I often hear the whiny left-wing media complain that the "message" of the left isn't getting out... ALl I can say is Thank GOD! The real pity of the US political scene is that it has been sterilized of true right-wing issues. ALL US politicians are left-of-center liberals, it's only a question of how far left. When was the last time you heard a candidate call for replacing welfare with the criminalization of indigence and sloth. What about replacing "no child left behind" with sterilizing the retarded so they stop polluting the gene pool. And how would those trembling in their lace underwear at the prospect of a "draft" feel about universal military service for all persons ages 18-20? And why are US soldiers dying in the Middle East when nukes could do the job cheaper and better? That's why I'm writing in Seth Tyrssen ( http://hometown.aol.com/americanfascist/afphome.ht ml ) for President!
As I understand it, what torpedoed SGI is that they pissed off their best graphics design engineers, so several of them quit and founded NVidia, and applied the SGI graphics pipeline processes to cheap PCI and AGP graphics cards... thereby making is possible to get $40K OnyxII class graphics performance on a $1K PC. Nobody I've ever met bought an SGI workstation because they loved the MIPS CPU...
Here's a clue f-maggots. Americans LOVE WAR. We crave the violent catharsis that stomping the carp out of weaker countries brings. We REVEL in seeing our victories chronicled on television. Who the flock cares if Saddam had WMDs. We KNOW it was a weak and flimsy rationalization at best, and we LOVE George W for having thr bulls to use it as an excuse for an attack. The important thing is, we WON, we KICKED ARSE. and it gives us a Hugh G. Rexxion just thinking about it. And after W is reelected, we're gonna STOMP Iran. And then N Korea. Why? Because we LOVE IT. So either learn to love war, or move to France, wuss!
I know folks who did their PhD thesis on a Cray (~100MIP +15 years ago) who now get much more computing done on a Pentium III desktop workstation. It has more megaflops and more RAM. The point - most of the research poured into "supercomputers" has been a complete waste of time. The SIMD technology of vector machines is virtually useless for general computing, but the enormous fiancial engine behind commercial CPUs has driven their R&D to pass up the performance of former "super" computers typically within 5 years.
The best advice would be to just shut down the useless waste of money that is supercomputing R&D, and wait for the commercial sector to do it.
Bette Midler *has* to be Shelob(didn't you see Drowning Mona?).
Rod Serling gets my vote for Saruman. Carl Sagan for Gandalf.
Mickey Dolenz for Frodo, Peter Tork for Samwise.
Marty Feldman For Gollum.
Enya for Arwen. Marcia Clark for Eowyn, and OJ Simpson for Lord of the Nazgul. Peter Gabriel for Aragorn. Danny Devito for Gimli. Jane Curtin for Galadriel. David Letterman for Elrond. John Tesh for Legolas. Ralph Nader for Denethor. Gene Wilder and Mel Brooks as Merry and Pippin. Mark Furman and the LAPD as the Orcs. And least but not last George Bush for Eomer King of Rohan, and Michael Moore as Wormtongue. Oh, Yeah, and Al Gore as Boromir.....and Gloria Alred as the Balrog.
To the extent that this development discourages other parties from encouraging people to watch TV, for fear of violating the Microsoft patent, this could become an unintended benefit to society in general.
But wait, quick, somebody charitable had better patent the process of flushing the toilet, or we're all in deep doo-doo, figuratively speaking;-)
No, neurotics bottle up their emotions.
Psychotics have radically wrong and inappropriate emotions because their perceptions of the world around them are warped and skewed by their illness. Like screaming when someone offers you a twinky because it is shaped like a phallus.
Sociopaths have no sense of *guilt*, they follow whatever urge comes into their heads. Like maybe Bill Clinton.
But you used to have to be all these things to have the B@lls to play D&D...
You say "Dork Thing" as if that was BAD...
Popularity has RAISED D&D to the status of a "Dork Thing".
Today a dork is someone who is just a little brighter and less socially adept than average.
Back in the day, D&D was a game for anti-social psychotic sociopath losers. In 1978, our DM stopped going to classes, hid in his dorm room, and didn't bathe for a whole semester. Then he dropped out of school over the summer, and was institutionalized. But while he was still nominally sane, he came up with some gnarly dungeon levels. Best played at night by candle-light. Today's mountain-dew sipping, haven't lost their baby-fat, give up to play Xbox kiddies are just poseurs.
The ID sniper is a deliberate hoax by a politically motivated "perofrmance artist".
He REALLY went to the Chinese police weapons show, but with a BOGUS product, just to see what would happen...
http://www.backfire.dk/JB/
Why not practice your skills by building an autonomous drone that will zero in on police radar and drop water balloons on them.
Blood-sucking parasites!
Oh look, Toyota has built a robot that blows... A trumpet!
I may have a penchant for seeing the dark side of human nature, but even so, I don't care what toyota says about "Pure" research regardless of profit, I am convinced that those robo-lips they spent all that money on will end up on a robo-hooker before long!
The noted author CS Lewis predicted in the 1940's that the human race would face extinction when scientists inevitably figured out how to make "female" robots that were better than the real thing.
The future is going to be a *strange* place.
Well, maybe, anyway...
Look to the lower right of the magic carpet area of the first set of mars photots - especially the marstrue.jpg image form http://www.lyle.org/mars/
There's a set of oddly regular pairs of white-ish dots arranged in a more-or-less straight line.
Reminiscent of, perhaps, fish ribs sticking up, or the spinal bones of some worm-like creature.
Can the Rover back up and take a closer photo?
I would guess that they all have jobs back in Redmond helping M$ to migrate the Linux kernel into Foghorn:Windoze. It would seem to us that M$ *must* have bought SCO under the table and ordered them to go down in flames doing as much damage to Linux as possible on the way down, with the promise of cushy golden parachutes at the bottom.
If not, well, they could always follow the old army joke, and get drunk and sleep in the gutter for six months to get their self-respect back.
Sorry Hank, this is just getting to the *pounding sand* stage. You don't find my arguments persuasive, but I do.
I will continue to advocate Linux, you can advocate windows. We'll have to rely on history to judge.
But... when we get to heaven, and we find out M$ really did appropriate open source code - you owe me a nickle
Actually, you are completely wrong, this is exactly the OPPOSITE of the SCO situation.
SCO has the Linux source code, and claimed to have proof from that source code that proprietary code had been pirated. When challenged, SCO has been unable to produce their claimed *proof*.
I on the other hand, freely admit that I have no source code, and claim only to have suspicions of M$ piracy. I have offered abundant and compelling reasons for holding those suspicions.
You, on the other hand, are misrepresenting my claims with a false straw-man argument, and are then attacking that straw-man with the assertion that since I don't have the source code in question, I am therefore somehow like SCO, even though that argument is absurd on the face of it.
I must congratulate you, you are a master of deceit. You must have been trained under the great Mr. Bill himself.
And I just gotts ask, how much does M$ pay trolls to lurk in discussion groups and attack their critics?
Well, I could mention dozens of additional Open Source features - demand paging, NUMA, 64 bit addressing, The original IE's resemblance to the UIUC freeware browser, the original IIS's resemblance to the UIUC web server code, etc, etc, etc BUT... you've got the perfect lawyers conundrum
A) If I can't produce the pirated code(being that MS doesn't open source theirs) then that is in a warped view of the world *proof* that they didn't pirate anything
B) And if I did produce the code, they can just claim they copied it from a proprietary source (those ACLs in NT that you mention DO bear a strange resemblance to DEC's VMS) and rely on their vast armada of lawyers to litigate the competition into submission the way they did when Apple sued them for stealing windoze in the first place...
So I suppose its hoeples, M$ could pretty much appropriate anything they want without fear of repercussions
OK Hankaholic, let's look at the features that Windoze had "first". Remember Linux dates back to the days of Win 3 or even a might earlier...
1)There's pre-emptive multitasking - oops, no Linux had that first, Windoze started with multi-threading tasks, and wouldn't scale past 3 CPUs in an MPU system until they *emulated* the Linux tasking scheme
2) Clustering support - oops, no Linux had that first, WIndoze atarted with "warm-spare" failover clustering that couldn't share tasks - till they *emulated* Linux clustering
3) Multi-user File security - oops, no Linux had that first. WIndoze started as a single user system that didn't have file ownership, till they *emulated* Linux security
4) LDAP authentication for single sign-on - oops,no Linux had that first. Windoze didn't have networking support at all, let alone network based authentication until they *emulated* Linux in AD
5) Network File Sharing - oops, no, Linux had that first. Windoze didn't have the ability to share much of anything over a network until they *Emulated* NFS with SMB.
5) The CLI for the new "Foghorn: Windoze" - oops, no Linux had that first. Windoze won't have the complex scripting ability of Linux until they *emulate* it in 2005.
And the list goes on and on and on...
Yeah every once in a while M$ works a deal with a hardware maker, and gets them to write a windoze driver for a USB camera or some similar gadget that few people use before they give the specs to the open-source community, but hey, even a blind pig finds an acorn every once in a while...
Y'know Hankster, if I knew as little about operating systems as you seem to , I wouldn't venture opinions in public so much...
Everyone is missing hte REAL point here. As the cartoon "user friendly" ( http://www.userfriendly.org/ ) has implied, SCO is just a sock-puppet for Microsoft. After all, didn't MS take a $39M equity position in SCO *just before* the suit got filed.
BUT here's the gag. What if this isn't just an end-around-run by MS trying to gore Linux without looking like a predatory monopoly? What if the rumors are true, and MS has been lowering software development costs by incorporating open-source drivers into Windoze?
Aha, suddenly the mists clear and we see what could REALLY be at stake. If SCO is NOT successful at destroying the GPL, Ms might have to OPEN-SOURCE Windows because of the code that they have appropriated. And following that thread, developers which have incorporated MS-supplied class libraries and APIs might also have to open source THEIR code.
So the REAL story that newspapers should be covering is not *How will Linux users be indemnified against IP claims* but instead *How will MS indemnify users of Windoze against having to open source their code* when the GPL is UPHELD by the courts.
Slashdot Mirror
I often hear the whiny left-wing media complain that the "message" of the left isn't getting out... ALl I can say is Thank GOD! The real pity of the US political scene is that it has been sterilized of true right-wing issues. ALL US politicians are left-of-center liberals, it's only a question of how far left. When was the last time you heard a candidate call for replacing welfare with the criminalization of indigence and sloth. What about replacing "no child left behind" with sterilizing the retarded so they stop polluting the gene pool. And how would those trembling in their lace underwear at the prospect of a "draft" feel about universal military service for all persons ages 18-20? And why are US soldiers dying in the Middle East when nukes could do the job cheaper and better? That's why I'm writing in Seth Tyrssen ( http://hometown.aol.com/americanfascist/afphome.ht ml ) for President!
As I understand it, what torpedoed SGI is that they pissed off their best graphics design engineers, so several of them quit and founded NVidia, and applied the SGI graphics pipeline processes to cheap PCI and AGP graphics cards... thereby making is possible to get $40K OnyxII class graphics performance on a $1K PC. Nobody I've ever met bought an SGI workstation because they loved the MIPS CPU...
Here's a clue f-maggots. Americans LOVE WAR. We crave the violent catharsis that stomping the carp out of weaker countries brings. We REVEL in seeing our victories chronicled on television. Who the flock cares if Saddam had WMDs. We KNOW it was a weak and flimsy rationalization at best, and we LOVE George W for having thr bulls to use it as an excuse for an attack. The important thing is, we WON, we KICKED ARSE. and it gives us a Hugh G. Rexxion just thinking about it. And after W is reelected, we're gonna STOMP Iran. And then N Korea. Why? Because we LOVE IT. So either learn to love war, or move to France, wuss!
I know folks who did their PhD thesis on a Cray (~100MIP +15 years ago) who now get much more computing done on a Pentium III desktop workstation. It has more megaflops and more RAM. The point - most of the research poured into "supercomputers" has been a complete waste of time. The SIMD technology of vector machines is virtually useless for general computing, but the enormous fiancial engine behind commercial CPUs has driven their R&D to pass up the performance of former "super" computers typically within 5 years. The best advice would be to just shut down the useless waste of money that is supercomputing R&D, and wait for the commercial sector to do it.
Bette Midler *has* to be Shelob(didn't you see Drowning Mona?). Rod Serling gets my vote for Saruman. Carl Sagan for Gandalf. Mickey Dolenz for Frodo, Peter Tork for Samwise. Marty Feldman For Gollum. Enya for Arwen. Marcia Clark for Eowyn, and OJ Simpson for Lord of the Nazgul. Peter Gabriel for Aragorn. Danny Devito for Gimli. Jane Curtin for Galadriel. David Letterman for Elrond. John Tesh for Legolas. Ralph Nader for Denethor. Gene Wilder and Mel Brooks as Merry and Pippin. Mark Furman and the LAPD as the Orcs. And least but not last George Bush for Eomer King of Rohan, and Michael Moore as Wormtongue. Oh, Yeah, and Al Gore as Boromir.....and Gloria Alred as the Balrog.
To the extent that this development discourages other parties from encouraging people to watch TV, for fear of violating the Microsoft patent, this could become an unintended benefit to society in general. But wait, quick, somebody charitable had better patent the process of flushing the toilet, or we're all in deep doo-doo, figuratively speaking ;-)
So when the WinFiat crashes(daily), can I just hold down the horn, windshield wiper, and turnsignal to reboot, then start driving again?
No, neurotics bottle up their emotions. Psychotics have radically wrong and inappropriate emotions because their perceptions of the world around them are warped and skewed by their illness. Like screaming when someone offers you a twinky because it is shaped like a phallus. Sociopaths have no sense of *guilt*, they follow whatever urge comes into their heads. Like maybe Bill Clinton. But you used to have to be all these things to have the B@lls to play D&D...
You say "Dork Thing" as if that was BAD... Popularity has RAISED D&D to the status of a "Dork Thing". Today a dork is someone who is just a little brighter and less socially adept than average. Back in the day, D&D was a game for anti-social psychotic sociopath losers. In 1978, our DM stopped going to classes, hid in his dorm room, and didn't bathe for a whole semester. Then he dropped out of school over the summer, and was institutionalized. But while he was still nominally sane, he came up with some gnarly dungeon levels. Best played at night by candle-light. Today's mountain-dew sipping, haven't lost their baby-fat, give up to play Xbox kiddies are just poseurs.
The ID sniper is a deliberate hoax by a politically motivated "perofrmance artist". He REALLY went to the Chinese police weapons show, but with a BOGUS product, just to see what would happen... http://www.backfire.dk/JB/
Why not practice your skills by building an autonomous drone that will zero in on police radar and drop water balloons on them. Blood-sucking parasites!
Oh look, Toyota has built a robot that blows... A trumpet! I may have a penchant for seeing the dark side of human nature, but even so, I don't care what toyota says about "Pure" research regardless of profit, I am convinced that those robo-lips they spent all that money on will end up on a robo-hooker before long! The noted author CS Lewis predicted in the 1940's that the human race would face extinction when scientists inevitably figured out how to make "female" robots that were better than the real thing. The future is going to be a *strange* place.
Dude, Download red carpet from http://www.ximian.com It makes updating and installing software amazingly user friendly...
Well, maybe, anyway... Look to the lower right of the magic carpet area of the first set of mars photots - especially the marstrue.jpg image form http://www.lyle.org/mars/ There's a set of oddly regular pairs of white-ish dots arranged in a more-or-less straight line. Reminiscent of, perhaps, fish ribs sticking up, or the spinal bones of some worm-like creature. Can the Rover back up and take a closer photo?
I would guess that they all have jobs back in Redmond helping M$ to migrate the Linux kernel into Foghorn:Windoze. It would seem to us that M$ *must* have bought SCO under the table and ordered them to go down in flames doing as much damage to Linux as possible on the way down, with the promise of cushy golden parachutes at the bottom. If not, well, they could always follow the old army joke, and get drunk and sleep in the gutter for six months to get their self-respect back.
Sorry Hank, this is just getting to the *pounding sand* stage. You don't find my arguments persuasive, but I do. I will continue to advocate Linux, you can advocate windows. We'll have to rely on history to judge. But... when we get to heaven, and we find out M$ really did appropriate open source code - you owe me a nickle
Actually, you are completely wrong, this is exactly the OPPOSITE of the SCO situation. SCO has the Linux source code, and claimed to have proof from that source code that proprietary code had been pirated. When challenged, SCO has been unable to produce their claimed *proof*. I on the other hand, freely admit that I have no source code, and claim only to have suspicions of M$ piracy. I have offered abundant and compelling reasons for holding those suspicions. You, on the other hand, are misrepresenting my claims with a false straw-man argument, and are then attacking that straw-man with the assertion that since I don't have the source code in question, I am therefore somehow like SCO, even though that argument is absurd on the face of it. I must congratulate you, you are a master of deceit. You must have been trained under the great Mr. Bill himself. And I just gotts ask, how much does M$ pay trolls to lurk in discussion groups and attack their critics?
Well, I could mention dozens of additional Open Source features - demand paging, NUMA, 64 bit addressing, The original IE's resemblance to the UIUC freeware browser, the original IIS's resemblance to the UIUC web server code, etc, etc, etc BUT... you've got the perfect lawyers conundrum A) If I can't produce the pirated code(being that MS doesn't open source theirs) then that is in a warped view of the world *proof* that they didn't pirate anything B) And if I did produce the code, they can just claim they copied it from a proprietary source (those ACLs in NT that you mention DO bear a strange resemblance to DEC's VMS) and rely on their vast armada of lawyers to litigate the competition into submission the way they did when Apple sued them for stealing windoze in the first place... So I suppose its hoeples, M$ could pretty much appropriate anything they want without fear of repercussions
OK Hankaholic, let's look at the features that Windoze had "first". Remember Linux dates back to the days of Win 3 or even a might earlier... 1)There's pre-emptive multitasking - oops, no Linux had that first, Windoze started with multi-threading tasks, and wouldn't scale past 3 CPUs in an MPU system until they *emulated* the Linux tasking scheme 2) Clustering support - oops, no Linux had that first, WIndoze atarted with "warm-spare" failover clustering that couldn't share tasks - till they *emulated* Linux clustering 3) Multi-user File security - oops, no Linux had that first. WIndoze started as a single user system that didn't have file ownership, till they *emulated* Linux security 4) LDAP authentication for single sign-on - oops,no Linux had that first. Windoze didn't have networking support at all, let alone network based authentication until they *emulated* Linux in AD 5) Network File Sharing - oops, no, Linux had that first. Windoze didn't have the ability to share much of anything over a network until they *Emulated* NFS with SMB. 5) The CLI for the new "Foghorn: Windoze" - oops, no Linux had that first. Windoze won't have the complex scripting ability of Linux until they *emulate* it in 2005. And the list goes on and on and on... Yeah every once in a while M$ works a deal with a hardware maker, and gets them to write a windoze driver for a USB camera or some similar gadget that few people use before they give the specs to the open-source community, but hey, even a blind pig finds an acorn every once in a while... Y'know Hankster, if I knew as little about operating systems as you seem to , I wouldn't venture opinions in public so much...
Everyone is missing hte REAL point here. As the cartoon "user friendly" ( http://www.userfriendly.org/ ) has implied, SCO is just a sock-puppet for Microsoft. After all, didn't MS take a $39M equity position in SCO *just before* the suit got filed. BUT here's the gag. What if this isn't just an end-around-run by MS trying to gore Linux without looking like a predatory monopoly? What if the rumors are true, and MS has been lowering software development costs by incorporating open-source drivers into Windoze? Aha, suddenly the mists clear and we see what could REALLY be at stake. If SCO is NOT successful at destroying the GPL, Ms might have to OPEN-SOURCE Windows because of the code that they have appropriated. And following that thread, developers which have incorporated MS-supplied class libraries and APIs might also have to open source THEIR code. So the REAL story that newspapers should be covering is not *How will Linux users be indemnified against IP claims* but instead *How will MS indemnify users of Windoze against having to open source their code* when the GPL is UPHELD by the courts.