A lot of Texans (at least jokingly) like to refer to Texas as a sovereign entity, and isn't a lot of truth said in jest?
It's not entirely jest. We tend to think of ourselves as "Texans first, Americans second." It's not really a matter of sovereignity, but a matter of culture. Sure, there aren't very many people who honestly believe in Texan succession (although we can legally do it - it was part of the agreement that the Feds made with the RoT when it was incorporated), but many Texans believe in the rights of the states versus the Federal government more than most Americans.
However, a good number of Texans will tell you that Texas should be a republic again, because it's just the culture in which some of us were raised.
perhaps the world will wake up and realize that it _might_ be a good idea to mix systems a bit so that whatever happens to one system, you still have some significant percentage of the network still running.
So we should make three different highway systems just in case there is a wreck on one of them? We should build three smaller power plants instead of one in case one of them crashes?
I can see your point, but the problem is initial cost. For each seperate system, you've gotta have additional servers, licenses, staff, etc. to maintain it.
You can't just run Apache, IIS, [whatever Apple uses], Netware, and Solaris on the same server. You also can't expect a single tech department to be able to know the ins and outs of each system. There will be a "Linux guru" and a "Windows guru", and a "Mac guru," who will all want things done their way.
I work in an IT dept. We've got four different types systems (P4 1.5, 2.0, 2.4 and XP2500+), all running XP. If there is a software problem that will take more than five minutes, we re-Ghost the computer with an image on the network, and it's up in a flash. Employees keep their data on the network, not locally. Uniformity is cheap and easy.
The benefit to having multiple systems just isn't great enough to outweigh the cost.
One of the first things that should be taught in a polling/stats class is that polls are only accurate if the persons being polled are randomly chosen, and do not have to do much to respond. Voluntary surveys show NOTHING.
There was a case a while back where Ann Landers asked her readers a simple question: if they had to do it over again, would they still have a child. She asked everyone to send her responses, and came up with an outrageous conclusion. Over 90% of her readers said that they would not want to have kids!
However, an independant study by phone was done a few months later. It showed that only 20% of parents would not have kids if they had a choice. The reason that there was such a discrepancy was that the people who wrote to Ann Landers felt so strongly about how horrible their kids were.
I think that slashdot says it best: "If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane. "
The reason we have all that fancy stuff
on
Less Might Be More
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· Score: 1
I always recommend my friends and family towards the higher end computers, telling them that they won't have to upgrade for a long time. I then explain to them my favorite distributed computing program and chuckle when the work units come in.:)
You don't go shooting someone because they trespass... If they are in your house you MAY have a case. On your property, not likely. Sure, you may not be prosecuted but only a fool would take that chance....
Does Ashcroft really expect me to believe there are 60,000 distinct movies on that network? Netflix only has 25,000 movies. I suspect they counted the number of COPIES of movies in the whole network.
Actually, what he said is that there were 40 petabytes, the equivalent of 60,000 movies or10.5 million songs. Could be 39.95pb of pr0n, and only.05 of songs.
Who signs his paycheck, anyway?
Are you a U.S. taxpayer? If you are, then you sign it.
Actually, you could truthfully answer no to that question, because the real law-breaking is not downloading, but uploading. Unless you hacked into some recording studio to get the studio edits of the songs, it's not really illegal.
With all the new colors and styles that the iPod is coming out in, I think that the developers have missed one important design: a black (or dark) theme. Is it just me who thinks that a black iPod would just look sweet?
I'm a geek so that means I don't run Windows. And I'm a real geek so that means I dont rely on Wine either.
Geez, the option to mod down is so tempting right now...
First off, geeklyness has nothing to do with the OS you run. Running Windows does not exclude you from the geekdom, and running Linux does not give you an all access pass. If you're running a fresh boot of Fedora every time you restart your computer because you can't figure out how to install RedHat, you are less of a geek than someone who runs Windows and keeps it finely tuned.
Wine sucks. Winex is better. Cedega (wine 4) is great. I really don't think you have a problem with having to "rely" on wine, you have a problem getting winex from CVS or shelling out for (or finding) cedega. Just because you are unwilling to get CS working in Wine, you shouldn't say that "real geeks" don't use it.
Oh, and real geeks never say things like "real geeks never do [whatever].":)
think about the viewpoint an affrican high school teacher in mississippi might have while teaching about the civil war...or a staunch anti-war believer when teaching about vietnam...children's views of events would eventually become skewed...that's why it's good to have standardized text books...
No, no it's not good to have standardized text books because it is difficult to choose a standard
Besides, the point of K-12 is to get an education, to learn how to learn. Trivial things like knowing the capital of Tunzania aren't important in and of themselves, they are important because one day, you will have to be able to learn the cities where your customers are, or something like that.
Also, it shouldn't matter what viewpoint the teacher has. I had a bible thumping, flag waving, white male republican for U.S. History in High School, but yet I formed the opinion that the Vietnam war was a conflict we shouldn't have gotten involved in.
I, for one, do not believe in a standardized text book, or a standardized education. Sure, facts need to be standardized, but how those facts are presented should be left up to the teacher. Let the teacher teach, for crying out loud!
of course, this relates mostly to elementary school & high school...obviously once you get into college, many teachers don't even use text books to begin with...
You've obviously never had a prof who, come test day, gave his tests completely out of the book, with little to no questions that were only covered in his lecture. If the prof teaches out of them, books are important in college.
I vehemently believe that behind EVERY botched tech job, there was at least one greedy, obsequious player that was too afraid of telling the customer he is WRONG.
I bought a laptop from Best Buy about three years ago. I also bought the service plan, which actually "helped" me, because within five months, the laptop would turn on. So, I get it back, and it does the same thing again in about a week. Take it there, they give it back to me and say it was abused, so my warranty is voided. Pissed off (but needing the laptop), I took it to a local mom and pop shop, who opened it up. They found that there were two screws that were rolling around on the motherboard, shorting things out.
We filed suit, and settled for the price of the laptop.
I mean, the windows users are the ones that are spoiled... no need to choose between distros
You obviously haven't ever seen a "tech-savvy" guy at the local CompUSA holding up a Win XP Home and a Win XP Pro box side by side trying to figure out what the difference (besides the $100) is.
Sure, the polics can use this technology to see through your walls and see if you are doing something illegal, but it probably won't be admissable in an American court.
There was a case in which police used infrared scanners to see how hot/bright it was inside a house that they suspected having marijuana plants growing inside. When it came to trial, the attorney argued that because the police had no warrant to search the house, it was an illegal search. IIRC, the judge ruled that it was a violation of search and seizure laws. It's a good precedent, and because it sends out waves to spy (as opposed to passive scanning like the infrared did), it's even more invasive.
Hmmm, this thing is nice, but what if I wanted to view not only movie files, but images too? And wouldn't it be cool if I could view documents and spreadsheets right there?
I would also want to be able to hook up external peripherals that would allow me to input data quickly and efficently, so I could edit those movies and images and documents. A big plus would be some kind of program that would let me download and view web pages.
Not only that, but wouldn't it be neat if I could remotely access it from other computers, using a open and secure protocall to do all of my administrating, or have a stable daemon that would serve whatever content I wanted to people throughout the internet. Finally, to rap it up, I would want counterstrike on it!
Here's an idea: Don't hook up the phone line to the computer unless you plan on going online
Here's a better idea: download Spybot Search & Destroy and run it. Keep your system patched. Run AV software. Don't run unkown binaries (read:"crap off Kazaa")
Let us examine a hypothetical, if used in a similar manner, laws could be passed to shut down any non-kosher restaurants and stores. Clearly no one pushes this because the govt has no role enforcing a set of religious beliefs or edicts, regardless the rhetoric they are couched in.
That is because kosherness is what is called a morae (sp?). The belief that only kosher things should be eaten is a regional one, held by a small percentage of the population. It is not universal to morality, like the idea that young children should not be raped on camera. That is a universal one, thus being immoral.
Unkosherness is distasteful, and even downright disrespectful (depending on the type of Jew), but it is not immoral. The reason that the government (believes they) have the right to pass such laws is that it is a universal opinion, like laws against murder and theivery.
One of the reasons that "tokens" for micropayments are unpopular is the same reason that everyone hates those coupons you have to buy when you go to the local fair. You know, every vendor takes only coupons, so if you want to eat, drink, ride a ride, take a crap, or do anything, you've gotta buy a coupon.
But think about the business model of these coupons: people buy a large chunk of them (more than they acually need, so they won't have to go back and get more), and then don't spend all of their tickets. However, you paid for $20 in tickets, and only bought $15 in food, so they've already raked in $5 without any spending but for cheap coupons.
However, fairs and the internet are two totally different venues. At a fair, there is a monopoly run by the owners, and you can't exactly warez some popcorn off of bittorrent. The internet allows for alternatives. For example, if the NYTimes decided to require microcash payments instead of microsoul payments, I'm pretty sure that slashdot and other similar sites will be devoid of links to the NYTimes site. This is survivable because we have things called mirrors and caches.
Suppose you haver been making micropayments on your credit card adding to $xxx.xx5 , then pay the credit card bill w/your bank account, then want to withdraw your complete bank account in cash. Does the bank round up; there by taking a loss, round down; cheating you, or slice a penny in 1/2?
Or they could just extend their precision of the balance in the account a few decimals and only let you withdraw a penny for each whole penny you have. They wuold be "rounding down" but it wouldn't be cheating you because you would still have the fractions of cents in your account. You would be able to transfer them to other accounts (assuming every bank does the new scheme), if you _really_ wanted the penny that much.
I live in Central Texas, about fifteen minutes from the Crawford Ranch that Bush stays in so often. It was very interesting here because all two of the local theatres refused to show the film (yes, they do show all the usual "opening everywhere" films on time), and I've heard nothing on the local news about F 9/11. The first time most people around here heard of Fahrenheit 9/11, or even Michael Moore were when the national commercials came on. Mind you, these aren't political dumbasses, most of them knew more than the average person about politics and candidates.
Uh, the guy sold the screennames, not the right to spam on them. Blocking home IP's won't do anything, unless the spammer is sending them from his own mail server on his AOL Hi-Speed (5 times faster than dialup!) connection.
I really don't care if they stop me from overclocking because I don't do it. I don't do intensive CPU tasks, so I have no need for it.
But, what I do is UNDERclock my CPU so that it runs cooler, thus needing fewer/quieter fans. I don't need all 2.4ghz, so I send the FSB and voltage down a bit. And then, instead of hitting 45 celsius when idle and fans blazing, I get around 40 degrees, and can't hear the fan at all. If I need to do something intensive, I just reboot, change to default and flip the switch that turns the fan on "high" mode.
If they are locking the FSB, voltages, multipliers, and everything else, this doesn't just prohibit overclocking, it stops tweaking at all. Which, in some form or another, is a fundamental need for most of the/. community.
Why is it considered news when some entity considers Linux? It's not news. It would be news if the decided to go with Linux, not if there considering it.
First off, everything is news. You considering taking a shit is news, just not important news.
It would not be important news if they were changing from IIS to Apache, or switching chips in their servers. But, they are considering revamping their entire computer system to open source. Just considering it is a great step for OSS.
Slashdot Mirror
A lot of Texans (at least jokingly) like to refer to Texas as a sovereign entity, and isn't a lot of truth said in jest?
It's not entirely jest. We tend to think of ourselves as "Texans first, Americans second." It's not really a matter of sovereignity, but a matter of culture. Sure, there aren't very many people who honestly believe in Texan succession (although we can legally do it - it was part of the agreement that the Feds made with the RoT when it was incorporated), but many Texans believe in the rights of the states versus the Federal government more than most Americans.
However, a good number of Texans will tell you that Texas should be a republic again, because it's just the culture in which some of us were raised.
perhaps the world will wake up and realize that it _might_ be a good idea to mix systems a bit so that whatever happens to one system, you still have some significant percentage of the network still running.
So we should make three different highway systems just in case there is a wreck on one of them? We should build three smaller power plants instead of one in case one of them crashes?
I can see your point, but the problem is initial cost. For each seperate system, you've gotta have additional servers, licenses, staff, etc. to maintain it.
You can't just run Apache, IIS, [whatever Apple uses], Netware, and Solaris on the same server. You also can't expect a single tech department to be able to know the ins and outs of each system. There will be a "Linux guru" and a "Windows guru", and a "Mac guru," who will all want things done their way.
I work in an IT dept. We've got four different types systems (P4 1.5, 2.0, 2.4 and XP2500+), all running XP. If there is a software problem that will take more than five minutes, we re-Ghost the computer with an image on the network, and it's up in a flash. Employees keep their data on the network, not locally. Uniformity is cheap and easy.
The benefit to having multiple systems just isn't great enough to outweigh the cost.
They stole my idea! I guess I should use a thicker tin-foil hat when walking around in public.
One of the first things that should be taught in a polling/stats class is that polls are only accurate if the persons being polled are randomly chosen, and do not have to do much to respond. Voluntary surveys show NOTHING.
There was a case a while back where Ann Landers asked her readers a simple question: if they had to do it over again, would they still have a child. She asked everyone to send her responses, and came up with an outrageous conclusion. Over 90% of her readers said that they would not want to have kids!
However, an independant study by phone was done a few months later. It showed that only 20% of parents would not have kids if they had a choice. The reason that there was such a discrepancy was that the people who wrote to Ann Landers felt so strongly about how horrible their kids were.
I think that slashdot says it best: "If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane. "
I always recommend my friends and family towards the higher end computers, telling them that they won't have to upgrade for a long time. I then explain to them my favorite distributed computing program and chuckle when the work units come in. :)
You don't go shooting someone because they trespass... If they are in your house you MAY have a case. On your property, not likely. Sure, you may not be prosecuted but only a fool would take that chance....
Or a Texan. It's all legal here, baby!
Does Ashcroft really expect me to believe there are 60,000 distinct movies on that network? Netflix only has 25,000 movies. I suspect they counted the number of COPIES of movies in the whole network.
.05 of songs.
Actually, what he said is that there were 40 petabytes, the equivalent of 60,000 movies or10.5 million songs. Could be 39.95pb of pr0n, and only
Who signs his paycheck, anyway?
Are you a U.S. taxpayer? If you are, then you sign it.
Actually, you could truthfully answer no to that question, because the real law-breaking is not downloading, but uploading. Unless you hacked into some recording studio to get the studio edits of the songs, it's not really illegal.
With all the new colors and styles that the iPod is coming out in, I think that the developers have missed one important design: a black (or dark) theme. Is it just me who thinks that a black iPod would just look sweet?
I'm a geek so that means I don't run Windows. And I'm a real geek so that means I dont rely on Wine either.
:)
Geez, the option to mod down is so tempting right now... First off, geeklyness has nothing to do with the OS you run. Running Windows does not exclude you from the geekdom, and running Linux does not give you an all access pass. If you're running a fresh boot of Fedora every time you restart your computer because you can't figure out how to install RedHat, you are less of a geek than someone who runs Windows and keeps it finely tuned.
Wine sucks. Winex is better. Cedega (wine 4) is great. I really don't think you have a problem with having to "rely" on wine, you have a problem getting winex from CVS or shelling out for (or finding) cedega. Just because you are unwilling to get CS working in Wine, you shouldn't say that "real geeks" don't use it.
Oh, and real geeks never say things like "real geeks never do [whatever]."
think about the viewpoint an affrican high school teacher in mississippi might have while teaching about the civil war...or a staunch anti-war believer when teaching about vietnam...children's views of events would eventually become skewed...that's why it's good to have standardized text books...
No, no it's not good to have standardized text books because it is difficult to choose a standard Besides, the point of K-12 is to get an education, to learn how to learn. Trivial things like knowing the capital of Tunzania aren't important in and of themselves, they are important because one day, you will have to be able to learn the cities where your customers are, or something like that.
Also, it shouldn't matter what viewpoint the teacher has. I had a bible thumping, flag waving, white male republican for U.S. History in High School, but yet I formed the opinion that the Vietnam war was a conflict we shouldn't have gotten involved in.
I, for one, do not believe in a standardized text book, or a standardized education. Sure, facts need to be standardized, but how those facts are presented should be left up to the teacher. Let the teacher teach, for crying out loud!
of course, this relates mostly to elementary school & high school...obviously once you get into college, many teachers don't even use text books to begin with...
You've obviously never had a prof who, come test day, gave his tests completely out of the book, with little to no questions that were only covered in his lecture. If the prof teaches out of them, books are important in college.
I vehemently believe that behind EVERY botched tech job, there was at least one greedy, obsequious player that was too afraid of telling the customer he is WRONG.
I bought a laptop from Best Buy about three years ago. I also bought the service plan, which actually "helped" me, because within five months, the laptop would turn on. So, I get it back, and it does the same thing again in about a week. Take it there, they give it back to me and say it was abused, so my warranty is voided. Pissed off (but needing the laptop), I took it to a local mom and pop shop, who opened it up. They found that there were two screws that were rolling around on the motherboard, shorting things out.
We filed suit, and settled for the price of the laptop.
I mean, the windows users are the ones that are spoiled... no need to choose between distros
You obviously haven't ever seen a "tech-savvy" guy at the local CompUSA holding up a Win XP Home and a Win XP Pro box side by side trying to figure out what the difference (besides the $100) is.
Sure, the polics can use this technology to see through your walls and see if you are doing something illegal, but it probably won't be admissable in an American court.
There was a case in which police used infrared scanners to see how hot/bright it was inside a house that they suspected having marijuana plants growing inside. When it came to trial, the attorney argued that because the police had no warrant to search the house, it was an illegal search. IIRC, the judge ruled that it was a violation of search and seizure laws. It's a good precedent, and because it sends out waves to spy (as opposed to passive scanning like the infrared did), it's even more invasive.
So, just get a good lawyer, and you should be set. That is, in theory.
I wasn't trying to make a statement on the ruling at all. I was trying to address an inconsistancy in the parent's post.
Hmmm, this thing is nice, but what if I wanted to view not only movie files, but images too? And wouldn't it be cool if I could view documents and spreadsheets right there?
I would also want to be able to hook up external peripherals that would allow me to input data quickly and efficently, so I could edit those movies and images and documents. A big plus would be some kind of program that would let me download and view web pages.
Not only that, but wouldn't it be neat if I could remotely access it from other computers, using a open and secure protocall to do all of my administrating, or have a stable daemon that would serve whatever content I wanted to people throughout the internet. Finally, to rap it up, I would want counterstrike on it!
I think I'm on to something here...
Here's an idea: Don't hook up the phone line to the computer unless you plan on going online
Here's a better idea: download Spybot Search & Destroy and run it. Keep your system patched. Run AV software. Don't run unkown binaries (read:"crap off Kazaa")
Here's an EVEN better idea: run linux.
Let us examine a hypothetical, if used in a similar manner, laws could be passed to shut down any non-kosher restaurants and stores. Clearly no one pushes this because the govt has no role enforcing a set of religious beliefs or edicts, regardless the rhetoric they are couched in.
That is because kosherness is what is called a morae (sp?). The belief that only kosher things should be eaten is a regional one, held by a small percentage of the population. It is not universal to morality, like the idea that young children should not be raped on camera. That is a universal one, thus being immoral.
Unkosherness is distasteful, and even downright disrespectful (depending on the type of Jew), but it is not immoral. The reason that the government (believes they) have the right to pass such laws is that it is a universal opinion, like laws against murder and theivery.
One of the reasons that "tokens" for micropayments are unpopular is the same reason that everyone hates those coupons you have to buy when you go to the local fair. You know, every vendor takes only coupons, so if you want to eat, drink, ride a ride, take a crap, or do anything, you've gotta buy a coupon.
But think about the business model of these coupons: people buy a large chunk of them (more than they acually need, so they won't have to go back and get more), and then don't spend all of their tickets. However, you paid for $20 in tickets, and only bought $15 in food, so they've already raked in $5 without any spending but for cheap coupons.
However, fairs and the internet are two totally different venues. At a fair, there is a monopoly run by the owners, and you can't exactly warez some popcorn off of bittorrent. The internet allows for alternatives. For example, if the NYTimes decided to require microcash payments instead of microsoul payments, I'm pretty sure that slashdot and other similar sites will be devoid of links to the NYTimes site. This is survivable because we have things called mirrors and caches.
Suppose you haver been making micropayments on your credit card adding to $xxx.xx5 , then pay the credit card bill w/your bank account, then want to withdraw your complete bank account in cash. Does the bank round up; there by taking a loss, round down; cheating you, or slice a penny in 1/2?
Or they could just extend their precision of the balance in the account a few decimals and only let you withdraw a penny for each whole penny you have. They wuold be "rounding down" but it wouldn't be cheating you because you would still have the fractions of cents in your account. You would be able to transfer them to other accounts (assuming every bank does the new scheme), if you _really_ wanted the penny that much.
I live in Central Texas, about fifteen minutes from the Crawford Ranch that Bush stays in so often. It was very interesting here because all two of the local theatres refused to show the film (yes, they do show all the usual "opening everywhere" films on time), and I've heard nothing on the local news about F 9/11. The first time most people around here heard of Fahrenheit 9/11, or even Michael Moore were when the national commercials came on. Mind you, these aren't political dumbasses, most of them knew more than the average person about politics and candidates.
Uh, the guy sold the screennames, not the right to spam on them. Blocking home IP's won't do anything, unless the spammer is sending them from his own mail server on his AOL Hi-Speed (5 times faster than dialup!) connection.
The first person who says gmail is getting shot. By me.
I really don't care if they stop me from overclocking because I don't do it. I don't do intensive CPU tasks, so I have no need for it.
/. community.
But, what I do is UNDERclock my CPU so that it runs cooler, thus needing fewer/quieter fans. I don't need all 2.4ghz, so I send the FSB and voltage down a bit. And then, instead of hitting 45 celsius when idle and fans blazing, I get around 40 degrees, and can't hear the fan at all. If I need to do something intensive, I just reboot, change to default and flip the switch that turns the fan on "high" mode.
If they are locking the FSB, voltages, multipliers, and everything else, this doesn't just prohibit overclocking, it stops tweaking at all. Which, in some form or another, is a fundamental need for most of the
Why is it considered news when some entity considers Linux? It's not news. It would be news if the decided to go with Linux, not if there considering it. First off, everything is news. You considering taking a shit is news, just not important news. It would not be important news if they were changing from IIS to Apache, or switching chips in their servers. But, they are considering revamping their entire computer system to open source. Just considering it is a great step for OSS.