That's a very fine opinion, but who are you to tell me
Oh, for cryin' out loud, he expressed his opinion on a/. talkback, what the hell do you think/. is all about?
Also, you (as far as I can tell) are not a member of the Debian project
Yeah, "if ye don't like it, youz can jest git the hell out". Geez. Why am I not surprised this is coming from an AC?
As for the grandparent, he does make a point that I haven't seen mentioned yet, that being, there is a lot of software in non-free that is NOT closed-source/commercial, but only "semi-free". Usually the only thing keeping it from being in main, is some "don't charge anything for this" restriction that prevents redistribution. I have no problem with the fanatics going after the closed source stuff, I get my NVIDIA drivers from NVIDIA's site anyway, but it will be a real shame if things like Angband can't be distributed with Debian.
Harvard was his second attempt since Texas Law School turned him down, and as for academics, I like this quote the best:
"I'd like to suggest to my liberal friends that they consider voting for Gov. G. Willikers Bush because obviously he believes in affirmative action. How else to explain the phenomenon of a C- average Yale student being admitted to Harvard graduate school? (Must be they had yet to fill their quota of young, preppy sons of wealthy, influential alumni.) Or could it be what was once said about his daddy is even more applicable to him? To wit, that he was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple..." Linda Badlucco, Carp Lake Mi.
Finally, to quote a famous religious conservative, a preacher with a show on every Sunday here in the Bible-Belt, and a fan of the Bushes, "even stupid people can get a college degree". Now he was referring to all those idiotic scientists with their crazy nonsense about evolution, but if *all* of those people got degrees and are still stupid, then surely Harvard can make a "mistake" every once in awhile. Hey, if the theory works for him, then it has to work for me too.:)
Do you really want to work with a Klingon programmer? I mean think about it, he (or she for that matter) is bigger than you, stronger than you, and carries a nasty, double-bladed, two-handed sword as a matter of course. Naturally, no honorable Klingon goes around unarmed. Now just imagine what a Klingon programmer might do if, after 4 hours of vainly chasing a bug (which turns out to be not in his app anyway, but in a third-party library that he doesn't have the source to), the frustration reaches critical mass, and he enters Klingon Battle Frenzy, and.... oh dear....
The amazing software developers making some of the best software out there today are not working for peanuts.
I don't believe anyone is saying that. What they're saying is that money is not the primary motivator of these people, they're doing it for other reasons. Sure, many are being paid full time to do this and that's great, but you seem to be implying that Linus, for example, would only work on Linux now if he were being paid too. I would suggest instead that Linus would do what he did in the beginning, earn a paycheck working for someone else, while working on his 'baby' on his own time. Just because these guys are being paid to work full-time, doesn't mean they wouldn't continue to work on them on their own time if their main job was something else.
What you're describing as a misunderstanding, I would describe simply as an indicator of who the elite in the FOSS world really are. These guys are so good, they are being paid to do work they would most likely do anyway, only at a much slower pace because they'd have to earn a living first. They're paid to do what they want to do anyway. Damn, I'm jealous.
because our intelligence services couldn't share information with local police.
I hope you don't believe thats actually fixed now. Government agencies not cooperating with one another is absolutely old news. The Patriot Act doesn't fix that, in fact, how do you figure an Act that take away the rights of *citizens* somehow helping with inter-agency communitcation in the *government*?
Also, remember that when the next attack takes out an entire city.
Which is just about inevitable anyway, its just a matter of time. Israel's attempt at stopping suicide bombers pretty much proves you can't stop it, no matter what you do. One lunatic getting his hands on some old Soviet nuclear warhead and using it is going to happen, its not an 'if', but a 'when'. The question is: does becoming like the enemy, in order to fight the enemy, really the logical thing for a democracy to do? Are you not destroying the very thing you claim to be defending?
My point is that it's not one party or the other; the whole system is flawed
Actually, its working exactly as expected. What too many idealists (not meaning you) seem to forget is that all governments will try to enhance their own power if allowed to, it is the nature and inherient danger in any form of government. Democracies and Republics are no exception. The question is, is the public allowed to effectively dissent and are there any judicial/legislative/political checks to prevent the government's expansion of power? In the case of the Patriot Act, the other shoe simply hasn't dropped yet. First we have to wait for the government to push the law too far and clearly abuse it (or demonstrate that the law itself is abusive), and then we'll see either a legislative or judicial counter response to rein the government in. Assuming the system isn't flawed of course...:)
That doesn't seem to fit the mind-set of the Democrats
That's a troll if I ever saw one. Jeez, do I have to go back to FDR and his insistence on unconditional surrender of Germany and Japan? Heck, we don't even have to go back further than Clinton and his stance on Serbia and Haiti (remember the grief the conservatives gave him about his aggressive stance on the military coup in Haiti?). All that crap about Dems being "weak" in the face of threats is just that, crap.
Clinton/Gore would have invaded Afghanistan to get to Al Qaida, no question. The might have even invaded Iraq too, the difference would have been though, that they wouldn't have so non-chalantly pissed off the entire world in doing so. Heck, Bush Jr.'s daddy would have been a little more patient and would have eventually gotten UN support, without stepping on everyone's toes or calling anyone "irrelevent". The problem isn't that Junior is a Republican or a conservative, the problem is that he's an idiot, IMO.
And me with no mod points. Reminds me of the sci-fi short story from way back about some mythical computer system running searches through databases to pick the "right" person for the job of President, and the "lucky" winner didn't get to say no....
64 bit right now is like people buying dual processor machines... if your application is not written to use it, it's a complete waste of money.
The FOSS people adopting AMD64 just recompile their apps to get the new features, of course you need the source code to do that... you sound like someone stuck with proprietary software. Please don't blame the hardware if *you* can't move to it now, those of us who see the value of AMD64 are already moving to it.
No, many of the high-kill pilots may have survived because of their innate skill, but Germany's decision to keep its pilots in planes until they got shot down meant that even the elite portion of the Luftwaffe essentially bled to death (whereas Britian and the US would send their veterans back to become instructors). The OP was right, at the end Germany had more planes than qualified pilots (however, fuel shortages were a critical problem too).
> We have fought this war with the army not the interpol or the CIA
You do realize don't you that the CIA was in Afghanistan before the Army? And is still there? And is operating in places around the world against terrorism where the military isn't? You do realize the first line of defense in the US is the local police, then the FBI, and the military will only be involved if an airliner needs to be shot down? You do realize that the military doesn't have the investigative capabilities of the FBI and Interpol? What kind of cooperation do you think we've been getting from the rest of the world? Military support? No, we don't need that, the support we got, until we muddied up the issue by attacking Iraq, was intelligence gained by the law enforcement and national intelligence agencies of other governments.
> In Iraq, afghanistan, phillipines, and south america we have mobilized our army
First, I and many others don't believe the attack on Iraq was related to terrorism, although there is definitely a terror campaign underway there now, thanks to us, but that terror campaign is also wrapped up in a guerilla insurgency. So I don't believe Iraq counts. As for the Phillipines and S. America, when was the last time the news had any report about operations there? They certainly aren't important, all we're doing there is advising the local military about counter-insurgency operations against guerilla movements. Although these guerilla movements certainly commit acts of terrorism, they aren't the primary source of international terrorism that the US is concerned with. It won't be our military that ultimately dismantles the Al Queda organization, even if they do get Bin Laden, for the simple reason that that organization is global and goes well beyond Afghanistan or any one specific location. No, it won't be a soldier with an assault rifle that breaks the back of Al Queda, it will be the analysts in Interpol, the FBI, NSA, CIA, Scotland Yard, and similar agencies who will track the communications and the flow of money that lets us trace out the web of Al Queda terrorist cells and roll them up.
> The estimates for the first gulf war were anywhere from 200,000 to 300,000 killed
On the night of March 9-10, 1945, LeMay's B-29 bombers attacked Tokyo, a city of 6 million people. Nearly 600 bombers dropped 1,665 tons of fire bombs on the Japanese capital, destroying 16 square miles of the city. The resulting firestorm killed 100,000 people, more than died at Hiroshima or Nagasaki from atomic bombs a few months later.
This is exactly why I suggested you read up on the strategic bombing campaigns of WWII, because with all due respect, you have no idea what you're talking about. 200,000 dead in the Iraqi war? Hell, man, the US Air Force killed 100,000 Japanesse IN ONE NIGHT! Not bad for a few hours work, huh?
> I think a true measure is the actual number of human beings killed and maimed.
That is exactly my point.
> That's an awful lot of people killed just by our country
> [snip the rest]
I don't buy your off-the-cuff numbers and logic there, but then I don't really care about that. I don't like the way we handled Iraq either, and yes, people die in war, thats why we shouldn't be so gung-ho about getting into one, as our current administration is, but please cut out the hyperbole of trying to compare the modern, laser-guided, precision bombing of today with the "area", carpet bombing of WWII where the entire city and its entire population WAS the target! To anyone that has actually studied WWII, your original statement was absurd, and you're attempted defense of it even worse, but worst of all, is that someone actually modded you "insightful". ?!?
Maybe, in hindsight, but the sad truth is that, at the time, the West didn't know that for sure, and on the other side, the Soviets didn't know for sure if the West might do the same to them.
Sorry, but there was no "cold war"?
Yes there was. The ideological divide between East and West was real, as was the level of distrust. Maybe the chance of nuclear war was less likely now that we know both sides feared it so much, but we also now know that both sides distrusted the other so badly that both sides considered it possible that other would launch a nuclear war if the other side saw an opportunity. We came a *lot* closer to a nuclear exchange in the Cuban Missile Crisis than a lot of people realized then, and many like yourself apparently still don't know how close we came. This is not because either side thought they could succeed, but it was the scenario that we have always feared: a confrontation which neither side planned on, escalating beyond anyone's control, because one or both sides weren't fully aware of the situation on the ground. To say there was no conflict at all is just false.
world war 3 (war on terrorism) is also global in scope.
The *global* war on terrorism is more of a law enforcement issue than a military one. Afghanistan was the exception to the rule because the "terrorists" and the "government" were one in the same. Just about everywhere else though, the US military isn't the solution, the solution is the FBI/CIA/Interpol or the like.
Maybe not grenada but certainly bombing of kosovo, iraq (twice), and afghanistan were certainly on the scale of dresden if not more so.
Please go back and read up on the Western strategic air campaign towards the end of WWII. Nothing like the firebombings of Dresden or Tokyo has been seen since then, in terms of the number of bombs and bombers, the percentage of the city destroyed and the percentage of city population killed. Although the total tonnage (weight, not the number of bombs) dropped in Vietnam was higher than what the US dropped in WWII, the world hasn't since, and probably won't ever again, see the massed thousand bomber raids of WWII.
I live in fear of doing "apt-get upgrade" sometimes.
Then don't.:)
Debian gets a lot of attention because of apt, and lots of Debian fanatic^H^H^H^Hs like to trot out apt-get commands to "prove" how easy Debian can be, and to some debatable degree this is true, but when it comes to tracking unstable/experimental, my first recommendation is to not use the command line programs to manage your system! Yes, some Debian folk will label me a heretic for saying that, but my point is, as good as apt is, no system management software will EVER be perfect when it comes to a real-world system, and the human element in this process (it is humans that put the debs together after all, not some mythical, perfect, never-made-a-simple-mistake machine) will always prevent apt from ever being perfect. So if you are going to track unstable/experimental, apt IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR COMMON SENSE! What I recommend is using an interactive system manager, like aptitude or synaptic or some other one, that allows you to fine-tune the upgrading process. Your reference to apt-get uninstalling "half your system" at one point is exactly why I don't use it, or rather, why I use a front-end program that allows me to override apt in a convenient way. The modus operandi of my recommendation is "Hold, Hold, HOLD". My rules are simple:
1. Never install something that just hit unstable in the previous 24 hours, put it on hold and wait a couple of days! Follow this rule and you won't waste time installing something big like XFree86 only to find out something is broke. If something is wrong its usually found quickly and the newsgroups/mailing-lists are talking about it within a few days (or hours). There is no need to rush, heck, I usually wait a week before installing anything.
2. If you don't really need it, put it on hold!
3. If it isn't already broken on your system, and the new version is just a minor update, put it on hold!
4. If its a major update, but its something you yourself don't use, i.e. something else depends on it, and/or the new update doesn't have any new features that you actually need, put it on hold!
PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE, and a time-saver, if it means you never have to waste time fixing a system broken by an update. Let the must-have-it-now early adopters take the risks, and deal with the headaches. You let things get updated only when dependencies demand them, and update those things that are important to the system or you, after a little wait to see if things are ok, but don't always update everything, every time you check debian.org, doing that IS JUST ASKING FOR TROUBLE!.
I've been using Debian since the 0.99 days, and I've been tracking unstable for at least 3-4 years now (back when it really was unstable!), and I've only had 2 or 3 significant problems (that I can remember) in that time, and I have never had to reinstall Debian because of a fubar'd update (but I did have to reinstall once because of something idiotic that I did!). I must have 200 to 300 packages on hold right now, and with aptitude at least, this is not a problem, it doesn't make administration any more difficult or time-consuming. The only problem is when package A depends on a new feature of package B, but A's maintainer doesn't update the dependencies of A to the correct version of B, and you end up updating A but not B. I don't remember ever having that problem myself, but admittedly, it is possible, although not likely since it depends on A's maintainer making a serious mistake to begin with. Other than that, just a little common sense makes Debian virtually painless, and as up-to-date as you are likely to need it.
Note that these rules are also extremely valuable to anyone who just has a dial-up connection to the net. You not only save yourself grief when you wait on a package to see if there are problems, you also save yourself the time of having to download the second, fixed copy.
Debian is not an extension of the FSF, and the GPL is not Debian's guiding rule for the "freeness" of software. Debian has its own "Debian Free Software Guidelines" (DFSG) that determines what can go into Debian. Apache isn't GPL compatible but it is free as far as the DFSG goes.
You even have the ironic situations where RMS won't officially bless Debian because it has a "non-free" section (a misnomer since it is almost completely made up of "semi-free", not proprietary, closed-source programs) and on the other side you have Debian considering the FSF's Free Documentation License to be incompatible with the DFSG. In any event, the original poster's implication that Debian follows the GPL only, and/or is officially part of RMS's organization, is incorrect. Debian is the only major Linux distribution to follow the ideals of the FSF, the only major distribution that is itself Free Software that isn't controlled by a company/corporation, but they *don't* agree with every one of the FSF's bullet items, or all of RMS's philosophy.:)
Perhaps Rambus could have behaved better and argued against using IP-violating technologies, but saying that Rambus is the ultimate bad guy in this is wrong. At the time, they were a small company that was essentially targeted for their invention.
Does anyone have any links to articles describing this alternative scenario where RAMBUS is the victim?
I still am skeptical. This whole business of the inside spy, and RAMBUS never complaining or threatening to sue if JEDEC used IP that looked a lot like theirs. If instead they went about extending and upgrading their patents on the work that JEDEC was doing from an inside source, even if we agree that the basis of that work was RAMBUS IP, it still looks like they were guilty because they made no attempt to warn JEDEC that their work was already patented by RAMBUS.
What I know for sure is RAMBUS, in collusion with Intel, wanted to lock up the memory market for themselves, just another example of greed run amok, at the expense of everyone else, so forgive me if I'm not sympathetic to their plight.
Huh? What would be the point of doing this? You would just end up having to have as much RAM as you normally have HD storage, yet RAM is still FAR more expensive than HD Storage.
I just did some quick calculations based on the cost of the components in my new system. My system RAM turns out to cost about $0.16 per MB, while my HD storage, the drive AND the controller together, costs about $0.014 per MB. This is at least a 10x difference in cost, and I'm comparing normal middle-of-the-road RAM to one of the most expensive kinds of HD storage out there (Ultra320 SCSI)!
I'm sorry but the parent's idea of replacing hard drives with RAM is just a little crazy right now, considering the cost differences and the practical problems that will come up when trying to use so much RAM at once in one system. Even using 1GB memory sticks, I'd need 3 DOZEN of them to equal my HD storage, and most folks using cheaper EIDE hard drives have much larger capacities. We are a LONG way off from being able to retire the trusty old hard drive.
Wake me up when they have a wide memory bus, flat 64bit archetecture with a low voltage CPU. This is where innovation is going
Is it really? For which market? The Itanium is so expensive it hasn't and probably never will make it to the desktop. For the *desktop* CPU, where is the innovation happening? Intel keeps speeding up their CPUs, for sure, but how about adding registers, adding bigger cache, dynamic clock speed control? AMD does that in their AMD64 architecture, and by the way, AMD64 isn't a "copy" of IA32 as you imply, otherwise their CPU would have the same performance as Intel's chips at the same clock speed. The fact a 2Ghz Athlon64 performs roughly as well as a 3Ghz P4 tells me that AMD has been doing a little bit of innovating with Intel's original design. And why in the world didn't Intel add new general-purpose registers to IA32 in the last 10 years or so? I still remember the RISC folks making fun of our measly 8 registers (and early on most of them were special-purpose, not general-purpose), yet we had to wait for a *competitor* to Intel to bump them up to a whopping 16! So let me get this straight: AMD improved the CPU core to the point they get Intel-like performance at a much lower clock speed, they doubled the number of gp and math registers, bigger L1 and L2 cache (except for the P4EE's L1, IIRC), dynamic, motherboard-based CPU clock control, and it costs about *half* the price of a Xeon, and you're telling me this isn't innovation?
Finally, Intel's idea for the desktop future never took off. The Itanium is still so expensive its only used in servers. AMD's idea for the desktop future (AMD64) is here, now, getting good reviews, and at about $250 a pop, is seriously undercutting Intel's P4 pricing, and now we hear that AMD64 is about to be adopted by Intel! And you claim Intel is still doing the innovating?!?
Look, even if you never buy an AMD chip in your life, you should still thank them for keeping that fire under Intel's backside nice and warm. If AMD wasn't in the picture, how long would desktop users have to wait for affordable 64 bit CPUs?
I knew the previous post was wrong about the AMD CPU idling. An Athlon64 will go anywhere from 10% over rated clock speed (10% overclock - rated clock on the 3000+ and 3200+ is 2Ghz) down to 800Mhz (less than half of normal speed). If you use a motherboard with the right support, like an MSI K8Txxx "Neo", CPU speed can be automatically controlled by the motherboard based on current load. Not bad for a *desktop* PC.
If you're saying that Linux can't compete because it doesn't have enough supported applications, then that is Linux's fault, not Microsoft's
Well if you want to get technical, no its not MS's fault, its IBM's fault for handing the monopoly to MS in the first place.:)
There are enough applications avaiable for Linux to persuade the modest desktop user or business user to switch. Office Suites, messaging programs, browsers, email programs, media players, graphics editors, and file sharing programs are all available for Linux.
None of that software is Windows software though, the software that 90% of the world is currently using and familiar with, never mind that not all software is equal, if it were, IBM would just use OpenOffice instead of trying to port MS's Office to Linux.
Also note that all the money and marketing swagger in the world did not save Microsoft TV venture.
I never referred to their other ventures, the only market where I believe they have an unassailable monopoly is the desktop PC OS market, because of application software lock-in of the rest of the industry.
Good marketing and a good product will kill Microsoft
In any other market besides the desktop PC OS market, its possible, but for the OS monopoly, I just doubt it. Time will tell.
UNIX isn't any more inherently unfriendly than DOS was,
DOS was tolerable simply because it was so brain-dead.:) Its hard for something that doesn't *do* a whole lot, to actually be complex. DOS provided some basic file IO, for nearly everything else apps had to go to the BIOS or directly to the hardware.
The Sun-sponsored Gnome usability testing is really making a difference
But that is just for the GUI, the rest of the underlying system is still very Unix-like, and that means it will be a very strange and obscure beast to typical (Windows) end-users. There is also a big difference between getting Linux ready for a corporate environment where most admin work will be done by the IT people, while the secretaries just stay within GNOME and click on icons for their apps, and getting it ready for a home-based PC with only one user, a user who is not a Unix guru.
Can you even admin the whole system from within the GUI on any Linux? I have never seen or heard of a Linux system that allows a user to manage the system without *ever* needing to go to a command-line prompt, on the console or in an xterm. Heck, just the sheer variety of different syntaxes used in config files is enough to put off a lot of people. My father gave up on Linux some years ago when he tried it out, mainly because one particular config file he needed to get right so he could connect to the net used a syntax that was patterned after Lisp! My father is not an idiot, but trying to deal with obscure ((Lisp)-(like)) syntax just made him decide it wasn't worth the trouble.
I'm in the strange position of having to critique Linux even though Linux is the only OS on my desktop PC! I'm not some Windows snob, but the truth is Linux needs a lot of usability work, better integration between different programs, and a set of common, coherent rules about administration (like one syntax for config files) to make it tolerable for normal people. Now a turn-key like system is different of course, if there is someone else to set things up and fix problems when they happen, then a lot of regular folk can use Linux just fine, but for now, Linux just doesn't win any ease-of-use awards.
Then Linux will never have a unified, standard DE, and I thought that was the holy grail most everyone wants so Linux can compete better against Windows and OSX and the like. Personally, I really don't care *that* much about it, I was just making the argument that many others would make.
I can tell you that nearly everything is fundementally tied to Qt
Right, I meant to imply in my argument that the base libraries and frameworks would be tackled first, using 2 different frameworks is a non-starter anyway, but then again, getting either side to even just publically state they are willing to compromise is pratically impossible now, so I'm wasting my (and your) time here.:)
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Hrrmph. Youngsters. I'm working on 40, and you kids are making me depressed. Now run along with you! Scat!
Oh, for cryin' out loud, he expressed his opinion on a
Yeah, "if ye don't like it, youz can jest git the hell out". Geez. Why am I not surprised this is coming from an AC?
As for the grandparent, he does make a point that I haven't seen mentioned yet, that being, there is a lot of software in non-free that is NOT closed-source/commercial, but only "semi-free". Usually the only thing keeping it from being in main, is some "don't charge anything for this" restriction that prevents redistribution. I have no problem with the fanatics going after the closed source stuff, I get my NVIDIA drivers from NVIDIA's site anyway, but it will be a real shame if things like Angband can't be distributed with Debian.
Finally, to quote a famous religious conservative, a preacher with a show on every Sunday here in the Bible-Belt, and a fan of the Bushes, "even stupid people can get a college degree". Now he was referring to all those idiotic scientists with their crazy nonsense about evolution, but if *all* of those people got degrees and are still stupid, then surely Harvard can make a "mistake" every once in awhile. Hey, if the theory works for him, then it has to work for me too.
Do you really want to work with a Klingon programmer? I mean think about it, he (or she for that matter) is bigger than you, stronger than you, and carries a nasty, double-bladed, two-handed sword as a matter of course. Naturally, no honorable Klingon goes around unarmed. Now just imagine what a Klingon programmer might do if, after 4 hours of vainly chasing a bug (which turns out to be not in his app anyway, but in a third-party library that he doesn't have the source to), the frustration reaches critical mass, and he enters Klingon Battle Frenzy, and .... oh dear....
I don't believe anyone is saying that. What they're saying is that money is not the primary motivator of these people, they're doing it for other reasons. Sure, many are being paid full time to do this and that's great, but you seem to be implying that Linus, for example, would only work on Linux now if he were being paid too. I would suggest instead that Linus would do what he did in the beginning, earn a paycheck working for someone else, while working on his 'baby' on his own time. Just because these guys are being paid to work full-time, doesn't mean they wouldn't continue to work on them on their own time if their main job was something else.
What you're describing as a misunderstanding, I would describe simply as an indicator of who the elite in the FOSS world really are. These guys are so good, they are being paid to do work they would most likely do anyway, only at a much slower pace because they'd have to earn a living first. They're paid to do what they want to do anyway. Damn, I'm jealous.
I hope you don't believe thats actually fixed now. Government agencies not cooperating with one another is absolutely old news. The Patriot Act doesn't fix that, in fact, how do you figure an Act that take away the rights of *citizens* somehow helping with inter-agency communitcation in the *government*?
Which is just about inevitable anyway, its just a matter of time. Israel's attempt at stopping suicide bombers pretty much proves you can't stop it, no matter what you do. One lunatic getting his hands on some old Soviet nuclear warhead and using it is going to happen, its not an 'if', but a 'when'. The question is: does becoming like the enemy, in order to fight the enemy, really the logical thing for a democracy to do? Are you not destroying the very thing you claim to be defending?
My point is that it's not one party or the other; the whole system is flawed
Actually, its working exactly as expected. What too many idealists (not meaning you) seem to forget is that all governments will try to enhance their own power if allowed to, it is the nature and inherient danger in any form of government. Democracies and Republics are no exception. The question is, is the public allowed to effectively dissent and are there any judicial/legislative/political checks to prevent the government's expansion of power? In the case of the Patriot Act, the other shoe simply hasn't dropped yet. First we have to wait for the government to push the law too far and clearly abuse it (or demonstrate that the law itself is abusive), and then we'll see either a legislative or judicial counter response to rein the government in. Assuming the system isn't flawed of course...
That's a troll if I ever saw one. Jeez, do I have to go back to FDR and his insistence on unconditional surrender of Germany and Japan? Heck, we don't even have to go back further than Clinton and his stance on Serbia and Haiti (remember the grief the conservatives gave him about his aggressive stance on the military coup in Haiti?). All that crap about Dems being "weak" in the face of threats is just that, crap.
Clinton/Gore would have invaded Afghanistan to get to Al Qaida, no question. The might have even invaded Iraq too, the difference would have been though, that they wouldn't have so non-chalantly pissed off the entire world in doing so. Heck, Bush Jr.'s daddy would have been a little more patient and would have eventually gotten UN support, without stepping on everyone's toes or calling anyone "irrelevent". The problem isn't that Junior is a Republican or a conservative, the problem is that he's an idiot, IMO.
And me with no mod points. Reminds me of the sci-fi short story from way back about some mythical computer system running searches through databases to pick the "right" person for the job of President, and the "lucky" winner didn't get to say no....
"Look, I'd be a lousy President, honest!"...
"Please, I don't WANT this job!"...
The FOSS people adopting AMD64 just recompile their apps to get the new features, of course you need the source code to do that... you sound like someone stuck with proprietary software. Please don't blame the hardware if *you* can't move to it now, those of us who see the value of AMD64 are already moving to it.
No, many of the high-kill pilots may have survived because of their innate skill, but Germany's decision to keep its pilots in planes until they got shot down meant that even the elite portion of the Luftwaffe essentially bled to death (whereas Britian and the US would send their veterans back to become instructors). The OP was right, at the end Germany had more planes than qualified pilots (however, fuel shortages were a critical problem too).
> We have fought this war with the army not the interpol or the CIA
You do realize don't you that the CIA was in Afghanistan before the Army? And is still there? And is operating in places around the world against terrorism where the military isn't? You do realize the first line of defense in the US is the local police, then the FBI, and the military will only be involved if an airliner needs to be shot down? You do realize that the military doesn't have the investigative capabilities of the FBI and Interpol? What kind of cooperation do you think we've been getting from the rest of the world? Military support? No, we don't need that, the support we got, until we muddied up the issue by attacking Iraq, was intelligence gained by the law enforcement and national intelligence agencies of other governments.
First, I and many others don't believe the attack on Iraq was related to terrorism, although there is definitely a terror campaign underway there now, thanks to us, but that terror campaign is also wrapped up in a guerilla insurgency. So I don't believe Iraq counts. As for the Phillipines and S. America, when was the last time the news had any report about operations there? They certainly aren't important, all we're doing there is advising the local military about counter-insurgency operations against guerilla movements. Although these guerilla movements certainly commit acts of terrorism, they aren't the primary source of international terrorism that the US is concerned with. It won't be our military that ultimately dismantles the Al Queda organization, even if they do get Bin Laden, for the simple reason that that organization is global and goes well beyond Afghanistan or any one specific location. No, it won't be a soldier with an assault rifle that breaks the back of Al Queda, it will be the analysts in Interpol, the FBI, NSA, CIA, Scotland Yard, and similar agencies who will track the communications and the flow of money that lets us trace out the web of Al Queda terrorist cells and roll them up.
No comparison From the link:
This is exactly why I suggested you read up on the strategic bombing campaigns of WWII, because with all due respect, you have no idea what you're talking about. 200,000 dead in the Iraqi war? Hell, man, the US Air Force killed 100,000 Japanesse IN ONE NIGHT! Not bad for a few hours work, huh?
That is exactly my point.
I don't buy your off-the-cuff numbers and logic there, but then I don't really care about that. I don't like the way we handled Iraq either, and yes, people die in war, thats why we shouldn't be so gung-ho about getting into one, as our current administration is, but please cut out the hyperbole of trying to compare the modern, laser-guided, precision bombing of today with the "area", carpet bombing of WWII where the entire city and its entire population WAS the target! To anyone that has actually studied WWII, your original statement was absurd, and you're attempted defense of it even worse, but worst of all, is that someone actually modded you "insightful". ?!?
Maybe, in hindsight, but the sad truth is that, at the time, the West didn't know that for sure, and on the other side, the Soviets didn't know for sure if the West might do the same to them.
Yes there was. The ideological divide between East and West was real, as was the level of distrust. Maybe the chance of nuclear war was less likely now that we know both sides feared it so much, but we also now know that both sides distrusted the other so badly that both sides considered it possible that other would launch a nuclear war if the other side saw an opportunity. We came a *lot* closer to a nuclear exchange in the Cuban Missile Crisis than a lot of people realized then, and many like yourself apparently still don't know how close we came. This is not because either side thought they could succeed, but it was the scenario that we have always feared: a confrontation which neither side planned on, escalating beyond anyone's control, because one or both sides weren't fully aware of the situation on the ground. To say there was no conflict at all is just false.
The *global* war on terrorism is more of a law enforcement issue than a military one. Afghanistan was the exception to the rule because the "terrorists" and the "government" were one in the same. Just about everywhere else though, the US military isn't the solution, the solution is the FBI/CIA/Interpol or the like.
Please go back and read up on the Western strategic air campaign towards the end of WWII. Nothing like the firebombings of Dresden or Tokyo has been seen since then, in terms of the number of bombs and bombers, the percentage of the city destroyed and the percentage of city population killed. Although the total tonnage (weight, not the number of bombs) dropped in Vietnam was higher than what the US dropped in WWII, the world hasn't since, and probably won't ever again, see the massed thousand bomber raids of WWII.
Then don't.
Debian gets a lot of attention because of apt, and lots of Debian fanatic^H^H^H^Hs like to trot out apt-get commands to "prove" how easy Debian can be, and to some debatable degree this is true, but when it comes to tracking unstable/experimental, my first recommendation is to not use the command line programs to manage your system! Yes, some Debian folk will label me a heretic for saying that, but my point is, as good as apt is, no system management software will EVER be perfect when it comes to a real-world system, and the human element in this process (it is humans that put the debs together after all, not some mythical, perfect, never-made-a-simple-mistake machine) will always prevent apt from ever being perfect. So if you are going to track unstable/experimental, apt IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR COMMON SENSE! What I recommend is using an interactive system manager, like aptitude or synaptic or some other one, that allows you to fine-tune the upgrading process. Your reference to apt-get uninstalling "half your system" at one point is exactly why I don't use it, or rather, why I use a front-end program that allows me to override apt in a convenient way. The modus operandi of my recommendation is "Hold, Hold, HOLD". My rules are simple:
1. Never install something that just hit unstable in the previous 24 hours, put it on hold and wait a couple of days! Follow this rule and you won't waste time installing something big like XFree86 only to find out something is broke. If something is wrong its usually found quickly and the newsgroups/mailing-lists are talking about it within a few days (or hours). There is no need to rush, heck, I usually wait a week before installing anything.
2. If you don't really need it, put it on hold!
3. If it isn't already broken on your system, and the new version is just a minor update, put it on hold!
4. If its a major update, but its something you yourself don't use, i.e. something else depends on it, and/or the new update doesn't have any new features that you actually need, put it on hold!
.
PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE, and a time-saver, if it means you never have to waste time fixing a system broken by an update. Let the must-have-it-now early adopters take the risks, and deal with the headaches. You let things get updated only when dependencies demand them, and update those things that are important to the system or you, after a little wait to see if things are ok, but don't always update everything, every time you check debian.org, doing that IS JUST ASKING FOR TROUBLE!
I've been using Debian since the 0.99 days, and I've been tracking unstable for at least 3-4 years now (back when it really was unstable!), and I've only had 2 or 3 significant problems (that I can remember) in that time, and I have never had to reinstall Debian because of a fubar'd update (but I did have to reinstall once because of something idiotic that I did!). I must have 200 to 300 packages on hold right now, and with aptitude at least, this is not a problem, it doesn't make administration any more difficult or time-consuming. The only problem is when package A depends on a new feature of package B, but A's maintainer doesn't update the dependencies of A to the correct version of B, and you end up updating A but not B. I don't remember ever having that problem myself, but admittedly, it is possible, although not likely since it depends on A's maintainer making a serious mistake to begin with. Other than that, just a little common sense makes Debian virtually painless, and as up-to-date as you are likely to need it.
Note that these rules are also extremely valuable to anyone who just has a dial-up connection to the net. You not only save yourself grief when you wait on a package to see if there are problems, you also save yourself the time of having to download the second, fixed copy.
Debian is not an extension of the FSF, and the GPL is not Debian's guiding rule for the "freeness" of software. Debian has its own "Debian Free Software Guidelines" (DFSG) that determines what can go into Debian. Apache isn't GPL compatible but it is free as far as the DFSG goes.
:)
You even have the ironic situations where RMS won't officially bless Debian because it has a "non-free" section (a misnomer since it is almost completely made up of "semi-free", not proprietary, closed-source programs) and on the other side you have Debian considering the FSF's Free Documentation License to be incompatible with the DFSG. In any event, the original poster's implication that Debian follows the GPL only, and/or is officially part of RMS's organization, is incorrect. Debian is the only major Linux distribution to follow the ideals of the FSF, the only major distribution that is itself Free Software that isn't controlled by a company/corporation, but they *don't* agree with every one of the FSF's bullet items, or all of RMS's philosophy.
Yeah, and Fox News is "fair and balanced". ROFL!
Does anyone have any links to articles describing this alternative scenario where RAMBUS is the victim?
I still am skeptical. This whole business of the inside spy, and RAMBUS never complaining or threatening to sue if JEDEC used IP that looked a lot like theirs. If instead they went about extending and upgrading their patents on the work that JEDEC was doing from an inside source, even if we agree that the basis of that work was RAMBUS IP, it still looks like they were guilty because they made no attempt to warn JEDEC that their work was already patented by RAMBUS.
What I know for sure is RAMBUS, in collusion with Intel, wanted to lock up the memory market for themselves, just another example of greed run amok, at the expense of everyone else, so forgive me if I'm not sympathetic to their plight.
Huh? What would be the point of doing this? You would just end up having to have as much RAM as you normally have HD storage, yet RAM is still FAR more expensive than HD Storage.
I just did some quick calculations based on the cost of the components in my new system. My system RAM turns out to cost about $0.16 per MB, while my HD storage, the drive AND the controller together, costs about $0.014 per MB. This is at least a 10x difference in cost, and I'm comparing normal middle-of-the-road RAM to one of the most expensive kinds of HD storage out there (Ultra320 SCSI)!
I'm sorry but the parent's idea of replacing hard drives with RAM is just a little crazy right now, considering the cost differences and the practical problems that will come up when trying to use so much RAM at once in one system. Even using 1GB memory sticks, I'd need 3 DOZEN of them to equal my HD storage, and most folks using cheaper EIDE hard drives have much larger capacities. We are a LONG way off from being able to retire the trusty old hard drive.
Is it really? For which market? The Itanium is so expensive it hasn't and probably never will make it to the desktop. For the *desktop* CPU, where is the innovation happening? Intel keeps speeding up their CPUs, for sure, but how about adding registers, adding bigger cache, dynamic clock speed control? AMD does that in their AMD64 architecture, and by the way, AMD64 isn't a "copy" of IA32 as you imply, otherwise their CPU would have the same performance as Intel's chips at the same clock speed. The fact a 2Ghz Athlon64 performs roughly as well as a 3Ghz P4 tells me that AMD has been doing a little bit of innovating with Intel's original design. And why in the world didn't Intel add new general-purpose registers to IA32 in the last 10 years or so? I still remember the RISC folks making fun of our measly 8 registers (and early on most of them were special-purpose, not general-purpose), yet we had to wait for a *competitor* to Intel to bump them up to a whopping 16! So let me get this straight: AMD improved the CPU core to the point they get Intel-like performance at a much lower clock speed, they doubled the number of gp and math registers, bigger L1 and L2 cache (except for the P4EE's L1, IIRC), dynamic, motherboard-based CPU clock control, and it costs about *half* the price of a Xeon, and you're telling me this isn't innovation?
Finally, Intel's idea for the desktop future never took off. The Itanium is still so expensive its only used in servers. AMD's idea for the desktop future (AMD64) is here, now, getting good reviews, and at about $250 a pop, is seriously undercutting Intel's P4 pricing, and now we hear that AMD64 is about to be adopted by Intel! And you claim Intel is still doing the innovating?!?
Look, even if you never buy an AMD chip in your life, you should still thank them for keeping that fire under Intel's backside nice and warm. If AMD wasn't in the picture, how long would desktop users have to wait for affordable 64 bit CPUs?
Arggh! Somebody please mod the parent up!
I knew the previous post was wrong about the AMD CPU idling. An Athlon64 will go anywhere from 10% over rated clock speed (10% overclock - rated clock on the 3000+ and 3200+ is 2Ghz) down to 800Mhz (less than half of normal speed). If you use a motherboard with the right support, like an MSI K8Txxx "Neo", CPU speed can be automatically controlled by the motherboard based on current load. Not bad for a *desktop* PC.
Well if you want to get technical, no its not MS's fault, its IBM's fault for handing the monopoly to MS in the first place.
None of that software is Windows software though, the software that 90% of the world is currently using and familiar with, never mind that not all software is equal, if it were, IBM would just use OpenOffice instead of trying to port MS's Office to Linux.
I never referred to their other ventures, the only market where I believe they have an unassailable monopoly is the desktop PC OS market, because of application software lock-in of the rest of the industry.
In any other market besides the desktop PC OS market, its possible, but for the OS monopoly, I just doubt it. Time will tell.
DOS was tolerable simply because it was so brain-dead.
But that is just for the GUI, the rest of the underlying system is still very Unix-like, and that means it will be a very strange and obscure beast to typical (Windows) end-users. There is also a big difference between getting Linux ready for a corporate environment where most admin work will be done by the IT people, while the secretaries just stay within GNOME and click on icons for their apps, and getting it ready for a home-based PC with only one user, a user who is not a Unix guru.
Can you even admin the whole system from within the GUI on any Linux? I have never seen or heard of a Linux system that allows a user to manage the system without *ever* needing to go to a command-line prompt, on the console or in an xterm. Heck, just the sheer variety of different syntaxes used in config files is enough to put off a lot of people. My father gave up on Linux some years ago when he tried it out, mainly because one particular config file he needed to get right so he could connect to the net used a syntax that was patterned after Lisp! My father is not an idiot, but trying to deal with obscure ((Lisp)-(like)) syntax just made him decide it wasn't worth the trouble.
I'm in the strange position of having to critique Linux even though Linux is the only OS on my desktop PC! I'm not some Windows snob, but the truth is Linux needs a lot of usability work, better integration between different programs, and a set of common, coherent rules about administration (like one syntax for config files) to make it tolerable for normal people. Now a turn-key like system is different of course, if there is someone else to set things up and fix problems when they happen, then a lot of regular folk can use Linux just fine, but for now, Linux just doesn't win any ease-of-use awards.
Then Linux will never have a unified, standard DE, and I thought that was the holy grail most everyone wants so Linux can compete better against Windows and OSX and the like. Personally, I really don't care *that* much about it, I was just making the argument that many others would make.
Right, I meant to imply in my argument that the base libraries and frameworks would be tackled first, using 2 different frameworks is a non-starter anyway, but then again, getting either side to even just publically state they are willing to compromise is pratically impossible now, so I'm wasting my (and your) time here.