While there may be a pre-written paper already available, a pre-written is also infinitely more likely to have already been seen by your professor than a custom-written paper.
Pre-writens also have other drawbacks -- you can't say "oh, by the way, the prof really likes to see theme foo emphasized and thinks interpretation bar is a load of crap." You have to either customize the paper (so why bother buying anyway -- if you're doing it right, rewriting is the most intensive part of the writing process anyway) or read a whole bunch until you find one you think is appropriate.
The point being that there's less demand for papers of any kind on obscure topics. You can make quite a bit of money writing custom papers about Shakespeare, virtually none writing papers on the design and implementation of role-playing games 1979-1983.
Yep -- the Pluto/Charon barycenter is in the space between the two, and neither Pluto nor Charon ever move retrograde to their mutual orbit around the Sun.
IIRC, the only other similar relationship between a "planet" and its "satellite" is Earth/Luna, where the barycenter is significantly outside the Earth's core and neither Earth nor Luna ever move retrograde to their mutual orbit around the Sun. (Every other satellite will, in its orbit around its primary, move the in the opposite direction of it's primary's movement around the Sun.)
And, given that Luna is larger than Pluto, it's then easy to argue that the Solar System has eleven known planets: Mercury, Venus, the dual planets Earth and Luna, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and the dual planets Pluto and Charon.
Of course, you could also argue anything larger than size X is a planet (in which case the four Gallileians, Luna, Titan, and Triton are planets if Pluto is...), or any of a dozen other criteria.
Ahem. How much does it cost to crack systems when private citizens can afford to do it?
Anyway, your premise is faulty -- Russia isn't completely bankrupt. It's completely corrupt.
Russian officials who are busy funneling as much as they can to Swiss banks aren't going to bother paying chem/bio warfare experts what they could be paid in the wealthiest nation on Earth or a major oil producer, especially since Russia has plenty of nukes as a deterrent.
And where are the soldiers, miners, and other peons going to go? So why bother paying them if you don't have to? Take the $$$ that comes from selling natural resources and put it in Switzerland, and tell the peons to work or starve.
Er, if your cracker is caught in the U.S., he can be legally imprisioned for espionage. If he's in Russia, he can't be arrested by the U.S. authorities. This way, the Russian government has plausible deniability (at worst, they kick out a student who was going to flunk out anyway and blame him), and they didn't risk having their spies arrested in the U.S.
Everybody spies on everybody anyway, so all you need is that "plausible deniability" factor to avoid formal incidents. We'll complain about this, they'll complain about NSA cracks disguised as university student attacks, and everybody will forget about them.
Too bad he didn't force the change. Or at least have demanded royalties for use of the name.
It's not that I have anything against large corporations per se. It's that I have a problem with large corporations setting their lawyers upon the small when the large company is in the wrong. It's a form of extortion, and I'd like to see them hammered hard for it.
Both *BSD and Linux let anybody read the source code.
Both *BSD and Linux let anybody distribute and use the code.
Both *BSD and Linux let anybody fork their own code.
Both *BSD and Linux, for the last few years at least, let anybody propose changes to the "official" system.
Both *BSD and Linux, for the last few years at least, have a small group of people who allow/deny changes to the "official" system.
The big difference is really that the *BSDs give you a whole unified distro, while Linux has no established official distro.
But an entire distribution is outside of the scope of the catherdral/bazaar paradigm anyway, especially since outside the a central core the BSDs and Linux use the same software anyway.
But, breaking up is a rather intrusive and complex solution. My libertarian instincts cry out "no! no!"
Instead, let's do what the governments could have done without the lawsuit anyway. Let's have Microsoft prohibited from licensing, directly or indirectly, new or renewal, their software to the Federal Government or any of the state governments that joined in the lawsuit. (Current licenses would be allowed to expire naturally [after two years if "perpetual"], creating an automatic transition period.)
Suddenly, the employers of more than 10% of the American workforce would *have* to exclusively use alternatives to Microsfot, breaking any Microsoft dominion. Computer suppliers would have to pre-load non-Microsfot OSes to get government contracts. Documents intended to be shared with the government would have to be in cross-platform formats...
And, since publically-financed schools and colleges are legally creatures of the states, they'd have to go non-Microsoft too. No VC++ or NT admin classes at your community colleges anymore, since they can't put that software on the lab machines. No more MS indoctrination in elementary schools.
It'd be simple, effective, and relatively non-disruptive. It's even a decent compromise between anti-corpratists and free enterprise supporters.
So, of course, it won't even be seriously considered.
I was on a MUD. Somebody struck up a conversation with me, and then suddenly stopped. He turned to a companion and said, "OC: I feel really dumb -- I actually thought that 'bot was another player."
I must say that I was rather embarassed at being thought a 'bot, and immediately denied it -- at which point the other player said, "OC: Well, it is really believeable -- see how it even denied it was a 'bot? Whoever wrote it was good."
My first instinct is to avoid a breakup. Instead, have a ruling against Microsoft prohibiting them from licensing or renewing the licenses of their software in any way to the U.S. Federal Government or any of the state governments.
That, of course, ends the "monopoly", since government is such a large sector of the largest economy on Earth. Entire school systems, as legally entities of state government, would have to kick Microsoft out of the classroom -- including colleges with clasess in NT administration or VC++.
However, if there is going to be a breakup, might I suggest:
At least five child companies. One with WinMillenium and Works/home apps, one with W2K and Office, one with W2K and BackOffice, one with the developer tools/environments, and one with the internet properties and WinCE.
Dragons are *extremely* smart, and that tends to mean that they pre-plan things. This would even things out a *lot* in a fight between red and gold dragons
Not really -- it makes things even more lopsided. The edge in planning goes to the golds, since they're smarter (intelligence is a Genius 17-18 for golds vs. an Exceptional 15-16 for reds). Organization also goes to the golds (lawful good vs. chaotic evil).
So a smarter, better organized group of golds with an effective breath weapon is fighting a dumber, less well-organized group of reds without an effective breath weapon. (Should I now mention that golds have 33% higher movement rates than reds as well?)
Another poster mentioned that they were talking about armies. If these armies have large non-dragon components, then it can be a decent battle. (If it's primarily a draconic conflict, MR and spells both give additonal advanatges to the golds, since golds get to choose their spells and have higher MR per age category.)
1) Elves are short in AD&D, being 55 (male) or 50 (female) plus 1d10 inches tall. That gives a max height of 65 inches, which is 5'5". Humans have a max height of 6'8", while Dwarves have a max height of 4'5". Seven-foot Elves are from J.R.R. Tolkien, not AD&D.
2) They certainly aren't using AD&D 2nd Edition dragons. As both 2nd Edition red and gold dragons are immune to fire, but gold dragons have a poison gas breath weapon as well, any red-gold fight between dragons of anywhere near the same size results in a scratched gold and a dead red. Furthermore, the golds have systematically chosen spells while the reds have fewer and haphazardly acquired spells, so that isn't an effective equalizer.
In short, any massive duel between a group of Gold and Red 2nd Edtiton dragons is a rout for the golds unless massively outnumbered to start with. So these are old-D&D, 1st Edition AD&D dragons, or possibly 3rd Edition (A)D&D dragons.
I can't believe that this is the only use for this technology
Depends on what you mean by "this technology". This whole project basically takes current atmospheric anit-aircraft missile technology and adapts it to exoatmospheric anti-missile use. So the basic technology already is being used for offensive purposes, and the new tech being added has no anti-aircraft use. Compare the Patriot -- an anti-aircraft missile hastily adapted to try to kill ballistic missiles.
The system itself might theoretically be used against aircraft, except that it would be more effective and efficient to use explosive warhead SAMs designed to kill airplanes instead of kinetic-kill devices engineered to kill warheads.
In short, what this is doing is similar to engineering a rifle variant to shoot tranquilizer darts. While you can still use a tranquilizer gun to kill people, you'd be better off using one of the unconverted rifles (SAMs) you already have.
BTW -- if we still want MAD, we *want* the system to be only somewhat effective and fairly easy to saturate. That way we can be immune to "rouge" strikes of a handful of missiles, but we can't risk massive strikes.
It requires more support software than just compilers.
[SARCASM] Really? I thought all you needed for a new viable platform was a compiler! [/SARCASM]
Last I checked, it *was* trivial getting protected-mode 16-bit 286 programs, even operating systems, to run on 32-bit 486es, even without emulators or access to the source code or compilers. Why? Because the 486 supports the 286's instruction set.
If, as the Register states in the article I linked to, the K8 is going to be a re-engineered K7, why in the world would they break its support for the IA-32 instruction set? So, like the 486 in 1992, the K8 would be the fastest x86 available and support all the old x86 programs. Now, it would additionally have support for an extended 64-bit mode. Like the 486, the additonal bits aren't the primary selling feature -- the selling point is speed and backwards compatibility.
And Linux, already with a single codebase supporting several 64-bit processors in addition to IA-32, would be a natural candidate for a K8-64 port, and it's a major OS for the kind of inexpensive servers the K8 would likely be found in initially. This at least gives the K8-64 a potential future...
Well, to quote the Register, "The K7 design worked out well and a K8 based on that can re-use x.86 compilers, thus bringing a product to market quicker than expected or usually feasible."
And AMD has a history of extending the x86 instruction set. Remeber that they were the first to begin work on MMX instructions, and 3DNow is their baby.
Finally, even Intel says Merced will not be as good as their future IA-32 chips at running x86 instructions.
So, an AMD K8 that simply extends x86 to 64-bit is:
Consistent with what AMD is rumored to be doing
Consistent with AMD actions in the past
Produces a chip that will probably outperfom Merced on IA-32 operations
Requires minimal re-engineering of support software like compilers, making acceptance easier
Does not require the massive resources cloning IA-64 would
Does not require the licensing or cloning of anybody ele's design
Maintains the current engineering investment in the RISC86 (Nx586/K6/K7) design
In ESR's case the gun-thing is not helping. I understand its part of his personaly politics and his advocacy of OSS and guns come from the same core ideas. But he must realize that alot of people even inside the US do not share those ideas, so emphasising the linkage between the guns and OSS is going to hurt more than it helps.
Really? I think linking guns to OSS will really help the geek community (and later the rest of society) to rid itself of its irrational fear of private firearms ownership. And I can't see any reason why it would hurt the acceptance of firearms, except maybe the association of guns=communist. But as long as being pro-gun is considered right-wing, I think that result is unlikely. Although anti-gun Republicans might play it up to try to change the stance of their party.
This is just pure speculation, but if the K8 is going to be a 64bit chip it'll need a new instruction set
Why? It could just extend the x86 instruction set to 64 bits, especially given how the RISC86 architecture is set up. The 64-bit Alpha uses mostly the same instruction set as the old 32-bit Alphas; same with Sparcs.
And, this gives AMD a market niche -- a 64-bit x86-optimized chip would outperform anything else running x86 software. So all those legacy apps would constitute a reason to buy AMD instead of Intel...
Well, in the U.S., the Constitution requires "just compensation". Is substitution of the foo.xxx domain "just compensation" for foo.com? (More importantly, would five Supreme Court justices agree that foo.xxx is just compensation for foo.com?)
BTW, a law that simply outlaws renewal of the current foo.com contract and the registration of new objectionable names might not even be considered a de facto taking. If it additionally reserved foo.xxx for the current holder of foo.com...
And here in my U.S. schools, both public through the 8th grade and parochial high school, all we learned were metric units. (Admittedly, my schools were all due north of a major Canadian city, but they are in the U.S.)
Now, the Detroit area is economically dominated by three major automakers, all of which switched to metric units years ago. Detroit is on the border with a metric-using country. My schools all taught metrics. The U.S. government, as pointed out above, has been pushing the metric system.
And despite all that, nobody here uses metric measurments.
Conversion cannot be done by fiat unless the government decides to punish use of non-metric units. Otherwise, people, we're just going to have to live with the slow evolution towards metrics (at least people buy 2-liter bottles of Pepsi, right?)
Under Article I, section 8, the Congress has the authority to "fix the Standard of Weights and Measures." In 1866 the U.S. Congress passed a law establishing the legality of the metric system in the United States. (No other system of measurements has been established by the Congress.) We were one of the original 17 signatories to the Treaty of the Meter in 1875. In 1893, the metric measurement standards were adopted as the fundamental standards for length and mass in the United States. Congress passed the Metric Coversion Act in 1975. The Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act Of 1988 designated the metric system as the "preferred system of weights and measures for United States trade and commerce," and required that all federal agencies use the metric system by 1992.
And it isn't a problem of corporations. GM and Ford both use metric (theoretically) exclusively internally. When gasoline companies tried to switch to liters, consumers rejected it. Multinational buisnesses have been major backers of metric conversion.
So, given that we are already legally metric, how are we going to do this 2-5 year conversion you speak of? Six months in jail for small buisnessmen using Customary units? $100 fine per incident of civilians calling themselves 5'10"? Life imprisonment without parole for tecahing you child ounce-to-pound conversions?
Re:Why are metered local calls "stupid"?
on
ISP War in the UK
·
· Score: 1
Don't US users pay a lot more for 'long distance' calls than we do anyway?
Newsweek explains the current situation in U.S. long distance.
Basically, the U.S. long-distance telecos have to pay $0.04 in per-minute fees to the local telecos for access to the local network -- and are charging $0.05 a minute to customers for long distance. So, modulo the local telco access charge, long distance in the U.S. is essentially unmetered if you buy, say, the $9.95-per-month AT&T plan.
If and when AT&T can get its newly acquired cable assets to operate as a local teleco, I would bet heavily on completely unmetered long distance soon following. (Maybe not from AT&T at first, but from somebody.)
Now, OTOH, I have to pay a metered $0.15 to call a location 10 miles away, becaue that's a "zone call". It remains entirely on my local teleco's own networks, but, without competition, who is going to stop them? So 100 minutes to 10 miles away on one company's network costs me 50% more than 1,000 minutes 2,000 miles away on three companies' networks. It's an unstable situation, and it will change -- the FCC is being nasty about denying the local telecos the chance to get into interstate long distance until there's competition.
Anyway, I expect in 5 years to have unlimited local calls, unlimited long distance, cable TV, and unlimited cable modem access for a combined bill of about $75 a month given current trends.
Yes, the WPS is mostly IBM, and I really wish they would release it. Heck, SOM is CORBA based IIRC, so we could wind up with WPS-X, KDE, and Gnome interoperable and with interembeddable objects.
Which is not the same thing as releasing OS/2 -- WPS-X on *nix probably wouldn't run any OS/2, Windows, or DOS apps without a significant porting effort. And WPS-X on a *nix wouldn't compete with OS/2 any more (or less) than Linux already does.
Slashdot Mirror
While there may be a pre-written paper already available, a pre-written is also infinitely more likely to have already been seen by your professor than a custom-written paper.
Pre-writens also have other drawbacks -- you can't say "oh, by the way, the prof really likes to see theme foo emphasized and thinks interpretation bar is a load of crap." You have to either customize the paper (so why bother buying anyway -- if you're doing it right, rewriting is the most intensive part of the writing process anyway) or read a whole bunch until you find one you think is appropriate.
particularly if you're trying something obscure
The point being that there's less demand for papers of any kind on obscure topics. You can make quite a bit of money writing custom papers about Shakespeare, virtually none writing papers on the design and implementation of role-playing games 1979-1983.
Yep -- the Pluto/Charon barycenter is in the space between the two, and neither Pluto nor Charon ever move retrograde to their mutual orbit around the Sun.
IIRC, the only other similar relationship between a "planet" and its "satellite" is Earth/Luna, where the barycenter is significantly outside the Earth's core and neither Earth nor Luna ever move retrograde to their mutual orbit around the Sun. (Every other satellite will, in its orbit around its primary, move the in the opposite direction of it's primary's movement around the Sun.)
And, given that Luna is larger than Pluto, it's then easy to argue that the Solar System has eleven known planets: Mercury, Venus, the dual planets Earth and Luna, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and the dual planets Pluto and Charon.
Of course, you could also argue anything larger than size X is a planet (in which case the four Gallileians, Luna, Titan, and Triton are planets if Pluto is...), or any of a dozen other criteria.
Ahem. How much does it cost to crack systems when private citizens can afford to do it?
Anyway, your premise is faulty -- Russia isn't completely bankrupt. It's completely corrupt.
Russian officials who are busy funneling as much as they can to Swiss banks aren't going to bother paying chem/bio warfare experts what they could be paid in the wealthiest nation on Earth or a major oil producer, especially since Russia has plenty of nukes as a deterrent.
And where are the soldiers, miners, and other peons going to go? So why bother paying them if you don't have to? Take the $$$ that comes from selling natural resources and put it in Switzerland, and tell the peons to work or starve.
Er, if your cracker is caught in the U.S., he can be legally imprisioned for espionage. If he's in Russia, he can't be arrested by the U.S. authorities. This way, the Russian government has plausible deniability (at worst, they kick out a student who was going to flunk out anyway and blame him), and they didn't risk having their spies arrested in the U.S.
Everybody spies on everybody anyway, so all you need is that "plausible deniability" factor to avoid formal incidents. We'll complain about this, they'll complain about NSA cracks disguised as university student attacks, and everybody will forget about them.
Too bad he didn't force the change. Or at least have demanded royalties for use of the name.
It's not that I have anything against large corporations per se. It's that I have a problem with large corporations setting their lawyers upon the small when the large company is in the wrong. It's a form of extortion, and I'd like to see them hammered hard for it.
The big difference is really that the *BSDs give you a whole unified distro, while Linux has no established official distro.
But an entire distribution is outside of the scope of the catherdral/bazaar paradigm anyway, especially since outside the a central core the BSDs and Linux use the same software anyway.
But, breaking up is a rather intrusive and complex solution. My libertarian instincts cry out "no! no!"
Instead, let's do what the governments could have done without the lawsuit anyway. Let's have Microsoft prohibited from licensing, directly or indirectly, new or renewal, their software to the Federal Government or any of the state governments that joined in the lawsuit. (Current licenses would be allowed to expire naturally [after two years if "perpetual"], creating an automatic transition period.)
Suddenly, the employers of more than 10% of the American workforce would *have* to exclusively use alternatives to Microsfot, breaking any Microsoft dominion. Computer suppliers would have to pre-load non-Microsfot OSes to get government contracts. Documents intended to be shared with the government would have to be in cross-platform formats...
And, since publically-financed schools and colleges are legally creatures of the states, they'd have to go non-Microsoft too. No VC++ or NT admin classes at your community colleges anymore, since they can't put that software on the lab machines. No more MS indoctrination in elementary schools.
It'd be simple, effective, and relatively non-disruptive. It's even a decent compromise between anti-corpratists and free enterprise supporters.
So, of course, it won't even be seriously considered.
I was on a MUD. Somebody struck up a conversation with me, and then suddenly stopped. He turned to a companion and said, "OC: I feel really dumb -- I actually thought that 'bot was another player."
I must say that I was rather embarassed at being thought a 'bot, and immediately denied it -- at which point the other player said, "OC: Well, it is really believeable -- see how it even denied it was a 'bot? Whoever wrote it was good."
My first instinct is to avoid a breakup. Instead, have a ruling against Microsoft prohibiting them from licensing or renewing the licenses of their software in any way to the U.S. Federal Government or any of the state governments.
That, of course, ends the "monopoly", since government is such a large sector of the largest economy on Earth. Entire school systems, as legally entities of state government, would have to kick Microsoft out of the classroom -- including colleges with clasess in NT administration or VC++.
However, if there is going to be a breakup, might I suggest:
At least five child companies. One with WinMillenium and Works/home apps, one with W2K and Office, one with W2K and BackOffice, one with the developer tools/environments, and one with the internet properties and WinCE.
Why would U.S. tech companies care what censorship laws the Australians pass anyway? How can it impact them at all?
Well, of course, they might try to extradite porn site operators when the visit Britain, but...
Dragons are *extremely* smart, and that tends to mean that they pre-plan things. This would even things out a *lot* in a fight between red and gold dragons
Not really -- it makes things even more lopsided. The edge in planning goes to the golds, since they're smarter (intelligence is a Genius 17-18 for golds vs. an Exceptional 15-16 for reds). Organization also goes to the golds (lawful good vs. chaotic evil).
So a smarter, better organized group of golds with an effective breath weapon is fighting a dumber, less well-organized group of reds without an effective breath weapon. (Should I now mention that golds have 33% higher movement rates than reds as well?)
Another poster mentioned that they were talking about armies. If these armies have large non-dragon components, then it can be a decent battle. (If it's primarily a draconic conflict, MR and spells both give additonal advanatges to the golds, since golds get to choose their spells and have higher MR per age category.)
1) Elves are short in AD&D, being 55 (male) or 50 (female) plus 1d10 inches tall. That gives a max height of 65 inches, which is 5'5". Humans have a max height of 6'8", while Dwarves have a max height of 4'5". Seven-foot Elves are from J.R.R. Tolkien, not AD&D.
2) They certainly aren't using AD&D 2nd Edition dragons. As both 2nd Edition red and gold dragons are immune to fire, but gold dragons have a poison gas breath weapon as well, any red-gold fight between dragons of anywhere near the same size results in a scratched gold and a dead red. Furthermore, the golds have systematically chosen spells while the reds have fewer and haphazardly acquired spells, so that isn't an effective equalizer.
In short, any massive duel between a group of Gold and Red 2nd Edtiton dragons is a rout for the golds unless massively outnumbered to start with. So these are old-D&D, 1st Edition AD&D dragons, or possibly 3rd Edition (A)D&D dragons.
I can't believe that this is the only use for this technology
Depends on what you mean by "this technology".
This whole project basically takes current atmospheric anit-aircraft missile technology and adapts it to exoatmospheric anti-missile use. So the basic technology already is being used for offensive purposes, and the new tech being added has no anti-aircraft use. Compare the Patriot -- an anti-aircraft missile hastily adapted to try to kill ballistic missiles.
The system itself might theoretically be used against aircraft, except that it would be more effective and efficient to use explosive warhead SAMs designed to kill airplanes instead of kinetic-kill devices engineered to kill warheads.
In short, what this is doing is similar to engineering a rifle variant to shoot tranquilizer darts. While you can still use a tranquilizer gun to kill people, you'd be better off using one of the unconverted rifles (SAMs) you already have.
BTW -- if we still want MAD, we *want* the system to be only somewhat effective and fairly easy to saturate. That way we can be immune to "rouge" strikes of a handful of missiles, but we can't risk massive strikes.
It requires more support software than just compilers.
[SARCASM]
Really? I thought all you needed for a new viable platform was a compiler!
[/SARCASM]
Last I checked, it *was* trivial getting protected-mode 16-bit 286 programs, even operating systems, to run on 32-bit 486es, even without emulators or access to the source code or compilers. Why? Because the 486 supports the 286's instruction set.
If, as the Register states in the article I linked to, the K8 is going to be a re-engineered K7, why in the world would they break its support for the IA-32 instruction set? So, like the 486 in 1992, the K8 would be the fastest x86 available and support all the old x86 programs. Now, it would additionally have support for an extended 64-bit mode. Like the 486, the additonal bits aren't the primary selling feature -- the selling point is speed and backwards compatibility.
And Linux, already with a single codebase supporting several 64-bit processors in addition to IA-32, would be a natural candidate for a K8-64 port, and it's a major OS for the kind of inexpensive servers the K8 would likely be found in initially. This at least gives the K8-64 a potential future...
And AMD has a history of extending the x86 instruction set. Remeber that they were the first to begin work on MMX instructions, and 3DNow is their baby.
Finally, even Intel says Merced will not be as good as their future IA-32 chips at running x86 instructions.
So, an AMD K8 that simply extends x86 to 64-bit is:
In ESR's case the gun-thing is not helping. I understand its part of his personaly politics and his advocacy of OSS and guns come from the same core ideas. But he must realize that alot of people even inside the US do not share those ideas, so emphasising the linkage between the guns and OSS is going to hurt more than it helps.
Really? I think linking guns to OSS will really help the geek community (and later the rest of society) to rid itself of its irrational fear of private firearms ownership. And I can't see any reason why it would hurt the acceptance of firearms, except maybe the association of guns=communist. But as long as being pro-gun is considered right-wing, I think that result is unlikely. Although anti-gun Republicans might play it up to try to change the stance of their party.
(Yes, I deliberately misunderstood you.)
Ooops -- mental gear slip. Now if I could only remember what my original example was...
Still, the point stands that you don't need an all-new instruction set for the transition from 32 to 64 bits.
This is just pure speculation, but if the K8 is going to be a 64bit chip it'll need a new instruction set
Why? It could just extend the x86 instruction set to 64 bits, especially given how the RISC86 architecture is set up. The 64-bit Alpha uses mostly the same instruction set as the old 32-bit Alphas; same with Sparcs.
And, this gives AMD a market niche -- a 64-bit x86-optimized chip would outperform anything else running x86 software. So all those legacy apps would constitute a reason to buy AMD instead of Intel...
Well, in the U.S., the Constitution requires "just compensation". Is substitution of the foo.xxx domain "just compensation" for foo.com? (More importantly, would five Supreme Court justices agree that foo.xxx is just compensation for foo.com?)
BTW, a law that simply outlaws renewal of the current foo.com contract and the registration of new objectionable names might not even be considered a de facto taking. If it additionally reserved foo.xxx for the current holder of foo.com...
And here in my U.S. schools, both public through the 8th grade and parochial high school, all we learned were metric units. (Admittedly, my schools were all due north of a major Canadian city, but they are in the U.S.)
Now, the Detroit area is economically dominated by three major automakers, all of which switched to metric units years ago. Detroit is on the border with a metric-using country. My schools all taught metrics. The U.S. government, as pointed out above, has been pushing the metric system.
And despite all that, nobody here uses metric measurments.
Conversion cannot be done by fiat unless the government decides to punish use of non-metric units. Otherwise, people, we're just going to have to live with the slow evolution towards metrics (at least people buy 2-liter bottles of Pepsi, right?)
Under Article I, section 8, the Congress has the authority to "fix the Standard of Weights and Measures." In 1866 the U.S. Congress passed a law establishing the legality of the metric system in the United States. (No other system of measurements has been established by the Congress.) We were one of the original 17 signatories to the Treaty of the Meter in 1875. In 1893, the metric measurement standards were adopted as the fundamental standards for length and mass in the United States. Congress passed the Metric Coversion Act in 1975. The Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act Of 1988 designated the metric system as the "preferred system of weights and measures for United States trade and commerce," and required that all federal agencies use the metric system by 1992.
And it isn't a problem of corporations. GM and Ford both use metric (theoretically) exclusively internally. When gasoline companies tried to switch to liters, consumers rejected it. Multinational buisnesses have been major backers of metric conversion.
So, given that we are already legally metric, how are we going to do this 2-5 year conversion you speak of? Six months in jail for small buisnessmen using Customary units? $100 fine per incident of civilians calling themselves 5'10"? Life imprisonment without parole for tecahing you child ounce-to-pound conversions?
Don't US users pay a lot more for 'long distance' calls than we do anyway?
Newsweek explains the current situation in U.S. long distance.
Basically, the U.S. long-distance telecos have to pay $0.04 in per-minute fees to the local telecos for access to the local network -- and are charging $0.05 a minute to customers for long distance. So, modulo the local telco access charge, long distance in the U.S. is essentially unmetered if you buy, say, the $9.95-per-month AT&T plan.
If and when AT&T can get its newly acquired cable assets to operate as a local teleco, I would bet heavily on completely unmetered long distance soon following. (Maybe not from AT&T at first, but from somebody.)
Now, OTOH, I have to pay a metered $0.15 to call a location 10 miles away, becaue that's a "zone call". It remains entirely on my local teleco's own networks, but, without competition, who is going to stop them? So 100 minutes to 10 miles away on one company's network costs me 50% more than 1,000 minutes 2,000 miles away on three companies' networks. It's an unstable situation, and it will change -- the FCC is being nasty about denying the local telecos the chance to get into interstate long distance until there's competition.
Anyway, I expect in 5 years to have unlimited local calls, unlimited long distance, cable TV, and unlimited cable modem access for a combined bill of about $75 a month given current trends.
Er, did you raid my previous posts? ;-)
Yes, the WPS is mostly IBM, and I really wish they would release it. Heck, SOM is CORBA based IIRC, so we could wind up with WPS-X, KDE, and Gnome interoperable and with interembeddable objects.
Which is not the same thing as releasing OS/2 -- WPS-X on *nix probably wouldn't run any OS/2, Windows, or DOS apps without a significant porting effort. And WPS-X on a *nix wouldn't compete with OS/2 any more (or less) than Linux already does.
A herring? A chip that translates instructions into another instruction set reminds me more of a different type of fish...
OTOH, does that mean Douglas Adams can claim prior art?