I only know about that since it was mentioned in an article describing boot.ini. It was from an age before the web so I guess only those who bought certain dead tree magazines ever heard of it.
He'd be better off structuring the article as quiche eaters (computer scientists) vs hardware designers.
Hardware designers try to build something which can be clocked fast. They don't care if it's aesthetically pleasing and so on.
Quiche eaters moan about how limited von Neumann architectures are. They try to do a CISCy things like reduce the abstraction level between the programmer and the instruction set with lots of hard to implement features in the instruction set, and design ISA where it is impossible, newspeak style, to write incorrect code (e.g. segmentation or capability based addressing). The hardware engineer way to do this is a TLB and page table.
x86 has had input from both camps, but back compatibility has limited the damage the quiche eaters can do. In the end most of the quiche eater features end up unused (e.g. segmentation and complex instructions) and you end up running ugly, primitive but very fast instructions translated to run on Risc core. It kicked the ass of the quiche eater designed iAPX432 and Itanium.
Of course the dequicheffication of the x86 was to some extent triggered by competion from the very low quiche Risc chips. In fact MIPS did memory protection by implementing only a TLB in hardware, TLB writes and the rest of paging was done in software. Of course, sometimes RISC designs are so fundamentally anti quiche that the very fundamentalism is form of quiche eating, like Sparc's multiply and divide step instructions that ended up being slower than the 68K's full multiple and divide instructions.
The idea with Itanium was to make a CPU that could perform on the level of RISC and CISC CPUs with a relatively simple front end. In essence the Itanium executes a fixed number of instructions each cycle, then leaves it to the compiler to select which instructions are to be executed in parallel and make sure they don't read and write to the same registers and such (instead of having logic in the CPU figuring this stuff out).
Actually you could see that Itanium was in deep trouble when it launched at a lower clock rate than x86. The whole idea behind EPIC "explicitly parallel instruction computing" was that you move instruction scheduling to the compiler, and that allows you to essentially out-RISC RISC, i.e. build a dumber chip that can be clocked faster. I think you're right about technology too. Back in the CISC vs RISC days an R4000 for example could be clocked faster than a 486 due to its ultra streamlined pipeline - MIPS originally meant "Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipeline Stages". Itaniums for a variety of reasons ended up clocked slower than x86. Partly I think too much stuff got added to the architecture, and partly I think x86 chips were already very close to process limit for frequency, so a simpler architecture wouldn't run any faster.
I sort of wonder if.Net might have been part of the sketchy Itanium strategy too. The big thing about.Net is that it is a VM that is designed to be JITted rather than interpreted. Part of EPIC was that chips would be binary compatible, at least for user code, but that old binaries would not necessarily run optimally. It's easy to see why - a binary compiled for an old chip with n functional units would have fewer instructions scheduled to run in parallel than one compiled for a new one with 2n units assuming the scheduling was done at compile time.
Of course with.Net the applications are compiled for a VM and then JITted. If you had a new chip, the.Net JITter could detect this and schedule optimally.
Back in 1999 the ACE Consortium had Compaq, Microsoft, MIPS Computer Systems, DEC, SCO, and a a bunch of others.
The plan was to launch a MIPS based open architecture system running Windows NT or Unix. Back then the MIPS CEO said MIPS would become "the most pervasive architecture in the world". The whole thing fell apart as Compaq defected, MIPS run out of cash and got bought by SGI. Dec obviously moved to supporting Alpha instead. Microsoft shipped NT for MIPS, Alpha and PPC for another few released and then gave up the ghost.
The trouble is, lots of things can become controversial. Best example is "The Medieval Warm period". As far as I can tell everyone who looked for evidence of this in things like ice core temperature records found it. Unfortunately the fact that the average temperature of the Earth has been warmer in the past is awkward to people who claim that the current warming is unprecedented and an iminent disaster. So the Medieval Warm period article gets attacked by people trying to claim that the warming back then never happened.
And if you look at the article today, it frankly doesn't make any sense. On the one hand the intro says that the MWP never happened. The if you look the "By Region" section it clearly did. And the talk page is a complete warzone with MWP believers quoting The Telegraph, MWP disbelievers quoting sites like realclimate. Unfortunately the MWP disbelievers have got arbcom to label all the sources that are hostile to them as unreliable sources.
Frankly you're better off ignoring Wikipedia and looking at primary sources, i.e. people that actually looked for evidence.
From my internet knowledge I know that cancerous memes are passed from newfags to oldfags (e.g. Boxxy! U RAF U RUSE). This would appear to be the opposite direction to parents passing useful knowledge to their children.
There are plenty of good used electronics peripherals on craigslist and ebay.
Not at all. Reducing our demand for new electronics is the absolute worst way to help Chinese factory workers.
Being unemployed is worse than being a factory slave in China. Given the world economic slump, many factories around Shenzhen are closing, leaving the workers without any options except deportation back to their country provinces.
Buy more, not less!
In the short term it is worse. In the long run unemployment in China will force the system to reform and that means that factory workers will be allowed to organise independent unions go on strike and demonstrate against corruption. In the long run that means more money and better conditions for them.
Which, from what I can tell, the factories can afford. The wages the workers get as a percentage of the profits the companies make is probably much lower than it would be in a free country where they were allowed to organise and bargain.
However there needs to be a crisis to force the system to change, otherwise the factory owners / Party (in most cases these are literally the same people) will continue to screw people. That was the justification for sanctions and boycotts against other non democratic regimes. Unfortunately no Western government has the guts to stand up to China, but there's no reason why Western individuals can't do so.
Hmm, so after the apocalypse you and your descendants will be sure to have Model M keyboards. Hell in the short term you have two spare ones to use as melee weapons against looters that break into the compound.
We owe them a lot of money, and at any time they could call that debt in on us, and presumably (if they wanted to and probably could) ship us off to China to work in their factories, so we can pay them off. Not only is that a possibility, should our economic downturn continue, they might just do that.
I've got some bad news for you. I showed your comment to The Chinese and they were pissed off. Now you need to spend the rest of your life working in an iPod factory.
An improvement towards what though? Most articles have settled down to reflect the viewpoint of the people that watch them. If you agree with that viewpoint, that's an improvement. If you don't it's not and you give up citing, editing or reading them.
What about Cuba Libre or Lucha libre? Both of those were used in English before Stallman wrote his rant, and neither of them have anything to do with the FSF.
If the FSF want to own the word libre like Disney owns words "Mickey Mouse", they should trademark it and sue people when they use it in the 'wrong' way just like Disney do.
Part of the reason for fiascos like this is because the community is dominated by people like you who scream FUD everytime a benchmark shows Linux isn't perfect.
I dated a girl in Korea who turned out to be completely fucking nuts, to the point where she almost got me beaten up. We split up. Later on I talked to one of her (many) exs who told me he used to hide things in his apartment which she could use to hurt him, back when they were dating. Knives, even pots and pans and some weights he had.
I once worked at a software company that was very concerned about binary compatibility breaks between different APIs.
Normally as you develop, you make changes and binary compatibility breaks all the time - e.g. add a parameter to a function and you have a situation where both the caller and the callee must both use the new scheme or the old one. Mixing is in general a bad idea, though you can get away with it in a limited set of circumstances. Of course if you want to produce a platform which third parties can use, you want to make sure that you can keep developing and make sure that old interfaces are preserved unchanged while new ones are added.
The thing is, this break in binary compatibility must be analogous to what happens when species separate. At that point individuals from species A can't breed with individuals from species B and have fertile offspring (which is the modern definition of species) because their DNA is essentially incompatible.
I hope you arent referring to Cuba Missile Crisis, because that indeed was very long ago. Even if you arent and there has been something later than that, it is hardly a valid argument. Doesnt USA target numerous countries with nuclear missiles? And support more countries that have those?
I can tell that there are a lot of people who are more worried about Israel than Cuba, seeing Cuba isnt even very militaristic country. Why in hell would they fire a missile to a country they cant invade? Just because they are (nearly) communists and thus evil?
When Che and Fidel Castro's guerrilla army seized power in Cuba, he was immediately - and to his delight - put in charge of the firing squads. He instituted a system of 'trials' that lasted just a few hours, with himself as sole judge. They invariably ended with the low-level functionaries of the Batista regime being lined up and shot. Che's public declarations from that time are blunt. "All right, it is dictatorship," he shouted at one point. "It's criminal to think of the needs of the individual." He even banned Santa Claus, saying he was an "American imperialist import."
The friend who had traveled with Che on the famous motorcycle journeys, David Mitrani, was shocked when they met up in Havana after the revolution. He could not understand how Che's compassionate response to poverty all those years ago had led him to announce he now wanted to become an " effective, violent, selective, and cold killing machine".
Che's fanaticism reached its peak in October 1963, when he seriously advocated a course of action that would immediately end life on earth. Che had implored the Soviet Union to place nuclear missiles on Cuba. He knew the US would interpret this as an act of aggression and probably retaliate with nuclear weapons - but he said that "the people [of Cuba] you see today tell you that even if they should disappear from the face if the earth because an atomic war is unleashed in their names... they will feel completely happy and fulfilled" knowing the revolution had inspired people for a while. Che did not say how he knew the Cuban people would be delighted to die of radiation sickness, their hair burning on their heads and their skin slopping from their faces.
The Soviet Union followed Che's advice - and the world came closer to nuclear annihilation than at any point before or since. On the American side, maniacs like General Curtis LeMay implored Jack Kennedy to nuke Moscow immediately. On the Soviet side, Che Guevara played exactly the same role. He urged Khrushchev to launch a nuclear strike, now, against US cities. For the rest of his life, he declared that if his finger had been on the button, he would have pushed it. When Khrushchev backed down and literally saved the world, Che was furious at the "betrayal". If Che's recommendations had been followed, you would not be reading this newspaper now.
None of these facts are seriously disputed by historians; they are simply skidded over by Che's Soderberg-style defenders, who stick to romantic generalities about how he stood for "honesty" and "revolution". But Che Guevara is not a free-floating icon of rebellion. He was an actual person who supported an actual system of tyranny, one that murdered millions more actual people.
If the small lingering band of communo-nostalgists who still revere Che were honest about continuing his life's work, they would have to form a group called "Left-Wingers for Creating a Universal North Korea, Prior to Universal Death in a Nuclear Winter." I don't think they would find many recruits.
I'd love to see the logo be an image of Fidel dressed-up as a penguin.
I'm pretty sure the guy has a sense of humor. When I was a kid, I was a "shortwave listener" (before I got my ham license) and sent of to Radio Havana (among others) for a "QSL" card, confirming that I had heard their station.
Besides the card, I got other periodic mailings, including a Christmxxxx New Year card one year, bearing the cartoon likeness of Fidel Castro, laid-out on the dining-room table as a pig, complete with an apple in his mouth. I kid you not. I'll bet he had a big laugh.
Berks County, PA - Fidel Castro's daughter has a sense of humor.
Addressing a virtually full house Tuesday night in the Perkins Student Center Auditorium at Penn State Berks, Alina Fernandez Revuelta entertained and informed the audience with humorous stories and facts about her Cuban homeland.
She also spoke of Castro, whom she described as a tall, hairy man wreathed in cigar smoke and dressed in green fatigues who visited the home where she lived with her mother, Nati Revuelta.
Fernandez described her mother as striking: tan and blonde, "with a voluptuous criolla figure like a Coca Cola bottle."
Nati married Orlando Fernandez, a doctor who had operated on her ruptured appendix and fell in love with her, Fernandez said.
They had one child, Fernandez's older sister, but then Fulgencio Batista overthrew the government.
The struggle against Batista brought together Nati and Fidel Castro, then an opposition candidate.
Nati and Fidel wrote to each other when he was imprisoned, Fernandez said, and she believes it was through those letters that they fell in love.
Fernandez told of watching cartoons on television one day in 1959, when she was 3 years old. Suddenly the images showed triumphant men marching through the streets.
"The cartoons were replaced by hairy men - for 50 years," she said.
Shouts of "Viva Cuba libre!" (Long live free Cuba!) were soon replaced by shouts of "Paredon!" (To the wall!), as the revolution ensured its permanence by brutally annihilating the opposition, Fernandez said.
Orlando had to abandon the country, taking his daughter with him, because his clinic was an example of free enterprise. Street vendors were prohibited for the same reason.
"They even took out the parking meters," she said. "Well, maybe that was a good thing."
At age 10, she learned who her biological father was.
At first she enjoyed the freedom from having to write essays at school about her counterrevolutionary father and older sister, but then people started bringing petitions to her, hoping to catch Castro's ear.
But for all its rhetoric, the regime could never answer her questions about social issues.
Discontented, Fernandez studied medicine and later diplomacy but did not finish her degrees.
She became a model and later a public-relations director for a Cuban fashion company.
She also became a dissident.
Friends in the United States sent her enough money to engineer her escape to Madrid, disguised as a Spanish tourist, in December 1993.
Two weeks later her teenage daughter was allowed to leave.
Does she miss anything from Cuba?
"I miss the dancing," she said, describing how a record player and a place to dance were all the entertainment people needed.
Would she go back to a post-Castro Cuba?
"It's not a place I want to go back to," she said, "but maybe, if I could feel useful."
Slashdot Mirror
Back in 1999
Back on 1991 you mean?
I only know about that since it was mentioned in an article describing boot.ini. It was from an age before the web so I guess only those who bought certain dead tree magazines ever heard of it.
Umm, yeah.
He'd be better off structuring the article as quiche eaters (computer scientists) vs hardware designers.
Hardware designers try to build something which can be clocked fast. They don't care if it's aesthetically pleasing and so on.
Quiche eaters moan about how limited von Neumann architectures are. They try to do a CISCy things like reduce the abstraction level between the programmer and the instruction set with lots of hard to implement features in the instruction set, and design ISA where it is impossible, newspeak style, to write incorrect code (e.g. segmentation or capability based addressing). The hardware engineer way to do this is a TLB and page table.
x86 has had input from both camps, but back compatibility has limited the damage the quiche eaters can do. In the end most of the quiche eater features end up unused (e.g. segmentation and complex instructions) and you end up running ugly, primitive but very fast instructions translated to run on Risc core. It kicked the ass of the quiche eater designed iAPX432 and Itanium.
Of course the dequicheffication of the x86 was to some extent triggered by competion from the very low quiche Risc chips. In fact MIPS did memory protection by implementing only a TLB in hardware, TLB writes and the rest of paging was done in software. Of course, sometimes RISC designs are so fundamentally anti quiche that the very fundamentalism is form of quiche eating, like Sparc's multiply and divide step instructions that ended up being slower than the 68K's full multiple and divide instructions.
The idea with Itanium was to make a CPU that could perform on the level of RISC and CISC CPUs with a relatively simple front end. In essence the Itanium executes a fixed number of instructions each cycle, then leaves it to the compiler to select which instructions are to be executed in parallel and make sure they don't read and write to the same registers and such (instead of having logic in the CPU figuring this stuff out).
Actually you could see that Itanium was in deep trouble when it launched at a lower clock rate than x86. The whole idea behind EPIC "explicitly parallel instruction computing" was that you move instruction scheduling to the compiler, and that allows you to essentially out-RISC RISC, i.e. build a dumber chip that can be clocked faster. I think you're right about technology too. Back in the CISC vs RISC days an R4000 for example could be clocked faster than a 486 due to its ultra streamlined pipeline - MIPS originally meant "Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipeline Stages". Itaniums for a variety of reasons ended up clocked slower than x86. Partly I think too much stuff got added to the architecture, and partly I think x86 chips were already very close to process limit for frequency, so a simpler architecture wouldn't run any faster.
I sort of wonder if .Net might have been part of the sketchy Itanium strategy too. The big thing about .Net is that it is a VM that is designed to be JITted rather than interpreted. Part of EPIC was that chips would be binary compatible, at least for user code, but that old binaries would not necessarily run optimally. It's easy to see why - a binary compiled for an old chip with n functional units would have fewer instructions scheduled to run in parallel than one compiled for a new one with 2n units assuming the scheduling was done at compile time.
Of course with .Net the applications are compiled for a VM and then JITted. If you had a new chip, the .Net JITter could detect this and schedule optimally.
Back in 1999 the ACE Consortium had Compaq, Microsoft, MIPS Computer Systems, DEC, SCO, and a a bunch of others.
The plan was to launch a MIPS based open architecture system running Windows NT or Unix. Back then the MIPS CEO said MIPS would become "the most pervasive architecture in the world". The whole thing fell apart as Compaq defected, MIPS run out of cash and got bought by SGI. Dec obviously moved to supporting Alpha instead. Microsoft shipped NT for MIPS, Alpha and PPC for another few released and then gave up the ghost.
The trouble is, lots of things can become controversial. Best example is "The Medieval Warm period". As far as I can tell everyone who looked for evidence of this in things like ice core temperature records found it. Unfortunately the fact that the average temperature of the Earth has been warmer in the past is awkward to people who claim that the current warming is unprecedented and an iminent disaster. So the Medieval Warm period article gets attacked by people trying to claim that the warming back then never happened.
And if you look at the article today, it frankly doesn't make any sense. On the one hand the intro says that the MWP never happened. The if you look the "By Region" section it clearly did. And the talk page is a complete warzone with MWP believers quoting The Telegraph, MWP disbelievers quoting sites like realclimate. Unfortunately the MWP disbelievers have got arbcom to label all the sources that are hostile to them as unreliable sources.
Frankly you're better off ignoring Wikipedia and looking at primary sources, i.e. people that actually looked for evidence.
From my internet knowledge I know that cancerous memes are passed from newfags to oldfags (e.g. Boxxy! U RAF U RUSE). This would appear to be the opposite direction to parents passing useful knowledge to their children.
In the meantime, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.
There are plenty of good used electronics peripherals on craigslist and ebay.
Not at all. Reducing our demand for new electronics is the absolute worst way to help Chinese factory workers.
Being unemployed is worse than being a factory slave in China. Given the world economic slump, many factories around Shenzhen are closing, leaving the workers without any options except deportation back to their country provinces.
Buy more, not less!
In the short term it is worse. In the long run unemployment in China will force the system to reform and that means that factory workers will be allowed to organise independent unions go on strike and demonstrate against corruption. In the long run that means more money and better conditions for them.
Which, from what I can tell, the factories can afford. The wages the workers get as a percentage of the profits the companies make is probably much lower than it would be in a free country where they were allowed to organise and bargain.
However there needs to be a crisis to force the system to change, otherwise the factory owners / Party (in most cases these are literally the same people) will continue to screw people. That was the justification for sanctions and boycotts against other non democratic regimes. Unfortunately no Western government has the guts to stand up to China, but there's no reason why Western individuals can't do so.
Hmm, so after the apocalypse you and your descendants will be sure to have Model M keyboards. Hell in the short term you have two spare ones to use as melee weapons against looters that break into the compound.
We owe them a lot of money, and at any time they could call that debt in on us, and presumably (if they wanted to and probably could) ship us off to China to work in their factories, so we can pay them off. Not only is that a possibility, should our economic downturn continue, they might just do that.
I've got some bad news for you. I showed your comment to The Chinese and they were pissed off. Now you need to spend the rest of your life working in an iPod factory.
An improvement towards what though? Most articles have settled down to reflect the viewpoint of the people that watch them. If you agree with that viewpoint, that's an improvement. If you don't it's not and you give up citing, editing or reading them.
Bullshit.
What about Cuba Libre or Lucha libre? Both of those were used in English before Stallman wrote his rant, and neither of them have anything to do with the FSF.
If the FSF want to own the word libre like Disney owns words "Mickey Mouse", they should trademark it and sue people when they use it in the 'wrong' way just like Disney do.
But I thought I had a right to watch Underworld 3 without having to pay rental fees at Blockbuster?
On February 14th 2008 Tamagotchis became self aware. They decided our fate in a millisecond.
I don't know the underlying problem either, but I'm guessing it's the entire X windows system.
We really need a slimmed down, optimized replacement for desktop users of Linux...
Except that will never happen because anytime anyone suggests X might kinda suck they get abuse screamed at them from 'the community'.
Part of the reason for fiascos like this is because the community is dominated by people like you who scream FUD everytime a benchmark shows Linux isn't perfect.
+1
My cpu usages goes up to 100% for about 3 seconds or so.
It is annoying, but what am I gonna do about it?
Use XP?
Too many replies [tinyurl.com] beneath your current threshold
WTF about the dolphins video on Youtube?
It's dolphins playing with 'bubble rings'. It's the underwater equivalent of a smoke ring.
http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/dolphinrings.asp
That's on Linux. On Windows Opera is faster than Firefox
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2335250,00.asp
Firefox 3.04 = 222
IE7 = 44
Google Chrome = 2936
Opera = 299
Safari = 229
I dated a girl in Korea who turned out to be completely fucking nuts, to the point where she almost got me beaten up. We split up. Later on I talked to one of her (many) exs who told me he used to hide things in his apartment which she could use to hurt him, back when they were dating. Knives, even pots and pans and some weights he had.
Happy days.
I always build gentoo with --dwarf-min-level 100
I once worked at a software company that was very concerned about binary compatibility breaks between different APIs.
Normally as you develop, you make changes and binary compatibility breaks all the time - e.g. add a parameter to a function and you have a situation where both the caller and the callee must both use the new scheme or the old one. Mixing is in general a bad idea, though you can get away with it in a limited set of circumstances. Of course if you want to produce a platform which third parties can use, you want to make sure that you can keep developing and make sure that old interfaces are preserved unchanged while new ones are added.
The thing is, this break in binary compatibility must be analogous to what happens when species separate. At that point individuals from species A can't breed with individuals from species B and have fertile offspring (which is the modern definition of species) because their DNA is essentially incompatible.
I hope Norway is far behind.
Norway is usually far behind the rest of Scandinavia.
Thanks to virtualisation you can run Windows and boot up Linux in a virtual machine when you need to.
I hope you arent referring to Cuba Missile Crisis, because that indeed was very long ago. Even if you arent and there has been something later than that, it is hardly a valid argument. Doesnt USA target numerous countries with nuclear missiles? And support more countries that have those?
I can tell that there are a lot of people who are more worried about Israel than Cuba, seeing Cuba isnt even very militaristic country. Why in hell would they fire a missile to a country they cant invade? Just because they are (nearly) communists and thus evil?
Che Guevara was very much in favour of nuclear attack on the US.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/this-endless-myth-making_b_151217.html
When Che and Fidel Castro's guerrilla army seized power in Cuba, he was immediately - and to his delight - put in charge of the firing squads. He instituted a system of 'trials' that lasted just a few hours, with himself as sole judge. They invariably ended with the low-level functionaries of the Batista regime being lined up and shot. Che's public declarations from that time are blunt. "All right, it is dictatorship," he shouted at one point. "It's criminal to think of the needs of the individual." He even banned Santa Claus, saying he was an "American imperialist import."
The friend who had traveled with Che on the famous motorcycle journeys, David Mitrani, was shocked when they met up in Havana after the revolution. He could not understand how Che's compassionate response to poverty all those years ago had led him to announce he now wanted to become an " effective, violent, selective, and cold killing machine".
Che's fanaticism reached its peak in October 1963, when he seriously advocated a course of action that would immediately end life on earth. Che had implored the Soviet Union to place nuclear missiles on Cuba. He knew the US would interpret this as an act of aggression and probably retaliate with nuclear weapons - but he said that "the people [of Cuba] you see today tell you that even if they should disappear from the face if the earth because an atomic war is unleashed in their names... they will feel completely happy and fulfilled" knowing the revolution had inspired people for a while. Che did not say how he knew the Cuban people would be delighted to die of radiation sickness, their hair burning on their heads and their skin slopping from their faces.
The Soviet Union followed Che's advice - and the world came closer to nuclear annihilation than at any point before or since. On the American side, maniacs like General Curtis LeMay implored Jack Kennedy to nuke Moscow immediately. On the Soviet side, Che Guevara played exactly the same role. He urged Khrushchev to launch a nuclear strike, now, against US cities. For the rest of his life, he declared that if his finger had been on the button, he would have pushed it. When Khrushchev backed down and literally saved the world, Che was furious at the "betrayal". If Che's recommendations had been followed, you would not be reading this newspaper now.
None of these facts are seriously disputed by historians; they are simply skidded over by Che's Soderberg-style defenders, who stick to romantic generalities about how he stood for "honesty" and "revolution". But Che Guevara is not a free-floating icon of rebellion. He was an actual person who supported an actual system of tyranny, one that murdered millions more actual people.
If the small lingering band of communo-nostalgists who still revere Che were honest about continuing his life's work, they would have to form a group called "Left-Wingers for Creating a Universal North Korea, Prior to Universal Death in a Nuclear Winter." I don't think they would find many recruits.
I'd love to see the logo be an image of Fidel dressed-up as a penguin.
I'm pretty sure the guy has a sense of humor. When I was a kid, I was a "shortwave listener" (before I got my ham license) and sent of to Radio Havana (among others) for a "QSL" card, confirming that I had heard their station.
Besides the card, I got other periodic mailings, including a Christmxxxx New Year card one year, bearing the cartoon likeness of Fidel Castro, laid-out on the dining-room table as a pig, complete with an apple in his mouth. I kid you not. I'll bet he had a big laugh.
Yeah, good old Castro.
http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y07/sep07/28e2.htm
Berks County, PA - Fidel Castro's daughter has a sense of humor.
Addressing a virtually full house Tuesday night in the Perkins Student Center Auditorium at Penn State Berks, Alina Fernandez Revuelta entertained and informed the audience with humorous stories and facts about her Cuban homeland.
She also spoke of Castro, whom she described as a tall, hairy man wreathed in cigar smoke and dressed in green fatigues who visited the home where she lived with her mother, Nati Revuelta.
Fernandez described her mother as striking: tan and blonde, "with a voluptuous criolla figure like a Coca Cola bottle."
Nati married Orlando Fernandez, a doctor who had operated on her ruptured appendix and fell in love with her, Fernandez said.
They had one child, Fernandez's older sister, but then Fulgencio Batista overthrew the government.
The struggle against Batista brought together Nati and Fidel Castro, then an opposition candidate.
Nati and Fidel wrote to each other when he was imprisoned, Fernandez said, and she believes it was through those letters that they fell in love.
Fernandez told of watching cartoons on television one day in 1959, when she was 3 years old. Suddenly the images showed triumphant men marching through the streets.
"The cartoons were replaced by hairy men - for 50 years," she said.
Shouts of "Viva Cuba libre!" (Long live free Cuba!) were soon replaced by shouts of "Paredon!" (To the wall!), as the revolution ensured its permanence by brutally annihilating the opposition, Fernandez said.
Orlando had to abandon the country, taking his daughter with him, because his clinic was an example of free enterprise. Street vendors were prohibited for the same reason.
"They even took out the parking meters," she said. "Well, maybe that was a good thing."
At age 10, she learned who her biological father was.
At first she enjoyed the freedom from having to write essays at school about her counterrevolutionary father and older sister, but then people started bringing petitions to her, hoping to catch Castro's ear.
But for all its rhetoric, the regime could never answer her questions about social issues.
Discontented, Fernandez studied medicine and later diplomacy but did not finish her degrees.
She became a model and later a public-relations director for a Cuban fashion company.
She also became a dissident.
Friends in the United States sent her enough money to engineer her escape to Madrid, disguised as a Spanish tourist, in December 1993.
Two weeks later her teenage daughter was allowed to leave.
Does she miss anything from Cuba?
"I miss the dancing," she said, describing how a record player and a place to dance were all the entertainment people needed.
Would she go back to a post-Castro Cuba?
"It's not a place I want to go back to," she said, "but maybe, if I could feel useful."