Verizon is building a FIOS monopoly with the money they're making from the copper monopoly. That's the problem. It's wrong to be granted a monopoly and exploit that position to perpetuate that monopoly.
Dave, If I'm paying $40 month for internet access, I expect unrestricted, high speed bandwidth in both directions. I expect choices and quality of service. My home phone costs about $40/month, my cable TV costs $40/month, my internet access costs $40/month and I'm certain it should be much less.
The local telco, Qwest, doesn't even try to compete. If my wife would tolerate getting a new phone number, I'd go with Vonage just to spite Qwest. I guess my expectation is that I get all three for $50/month this year, and less next year. I have no real choices. The cable company is a monopoly, the telephone company is a monopoly, and I have high prices and no alternatives.
Verizon is building a FIOS monopoly with the money they're making from the copper monopoly. That's the problem.
I am one of many who are not at all happy about the quality, level, and cost of telephony and digital access. I think our government has corrupted itself with the granting and enforcing of monopolies in this area. The access providers are screwing us and we have a third world infrastructure. It was inevitable that Verizion would skimp on copper to fund their build-out of FIOS. The suprise is that so few people seem to care, or even know, how badly we're being screwed.
Remember that when Microsoft was trying to get into the file/print/email server game, Novell was the leader in the field. But to win, Microsoft merely had to more or less match their functionality and throw in some price cuts and desktop tie-ins to sweeten the deal.
Actually, I was in the business of testing hardware compatibility with network operating systems and I remember those days clearly.
Microsoft's client 'updates' always broke the networking stack of their NOS competitors. They were actively sabotaging Novell compatibility, as well as compatibility of other providers of network stacks. Their 'solutions' were always inferior; did not scale well, compatibility issues, poor reliability. I remember their disk mirroring 'solution'. What a joke.
Microsoft used its client OS dominance to marginalize NOS competitors. I would expect them to attempt the same thing with this Linux initiative.
Reminds me of "We're from the government and we're here to help." To which the reply goes, "You're confusing me, which is it? You're from the government, or you're here to help?"
Microsoft having someone with the title of "Director of Linux Interoperability" is one of those euphemisms. He's not going to improve interoperability, but he'll be addressing interoperability. Much of the interoperability between Microsoft operating systems and Linux have happened despite Microsoft, not with Microsoft's help. They fought SAMBA, for example.
Please remember Microsoft's long history of polluting standards and interfaces. They buggered such standards as HTML and Java. They have everything to lose with interoperability, and very little to gain. If they believe in interoperability, they would not oppose the move to open document standards.
Yes, he's only peeking to see what they're watching, but I'm totally jealous. Aren't you curious to see what people are looking at? I think that would be very interesting (for a little while).
To me, the Europeans look like a bunch of reasonable people. And their countries have been doing a good job of caring for the welfare of their citizens. Here in the U.S. the trend is just the opposite; extremist behavior and a neglected population (since 2000). We have some reasonable people here in the U.S. but the reasonable Republicans got marginalized by the NeoCons.
The way we Americans carry on about little stuff like Clinton's involvement with Lewinski, and the way so many American went off on people like the Dixie Chicks, while we tolerate some despicable, vicious behavior at our highest political offices sometimes makes me wish I lived in Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland, Spain, or someplace where a more reasonable, moderate political system was at work.
We're stuck with the best politicians that money can buy. I've been sending money to the ones I want to see in office. Too bad I have to spend my money to help get some fair political leadership.
I disagree that Americans don't care. They do vote, and in increasing numbers. But I get your point; 'United States of Apathy' or 'United States of Amnesia'. Mostly, I think people want a general idea of which party will take care of what sort of issues, and they'll vote on that idea. The political arrangement used to be that Republicans were fiscal conservatives, and political conservatives, and the Democrats were the progressives. Republicans used to be social liberals.
My complaint is that the political system has been so totally gamed that Fox can curry favor with a political party and then get away with being the worst, by far, about violating decency standards because they've 'bought' their indulgence with that political party. The Republicans have been pandering to narrow constituencies in order to get political power. They'll sell their political support to the highest bidder. Again, nothing new, but why should we sit by and not remark about it?
As I said, I'd like to be a Republican, but the only thing that the Republicans really stand for is the wealthy. They don't do anything about abortion even when they had complete political power. Why would they? If they did something about abortion, the fundamentalist christians would no longer have a reason to vote for them.
The Republicans spend money like crazy, not just the administrations, but the various senators, congressmen all got involved in the pork. They label the Dems as 'tax and spend', but if you look at a chart of the national deficit and a timeline of political administration, you'd see just the opposite; the deficit goes up during Republican administrations.
The NeoCon Republicans are currently pandering to the social conservatives, but it turns out to be lip service. They did nothing about abortion, gay marriage, decency on the airwaves, and they themselves turn out to be a bunch of rotten apples; closet homosexuals preying on the young, liars and manipulators who have no compunction about sending troops into war, they claim that they 'support the troops' but there was inadequate preparation for the war in Iraq and there's been poor support of the troops after they come home. I'm heartsick about what's been happening and the fact that Fox is able to pimp the NeoCons is just another sign of what's wrong.
I don't think the Democrats are in a good position to fix this problem. I'd prefer to see someone like Chuck Hagel in the White House, or maybe even Thompson - a Regan Republican, but the current front runners in the Republican race for the primaries don't thrill me. More sellouts. Fox is still sitting pretty.
Or is it the other way around; the Republicans are Fox's bitch. Either way, you're trying to be logical about politics, you yourself are being illogical.
Republicans are supposed to be political conservatives. Political conservatives are supposed to be against government interference in private lives. Terri Schaivo, abortion rights, gay marriage, etc. show that they care more about their 'base', the social conservatives, than they care about political philosophy.
And the fact that Fox has been leading the charge when it comes to smutty, sensationalist television, which you think would offend the religious right, and they they get a free ride from the Republican Party because they're such whores about supporting the NeoCons is just another example of the hypocritical politics we have these days. Another reason why religion and politics are a bad, but historical, combination.
I'd love to support the Republicans (fiscal conservatives, political conservatives), but I don't dare support the whores and hypocrites in power right now.
I finally wised up the the coincidence of endorsements of parts for performance cars, and the size of the ads in the magazines. Once I figured that out, I started seeing this sort of thing everywhere. In many places it's obvious, in other places it is more subtle. Recently I've noticed that this viral marketing is effecting web searches.
I'm thankful for this little bit of 'research', but the job that was done was cursory and will simply make these charlatans be a little more sneaky about how business is conducted; where there's money to be made, product placement can be bought.
This is one of the arguments for open-sourcing development of software and hardware; 'products' compete on merit, not marketing.
Reputation and anonymity are mutually competing goals. Early in the history of the 'net, anonymity was something that people at first exploited for a wide range of reasons; honesty without repercussions, viciousness without repercussions, etc. Eventually, technology caught up an much of the anonymity has become relative. If they want to find out how you are, they usually can.
I think that much of the recent alarm about loss of privacy is the result of us becoming accustomed to thinking we had anonymity and that loss of thinking we were 'safe'. I'm getting used to the idea that I'm being watched, at work, in public, on the internet.
I have changed my behavior to avoid activities that might be unflattering. Big Brother, I know, but I don't really have much to hide. I'm willing to become more public if it means my 'reputation' does not get damaged. In some respects, my 'reputation' is already a matter of 'public' record; my credit record. I'm ok with that, especially because it helps me with lower interest rates and better job prospects.
There are other reasons to tolerate this linking of reputation with your real identity. Terrorists, criminals, and other bad actors are rapidly running out of places to hide. Considering the fact that technology has enabled bad actors to strike from around the globe, this ability to identify people becomes something of a deterrent to bad behavior of all sorts; terrorists, criminals, politicians.
I just hope that when reputation gets unfairly damaged, it is quickly restored.
I've learned by watching the big money interests; you only have to win once. And once you've won, there's no going back. I saw it happen with logging and other environmental interests; the logging lobby wants to log some area, they just keep trying to get the legislature to allow logging, and one fine day, they do. In, out, and the battle is over.
ODF needs to do this, too. Keep it up and one year real soon, they'll win and it's over.
It's interesting to me that video has become the newest, best tool to portray a point of view on an issue. Now if we could get these videos on the airwaves on a regular basis, I think the public good would be served. I realize that oil companies, tobacco companies, and other groups with an agenda might tend to drown out the discourse with their own videos. Still, these videos are better than the 30 second sound bites that we get in our broadcast TV channels.
Wow, I'm impressed. Maybe what your relating is common knowledge, but you go my respect.
I've got a question for you. The Bohr model of an atom shows neutrons and protons as 'atomic' sub-particles. How accurate is that? When atoms form a crystal, is the position of the nucleus fixed or is it suspended, able to change its position? For example, I can imagine that carbon, with a valence of 6 (has 6 protons) and a 'weight' of 12 (usually) would have an asymmetrical shape to its nucleus. This would cause a variation to the electrical field that surrounds it. This would, in turn, influence the shape of the lattice. Could you have a nucleus that's 'upside down' in relation to the other nuclei?
And so it seems to have been abused, but I don't think there's any stopping it now.
The demographics, an aging baby boom generation who grow more conservative as they age, favor the increasingly protofascist elements of our political system. As we boomers age, we will tend to favor the group of politicians who will promise us old age benefits. The Republican Party has always been out front for looting the public taxes to buy votes from the old. That's just how the system works; one party or the other was going to do it. But now that the political system has been gamed, we need to respond.
Combine the mono-culture fundamentalist christians (no, not cap C), big oil/big money, the one-issue gun lobby, and the demographics, and you have the recipe for an unbreakable control of our government. And the current crop of villains who had control of our government is just the most recent example of what will become the norm; the abuse of power by those who are best able to manipulate the system.
The proto fascists will continue to grow a secret police organization, a private (outsourced) police. Eisenhower's prediction about the military-industrial complex came true long ago. But what disheartens me is the knowledge that we will abide this ongoing decay in the values and standards that were hoped for by the founders of our nation. There was no outcry when the Patriot Act was passed. There seems to be no outrage about the Justice Department's (Gonzales, and Card, with assistance from Bush) violations of the law WRT wiretaps. (Think about that. The federal Justice Department breaking the law.)
We can expect this 'outsourcing' of covert activities to continue because it serves to concentrate power in one branch of our government.
I named Republicans as a guilty party, but it could just have easily been the Democratic Party. Events in 1964 changed where the balance of power in the Republican Party lay. The names of political parties is not as important as the names of the actors involved and who they serve. I don't think the future of our government is well served by this large secret police organization. Democracy thrives in the open air.
This seems to be a very widespread phenomenon; apparent illogic in public positions.
At even the hint of a suggestion that Microsoft has made a living from using other people's ideas, Bill Gates will immediately start into a harangue about how Microsoft is a leader because of its innovation. As most people familiar with the subject (and not predisposed to believe what Microsoft/Bill Gates says) already knows, Microsoft is not an innovator.
Many very big corporations like Microsoft, and all politicians, have learned to make statements that are based on false logic, falsified logic, and plain illogic. Big Tobacco denying the link between tobacco and cancer, Big Oil explaining their profits. I'll leave the political stuff alone because that seems to bring out the trolls.
That Microsoft will openly state that there is no tension between its 'support' of open standards and software, and their other work which supports and extends 'closed' technology is not a surprise. But what disappoints is that this rather open hypocrisy seems to be so readily accepted, especially by the mainstream media.
Have we become so jaded that truth and fact no longer matter? Am I the only one who tires of this open hypocrisy?
Document your concerns to your 'higher ups', and then freshen up your resume'. Your boss isn't going to want to take the heat when this system goes down, so BOHICA, you're going to get the blame. Start your job search now.
And, ask them how much will it cost the company when the system fails and data gets lost.
The good news; the job market got better lately, so you won't be out of work for long.
Anonymous Coward writesIDE refers to any drive (ATA, SCSI...) with integrated drive electronics, that is, everything that has come after the ancient dumb drives that required a model-specific controller on the motherboard. In other words, not a very useful term anymore.
Well, actually, IDE's history is a bit different than that. IDE requires a host buss interface, but, yes, they do have their disk controllers built into the PCA attached to the disk mechanism.
Before Compaq and others developed the first IDE systems, hard drives usually had external controller boards that used low level commands. IDE standardized the host interface to disk storage at the driver level, and standardized the host buss/drive command set at that buss level.
And, it's not just disk drives that use the IDE stack. Other devices can be attached to the IDE buss, too.
SCSI drives require a SCSI host buss adapter with a dedicated processor and that adapter does the heavy lifting for disk access. IDE requires the host CPU to do a lot of processing, where SCSI does the majority of the work. This model was used for the FC technology. It, too, unloads the processing from the CPU.
SCSI/FC are preferred in the 'big iron' type of installations. IDE/ATA/SATA are fine on a dedicated NAS system. In effect, the CPU of the NAS motherboard is doing the work that is done on the host buss adapters in SCSI/FC.
At the drive mech level, FC is a copper interface. The design of the connector on the disk mech allows it to be plugged. This provides the ability to quickly replace failed drives. The drive mechs are aggregated into some type of array to provide protection from data loss. This array of drives is then attached to systems via fiber optic cabling.
You can simulate some, but not all, of the benefits of a FC/SCSI array using SATA technology. I don't know if the IDE drivers are being rewritten to use the multi-core processors yet, but that would help reduce some of the latency.
Short answer, if what the OP was aiming for is to get into a large disk array for cheap, trading some reliability and performance for low cost, the idea is a good one. I would be looking for a multi-core cpu in the motherboard and an OS that has parallel processing drivers for the IDE channel. Be sure that all the drives have plenty of cooling. Have a backup solution. Some day, this lash-up will give you heartache, but till then, you've saved money.
Can you tell I used to work in the disk storage business?
When President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1965 he said some prophetic words; words to the effect of delivering the South to the Republican Party. Before that, the Republican party was actually a bit socially liberal. They were political conservatives (small government), they were fiscal conservatives (balanced budget), but they were rather tolerant of a lot of things that the current crop of fascists has come out against.
I don't know how the Republicans are going to get rid of that fascist Southern element, but until they do, they will be the rapacious, dangerous, nut-jobs you describe. I just wish the Democrats had the gonads to expose the fascists for what they are.
Al Gore was the guy who brought the ARPANET out to be the Internet. He's tech savvy. He pays attention to technology and business. I wish our country was enlightened enough to have a guy like Al Gore be the President, but there's still a backward thinking element that favors authoritarianism (fascism).
Al was the one who helped get toxic waste sites identified and create a mechanism to deal with it. He's not working an agenda, he's outwardly focused.
Speaking of Microsoft (Clippy), back in the days of DOS 6.something (6.2 ?), when upgrading from a previous version of OS, if the Mircosoft installation program detected something besides a DOS partition, it would blithely inform you that it had detected something non-Mircosoft and it would take care of it for you!
That was a disappointment.
I lost a lot of work until I found the work-around.
Female Sharks Can Reproduce Alone
So you've met my ex-wife?
Seriously, imagine the shark husbands; "That's not my pup. Who's the father???"
Or trying to explain this to your parents; "But Mom, I didn't. Really Mom."
And now the quotes, "A female shark needs a male shark, like a flounder needs a bicycle." - "All he's good for is opening jars and lifting heavy things." - "Not tonight, honey. I'm already stuffed."
Microsoft selling software is like Exxon selling gasoline. Except that Exxon has better sense than to brag about their monopoly.
But this is a case of "...methinks the lady doth protest too much..."; Microsoft is worrying about losing their monopoly to free software (linux, especially linux servers) and better software (Apple's OS). The louder they talk about market share, but more suspicious it looks.
To me, there are some other pretty important developments that have been going on, such as yesterday's report here on Slashdot about the NYSE replacing IBM mainframes with IBM AIX and with Linux.
I don't know how many people were around when Microsoft successfully spiked the Unix market with their FUD about workstation NT running on RISC processors. At the time, the Unix server and workstation companies were talking about converging their various flavors of Unix. This would have allowed more and better cross-platform compatibility of distributed application software. Microsoft countered with a campaign to run Windows NT on RISC processors as an alternative. DEC, HP and others squandered resources on this effort and the Unix market withered. Microsoft's campaign even had consulting businesses like Gartner Group predicting that NT would replace both Unix and the mainframe in a few years time. HP even went so far as to try to munge its PA RISC processor with the Intel x86 processor (Itanium) with the goal of running both x86 and Unix code on one platform. Intel never delivered on the early promises of that project, but they got HP's processor technology for their troubles.
Looking back, you have to hand it to Microsoft for the brilliant way they marginalized Unix. Problem is, they never did supply a replacement server platform except for some lousy versions of NT on Intel processors (And into that void slips Linux.)
I'm guessing that Windows XP represents the peak of Microsoft's work. Vista was years late, and the future of processors; cell, multi-core, distributed computing, internet-based applications, cell phone computers - will be beyond Microsoft's narrow, one-user/one-cpu, world view. Office productivity software has matured, gaming programming is moving onto GPUs and Microsoft's operating system is becoming less and less relevant.
I guess I'll have to concede this point because the phrase 'computational model' is so vague, but I have seen some of the statistical modeling (Taguchi modeling, for example) that went into 1980's Fords. This modeling is used to continually tune spark advance and fuel flow, down to the individual injectors. This was over 20 years ago.
I hope these guys do some good work, but it looks evolutionary, not revolutionary, to me.
To the guys who run slashdot; take a bow. Without being nasty, you made some accurate and justified criticisms of the goings-on that led to the resignation. Nice to see that magazine do the right thing and restore some of their integrity.
Slashdot Mirror
Verizon is building a FIOS monopoly with the money they're making from the copper monopoly. That's the problem. It's wrong to be granted a monopoly and exploit that position to perpetuate that monopoly.
Dave, If I'm paying $40 month for internet access, I expect unrestricted, high speed bandwidth in both directions. I expect choices and quality of service. My home phone costs about $40/month, my cable TV costs $40/month, my internet access costs $40/month and I'm certain it should be much less.
The local telco, Qwest, doesn't even try to compete. If my wife would tolerate getting a new phone number, I'd go with Vonage just to spite Qwest. I guess my expectation is that I get all three for $50/month this year, and less next year. I have no real choices. The cable company is a monopoly, the telephone company is a monopoly, and I have high prices and no alternatives.
Verizon is building a FIOS monopoly with the money they're making from the copper monopoly. That's the problem.
I am one of many who are not at all happy about the quality, level, and cost of telephony and digital access. I think our government has corrupted itself with the granting and enforcing of monopolies in this area. The access providers are screwing us and we have a third world infrastructure. It was inevitable that Verizion would skimp on copper to fund their build-out of FIOS. The suprise is that so few people seem to care, or even know, how badly we're being screwed.
Actually, I was in the business of testing hardware compatibility with network operating systems and I remember those days clearly.
Microsoft's client 'updates' always broke the networking stack of their NOS competitors. They were actively sabotaging Novell compatibility, as well as compatibility of other providers of network stacks. Their 'solutions' were always inferior; did not scale well, compatibility issues, poor reliability. I remember their disk mirroring 'solution'. What a joke.
Microsoft used its client OS dominance to marginalize NOS competitors. I would expect them to attempt the same thing with this Linux initiative.
Reminds me of "We're from the government and we're here to help." To which the reply goes, "You're confusing me, which is it? You're from the government, or you're here to help?"
Microsoft having someone with the title of "Director of Linux Interoperability" is one of those euphemisms. He's not going to improve interoperability, but he'll be addressing interoperability. Much of the interoperability between Microsoft operating systems and Linux have happened despite Microsoft, not with Microsoft's help. They fought SAMBA, for example.
Please remember Microsoft's long history of polluting standards and interfaces. They buggered such standards as HTML and Java. They have everything to lose with interoperability, and very little to gain. If they believe in interoperability, they would not oppose the move to open document standards.
Yes, he's only peeking to see what they're watching, but I'm totally jealous. Aren't you curious to see what people are looking at? I think that would be very interesting (for a little while).
To me, the Europeans look like a bunch of reasonable people. And their countries have been doing a good job of caring for the welfare of their citizens. Here in the U.S. the trend is just the opposite; extremist behavior and a neglected population (since 2000). We have some reasonable people here in the U.S. but the reasonable Republicans got marginalized by the NeoCons.
The way we Americans carry on about little stuff like Clinton's involvement with Lewinski, and the way so many American went off on people like the Dixie Chicks, while we tolerate some despicable, vicious behavior at our highest political offices sometimes makes me wish I lived in Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland, Spain, or someplace where a more reasonable, moderate political system was at work.
We're stuck with the best politicians that money can buy. I've been sending money to the ones I want to see in office. Too bad I have to spend my money to help get some fair political leadership.
I disagree that Americans don't care. They do vote, and in increasing numbers. But I get your point; 'United States of Apathy' or 'United States of Amnesia'. Mostly, I think people want a general idea of which party will take care of what sort of issues, and they'll vote on that idea. The political arrangement used to be that Republicans were fiscal conservatives, and political conservatives, and the Democrats were the progressives. Republicans used to be social liberals.
My complaint is that the political system has been so totally gamed that Fox can curry favor with a political party and then get away with being the worst, by far, about violating decency standards because they've 'bought' their indulgence with that political party. The Republicans have been pandering to narrow constituencies in order to get political power. They'll sell their political support to the highest bidder. Again, nothing new, but why should we sit by and not remark about it?
As I said, I'd like to be a Republican, but the only thing that the Republicans really stand for is the wealthy. They don't do anything about abortion even when they had complete political power. Why would they? If they did something about abortion, the fundamentalist christians would no longer have a reason to vote for them.
The Republicans spend money like crazy, not just the administrations, but the various senators, congressmen all got involved in the pork. They label the Dems as 'tax and spend', but if you look at a chart of the national deficit and a timeline of political administration, you'd see just the opposite; the deficit goes up during Republican administrations.
The NeoCon Republicans are currently pandering to the social conservatives, but it turns out to be lip service. They did nothing about abortion, gay marriage, decency on the airwaves, and they themselves turn out to be a bunch of rotten apples; closet homosexuals preying on the young, liars and manipulators who have no compunction about sending troops into war, they claim that they 'support the troops' but there was inadequate preparation for the war in Iraq and there's been poor support of the troops after they come home. I'm heartsick about what's been happening and the fact that Fox is able to pimp the NeoCons is just another sign of what's wrong.
I don't think the Democrats are in a good position to fix this problem. I'd prefer to see someone like Chuck Hagel in the White House, or maybe even Thompson - a Regan Republican, but the current front runners in the Republican race for the primaries don't thrill me. More sellouts. Fox is still sitting pretty.
Or is it the other way around; the Republicans are Fox's bitch. Either way, you're trying to be logical about politics, you yourself are being illogical.
Republicans are supposed to be political conservatives. Political conservatives are supposed to be against government interference in private lives. Terri Schaivo, abortion rights, gay marriage, etc. show that they care more about their 'base', the social conservatives, than they care about political philosophy.
And the fact that Fox has been leading the charge when it comes to smutty, sensationalist television, which you think would offend the religious right, and they they get a free ride from the Republican Party because they're such whores about supporting the NeoCons is just another example of the hypocritical politics we have these days. Another reason why religion and politics are a bad, but historical, combination.
I'd love to support the Republicans (fiscal conservatives, political conservatives), but I don't dare support the whores and hypocrites in power right now.
I finally wised up the the coincidence of endorsements of parts for performance cars, and the size of the ads in the magazines. Once I figured that out, I started seeing this sort of thing everywhere. In many places it's obvious, in other places it is more subtle. Recently I've noticed that this viral marketing is effecting web searches.
I'm thankful for this little bit of 'research', but the job that was done was cursory and will simply make these charlatans be a little more sneaky about how business is conducted; where there's money to be made, product placement can be bought.
This is one of the arguments for open-sourcing development of software and hardware; 'products' compete on merit, not marketing.
Reputation and anonymity are mutually competing goals. Early in the history of the 'net, anonymity was something that people at first exploited for a wide range of reasons; honesty without repercussions, viciousness without repercussions, etc. Eventually, technology caught up an much of the anonymity has become relative. If they want to find out how you are, they usually can.
I think that much of the recent alarm about loss of privacy is the result of us becoming accustomed to thinking we had anonymity and that loss of thinking we were 'safe'. I'm getting used to the idea that I'm being watched, at work, in public, on the internet.
I have changed my behavior to avoid activities that might be unflattering. Big Brother, I know, but I don't really have much to hide. I'm willing to become more public if it means my 'reputation' does not get damaged. In some respects, my 'reputation' is already a matter of 'public' record; my credit record. I'm ok with that, especially because it helps me with lower interest rates and better job prospects.
There are other reasons to tolerate this linking of reputation with your real identity. Terrorists, criminals, and other bad actors are rapidly running out of places to hide. Considering the fact that technology has enabled bad actors to strike from around the globe, this ability to identify people becomes something of a deterrent to bad behavior of all sorts; terrorists, criminals, politicians.
I just hope that when reputation gets unfairly damaged, it is quickly restored.
I've learned by watching the big money interests; you only have to win once. And once you've won, there's no going back. I saw it happen with logging and other environmental interests; the logging lobby wants to log some area, they just keep trying to get the legislature to allow logging, and one fine day, they do. In, out, and the battle is over.
ODF needs to do this, too. Keep it up and one year real soon, they'll win and it's over.
I had recently seen to videos that conveyed messages about some current events; http://www.whokilledtheelectriccar.com/, and Al Gore's http://www.an-inconvenient-truth.com/.
It's interesting to me that video has become the newest, best tool to portray a point of view on an issue. Now if we could get these videos on the airwaves on a regular basis, I think the public good would be served. I realize that oil companies, tobacco companies, and other groups with an agenda might tend to drown out the discourse with their own videos. Still, these videos are better than the 30 second sound bites that we get in our broadcast TV channels.
Wow, I'm impressed. Maybe what your relating is common knowledge, but you go my respect.
I've got a question for you. The Bohr model of an atom shows neutrons and protons as 'atomic' sub-particles. How accurate is that? When atoms form a crystal, is the position of the nucleus fixed or is it suspended, able to change its position? For example, I can imagine that carbon, with a valence of 6 (has 6 protons) and a 'weight' of 12 (usually) would have an asymmetrical shape to its nucleus. This would cause a variation to the electrical field that surrounds it. This would, in turn, influence the shape of the lattice. Could you have a nucleus that's 'upside down' in relation to the other nuclei?
And so it seems to have been abused, but I don't think there's any stopping it now.
The demographics, an aging baby boom generation who grow more conservative as they age, favor the increasingly protofascist elements of our political system. As we boomers age, we will tend to favor the group of politicians who will promise us old age benefits. The Republican Party has always been out front for looting the public taxes to buy votes from the old. That's just how the system works; one party or the other was going to do it. But now that the political system has been gamed, we need to respond.
Combine the mono-culture fundamentalist christians (no, not cap C), big oil/big money, the one-issue gun lobby, and the demographics, and you have the recipe for an unbreakable control of our government. And the current crop of villains who had control of our government is just the most recent example of what will become the norm; the abuse of power by those who are best able to manipulate the system.
The proto fascists will continue to grow a secret police organization, a private (outsourced) police. Eisenhower's prediction about the military-industrial complex came true long ago. But what disheartens me is the knowledge that we will abide this ongoing decay in the values and standards that were hoped for by the founders of our nation. There was no outcry when the Patriot Act was passed. There seems to be no outrage about the Justice Department's (Gonzales, and Card, with assistance from Bush) violations of the law WRT wiretaps. (Think about that. The federal Justice Department breaking the law.)
We can expect this 'outsourcing' of covert activities to continue because it serves to concentrate power in one branch of our government.
I named Republicans as a guilty party, but it could just have easily been the Democratic Party. Events in 1964 changed where the balance of power in the Republican Party lay. The names of political parties is not as important as the names of the actors involved and who they serve. I don't think the future of our government is well served by this large secret police organization. Democracy thrives in the open air.
This seems to be a very widespread phenomenon; apparent illogic in public positions.
At even the hint of a suggestion that Microsoft has made a living from using other people's ideas, Bill Gates will immediately start into a harangue about how Microsoft is a leader because of its innovation. As most people familiar with the subject (and not predisposed to believe what Microsoft/Bill Gates says) already knows, Microsoft is not an innovator.
Many very big corporations like Microsoft, and all politicians, have learned to make statements that are based on false logic, falsified logic, and plain illogic. Big Tobacco denying the link between tobacco and cancer, Big Oil explaining their profits. I'll leave the political stuff alone because that seems to bring out the trolls.
That Microsoft will openly state that there is no tension between its 'support' of open standards and software, and their other work which supports and extends 'closed' technology is not a surprise. But what disappoints is that this rather open hypocrisy seems to be so readily accepted, especially by the mainstream media.
Have we become so jaded that truth and fact no longer matter? Am I the only one who tires of this open hypocrisy?
Document your concerns to your 'higher ups', and then freshen up your resume'. Your boss isn't going to want to take the heat when this system goes down, so BOHICA, you're going to get the blame. Start your job search now.
And, ask them how much will it cost the company when the system fails and data gets lost.
The good news; the job market got better lately, so you won't be out of work for long.
Anonymous Coward writes IDE refers to any drive (ATA, SCSI...) with integrated drive electronics, that is, everything that has come after the ancient dumb drives that required a model-specific controller on the motherboard. In other words, not a very useful term anymore.
Well, actually, IDE's history is a bit different than that. IDE requires a host buss interface, but, yes, they do have their disk controllers built into the PCA attached to the disk mechanism.
Before Compaq and others developed the first IDE systems, hard drives usually had external controller boards that used low level commands. IDE standardized the host interface to disk storage at the driver level, and standardized the host buss/drive command set at that buss level.
And, it's not just disk drives that use the IDE stack. Other devices can be attached to the IDE buss, too.
SCSI drives require a SCSI host buss adapter with a dedicated processor and that adapter does the heavy lifting for disk access. IDE requires the host CPU to do a lot of processing, where SCSI does the majority of the work. This model was used for the FC technology. It, too, unloads the processing from the CPU.
SCSI/FC are preferred in the 'big iron' type of installations. IDE/ATA/SATA are fine on a dedicated NAS system. In effect, the CPU of the NAS motherboard is doing the work that is done on the host buss adapters in SCSI/FC.
At the drive mech level, FC is a copper interface. The design of the connector on the disk mech allows it to be plugged. This provides the ability to quickly replace failed drives. The drive mechs are aggregated into some type of array to provide protection from data loss. This array of drives is then attached to systems via fiber optic cabling.
You can simulate some, but not all, of the benefits of a FC/SCSI array using SATA technology. I don't know if the IDE drivers are being rewritten to use the multi-core processors yet, but that would help reduce some of the latency.
Short answer, if what the OP was aiming for is to get into a large disk array for cheap, trading some reliability and performance for low cost, the idea is a good one. I would be looking for a multi-core cpu in the motherboard and an OS that has parallel processing drivers for the IDE channel. Be sure that all the drives have plenty of cooling. Have a backup solution. Some day, this lash-up will give you heartache, but till then, you've saved money.
Can you tell I used to work in the disk storage business?
Good luck.
Boy, I had to reply to this.
When President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1965 he said some prophetic words; words to the effect of delivering the South to the Republican Party. Before that, the Republican party was actually a bit socially liberal. They were political conservatives (small government), they were fiscal conservatives (balanced budget), but they were rather tolerant of a lot of things that the current crop of fascists has come out against.
I don't know how the Republicans are going to get rid of that fascist Southern element, but until they do, they will be the rapacious, dangerous, nut-jobs you describe. I just wish the Democrats had the gonads to expose the fascists for what they are.
Meanwhile, draft Al Gore.
Al Gore was the guy who brought the ARPANET out to be the Internet. He's tech savvy. He pays attention to technology and business. I wish our country was enlightened enough to have a guy like Al Gore be the President, but there's still a backward thinking element that favors authoritarianism (fascism).
Al was the one who helped get toxic waste sites identified and create a mechanism to deal with it. He's not working an agenda, he's outwardly focused.
Speaking of Microsoft (Clippy), back in the days of DOS 6.something (6.2 ?), when upgrading from a previous version of OS, if the Mircosoft installation program detected something besides a DOS partition, it would blithely inform you that it had detected something non-Mircosoft and it would take care of it for you!
That was a disappointment.
I lost a lot of work until I found the work-around.
Female Sharks Can Reproduce Alone
So you've met my ex-wife?
Seriously, imagine the shark husbands; "That's not my pup. Who's the father???"
Or trying to explain this to your parents; "But Mom, I didn't. Really Mom."
And now the quotes, "A female shark needs a male shark, like a flounder needs a bicycle." - "All he's good for is opening jars and lifting heavy things." - "Not tonight, honey. I'm already stuffed."
In some ways, it would suck to be a male shark.
Microsoft selling software is like Exxon selling gasoline. Except that Exxon has better sense than to brag about their monopoly.
But this is a case of "...methinks the lady doth protest too much..."; Microsoft is worrying about losing their monopoly to free software (linux, especially linux servers) and better software (Apple's OS). The louder they talk about market share, but more suspicious it looks.
To me, there are some other pretty important developments that have been going on, such as yesterday's report here on Slashdot about the NYSE replacing IBM mainframes with IBM AIX and with Linux.
I don't know how many people were around when Microsoft successfully spiked the Unix market with their FUD about workstation NT running on RISC processors. At the time, the Unix server and workstation companies were talking about converging their various flavors of Unix. This would have allowed more and better cross-platform compatibility of distributed application software. Microsoft countered with a campaign to run Windows NT on RISC processors as an alternative. DEC, HP and others squandered resources on this effort and the Unix market withered. Microsoft's campaign even had consulting businesses like Gartner Group predicting that NT would replace both Unix and the mainframe in a few years time. HP even went so far as to try to munge its PA RISC processor with the Intel x86 processor (Itanium) with the goal of running both x86 and Unix code on one platform. Intel never delivered on the early promises of that project, but they got HP's processor technology for their troubles.
Looking back, you have to hand it to Microsoft for the brilliant way they marginalized Unix. Problem is, they never did supply a replacement server platform except for some lousy versions of NT on Intel processors (And into that void slips Linux.)
I'm guessing that Windows XP represents the peak of Microsoft's work. Vista was years late, and the future of processors; cell, multi-core, distributed computing, internet-based applications, cell phone computers - will be beyond Microsoft's narrow, one-user/one-cpu, world view. Office productivity software has matured, gaming programming is moving onto GPUs and Microsoft's operating system is becoming less and less relevant.
Tearing the numbers apart in throes of pedantic ecstasy is just masturbation.
And here I thought it was M$ who was doing the self-gratification (again). Thanks for clearing that up.
I guess I'll have to concede this point because the phrase 'computational model' is so vague, but I have seen some of the statistical modeling (Taguchi modeling, for example) that went into 1980's Fords. This modeling is used to continually tune spark advance and fuel flow, down to the individual injectors. This was over 20 years ago.
I hope these guys do some good work, but it looks evolutionary, not revolutionary, to me.
To the guys who run slashdot; take a bow. Without being nasty, you made some accurate and justified criticisms of the goings-on that led to the resignation. Nice to see that magazine do the right thing and restore some of their integrity.