Also, if you read the article, you will see that the new and improved Open Source Java will be missing some features (ie sound). So this isn't so much open-sourcing Java as it is removing the last offending bits that cannot be open-sourced and hoping they will be coded back in. What? Fro what I understand, they *are* giving more code under the GPL. Previously, Java lacked "some encryption libraries, graphics libraries, the sound engine, and some SNMP management ". Now, it seems that only SNMP and sound are missing, and they will be done in a year.
Now, it is a huge shame that Gentoo does not offer icedtea/OpenJDK...
But this neglects the fact that black Americans are catching up with whites. If their culture was to blame, then surely their economic growth would not be exceeding that of whites? I'm sorry, my writing was unclear
1) I did not mean that only black people are lazy and stupid; the whole society is. Most people admire Hollywood stars more than hard-working scientists. We geeks are often mistreated.
2) Until a few decades ago, black people were heavily mistreated. This explains their poverty.
That being said, I believe that, in many places, racism has nearly ended. At least in Brasil, I cannot imagine a person being refused a job just because of skin color. Black people are treated well, and naturally create friendships and relationships with white people. Many musics talk about the beauty of the "mulata" (a mixed black/white woman).
With the end of racism, the wealth division between blacks and whites is changing, but it will take some years to reach a natural wealth distribution.
My belief is: 1) Most people are lazy and stupid. 2) Those born rich tend to continue rich 3) Those born poor can develop themselves economically if they show effort. The amount of effort varies: - probably very hard, sometimes impossible, in a miserable country like Haiti - not hard in a developing country like Brasil (except in the poorest regions, like some parts of the Northeast) - easy in the USA
Of course, this varies a lot depending on a particular person's experience, including the person's health, how poor the person is, etc.
I should add that many countries, including Brasil, have developed a lot recently. Some decades ago it was a lot harder to get out of poverty here.
You have to understand, though, that a $7/hr job in the US will never let you afford a house. The cost of living is higher here. I have a hard time believing that. Maybe people have too high a standard for housing.
The USA is filthy rich. Check the World Factbook. Your GDP per capita (corrected by PPP, so the cost of living is already included) is not only 4.6 times the world average, but also 40% higher than that of the EU, 34% higher than that of Germany and 36% higher than that of Japan. The USA also has a very high standard of living, with a HDI of 0.951 (the world's highest being 0.968). Also, the income distribution is reasonable: from the World Factbook, the household income or consumption of the 10% poorest is 2% of the total (and remember, the total is huge).
I once heard a guy say "the imperialist pigs are a failure! While they have a big GDP, 12% of their people are below poverty line!". Anti-Americanism aside, the guy forgot one thing: the U.S. set the bar very high.
I do not think gangsta rap is *the* cause. I think the cause is a culture of irresponsibility, crime, and laziness. You can argue that this culture is not their fault since they are the product of their environment. The point is, gangsta rap is a result of this culture, and I believe there is a positive feedback: if you keep hearing music that portrays criminals as "macho" and policemen as enemies, "pigs", and corrupt, there is a chance your image of policemen may be degraded. You may also end up thinking that disobeying policemen (and the law), and, in general, being violent, is a sign of manliness.
My view on the cause of poverty is probably influenced by family experience. My grandfather was illiterate, and, tough he had a big farm, he lived a very simple life, in a house without electricity, piped water, or any kind of bathroom. My father gained his first boot at age 12. Until then, he worked barefoot alongside my grandfather. Yet my father is now a researcher with a P.H.D. He achieved this with a lot of effort and study. He studied in very harsh conditions. Yet I hear people saying "Mr. Orlando is rich because he has poor people working for him". I also have some poor friends, and I see they spend their time watching TV, playing videogame, or otherwise wasting their time. When they become adults, they get bad jobs.
If this is true here, I can only imagine how it is in the USA. Your GDP per capita is some 4.6 times the world average. People that travel to the U.S. tell that any healthy adult (except illegal immigrants) can easily get a job that pays $7 or $8 per hour.
But some Americans complain that they cannot find a job. Of course they could work at McDonalds and earn $7 per hour, but then their friends would laugh at them saying that they job is "Do you want fries with that?", and $7 per hour is also "too little". They deserve more.
I know from personal experience that one can listen to gangsta rap and be a doctor or lawyer. Hell, you don't even have to be black. That's only one data point, but there you go. The correct thing you said is that *this is one data point*.
This troubles me about "Anonymous". Threatening a vindictive bully with vindictive bullying can just encourage them. Which is why Anonymous is not using vindictive bullying.
And why do you think that a "loser pays" system would make such a situation more likely?
By the way, I am not advocating "loser pays". But I think there should be much harsher penalties for barratry. Perhaps the loser should pay if it can be determined that he did not have a reasonable, good faith belief that the case should and could be resolved in his favor, and whenever he built the case in a manner that unnecessarily harasses the defendant (for example, if he sues the defendant an unnecessary number of times).
Bruce, don't lose your valuable time answering that kind of thing. It is hard to think the grandparent didn't already know what you stated above. Not to mention he seems to be a troll. Don't feed trolls.
By the way, I can only wish most sites were formatted like yours: black text on a white background, on a single page-wide column (by today standards, it is a surprise that it occupies more than half of the page). Maybe you could found a "Readable Text Movement":)
Thank you for your work,
Jorge Peixoto, from Brasil
The summary claims that the *notebook manufacturers* are deliberately raising the price of DRAM chips.
First, if they are doing that, they are benefiting the DRAM manufacturers, so they must have an agreement with them. I am not sure this would be legal.
Second, a single notebook manufacturer would hardly have the market power to increase DRAM prices. Such a move would have to be coordinated among several manufacturers, and I doubt very much that would be legal.
From the summary: "They claim the move is an attempt to shore up the costs of DRAM chips, which are currently depressed because of a glut in market."
The article says: "While first-tier notebook vendors such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Toshiba are planning to roll out 4GB notebooks starting from the first quarter of 2008, the move is expected to give a boost to the DRAM market, according to memory module makers."
The article does not say that this is a deliberate attempt to increase DRAM price. And if it was, wouldn't it be illegal?
It uses so much memory and CPU that computer shops near my house explicitly tell their costumers "It comes with Windows Vista, but we recommend you to change it to Windows XP. We do it for free"
I have never heard of anything similar with any other release of Windows. Not even Windows ME.
But free games are thriving more and more as we speak...
Re:The power you speak of is the power of the GNU
on
NYSE Moves to Linux
·
· Score: 1
It was Richard Stallman and his GPL that built the Free Software Movement. Before that, there was no idea that proprietary software was anti-ethical (Free Software); the momentum created by the Free Software movement spawned the Open Source movement, with the idea that proprietary software is inefficient.
Without Richard Stallman, Free Software would probably be restricted to university projects.
All of what you said is true, but 1) This is also true with FreeBSD, Windows or Mac OS 2) If Linux wasn't extremely reliable, HP wouldn't be able to guarantee reliability to 6 sigma
What, do you mean that free software is anti-capitalistic because it removes scarcity? More explicitly, are you suggesting that free software is communistic?
As Bruce Perens puts it, "Carl Marx didn't invent helping your neighbor" As Eric Raymond puts it, "Open Source is not communism because we don't send people to a Gulag" (paraphrasing, not an exact quote)
As I put it, Free Software is all about individual rights and individual freedom, which communism is not. Open Source is about having a competitive free market, instead of government-imposed inefficient monopolies. This is not communistic.
The scarcity that Free Software removes is the artificial scarcity of government-imposed copyright; there is still a tremendous scarcity of developer time, tech support time, etc. This presents enormous opportunities for business. Free software is not anti-business.
Some leftist governments have advocated Free Software and faced opposition from the Right, but this is accidental. At least here in Brasil, this is what happens: Microsoft happens to be a US company, and therefore is hated by the Left. Thus the Left advocates Free Software. Proprietary software companies then lobby the Right and tell them that Free Software is a leftist idea against free market. Although this is absurd, the technologically-illiterate right wing politicians can only understand that the Left advocates Free Software, and established, successful companies (which create many jobs) don't like it. They don't know that many small companies, and companies not yet created, love free software. They don't know that these established companies are only successful because they benefit from a government-imposed monopoly and explore an inefficient non-free market.
By the way, I am a firm believer in Free Software (typing this from a completely free system), and am a good old-fashioned right wing. Yes, this means I have to vote against Free Software due to lack of options:(
I guess the difference is that wikipedia contains a fairly large amount of factual errors and the Britannica much less. Not according to Nature: http://www.news.com/2100-1038_3-5997332.html.
What do you mean in item 19? As far as I know, it is only the Argentinians we don't like. And many other countries in Latin America don't like Argentinians either.
Also, I have never traveled to Argentina, but I think that the animosity between Brazil and Argentina is nothing too serious; we love beating them in any sport (specially soccer), we crack jokes about them, we mock them, but (I hope!) very few Brazilians would treat badly a person from Argentina just because of his/her nationality.
I have never seen a modern CFL with a noticeable warm up period.
Only those big fluorescent tube lamps used in commercial places have a warm up period. I remember that in a school, the lamp took minutes to produce reasonable light. But for household CFLs, I have never seen this.
All we're really left with is the observation that some people (certain mine owners and local officials in this case, if they're distinct categories) are scum. And the observation that people from around the world will readily buy products "made in China" just because they're cheap.
Slashdot Mirror
Brasil is largely hydro.
Now, it is a huge shame that Gentoo does not offer icedtea/OpenJDK
1) I did not mean that only black people are lazy and stupid; the whole society is. Most people admire Hollywood stars more than hard-working scientists. We geeks are often mistreated.
2) Until a few decades ago, black people were heavily mistreated. This explains their poverty.
That being said, I believe that, in many places, racism has nearly ended. At least in Brasil, I cannot imagine a person being refused a job just because of skin color. Black people are treated well, and naturally create friendships and relationships with white people. Many musics talk about the beauty of the "mulata" (a mixed black/white woman).
With the end of racism, the wealth division between blacks and whites is changing, but it will take some years to reach a natural wealth distribution.
My belief is:
1) Most people are lazy and stupid.
2) Those born rich tend to continue rich
3) Those born poor can develop themselves economically if they show effort. The amount of effort varies:
- probably very hard, sometimes impossible, in a miserable country like Haiti
- not hard in a developing country like Brasil (except in the poorest regions, like some parts of the Northeast)
- easy in the USA
Of course, this varies a lot depending on a particular person's experience, including the person's health, how poor the person is, etc.
I should add that many countries, including Brasil, have developed a lot recently. Some decades ago it was a lot harder to get out of poverty here. You have to understand, though, that a $7/hr job in the US will never let you afford a house. The cost of living is higher here. I have a hard time believing that. Maybe people have too high a standard for housing.
The USA is filthy rich. Check the World Factbook. Your GDP per capita (corrected by PPP, so the cost of living is already included) is not only 4.6 times the world average, but also 40% higher than that of the EU, 34% higher than that of Germany and 36% higher than that of Japan.
The USA also has a very high standard of living, with a HDI of 0.951 (the world's highest being 0.968).
Also, the income distribution is reasonable: from the World Factbook, the household income or consumption of the 10% poorest is 2% of the total (and remember, the total is huge).
I once heard a guy say "the imperialist pigs are a failure! While they have a big GDP, 12% of their people are below poverty line!". Anti-Americanism aside, the guy forgot one thing: the U.S. set the bar very high.
I do not think gangsta rap is *the* cause. I think the cause is a culture of irresponsibility, crime, and laziness. You can argue that this culture is not their fault since they are the product of their environment. The point is, gangsta rap is a result of this culture, and I believe there is a positive feedback: if you keep hearing music that portrays criminals as "macho" and policemen as enemies, "pigs", and corrupt, there is a chance your image of policemen may be degraded. You may also end up thinking that disobeying policemen (and the law), and, in general, being violent, is a sign of manliness.
My view on the cause of poverty is probably influenced by family experience. My grandfather was illiterate, and, tough he had a big farm, he lived a very simple life, in a house without electricity, piped water, or any kind of bathroom. My father gained his first boot at age 12. Until then, he worked barefoot alongside my grandfather. Yet my father is now a researcher with a P.H.D. He achieved this with a lot of effort and study. He studied in very harsh conditions. Yet I hear people saying "Mr. Orlando is rich because he has poor people working for him".
I also have some poor friends, and I see they spend their time watching TV, playing videogame, or otherwise wasting their time. When they become adults, they get bad jobs.
If this is true here, I can only imagine how it is in the USA. Your GDP per capita is some 4.6 times the world average. People that travel to the U.S. tell that any healthy adult (except illegal immigrants) can easily get a job that pays $7 or $8 per hour.
But some Americans complain that they cannot find a job. Of course they could work at McDonalds and earn $7 per hour, but then their friends would laugh at them saying that they job is "Do you want fries with that?", and $7 per hour is also "too little". They deserve more.
"Poor Americans" need some perspective.
And why do you think that a "loser pays" system would make such a situation more likely?
By the way, I am not advocating "loser pays". But I think there should be much harsher penalties for barratry. Perhaps the loser should pay if it can be determined that he did not have a reasonable, good faith belief that the case should and could be resolved in his favor, and whenever he built the case in a manner that unnecessarily harasses the defendant (for example, if he sues the defendant an unnecessary number of times).
Bruce, don't lose your valuable time answering that kind of thing. It is hard to think the grandparent didn't already know what you stated above. Not to mention he seems to be a troll. Don't feed trolls.
:)
By the way, I can only wish most sites were formatted like yours: black text on a white background, on a single page-wide column (by today standards, it is a surprise that it occupies more than half of the page). Maybe you could found a "Readable Text Movement"
Thank you for your work,
Jorge Peixoto, from Brasil
Please see my answer here: http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=397262&cid=21791628
The summary claims that the *notebook manufacturers* are deliberately raising the price of DRAM chips.
First, if they are doing that, they are benefiting the DRAM manufacturers, so they must have an agreement with them. I am not sure this would be legal.
Second, a single notebook manufacturer would hardly have the market power to increase DRAM prices. Such a move would have to be coordinated among several manufacturers, and I doubt very much that would be legal.
From the summary: "They claim the move is an attempt to shore up the costs of DRAM chips, which are currently depressed because of a glut in market."
The article says: "While first-tier notebook vendors such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Toshiba are planning to roll out 4GB notebooks starting from the first quarter of 2008, the move is expected to give a boost to the DRAM market, according to memory module makers."
The article does not say that this is a deliberate attempt to increase DRAM price. And if it was, wouldn't it be illegal?
I forgot the obvious: just read the article
It uses so much memory and CPU that computer shops near my house explicitly tell their costumers "It comes with Windows Vista, but we recommend you to change it to Windows XP. We do it for free"
I have never heard of anything similar with any other release of Windows. Not even Windows ME.
But free games are thriving more and more as we speak...
It was Richard Stallman and his GPL that built the Free Software Movement. Before that, there was no idea that proprietary software was anti-ethical (Free Software); the momentum created by the Free Software movement spawned the Open Source movement, with the idea that proprietary software is inefficient.
Without Richard Stallman, Free Software would probably be restricted to university projects.
LOL
(sorry for using this on Slashdot...)
All of what you said is true, but
1) This is also true with FreeBSD, Windows or Mac OS
2) If Linux wasn't extremely reliable, HP wouldn't be able to guarantee reliability to 6 sigma
What, do you mean that free software is anti-capitalistic because it removes scarcity? More explicitly, are you suggesting that free software is communistic?
:(
As Bruce Perens puts it, "Carl Marx didn't invent helping your neighbor"
As Eric Raymond puts it, "Open Source is not communism because we don't send people to a Gulag" (paraphrasing, not an exact quote)
As I put it, Free Software is all about individual rights and individual freedom, which communism is not.
Open Source is about having a competitive free market, instead of government-imposed inefficient monopolies. This is not communistic.
The scarcity that Free Software removes is the artificial scarcity of government-imposed copyright; there is still a tremendous scarcity of developer time, tech support time, etc. This presents enormous opportunities for business. Free software is not anti-business.
Some leftist governments have advocated Free Software and faced opposition from the Right, but this is accidental. At least here in Brasil, this is what happens:
Microsoft happens to be a US company, and therefore is hated by the Left.
Thus the Left advocates Free Software.
Proprietary software companies then lobby the Right and tell them that Free Software is a leftist idea against free market. Although this is absurd, the technologically-illiterate right wing politicians can only understand that the Left advocates Free Software, and established, successful companies (which create many jobs) don't like it. They don't know that many small companies, and companies not yet created, love free software. They don't know that these established companies are only successful because they benefit from a government-imposed monopoly and explore an inefficient non-free market.
By the way, I am a firm believer in Free Software (typing this from a completely free system), and am a good old-fashioned right wing. Yes, this means I have to vote against Free Software due to lack of options
According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_rape_drug ,
GHB is one of the drugs that can be called "date rape drug".
Read the Wikipedia article again (at least the introduction!)
What do you mean in item 19? As far as I know, it is only the Argentinians we don't like. And many other countries in Latin America don't like Argentinians either.
Also, I have never traveled to Argentina, but I think that the animosity between Brazil and Argentina is nothing too serious; we love beating them in any sport (specially soccer), we crack jokes about them, we mock them, but (I hope!) very few Brazilians would treat badly a person from Argentina just because of his/her nationality.
Confess. You are Argentinian and you are posing as a Brazilian vomiting this nonsense in order to mock our country.
I have never seen a modern CFL with a noticeable warm up period.
Only those big fluorescent tube lamps used in commercial places have a warm up period. I remember that in a school, the lamp took minutes to produce reasonable light. But for household CFLs, I have never seen this.
Perhaps you are outdated?