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User: Cyno

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  1. hmm on Linux Gains Support for NUMA · · Score: 1

    I want to see this in a cluster. If the kernel can understand NUMA then it should be able to handle a cluster over a network, such as gigabit ethernet, IMO. Craylink is only what 800Mbps/full duplex? But, dammit Jim, I'm a Sys Admin, not a programmer.

    If it were possible to scale a cluster of PCs easily and keep a single concurrent system image there would be no limits to what we're capable of doing. Encode a video in 30 minutes or less, play the latest games with 2 year old hardware, etc.

    Make it so.

  2. Re:guilty about killing "true AI badguys"? on Infinite Games? · · Score: 1
    Its all about money anyway. If killing AI sells I see no problem with it. We can make as many AI as we want, infinitely replicatable, just like real people. Unfortunately for us we can't exactly duplicate a real person. We can't copy consciousness. When AI becomes conscious, then we will be able to duplicate that consciousness. Think of it. We could spend years raising our AI child, teaching them to be polite and well mannered. Then one day make a backup and brutally slaughter them or rape them senseless.

    The poor copy that gets mutilated can easily be deleted when you are finished and just restore from the backup. The AI won't know the difference.

    Do I see an ethical or moral problem with this? No more than I see with bombing afghanistan or Iraq. The last time we bombed Iraq over a million deaths were caused. Real deaths, not AI, not artificial objects. Irreplacable human beings with friends, family and consciousness. Most of those deaths were innocent.

    Not think about this for a minute. I kill hundreds, maybe thousands of innocent virtual objects every day. But I would be surprised if I have killed over a million. That takes a lot of effort. You have to be a mass murder, probably with weapons of mass destruction, like the US government.

    Explain how the US can claim to be a moral or ethical body. I blame not just the government for those deaths, but each and every American including myself, even though I have no power to stop the killing. Ignorance is not bliss.

    So this is how I see it. If humanity can grow up and act based on morals and ethics (I bet this throws capitalism out the window) then perhaps it might be wrong to injure a virtual object of some level of intelligence. But this will never happen. We'll never grow up.

    What happens when we take away the violence in content, but leave our current system of war and poverty and illogical anti-drug propoganda and crooked execs and government (this is known as reality). We end up with riots, er I mean peaceful marches, resulting in more crime and violence in reality.

    Put it this way, what would you rather see? Your kid:
    • playing a computer game, killing the bad guys or the innocent guys doesn't really matter, whatever gets them off.
    • hurting real people in the real world?
  3. Re:Do you still have problems with this stuff? on Telemarketers Sue to Block Do-Not-Call List · · Score: 1

    What's the point? Why go through all the effort to fix the broken phone system. We already have computer networks. It seems like it would be a whole lot more logical to build on top of the network we already got. Build up IP based phone services that use IP addresses, not phone numbers. And ask all your contacts to get with the times. Once the free software is stable and everyone has better than 56k net access at home...

    Look, this is the future. The phone system is analogous to the postal service or telegraph, like the the choice between broadband (LAN) multimedia and TV. Over a LAN you can choose to watch the Star Trek: The Next Generation channel w/o commercials, or the Simpsons channel. On TV you get whatever crap they want to feed you, 30 minutes at a time.

    I don't recommend everyone giving up their phones and TVs. Only those people who want to learn and communicate without the annoyance of commercialism and Americanism. The rest of you are more than welcome to buy all the cheesy products that gives you your jobs. I'm just saying we finally have a choice.

    Its all you.

    P.S. Why do people use their telephone? Because EVERYONE has a phone number. If EVERYONE didn't have a phone number then it wouldn't be an issue, would it. Monopolies are bad, m'kay?

  4. Do you still have problems with this stuff? on Telemarketers Sue to Block Do-Not-Call List · · Score: 1

    I learned early on that TV and Phone services are offer little more than the free postal service, they only bring you junkmail and free offers for junk attached to advertisements. None of it is quality or worth the cost. So I don't have either. I use a cell phone for that personal phone number in case anyone needs to reach me. The only junkmail I get these days is in my mailbox, and believe me, that's more than enough.

    All I recommend is you give it a try. See how much more time you have when you cancel your cable and phone services. With the extra money you could probably afford a broadband connection or the hardware to connect with one of your friends that already has one.

    As a result it is very difficult for anyone to sell me anything I don't naturally want to buy.

  5. Leave out those codecs. We already got our own! on MPlayer Licence Trouble With A Twist · · Score: 1

    All I want is a good quality bug free video player that easily streams xvid ogms with ogg vorbis audio from an SMB, NFS or ssh connection. Once the product is polished and stable, then we can worry about wmv and quicktime plugins and legal issues.

  6. Re:Why is Kazaa/Napster illegal? on Kazaa Fights Back · · Score: 1

    What about automobiles? They would have to be illegal because they could easily drive faster than the speed limit or run over a pedestrian. Yay, let's take all responsibilities off the end lusers. My government should drive me to work and back every day, they should cloth and feed me and buy me my favorite music, since they already know what I like. I'm gonna be so happy.

  7. Re:GUNS on Kazaa Fights Back · · Score: 1

    Gimme a plastic fork. I'll show you how to kill someone with it, or at least poke out their eye.

    Any solid object could potentially be used as a weapon. Toasters, knives, guns, soda cans, beer bottles, pencils, even plastic forks. Personally I would love the chaos that would consume us if we continue down our current path of making all wrong acts illegal, but most people want a safe environment. I thrive on the survival of the fittest model because I'm willing to do anything to survive. ;)

    The answer is simple, make less laws (tear down the laws we've already built) not more of them. When people realize they are all criminals in one way or another, they begin to form groups... criminal organizations if you will. Napster was one of those, as are the p2ps, but they are not the problem. The law is what created this problem. Fighting the criminals with more laws will only compound it. Fighting them with enforcement may turn this harmless situation into a dangerous one.

  8. Re:Answer on America's Army on Linux · · Score: 1

    Oh, I'm sorry, you were refering to afghanistan. Everything I've read suggests between 3000 and 3500 innocent deaths from the bombing. Care to explain your opinions on this topic? Feel free to provide links to information.

  9. Re:Answer on America's Army on Linux · · Score: 1

    And as for integration into our society.. What excuse do we have for our current situation? Why aren't there enough jobs? Because we're too stupid to invest in "companies" that provide "jobs". Besides, the number of jobs doesn't matter. What matters is the work that needs to get done in order to make all the products that we wish to buy. Most of the hard work these days is done by machines or computers. If we applied that to the rest of the work most people wouldn't need jobs. But like I said we don't care, we don't love eachother, we couldn't go to work knowing someone had the day off, could we? And that's too bad.

  10. Re:Answer on America's Army on Linux · · Score: 1

    Prove that or shut your liberal ass up.

    Is this what you were looking for? No? Let me spell it out for you:

    More than a million and a half people died in Iraq as a direct result of those sanctions. The great majority of the victims were infants, children, elderly and chronically ill persons. UNICEF reported in 1997 that 4,500 children under the age of five were dying each month from hunger and disease, making 500,000 the number of small children killed by the blockade.

    What do you think of your almight US republic now? Like killing children, don't you? Ignorant fool.

  11. Re:Answer on America's Army on Linux · · Score: 1

    But why do we still call ourselves humane? Its hypocritical. Our bitchslap to Afghanistan killed more innocent people than died at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon combined, including the terrorists. The last strike on Iraq caused the deaths of over half a million innocent civilians. Those deaths could have been prevented by a civilized, humane society. Something we are NOT.

    The humane way to help these people is provide them free transportation and citizenship within our country. Give them the freedom we base our killing on. The power of any nation is its population. You don't think our GNP grows on trees, do you? But to have a valuable population you got to education them, so I think this rules out the US as a potentially humane society.

    We got the money but we don't love eachother enough to care.

  12. Re:here's how I see it on Linux in Enterprise Environments · · Score: 1

    Yes, but the software you mention has value because it takes input from the proper channels, processes it and outputs it to the proper channels. That software could be written in any language and run on any OS, but its value would generally be the same as long as it does what it was designed for. All I'm saying is it doesn't matter how much your software costs or what "features" it boasts, it only matters if it does its job and uses your hardware to process the data. Afterall that is what you are paying for in the first place. So I don't see why leveraging free software on cheap comodity hardware is such a bad idea once you reallize that the software running on top of it doesn't matter as long as it just works. As long as it processes your data.

    Or do I have it all wrong. Is this business software doing something other than processing data and sending it to the right people?

  13. here's how I see it on Linux in Enterprise Environments · · Score: 1

    I don't know what type of services are required by those 400 users, but I bet I could build a network of PCs with Linux and get the same level of service. $1,000,000 seems like a lot of money to me for a couple servers. I've setup million dollar servers before, a Sun database for a startup and an SGI reality monster, but I've never messed around with a mainframe. But I have yet to find anything that is more fault tolerant than a cluster of PCs designed the right way the first time. Failure MUST be planned for. So as long as we do our job what is the benefit of having a mainframe over a bunch of PCs besides the TCO?

    PCs: $0* initial, $120k/year TCO
    MFs: $1M initial, $?/year TCO

    *This assumes you have a bunch of PCs already and doesn't take into account the design and implementation cost of the network.

    It would take you at least 5 years to make back your initial investment, assuming MFs have a lower TCO. With PCs you get the latest technology (fast chips + buses) at a discount, but you have to manage the extra hardware. You almost need to have the system manage itself and report on statistics, parts failure, etc. so you can make the proper purchasing decisions. So with PCs you get more work (which can be done by computers), but you should save a bundle and be extremely scalable, limitted only by current technology (because its totally modular).

    Not saying mainframes are bad, I'm sure there are certain situations which require a mainframe, but I don't know what they are. I only know about processing data, dealing with nets and the separation of the logical services from the physical infrastructure that provides them. And that PCs are really cheap. :)

  14. Re:In the dark about permanent illumination on MIT Develops Quantum-Dot OLEDs · · Score: 1

    The gas in my car was fed by the sun and various other plants and animals and was alive at one time. Which is why it is such a cheap power source. We're living off the work of others. We can't fathom the amount of time and energy it took to make a single tank of gas, yet we burn through it in a week without ever thinking about it. Only someone with a soul would confuse organic with alive.

  15. Re:Blog on Beyond Eldred v. Ashcroft · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I like Bill Maher's opinions on abortion:

    "I'm for the death penalty, I'm pro-abortion, I'm pro-assisted suicide, I'm pro-regular suicide. Anything that'll get the traffic moving." - Bill Maher

    It doesn't matter if the brain is half way developed. There's millions of innocent people that die every year, thousands of them have fully developed brains and are killed by the US government with full support of the American public. Its called war. So tell me why should a mother have to ask you if she can kill her child.

    We've already decided to kill anyone with the potential to be a "terrorist" (Or at least deny them humane rights). But everyone has the potential to be a "terrorist". So fuck it. What does it matter anyway? Its only life.

  16. Re: Imagine That on Music Biz Predicts 6% Decline in '03 · · Score: 1

    Maybe if they lose enough money they'll start giving you free CD cases made of sand paper.

  17. Re:Is anybody WORRIED about this? on Seagate Barracuda V Serial ATA Drive Reviewed · · Score: 1

    Actually most people only started to use a computer in the last five years, so what do they know about how much harddrive space they'll be using later this year or next year or 5 years from now. Why did they get a computer? Probably because they wanted a typewriter than they could browse the internet with. But slowly they are learning that this device will be useful for storing their music and video collection. When they finally figure that out they'll need these 200GB drives. Or they'll need better compression.

  18. Re:Now if only they were as reliable... on Hard Drives Down To A Dollar A Gigabyte · · Score: 2

    Great idea! Use the monkey for backups!

  19. Yay! on Judge Rules that Kazaa can be Sued · · Score: 1, Redundant

    When will all those P2P sharing copyright violators finally figure it out? The best P2P network can only be built on open source software, like gnutella. Everything else is temporary.

  20. Re:Gawd, more whining from an also-ran on MPEG 4, Windows Media 9 At War · · Score: 2

    How about all the startups that had technology and innovative industry leaders that gets bought out by the larger corp that only uses it for its patents, PCs and lays off the expensive people who know how it all works. How about the individual innovator that has a great idea but can't get the funding to start a business? Capitalism only hurts us. We spend a good 20% of our life managing money. Just managing money. That doesn't include all the problems we run into because we don't have enough of it to begin with. I wasn't born with a bank account, were you? But I was born with a brain that is capable of innovation if I'm not constantly being discouraged from being diverse and creative, and if money does not become a barrier preventing me from learning or producing.

    When I want to innovate on computers I need computers, which means I need money to innovate in a capitalist society. Hell you even need money to survive, even though it is one of your rights.

  21. Re:Gawd, more whining from an also-ran on MPEG 4, Windows Media 9 At War · · Score: 2

    Most of the desktop features are common sense. But then there was that person that innovated the first crap. Do you think they sat down or did it takes years of fierce competition to revise the method towards our modern restroom technology?

    I think somewhere along the way the toilet would have been invented without all the R&D of some huge corporation.

  22. Re:In all seriousness... on Hard Drives Down To A Dollar A Gigabyte · · Score: 2

    What percentage of personal computer users use more than 10GB of hard drive space? Seriously.

    What percentage of personal computer users will need more than 640k of RAM? Seriously.

    A single DVD takes up 4GB of harddrive space. A Movie collection most likely will take up a LOT more.

  23. Re:There *is* an alternative - XVID on MPEG 4, Windows Media 9 At War · · Score: 2

    Actually they quit posting their developement work for obvious reasons. You probably would too if someone was stealing your work, taking credit for it and profiting from it illegally. But when they finally updated the website they were at the 0.9 mark and it has been completely useable since April last year. I haven't even tested the 0.9 stuff. I'm waiting until B-Frames are out of beta and some SMP enhancements are fine tuned. Looks like they're getting very close to the 1.0 release.

  24. Re:Now if only they were as reliable... on Hard Drives Down To A Dollar A Gigabyte · · Score: 5, Interesting

    That's something I've learned about PC hardware. You must plan for failure. That's what RAID and backups are for. I've been buying harddrives for $1/GB for over a year now. I buy the cheapest drives I can find, 80GB Seagates, and use a few 100-200GB drives to build a RAID. The Seagates work well in swapable drive bays and have been very stable. I had one problem and it was only a missing pin, no data loss or corruption. But then again none of the data I store of them is important by itself.

    The best technology today IMO is a few cheap 1394 controllers, some 1394->IDE converters and the cheapest $/GB drives you can find. Build a RAID, probably in a custom case with like 8 or 12 5.25" drive bays, use swapable IDE enclosures and have the box email you when the logs show a drive is about to fail. It might cost a little initially but it is mostly fault tolerant and dirt cheap in the long run.

  25. Re:Where are the 70% Efficient Solar Cells? ask GW on Where are the 70% Efficient Solar Cells? · · Score: 2

    Uh, no... Is it a child's fault if you don't educate 'em? The people are like children, ignorant of the world around them. It is not their fault that the media they trust flat out lies to them or doesn't give them all the facts.

    But go ahead, blame the population. Blame them to death, if that'll make you feel better. It does nothing to help us fix the problem.