Don't you wish you could talk to those managing transmeta directly? I'd love to point at articles like this and say, "I told you so." They are a good year ahead of any competition, but unfortunately their products are still too pricey and too slow. Since Transmeta refuses to open source their code morphing capability I'll put my money and support behind IBM or whomever writes software to give me the functionality Transmeta doesn't even want to give its customers.
I want a system that can change its instruction set on the fly, or at least in prom or bios. I want a system I can run solaris, OSX, Linux, IRIX and wintendoze on natively at near hardware speeds. It would also be nice if this could be a portable system, but that's not nearly as much a requirement. Transmeta refuses to write additional code morphing software for the ultrasparc, MIPS, PPC, etc. instruction sets. So as far as I'm concerned they can be consumed by AOL or the next big monopoly. I won't shed a tear.
I think the patent system has served its purpose. It did promote competition when it was first implemented, however, in todays world there is already fierce competition, which does not need any encouragement. The competition today mostly battle on court grounds with their casualties being money and lots of it. Small companies can not compete. So in order to continue promoting competition we should create a new bill that will phase out the patent system.
We need to significantly reduce the length of time patents will be valid. Perhaps this needs to be split between the various markets: technology / electronics, arts and music, industrial tech, etc. But patents should last no more than 2 or 3 generations of products, after that point they severely hinder competition if no alternative solutions can be found, such as in graphics technology, it can set competition back so far they could never catch up.
In an area of technological growth that moves as fast as graphics technology, where performance doubles every 6 months, patents should last no more than 2 years. As the rate at which technology is developed increases the length of patents should decrease, inversely proportional, until a time comes (10 years?) that we can just phase out the patent system altogether and cooperate to promote technology and information instead of money.
Do any of you honestly think that day will ever come? Or has capitalism poisonned the water forever?
I'm a Sr. Network Administrator and I have two words for all those sys admins out there who would rather not pay $50+ for a book: man man
I rarely need additional info to what the system's man pages contain (its usually acurate and up-to-date). And on Linux, which RedHat does a piss poor job of implementing, you can also browse/usr/doc and/usr/src/linux/Documentation to learn how Linux really works.
But that happens all the time. Many Americans get killed by the use of information by our media system. Desert Storm ring a bell? Not because of leaked papers or anything, but our mass marketted media programming has the ability to rally the ignorant masses into military action anytime they want. Why doesn't our congress pass a bill that says any news that ends up costing american lives gets everyone in that news conglomerate the death penalty? But I guess that would be sorta hypocritical, wouldn't it?
I would use a crusoe laptop/webpad for serial consoles on servers, browsing the net with some stripped down mozilla, or otherwise just using a terminal for daily tasks. I don't need a huge PIII system, cuz I won't use the thing for games, photo editting, or ray tracing. That's what my desktop is for. But I do want either a huge 15"+ XGA TFT display or a nice sized webpad with no fan that runs cool enough to hold comfortably.
I would also hope that transmeta is not going to be another stuck up proprietary IP company like Intel, MS, Sun, Apple and the like. If they want to be a proprietary IP company, that's fine. Just don't use Linus as some marketting ploy. That's like a slap in the face to anyone who supports the ideology of the GPL. I know I won't be buying a Crusoe until Transmeta releases some information about their code morphing technology.
But I must admit they created a system that will live up to its intentions. To be an efficient, fairly fast and usable webpad/linux PC. As long as they come with wireless net connections or at the very least a PCMCIA port, and cost me no more than $1000, they will help change the way I use computers to store my information. Palm Pilots just don't cut it with their 8MB of ram. Crusoe is just a step up, not the portable server you were expecting. And NO, they don't perform like a P3 500 or 700, they're different. Wish they'd post REAL benchmark numbers on their site and stop causing all this bad PR by trying to live up to the high end systems.
You want performance, go with a Pentium. You want something usable for several hours at home while you are watching the TV, that uses your home net to access all your personal information and the web, that is fast enough to get your work done, potentially upgradable to support other OSs, light weight and cool running, get a Crusoe... but only after Transmeta releases their IP on code morphing. We can at least hold out for that.
Plugin for winamp and standalone app. Its basicly the technology behind geiss with the ability to program the visuals (Or well, you write mathematical functions, but it works really well!) And more or less its open source. Maybe one day with enough of our support he'll GPL it.
I've seen people learn to code during the part of the day they are usually high and actually become a better programmer while stoned than sober. They still make the same dumb mistakes all programmers make that causes small bugs, but they have more creative input and can usually design a program better on an architectural level while high. I'm sure if they gave up pot altogether, after a few weeks of detox they would go back to coding better sober, but it makes you think.
I like this comment, "...drug treatment experts say tech workers are more susceptible than those in, say, Hollywood or Wall Street because of their work."
I have been in the valley for 5 years now, doing drugs, coding, networking and being a general sys admin. I smoke pot. Most of my friend smoke pot or have tried various forms hash, acid, ecstacy, shrooms and GHB, which is NOT a liquid form of cocaine as the article states, but more like a mostly harmless chemical that has no short or long term affects other than a potential date rape. A few have tried crank or cocaine, but none that I know of have ever tried other forms of meth or heroin.
Doing drugs occationally, as most programmers or techies to, is one thing. But printing an article saying 40%+ are intense crack addicts is extremely rude and unjustified, LA TIMES.
Techies do drugs, its a fact of life. Most can get by with caffeine, and a few are drug free. But all in all most are occational and responsible drug users. We do drugs at raves, in the youth/stoner/skater crowds we hang around, etc. But we very rarely need to do any drugs to make it through our day at work. If we work late it is because we believe that our companies IPO will make those few stock options we are in the process of vesting worth a few pennies.
In case LA TIMES can't get a clue, our job isn't a typical work and slave long hours sort of job. It requires a deep knowledge of computer systems, networks, and code and the ability to think creatively to solve problems, which most of the country is incapable of solving, including probably 50% of those with MBAs. Programming is something that you just can't do on most of the drugs mentioned in this article.
"The body count is just starting." This is shocking how our media system is trying to spread panic to the ignorant masses that don't know how difficult it is to write code or do most high paying tech jobs. The jobs that would afford you the cocaine with the current rent prices in the bay area are only tech, marketting or management positions. Which do you think plays around with the harder drugs? You'd need to make at least $70k to afford the amount of drugs required to sustain happiness if you rely on drugs for such things. I used to smoke over a half ounce a month. That's from $250 to $300 a month for my pot addiction, which is cheap compared with cocaine.
I just don't get this. "There's always been an anarchist technophile drug-use thing that seems to go together," Maybe excessive drug usage helps create the anarchist technophile present within each of us? But who am I? Just another clueless techie who runs your internet... what do I know 'bout these things?
What's next? Are they gonna start bitching 'bout my zoophile sexual nature and how wrong it is, too? I can't wait for the theories of how long hard working days make us all insane anarchistic sexual freaks.
Okay, sorry about that. That was a bit long and had a very angry tone to it. When I think of geeks I think of my friends who all just happen to be sys admins or programmers or stoners. Maybe there is an intermediate grey area of geek wannabes? But I think what makes a geek is a passion and love for computers and electronics of all sorts. Some geeks don't want to go all out, setting up the geek net to the fullest where connectivity is maximal.
But I think what makes a geek house is all the hard work geeks do that in the end fully automates and simplifies their lives. This includes computer networks and sharing high bandwidth lines (Often cable for web/cache proxies and DSL for gaming), audio and video networks for sharing movies and music resources throughout the home environment, and external connectivity to all of your data from any point on earth is important. In the future this will be common not only among geeks, but also business management since they can afford it.
But geeks in the end will understand it since they built it from the ground up with their own two hands. If you buy a network kit and don't learn that a network is built up on top of a network medium (cat 5 or EM waves), and that you need a network interface card or NIC in each PC that understands which network it is on, concepts of DNS, default route / gateway, subnet mask, etc. (TCP/IP), then you have failed to become a geek and should not consider your home a geek home, unless you like being flamed for ignorance. I think geeks typically understand networks. No one knows EVERYTHING, but if you don't understand the basics of a network of computers then you don't know ANYTHING. And thus you are not a geek. In this example does this mean that a geek is set on the path to enlightenment or just to becoming an engineer? Not knowing all, but knowing more than average?
Anyway, I failed to mention how much superior BSD is to linux in my last post. Even though I barely know anything about BSD I promise I will learn! It is more stable and has a better TCP/IP stack from what I hear, not just from other like minded geeks, but also in the professional market of production servers.
And as always there are a million ways to implement a network, but main thing we geeks need to know is how to stay ahead of the l33t crowd.
But what do y'all think? Do these things really make up a geek home? Or is it just living with geeks and the side affect of all the actions of geekiness are the collective consquences that make up the geek home?
Yes this is getting closer. But you forgot to mention the MP3 and MPEG-4 audio and video file servers for all. DHCP and DNS could easily be run off the same server, but true geek houses use samba as their windoze server and refuse to let the MS virus touch their loyal linux server. Intense filesystem cleaning results if infection spreads through network. And NT is worthless for games. What else do geeks use MS products for anyway?
A firewall is good, but you shouldn't plague it with NAT... and WTF is PAT? You should have one lonely old linux box be your NAT server for all systems on various subnets. Psycho subnet masks might also be common on geek nets. Anyway, you should setup a DMZ for your house webserver, required for webcam portal. Most geeks prefer to let their router do this. Sometimes a separate box from your firewall. Cisco is always preferrable, but expensive! You will want to setup external DNS, mail and ftp services and separate these from your internal services for security purposes. And lock down all the boxxes on your DMZ TIGHTLY! It is extremely embarrassing if your geek friends find out you have been rooted by some l33t script kiddy. True geeks are not script kiddys, we're hackers. We write code.
Often internally on your fine, but slightly dated, 100 Mbps switched net you will run services similar to LDAP or NIS. LDAP is something I'm unfamiliar with, and NIS is insecure. So I choose to write perl scripts to push all the data out that needs propogating, such as passwd entries and automount maps to maintain a consitent distributed filesystem across all unix boxxes for ease of use, better.rhosts / ssh connectivity, etc. With a good firewall, unless a l33t kiddy walks in your front door, it is not likely you'll be too insecure.
Network is only half the setup. You also have your audio / visual connections. This means you need amps in every room for music and run RCA or even RCA - cat 5 - RCA if you know how to splice wires for low level audio. It is always best to use a patch panel with several ports in every room for general purpose, but in apartments this is often not an option. Wiring up your audio like this can help maintain total absolute laziness. You no longer need to go into your roommate's bedroom to listen to him spin, you just use your remote to change to the spinning channel on your reciever... A good 24+ track mixxer with multi pre and post DSP / Computer SP outputs is good to separate the audio exactly how you want it. Also you can run video in the same manner, but video mixxers are a hell of a lot more expensive. Coax also works to pipe Computer/VHS/cable video to every smaller non-central tv terminal using VCRs or possible your stereo reciever as the mixxer. True mixxing can not be done in this fassion, but it will allow you to choose from multiple video signals easily. Good to note that computers are also analog video boxxes today, even though most video cards do not have good TV out. It is highly recommended you look into purchasing a DVD drive and a Matrox G-400 Marvel for a good entertainment PC. I don't support DVDs, I rent them. And for $20 more than a standard CD drive, why not?
This is good for parties where all your geek friends do all your drugs and trip balls all night watching g-force or maybe geiss if you like to promote proprietary software. Unfortunately constantly morphing/changing deltafields are a bit too CPU intensive for today's athlons. Maybe next year. Its also nice to be able to watch your roommate desimate his opposition online while baked out of his mind. Amazing how someone so stoned he can't talk can still kill people with almost perfect efficiency.
Music equipment (digital and acoustic) is required for loud geeks who like to use their computer for things other than games and masturbation. A good set of acoustic drums is preferrable for the burning man geek/monkeys. And several electric guitars, bass, synths, etc. Since they don't take up a lot of room. Perhaps even an electric drum set, but its difficult to fit this into a 2 bedroom apartment. Unless you don't need a dining room table...
And the hooka. No geek house is complete without one. Although almost any peace pipe will do. How do you think we come up with all these crazy ideas anyway?
I'd just like to say I'm sorry for ever thinking google might have been corrupted by Yahoo or any other corporate entity. Google, you're my favorite search engine! You kick ass! And I will never question your loyalty again... at least 'til the next slashdot article tells me otherwise.
Grassroots efforts are always the best, don't you think? Because they come from the heart, not from the wallet. I want to startup a website that is geared towards the artists and not about money or profits, about art foremost, and giving the artists enough to live on second, then providing enough funding for bandwidth third. All donations to the website would be voluntary, such as an option to pay up to 10% to the website, the rest going to the artist, etc.
I'm curious what you or anyone else thinks about this sort of thing. How should such a site be organized, should it be a real effort by the people to provide something like this where I can find some other similarly minded people and create something beautiful? Or should I fund it myself to begin with and see where it goes from there? Have any ideas? I have tonnes and the knowledge to begin implementing them, just very little time and currently no bandwidth of any kind to host.
I noticed they are trying to make deals with the RIAA. It struck me as kinda sad. Can you explain more about the changes in their terms for new artists? I suspect both the RIAA and MPAA / hollywood are a dying breed of IP organizations today. They will be replaced with indipendant film of quality, not quantity, and real musical art instead of hype and dance. Its only a matter of time. Money matters not.
And when all information is finally free so will the people be.
Actually, Linux and the GPL have given me a new ideology. Do away with money and make EVERYTHING free. Including the resources someone rips from the earth and charges you for. This way if we all work together to build something great we won't have to pay through the nose for it. Also if we want to run 100 Mbit switched networks between our apartment complexes and neighbors house, etc. We can. Instead of waiting 10 years 'til that technology is far more than merely obsolete, while our telecos charge 4 times the cost of laying fiber and refuse to run it from the corner to my doorstep. Things suck, man, take a look outside and tell me you think its all good and dandy.
Oh, but you're concerned that people won't work if they already have everything they want, right? True to some extent, but if we automate all those shit jobs people don't want to do and if there are enough of us working (currently less than 50% in the US) then we'll still get everything we want done. For example I am in the computer field. But if I didn't have to worry about paying my bills, if I could live in my apartment for free and pick up food at the store for free I'd still drive to work everyday. I'd probably be happier about it and do a better job, and I'd make sure I was working for a cause and a company I agreed with instead of the one that pays me the most. I'm also willing to get out there and help lay the foundation of houses and roads and do those shit jobs, including taking out the trash, if that's required. But the things is I'd work for free. Would you?
I bet Judge Lewis A. Kaplan would argue that encoding a set of characters that meet your protocol into a set of bits (or 1s and 0s) would be encrypting your signal in a way as to protect it under the DMCA, since you copyrighted your code and licensed it according to all those lovely IP laws.
Thank you WTO, WIPO, all those congress persons that voted for the DMCA, MPAA, RIAA, and anyone who upholds copyright and strict licensing agreements. I will just have to make sure none of my money or votes ends up in your dirty evil little hands.
Without the work and support of the people a country and a company have no intellectual property to protect. -Caleb
And more about KDE and GNOME. Honestly, in my opinion, KDE is a much better designed and implemented platform. It is more stable, integrated, and funner to work with. But like Jason was saying, "the license certainly does matter". I support KDE and I feel sorry for them. They created a beautiful set of tools and code and get little respect. The reason Linux has gotten so much support isn't because of the amount of work people have put into it and it isn't because its better than other OSs or not. It is because its license, plain and simple. BSD kicks ass over Linux in almost every way, stability, network performance, etc. But Linux prevails because of its license. BSD has a much more similar license to Linux than KDE, one version uses the LGPL, which is the same as the GPL, but lets others take your code, modify it and they don't have to release their changes. That slight difference is enough to pull the wind out of their sails, so to speak. I write GPL code because it gives my work to the people. No one can take what I write and change it or profit off of it without giving it away. I like that. It makes me happy.:)
If only those KDE folks would give in... then we'd have a really good desktop to support instead of the GNOME shit... though I hear its gotten a lot more stable. Last time I tried installing on solaris it crashed like 5 times from helixcode's site.:P Oh well, maybe one day they'll fix it. 'Til then I'll still use KDE, I have nothing against them, but I just wish they'd change that damned license for QT.
I don't enjoy being called a liar, please state which facts are wrong and why they are wrong... and if you think my opinions are wrong, so be it. I don't care, they are my opinions. Everyone is entitled to their own. However, did you know that the reason Andover can publish all of these comments in a book if they wished is because although they are owned by their respected authors they are not copyrighted? Simple, huh? Now if I copyrighted this comment like so... copyright (c) 2000 Caleb Mulford... now this comment is copyrighted by me and I reserve all rights, which means you have no right to copy or redistribute this comment without my express permission unless you are quoting this in your work and site the source you obtained your quote from, just like any other free speech document. Now I could license this comment to anyone I want under any license I want, but for right now I choose not to. Andover could not publish this comment in their book and sell their book without my express permission or without siting it as a quote and including a works sited or bibliographical page.
I am slowly beginning to understand the law, but it takes time. Lawyers are not magicians, they learned the rules through years of study, like all of us. We could all be lawyers if we really wanted to, but that's a lot of boring text I don't intend to read. Until then I will do what I can to learn 'bout copyright, copyleft, and freedom and I urge you to do the same, Mr. Otter.
Re:the freedom to steal
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Don't put words in his mouth, he's not talking about freedom, asshole, he's talking about freedom!
It doesn't take a lawyer to understand the GPL. I'm a network administrator. I read the GPL. Its really quite clear. As is the open publications license and open content license. These are all great licenses, and to sum up the jist of what they are saying. Your source code is protected by the license, the copyleft, by forcing others to rerelease any modifications they do to it if they decide not to keep those modifications to themselves. In addition to that you have the right to sell the source code for whatever price you want as long as you give it away for free in one form or another. You are free to do whatever you want with this code, copy it, distribute it, even sell it, as long as you give away whatever work you put into it. How much more free can it get?
Now Debian is a GOOD company. They are as they state GNU/Linux, which means they are GPL/Linux, right? KDE's libraries are not GPLed, they are for non-commercial use only, which means we can't sell them legally, as I understand it... now IANAL, and I haven't read the license behind QT, but using common sense that's what non-commercial means to me. Debian decides not to include KDE in their release because it is not GPLed and you bitch about this? Chill out. Its not your distribution.
Look at what RedHat does. They have all this money from going IPO, and I reallize they gave a lot of that away, but I often get:
ftp ftp.redhat.com
Connected to ftp.redhat.com.
220 FTP server ready.
Name (ftp.redhat.com:calebm): anonymous
331 Guest login ok, send your complete e-mail address as password.
Password:
530-Anonymous user limit reached, see http://www.redhat.com/mirrors.html
530 Login incorrect.
Login failed.
ftp>
Why does this multimillion dollar linux startup have a limit on ftp connections? They should have a farm of ftp servers to give away their code. In fact if I was running that company I would have a free form on the webpage for anyone to order and have a CD shipped to them without asking for any cost, or possibly even a minimal $5 fee for S&H with an option to pay more.
That's what Linux and the GPL are about. It has never been about money, but about freedom and the value we all contribute to the people. Linux is the people's OS, no one can ever take it away from the people. I just wish the authors of QT could see the beauty of the GPL and understand that that is the only reason KDE is under such heavy fire from GNOME. If they relicensed it under the GPL it would be included with the next release of Debian, I guarantee!
"They say that the government is sticking it's nose where it doesn't belong..."
If our government is sticking its nose where it doesn't belong what do you think is going to happen when they win and take "hundreds of millions of dollars" from the record labels? That money was originally intended, by the public, to go to the artist, NOT the stores selling the CDs. If these starving artists have to deal with a pay cut, and I'm sure our greedy labels wound love to push some of this cost onto them, shouldn't this money go the people who worked to create the content on the CDs originally instead of greedy stores or labels?
If only I owned a linux record company. I'd give everything away. -Caleb
If you understand that laws are nothing more than written rules that we choose to obey. And the way to enforce a law in a capitolist society is by taking away your money through fines or imprisonment (All fear tactics). Then you have to think a bit about modern laws that have been passed into action. If they are laws that EVERYONE breaks. Or that a majority of our democratic society breaks. Shouldn't that be a prime example of the public voting down a law, simply by ignoring its existence? How can a majority of the population be criminals? That seems sort of hypocritical to me.
I would start by getting me a lawyer. If I was in the same situation Adam Penenburg is in, trying not to be a narc but at the same time upholding his first amendment rights to freedom of speech and press, I would make all commentary between the goverment and myself public by posting it on the net. This would give me a better chance at staying out of jail. Its one of those 'could happen to anyone' situations.
I would try to politely explain to the goverment that I am not a narc and that I have done nothing illegal. If they wish to make trouble for me they will have to face the public problems associated with that.
What do you think Slashdot should do if faced with that kind of choice?
First delete all logs, using one of those permanent RMs that overwrite the bits on the drive several times. Then post everything the government threatens on this website. With enough people backing you up I doubt the government could force you to give up logs or information you don't really have.
Unfortunately the government knows Adam has information about Slut Puppy and Master Pimp. But I can't understand why our almighty government likes locking teenagers up. This seems like more of a problem, to me, than trying to fix the system, implement IPV6, etc. There are ways to prevent cracking. Unfortunately for Joe Citizen, and apparently NY Times, most of those involved learning and being creative. None of which are including with your standards Windoze installation.
While working as a systems and network admin for the last 5 years I have come to understand a few things about computers and what happens when people use them. They break. Sometimes they break because of malicious cracking. But the best thing to do in these situations is to always fix the problem and prevent it from happening again. Placing blame never fixxes any problems. It merely shows us who caused them. Great. There are many more just like him and they all think its kewl. So just get your shit fixxed and as unbreakable as possible. And before ya know it you'll be a good sys admin too.:)
OR Go the route of our super inefficient government and blame everyone, then spend the time and resources tracking them down, then throw them all in prison so they can buttfuck eachother for all of eternity. Before you know it nothing will work, because all the smart people are locked up. I have yet to see Joe Politician run Linux.
I live in the United States. I know a couple things about computers such as how to log in, write code, do network administration stuff. And I am fairly young. 22. I'm scared that my government may break into my home, take my computers away and lock me up without any reason some night while I'm sleeping soundly in my bed.
Recently there have been several cases where kids, under 18, where taken from their homes and their computers confiscated because of relatively contravertial issues. All because the ignorant masses don't understand computers. They immediately think that some kid who posts something _they_ don't like on the net is probably a hacker / cracker and should be treated as such.
You know what this makes me want to do? I am not a criminal yet, unless you count the occational illegal porn or mp3 download as truely criminal activity, however, when I see our government throwing out our rights and invading the privacy of our homes I want to round all my sys admin friends up and write some nasty M$ outlook virusses or even worse, exploit some of those bad buffer overruns and trash a few government systems. I, unlike most 16 year olds, work on computers professionally. I know how to program in multiple languages from assembly to perl, I know how internetworks work as well as how to implement them and design them. I know how your operating systems work, from win 3.x, 9x, NT x, BSD, Linux, SunOS, Solaris, HP-UX, Irix, OSF / True-64, AIX, MacOS, BeOS, etc. I can assure you the government doesn't want my friends and I to turn against them. I live in the silicon valley. Do you know how many technically proficient people there are living here? Enough to launch a large scale internet war for starters! It takes 1 kid to bring down sites like yahoo, amazon, etc. with a simple DoS attack. What happens when 50 sys admins decide to take down all of the governments' sites they can find? It isn't very hard, currently I work to prevent this stuff, but that all could change very soon.
The whole point of the First Amendment is to protect offensive speech, even when it's obnoxious.
Now I have to ask you, do I need to buy a gun to protect my first amendment rights and start shooting police whenever they break into my home in a manner in which I consider illegal? A gun happens to be the ultimate form of justice, and luckily I can still buy one.
If the first amendment can't protect my freedom of speech, I will. What would happen if the police broke into someone's home and someone got shot, either by the police or otherwise, all over some stupid HTML page written and posted on the net? Is it worth dying over? My freedom is! I will fight to the death and kill for what I believe is my freedom. I don't need a constitution to tell me what my rights are. And clearly, I have the right to say whatever I want as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else. You don't have to browse my web page. And you can ignore what you read. If you can't, please seek help immediately!
And as for all of you/.ers, if you buy a gun and protect your rights, they will be much less likely to try to take them away from you. After a couple cops die over stupid internet related crimes turned bad, I assure you people will wake up and wonder what went wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't you wish you could talk to those managing transmeta directly? I'd love to point at articles like this and say, "I told you so." They are a good year ahead of any competition, but unfortunately their products are still too pricey and too slow. Since Transmeta refuses to open source their code morphing capability I'll put my money and support behind IBM or whomever writes software to give me the functionality Transmeta doesn't even want to give its customers.
I want a system that can change its instruction set on the fly, or at least in prom or bios. I want a system I can run solaris, OSX, Linux, IRIX and wintendoze on natively at near hardware speeds. It would also be nice if this could be a portable system, but that's not nearly as much a requirement. Transmeta refuses to write additional code morphing software for the ultrasparc, MIPS, PPC, etc. instruction sets. So as far as I'm concerned they can be consumed by AOL or the next big monopoly. I won't shed a tear.
That's why we need a space factory... Is gravity a requirement for processing metal?
I think the patent system has served its purpose. It did promote competition when it was first implemented, however, in todays world there is already fierce competition, which does not need any encouragement. The competition today mostly battle on court grounds with their casualties being money and lots of it. Small companies can not compete. So in order to continue promoting competition we should create a new bill that will phase out the patent system.
We need to significantly reduce the length of time patents will be valid. Perhaps this needs to be split between the various markets: technology / electronics, arts and music, industrial tech, etc. But patents should last no more than 2 or 3 generations of products, after that point they severely hinder competition if no alternative solutions can be found, such as in graphics technology, it can set competition back so far they could never catch up.
In an area of technological growth that moves as fast as graphics technology, where performance doubles every 6 months, patents should last no more than 2 years. As the rate at which technology is developed increases the length of patents should decrease, inversely proportional, until a time comes (10 years?) that we can just phase out the patent system altogether and cooperate to promote technology and information instead of money.
Do any of you honestly think that day will ever come? Or has capitalism poisonned the water forever?
I'm a Sr. Network Administrator and I have two words for all those sys admins out there who would rather not pay $50+ for a book: man man
I rarely need additional info to what the system's man pages contain (its usually acurate and up-to-date). And on Linux, which RedHat does a piss poor job of implementing, you can also browse /usr/doc and /usr/src/linux/Documentation to learn how Linux really works.
But that happens all the time. Many Americans get killed by the use of information by our media system. Desert Storm ring a bell? Not because of leaked papers or anything, but our mass marketted media programming has the ability to rally the ignorant masses into military action anytime they want. Why doesn't our congress pass a bill that says any news that ends up costing american lives gets everyone in that news conglomerate the death penalty? But I guess that would be sorta hypocritical, wouldn't it?
I would use a crusoe laptop/webpad for serial consoles on servers, browsing the net with some stripped down mozilla, or otherwise just using a terminal for daily tasks. I don't need a huge PIII system, cuz I won't use the thing for games, photo editting, or ray tracing. That's what my desktop is for. But I do want either a huge 15"+ XGA TFT display or a nice sized webpad with no fan that runs cool enough to hold comfortably.
I would also hope that transmeta is not going to be another stuck up proprietary IP company like Intel, MS, Sun, Apple and the like. If they want to be a proprietary IP company, that's fine. Just don't use Linus as some marketting ploy. That's like a slap in the face to anyone who supports the ideology of the GPL. I know I won't be buying a Crusoe until Transmeta releases some information about their code morphing technology.
But I must admit they created a system that will live up to its intentions. To be an efficient, fairly fast and usable webpad/linux PC. As long as they come with wireless net connections or at the very least a PCMCIA port, and cost me no more than $1000, they will help change the way I use computers to store my information. Palm Pilots just don't cut it with their 8MB of ram. Crusoe is just a step up, not the portable server you were expecting. And NO, they don't perform like a P3 500 or 700, they're different. Wish they'd post REAL benchmark numbers on their site and stop causing all this bad PR by trying to live up to the high end systems.
You want performance, go with a Pentium. You want something usable for several hours at home while you are watching the TV, that uses your home net to access all your personal information and the web, that is fast enough to get your work done, potentially upgradable to support other OSs, light weight and cool running, get a Crusoe... but only after Transmeta releases their IP on code morphing. We can at least hold out for that.
G-Force, by Andy O'Meara, kicks ass over that POS proprietary app Ryan Geiss wrote anyday!
check out G-Force
Plugin for winamp and standalone app. Its basicly the technology behind geiss with the ability to program the visuals (Or well, you write mathematical functions, but it works really well!) And more or less its open source. Maybe one day with enough of our support he'll GPL it.
I've seen people learn to code during the part of the day they are usually high and actually become a better programmer while stoned than sober. They still make the same dumb mistakes all programmers make that causes small bugs, but they have more creative input and can usually design a program better on an architectural level while high. I'm sure if they gave up pot altogether, after a few weeks of detox they would go back to coding better sober, but it makes you think.
I like this comment, "...drug treatment experts say tech workers are more susceptible than those in, say, Hollywood or Wall Street because of their work."
I have been in the valley for 5 years now, doing drugs, coding, networking and being a general sys admin. I smoke pot. Most of my friend smoke pot or have tried various forms hash, acid, ecstacy, shrooms and GHB, which is NOT a liquid form of cocaine as the article states, but more like a mostly harmless chemical that has no short or long term affects other than a potential date rape. A few have tried crank or cocaine, but none that I know of have ever tried other forms of meth or heroin.
Doing drugs occationally, as most programmers or techies to, is one thing. But printing an article saying 40%+ are intense crack addicts is extremely rude and unjustified, LA TIMES.
Techies do drugs, its a fact of life. Most can get by with caffeine, and a few are drug free. But all in all most are occational and responsible drug users. We do drugs at raves, in the youth/stoner/skater crowds we hang around, etc. But we very rarely need to do any drugs to make it through our day at work. If we work late it is because we believe that our companies IPO will make those few stock options we are in the process of vesting worth a few pennies.
In case LA TIMES can't get a clue, our job isn't a typical work and slave long hours sort of job. It requires a deep knowledge of computer systems, networks, and code and the ability to think creatively to solve problems, which most of the country is incapable of solving, including probably 50% of those with MBAs. Programming is something that you just can't do on most of the drugs mentioned in this article.
"The body count is just starting." This is shocking how our media system is trying to spread panic to the ignorant masses that don't know how difficult it is to write code or do most high paying tech jobs. The jobs that would afford you the cocaine with the current rent prices in the bay area are only tech, marketting or management positions. Which do you think plays around with the harder drugs? You'd need to make at least $70k to afford the amount of drugs required to sustain happiness if you rely on drugs for such things. I used to smoke over a half ounce a month. That's from $250 to $300 a month for my pot addiction, which is cheap compared with cocaine.
I just don't get this. "There's always been an anarchist technophile drug-use thing that seems to go together," Maybe excessive drug usage helps create the anarchist technophile present within each of us? But who am I? Just another clueless techie who runs your internet... what do I know 'bout these things?
What's next? Are they gonna start bitching 'bout my zoophile sexual nature and how wrong it is, too? I can't wait for the theories of how long hard working days make us all insane anarchistic sexual freaks.
Okay, sorry about that. That was a bit long and had a very angry tone to it. When I think of geeks I think of my friends who all just happen to be sys admins or programmers or stoners. Maybe there is an intermediate grey area of geek wannabes? But I think what makes a geek is a passion and love for computers and electronics of all sorts. Some geeks don't want to go all out, setting up the geek net to the fullest where connectivity is maximal.
But I think what makes a geek house is all the hard work geeks do that in the end fully automates and simplifies their lives. This includes computer networks and sharing high bandwidth lines (Often cable for web/cache proxies and DSL for gaming), audio and video networks for sharing movies and music resources throughout the home environment, and external connectivity to all of your data from any point on earth is important. In the future this will be common not only among geeks, but also business management since they can afford it.
But geeks in the end will understand it since they built it from the ground up with their own two hands. If you buy a network kit and don't learn that a network is built up on top of a network medium (cat 5 or EM waves), and that you need a network interface card or NIC in each PC that understands which network it is on, concepts of DNS, default route / gateway, subnet mask, etc. (TCP/IP), then you have failed to become a geek and should not consider your home a geek home, unless you like being flamed for ignorance. I think geeks typically understand networks. No one knows EVERYTHING, but if you don't understand the basics of a network of computers then you don't know ANYTHING. And thus you are not a geek. In this example does this mean that a geek is set on the path to enlightenment or just to becoming an engineer? Not knowing all, but knowing more than average?
Anyway, I failed to mention how much superior BSD is to linux in my last post. Even though I barely know anything about BSD I promise I will learn! It is more stable and has a better TCP/IP stack from what I hear, not just from other like minded geeks, but also in the professional market of production servers.
And as always there are a million ways to implement a network, but main thing we geeks need to know is how to stay ahead of the l33t crowd.
But what do y'all think? Do these things really make up a geek home? Or is it just living with geeks and the side affect of all the actions of geekiness are the collective consquences that make up the geek home?
Yes this is getting closer. But you forgot to mention the MP3 and MPEG-4 audio and video file servers for all. DHCP and DNS could easily be run off the same server, but true geek houses use samba as their windoze server and refuse to let the MS virus touch their loyal linux server. Intense filesystem cleaning results if infection spreads through network. And NT is worthless for games. What else do geeks use MS products for anyway?
A firewall is good, but you shouldn't plague it with NAT... and WTF is PAT? You should have one lonely old linux box be your NAT server for all systems on various subnets. Psycho subnet masks might also be common on geek nets. Anyway, you should setup a DMZ for your house webserver, required for webcam portal. Most geeks prefer to let their router do this. Sometimes a separate box from your firewall. Cisco is always preferrable, but expensive! You will want to setup external DNS, mail and ftp services and separate these from your internal services for security purposes. And lock down all the boxxes on your DMZ TIGHTLY! It is extremely embarrassing if your geek friends find out you have been rooted by some l33t script kiddy. True geeks are not script kiddys, we're hackers. We write code.
Often internally on your fine, but slightly dated, 100 Mbps switched net you will run services similar to LDAP or NIS. LDAP is something I'm unfamiliar with, and NIS is insecure. So I choose to write perl scripts to push all the data out that needs propogating, such as passwd entries and automount maps to maintain a consitent distributed filesystem across all unix boxxes for ease of use, better
Network is only half the setup. You also have your audio / visual connections. This means you need amps in every room for music and run RCA or even RCA - cat 5 - RCA if you know how to splice wires for low level audio. It is always best to use a patch panel with several ports in every room for general purpose, but in apartments this is often not an option. Wiring up your audio like this can help maintain total absolute laziness. You no longer need to go into your roommate's bedroom to listen to him spin, you just use your remote to change to the spinning channel on your reciever... A good 24+ track mixxer with multi pre and post DSP / Computer SP outputs is good to separate the audio exactly how you want it. Also you can run video in the same manner, but video mixxers are a hell of a lot more expensive. Coax also works to pipe Computer/VHS/cable video to every smaller non-central tv terminal using VCRs or possible your stereo reciever as the mixxer. True mixxing can not be done in this fassion, but it will allow you to choose from multiple video signals easily. Good to note that computers are also analog video boxxes today, even though most video cards do not have good TV out. It is highly recommended you look into purchasing a DVD drive and a Matrox G-400 Marvel for a good entertainment PC. I don't support DVDs, I rent them. And for $20 more than a standard CD drive, why not?
This is good for parties where all your geek friends do all your drugs and trip balls all night watching g-force or maybe geiss if you like to promote proprietary software. Unfortunately constantly morphing/changing deltafields are a bit too CPU intensive for today's athlons. Maybe next year. Its also nice to be able to watch your roommate desimate his opposition online while baked out of his mind. Amazing how someone so stoned he can't talk can still kill people with almost perfect efficiency.
Music equipment (digital and acoustic) is required for loud geeks who like to use their computer for things other than games and masturbation. A good set of acoustic drums is preferrable for the burning man geek/monkeys. And several electric guitars, bass, synths, etc. Since they don't take up a lot of room. Perhaps even an electric drum set, but its difficult to fit this into a 2 bedroom apartment. Unless you don't need a dining room table...
And the hooka. No geek house is complete without one. Although almost any peace pipe will do. How do you think we come up with all these crazy ideas anyway?
I'd just like to say I'm sorry for ever thinking google might have been corrupted by Yahoo or any other corporate entity. Google, you're my favorite search engine! You kick ass! And I will never question your loyalty again... at least 'til the next slashdot article tells me otherwise.
I'm curious what you or anyone else thinks about this sort of thing. How should such a site be organized, should it be a real effort by the people to provide something like this where I can find some other similarly minded people and create something beautiful? Or should I fund it myself to begin with and see where it goes from there? Have any ideas? I have tonnes and the knowledge to begin implementing them, just very little time and currently no bandwidth of any kind to host.
I noticed they are trying to make deals with the RIAA. It struck me as kinda sad. Can you explain more about the changes in their terms for new artists? I suspect both the RIAA and MPAA / hollywood are a dying breed of IP organizations today. They will be replaced with indipendant film of quality, not quantity, and real musical art instead of hype and dance. Its only a matter of time. Money matters not.
And when all information is finally free so will the people be.
Oh, but you're concerned that people won't work if they already have everything they want, right? True to some extent, but if we automate all those shit jobs people don't want to do and if there are enough of us working (currently less than 50% in the US) then we'll still get everything we want done. For example I am in the computer field. But if I didn't have to worry about paying my bills, if I could live in my apartment for free and pick up food at the store for free I'd still drive to work everyday. I'd probably be happier about it and do a better job, and I'd make sure I was working for a cause and a company I agreed with instead of the one that pays me the most. I'm also willing to get out there and help lay the foundation of houses and roads and do those shit jobs, including taking out the trash, if that's required. But the things is I'd work for free. Would you?
Thank you WTO, WIPO, all those congress persons that voted for the DMCA, MPAA, RIAA, and anyone who upholds copyright and strict licensing agreements. I will just have to make sure none of my money or votes ends up in your dirty evil little hands.
Without the work and support of the people a country and a company have no intellectual property to protect. -Caleb
Shit, I'd do it for $10,000 and an O of some fine green. ;)
Perl solves EVERYTHING!!!
If only those KDE folks would give in... then we'd have a really good desktop to support instead of the GNOME shit... though I hear its gotten a lot more stable. Last time I tried installing on solaris it crashed like 5 times from helixcode's site.
Sorry for rambling sommore...
I am slowly beginning to understand the law, but it takes time. Lawyers are not magicians, they learned the rules through years of study, like all of us. We could all be lawyers if we really wanted to, but that's a lot of boring text I don't intend to read. Until then I will do what I can to learn 'bout copyright, copyleft, and freedom and I urge you to do the same, Mr. Otter.
Don't put words in his mouth, he's not talking about freedom, asshole, he's talking about freedom!
Now Debian is a GOOD company. They are as they state GNU/Linux, which means they are GPL/Linux, right? KDE's libraries are not GPLed, they are for non-commercial use only, which means we can't sell them legally, as I understand it... now IANAL, and I haven't read the license behind QT, but using common sense that's what non-commercial means to me. Debian decides not to include KDE in their release because it is not GPLed and you bitch about this? Chill out. Its not your distribution.
Look at what RedHat does. They have all this money from going IPO, and I reallize they gave a lot of that away, but I often get:
ftp ftp.redhat.com
Connected to ftp.redhat.com.
220 FTP server ready.
Name (ftp.redhat.com:calebm): anonymous
331 Guest login ok, send your complete e-mail address as password.
Password:
530-Anonymous user limit reached, see http://www.redhat.com/mirrors.html
530 Login incorrect.
Login failed.
ftp>
Why does this multimillion dollar linux startup have a limit on ftp connections? They should have a farm of ftp servers to give away their code. In fact if I was running that company I would have a free form on the webpage for anyone to order and have a CD shipped to them without asking for any cost, or possibly even a minimal $5 fee for S&H with an option to pay more.
That's what Linux and the GPL are about. It has never been about money, but about freedom and the value we all contribute to the people. Linux is the people's OS, no one can ever take it away from the people. I just wish the authors of QT could see the beauty of the GPL and understand that that is the only reason KDE is under such heavy fire from GNOME. If they relicensed it under the GPL it would be included with the next release of Debian, I guarantee!
If our government is sticking its nose where it doesn't belong what do you think is going to happen when they win and take "hundreds of millions of dollars" from the record labels? That money was originally intended, by the public, to go to the artist, NOT the stores selling the CDs. If these starving artists have to deal with a pay cut, and I'm sure our greedy labels wound love to push some of this cost onto them, shouldn't this money go the people who worked to create the content on the CDs originally instead of greedy stores or labels?
If only I owned a linux record company. I'd give everything away. -Caleb
How can a majority of the population be criminals? That seems sort of hypocritical to me.
Just a thought,
Caleb
I would start by getting me a lawyer. If I was in the same situation Adam Penenburg is in, trying not to be a narc but at the same time upholding his first amendment rights to freedom of speech and press, I would make all commentary between the goverment and myself public by posting it on the net. This would give me a better chance at staying out of jail. Its one of those 'could happen to anyone' situations.
I would try to politely explain to the goverment that I am not a narc and that I have done nothing illegal. If they wish to make trouble for me they will have to face the public problems associated with that.
What do you think Slashdot should do if faced with that kind of choice?
First delete all logs, using one of those permanent RMs that overwrite the bits on the drive several times. Then post everything the government threatens on this website. With enough people backing you up I doubt the government could force you to give up logs or information you don't really have.
Unfortunately the government knows Adam has information about Slut Puppy and Master Pimp. But I can't understand why our almighty government likes locking teenagers up. This seems like more of a problem, to me, than trying to fix the system, implement IPV6, etc. There are ways to prevent cracking. Unfortunately for Joe Citizen, and apparently NY Times, most of those involved learning and being creative. None of which are including with your standards Windoze installation.
While working as a systems and network admin for the last 5 years I have come to understand a few things about computers and what happens when people use them. They break. Sometimes they break because of malicious cracking. But the best thing to do in these situations is to always fix the problem and prevent it from happening again. Placing blame never fixxes any problems. It merely shows us who caused them. Great. There are many more just like him and they all think its kewl. So just get your shit fixxed and as unbreakable as possible. And before ya know it you'll be a good sys admin too.
OR Go the route of our super inefficient government and blame everyone, then spend the time and resources tracking them down, then throw them all in prison so they can buttfuck eachother for all of eternity. Before you know it nothing will work, because all the smart people are locked up. I have yet to see Joe Politician run Linux.
Recently there have been several cases where kids, under 18, where taken from their homes and their computers confiscated because of relatively contravertial issues. All because the ignorant masses don't understand computers. They immediately think that some kid who posts something _they_ don't like on the net is probably a hacker / cracker and should be treated as such.
You know what this makes me want to do? I am not a criminal yet, unless you count the occational illegal porn or mp3 download as truely criminal activity, however, when I see our government throwing out our rights and invading the privacy of our homes I want to round all my sys admin friends up and write some nasty M$ outlook virusses or even worse, exploit some of those bad buffer overruns and trash a few government systems. I, unlike most 16 year olds, work on computers professionally. I know how to program in multiple languages from assembly to perl, I know how internetworks work as well as how to implement them and design them. I know how your operating systems work, from win 3.x, 9x, NT x, BSD, Linux, SunOS, Solaris, HP-UX, Irix, OSF / True-64, AIX, MacOS, BeOS, etc. I can assure you the government doesn't want my friends and I to turn against them. I live in the silicon valley. Do you know how many technically proficient people there are living here? Enough to launch a large scale internet war for starters! It takes 1 kid to bring down sites like yahoo, amazon, etc. with a simple DoS attack. What happens when 50 sys admins decide to take down all of the governments' sites they can find? It isn't very hard, currently I work to prevent this stuff, but that all could change very soon.
The whole point of the First Amendment is to protect offensive speech, even when it's obnoxious.
Now I have to ask you, do I need to buy a gun to protect my first amendment rights and start shooting police whenever they break into my home in a manner in which I consider illegal? A gun happens to be the ultimate form of justice, and luckily I can still buy one.
If the first amendment can't protect my freedom of speech, I will. What would happen if the police broke into someone's home and someone got shot, either by the police or otherwise, all over some stupid HTML page written and posted on the net? Is it worth dying over? My freedom is! I will fight to the death and kill for what I believe is my freedom. I don't need a constitution to tell me what my rights are. And clearly, I have the right to say whatever I want as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else. You don't have to browse my web page. And you can ignore what you read. If you can't, please seek help immediately!
And as for all of you