You should check out Norhtec's stuff. I haven't tried them (yet), but for what you're talking about you might be interested in their S3 based MicroServer, less features but less juice and smaller than Mini-ITX systems (which they also have).
While false advertising is illegal in the US, as far as I know the Ad Council has nothing to do with stopping it. They are an agency who coordinates resources and pro bono time donated by professional ad agencies to produce Public Service Announcements and other advertisements to "stimulate positive social change". They did the Rosie The Riveter ads in the 1940s, the "Crying Indian" ads in the 1970s, the Crash Test Dummy ads, stuff like that.
AFAIK there is no agency in the US looking for false advertising claims. Most false advertising issues here are people who get taken by a fradulent ad suing the company who made the ad.
Better than many. If Gluon 2.1 is truly critical for corporate survival, would you prefer she do what way too many companies do, which is keep that a secret until it's too late and they can't meet payroll?
She's identified a critical step to get the company out of fucked status, and is trying to engage the employees to be more involved in making sure the step happens. Granted, she's doing a mediocre job of it. A carrot would be nice to go along with the long hours, stressful deadlines, and hosed vacation plans.
I don't know the entire story behind Gluon Networks, and there may be truly fucked up shit going on behind the scenes, I just don't see this memo as one of them.
I'm curious, was she fired because she was running things badly, or because the board didn't like her making the fragility of the company that public? My guess was, whether she was good or horrid at running things, she was fired because the board didn't like their dirty laundry put in memo form and leaked to fuckedcompany.com for the shareholders to see.
First, the free stuff (often gone into in other posts). Having a liberal dress code and flex time policy costs a company nothing and can greatly help morale. Don't go too far, though, there are good reasons for having people who meet clients/customers to dress up, and you can't have regular progress meetings if flex time has destroyed all overlap in people's schedules; but back office staff should be able to where whatever they find comfortable, and those who must crawl under desks to plug in wiring should not be forced to wear a tie and slacks.
Next, talk to the employees. If the company is having difficulty, make sure they know exactly what the problems are, so the rumor mill is quieted down. Equally important, make sure they know the plan to get the company back on track. Set goals and tell employees how they can help. Reward the help too, if an employee does something major to help, give them an on-the-spot bonus, or a contract protecting them from layoffs.
Next, if more layoffs are needed, do it humanely and fairly. First, ask for volunteers, and offer incentives for volunteering (better severance package), why screw A's life over if B wanted to leave anyway? Second, if at all possible, offer a decent severance package, some people don't have a financial safety net, and if they see people cut off with just their last paycheck, they will panic. If layoffs have several weeks severance, and some access to company equipment for job hunting, those who remain will be less demoralized anticipating the next round of layoffs.
Finally, management must make visible sacrifices too. If staff is looking at a 10% paycut plus triple the workload due to layoffs, and they see management with unchanged salary and perqs (or worse, more) and no layoffs, staff will be upset. If staff takes a 10% paycut, management should take 20% (and tell staff they're doing so). If there are layoffs, make sure management is not immune. If staff loses health insurance, so should management. It makes a huge difference for morale to know that everyone is in the same boat.
I am however puzzled over one simple fact; can it really be legal in the USofA (where I presume this is happening) to sell such a device? Over here (Norway for those who don't get the clue from my nick) it would be quite illegal to sell something which is intended to allow the (l)user to break the law.
In the USA it is and it isn't. My understanding is, in most states, it is illegal to sell something for the purpose of committing a crime. As a corrolary to this, it is illegal to use criminal activities as selling point when making a sale. This makes the spam and many of the auctions illegal. It doesn't make selling the device illegal, you just have to limit yourself to the legal uses (filtering non-cabletv signals over coax).
Another example is the crowbar. If you work at a hardware store, and someone wants to buy one, you can assume they want to use it for legal purposes and legally sell it to them. If, however, they come to the counter talking about using it in a burglary or assault, you can not legally sell it. Likewise, you can't put a sign up advertising the "Crowmaster 2000, busts neighbors locks 30% faster" and continue to sell the product legally.
Some state laws may vary. I am not a lawyer, the above should not be considered legal advice.
Hmm, a lame troll, but one with lots of hooks to inform people with. You discount Academic Computer Science, yet it is responsible, in whole or in part, for (in no particular order):
Another funny bit in your troll was "If [Tanenbaum's] cruft is still being looked at in 20 years from now, then you have something." Considering the first edition of Computer Networks was written in 1980, and it's still being looked at 23 years later, considering it was probably read by most people who made advances in computer networking over the past 20 years, I think you've made my point for me here.
Sure there's a lot more to computer science than academic computing, but don't discount it as a huge force in the field.
They're the guys who get the porn acteresses 'ready' for their next scene. Yeah, and they get paid too.
Just watch out for diseases, mate.
Um, I hate to break this to you, but I've never heard of fluffers being used for porn actresses. The few times I've heard of fluffers being used, they were for the porn actors.
We don't use "antique" measurements in the US, we use the measurements based on the measure handed to us by God. What are you talking about?!? I live in the US, and, other than a few industries (eg. soda and drugs) we use an antique system called "Imperial" because we inherited it from the British Empire before they got wise and changed to metric.
The rest of the world is using a system of measurements handed to them by the French. Yes, the French designed and popularised the metric system. They did this because all previous systems had gross problems with them.
Which would you prefer? Metric, please.
For those outside of the know, the inch is related to the cubit which you can find throughout the Bible. Huh? The cubit in the Bible is the distance from a person's elbow to the tip of their middle finger. This distance obviously changes from person to person, and is far from being a standard. There is no mention of inches in the bible, and historically, an inch was the width of the thumb. I fail to see the basis for the inch being "the measure handed to us by God", even if I accepted your Bible as being from God.
The measurements we use in the US are primarily those handed to us by the English Parlement in the 1820's, because that standard was closer to what we had been using up until that point than the metric system.
Their is no scientific reason for prefering the meter to the cubit. Well, yes there is. The metric standard is defined much more precisely, so it can be used more accurately for very large and very small scale measurements. The math is easier, and using the same measuring system as everyone else facilitates communication, which is a good thing.
Andy Tanenbaum was *not* "one of the leading authorities". He was a professor of computer science teaching operating system theory, using Minix as a teaching tool.
Let's see, he is the the author of the Minix Operating System, and coauthor of the Amoeba and Paramecium operating systems. He is the author of two of the cornerstone books used in computer science classes, Computer Networks, and Operating Systems: Design and Implementation, as well as several other books commonly assigned in computer science courses around the world.
Whether or not you agree with the man, you have to admit he is considered one of the leading authorities, particularly in academic computer science.
We all read the same article. SuSE said it supports the ideals and goals of UnitedLinux, but left out any indication of support of the actions or current composition. They also said they were reevaluating their relationship to the SCO group and that:
SuSE's VP of Corporate Communications. Eckert confirmed that the "relationship with the SCO Group" was in fact the UnitedLinux consortium aarrangment[sic].
So they are reevaluating their membership in the UnitedLinux consortium, as that membership is their primary (and perhaps only) relationship with SCO Group. I'm sure if SCO were to leave the UnitedLinux consortium, SuSE would be happy to stay.
If your only issue with Debian is the release cycle, use Debian and upgrade to unstable. Unstable Debian is still, in my experience, more stable than RedHat's releases, and has a much better upgrade cycle, as well as better packaged materials.
Insightful, except that MS always has freely available viewers for Word, Excel, and Powerpoint.
Interesting, so where can I get these freely available viewers for my Solaris machine, or my Linux box, or the Amiga my neighbors have been nursing along for years so they don't need to buy a new computer, or the Windows 3.11 box another neighbor of mine has been nursing along to avoid upgrading the machine he went thousands of dollars in debt for years ago.
Also, what license am I forced to agree to in order to use this "freely available" viewer? What guarantees are there that Microsoft won't add odious terms to that license in the future. What guarantees are there that Microsoft will continue to offer them for free?
Again, Open Standards are the only way to ensure delivery of digital information without putting an undue financial or legal burden on the population.
I'm glad they didn't require the use of Open Source, not because I don't think the freedoms that such a requirement would enforce are important, but because requiring them would be sufficient to torpedo the bill, and a partial measure like this is a good start.
One thing I do wish they would require, and I believe is feasible to require at this point, is Open Standards in data storage and transmission. The bill defines them, but doesn't insist on them. It is a Free Government's responsibility, as representatives of the people, to make sure that their workings are accessible to all the people without forcing the people to spend hundreds of dollars on Word or Excel just to look at a document.
If the standard for professional is "never see a dupe or typo", then you have to rule out CNN, New York Times, Washington Post, BBC, et al. All professional news sources have had typos, duplicate news entries (eg. watch CNN during a crisis), outright factual errors. News is a messy business.
Personally, I just subscribed. Getting rid of ads was nice, but didn't inspire me to get my plastic out, but this, I'm a news junkie. Thanks!:-)
I'll bet that a lot of cats and dogs go missing in those neigbourhoods, or don't they?
Considering the markets I'm talking about are often in the process of butchering an entire side of beef or pork in front of me, I seriously doubt that dogs and cats are involved.
[a bunch of interesting economic and social points that I have insufficient background to respond to compitently]
For various reasons, both the community of Harlem and the town of Mount Vernon (both New York) have turned down proposals by big-box retailers to open in their neighborhoods, forgoing both the tax benefits and the lower prices that would result. I can't speak for why they did this, but it is one answer to the bizarre mystery of why groceries are more expensive in poor neighborhoods than anywhere else in New York City.
I was born and raised in NYC, and still visit there regularly. I don't find the groceries more expensive in New York's poor neighborhoods than wealthy ones. I do find a few things:
1) Some poorer neighborhoods don't have a big grocery, they just have a greengrocer or bodega, both of which are more expensive than a full supermarket. This is almost certainly because it's harder to get loans for a business in a poor neighborhood.
2) The big name brands are more expensive in supermarkets in poor neighborhoods than wealthy ones
3) The supermarkets in poorer neighborhoods make up for it with a wide variety of "little name" brands: (eg. Badia, D&G), some of this stuff is pretty bad, some of it is good stuff I prefer to the pricier "big names"
4) Some (but not all) of the poorer supermarkets also make up for it with excellent meat and/or produce prices. Apparently there are some good sources out there that are not available to all venues.
So, yes, if you compare the price of a carton of Minute Maid at Food Emporium to the same carton at C-Town, Food Emporium might come out ahead, but I can feed a family well for cheaper at C-Town.
To get back to turning down the big box retailer, I can't speak for Mt Vernon, but some attitudes that I have often heard expressed in Harlem go along the lines of:
A) Big chains homogonize their stock, an independant business is more likely to match the product desires of the community (more little name brands, rather than the big name brands)
B) Big chains take money out of the community. Harlem doesn't see the tax benefits of a Wal-Mart, that goes to the City; the lower prices aren't on what they want. They do, however, see that the guy who owns a store on 125th street, and lives on 133rd street, employs people in the neighborhood and spends most of his profits in the neighborhood, enriches the neighborhood in a real financial sense.
Don't underestimate the power of community in the decision making process, or overestimate the benefit of the homogonized "big-box" retailers.
From someone who has used some of the higher end Dell kit, they are not quite up to Sun levels, but pretty close.
Dell has hot swappable drives, power supplies and PCI slots. They do not yet have hot swappable CPU's and motherboards like some of the Sun boxes have. If you need 64 bit, they do have Itanium machines for sale, but they're awfully expensive. Even though Dell's pretty solidly an Intel shop, I would expect the 64 bit situation to improve when AMD release Hammer (sorry, Opteron).
Dell has 4 hour onsite support. From experience, the parts often arrive in 2 hours, and the technician in about 3-4 hours. Their technicians are knowledgable and efficient, I have no issues with their onsite premium support (their offsite laptop support gave my sister a migrane, but that was years ago).
Dell boxes don't scale up to 128 processors.
For the past two years I have been dealing with a farm of several Dell PowerEdges running Linux, and one Sun running Solaris. I have had one crash of the Dells running Linux, I have had 2 of the Sun running Solaris. That's several Linux Dells, one crash. That's one Solaris machine, 2 crashes. Same time period. And the Solaris machine is under a far less demanding load. Sun+Solaris has nothing over Dell+Linux when it comes to stability.
You mention reboots, one other point is, at least in my experience, once you get to the high-end SCSI-based Dells, they reboot slower than the Sun boxes. If a system does go down, I hate how the Dell's spend minutes polling the SCSI cards.
Pacman is a trademark of Namco, Ltd (the people who wrote the software) and Bally Midway Manufacturing Corporation (the people who made the original arcade machines).
There should be a way to counter sue for damages and recoup all your losses to defend yourself against the ludicrous case in the first place.
Frivolous law suits are illegal, aren't they?
Technically, there are laws against frivolous lawsuits, but what they are and what you have to do to trigger them vary from country to country. In the US (where IDSA is located) it is very very hard to prove that a lawsuit was illegal. World Of Spectrum is in the Netherlands, which might have more protection, but who knows what jurisdiction any lawsuit will end up in this case.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, the above should not be interpreted as legal advice.
Not true. The spirit of the law is to prevent people from wholesale committing that crime. It's worded sloppily and there are holes but you know what they are trying to do. I don't know of anyone who has been busted for ripping a DVD Don't interpret that as "they won't use the law against people who just rip a DVD", interpret that as "it's much harder to find someone who is just using the tools, so we bust the distrubutors, it's easier.
just selling tools to do it, Or distributing the tools for free. Or linking to a site that distributes tools as a part of an online article if you are a "bad" journalist (eg. 2600), as opposed to a "good" journalist (eg. NYT) doing the same thing.
and really not even that, they were busted for distributing copyrighted materials. No, nether Skylarov nor Elcomsoft nor 2600 were distributing unauthorized copies of copyrighted material when busted.
Seriously, how many xbox modchips were used for putting linux on xbox? How many do you think were used for piracy? I have no idea, I don't think anyone does. The legal climate makes it very difficult to find such figures. I do know that a considerable number were used by the X-Box Linux developers.
How about PS2 modchips, what is the legitmate use for them? To run GameShark2, so you can explore your legally purchased games in ways other than the original game manufacturer intended. Porting one of the BSDs or an actual Free distribution of Linux (as opposed to Sony's distribution) to the machine. Developing games or other software for the PS/2 without going through the expensive licensing process and purchasing the expensive development version of the console.
I don't know a single person that has moded a PS2 or Xbox for some reason other than piracy. Personally, I don't know a single person that has modded a PS2 or XBox, period. The only people I know of who have modded their consoles are the people working on the various Linux port projects.
Both your experience and mine are unbalanced and anecdotal, neither represents accurate figures. Again, accurate figures of such things are impossible to come by.
As far as the details go, I admit I don't have an idea of what I'm talking about. I do, however, remember NASA mentioning all three items at various points when discussing reducing heat during shuttle landings. I am parroting what I remembered. If I misunderstood or misremembered what they were saying, I apologize, but I didn't just pull these things out of my butt. While you may very well have a more detailed understanding of physics and astronautic engineering than I, a flame was completely uncalled for.
Regardless, the point of my post wasn't to tell NASA all the nifty ideas I had for getting the shuttle home safe, it was to rebut the people (including the poster I was replying to) who were saying that, even if the danger were known after entering orbit, there was no way to save the astronauts. Even if the best plan that could be devised would have only give them a 10% better chance of survival, that still would have better than what they got.
If you are, as you claim, a rocket scientist (although your blog seems to indicate that you are a student), why don't you inject some actual information into this discussion, rather than surly flames?
On the other hand, NASA could conclude that the crash was a result of a long-standing defect (structural, mechanical, etc.) that nobody knew about until now.
Actually, there was a long standing defect on Columbia's left wing, it was rougher than it ought to have been, producing more drag and more heat than its right wong or than the other shuttles' wings. It obviously could land with the rough wing (the roughness issue was known since mission STS-28 in 1988), but some of the hottest landings on record had been in Columbia. It's just an extra issue thrown into the mix.:-(
Nope. There wasn't a damn thing that they could have done for that vehicle once it achieved orbit (and more likely, once it went "negative return" [no RTLS abort capability]).
Why not? I mean, it's clear they didn't have the capability to go out and fix tiles (though I think they should have that capability), I'll take NASA at their word that they didn't have the capability to reach the ISS, but those aren't the only options. John Glenn couldn't go out and fix his heat shield. The Apollo 13 crew couldn't reach any space station (Salyut 1 hadn't even been launced yet). The Astronauts, with help from mission control, are trained to troubleshoot problems and adapt to minimize risks when they know them.
Nobody knew anything was the matter until well after they were on orbit. Any structural degradation at that point becomes a simple pass/fail test that's graded by the rigors of a reentry profile that CANNOT be changed.
Why not? If there was a question about the integrity of the left wing tiles, there was plenty of time to design a reentry path that minimized stress on that wing (nighttime landing, hypercooling the wing before landing, braking on the right wing more than the left, and other options I don't know of). There's no guarantee of success, but it could have improved their chances significantly.
In order to do this, though, the extra risks need to be known.
Slashdot Mirror
You should check out Norhtec's stuff. I haven't tried them (yet), but for what you're talking about you might be interested in their S3 based MicroServer, less features but less juice and smaller than Mini-ITX systems (which they also have).
While false advertising is illegal in the US, as far as I know the Ad Council has nothing to do with stopping it. They are an agency who coordinates resources and pro bono time donated by professional ad agencies to produce Public Service Announcements and other advertisements to "stimulate positive social change". They did the Rosie The Riveter ads in the 1940s, the "Crying Indian" ads in the 1970s, the Crash Test Dummy ads, stuff like that.
AFAIK there is no agency in the US looking for false advertising claims. Most false advertising issues here are people who get taken by a fradulent ad suing the company who made the ad.
Better than many. If Gluon 2.1 is truly critical for corporate survival, would you prefer she do what way too many companies do, which is keep that a secret until it's too late and they can't meet payroll?
She's identified a critical step to get the company out of fucked status, and is trying to engage the employees to be more involved in making sure the step happens. Granted, she's doing a mediocre job of it. A carrot would be nice to go along with the long hours, stressful deadlines, and hosed vacation plans.
I don't know the entire story behind Gluon Networks, and there may be truly fucked up shit going on behind the scenes, I just don't see this memo as one of them.
I'm curious, was she fired because she was running things badly, or because the board didn't like her making the fragility of the company that public? My guess was, whether she was good or horrid at running things, she was fired because the board didn't like their dirty laundry put in memo form and leaked to fuckedcompany.com for the shareholders to see.
First, the free stuff (often gone into in other posts). Having a liberal dress code and flex time policy costs a company nothing and can greatly help morale. Don't go too far, though, there are good reasons for having people who meet clients/customers to dress up, and you can't have regular progress meetings if flex time has destroyed all overlap in people's schedules; but back office staff should be able to where whatever they find comfortable, and those who must crawl under desks to plug in wiring should not be forced to wear a tie and slacks.
Next, talk to the employees. If the company is having difficulty, make sure they know exactly what the problems are, so the rumor mill is quieted down. Equally important, make sure they know the plan to get the company back on track. Set goals and tell employees how they can help. Reward the help too, if an employee does something major to help, give them an on-the-spot bonus, or a contract protecting them from layoffs.
Next, if more layoffs are needed, do it humanely and fairly. First, ask for volunteers, and offer incentives for volunteering (better severance package), why screw A's life over if B wanted to leave anyway? Second, if at all possible, offer a decent severance package, some people don't have a financial safety net, and if they see people cut off with just their last paycheck, they will panic. If layoffs have several weeks severance, and some access to company equipment for job hunting, those who remain will be less demoralized anticipating the next round of layoffs.
Finally, management must make visible sacrifices too. If staff is looking at a 10% paycut plus triple the workload due to layoffs, and they see management with unchanged salary and perqs (or worse, more) and no layoffs, staff will be upset. If staff takes a 10% paycut, management should take 20% (and tell staff they're doing so). If there are layoffs, make sure management is not immune. If staff loses health insurance, so should management. It makes a huge difference for morale to know that everyone is in the same boat.
WegianWarrior asks:
I am however puzzled over one simple fact; can it really be legal in the USofA (where I presume this is happening) to sell such a device? Over here (Norway for those who don't get the clue from my nick) it would be quite illegal to sell something which is intended to allow the (l)user to break the law.
In the USA it is and it isn't. My understanding is, in most states, it is illegal to sell something for the purpose of committing a crime. As a corrolary to this, it is illegal to use criminal activities as selling point when making a sale. This makes the spam and many of the auctions illegal. It doesn't make selling the device illegal, you just have to limit yourself to the legal uses (filtering non-cabletv signals over coax).
Another example is the crowbar. If you work at a hardware store, and someone wants to buy one, you can assume they want to use it for legal purposes and legally sell it to them. If, however, they come to the counter talking about using it in a burglary or assault, you can not legally sell it. Likewise, you can't put a sign up advertising the "Crowmaster 2000, busts neighbors locks 30% faster" and continue to sell the product legally.
Some state laws may vary. I am not a lawyer, the above should not be considered legal advice.
- The Internet
- BSD Unix (and variations)
- Linux
- The GNU project
- Object Oriented Programming (and, by extension, anything built using OOP principles, like Microsoft Windows)
- The World Wide Web
Another funny bit in your troll was "If [Tanenbaum's] cruft is still being looked at in 20 years from now, then you have something." Considering the first edition of Computer Networks was written in 1980, and it's still being looked at 23 years later, considering it was probably read by most people who made advances in computer networking over the past 20 years, I think you've made my point for me here.Sure there's a lot more to computer science than academic computing, but don't discount it as a huge force in the field.
buck wild wrote:
;-)
My idea of the perfect internship:
Fluffer.
They're the guys who get the porn acteresses 'ready' for their next scene. Yeah, and they get paid too.
Just watch out for diseases, mate.
Um, I hate to break this to you, but I've never heard of fluffers being used for porn actresses. The few times I've heard of fluffers being used, they were for the porn actors.
You sure you want to be a fluffer?
dnoyeb wrote:
We don't use "antique" measurements in the US, we use the measurements based on the measure handed to us by God.
What are you talking about?!? I live in the US, and, other than a few industries (eg. soda and drugs) we use an antique system called "Imperial" because we inherited it from the British Empire before they got wise and changed to metric.
The rest of the world is using a system of measurements handed to them by the French.
Yes, the French designed and popularised the metric system. They did this because all previous systems had gross problems with them.
Which would you prefer?
Metric, please.
For those outside of the know, the inch is related to the cubit which you can find throughout the Bible.
Huh? The cubit in the Bible is the distance from a person's elbow to the tip of their middle finger. This distance obviously changes from person to person, and is far from being a standard. There is no mention of inches in the bible, and historically, an inch was the width of the thumb. I fail to see the basis for the inch being "the measure handed to us by God", even if I accepted your Bible as being from God.
The measurements we use in the US are primarily those handed to us by the English Parlement in the 1820's, because that standard was closer to what we had been using up until that point than the metric system.
Their is no scientific reason for prefering the meter to the cubit.
Well, yes there is. The metric standard is defined much more precisely, so it can be used more accurately for very large and very small scale measurements. The math is easier, and using the same measuring system as everyone else facilitates communication, which is a good thing.
erc asserts:
Andy Tanenbaum was *not* "one of the leading authorities". He was a professor of computer science teaching operating system theory, using Minix as a teaching tool.
Let's see, he is the the author of the Minix Operating System, and coauthor of the Amoeba and Paramecium operating systems. He is the author of two of the cornerstone books used in computer science classes, Computer Networks, and Operating Systems: Design and Implementation, as well as several other books commonly assigned in computer science courses around the world.
Whether or not you agree with the man, you have to admit he is considered one of the leading authorities, particularly in academic computer science.
So they are reevaluating their membership in the UnitedLinux consortium, as that membership is their primary (and perhaps only) relationship with SCO Group. I'm sure if SCO were to leave the UnitedLinux consortium, SuSE would be happy to stay.
If your only issue with Debian is the release cycle, use Debian and upgrade to unstable. Unstable Debian is still, in my experience, more stable than RedHat's releases, and has a much better upgrade cycle, as well as better packaged materials.
Anonymous Coward wrote:
Insightful, except that MS always has freely available viewers for Word, Excel, and Powerpoint.
Interesting, so where can I get these freely available viewers for my Solaris machine, or my Linux box, or the Amiga my neighbors have been nursing along for years so they don't need to buy a new computer, or the Windows 3.11 box another neighbor of mine has been nursing along to avoid upgrading the machine he went thousands of dollars in debt for years ago.
Also, what license am I forced to agree to in order to use this "freely available" viewer? What guarantees are there that Microsoft won't add odious terms to that license in the future. What guarantees are there that Microsoft will continue to offer them for free?
Again, Open Standards are the only way to ensure delivery of digital information without putting an undue financial or legal burden on the population.
I'm glad they didn't require the use of Open Source, not because I don't think the freedoms that such a requirement would enforce are important, but because requiring them would be sufficient to torpedo the bill, and a partial measure like this is a good start.
One thing I do wish they would require, and I believe is feasible to require at this point, is Open Standards in data storage and transmission. The bill defines them, but doesn't insist on them. It is a Free Government's responsibility, as representatives of the people, to make sure that their workings are accessible to all the people without forcing the people to spend hundreds of dollars on Word or Excel just to look at a document.
If the standard for professional is "never see a dupe or typo", then you have to rule out CNN, New York Times, Washington Post, BBC, et al. All professional news sources have had typos, duplicate news entries (eg. watch CNN during a crisis), outright factual errors. News is a messy business.
:-)
Personally, I just subscribed. Getting rid of ads was nice, but didn't inspire me to get my plastic out, but this, I'm a news junkie. Thanks!
I would read it more as "BSD is the future" ;-)
Aapje wrote:
I'll bet that a lot of cats and dogs go missing in those neigbourhoods, or don't they?
Considering the markets I'm talking about are often in the process of butchering an entire side of beef or pork in front of me, I seriously doubt that dogs and cats are involved.
milo_Gwalthny wrote:
[a bunch of interesting economic and social points that I have insufficient background to respond to compitently]
For various reasons, both the community of Harlem and the town of Mount Vernon (both New York) have turned down proposals by big-box retailers to open in their neighborhoods, forgoing both the tax benefits and the lower prices that would result. I can't speak for why they did this, but it is one answer to the bizarre mystery of why groceries are more expensive in poor neighborhoods than anywhere else in New York City.
I was born and raised in NYC, and still visit there regularly. I don't find the groceries more expensive in New York's poor neighborhoods than wealthy ones. I do find a few things:
1) Some poorer neighborhoods don't have a big grocery, they just have a greengrocer or bodega, both of which are more expensive than a full supermarket. This is almost certainly because it's harder to get loans for a business in a poor neighborhood.
2) The big name brands are more expensive in supermarkets in poor neighborhoods than wealthy ones
3) The supermarkets in poorer neighborhoods make up for it with a wide variety of "little name" brands: (eg. Badia, D&G), some of this stuff is pretty bad, some of it is good stuff I prefer to the pricier "big names"
4) Some (but not all) of the poorer supermarkets also make up for it with excellent meat and/or produce prices. Apparently there are some good sources out there that are not available to all venues.
So, yes, if you compare the price of a carton of Minute Maid at Food Emporium to the same carton at C-Town, Food Emporium might come out ahead, but I can feed a family well for cheaper at C-Town.
To get back to turning down the big box retailer, I can't speak for Mt Vernon, but some attitudes that I have often heard expressed in Harlem go along the lines of:
A) Big chains homogonize their stock, an independant business is more likely to match the product desires of the community (more little name brands, rather than the big name brands)
B) Big chains take money out of the community. Harlem doesn't see the tax benefits of a Wal-Mart, that goes to the City; the lower prices aren't on what they want. They do, however, see that the guy who owns a store on 125th street, and lives on 133rd street, employs people in the neighborhood and spends most of his profits in the neighborhood, enriches the neighborhood in a real financial sense.
Don't underestimate the power of community in the decision making process, or overestimate the benefit of the homogonized "big-box" retailers.
From someone who has used some of the higher end Dell kit, they are not quite up to Sun levels, but pretty close.
Dell has hot swappable drives, power supplies and PCI slots. They do not yet have hot swappable CPU's and motherboards like some of the Sun boxes have. If you need 64 bit, they do have Itanium machines for sale, but they're awfully expensive. Even though Dell's pretty solidly an Intel shop, I would expect the 64 bit situation to improve when AMD release Hammer (sorry, Opteron).
Dell has 4 hour onsite support. From experience, the parts often arrive in 2 hours, and the technician in about 3-4 hours. Their technicians are knowledgable and efficient, I have no issues with their onsite premium support (their offsite laptop support gave my sister a migrane, but that was years ago).
Dell boxes don't scale up to 128 processors.
For the past two years I have been dealing with a farm of several Dell PowerEdges running Linux, and one Sun running Solaris. I have had one crash of the Dells running Linux, I have had 2 of the Sun running Solaris. That's several Linux Dells, one crash. That's one Solaris machine, 2 crashes. Same time period. And the Solaris machine is under a far less demanding load. Sun+Solaris has nothing over Dell+Linux when it comes to stability.
You mention reboots, one other point is, at least in my experience, once you get to the high-end SCSI-based Dells, they reboot slower than the Sun boxes. If a system does go down, I hate how the Dell's spend minutes polling the SCSI cards.
BJH wrote:
If Atari had Pacman trademarked (which is likely)
Pacman is a trademark of Namco, Ltd (the people who wrote the software) and Bally Midway Manufacturing Corporation (the people who made the original arcade machines).
nurb432 wrote:
There should be a way to counter sue for damages and recoup all your losses to defend yourself against the ludicrous case in the first place.
Frivolous law suits are illegal, aren't they?
Technically, there are laws against frivolous lawsuits, but what they are and what you have to do to trigger them vary from country to country. In the US (where IDSA is located) it is very very hard to prove that a lawsuit was illegal. World Of Spectrum is in the Netherlands, which might have more protection, but who knows what jurisdiction any lawsuit will end up in this case.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, the above should not be interpreted as legal advice.
AxelTorvalds wrote:
Not true. The spirit of the law is to prevent people from wholesale committing that crime. It's worded sloppily and there are holes but you know what they are trying to do. I don't know of anyone who has been busted for ripping a DVD
Don't interpret that as "they won't use the law against people who just rip a DVD", interpret that as "it's much harder to find someone who is just using the tools, so we bust the distrubutors, it's easier.
just selling tools to do it,
Or distributing the tools for free. Or linking to a site that distributes tools as a part of an online article if you are a "bad" journalist (eg. 2600), as opposed to a "good" journalist (eg. NYT) doing the same thing.
and really not even that, they were busted for distributing copyrighted materials.
No, nether Skylarov nor Elcomsoft nor 2600 were distributing unauthorized copies of copyrighted material when busted.
Seriously, how many xbox modchips were used for putting linux on xbox? How many do you think were used for piracy?
I have no idea, I don't think anyone does. The legal climate makes it very difficult to find such figures. I do know that a considerable number were used by the X-Box Linux developers.
How about PS2 modchips, what is the legitmate use for them?
To run GameShark2, so you can explore your legally purchased games in ways other than the original game manufacturer intended. Porting one of the BSDs or an actual Free distribution of Linux (as opposed to Sony's distribution) to the machine. Developing games or other software for the PS/2 without going through the expensive licensing process and purchasing the expensive development version of the console.
I don't know a single person that has moded a PS2 or Xbox for some reason other than piracy.
Personally, I don't know a single person that has modded a PS2 or XBox, period. The only people I know of who have modded their consoles are the people working on the various Linux port projects.
Both your experience and mine are unbalanced and anecdotal, neither represents accurate figures. Again, accurate figures of such things are impossible to come by.
Thank you :-)
As far as the details go, I admit I don't have an idea of what I'm talking about. I do, however, remember NASA mentioning all three items at various points when discussing reducing heat during shuttle landings. I am parroting what I remembered. If I misunderstood or misremembered what they were saying, I apologize, but I didn't just pull these things out of my butt. While you may very well have a more detailed understanding of physics and astronautic engineering than I, a flame was completely uncalled for.
Regardless, the point of my post wasn't to tell NASA all the nifty ideas I had for getting the shuttle home safe, it was to rebut the people (including the poster I was replying to) who were saying that, even if the danger were known after entering orbit, there was no way to save the astronauts. Even if the best plan that could be devised would have only give them a 10% better chance of survival, that still would have better than what they got.
If you are, as you claim, a rocket scientist (although your blog seems to indicate that you are a student), why don't you inject some actual information into this discussion, rather than surly flames?
zurab wrote:
:-(
On the other hand, NASA could conclude that the crash was a result of a long-standing defect (structural, mechanical, etc.) that nobody knew about until now.
Actually, there was a long standing defect on Columbia's left wing, it was rougher than it ought to have been, producing more drag and more heat than its right wong or than the other shuttles' wings. It obviously could land with the rough wing (the roughness issue was known since mission STS-28 in 1988), but some of the hottest landings on record had been in Columbia. It's just an extra issue thrown into the mix.
DoraLives wrote:
Nope. There wasn't a damn thing that they could have done for that vehicle once it achieved orbit (and more likely, once it went "negative return" [no RTLS abort capability]).
Why not? I mean, it's clear they didn't have the capability to go out and fix tiles (though I think they should have that capability), I'll take NASA at their word that they didn't have the capability to reach the ISS, but those aren't the only options. John Glenn couldn't go out and fix his heat shield. The Apollo 13 crew couldn't reach any space station (Salyut 1 hadn't even been launced yet). The Astronauts, with help from mission control, are trained to troubleshoot problems and adapt to minimize risks when they know them.
Nobody knew anything was the matter until well after they were on orbit. Any structural degradation at that point becomes a simple pass/fail test that's graded by the rigors of a reentry profile that CANNOT be changed.
Why not? If there was a question about the integrity of the left wing tiles, there was plenty of time to design a reentry path that minimized stress on that wing (nighttime landing, hypercooling the wing before landing, braking on the right wing more than the left, and other options I don't know of). There's no guarantee of success, but it could have improved their chances significantly.
In order to do this, though, the extra risks need to be known.