Wasting two full LCD displays on getting two blurry discrete depths is not a good use of hardware. If you expend the same amount of effort on a true 3D display, you can do the same thing, and you can actually look at arbitrary 3D objects/scenes.
That's a completely unrelated problem. Cops are much more likely to ticket you for following to closely at any speed (or other unsafe driving) than if you nominally exceed the speed limit but are going with the flow of traffic.
That's actually the law: in some states, you can get a ticket for observing the speed limit if, by doing so, you obstruct the flow of traffic. There are historical reasons for this, too. The speed limit in the US wasn't enacted for safety reasons, it was enacted to save gasoline.
Most people who use Linux use Firefox. Most people who use Macs use Safari. Which one starts quicker? Which has the lowest memory footprint?
Safari is just the KDE HTML renderer wrapped up in OSX APIs--there is no difference. Startup time and memory footprint are determined by other factors (preloading, caching, etc.).
And what about graphics? Which is better set up to use the video card's features? That should be obvious.
X11 has had hardware accelerated rendering since long before OS X even existed, and it still accelerates more today than OS X.
And OS X rendering is actually quite slow, in particular text rendering. OS X seems fast because they enable the equivalent of "backing store" by default, something which eats up lots of memory. You can do the same on X11, but it seems wasteful and unnecessary.
These types of features have been getting faster with each release.
There is a lot of hype surrounding OS X; don't believe all of it. In reality, it's what you'd expect it to be: an operating system that's about the same as Windows and Linux, but perhaps not quite as well tuned, given that Apple has fewer resources. What Apple does well is marketing and theming...
but I am not so blinded to know that over the last couple of years, Mac OS X has been the only operating system that has been getting consistently faster for general workstation usage.
OS X started out very unoptimized, and it still hasn't anywhere near caught up with Linux. Running Linux on the same PPC hardware as OS X, Linux is far more responsive, even if you run Gnome or KDE.
I am a linux fan
No, you are an Apple troll, but hey, who cares anyway.
There is no need for autonomy in orbit--they could do the entire thing via teleoperation.
And that's what they should do for now: get teleoperations and telepresence between orbital vehicles and the ground worked out. That's useful not just for operating vehicles in orbit from the ground, it's potentially also useful for telepresence during planetary exploration--for most planetary operations, even if you send astronauts, there is little reason for them to actually land on the planet.
It seems like an important part of a legal system in a democracy that prisoners can get their side of the story out. That's both to ensure that the prison system itself is run well and to help reverse wrongful convictions.
If and when a prisoner abuses the right in order to commit further crimes, only then should his ability to publish be restricted. But he shouldn't be restricted merely because what he says is uncomfortable for prison authorities. He also shouldn't be restricted merely if he is (thought to be) lying, as long as it doesn't rise to the level of defamation.
If you want to experiment, here are LED lightbulbs that screw into regular sockets. There are lots of other companies offering them (this was just the first link that came up in Google). Smarthome.com offers them, too.
I think one of the main issues with LED lights is the incompatibility with existing lamps.
You can already get LED lights that can replace regular light bulbs (check the web). They simply happen to be expensive because of the cost of the LEDs.
It's not pertinent because it won't further the cause. It's a blind alley. Perens thinks he can dethrone the king of Open Source by slinging mud at him -- perhaps justly -- perhaps not.
Linus isn't "the king of Open Source": he doesn't have any authority. If he starts screwing up too much technically or legally, he'll become irrelevant. And the only two major parts of Linux he is responsible for are the kernel and the name.
Linus is right about his moral statements right now,
No, he is not, at least not in my opinion, and apparently not in the opinion of many other people.
I've known for years, that Open Source does not have to be a reverse-engineered byproduct to be of any value. It can be 100% orginal.
No, it can't be. Microsoft, Apple, Sun, and all those other big companies are almost completely unoriginal. Reimplementation and reverse engineering is necessary, not only because it is silly to reinvent the wheel, but also because users expect and want familiarity and interoperability.
There have been plenty of 100% original systems, systems that were far superior to any of the currently popular systems, systems compared to which Linux is garbage, but they didn't succeed: the market doesn't want originality.
Tridgell didn't enter into the deal and Linus has no control over Tridgell. If McVoy now renegs on his deal with Linus because someone unrelated to Linus does something McVoy doesn't like, McVoy is being the jerk.
The real problem is that Linus made a bad and risky choice, people told him so, it backfired, and now he is still blaming others for his mistake.
McVoy "invented" the idea for Linux at Sun, which he called freenix.
You're right. Now the pieces start falling into place. Sun still claims to be "open source friendly" while doing just about everything they can to attack, sabotage, and undermine open source. Sun just seems to breed people like this.
Sorry, but that's all there is to it. He picked a proprietary tool with a lousy license. In addition, the tool was produced by someone who seemed pretty clearly unstable and hostile to open source. Now that the chickens have come how to roost, he is trying to blame other people for the unpleasant task of having to switch version control systems.
I'm glad Linus does the work he does, but I don't particularly trust him to make good long-term judgements. Tanenbaum was right on the technical side, and all the people who warned about the version control system issue were right on the license front.
Let's make sure there are some good alternatives to the Linux kernel around (the main thing that Linus actually contributes to Linux) because one of these days, he is going to screw up in a way that can't be fixed anymore.
does this have anything to do with the fact that INTEL STOLE THE 64 BIT INSTRUCTIONS FROM AMD??? The article just looked familiar, I don't know why..
AMD cloned Intel's instruction set, and Intel cloned AMD's. Thank goodness companies can still do that. Instruction sets aren't rocket science.
If anything, this is a good thing for AMD: the fact that AMD got to decide what the 64bit instructions look like and that Intel had to copy them is really humbling for Intel. On the other hand, it gives more credibility to AMD, plus a head-start of a couple of years.
That's part of what I suggested--get your boss to pick a different company. But you don't have to behave like an arrogant prick to do so: bringing in outside auditing is the right thing to do for your boss, and if you can't deal with that, then you should be fired.
No more than companies are violating the social contract day by day with attractive, legal, but harmful products (cigarettes, fast food, soft drinks,...). No more than companies are violating the social contract with misleading advertising, monopolistic practices, and PR manipulation. And certainly no more than when companies lobby Congress for all sorts of favors.
Under our system, companies are free to do stupid and bad things when designing products, and consumers are free to do the same when shopping and consuming.
The consequences of this choice may be bad (less "free" content), but that's ultimately a choice we are making collectively, and that's OK.
What is UnAmerican is attempts by corporations to take away the ability of US citizens to make democratic choices about public services.
Free WiFi service is no more UnAmerican than free roads, free police, public education, government subsidized nuclear waste disposal, government subsidized airports or air traffic control, etc.
In fact, these companies love government handouts (like the money that went into building the Internet in the first place), they just like to charge consumers for it twice: once in taxes, and a second time in fees. Well, that really is UnAmerican, not to mention reminiscent of what corporations would do in some other UnAmerican, unsavory, unmentionable political systems.
If that market is dominated ba a single company and all those add on products are for that company, it's not so goos news.
Right now, I can actually still buy a non-Apple MP3 player and not have to worry about losing out on third party functionality--I can pick and choose based only on the value and functionality of thw device itself (which I think is better for many non-Apple players). But if it turns out that a lot of value is in the add-ons, then I won't have a choice anymore--I will have to buy an iPod, even though I don't like it. In different words, the Apple iPod would become a non-choice like MS Windows.
And just what claim does the government have on my family's money if it's been gained by doing honest work?
Try making that money through "honest work" in North Korea or some central-African nation. The only reason your "honest work" is paying so well is because our society as a whole works so well.
Secondly, your family may have made the money through "honest work", but why should you be exempt from working honestly?
Finally, do you, in all seriousness, believe that many of the poor don't work at least as hard as you do? Or the billions in developing nations?
"To prevent some families gathering too much money" is a just a sad excuse for class envy and socialism.
That's, roughly, what most nobility says in order to justify their existence. We know what happens when you allow families to amass greater and greater amounts of wealth over time, and it is not good. Western democracies ended up striking a balancing act between various different extremes. You just want to go back to one of those extremes, and that's not a good thing.
Fortunately, it's also self-limiting: the more a nation goes down this road, the less internationally competitive it will become.
Most of Hollywood's "historical" movies are anywhere from mildly misleading to completely wrong as well. Yet, the views of even educated people seem to be strongly influenced by it. And it's really no different in books either.
There isn't much one can do about it: it's hard to have an unbiased view of history, and anything even close to the truth often makes for a bad story, or worse, makes people feel bad about themselves.
I've seen the managers that this guy is suffering under and your insightful remark won't help him. You see, his boss is likely referring to "holes" reported by Nessus and others that are not holes but, because some outside company said it, then it must be so.
And what is your boss supposed to do? He isn't a network security expert. His in-house staff has strong incentives to pretend that everything is alright, whether it actually is or not. He has to bring in outside experts to verify that his staff is doing what it is supposed to be doing. That's not different from outside accounting firms and other kinds of outside review in other areas.
If you think the quality of the outside security firm your boss selected is poor, talk to him about it and get him to pick one that you think is good. But whether there is going to be an external audit is not debatable--the boss wouldn't be doing his job if he didn't do these things.
I for one *love* ripping these guys new ones. In particular when I produce the same report in a couple of hours. All kinds of fun.
It doesn't matter what you produce. Your boss is bringing in an outside consultancy to get an independent assessment of what you are doing. That's a prudent and sensible thing to do, because he doesn't know what is going on technically (he isn't supposed to--it's not his job), and you could be lying to him to cover your ass. It's no different from bringing in outside accounting firms to check the books, outside HR experts to check compliance with anti-discrimination laws, or outside consultants to check on customer service.
If you are unprofessional, uncooperative, or insulting in the process, you only hurt yourself.
On the other hand, if you think you can do a better job than the outside consulting agencies, start your own and try to convince companies of that.
There is a reason we have an FEC and why it regulates campaigning. Exempting an entire communications medium may end up neutering the FEC entirely and seems unreasonable.
By analogy, let's say there was a lot of political activism on amateur radio. Great, your Congressman says: we should exempt all radio-based communications from FEC regulation. Oops--all of a sudden, TV and commercial radio are off-limits to FEC regulation.
I don't see why the Internet needs any special legislation here. Paid election-related activities on the Internet should be regulated the same way they are regulated in any other medium. And, yes, that may mean "registering a blog" if that blog was created for a PR firm that is getting paid millions of dollars for its work; astroturfing is, in some sense, worse than other kinds of commercial advertising.
Unpaid, personal activities should be unregulated on the Internet, and they should be unregulated anywhere else.
Slashdot Mirror
Wasting two full LCD displays on getting two blurry discrete depths is not a good use of hardware. If you expend the same amount of effort on a true 3D display, you can do the same thing, and you can actually look at arbitrary 3D objects/scenes.
people just don't follow the speed limit anymore
What makes you think they ever did?
or maintain safe braking distances
That's a completely unrelated problem. Cops are much more likely to ticket you for following to closely at any speed (or other unsafe driving) than if you nominally exceed the speed limit but are going with the flow of traffic.
That's actually the law: in some states, you can get a ticket for observing the speed limit if, by doing so, you obstruct the flow of traffic. There are historical reasons for this, too. The speed limit in the US wasn't enacted for safety reasons, it was enacted to save gasoline.
Most people who use Linux use Firefox. Most people who use Macs use Safari. Which one starts quicker? Which has the lowest memory footprint?
Safari is just the KDE HTML renderer wrapped up in OSX APIs--there is no difference. Startup time and memory footprint are determined by other factors (preloading, caching, etc.).
And what about graphics? Which is better set up to use the video card's features? That should be obvious.
X11 has had hardware accelerated rendering since long before OS X even existed, and it still accelerates more today than OS X.
And OS X rendering is actually quite slow, in particular text rendering. OS X seems fast because they enable the equivalent of "backing store" by default, something which eats up lots of memory. You can do the same on X11, but it seems wasteful and unnecessary.
These types of features have been getting faster with each release.
There is a lot of hype surrounding OS X; don't believe all of it. In reality, it's what you'd expect it to be: an operating system that's about the same as Windows and Linux, but perhaps not quite as well tuned, given that Apple has fewer resources. What Apple does well is marketing and theming...
but I am not so blinded to know that over the last couple of years, Mac OS X has been the only operating system that has been getting consistently faster for general workstation usage.
OS X started out very unoptimized, and it still hasn't anywhere near caught up with Linux. Running Linux on the same PPC hardware as OS X, Linux is far more responsive, even if you run Gnome or KDE.
I am a linux fan
No, you are an Apple troll, but hey, who cares anyway.
There is no need for autonomy in orbit--they could do the entire thing via teleoperation.
And that's what they should do for now: get teleoperations and telepresence between orbital vehicles and the ground worked out. That's useful not just for operating vehicles in orbit from the ground, it's potentially also useful for telepresence during planetary exploration--for most planetary operations, even if you send astronauts, there is little reason for them to actually land on the planet.
It seems like an important part of a legal system in a democracy that prisoners can get their side of the story out. That's both to ensure that the prison system itself is run well and to help reverse wrongful convictions.
If and when a prisoner abuses the right in order to commit further crimes, only then should his ability to publish be restricted. But he shouldn't be restricted merely because what he says is uncomfortable for prison authorities. He also shouldn't be restricted merely if he is (thought to be) lying, as long as it doesn't rise to the level of defamation.
If you want to experiment, here are LED lightbulbs that screw into regular sockets. There are lots of other companies offering them (this was just the first link that came up in Google). Smarthome.com offers them, too.
I think one of the main issues with LED lights is the incompatibility with existing lamps.
You can already get LED lights that can replace regular light bulbs (check the web). They simply happen to be expensive because of the cost of the LEDs.
It's not pertinent because it won't further the cause. It's a blind alley. Perens thinks he can dethrone the king of Open Source by slinging mud at him -- perhaps justly -- perhaps not.
Linus isn't "the king of Open Source": he doesn't have any authority. If he starts screwing up too much technically or legally, he'll become irrelevant. And the only two major parts of Linux he is responsible for are the kernel and the name.
Linus is right about his moral statements right now,
No, he is not, at least not in my opinion, and apparently not in the opinion of many other people.
I've known for years, that Open Source does not have to be a reverse-engineered byproduct to be of any value. It can be 100% orginal.
No, it can't be. Microsoft, Apple, Sun, and all those other big companies are almost completely unoriginal. Reimplementation and reverse engineering is necessary, not only because it is silly to reinvent the wheel, but also because users expect and want familiarity and interoperability.
There have been plenty of 100% original systems, systems that were far superior to any of the currently popular systems, systems compared to which Linux is garbage, but they didn't succeed: the market doesn't want originality.
Tridgell didn't enter into the deal and Linus has no control over Tridgell. If McVoy now renegs on his deal with Linus because someone unrelated to Linus does something McVoy doesn't like, McVoy is being the jerk.
The real problem is that Linus made a bad and risky choice, people told him so, it backfired, and now he is still blaming others for his mistake.
McVoy "invented" the idea for Linux at Sun, which he called freenix.
You're right. Now the pieces start falling into place. Sun still claims to be "open source friendly" while doing just about everything they can to attack, sabotage, and undermine open source. Sun just seems to breed people like this.
Sorry, but that's all there is to it. He picked a proprietary tool with a lousy license. In addition, the tool was produced by someone who seemed pretty clearly unstable and hostile to open source. Now that the chickens have come how to roost, he is trying to blame other people for the unpleasant task of having to switch version control systems.
I'm glad Linus does the work he does, but I don't particularly trust him to make good long-term judgements. Tanenbaum was right on the technical side, and all the people who warned about the version control system issue were right on the license front.
Let's make sure there are some good alternatives to the Linux kernel around (the main thing that Linus actually contributes to Linux) because one of these days, he is going to screw up in a way that can't be fixed anymore.
does this have anything to do with the fact that INTEL STOLE THE 64 BIT INSTRUCTIONS FROM AMD??? The article just looked familiar, I don't know why..
AMD cloned Intel's instruction set, and Intel cloned AMD's. Thank goodness companies can still do that. Instruction sets aren't rocket science.
If anything, this is a good thing for AMD: the fact that AMD got to decide what the 64bit instructions look like and that Intel had to copy them is really humbling for Intel. On the other hand, it gives more credibility to AMD, plus a head-start of a couple of years.
There are other jobs out there. If they choose to stick with a company that has behaved like SCO has, they share in the blame.
Well, then you have your work cut out for yourself: do some research and identify comapnies that are doing a good job, and suggest them to your boss.
That's part of what I suggested--get your boss to pick a different company. But you don't have to behave like an arrogant prick to do so: bringing in outside auditing is the right thing to do for your boss, and if you can't deal with that, then you should be fired.
No more than companies are violating the social contract day by day with attractive, legal, but harmful products (cigarettes, fast food, soft drinks, ...). No more than companies are violating the social contract with misleading advertising, monopolistic practices, and PR manipulation. And certainly no more than when companies lobby Congress for all sorts of favors.
Under our system, companies are free to do stupid and bad things when designing products, and consumers are free to do the same when shopping and consuming.
The consequences of this choice may be bad (less "free" content), but that's ultimately a choice we are making collectively, and that's OK.
What is UnAmerican is attempts by corporations to take away the ability of US citizens to make democratic choices about public services.
Free WiFi service is no more UnAmerican than free roads, free police, public education, government subsidized nuclear waste disposal, government subsidized airports or air traffic control, etc.
In fact, these companies love government handouts (like the money that went into building the Internet in the first place), they just like to charge consumers for it twice: once in taxes, and a second time in fees. Well, that really is UnAmerican, not to mention reminiscent of what corporations would do in some other UnAmerican, unsavory, unmentionable political systems.
If that market is dominated ba a single company and all those add on products are for that company, it's not so goos news.
Right now, I can actually still buy a non-Apple MP3 player and not have to worry about losing out on third party functionality--I can pick and choose based only on the value and functionality of thw device itself (which I think is better for many non-Apple players). But if it turns out that a lot of value is in the add-ons, then I won't have a choice anymore--I will have to buy an iPod, even though I don't like it. In different words, the Apple iPod would become a non-choice like MS Windows.
And just what claim does the government have on my family's money if it's been gained by doing honest work?
Try making that money through "honest work" in North Korea or some central-African nation. The only reason your "honest work" is paying so well is because our society as a whole works so well.
Secondly, your family may have made the money through "honest work", but why should you be exempt from working honestly?
Finally, do you, in all seriousness, believe that many of the poor don't work at least as hard as you do? Or the billions in developing nations?
"To prevent some families gathering too much money" is a just a sad excuse for class envy and socialism.
That's, roughly, what most nobility says in order to justify their existence. We know what happens when you allow families to amass greater and greater amounts of wealth over time, and it is not good. Western democracies ended up striking a balancing act between various different extremes. You just want to go back to one of those extremes, and that's not a good thing.
Fortunately, it's also self-limiting: the more a nation goes down this road, the less internationally competitive it will become.
Most of Hollywood's "historical" movies are anywhere from mildly misleading to completely wrong as well. Yet, the views of even educated people seem to be strongly influenced by it. And it's really no different in books either.
There isn't much one can do about it: it's hard to have an unbiased view of history, and anything even close to the truth often makes for a bad story, or worse, makes people feel bad about themselves.
I've seen the managers that this guy is suffering under and your insightful remark won't help him. You see, his boss is likely referring to "holes" reported by Nessus and others that are not holes but, because some outside company said it, then it must be so.
And what is your boss supposed to do? He isn't a network security expert. His in-house staff has strong incentives to pretend that everything is alright, whether it actually is or not. He has to bring in outside experts to verify that his staff is doing what it is supposed to be doing. That's not different from outside accounting firms and other kinds of outside review in other areas.
If you think the quality of the outside security firm your boss selected is poor, talk to him about it and get him to pick one that you think is good. But whether there is going to be an external audit is not debatable--the boss wouldn't be doing his job if he didn't do these things.
I for one *love* ripping these guys new ones. In particular when I produce the same report in a couple of hours. All kinds of fun.
It doesn't matter what you produce. Your boss is bringing in an outside consultancy to get an independent assessment of what you are doing. That's a prudent and sensible thing to do, because he doesn't know what is going on technically (he isn't supposed to--it's not his job), and you could be lying to him to cover your ass. It's no different from bringing in outside accounting firms to check the books, outside HR experts to check compliance with anti-discrimination laws, or outside consultants to check on customer service.
If you are unprofessional, uncooperative, or insulting in the process, you only hurt yourself.
On the other hand, if you think you can do a better job than the outside consulting agencies, start your own and try to convince companies of that.
There is a reason we have an FEC and why it regulates campaigning. Exempting an entire communications medium may end up neutering the FEC entirely and seems unreasonable.
By analogy, let's say there was a lot of political activism on amateur radio. Great, your Congressman says: we should exempt all radio-based communications from FEC regulation. Oops--all of a sudden, TV and commercial radio are off-limits to FEC regulation.
I don't see why the Internet needs any special legislation here. Paid election-related activities on the Internet should be regulated the same way they are regulated in any other medium. And, yes, that may mean "registering a blog" if that blog was created for a PR firm that is getting paid millions of dollars for its work; astroturfing is, in some sense, worse than other kinds of commercial advertising.
Unpaid, personal activities should be unregulated on the Internet, and they should be unregulated anywhere else.