***You are all making a major error in considering this in nationalist terms.***
Maybe.
A bit of history. The ISS started life as "Space Station Freedom" -- an initiative of the Reagan administration started around 1984. It was to cost between 15 and 20 billion dollars and to be in orbit by 1995-1996. It was a US project. Around 1990 it became clear that Space Station Freedom was over weight, over budget, and quite possibly unbuildable. After a gazillion redesigns failed to improve the prospects, the Clinton administration sucked a bunch of suck^H^H^H^H international partners into the scheme, and renamed it the International Space Stations.
So far, the US has put something like $30 to $35 billion dollars into Space Station Freedom and the ISS in direct costs and another $25 billion into space shuttle costs directly related to the ISS. Japan, Canada and the European Space Agency have thrown some money into the pot, but not all that much. Russia -- the other major contributor -- threw in two existing MIR modules and a number of Soyuz flights.
You may think that the international aspect is important. I don't. This fiasco has Made In America stamped all over it except for the relatively inexpensive MIR modules contributed by Russia. In fact, without the US effort, the other participants would probably be basing their efforts on MIR, Russia would have earned some foreign exchange during the troubled years of the 1990s; the world -- primarily the US -- would be maybe $40 billion dollars richer; and the human race would have accomplished pretty much nothing much more cheaply.
***The ISS is an utter waste of time and money.
Agreed
***The original purpose of the ISS was to have something for the Shuttle to visit.***
The ISS (Space Station Freedom) didn't need a mission. We're talking the Reagan administration here. All gut feeling. No coherent planning. Reality need not apply. (Bush 1 and Clinton were quite a bit better. Bush 2 is even worse.)
***The purpose of the Shuttle was to build the station.***
The Shuttle program predates Space Station Freedom by a decade. It was intended to replace the expensive expendable launch vehicles of the 1960s with much less expensive reusable lanuch vehicles. Predicatably the costs were grossly underestimated and the launch frequency of the reusable vehicles was grossly overestimated. 'Taint cheaper. More accurate would be to say that the purpose of the shuttle has become to build and support the ISS. Without the ISS, the Shuttle might actually make some sense as a platform for experiments.
The good news is that the Shuttle is supposed to go away in a couple of years -- 2010 and be replaced by a super-duper low cost, reusable, launch vehicle called Orion in 2014. What are they going to use in the intervening 4 years? I haven't a clue. What will keep Orion from being a typical US manned spaceflight project -- over weight, over budget, late and lame? Again, no clue.
***I fail to see any flaws with this solution. Also read 'The Design of Everyday Things'.***
I suppose that you probably don't. So let me help you out. The first problem you are going to encounter is that something like 15-20% of the customers are goijng to take an utterly irrational "It's MY router. How about you clowns let ME determine how to configure it?" attitude The second is that quite possibly a small percentage of them will actually need to run with default passwords. You can't imagine why. Neither can I. But I learned in 1963 or so that anticipating exactly what customers will do with your product is impossible. Gratuitously jamming 'solutions' down people's throats will NOT earn you friends. If you try it, you will discover that many of the folks you have helped out will be quite ungrateful.
***Err, my read was the Americans are trying to get Russia and Europe to pick up more of the tab,***
It's more like having organized the party, invited all its friends, and paid some of the costs, the US -- having finally figured out that the orbiting junk heap is pretty much worthless scientifically -- is strolling off and leaving the party guests to figure out how to pay the band and the caterer. Unless of course they want to call off the party themselves.
***Did you ever use it? For more than a few days? ME was a trainwreck when it came to stability.***
When I installed our first pair of Me machines, one of them promptly ate the Printers and Control Panel icons in My Computer and refused ever to display them again. I finally cobbled together some icons using the appropriate CLSIDs and resolved never to allow another copy of Me through the door.
I'd guess not. Picasa on Linux is a Wine application. Wine, of necessity, has a (yechhh) Registry and Windows API calls to tinker with it. So a registry based attack on the Google web site might very well stand about the same chance as any other complex software under Wine on Linux. Might work, might not. Again, that's a guess. Like 99% of the other posts on Slashdot, this one isn't based on actual knowledge or anything like that.
***Without the patent system, it would cause many companies to go secret squire and much technology would die with the inventor or company..***
Maybe in 1780 although I have some doubts about that. Today? The number of technologies that can't be reverse engineered if there is a need to do so is surely very small.
Also, today's marketplace moves at a much faster pace than that of two centuries ago. Simply having a lead of a year or two by virtue of being the inventor conveys much of the advantage that a patent conveyed two centuries ago -- maybe more since patents were largely ignored in practice. Read up on Eli Whitney and the cotton gin. Here's the Wikipedia link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eli_Whitney.
Been there. Tough problem. Trees are nice. But there is such a thing as too many trees. We ended up with a very long T1 line. The phone company had trouble getting it intalled because of the number of repeaters it required. Probably not a solution for you because of cost.
If you haven't got line of sight to a place where you have power and broadband access, your only options may be find out more about cellular or go without.
You might, and I emphasize MIGHT, be able to squeeze more Kb/s out of your modem by using a different ISP. Modem communications work by magic. Here's a link to an article I wrote many years ago about some phone line problems. Probably still largely as correct as it ever was. http://donaldkenney.110mb.com/GLOSSARY/LINEPROB.HTM Maybe it'll help. Fortunately, you can test ISPs without cancelling your old one.
***The FBI is the only police department, at least at this point.***
Except of course when the ATF (Treasury Department), Secret Service(DHS), DEA (Justice Department), etc, etc, etc is the federal police department.
***What that means is the CIA is all about getting information from people, be it by attempting to place spys or turning other agents or whatever***
Not really. That's part of their job, but mostly they are supposed to integrate public information (e.g what they read in foreign newspapers and hear on local broadcasts overseas) with information from the other two dozen intelligence agencies into a single, coherent whole.
***The DHS is a good idea at the high levels***
You're certainly entitled to have an opinion on that. But I have my own which is that it is an absolutely terrible idea. It's goal inevitably will be to restrict freedoms (including some purportedly guaranteed in the constitution). It will, I predict, be totally ineffective in making the homeland more secure. Who is going to protect us from the DHS? (Quis custodiet...)
I don't have any problem with NSA and the intelligence agencies although there are way too many of them. If you ask me, we need more intelligence analysts and fewer unworkable anti-ballistic missile systems.
But I have little use for a central police department. The Secret Service has a relatively decent record (They do counterfitting as well as protection), and ought the be retained. The FBI doesn't have that good a record. Neither does the ATF. The DEA is worse (we lost the war on drugs decades ago. We should find an enemy and surrender). And the DHS is a disaster. We should take a decade and rebuild this mess from scratch. I won't be terribly troubled if we lose 80% of it in the makeover..
A patent is not private property. It is a transferable government issued license. Goverments can stop issuing them any time they choose to. AFAICS, historically patents have mostly enriched lawyers and opportunists, not inventors. Looks to me like they distort the marketplace, divert effort and resource into unproductive activity (e.g. lawsuits), and largely fail to generate the benefits they are claimed to engender.
If you ask me, we can, with a few adjustments, get by just fine without them.
***That won't happen. If anyone thinks they can take their current bill and divide by the fraction of channels they watch to get a new a la carte bill, they're deluding themselves. ***
Of course. BUT, if you look at the rates for C-band which is a la carte you will discover that news, sports, adult material and current entertainment channels are MUCH more expensive than routine Discover channel, TV show rerun, etc channels. Ask not who pays the ridiculous salaries of top athletes -- you and I do when we send our monthly check to DishTV or Comcast -- even if we skip over ESPN when surfing up the dial. So, if all you care about is cheap stuff, the six channels you want plus your basic connect fee may well save a fair amount of money.
My guess is that some customers will pay more, some less. I imagine that the cable companies will fiddle things so that they make a bit more money, not less. But some consumers really will be winners as well.
***Can I sue the grocery store for refusing to sell me one egg?***
I dunno. Is it a licensed Public Utlilty? If it is, what does it's license say about what services it must provide and how it must provide them? Maybe a court or your relevant PUC actually CAN tell them to sell you one egg.
***But Ruby is also slower than python, so all the obvious optimizations aren't all done yet. Besides, it's always dangerous to talk about the "next version". Where's parrot (for perl)? ***
The next version of Python is 3.0/3000 and the first Alpha was released three weeks ago. Scheduled final release is August 2008. I don't believe that it is dramatically faster or has any breakthrough in multicore support, but I'm no expert and I'm often a bit baffled about whether specific Python improvements are a big deal or not. FWIW, here's the wikipedia link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_3
***We've already won any war in Iraq. We should not have overstayed our welcome, however.***
Actually, I'm damned if I can figure out if we won militarily or not. One of the books on the war -- Ricks-"Fiasco" of Hersch "Chain of Command", claims that on the eve of the assault on Baghdad, Saddam Hussein decided not to conduct a scorched earth battle for the city. Instead, he sent the troops home with instructions to conduct a guerilla war. I have no idea if that is true, but whether it is or not, the results seem to have been all he could have hoped for... excepting the part about being aprehended and hung of course.
"Every time I look at you I don't understand why you let the things you did get so out of hand? You'd've managed better if you'd had a plan." Tim Rice, Jesus Christ Superstar. Seems to fit somehow.
***Well, yes you can. I don't recall hearing much from Carthage in the last 2000 years.***
I was suprised to find that Carthage was resettled after the third Punic War and was a fairly important city until it was finally destroyed for good in 698AD (not by the Romans that time). Today, it is a suburb of Tunis http://www.galenfrysinger.com/carthage_tunisia.htm
***would it be ready in time for the upcoming war with iran?***
Naw, I don't think the Iranians can pull together an anti-matter based laser weapon all that quickly, no matter what the Bush administration claims about the threat the Iranians represent.
I'd submit that servers and consumer machines are substantially different. I think that at this point, we have pretty good server architectures.
But I don't think anyone has yet built even a moderately good single user machine OS. Until someone does, we don't know if it can effectively use the same kernel as servers and special purpose desktops. Windows 9 might have eventually evolved into something interesting. But instead, MS elected to produce NT -- which is probably an OK server OS, but is really a mediocre desktop OS. (Takes forever to boot; often even longer to shut down; response to keystrokes is often slow; security is an ongoing problem etc, etc, etc)
But I think the right way to handle this is for experimeters to try to build a decent single user OS based on Open Source Unix. If, after they get their act together -- which will take years -- they really can't do it with the Linux kernel because of fundamental, irresolvable, conflicts, then it's time to talk about forking the kernel
(Note, single user machine architecture surely is not GNOME vs KDE vs Xfce vs Windows Explorer vs OsX. It's what does a consumer want in a computer and how do we deliver it to him or her? e.g. instant ON, instant OFF, secure by design... just works... no suprises... stuff like that).
***Why? Are licenses for the codecs going to cost Dell more for a Linux machine than a Windows one?***
I'd think so. Windows comes with a lot of license fees prepaid by Microsoft, no? Take Windows off the PC, there's no license for stuff like MP3 (I think that's a valid example?).
The license fees are the only really good reason I can think of for people who are going to install Linux buying a PC with Windows. Makes me not feel guilty when I download and install a possibly illegal codec for Linux.
Since we (or Dell) can't just go out a buy a license pack that legally enables all the protocols folks might want to use, Dell is taking the easy way out and telling its customers to go download (probably illegal) codecs. The alternative would be that they would have to negotiate and pay license fees. I'd guess that the people costs and aggrevation of the negotiation probably dwarfs the actual cost of the license fees.
Stupid system. No great wonder that it doesn't work.
***But after installing 7.04 Feisty Faqqer (or whatever it's called) in dual-boot, I discovered that Ubuntu would not support my wireless LAN.
(Please, no ath0 SUDO suggestions- I've tried 'em all; they plainly do not work.)***
Broadcom Wireless Card? Known problem very likely. Broadcom doesn't release technical details on its stupid hardware, so the Linux driver doesn't work with some broadcom chips. The answer is to use a Windows driver via ndiswrapper. Amazingly perhaps, that often works. But you'll probably be even madder by the time you get ndiswrapper working.
If Vista works for you, fine. Just remember that Microsoft clearly considers its interests to be more important than yours. The risk that MS will eventually lock you into MS software and demand periodic ransom payments increases a bit every year. Home machine? Sure, use NT based Windows if you can stand the slow response to keystrokes and mouseclicks and can keep the kids from downloading malware. Business machine? Best be working on an exit strategy.
***And in that 14 years, you still haven't learned to check to see if your hardware is going to be supported in a recent kernel before you buy it?.***
Give us a break. You'd have to be clairvoyant to check what is supported and what isn't. About the best you can do is avoid stuff where there are a gazillion search engine hits about Linux problems. Just because something says that X has linux support doesn't mean the support works.
And even if you find a hardware assmblege that appears to be Linux compatible, odds are that by the time you get the box, one or more components will be different versions than what you've checked out. I've bought groups of 15 consecutive serial number machines where half came with a different (incompatible) hardware configuration than the other half.
***Now we can actually read all those articles that are lined from Slashdot!***
You could have anyway. Registgration is free, and if you get your back up about that, it'll take you about five minutes with Google to find a publically posted login and password that will work.
What's more important maybe is it sounds like they have opened up the archives. Maybe now if you want to find out about how good a job Donald Rumsfeld did in his first term as Defense Secretary in the Ford administration or want to track down details on CDCs suite against IBM, you can do so without spending a fortune.
Of yeah, and now I think we can read the columnists. that's a mixed blessing for sure, but Krugman's economic views are widely respected and it's annoying to have to wait for someone to break copyright and post them elsewhere.
***In all likelyhood that pattern will repeat with Vista***
I'm curious why you think that. Windows 98 and XP both had features that users wanted/needed. For example. USB support in W98, a non-crashing kernel with decent hardware support in XP. I can't see one single feature in Vista that I or most other users do or will give a damn about. The last time Microsoft released an OS with those characteristics was Windows Millenium and it was NOT a success.
I suspect that we will see VERY slow adoption of Vista. Since a lot of ordinary users are fed up with Microsott, I think that Apple's numbers will creep up. After all 3% market share is 50% more than 2%. The big break for Apple will come when/if Best Buy et al start stocking a few models.
As for Linux. Two more years I think. The kernel is fine. CUPS (finally) works more often than not. KDE, GNOME and Xfce are all usable. But there are still a few rough edges. Some hardeare isn't really supported. . Wine is iffy and not for the faint at heart. Where am I going to find a real income tax program next year, etc? At this point I could only recommend Linux to non-gaming geeks who are, IMO, better off with Linux than with Windows. And to people with VERY limited needs. Even the least demanding users may not be able to print unless they have access to a card carrying bit-head who can help.
Here's the link the ITIF web page http://www.innovationpolicy.org/. If you look at their publication list, you will find that they are not simply shills for the voting machine industry. Overall, they look to be conservative but nowhere near as whacky as the christian fundamentalists or the neo-conservatives. On the one hand they seem to have managed to conclude that US productivity gains in recent decades have been fairly distributed -- a pure lunatic view if you look at the evidence. They are in favor of R&D tax credits despite the lack of any evidence that those credits are anything other than a modest raid on the US treatury.
OTOH, they are critical of the patent system and patent litigation. And they think (correctly) that US broadband is a mess. And they are not happy with the new internet radio radio rates. So, I reckon that they can look at some issues with reasonable objectivity.
So, I'd say, read what they have to say and judge their analysis on its merits. It may or may not have any merits.
Thanks for pointing that out. I forgot about it because I knew that unlike AM and FM, you can't run even a flea power TV signal in the US without a license that makes sure you are not on an interfering frequency.
Turns out that wireless microphones and such are actually a licensed service, although hardly anyone bothers to license them. Because they operate at such low power -- 50-100mw (250mw max) -- and are sensitive to interference, themselves, their users apparently take care of keeping them out of the way of TV broadcasters. Here's a link.
From the broadcaster's point of view, wireless mics and such aren't a problem.
That seems to be vastly different from the unlicensed 'wireless' that the White Space Coalition wants to do. FWIW, The wireless mic people are with the broadcasters in opposing the Microsoft/Google/whoever proposal. I haven't been able to dig out what power levels they propose to operate at, but did find that the HP prototype the FCC tested failed miserably at avoiding interference.
I believe the issue is that the Whitespace Coalition proposal is for a relatively high powered unlicensed service that automatically seeks out unused channels. If the usage were licensed, then interference wouldn't be an issue because the FCC would ensure that the channels were in fact non-interfering.
***So, what is going to happen when M$ screws up and starts blocking products that are 'genuine'?***
90% of the Windows will have no problem and will proceed fat dumb and happy through this and other outrages. I imagine many of them will end up a decade from now wondering exactly how it was that Microsoft ended up owning the user's own data and is somehow charging them protection money to get to it.
6% will have no problem and will make a mental note that the really HAVE to get around to working on their exit strategy from Windows.
2% will have no problem but will actually start working on an exit strategy from Windows.
1% will have no problem but will execute their exit strategy. e.g. switch to Linux.
.5% will have a problem and will work out a satisfactory solution with Microsoft
.5% will have a problem and will back up to Windows 98 or W2K.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe.
A bit of history. The ISS started life as "Space Station Freedom" -- an initiative of the Reagan administration started around 1984. It was to cost between 15 and 20 billion dollars and to be in orbit by 1995-1996. It was a US project. Around 1990 it became clear that Space Station Freedom was over weight, over budget, and quite possibly unbuildable. After a gazillion redesigns failed to improve the prospects, the Clinton administration sucked a bunch of suck^H^H^H^H international partners into the scheme, and renamed it the International Space Stations.
So far, the US has put something like $30 to $35 billion dollars into Space Station Freedom and the ISS in direct costs and another $25 billion into space shuttle costs directly related to the ISS. Japan, Canada and the European Space Agency have thrown some money into the pot, but not all that much. Russia -- the other major contributor -- threw in two existing MIR modules and a number of Soyuz flights.
You may think that the international aspect is important. I don't. This fiasco has Made In America stamped all over it except for the relatively inexpensive MIR modules contributed by Russia. In fact, without the US effort, the other participants would probably be basing their efforts on MIR, Russia would have earned some foreign exchange during the troubled years of the 1990s; the world -- primarily the US -- would be maybe $40 billion dollars richer; and the human race would have accomplished pretty much nothing much more cheaply.
***The ISS is an utter waste of time and money.
Agreed
***The original purpose of the ISS was to have something for the Shuttle to visit.***
The ISS (Space Station Freedom) didn't need a mission. We're talking the Reagan administration here. All gut feeling. No coherent planning. Reality need not apply. (Bush 1 and Clinton were quite a bit better. Bush 2 is even worse.)
***The purpose of the Shuttle was to build the station.***
The Shuttle program predates Space Station Freedom by a decade. It was intended to replace the expensive expendable launch vehicles of the 1960s with much less expensive reusable lanuch vehicles. Predicatably the costs were grossly underestimated and the launch frequency of the reusable vehicles was grossly overestimated. 'Taint cheaper. More accurate would be to say that the purpose of the shuttle has become to build and support the ISS. Without the ISS, the Shuttle might actually make some sense as a platform for experiments.
The good news is that the Shuttle is supposed to go away in a couple of years -- 2010 and be replaced by a super-duper low cost, reusable, launch vehicle called Orion in 2014. What are they going to use in the intervening 4 years? I haven't a clue. What will keep Orion from being a typical US manned spaceflight project -- over weight, over budget, late and lame? Again, no clue.
I suppose that you probably don't. So let me help you out. The first problem you are going to encounter is that something like 15-20% of the customers are goijng to take an utterly irrational "It's MY router. How about you clowns let ME determine how to configure it?" attitude The second is that quite possibly a small percentage of them will actually need to run with default passwords. You can't imagine why. Neither can I. But I learned in 1963 or so that anticipating exactly what customers will do with your product is impossible. Gratuitously jamming 'solutions' down people's throats will NOT earn you friends. If you try it, you will discover that many of the folks you have helped out will be quite ungrateful.
It's more like having organized the party, invited all its friends, and paid some of the costs, the US -- having finally figured out that the orbiting junk heap is pretty much worthless scientifically -- is strolling off and leaving the party guests to figure out how to pay the band and the caterer. Unless of course they want to call off the party themselves.
When I installed our first pair of Me machines, one of them promptly ate the Printers and Control Panel icons in My Computer and refused ever to display them again. I finally cobbled together some icons using the appropriate CLSIDs and resolved never to allow another copy of Me through the door.
I'd guess not. Picasa on Linux is a Wine application. Wine, of necessity, has a (yechhh) Registry and Windows API calls to tinker with it. So a registry based attack on the Google web site might very well stand about the same chance as any other complex software under Wine on Linux. Might work, might not. Again, that's a guess. Like 99% of the other posts on Slashdot, this one isn't based on actual knowledge or anything like that.
Maybe in 1780 although I have some doubts about that. Today? The number of technologies that can't be reverse engineered if there is a need to do so is surely very small.
Also, today's marketplace moves at a much faster pace than that of two centuries ago. Simply having a lead of a year or two by virtue of being the inventor conveys much of the advantage that a patent conveyed two centuries ago -- maybe more since patents were largely ignored in practice. Read up on Eli Whitney and the cotton gin. Here's the Wikipedia link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eli_Whitney.
If you haven't got line of sight to a place where you have power and broadband access, your only options may be find out more about cellular or go without.
You might, and I emphasize MIGHT, be able to squeeze more Kb/s out of your modem by using a different ISP. Modem communications work by magic. Here's a link to an article I wrote many years ago about some phone line problems. Probably still largely as correct as it ever was. http://donaldkenney.110mb.com/GLOSSARY/LINEPROB.HTM Maybe it'll help. Fortunately, you can test ISPs without cancelling your old one.
Except of course when the ATF (Treasury Department), Secret Service(DHS), DEA (Justice Department), etc, etc, etc is the federal police department.
***What that means is the CIA is all about getting information from people, be it by attempting to place spys or turning other agents or whatever***
Not really. That's part of their job, but mostly they are supposed to integrate public information (e.g what they read in foreign newspapers and hear on local broadcasts overseas) with information from the other two dozen intelligence agencies into a single, coherent whole.
***The DHS is a good idea at the high levels***
You're certainly entitled to have an opinion on that. But I have my own which is that it is an absolutely terrible idea. It's goal inevitably will be to restrict freedoms (including some purportedly guaranteed in the constitution). It will, I predict, be totally ineffective in making the homeland more secure. Who is going to protect us from the DHS? (Quis custodiet ...)
I don't have any problem with NSA and the intelligence agencies although there are way too many of them. If you ask me, we need more intelligence analysts and fewer unworkable anti-ballistic missile systems.
But I have little use for a central police department. The Secret Service has a relatively decent record (They do counterfitting as well as protection), and ought the be retained. The FBI doesn't have that good a record. Neither does the ATF. The DEA is worse (we lost the war on drugs decades ago. We should find an enemy and surrender). And the DHS is a disaster. We should take a decade and rebuild this mess from scratch. I won't be terribly troubled if we lose 80% of it in the makeover..
If you ask me, we can, with a few adjustments, get by just fine without them.
Of course. BUT, if you look at the rates for C-band which is a la carte you will discover that news, sports, adult material and current entertainment channels are MUCH more expensive than routine Discover channel, TV show rerun, etc channels. Ask not who pays the ridiculous salaries of top athletes -- you and I do when we send our monthly check to DishTV or Comcast -- even if we skip over ESPN when surfing up the dial. So, if all you care about is cheap stuff, the six channels you want plus your basic connect fee may well save a fair amount of money.
My guess is that some customers will pay more, some less. I imagine that the cable companies will fiddle things so that they make a bit more money, not less. But some consumers really will be winners as well.
***Can I sue the grocery store for refusing to sell me one egg?***
I dunno. Is it a licensed Public Utlilty? If it is, what does it's license say about what services it must provide and how it must provide them? Maybe a court or your relevant PUC actually CAN tell them to sell you one egg.
It's possibly a big deal for would be rescuers. The truck with the breathing gear is not necessarily the first vehicle on the scene.
The next version of Python is 3.0/3000 and the first Alpha was released three weeks ago. Scheduled final release is August 2008. I don't believe that it is dramatically faster or has any breakthrough in multicore support, but I'm no expert and I'm often a bit baffled about whether specific Python improvements are a big deal or not. FWIW, here's the wikipedia link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_3
Actually, I'm damned if I can figure out if we won militarily or not. One of the books on the war -- Ricks-"Fiasco" of Hersch "Chain of Command", claims that on the eve of the assault on Baghdad, Saddam Hussein decided not to conduct a scorched earth battle for the city. Instead, he sent the troops home with instructions to conduct a guerilla war. I have no idea if that is true, but whether it is or not, the results seem to have been all he could have hoped for ... excepting the part about being aprehended and hung of course.
"Every time I look at you I don't understand why you let the things you did get so out of hand? You'd've managed better if you'd had a plan." Tim Rice, Jesus Christ Superstar. Seems to fit somehow.
***Well, yes you can. I don't recall hearing much from Carthage in the last 2000 years.***
I was suprised to find that Carthage was resettled after the third Punic War and was a fairly important city until it was finally destroyed for good in 698AD (not by the Romans that time). Today, it is a suburb of Tunis http://www.galenfrysinger.com/carthage_tunisia.htm
Naw, I don't think the Iranians can pull together an anti-matter based laser weapon all that quickly, no matter what the Bush administration claims about the threat the Iranians represent.
But I don't think anyone has yet built even a moderately good single user machine OS. Until someone does, we don't know if it can effectively use the same kernel as servers and special purpose desktops. Windows 9 might have eventually evolved into something interesting. But instead, MS elected to produce NT -- which is probably an OK server OS, but is really a mediocre desktop OS. (Takes forever to boot; often even longer to shut down; response to keystrokes is often slow; security is an ongoing problem etc, etc, etc)
But I think the right way to handle this is for experimeters to try to build a decent single user OS based on Open Source Unix. If, after they get their act together -- which will take years -- they really can't do it with the Linux kernel because of fundamental, irresolvable, conflicts, then it's time to talk about forking the kernel
(Note, single user machine architecture surely is not GNOME vs KDE vs Xfce vs Windows Explorer vs OsX. It's what does a consumer want in a computer and how do we deliver it to him or her? e.g. instant ON, instant OFF, secure by design ... just works ... no suprises ... stuff like that).
but Krugman's economic views are widely respected
you forgot the "/sarcasm" tag there, vtcodger.
What I forgot was to add, "by those who know something about economics."
I'd think so. Windows comes with a lot of license fees prepaid by Microsoft, no? Take Windows off the PC, there's no license for stuff like MP3 (I think that's a valid example?).
The license fees are the only really good reason I can think of for people who are going to install Linux buying a PC with Windows. Makes me not feel guilty when I download and install a possibly illegal codec for Linux.
Since we (or Dell) can't just go out a buy a license pack that legally enables all the protocols folks might want to use, Dell is taking the easy way out and telling its customers to go download (probably illegal) codecs. The alternative would be that they would have to negotiate and pay license fees. I'd guess that the people costs and aggrevation of the negotiation probably dwarfs the actual cost of the license fees.
Stupid system. No great wonder that it doesn't work.
Broadcom Wireless Card? Known problem very likely. Broadcom doesn't release technical details on its stupid hardware, so the Linux driver doesn't work with some broadcom chips. The answer is to use a Windows driver via ndiswrapper. Amazingly perhaps, that often works. But you'll probably be even madder by the time you get ndiswrapper working.
If Vista works for you, fine. Just remember that Microsoft clearly considers its interests to be more important than yours. The risk that MS will eventually lock you into MS software and demand periodic ransom payments increases a bit every year. Home machine? Sure, use NT based Windows if you can stand the slow response to keystrokes and mouseclicks and can keep the kids from downloading malware. Business machine? Best be working on an exit strategy.
Give us a break. You'd have to be clairvoyant to check what is supported and what isn't. About the best you can do is avoid stuff where there are a gazillion search engine hits about Linux problems. Just because something says that X has linux support doesn't mean the support works.
And even if you find a hardware assmblege that appears to be Linux compatible, odds are that by the time you get the box, one or more components will be different versions than what you've checked out. I've bought groups of 15 consecutive serial number machines where half came with a different (incompatible) hardware configuration than the other half.
You could have anyway. Registgration is free, and if you get your back up about that, it'll take you about five minutes with Google to find a publically posted login and password that will work.
What's more important maybe is it sounds like they have opened up the archives. Maybe now if you want to find out about how good a job Donald Rumsfeld did in his first term as Defense Secretary in the Ford administration or want to track down details on CDCs suite against IBM, you can do so without spending a fortune.
Of yeah, and now I think we can read the columnists. that's a mixed blessing for sure, but Krugman's economic views are widely respected and it's annoying to have to wait for someone to break copyright and post them elsewhere.
I'm curious why you think that. Windows 98 and XP both had features that users wanted/needed. For example. USB support in W98, a non-crashing kernel with decent hardware support in XP. I can't see one single feature in Vista that I or most other users do or will give a damn about. The last time Microsoft released an OS with those characteristics was Windows Millenium and it was NOT a success.
I suspect that we will see VERY slow adoption of Vista. Since a lot of ordinary users are fed up with Microsott, I think that Apple's numbers will creep up. After all 3% market share is 50% more than 2%. The big break for Apple will come when/if Best Buy et al start stocking a few models.
As for Linux. Two more years I think. The kernel is fine. CUPS (finally) works more often than not. KDE, GNOME and Xfce are all usable. But there are still a few rough edges. Some hardeare isn't really supported. . Wine is iffy and not for the faint at heart. Where am I going to find a real income tax program next year, etc? At this point I could only recommend Linux to non-gaming geeks who are, IMO, better off with Linux than with Windows. And to people with VERY limited needs. Even the least demanding users may not be able to print unless they have access to a card carrying bit-head who can help.
OTOH, they are critical of the patent system and patent litigation. And they think (correctly) that US broadband is a mess. And they are not happy with the new internet radio radio rates. So, I reckon that they can look at some issues with reasonable objectivity.
So, I'd say, read what they have to say and judge their analysis on its merits. It may or may not have any merits.
Thanks for pointing that out. I forgot about it because I knew that unlike AM and FM, you can't run even a flea power TV signal in the US without a license that makes sure you are not on an interfering frequency.
Turns out that wireless microphones and such are actually a licensed service, although hardly anyone bothers to license them. Because they operate at such low power -- 50-100mw (250mw max) -- and are sensitive to interference, themselves, their users apparently take care of keeping them out of the way of TV broadcasters. Here's a link.
From the broadcaster's point of view, wireless mics and such aren't a problem.
That seems to be vastly different from the unlicensed 'wireless' that the White Space Coalition wants to do. FWIW, The wireless mic people are with the broadcasters in opposing the Microsoft/Google/whoever proposal. I haven't been able to dig out what power levels they propose to operate at, but did find that the HP prototype the FCC tested failed miserably at avoiding interference.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I think not. Here's an article http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=003000AMBS9L
90% of the Windows will have no problem and will proceed fat dumb and happy through this and other outrages. I imagine many of them will end up a decade from now wondering exactly how it was that Microsoft ended up owning the user's own data and is somehow charging them protection money to get to it.
6% will have no problem and will make a mental note that the really HAVE to get around to working on their exit strategy from Windows.
2% will have no problem but will actually start working on an exit strategy from Windows.
1% will have no problem but will execute their exit strategy. e.g. switch to Linux.
.5% will have a problem and will work out a satisfactory solution with Microsoft
.5% will have a problem and will back up to Windows 98 or W2K.