The unfortunate truth about automation is that it forces people to get an education, so they can compete in the job market, and in a "free" society, it should not be required to get an education unless you want one. While I do think everyone should get an education, it's not my place or the place of the government or society to override the individual's right to decide.
That's all fine and good for people to choose not to get an education - but I have no patience for anyone who makes that choice then later comes back and says "But I can't get a job! Society should either give me a job or give me a welfare check." If you're going to give people the responsibility to make that choice themselves (a position with which I agree wholeheartedly), you should also make them responsible for the outcome of that choice.
It would take a generation of societal pain (I.E. lots of homelessness and strife) but our society would be better off for it - people would choose education because they recognized its benefits, not because the government-nanny said so.
Because a guy who doesn't mind using modern technology will happily pull a.22 caliber pistol and put a bullet between his eyes so that he can survive instead of the environmentalist.
Nah, I'd use at least a.40 - in fact, probably a.45... *cackle*
I agree with the majority of your post, except for one fine, but crucial point:
Anything so obvious at the time of patent submission should be thrown out by the patent office.
No offense, but I have to call bullshit on that one. I know a couple people who work over there, and while there is the occasional patent examiner who really cares about what they do, you wouldn't believe some of the stories of people just approving patents to make their quotas. How do you think Amazon got "one-click" (non-obvious, my ass!)?
Good post, and useful... wish I had mod points. Is Logic (et al) native yet or are they running Rosetta?
...I'm looking forward to having one machine where I can run ProTools and/or Logic, then "once in a while" load up a DX plugin or virtual instrument on a BootCamp session. Fun times!
One example is the Hubsborough Gazette, which famously spread confusion on the evening of March 31st, 2004 (EST) when an article claiming that aliens have attacked the Whitehouse appeared on their website. Despite the seemingly obvious nature of the hoax, many believed it and called the authorities or local clergery for guidance.
Is that anything like establishing a comprehensive April Fool's Day strateegery?
Note: the following is not intended to troll or tick anyone off. Just a possible alternative explanation...
It seems useful to evaluate the possibility that the reason OSS has such a difficult time winning acceptance in some quarters has to do with its communist image and development approach. The U.S. is, obviously, very capitalist in nature and culture, even in the government, and I have to wonder if that has something to do with this issue.
Capitalists tend to be very comfortable with the notion of "You get what you pay for." When you try to impress upon them the idea that there's all this great software out there, and it's free! they start to wonder to themselves, "Why is it free? What's wrong with it?" I don't think OSS advocates have done a great job of answering this question, or necessarily even of asking the question of themselves - Why is it free? (A host of reasons, some good, some not-so-good)...What is wrong with it? (Many things, starting with frequently difficult user interfaces - note I use OSS myself regularly, but only the most ardent fanboy will refuse to acknowledge that it does have its problems and limitations, though it may still be preferable to proprietary software in some or even many cases)
Remember that techies are rarely the ones making decisions about these sorts of issues - instead it is mostly executives, marketers, managers, etc., who may not be willing or capable to make a judgment based upon the technical merits. When they see something free, their natural inclination may be suspicion...
Wrong. Neoconservative ideas are readily available in political and media circles, though the notion that they dominate is absolutely laughable. True classical conservative, or libertarian, thought is all too difficult to locate anymore.
When I lived in the SF Bay area, even Neocon ideas were, as you put it, endangered.
People talk about being socially liberal and fiscally conservative and it makes me laugh. To quote Merriam-Webster:
a : marked by generosity : OPENHANDED b : given or provided in a generous and openhanded way
There are obviously other meanings, but traditionally, the word "liberal" refers to "generous" amounts of government involvement in things. This is why people who describe themselves as socially liberal while advocating freedom in social choices make me laugh.
RANT ALERT
Personally I believe that my preference for limited involvement of government in our day-to-day lives (i.e., a referee government, instead of the nanny state) is quite consistent, regardless of the subject matter - the government does not have any business involving itself in our day-to-day lives unless it is absolutely necessary due to crimes being committed against us or the need for collective defense of country. Where I diverge from the more extreme elements of the libertarian point of view is my belief that the government does have a moderate role in ensuring a certain basic level of community infrastructure (e.g. roads), environmental protections, (very) limited regulation of the free markets to ensure efficiency, and a few other specific roles. Ok, that's enough for now... otherwise this will turn into a 20-page, three-hours-to-write post.:-P
/rant
Mod Scurvy's post up. It's about time more people understood that "conservative" is not a swear word. I suspect a whole lot more of you slashdotters lean for more libertarian than you realize. That has been the case frequently over conversations I've had with a number of liberal friends, once they actually started listening to my arguments instead of blindly reacting against the conservative bogeyman.
Incidentally, Cato is far more pragmatic and realistic than the Libertarian party. I know a number of folks who are trying to make the LP more Cato-like in its platform (as opposed to anarcho-capitalist), and if they are successful, the LP could very well become an intriguing, influential 3rd party in this country. Keep an eye on this, as it may turn out to be a tremendous way to escape the current domination of the Democans and the Republicrats.
One such individual is the guy I voted for Congress in 2004 when I used to live in Silicon Valley. Interesting fellow, software engineer at Yahoo. Holds a set of viewpoints broadly compatible with my own, despite a few disagreements over specifics. This is the guy who bet voters $2 that they could read his website and still decide they didn't want to vote for him or somesuch. He's pretty active in the Libertarian Party of CA trying to get them to come up with a platform that's somewhat practical, as opposed to purely ideological and idealistic. His website (a great read): http://marketliberal.org/ - go check it out.
...honest left wing-liberals will also give this report due consideration because they give EVERYTHING due consideration no matter how meritless (or merited).
Then I've met terribly few honest left-wing liberals, I'm sorry to say.... and I lived in the SF Bay Area for over two years, too.
I feel your pain, but allow me to point out the following info:
The last time I bought a CPU, I worked for an Intel Product Dealer and got a 50%-off deal on a P4/3.0GHz Northwood with an 800MHz FSB. That was in the Fall of 2004. That machine obviously isn't the fastest thing in the world anymore, but it will still be solid for a good year or two more before I really need to consider upgrading. I'm not a gamer but I do record multichannel hidef audio on my PC.
The reason I point this out is to provide evidence for the following contention: In my opinion, the past couple of years have shown that getting in at the right time is more important than it used to be. Back in the late 90's, it was more a case of "just buy whatever's at your price point when you need a computer", because you knew it was going to be heinously obsolete after two to three (maybe you could stretch it to four) years.
Nowadays though, single-threaded execution speed is increasing at a relatively slow pace (at least in comparison to the pace at which it increased back in those days). The CPU manufacturers are focusing on improving multithreaded performance, adding multiple cores and such. This is a boon to code that is suitably multithreaded, as it will provide a speed increase of 50%-80% or more (100% isn't really possible because the dual core machines share memory-subsystem bandwidth, whether it's cache or RAM) in really well-written multithreaded code.
However, the software hasn't kept up, particularly in the case of games - most games are still primarily single-threaded. Unfortunately writing good multithreaded code is extremely difficult, and debugging it even more so. The situation is different in server-land: the types of code for processing databases, serving webpages, etc. is well-suited for multithreading and has been written this way for years, especially in *NIX-world.
Therefore, I would simply like to point out that the marginal improvement in performance from adding more cores will decrease over time - i.e., a four-core machine might improve performance 25%-50% over a dual-core machine instead of another 50%-80%, because there are just that many fewer situations in which you can take advantage of the additional resources.
The overall point I'm trying to make is, I believe the introduction of Conroe to be one of those "getting in now is good timing" sorts of situations, due to the confluence of factors I pointed out - recent introduction of a significant architectural improvement, reduced power consumption, dual-core, good platform, etc... Note that this is contingent upon the "real" benchmarks proving to be as impressive as the ones released in this article. If those prove to be false, all bets are off...
***Also note that the discussion of percentage-speed-ups is highly dependent upon the type of code and suitability for multithreading - code that is completely single-threaded will show 0% performance improvement when moving from a single-core cpu to a dual-core cpu, with the same architecture.
Slashdot Mirror
That's all fine and good for people to choose not to get an education - but I have no patience for anyone who makes that choice then later comes back and says "But I can't get a job! Society should either give me a job or give me a welfare check." If you're going to give people the responsibility to make that choice themselves (a position with which I agree wholeheartedly), you should also make them responsible for the outcome of that choice.
It would take a generation of societal pain (I.E. lots of homelessness and strife) but our society would be better off for it - people would choose education because they recognized its benefits, not because the government-nanny said so.
Nah, I'd use at least a .40 - in fact, probably a .45... *cackle*
Also, recent reports indicate that the Smug Bastard (tm) will enjoy the smell of his own farts.
*PTHHTHTPPBTHTHP* ... *sniff*... "AHHhhhhh...."
Anything so obvious at the time of patent submission should be thrown out by the patent office.
No offense, but I have to call bullshit on that one. I know a couple people who work over there, and while there is the occasional patent examiner who really cares about what they do, you wouldn't believe some of the stories of people just approving patents to make their quotas. How do you think Amazon got "one-click" (non-obvious, my ass!)?
...I'm looking forward to having one machine where I can run ProTools and/or Logic, then "once in a while" load up a DX plugin or virtual instrument on a BootCamp session. Fun times!
Is that anything like establishing a comprehensive April Fool's Day strateegery?
...Heckuva job there, kinx-ie...
:-D
It seems useful to evaluate the possibility that the reason OSS has such a difficult time winning acceptance in some quarters has to do with its communist image and development approach. The U.S. is, obviously, very capitalist in nature and culture, even in the government, and I have to wonder if that has something to do with this issue.
Capitalists tend to be very comfortable with the notion of "You get what you pay for." When you try to impress upon them the idea that there's all this great software out there, and it's free! they start to wonder to themselves, "Why is it free? What's wrong with it?" I don't think OSS advocates have done a great job of answering this question, or necessarily even of asking the question of themselves - Why is it free? (A host of reasons, some good, some not-so-good) ...What is wrong with it? (Many things, starting with frequently difficult user interfaces - note I use OSS myself regularly, but only the most ardent fanboy will refuse to acknowledge that it does have its problems and limitations, though it may still be preferable to proprietary software in some or even many cases)
Remember that techies are rarely the ones making decisions about these sorts of issues - instead it is mostly executives, marketers, managers, etc., who may not be willing or capable to make a judgment based upon the technical merits. When they see something free, their natural inclination may be suspicion...
Wrong. Neoconservative ideas are readily available in political and media circles, though the notion that they dominate is absolutely laughable. True classical conservative, or libertarian, thought is all too difficult to locate anymore.
When I lived in the SF Bay area, even Neocon ideas were, as you put it, endangered.
People talk about being socially liberal and fiscally conservative and it makes me laugh. To quote Merriam-Webster:
a : marked by generosity : OPENHANDED b : given or provided in a generous and openhanded way
There are obviously other meanings, but traditionally, the word "liberal" refers to "generous" amounts of government involvement in things. This is why people who describe themselves as socially liberal while advocating freedom in social choices make me laugh.
RANT ALERT :-P
Personally I believe that my preference for limited involvement of government in our day-to-day lives (i.e., a referee government, instead of the nanny state) is quite consistent, regardless of the subject matter - the government does not have any business involving itself in our day-to-day lives unless it is absolutely necessary due to crimes being committed against us or the need for collective defense of country. Where I diverge from the more extreme elements of the libertarian point of view is my belief that the government does have a moderate role in ensuring a certain basic level of community infrastructure (e.g. roads), environmental protections, (very) limited regulation of the free markets to ensure efficiency, and a few other specific roles. Ok, that's enough for now... otherwise this will turn into a 20-page, three-hours-to-write post.
/rant
Mod this post up. Excellent explanation of what is often referred to as the "Nolan Chart", in honor of the Libertarian Party's founder, David Nolan...
Incidentally, Cato is far more pragmatic and realistic than the Libertarian party. I know a number of folks who are trying to make the LP more Cato-like in its platform (as opposed to anarcho-capitalist), and if they are successful, the LP could very well become an intriguing, influential 3rd party in this country. Keep an eye on this, as it may turn out to be a tremendous way to escape the current domination of the Democans and the Republicrats.
One such individual is the guy I voted for Congress in 2004 when I used to live in Silicon Valley. Interesting fellow, software engineer at Yahoo. Holds a set of viewpoints broadly compatible with my own, despite a few disagreements over specifics. This is the guy who bet voters $2 that they could read his website and still decide they didn't want to vote for him or somesuch. He's pretty active in the Libertarian Party of CA trying to get them to come up with a platform that's somewhat practical, as opposed to purely ideological and idealistic. His website (a great read): http://marketliberal.org/ - go check it out.
Then I've met terribly few honest left-wing liberals, I'm sorry to say.... and I lived in the SF Bay Area for over two years, too.
I wish I could say differently... :-(
The last time I bought a CPU, I worked for an Intel Product Dealer and got a 50%-off deal on a P4/3.0GHz Northwood with an 800MHz FSB. That was in the Fall of 2004. That machine obviously isn't the fastest thing in the world anymore, but it will still be solid for a good year or two more before I really need to consider upgrading. I'm not a gamer but I do record multichannel hidef audio on my PC.
The reason I point this out is to provide evidence for the following contention: In my opinion, the past couple of years have shown that getting in at the right time is more important than it used to be. Back in the late 90's, it was more a case of "just buy whatever's at your price point when you need a computer", because you knew it was going to be heinously obsolete after two to three (maybe you could stretch it to four) years.
Nowadays though, single-threaded execution speed is increasing at a relatively slow pace (at least in comparison to the pace at which it increased back in those days). The CPU manufacturers are focusing on improving multithreaded performance, adding multiple cores and such. This is a boon to code that is suitably multithreaded, as it will provide a speed increase of 50%-80% or more (100% isn't really possible because the dual core machines share memory-subsystem bandwidth, whether it's cache or RAM) in really well-written multithreaded code.
However, the software hasn't kept up, particularly in the case of games - most games are still primarily single-threaded. Unfortunately writing good multithreaded code is extremely difficult, and debugging it even more so. The situation is different in server-land: the types of code for processing databases, serving webpages, etc. is well-suited for multithreading and has been written this way for years, especially in *NIX-world.
Therefore, I would simply like to point out that the marginal improvement in performance from adding more cores will decrease over time - i.e., a four-core machine might improve performance 25%-50% over a dual-core machine instead of another 50%-80%, because there are just that many fewer situations in which you can take advantage of the additional resources.
The overall point I'm trying to make is, I believe the introduction of Conroe to be one of those "getting in now is good timing" sorts of situations, due to the confluence of factors I pointed out - recent introduction of a significant architectural improvement, reduced power consumption, dual-core, good platform, etc... Note that this is contingent upon the "real" benchmarks proving to be as impressive as the ones released in this article. If those prove to be false, all bets are off... ***Also note that the discussion of percentage-speed-ups is highly dependent upon the type of code and suitability for multithreading - code that is completely single-threaded will show 0% performance improvement when moving from a single-core cpu to a dual-core cpu, with the same architecture.