[T]he US government has succesfully tainted even the slightest notion of progressive tax systems (i.e. the largest shoulders carry the largest burden).
Except that in the US, the largest shoulders do carry the largest burden. The bottom 40% of tax payers have an effective income tax rate of between -2.3% and 0.3%. The top 20% earned slightly over half of the income, and paid over 80% of income taxes.
In the case of MS, there seems to alternatives within 10 miles that can support traffic in the '520' went away. Sure it would be a hassle, but not the end of the world. I myself have to make a 5 mile detour right now due to such issues.
FYI, a 10 mile alternate route in Seattle usually means a delay measured in hours. Drive in Seattle's rush hour (which in reality lasts pretty much all day), and see if you can see reasonable alternatives.
I can't believe I'm going to stick up for Microsoft, but here we go. Microsoft is not asking for a "Microsoft custom" bridge. The bridge replacement planning process has drug on for DECADES and the bridge is estimated to have 7 years of useful life remaining. The SR-520 bridge needs to be replaced, everyone knows it, and Microsoft is simply asking that the powers-that-be simply stop dragging their feet on the issue.
These redesigns have been decades in making, while the bridge is hanging by the thread on every major windstorm.
Indeed. The SR-520 bridge is a floating bridge and is nearly 50 years old. It carries far more traffic than it was designed to carry, and in any case, is nearing the end of it's design life.
To put things in perspective, the Hood Canal Bridge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hood_Canal_Bridge) is of similar age, design, construction, and span. The Hood Canal bridge suffered a catastrophic failure during a windstorm in 1979. It was rebuilt and reopened in 1982.
Knowing it is a computer with a crippled OS I have every reasonable expectation that it can run Linux.
You may have an expectation, but it is not reasonable. It's not marketed as a general-purpose device. In fact, it's been designed to specifically to NOT be a general-purpose device. I suspect you knew this when you bought it. There's no more a reasonable expectation that you can run unsupported software on it than there is to run unsupported software on your TV or wristwatch. At least, it's reasonable to expect that if you do make such an attempt you are on your own. It's not reasonable to expect a hardware vendor to support a particular OS or application simply because you wish them to. Buy a fucking piece of hardware that does support it, for fuck's sake.
That being said, Microsoft is not stopping you from putting Linux on it. Your difficulty is in obtaining a suitable mod chip, and your apparent unwillingness to live without Live is. The former is a result of the DCMA, and the second is solely your problem.
Take it up with Congress.
P.S. I'm done with this thread. Feel free to have the last word.
Microsoft is a monopoly with respect to PC OS software. Not game consoles. Microsoft's market share in the game console market is a small fraction of the total market.
Before I broke free on my PC I was forced to use Windows to enjoy the right everyone else has: entertainment software.
Entertainment software is a right? You throw around that word so much as to render it meaningless.
I bought an Xbox 360 to Free my PC. My PC now is Linux and my entertainment has been shifted to a different monopoly corner of my living room. Being a monopoly - collectively, no console maker now offers Freedom (sorry PS3 Linux)
There is NO such thing as a "collective monopoly". Unless you can demonstrate that Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo are in collusion, your statements here are nothing more than hyperbole.
I am still *forced* to agree to their terms to enjoy what everyone else enjoys: entertainment.
More hyperbole. Video games are the only form of entertainment? There do exist free games on free/open platforms. What you're really complaining about here is that you want to use non-free software on a non-free OS on your own terms, not the terms that the software is licensed under. You're also free to run non-free games on a free OS platform using Wine/Cedega, etc. You did say you like to tinker, no?
Before you accuse me of being an industry shill, let me save you the trouble. I'm not. I'm a big fan of free software, and use Linux as my primary work OS. I also recognize that it's not going to be everything to everyone, and that people who produce software have the right to license/sell/give it away under whatever terms they deem appropriate.
Just because I agreed to the contract does not make it enforcable [sic].
It doesn't make it not enforceable either.
Being a monopoly for Microsoft or my asserted "virtual" monopoly for console makers as a group, they are held to higher standards: the onus is on them.
There is no monopoly in the console market. No such onus exists.
I may be wrong
This.
Your desire to turn a gaming console into a general-purpose computing device in no way alters the reality that a gaming console is no such thing. If a GP computing device is what you want, go buy one already, and stop complaining that a device you bought doesn't do what you want, even though you had no reasonable expectation that it would.
And Microsoft didn't your ability to lawfully purchase and use mod chips. The DMCA did. I would suggest working towards getting the DMCA repealed rather than whining on Slashdot about it.
;) I can add feature X but I somewhere lost the right to do so.
No, you didn't. You can still add feature X. What you lost was the ability to connect to Live after hacking your console. Which, by the way, is covered by the terms of the license that you agreed to when you signed up for Live.
I'll take Interstate Commerce Clause for $100, Alex.
I'll see your Interstate Commerce Clause and raise you the 9th and 10th Amendments.
We all (should) know that the ICC hasn't been stretched beyond all rationality and sanity. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn for the torturous logic that governs interpretations of the ICC.
Well, IANAL, but I would guess the very moment I was granted the right to pursue happiness. You see, putting my name on a list to prevent me from purchasing something is an obstruction to my pursuit of happiness, and would thus be unconstitutional, and thus illegal.
A few points -
- The Constitution doesn't grant you the right to pursue happiness. In fact, it grants no rights at all, it recognizes existing rights. You're thinking of the Declaration of Independence, which has zero legal weight.
- You have the right to pursue happiness, not to achieve it. You're free to pursue it all you want, but no one else is required to help you achieve it or not hinder same.
This is completely idiotic. You do realize that if you put a 9.5% tax (for example) on an interest-bearing instrument that pays 2%, that only an imbecile would buy such a thing.
Right?
Downloading torrents (or anything else for that matter) is not speech.
I would also suggest that you actually read the 1st Amendment, particular the part that starts "Congress shall pass no law...". It's not applicable to private parties, only Congress.
So all that needs to happen is a law must be passed. I can't wait to see how many pages it will take to say NO THROTTLING!
It's never that simple. The road to hell is paved in good intentions.
Let's say Lobbyist A wants net neutrality, and finds a sympathetic ear or three in congress. Draft legislation is written by legislator C, and Lobby B gets wind of it. Lobby B is opposed to neutrality, and contacts legislator D, who happens to be bought and paid for by Lobby B. Another bill is written, which on it's face looks like net neutrality, but in fact is not.
The first bill gets a few sponsors, who go out and try to get other legislators to line up behind them. In order to garner votes, the sponsors have to make concessions to other legislators, or add pork to benefit another legislator's state/district. Repeat ad nauseum until enough of the 435 representatives / 100 senators have slipped in their pet project or amendment.
Meanwhile, the second bill is going through the same process. There may be several competing bills, in both the House and the Senate. Usually when you actually get a similar bill to pass both the House and the Senate, there are differences to be hammered out.
What you end up with is a monstrosity of a bill that looks like neither original bill, and nobody is really happy with it - except the districts that ended up being the beneficiaries of all the pork that got packed into the bill on both sides of the capitol building.
Most of the nuclear waste in the US is recyclable. The amount of waste produced for a given amount of power is small compared to coal, pil and other fossil fuels.
I don't recall the GP posting anything about fossil fuels. IMHO, nuclear is superior to fossil fuel energy production. We're in violent agreement on that point.
Thorium reactors produce even less waste than Uranium/Plutonium reactors do and is more common as well. There is also the problem of low carnot efficiency of solar updraft towers relative to other solar thermal designs because of the relatively small thermal gradient. The larger the thermal gradient, the higher the efficiency.
I'm afraid you might have taken "shitload of radioactive waste" a little too literally. GP simply wanted to know what the benefit of this technology was over nuclear. Solar updraft technology appears on it's face to not have the environmental concerns of nuclear power. Whether or not is practical remains to be seen I think.
Regarding the GP's complaint of land use, desert land is practically free. Nuclear reactors have to be sited close to an abundant source of coolant (i.e. water). Appropriate sites for nuclear power generation are substantially more expensive than desert land.
Developers should never, ever, ever have root access to production systems.
While I agree with this sentiment generally, in some cases it's necessary and desirable. Case in point, I am a lead developer, and I also happen to be the final escalation point for production issues. The buck stops with me. I do have root access on the production systems I am ultimately responsible for.
You are correct... I didn't check the link you provided and assumed you were talking about the Sloane DSS (which uses neither photographic plates nor is full-sky).
... The use of Fortran and BASIC is certainly very harmful...
FYP
In all seriousness, the unrestrained use of goto by a novice is much like using a hammer to drive wood screws. It's the wrong tool for the task, and it yields poor results. On the other hand, the master carpenter not only knows to use a screwdriver, he also knows exactly which screwdriver of the dozens in his toolbelt is the correct tool for the job.
It's much the same in C programming - as another poster stated, "continue" and "break" (as well as "if..else") are equivalent to special-purpose goto's. The explicit "goto" is simply more flexible, and when used appropriately, it is not harmful. I can't recall using a goto more than one or two times in my career (outside of BASIC), and it was always for readability/optimization.
Though I haven't touched BASIC in decades (my experience was with AppleSoft BASIC, Commodore BASIC, BASICA and GW-BASIC), I do recall that it was quite impossible to write any kind of non-trivial elegant code in BASIC at that time. I do realize that BASIC has evolved into more structured forms. You can't polish a turd, but I digress.
Dijkstra certainly thought goto was harmful, and I'll not speak ill of the dead. As you say, Wirth is a true believer, a fanatic. At the time when Wirth was developing Pascal, he had a point - the unrestrained use of goto in the BASIC of his day, WAS harmful. For a time around 1982-1985 I drank the kool-aid as well, and embraced Pascal until I realized that Pascal itself should be considered harmful.;-) Modula/2 was only moderately better. We used Pascal because we had no choice - and I abandoned the whole sorry mess of Wirth family languages and never looked back. Suffice it to say that Wirth's opinions on goto hold no weight with me.
The computers we have now are so powerful that we don't usually have to worry about how we squander resources. I see people saying this and I have to shake my head. First of all, poorly written procedures are capable of wasting huge amounts of computing resources. Write a daemon that does I/O polling poorly and watch it waste an immense amount of CPU that could be used to run useful code.
If you're talking about applications for the typical home computer, you may have a point, although not one I would necessarily concede. I work in a commercial environment where we're always struggling with resource contention of one sort or another. We can't squander resources on our database servers where adding CPUs/memory to an existing box or adding another box would result in much higher licensing fees that we'd have to justify to bean counters who don't grok this shit. In our environment, adding another $20K box to the production environment means in reality that we've got to buy at least 4 boxes to account for local redundancy, the disaster recovery site, and our test environment. There's also the indirect costs of adding all of these boxes (our non-production data center is about maxed out in terms of floor load, HVAC capacity, etc etc etc).
The money saved by not buying those boxes pays the salaries of people who can spend a lot of time writing efficient code.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you kidding? Bad mexican food is a perfect growth medium for microscopic life.
*Burp*
[T]he US government has succesfully tainted even the slightest notion of progressive tax systems (i.e. the largest shoulders carry the largest burden).
Except that in the US, the largest shoulders do carry the largest burden. The bottom 40% of tax payers have an effective income tax rate of between -2.3% and 0.3%. The top 20% earned slightly over half of the income, and paid over 80% of income taxes.
What exactly was your point?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_the_United_States
In the case of MS, there seems to alternatives within 10 miles that can support traffic in the '520' went away. Sure it would be a hassle, but not the end of the world. I myself have to make a 5 mile detour right now due to such issues.
FYI, a 10 mile alternate route in Seattle usually means a delay measured in hours. Drive in Seattle's rush hour (which in reality lasts pretty much all day), and see if you can see reasonable alternatives.
I can't believe I'm going to stick up for Microsoft, but here we go. Microsoft is not asking for a "Microsoft custom" bridge. The bridge replacement planning process has drug on for DECADES and the bridge is estimated to have 7 years of useful life remaining. The SR-520 bridge needs to be replaced, everyone knows it, and Microsoft is simply asking that the powers-that-be simply stop dragging their feet on the issue.
At least, it's faster in a well-designed transit system.
If "well-designed" is a synonym for "intended to cause the most amount of discomfort for motorists", then I'd agree with you.
These redesigns have been decades in making, while the bridge is hanging by the thread on every major windstorm.
Indeed. The SR-520 bridge is a floating bridge and is nearly 50 years old. It carries far more traffic than it was designed to carry, and in any case, is nearing the end of it's design life.
To put things in perspective, the Hood Canal Bridge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hood_Canal_Bridge) is of similar age, design, construction, and span. The Hood Canal bridge suffered a catastrophic failure during a windstorm in 1979. It was rebuilt and reopened in 1982.
Knowing it is a computer with a crippled OS I have every reasonable expectation that it can run Linux.
You may have an expectation, but it is not reasonable. It's not marketed as a general-purpose device. In fact, it's been designed to specifically to NOT be a general-purpose device. I suspect you knew this when you bought it. There's no more a reasonable expectation that you can run unsupported software on it than there is to run unsupported software on your TV or wristwatch. At least, it's reasonable to expect that if you do make such an attempt you are on your own . It's not reasonable to expect a hardware vendor to support a particular OS or application simply because you wish them to. Buy a fucking piece of hardware that does support it, for fuck's sake.
That being said, Microsoft is not stopping you from putting Linux on it. Your difficulty is in obtaining a suitable mod chip, and your apparent unwillingness to live without Live is. The former is a result of the DCMA, and the second is solely your problem.
Take it up with Congress.
P.S. I'm done with this thread. Feel free to have the last word.
Microsoft is a convicted monopolist.
Microsoft is a monopoly with respect to PC OS software. Not game consoles. Microsoft's market share in the game console market is a small fraction of the total market.
Before I broke free on my PC I was forced to use Windows to enjoy the right everyone else has: entertainment software.
Entertainment software is a right? You throw around that word so much as to render it meaningless.
I bought an Xbox 360 to Free my PC. My PC now is Linux and my entertainment has been shifted to a different monopoly corner of my living room. Being a monopoly - collectively, no console maker now offers Freedom (sorry PS3 Linux)
There is NO such thing as a "collective monopoly". Unless you can demonstrate that Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo are in collusion, your statements here are nothing more than hyperbole.
I am still *forced* to agree to their terms to enjoy what everyone else enjoys: entertainment.
More hyperbole. Video games are the only form of entertainment? There do exist free games on free/open platforms. What you're really complaining about here is that you want to use non-free software on a non-free OS on your own terms, not the terms that the software is licensed under. You're also free to run non-free games on a free OS platform using Wine/Cedega, etc. You did say you like to tinker, no?
Before you accuse me of being an industry shill, let me save you the trouble. I'm not. I'm a big fan of free software, and use Linux as my primary work OS. I also recognize that it's not going to be everything to everyone, and that people who produce software have the right to license/sell/give it away under whatever terms they deem appropriate.
Just because I agreed to the contract does not make it enforcable [sic].
It doesn't make it not enforceable either.
Being a monopoly for Microsoft or my asserted "virtual" monopoly for console makers as a group, they are held to higher standards: the onus is on them.
There is no monopoly in the console market. No such onus exists.
I may be wrong
This.
Your desire to turn a gaming console into a general-purpose computing device in no way alters the reality that a gaming console is no such thing. If a GP computing device is what you want, go buy one already, and stop complaining that a device you bought doesn't do what you want, even though you had no reasonable expectation that it would.
And Microsoft didn't your ability to lawfully purchase and use mod chips. The DMCA did. I would suggest working towards getting the DMCA repealed rather than whining on Slashdot about it.
;) I can add feature X but I somewhere lost the right to do so.
No, you didn't. You can still add feature X. What you lost was the ability to connect to Live after hacking your console. Which, by the way, is covered by the terms of the license that you agreed to when you signed up for Live.
All I'm asking for is a menu option: "Boot other OS"
Let's get this straight.
You bought a product that does not have feature X. It's not advertised to have feature X. It's well known that it does not have feature X.
And yet, you want the government to step in and mandate that Microsoft provide feature X?
I think it's time you adjusted your expectations.
P.S. Your sig is hilarious considering the line you're taking here.
I'll take Interstate Commerce Clause for $100, Alex.
I'll see your Interstate Commerce Clause and raise you the 9th and 10th Amendments.
We all (should) know that the ICC hasn't been stretched beyond all rationality and sanity. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn for the torturous logic that governs interpretations of the ICC.
The Constitution grants the Federal Government the right to pass laws to deal with some things not specifically addressed in the Constitution
So, in reality, what you're saying is that the Constitution provides for no limits whatsoever on Federal power.
I don't think so, Dave.
Which "some things" are you referring to, and which clauses enable them?
Well, IANAL, but I would guess the very moment I was granted the right to pursue happiness. You see, putting my name on a list to prevent me from purchasing something is an obstruction to my pursuit of happiness, and would thus be unconstitutional, and thus illegal.
A few points -
- The Constitution doesn't grant you the right to pursue happiness. In fact, it grants no rights at all, it recognizes existing rights. You're thinking of the Declaration of Independence, which has zero legal weight.
- You have the right to pursue happiness, not to achieve it. You're free to pursue it all you want, but no one else is required to help you achieve it or not hinder same.
P.S. It's obvious that YANAL.
This is completely idiotic. You do realize that if you put a 9.5% tax (for example) on an interest-bearing instrument that pays 2%, that only an imbecile would buy such a thing. Right?
why are you people still using xp?
Because -
a) I already own a license
b) It suits my needs
c) It's what my employer requires me to have on my at-home on-call PC. Since they're footing the bill, I can hardly complain. See a) and b) above.
Downloading torrents (or anything else for that matter) is not speech. I would also suggest that you actually read the 1st Amendment, particular the part that starts "Congress shall pass no law...". It's not applicable to private parties, only Congress.
So all that needs to happen is a law must be passed. I can't wait to see how many pages it will take to say NO THROTTLING!
It's never that simple. The road to hell is paved in good intentions.
Let's say Lobbyist A wants net neutrality, and finds a sympathetic ear or three in congress. Draft legislation is written by legislator C, and Lobby B gets wind of it. Lobby B is opposed to neutrality, and contacts legislator D, who happens to be bought and paid for by Lobby B. Another bill is written, which on it's face looks like net neutrality, but in fact is not.
The first bill gets a few sponsors, who go out and try to get other legislators to line up behind them. In order to garner votes, the sponsors have to make concessions to other legislators, or add pork to benefit another legislator's state/district. Repeat ad nauseum until enough of the 435 representatives / 100 senators have slipped in their pet project or amendment.
Meanwhile, the second bill is going through the same process. There may be several competing bills, in both the House and the Senate. Usually when you actually get a similar bill to pass both the House and the Senate, there are differences to be hammered out.
What you end up with is a monstrosity of a bill that looks like neither original bill, and nobody is really happy with it - except the districts that ended up being the beneficiaries of all the pork that got packed into the bill on both sides of the capitol building.
Most of the nuclear waste in the US is recyclable. The amount of waste produced for a given amount of power is small compared to coal, pil and other fossil fuels.
I don't recall the GP posting anything about fossil fuels. IMHO, nuclear is superior to fossil fuel energy production. We're in violent agreement on that point.
Thorium reactors produce even less waste than Uranium/Plutonium reactors do and is more common as well. There is also the problem of low carnot efficiency of solar updraft towers relative to other solar thermal designs because of the relatively small thermal gradient. The larger the thermal gradient, the higher the efficiency.
I'm afraid you might have taken "shitload of radioactive waste" a little too literally. GP simply wanted to know what the benefit of this technology was over nuclear. Solar updraft technology appears on it's face to not have the environmental concerns of nuclear power. Whether or not is practical remains to be seen I think. Regarding the GP's complaint of land use, desert land is practically free. Nuclear reactors have to be sited close to an abundant source of coolant (i.e. water). Appropriate sites for nuclear power generation are substantially more expensive than desert land.
It doesn't generate a shitload of radioactive waste, perhaps?
Developers should never, ever, ever have root access to production systems.
While I agree with this sentiment generally, in some cases it's necessary and desirable. Case in point, I am a lead developer, and I also happen to be the final escalation point for production issues. The buck stops with me. I do have root access on the production systems I am ultimately responsible for.
You are correct... I didn't check the link you provided and assumed you were talking about the Sloane DSS (which uses neither photographic plates nor is full-sky).
It's the only collection of photographic plates that covers both hemispheres. Despite DSS, this data is extremely important to astronomical research.
... The use of Fortran and BASIC is certainly very harmfulFYP
In all seriousness, the unrestrained use of goto by a novice is much like using a hammer to drive wood screws. It's the wrong tool for the task, and it yields poor results. On the other hand, the master carpenter not only knows to use a screwdriver, he also knows exactly which screwdriver of the dozens in his toolbelt is the correct tool for the job.
It's much the same in C programming - as another poster stated, "continue" and "break" (as well as "if..else") are equivalent to special-purpose goto's. The explicit "goto" is simply more flexible, and when used appropriately, it is not harmful. I can't recall using a goto more than one or two times in my career (outside of BASIC), and it was always for readability/optimization.
Though I haven't touched BASIC in decades (my experience was with AppleSoft BASIC, Commodore BASIC, BASICA and GW-BASIC), I do recall that it was quite impossible to write any kind of non-trivial elegant code in BASIC at that time. I do realize that BASIC has evolved into more structured forms. You can't polish a turd, but I digress.
Dijkstra certainly thought goto was harmful, and I'll not speak ill of the dead. As you say, Wirth is a true believer, a fanatic. At the time when Wirth was developing Pascal, he had a point - the unrestrained use of goto in the BASIC of his day, WAS harmful. For a time around 1982-1985 I drank the kool-aid as well, and embraced Pascal until I realized that Pascal itself should be considered harmful.
Why was the parent modded funny? His toolbox, minus EMACS, plus vim and cscope and some various libraries covers 95% of my needs.
If you're talking about applications for the typical home computer, you may have a point, although not one I would necessarily concede. I work in a commercial environment where we're always struggling with resource contention of one sort or another. We can't squander resources on our database servers where adding CPUs/memory to an existing box or adding another box would result in much higher licensing fees that we'd have to justify to bean counters who don't grok this shit. In our environment, adding another $20K box to the production environment means in reality that we've got to buy at least 4 boxes to account for local redundancy, the disaster recovery site, and our test environment. There's also the indirect costs of adding all of these boxes (our non-production data center is about maxed out in terms of floor load, HVAC capacity, etc etc etc).
The money saved by not buying those boxes pays the salaries of people who can spend a lot of time writing efficient code.