They're still huge. I hated it until I got a 19" 1680x1020 LCD. Now KDE looks perfect and XP looks tiny. Everything about KDE is geared for large displays. It's actually very nice if you have one.
SATA drives are commonly specified with an unrecoverable read error rate (URE) of 10^14. Which means that once every 100,000,000,000,000 bits, the disk will very politely tell you that, so sorry, but I really, truly can't read that sector back to you.
...
Disk drive capacities double every 18-24 months. We have 1 TB drives now, and in 2009 we'll have 2 TB drives.
With a 7 drive RAID 5 disk failure, you'll have 6 remaining 2 TB drives. As the RAID controller is busily reading through those 6 disks to reconstruct the data from the failed drive, it is almost certain it will see an URE. So the read fails. And when that happens, you are one unhappy camper. The message "we can't read this RAID volume" travels up the chain of command until an error message is presented on the screen. 12 TB of your carefully protected - you thought! - data is gone. Oh, you didn't back it up to tape? Bummer!
Um, no. If your server code balks at someone exceeding 75mph on foot, it will do it whether or not it's open source. The client has no control over the server's physics checks. The problem is that those checks don't exist.
There's something particular about video game blood that mothers can't stand. Go find some 10-12 year old kids and ask them. There's little explanation for it, but it's true.
1. First and foremost, people feel comfortable with it from the past. 2. It has a lot of apps. 3. Hardware tends to work well with it. 4. It comes preinstalled on computers. 5. It has very, very nice dev tools. 6. Backwards compatibility 7. It provides working management dialogs you can figure out yourself. 8. Networking just works.
It's all based on inertia. MS achieved critical mass and maintained it through good support and marketing. They just suffer terribly for corporate bloat and bad security practices of the past which they can't just ditch because of 6.
Linux could take a few pages from 5, 7, and 8. Seriously, I'm a fairly technical guy and I cannot get Kubuntu 8.10's file sharing working. I find myself fiddling around with multiple file sharing and Samba control widgets that partially, but not completely, overlap in purpose. Management dialogs (I'm looking at KDE4's Sharing and Nepomuk!) that don't affect reality in any way are very, very bad for user perception.
Radioshack still carries bits and pieces connected with A/V, but nothing to do with actual ham radio, which I thought was the whole idea. There's a local place here called A-Gem Supply that carries EVERYTHING though. It's the old "we have it if we can find it" type thing. They had some exotic S-video+RCA audio to Cat5 converters I needed, as well as a dishwasher door switch. The switch was listed at ~$30 or so from the mfg., but the A-Gem old geezer found one that worked in a pile and charged ~$2. I had to laugh when all the A/V supply and alarm companies in the region all suggested calling A-Gem when I was searching for that s-video adapter. Seriously, every single one I called besides the chain stores.
Places like that are indispensable. I'm afraid they might go the way of the local hardware store where the proprietor could actually give you advice.
I'd like to point out that the Old Testament does too. And for those who want a citation:
Genesis 18-19 (OT) Romans 1 (NT)
Romans 1:25-32 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. 26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: 27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. 28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; 29 Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, 30 Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, 31 Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: 32 Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.
So what if some people lose their TV program. If they're addicted to TV, logic would hold that they would have seen the DTV announcements plastered all over TV broadcasts (and even the TV's themselves). If not, well, maybe this will be a good splash of reality. A deadline is a deadline. This one was quite generous. I was almost ready to clap for government achieving something on schedule, and now Obama and you people show up. TV isn't like air or water. Nobody's going to keel over dead if they miss their soap opera. If they do, they deserved it.
Now let's hold a pity-party for the companies that were planning to introduce other wireless services after the switchover. They'll loose money because it was delayed!
Ok, I confess I'm being extremely caustic. But really, this is silly. We made a deadline and spent millions of taxpayer's dollars advertising it. Don't go messing it all up at the last minute.
I'm not a coder, but I am an avid KDE4 user. I'm sure it's technically possible to port all of GNOME's good stuff to use KDE's libs, but are the people involved willing to work together? I don't know enough background and history in the long GNOME vs KDE thing to know if the emotional people behind them could be merged. Is there any possibility of that happening?
1) I disagree about the Republicans doing well. I'm of the opinion that modern Republicans are just go-slow socialists, and modern Democrats are go-fast socialists. It didn't use to be this way, but I think both parties are catering to an ignorant populace that just wants grain out of the public treasury. They just differ on moral issues.
2) Maybe so, but I don't think it's up to the government to redistribute it. I think that should be left to the private sector.
I agree that the government could invest wisely, but looking at the current balance sheets convinces me that that won't happen. Building roads and other infrastructure is a good use of money, but I'm afraid most of the Keynesian boosters will go towards social programs which won't return the investment.
1) I'm not sure what these conditions are.
2) If this money is fiat, doesn't that mean it's creating inflation?
3) Ok, I'll give you that, but for every fiscal Clinton there are a dozen fiscal Obamas. The balance is way, way out, and I don't think our population has it in them correct it and shun addictive spending.
This stimulus thing is called Keynesian economics. Here's a crash course on Keynesian economics. Keynes says that the government should cut taxes and increase spending during a recession and cut spending and increase taxes during an expansion.
Keynes used the analogy of pump priming to explain government stimulating of the economy. During good economic times, money is set aside to be spent during a recession, much like a farmer would prime a pump with a bucket of water and then refill the bucket. The problem with this is that there is no money on reserve. None. Nada.
The multiplier you speak of is called the marginal propensity to consume (MPC). You are correct that the money will be spent and respent to create an increase in the national income. But where does the money come from?
In order for the government to prime, stimulate or bail out anything with money, it must do one of three things: 1) Print money 2) Tax 3) Borrow Printing creates inflation and increasing taxes is political suicide. Therefore, the government takes #3. They borrow money. Now, this borrowing is very destructive for several reasons.
For one thing, borrowing is addictive. It seems like politicians are in a race to the bottom. Whoever promises to spend the most wins (similar to the fiscal decline of Rome). Raising taxes to pay the debt is political suicide (see Walter Mondale).
Second, government borrowing has an effect known as crowding out. The money that the government borrows comes from a bank. Where does the bank get the money? From your deposits. When the government borrows money, the bank can no longer lend it out to a business. The more the government borrows, the less is left for the private sector. Crowding out is when the government borrows such a huge chunk of the money supply that the private sector can't operate efficiently. (Coming soon to a country near you!)
The government also borrows from foreign governments, which is even worse. I won't go into that here.
When the government creates a job, it create busywork. When the borrowed money runs out, the job disappears and national debt is left. If the government had not borrowed that money, a business would have borrowed it. When a business borrows money, it creates real jobs and factories that will last after the money runs out and the debt is repaid. Businesses create real economic growth as opposed to the cash-burning jobs government creates.
Let's look at another possibility. Suppose the government raises taxes. The government takes money and spends it through the MPC to create income. That's fine and dandy, but the MPC also applies to the private sector. If the money had not been taxed, it would have been spent or saved. If the money were spent, the MPC would have applied to it just the same. If it were saved, it would have been lent by the bank to a business which would spend it through the MPC. The net effect is nothing but bureaucratic overhead.
There are three fundamental problems with Keynesian economics. 1. It assumes money in a bank is idle. That's nonsense. 2. It ignores the fact that money the government spends came from somewhere else, where it would have been spent more efficiently. 3. It ignores the fact that nobody ever increases taxes and cuts spending.
Keynes was wrong. Plain and simple. If we want to fix the economy, we must allow insolvent businesses (Ford, GM, etc.) to fail, cut taxes and spending, and shrink the government. Obama's charisma will never invalidate Adam Smith or Karl Menger. There's no school like the old school.
Nope. That's a misconception perpetrated by public education. Before the current education system, local towns would hire their own teachers and build their own schoolhouse. It produced people who wrote works like the Federalist Papers and the Constitution. Go read the Federalist Papers, which were designed to convince the New England farmer to accept the brand-new Constitution. I don't think most college students could read them aloud without stumbling, let alone understand them.
To the People of the State of New York:
AFTER an unequivocal experience of the inefficiency of the subsisting federal government, you are called upon to deliberate on a new Constitution for the United States of America. The subject speaks its own importance; comprehending in its consequences nothing less than the existence of the UNION, the safety and welfare of the parts of which it is composed, the fate of an empire in many respects the most interesting in the world. It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force. If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis at which we are arrived may with propriety be regarded as the era in which that decision is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind. [truncated]
-FEDERALIST. No. 1
General Introduction For the Independent Journal. Alexander Hamilton
That word "unfortunate" is called innuendo, and it reveals a bias on the part of the article writer. Writers use words like that to imply that something is good or bad without backing it up. Slashdot is an excellent place to practice bias detection. I probably tag every third science article 'bias'.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, at least KDE's choosing MyBB finally got it GPL'ed. I'm so happy to have MyBB GPL'ed that I'll just accept this as collateral damage.
They're still huge. I hated it until I got a 19" 1680x1020 LCD. Now KDE looks perfect and XP looks tiny. Everything about KDE is geared for large displays. It's actually very nice if you have one.
There's another problem. Take a look at this excellent article:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/storage/?p=162
SATA drives are commonly specified with an unrecoverable read error rate (URE) of 10^14. Which means that once every 100,000,000,000,000 bits, the disk will very politely tell you that, so sorry, but I really, truly can't read that sector back to you.
...
Disk drive capacities double every 18-24 months. We have 1 TB drives now, and in 2009 we'll have 2 TB drives.
With a 7 drive RAID 5 disk failure, you'll have 6 remaining 2 TB drives. As the RAID controller is busily reading through those 6 disks to reconstruct the data from the failed drive, it is almost certain it will see an URE. So the read fails. And when that happens, you are one unhappy camper. The message "we can't read this RAID volume" travels up the chain of command until an error message is presented on the screen. 12 TB of your carefully protected - you thought! - data is gone. Oh, you didn't back it up to tape? Bummer!
Um, no. If your server code balks at someone exceeding 75mph on foot, it will do it whether or not it's open source. The client has no control over the server's physics checks. The problem is that those checks don't exist.
There's something particular about video game blood that mothers can't stand. Go find some 10-12 year old kids and ask them. There's little explanation for it, but it's true.
Windows is successful because:
1. First and foremost, people feel comfortable with it from the past.
2. It has a lot of apps.
3. Hardware tends to work well with it.
4. It comes preinstalled on computers.
5. It has very, very nice dev tools.
6. Backwards compatibility
7. It provides working management dialogs you can figure out yourself.
8. Networking just works.
It's all based on inertia. MS achieved critical mass and maintained it through good support and marketing. They just suffer terribly for corporate bloat and bad security practices of the past which they can't just ditch because of 6.
Linux could take a few pages from 5, 7, and 8. Seriously, I'm a fairly technical guy and I cannot get Kubuntu 8.10's file sharing working. I find myself fiddling around with multiple file sharing and Samba control widgets that partially, but not completely, overlap in purpose. Management dialogs (I'm looking at KDE4's Sharing and Nepomuk!) that don't affect reality in any way are very, very bad for user perception.
I'd like to assume he means a single redundant server, rather than two servers doing different things.
I don't think that will scale well past a couple dozen machines. You'll end up with a bloat of IT people who do nothing but act as live firewalls.
I'd recommend you check out Secunia PSI. Nothing compares for keeping a handle on the Windows & Apps patch circus.
Gun ownership has gone up too. Wow, we're onto something here!
That doesn't mean we should try to stop every dollar at every level until the debt is paid.
Radioshack still carries bits and pieces connected with A/V, but nothing to do with actual ham radio, which I thought was the whole idea. There's a local place here called A-Gem Supply that carries EVERYTHING though. It's the old "we have it if we can find it" type thing. They had some exotic S-video+RCA audio to Cat5 converters I needed, as well as a dishwasher door switch. The switch was listed at ~$30 or so from the mfg., but the A-Gem old geezer found one that worked in a pile and charged ~$2. I had to laugh when all the A/V supply and alarm companies in the region all suggested calling A-Gem when I was searching for that s-video adapter. Seriously, every single one I called besides the chain stores.
Places like that are indispensable. I'm afraid they might go the way of the local hardware store where the proprietor could actually give you advice.
I'd like to point out that the Old Testament does too. And for those who want a citation:
Genesis 18-19 (OT)
Romans 1 (NT)
Romans 1:25-32
Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. 26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: 27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. 28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; 29 Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, 30 Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, 31 Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: 32 Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.
Funded from what? The government is out of money.
So what if some people lose their TV program. If they're addicted to TV, logic would hold that they would have seen the DTV announcements plastered all over TV broadcasts (and even the TV's themselves). If not, well, maybe this will be a good splash of reality. A deadline is a deadline. This one was quite generous. I was almost ready to clap for government achieving something on schedule, and now Obama and you people show up. TV isn't like air or water. Nobody's going to keel over dead if they miss their soap opera. If they do, they deserved it.
Now let's hold a pity-party for the companies that were planning to introduce other wireless services after the switchover. They'll loose money because it was delayed!
Ok, I confess I'm being extremely caustic. But really, this is silly. We made a deadline and spent millions of taxpayer's dollars advertising it. Don't go messing it all up at the last minute.
What if they're oil contacts?
religion correlates with violent crime, homocide, stds, abortion
I'm offended!
I'm not a coder, but I am an avid KDE4 user. I'm sure it's technically possible to port all of GNOME's good stuff to use KDE's libs, but are the people involved willing to work together? I don't know enough background and history in the long GNOME vs KDE thing to know if the emotional people behind them could be merged. Is there any possibility of that happening?
Can't we just buy AMD?
Security question after a few attempts. And let people make their own security question.
Thank you for a reasonable reply.
1) I disagree about the Republicans doing well. I'm of the opinion that modern Republicans are just go-slow socialists, and modern Democrats are go-fast socialists. It didn't use to be this way, but I think both parties are catering to an ignorant populace that just wants grain out of the public treasury. They just differ on moral issues.
2) Maybe so, but I don't think it's up to the government to redistribute it. I think that should be left to the private sector.
I agree that the government could invest wisely, but looking at the current balance sheets convinces me that that won't happen. Building roads and other infrastructure is a good use of money, but I'm afraid most of the Keynesian boosters will go towards social programs which won't return the investment.
1) I'm not sure what these conditions are.
2) If this money is fiat, doesn't that mean it's creating inflation?
3) Ok, I'll give you that, but for every fiscal Clinton there are a dozen fiscal Obamas. The balance is way, way out, and I don't think our population has it in them correct it and shun addictive spending.
This stimulus thing is called Keynesian economics. Here's a crash course on Keynesian economics. Keynes says that the government should cut taxes and increase spending during a recession and cut spending and increase taxes during an expansion.
Keynes used the analogy of pump priming to explain government stimulating of the economy. During good economic times, money is set aside to be spent during a recession, much like a farmer would prime a pump with a bucket of water and then refill the bucket. The problem with this is that there is no money on reserve. None. Nada.
The multiplier you speak of is called the marginal propensity to consume (MPC). You are correct that the money will be spent and respent to create an increase in the national income. But where does the money come from?
In order for the government to prime, stimulate or bail out anything with money, it must do one of three things:
1) Print money
2) Tax
3) Borrow
Printing creates inflation and increasing taxes is political suicide. Therefore, the government takes #3. They borrow money. Now, this borrowing is very destructive for several reasons.
For one thing, borrowing is addictive. It seems like politicians are in a race to the bottom. Whoever promises to spend the most wins (similar to the fiscal decline of Rome). Raising taxes to pay the debt is political suicide (see Walter Mondale).
Second, government borrowing has an effect known as crowding out. The money that the government borrows comes from a bank. Where does the bank get the money? From your deposits. When the government borrows money, the bank can no longer lend it out to a business. The more the government borrows, the less is left for the private sector. Crowding out is when the government borrows such a huge chunk of the money supply that the private sector can't operate efficiently. (Coming soon to a country near you!)
The government also borrows from foreign governments, which is even worse. I won't go into that here.
When the government creates a job, it create busywork. When the borrowed money runs out, the job disappears and national debt is left. If the government had not borrowed that money, a business would have borrowed it. When a business borrows money, it creates real jobs and factories that will last after the money runs out and the debt is repaid. Businesses create real economic growth as opposed to the cash-burning jobs government creates.
Let's look at another possibility. Suppose the government raises taxes. The government takes money and spends it through the MPC to create income. That's fine and dandy, but the MPC also applies to the private sector. If the money had not been taxed, it would have been spent or saved. If the money were spent, the MPC would have applied to it just the same. If it were saved, it would have been lent by the bank to a business which would spend it through the MPC. The net effect is nothing but bureaucratic overhead.
There are three fundamental problems with Keynesian economics.
1. It assumes money in a bank is idle. That's nonsense.
2. It ignores the fact that money the government spends came from somewhere else, where it would have been spent more efficiently.
3. It ignores the fact that nobody ever increases taxes and cuts spending.
Keynes was wrong. Plain and simple. If we want to fix the economy, we must allow insolvent businesses (Ford, GM, etc.) to fail, cut taxes and spending, and shrink the government. Obama's charisma will never invalidate Adam Smith or Karl Menger. There's no school like the old school.
Nope. That's a misconception perpetrated by public education. Before the current education system, local towns would hire their own teachers and build their own schoolhouse. It produced people who wrote works like the Federalist Papers and the Constitution. Go read the Federalist Papers, which were designed to convince the New England farmer to accept the brand-new Constitution. I don't think most college students could read them aloud without stumbling, let alone understand them.
To the People of the State of New York:
AFTER an unequivocal experience of the inefficiency of the subsisting federal government, you are called upon to deliberate on a new Constitution for the United States of America. The subject speaks its own importance; comprehending in its consequences nothing less than the existence of the UNION, the safety and welfare of the parts of which it is composed, the fate of an empire in many respects the most interesting in the world. It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force. If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis at which we are arrived may with propriety be regarded as the era in which that decision is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind.
[truncated]
-FEDERALIST. No. 1
General Introduction
For the Independent Journal.
Alexander Hamilton
That word "unfortunate" is called innuendo, and it reveals a bias on the part of the article writer. Writers use words like that to imply that something is good or bad without backing it up. Slashdot is an excellent place to practice bias detection. I probably tag every third science article 'bias'.
No, but it can keep overpopulation (and other ills) from destroying every last vestige of civilization.
The dinosaurs died because they insisted on "fixing problems here on Earth first."
Rubbish. They died in a sudden, watery catastrophe they had no control over.