Letter to the Editor
People who are arguing about the Pledge of Allegiance need to think about the two words before "Under God" - the words "One Nation". The phrase "one nation" means that New Orleans didn't happen to "them". It happened to "us" and "we" needs to step up and make it happen. And in order to do that we need to take a long hard look at the reality around us and figure out how "we" are going to make it happen.
We have to face the tough questions about what we are doing with our money. We spent hundreds of billions of dollars in Iraq. Are we going to continue to choose Iraq over Louisiana. Are we going to take the money from old sick people by delaying their prescription drug plan? Are we going to take it from children by cutting Head Start? Bush has already ruled out taxing the rich so that leaves borrowing the money from the Communist Chinese. I think that borrowing from the Commies is not good long term thinking.
We can't afford empty promises and poor judgment. It's time for America to come out of the fog and begin to actually think. We are being tested as a nation to see if we are worthy of survival. We aren't just rebuilding New Orleans, we are rebuilding the nation As a sit here on the edge of the San Andreas fault I ask if we are really one nation?
Letter to the Editor
People have said that Americans shouldn't play the "blame game". President Clinton said that there's a time to review the failures of the government response but that time isn't now. I have to strongly disagree with that.
Because the people rose up screaming about what a poor job the government did the politicians are finally getting off their butts and getting the job done. If we weren't pointing fingers and screaming the evacuees would still be at the astro dome dying for lack of food and water. And if not for the blame game Bush wouldn't be on TV along with the governors and the mayors trying to get the job done (finally) and at least making promises about what they say they are going to do.
We Americans have to keep the pressure on and keep the blame going. We need to see if Bush is going to follow through. We need to see if they rebuild the levies right. We need to see that the money isn't stolen by Bush cronies, Oil Companies, and corrupt local officials. The blame game works. It is saving lives and helping people recover. What they call the blame game is what we call holding people accountable and taking responsibility. That's what we elect them to do and that's what we pay taxes for and we need to hold their feet to the fire and whip the stupidity out of them until they become the kind of people they represented themselves as when they ran for office. And if we can't afford to do it right, how are we going to afford to do it over?
So - after starting two other threads on the subject I have now made the conversion to the Athlon X2 server. The bottom line is - it works!
Basically running about 300 web sites of all kinds from a few static pages to PHP/MySQL. The system includes email and is running spam assassin.
This box replaces two servers merging them into one. One of the older servers was a 2.4 mhs Dual Xeon 32 bit with 4 gigs of ram and 2 WD 250 gig drives with 8M buffer. The second server was a 2.6 ghz Pentuin 4 that was running high volume static pages. (Well, 10mb average - high volume to me).
The new server is an Athlon 64 X2 4400+ also with 4 gigs of ram and 2 300gb Maxtor Maxline III drives with 16MB buffer.
The Results:
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The technology is still rather new and bleeding adge. I had more problems with getting 4 gigs to work than getting the dual core athlons to work. That's because the VGA and much of the hardware needs to be below the 4gb barrier. If I were running 2 gigs I wouldn't have had a problem. You need to make sure if you are running a full 4 gigs that the board actually supports it and it's all usable. I used an Asus and it did - but it wasn't pretty.
To get it to work I needed the 2.6.13 kernel. With 2 gigs of ram it was fine with the stock kernel in FC4. But with 4 gigs the SATA drives crashed the system until I compiled my own kernel.
But - once I got it all working ....
The load levels on the new server are running about 1/2 of the dual xoen server and that's with the combined load of both servers. The second old server however wasn't running much of a load.
I am comparing however an older Xeon to a new dual core Athlon. But guessing that new Xeons are faster than the older ones I would say that the single processor dual core Athlon would probably still beat or be about the same speed at 2 single core Xeon systems.
But - the cost is like 1/2 of a dual xeon - power consumption is less than 1/2 and the motherboards are much smaller. So it looks to me like this is a really good deal.
So - as compared to what I expected and predicted I was about right on. Except that I ran into more problems than I thought I was going to. But in the coming months this isn't going to be quite as bleeding edge.
Oh - and ----
Here's a picture of it.
Yes - too kool for a data center - but I like to build a computer that looks hot.
I find it disturbing that the news media is falsely reporting that the Pledge of Allegiance has been ruled unconstitutional. That is not what happened. What the court ruled was that the inclusion of the religious words "under God" in the pledge is unconstitutional. No matter what side of the argument to are on the news media should at least get the story right.
The pledge ends with the words, "Liberty and Justice for All". The world "All" means everyone including non theist religions, those who are without religion, and those who believe in deities other than the Christian's God. Issues of religion are very divisive and our founding fathers went out of their way to make sure the government was religiously neutral so that everyone is equal and have the freedom to express their beliefs without the government choosing sides. If the words "Under God" are left in then they should take out "Indivisible" and "Liberty and Justice for All" because liberty has no meaning when the government makes religious choices.
Letter to the Editor
The tax cut that Bill Gates alone got under the Bush administration would have paid for levies that could have saved New Orleans. Ross Perot's tax cut could replace all the bridges that were destroyed. When we hear about the government not having enough money we have to wonder why they are giving such big tax cuts to the rich. I think it's time we went back to taxing the rich and not making the middle class bear the brunt of paying for everything.
