Slashdot Mirror

i know. i was trying to be funny.
adrien cater
boring.ch

They say they want to print posters. I like the idea. But won't they have to include the source code for the PS file on the back of the poster??? Otherwise it would violate the GPL no?


adrien cater
boring.ch

The way i see things, events will neither get substantially better (the serious reform of IP laws that "we" want), nor get substantially worse (the absurd reality that Lanier shows the logic heading to).

From the Big Mean Media Corporations point of view, they have to keep things tolerable, otherwise you get revolution.

This is far more sinister than Lanier's "possibility", because our freedoms will be abused by Corporations (with the help of our friendly democratic government), but not to the point that things get so bad that they must change.

What we will see is that those of us who wish to exercise our freedoms will get caught in an endless cat and mouse game of crack-countercrack in some grim parody of Spy-vs-Spy, and we will be criminals and life will not be pleasent. Yes, every securtiy measure will broken and those who want to break the law will be able to, but at the price of it all being a big pain in the ass.

I don't really want to be a criminal, and i don't really want to have to spend my time and energy cracking stupid security measures in order to get what i want, and what to a large extent I have a moral and even legal right to. I would rather see IP laws reformed in a fair way... but that's seems a long way off.

From a certian view, I actually do wish that Lanier's proposed reality happens. Once things sink to that level, there will be a massive need for change which will be clear to all people, and all people will fight for this change. It might even mean a larger revolution. But as long as we can crack the security with relative ease, we will, rather than fight the big fight to change the situation at it's root; and as long as the situation doesn't get really absurd, it will be that much harder to push things back the other direction.

please tell me i'm woring...

adrien cater
boring.ch

The last thing Aqua is is Usable. It is a usability disaster. Read Tog's comments or the Ars Technica reviews (this one, for example. Aqua is not a usability wonder, it is marketing schlock...

(disclaimer, i am a loyal Mac User, and you would have to pry my powerbook running Platinum from my cold dead fingers. This said, When Aqua hits, i will be running windows...)

yeah, that's correct.

as far as usability, speed and general usefulness goes, Aqua is a disaster. By the time it ships, Linux (and linux PPC) will have a much nicer interface.

Apple's marketing gimmick scholck interfaces will grow really tiresome really quick (they aready have) and, if the apps are there (they are _not_, and unless Adobe and Macromedia port to linux and linux PPC, they "aren't"), then people will be using Linux and not MacOS X.

just my opinion.


adrien cater
boring.ch

on a recent (very short, thank god) back to the united states this fall, i heard a few people saying things like:

"if GW get's elected president, i will leave the country"

i always laughed at this proposition, and my only reply was:

"why wait?"

adrien cater
boring.ch

My proposal mentined nowhere the requirement for 1 single central list.

that's part of the idea, it's open. wanna diffferent list? make your own. are there other people around with the same taste as you? collaborate, share your lists and form a group.

there can be one or many 'large' lists, which, if they are reasonably acceptable, will be used my a majority of people.

-----

the whole thing is disgusting to me. i hate the idea of blacklists. the only idea here is to have a system that is _not_too_bad_, if we are forced to install the stuff, at least there should be an open, democratic, honest, quasi acceptable alternative. it would be better than seeing cyberpatrol & company everywhere.

just a thought.


adrien cater
boring.ch

I like that idea a lot, but wouldn't we then need 120 numerical characters?

with 12 we only need 2 more...

[i probably just put my foot in my mouth, but i am a zero-math-skills person. i would probably be the last person to be able to do base 12 or base anything but 10... Hell, i even failed math in kindergarten. we were supposed to add 2 and 2, and i kept counting the zero, counting the 2 twice, etc.... it was very frustrating. other kids were counting with fingers, i was doing abstract numbers. argh.]
adrien cater
boring.ch

everytime someone mentions changing our time system to decimel or watever, i have to put in my suggestion for the reverse:

why? 12 makes more sense.
why?
well, 10 is divisible by 2 and by 5; while 12 is divible by 2 and 3 (and 4, and 6...).

dividing stuff into halves is great. dividing into 5ths? what for? Dividing into halves, thirds and quarters is so much more double plus better.

then we can leave our time system more or less like it is.

so what if we have 10 fingers. do you still count with your fingers?

adrien cater
boring.ch

OK, if this goes through, which i hope it doesn't, then we should be thinking of ways to minimize it's negative effects -- damage control.

If censorware _has_ to be installed, then let's attmept to make acceptable censorware (i know, i am starting badly, already into oxymorons...)

call it GNinteen84, for now

1. open source / free / etc.

2. start with _no_ sites blocked.

3. material can be proposed by anybody, submitted, reviewed, noted, voted, and pok-ed with a stick, and added to the blacklist if everyone agrees, more or less.

no material is ever "automatically" blacklisted. no material is _ever_ blacklisted untill it gets a solid "this is really bad" rating. say, aim for a 80% majority, or something like that.

4. who is everyone? _any_one who wants to be part of the process. make it like slashdot moderation. ok, bad example, but something like that. don't like what's on the balcklist? well, get in there and work on making it better.

5. set up certian safety measures so that a black listing can easily be contensted, by a frustrated user, the site's owner, joe modem. re-review procedures, etc. sites get put back in the review list, or something.

6. the blacklist is open to anyone who wants to inspect it, test it, click on the dirty links on an unfiltered line, poke at it with a stick, whatever.

etc.

So, this system would proceed very slowly, but at least we would be relatively certian that no decent material got blacklisted. of course, some porn will get in. don't like it? make it better, work on it, vote. of course, groups working together can influence the list to ban, say, ppolitical or religious views they oppose. of course, people who oppose those oppositions can also group together and cut out the cartels. but it's gotta be open.

step two: promote it. say wonderful things like "This is the only American way to censor! Democracy!". Note that because it is open and free and democratic, companies will not be swayed by financial or political pressures. etc.

Anyway, if there has to be censorware installed, we should really be working towards making it something only mildly displeasing.

just an idea.

if anyone is interested in working on such a project, talking about such a project, or thinks i am a complete idiot and wants to flame me, send me an email.

maybe someone like Jamie might be a good person to get such a project going. hint hint.


adrien cater
boring.ch

You slashdot people have very bad taste in humor! Don't you realize how dagerous video games really are?!?!

Just think if Kleybold and Harris had PS2s rather than just plain old PC games -- if they had 15 times as much processing power, think of havoc they might have wreked; they might just have nuked the school!

At home, video games are turning our children into crazed, heartless, violent, anti-social, devil warshipping killers; and abroad, video games are turning our 3rd world crazed heartless violent anti-social devil warshipping dictators into... well... PS2 playing 3rd world dictators!

And you slashdot people should stop making light of this serious threat to the moral fabric of our world as well. shame on you all!

--

eventualy, yes.

all linux realy needs to do that is shrinkwrap apps, namely everything adobe makes, and macromedia stuff.

sure, gimp is cool, but to get a mass of mac people on linux, you would need photoshop.

imho, this would be a good thing. Mac/Aqua is becoming a I catastrphe, and it needs serious copetition.

as it is now, a lot of professionals will be migrating to windows just to have a useable machine, or holding out as long as possible with OS9 (tog)

woudn't it be beautiful if linux were there to pick up the slack?

a little gui work, and apps apps apps.


adrien cater
boring.ch

museum = shopping mall

only our (originally american, now everybody) culture could have spawned such a thing.

yeah, i know, it's not as bad as i exaggerate, but i have to make a point...

my point being that although the french are paranoid about preserving their culture, they are not doing a very good job of it.

yeah, i was thinking of the virgin store. OK. it is still one find step away from a Wal-Mart poster section.

sorry if i offended you, it's just that i always like to take a jab at the parisienne cul-ture... quand l'opportunité se manifeste...

a bientôt


adrien cater
boring.ch

good news, it doesn't look like they want to make this a SMDI based spec. Just plain ol' MP3 files(z)...

wait 'till the RIAA get wind of this...


adrien cater
boring.ch

every time i go to paris, i am astounded at how extremely american it is. almost a exaggerated parody of it, in fact.
anyone been in the louvre lately? (it's that big museum where the mona lisa is...) it's a shopping mall! there is a fnac where you can by spice girls cds, tourist merchandise. there may or may not be a mcdonalds in the food court. maybe the substitute quick burger, i forget.

off topic rant flame bait, i know.

needless to say, i still prefer to live in europe than the states, and french culture _is_ something to be respected, but the loads of hipocrasy and bullsh!t about protecting superior french culture from american imperialism always makes me chuckle.

what does this have to do with DVD's? nothing. off topic.
adrien cater
boring.ch

I agree that the proposition is completely backwards: we should be replacing phone numbers with urls, and not the ohter way around...

how about
"phone://voice.company.com/department/person.tel "

ok. har har.

Apparently they were thinking about portable phones and w@p services. Their point was that it is easier to tap numbers on a phone than words. which is true. but i think phones will evolve a bit in the next few microseconds to make such an idea unnecessary.

IMHO, if you have screen realestate big enough to comfortably browse for information, there is a way to fit some kind of intelligent input system that would make it easy to type, at least an URL.

T9 software is already pretty neat, and things will get better.

if you are interested in typing efficiently in small spaces:

T9

FITALY

BAT

FAQ

so, i don't think alternative URL systems are necessary. rethinking cellphone input is, however.

adrien cater
boring.ch

the best way to prove an idiot wrong is to let them talk.


adrien cater
boring.ch

I teach at at a few schools, and the adminsitration(s) constantly think that teaching "program X" will give the students the knowedge to be "professionals" - since "program X" is what "professionals" are using to to their "professional stuff" (or so says the marketing department at X-SoftwareCompany).

I find this negligent. the computer tech landscape changes so fast that tying students to any one program or any one platform or any one way of doing things puts them at a disadvantage later on. new versions come out, new technologies come, old ones go.

I always push my students to understand the underlying concepts and mechanism and to understand WHY this or that, and to grasp some theory and histroy behind things - otherwise their knowedge is superficial. I also tell them to try all the available programs for the task at hand, spend time with all of them and choose the one they feel the most comfortable with. Yeah, so what if students are using GoLive in my Dreamweaver class, Freehand in my Illustrator class...

You can train a monkey to press the right buttons at the right time - and that isn't knowedge or learning or thought. If students understand the hidden mechanisms behind their task, they can adapt that knowedge to any program, any interface, any technology... and then they are truly knowedgible professionals, not just trained monkeys.

Even worse is when the school is sponsored / affiliated / accredited by some software company, and so the students learn to be professional microsoft trained monkeys, or professional macromedia trained monkeys, or professional linux trained monkeys, for that matter.


adrien cater
boring.ch

nitrogen makes up 78% of the atmosphere (by volume), and occurs as a constituent of all living tissues.

i doubt that nitrogen emissions from second generation death-boxes would seriously mess anything up.

but when will they get rid of asphalt???


adrien cater
boring.ch

Ok, the software itself is, but the required computer capable of sound playback & MP3 decompression, and the fat cable modem or DLS type bandwidth, (or 20'000 dollar college tuition...) to really benifit from it restricts these kinds of toys to the pretty damn rich in any case. I would suspect that there really is only a _very_ small gap between napster users and those in the market for a tvio type toy.

it is frightening, this lack of awareness that these technologies "that are going to change everybodys lives" are, for a while at least, only going to change the lives of those who can really afford it - namely us, slashdotter types.

Sad irony? it is only those who could pretty much already afford to pay for CD's, DVD's, whatnot who are so gung-ho about toppling the greedy monopolistic cartelized industries that pump the garbage out.

let's get out priorities straight:

1. get powerful technology into the hands of everybody -- especially those who need it and can benifit from it.

2. _then_ use those technologies to combat groups of big greedy multinational copyright parasitizing corporations.

adrien
adrien cater
boring.ch

The people on that island (i have the book here somewhere...) are, yes, completely colorblind, but it is NOT the same things as standard color blindness. They lack cones (color vision) but have rods (night vision). This means they have very very sensitive, blurry, black and white vision. In the rest of the world it occurres in something like one in a million people.

anyway, the book is called "The Island of the Colorblind and Cycad Island", by Oliver Sacks (the guy who wrote The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat)
adrien cater
boring.ch

i like the idea of the .gov trying to get every citizen of the country connected to the internet - i am frightened by the thought of the poor being left even more behind as communication becomes intimately linked to (still very, very expensive, in the scheme of things) technology .

admit it, /.ers, our community is an expensive and very very elete one, on a socioeconomic scale.

this said, i am not sure the PO giving out email addresses is really a big step forward. one would still need internet access, and a computer, and if you can afford that, well... Ok, it's better than hotmail, in that you don't have to pay via banner-ad-attention schemes.

what i would really want to see is a lot more free internet access, computer grants to underprivileged kids, etcetera (sure, sponsored by the .gov, that's the kind of stuff i want to see MY tax money going to...)

what i really like, though, is the fact that they are printing out the email and delivering it to the door. that is what i call a cool mutant technology. Once upon a time, XeroxPARC (i think) devloped a system where you would send a fax to a computer, get a fax back on which you could check some boxes, write some commands, fax it back, get another one back with the information you requested and some more options, rince, repeat... imagine surfing slashdot today via fax... weird shit.
adrien cater
boring.ch

um, actually, i head that apple had a wheel on a mouse way back in like the fourteenth century.

don't know if they invented it, but there is a chance.

they just didn't think it was a good idea, which adds, well, another layer to the "ein komputer, ein fuhrer, ein mausbutton syndrome".


adrien cater
boring.ch

the biggest problem i have seen with set top boxes is the screen (television) resolution. I wouldn't want to try to read my email, let alone surf the web at someting like VGA resolution. (i know, i know, i am a spoiled brat)

hell, i don't even want to watch TV at tv screen resolution!

Seriously, so many websites today are impossible to see at a lower resolution than at least 800x600 pixels, your relatives would have a harder time with this than they might have with the only slightly steper learning curve of a desktop computer.

you will probably have less headaches setting up your computer illiterate relatives with an iMac or someting like that. unless price is really an issue - and even then, an old used mac would do fine and probably hover around the same price point.
adrien cater
boring.ch

I just can't figure it out. Just about all the really nice digital toy ideas (digital cameras, pdas, MP3CD players, whatnot) are of a consistently crappy quality.

on the other hand, the old school, analog versions of a lot of these toys, even on the consumer level, are of a much higher quality -- irregradless of price.

can anyone explain this? Why do manufacturers of digital toys have such a lack of regard for quality?

(i know, they are used to the _software_ business... ;-)

adrien
adrien cater
boring.ch

the AltER Vista project is a similar hack made by myself, (not sopnsored by altaviata) and still has some important interface improvements...

There is also an AltER Vista Advanced Search interface and a Babelfish Traduction intereface...

nice to see they were paying attantion ;-)

finally, a company who realizes that there are people who want to do something, and do not want to be blasted with a million banner ads and portal bullshit e.commerce weblog buy button whatnot...

the AltER Vista project is a similar hack made by myself, (not sopnsored by altaviata) and still has some important interface improvements...

There is also an AltER Vista Advanced Search interface and a Babelfish Traduction intereface...

nice to see they were paying attantion ;-)

finally, a company who realizes that there are people who want to do something, and do not want to be blasted with a million banner ads and portal bullshit e.commerce weblog buy button whatnot...

the poweful idea here is to break a laptop computer down into its component parts -- make it modular, think object oriented hardware.

<i>component 1:</i>
cpu
(done)

<i>component 2:</i>
CD and floppy
(done)

<i>component 3:</i>
small, high res lcd monitor

<i>component 4:</i>
power supply (strap on battery)

<i>component 5:</i>
a really really nice AD/DA sound input and output box, turn this thing into a super minidisk/MP3/sampler/whatever thing

<i>component 6:</i>
[insert bright idea here]

This makes for a standard sort of desktop system, just made out of small parts. With today's technology, <b>why make it big?</b> Most PCs today are 90% air! The original iMac was a PowerbookG3 with a CRT attached...

Now if it all could just run Bluetooth so i don't have to drag cables to connect all this stuff, i will be really really happy.

I think we are going to see a lot of stuff like this come out in the following years, and none too late!

If anyone is interested in brainstorming ideas like this and finding interesting ways of looking at intelligent applications of off the shelf technology, don't hesitate to talk to me...


adrien cater
boring.ch

Hannibal's review pointed out two shortcomings of the machine -- a sometimes not so high qulity sound output (MP3's are affected) and the lack of an ethernet port.

when they release a new model that addressed these issues... it will be perfect.
adrien cater
boring.ch

it would not take a large leap of logic to say that Napster is offering a similar service (facilitating the exchange of data, routing information, whatnot) to an e-mail server, and thus would also not be held responsible for illegal files sent over it's wires, or even information about where to find illegal files, communicated over its' wires...

I can send an MP3 file via email; and can give the IP number and login of a MP3 hotline server in an email, too

hmm. would be nice to see thing move in the right direction in other cases as well...

?X?|uÂit was Xerox who started developing "Machine Compatible English", which was basically a simplified Engligh minus all the ambiguity and messy stuff.

it is still very inteligible to any native speaker, but has the advangate of being 'computer compatible' which allowed automatic translation into any number of languages.

Xerox used it for photocopier intstruction manuals...

It always struck me that slightly midified native langiages are the best bet -- the changes are minor on the written language and the benfits of high quality babbelfishing are double plus good.

I think the adaptation could go over pretty easy, i would love to see it happen. (I am sure that it wouldn't be any stranger than Swiss-German, which is a pretty different language from 'real' German, but has no written language! Swiss-German kids go to school and write in a different language than they speak...)


adrien cater
boring.ch

(Any Francophones want to tell us what "moral person" refers to here? Corporations? Committees? AI software that passes the Turing test?)

AFAIK, (and my francophone girlfriend) the french legal term "personne morale" means a group, assiciation, corporation or whtanot, as opposed to an actual flesh and bone person (like my francophone girlfriend... ;-) )

I may be wrong -- as a french lawyer (SINAL (she is not a lawyer...).

As far as I am concerned, there is no such thing as "legitimate spam".

Spam is unsolicited e-mail - if I ask for it, it is not Spam, it is plain old legitimate email communication - just that it comes from a company who wants to tell me something (which I have directly told them that I want to hear...).

The very word "legitimate spam" is frightening -- it has the same ring to me as "Freindly Fascism" or "Good Child Molestation"


adrien cater
boring.ch

does anyone know of other small stuff to go with this thing?

Palm bought a foldable keyboard design from a company called Think Outside which, if it could be hooked up, would be the perfect companion from something like this.

A portable display??? Anyone? Teeny LCD?

OK, then Sony makes these goggle things - but they seem really expensive...

And then, outside of lugging around a car battery, anyone know of any nice power supply solution that might work with this thing?
VST makes a firewire RAID that can run off powerbook batteries (or maybe just as a backup source???) So something might be hackable by a skilled and brave geek with a soldering iron...

Break the 1 box tyranny of laptops! Think modular. break it up into seperately usable parts. I wish that my powerbook screen was detachable and could be used with my linux box, for instance. Why have two screens on my desk?

this type of thing is definately the future. why make things big???


adrien cater
boring.ch

Make a functioning desktop PC out of laptop components and this is what you get.

Take a small laptop, remove the screen, the battery, and magically fit in a CdRom (orDVD!) drive...

Very intelligent - now if they made a battery that was about the same size that you could attach to the unit, and then a portable screen that could be hooked up, etc, you could have a really nice modular laptop system - Think Lego!


adrien cater
boring.ch

Not the case. There are bright people out there who have bachelors degrees who are not geeks. This is a crash course program for people who want to get the technical skills to do something like, say, Slashdot.

Just because you're smart, doesn't mean that a course is CS is unnecessary.

These people may not already have a high paying job in tech. They may be people with a background in the social sciences, humanities, whatnot (Greenspun is after all a photographer).

ADU seems like a great way to get good ideas and great minds from other areas into technology really fast. Think cross-pollenation, out of the box, brilliant kind of stuff.

Greenspun is a very intelligent guy and I applaud anyone in his position to have the foresight and social responsibility to make something like this happen.

Watch what the alumni do, some amazing stuff will probably come out of this program.

adrien

adrien cater
boring.ch

IANAL

from the original doc (Factual Background section):
"Although it found that four programs were subject to the Regulations, the Export Administration found that the first chapter of Junger's textbook, Computers and the Law, was an allowable unlicensed export. Though deciding that the printed book chapter containing encryption code could be exported, the Export Administration stated that export of the book in electronic form would require a license if the text contained 5D002 software."

Despite all the bla bla about sour code being expressive and speech and whatnot bla bla (which i agree with...) it seems an important logical part of the argument is that (if i understand correctly) the same material was legally "exported" in the form of a book, whereas the online version was met with restrictions.

So it seems that this ruling might be more of a 'the internet is not to be subject to stupid restrictions that would not be placed on, say, books' then a 'code is free speech' type response.

dunno, anyone got any opinions on this? is there a lawyer in the house?

/IANAL

adrien