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How good would it be to see an interviewer sit down and totally grill Bush or Kerry for a good hour, with no aides or press secretaries, or time limits to force them to move on, and with no fear of losing 'access' and no drip-fed policy announcements and spin.

I often think about this. I think I have decided that open press conferences should be consitutionally mandates. The President should have to face the public and the press at least once a week throughout his term, and during the campaign there should be both compulsory debates and compulsory open press conferences. None of this stage managed bullshit.

Doonesbury says it well.

Prior art.

When the fox gaurds the henhouse

I thought it was well known that FOX mainly guarded the White House.

Here and here.

Here and here.

the scoring on the survey ranks in the range of 0-104

I'm glad someone pointed that out. I also thought it was funny that 100 represents an average score. Was this work done at Walden College?

Ooh, too far, dial it back!

I was going to say the Doonesbury site, and even noticed that I was a bit behind reading them... Then I went there. (Microsoft's) Slate has taken it over! The site used to look like the white area without the Slate shit around it, but I guess MS felt that interface was too intuiti... err... not branded enough. First the subscription debacle of Non Sequitur and now this. Damn it!

Spider practically IS hunter. Lets just hope hnter doesnt know considering the fury he has at being in Doonsbury

Read Fear and loathing on the campaign trail in 72' By Thomspon and youll see a few farmiliar scenes. Then theres the characters. The beast in Transmet is a fat Nixion. The smiler is clinton. (Read Better than sex by Thompson) And youll see the way thompson describes them is ever so close.

Few begrudge this similarity, in fact its some of the fun of the comic, but yes, if you like Transmet and SPider Read Hunter S thompson for a real life just as crazy drugged up version, and vice versa for spider from Thompson fans.

Reminds me of this Doonesbury strip from 1995. The whole week is pretty funny.

Agreed.

If you want to see the continued creation of music, you've got to consider how you can fund artists

Again, good point.

Options like this one just might provide a better solution for that than the current publishing/distribution model.

Not so good here. This option isn't really a change at all in artist reimbursement. It isn't as if artists are going to get any more money from an on-line sale than they do from a CD sale (approximately fuckall). The major labels are still going to screw the artists, just now they can do it online as well.

The problem is that the existence of 'free' (modulo the long term social cost of killing the creation of future music) alternatives could prevent this potentially sustainable model from catching hold.

I don't know if I agree. I think what might prevent this model from being sustainable will be in its application. A dollar a song still does not seem to be an appropriate value to many. That is basically what you pay now, only you get more (a physical object, liner notes, etc etc). Additionally, the cost of delivery to the producer has drastically decreased, and it is not unreasonable for the consumer to expect some of that to be reflected in a decrease in the purchase cost.

Anyway, I do not believe music will cease to be created for any business reason, ever. Music production existed long before, and will continue long after gigantic multinationals stop making money through it. As doonesbury discusses, there are other valid models for the the financial support of creation of music.

Normally, when a society wants to proscribe some activity which is destructive to its long term health (such as the widespread freeloading of music), it uses social norms and, in extreme cases, laws to prevent them. Hmm - maybe copying music without giving anything back to the artist ought to be socially unacceptable, or maybe even illegal?

Thing is, kazaa'ing seems more the social norm than not.

I think perhaps the big 5 are experiencing exactly that type of normative action: People see that musicians get shafted by the industry, so it becomes socially acceptable to shaft the industry. As for the basis of legality for things...that is such another barrel of worms.

-Ted

Agreed.

If you want to see the continued creation of music, you've got to consider how you can fund artists

Again, good point.

Options like this one just might provide a better solution for that than the current publishing/distribution model.

Not so good here. This option isn't really a change at all in artist reimbursement. It isn't as if artists are going to get any more money from an on-line sale than they do from a CD sale (approximately fuckall). The major labels are still going to screw the artists, just now they can do it online as well.

The problem is that the existence of 'free' (modulo the long term social cost of killing the creation of future music) alternatives could prevent this potentially sustainable model from catching hold.

I don't know if I agree. I think what might prevent this model from being sustainable will be in its application. A dollar a song still does not seem to be an appropriate value to many. That is basically what you pay now, only you get more (a physical object, liner notes, etc etc). Additionally, the cost of delivery to the producer has drastically decreased, and it is not unreasonable for the consumer to expect some of that to be reflected in a decrease in the purchase cost.

Anyway, I do not believe music will cease to be created for any business reason, ever. Music production existed long before, and will continue long after gigantic multinationals stop making money through it. As doonesbury discusses, there are other valid models for the the financial support of creation of music.

Normally, when a society wants to proscribe some activity which is destructive to its long term health (such as the widespread freeloading of music), it uses social norms and, in extreme cases, laws to prevent them. Hmm - maybe copying music without giving anything back to the artist ought to be socially unacceptable, or maybe even illegal?

Thing is, kazaa'ing seems more the social norm than not.

I think perhaps the big 5 are experiencing exactly that type of normative action: People see that musicians get shafted by the industry, so it becomes socially acceptable to shaft the industry. As for the basis of legality for things...that is such another barrel of worms.

-Ted

Here's the comics search. Note they're in reverse order.

Wasn't it Doonsebury which effectively killed off any hope for the newton>

The article wasn't much, but the Doonesbury strip it mentions but doesn't link (bastards) is worth a glance.

The supreme irony of the test is that the building was a secret al-Queda training facility.

As usual, the comic strip Doonesbury is way ahead of the curve. Check out a week's worth of strips starting on April 12, 1982 . Obviously, computer simulations of social phenomena can be more or less productive.

Oh good! you read your Sunday morning Doonesbury! Bonus points if you know what the Boondocks' Huey said today about the 15th amendment.

Was the Lone Gunmen episode the one where they hacked the cookies? :-D

I thought Ollie North helped remove any doubt about that. Besides the "war on terror" does have a clearly defined enemy. It just lacks a clearly defined end point or exit strategy... for obvious reasons.

Back to the psychology / technology -- ads use mamilian and primate level drives to make a sale or lure potential customers. Can anyone suggest some good books about primate social behaviour? something corresponding to Jakob Nielsen's book Designing Web Usability : The Practice of Simplicity or Krug & Black's Don't Make Me Think: Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, with theory plus good examples.

Don't discount freenet yet. I know some of the central developers and they are incredibly badass coders. The overall project has a lot of featurecreep (when writing features appears in Doonesbury, there's something funky goin' on).

But despite that, there's a growing community of freenet users. There are stable websites posted within freenet. (And I hear rumor that a few webcams are soon to get linked in to the system).

One of the central problems with maintaining gnutella during a RIAA attack will be maintaining repositories for getting your first host. Freenet pages can mitigate this, and/or provide its own transport/trading system.

Other problems, such as attacking ISPs if their users have gnutella ports open, and attacking the main developers like bearshare and limewire are separate issues, but still very relevant. It might be a good idea to start dealing with these while the RIAA is occupied with Aimee--I mean, Aimster. ;)

-Chris

I love web comics, but the problem I have with them is that I don't read them on a "daily basis" like the dead tree comics, so the ones with an ongoing storyline or character development lose a lot of their "flow." I like the "one day at a time" feel of something like Doonesbury or the kickass newcomer The Boondocks. When you read 'em all at once, it just doesn't feel right to me.

Other great online strips: the ones at Salon, especially Tom the Dancing Bug and Story Minute. And how could I leave out the deranged genius which is Space Moose!

The world hasn't been the same since Word.com got destroyed by their fish-oil selling masters. However, if you Google long enough, you'll find the old archive of Maakies still online.

Eschatfische.

Except Trudeau still has a problem with Breathed -- see the last answer at the bottom of this Doonesbury/Trudeau FAQ page...

This election isn't going to affect just America either, as with most other country's national elections. The result of the US presidential carries ramifications all over the globe.

Personally, I think Bush has proved himself quite a paradox. Alternately oafish and brilliant. Mostly oafish towards the beginning of his campaign, now he seems to be getting into the swing of things. He's reported to be a smart man, and yet wasn't aware that there were European troops deployed in Bosnia. I suppose foreign affairs isn't his long suit, but i digress.

As an Australian I generally support Republicans (given that Gore was talking about a closed market economy while Bush was backing free trade my motives should be obvious). There are some policies that Bush is backing though that seem ludicrously shallow in their strategy.

One that i point out here is the deployment of the Nuclear Defense Shield. I realise that it might seem sensible to defend yourself against one of these. They're not nice. But this shield involves putting emplacements all over the world in order to work. One of these emplacements is going to be on Australian soil. Does it protect Australia? No. Does it suddenly shoot us into the Top Ten Targets for Terrorism? Yes.

I acknowledge that our government has obviously played a part in this deal. I'm not trying to make out that we're a victim at all. I'm pointing out though, that the new government's plan will be putting relatively peaceable and defenseless nations on the front line to save their own skin. Pretty un-American, right?

The stupid part is that this defensive net hasn't even been proved effective and it's going ahead costing billions of dollars and shaking the still-unsturdy Balance of Power. It is a short-sighted and ill thought out policy that treats the symptom rather than the cause.

I think Katz is right when he says that Bush is infatuated with Defense Technology spending...


"And now for something completely [similar]"

Here's the direct link: http://www.doon esb ury.com/flashbacks/pages/1993/05/db930505.html

So Garry Trudeau seems to have invented 1-Click shopping. It's a little depressing that he's become more tech-savy than Scott Adams!

Funny you should mention Heinlein. I once read a piece by another writer (I forget his name, but he was book editor of Analog Magazine back in the 60s) who claimed to have coined the famous word "grok" that Heinlein immortalized in his classic Stranger in a Strange Land . Heinlein supposedly picked it up at a conference they both attended. But this other writer wasn't accusing Heinlein of plagarism. He considered his use of "grok" to be a fair use of an idea freely shared.

__________

ESR certainly doesn't speak for me. He has no right to claim that he speaks for me. I was all for the idea of China adopting Linux as an official OS, and it also makes sense, considering that GNU/Linux is the current choice of Richard Stalin^H^Hlman. (I don't mean that as a slur, either. I'm a pinko leftie communist at heart. :)

ESR needs to realize that not everyone in the free software movement is an opensource libertarian.
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.

Oh, the Simpson's writers weren't the first to prophesize...I still have on my fridge the Doonesbury's from when Win95 first came out:

"Why don't we just give Bill Gates ALL the money now and get it over with"..."Pride."

Plus even more relevant, and more recent, from 2-15-98..not found on doonesbury.com (interesting, in the "topics" list, there was no "Microsoft"), so here's the text:

"So, Alex, given any more thought to what you want to be when you grow up?"

"Uh huh, I've decided I want to found the next Microsoft, Uncle Bernie!"

"Hee, hee... I'm afraid there'll never BE another Microsoft, Alex. Microsoft is in the business of preventing that from happening!

But -- if you have a great idea, a killer app, a new technology that changes everything... then, with a little luck you might start a company SO promising that it'll quickly be taken over and dismantled by Microsoft!'

"Wow...that's the new dream?"

"Yup! I know guys who've done it two, three times"

(c) 1998 G.B. Trudeau

I have to laugh because doonesbury has had a story line on this very topic. This whole thing is just like a comic strip!

The strip in todays paper was even better!

Steven Rostedt

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Slashdot Load Testing (Continues) Posted by CmdrTaco on Mon August 30, 02:13 PM EDT
from the ain't-this-fun? dept.
Fixed so far:

• Dropped http MaxClients down to 75
• increased mysql max_connections to to 250

( Read More... | 190 of 190 comments )

Help Test Our New Server! Posted by CmdrTaco on Mon August 30, 12:51 PM EDT
from the load-testing-is-cool dept.
So here it is: A mirror of Slashdot (as of a week or so ago). It exists now for testing: So feel free to post comments and help test the new load balancer. For the curious, the new system has 3 http machines (P2s) and one mysql box (a dual P2) with a load balancer trying to keep everyone all equally busy. And its about time: the old setup has been really stressed out trying to keep up with everyone. Anyway, don't get to attached to any of your comments here, when we're satisfied that the new setup is stable, I'm gonna mirror over Slashdot and make the final switcheroo.

( Read More... | 335 of 335 comments )

Interview: Mandrake Answers Posted by Roblimo on Fri August 20, 12:00 PM EDT
from the x-leads-to-enlightenment dept.
Monday a whole bunch of people had questions for Mandrake, one of the heavies behind Enlightenment. Slashdot Moderators picked the best ones. We forwarded them, unedited, to Mandrake on Tuesday. His (excellent) answers appear below.

( Read More... | 11562 bytes in body | 9 of 9 comments )

Geeks in the Space: The Attack of 5 Posted by Hemos on Thu August 19, 04:10 AM EDT
from the more-stuff-to-listen-to dept.
Well, we've done it again. Yes, Geeks in Space, Episode 5 has been released. In it, we lament the lack of good news, talk about anti-matter, and the hiring of hacks by companies. You can also become...educated in my long-term plan for the hostile takeover of a certain Redmond-based company.

( Read More... | 14 of 17 comments )

Apple announces Darwin 0.3 Posted by Hemos on Thu August 19, 12:24 AM EDT
from the more-to-download dept.
J. FoxGlov writes "Macintouch reports that v0.3 of Darwin, the open-source foundation for Mac OS X Server is available on Apple's Public Source site. Apple Developer Connection members can get it on CD for $29. Check Public Source for more about the Darwin SDK and the new Darwin. "

( Read More... | 67 of 68 comments )

Microsoft's New Audio Format Cracked Posted by Hemos on Wed August 18, 05:23 PM EDT
from the secure-this-buddy dept.
Barcode (JPB) was one of the first to send us the word from Wired that the new audio format Microsoft introduced (Two days ago), supposed to be a secure format (resricting playback) has already been cracked. Dimension Music first carried the news-and what a name the crack has *grin*.

( Read More... | 238 of 240 comments )

Find your Star Wars Twin Posted by Hemos on Wed August 18, 05:16 PM EDT
from the what-freud-really-wanted-to-do dept.
The_Monk writes "Ever wanted to know your Star Wars twin? Now this incredibly important information can be verified. It placed me the likes of Astro Mech Droids, 'Tarkin, and R2-D2. " Ahem-as the lost twin of Lando (extraversion), I have a Cloud City I'd like to sell someone. But I'm about as agreeable as Boba, always a bonus.

( Read More... | 94 of 94 comments )

Now Police Can 'See' Through Walls Posted by Roblimo on Wed August 18, 12:40 PM EDT
from the move-along-there's-nothing-to-see-here dept.
Bram writes "Just found an article about another way to invade privacy." He's talking about hand-held radar systems police can use to detect breathing, beating hearts or other motion through walls and other obstacles. Sounds like a declassified version of the Ground Support Radar [GSR] units we used years ago in the Army. I can see why police would want them, and I can also see why Bram considers them a privacy threat. Depends on how they're used, I suppose.

( Read More... | 205 of 205 comments )

FreeType posts patent warning Posted by Hemos on Wed August 18, 11:53 AM EDT
from the i-want-my-verdonna dept.
Anonymous Coward writes "According to the the FreeType web page, there have been some new concerns raised about Apple's patents on TrueType. I hope this doesn't affect the planned TrueType support in XF86 4. " It appears that they are still checking into the issue, but I'd really like TrueType support. A lot. Let's hope Apple responds nicely.

( Read More... | 202 of 206 comments )

Microsoft to "publish code" to Instant Messenger Posted by Hemos on Wed August 18, 09:49 AM EDT
from the want-more-market-share dept.
VFVTHUNTER writes "According to this article at cnet, MS, in an attempt to gain a share of AOL's Instant Messenger Service Market, announced today it is going to publish the protocol to its own messenger service. " It's important to note it's NOT the source code, just the protocol.

( Read More... | 192 of 192 comments )

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Features The latest installment of Geeks in Space is up at The Sync. We talk about the Red Hat IPO, crazy naming schemes, and much more.

Perhaps you are seeking Jon Katz's series of articles related to recent events in Colorado. These articles include Voices from the Hellmouth, More Stories from the Hellmouth or The Price of Being Different,

With all the hype about the recent MindCraft Linux/NT benchmarks, you might be interested in reading ESR's Response to the Mindcraft Fiasco

For something different, try reading my little essay Thoughts from the Furnace about the internet, and flame.

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Star Office to become Open Source?

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