Slashdot Mirror

It is a world in which the craziest ideas of the rich get a lot of attention. If computers are controlled, there will be kits to build uncontrolled ones from ICs. People will bring in uncontrolled computers across the border. Old, uncontrolled computers, of which there are many tens of millions, will go up in value. People will network their old computers to their new computers, so that they can bypass control.

Personal computers have been one of the best things to come along in many years, and rich people want to destroy the growth.

This idea has the same sensibility as the U.S. government trying to outlaw privacy by trying to outlaw encryption.

The craziness is not limited to issues surrounding copyright. The U.S. government engages in violence to enhance the profits of the weapons manufacturers and oil companies. See What should be the response to violence?

I agree, the Chinese government is extremely arrogant, but in some ways the U.S. government is worse. The U.S. government interferes with the governments of other countries, and kills people with whom it disagrees. Here is a collection of links from respected news sources that supports that assertion: What should be the Response to Violence?

All arrogance covers up an inability to relate. We need more socially skilled leaders.

It is very painful for me to realize this, but the U.S. government is corrupt.

More about U.S. government corruption: What should be the Response to Violence?

It amazes me that the U.S. government has done as much as it can to try to outlaw privacy. To me, it seems that things are out of control in some parts of the U.S. government. The U.S. spends more on surveillance of everyone everywhere than any country ever has in the history of the world. Money is spent on being sneaky, rather than on making good relationships.

It is futile to try to avoid the export of software, particularly when having it is legal in other countries. Yet taxpayer money is spent on this. The U.S. government, in my opinion, should not try to control the entire world.

More on the extremes of U.S. government policy: What should be the Response to Violence?

It's clear from the design of all of Windows XP, not just WMP8, that Microsoft does not want you to have privacy. For example, consider how many holes Windows XP expects you to punch in your firewall.

This anti-privacy attitude is similar to that of the U.S. government. U.S. government agencies are the biggest, most well-funded surveillance organizations in the history of the world. For support for that statement see What should be the Response to Violence?

At the bottom of the anti-privacy attitude is a feeling of superiority. Below that is an inability to make successful connections with other people. It's a kind of mild mental illness that has the characteristic that those who have it find it difficult to realize that they have it.

Thoughts:

First, this laser works when there are no clouds. There is not enough energy in the beam to punch through the aerosol droplets of water in clouds. It is necessary to have a clear line of sight.

Second, lasers are VERY dangerous to use when there is a clear line of sight. The people at whom the U.S. government is shooting may have a mirror.

Remember, corner cubes are mirrors that automatically aim back exactly along the direction of the arriving beam. They don't need to be pointed. There are no moving parts. They work at the speed of light.

Third, powerful chemical lasers are very big and bulky weapons. They are also very expensive. Those who have the mental illness that makes them want to kill people like to try different methods. However, there may come a time when the citizens of the U.S. decide that they don't want to use their hard-earned money to support the activities of sick people.

Fourth, this laser is just one of many, many weapons designed by the U.S. government. It is a lot like angry children playing. They don't really care if the weapon is used, or who it is used to kill. They have never learned adult responsibility. They are mentally bound to their infantile conflict and have never learned to see other people as beings like themselves.

It just confuses the issues when people assume that the U.S. government has some kind of healthy rationality about weapons.

More on corruption in the U.S. government: What should be the Response to Violence?

What is happening in Australia is a kind of sickness, a governmental sickness. There are people who like to sneak around, rather than have a real connection with others. If they can attach themselves to a government that believes in, or accepts, secrecy, they find that they have endless money, and they can do whatever they like. Given the nature of secrecy, and the nature of bureacracy, there is never true accountability in a secret bureacracy.

Angry people often like to cause trouble if they can avoid being held accountable. Secret troublemaking by government is a dream job for these people.

Secret agencies in the U.S. are much bigger troublemakers than those in Australia. The article, What should be the Response to Violence?, has links to about 600 pages from major news sources that tell the story. For example, there is a section about a secret agency of the U.S. government that trained Arabs to be terrorists. Also see the sections, To understand the present conflict, consider the past, and Understanding the CIA.

RF ID tags are not a big problem for those who don't want to participate. It's like Internet browser cookies. You can let anyone put cookies on your hard drive. But, you didn't sign a contract with web site owners to give back the same cookies that they recorded. You could have software that gave back, not the correct cookies, but something subtly different.

Similarly, you can allow them to irradiate your possessions with radio frequency signals. But you don't have to give back the signals they expect. If they ping your possessions, your own electronics can respond that you are carrying three large elephants from the zoo. If anyone questions you about this, you can confess that you have never stolen anything before, but that you carried the elephants away in an unusual moment of weakness.

--
Links to respected news sources show that U.S. government policy contributed to terrorism: What should be the Response to Violence?

That may be true in some fields, but not programming. If you aren't a very, very good programmer, with an intuitive feel for coding, you cannot manage programming effectively.

If you can't read code quickly, and see all the implications immediately, you will never know if a coder who works for you is in trouble. You will never know who is a good coder. You will never understand whether you are getting quality code, or future junk. You will never understand whether a programmer has coded himself or herself into a corner.

Here are some examples of bad software development management. It is all my opinion:

IBM killed OS/2 through marketing stupidity. That was 2 billion dollars flushed down the drain. They called the product "Warp", a term for something that has been damaged by being bent. They made many, many other foolish decisions. They were not attentive to business. They didn't realize the importance of having plenty of drivers for popular peripherals. Amazing. All that work of talented people, thrown away. Not just a waste, but immoral.

IBM bought Lotus, and killed Lotus WordPro, and other Lotus products, through marketing neglect.

WordStar was killed by a new version that lacked some of the features that customers loved.

WordPerfect Corporation killed WordPerfect by being slow to make a version with a GUI interface. Novell bought the product, and sold it for $750,000,000 dollars less than it paid about 8 months later to Corel, I seem to remember.

Novell killed Netware's sales potential by abusing its customers, the consultants who installed and maintained its products.

Corel slowed Corel Draw's sales by being utterly foolish in marketing. I talked with [a top manager at Corel] for more than an hour about this. He agreed fully, but said he could not get the CEO to change things. Corel Draw is still around, but the company has laid off most of its former staff.

Central Point Software killed PC Tools by bringing out a very, very buggy version. Before that, Central Point was doing hundreds of millions of dollars a year in business.

Fastback from 5th Generation Systems was run by a man whose entire business history was in banking. I talked to him for about 45 minutes. He employed his daughter to do marketing. She had just graduated from university. He shipped a bad version, and Fastback died. It is now owned by Symantec, who stopped marketing the product.

Xerox killed Ventura Publisher's popularity by continuing a design in which the drive letter and folder name were stored inside its files. This meant that the files could not be loaded from a diskette backup. Strange, but true.

Corel bought Ventura Publisher, and fixed the file problem. Corel has slowed the sales of Ventura Publisher by poor marketing and poor design decisions. People say Ventura Publisher is the best book publishing software, but sales don't reflect that.

PkWare killed PkZip by continuing a poor quality interface. Now most of PkWare's business has been taken by WinZip from WinZip Computing.

I've only covered a few of the early failures here. I've said nothing about the dot-com bombs, which deserve a full investigation.

The biggest cause of software company failure is neglecting the sociological challenges of marketing software. Usually marketing vice presidents lack the necessary skills. Often they lack both sociological skills and technical skills. Part of the marketing manager's job is to create connections between the customers and the technical staff. Usually marketing managers have no programming experience, so they have no hope of having credibility with programmers. Usually marketing managers vastly underestimate the challenge of knowing the customer's needs.

The second biggest cause of software company failure is not understanding how to make a useful program. That means partly knowing how customers use their computers (see the paragraph above), but also thoroughly knowing the technical issues so that you know what can be and should be coded.

When people say they can manage in a fast-growing technical field without understanding what their employees are doing, they are talking complete and utter nonsense.

It is necessary to have a close business relationship with your coders. If you don't understand what they are doing, you can't be close to them.

Wow, it amazes me that the companies will publicly go to court to try to force themselves on people.

I only recently learned that my bank was selling my personal information. When I tried to opt-out, I discovered that they have a difficult procedure to do so. Also, I have three accounts, and they expect me to opt-out of each one separately, even though it is the same information.

I would boycott any company that goes to court against opt-in.

Notice the Sybase ad next to the Computerworld article. Will that sell Sybase products, or damage Sybase by annoying potential customers? The overall reality is that companies are often self-destructive in the way they interact with people.

--
Links to respected news sources show that U.S. government policy contributed to terrorism: What should be the Response to Violence?

You would switch away from Windows for these reasons:

1) You don't want to be on the upgrade treadmill, in which you pay money to Microsoft every year, and continue to get software that needs more upgrades. One upgrade at $180 may be acceptable, but $180 per year amounts to $1,800 in ten years.

2) You don't want an operating system with a single point of failure: the registry. The registry is a primitive database that is, in practice, not maintainable. If something goes wrong, the suggested fix (from Microsoft) has been to re-load the operating system and all your programs and configurations and driver upgrades.

3) You are worried that some of the security risks of Windows were deliberately put there for surveillance, by order of the U.S. government. It puzzles you that the United States Department of Justice case is being settled with little or no penalty to Microsoft. Would the U.S. government do something this sneaky? Here are links to 600 pages of articles that say yes: What should be the Response to Violence?

4) You want the flexibility that comes from owning the source code. You may never use the source code, but if you have a big company, and you find some kind of problem, having the source code may be the answer. For example, if there is a bug in a driver for 1,000 pieces of equipment you own, and the manufacturer won't fix it soon enough for you, you can fix it yourself.

5) You want to avoid invasions of business privacy forced on you by Microsoft. Microsoft is requiring that the location and owner of each copy of its XP operating system be disclosed to Microsoft.

In my opinion, the article is extremely badly written. Also, it is nonsense, as is easily proven by giving a link to another operating system:

Open BSD: Four years without a remote hole in the default install!

If the Open BSD team can make a secure operating system as volunteers, Microsoft, with a reported $33 billion in the bank, could take one of those billions and clean up their code.

Microsoft's security problems come partly from feeling that they don't have to care, apparently.

Also, maybe there is some secret U.S. government surveillance agency that requires that Microsoft operating systems not be secure. For years the U.S. government tried to prevent cryptography. For example, see these notes from the Center for Democracy and Technology: An overview of Clinton Administration Encryption Policy Initiatives. The notes say, "The long-standing goal of every major encryption plan by the [U.S. government] has been to guarantee government access to all encrypted communications and stored data."

It is not impossible that software insecurity is secret U.S. government policy. The U.S. government is involved in many hidden activities, as this collection of links and explanation shows: What should be the Response to Violence?

Let me try: Linux programmers like to make things work. They don't like to code user interfaces. This is unfortunate, but the result of programmer preferences not to code tedious interfaces, and not abuse.

(I myself am good at programming user interfaces, and it is easy work for me, but I still don't like it, so I can sympathize.)

Many people who choose to be programmers are not skilled at interacting with people. Although they are abusive sometimes, this is not conscious abuse, usually.

Just the very limited abuses in the U.S. Justice Department complaints against Microsoft, in which Microsoft was found guilty of breaking the law, were more than 200 pages. That is conscious, deliberate abuse.

Keeping known bugs in products so that there will be a reason for users to pay for upgrades is conscious abuse, also.
--

The U.S. government acts as a sales department for weapons manufacturers: What should be the Response to Violence?

It's not a troll. I've learned a lot from the responses. Some people seem to feel that asking their government to be responsible is beyond imagining.

If you are a U.S. citizen, you pay for this attitude. You pay Israel $905 per year for every man, woman, and child who lives there. Why? Apparently so that U.S. weapons makers can make more profit.

If you allow your government to lie, you can be sure of two things: 1) You won't be the one in control. 2) You will pay.

The U.S. government does a lot of things you probably don't suspect and for which, if you are a U.S. citizen, you probably don't want to pay. For example, the U.S. government brought Arabs to the U.S. and trained them in terrorism. The U.S. government was planning to attack Afghanistan long before the September 11, 2001 terrorism in the U.S. because a profitable oil and gas pipeline is planned that must go through Afghanistan. The terrorism apparently gave the government the excuse for which it was looking. For more about this, see the collection of links in What should be the Response to Violence?.

I have a problem with this. The U.S. government is, once again, lying. People need to be able to trust their government, but the government engages in every kind of behavior that it calls criminal.

For a small collection of U.S. government lies and misleading behavior, see this collection of links I put together: What should be the Response to Violence?

I have known Chinese (in China) who own little more than 2 white shirts, a pair of pants, and a bicycle.

However, they may use a computer at work to do personal jobs. They may run software on a computer at work that costs, in the U.S., more than their entire net worth.

This is not lost profit for companies like Adobe. It is free advertising and free trademark promotion.

No amount of law-making or law enforcement will make these people pay hundreds of U.S. dollars for Adobe Photoshop. However, advertise that you need someone who knows how to use Photoshop, and hundreds will apply. Is this a bad thing?

People in the U.S. get little accurate news of other countries. They often unconsciously make the assumption that other people are as rich as they are.

U.S. Senator Biden, who is an intelligent and educated man, and who is the Chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, doesn't even pronounce the words correctly, yet he talks of changing (my article, see the Biden interview) the Saudi government and controlling the development of the government of Afghanistan. If Senator Biden is like this, make a guess about the knowledge of other countries of the average Adobe executive.

Adobe executives should not consider that every pirated copy is a personal attack on Adobe profitability. There are many social situations that require more social sophistication than that.

The license says, basically, "Even though the U.S. was founded with carefully designed judicial principles, you must agree that those principles don't apply to you."

Software companies seem to be quite self-destructive. First Microsoft, with Bill Gates seeming to lie to the courts, and Microsoft license confusion, and numerous other ways of communicating that the company doesn't care.

Then Adobe attacking Skylarov and the author of Killustrator.

Now Borland wants to finish the job of destroying itself.

--
What should be the response to violence?

Suing HP: $8,000,000 if they win.

Suing other people: Another $4,000,000.

Being known by every prospective student as an organization that sues: Priceless. (Do you want to come from a university that prospective employers know might sue? This is a cost to the university whether or not they win.)

I thought the whole point of a university was to collect people who know more than the average person, for the benefit of the society as a whole. But now, if the university discovers that they may have benefited us, they sue?

The patent claims seem overly broad to me. If you have experience doing assembly language programming, you are certainly aware of the possibilities of out-of-order execution. I was doing what the patent claims long before 1989 -- manually. That is certainly prior art.

When you hand-optimize assembly code, you develop lots of appreciation for cases where re-ordered execution might not function correctly. The claims basically say, "Execute instructions out of their normal order, except where that wouldn't work." So, Columbia has a patent on hard-wiring a processor to run an obvious kind of program.

From the story: Dullea acknowledged that the university is involved in patent litigation with Carl Zeiss Optical, Inc., maker of eyeglass frames, but said the case is "not of this size." Translation: "We are not really an organization that likes to litigate, except..."

From a previous post: The average Cornell prof salary is below corresponding salaries at "peer" institutions and definitely below private industry equivalents. The faculty has been complaining about that for at least twenty years without effect. - son of Cornell professor. The university is NOT planning on sharing any money with students or faculty if they win.

The suit seems to me to be an example of a habitually adversarial kind of thinking that is becoming quite common in the U.S. culture. Remember Adobe and Skylarov, and Adobe's attack on the writer of the Killustrator program? People and societies sometimes arrive at a habitual frame of mind in which they are unable to find creative ways to live in the world without conflict.

The recent terrorism is also an example of this. According to major news sources; the U.S. government caused many of the problems to which the terrorists were reacting: What should be the response to violence?

Microsoft has a history of doing what it thinks will make more money in the short term, even if what the company does is strongly against the interests of its customers. For example, the registry in MS operating systems is implemented in such a way that it provides copy protection, and also in such a way as to be a massive single point of failure.

Basically, when you pay money to Microsoft, you are paying money to someone who may decide to be your enemy. It is not surprising that a large organization would try to avoid that.

Also, there is the concern that the amazing number of security bugs in Microsoft software may be due to a deliberate intention of the U.S. government to provide points of entry for government spy software like the FBI's Carnivore.

I've gathered more than 600 pages of links from major news sources showing the U.S. government's interest in control: What should be the Response to Violence? It it any wonder that a foreign government would want to avoid being involved in this? The only downside is that the office tools are less capable. But the Chinese government's decision is support for closing the gap.

"The truth is that violence is violence, no matter who commits and no matter who suffers as a result."

Agreed. Also, very few Americans understand how violent is their government. The U.S. government has bombed 14 countries in a little over 30 years, killing more than 2,000,000 people directly, and destroying the lives of millions more.

It is interesting to note that Brazil is a country about the same size as the United States. Brazil is also a nation of immigrants, from the same mostly European countries. How many countries has Brazil bombed in the last 30 years? None, nada, zero. So, it is possible for Europeans to live in the world without killing. The method of relating to other people used by the U.S. government is not the only way.

I've gathered links from news agencies and other online sources about this: What should be the Response to Violence?

Microsoft is making sure this company gets a lot of publicity.

--
The U.S. government causes problems, then pretends to solve them by creating more: What should be the Response to Violence?

A lot of people don't realize how bad the situation is with Microsoft. They read a story on Slashdot, and think that Slashdot is exaggerating the problems. The opposite is true. There are many, many problems you never hear about on Slashdot. For example, this just arrived:

Title: SQL Server Text Formatting Functions Contain unchecked Buffers.
Date: 20 December 2001
Software: Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 and Microsoft SQL Server 2000
Impact: Run code of attacker's choice on server, denial of service
Max Risk: Moderate
Bulletin: MS01-060

Microsoft encourages customers to review the Security Bulletin at: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin /MS01-060.asp.

If you read all the advisories, it is possible to come to the conclusion that there seems to be a lot of sloppy code in Microsoft products.

--
The U.S. government causes problems, then pretends to solve them by creating more: What should be the Response to Violence?

I read all the posts carefully, because accounting software is an important subject for me.

No one seems to have discussed a MAJOR reason to go to Open Source software: Commercial companies often become self-destructive. Maybe because they want to preserve reasons for future upgrades, they become unwilling to fix problems in their products.

When commercial companies are successful, they will often begin to try to squeeze the user. Look at the quote below about "unrelenting advertisement".

When commercial companies are successful, they often seem to spin out of control. Novell was one. Corel was another.

When commercial companies are successful, they often become arrogant and self-serving. Microsoft is an on-going story of being adversarial toward its customers.

Commercial software is often VERY influenced by the markeplace. From a quote below: Microsoft is "giving away Microsoft Money ... I think Intuit/Quicken/QuickBooks will go the way of Netscape within 18 months." When a company experiences a downturn, the good people leave, and companies often are unable to continue successfully. Remember PowerBuilder? Where is it now, after Microsoft took over the market with Visual Basic? Those who spent years learning PowerBuilder lost their investment.

I've been hearing about file corruption in Quicken and QuickBooks for years. The quotes below from this Slashdot story show that the problems have not been cured. Have the good people left Intuit, the manufacturer of QuickBooks? My experience of Open Source software it that major problems are fixed quickly.

QuickBooks is counter-intuitive, lacks backward file compatibility, and fixing some types of transactions is virtually impossible: 2718237

QuickBooks has a poor interface, there is often data corruption, and it is "slooooooooow": 2720211

QuickBooks has "frequently lost entire days worth of data": 2718998

"I hate the QuickBooks UI and its inconsistencies", GNU Cash is better: 2717131

QuickBook's "Web Based" accounting package only works on Windows: 2717244

"QuickBooks 2001 Pro is cranky - it misnumbers printed checks, sometimes. It will let you delete a reconciled check without warning on some systems, but not others. The invoicing sometimes deletes descriptions but keeps amounts.

"Plus, [QuickBooks 2001 Pro is] an unrelenting advertisement for online plus-charged checking, charge cards, investment accounts, you name it. QB is just a loss leader for the online services.

"... [Microsoft] is giving away Microsoft Money. The .NET services will require you to use Money, just you watch. I think Intuit/Quicken/QuickBooks will go the way of Netscape within 18 months."

The above three paragraphs are quoted from: 2717209

"I use Vmware [under Linux] to run QuickBooks for my business and Quicken for my personal stuff. They are in two different VMs and it runs great. When Quicken/QuickBooks decides to crash the OS, I just restart the Virtual Machine": 2716999"

Someone from Intuit posted a comment: KaiserSoze, a "member of the QuickBooks team" -- 2717731

This is counter-intuitive, but commercial software is often or unwilling to serve the needs of its users. Open Source software has no other purpose.

--
The U.S. government causes problems, then pretends to solve them by creating more: What should be the Response to Violence?

If the volunteers for OpenBSD can go through the software and eliminate security problems in advance, Microsoft, with 30 billion dollars in the bank, could also. Since Microsoft doesn't do this, maybe there is some reason. Maybe the U.S. government has dictated that they leave bugs in.

Software is only an operating system if it can be trusted. If it can't be trusted, there should be some other name, like fnord. Microsoft Fnord XP.

--
U.S. planned to attack Afghanistan before the second WTC bombing.

The spelling is Conectiva, with a single "n" because it is Portuguese, the language spoken in Brazil, and Portuguese avoids redundant letters. (But, of course, Portuguese has quirkiness of its own.)

I've never used it, but Conectiva looks like a good distro when you need to support users in the three languages it supports. The web site is in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

From the English web site: "... the company provides consulting services, training and technical support in all Latin America through its own service centers and certified partners."

--
Senator Biden (and Osama bin Laden) say that the Saudi government cannot continue without U.S. support: What should be the Response to Violence?

Glad you mentioned this, because it reminded me how difficult it is to find good documentation about wiring Ethernet.

As a wise Slashdot reader once said, "You can't have too much overkill", so here is the wiring scheme shown 3 different ways. I hope it saves you the time of gathering it together yourself.

Slashdot doesn't allow the HTML PRE tag. Slashdot removes leading spaces, so I've used dots below. Another problem is that the lameness filter is lame. That lameness filter is definitely named correctly.

Use only Standard EIA/TIA T568B. This is also called the AT&T specification. T568A is NOT USED.

T568B:

When the hook of the RJ-45 Ethernet connector is underneath, pin 1 is on the left.

Pair 1 is pins 4 and 5, Blue and White/Blue.

Pair 2 is pins 1 and 2, White/Orange and Orange (Transmit Data + and -)

Pair 3 is pins 3 and 6, White/Green and Green (Receive Data + and -).

Pair 4 is pins 7 and 8, White/Brown and Brown.

/--T21 White/Orange
Pair2 \--R22 Orange
/--------- -T33 White/Green
/ /-R14 Blue
Pair3 \ Pair1 \-T15 White/Blue
\--------- -R36 Green
/--T47 White/Brown
Pair4 \--R48 Brown

Pin ColorPairName

1 wh/or 2 TxData +
2 or2 TxData -
3 wh/grn3 RecvData+
4 blu 1
5 wh/blu1
6 grn 3 RecvData-
7 wh/brn4
8 brn 4

I know this sounds crazy, but standard Ethernet uses ONLY pairs 2 and 3, for both half and full duplex. The other wires just sit there, unused. (It is possible to buy external adapters to use the other two pairs as a second 10- or 100 Megabit 100Base-T connection.)

The R1, T1, R2, T2 designations are for telephones. R1 is Ring 1 (the red wire at the telephone box). T1 is Tip 1 (the green wire at the telephone box). Ring and Tip are old names for the telephone wires, but if you talk to a telephone company installer, he or she will use those names.

Quite obviously, someone messed this up majorly, as in "How can we make this confusing?"

If you are new to wiring Ethernet start with the simple explanation at Johns Closet (as in wiring closet): Wiring: Color Codes, Terms, and Tools.

See the Leviton Do and Don't Guides

See the Wiring Guides at the Leviton Learning Center . See the Residential And Light Commercial Installation Practices (Tia-570 Compliance) [PDF file] guide.

Also see the wiring specs at FAQS.org: 9.0 Standard EIA/TIA 568 (Use ONLY T568B)

More information about wiring: Data Communications Cabling FAQ

Your local store will probably try to charge too much. Shop around for Ethernet cable and connectors. You need the real thing, cable marked "Category 5". Other cable won't work.

One last thought to those who are new to Ethernet networking. A Hub broadcasts all data to all computers. An Ethernet Switch sends the data only to the computer that where the data will be used. Therefore, switches are faster in cases where the network is sending data between more than one pair of computers at the same time.

--
Senator Biden (and Osama bin Laden) say that the Saudi government cannot continue without U.S. support: What should be the Response to Violence?

The registry performs the function of copy-protection. A good operating system, one that was made in the customer's interests, would not mix information from one program with another, because then one bad program can cause others to fail.

The registry is poorly implemented. That is another reason for problems. For example, it often has errors that cannot be repaired with the tools Microsoft provides.

--
Senator Biden (and Osama bin Laden) say that the Saudi government cannot continue without U.S. support: What should be the Response to Violence?

In the real world, I agree that what you have said holds true. I don't think it is absolutely certain, but I don't know any counter-examples.

What you didn't mention is that the abusiveness is self-destructive. When IBM first sold PCs, they had 100% of the market. When there began to be alternatives, IBM's share of the market dropped to 8%, and eventually to nothing. I was amazed back then. People who knew little about computers knew they didn't like IBM! All the articles in newspapers and magazines managed to convey the nature of IBM management back then even to people with no technical knowledge.


--
Senator Biden (and Osama bin Laden) say that the Saudi government cannot continue without U.S. support: What should be the Response to Violence?

Microsoft is trying to establish the idea that they can kill their products even when people still are using them.

When this happens with Windows XP, you will no longer be able to change parts in an old computer, because doing so would require re-activation, which Microsoft won't make available after a date the company picks. This is a way of forcing users to pay more, not only for software, but for hardware, too. (Microsoft's big customers are hardware manufacturers.)

I really, really don't like Microsoft's abuse. I don't like things like the Registry, which is a database that frequently has errors that cannot be fixed with the tools Microsoft supplies. All settings for most programs are contained in the registry, and if there is bad error, it can be necessary to start over completely, and re-install all programs. For some people with a lot of programs, this can take 20 hours.

I don't like the artificial limitations which cause Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows ME to crash even though there is plenty of memory available.

I don't like the sloppiness and built-in weak security. This has caused billions of dollars of grief for people all over the world.

I don't like the fact that the operating system re-configures itself without any notice to the user. When there is a problem with a connection, as there often is after a computer is moved, there is no notice that something has changed.

Monopolies are not necessarily bad. Abusive monopolies are terrible.

I am very much looking forward to the time when Linux configuration and documentation are good enough that I can stop supporting Windows completely.

Why does a man who has 70 billion dollars feel that he has to squeeze money from people? Why doesn't Bill Gates relax and make a good product? Does it really make all that much difference to him to make another billion?

--
Senator Biden (and Osama bin Laden) say that the Saudi government cannot continue without U.S. support: What should be the Response to Violence?

Regardless of the problems in Saudi Arabia, the situation there is many, many times better than it is in "similar" countries such as Iraq and Iran.

Senator Biden, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, disagrees with you. He said in a recent interview that the government of Saudi Arabia exists only because it is supported by the United States. This is effectively saying that Osama bin Laden's main complaint is justified. (HOWEVER, note that bin Laden's violence is NOT justified.) A transcript of the interview will be posted later at http://hevanet.com/peace.

This is all relevant to the discussion of laser weapons in that something is out of control. There is a much greater belief in the power and efficacy of weapons than there should be.

I read about 60 Slashdot posts when the story was young, and I didn't find anyone who took the new weapon seriously. Many discussed reasons why it wouldn't work.

Thanks for bringing a little sanity to this subject.

And dont forget:

10) Clouds. Laser light does NOT penetrate clouds. The water vapor easily absorbs all the energy.

Also don't forget:

11) Friendly aircraft. On July 4, 1988, the U.S. Navy cruiser Vincennes, in the Persian Gulf, shot down an Iran Air A300 Airbus, killing 290 persons, after mistaking it for an attacking jet fighter. "The U.S. government deeply regrets this incident," Adm. William J. Crowe Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Pentagon news conference.

The cruiser was "equipped with the most sophisticated radar and electronic battle gear in the Navy's surface arsenal."

Organizations that sell weapons are often not honest about the shortcomings.

--
Links to respected news sources show how U.S. government policy contributed to terrorism: What should be the Response to Violence?

"Linux" is a great name that follows all the rules. It communicates what it was intended to communicate, and nothing more. It's a Unix work-alike that is still guided by a man named Linus. The name couldn't be better.

I'm not saying that companies with humorous names don't ever have customers. I'm saying that, in my experience, these companies don't last. They either go out of business or they change their name.

I can give only one counter-example: The Beatles. Sounds like an insect. This shows that, if you have an absolutely revolutionary product, and George Martin as a producer, you can overcome unfortunate connotations. But it doesn't happen often. If you disagree with this, can you give me counter-examples?

My quick impression when I visited your web site was that it was a good product. My comments have NOTHING to do with you or your product. My comments are only about unfortunate connotations.

Quoting your post:

"We (authors of BouncyCastle) have already gone through this with somebody who mailed us directly, who's boss didn't want to use it because the name was funny."

How many people had this reaction, but didn't communicate with you?

P.S.: Here is another example. Don't call yourself a geek. It carries the connotation that you have difficulty communicating with others, and avoid communicating by immersing yourself in technical things. After seeing your website, I very much doubt that is true.

--
Links to respected news sources show how U.S. government policy contributed to terrorism: What should be the Response to Violence?

Please don't sound superior about this.

If I lived in Iran, I would change my name to Moshen. Why? Because I don't want to sound Christian in a country where that is not favored. (Because Christians killed Muslims during the Crusades.)

I suggested to a friend of mine whose name is Mohammad that he pick another name for use in the U.S., since someone named Mohammad had bombed a TWA flight, and Mohammad Salameh bombed the World Trade Center the first time it was bombed. He strongly agreed, and now calls himself Mike when communicating with people who don't understand his culture.

I had a Japanese-Brazilian acquaintance whose last name is Asso, which is pronounced to rhyme with asshole. When he says his last name, it sounds like he is saying asshole. If he came here, I would recommend he adopt a different name.

I heard about a German man, now living in the U.S., who changed his last name. Before the change, it was Raper, a perfectly good name in German.

Un-intentional communication has killed many Open Source Software projects, and commercial companies, too. I have found that this is a very radical opinion on Slashdot, but it is the standard opinion of professional communicators and marketing people. My opinion is that OSS must adopt good communication methods to avoid silly problems like this.

I'm not saying that someone who is named Imad should change his name. He should arrange his communication, however, so people who are new to knowing him don't read it as "I mad", which is what a native English speaker is likely to do.

--
Links to respected news sources show how U.S. government policy contributed to terrorism: What should be the Response to Violence?

What is almost never mentioned in discussions of cryptography is that brute force or most mathematical attacks require that the method of encryption be known.

If the method of encryption is not known, then it can be impossible to decrypt a message. For example, if several kinds of strong encryption are used, and the kinds and order are not known, then brute force or mathematical attacks don't work. (Using several methods of encryption together is called "chaining".)

This is of limited use since, in many cases, it is impossible or impractical or difficult to keep the methods of encryption secret.

Nevertheless, software that used several encryption methods and varied the methods depending on the passphrase would have value in some cases where there is plenty of computing power.

--
Links to respected news sources show how U.S. government policy contributed to terrorism: What should be the Response to Violence?

"According to the lecturer, there are over 50 million handicapped people in the United States..."

The population of the United States was 285,663,707 earlier today. That is one out of 6. When you look around you, do you see one handicapped person for every 6 people?

Okay, maybe they don't use Linux, but they aren't handicapped.

--
Links to respected news sources show how U.S. government policy contributed to terrorism: What should be the Response to Violence?

In my post above, I was making the point that Microsoft is much worse than people realize. Here is a link to a Microsoft Knowledgebase article that eloquently makes that point: User Accounts That You Create During Setup Are Administrator Account Types (Q293834)

This is not Windows 95 the article is discussing. It is Windows XP. Here is a cut-and-paste quote from that article:

"After you install Windows XP, you have the option to create user accounts. If you create user accounts, by default, they will have an account type of Administrator with no password."

Even someone who knows how bad Microsoft can be would likely not guess that Windows XP would be designed to be completely and utterly not secure by default. So, we will see a lot of stories about compromised Windows XP systems like this: Some poor guy was testing XP and set up an account to begin using it, and was rooted while he was still looking around.

--
Links to respected news sources show how U.S. government policy contributed to terrorism: What should be the Response to Violence?

"CD: You'd think people would examine what someone did at his previous job before offering him a new one." [Corrections to grammar and spelling added.]

It's all part of the same kind of thinking. Bomb Afghanistan to save it. (I'm talking about the first bombing by the U.S. government [1983], not the second and third.)

Hire someone from a company known for its inability to make secure software, and put him in charge of what his company always did poorly.

But, of course, maybe he is not really leaving Microsoft, but just working with a government that doesn't believe in privacy to assure that Microsoft software will always be compromised by the government.

Look on the bright side. With Microsoft in the White House, no one who truly wants software security will be running Microsoft products.

--
Links to respected news sources show how U.S. government policy contributed to terrorism: What should be the Response to Violence?

I am saying that, for me as a native English speaker, the cost of being involved with Ruby is high:

Ruby is a language primarily written and maintained by one person. The author of the language says this in one of the links that I provided. The documentation in English is poor, and, because there is only one primary person working on the language, the documentation is likely to remain poor. That makes a big difference for anyone trying to learn a new computer language, because it vastly increases the cost (in time) of learning.

Also, if there is poor documentation in English, it has been my experience that fewer people adopt a new computer language. English is the world's most common second language. EVERY Japanese student studies English, my Japanese friends say. A friend in Thailand told me that there was a scholarship program to teach computer skills to Thais in Japan. The courses were taught in English.

Try a test: Call the main number of any large German bank. When the operator says hello in German, just start speaking English. You will find that the operator immediately switches to perfect English. If German banks think that communicating in English is important, maybe that is because communicating in English is important in today's world.

If fewer people adopt a computer language, there will be less development. If there is less development, then it may become one of the hundreds of languages that have eventually died. This would increase the cost of adopting Ruby still further.

Poor communication is a BIG issue with open source software, in my opinion (and closed source, too). In my opinion, poor communication is the one big barrier to getting rid of the Microsoft Windows operating system completely. I don't like Windows because I don't like being abused by Microsoft.

My city, Portland, Oregon, USA, has what is said to be the biggest bookstore in the world, Powell's. I went to Powell's technical bookstore and looked at about 20 books on Samba. ALL of them were very incomplete. ALL of them were poorly written.

--
Links to respected news sources show how U.S. government policy contributed to terrorism: What should be the Response to Violence?

I looked at Ruby. It is certainly a heartfelt attempt. However, it seems to me that yet another poor communicator has written yet another language.

Not only that, but the Ruby creator has created his own syntax. A new language has one big advantage for the creator: The creator finds the syntax very familiar. Everyone else must struggle.

Links:

The Ruby Home Page

Ruby Language Reference Manual

The Ruby Language FAQ

Programming in the Ruby language by Joshua D. Drake, who is a good communicator.

A Slashdot story and comments: Programming in the Ruby Language

Positive comments about Ruby:

Introducing the latest open source gem from Japan

Thirty-seven Reasons I Love Ruby by Hal Fulton.

Negative comments about Ruby:

As mentioned above, Bruce Eckel does not like Ruby:

"IMO, the Ruby syntax is ... often annoying... Ruby requires more typing for no particular reason, and has an uninspired choice of syntax ..."

Eckel again: "... Python has 10 years behind it and a big, very smart, very active community, a nice number of good books and more on the way, a large set of libraries and a whole process and team in place for developing the language. Recent improvements to the language have outstripped whatever Ruby could offer, I think, and there's currently lots of very good work going on to further improve Python."

For those who would like to quickly see for themselves, there is a section of the The Ruby Language FAQ called Show me some Ruby code

Quotes from Ruby's creator, a Japanese man with an incomplete command of English:

What is the history of Ruby?

"Well, Ruby was born on February 24 1993. I was talking with my colleague about the possibility of an object-oriented scripting language. I knew Perl (Perl4, not Perl5), but I didn't like it really, because it had smell of toy language (it still has). The object-oriented scripting language seemed very promising.

"I knew Python then. But I didn't like it, because I didn't think it was a true object-oriented language -- OO features appeared to be add-on to the language. As a language manic and OO fan for 15 years, I really wanted a genuine object-oriented, easy-to-use scripting language. I looked for, but couldn't find one.

"So, I decided to make it. It took several months to make the interpreter run. I put it the features I love to have in my language, such as iterators, exception handling, garbage collection.

"Then, I reorganized the features of Perl into a class library, and implemented them. I posted Ruby 0.95 to the Japanese domestic newsgroups in Dec. 1995.

"Since then, highly active mailing lists have been established and web pages formed."

--
Links to respected news sources show how U.S. government policy contributed to terrorism: What should be the Response to Violence?

When the government is sneaky, people learn not to trust the government.

When the government is sneaky, much more is lost than ever can be gained by being sneaky.

Trust is absolutely necessary in a democracy. If we cannot trust our government, we do not really have a democracy.

When a government cannot be trusted, the government becomes a suspect in every major crime.

Governments are not sneaky because sneakiness benefits the government. Governments are sneaky because there are people who like to be sneaky and be paid for it, and they sometimes gain power.

The facts seem to be this: For years the U.S. government acted in an un-trustworthy way toward Arabs. For years some Arabs became mentally unbalanced by this and threatened to retaliate inside the United States.

Now, the U.S. government is using the results of its unwillingness to be trustworthy to justify even more un-trustworthy behavior.

Here are links to respected news sources that show how U.S. government policy contributed to terrorism: What should be the Response to Violence?

US control Saudi goverment

U.S. ARMY COMMAND AND GENERAL STAFF COLLEGE

S 510/0 Strategic, Operational and Joint Environments

Lesson Guide for Lesson 6
National and Theater Command and Control

"So you have all this incredibly nasty software sitting happily on some (criminal enough to get the FBI's attention) hacker's computer, conveniently within his reach."

Exactly.

They'll spend $30,000,000 of your money (if you are a U.S. citizen) on software to exploit security flaws. Then they'll broadcast that software free to criminals. This will teach some of the criminals how to exploit security flaws. Then there will be more crime. Then the FBI will get more money to fight crime. They will see this as a big success.

The CIA used this same method in Afghanistan. They trained Arabs in terrorism. Read about that in: What should be the Response to Violence?

How many criminals smart enough to use computers will be smart enough to run Tripwire, or some program like it, such as the one that comes with Mandrake? At least some, is my guess. Those criminals will know immediately that their computers have been compromised. The criminals will then use the compromised computers to write email saying how much they believe in law enforcement, and to send Paypal payments to charities.

We need to protect ourselves vigorously from crime. However, creating secret agencies who are able to commit crimes themselves is not the way to protect ourselves.

Already there is a serious problem with people committing some destructive act and claiming it was done by the CIA or other U.S. government secret agency. There is no good defense against this, because people worldwide know that the U.S. government secret agencies routinely break the law. How could it be proven that the FBI, CIA, or NSA, or some other secret agency didn't do a particular crime?

The U.S. FBI, CIA, and NSA are now worldwide surveillance agencies. They are supported by Americans who are not allowed to know how much of their money is spent on surveillance. United States citizens are not allowed to know what the U.S. government secret agencies are doing, so they don't know if the agencies are doing things they would now support.

The people who work for the FBI are often not smart people. They don't realize that trust is absolutely necessary in a democracy. They have often in the past not shown understanding of the other needs of democracy. They have often acted like secret police. They often believe in killing or other ways of being destructive as a way of curing some ill in society.

Now they will be attacking computers like the criminals. They will say that they are doing it only to solve crimes, but it is socially impossible to control this kind of thing. Once the principle is established that a secret agency can break the law, there is in practice no limit to what some people in that agency might feel "justified" in doing. Consider your own experience. When has the boss had complete knowledge and complete control over the actions of employees? Never. A company's only good policy is to hire open and honest people and to encourage honesty and genuine caring.

The FBI's influence will mean that the U.S. taxpayer's money will become a powerful force in preserving security holes, instead of closing them. Generally, this kind of software has had holes of its own. You may be attacked by a cracker exploiting a security hole created by FBI software. Governments will detect FBI snooping software and feed the FBI erroneous information.

This is all support for people who like snooping and sneaking. It is not actually a way to reduce crime. It is for adults who like to treat the whole world as a video game. It is for the kind of people who think of themselves as James Bond, who like the idea of being able to kill other people legally.


How U.S. government policy contributed to terrorism: What should be the Response to Violence?

The following is my opinion. I have had extensive experience in supporting computer use by businesses, and it may be an opinion worth considering:

The Microsoft web page says that Windows 98 will only receive FULL support until June 30, 2002. After that date support will be limited. The limitations will have many effects that are not detailed on the web page. For example, if severe security bugs are found, Microsoft may refuse to fix them. This is a big issue with Microsoft products, because there have been so many security bugs in the past, literally hundreds.

Remember, this means that the great majority of people and companies will not be completely supported after June 2002. If they want complete support, they will be forced to go through the difficulties and re-retraining of an upgrade. They will also have to pay Microsoft more money.

Maybe the biggest effect of companies going to Windows XP is that they will eventually be forced onto the planned Microsoft treadmill, in which they will pay Microsoft money every month whether they upgrade or not, and whether Windows XP works or not. They will also be forced onto the Microsoft advertising and security treadmill, as Microsoft tries to pressure them ecomonically in any way it can.

Because Microsoft has, essentially, a monopoly, it has more extensive responsibilities. The law says this, but the law is not being enforced. Instead, Microsoft uses its power to cause a situation in which almost every arrangement is in some way bad for the buyer and good for Microsoft, the seller. It is an economic dictatorship. One-sided contracts have been found to be illegal in the past, but the courts don't understand the technical issues, so they aren't sure that the Microsoft contracts are one-sided.

Many companies use applications that work fine under Windows 98. When Windows 98 is used with only one or a very few applications, it may crash only once or twice a week, which depending on the applications, may be acceptable.

Companies that use Windows 98 with an accounting application, for example, may be growing and improving rapidly, but may be happy with their accounting methods. Such companies may not need or want to change software for a period of 10 years or more.

If you use a computer for your own personal needs, you may buy a new computer every 2 years. But try to put yourself in the frame of mind of a business manager. A computer owned by a business may be used for only one purpose, like data entry. With data entry, greater computer speed makes no difference. A company may simply not need to change this business method; the data entry computer is only one of many business tools.

The Microsoft web page talks about "Product Lifecycle". This is misleading. It is as though you have used the same stapler for 15 years, but Microsoft says you should buy a new one whenever Microsoft dictates, even though you don't need a new one. It is as though Hoover stopped selling bags for its older vacuum cleaners, and was somehow able to prevent others from supplying bags, also.

The larger issue is that Microsoft is saying it can dictate the use of its products after they are sold, and in an extremly prejudicial fashion. It is doing this by imposing numerous entirely artificial limitations.

Not all computers running an un-supported operating system will need support, of course. Also, the lack of support from Microsoft will no doubt cause the development of an un-official support network.

Monopolies are not in themselves bad or illegal. The conditions that make the Microsoft monopoly negative for the customer are: 1) Microsoft is often extremely adversarial to the needs of the customer if by doing so it believes it will make more money. Over the long term an abusive Microsoft will make less money, of course, because the company is gaining a very negative reputation. 2) Microsoft products are often sloppy about security. 3) Microsoft may have been compromised by the secret agenicies of the U.S. government. Microsoft software is sausage software; who knows what is in it?

These conditions are excellent for Linux. Unfortunately Linux is still much more difficult to configure.


An explanation of how the U.S. got involved in terrorism: What should be the Response to Violence?

"If it is beyond the scope of the case then it is beyond the scope of the remedy. The findings of fact and law have been affirmed by the Appeals court and if the remedy doesn't follow those findings them Microsoft has valid ground for yet another appeal."

The issue has moved away from a court resolution. The issue now is a negotiated settlement. Using secret file formats to enforce monopoly is relevant. It is relevant that Microsoft is extremely abusive in other ways, also.

"These aren't arbitrary limits. There are valid technical reasons (regardless of how ugly the solution was) for them being there (namely the use of the Win16 GDI layer as the drawing engine in Win9x). These restrictions no longer exist in WinXP so your argument here is quite a joke.

"What sort of programmer are you?"

I am a good programmer, and I realize that computers can be programmed. It was not elegant to use the old Win16 code. However, an even more inelegant work-around could have solved the problem.

Allowing Microsoft Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows ME to crash was a VERY heartless act on the part of Microsoft. Many, many users bought extra memory for their computers, not realizing that it would make no difference.

"... this is a stupid comment."

This is a problem on Slashdot. People are too quick to call someone else stupid. Also, even if I am stupid, this is not justification for you to act out your anger toward me. It is only justification for you to educate me.


An explanation of how the U.S. got involved in violence: What should be the Response to Violence?

I believe you are corrrect. There is a law of estoppel. If you deliberately don't enforce your rights, you cannot enforce them later. There may be something in copyright law that says that estoppel does not apply. However, Microsoft might lose their right to enforce the contract of their license, anyway, because of other issues.

I don't know the law in this case. Also, it would be necessary to prove that their lack of enforcement is deliberate and widespread.

Note that is why they had the court case in which I was a witness. The Microsoft operator gave me the legal department phone number, and I talked to someone there with little experience, extensively. They could not ignore this. I was VERY upset with them. There were 5 distributors in the area, and ALL of them were selling illegal copies of DOS. I made it VERY clear I thought their behavior was deliberate.

That may be why it is NOT possible to get the phone number of the legal department now. When I called to make a similar complaint about Microsoft Office 2000, they blocked me from telling my story.


An explanation of how the U.S. became the target of terrorism: What should be the Response to Violence?

If your company is not extemely abusive and anti-competitive, you have nothing to fear from the DOJ.

You are right, Windows 98 full support will stop in 7 months, not 1 month.

From the Langa Newsletter, Nov. 15, 2001:

"Starting next month and ending next June, the overwhelming majority of current Windows users will find themselves operating OS versions that the vendor --- Microsoft --- either doesn't support, or only partially supports! " [my emphasis]

(The Langa Newsletter is an excellent free emailed newsletter that covers matters of interest to computer users.)


An explanation of how the U.S. got involved in violence: What should be the Response to Violence?

Here's my letter to the DOJ:


I've owned a computer dealership since before IBM sold personal computers. I'm also a programmer.

Microsoft is extemely abusive and anti-competitive. -- Microsoft is far, far more anti-competitive and abusive than the US DOJ vs. Microsoft antitrust case discusses. If the present case in resolved in an insufficient fashion, there will be a need for another case immediately.

Secret file formats are anti-competitive. -- A good partial resolution of the case would be to prohibit Microsoft from using secret file formats. Then there could be competition again.

At present there cannot be competition because the software from the dominant company, Microsoft, produces file formats that cannot be reproduced because they are secret. So, another company cannot make software that reliably inter-operates.

At present, if a big customer upgrades to a new version of Microsoft Office, and sends out files in a format incompatible with previous versions, all people who receive the files are forced to upgrade their Microsoft software. Companies understandably don't want to go to a good customer and ask that a document be sent again in a former file format.

Microsoft produces software that is deliberately faulty. -- Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows ME all have articifial limitations which cause them to crash even though there are plenty of hardware resources. These are called "User Resources" and "GDI Resources". The memory for these resources is artificially limited to 128,000 bytes in some cases and 2 megabytes in other cases. When these resources are exhausted, the operating systems stop functioning.

Microsoft deliberately allows piracy. -- Major competitors of Microsoft like Corel Word Perfect and IBM Lotus WordPro have difficulty competing because Microsoft allows enough piracy of Microsoft products that competitors cannot sell theirs.

I called the Microsoft legal department and complained about this. The result was that I was a witness in a case against one of the pirates. More recently I tried to complain about this again, but it is now impossible to contact Microsoft's legal department.

In my area Microsoft Office 2000 is available for $50.00 at dealers who sell low-cost computers. I have verified with Microsoft that these are pirated copies. Over a period of many years, Microsoft has not taken sufficient action against the pirates to allow a chance for honest competitors.

Microsoft is ending support. -- Next month, December 2001, Microsoft will stop providing support for Windows 98, apparently in an attempt to force users to upgrade. Another good partial resolution of the DOJ-Microsoft case would be to extend the support time for at least another 10 years. Many people have computers that operate fine for the purpose for which they are used. For example, an accounting department in a small company may use Windows 95, or even the DOS operating system. These people should not be forced to upgrade.

These are only a few of the extremely anti-competitive and abusive methods Microsoft uses, in my opinion.

Regards,

Michael Jennings


An explanation of how the U.S. got involved in violence: What should be the Response to Violence?

From the Slashdot story posted by Hemos, (Mostly) Confirmed: New Mersenne Prime Found

pc's [Should be PCs.]

there fifth result [their]

money has been awarded [How could this be past tense if the results have not been confirmed?]

sofar [so far, until now]

a message send into outer space. " [two mistakes]

to totally test it out [to test it completely]

It is one of the characteristics of a young child that he or she only cares about himself or herself. It is one of the characteristics of an adult that he or she is considerate of others.

It is time for the Slashdot editors like Hemos to grow up and become responsible adults. Every time they post a story with spelling, grammatical, and typographical errors, they make every reader do more work. The errors are especially difficult for the many Slashdot readers for whom English is not their native language.

Someone who knows English well should edit all stories before they are posted.


An explanation of how the U.S. got involved in violence: What should be the Response to Violence?