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Hick town eh?

Oh yeah, way out there in Fairfax County.

Funny, we have the NRO, one of the largest airports in the US, an 802.11b wireless network, SGI, a linux users group, and an Intel datacenter, not to mention also having a boatload of linux careers. Oh yeah, and don't forget that MAE-East often gets cut by cows chewing on the fiber out here in hickville. Oh, I forgot some little things like ThinkGeek, NSI, and ARIN.
Oh yeah, and that hick high school is getting me my CCNA.

I'm not even going to mention AOL, Erols, or the CIA.

But you get the picture.

- Cary

Alternative tech article (probably very expensive though)

Raymond essay is disingenuous in that he evades the whole point of Kuhn and Stallman's essay. Kuhn and Stallman clearly are talking about freedom for the user. Raymond begs the question by addressing freedom for the programmer. Ultimately, which is the more important?

One delusion that some programmer's often operate under is that they are creating a work in isolation from everybody else's contributions. Most of what we leverage in our creative works has come to us for free, under the principles of academic freedom. In many ways, RMS has simply reformulated these principles into a binding form specific to computer software. I agree with his effort to eliminate the free riders that would attempt to appropriate the vast body of prior art for their own personal gain.

...or, even better O'Reilly's Meerkat

Mmmmm.... Tastey

~g.

What is wrong with trademarks?
They help the consumer distinguish between reputable products and cheap imitations.
Would you be happy if the Herman Miller Aeron you just purchased for US$700 was actually an fraud, made out of cheap plastic and manufactured by underpaid laborers in Taiwan. Trademark law helps you to make sure you are getting the Real Thing(TM).

As for patents, it depends on how they are enforced.

What do you think of Tim O'Reilly's definiton of Freedom Zero? Roughly, "Freedom Zero for me is to offer the fruit of your work on the terms that work for you."

This freedom (which sounds so reasonable to me) often puts the other four in conflict, as the FSF always describes software as a public good.

We met at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention. I remember you beeing the first person taking the microphone to ask Craig Mundie some questions during the debate. You invited him to discuss the philosophy behind the GPL compared to the philosophy behind Microsoft's shared-source license.

I wanted to know. Did he accept your invitation? What will you ask him when you two meet face to face?

Haim.

In the O'Reilly article, the author says that Miguel is open minded. I suggest we all seat back, relax and try to do the same exact thing. Let's be open minded if only for 5 minutes.

So I'm sitting at my desk, open minded and stuff, reading Dale Dougherty's article. First of all, I would like to say that I found it very interesting. Here are my comments on it.

Open Source developer Miguel de Icaza, leader of the GNOME project and founder of Ximian, has been exploring Microsoft's .NET platform with an open mind

The open mind thing, remember?

he was only beginning to think about the implications of Microsoft.NET

That's exactly what it's about. The implications. Read on.

.NET provides developers with a state-of-the-art development environment, one that leaps ahead of open source alternatives.

Here we go. The first of many comparaisons. Some of you slashdotters are aiming their guns at him for making such a comparaison. Don't! Keep an open mind. With an open mind you realize that vi and Emacs don't come even close to a fully integrated development environment. Again, keep an open mind and think about it for at least a minute before you shoot.

"It's a new development environment for the next twenty years."

Let me be honest: when I read that piece, I thought he was being paid by Microsoft. I mean come on! That's a pretty bold statement right there. Let's see what he has to say about that.

Five years ago, we [open source developers] had the high ground in technical tools," said de Icaza. "We had better tools and a better development environment than Windows developers had. Now, with .NET, I see that the roles have changed and Windows developers have much better tools than we have.

(NOTE TO SELF: Don't quote that much in one piece)
Wow! Is that really so? ... Ok then. I have my open mind and all that but still, that's sounds like marketing to me. Now hold on. What if ... I don't know ... do you think ... is it really ... True?

What if it's true? Let's see what he has to say.

.NET is a good platform to innovate from

Cool! This time, the roles would be reversed. Please understand. This time, it is us who have a chance to copy, to mimic, to "innovate". Schweeeeet.

Microsoft might port the runtime to Linux

Now why the hell would they do that? The only thing AFAIK they ever did on Linux was those f***ed up Front Page Extensions! Do you really think they would do that? Why? To extend .NET of course, just like Unix embraced multiple platforms back in the days (This is indeed a very good analogy). About a year ago I think, I read someone saying that the Desktop OS should be at the user's service, not the opposite. Microsoft understood that believe it or not. You (and I) may not like it but the main reason why they are what they are on the desktop market is because they offer what the vast majority of users want. They also know that the OS is not the end all of all things. They understand the market (heck, they control the damn thing) and they expand like a wasp colony in my back yard by controling the rest with .NET.

What I mean to say by that is that Miguel has a point. .NET is probably the most important technology/invention for the years to come. Just like Unix kicked Multix's ass back in the days, .NET will be the next development environment for the years to come. (open mind everyone)

"I personally want to see the .NET runtime on Linux", [...] seeming to commit himself to building it if it doesn't emerge from current efforts.

Thank you! It would be terrible to be left at the mercy of Microsoft for having something that important not available on our favorite OS. Could you imagine? Maybe not. Let me help, imagine that there was no TCP/IP stack available for Linux. That's the kind of situation we could find ourselves in if major tools like .NET are not available for Linux. (NOTE TO SELF: That was a "Bad analogy").

Later on, Miguel explains briefly why he likes .NET so much. He makes his points when he says (and I quote)

"With .NET, MS has figured out the next generation of development software"

Now that does not come from some AC waiting for a good troll. This guy wrote a whole lot of code. I think I can safely say that he knows what he is talking about when it comes to developing software. (Open mind again).

.NET was not targeted for a single language.

Just like Unix was not targetted as a single platform. You have it right here, in front of you. If you can see further than your nose, it's obvious that this is why .NET will (wether you like it or not) take over. He even says It's a programmer's dream come true. He's right, at least admit it.

So he goes on and on explaining what the Unix world did wrong and what .NET does right. Good. He wants to see .NET under Linux. Great, count me in.

Now remember what happened with Unix in the early 2000's ... it got taken over by a Free (as in speech) OS based on the Linux kernel. This is what is going to happen with .NET. If Microsoft think they are ahead, wait until they see how good the open source community is at rebuilding a good idea from scratch and make it a wonderful one. .NET is a fantastic concept. .ORG (or whatever we chose to call our open source alternative) will be to .NET what GNU/Linux is to Unix. Mark my words.

Good night and thank you for reading.

In the O'Reilly article, the author says that Miguel is open minded. I suggest we all seat back, relax and try to do the same exact thing. Let's be open minded if only for 5 minutes.

So I'm sitting at my desk, open minded and stuff, reading Dale Dougherty's article. First of all, I would like to say that I found it very interesting. Here are my comments on it.

Open Source developer Miguel de Icaza, leader of the GNOME project and founder of Ximian, has been exploring Microsoft's .NET platform with an open mind

The open mind thing, remember?

he was only beginning to think about the implications of Microsoft.NET

That's exactly what it's about. The implications. Read on.

.NET provides developers with a state-of-the-art development environment, one that leaps ahead of open source alternatives.

Here we go. The first of many comparaisons. Some of you slashdotters are aiming their guns at him for making such a comparaison. Don't! Keep an open mind. With an open mind you realize that vi and Emacs don't come even close to a fully integrated development environment. Again, keep an open mind and think about it for at least a minute before you shoot.

"It's a new development environment for the next twenty years."

Let me be honest: when I read that piece, I thought he was being paid by Microsoft. I mean come on! That's a pretty bold statement right there. Let's see what he has to say about that.

Five years ago, we [open source developers] had the high ground in technical tools," said de Icaza. "We had better tools and a better development environment than Windows developers had. Now, with .NET, I see that the roles have changed and Windows developers have much better tools than we have.

(NOTE TO SELF: Don't quote that much in one piece)
Wow! Is that really so? ... Ok then. I have my open mind and all that but still, that's sounds like marketing to me. Now hold on. What if ... I don't know ... do you think ... is it really ... True?

What if it's true? Let's see what he has to say.

.NET is a good platform to innovate from

Cool! This time, the roles would be reversed. Please understand. This time, it is us who have a chance to copy, to mimic, to "innovate". Schweeeeet.

Microsoft might port the runtime to Linux

Now why the hell would they do that? The only thing AFAIK they ever did on Linux was those f***ed up Front Page Extensions! Do you really think they would do that? Why? To extend .NET of course, just like Unix embraced multiple platforms back in the days (This is indeed a very good analogy). About a year ago I think, I read someone saying that the Desktop OS should be at the user's service, not the opposite. Microsoft understood that believe it or not. You (and I) may not like it but the main reason why they are what they are on the desktop market is because they offer what the vast majority of users want. They also know that the OS is not the end all of all things. They understand the market (heck, they control the damn thing) and they expand like a wasp colony in my back yard by controling the rest with .NET.

What I mean to say by that is that Miguel has a point. .NET is probably the most important technology/invention for the years to come. Just like Unix kicked Multix's ass back in the days, .NET will be the next development environment for the years to come. (open mind everyone)

"I personally want to see the .NET runtime on Linux", [...] seeming to commit himself to building it if it doesn't emerge from current efforts.

Thank you! It would be terrible to be left at the mercy of Microsoft for having something that important not available on our favorite OS. Could you imagine? Maybe not. Let me help, imagine that there was no TCP/IP stack available for Linux. That's the kind of situation we could find ourselves in if major tools like .NET are not available for Linux. (NOTE TO SELF: That was a "Bad analogy").

Later on, Miguel explains briefly why he likes .NET so much. He makes his points when he says (and I quote)

"With .NET, MS has figured out the next generation of development software"

Now that does not come from some AC waiting for a good troll. This guy wrote a whole lot of code. I think I can safely say that he knows what he is talking about when it comes to developing software. (Open mind again).

.NET was not targeted for a single language.

Just like Unix was not targetted as a single platform. You have it right here, in front of you. If you can see further than your nose, it's obvious that this is why .NET will (wether you like it or not) take over. He even says It's a programmer's dream come true. He's right, at least admit it.

So he goes on and on explaining what the Unix world did wrong and what .NET does right. Good. He wants to see .NET under Linux. Great, count me in.

Now remember what happened with Unix in the early 2000's ... it got taken over by a Free (as in speech) OS based on the Linux kernel. This is what is going to happen with .NET. If Microsoft think they are ahead, wait until they see how good the open source community is at rebuilding a good idea from scratch and make it a wonderful one. .NET is a fantastic concept. .ORG (or whatever we chose to call our open source alternative) will be to .NET what GNU/Linux is to Unix. Mark my words.

Good night and thank you for reading.

One of they guys from www.oreillynet.com had some fun trying NetBSD. Not too much luck.
Here: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/mac/2001/07/03/ibo ok.html

One of they guys from www.oreillynet.com had some fun trying NetBSD. Not too much luck.
Here: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/mac/2001/07/03/ibo ok.html

It has been called an "Open Source alternative to .NET", although it is by no means a clone. Rather, it focuses on extending existing UNIX features and programs to the Internet, where they haven't been before.

Perhaps we don't need a clone, just as Linux is not a clone of Windows. And it's a good thing it is not.

Here are some articles and mentions of Piper:

On Slashdot

Linux Software Encyclopedia

Linux Weekly News

Gnome Gnotices (It's interesting to note that the article first posted there referred to Piper as an alternative to .Net. The moderator later changed that. Paranoid minds, such as mine, wonder about this and the future intentions of GNOME with respect to .Net.)

O'Reilly P2P website

SunWorld Online

And some other online magazines/forums:

Infolets

Tecnologia

Hispa MP3

--
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.

there is a very good article on linux o'reillynet about ipaq running linux...

compaq hosts and sponsors the handhelds.org site, which is a community resource center, primarily for developers, hosting Web, FTP, CVS, and mailing-list services.. the site focuses on linux under strongarm SA11xx processors, such as the ipaq and the yopy, but does not mention work on other processors such as MIPS or 68xxx...

there are few distributions running well on ipaq:
#1# familiar distribution, a lightweight package with python and XFree86 with anti-aliased fonts, using the blackbox window manager. familiar also includes a new packaging system called ipkg, which is like RPM or DEB packages for desktop Linux. compaq had at the beginning its own hh distribution but after a while it swap to familiar...
#2# an extension of familiar is initimate... its goal is to provide "full-blown" distribution including doom, konqueror, mpeg players and stuff like that... but for all of that u will need extra microdrive coz by default ipaq doesn't have enough space...

there are few others but there are not free like trolltech's Qt Palmtop Environment or transvirtual technology's pocketlinux which goal is to provide a java runtime instead of pure linux environment....

imho when u have ssh (included by default) and rxvt w/ gprs modem it is enough to go with it ;) and with familiar dis u will have that and much much more...

Ok, I have done a little research in the past day, and I have found that the Palm m505 looks nice, and appears to be nice, but nobody seams to put it on they're top list. I dunno, let me get to the point here. This is a review done on the Agenda VR3 from O'Reilly, and it doesn't look /nearlly/ as good as I has hoped. Doesn't even have color. shrug The iPAQ, from reading everyones post, also sounds disappointing. Specially with you only being able to push down one button at a time. Ok, what PDA should I get, and how would I put linux on it?

What service _is_ that (mobile wireless 5Mb?!) and where else can I buy it from?

Long range directional 802.11b. With line of site there no problem with directional 10 mile 2.4GHz at 11mbps (http://linux.oreillynet.com/pub/a/wireless/2001/0 5/03/longshot.html)

It'd work flying near towns or cities, or maybe interstates, which could have arials put up.

First, a personal opinion: I believe that learning how to program is so valuable because through it, one learns problem solving skills.

On that note, if you want to teach programming, here are some ideas. I have use none of these for teaching, but I am intrigued:


Scheme/LISP - I learned Scheme from The Little LISPer (the most recent version is called The Little Schemer ), a great book! I already knew how to program when I learned Scheme, but this might be a good way to learn.

Other resources for learning programming through Scheme (with which I have no experience, but sound interesting):

http://www.cs.rice.edu/CS/PLT/Teaching/
http://www.cs.rice.edu/CS/PLT/packages/drscheme/
http://www.teach-scheme.org/ (doesn't seem to be working right now)


Starlogo is very cool, you might also want to look at the book Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams by Mitchel Resnick, the creator of StarLogo (in the book he talks about working with kids on StarLogo projects)

I don't even know Python, but I have read several things about using it as a teaching language:

Article at O'Reilly on Python as a first language
Computer Programming for Everybody - a proposal by Guido van Rossum
The Official Python Tutorial
Why Python? - by Eric S. Raymond
Learning to Program - uses Python


I hope this is helpful!!!

Another nice way to detect those (and do much more) is to use Eric Meyer's tactics outlined in his CSS anarchist articles (1,2). This method is fully standards compliant, easy to customize and even fun...

Another nice way to detect those (and do much more) is to use Eric Meyer's tactics outlined in his CSS anarchist articles (1,2). This method is fully standards compliant, easy to customize and even fun...

Open Source Advocate Has Yet To Rebut Craig Mundie

Jeff Parns considers himself a model for free software advocacy: helping out at installfests, answering questions on the Central Kansas Free Unix User's Group mailing list, working in his spare time on a user-friendly graphical interface to cron. Why, then, has he yet to write a long-winded essay rebutting Microsoft exec Craig Mundie's recent remarks about open source?

Our crack interviewing team cornerned Parns in his home, where he was conspicuously not combing through the text of Mundie's remarks, just as he had not been in attendance at NYU's Stern School of Business on May 3 to hear Mundie speak. What justified this weird behavior?

"I really think there are enough rebuttals already, " said Parns. "I mean, have you even read all those things? "

Eric S. Raymond, whose two preemptive rebuttals sparked the craze, was pessimistic about the chances for a Parns rebuttal in the future. "Obviously, we can't force him to write a rebuttal to Mundie's wrong-headed remarks about open source," said Raymond. "However, it's possible that my new paper, 'How I Rebutted Craig Mundie's Wrong-Headed Remarks About Open Source In Copious Detail--And How You Can Too' will give him some ideas. In fact, there's sort of a little form rebuttal in Appendix C which he can sign his name to and get it linked from Linux Today."

"As a full-time programmer, my day is pretty busy," said Brian Behlendorf of the Apache Software Foundation, whose anti-Mundie remarks were picked up by Infoworld. "Yet even I managed to stop by Mundie's speech and make a few remarks to the press. I don't think this Parns is even trying. I mean, even Steve Ballmer published a 3000-word Mundie rebuttal. Sic transit gloria Mundie, I guess."

Even Parns' neighbors have begun to notice this gap in the open source ranks. "The way he helped me with my Red Hat install, I was sure he was some sort of hot-shot free software advocate," said Millie Leman, a local dominatrix and mother of two. "But I haven't heard one word from him about this Mundie thing. It makes a person wonder."

"Look, it's spring, my son's about to graduate from junior high, I'm trying to get KCron to 1.0," said Parns, shooing this reporter out his front door. "Just leave me alone."

Will Parns rebut? Already, rebuttals with his name on them have begun showing up, though he denies authorship. Watch for the rebuttal signed with Parns' Gnu Privacy Guard key, and keep reading Segfault.org for complete coverage of every Mundie rebuttal ever written.

Tomorrow: An in-depth look at the rebuttal that Mark Billings of London saved to ~mark/mundie.txt, but never showed to anybody.

(This 'story' was first shown at Segfault.org here, and was written by Leonard Richardson)

Open Source Advocate Has Yet To Rebut Craig Mundie

Jeff Parns considers himself a model for free software advocacy: helping out at installfests, answering questions on the Central Kansas Free Unix User's Group mailing list, working in his spare time on a user-friendly graphical interface to cron. Why, then, has he yet to write a long-winded essay rebutting Microsoft exec Craig Mundie's recent remarks about open source?

Our crack interviewing team cornerned Parns in his home, where he was conspicuously not combing through the text of Mundie's remarks, just as he had not been in attendance at NYU's Stern School of Business on May 3 to hear Mundie speak. What justified this weird behavior?

"I really think there are enough rebuttals already, " said Parns. "I mean, have you even read all those things? "

Eric S. Raymond, whose two preemptive rebuttals sparked the craze, was pessimistic about the chances for a Parns rebuttal in the future. "Obviously, we can't force him to write a rebuttal to Mundie's wrong-headed remarks about open source," said Raymond. "However, it's possible that my new paper, 'How I Rebutted Craig Mundie's Wrong-Headed Remarks About Open Source In Copious Detail--And How You Can Too' will give him some ideas. In fact, there's sort of a little form rebuttal in Appendix C which he can sign his name to and get it linked from Linux Today."

"As a full-time programmer, my day is pretty busy," said Brian Behlendorf of the Apache Software Foundation, whose anti-Mundie remarks were picked up by Infoworld. "Yet even I managed to stop by Mundie's speech and make a few remarks to the press. I don't think this Parns is even trying. I mean, even Steve Ballmer published a 3000-word Mundie rebuttal. Sic transit gloria Mundie, I guess."

Even Parns' neighbors have begun to notice this gap in the open source ranks. "The way he helped me with my Red Hat install, I was sure he was some sort of hot-shot free software advocate," said Millie Leman, a local dominatrix and mother of two. "But I haven't heard one word from him about this Mundie thing. It makes a person wonder."

"Look, it's spring, my son's about to graduate from junior high, I'm trying to get KCron to 1.0," said Parns, shooing this reporter out his front door. "Just leave me alone."

Will Parns rebut? Already, rebuttals with his name on them have begun showing up, though he denies authorship. Watch for the rebuttal signed with Parns' Gnu Privacy Guard key, and keep reading Segfault.org for complete coverage of every Mundie rebuttal ever written.

Tomorrow: An in-depth look at the rebuttal that Mark Billings of London saved to ~mark/mundie.txt, but never showed to anybody.

(This 'story' was first shown at Segfault.org here, and was written by Leonard Richardson)

Here it is, without the trailing " that is causing problems.

A good write up about using hdparm to improve hd performance and the risks involved can be found here:

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/linux/2000/06/29/h dparm.html

...including some discussion of what those DMA modes are and their merits.

Older stuff, but it kills inline images of specific dimensions. The drawback is that you need a browser that supports a user-defined CSS file.

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/javascript/2001/03 /09/anarchist_2.html

Doesn't kill the javascript popups, but it does kill most the images.

Here, try The CSS Anarchist's Cookbook off of O'Reilly.

It has instructions on how to do that using user style sheets.

Have fun.

Jon Orwant Search on Slashdot...

Jon Orwant -- 2 O'Reilly Network Articles

Jon Orwant and The Real Perl Keyboard -- Fuzzy picture of Jon against a fuzzy background. Mildly humorous.

Good Picture of Jon Orwant

Mastering Algorithms with Perl -- "Topics covered: Perl data types, Big-O notation, data structures, queues, deques, linked lists, binary trees, sorting and searching algorithms, game and dynamic programming, sets and multisets, matrices and graphs, string matching and parsing, 2-D geometry, number systems, cryptography (including DES and RSA), probability, statistics, and numerical analysis." (Comments: Written by Jon Orwant. The link points to the evil Amazon.com)

Magnetic Perl kits -- "I just recieved this note from Jon Orwant (editor of The Perl Journal).You can order magnetic perl poetry kits from the Journal now." (Comments: This is a somewhat interesting 1998 posting to MacPerl.)

Jim Allchin.

said something to the effect that copylefting software (GNU, open-source, GPL, Free Software, you know the deal) is harmful.

He said:

Open source is an intellectual-property destroyer.... I can't imagine something that could be worse than this for the software business and the intellectual-property business.... I'm an American, I believe in the American Way. I worry if the government encourages open source, and I don't think we've done enough education of policy makers to understand the threat.

That issue has been flogged thoroughly elsewhere.

As a parting off-topic shot: Microsoft pays no taxes, so Allchin's claim that tax-paying companies should be allowed to co-op taxpayer-funded code doesn't apply to Microsoft anyway. Put that in your tax-loophole pipe and smoke it.

--Patrick

Another great site is Peertal at http://www.peertal.com/ for all sorts of news about peer to peer projects and news.

Ben Housten has a good page with ideas and links at http://www.exocortex.org/p2p/index.html

The Peer to peer working group has their site at http://www.peer-to-peerwg.org/

You may also want to check out the Orielly OpenP2P page at http://www.oreillynet.com/p2p/

And of course, I need to shamelessly plug my open source decentralized searching network, the ALPINE Network

Edna is a streaming MP3 server that allows network access of mp3 files over HTTP. I also found another useful article on the O'Reilly network about analyzing sound files in python

You might want to look at Meerkat as well. I don't know much about it, but it uses PHP and Perl.

John Udell once described Digital Creations' Zope as Python's killer app, the application that was going to have everyone scrambling to learn Python. It hasn't proved to be much of a killer though. Web designers looking for solutions to their documentation management problems routinely dismiss it as overkill, developers as underkill, or too hobbling.

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/linux/2000/06/29/h dparm.html

I went form 2 mb/s to 35 mb/s. Talk about an improvement.

We use XML-RPC on our Python-powered intranet to grab headlines from O'Reilly's free Meerkat wire service via Secret Lab's free xmlrpclib module. Dave Warner wrote an excellent article on XML-RPC and Python here, using Meerkat as an example of a real XML-RPC server.

If Python is not your thing, there are XML-RPC libraries for PHP and Perl. Rael Dornfest wrote an excellent article on Meerkat's XML-RPC interface here, with sample PHP and Perl code (as well as Python).

-M

You're smart; why haven't you learned Python yet? diveintopython.org

We use XML-RPC on our Python-powered intranet to grab headlines from O'Reilly's free Meerkat wire service via Secret Lab's free xmlrpclib module. Dave Warner wrote an excellent article on XML-RPC and Python here, using Meerkat as an example of a real XML-RPC server.

If Python is not your thing, there are XML-RPC libraries for PHP and Perl. Rael Dornfest wrote an excellent article on Meerkat's XML-RPC interface here, with sample PHP and Perl code (as well as Python).

-M

You're smart; why haven't you learned Python yet? diveintopython.org

We use XML-RPC on our Python-powered intranet to grab headlines from O'Reilly's free Meerkat wire service via Secret Lab's free xmlrpclib module. Dave Warner wrote an excellent article on XML-RPC and Python here, using Meerkat as an example of a real XML-RPC server.

If Python is not your thing, there are XML-RPC libraries for PHP and Perl. Rael Dornfest wrote an excellent article on Meerkat's XML-RPC interface here, with sample PHP and Perl code (as well as Python).

-M

You're smart; why haven't you learned Python yet? diveintopython.org

In the intro to the interview, it is noted that Lessig will deliver a keynote titled "Free Code, Freeing Culture" at the O'Reilly Peer-to-Peer Conference on Friday, Feb. 16.

It is a fascinating interview. In fact, I am surprised that it didn't get posted here because it is both intelligent and educational. It stimulates the brain cells it does.

I'll be there, giving a presentation on a subject dear to the hearts of slashdotters: how to find the good stuff amidst the bad stuff, even when some of the moderators are malicious.

Of course, my real goal will be to find out how other p2p systems work in order to use the knowledge to improve Mojo Nation. Therefore one of the talks I'm most looking forward to is Wes Felter's overview of technical decisions in the deployed p2p networks.

Regards

Zooko

I'll be there, giving a presentation on a subject dear to the hearts of slashdotters: how to find the good stuff amidst the bad stuff, even when some of the moderators are malicious.

Of course, my real goal will be to find out how other p2p systems work in order to use the knowledge to improve Mojo Nation. Therefore one of the talks I'm most looking forward to is Wes Felter's overview of technical decisions in the deployed p2p networks.

Regards

Zooko

Well, this puts me into an interesting position, Jon, because I like you even less than I do Katie Hafner. But until Ms. Hafner asks me why I don't like Jon Katz, I'll answer your questions.

1. Does she have to be a technology advocate to be on a panel?

No, she doesn't have to have any credentials at all to be on any panel, although one would hope the credentials one does have would lend themselves to whatever the subject is at hand. Her speaker bio for this conference certainly leads one to the impression that she is not only a technology writer, but has been one for 17 years. One would hope, in that sort of starry-eyed mistiness I get whenever I think about journalism, that someone who writes about a subject for such a long time would have some small respect for the figures within that subject, and more importantly would be focused on bringing to light the story that a group or subculture might have to tell. It's not altogether earth-shattering to note that there's people who like computers or who are really driven to create things, but it is important that someone who calls themselves a journalist help these folks express their motivations and story in a way that people not intimately involved with them will understand or at least have a clear picture of what these folks are about. If you're not using your skills as a writer to bring your audience an improved awareness of your subject, then you're just another sideshow barker, gaining a quick buck for your publishing masters by redrawing perfectly normal/human people as scary, freakish monsters bent on the destruction of all.

I see very little evidence that Katie doesn't "use" her subjects, a technique possibly learned from Markoff. She certainly doesn't bring, in her writing, the thoughts of the people she's writing about in the hacking/hacker community; she DOES do an awful lot of finger-pointing and telling you what they're thinking. This is a subtle difference, but important. These figures that she and Markoff choose to cover are alive, and quite capable of communicating, but she chooses instead to speculate on what they're thinking (which she generally doesn't know) and guesses at motivations. She doesn't quote; she narrates. This is not a very flattering approach, and often not all that accurate.

Nowhere in her writing, I might add, does she ever profess an understanding of the draw of technology. She might as well be talking about serial killers, pharmacists, or alligator wrestlers for all she brings to the table in writing about her subject. I can make a pretty assured bet that she would write about all these subcultures with the same distant lack of fundamental characterization. She can string sentences together, but she does her subject (and audience) no favors.

2. You really think she's anti-hacker. I didn't get that from her book at all..plse explain.

There's many examples, and remember she's written several books and articles on hackers and hacker culture, so you can't just say "her book". One burning example of her approach is her hatchet job on Mitnick in Cyberpunk, which is captured wonderfully in Charles Platt's review of Markoff's later book Takedown, where Hafner admits quite freely that she never talked to Mitnick before writing the book, and professes ignorance of her subject. Platt goes on to Focus on Markoff, worse than the two of you (Katz/Hafner) combined, but my insistence that she has not only a lack of understanding of the Hacker Subculture, but a fundamental distrust/dislike of this group of people, stays firm.

As for her upcoming book on The WELL, I'm one of those folks who has really cringed at the Canonization of The WELL by yourself and others, and another "Book of Revelations" onto the pile will no doubt add to that mythology, but I would say that I have very little faith that Hafner will capture anything but a surface glimmer of the motivations of the hacker psyche, assuming of course she actually touches on it at all in this book! There's actually a very good chance she could avoid that aspect entirely. But now we're running into a smorgasbord of conflicting dislikes I have about this whole rotten business that Hafner, Markoff, Yourself, and Littman have in what you've all done.

I apologize to any outside readers if my dislike of Katz has distorted the clarity of what I'm trying to get across. I'll probably cover it some time on my site, in better thought-out detail, starting from Richard Sandza and progressing forward.

- Jason Scott
TEXTFILES.COM

In particular, users want predictable and simple pricing. Micropayments, meanwhile, waste the users' mental effort in order to conserve cheap resources, by creating many tiny, unpredictable transactions. Micropayments thus create in the mind of the user both anxiety and confusion, characteristics that users have not heretofore been known to actively seek out.

He draws parallels between one-time-cost services vs. accumulate-as-you-use services like the utilities. The 20-minutes (or less) for $1.00 long distance thing sells because its predictable. One can budget x- number of phone calls and know that they won't exceed them. With long-distance rates varying based on distance, as in the old model (or AT&T's default to this day), a bill for 10 phone calls can be 50 cents of 50 dollars and you wouldn't know until you got it. No-extra-costs for long distance calling is a BIG selling point for celular phone contracts these days.

From this article, it seems a large amount of the content is of a dubious nature, eg porn, warez, divx, mp3z. Much as I applaud the freenet concept, I would hate to see it overrun by crap. From my initial impressions of it, I had assumed it would most likely be a data haven for oppressed/unavailable texts and other items, but right now the prospects aren't all that great, considering both The Matrix and Scary Movie are on it. The Matrix I can understand being archived, as it seems to have quite the geek following, but Scary Movie? A lamer attempt at knob jokes I have not seen in a long time.

Actually, the latencies that matter in this situation are caused by the scheduler, can be drastically reduced with a patch now and eventually reduced in the main kernel flow. This yields latencies significantly better than Windows or Mac, taking things down to roughly BeOS levels. The view just propounded above is quite common, but fallacious, I fear.

See this link for more detailed information: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/linux/2000/11/17/l ow_latency.html?page=1

Savant

The article points out that most of the discussion about peer-to-peer focusses on Napster and Gnutella which pretty well misses the point of P2P entirely.

Well worth the read. (The comparision between the meme-spaces of the Free Software Foundation and the Open Source Initiative are also quite interesting.)

Also, the military service (PPS) has two frequencies to work with, while civilians can only decode one. This gives at least 5 meters of better accuracy.

See this article for more details.

Would you like to pet my Penguin? The Linux Pimp

Note: CSS is cool

I would like to respond to both you and the posters who responded to you.

I know a lot about HTML. It *was* meant to be a simple markup language. It wasn't meant for design. Well...developers demanded more control over presentation and that is what we have. tags and tables and nested tables. Now anyone worth their salt knows that using these techniques cruddify the language. But in order to maintain *some* control over the display of web pages, they were needed.

That time is over. Cascading Style Sheets is definitely the answer. Konqueror is supposed to have full CSS compliance. Embedded web browsing was one of the things that CSS was *designed* for. You just need a user style sheet that overrides the formatting in the web page. I don't know if Konqueror supports user style sheets, but you'd think it should.

Here is definitely a must-read article for those who doesn't understand the power of stylesheets. Changing the size of images to 20x20 pixels. Decreasing font sizes. Getting rid of banner ads. These are ways to make web sites more usable for users on embedded devices. If you are a more traditional HTML coder, than you may find your web site rather mangled, but usable, on these platforms. But if you design your site using the web standards that were designed so that the web could be universally accessed, then you *can* give your web site a distinctive look and feel that your users will always recognize, even as your user moves from device to device.

Your design *will* be overrided by someone's browser, there is nothing you can do about it. It is part of the universallness of the web. For people who need larger font-sizes and contrasting colors, they will probably have user style sheets also. If you *work* with the standards, you can still influence the presentation of the web site.

But fixed-size, paper-like web displays are a thing of the past. Computers are far more flexible than paper.

Here's a little testimony: http://dale.oreillynet.com/stories/storyReader$31.

But none of that is important. That's all kinetic, or realised potential. The potential to do more than that is what is important.

When I was there I got to learn from Spencer Kimball, Pete Mattis, Ali Rahimi, Tracy Scott, Yaroslav Faybishenko, Misha Dynin, Josh MacDonald and many other people. A team of individuals. XCF members empowered each other by bringing together a great pool of knowledge and experience.

It's been a concern of mine for years that the wide spread of cheap computers and connectivity encourages people to stay home instead of going to labs to interact with their peers. This is the problem the XCF faces now. Having coded in the XCF and at home, I wish entirely that I could return to the days of the XCF. It was just more productive and more fun.

XCF members were brutal against boring projects and idiocy. Praise was rationed. There was no sense of political correctness and ego maintenance typical in the modern workplace. Respect was measured by quality of product, i.e. not by who you knew or how many papers you shipped about the code that stayed moored. I dream of the level of productivity achievable in a commercial XCF.

The XCF was uniquely a place of product staffed by members who transcended the one-dimensional geeky lameness endemic to tech-centric societies. We did cool things like race BMWs in Palo Alto and get drunk together. Huh huh *snort* huh.

Gene

I use FreeBSD on my Toshiba Satellite just fine. Sound, X, pcmcia, everything. If you're having trouble with PCMCIA, check out this Big Scary Daemons article: Laptops, PC Cards, and FreeBSD Short answer; if it doesn't work, you probably have an IRQ conflict.

Kord

Realtime Indexing of the Internet. Coming soon!

I was sure the link looked right in preview sorry. Here it is again.