Saving the Net

An anonymous reader writes "Doc Searls, editor at Linux Journal, has a very insightful editorial that brings it all together - the FCC media consolidation ruling, SCO vs. Linux, why broadband is under attack by telcos and cable systems, why we lost Eldred vs. Ashcroft, what's really interesting about Howard Dean's presidential campaign, and a very astute observation about the vast gulf between Liberals and Conservatives."

Comments

Terminator is trying to

[linuxislandsucks]

Terminator is trying to ..excuse me RIAA/MPAA is trying to get Arnold to run for President under their banner..

Not a joke people..

Its time for Revolution...

Re:Terminator is trying to

[steelrecluse]

Time to start paying attention to news sites other than Slashdot. Orrin Hatch (Senator from Utah) is pushing an ammendment to allow US Citizens that were not born in the US but have been citizens for a decent amount of time (I believe 20 years) to be eligible to be president. It's actually a good idea in my opinion, the requirement that you were born in the US is outdated.

The ironic thing is wasn't there a Movie (was it Demolition Man?) about a future where they changed the laws to allow Arnold to become president? Life imitates movies it appears.

Free Air Optical

[femto]

What about geeks connecting to each other, in a mesh, using through-the-air optical links, thus forming a 'private' internet?

• Raw components (LEDs and LASERs) are cheap .
• Bandwidth is high >100MHz with cheap laser + PIN diode
• Visible spectrum is unlicensed (it's just light)
• Spectrum reuse is very high.
• Consequently it has a very high data density (bits per second per unit volume)
• In many juridiction it falls outside telecommunications regulation, as such regulation only covers wires, fibres and radio (frequency less than light) signals

The only 'major' piece missing is a simple and cheap form of active aiming to keep the transmitter and receiver reliably pointing at each other. There's a project for someone.

Interview with Howard Dean

[ornil]

Howard Dean seems to be a very unusual candidate with regard to the use of technology and the tech crowd in general. How about we try to get an interview with him? We can ask him about DMCA, Patriot act and stuff like that. Wouldn't it be nice to have a president who actually heard of Slashdot?:)
He appeared on Lessig's blog which has (I would guess) a lot fewer readers than Slashdot, so it seems likely he would agree, if we approached it right. Does anyone know his campaign people, so we can find out?

Re:The internet the big corporation way

[Trigun]

I am not sure why this was marked as offtopic. A little doomsday-ish maybe, but not offtopic. Face it, everyone is vying for control over the net. The Chinese government wants to control it, The U.S. Government wants to control it, the corporations want to control it.

They have concluded what Marshall McLuhan had years ago, that the medium is the message. The natrual extension of this is that whoever controls the medium, controls the message.

Without the anarchy which fostered the internet, we will end up with another passive form of entertainment that is inaccessable to the masses from a broadcast standpoint, television.

The internet is the voice of the people (scary,innit?). Sure some people speak louder than others, and some are leaders while others are followers. But everyone has a voice, and that is what is being taken away from us, slowly at first, and then with great vigor as we become more complacent.

I have a website, and nobody in their right mind would give me a television show. I don't know if that's considered progress, but I like where this whole internet thing could go, if only we're allowed to take it there ourselves.

Being bought

[cryonic*angel]

This is a frequent criticism of Modern Democracy. For the moment we'll hold aside the fact that Ancient Democracy was available only to property-holding males (something the republicans I'm sure would love to bring back). Ancient Democracy was not about getting paid, in salary or in kind; in was civic duty.

Modern Democracy, at least as practiced in the USA, is all about money. And as has been said about corruption, "...follow the money." Why don't american politicians finally prove that they're not the lords of a corrupt system, but the leaders of a just system and ban soft money.

Re:Hrmm

[Winterblink]

I wish. I miss the old BBS days. Sure we didn't have the full-on multimedia experience that the net is now. But we weren't constantly under fire from organizations trying to control our computers and the stuff we store on it. We weren't assaulted by spam and advertisements on any page view or mouse click. Most of all, what I miss was the greater sense of community the local BBS fostered. Sure you didn't necessarily KNOW the people there, but you lived in the same city or region they did. You could go to a BBS meet at a local bar or something, organize it a couple weeks in advance. Running a BBS was a blast too. One could actually distinguish themselves easily when there was only a couple dozen major boards in the area, and it was fun fostering the growth of your own little section of the community.

I kind of feel sorry for people who didn't come from the old BBS days. They truly missed out on something special.

Re:Dean for President

[phantomlord]

In the 2000 election, GWB collected $81,260,483 from contributors of more than $200 and another $20,260,290 from people contributing less than $200. That means at least 182563 (81261+101302) contributors. Seems like a pretty significant amount of people.

Looking at this year's race, GWB has 6996 contributors under the $2000 limit, compared to Dean at 8662. A difference of less than 1700 contributors isn't really that ground breaking, especially seeing as the campaign cycle hasn't gone into full swing yet.

The dirty little secret is GWB, and republicans in general, actually do better at collecting numbers of small donations than the democrats do. The vast majority of democratic hard money come from large donations by people in the entertainment and legal fields whereas republicans do better in the flyover country that the democrats often like to ignore. Yes... Dean has more non-limit contributors than GWB right now, but remember that 101302 figure at the end of the 2000 cycle as the election season begins to brew.

Re:Hrmm

[caluml]

Why don't we just establish an overlay internetwork between like minded people, and use our own addresses schema within it. It would suffer slowness, but currently, the only thing that stops you being anonymous on the internet today is the fact that your IP address is tied to you by your ISP. If we could work out some kind of dynamic routing and allocation protocol whereby I wish to join this new network, so I send a query out with my chosen IP, and if no-one replies that it is taken, then I use the address, and advertise the route to it, then you would be free to choose whatever address you like. (Of course, routing table sizes would need to be worked on to make sure they stay small). GNoIN? (Geeknet over Internet)

Most people seem to want it

[autechre]

It's very frustrating for me, and hard for me to understand. To me, the best way to live is to learn as much as you can, and try to find the best choices for yourself by gathering as much information as is possible (or feasible; you don't want to spend 2 hours researching where you will eat lunch today). Art and creation are, I believe, some of the most fun you can have without being naked (not that that's excluded...)

But a lot of people seem really, truly content with being told what to eat, wear, listen to, drive, vote for, support, etc. There are people who always vote Democrat/Republican without any consideration for the actual candidate. There are people that prefer McDonald's to real food. Most people just do what their friends do, and how did their friends start doing it? What's the source? I guess there's no way to be sure, but I'm betting it was an advertisement.

Maybe it's because it makes life easy. You listen to music to relax, and thinking about it is too hard. It's easier to watch TV than to read a book. It's easy to enjoy fast food, because it's a collection of chemicals designed to be pleasing to the largest number of people. No dangerous sharp edges for you to beware.

Similarly, most people don't want to create. Artistic effort is difficult, requiring many hours to produce something. TV can be enjoyed now. Learning how to really cook would be hard, and my family needs dinner today. Hamburger Helper is good enough. It was a hard day at work and I have a lot on my mind. I don't have time to be creative.

Now, there's great joy to be had in take-out pizza, beer, and Brotherhood of the Wolf. Some days, it's nice to let someone else take the helm. But Einstein understood that we have to keep our brains moving in new directions in order to keep them alive (he played the violin). If all you do is work and consume, you are a unit. I couldn't stand it.

(Some people take great joy in their work, which is wonderful, and ideal even. But being one-dimensional is still bad. You'll get further if you stretch your mind in new directions as often as possible; you may be surprised at how related two seemingly dissimilar things really are.)

greedy?

[cascadingstylesheet]

The Republican Party is geared towards saving people money.

Sounds good so far ... most people consider saving money to be a good thing.

This is the key issue for Republican politics, regardless of all the morality bullshit they spew.

Well, if you are immoral, then you don't understand morality. You can't image actually having it, so you impute weird motives instead of just listening to what people say.

If you're greedy, you vote Republican, whether it's for an end to the estate tax or a $300 tax refund loan.

How is it greedy to want to save money? Your own money?

I put in the extra hours, I got the deliverable done on time, I did the work, why shouldn't I keep my money? How is that greedy? I think that coveting other people's money is what is greedy.

Re:Hrmm

[arkane1234]

I'll have to agree with you, I really miss it. I used to run a BBS in maryland called Starpost Sentinel (later named Apocalypse)... short lived but very fun. Most of my time was being a user. I met more interesting people that way, and learned so much more within a timeframe of 4 years than I could have in 20, honestly. Not to mention programming WWIV :P