What they are talking about is having a computerized system *supplement* the tried and true ballot box mechanism. After you make your choices on the computer, it'll print out your ballot for you, which you can read in ink and then deposit in the lock box.
Gateways/caches should _NOT_ change the user agent
on
Slashdot over IPv6
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Bad! Many sites go through painstaking effort to be compable with all sorts of user agents, giving plain HTML when one is not recognized. By re-writing the user agent these people prevent this magic. Not good. Instead it should add it's own key/value pair, much like SQUID or other cache/gateway.
Refresh my memory... where in the Constitution or Bill of Rights is Internet access defined as a "right"?
Let's turn this around (the way it should be). Where in the Constitution does it state that the Government has the "right" to censor what people can read and what they can't?
Oh no! This could be used by terrorists.
on
Cashless Society
·
· Score: 1
Imagine if most people started to use this sort of device and the record of transactions wasn't centralized... a person's expendatures wouldn't be an open book for Homeland Security. This is just awful, horrific thing. How is Big Brother going to gaurentee that you are a Patriot if they san't observe your every financial move... horror of horrors. I know this is sending chills up John Ashcroft's spine; so thank god it'll never make it to the US. And for good reasons, it is the perfect for terrorist funding.
If someone is found guilty of pirating warez, lates say Windoze XP... should the company value its "loss" at the retail level, the fair market value, or the cost of production?
Actually, Microsoft should be paying the Pirates!
With extra copies of the software out there in use, the value of the software (which is proportional to its user base) is increased. Therefore, Priates are actually helping the monopoly along. For early adoption software, I'm sure Microsoft is very happy to have Pirates spreading copies to friends or anyone else in the market. More copies is less sales for competitors and greater chance that their file format will become the standard.
However, once a product hits 60% or some other magic number of market dominance, the software is ubiquitious and the Pirate isn't helping to "spread the word". At this point, the Pirate is a net loss for Microsoft, and they are actively hunted down. Further, all of those "non-prirate, good customers" who have, unfortunately, illegally installed copies; well, Microsoft will be very nice to them with their payment plans.
Moral: If you want to hurt Microsoft, don't use or help spread the use of their products.
The OS division is where MS gets the cash to pour into products that will never turn a profit...are only marketed by MS for the sole purpose of having a presence in that market, without hope of actually taking over
Hunh? Game boxes arn't profitable?
Ok. Why would Miucrosoft get into such a market then? Clue Brick. Microsoft is using $$$ from it's monopolies to drive competition out of another market, once Microsoft has 90% marketshare and all the other players have turned in their cards since they can't make any cash, then, and only then (about 5 years down the line) will Microsoft raise the price on their boxes. And when they raise their price it will be far far higher than what it would have been if the competitors were still around.
What they are doing is illegal. How'd you like it after 5 years of being in a business that Microosft decided to compete with you? They'd duplicate your product and sell it for half price or even less... till your organization bled to death in red ink. Then, when you finally give up and close up shop, they raise their price back up with a price far higher than you were selling...
The only hope against game boxes is an open source game box operating system and hardware specification. If Sony and Nintendo want to compete they'll have to make the conversion; or just drown in red ink.
Yeah but 99% of consumers will be totally unaware whether the CD in their hot little hands at Best Buy is "crippled" or not.
I was at BestBuy a month past to return a defective headset. Anyway, the fella in the line behind me had a "defective CD" that woudn't play in his girlfriend's computer. Anyway, I broke the news to him and explained that the CD was just "copy protected". So, he got to the front, the BestBuy person put it into a CD player and showed the customer that it did work -- and then stated that it isn't defective. An argument insued where the BestBuy person asserted that his girlfriend's computer was defective... after he lost the argument and BestBuy wouldn't take back the CD-ROM he asked me where I can get a list of CDs which are "Defective, but the store won't admit it". Anyway, I didn't know at the time but I told him to search. He said that he'd tell all his friends about the problem.
So, I think the behavior is going to change. This fella, I'm sure, told every one of his friends (starting about 1 min after he left the store and picked up his cell phone) about the problem. A few burned customers like this and we'll be OK.
The only problem is that he would not have known about the copy restriction if I hadn't told him. So. How do we make this well known to the population? Is there a flyer that I can print out with a succinct description of the problem and a list of record labels / popular CDs which are crippled? This flyer can then be printed out by us geeks and put in poster boards, on cars out side of record stores, etc.
Personally I think the key to tort reform is to remove the profit insentive to lawsuits by diverting punative damages to education.
This is a great idea. I've actually floated it with a few legislative assistants (while I was living in D.C.) they said it was a good idea... then I never heared back from them. I've also suggested this via snail mail to several representatives.
The problem is that the plantiff's attorney's want a chunk of this extra pie. So, if you want this to have a chance in hell, to get passed the laywer's lobby you'd have to let the suing atty keep 10% or something like that; or cap the punative damages which goes to the plantiff at, say 1 million dollars; while amounts over a million go to education. Even this will get resistance beacuse some people think they "deserve" punative damanges.
Not that I think PageKing has any ground to stand on, but I do think that it would be great if there was some sort of court certification that Google's ranking mechanism is in fact unbiased as it is claimed by their Marketing and PR. That is, that there isn't code like:
If domain is 'pageking' Then
PageRank = 0
End If
Truth in advertising is a good thing. Now, for those claiming government intervention is bad (or that it is Google's algorithem and they can do with it as they please) there are two facts: (a) Google claims that it is a unbiased algorithem, (b) People depend upon this claim when using the service. Thus, while Google is free to change their algoirhtem, they should be constrained to do so in accordance with what they have advertised. Just like when I order a product I expect it to operate as advertised.
So, I'm hopeful that the court case goes forward and that it can set a precident that on-line services can be challenged if someone thinks that it operates with a different spirit than as advertised. That said, I also hope the Judge awards Google appropriate attorney fees after Google wins. not that I htink P
Just downloaded Ion on my FreeBSD box. It really is great... consider KDE upgraded.;) Now, the other problem... I have Windoz on my portable since I have to do IE 6 testing for my applications. Is there a Ion like window manager for Win2K?
Re:It's $14.00 at the Tattered Cover
on
Slack
·
· Score: 2
Oops! I accidently included the sessionid in the above link. Use this link instead for your privacy. I'm so sorry and I'll contact their coders about proper tying of session ids to IP addreses.
It's $14.00 at the Tattered Cover
on
Slack
·
· Score: 5, Informative
This fantastic book is $14.00 at an independent bookstore who values freedom. If you remember, about one year ago there was a big case in Colorado where the Tattered Cover bookstore refused to give up records of customers who purchased particular books to the authorities on grounds of free speech. This is detailed here,here, and here. Big chains like BN and Amazon don't take stands like this.
Instead, RMS refused outright to sign the affadavit, and suggested quite bluntly that ProductManager (which costed IBM millions to develop, and was a pretty vertical product) should be open source
You clearly did not understand RMS. He *knows* that proprietary software is *fundamentally wrong* and in fact *immoral*. It's not a quid-pro-quo kinda thing, never has beeen for him and it never will be.
If it was my code, I'd have been happy to say it was mine, as long as I knew (a la Vern Paxson's response). RMS, however, didn't even entertain the thought from the impression he gave us.
To provide you with that affirmation would be to help a proprietary product. This is completely consistent.
Instead, he came across as a complete hypocrite
Hunh? I don't agree with RMS -- but he is not a hypocrite -- in fact, by not accepting your "offer" and "quid-pro-quo" he clearly has affirmed otherwise.
Mozilla is a great chunk of software. I don't think that another "browser" is required, in fact this will only help to dillute Mozilla's brandname.
Microsoft's stuff has been just great for along time. The Mozilla group should just focus on making their HTML rendering engine, Gecko, completely useable by as many application developers as possible... for example a wxWindows binding would be a great boon.
And what's this with changing the icons? Either it's a Dragon, Sea-Monkey, a big M, or a Square thingy that is hald blue and half read. I've got four icons on my page for the same thing...
In short... Mozilla needs some marketing oriented types instead of more nerds. For example, it needs help making Chatzilla work for people like my gf who can use AIM but get confused when chatzilla doesn't find a server and complains.
I'm sure the FTC won't act on singular items; however, if they get 5,000 of a single spam -- that's probably a pretty good indication that it is indeed spam and should be examined more closely.
one of the obvious minuses I see is: it s..l...o...w.e..s. d...o...w...n . ..t..h..e d..e...v...e..l..o..p...m..e...n.....?
IETF is a standards body, a place where concensus is established, and as such it probably isn't a good place to do development. However, it is a great place to have your stuff reviewed, poked at, and perhaps eventually published as an RFC. It has to be slow and deliberate, it is the nature of the beast. If it wasn't so slow then it would probably turn into the big ball of corporate mud that is the W3C.
Public Libraries are _public_ places, owned by the _government_. The government has a right to collect information from the library. It is not a private citizen's business or residence
Public Libraries are _public_ places, owned by the _people_. The people have a right to peacebly educate themselves, assemble, and petition government for greviences. They have a right to perform these activities anonymously, else they could be subject to harrassment by those individuals who currently control the government.
Remember in the turn of the century when black people had the right to vote, but had to do so publicly so that their owners knew how they voted and what they were up to at all times? This is called opression and we are quicly headed back to this stage... only this time it won't just be along ratial boundaries.
Government is *NOT* a private enterprise
on
Mega-Geek March?
·
· Score: 2
it need not make decisions based on cost. By its very nature it should take into account the people that it serves. And investing money in openly available technologies helps all. Investing money in propiretary solutions justs enriches the pockets of a few.
The bottom line is if Open Office or some other solution isn't good enough; with just a wee bit of Government funding it would be.
Re:push for open DATA FORMATS, not open SOURCE
on
Mega-Geek March?
·
· Score: 2
This seems wise but it isn't. The meaning of any data format is really described by the program which operates on it. Thus you really can't have an open data format without open source code which describes the behavior which data in the given format behaves.
A very bad compromise is to require one "reference" implementation that is open source, and if any implementation does something different than the reference, it is wrong. The problem with this compromise is clear to see with XML technologies. Despite how much Microsoft's implemetnations differ from the open source "reference" implementation who is right? That's right, Microsoft. Why? Beacuse they have the biggest distribution. So, this is a loosing compromise.
In the end it's rather simple, when faced with a nasty company the only solution is source code availability (note: this doesn't necessarly mean "open source").
How is the ability to edit a film different than the right to fork? It seems that as long as I'm selling/giving my modification to someone who already has a copy of the original work (or I buy an extra copy so that they do) then I don't see why I shouldn't be able to distributute my modifications. Should copyright law be so strong as to stop this "right of fork?" Admittedly, the modification should probably be clearly marked as such... but this is a detail.
PostgreSQL was one of the first kids on the GPL block.
No, it was one of the first on the Open Source block, specifically it has a BSD license. And SAP-DB needs to beat PostgreSQL on several counts for it to be considered:
(a) features, PostgreSQL has them in spades, (b) stability, PostgreSQL is solid, (c) licensing, you can't beat BSD, and most importantly, (d) community, PostgreSQL's user community is just a fanstatic group of fellas.
Slashdot Mirror
I can be finishing the last bottle of wine from my cellar
Or trying to protect your 13 year old daughter from a gang of thugs. I for one, *like* the policy as stated thank you very much.
Machine generated from a touch screen like device.
Machine and human readable.
Signed so as to be verifiable.
Err. No. I ain't signing my ballot.
What they are talking about is having a
computerized system *supplement* the tried
and true ballot box mechanism. After you
make your choices on the computer, it'll
print out your ballot for you, which you
can read in ink and then deposit in the
lock box.
SixXS-IPv6Gate/1.0 (IPv6 Gateway; http://ipv6gate.sixxs.net; info@sixxs.net)
Bad! Many sites go through painstaking effort to be compable with all sorts of user agents, giving plain HTML when one is not recognized. By re-writing the user agent these people prevent this magic. Not good. Instead it should add it's own key/value pair, much like SQUID or other cache/gateway.
not the other way around.
Refresh my memory... where in the Constitution or Bill of Rights is Internet access defined as a "right"?
Let's turn this around (the way it should be). Where in the Constitution does it state that the Government has the "right" to censor what people can read and what they can't?
Imagine if most people started to use this sort of device and the record of transactions wasn't centralized... a person's expendatures wouldn't be an open book for Homeland Security. This is just awful, horrific thing. How is Big Brother going to gaurentee that you are a Patriot if they san't observe your every financial move... horror of horrors. I know this is sending chills up John Ashcroft's spine; so thank god it'll never make it to the US. And for good reasons, it is the perfect for terrorist funding.
If someone is found guilty of pirating warez, lates say Windoze XP... should the company value its "loss" at the retail level, the fair market value, or the cost of production?
Actually, Microsoft should be paying the Pirates!
With extra copies of the software out there in use, the value of the software (which is proportional to its user base) is increased. Therefore, Priates are actually helping the monopoly along. For early adoption software, I'm sure Microsoft is very happy to have Pirates spreading copies to friends or anyone else in the market. More copies is less sales for competitors and greater chance that their file format will become the standard.
However, once a product hits 60% or some other magic number of market dominance, the software is ubiquitious and the Pirate isn't helping to "spread the word". At this point, the Pirate is a net loss for Microsoft, and they are actively hunted down. Further, all of those "non-prirate, good customers" who have, unfortunately, illegally installed copies; well, Microsoft will be very nice to them with their payment plans.
Moral: If you want to hurt Microsoft, don't use or help spread the use of their products.
The OS division is where MS gets the cash to pour into products that will never turn a profit...are only marketed by MS for the sole purpose of having a presence in that market, without hope of actually taking over
Hunh? Game boxes arn't profitable?
Ok. Why would Miucrosoft get into such a market then? Clue Brick. Microsoft is using $$$ from it's monopolies to drive competition out of another market, once Microsoft has 90% marketshare and all the other players have turned in their cards since they can't make any cash, then, and only then (about 5 years down the line) will Microsoft raise the price on their boxes. And when they raise their price it will be far far higher than what it would have been if the competitors were still around.
What they are doing is illegal. How'd you like it after 5 years of being in a business that Microosft decided to compete with you? They'd duplicate your product and sell it for half price or even less... till your organization bled to death in red ink. Then, when you finally give up and close up shop, they raise their price back up with a price far higher than you were selling...
The only hope against game boxes is an open source game box operating system and hardware specification. If Sony and Nintendo want to compete they'll have to make the conversion; or just drown in red ink.
Yeah but 99% of consumers will be totally unaware whether the CD in their hot little hands at Best Buy is "crippled" or not.
I was at BestBuy a month past to return a defective headset. Anyway, the fella in the line behind me had a "defective CD" that woudn't play in his girlfriend's computer. Anyway, I broke the news to him and explained that the CD was just "copy protected". So, he got to the front, the BestBuy person put it into a CD player and showed the customer that it did work -- and then stated that it isn't defective. An argument insued where the BestBuy person asserted that his girlfriend's computer was defective... after he lost the argument and BestBuy wouldn't take back the CD-ROM he asked me where I can get a list of CDs which are "Defective, but the store won't admit it". Anyway, I didn't know at the time but I told him to search. He said that he'd tell all his friends about the problem.
So, I think the behavior is going to change. This fella, I'm sure, told every one of his friends (starting about 1 min after he left the store and picked up his cell phone) about the problem. A few burned customers like this and we'll be OK.
The only problem is that he would not have known about the copy restriction if I hadn't told him.
So. How do we make this well known to the population? Is there a flyer that I can print out with a succinct description of the problem and a list of record labels / popular CDs which are crippled? This flyer can then be printed out by us geeks and put in poster boards, on cars out side of record stores, etc.
Personally I think the key to tort reform is to remove the profit insentive to lawsuits by diverting punative damages to education.
This is a great idea. I've actually floated it with a few legislative assistants (while I was living in D.C.) they said it was a good idea... then I never heared back from them. I've also suggested this via snail mail to several representatives.
The problem is that the plantiff's attorney's
want a chunk of this extra pie. So, if you want
this to have a chance in hell, to get passed the
laywer's lobby you'd have to let the suing
atty keep 10% or something like that; or cap the
punative damages which goes to the plantiff at,
say 1 million dollars; while amounts over a million go to education. Even this will get
resistance beacuse some people think they "deserve" punative damanges.
Not that I think PageKing has any ground to stand on, but I do think that it would be great if there was some sort of court certification that Google's ranking mechanism is in fact unbiased as it is claimed by their Marketing and PR. That is, that there isn't code like:
If domain is 'pageking' Then
PageRank = 0
End If
Truth in advertising is a good thing. Now, for those claiming government intervention is bad (or that it is Google's algorithem and they can do with it as they please) there are two facts: (a) Google claims that it is a unbiased algorithem, (b) People depend upon this claim when using the service. Thus, while Google is free to change their algoirhtem, they should be constrained to do so in accordance with what they have advertised. Just like when I order a product I expect it to operate as advertised.
So, I'm hopeful that the court case goes forward and that it can set a precident that on-line services can be challenged if someone thinks that it operates with a different spirit than as advertised. That said, I also hope the Judge awards Google appropriate attorney fees after Google wins.
not that I htink P
Just downloaded Ion on my FreeBSD box. It really is great... consider KDE upgraded. ;) Now, the other problem... I have Windoz on my portable since I have to do IE 6 testing for my applications. Is there a Ion like window manager for Win2K?
Oops! I accidently included the sessionid in the above link. Use this link instead for your privacy. I'm so sorry and I'll contact their coders about proper tying of session ids to IP addreses.
This fantastic book is $14.00 at an independent bookstore who values freedom. If you remember, about one year ago there was a big case in Colorado where the Tattered Cover bookstore refused to give up records of customers who purchased particular books to the authorities on grounds of free speech. This is detailed here,here, and here. Big chains like BN and Amazon don't take stands like this.
Instead, RMS refused outright to sign the affadavit, and suggested quite bluntly that ProductManager (which costed IBM millions to develop, and was a pretty vertical product) should be open source
You clearly did not understand RMS. He *knows* that proprietary software is *fundamentally wrong* and in fact *immoral*. It's not a quid-pro-quo kinda thing, never has beeen for him and it never will be.
If it was my code, I'd have been happy to say it was mine, as long as I knew (a la Vern Paxson's response). RMS, however, didn't even entertain the thought from the impression he gave us.
To provide you with that affirmation would be to help a proprietary product. This is completely consistent.
Instead, he came across as a complete hypocrite
Hunh? I don't agree with RMS -- but he is not a hypocrite -- in fact, by not accepting your "offer" and "quid-pro-quo" he clearly has affirmed otherwise.
Mozilla is a great chunk of software. I don't think that another "browser" is required, in fact this will only help to dillute Mozilla's brandname.
Microsoft's stuff has been just great for along time. The Mozilla group should just focus on making their HTML rendering engine, Gecko, completely useable by as many application developers as possible... for example a wxWindows binding would be a great boon.
And what's this with changing the icons? Either it's a Dragon, Sea-Monkey, a big M, or a Square thingy that is hald blue and half read. I've got four icons on my page for the same thing...
In short... Mozilla needs some marketing oriented types instead of more nerds. For example, it needs help making Chatzilla work for people like my gf who can use AIM but get confused when chatzilla doesn't find a server and complains.
I'm sure the FTC won't act on singular items; however, if they get 5,000 of a single spam -- that's probably a pretty good indication that it is indeed spam and should be examined more closely.
one of the obvious minuses I see is: it s ..l ...o ...w .e..s. d...o...w...n . . .t..h..e d..e...v...e..l..o..p...m..e...n.....?
IETF is a standards body, a place where concensus is established, and as such it probably isn't a good place to do development. However, it is a great place to have your stuff reviewed, poked at, and perhaps eventually published as an RFC. It has to be slow and deliberate, it is the nature of the beast. If it wasn't so slow then it would probably turn into the big ball of corporate mud that is the W3C.
between a pro-Linux supporter and a pro-Microsoft supporter on Slashdot? Answer: The former isn't paid to express 'their' ideas.
Public Libraries are _public_ places, owned by the _government_. The government has a right to collect information from the library. It is not a private citizen's business or residence
Public Libraries are _public_ places, owned by the _people_. The people have a right to peacebly educate themselves, assemble, and petition government for greviences. They have a right to perform these activities anonymously, else they could be subject to harrassment by those individuals who currently control the government.
Remember in the turn of the century when black people had the right to vote, but had to do so publicly so that their owners knew how they voted and what they were up to at all times? This is called opression and we are quicly headed back to this stage... only this time it won't just be along ratial boundaries.
it need not make decisions based on cost. By its very nature it should take into account the people that it serves. And investing money in openly available technologies helps all. Investing money in propiretary solutions justs enriches the pockets of a few.
The bottom line is if Open Office or some other solution isn't good enough; with just a wee bit of Government funding it would be.
This seems wise but it isn't. The meaning of any data format is really described by the program which operates on it. Thus you really can't have an open data format without open source code which describes the behavior which data in the given format behaves.
A very bad compromise is to require one "reference" implementation that is open source, and if any implementation does something different than the reference, it is wrong. The problem with this compromise is clear to see with XML technologies. Despite how much Microsoft's implemetnations differ from the open source "reference" implementation who is right? That's right, Microsoft. Why? Beacuse they have the biggest distribution. So, this is a loosing compromise.
In the end it's rather simple, when faced with a nasty company the only solution is source code availability (note: this doesn't necessarly mean "open source").
How is the ability to edit a film different than the right to fork? It seems that as long as I'm selling/giving my modification to someone who already has a copy of the original work (or I buy an extra copy so that they do) then I don't see why I shouldn't be able to distributute my modifications. Should copyright law be so strong as to stop this "right of fork?" Admittedly, the modification should probably be clearly marked as such... but this is a detail.
Hmm. Perhaps 2096 is a bit too far in the future for The Road To Tycho.
PostgreSQL was one of the first kids on the GPL block.
No, it was one of the first on the Open Source block, specifically it has a BSD license. And SAP-DB needs to beat PostgreSQL on several counts for it to be considered:
(a) features, PostgreSQL has them in spades, (b) stability, PostgreSQL is solid, (c) licensing, you can't beat BSD, and most importantly, (d) community, PostgreSQL's user community is just a fanstatic group of fellas.