The DeCSS case isn't the issue at all. DeCSS is ultimately unimportant *in and of itself*. But the principle that's really being fought over here is the most important, most fundamental principle there is. It's about personal rights versus corporate rights, and this will be the big fight of the 21st century. The Civil Rights movement, one of the greatest advances in this country--which should never have had to happen in the first place--ensured that ~20% of the country's population finally got rights equal to those of the other ~80%. But this battle will determine if each and every American will be giving up many of those important, fundamental rights, or if he gets to be as free as his forefathers. Here's why it's so important.
Corporations are legal fictions which have evolved over the last 2 centuries to have all the rights that real people have, but with fewer responsibilities and far, far, far greater resources. Wal-Mart, for example, can ruin a local economy just by building a store in a small town, because no other stores in town can sell as low as Wal-Mart thanks to the volume discounts Wal-Mart gets on the wholesale end; therefore, low-income people will *have* through economic imperative to shop there, forcing other stores (esp. ones owned by actual people) to go out of business, which causes more and more people to work for Wal-Mart which pays a wage which is entirely unlivable unless you buy everything from the cheapest source in town--your new employer, Wal-Mart. Results: almost all other retail stores in small towns go out of business, so that most of their old employees now work for Wal-Mart, and can only afford to buy from "the company store." It's a 21st-century version of a practice outlawed after abuses in the 19th century, but it's legal since there's no company policy to force people to buy there--it just becomes an economic necessity when Wal-Mart moves in to a small town. And of course Wal-Mart loses a ton of cash initially when moving into small towns, but as a megacorp they can afford to let their profitable stores subsidize taking over small towns until those towns are entirely under Wal-Mart's economic control (at least regarding the retail sales and low-income workers). Also, Wal-Mart often drives all other supermarkets and grocers in small towns out of business, because Wal-Marts with supermarkets in them sell the food at or below cost in most areas, since the retail sales section of the store is immensely profitable. If you disagree with this analysis, then you haven't lived in a small town both before and after a Wal-Mart moves in. My nice little college town was destroyed by a Wal-Mart; we used to have a wonderful, colorful Main Street, and now it's an abandoned bunch of boarded-up buildings.
But what does that have to do with tech, or with DeCSS and the rights I mentioned in the first paragraph? Wal-Mart, as a huge corporation, can do things no individual could ever afford to do, and can drive all the smaller guys out of business, and put lots of people under its economic control. The same thing is true of most other sectors of big business these days.
Take the recording industry, for example. Over the years the top few companies gobbled up the entire market, so that now they have a complete lock on the market. They just made a deal with the U.S. to stop a price-fixing scheme for CDs which they'd been using for years--MAP, Minimum Advertised Price, set minimum prices at which CDs could be advertised by retailers, ensuring that retail prices for CDs would remain artificially high. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. The big record companies own almost all the recording studios, almost all the advertising agencies they use, almost all of the wholesalers they sell to, and a fair percentage of the retailers which the wholesalers sell to. The result is that it's almost impossible to get CDs produced outside of the big corporate structure into the pipeline at all, at any stage; at concerts and at specialty stores in big cities, those are the only places that albums produced outside the system can be found. Otherwise, the rcording studios find lots of raw young talent every year, record with a huge percentage of them, pick out a bunch of those to go to the next level and be sponsored by the company to put out an album that will be advertised a little and promoted while the band busts its ass touring--and oh, did I mention that the band goes in debt to the studio for recording with them? Yup, they get in debt for the cost of the studio time, production costs, and advertising, and the amount of an advance to live off of while touring. If they make it big they can pay it back and move up in the food chain, but if they don't make it big they still have to pay all that money back or go bankrupt. Most bands break up or at least end up owing their souls to Sony or whoever at this point. Studios often argue that CDs are so expensive to offset the costs of all the bands who fail, but bullshit: those costs are inflated since the recording companies own all the studios and postproduction and CD press facilities and advertising agencies they use, and since bands go into debt to the recording company to get that album out. Then, if at this point a band hits it big, they become a name band that might actually make money. For every band that does become hugely successful and makes a living from album sales (small percentage of income) and big tours (large percentage of income), dozens of bands went broke and got to start paying the big corporations back, file for bankruptcy, break up, etc. So, in effect big music stifles art, stifles the advancement of art which copyright law is supposed to protect. Who the fuck cares if Lars Ulrich and Garth Brooks are making money out of the current system, when thousands of other bands got anally raped by the system? And the argument that mp3 piracy and new music services don't promote giving anyone payment for their work is crap, because when the old system is gone people will have money to support bands by buying merchandise or attending concerts, but as long as they're required to pay $15-$20 for every piece of music they want to buy, very little of which goes to any band, consumers won't have the disposable income left over to support artists directly. Lots of people have faith that this model, voluntarily supporting artists who disseminate digitally downloadable work, will work for all parties concerned: Stephen King, for example, fresh from the success of his pay-for-download book, is releasing a new book online; it'll be released in three segments, and as a test of the system he'll only release the last section if people give him enough money to account for $1 per download. One thing's for sure, the music companies' stranglehold on the whole music pipeline stifles advancement and bankrupts many more artists than ever get supported by it, and the advancement of the art is being stymied and interfered with: witness the "band factories" that have popped up, creating artificial bands with canned personalities and canned songs, people like N*SYNC who don't deserve to exist and are created by the industry to cater to the lowest-common-denominator of uneducated teenybopper taste. That is NOT what copyright law was created to do; it was created to promote the advancement of arts and sciences, not to have all-powerful corporations destroy the art of music by unnaturally promoting their own artificial creations which set the art back.
The movie industry, represented by the MPAA and the DVDCCA, are doing the same thing with films. The scariest thing for them is for there to be a "Blair Witch Phenomenon," with low-budget, creative, *new* films cutting into their market for over-budget canned studio plots recycled since the 40s, actors and actresses who look absolutely nothing like real Americans in the public at large, movie theaters who not only charge $8 for a ticket but have the audacity to in addition charge $2.50 for a small watery coke and $3.50 for small popcorn with watered-down fake butter. Why else would they decree that no film released on the Net before being shown in theaters can ever receive an award nomination? No, getting movies for free isn't my right. But it is the right of filmmakers to release their films in new media without being discriminated against by organizations controlled by the top few mega-corporations. It's not my right to make illegal copies of DVDs and upload them to the Net, but it is my right to take a DVD I buy and play it on anything I want to without having to pay extra for software licensed by the DVDCCA; it is my right to take clips from that DVD and splice them together for a presentation, or to use clips from a DVD in a collage/montage fashion in a new work, or to write new software to play it and skip over those fucking 10-minute commercials Disney puts before its movies and sets the copyright notice bit on so that DVD players won't let you skip the track, or to do any number of other things which the people in Hollywood say I can't do, but which Fair Use law says I can.
And I haven't even touched upon the copyright issues the studios have saddled us with, yet. Copyright originally lasted 14 years, now it lasts the life of the artist plus 100 years. Big corporations, Disney in particular, got those laws changed to keep their characters and works from ever passing into the public domain. Ironic, since Disney built itself using characters in its motion pictures who were derived from characters in the public domain, characters invented by the Brothers Grimm and other writers and storytellers. We need the public domain. We need IP to pass into the control of all of us after a reasonable period for the creators to derive a profit. 14 years, for example, is more than enough time for the big studios to derive major profits from their films: big films usually make a small profit on initial release, then a huge profit at rental within the first couple years; smaller, relatively unsuccessful films usually make their profit at renatl within 5 years. 100 years after the death of the artist is utterly insane, and a complete violation of our rights. We have a right to have IP pass into the public domain, so that after its creators derive profit we can all benefit from it and build upon it. Take the hugely popular TV show (in its day, it was #1 up until Tom Selleck quit the series and it folded), Magnum P.I. There has never been a film, although Tom Selleck said just the other day on Larry King that he'd love to do a film version, but he can't because Universal owns the rights and Universal is in tumult and has been for a while. Guess what? It's been 20 years since that show was on, and if Universal isn't going to use the film rights it shouldn't have them--under old copyright law, the character would have passed into public domain by now and a more competent studio could do the film with Selleck, but instead Universal and current IP law are preventing the furtherence of the arts rather than furthering them as IP law was supposed to do (not that Magnum is all that artful, but you get my point). Companies today never want their characters or music or other IP to pass into public domain; they want to carve up the markets entirely for themselves, keeping forever whatever IP they buy the rights to or create in-house. That's not how it was supposed to work. IP law is backfiring, and taking away rights from the common man. Shekespeare made money from his plays even though some publishers were pirating them without paying him. Writers made enough money to support themselves even before copyright gave them huge periods of time in which they had exclusive IP rights. Beethoven, Haydn, and Leadbelly managed to support themselves without a Big (Brother) Studio protecting their IP "for them."
That's what this is about. It's about the rights of individuals and the rights of whole cultures. It's about whether we will become a corporate culture, controlled by a few powerful companies with vast IP warehouses, or whether we will be individuals free to invent and build upon the IP of the past, or simply to enjoy the IP of the past. Much of it is disappearing. We now live in a culture in which television shows and other short-term outlets are important factors, and these cultural artifects are being lost to us all the time. Why shouldn't I be able to freely distribute a television show which hasn't aired in 20 years? Those TV shows made their profit at the initial airing, there's no need to keep the IP under lock and key. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could have vast IP storehouses online, where for a few dollars to pay for bandwidth and server upkeep we could download episodes of our favorite dead TV shows? Less than 1% of them ever make it to retail tape. But that will never happen under the current system. It reaches beyond that, into film, literature, music, and the rights of the people to engage in Fair Use of all of it. What we have is a cultural crisis, and a set of industry monopolies in every realm, and it needs to be dealt with. It's bigger than DeCSS, DVDs, or Linux. It's about our way of life, and our freedoms.
The animation is done in the U.S., and then is sent to Taiwan to be colored in. The animation requires skilled work, while the coloring-in can be done by unskilled laborers who get Kathie Lee sweatshop wages. Ain't globalization grand?:-)
Also, the guy above has it right. Much of Futurama is rendered in a combination of 2D and 3D computer graphics; when the show first came out, it got a lengthy spread in TV Guide complete with interviews, and in the interview Groening was talking about how hard they worked to get the right look for the show--they wanted to use new technologies and give the show a unique feel that couldn't be done with traditional animation, but they didn't want it to be visually jarring. Personally, I think they hit the nail on the head; the show definitely feels unique thanks to the fast-motion, 3D backgrounds, and other aspects of the CG animation, but the effects are subtle enough that it doesn't distract and make you start thinking about how computers did this or that or that this or that looks "fake."
Now, the one wish I have for Futurama is that they find a guy who does a good Phil Hartman impersonation, and have him play Phil Hartman's Head in an episode. After all, if the heads of Pamela Anderson and Richard Nixon can make guest appearances, Phil's head would be a great tribute. Fry could recognize him as Troy McClure from The Simpsons or something. Cool...
"No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks." -- Article 12 Universal Declaration of Human Rights
It's not about passwording a BIOS to keep the kids off your computer while you're away at work. It's not about keeping skr1pt kiddiez out of your box--for that, use firewalls. It's about invasion of privacy. It's about freedom. It's about the private self. It's about the fact that there are people and organizations and governments which don't believe a man's private papers are private any more. It's about the right to have that privacy, and the absolute peace of mind that comes when you've got it.
See, there used to be this idea in democracies that a man had a fundamental human right to think whatever he wants and write whatever he wants, and that as long as it was kept private such information was personal and couldn't even be used against him in Court. A man's diaries and journals and such weren't even admissable as evidence at trial--it was tainted, because he had a right to think and write privately for his own contemplation. But that went away late in the last century/early in this century, in almost all countries. Your diaries, your private thoughts and reflections, were no longer private, could be used against you and now even subpoenaed.
Some people don't consider this a huge loss. Others consider it a huge loss, of something fundamental. Do you know why there's no explicit "right to privacy" in the U.S. Bill of Rights? Because none of the founding fathers ever thought that it could be taken away, it was such a fundamental aspect of the Common Law. Freedom of the press, the right to assemble, the right to bear arms--all the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights had been taken away by the British at one point or another, but never did they go so low as to use a colonist's own private diaries and thoughts against him at trial. It was so incredibly fundamental. The Fourth Amendment only begins to touch upon this, but unfortunately didn't fully flesh out a "right to privacy" and is tody construed by the Court to mean that as long as the cops have a warrant they can take any damned thing they want to even if it's something the Founding Fathers would have found inviolable, like one's own journals.
Fast forward two centuries, and this fundamental right has disappeared. If you are accused of anything, or even if you're just a material witness, your journals and papers can be subpoenaed and paraded out before the world. Records of Monica Lewinsky's book purchases, and her private correspondence, taken and abused and paraded before the public. People's hard drives have been either confiscated or imaged by the authorities for things as petty as possibly having conspired to call in sick during an airline sick-out. Would you want your hard drive imaged and inspected because you called in sick? Or would you want it imaged or confiscated for having said something negative about a company in an online forum, so that now you're being sued for libel for making an honest and true comment about some behemoth corporation? It's happened and is happening. You don't have to be a terrorist or a child pornographer or a seditionist any more to have the contents of your hard drive made public any more. these days you can be anyone. Are you aware of the fact that people who've worked for Consumer Reports have had their computers searched because a big powerful company filed a libel suit against them, hmmm? My computer is my own goddamned business, and what I write or store here is private. PERIOD. It's a fundamental human right to privacy which I, and you, and every humanfuckingbeing has, so call me a "fool" all you like, but you're the fucking fool for not wanting every bit of privacy and humanity which governments and corporations are taking away. You find no use for encrypted systems? Fine. But some of us are actually interested in preserving our rights and we aren't fools for that. The one thing we do have left, at least in the U.S., is a Fifth Amendment right to not incriminate ourselves, so with an encrypted system we could just say, when the key is demanded, "On advice of counsel I decline to answer, on the grounds that such an answer may incriminate me." The only way they could possibly get around that is by granting you full immunity from all charges relating to whatever may be on your system, so crypto is an effective way to protect yourself if you should ever say something a corporation or the government doesn't like. There are many programs to encrypt your hard drives, but you can't effectively encrypt your boot drive, and you can't encrypt swap without major overhead (another reason a yhardware card would be great); there are ways in which software encryption mechanisms can fuck up and reveal your key or compromising info about your key, and your boot drive may also provide fodder for social engineering or provide plaintext which you haven't yet encrypted; so, a hardware card which provides a completely encrypted system with little overhead would be the ideal. These days, we unfortunately can use the term "American dissidents" almost as truthfully as we could say "Chinese dissidents".
That isn't even taking into consideration the needs of individuals in other countries. So stop calling people who want privacy fools, and start appreciating the rights which we should all hold dear. A few more quotes to bolster the point:
"The real aim of current policy is to ensure the continued effectiveness of US information warfare assets against individuals, businesses and governments in Europe and elsewhere" -- Ross Anderson
"As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy." -- Christopher Dawson, The Judgment of Nations, 1942
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated..." -- The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
"No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session." -- Judge Gideon J. Tucker, 1866
"The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each citizen to defend it. Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do his share in this defense are the constitutional rights secure." -- Albert Einstein
"You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the great struggle for independence." --Charles Austin Beard, 1874 - 1948
This is clearly aimed at Geeks-with-Cash, not at the average compuser. If I actually had any money, I'd buy one. I don't even run the Seti client, I do the distributed.net stuff, but this thing is just so cool that I'd definitely buy one if I could. After all, talk about bragging rights:
"Hey Bob, did you hear about that Seti project where people use their computers to help search for extraterrestrial radio signals?"
"Yup. Pretty cool, eh?"
"Yeah, I decided to go ahead and install it on my workstation. Seems like a great project for a geek to help out."
"Yeah, I installed a special multiprocessor vector processing unit in my computer to work on Seti all the time; it runs on a PCI card, and beats the hell out of a P!!! 500 even though it doesn't use any of my CPU's cycles to do the work, it's all in hardware. Took these military surplus vector processors and..."
Now, that's some nice geek bragging rights, my friend. Talk about exotic hardware. I just wish they'd do something like this for distributed.net, since there have to be a few embedded chips which would handle crypto-cracking pretty well.
That brings me to my #1 desire in an exotic PCI card: hardware-based encryption. I want a card with an embedded processor(s) to handle a very strong combination of crypto specifically designed for encrypting hard drives. Wouldn't it be amazing to have a PCI card which registers to your BIOS as the primary hard disk controller, and then prompts for password information before bringing up a boot menu allowing access to your real hard drives and operating system(s)? Imagine, with a dedicated card like that the entire system could be encrypted with almost no overhead, since the card would handle all decryption/encryption and leave the main CPU(s) free. The only slow down on such a system would be the slight delay in routing I/O calls through the card, but I'm sure it's technically feasible to do such a thing. IBM does something similar in the hardware of some of its big-$$$ RISC systems. Now, a card like *that* would be sweet, and if implemented right with good drivers virtually fool-proof.
> You harp on this 'spatial intelligence vs abstract intelligence' thing quite a > bit, and it is rather irksome, since its a well-known fact in educational circles that > advanced spatial and geometric skills go hand in hand with mathematical ability and > abstract thought.
Not at all true. While it is true that the most intelligent individuals have both forms of intelligence in great measure, very few of us are at or near that level. 180 IQs are unfortunately doled out quite sparingly at the factory. The majority of people, even the majority of people in the 120-150 IQ range, are quite better in one area than in the other. You can dispute this all you want by calling your idea "fact," but if it is indeed a fact then point us to a source. It's certainly the opposite of what I was taught in college.
> As a previous author has pointed out (and you pointedly ignored), most peoples' > stengths lie in narrative
Yes, of course they do; I really wish more people had strengths in the area of reading comprehension, though, since I didn't disagree: I said that he was missing the point, that narrative requires descriptive words and those descriptive words can be of two types, mathematically (algebraicly) abstract or spatially (geometrically) concrete. That is the important thing to note, since people cannot actually narrate in natural language to their computers. To narrate in the mathematically derived languages of most CLIs is fundamentally different from narrating in plain English; CLIs require a certain mathematical precision, while natural language is more flexible and intuitive to most people. That was my point. And until the computer can understand a plain natural language (English, let's say) CLI, the CLI will always be inferior *for most users* to the GUI. The GUI is equated with spatial, geometric terms, while the CLI is equated with abstract, algebraic terms. The classical example--I forget who said it--is the notion that CLIs require much knowledge internal to the user, but little on behalf of the computer, while GUIs require much knowledge internal to the computer but little knowledge on the part of the user. But it boils down to this: GUIs give the user concrete spatial and geometric information about the objects on his system and their relationship to each other, while CLIs require that the user already possess this information since he gets far fewer visual cues as to how objects are related. *Now* do you grok it?
As for your last bit about how a spoken-language CLI would be more natural and useful--you should have read the post with which I started this thread:
> In short, until computing power is sufficient enough and code is bug-free enough > to execute commands based on spoken language with few or no errors, the CLI will > never make a resurgence in any form among non-techno-geeks.
Now, doesn't that sentence imply that when computers can understand plain English, then the CLI *will* make a resurgence (but until then)? Yes. So, I already said that and agreed with you. However, as the authors of the article referenced in the story noted, parsing natural language is a "computational nightmare" with present technology, so it's not going to happen any time soon. So, again, GUIs will be the paradigm used by almost all users, not CLIs, *until* computers have a CLI interface comparable--as I wrote earlier in this thread--to those used in Star Trek, in which users just tell the computer what to do and the computer just does it. But that's a long way off.
> Oh, and it's nice that you can sort files ascending by date in your favorite GUI... > one more option letter to ls.
No, I said "by arbitrary criteria." By date, 1-click. By size, or type, or descriptor, etc. etc. 1-click. BTW, my GUI of choice is the Powerdesk file browser for Windows, by Mijenix (bought by Ontrack). With that particular GUI, there are many advanced options not available in the standard Windows GUI, including a slightly integrated and sophisticated file finder that could do far more complex things than "find all files in/var owned by Bob, larger than 300k, and modified in the last week. And rename them to lowercase or compress them or selectively change the permissions on them" just by ticking a couple of boxes and entering whatever size/date/whatever criteria you want to search for. Far easier for most users than remembering what command line to type to get those same results. If you ever have occasion to use Windows, I highly suggest you check it out; for rock-solid stabilty (well, almost) in Win9x, use the utility 98Lite Professional to do a clean install without the Win98 shell, and then install PowerDesk 2000 and select the option to integrate it into Explorer. The things you mention can be done very easily through the right GUI, or even from the stock Windows or Mac GUIs plus a third-party file finder utility.
> Designing a GUI for that is probably a complete waste of time;
It would be a waste of time, since some GUIs already do that just fine.
> And if you compare *the existing tools*, it is very clear that CLIs win for power > and expressiveness on many tasks
Sure, and I never disputed that. I just pointed out that there are also many tasks for which a GUI is better suited and faster, including many complex tasks that CLI elitists would wrongly assume a GUI can't do efficiently. Yes, CLI is more expressive--but infinitely more complex and requiring much more knowledge/memory than is necessary or desirable for most computer users, even power users, ever to expend. The CLI is fine if you want to invest the time to learn it right, but very few people are going to spend that time in this the age of the GUI. Macs were usually too expensive for home use, so the first time many people broke out of CLI was with Win95 (Win3.1 hardly counts)--so there have only been about five years of widespread GUI OS use on home PCs except for those lucky enough to afford a Mac before then. And yet despite this, the GUI pervades the home as well as the office now--how many strictly CLI machines are there in the home and office workstation spaces, percentage-wise? It's probably relatively small. Everyone has gotten used to the GUI. Kids are now growing up using GUIs instead of the CLI interface to Apple ][ machines that my generation had. And only a statistically insignificant number of computer users want to use CLI anymore. Those who do are the hardcore computer users willing to invest the time to learn the language, and in exchange for their time they'll get the ability to do many complex things quickly which sometimes outpaces GUI use and is always more impressive. But most users don't want to invest that time, they want something graphical and easy to use that will do whatever they tell it to through clicks and ticks. I'm just trying to get people to realize that the days of the CLI are over except for the hardcore power users who want to get closer to the hardware, and that isn't most people. That's relatively few people.
> manipulating a large set of multifaceted objects in a scriptable fashion is a CLI task
Sure. Like I said, there are plenty of things a CLI is better at than a GUI--and vice versa. For instance, if manipulating that large set of objects is not a scriptable task, but one that will vary from day to day according to various factors, then a GUI is going to probably do it better/faster. This is especially true if the content of each object must be determined before the object is dealt with; a power-GUI like Powerdesk can gice you quick and painless previews of every object, even rare document types; a CLI could never do that.
> So if you want to talk about "the vast majority of users", fine.
That's precisely who I was talking about. The small percentage of CLI users notwithstanding, most computer users will be using GUIs for the foreseeable future, and the less CLI each one requires the more successful it's probably going to be. That's a simple truth some of the more zealous people in the Linux community don't seem to understand, and it's hindering Linux's move to the desktop and workstation market. I want MS to lose as much as anyone around here; I'm just trying to further that cause by expressing that many Linux people are virtually aiding Microsoft's desktop dominance by insisting that GUIs are bad, inferior, mistaken, or otherwise shouldn't be implemented as a priority in their current form. Linux is winning the server battle, but it'll lose the OS Wars at large unless it becomes more GUIlicious. Fortunately, KDE and GNOME have picked up since last year, and are making great progress; but there are still those who belittle those projects, even though they're the only chance Linux seems to have at the moment of winning over the hefty Windows market. Even so, CLI configuration tools and arcane config files are going to have to get graphical counterparts to manipulate them if Linux is truly to win on the desktop and workstation fronts.
> But don't give me nonsense about women being more spatially oriented than men > (they use landmarks more often and cardinal directions less often; thats locale > memory in action, not spatial modeling)
Well, it's not "spatial modeling" because no one is going to sit there and compute a spatial model of the real world to give directions, when they know already the layout of the world *in spatial terms*. Again, like most geeks you are assuming something mathematical when instead I had a more generalized concept in mind. "Spatial" as in the general relationship of objects to one another. Why the heck use a useless psychobabble term like "locale memory" when it's clear that I'm talking about the use of actual physical objects and their *spatial relationships* to express something, rather than using strict mathematical modes of expression. I stand by my use of the word "spatial" and would add the word "geometric" as well to the description of the way most people, especially women, perceive the world and give directions. "Geometric" as opposed to "algebraic"; both are mathematical, but algebra is representative of the abstract in mathematics while geometry is representative of the concrete, of spatial relationships and easily recognizable physical shapes. As an example, if you've ever studied chess extensively, you realize that chess is a very mathematical game, and that words like "geometric" versus "algebraic" are common descriptors in the literature; but the best players are usually the ones with better geometric skills, people who can concretely understand spatial relationships on the board rather than having to think about moves algebraicly, calculatedly. Maybe that clears it up, or maybe it muddles things further, but you probably know what I mean by now since you didn't get my use of that term the first time around.
> and don't tell me that GUIs are absolutely better for manipulating data that is > not inherently pictorial
No, they're not absolutely better, and I didn't say they were. But on balance they have as many strong points as CLIs do, and when well designed they're almost as powerful and versatile, and they're definitely easier to use and master. And they're the future, CLIs are the past and will be relegated to use by increasibgly fewer people.
> Show me a sysadmin that never uses a CLI and I'll show you a sysadmin that can't get > the job done.
I was never talking about sysadmins--thet's the problem, right there. Even when you're talking about "most users" or "the average user" or some such, there are some people in the geek community who will relate the issue to sysadmins or advanced users or people who are otherwise not even being discussed. It's also narrow minded to assume that a GUI is automatically inferior than a CLI--the only reason some people want to think so is that CLIs are arcane knowledge, while GUIs are common knowledge. That's just silly elitism. Also, the one thing I think is holding Linux back from taking over computing is the fact that many of its coders write for themselves, not for users at large--they write for other CLI users, and sysadmins, and not for the other 99% of computer users. And that's fine, if you want Linux to be the best server OS, but to never make a dent in the home and business desktop markets. But I don't think that's what Free Software is all about. I don't think that Free Software is about coding something just for your own use; it's about sharing something useful with the rest of the world. I'm not saying that anyone in the Linux community should code only when the product will be useful to others, of course it's about doing what's right for you, and coding whatever the hell you want--it's your time and effort, after all. But what I see are some people who actively discourage creating an easy-as-Windows GUI, and that's just plain selfish. It's also quite shortsighted, since whoever wins the desktop will win on the server as well--if Windows.NET becomes this huge force that MS hopes it will, then ISPs and ASPs can easily be forced into buying Windows Server and Advanced Server in order to keep up with implementing all the whiz-bang ways of interfacing between client and server which Windows.NET will undoubtedly implement in closed, proprietary form. And that wouldn't be good for anyone, even the elitists.
> No; most people are verbally-oriented. The ability to visualize and juggle spatial > concepts is less common than the ability to describe, narrate, and request things.
You're missing the point. How do you "describe, narrate, and request things"? Do do so requires words which are descriptive somehow. Either those descriptors can be based on abstract mathematics, or they can be based on more concrete geometrical or spatial information. Spatial and geometric information is easier for most people than abstract mathematical information: if I say "The gas staion you're looking for is three and a half kilometers down that road, then 2 kilometers to the left, then seven kilometers south," you'd have to know what a kilometer is, what south is, and process the abstract math associated with the directions. Many people (in the States, at least) wouldn't know what distance a kilometer represents and some wouldn't be sure how to go south. Contrast that with concrete spatial data: "The gas station you're looking for is down that road; turn left onto Sycamore Street when you pass the Wal-Mart, then turn right onto Elm Street when you pass the bridge." Those directions are far easier to follow for most because they're concrete: they require no specific knowledge except how to read signs, and nothing is abstract. The latter directions are therefore easier and more universal for most people. A CLI is more like the directions based on kilometers and polar directions, while a GUI is more like the directions based on visual cues.
> The special skill of the mathematician is one of expressing in symbols things that > ordinarily can only be visualized.
Or, as with a GUI, you can just visually display whatever you're working with instead of making it into abstract mathematical-language-based symbols. What most computer science people fail to realize is that ther *is* a huge difference between mathematically based languages and natural verbal languages. Verbal languages are learned as children, and describe a world we can physically see and be a part of; mathematical languages descibe an already abstract world of data which we cannot physically be part of, and therefore it's much harder to learn a mathematical language for most people--especially since our ability to quickly learn languages is decaying by age six and it's progressively more and more difficult to learn languages after that. But a GUI puts data into easy-to-understand and easy-to-experience visual cues which are intuitive and require no special skills or language. Even the elderly can successfully learn to use a GUI, while learning a CLI is far less intuitive.
> In other words, mathematicians (and good > programmers) have the ability to formulate and utilize abstractions.
There's no need for abstractions when the GUI model makes everything concrete and easy to understand and work with.
> We use them because, like earlier text menus, they take advantage of the fact that > the human brain is much better at recognition than blind recall
That's exactly right, and there's nothing wrong with that. Design a better system which allows such intuitive interaction, and then we'll talk. Until then, there's no use in trashing the paradigm which you just admitted works best for most people, out of all currently existing systems. I'm more productive with a GUI, and so are most people. I can literally operate my computer while I'm half-asleep, because I instantly recognize all the visual cues instead of having to remember an arcane string of commands and modifiers. So, my active thought processes can be better used in solving whatever task is at hand, rather than in trying to conjure up the arcane language of a CLI to execute whatever it is I decide I need to do. It's more productive to think about the tasks you're performing than to have to think about how to get the computer to perform a given task. In a GUI I click something and tick a few check boxes or what-not, whereas in a CLI I'd have to type something and then remember what to type to modify that command in a particular way. Waste of brainpower.
> We should salute anyone with enough guts to try and take UI's beyond the mental world > of the 3-year-old.
Umm, if computers are easy enough for a 3 year old to use, then so much the better, because computers are a means to an end not an end in and of themselves. I love tech, I love buying new video and audio cards and RAID cards and DVD decoders, I love configuring my system for the best performance and for my own needs. But I don't buy those things for the computer's sake, I buy them for my own. I buy them because there are things I want that hardware to do. Ultimately, a computer is just something we buy so that we can access the Internet, USENET, write, read, play games, compile programs, communicate with other people, listen to music, and any host of other uses. So, why shouldn't we make each of those things and all others as easy to do as possible? That's what I don't understand about some CLI supporters who are so unyielding as to be elitists. Why shouldn't we make computer use as easy and seamless as possible? Ease of use doesn't have to mean lack of power, and indeed most GUIs are more flexible and forgiving than most CLIs, though GUIs which aren't optimally designed can take longer to perform some tasks (but not all). The goal should be to make fast, efficient, easy to use GUIs, trim down some of the fat and make the code lean, not to try to keep alive the dying CLI which few people use outside of technogeekdom (and quite a lot of geeks like GUIs, too). The CLI will stay underneath, where gurus can get to it easily, but on top there needs to be a fully-functional and easy to use GUI, which Linux still lacks at this time even though it's getting closer very quickly. Until Linux requires no more CLI use as a requisite than Windows does, though, it's not going to win on the desktop. I hope it does, but the more people complain about GUIs and desktops, the longer it will be until Linux can take over from Windows. And again, people complain about the current GUIs, but they never code anything better. Do, don't just say. I look forward to Eazel, though, I can tell you that much.
The FBI uses cooked statistics about child molesters and child pornographers as a red herring, to elicit a completely emotional and irrational reaction on the part of the public and the Congress which would otherwise stand in the way of their Big Brother aspirations.
Setting aside the issue of whether we should trust the FBI and their motives and integrity for the moment, let's examine the specific issue you mentioned: child molestors. In nearly every paper the FBI puts out about the Internet you can see the terms "child molester" "child pornography" and "pedophiles" sprinkled about liberally, suggesting that without the FBI looking over our shoulders our children would never be safe. But is it true? Just like the comic cries of "Won't somebody PLEASE think of the CHILDREN!" uttered on The Simpsons, the FBI's pronouncements ring out with few facts and statistics behind them. The few statistics the FBI ever uses are usually aggregate statistics which don't distinguish between pervs who used the Net to meet up with 12 year olds, and 15 year old kids who got nabbed for posting underage porn in chatrooms when they really didn't know it was illegal (yes, it has happened--more than once).
How great a problem is child pornography on the Net? Reality: Not very. But the FBI makes it sound in all their reports as if you can't surf for an hour without stumbling across kiddy porn. The FBI makes much in their reports and testimony of online "rings" of child pornographers who sell access to their collections by credit card, when the reality is that most of these sites are legal in their countries of origin and contain images of nude 16 or 17 year olds, which are legal in most Western countries; yet the FBI doesn't distinguish between these and "real" child porn of young people being molested or exploited. If pictures of nude 16 year olds are legal in The Netherlands and Japan, then it is unfair to count those sites based in those countries and operating legally as being child pornography sites. Most of the FBI's figures are skewed by this. Only a few people are busted each year for operating sites which are truly composed of kiddyporn. Plus, overzealous activists usually turn in sites for kiddie porn which are, in reality, hosting perfectly legal images of 18 year olds from publications such as Hustler's *Barely Legal*.
The reality is that most child porn online is well-hidden from the average user, yet easy enough for the FBI to find. It isn't on the Web, irt's on Usenet. Don't ever download binaries from there unless you want to go to jail, but if you want to know where all the child porn is then read the text messages in newsgroups like alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.pre-teen and alt.binaries.adolescents. As I said, no binary downloads unless you want jail time, but reading the text messages is both legal and educational--you'll learn that the FBI isn't really doing much to stop child pornography when they use systems like Carnivore to intercept e-mail, because most pedos online communicate not by e-mail but by posting PGP'd private messages to these groups or to alt.anonymous.messages. Since so many binaries are posted there, the content of which can be gleaned from accompanying text posted as follow-up commentary by its viewers, we can ascertain that the FBI isn't doing much to actually get these people. Headers can be forged, but that can only get you so far. Most of these people could probably be found if the FBI really tried--but evidently they don't. The FBI is all talk, using the threat of child porn and molesters online to gain control over areas which those people typically don't use to communicate with one another, like e-mail. They also like to entice morons who are stupid enough to think the FBI agent they're chatting with is an underage child, sometimes catching people who are clearly pedos who need to be locked up and sometimes raising the spectre of entrapment--more than one such case has been dismissed because judges believed it was clearly entrapment (law enforcement coaxing someone to do something illegal which they'd never have done without all the encouragement).
Research the issue yourself if you don't believe me. Go to all the major online news sites, and search for terms like "child pornography" and see how few cases there actually are where the FBI has busted someone, and then see how many of them mention entrapment, e-mail, chat, usenet, to get anh idea of what the FBI is actually doing with all that money they're being given for cybercrime. Then get the headers for the usenet groups I mentioned above, and maybe read some text postings that are too small to be encoded binaries. Are all the people who post to USENET so smart as to elude all FBI pursuit and cover their tracks so perfectly, or is the FBI that technically incompetent or unable to hire good computer personnel despite all the tax dollars they embezzle supposedly for that purpose, or do they just not care that much about the problem and use it as a means to play on emotions and get all those tax dollars which they then use to intercept our e-mails and build a KGB or Stasi like surveillance network, instead of using it to REALLY fight child predators online? The latter seems most likely.
Then, judge their intentions from their past behavior. Lok at the statistics for the unauthorized number of wiretaps law enforcement uses in this country--in the thousands each year. Look at what the ATF and FBI did at Waco--whether they set the fires (accidentally, of course) or not isn't the important issue; first they lied about it being a drug operation in order to get military assistance/training/a tank, then they made 2/3 of the warrant affidavit about unsupported allegations of child abuse (which they have *no* jurisdiction over--the state social services dept. was investigating those allegations, and found that the underage girls were above the legal age for marriage in Texas and thus it was a gray area; but, ATF and FBI have no jurisdiction over that, only Texas did, so it had no place in the warrant *except to play on emotions*), then they lied about firing pyrotechnic rounds (grenades or mortars) into the compound--for years they lied about it, but now the official report says they did; then they claimed that the tape from their listening device had them spreading gasoline around and setting the compound on fire, when in reality the Davidians were talking about pouring Molotov cocktails to use against the tank that was tearing their house down; finally, let's not forget that they completely demolished the remains like a conquering army salting the earth, so that no evidence was left, and the evidence they had (like the doors the Davidians claim the FBI fired through first) has all disappeared, together with the pictures taken by the Texas Rangers. Then there's Ruby Ridge, wwhere the FBI murdered innocent people and the Court agreed and held them responsible--they even killed a woman who was standing there, unarmed, with a baby in her arms, because their orders were "shoot to kill" once they killed that teenager who was walking around with a hunting rifle. The FBI is not to be trusted, at all. They lie and play on emotions, then do whatever they feel is best even if it's illegal and unconstitutional. Child molesters, kiddy pr0n, cybercrime--they'll say anything to get our sympathy and trust. It's just a red herring, and NOT a good excuse to give up our Constitutional rights--without those, we're no longer Americans. Don't be fooled.
I wish CLI elitists would realize that the vast majority of people want a GUI that doesn't require and command-line parameters at all, ever. That's NOT to say that all CLI users are elitists, but it IS to say that there are many CLI users who not only consider it a more useful, better, and more "pure" way to interface with computers, but also believe as fervently as any medieval crusader that all users should either feel as they themselves do or need to be "educated" to have the same faith in CLI. These people are not just egocentric and want to force their own opinions on others, they are also actively dangerous to those who would like to see Free Software dominate the market for desktop workstations and home PCs as well as server and technical-user markets.
How is it I can make these assertions? Well, they're all based on facts. The first fact is that the majority of people are spatially-oriented, rather than mathematically oriented. This has often been said of women, and is especially true of them; but it's true of most men as well. After all, what percentage of men major in math and computer science and sciences like physics which require extensive math, compared to the percentage who major in social sciences, language and literature, and sciences which aren't as math-centered (like biology, which requires some math skills but not extensive ones)? Math is simply not a priority skill for most people, but the problem comes when you have the geek community designing and discussing interfaces which are intended for non-geeks. The article in question, for example, propose an advanced CLI with language heuristics as part of their propesed new interface paradigm--but poll actual computer users, and you'll find less than five percent (pulling # out of ass, but I'd bet it's accurate) who'd be interested in having to learn such a CLI instead of using a standard contemporary Mac or Windows style GUI. The problem is, geeks live in a different culture, in which most of their friends and associates have far richer math skills and far more extensive desire to explore computers and interface with them more closely, than the average user or even the average advanced user. I manipulate literally hundreds of files of varying types every day, I configure applications and OS parameters very frequently using both graphical and CLI utilities, and do the type of work most geeks would say can be more efficiently done with CLI--and yet for me and for most other people, a CLI would be a cumbersome burden. Yes, you can do things faster with a CLI--if, and only if, you can a) type quickly b) remember complex sets of commands and modifiers c) count on those command sets and modifiers being standard across every platform you use, else confucion can arise, and d) have a good memory for where everything is located on you computer/network. But, if you type slowly then CLI is asking too much. If you have trouble remembering lengthy sets of commands, because you're not math-language-oriented or just because you have a bad memory, then CLI is a burden. If you use multiple CLI platforms with different command sets, it's easy for most people to confuse what to use with which environment (as contrasted to modern GUIs, which have comparatively subtler differences--a Mac user can learn Win98 pretty quickly, and vice-versa). If you have a poor memory for which files are where, a GUI is better for you because you get visual cues about your folder hierarchies and can list more objects at once than in CLI.
This isn't to bash CLI at all, or to say it's outdated. There will always be technical people who speed along CLI style and love it, and that's great. But it's a fallacy to think, as far too many geeks do, that even power users of today who grow up on GUIliciousness will ever want to learn arcane CLIs. The archetypal example is the small but vocal number of people on/. who say things like "We need to stop screwing around with making KDE and GNOME look like Windows and Mac, because people who want to use Linux should know enough to open a CLI window and go at it." Linux and Free Software will never take the desktop market from the big corporations with this attitude, because people who say things like that are coding for themselves and not other people. That's fine, if you want Linux to be a niche market for sysadmin and technical types, but then most schools and colleges will continue to teach with Mac and Windows and home users will continue to use Mac and Windows because the opportunity cost of spending so much time learning/teaching CLI is arguably greater than spending $120 for a copy of Windows. But if you want to build software that'll free most people from corporations like MS, then you have to start thinking like a non-technogeek.
That's where the authors of this article went wrong--they assume that as more people get more and more computer experience, that those people are going to want the richness and power of an advanced heuristic-based CLI mixed with the visual cues of an "expressive interface" GUI. But most people these days have the comfort and ease of use of an entirely graphical environment, which since we humans exist in a graphical world rather than a world full of letters and numbers and command lines, is far easier to work with than any CLI. Such users will never want to revert to a CLI, unless that advanced CLI gets to the point that it's as easy to use as the interface of the computers in Star Trek--where you just talk to the computer and it does what it's told in plain English. The authors of the article dismiss that as a "computational nightmare ", and they're right--so it's not going to happen any time soon that any sort of CLI will become popular, whether typed or voice-based, because of the ease of use associated with GUIs. The article also dismisses, as many CLI elitists do, the idea that a GUI can be as powerful as a CLI. Bullshit. It depends entirely upon the uses of the computer; even the best, fastest-typing CLI user would be entirely unable to sort through a folder containing several hundred files and separate them based on arbitrary criteria as quickly as a GUI power user could, because the GUI can list all the files and all their attributes and list them by whichever attribute you choose with a single-click, for arbitrary selection and transport. The article also makes the mistake of throwing out the ability for the user to sort his objects as he sees fit, into whatever hierarchies he finds most useful, in favor of multi-user standardization which doesn't allow you to work "outside the box" even on your own computer. Most people do NOT want "to share control of the environment between the user and other entities, specifically computer agents and other users"--they want to put things in the dir structures which are most convenient for them; this is especially and ironically true of power users, who like to arrange things for quick access in ways which multi-user system paradigms would not allow. The only way around this conflict of paradigms would be to have the user exist in a virtual environment in which he hass access to all resources in user space, while things outside user space are completely hidden from him--rather like the way Mac OSX will probably work; hiding the Unix system structure from the user, while nonetheless being Unix at heart with Mac behavior grafted on top. But then of course you'd alienate the true power users, who want to see and manipulate all that can be tweaked and changed to taste. So there's no way to win on this one.
In short, until computing power is sufficient enough and code is bug-free enough to execute commands based on spoken language with few or no errors, the CLI will never make a resurgence in any form among non-techno-geeks. I myself am a geek, but not a mathematical-minded CLI-loving one. The reality we have to start getting used to is that only a select few will ever be using CLI extensively--some of you may not like that, but that's the way it is.
Caffeine morphine Jolt Cola--what's the diff? :-)
on
Caffeine Vault
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· Score: 5
> BTW, did you know that caffeine can kill?
Yep; in sufficiently high doses, anything can kill you. Even abnormally high water intake for a sustained period can kill you in several ways, including malnutirion: if you drink insane quantities of water, your digestive acids may actually become too diluted to effectively digest many foods. Even non-diabetics can overdose on sugar...which makes me wonder why I'm not dead yet considering the deranged quantities of Jolt and sweet sweet heavenly hash I've imbibed... makes me feel like Elvis when I binge, except that I'd never under any circumstances put peanut butter on my hamburgers.
But back to the caffeine, there was at least one case I recall reading about, in which a mother overdosed her young daughter on caffeine pills by repeatedly feeding them to her over several days. The mother didn't realize that the autopsy would turn up plenty of undigested pills, some with the brand still visible on the capsules...
Guns aren't dangerous; some of the people who carry them are, though. There's a fundamental philosophical distance between the European and the American POV on guns, which typically results in Europeans misunderstanding the American reverence for this very old and, to most Americans, sacred right.
See, we got our explicitly-spelled-out right to bear arms from the fact that an oppressive government (Britain) was denying the Colonies the same rights Englishmen had, and was trying to restrict gun ownership and importation as one measure to keep the Colonies under their thumb. So, after the war was over the Americans set in the Bill of Rights, a document which was supposed to be absolute and overriding of all other law (though those rights have been limited and interpreted over the centuries), certain of the most fundamental and necessary rights of Americans. The right to bear arms is thought important even to this day not because Americans have a right to shoot each other, but because Americans have the right to protect themselves from abusive and oppressive government. If there ever is need for another Revolution, we Americans can at least have some guns in the hands of the citizens, not all in the hands of the oppressive government. Contrast this to Europe: If an oppressive and tyrannical regime ever gets power in any European country, the people have no weapons with which to protect themselves or rise up. You don't think an oppressive regime could ever come to power in an advanced democracy? Pshaw, sooner or later all governments crumble. At least Americans will be prepared. After all, it was our beloved patriot and philosopher Thomas Jefferson who said "A Revolution every now and then would be a good thing."
You appear by your language style to be the same anonymous Coward who has been posting trolls/flamebait like this one after many of my posts lately. I guess that makes you my own personal fan-club.:-) And I thought poor Signal 11 was the only one so afflicted...
This will be the last time I post in this thread because it's gotten off-topic, thanks to *you*. But a few last points:
> 1. RIP isn't going to pass with the self-incrimination clause, due to this: democracy
Tell that to all the very reputable people in the UK who were deathly afraid it was going to pass. Oh, and in the U.S. no one would need to worry about it at all, because we have a rock-solid provision in our Constitution which would prevent such a law from ever getting past the Court, even if Congress were stupid enough to pass it. Contrast that to the restrictive UK gov't under secretary Jack Straw, that militant freedom-crushing bastard. "Democracy" is the way you describe it; "tyranny" is how most Americans (assuming they paid any attention to world affairs, which sadly they don't) would describe it.
> 2. unique for your lack of censorship of violent imagery? well, fuck, that's > something to be proud of. what a shame that *everything else* - bad language? > subversive or independent thought? - is censored.
Yes, not censoring violent imagery in film and literature, or even in games, *is* something to be proud of. There are many films which would never pass the Film Board in Britain, but in which violence is a necessary part of the plot, structure, or artistic expression. There are many classic movies, and art-house films, which are heavily censored in Britain and elsewhere, even though they ooze with artistry. Granted, the U.S. film industry self-censors sex scenes, which is plain stupid and backwards, but ultimately less damaging (since films with explicit sex can still be released here, just with the NC-17 rating) to good films than censoring violence. Try making a great film about violent criminals, or about the victims of violent crime, without heavy violence. Stupidity. The world is a violent place sometimes--deal with it. And bad language isn't censored, you stupid fucking motherfucking cocksucking arse-licking bum-humping fuckheaded shitbrained son of a bitch-whore bloody anal-fisting limpdick.;-) And subversive/independant thought can be expressed more freely than, say, in France or Germany, where saying "Hitler wasn't so evil, no different from Bismarck or King George III, maybe the concentration camp stuff is exaggerrated" can get you thrown in jail. We in America, provided we're adults, can say any subversive thing we want provided it's not a threat or something which can cause physical harm (like yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater); just be prepared for the media to not express subversiveness since the corporations want the status-quo. You're just a moron who doesn't seem to know anything about America.
> 4. you are a dick. as long as there are people like you who are willing to exist > under the pretence of your supposed "rights" nothing is ever going to change
Anyone can look at my past posts and see that I don't agree with much of the American government's bullshit, and I express my disdain vocally here and elsewhere. Since I live near Washington, D.C., I go to protests when I get pissed off at gov't foolishness. In how many other countries can you openly protest without fear of arrest just a few yards from the home of your country's president/prime minister/leader? Try getting that close to 10 Downing Street for a protest. Not bloody likely. But yes, I am a dick; I concede that much.;-)
> 5. you stink of shit
Thanks for noticing. It's been five days since I left my computer long enough for a shower, and I'm starting to get a bit gamey. And there appears to be a ham sandwich stuck under one of my armpits, and the mayonnaise has gone rancid. Just kidding...:-)
Bye, my own personal troll-boy. Get your own life and stop shadowing my posts--I know it's been you these past few times because of your idiosyncratic language use. Grow up, kiddie.
The "generic and unremarkable" in your statement would be true, if it weren't for the fact that the rather bland "pop culture" we have is in itself a unique phenomenon which is just being foisted by our corporations on the rest of the world. Face it: disposable culture is an American invention, and as such we couldn't possibly be termed "generic and unremarkable" since our ways, however much some may dislike them, are being adopted by the rest of the world and not vice-versa. So my comment stands.
But more importantly, America is very individual and distinct from the rest of the world in some fundamental and important ways. No matter how much we complain about the erosion of our rights in contemporary times, Americans still have far more freedom than people in most other countries, even Western ones. We have rights which are difficult to chip away, even though some in our government are trying. For example, an American can say whatever the fuck he wants as long as it doesn't cause a threat of immediate danger to others or constitute a threat or slander. Contrast this with, for example, France and Germany, where you aren't free to express any opinions about the 2nd World War which go against the mainstream. Also, the whole mess that Britain has been going through over making it illegal to not decrypt files when asked to by police/courts--that could never happen in the U.S., because we have a set-in-stone Fifth Amendment right to not self-incriminate or be compelled to hand over incriminating evidence against ourselves. If Congress ever tried what Parliament tried, the Court would instantly get rid of it (just like they got rid of the CDA and provisions of COPA). Also, though we may unfairly and prudishly self-censor sexuality, we are unique in Western societies for our lack of censorship of violent imagery in films and games. We also have the right to bear arms, a right the Europeans long ago gave up. So we are, I say again, individualists here in the U.S.
I seem to recall watching a story on CNN about how the British--particularly the Scots, I'd imagine--were upset when bars were starting to use the metric system when doling out whisky and other potent potables. When using the new "official" measures, you see, a few tenths of an ounce were being shaved off the shot, so it was most upsetting to my people (I'm of Scots and Welsh extraction) when they started getting shorted in their favorite pastime. There's something not quite right about a sober Scotsman.;-)
But getting back to Americans using the English system instead of the metric, I'm all for the old-fashioned ways. It's kind of a typically stubborn American thing to do, an expression of our stereotypical individualism. The only thing that annoys me is that they don't teach the metric system alongside the traditional English system in elementary schools, which would allow most Americans to communicate better with the outside world.
Don't forget those classics of the tentacle pr0n genre, now available on DVD with introductions about the lofty cultural place schoolgirl tentacle pr0n holds in Japanese culture:
Urotsukidoji (Legend of the Overfiend)--now available in an excellent DVD reviewed at
Yes, the pics are definitely computer-generated, but MacJunkie has a few things wrong. Point-by-point:
> 1. In this form, the machine would be very much top-heavy
Not necessarily--the transparent base could be solid plastic, in which case the case would be very, very stable (more so than a current G4 minitower).
> 2. Look at the size of those air vents. You could drop a pencil through there, > or spill a cup of coffee
Much about Apple's current crop of cases is aesthetic, not functional; there could be mesh and foam inside those huge vent louvers to protect from accidents like that, anyway.
> 3. While in the photograph taken from a diagonal angle there are three screws > on the top of the machine, there are > only two in the head-on photo. Why?
Because the third screw, the one in the middle, is shielded from view by the raised border of the vent cutout.
> 4. There are no handles. Apple loves handles, and furthermore, anyone who expects to > get a good grip on a computer with plexiglass sides has got another thing coming.
Those raised bars on the top of the case are handles which retract into the case when not in use, and can be pulled up into handles when needed. This was noted in the first articles about this alleged case design, so I wish the person who wrote this debunking article would do his homework.
> 5. The front of the machine has at least a couple tell-tale Photoshop > fingerprints. First, look at the Apple logo in the second image. Does it look > a little smushed to you? It is. The artist had to use Photoshop's Distort tool > to get the image to be angled correctly, but this tool doesn't take 3D > measurements into consideration.
This is complete BS. The logo in question looks distorted because it is being viewed at an angle, from above, to the side, and on the diagonal--a very complex angle. The distortion visible is in line with the angle of observation, with only a little deviation. I disagree that this is a Photoshop image, and here's why.
It is definitely computer-generated, but most likely by a 3D design and rendering program, not by a 2D tool like Photoshop. The attention to detail in shading and angle and contour in these images is certainly doable in Photoshop, but at the cost of a huge amount of time.
In contrast, I could create the same images in 3D Studio Max and similar programs in a fraction of the time required to do them in Photoshop, plus I'd have an interactive 3D model to move around easily and get as many 2D image captures from as I want. 3D Studio Max, I know, isn't available for Macs, but similar products are (not as good IMHO, though). In particular, the attention to details like very accurate lighting and shading points to a 3D app creating these images, not a 2D app like Photoshop; this guy's concluding remarks about a lighting source being out of place are BS, the images appear to have pretty accurate lighting and shading. Doing these images in Photoshop would be too much of a bother, especially when so many good 3D apps are widely available (even the dongle protection for 3D Studio Max has been broken, and it's food for the warez kiddies now).
Plus, the pics on AppleInsider have been removed and replaced with images with a message about Apple's legal dept. making them take the pics down. This supports earlier claims, which were disputed, that Apple had done so on other sites hosting these pics. This indicates that there may be a grain of truth to these computer-generated images. My personal opinion is that the images are, indeed, authentic in that they come from Apple design mock ups, not necessarily of a design that will be used any time soon, but of a design that is or was being considered. My guess, unsupported by anything but Apple's stupid lawyermongering, is that these were taken from early 3D computer-generated designs from Apple's case-styling guys. But Apple is pissing me off with their lawyer-whoring bullshit; I was considering buying an Apple since I used to use them in college, but now they can fuck off. I hate ity when people try to stifle freedom of the press, important enough that the framers of the constitution put it first in the bill of rights.
This is the first time that ATI has been on par with performance leaders since...well...probably since before 3D performance was being stressed much at all. I myself have an ATI All-in-Wonder 128 which I'm fond of, but I have reservations about this new chip.
First of all, ATI's track record for supporting non-Intel chipsets is pretty sketchy at best, abysmal at worst. Currently the Athlon chipsets out now are well provided for in ATI's drivers, but when you consider that new Athlon chipsets are going to be coming out within the next six months which feature many new advancements and changes, from DDR SDRAM to SMP and more subtle changes, I can't say that I'd buy one with performance in mind unless I'd definitely be running an older Athlon mobo or an Intel setup. These ATI boards will definitely be great for their multimedia features, and the All-in-Wonder version especially promises to be interesting, but I doubt performance will be up to snuff on the VIA and ALi next-gen Athlon chipsets because they poorly supported the VIA MVP3 and similar Socket 7 chipsets and to this day their own webpages tout only Intel processors; last time I was there, not a single benchmark was done on an Athlon, and they "recommended" Intel processor boards. With the new Willamette chipsets coming out, it's likely that ATI will make compatability with those their first priority, and compatibility with next-gen Athlon mobos an afterthought. ATI has also had many odd driver issues, like the Fury MAXX not supporting Windows 2000. Just remember that this might not perform well if you upgrade your Athlon mobo...
...is someone who's living in the past but doesn't even know his history. Of course the French Revolution was a bourgeois revolution of the middle and lower classes, but what your narrow, selfish, classist and skewed view of history makes you unable to realize is that that brevolution was fomented by the writings of a faction in the well-educated upper class who realized that the system was flawed, that the segregation of the classes was wrong. Read the writings of the pre-Revolutionary French Enlightenment, which were predominantly written by aristocrats or wealthy middle class gentlemen. Go to a decent college or university, my friend, and take a few classes on this period, and maybe then you can discuss it intelligently instead of spouting off historically inaccurate post-revisionist claptrap. "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," the stereotypical theme of the French Revolutionaries, has its philosophical basis and in the writings of the Enlightenment, most of whose celebrated authors were wealthy upper class or well of middle class. Name one celebrated bourgeois author of the same period, and I will name ten at least as important who were in the upper classes. You sir are a classist, and a racist, a bigot who prejudges people based on which class and race they belong to instead of looking to the individual. People like you are the problem with America and elsehwere: whether you are prejudiced against the poor or the rich, against the whites or the Latinos, you are wrong and your thinking is insidious and evil. It is the type of person that matters, not his race, class, gender, etc.
As a last note, everyone who has any doubts about Mr. Martinez's bias and racism and classism should follow the URL provided at the top of his user page here on/. It leads to a hate-filled tabloid which does nothing but portray white Americans as evil racists and Hispanics as poor downtrodden people who are oppressed by the evil white upper class. It even sensationalistically declares that U.S.-Mexican relations are breaking down because the U.S., it proclaims, is allowing state-sponsored beatings and murders of Latinos. What lying, venomous, hate-filled bullshit; I have many Mexican American friends in Texas, and messaging with one of them to check out that site, he was appalled at its lies.
Lastly, I apologize that this thread has gotten off-topic but this man's hate had to be countered--I posted down to +1 instead of my default +2 because of that, and would have posted down to 0 if I could have since this is getting off-topic, but Slashcode doesn't provide that option.
You just proved my point. You point to "historical fact" to use your own term, when what you need to do is get the hell over the past and start building the future. Learn from the past and move on--don't repeat it. You're repeating the past because you're fostering divisiveness, pointing to disparities based on race and ethnicity when you should be thinking about commonalities.
You say I am a "bigoted fool who can't recognize the effects of your society on others." Bullshit. I point it out all the time, including on Slashdot, that American values are often fucked up, that our priorities are often out of whack, and that we use the wrong means to achieve ends which we assume are good just because they're the ends we personally believe in, not necessarily the ones that are best for everyone. Look at my posting history here to see that I do not believe in the globalization of Americanized culture, or that our government always does the "right" thing.
Before I posted saying that you're a racist, I *did* take the time to look up your own posting history, because I don't use the term "racist" lightly. Your posting history indicates that you frequently post inflammatory and divisive crap. But most telling is the first line in your user bio: "My goal in life is social justice for mi gente and everyone else." Nice. Let's dissect it: you put "mi gente" separately, and before, "everyone else," not just in that sentence but philosophically. That is evidence which supports the assertion that you are a racist. And, let's linger on the term "social justice": it is typically used by those who seek to promote division between the races or classes, who seek to levy some sort of revenge or extort "compensation" from the race or class (or race/class; you earlier in this thread equated white with wealthy/powerful, displaying great animus in the process) which is singled out by those seeking so-called "social justice" as being a wrongdoer, an aggressor, which deserves to have to dole out compensation for either real or imagined wrongdoings. Divisive people in the black and Hispanic communities in America today use the term "social justice" in claiming that they deserve preferential treatment in hiring and entitlement decisions, through notions such as "Affirmative Action" and racial quotas. "Social justice" is used in South Africa when referring to how white South Africans don't deserve protection for their well being and property, don't deserve protection from mobs and rapists if the mobs and rapists happen to be black instead of white. "Social justice" has been and continues to be a term used in South American countries, in reference to stripping property from people once a communist regime comes into power, in reference to the murders and tortures of the people who were in charge under old regimes.
So I stand by my assessment that you are racist, though I should have added that you're a classist as well. Never forget that wealthy classes have, according to the history you so like to point to instead of the future, often assisted the proletariat in taking power, as many forward-thinking aristocrats did during the French Revolution, as some of the wealthy Chinese did during the Cultural Revolution--and history is full of examples of people who did *not* break down into lines by class or race. So, you do everyone a disservice by being a small minded bigoted racist classist individual.
You are such a racist bastard. I always find it supremely ironic when non-whites are racist. And, don't give me any of this neo-feminazi-ethnonazi bs about how only those in power can be racists: racism has to do with the irrational hatred of particular races or ethnicities, and you sir are just as bad as any KKK member. Worse, because you as a non-white should know better than to be a racist, considering the racism which whites have used against non-whites for a couple of centuries. You hate white people, so you are a racist.
And this is extremely unfair, especially since race is eroding slowly but surely as a cultural divide, thanks in part to intermarriage and thanks to the global culture being created by the Information Age. In America, you can never be sure who's white or black or American Indian. I've known several people as white as any Aryan Brother, but half of whose ancestors in recent memory were black--skin can lighten to the point that some blacks could easy pass as white, and decades ago "passing" was a common thing for such people due to racism. Likewise, someone who had one black grandfather back down the line can be dark-skinned. Me, I'm pretty damned white, but I have enough Cherokee blood that I could legally apply for membership in the tribe if I wanted to. People like you hold us back. people like you are living in the past. You are a worthless racist bastard who causes more harm than stupid redneck KKK racists, because most people just ignore their wacky ideas and treat them like outcasts. But black and Hispanic racists get listened to, and it's people like you who renew the racial divide, who breed hatred and dissension instead of unity and brotherhood. You are the ultimate in harmful attitudes. Stop living in the past and start trying to work in the present to create the future. We're living in times when physical commodities are going to become less valuable than information and tech skills; there's a huge opportunity for non-whites to jump quickly to economic parity, but only if they discard outdated animus like yours. Your hatred has no place here.
If the data supports the claims that have been made over the years about cell phone radiation causing increased risk of cancer--and I'm not saying it *does* in fact do so, just that many people have claimed it--then the question will become how long have they known and have they been hiding it. That's what got the tobacco companies: that their product causes increased risk of cancer isn't very actionable in and of itself--the fact that they knew it caused cancer, and did nothing to stop it, and denied any knowledge of the risks, is what made the tobacco lawsuits so profitable. I myself smoke cigars, but have no sympathy for a cigarette industry which has lied and cheated and in effect caused more people to die than might have if they'd come clean years ago. Anyone remember those cheesy 50s and 60s cigarrette commercials which touted the "health benefits" of smoking?
But seriously, I doubt that cell phones cause cancer any more than everything else around us does these days. Face it: life causes cancer. Most modern tech increases health risks. Six inches away from a small 15" CRT that I am, I am undoubtedly increasing my risks for cancer somewhat. Sitting a couple feet from a 19" CRT probably contributes just as much. Running your computer caseless probably contributes a tiny little bit to cancer risks, as probably does using cellphones, preservatives, cultured cheese products, soy products (recent studies suggest soy is a carcinogen in mice), diet soda, and just about anything useful. Personally, I'm fed-up with the overly-health-consciousness which causes us to put so many constraints on life that it isn't as fun as it should be. Plus, most of it is bullshit--fat and cholesterol are supposedly bad for you, yet the French practically have IVs of pure butter hooked into their veins and yet they're healthier than and live longer than Americans. To hell with no drinking, no smoking, no eating greasy pork products, and no enjoying buttery sugary eggy confections. It's time we just started enjoying life and not being so concerned with radiation, dietary intake, and how many hormones are in milk: who cares if we live to a hundred carefully if we could just have sixty five really fun years? Just my opinion.
Mitnick was never compelled to decrypt the contents of his drive. Law enforcement is keeping the drive *because* he refuses to decrypt it, but he's not in jail for contempt of Court for not doing so. He can't be compelled to decrypt it because the contents may incriminate him, and to force him to do so would violate his Fifth Amendment rights.
Now, whether or not law enforcement can keep the drive(s) indefinitely is a very gray area with little precedent. As of now the matter hasn't been appealed as it could, and for good reason: Mitnick is still on parole, unable to be near computers and such things anyway. I wouldn't want to anger the people who fucked me over for so long and who can still put me back in jail for minor things. But I hope that when Kevin is truly free and no longer on parole, that he challenges this and wins--but I wouldn't count on it, since the value of those old computer components is negligible even now, since it's been so long, that a fight over them wouldn't be very financially justified. At any rate, I'd rather forfeit a couple of hard disks than my freedom, so it's not such a bad deal.
Norton had a security product called Your Eyes Only which they sold last year, and abruptly stopped selling soon after it came out. The actual reason given on their web site is, interestingly, "unresolved Y2K issues." They must be some issues, I tell you, because I ran across a copy on the Web, tried to install it for shits and giggles, and it hung. Weird. I thought it may have been an issue with that particular copy, but then I ran across a page comparing various crypto apps, and the author said she couldn't review Norton YEO because, even though she dloaded the trial version, it hung during install. The version I had was the full version, so it couldn't just have been a kill date in the trial copy, it must have been doing something weird during the install routine based on the date, but I have no idea what. Norton YEO was kind of unique because, in addition to letting you encrypt files or folders on your drives, it had an option for encrypting the File Allocation Tables for all drives which would mean that there'd be no easy way for an attacker with physical access to get at any of your files unless they were someone with the ability to physically remove the drive and hook it into another machine for analysis and file recovery.
Back to Corel, it is a pity that they're in such straits at the moment. WordPerfect is so much nicer than MS Word, and while I prefer Adobe's graphics products, Corel's are still pretty impressive. They even have one graphics app which Adobe can't best: KnockOut 1.5, which is absolutely the best and easiest way to separate a particular figure in an image from the rest of the image; no more pixel-by-pixel erasing of the borders left by Photoshop when it cuts out a figure, KnockOut has the most intelligent ways of doing masking and cut-outs for you. It would be a pity all around if Corel goes under, or gets bought out by one of its not-so-nice competitors (read: MS or Adobe).
You are protected, in the U.S. at least though laws in other countries differ, from being compelled to bear witness against or present evidence against yourself. You would have to decrypt said data if it would incriminate other people (not including a spouse) or be of use in criminal matters not pertaining to you, but if decrypting that data would provide evidence against you then you are constitutionally protected from being compelled to do so. The only exception is that you could be compelled to decrypt the data if you were guaranteed immunity from prosecution for the offences the decypted data implicates you in, in which case you wouldn't have to worry about doing it since you'd be free and clear of all related charges. There are many alarmists who keep crowing about how you can be compelled to decrypt your data, but in the U.S. this is not at all the case. The U.K. I fear is a different matter entirely, but I defy anyone to find a single U.S. case in which someone was held in contempt of Court for not decrypting data that could implicate him, who was not given a guarantee of immunity to do so. You won't be able to find one.
I'm always disappointed that there's not a greater effort to provide data security through an easy-to-implement optional encrypted file system. Yes, you can get the patch from Kerneli.org to accomplish this, but this really isn't enough. The first line in the Howto on kerneli is: "This process requires the kernel source code, knowledge of compiling this code, and a lot of patience."
There should be a distribution--and maybe there is, can anyone point us to it?--which offers the encrypting file system as an option during install. Most of the install process for the more friendly distros already have all the install options laid out in fairly easy-to-use dialogs and what not, but it would go a long way toward insuring privacy if an encrypting file system were a standard install option in a big distro. With relaxation of crypto export regulations, it's becoming increasingly possible for the big US Linux companies to do this, and of course most non-US distros could have been doing it already.
The fact is, most *nix OSes are already much more secure from cracking exploits and viruses than Windows can ever dream of being; something like Bastille is just icing on the cake. But the next step in security, and in ensuring our privacy, is having an encrypted file system as an option in widely used distros, or in widely used/easy to apply add-on products. A standard complaint when someone suggests this is the increased overhead--but with modern microprocessors, the overhead is barely noticeable--I'd know because I use encrypted file systems in Windows on a measly old K6-2 400, with overhead barely visible at all. Just try using an efs on a processor made in the last 2 years, and you'll see it's pretty snappy. Running programs from encrypted drives does sometimes have noticeable, but not deadly, overhead, but accessing data stored on those drives (logs, writings, multimedia files, etc.) is hardly slower than accessing it on non-encrypted drives. And this is my experience under Windows, I can only imagine that under Linux performance would be far superior.
Just an attempt to point out that there's more than one issue in security; securing from crackers is far more well addressed, in almost all operating environments, than security for stored data. These days the U.S. and U.K. governments, and many others, are cracking down on expression of unpopular ideas and distribution of IP-infringing source and executables, and if they come to search your computer and find an encrypted file system, you're better off than if they find that copy of a DeCSS sort of proggie you wrote, or that article you thought you published anonymously but they managed to trace back to you, or the opinion you expressed about a company which has now decided to sue you for libel, or that copy of the webpage you uploaded which calls school officials and classmates the misguided bastards they really are.
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The DeCSS case isn't the issue at all. DeCSS is ultimately unimportant *in and of itself*. But the principle that's really being fought over here is the most important, most fundamental principle there is. It's about personal rights versus corporate rights, and this will be the big fight of the 21st century. The Civil Rights movement, one of the greatest advances in this country--which should never have had to happen in the first place--ensured that ~20% of the country's population finally got rights equal to those of the other ~80%. But this battle will determine if each and every American will be giving up many of those important, fundamental rights, or if he gets to be as free as his forefathers. Here's why it's so important.
Corporations are legal fictions which have evolved over the last 2 centuries to have all the rights that real people have, but with fewer responsibilities and far, far, far greater resources. Wal-Mart, for example, can ruin a local economy just by building a store in a small town, because no other stores in town can sell as low as Wal-Mart thanks to the volume discounts Wal-Mart gets on the wholesale end; therefore, low-income people will *have* through economic imperative to shop there, forcing other stores (esp. ones owned by actual people) to go out of business, which causes more and more people to work for Wal-Mart which pays a wage which is entirely unlivable unless you buy everything from the cheapest source in town--your new employer, Wal-Mart. Results: almost all other retail stores in small towns go out of business, so that most of their old employees now work for Wal-Mart, and can only afford to buy from "the company store." It's a 21st-century version of a practice outlawed after abuses in the 19th century, but it's legal since there's no company policy to force people to buy there--it just becomes an economic necessity when Wal-Mart moves in to a small town. And of course Wal-Mart loses a ton of cash initially when moving into small towns, but as a megacorp they can afford to let their profitable stores subsidize taking over small towns until those towns are entirely under Wal-Mart's economic control (at least regarding the retail sales and low-income workers). Also, Wal-Mart often drives all other supermarkets and grocers in small towns out of business, because Wal-Marts with supermarkets in them sell the food at or below cost in most areas, since the retail sales section of the store is immensely profitable. If you disagree with this analysis, then you haven't lived in a small town both before and after a Wal-Mart moves in. My nice little college town was destroyed by a Wal-Mart; we used to have a wonderful, colorful Main Street, and now it's an abandoned bunch of boarded-up buildings.
But what does that have to do with tech, or with DeCSS and the rights I mentioned in the first paragraph? Wal-Mart, as a huge corporation, can do things no individual could ever afford to do, and can drive all the smaller guys out of business, and put lots of people under its economic control. The same thing is true of most other sectors of big business these days.
Take the recording industry, for example. Over the years the top few companies gobbled up the entire market, so that now they have a complete lock on the market. They just made a deal with the U.S. to stop a price-fixing scheme for CDs which they'd been using for years--MAP, Minimum Advertised Price, set minimum prices at which CDs could be advertised by retailers, ensuring that retail prices for CDs would remain artificially high. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. The big record companies own almost all the recording studios, almost all the advertising agencies they use, almost all of the wholesalers they sell to, and a fair percentage of the retailers which the wholesalers sell to. The result is that it's almost impossible to get CDs produced outside of the big corporate structure into the pipeline at all, at any stage; at concerts and at specialty stores in big cities, those are the only places that albums produced outside the system can be found. Otherwise, the rcording studios find lots of raw young talent every year, record with a huge percentage of them, pick out a bunch of those to go to the next level and be sponsored by the company to put out an album that will be advertised a little and promoted while the band busts its ass touring--and oh, did I mention that the band goes in debt to the studio for recording with them? Yup, they get in debt for the cost of the studio time, production costs, and advertising, and the amount of an advance to live off of while touring. If they make it big they can pay it back and move up in the food chain, but if they don't make it big they still have to pay all that money back or go bankrupt. Most bands break up or at least end up owing their souls to Sony or whoever at this point. Studios often argue that CDs are so expensive to offset the costs of all the bands who fail, but bullshit: those costs are inflated since the recording companies own all the studios and postproduction and CD press facilities and advertising agencies they use, and since bands go into debt to the recording company to get that album out. Then, if at this point a band hits it big, they become a name band that might actually make money. For every band that does become hugely successful and makes a living from album sales (small percentage of income) and big tours (large percentage of income), dozens of bands went broke and got to start paying the big corporations back, file for bankruptcy, break up, etc. So, in effect big music stifles art, stifles the advancement of art which copyright law is supposed to protect. Who the fuck cares if Lars Ulrich and Garth Brooks are making money out of the current system, when thousands of other bands got anally raped by the system? And the argument that mp3 piracy and new music services don't promote giving anyone payment for their work is crap, because when the old system is gone people will have money to support bands by buying merchandise or attending concerts, but as long as they're required to pay $15-$20 for every piece of music they want to buy, very little of which goes to any band, consumers won't have the disposable income left over to support artists directly. Lots of people have faith that this model, voluntarily supporting artists who disseminate digitally downloadable work, will work for all parties concerned: Stephen King, for example, fresh from the success of his pay-for-download book, is releasing a new book online; it'll be released in three segments, and as a test of the system he'll only release the last section if people give him enough money to account for $1 per download. One thing's for sure, the music companies' stranglehold on the whole music pipeline stifles advancement and bankrupts many more artists than ever get supported by it, and the advancement of the art is being stymied and interfered with: witness the "band factories" that have popped up, creating artificial bands with canned personalities and canned songs, people like N*SYNC who don't deserve to exist and are created by the industry to cater to the lowest-common-denominator of uneducated teenybopper taste. That is NOT what copyright law was created to do; it was created to promote the advancement of arts and sciences, not to have all-powerful corporations destroy the art of music by unnaturally promoting their own artificial creations which set the art back.
The movie industry, represented by the MPAA and the DVDCCA, are doing the same thing with films. The scariest thing for them is for there to be a "Blair Witch Phenomenon," with low-budget, creative, *new* films cutting into their market for over-budget canned studio plots recycled since the 40s, actors and actresses who look absolutely nothing like real Americans in the public at large, movie theaters who not only charge $8 for a ticket but have the audacity to in addition charge $2.50 for a small watery coke and $3.50 for small popcorn with watered-down fake butter. Why else would they decree that no film released on the Net before being shown in theaters can ever receive an award nomination? No, getting movies for free isn't my right. But it is the right of filmmakers to release their films in new media without being discriminated against by organizations controlled by the top few mega-corporations. It's not my right to make illegal copies of DVDs and upload them to the Net, but it is my right to take a DVD I buy and play it on anything I want to without having to pay extra for software licensed by the DVDCCA; it is my right to take clips from that DVD and splice them together for a presentation, or to use clips from a DVD in a collage/montage fashion in a new work, or to write new software to play it and skip over those fucking 10-minute commercials Disney puts before its movies and sets the copyright notice bit on so that DVD players won't let you skip the track, or to do any number of other things which the people in Hollywood say I can't do, but which Fair Use law says I can.
And I haven't even touched upon the copyright issues the studios have saddled us with, yet. Copyright originally lasted 14 years, now it lasts the life of the artist plus 100 years. Big corporations, Disney in particular, got those laws changed to keep their characters and works from ever passing into the public domain. Ironic, since Disney built itself using characters in its motion pictures who were derived from characters in the public domain, characters invented by the Brothers Grimm and other writers and storytellers. We need the public domain. We need IP to pass into the control of all of us after a reasonable period for the creators to derive a profit. 14 years, for example, is more than enough time for the big studios to derive major profits from their films: big films usually make a small profit on initial release, then a huge profit at rental within the first couple years; smaller, relatively unsuccessful films usually make their profit at renatl within 5 years. 100 years after the death of the artist is utterly insane, and a complete violation of our rights. We have a right to have IP pass into the public domain, so that after its creators derive profit we can all benefit from it and build upon it. Take the hugely popular TV show (in its day, it was #1 up until Tom Selleck quit the series and it folded), Magnum P.I. There has never been a film, although Tom Selleck said just the other day on Larry King that he'd love to do a film version, but he can't because Universal owns the rights and Universal is in tumult and has been for a while. Guess what? It's been 20 years since that show was on, and if Universal isn't going to use the film rights it shouldn't have them--under old copyright law, the character would have passed into public domain by now and a more competent studio could do the film with Selleck, but instead Universal and current IP law are preventing the furtherence of the arts rather than furthering them as IP law was supposed to do (not that Magnum is all that artful, but you get my point). Companies today never want their characters or music or other IP to pass into public domain; they want to carve up the markets entirely for themselves, keeping forever whatever IP they buy the rights to or create in-house. That's not how it was supposed to work. IP law is backfiring, and taking away rights from the common man. Shekespeare made money from his plays even though some publishers were pirating them without paying him. Writers made enough money to support themselves even before copyright gave them huge periods of time in which they had exclusive IP rights. Beethoven, Haydn, and Leadbelly managed to support themselves without a Big (Brother) Studio protecting their IP "for them."
That's what this is about. It's about the rights of individuals and the rights of whole cultures. It's about whether we will become a corporate culture, controlled by a few powerful companies with vast IP warehouses, or whether we will be individuals free to invent and build upon the IP of the past, or simply to enjoy the IP of the past. Much of it is disappearing. We now live in a culture in which television shows and other short-term outlets are important factors, and these cultural artifects are being lost to us all the time. Why shouldn't I be able to freely distribute a television show which hasn't aired in 20 years? Those TV shows made their profit at the initial airing, there's no need to keep the IP under lock and key. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could have vast IP storehouses online, where for a few dollars to pay for bandwidth and server upkeep we could download episodes of our favorite dead TV shows? Less than 1% of them ever make it to retail tape. But that will never happen under the current system. It reaches beyond that, into film, literature, music, and the rights of the people to engage in Fair Use of all of it. What we have is a cultural crisis, and a set of industry monopolies in every realm, and it needs to be dealt with. It's bigger than DeCSS, DVDs, or Linux. It's about our way of life, and our freedoms.
The animation is done in the U.S., and then is sent to Taiwan to be colored in. The animation requires skilled work, while the coloring-in can be done by unskilled laborers who get Kathie Lee sweatshop wages. Ain't globalization grand? :-)
Also, the guy above has it right. Much of Futurama is rendered in a combination of 2D and 3D computer graphics; when the show first came out, it got a lengthy spread in TV Guide complete with interviews, and in the interview Groening was talking about how hard they worked to get the right look for the show--they wanted to use new technologies and give the show a unique feel that couldn't be done with traditional animation, but they didn't want it to be visually jarring. Personally, I think they hit the nail on the head; the show definitely feels unique thanks to the fast-motion, 3D backgrounds, and other aspects of the CG animation, but the effects are subtle enough that it doesn't distract and make you start thinking about how computers did this or that or that this or that looks "fake."
Now, the one wish I have for Futurama is that they find a guy who does a good Phil Hartman impersonation, and have him play Phil Hartman's Head in an episode. After all, if the heads of Pamela Anderson and Richard Nixon can make guest appearances, Phil's head would be a great tribute. Fry could recognize him as Troy McClure from The Simpsons or something. Cool...
"No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks."
-- Article 12 Universal Declaration of Human Rights
It's not about passwording a BIOS to keep the kids off your computer while you're away at work. It's not about keeping skr1pt kiddiez out of your box--for that, use firewalls. It's about invasion of privacy. It's about freedom. It's about the private self. It's about the fact that there are people and organizations and governments which don't believe a man's private papers are private any more. It's about the right to have that privacy, and the absolute peace of mind that comes when you've got it.
See, there used to be this idea in democracies that a man had a fundamental human right to think whatever he wants and write whatever he wants, and that as long as it was kept private such information was personal and couldn't even be used against him in Court. A man's diaries and journals and such weren't even admissable as evidence at trial--it was tainted, because he had a right to think and write privately for his own contemplation. But that went away late in the last century/early in this century, in almost all countries. Your diaries, your private thoughts and reflections, were no longer private, could be used against you and now even subpoenaed.
Some people don't consider this a huge loss. Others consider it a huge loss, of something fundamental. Do you know why there's no explicit "right to privacy" in the U.S. Bill of Rights? Because none of the founding fathers ever thought that it could be taken away, it was such a fundamental aspect of the Common Law. Freedom of the press, the right to assemble, the right to bear arms--all the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights had been taken away by the British at one point or another, but never did they go so low as to use a colonist's own private diaries and thoughts against him at trial. It was so incredibly fundamental. The Fourth Amendment only begins to touch upon this, but unfortunately didn't fully flesh out a "right to privacy" and is tody construed by the Court to mean that as long as the cops have a warrant they can take any damned thing they want to even if it's something the Founding Fathers would have found inviolable, like one's own journals.
Fast forward two centuries, and this fundamental right has disappeared. If you are accused of anything, or even if you're just a material witness, your journals and papers can be subpoenaed and paraded out before the world. Records of Monica Lewinsky's book purchases, and her private correspondence, taken and abused and paraded before the public. People's hard drives have been either confiscated or imaged by the authorities for things as petty as possibly having conspired to call in sick during an airline sick-out. Would you want your hard drive imaged and inspected because you called in sick? Or would you want it imaged or confiscated for having said something negative about a company in an online forum, so that now you're being sued for libel for making an honest and true comment about some behemoth corporation? It's happened and is happening. You don't have to be a terrorist or a child pornographer or a seditionist any more to have the contents of your hard drive made public any more. these days you can be anyone. Are you aware of the fact that people who've worked for Consumer Reports have had their computers searched because a big powerful company filed a libel suit against them, hmmm? My computer is my own goddamned business, and what I write or store here is private. PERIOD. It's a fundamental human right to privacy which I, and you, and every humanfuckingbeing has, so call me a "fool" all you like, but you're the fucking fool for not wanting every bit of privacy and humanity which governments and corporations are taking away. You find no use for encrypted systems? Fine. But some of us are actually interested in preserving our rights and we aren't fools for that. The one thing we do have left, at least in the U.S., is a Fifth Amendment right to not incriminate ourselves, so with an encrypted system we could just say, when the key is demanded, "On advice of counsel I decline to answer, on the grounds that such an answer may incriminate me." The only way they could possibly get around that is by granting you full immunity from all charges relating to whatever may be on your system, so crypto is an effective way to protect yourself if you should ever say something a corporation or the government doesn't like. There are many programs to encrypt your hard drives, but you can't effectively encrypt your boot drive, and you can't encrypt swap without major overhead (another reason a yhardware card would be great); there are ways in which software encryption mechanisms can fuck up and reveal your key or compromising info about your key, and your boot drive may also provide fodder for social engineering or provide plaintext which you haven't yet encrypted; so, a hardware card which provides a completely encrypted system with little overhead would be the ideal. These days, we unfortunately can use the term "American dissidents" almost as truthfully as we could say "Chinese dissidents".
That isn't even taking into consideration the needs of individuals in other countries. So stop calling people who want privacy fools, and start appreciating the rights which we should all hold dear. A few more quotes to bolster the point:
"The real aim of current policy is to ensure the continued effectiveness of US information warfare assets against individuals, businesses and governments in Europe and elsewhere"
-- Ross Anderson
"As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy."
-- Christopher Dawson, The Judgment of Nations, 1942
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated..."
-- The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
"No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session."
-- Judge Gideon J. Tucker, 1866
"The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each citizen to defend it. Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do his share in this defense are the constitutional rights secure."
-- Albert Einstein
"You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the great struggle for independence."
--Charles Austin Beard, 1874 - 1948
This is clearly aimed at Geeks-with-Cash, not at the average compuser. If I actually had any money, I'd buy one. I don't even run the Seti client, I do the distributed.net stuff, but this thing is just so cool that I'd definitely buy one if I could. After all, talk about bragging rights:
"Hey Bob, did you hear about that Seti project where people use their computers to help search for extraterrestrial radio signals?"
"Yup. Pretty cool, eh?"
"Yeah, I decided to go ahead and install it on my workstation. Seems like a great project for a geek to help out."
"Yeah, I installed a special multiprocessor vector processing unit in my computer to work on Seti all the time; it runs on a PCI card, and beats the hell out of a P!!! 500 even though it doesn't use any of my CPU's cycles to do the work, it's all in hardware. Took these military surplus vector processors and..."
Now, that's some nice geek bragging rights, my friend. Talk about exotic hardware. I just wish they'd do something like this for distributed.net, since there have to be a few embedded chips which would handle crypto-cracking pretty well.
That brings me to my #1 desire in an exotic PCI card: hardware-based encryption. I want a card with an embedded processor(s) to handle a very strong combination of crypto specifically designed for encrypting hard drives. Wouldn't it be amazing to have a PCI card which registers to your BIOS as the primary hard disk controller, and then prompts for password information before bringing up a boot menu allowing access to your real hard drives and operating system(s)? Imagine, with a dedicated card like that the entire system could be encrypted with almost no overhead, since the card would handle all decryption/encryption and leave the main CPU(s) free. The only slow down on such a system would be the slight delay in routing I/O calls through the card, but I'm sure it's technically feasible to do such a thing. IBM does something similar in the hardware of some of its big-$$$ RISC systems. Now, a card like *that* would be sweet, and if implemented right with good drivers virtually fool-proof.
> You harp on this 'spatial intelligence vs abstract intelligence' thing quite a
> bit, and it is rather irksome, since its a well-known fact in educational circles that
> advanced spatial and geometric skills go hand in hand with mathematical ability and
> abstract thought.
Not at all true. While it is true that the most intelligent individuals have both forms of intelligence in great measure, very few of us are at or near that level. 180 IQs are unfortunately doled out quite sparingly at the factory. The majority of people, even the majority of people in the 120-150 IQ range, are quite better in one area than in the other. You can dispute this all you want by calling your idea "fact," but if it is indeed a fact then point us to a source. It's certainly the opposite of what I was taught in college.
> As a previous author has pointed out (and you pointedly ignored), most peoples'
> stengths lie in narrative
Yes, of course they do; I really wish more people had strengths in the area of reading comprehension, though, since I didn't disagree: I said that he was missing the point, that narrative requires descriptive words and those descriptive words can be of two types, mathematically (algebraicly) abstract or spatially (geometrically) concrete. That is the important thing to note, since people cannot actually narrate in natural language to their computers. To narrate in the mathematically derived languages of most CLIs is fundamentally different from narrating in plain English; CLIs require a certain mathematical precision, while natural language is more flexible and intuitive to most people. That was my point. And until the computer can understand a plain natural language (English, let's say) CLI, the CLI will always be inferior *for most users* to the GUI. The GUI is equated with spatial, geometric terms, while the CLI is equated with abstract, algebraic terms. The classical example--I forget who said it--is the notion that CLIs require much knowledge internal to the user, but little on behalf of the computer, while GUIs require much knowledge internal to the computer but little knowledge on the part of the user. But it boils down to this: GUIs give the user concrete spatial and geometric information about the objects on his system and their relationship to each other, while CLIs require that the user already possess this information since he gets far fewer visual cues as to how objects are related. *Now* do you grok it?
As for your last bit about how a spoken-language CLI would be more natural and useful--you should have read the post with which I started this thread:
> In short, until computing power is sufficient enough and code is bug-free enough
> to execute commands based on spoken language with few or no errors, the CLI will
> never make a resurgence in any form among non-techno-geeks.
Now, doesn't that sentence imply that when computers can understand plain English, then the CLI *will* make a resurgence (but until then)? Yes. So, I already said that and agreed with you. However, as the authors of the article referenced in the story noted, parsing natural language is a "computational nightmare" with present technology, so it's not going to happen any time soon. So, again, GUIs will be the paradigm used by almost all users, not CLIs, *until* computers have a CLI interface comparable--as I wrote earlier in this thread--to those used in Star Trek, in which users just tell the computer what to do and the computer just does it. But that's a long way off.
> Oh, and it's nice that you can sort files ascending by date in your favorite GUI...
/var owned by Bob, larger than 300k, and modified in the last week. And rename them to lowercase or compress them or selectively change the permissions on them" just by ticking a couple of boxes and entering whatever size/date/whatever criteria you want to search for. Far easier for most users than remembering what command line to type to get those same results. If you ever have occasion to use Windows, I highly suggest you check it out; for rock-solid stabilty (well, almost) in Win9x, use the utility 98Lite Professional to do a clean install without the Win98 shell, and then install PowerDesk 2000 and select the option to integrate it into Explorer. The things you mention can be done very easily through the right GUI, or even from the stock Windows or Mac GUIs plus a third-party file finder utility.
> one more option letter to ls.
No, I said "by arbitrary criteria." By date, 1-click. By size, or type, or descriptor, etc. etc. 1-click. BTW, my GUI of choice is the Powerdesk file browser for Windows, by Mijenix (bought by Ontrack). With that particular GUI, there are many advanced options not available in the standard Windows GUI, including a slightly integrated and sophisticated file finder that could do far more complex things than "find all files in
> Designing a GUI for that is probably a complete waste of time;
It would be a waste of time, since some GUIs already do that just fine.
> And if you compare *the existing tools*, it is very clear that CLIs win for power
> and expressiveness on many tasks
Sure, and I never disputed that. I just pointed out that there are also many tasks for which a GUI is better suited and faster, including many complex tasks that CLI elitists would wrongly assume a GUI can't do efficiently. Yes, CLI is more expressive--but infinitely more complex and requiring much more knowledge/memory than is necessary or desirable for most computer users, even power users, ever to expend. The CLI is fine if you want to invest the time to learn it right, but very few people are going to spend that time in this the age of the GUI. Macs were usually too expensive for home use, so the first time many people broke out of CLI was with Win95 (Win3.1 hardly counts)--so there have only been about five years of widespread GUI OS use on home PCs except for those lucky enough to afford a Mac before then. And yet despite this, the GUI pervades the home as well as the office now--how many strictly CLI machines are there in the home and office workstation spaces, percentage-wise? It's probably relatively small. Everyone has gotten used to the GUI. Kids are now growing up using GUIs instead of the CLI interface to Apple ][ machines that my generation had. And only a statistically insignificant number of computer users want to use CLI anymore. Those who do are the hardcore computer users willing to invest the time to learn the language, and in exchange for their time they'll get the ability to do many complex things quickly which sometimes outpaces GUI use and is always more impressive. But most users don't want to invest that time, they want something graphical and easy to use that will do whatever they tell it to through clicks and ticks. I'm just trying to get people to realize that the days of the CLI are over except for the hardcore power users who want to get closer to the hardware, and that isn't most people. That's relatively few people.
> manipulating a large set of multifaceted objects in a scriptable fashion is a CLI task
Sure. Like I said, there are plenty of things a CLI is better at than a GUI--and vice versa. For instance, if manipulating that large set of objects is not a scriptable task, but one that will vary from day to day according to various factors, then a GUI is going to probably do it better/faster. This is especially true if the content of each object must be determined before the object is dealt with; a power-GUI like Powerdesk can gice you quick and painless previews of every object, even rare document types; a CLI could never do that.
> So if you want to talk about "the vast majority of users", fine.
That's precisely who I was talking about. The small percentage of CLI users notwithstanding, most computer users will be using GUIs for the foreseeable future, and the less CLI each one requires the more successful it's probably going to be. That's a simple truth some of the more zealous people in the Linux community don't seem to understand, and it's hindering Linux's move to the desktop and workstation market. I want MS to lose as much as anyone around here; I'm just trying to further that cause by expressing that many Linux people are virtually aiding Microsoft's desktop dominance by insisting that GUIs are bad, inferior, mistaken, or otherwise shouldn't be implemented as a priority in their current form. Linux is winning the server battle, but it'll lose the OS Wars at large unless it becomes more GUIlicious. Fortunately, KDE and GNOME have picked up since last year, and are making great progress; but there are still those who belittle those projects, even though they're the only chance Linux seems to have at the moment of winning over the hefty Windows market. Even so, CLI configuration tools and arcane config files are going to have to get graphical counterparts to manipulate them if Linux is truly to win on the desktop and workstation fronts.
> But don't give me nonsense about women being more spatially oriented than men
> (they use landmarks more often and cardinal directions less often; thats locale
> memory in action, not spatial modeling)
Well, it's not "spatial modeling" because no one is going to sit there and compute a spatial model of the real world to give directions, when they know already the layout of the world *in spatial terms*. Again, like most geeks you are assuming something mathematical when instead I had a more generalized concept in mind. "Spatial" as in the general relationship of objects to one another. Why the heck use a useless psychobabble term like "locale memory" when it's clear that I'm talking about the use of actual physical objects and their *spatial relationships* to express something, rather than using strict mathematical modes of expression. I stand by my use of the word "spatial" and would add the word "geometric" as well to the description of the way most people, especially women, perceive the world and give directions. "Geometric" as opposed to "algebraic"; both are mathematical, but algebra is representative of the abstract in mathematics while geometry is representative of the concrete, of spatial relationships and easily recognizable physical shapes. As an example, if you've ever studied chess extensively, you realize that chess is a very mathematical game, and that words like "geometric" versus "algebraic" are common descriptors in the literature; but the best players are usually the ones with better geometric skills, people who can concretely understand spatial relationships on the board rather than having to think about moves algebraicly, calculatedly. Maybe that clears it up, or maybe it muddles things further, but you probably know what I mean by now since you didn't get my use of that term the first time around.
> and don't tell me that GUIs are absolutely better for manipulating data that is
> not inherently pictorial
No, they're not absolutely better, and I didn't say they were. But on balance they have as many strong points as CLIs do, and when well designed they're almost as powerful and versatile, and they're definitely easier to use and master. And they're the future, CLIs are the past and will be relegated to use by increasibgly fewer people.
> Show me a sysadmin that never uses a CLI and I'll show you a sysadmin that can't get
> the job done.
I was never talking about sysadmins--thet's the problem, right there. Even when you're talking about "most users" or "the average user" or some such, there are some people in the geek community who will relate the issue to sysadmins or advanced users or people who are otherwise not even being discussed. It's also narrow minded to assume that a GUI is automatically inferior than a CLI--the only reason some people want to think so is that CLIs are arcane knowledge, while GUIs are common knowledge. That's just silly elitism. Also, the one thing I think is holding Linux back from taking over computing is the fact that many of its coders write for themselves, not for users at large--they write for other CLI users, and sysadmins, and not for the other 99% of computer users. And that's fine, if you want Linux to be the best server OS, but to never make a dent in the home and business desktop markets. But I don't think that's what Free Software is all about. I don't think that Free Software is about coding something just for your own use; it's about sharing something useful with the rest of the world. I'm not saying that anyone in the Linux community should code only when the product will be useful to others, of course it's about doing what's right for you, and coding whatever the hell you want--it's your time and effort, after all. But what I see are some people who actively discourage creating an easy-as-Windows GUI, and that's just plain selfish. It's also quite shortsighted, since whoever wins the desktop will win on the server as well--if Windows.NET becomes this huge force that MS hopes it will, then ISPs and ASPs can easily be forced into buying Windows Server and Advanced Server in order to keep up with implementing all the whiz-bang ways of interfacing between client and server which Windows.NET will undoubtedly implement in closed, proprietary form. And that wouldn't be good for anyone, even the elitists.
> No; most people are verbally-oriented. The ability to visualize and juggle spatial
> concepts is less common than the ability to describe, narrate, and request things.
You're missing the point. How do you "describe, narrate, and request things"? Do do so requires words which are descriptive somehow. Either those descriptors can be based on abstract mathematics, or they can be based on more concrete geometrical or spatial information. Spatial and geometric information is easier for most people than abstract mathematical information: if I say "The gas staion you're looking for is three and a half kilometers down that road, then 2 kilometers to the left, then seven kilometers south," you'd have to know what a kilometer is, what south is, and process the abstract math associated with the directions. Many people (in the States, at least) wouldn't know what distance a kilometer represents and some wouldn't be sure how to go south. Contrast that with concrete spatial data: "The gas station you're looking for is down that road; turn left onto Sycamore Street when you pass the Wal-Mart, then turn right onto Elm Street when you pass the bridge." Those directions are far easier to follow for most because they're concrete: they require no specific knowledge except how to read signs, and nothing is abstract. The latter directions are therefore easier and more universal for most people. A CLI is more like the directions based on kilometers and polar directions, while a GUI is more like the directions based on visual cues.
> The special skill of the mathematician is one of expressing in symbols things that
> ordinarily can only be visualized.
Or, as with a GUI, you can just visually display whatever you're working with instead of making it into abstract mathematical-language-based symbols. What most computer science people fail to realize is that ther *is* a huge difference between mathematically based languages and natural verbal languages. Verbal languages are learned as children, and describe a world we can physically see and be a part of; mathematical languages descibe an already abstract world of data which we cannot physically be part of, and therefore it's much harder to learn a mathematical language for most people--especially since our ability to quickly learn languages is decaying by age six and it's progressively more and more difficult to learn languages after that. But a GUI puts data into easy-to-understand and easy-to-experience visual cues which are intuitive and require no special skills or language. Even the elderly can successfully learn to use a GUI, while learning a CLI is far less intuitive.
> In other words, mathematicians (and good
> programmers) have the ability to formulate and utilize abstractions.
There's no need for abstractions when the GUI model makes everything concrete and easy to understand and work with.
> We use them because, like earlier text menus, they take advantage of the fact that
> the human brain is much better at recognition than blind recall
That's exactly right, and there's nothing wrong with that. Design a better system which allows such intuitive interaction, and then we'll talk. Until then, there's no use in trashing the paradigm which you just admitted works best for most people, out of all currently existing systems. I'm more productive with a GUI, and so are most people. I can literally operate my computer while I'm half-asleep, because I instantly recognize all the visual cues instead of having to remember an arcane string of commands and modifiers. So, my active thought processes can be better used in solving whatever task is at hand, rather than in trying to conjure up the arcane language of a CLI to execute whatever it is I decide I need to do. It's more productive to think about the tasks you're performing than to have to think about how to get the computer to perform a given task. In a GUI I click something and tick a few check boxes or what-not, whereas in a CLI I'd have to type something and then remember what to type to modify that command in a particular way. Waste of brainpower.
> We should salute anyone with enough guts to try and take UI's beyond the mental world
> of the 3-year-old.
Umm, if computers are easy enough for a 3 year old to use, then so much the better, because computers are a means to an end not an end in and of themselves. I love tech, I love buying new video and audio cards and RAID cards and DVD decoders, I love configuring my system for the best performance and for my own needs. But I don't buy those things for the computer's sake, I buy them for my own. I buy them because there are things I want that hardware to do. Ultimately, a computer is just something we buy so that we can access the Internet, USENET, write, read, play games, compile programs, communicate with other people, listen to music, and any host of other uses. So, why shouldn't we make each of those things and all others as easy to do as possible? That's what I don't understand about some CLI supporters who are so unyielding as to be elitists. Why shouldn't we make computer use as easy and seamless as possible? Ease of use doesn't have to mean lack of power, and indeed most GUIs are more flexible and forgiving than most CLIs, though GUIs which aren't optimally designed can take longer to perform some tasks (but not all). The goal should be to make fast, efficient, easy to use GUIs, trim down some of the fat and make the code lean, not to try to keep alive the dying CLI which few people use outside of technogeekdom (and quite a lot of geeks like GUIs, too). The CLI will stay underneath, where gurus can get to it easily, but on top there needs to be a fully-functional and easy to use GUI, which Linux still lacks at this time even though it's getting closer very quickly. Until Linux requires no more CLI use as a requisite than Windows does, though, it's not going to win on the desktop. I hope it does, but the more people complain about GUIs and desktops, the longer it will be until Linux can take over from Windows. And again, people complain about the current GUIs, but they never code anything better. Do, don't just say. I look forward to Eazel, though, I can tell you that much.
The FBI uses cooked statistics about child molesters and child pornographers as a red herring, to elicit a completely emotional and irrational reaction on the part of the public and the Congress which would otherwise stand in the way of their Big Brother aspirations.
Setting aside the issue of whether we should trust the FBI and their motives and integrity for the moment, let's examine the specific issue you mentioned: child molestors. In nearly every paper the FBI puts out about the Internet you can see the terms "child molester" "child pornography" and "pedophiles" sprinkled about liberally, suggesting that without the FBI looking over our shoulders our children would never be safe. But is it true? Just like the comic cries of "Won't somebody PLEASE think of the CHILDREN!" uttered on The Simpsons, the FBI's pronouncements ring out with few facts and statistics behind them. The few statistics the FBI ever uses are usually aggregate statistics which don't distinguish between pervs who used the Net to meet up with 12 year olds, and 15 year old kids who got nabbed for posting underage porn in chatrooms when they really didn't know it was illegal (yes, it has happened--more than once).
How great a problem is child pornography on the Net? Reality: Not very. But the FBI makes it sound in all their reports as if you can't surf for an hour without stumbling across kiddy porn. The FBI makes much in their reports and testimony of online "rings" of child pornographers who sell access to their collections by credit card, when the reality is that most of these sites are legal in their countries of origin and contain images of nude 16 or 17 year olds, which are legal in most Western countries; yet the FBI doesn't distinguish between these and "real" child porn of young people being molested or exploited. If pictures of nude 16 year olds are legal in The Netherlands and Japan, then it is unfair to count those sites based in those countries and operating legally as being child pornography sites. Most of the FBI's figures are skewed by this. Only a few people are busted each year for operating sites which are truly composed of kiddyporn. Plus, overzealous activists usually turn in sites for kiddie porn which are, in reality, hosting perfectly legal images of 18 year olds from publications such as Hustler's *Barely Legal*.
The reality is that most child porn online is well-hidden from the average user, yet easy enough for the FBI to find. It isn't on the Web, irt's on Usenet. Don't ever download binaries from there unless you want to go to jail, but if you want to know where all the child porn is then read the text messages in newsgroups like alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.pre-teen and alt.binaries.adolescents. As I said, no binary downloads unless you want jail time, but reading the text messages is both legal and educational--you'll learn that the FBI isn't really doing much to stop child pornography when they use systems like Carnivore to intercept e-mail, because most pedos online communicate not by e-mail but by posting PGP'd private messages to these groups or to alt.anonymous.messages. Since so many binaries are posted there, the content of which can be gleaned from accompanying text posted as follow-up commentary by its viewers, we can ascertain that the FBI isn't doing much to actually get these people. Headers can be forged, but that can only get you so far. Most of these people could probably be found if the FBI really tried--but evidently they don't. The FBI is all talk, using the threat of child porn and molesters online to gain control over areas which those people typically don't use to communicate with one another, like e-mail. They also like to entice morons who are stupid enough to think the FBI agent they're chatting with is an underage child, sometimes catching people who are clearly pedos who need to be locked up and sometimes raising the spectre of entrapment--more than one such case has been dismissed because judges believed it was clearly entrapment (law enforcement coaxing someone to do something illegal which they'd never have done without all the encouragement).
Research the issue yourself if you don't believe me. Go to all the major online news sites, and search for terms like "child pornography" and see how few cases there actually are where the FBI has busted someone, and then see how many of them mention entrapment, e-mail, chat, usenet, to get anh idea of what the FBI is actually doing with all that money they're being given for cybercrime. Then get the headers for the usenet groups I mentioned above, and maybe read some text postings that are too small to be encoded binaries. Are all the people who post to USENET so smart as to elude all FBI pursuit and cover their tracks so perfectly, or is the FBI that technically incompetent or unable to hire good computer personnel despite all the tax dollars they embezzle supposedly for that purpose, or do they just not care that much about the problem and use it as a means to play on emotions and get all those tax dollars which they then use to intercept our e-mails and build a KGB or Stasi like surveillance network, instead of using it to REALLY fight child predators online? The latter seems most likely.
Then, judge their intentions from their past behavior. Lok at the statistics for the unauthorized number of wiretaps law enforcement uses in this country--in the thousands each year. Look at what the ATF and FBI did at Waco--whether they set the fires (accidentally, of course) or not isn't the important issue; first they lied about it being a drug operation in order to get military assistance/training/a tank, then they made 2/3 of the warrant affidavit about unsupported allegations of child abuse (which they have *no* jurisdiction over--the state social services dept. was investigating those allegations, and found that the underage girls were above the legal age for marriage in Texas and thus it was a gray area; but, ATF and FBI have no jurisdiction over that, only Texas did, so it had no place in the warrant *except to play on emotions*), then they lied about firing pyrotechnic rounds (grenades or mortars) into the compound--for years they lied about it, but now the official report says they did; then they claimed that the tape from their listening device had them spreading gasoline around and setting the compound on fire, when in reality the Davidians were talking about pouring Molotov cocktails to use against the tank that was tearing their house down; finally, let's not forget that they completely demolished the remains like a conquering army salting the earth, so that no evidence was left, and the evidence they had (like the doors the Davidians claim the FBI fired through first) has all disappeared, together with the pictures taken by the Texas Rangers. Then there's Ruby Ridge, wwhere the FBI murdered innocent people and the Court agreed and held them responsible--they even killed a woman who was standing there, unarmed, with a baby in her arms, because their orders were "shoot to kill" once they killed that teenager who was walking around with a hunting rifle. The FBI is not to be trusted, at all. They lie and play on emotions, then do whatever they feel is best even if it's illegal and unconstitutional. Child molesters, kiddy pr0n, cybercrime--they'll say anything to get our sympathy and trust. It's just a red herring, and NOT a good excuse to give up our Constitutional rights--without those, we're no longer Americans. Don't be fooled.
I wish CLI elitists would realize that the vast majority of people want a GUI that doesn't require and command-line parameters at all, ever. That's NOT to say that all CLI users are elitists, but it IS to say that there are many CLI users who not only consider it a more useful, better, and more "pure" way to interface with computers, but also believe as fervently as any medieval crusader that all users should either feel as they themselves do or need to be "educated" to have the same faith in CLI. These people are not just egocentric and want to force their own opinions on others, they are also actively dangerous to those who would like to see Free Software dominate the market for desktop workstations and home PCs as well as server and technical-user markets.
/. who say things like "We need to stop screwing around with making KDE and GNOME look like Windows and Mac, because people who want to use Linux should know enough to open a CLI window and go at it." Linux and Free Software will never take the desktop market from the big corporations with this attitude, because people who say things like that are coding for themselves and not other people. That's fine, if you want Linux to be a niche market for sysadmin and technical types, but then most schools and colleges will continue to teach with Mac and Windows and home users will continue to use Mac and Windows because the opportunity cost of spending so much time learning/teaching CLI is arguably greater than spending $120 for a copy of Windows. But if you want to build software that'll free most people from corporations like MS, then you have to start thinking like a non-technogeek.
How is it I can make these assertions? Well, they're all based on facts. The first fact is that the majority of people are spatially-oriented, rather than mathematically oriented. This has often been said of women, and is especially true of them; but it's true of most men as well. After all, what percentage of men major in math and computer science and sciences like physics which require extensive math, compared to the percentage who major in social sciences, language and literature, and sciences which aren't as math-centered (like biology, which requires some math skills but not extensive ones)? Math is simply not a priority skill for most people, but the problem comes when you have the geek community designing and discussing interfaces which are intended for non-geeks. The article in question, for example, propose an advanced CLI with language heuristics as part of their propesed new interface paradigm--but poll actual computer users, and you'll find less than five percent (pulling # out of ass, but I'd bet it's accurate) who'd be interested in having to learn such a CLI instead of using a standard contemporary Mac or Windows style GUI. The problem is, geeks live in a different culture, in which most of their friends and associates have far richer math skills and far more extensive desire to explore computers and interface with them more closely, than the average user or even the average advanced user. I manipulate literally hundreds of files of varying types every day, I configure applications and OS parameters very frequently using both graphical and CLI utilities, and do the type of work most geeks would say can be more efficiently done with CLI--and yet for me and for most other people, a CLI would be a cumbersome burden. Yes, you can do things faster with a CLI--if, and only if, you can a) type quickly b) remember complex sets of commands and modifiers c) count on those command sets and modifiers being standard across every platform you use, else confucion can arise, and d) have a good memory for where everything is located on you computer/network. But, if you type slowly then CLI is asking too much. If you have trouble remembering lengthy sets of commands, because you're not math-language-oriented or just because you have a bad memory, then CLI is a burden. If you use multiple CLI platforms with different command sets, it's easy for most people to confuse what to use with which environment (as contrasted to modern GUIs, which have comparatively subtler differences--a Mac user can learn Win98 pretty quickly, and vice-versa). If you have a poor memory for which files are where, a GUI is better for you because you get visual cues about your folder hierarchies and can list more objects at once than in CLI.
This isn't to bash CLI at all, or to say it's outdated. There will always be technical people who speed along CLI style and love it, and that's great. But it's a fallacy to think, as far too many geeks do, that even power users of today who grow up on GUIliciousness will ever want to learn arcane CLIs. The archetypal example is the small but vocal number of people on
That's where the authors of this article went wrong--they assume that as more people get more and more computer experience, that those people are going to want the richness and power of an advanced heuristic-based CLI mixed with the visual cues of an "expressive interface" GUI. But most people these days have the comfort and ease of use of an entirely graphical environment, which since we humans exist in a graphical world rather than a world full of letters and numbers and command lines, is far easier to work with than any CLI. Such users will never want to revert to a CLI, unless that advanced CLI gets to the point that it's as easy to use as the interface of the computers in Star Trek--where you just talk to the computer and it does what it's told in plain English. The authors of the article dismiss that as a "computational nightmare ", and they're right--so it's not going to happen any time soon that any sort of CLI will become popular, whether typed or voice-based, because of the ease of use associated with GUIs. The article also dismisses, as many CLI elitists do, the idea that a GUI can be as powerful as a CLI. Bullshit. It depends entirely upon the uses of the computer; even the best, fastest-typing CLI user would be entirely unable to sort through a folder containing several hundred files and separate them based on arbitrary criteria as quickly as a GUI power user could, because the GUI can list all the files and all their attributes and list them by whichever attribute you choose with a single-click, for arbitrary selection and transport. The article also makes the mistake of throwing out the ability for the user to sort his objects as he sees fit, into whatever hierarchies he finds most useful, in favor of multi-user standardization which doesn't allow you to work "outside the box" even on your own computer. Most people do NOT want "to share control of the environment between the user and other entities, specifically computer agents and other users"--they want to put things in the dir structures which are most convenient for them; this is especially and ironically true of power users, who like to arrange things for quick access in ways which multi-user system paradigms would not allow. The only way around this conflict of paradigms would be to have the user exist in a virtual environment in which he hass access to all resources in user space, while things outside user space are completely hidden from him--rather like the way Mac OSX will probably work; hiding the Unix system structure from the user, while nonetheless being Unix at heart with Mac behavior grafted on top. But then of course you'd alienate the true power users, who want to see and manipulate all that can be tweaked and changed to taste. So there's no way to win on this one.
In short, until computing power is sufficient enough and code is bug-free enough to execute commands based on spoken language with few or no errors, the CLI will never make a resurgence in any form among non-techno-geeks. I myself am a geek, but not a mathematical-minded CLI-loving one. The reality we have to start getting used to is that only a select few will ever be using CLI extensively--some of you may not like that, but that's the way it is.
> BTW, did you know that caffeine can kill?
Yep; in sufficiently high doses, anything can kill you. Even abnormally high water intake for a sustained period can kill you in several ways, including malnutirion: if you drink insane quantities of water, your digestive acids may actually become too diluted to effectively digest many foods. Even non-diabetics can overdose on sugar...which makes me wonder why I'm not dead yet considering the deranged quantities of Jolt and sweet sweet heavenly hash I've imbibed...
makes me feel like Elvis when I binge, except that I'd never under any circumstances put peanut butter on my hamburgers.
But back to the caffeine, there was at least one case I recall reading about, in which a mother overdosed her young daughter on caffeine pills by repeatedly feeding them to her over several days. The mother didn't realize that the autopsy would turn up plenty of undigested pills, some with the brand still visible on the capsules...
Guns aren't dangerous; some of the people who carry them are, though. There's a fundamental philosophical distance between the European and the American POV on guns, which typically results in Europeans misunderstanding the American reverence for this very old and, to most Americans, sacred right.
See, we got our explicitly-spelled-out right to bear arms from the fact that an oppressive government (Britain) was denying the Colonies the same rights Englishmen had, and was trying to restrict gun ownership and importation as one measure to keep the Colonies under their thumb. So, after the war was over the Americans set in the Bill of Rights, a document which was supposed to be absolute and overriding of all other law (though those rights have been limited and interpreted over the centuries), certain of the most fundamental and necessary rights of Americans. The right to bear arms is thought important even to this day not because Americans have a right to shoot each other, but because Americans have the right to protect themselves from abusive and oppressive government. If there ever is need for another Revolution, we Americans can at least have some guns in the hands of the citizens, not all in the hands of the oppressive government. Contrast this to Europe: If an oppressive and tyrannical regime ever gets power in any European country, the people have no weapons with which to protect themselves or rise up. You don't think an oppressive regime could ever come to power in an advanced democracy? Pshaw, sooner or later all governments crumble. At least Americans will be prepared. After all, it was our beloved patriot and philosopher Thomas Jefferson who said "A Revolution every now and then would be a good thing."
You appear by your language style to be the same anonymous Coward who has been posting trolls/flamebait like this one after many of my posts lately. I guess that makes you my own personal fan-club. :-) And I thought poor Signal 11 was the only one so afflicted...
;-) And subversive/independant thought can be expressed more freely than, say, in France or Germany, where saying "Hitler wasn't so evil, no different from Bismarck or King George III, maybe the concentration camp stuff is exaggerrated" can get you thrown in jail. We in America, provided we're adults, can say any subversive thing we want provided it's not a threat or something which can cause physical harm (like yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater); just be prepared for the media to not express subversiveness since the corporations want the status-quo. You're just a moron who doesn't seem to know anything about America.
;-)
:-)
This will be the last time I post in this thread because it's gotten off-topic, thanks to *you*. But a few last points:
> 1. RIP isn't going to pass with the self-incrimination clause, due to this: democracy
Tell that to all the very reputable people in the UK who were deathly afraid it was going to pass. Oh, and in the U.S. no one would need to worry about it at all, because we have a rock-solid provision in our Constitution which would prevent such a law from ever getting past the Court, even if Congress were stupid enough to pass it. Contrast that to the restrictive UK gov't under secretary Jack Straw, that militant freedom-crushing bastard. "Democracy" is the way you describe it; "tyranny" is how most Americans (assuming they paid any attention to world affairs, which sadly they don't) would describe it.
> 2. unique for your lack of censorship of violent imagery? well, fuck, that's
> something to be proud of. what a shame that *everything else* - bad language?
> subversive or independent thought? - is censored.
Yes, not censoring violent imagery in film and literature, or even in games, *is* something to be proud of. There are many films which would never pass the Film Board in Britain, but in which violence is a necessary part of the plot, structure, or artistic expression. There are many classic movies, and art-house films, which are heavily censored in Britain and elsewhere, even though they ooze with artistry. Granted, the U.S. film industry self-censors sex scenes, which is plain stupid and backwards, but ultimately less damaging (since films with explicit sex can still be released here, just with the NC-17 rating) to good films than censoring violence. Try making a great film about violent criminals, or about the victims of violent crime, without heavy violence. Stupidity. The world is a violent place sometimes--deal with it. And bad language isn't censored, you stupid fucking motherfucking cocksucking arse-licking bum-humping fuckheaded shitbrained son of a bitch-whore bloody anal-fisting limpdick.
> 4. you are a dick. as long as there are people like you who are willing to exist
> under the pretence of your supposed "rights" nothing is ever going to change
Anyone can look at my past posts and see that I don't agree with much of the American government's bullshit, and I express my disdain vocally here and elsewhere. Since I live near Washington, D.C., I go to protests when I get pissed off at gov't foolishness. In how many other countries can you openly protest without fear of arrest just a few yards from the home of your country's president/prime minister/leader? Try getting that close to 10 Downing Street for a protest. Not bloody likely. But yes, I am a dick; I concede that much.
> 5. you stink of shit
Thanks for noticing. It's been five days since I left my computer long enough for a shower, and I'm starting to get a bit gamey. And there appears to be a ham sandwich stuck under one of my armpits, and the mayonnaise has gone rancid. Just kidding...
Bye, my own personal troll-boy. Get your own life and stop shadowing my posts--I know it's been you these past few times because of your idiosyncratic language use. Grow up, kiddie.
The "generic and unremarkable" in your statement would be true, if it weren't for the fact that the rather bland "pop culture" we have is in itself a unique phenomenon which is just being foisted by our corporations on the rest of the world. Face it: disposable culture is an American invention, and as such we couldn't possibly be termed "generic and unremarkable" since our ways, however much some may dislike them, are being adopted by the rest of the world and not vice-versa. So my comment stands.
But more importantly, America is very individual and distinct from the rest of the world in some fundamental and important ways. No matter how much we complain about the erosion of our rights in contemporary times, Americans still have far more freedom than people in most other countries, even Western ones. We have rights which are difficult to chip away, even though some in our government are trying. For example, an American can say whatever the fuck he wants as long as it doesn't cause a threat of immediate danger to others or constitute a threat or slander. Contrast this with, for example, France and Germany, where you aren't free to express any opinions about the 2nd World War which go against the mainstream. Also, the whole mess that Britain has been going through over making it illegal to not decrypt files when asked to by police/courts--that could never happen in the U.S., because we have a set-in-stone Fifth Amendment right to not self-incriminate or be compelled to hand over incriminating evidence against ourselves. If Congress ever tried what Parliament tried, the Court would instantly get rid of it (just like they got rid of the CDA and provisions of COPA). Also, though we may unfairly and prudishly self-censor sexuality, we are unique in Western societies for our lack of censorship of violent imagery in films and games. We also have the right to bear arms, a right the Europeans long ago gave up. So we are, I say again, individualists here in the U.S.
I seem to recall watching a story on CNN about how the British--particularly the Scots, I'd imagine--were upset when bars were starting to use the metric system when doling out whisky and other potent potables. When using the new "official" measures, you see, a few tenths of an ounce were being shaved off the shot, so it was most upsetting to my people (I'm of Scots and Welsh extraction) when they started getting shorted in their favorite pastime. There's something not quite right about a sober Scotsman. ;-)
But getting back to Americans using the English system instead of the metric, I'm all for the old-fashioned ways. It's kind of a typically stubborn American thing to do, an expression of our stereotypical individualism. The only thing that annoys me is that they don't teach the metric system alongside the traditional English system in elementary schools, which would allow most Americans to communicate better with the outside world.
Don't forget those classics of the tentacle pr0n genre, now available on DVD with introductions about the lofty cultural place schoolgirl tentacle pr0n holds in Japanese culture:
o jipc.html
f fer-overflowed-by-evil-tentacle-demons glory. A classic.
Urotsukidoji (Legend of the Overfiend)--now available in an excellent DVD reviewed at
http://www.thedigitalbits.com/reviews/urotsukid
in all its young-schoolgirl-in-cute-sailor-outfit-getting-bu
Yes, the pics are definitely computer-generated, but MacJunkie has a few things wrong. Point-by-point:
> 1. In this form, the machine would be very much top-heavy
Not necessarily--the transparent base could be solid plastic, in which case the case would be very, very stable (more so than a current G4 minitower).
> 2. Look at the size of those air vents. You could drop a pencil through there,
> or spill a cup of coffee
Much about Apple's current crop of cases is aesthetic, not functional; there could be mesh and foam inside those huge vent louvers to protect from accidents like that, anyway.
> 3. While in the photograph taken from a diagonal angle there are three screws
> on the top of the machine, there are
> only two in the head-on photo. Why?
Because the third screw, the one in the middle, is shielded from view by the raised border of the vent cutout.
> 4. There are no handles. Apple loves handles, and furthermore, anyone who expects to
> get a good grip on a computer with plexiglass sides has got another thing coming.
Those raised bars on the top of the case are handles which retract into the case when not in use, and can be pulled up into handles when needed. This was noted in the first articles about this alleged case design, so I wish the person who wrote this debunking article would do his homework.
> 5. The front of the machine has at least a couple tell-tale Photoshop
> fingerprints. First, look at the Apple logo in the second image. Does it look
> a little smushed to you? It is. The artist had to use Photoshop's Distort tool
> to get the image to be angled correctly, but this tool doesn't take 3D
> measurements into consideration.
This is complete BS. The logo in question looks distorted because it is being viewed at an angle, from above, to the side, and on the diagonal--a very complex angle. The distortion visible is in line with the angle of observation, with only a little deviation. I disagree that this is a Photoshop image, and here's why.
It is definitely computer-generated, but most likely by a 3D design and rendering program, not by a 2D tool like Photoshop. The attention to detail in shading and angle and contour in these images is certainly doable in Photoshop, but at the cost of a huge amount of time.
In contrast, I could create the same images in 3D Studio Max and similar programs in a fraction of the time required to do them in Photoshop, plus I'd have an interactive 3D model to move around easily and get as many 2D image captures from as I want. 3D Studio Max, I know, isn't available for Macs, but similar products are (not as good IMHO, though). In particular, the attention to details like very accurate lighting and shading points to a 3D app creating these images, not a 2D app like Photoshop; this guy's concluding remarks about a lighting source being out of place are BS, the images appear to have pretty accurate lighting and shading. Doing these images in Photoshop would be too much of a bother, especially when so many good 3D apps are widely available (even the dongle protection for 3D Studio Max has been broken, and it's food for the warez kiddies now).
Plus, the pics on AppleInsider have been removed and replaced with images with a message about Apple's legal dept. making them take the pics down. This supports earlier claims, which were disputed, that Apple had done so on other sites hosting these pics. This indicates that there may be a grain of truth to these computer-generated images. My personal opinion is that the images are, indeed, authentic in that they come from Apple design mock ups, not necessarily of a design that will be used any time soon, but of a design that is or was being considered. My guess, unsupported by anything but Apple's stupid lawyermongering, is that these were taken from early 3D computer-generated designs from Apple's case-styling guys. But Apple is pissing me off with their lawyer-whoring bullshit; I was considering buying an Apple since I used to use them in college, but now they can fuck off. I hate ity when people try to stifle freedom of the press, important enough that the framers of the constitution put it first in the bill of rights.
This is the first time that ATI has been on par with performance leaders since...well...probably since before 3D performance was being stressed much at all. I myself have an ATI All-in-Wonder 128 which I'm fond of, but I have reservations about this new chip.
First of all, ATI's track record for supporting non-Intel chipsets is pretty sketchy at best, abysmal at worst. Currently the Athlon chipsets out now are well provided for in ATI's drivers, but when you consider that new Athlon chipsets are going to be coming out within the next six months which feature many new advancements and changes, from DDR SDRAM to SMP and more subtle changes, I can't say that I'd buy one with performance in mind unless I'd definitely be running an older Athlon mobo or an Intel setup. These ATI boards will definitely be great for their multimedia features, and the All-in-Wonder version especially promises to be interesting, but I doubt performance will be up to snuff on the VIA and ALi next-gen Athlon chipsets because they poorly supported the VIA MVP3 and similar Socket 7 chipsets and to this day their own webpages tout only Intel processors; last time I was there, not a single benchmark was done on an Athlon, and they "recommended" Intel processor boards. With the new Willamette chipsets coming out, it's likely that ATI will make compatability with those their first priority, and compatibility with next-gen Athlon mobos an afterthought. ATI has also had many odd driver issues, like the Fury MAXX not supporting Windows 2000. Just remember that this might not perform well if you upgrade your Athlon mobo...
...is someone who's living in the past but doesn't even know his history. Of course the French Revolution was a bourgeois revolution of the middle and lower classes, but what your narrow, selfish, classist and skewed view of history makes you unable to realize is that that brevolution was fomented by the writings of a faction in the well-educated upper class who realized that the system was flawed, that the segregation of the classes was wrong. Read the writings of the pre-Revolutionary French Enlightenment, which were predominantly written by aristocrats or wealthy middle class gentlemen. Go to a decent college or university, my friend, and take a few classes on this period, and maybe then you can discuss it intelligently instead of spouting off historically inaccurate post-revisionist claptrap. "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," the stereotypical theme of the French Revolutionaries, has its philosophical basis and in the writings of the Enlightenment, most of whose celebrated authors were wealthy upper class or well of middle class. Name one celebrated bourgeois author of the same period, and I will name ten at least as important who were in the upper classes. You sir are a classist, and a racist, a bigot who prejudges people based on which class and race they belong to instead of looking to the individual. People like you are the problem with America and elsehwere: whether you are prejudiced against the poor or the rich, against the whites or the Latinos, you are wrong and your thinking is insidious and evil. It is the type of person that matters, not his race, class, gender, etc.
/. It leads to a hate-filled tabloid which does nothing but portray white Americans as evil racists and Hispanics as poor downtrodden people who are oppressed by the evil white upper class. It even sensationalistically declares that U.S.-Mexican relations are breaking down because the U.S., it proclaims, is allowing state-sponsored beatings and murders of Latinos. What lying, venomous, hate-filled bullshit; I have many Mexican American friends in Texas, and messaging with one of them to check out that site, he was appalled at its lies.
As a last note, everyone who has any doubts about Mr. Martinez's bias and racism and classism should follow the URL provided at the top of his user page here on
Lastly, I apologize that this thread has gotten off-topic but this man's hate had to be countered--I posted down to +1 instead of my default +2 because of that, and would have posted down to 0 if I could have since this is getting off-topic, but Slashcode doesn't provide that option.
You just proved my point. You point to "historical fact" to use your own term, when what you need to do is get the hell over the past and start building the future. Learn from the past and move on--don't repeat it. You're repeating the past because you're fostering divisiveness, pointing to disparities based on race and ethnicity when you should be thinking about commonalities.
You say I am a "bigoted fool who can't recognize the effects of your society on others." Bullshit. I point it out all the time, including on Slashdot, that American values are often fucked up, that our priorities are often out of whack, and that we use the wrong means to achieve ends which we assume are good just because they're the ends we personally believe in, not necessarily the ones that are best for everyone. Look at my posting history here to see that I do not believe in the globalization of Americanized culture, or that our government always does the "right" thing.
Before I posted saying that you're a racist, I *did* take the time to look up your own posting history, because I don't use the term "racist" lightly. Your posting history indicates that you frequently post inflammatory and divisive crap. But most telling is the first line in your user bio: "My goal in life is social justice for mi gente and everyone else." Nice. Let's dissect it: you put "mi gente" separately, and before, "everyone else," not just in that sentence but philosophically. That is evidence which supports the assertion that you are a racist. And, let's linger on the term "social justice": it is typically used by those who seek to promote division between the races or classes, who seek to levy some sort of revenge or extort "compensation" from the race or class (or race/class; you earlier in this thread equated white with wealthy/powerful, displaying great animus in the process) which is singled out by those seeking so-called "social justice" as being a wrongdoer, an aggressor, which deserves to have to dole out compensation for either real or imagined wrongdoings. Divisive people in the black and Hispanic communities in America today use the term "social justice" in claiming that they deserve preferential treatment in hiring and entitlement decisions, through notions such as "Affirmative Action" and racial quotas. "Social justice" is used in South Africa when referring to how white South Africans don't deserve protection for their well being and property, don't deserve protection from mobs and rapists if the mobs and rapists happen to be black instead of white. "Social justice" has been and continues to be a term used in South American countries, in reference to stripping property from people once a communist regime comes into power, in reference to the murders and tortures of the people who were in charge under old regimes.
So I stand by my assessment that you are racist, though I should have added that you're a classist as well. Never forget that wealthy classes have, according to the history you so like to point to instead of the future, often assisted the proletariat in taking power, as many forward-thinking aristocrats did during the French Revolution, as some of the wealthy Chinese did during the Cultural Revolution--and history is full of examples of people who did *not* break down into lines by class or race. So, you do everyone a disservice by being a small minded bigoted racist classist individual.
You are such a racist bastard. I always find it supremely ironic when non-whites are racist. And, don't give me any of this neo-feminazi-ethnonazi bs about how only those in power can be racists: racism has to do with the irrational hatred of particular races or ethnicities, and you sir are just as bad as any KKK member. Worse, because you as a non-white should know better than to be a racist, considering the racism which whites have used against non-whites for a couple of centuries. You hate white people, so you are a racist.
And this is extremely unfair, especially since race is eroding slowly but surely as a cultural divide, thanks in part to intermarriage and thanks to the global culture being created by the Information Age. In America, you can never be sure who's white or black or American Indian. I've known several people as white as any Aryan Brother, but half of whose ancestors in recent memory were black--skin can lighten to the point that some blacks could easy pass as white, and decades ago "passing" was a common thing for such people due to racism. Likewise, someone who had one black grandfather back down the line can be dark-skinned. Me, I'm pretty damned white, but I have enough Cherokee blood that I could legally apply for membership in the tribe if I wanted to. People like you hold us back. people like you are living in the past. You are a worthless racist bastard who causes more harm than stupid redneck KKK racists, because most people just ignore their wacky ideas and treat them like outcasts. But black and Hispanic racists get listened to, and it's people like you who renew the racial divide, who breed hatred and dissension instead of unity and brotherhood. You are the ultimate in harmful attitudes. Stop living in the past and start trying to work in the present to create the future. We're living in times when physical commodities are going to become less valuable than information and tech skills; there's a huge opportunity for non-whites to jump quickly to economic parity, but only if they discard outdated animus like yours. Your hatred has no place here.
If the data supports the claims that have been made over the years about cell phone radiation causing increased risk of cancer--and I'm not saying it *does* in fact do so, just that many people have claimed it--then the question will become how long have they known and have they been hiding it. That's what got the tobacco companies: that their product causes increased risk of cancer isn't very actionable in and of itself--the fact that they knew it caused cancer, and did nothing to stop it, and denied any knowledge of the risks, is what made the tobacco lawsuits so profitable. I myself smoke cigars, but have no sympathy for a cigarette industry which has lied and cheated and in effect caused more people to die than might have if they'd come clean years ago. Anyone remember those cheesy 50s and 60s cigarrette commercials which touted the "health benefits" of smoking?
But seriously, I doubt that cell phones cause cancer any more than everything else around us does these days. Face it: life causes cancer. Most modern tech increases health risks. Six inches away from a small 15" CRT that I am, I am undoubtedly increasing my risks for cancer somewhat. Sitting a couple feet from a 19" CRT probably contributes just as much. Running your computer caseless probably contributes a tiny little bit to cancer risks, as probably does using cellphones, preservatives, cultured cheese products, soy products (recent studies suggest soy is a carcinogen in mice), diet soda, and just about anything useful. Personally, I'm fed-up with the overly-health-consciousness which causes us to put so many constraints on life that it isn't as fun as it should be. Plus, most of it is bullshit--fat and cholesterol are supposedly bad for you, yet the French practically have IVs of pure butter hooked into their veins and yet they're healthier than and live longer than Americans. To hell with no drinking, no smoking, no eating greasy pork products, and no enjoying buttery sugary eggy confections. It's time we just started enjoying life and not being so concerned with radiation, dietary intake, and how many hormones are in milk: who cares if we live to a hundred carefully if we could just have sixty five really fun years? Just my opinion.
Mitnick was never compelled to decrypt the contents of his drive. Law enforcement is keeping the drive *because* he refuses to decrypt it, but he's not in jail for contempt of Court for not doing so. He can't be compelled to decrypt it because the contents may incriminate him, and to force him to do so would violate his Fifth Amendment rights.
Now, whether or not law enforcement can keep the drive(s) indefinitely is a very gray area with little precedent. As of now the matter hasn't been appealed as it could, and for good reason: Mitnick is still on parole, unable to be near computers and such things anyway. I wouldn't want to anger the people who fucked me over for so long and who can still put me back in jail for minor things. But I hope that when Kevin is truly free and no longer on parole, that he challenges this and wins--but I wouldn't count on it, since the value of those old computer components is negligible even now, since it's been so long, that a fight over them wouldn't be very financially justified. At any rate, I'd rather forfeit a couple of hard disks than my freedom, so it's not such a bad deal.
Norton had a security product called Your Eyes Only which they sold last year, and abruptly stopped selling soon after it came out. The actual reason given on their web site is, interestingly, "unresolved Y2K issues." They must be some issues, I tell you, because I ran across a copy on the Web, tried to install it for shits and giggles, and it hung. Weird. I thought it may have been an issue with that particular copy, but then I ran across a page comparing various crypto apps, and the author said she couldn't review Norton YEO because, even though she dloaded the trial version, it hung during install. The version I had was the full version, so it couldn't just have been a kill date in the trial copy, it must have been doing something weird during the install routine based on the date, but I have no idea what. Norton YEO was kind of unique because, in addition to letting you encrypt files or folders on your drives, it had an option for encrypting the File Allocation Tables for all drives which would mean that there'd be no easy way for an attacker with physical access to get at any of your files unless they were someone with the ability to physically remove the drive and hook it into another machine for analysis and file recovery.
Back to Corel, it is a pity that they're in such straits at the moment. WordPerfect is so much nicer than MS Word, and while I prefer Adobe's graphics products, Corel's are still pretty impressive. They even have one graphics app which Adobe can't best: KnockOut 1.5, which is absolutely the best and easiest way to separate a particular figure in an image from the rest of the image; no more pixel-by-pixel erasing of the borders left by Photoshop when it cuts out a figure, KnockOut has the most intelligent ways of doing masking and cut-outs for you. It would be a pity all around if Corel goes under, or gets bought out by one of its not-so-nice competitors (read: MS or Adobe).
You are protected, in the U.S. at least though laws in other countries differ, from being compelled to bear witness against or present evidence against yourself. You would have to decrypt said data if it would incriminate other people (not including a spouse) or be of use in criminal matters not pertaining to you, but if decrypting that data would provide evidence against you then you are constitutionally protected from being compelled to do so. The only exception is that you could be compelled to decrypt the data if you were guaranteed immunity from prosecution for the offences the decypted data implicates you in, in which case you wouldn't have to worry about doing it since you'd be free and clear of all related charges. There are many alarmists who keep crowing about how you can be compelled to decrypt your data, but in the U.S. this is not at all the case. The U.K. I fear is a different matter entirely, but I defy anyone to find a single U.S. case in which someone was held in contempt of Court for not decrypting data that could implicate him, who was not given a guarantee of immunity to do so. You won't be able to find one.
I'm always disappointed that there's not a greater effort to provide data security through an easy-to-implement optional encrypted file system. Yes, you can get the patch from Kerneli.org to accomplish this, but this really isn't enough. The first line in the Howto on kerneli is: "This process requires the kernel source code, knowledge of compiling this code, and a lot of patience."
There should be a distribution--and maybe there is, can anyone point us to it?--which offers the encrypting file system as an option during install. Most of the install process for the more friendly distros already have all the install options laid out in fairly easy-to-use dialogs and what not, but it would go a long way toward insuring privacy if an encrypting file system were a standard install option in a big distro. With relaxation of crypto export regulations, it's becoming increasingly possible for the big US Linux companies to do this, and of course most non-US distros could have been doing it already.
The fact is, most *nix OSes are already much more secure from cracking exploits and viruses than Windows can ever dream of being; something like Bastille is just icing on the cake. But the next step in security, and in ensuring our privacy, is having an encrypted file system as an option in widely used distros, or in widely used/easy to apply add-on products. A standard complaint when someone suggests this is the increased overhead--but with modern microprocessors, the overhead is barely noticeable--I'd know because I use encrypted file systems in Windows on a measly old K6-2 400, with overhead barely visible at all. Just try using an efs on a processor made in the last 2 years, and you'll see it's pretty snappy. Running programs from encrypted drives does sometimes have noticeable, but not deadly, overhead, but accessing data stored on those drives (logs, writings, multimedia files, etc.) is hardly slower than accessing it on non-encrypted drives. And this is my experience under Windows, I can only imagine that under Linux performance would be far superior.
Just an attempt to point out that there's more than one issue in security; securing from crackers is far more well addressed, in almost all operating environments, than security for stored data. These days the U.S. and U.K. governments, and many others, are cracking down on expression of unpopular ideas and distribution of IP-infringing source and executables, and if they come to search your computer and find an encrypted file system, you're better off than if they find that copy of a DeCSS sort of proggie you wrote, or that article you thought you published anonymously but they managed to trace back to you, or the opinion you expressed about a company which has now decided to sue you for libel, or that copy of the webpage you uploaded which calls school officials and classmates the misguided bastards they really are.