As a member of the United States Marine Corps, I am deeply offended by your post. It does not in any way reflect well on the armed forces that you served. You condemn Linux as simply a hackers tool. It can be, but no more so than whatever operating system you are running. As said by others, few crackers, and fewer hackers, do anything to cause damage. All that is wanted is free flow of information. We do not as a community steal information, engage in vandalism, or screw people over in any way. We fight for what we believe in as generations of americans have done. When the government or a corporation does something the Linux community disagrees with, a peaceful protest is mounted. We do not resort to terrorist tactics as you apparently believe. The whole point is that information should be free. Think about that, and about the image of the armed forces you are showing. I leave you with this quote about free flow of information:
"If I had to choose between government without newspapers or newspapers without government, I would not hesitate to choose the latter"
Lance Corporal George E. Worroll Jr. United States Marine Corps
Is that really a good thing? I mean, the earth is overpopulated in some areas, and even in some parts of the US it is getting that way. Humans have no natural predators outside our species, and those we kill or lock away. More people are born than die. We turn a huge portion of our energies to wiping out death, oblivious to the long term effects not just on our species but on others. If the population growth doesn't slow down soon, we will have severe problems. Advances in world peace will be shredded as we fight over arable land. Crime will rise immensely inside our cities. In short, this world will become a living hell if the population growth is not stopped, at least until space colonies become practical.
Two movies exist that basically cover this topics philosophical implications.
The more recent of the two, most of you have certainly seen, is The Matrix. Especially Morpheus' speech to Neo about the nature of "real".
A better review of the idea "are machines with human intelligence as human as us" is Armitage III Poly Matrix. Its basically a movie version of the 6 episode anime series Armitage III. Aside from being an excellent dub and well done paring down of the series, it seriously explores the philosophical side of human intelligence in machines. I recommend anyone interested in this topic to rent this movie, you will not be dissapointed.
but there is only one version of the Bill of Rights
Only one legal version. I saw a copy that included the phrase "in extremely poor taste". While it is clear from searching the web that that is not part of the legal version, it is in at least one version floating around.
extreme circumstances, such as national security risks Actually, I think that comes under something else for most circumstances... Not sure though. Besides the First Amendment does not give any exceptions.
death threats
This is also not an exception, simply basic common sense. To have any freedom, the freedom to restict the freedom of another must be restricted.
I know I saw this, it was in high school studying the constitution. I am in the process of looking up the matter on the web, it may not have been in the official words of the 1st amendment, I will concede that point but I was taught that in high school, and I have seen at least one copy of the Bill of Rights with that wording.
Doesn't it? Such speech can be considered "in extremely poor taste" and as such is exempted from the freedom of speech. Have you actually read the bill of rights, or just learned the big ones secondhand?
Actually, since the bidding has passed 500 dollars, in fact it has reached $2,325.00 as of now, the proceeds will go to the highest bidders charity of choice, with matching funds(or $2500.00 if it goes above that) from Mr. Chaney himself. He is also trying to get Microsoft to provide matching funds too, or at least the original amount of 500.
EMACS on a PDA??? Remember EMACS is about 70 megs total. Thats pretty big for a handheld. A stripped down version, with the email and text editing and multiple buffer fuctionality would be enough. The coding parts are unnecasary. Who needs to code on a PDA? If the PDA is powerful enough to be a meaningful general purpose coding device, and small enough to qualify as a PDA, the price is going to be much higher than that Inspiron you are lugging around. It should certainly have limited coding capabilities, so that you can develop for the PDA itself, but general purpose coding capability to replace a full PC would just make it way too expensive and probably too large to be a worthwhile PDA.
for those who have not done that yet. If Bill is the chief software architect, the first service pack for Windows 2000 is going to be written in BASIC spaghetti code;-)
That would be a good thing! Maybe they would actually code decent stuff! Its obvious things like C and assembly are far to difficult for them.
Re:Redhat moving away from OpenSource?
on
New CTO at Red Hat
·
· Score: 1
My point is that the OSS model is not a failure. It simply has not been around enough for the model itself to be declared a failure. It might not have worked for Cygnus, and Red Hat still might not have turned a profit yet. But almost all new businesses fail to make a profit for a while after they start. And why did Cygnus move away from Open Source? Was it really business failure or human greed?
Re:Redhat moving away from OpenSource?
on
New CTO at Red Hat
·
· Score: 1
Failed OSS model???? I(and other Slashdotters) would certainly be quite interested in your reasoning for that assertion, and quite impressed if you could actually prove it.
This is a good thing. While the applicability of certifications to the real world can be debated, it is true that many of the testing requirements are things you need to know. The certification will give a reason for the personel departments of various companies to hire you, and something to cover their ass better than "Well he said he knew linux". Companies will be more likely to move to linux if there is a certification process. This will aid Linux in general.
As for the people asking about which distribution, the certification is not distribution specific, however one of the requirements is that you pass a distribution specific exam of your choice. Available choices are RedHat(obviously), Debian, TurboLinux, and others. Not all, but most of the common ones.
META tag filtration will block out offensive sites. If done intelligently, it can have a high rate of success at blocking bad sites and letting through good sites. Things like "sex sex sex XXX XXX XXX naked girls teenpussy" are probably not in any non x rated sites meta tags. What is important is that the filter look at phrases and frequency of the keywords. And this would of course be completely configurable as to how close words have to be together, how often, and I would also include an option to let certain URLs through regardless of META tags. The main thing is to make sure that the user can set the decision making process of the filter to his own preferences, and that it can be overridden if you find an good site that has a wierd coincidence in its META tags.
You make a good point about the minority not being opressed by the majority. But still, I dont think that pornography should be available on public systems. On home systems yes I do think we should be able to access it, but not on public. I was not intending to suggest that a community be allowed to block the things you mentioned, maybe I should have been clearer.
A library exists primarily as an educational resource. Pornography has little, if any, real educational content. What little it ever has is innappropriate for children. Thus it should have some sort of access control to prevent this or at least make it too difficult to be worthwhile.
The access control must be done intelligently to be of any worth. The library must have full, independent control over the blocking. They should be able to change this on the fly if you show research need for something. What is blocked should be open to public scrutiny. You should get a login name and password along with your library card. Then according to your account information you should be given a certain access level, with your parents or guardians able to get it changed up or down based on what they want for their child.
Filtering software is not perfect, but if done right represents the best possible way to protect children without harming the rights of adults or infringing on the authority of parents.
Censoring software like this is a good idea. If the majority of the people in a community want internet access in their public libraries filtered, then the libraries have a duty, as an institution of a democratic society, to filter access. If you want to look at net porn in such a community, get your own computer and net access. It isn't that expensive these days. 600 dollars can set you up with a decent PC and internet access for as much as 2 years. Filtering software(as a concept) is a great idea for public libraries and for parents(especially single parents) seeking an aid in supervising their children while they do stuff like work, get groceries, cook dinner, etc. It isn't a complete replacement for discussion of what is appropriate and direct involvement, but it can add to and help.
However, as we all know, filtering software is not perfect. SurfWatch is known to block CNN, ZDNet, and various other mainstream news sites. It is almost senile in its behavior sometimes. And it seems like just about every filter program has similar problems no matter how sincere their efforts at blocking only what is offensive and all that is offensive. What should be done is a filter that includes the list of blocked URLS, keywords, any other blocking method, and gives the user the ability to change them. To add offensive sites the filter misses as shipped, and to remove legitimate sites that were blocked.
This shouldn't be too hard to code. Simply have a monitor on outgoing URL requests and scans of META tags, maybe a keyword search of the text(all things current software does), comparison to a data file, and if it matches the site is blocked. Add in an editing module to edit the block file and the program will do everything current filter programs do and be customizable to different circumstances.
I agree with the points of this article. One thing it didn't really explore is why is there a perception of such extensive problems? Pretty simple I think. We are simply living much closer together, and long range information dissemination has improved dramatically. Thus we hear about every little incident no matter where it is. Things that would have remained behind closed doors in Missisipi that noone would ever hear of, now can be read about in Johannesburg mere minutes after the abused child calls the police or child welfare for the first time. While something should be done to protect children, we must not panic. The problem is no bigger than its ever been, we simply can see how bad it really is. This can enable us to effectively kill the problem if we keep a clear head. Knee jerk reactions like those that seem so common, however well meaning, will only create more problems than they solve.
These people who are forcing station switching should be dragged into the street and shot. I mean come on, you need traffic information. Suddenly you here "Baby baby, how was I supposed to know..." and end up in a traffic jam that could be avoided if only someone wasn't overriding your radio. True, this whole system is a stupid idea to begin with, so obviously open to abuse, but those who are taking advantage of it are certainly in the wrong.
Not sure how serious you were being here but some of those are good ideas. The worldwide tax on ecommerce may actually be a good idea. Imagine with the amount of money being spent online the bandwith upgrades. Or, extending the reach of the internet into less developed countries. The UN is far from perfect but they could do alot with this. Encryption, yes. If someone releases to the public an encryption method, and are not violating anyones intellectual property, it should be legal for any personal use the user sees fit. Businesses and governments of course should control internal use of encryption, they have full right over their own networks. Underage porn, thats a tough one. I'd require sites to have a plain splash page, explaining clearly that the site is for 18 and over ONLY. State that anyone who illegally accesses it(IE underage) will be held personally responsible. And no pornography on this page, at the upper limit would be the pics of Britney Spears in rolling stone. Place all adult sites in a new TLD, perhaps.adu? Hold all those with adult sites outside this domain legally responsible for fraud or some similar charge. Put in place reasonable net vandalism charges, modeled after laws for real world vandalism modified only as much as necasary to account for it being online, and not a bit more. Hold internet based law enforcement and investigation to the same standards as real world(ie require searcg warrants). No forcing computers to have backdoors, thats like giving the police a master key to every single lock and all combinations and other methods of getting through physical security methods. The government can do alot more to protect children online and protect our privacy and other stuff to in general increase security, without harming our freedom. The damn politicians just go and make these huge drawn out laws that are more showy than anything else. If they really cared, they would actually realize how much can be done.
First off, the linked article was useless. The web design was horrid. Picture covering text? I had to turn off images to read what little fluff there actually was. Anyways... Does the patent system need reform? Yes. The human genome cannot be patented, I'm sorry, but thats already been invented. Software patents are ok, with reasonable restrictions. Amazon using one technique to implement one clck shopping, and patenting one click shopping rather than the way they implemented it. Patenting the latter is reasonable, the former is not. This guy doesn't seem concerned with reform, or the patent system at all. He's just one of the crackpot "america is the source of all that is good in the world" people. The USA is great, and I'm in the USMC ready to defend my country at a moments notice, but I am not that arrogrant. Other cultures have things to offer the USA.
Thank you for the information links. As for Slashdot not presenting it as a rumour, I am often very hard on being absolutely clear on what you say. In my job if I gave a brief and presented Slashdots intro as is, I would get my ass chewed for not being clear. I may ramble on sometimes, but when I bring up information that is simply a rumour I say somewhere in there "This is only a rumour". I don't rely on simple phrasing to get my point across.
It's always been possible to do this, thankfully someone has finally implemented it across different operating systems. This will certainly speed the adoption of Linux in business, as it will not require a complete reworking of a companys ADP strategy. A couple questions, will it only link to Windows NT Server? Will this work for different hardware, such as a Linux Alpha machine running software on a Windows NT x86 machine? Will it be Open Source?
Slashdot Mirror
As a member of the United States Marine Corps, I am deeply offended by your post. It does not in any way reflect well on the armed forces that you served. You condemn Linux as simply a hackers tool. It can be, but no more so than whatever operating system you are running. As said by others, few crackers, and fewer hackers, do anything to cause damage. All that is wanted is free flow of information. We do not as a community steal information, engage in vandalism, or screw people over in any way. We fight for what we believe in as generations of americans have done. When the government or a corporation does something the Linux community disagrees with, a peaceful protest is mounted. We do not resort to terrorist tactics as you apparently believe. The whole point is that information should be free. Think about that, and about the image of the armed forces you are showing. I leave you with this quote about free flow of information:
"If I had to choose between government without newspapers or newspapers without government, I would not hesitate to choose the latter"
Lance Corporal George E. Worroll Jr. United States Marine Corps
Is that really a good thing? I mean, the earth is overpopulated in some areas, and even in some parts of the US it is getting that way. Humans have no natural predators outside our species, and those we kill or lock away. More people are born than die. We turn a huge portion of our energies to wiping out death, oblivious to the long term effects not just on our species but on others. If the population growth doesn't slow down soon, we will have severe problems. Advances in world peace will be shredded as we fight over arable land. Crime will rise immensely inside our cities. In short, this world will become a living hell if the population growth is not stopped, at least until space colonies become practical.
Two movies exist that basically cover this topics philosophical implications.
The more recent of the two, most of you have certainly seen, is The Matrix. Especially Morpheus' speech to Neo about the nature of "real".
A better review of the idea "are machines with human intelligence as human as us" is Armitage III Poly Matrix. Its basically a movie version of the 6 episode anime series Armitage III. Aside from being an excellent dub and well done paring down of the series, it seriously explores the philosophical side of human intelligence in machines. I recommend anyone interested in this topic to rent this movie, you will not be dissapointed.
but there is only one version of the Bill of Rights
Only one legal version. I saw a copy that included the phrase "in extremely poor taste". While it is clear from searching the web that that is not part of the legal version, it is in at least one version floating around.
extreme circumstances, such as national security risks Actually, I think that comes under something else for most circumstances... Not sure though. Besides the First Amendment does not give any exceptions.
death threats
This is also not an exception, simply basic common sense. To have any freedom, the freedom to restict the freedom of another must be restricted.
I know I saw this, it was in high school studying the constitution. I am in the process of looking up the matter on the web, it may not have been in the official words of the 1st amendment, I will concede that point but I was taught that in high school, and I have seen at least one copy of the Bill of Rights with that wording.
Any idea on prices for these things? Apparently they demoed a linux PDA is this true? I can't remember where I caught that bit...
Not intended as flamebait... but
doesn't say a damn thing about intimidation
Doesn't it? Such speech can be considered "in extremely poor taste" and as such is exempted from the freedom of speech. Have you actually read the bill of rights, or just learned the big ones secondhand?
Maybe it was submitted and accepted as of 7:59 PST? Maybe your headline mislead the editors about what it was about.
Actually, since the bidding has passed 500 dollars, in fact it has reached $2,325.00 as of now, the proceeds will go to the highest bidders charity of choice, with matching funds(or $2500.00 if it goes above that) from Mr. Chaney himself. He is also trying to get Microsoft to provide matching funds too, or at least the original amount of 500.
They haven't even done official "unofficial" leaks, to boost outside interest.
Perhaps all the hype is due to "unauthorized" leaks. Perhaps they plan to surprise us with something better?
EMACS on a PDA??? Remember EMACS is about 70 megs total. Thats pretty big for a handheld. A stripped down version, with the email and text editing and multiple buffer fuctionality would be enough. The coding parts are unnecasary. Who needs to code on a PDA? If the PDA is powerful enough to be a meaningful general purpose coding device, and small enough to qualify as a PDA, the price is going to be much higher than that Inspiron you are lugging around. It should certainly have limited coding capabilities, so that you can develop for the PDA itself, but general purpose coding capability to replace a full PC would just make it way too expensive and probably too large to be a worthwhile PDA.
for those who have not done that yet. If Bill is the chief software architect, the first service pack for Windows 2000 is going to be written in BASIC spaghetti code ;-)
That would be a good thing! Maybe they would actually code decent stuff! Its obvious things like C and assembly are far to difficult for them.
My point is that the OSS model is not a failure. It simply has not been around enough for the model itself to be declared a failure. It might not have worked for Cygnus, and Red Hat still might not have turned a profit yet. But almost all new businesses fail to make a profit for a while after they start. And why did Cygnus move away from Open Source? Was it really business failure or human greed?
Failed OSS model???? I(and other Slashdotters) would certainly be quite interested in your reasoning for that assertion, and quite impressed if you could actually prove it.
This is a good thing. While the applicability of certifications to the real world can be debated, it is true that many of the testing requirements are things you need to know. The certification will give a reason for the personel departments of various companies to hire you, and something to cover their ass better than "Well he said he knew linux". Companies will be more likely to move to linux if there is a certification process. This will aid Linux in general.
As for the people asking about which distribution, the certification is not distribution specific, however one of the requirements is that you pass a distribution specific exam of your choice. Available choices are RedHat(obviously), Debian, TurboLinux, and others. Not all, but most of the common ones.
META tag filtration will block out offensive sites. If done intelligently, it can have a high rate of success at blocking bad sites and letting through good sites. Things like "sex sex sex XXX XXX XXX naked girls teenpussy" are probably not in any non x rated sites meta tags. What is important is that the filter look at phrases and frequency of the keywords. And this would of course be completely configurable as to how close words have to be together, how often, and I would also include an option to let certain URLs through regardless of META tags. The main thing is to make sure that the user can set the decision making process of the filter to his own preferences, and that it can be overridden if you find an good site that has a wierd coincidence in its META tags.
You make a good point about the minority not being opressed by the majority. But still, I dont think that pornography should be available on public systems. On home systems yes I do think we should be able to access it, but not on public. I was not intending to suggest that a community be allowed to block the things you mentioned, maybe I should have been clearer.
A library exists primarily as an educational resource. Pornography has little, if any, real educational content. What little it ever has is innappropriate for children. Thus it should have some sort of access control to prevent this or at least make it too difficult to be worthwhile.
The access control must be done intelligently to be of any worth. The library must have full, independent control over the blocking. They should be able to change this on the fly if you show research need for something. What is blocked should be open to public scrutiny. You should get a login name and password along with your library card. Then according to your account information you should be given a certain access level, with your parents or guardians able to get it changed up or down based on what they want for their child.
Filtering software is not perfect, but if done right represents the best possible way to protect children without harming the rights of adults or infringing on the authority of parents.
Before you flame me, read my whole comment.
Censoring software like this is a good idea. If the majority of the people in a community want internet access in their public libraries filtered, then the libraries have a duty, as an institution of a democratic society, to filter access. If you want to look at net porn in such a community, get your own computer and net access. It isn't that expensive these days. 600 dollars can set you up with a decent PC and internet access for as much as 2 years. Filtering software(as a concept) is a great idea for public libraries and for parents(especially single parents) seeking an aid in supervising their children while they do stuff like work, get groceries, cook dinner, etc. It isn't a complete replacement for discussion of what is appropriate and direct involvement, but it can add to and help.
However, as we all know, filtering software is not perfect. SurfWatch is known to block CNN, ZDNet, and various other mainstream news sites. It is almost senile in its behavior sometimes. And it seems like just about every filter program has similar problems no matter how sincere their efforts at blocking only what is offensive and all that is offensive. What should be done is a filter that includes the list of blocked URLS, keywords, any other blocking method, and gives the user the ability to change them. To add offensive sites the filter misses as shipped, and to remove legitimate sites that were blocked.
This shouldn't be too hard to code. Simply have a monitor on outgoing URL requests and scans of META tags, maybe a keyword search of the text(all things current software does), comparison to a data file, and if it matches the site is blocked. Add in an editing module to edit the block file and the program will do everything current filter programs do and be customizable to different circumstances.
Can we say figure of speech? There thats good, I thought so.
Come on why are so many people who criticize Jon Katz moderated up regardless of the quality of the quote?
I agree with the points of this article. One thing it didn't really explore is why is there a perception of such extensive problems? Pretty simple I think. We are simply living much closer together, and long range information dissemination has improved dramatically. Thus we hear about every little incident no matter where it is. Things that would have remained behind closed doors in Missisipi that noone would ever hear of, now can be read about in Johannesburg mere minutes after the abused child calls the police or child welfare for the first time. While something should be done to protect children, we must not panic. The problem is no bigger than its ever been, we simply can see how bad it really is. This can enable us to effectively kill the problem if we keep a clear head. Knee jerk reactions like those that seem so common, however well meaning, will only create more problems than they solve.
These people who are forcing station switching should be dragged into the street and shot. I mean come on, you need traffic information. Suddenly you here "Baby baby, how was I supposed to know..." and end up in a traffic jam that could be avoided if only someone wasn't overriding your radio. True, this whole system is a stupid idea to begin with, so obviously open to abuse, but those who are taking advantage of it are certainly in the wrong.
Not sure how serious you were being here but some of those are good ideas. The worldwide tax on ecommerce may actually be a good idea. Imagine with the amount of money being spent online the bandwith upgrades. Or, extending the reach of the internet into less developed countries. The UN is far from perfect but they could do alot with this. Encryption, yes. If someone releases to the public an encryption method, and are not violating anyones intellectual property, it should be legal for any personal use the user sees fit. Businesses and governments of course should control internal use of encryption, they have full right over their own networks. Underage porn, thats a tough one. I'd require sites to have a plain splash page, explaining clearly that the site is for 18 and over ONLY. State that anyone who illegally accesses it(IE underage) will be held personally responsible. And no pornography on this page, at the upper limit would be the pics of Britney Spears in rolling stone. Place all adult sites in a new TLD, perhaps .adu? Hold all those with adult sites outside this domain legally responsible for fraud or some similar charge. Put in place reasonable net vandalism charges, modeled after laws for real world vandalism modified only as much as necasary to account for it being online, and not a bit more. Hold internet based law enforcement and investigation to the same standards as real world(ie require searcg warrants). No forcing computers to have backdoors, thats like giving the police a master key to every single lock and all combinations and other methods of getting through physical security methods. The government can do alot more to protect children online and protect our privacy and other stuff to in general increase security, without harming our freedom. The damn politicians just go and make these huge drawn out laws that are more showy than anything else. If they really cared, they would actually realize how much can be done.
First off, the linked article was useless. The web design was horrid. Picture covering text? I had to turn off images to read what little fluff there actually was. Anyways... Does the patent system need reform? Yes. The human genome cannot be patented, I'm sorry, but thats already been invented. Software patents are ok, with reasonable restrictions. Amazon using one technique to implement one clck shopping, and patenting one click shopping rather than the way they implemented it. Patenting the latter is reasonable, the former is not. This guy doesn't seem concerned with reform, or the patent system at all. He's just one of the crackpot "america is the source of all that is good in the world" people. The USA is great, and I'm in the USMC ready to defend my country at a moments notice, but I am not that arrogrant. Other cultures have things to offer the USA.
Thank you for the information links. As for Slashdot not presenting it as a rumour, I am often very hard on being absolutely clear on what you say. In my job if I gave a brief and presented Slashdots intro as is, I would get my ass chewed for not being clear. I may ramble on sometimes, but when I bring up information that is simply a rumour I say somewhere in there "This is only a rumour". I don't rely on simple phrasing to get my point across.
It's always been possible to do this, thankfully someone has finally implemented it across different operating systems. This will certainly speed the adoption of Linux in business, as it will not require a complete reworking of a companys ADP strategy. A couple questions, will it only link to Windows NT Server? Will this work for different hardware, such as a Linux Alpha machine running software on a Windows NT x86 machine? Will it be Open Source?