I am not a geek, but with only 1.5 credit hours of computer science I know that != means "is not equal to".
It depends on your background. "!" means very much so, in general English. I first started programming in 1975, and have done it professionally since 1981. Just not in c, and without exposure to c. As of 1990, after a decade as a programmer, I read != as "does too!" in an online conversation. It took us twenty minutes or so to clean up the resulting confusion. I think that c chose a bad symbol for "not", and that it will be confusing to people without exposure to c. I've been there.
The concept of "property" is obsolete in the digital universe. "Property" survives by operation of scarcity and inconvenience.
The rights inherent in copyright are comparable to the rights to patent, that have been controlled by the government for a couple of centuries. Until the USPO's recent collapse of any sane review standards, patent has worked rather well. Once the "non-obvious" is pointed out, anyone can build the better mousetrap. Or interval wipers. Or whatever. But the designers of the US government decided that a temporary monopoly provided advantages to society.
The oxygen analogy applies equally to the centuries-old concept of patents as much as to modern digital intellectual property.
Other than that, I agree with the rest of your points. Including the conspiracist stuff. This is why I believe that the battle for DMCA issues (links and instructions to subvert) should be separated from the copyright issues (entire copies).
I didn't read the article, but what you describe is available. You start with a tank of clear liquid polymer waiting for (visual? UV?) light to cure it. You shine lasers on it from various directions, and where the lasers intersect, there is enough energy to cure the plastic at that point.
I believe I saw a TLC show where they were "printing" a 3-D lifesize HOLLOW model of a guy's skull based on a CAT scan, so that the surgeon could plan his operation around landmarks on the INSIDE of the skull.
I always wondered why they were so expensive... I underestood it when they came out (late 80's) because of limited capacity, but now?
I bought my player in 1983. At that time disks were typically C$19 in the big cities and C$21 in the small town where I lived. The price dropped to about C$17 / C$19 a couple of years later, then swiftly rose to the mid twenties (say C$26). I guess this is where you came in.
The price very gradually dropped from that peak towards 20. I stopped buying much music about 5 years ago. Someone from my city has already said that typical prices are now mid teens.
I also found it odd that some small bands sell there CDs at 10$ a pop for a small cd run, vs 18 dollars for a mass produced cd.
Blank CDR's are somewhere under $2. A recorder for them is US$100. A band member's time is worth $7/hr and he doesn't even have to sit there watching the progress bar chug for the hour. I would be very surprised if the stamped disk is more than 50 cents in 1000 lot runs (not counting printing, case, or case printing.) I'd be surprised if the media were more than 20 cents in the very large runs. Your $18 is paying for the artist's lifestyle, the massive ad campaign, and for DMCA lawyers to harass websites.
There is a reason contract programmers are called that. There is a contract involved. Typically the code belongs to the original author unless the contract specifies otherwise. I put some time in as a subcontract consultant. The terms of the boilerplate that those contracts were built on was that the customer got the rights to use, modify, extend anything I came up with. Actual ownership resided with the consulting company. I got paid by the hour by the consulting company, under a separate contract, with no ownership.
Example. ABC Construction asks Dynamic Datacorp to revamp their logins. Dynamic phones me and sends me over. I rewrite a bunch of scripts. A week later, ABC asks Dynamic to set up a new machine, and Dynamic sends Joe over. Joe likes what he sees and saves it to a floppy to use in other similar situations. Is Joe violating ABC's ownership? No. The code belongs to Dynamic. Is he violating Dynamic's rights? I dunno. Probably he could use them at other Dynamic customers, but not for his indie consulting. Can Dynamic ask ABC for the scripts to use at DEF construction? Probably, but they wouldn't. Can ABC sell the scripts at the annual builder's fair? Probably not.
Example 2. XYZ sales asks Doofus Design to build a web site. Doofus has them sign a contract granting all rights to Doofus. Doofus builds half of the site and stalls out. Flames fly and people say things that they will regret and everyone leaves. XYZ now hires Leet Design to fix the almost-finished website. It is likely that Leet CANNOT use any of Doofus's code. Because XYZ said in the original contract that ownership belonged to Doofus.
Example 3. BCDEF Railway contracts with Maddox Systems Inc to provide a dispatch system. MSI is unable to meet the terms of the contract and litigation begins. A settlement is reached where BCDEF is allowed use and modify MSI source code in exchange for reduced damages regarding the unfulfilled contract. BCDEF cannot sell the dispatch system, but they can assign three programmers to it for three years to beat it into adequate shape to run. (The worst year and a half of my life. If code is too grotty to pay for, it is too grotty to use as a foundation for a major system).
My conclusion. I think that XYZ should ask their lawyer whether they have any grounds to sue for non-completion of the original contract. Then XYZ could settle for a license to extend/modify/fix the code that Doofus was unable to fix. Unfortunately, I suspect that Doofus holds some strong cards here.
(I see that 600 people have already commented. Oh well, Someone will read this.) (When I say "kill" I mean "replace with a message "Posting removed without prejudice, as requested in _link_". The existance of the censorship should be visible, and should only be done when the request is a public document like this time)
Full-copy text by AC. - kill
Full-copy text by named poster. My opinion is "kill" but a lawyer or ethicist may disagree.
Link by AC. Keep
Link by named poster. Keep
Instructions by AC. See discussion.
Instructions by named poster. See discussion.
There are three issues here. Copyright applies to the full-copy text. I have no real concern here on whether a medium must comply with after-the-fact removal on request. This does not establish a precedent for requireing media to censor themselves. The copyright belongs to MS. Posting all or a substantial portion beyond what's needed for critiquing violates that copyright. If we decide to let MS take it up with the original poster, then we need a mechanism where MS could compell slashdot to reveal True Names. I think that removal of the actual content of Microsoft's content is a reasonable request. It is a separate battle than the DMCA thing.
The links are simple reporting on an issue of public interest. I believe that first amendment issues could gut the DMCA if a court was asked to rule on this. Get Microsoft into court on a censorship issue at the same time as they are trying to buy a president who is running for office. Let the polls decide on THAT one! (grin)
The instructions to subvert are a different issue than the links. Again, I think it is a battle worth fighting, but it would be fought on different grounds. I don't know if it is as clearly a freedom of the press issue. I would like to see it fought in court, but it doesn't make as beautiful a political disaster as the links issue does. I would comply with removing the instructions, under protest, and only on request specifying each indifidual comment. This would separate the two battles. And I'm sure that there would be enough links to instructions to preserve the freedom while they fight the easy battle first.
It's using Linux 2,2,15. With the GPL, this platform must be publicly available.
relatively persistent bookmarking
4 MB of flash
There needs to be some sort of word processor and spreadsheet, and either they need to be small enough that downloading's quick
They're betting on Citrix. This is a $1k to $5K (and up) server-side solution that downloads your working image to the terminal. ("thin client") Word/Excel/whatever stay on the server and count clients currently connected.
There needs to be a good mechanism for caching downloaded applications.
They're betting on keeping the applications on the server. You work with an image that's maintained on your local screen. I don't know enough about Citrix to know whether this is practical. LE is in the running to be world's richest mand and he's betting it's good enough.
There needs to be a good way to use an Internet file storage provider - probably easiest to piggyback off XDrive/IDrive/Driveway/50Megs/etc. - but is there another mechanism to use instead?
The page mentions XDrive and "their network server". (On my office computer, I keep all my data on my "V" drive if it doesn't belong on some other file share. A network share for each user allows well-administered backups etc. The local drive is just config)
Games -
I'd like to see some discussion of thin servers cheaper than CITRIX. I'd like to have my big computer running some application server SHARED with my primary user, and the second computer a toy like this one. At a grand per server, Citrix ain't the answer just yet. Larry is aiming this at schools because they have enough machines in one place to be able to afford the citrix server.
how can they begin to figure out a file cabinet organization system
One of my assignments back in my consulting days (93) was to fix the computer at a local Loomis office.
While waiting for me to show up, and for the day it took for me to figure out how to diagnose their byzantine setup (most of the extra day resulted in the post-it note "Phone telco and ask for a diagnostic on leased line after any reboot". Their diagnostic probe would restart the link.)
Anyhow, the office manager had kept the 90-slot dispatch sorting rack just because he thought it looked cool and was a historical artifact. Their lead dispatcher still remembered how to use it, and had brought the other two dispatchers up to speed.
The waterbed, by Robert A. Heinlein - has his estate seen a penny from Water Bedroom Land?
One of his local dealers sent him a free one. I forget the reasons, but he ended up leaving it in the garage. I think that this is mentioned in either Expanded Universe or Grumbles.
AugstWest points out that he suggested this idea to Slashdot.
It's an idea that runs around occasionally. Bob Forward gave a speech to a 1981 conference I attended about his contract with NASA to investigate partly baked ideas.
The Niven/Pournelle book "footfall" included a government think-tank including barely-disguised versions of Bob and Ginny Heinlein, Niven & Pournelle themselves, and a few others that were familiar to me while reading it (Anderson? Poul? Forward? Bova? McCaffrey?).
The Register has "an article linking to a RAMBUS filing with the SEC describing why Intel is required to push Rambus memory thru the end of 2002. I can't read stockbrokerese, so I'm taking the Register's word for what this document says.
[...]"A Walk in Tibet"[...]I'm sure it was a little awkward to explain that not only would President Clinton probabally not do something that raw, he didn't even have the legal authority to even require something like that.
Awkward to explain? It would probably have been easier to just point them at "Primary Colors" and say "...if I had any authority over media..."
Furthermore, an "offical" plea not to watch a movie like that would actually be like free advertising to promote a movie like that here.
The only reason I watched "The Last Temptation" was because of the attempts to suppress it. I rented it again because of the Blockbuster decision to not carry it. The movie wasn't all that interesting to me. In essence the admission and the rental were donations to companies willing to produce or carry controversial material.
even though it appears prior use by linux would make this null and void if they attempt to go after them. This doesn't seem to be as much protection as one would think. Think of the Amazon patent or the eToys trademark!
The US legal system has recently been handing out temporary restraining orders based on merely the flimsiest of excuses. If the patent / trademark was invalid, then the TRO will be voided after the trial. Six years from now (or whatever).
The real danger in spurious patents is that the judges are willing to hand out TROs way too freely. I don't think that judges really realize what a shambles the US patent office has become.
Too bad MS didn't include antivirus with the OS instead of IE.
They did include a virus checker with the previous release (DOS 6.x). But virus releases change too fast. You buy an OS every two or three years. The viruses change faster than that. Is even the original Melissa code older than Win98?
Nope. The B is definitely between two "R"s. The Greek chi is an "X" shaped letter that presumably evolved into our "K". Spelling is optional when the owner of the word (the greeks) don't use our alphabet.
American operating systems? English. (I'm thinking of UNIX and MS-DOS commands.) American-designed programmic languages? English (if, then, foreach, printf, etc.).
Not just American! I spend most of my day hacking inside a GERMAN designed programming system. The commentary is in german. But the language itself uses english commands and syntax. (language=ABAP/4 in the system SAP)
The universality of English as the base for programming languages is established strongly enough that new languages designed in non-english environments use english for the programming language.
those who Want To Be Artists [...] they usually don't deliver very good work, either
The world contains both ARTISTS and CRAFTSMEN. An artist will explore limits, see what breaks, and come up with new metaphors for work.
A craftsman will produce something that can be predicted to work, to a predictable schedule. It won't get written up in the magazines, but it will work.
What society needs is to find a way to finance the artists while not letting them near anything that we intend to ship. In the historical past, this was handled via corporate thinktanks like Bell Labs or Xerox PARC or whereever IBM stashed their official "fellows".
Once the bean counters slashed these "artistic" (and apparently unprofitable) quarantines, the partly-baked ideas now have to be developed within real projects.
My dichotomy artist/craftsman can also be expressed as scientist/engineer, or probably a dozen other expressions in different fields.
Did Microsoft actually invent the wheel mouse, or just,,,(steal from someone else). The box for my "Mouse Systems" wheelmouse claims that they invented the wheel mouse in '95 or some such.
My quesion is will the MPAA sue/. for linking to a story that links to a site that links to sites that have the program??
Hmmm, Let's see... Jerrypournell, user friendly, the Register, and just about every other high-tech source have linked to slashdot at some time or other.
And most of the rest of the net have linked to the NYT. I think we've just indicted the entire net.
My wife's employer blocks telnet but not anonymizer. My employer doesn't block either. (I need telnet, ans so long as smartfilter blocks ABAP/4 sites as "sex", my job function needs anonymizer - without anonymizer, I'd grab the tripod page, my superviser, a random one of our net guys and barge in on our CIO. Anonymizer saved me several hours yesterday. (alternatively, smartfilter almost cost me several hours)).
the maintainer
There is a third group. Important to the internet is the skilled user. I make a distinction between the "geek mindset" (memorize, at least temporarily, all the information on a topic, then reason among that internalized data) and the "librarian mindset" (memorize how to look up the information required, and reason among the links and just a few actual lookups).
I have the "geek mindset". I feel that the future of the internet belongs to the "librarians", the skilled users of a resource built by others. Neither you (a skilled maintainer) nor I (a non-optimal user) get the most benefit from the net.
One thing we definitely need, IMO, is a superset of the current domain name system, more flexible, semi-decentralized and used on a voluntary basis.
Are you sure we don't have that now? I can get a name for free in *.bc.ca . There are plenty of names in *.ca. Some countries have chosen to sell placement in their namespace (*.nu, *.to, *.cc), while others have chosen to implement specific limitations for their own reasons. (I believe that registering a name in *.ca, other than inside regional subdomains, requires you to demonstrate that you are currently doing business under that trademark in Canada.)
Regional domains, including subregions, are well-implemented in our current DNS design. I don't understand the design of the underlying machinery, but the vendors of *.cc and *.to assure me that you don't need to go off to some distant low-bandwidth server to pick up the numeric address. How is your image of what we need different than regional domains and subdomains?
I just wish more companies would USE regional addresses. I work for a railway with a discrete regional presence. We have customers outside that region, but only because they do business within that region. But we bought a *.com domain address. Another example is Chapters books. When they introduced their web service, they were doing the interviews circuit pointing out that they were "an all-Canadian alternative" while using the *.com address that implies a generic multinational. (They later fixed this. Chapters.com still works, but all their advertising and internal links go via chapters.ca, making the "I am Canadian" implication explicit)
Slashdot Mirror
It depends on your background. "!" means very much so, in general English. I first started programming in 1975, and have done it professionally since 1981. Just not in c, and without exposure to c. As of 1990, after a decade as a programmer, I read != as "does too!" in an online conversation. It took us twenty minutes or so to clean up the resulting confusion. I think that c chose a bad symbol for "not", and that it will be confusing to people without exposure to c. I've been there.
The rights inherent in copyright are comparable to the rights to patent, that have been controlled by the government for a couple of centuries. Until the USPO's recent collapse of any sane review standards, patent has worked rather well. Once the "non-obvious" is pointed out, anyone can build the better mousetrap. Or interval wipers. Or whatever. But the designers of the US government decided that a temporary monopoly provided advantages to society.
The oxygen analogy applies equally to the centuries-old concept of patents as much as to modern digital intellectual property.
Other than that, I agree with the rest of your points. Including the conspiracist stuff. This is why I believe that the battle for DMCA issues (links and instructions to subvert) should be separated from the copyright issues (entire copies).
I believe I saw a TLC show where they were "printing" a 3-D lifesize HOLLOW model of a guy's skull based on a CAT scan, so that the surgeon could plan his operation around landmarks on the INSIDE of the skull.
I bought my player in 1983. At that time disks were typically C$19 in the big cities and C$21 in the small town where I lived. The price dropped to about C$17 / C$19 a couple of years later, then swiftly rose to the mid twenties (say C$26). I guess this is where you came in.
The price very gradually dropped from that peak towards 20. I stopped buying much music about 5 years ago. Someone from my city has already said that typical prices are now mid teens.
I also found it odd that some small bands sell there CDs at 10$ a pop for a small cd run, vs 18 dollars for a mass produced cd.
Blank CDR's are somewhere under $2. A recorder for them is US$100. A band member's time is worth $7/hr and he doesn't even have to sit there watching the progress bar chug for the hour. I would be very surprised if the stamped disk is more than 50 cents in 1000 lot runs (not counting printing, case, or case printing.) I'd be surprised if the media were more than 20 cents in the very large runs. Your $18 is paying for the artist's lifestyle, the massive ad campaign, and for DMCA lawyers to harass websites.
Example. ABC Construction asks Dynamic Datacorp to revamp their logins. Dynamic phones me and sends me over. I rewrite a bunch of scripts. A week later, ABC asks Dynamic to set up a new machine, and Dynamic sends Joe over. Joe likes what he sees and saves it to a floppy to use in other similar situations. Is Joe violating ABC's ownership? No. The code belongs to Dynamic. Is he violating Dynamic's rights? I dunno. Probably he could use them at other Dynamic customers, but not for his indie consulting. Can Dynamic ask ABC for the scripts to use at DEF construction? Probably, but they wouldn't. Can ABC sell the scripts at the annual builder's fair? Probably not.
Example 2. XYZ sales asks Doofus Design to build a web site. Doofus has them sign a contract granting all rights to Doofus. Doofus builds half of the site and stalls out. Flames fly and people say things that they will regret and everyone leaves. XYZ now hires Leet Design to fix the almost-finished website. It is likely that Leet CANNOT use any of Doofus's code. Because XYZ said in the original contract that ownership belonged to Doofus.
Example 3. BCDEF Railway contracts with Maddox Systems Inc to provide a dispatch system. MSI is unable to meet the terms of the contract and litigation begins. A settlement is reached where BCDEF is allowed use and modify MSI source code in exchange for reduced damages regarding the unfulfilled contract. BCDEF cannot sell the dispatch system, but they can assign three programmers to it for three years to beat it into adequate shape to run. (The worst year and a half of my life. If code is too grotty to pay for, it is too grotty to use as a foundation for a major system).
My conclusion. I think that XYZ should ask their lawyer whether they have any grounds to sue for non-completion of the original contract. Then XYZ could settle for a license to extend/modify/fix the code that Doofus was unable to fix. Unfortunately, I suspect that Doofus holds some strong cards here.
Full-copy text by AC. - kill
Full-copy text by named poster. My opinion is "kill" but a lawyer or ethicist may disagree.
Link by AC. Keep
Link by named poster. Keep
Instructions by AC. See discussion.
Instructions by named poster. See discussion.
There are three issues here. Copyright applies to the full-copy text. I have no real concern here on whether a medium must comply with after-the-fact removal on request. This does not establish a precedent for requireing media to censor themselves. The copyright belongs to MS. Posting all or a substantial portion beyond what's needed for critiquing violates that copyright. If we decide to let MS take it up with the original poster, then we need a mechanism where MS could compell slashdot to reveal True Names. I think that removal of the actual content of Microsoft's content is a reasonable request. It is a separate battle than the DMCA thing.
The links are simple reporting on an issue of public interest. I believe that first amendment issues could gut the DMCA if a court was asked to rule on this. Get Microsoft into court on a censorship issue at the same time as they are trying to buy a president who is running for office. Let the polls decide on THAT one! (grin)
The instructions to subvert are a different issue than the links. Again, I think it is a battle worth fighting, but it would be fought on different grounds. I don't know if it is as clearly a freedom of the press issue. I would like to see it fought in court, but it doesn't make as beautiful a political disaster as the links issue does. I would comply with removing the instructions, under protest, and only on request specifying each indifidual comment. This would separate the two battles. And I'm sure that there would be enough links to instructions to preserve the freedom while they fight the easy battle first.
The software platform needs to be open
It's using Linux 2,2,15. With the GPL, this platform must be publicly available.
relatively persistent bookmarking
4 MB of flash
There needs to be some sort of word processor and spreadsheet, and either they need to be small enough that downloading's quick
They're betting on Citrix. This is a $1k to $5K (and up) server-side solution that downloads your working image to the terminal. ("thin client") Word/Excel/whatever stay on the server and count clients currently connected.
There needs to be a good mechanism for caching downloaded applications.
They're betting on keeping the applications on the server. You work with an image that's maintained on your local screen. I don't know enough about Citrix to know whether this is practical. LE is in the running to be world's richest mand and he's betting it's good enough.
There needs to be a good way to use an Internet file storage provider - probably easiest to piggyback off XDrive/IDrive/Driveway/50Megs/etc. - but is there another mechanism to use instead?
The page mentions XDrive and "their network server". (On my office computer, I keep all my data on my "V" drive if it doesn't belong on some other file share. A network share for each user allows well-administered backups etc. The local drive is just config)
Games -
I'd like to see some discussion of thin servers cheaper than CITRIX. I'd like to have my big computer running some application server SHARED with my primary user, and the second computer a toy like this one. At a grand per server, Citrix ain't the answer just yet. Larry is aiming this at schools because they have enough machines in one place to be able to afford the citrix server.
One of my assignments back in my consulting days (93) was to fix the computer at a local Loomis office.
While waiting for me to show up, and for the day it took for me to figure out how to diagnose their byzantine setup (most of the extra day resulted in the post-it note "Phone telco and ask for a diagnostic on leased line after any reboot". Their diagnostic probe would restart the link.)
Anyhow, the office manager had kept the 90-slot dispatch sorting rack just because he thought it looked cool and was a historical artifact. Their lead dispatcher still remembered how to use it, and had brought the other two dispatchers up to speed.
One of his local dealers sent him a free one. I forget the reasons, but he ended up leaving it in the garage. I think that this is mentioned in either Expanded Universe or Grumbles.
It's an idea that runs around occasionally. Bob Forward gave a speech to a 1981 conference I attended about his contract with NASA to investigate partly baked ideas.
The Niven/Pournelle book "footfall" included a government think-tank including barely-disguised versions of Bob and Ginny Heinlein, Niven & Pournelle themselves, and a few others that were familiar to me while reading it (Anderson? Poul? Forward? Bova? McCaffrey?).
The Register has "an article linking to a RAMBUS filing with the SEC describing why Intel is required to push Rambus memory thru the end of 2002. I can't read stockbrokerese, so I'm taking the Register's word for what this document says.
You don't mention the best analogy for "monoculture = bad".
We need to make the mainstream media aware of the analogy with 19th century Ireland. Everyone used the same product - based their lives on uniformity.
Then the first disease that came along, wiped out everything. The entire country starved.
Uniformity provides horrific exposure to diseases whether blights or computer viruses.
Awkward to explain? It would probably have been easier to just point them at "Primary Colors" and say "...if I had any authority over media..."
Furthermore, an "offical" plea not to watch a movie like that would actually be like free advertising to promote a movie like that here.
The only reason I watched "The Last Temptation" was because of the attempts to suppress it. I rented it again because of the Blockbuster decision to not carry it. The movie wasn't all that interesting to me. In essence the admission and the rental were donations to companies willing to produce or carry controversial material.
The US legal system has recently been handing out temporary restraining orders based on merely the flimsiest of excuses. If the patent / trademark was invalid, then the TRO will be voided after the trial. Six years from now (or whatever).
The real danger in spurious patents is that the judges are willing to hand out TROs way too freely. I don't think that judges really realize what a shambles the US patent office has become.
They did include a virus checker with the previous release (DOS 6.x). But virus releases change too fast. You buy an OS every two or three years. The viruses change faster than that. Is even the original Melissa code older than Win98?
eg: http://elfwood.lysator.liu.se/loth/p/a/paula/cerbe rus.gif.html
Not just American! I spend most of my day hacking inside a GERMAN designed programming system. The commentary is in german. But the language itself uses english commands and syntax. (language=ABAP/4 in the system SAP)
The universality of English as the base for programming languages is established strongly enough that new languages designed in non-english environments use english for the programming language.
The world contains both ARTISTS and CRAFTSMEN. An artist will explore limits, see what breaks, and come up with new metaphors for work.
A craftsman will produce something that can be predicted to work, to a predictable schedule. It won't get written up in the magazines, but it will work.
What society needs is to find a way to finance the artists while not letting them near anything that we intend to ship. In the historical past, this was handled via corporate thinktanks like Bell Labs or Xerox PARC or whereever IBM stashed their official "fellows".
Once the bean counters slashed these "artistic" (and apparently unprofitable) quarantines, the partly-baked ideas now have to be developed within real projects.
My dichotomy artist/craftsman can also be expressed as scientist/engineer, or probably a dozen other expressions in different fields.
Did Microsoft actually invent the wheel mouse, or just ,,,(steal from someone else). The box for my "Mouse Systems" wheelmouse claims that they invented the wheel mouse in '95 or some such.
You have to read the original findings of fact. The reasons for destroying Netscape were to prevent erosion of the windows monopoly.
Is "the Brain"'s real name "Bob"?
Hmmm, Let's see... Jerrypournell, user friendly, the Register, and just about every other high-tech source have linked to slashdot at some time or other.
And most of the rest of the net have linked to the NYT. I think we've just indicted the entire net.
My wife's employer blocks telnet but not anonymizer. My employer doesn't block either. (I need telnet, ans so long as smartfilter blocks ABAP/4 sites as "sex", my job function needs anonymizer - without anonymizer, I'd grab the tripod page, my superviser, a random one of our net guys and barge in on our CIO. Anonymizer saved me several hours yesterday. (alternatively, smartfilter almost cost me several hours)).
the innovator
the maintainer
There is a third group. Important to the internet is the skilled user. I make a distinction between the "geek mindset" (memorize, at least temporarily, all the information on a topic, then reason among that internalized data) and the "librarian mindset" (memorize how to look up the information required, and reason among the links and just a few actual lookups).
I have the "geek mindset". I feel that the future of the internet belongs to the "librarians", the skilled users of a resource built by others. Neither you (a skilled maintainer) nor I (a non-optimal user) get the most benefit from the net.
Are you sure we don't have that now? I can get a name for free in *.bc.ca . There are plenty of names in *.ca. Some countries have chosen to sell placement in their namespace (*.nu, *.to, *.cc), while others have chosen to implement specific limitations for their own reasons. (I believe that registering a name in *.ca, other than inside regional subdomains, requires you to demonstrate that you are currently doing business under that trademark in Canada.)
Regional domains, including subregions, are well-implemented in our current DNS design. I don't understand the design of the underlying machinery, but the vendors of *.cc and *.to assure me that you don't need to go off to some distant low-bandwidth server to pick up the numeric address. How is your image of what we need different than regional domains and subdomains?
I just wish more companies would USE regional addresses. I work for a railway with a discrete regional presence. We have customers outside that region, but only because they do business within that region. But we bought a *.com domain address. Another example is Chapters books. When they introduced their web service, they were doing the interviews circuit pointing out that they were "an all-Canadian alternative" while using the *.com address that implies a generic multinational. (They later fixed this. Chapters.com still works, but all their advertising and internal links go via chapters.ca, making the "I am Canadian" implication explicit)