This technology should be made available to social scientists, anthropologists, cultural critics, etc. so that current social trends can be analyzed. Perhaps IBM would be kind enough to provide free access to this system to Universities?
It is a pity that the WebFountain system is geared toward corporate users. Of course, there must be some ROI... but, still it makes me sad that every new technology seems to be driven by corporate desire for good PR and world domination.
Interestingly, this article comes out right after Slashdot's coverage of the O'Reilly GeekCamp, in which the CNN
article mentions the following relevant projects:
Jeremy Zawodny teamed up with David Sifry, the founder and CEO of Technorati, a popular search engine for blogs, and others to propose a new way to organize the thousands of newsfeeds available from media outlets around the world. The new standard they hacked up, FDML, may well be adopted by major corporations and news outlets soon after this column hits newsstands.
Simon Cozens, an author and programmer from England, presented Twingle, a program that helps you find things in your e-mail archives (who doesn't need that?).
Also receiving good geek buzz was an application called Dashboard, which automatically scans and indexes your hard drive, then displays documents related to whatever you're working on.
So, perhaps the Open Source community will be able to create some similar technology that is freely available for researchers, writers, scientists, etc. to use.
More transparent decisions and pre-announcements
on
Verisign Plans DNS Changes
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
This announcement is important in that Verisign finally seems to recognize that they are part of a larger community, that those DNS records are not just some corporate asset sitting in a couple of computers in the corner.
Changes affect administrators around the globe. As part of a community, they have a responsibility to make their decisions transparent to the community, and to announce changes well-enough in advance that those who are affected have time to prepare.
This is not just a Verisign issue. The need for major Internet organizations to recognize the larger public as important stakeholders within the community is important. Awareness of the larger community should be followed by communication and actions that reflect that awareness, thus signalling a willingness to truly be a part of that community.
Verisign seems to be exhibiting a newfound awareness of community that ICANN seems to have abandoned.
I hope Verisign continues to be a good memeber of the community. Perhaps others can follow their lead.
In the US such a roll-out might be marked by long queues and frantic buyers worried about the store running out of stock. Not so here in Japan.
When I was in Akihabara last week they had huge banners in front of AsoBitCity (and other stores) under which there were several salesmen holding PSX units, running raffles, and demoing systems to crowds of people. However, there were plenty of units in stock and everyone around me was pretty calm.
I think the media center concept is a great one for Japan because space is at such a premium here. So having one unit that combines console gaming with DVD is huge since it reduces the number of items clogging up your precious shelf space.
Also note that most unmarried adults in their late 20's live at home with their parents, and like to have their own TVs and whatnot in their small bedrooms, so again, this device saves a lot of space... that's why it's so attractive to buyers here, whereas in the USA, where your living room is huge by comparison, there is no need to worry about space as much, so you have have multiple components sitting around being redundant.
My vision goes beyond chat. It's more like the combination of an online storefront with IRC and Shoutcast.
The users browse certain genre "aisles" (i.e., Channels) and each aisle has it's own audio stream. Each audio stream plays a default music album from that genre (which is selected by the store)--similar to if you went into Newbury Comics and were listening to the employees' selection on the store PA, but genre specific.
The audio stream can be preempted by activating the music preview feature, to preview the songs from an album you are interested in buying -- this results in an individual stream to your computer, but the channel stream still continues for others in the aisle.
However, if you are chatting with others in the aisle and want to share a musical selection with everyone else, the channel audio stream can operate like a jukebox by allowing each user in the aisle to submit one song at a time into the playlist (to prevent hogging the stream). Leave the channel and your song is removed (or you can delete it yourself sooner).
Done browsing the Rock section? Move along to the Jazz section by changing asiles (channels) and you are now browsing the Jazz artists, listening to (and interacting with) the Jazz aisle's audio stream, and chatting with the other people in the Jazz aisle.
Hey, you get a private message from your friend Walsh1975 who is over in the Electronica section, so you switch aisles again to see what cool thing he's found to listen to.
Thus, in any given trip to the online store, you can listen to various types of music and interact with various different people to broaden your musical horizons and probably end up buying more music than you would have originally done had you visited the online store alone in the vaccuum of cyberspace. But more importantly, you would have a community experience that would be positive and encourage you to return to that store again in the future.
If anyone wants to use this idea, go ahead. But please remember: you heard it here first!;)
Although, I'd rather see someone from the open source community implement this than Microsoft, but obviously I can't control that (not being a developer myself).
Why not go a step further and add telephone notification or email notification to the system, plus ability to remote control the system from your phone via Java or email.
Here in Japan, everyone's mobile phone has email and all the new ones can run Java apps; in fact, the very latest Vodafone has a digital TV tuner. According to Charles Arthur's predictions for 2004, everyone in the States will have fancy phones, too. Imagine the following:
The home security system can send updates in real-time to the homeowner, including video-feeds from the outdoor or indoor cameras. From the mobile phone the homeowner can run a Java app to send commands back to the home security system (or send them via email if the phone doesn't support Java).
Incoming email: someone is tresspassing. Remote Homeowner: *uses Java app to view video feed* -- ah, it's just my son coming home from school.
Incoming email: someone is tresspassing. Remote Homeowner: *sees video feed: it's a stranger* -- selects option to play audio warning on outdoor speakers. (If that doesn't work, he or she can dial the police and report a burglary in real time!)
Incoming alert: someone is tresspassing. Remote Homeowner: ah, it's Ned Flanders. *selects option to play sound of Homer snoring*
Why not go a step further and add telephone notification or email notification to the system, plus ability to remote control the system from your phone via Java or email.
Here in Japan, everyone's mobile phone has email and all the new ones can run Java apps; in fact, the very latest Vodafone has a digital TV tuner. According to Charles Arthur's predictions for 2004, everyone in the States will have fancy phones, too. Imagine the following:
The home security system can send updates in real-time to the homeowner, including video-feeds from the outdoor or indoor cameras. From the mobile phone the homeowner can run a Java app to send commands back to the home security system (or send them via email if the phone doesn't support Java).
Incoming email: someone is tresspassing.
Remote Homeowner: *uses Java app to view video feed* -- ah, it's just my son coming home from school.
Incoming email: someone is tresspassing.
Remote Homeowner: *sees video feed: it's a stranger* -- selects option to play audio warning on outdoor speakers. (if that doesn't work, he or she can dial the police and report a burglary in real time!)
Incoming alert: someone is tresspassing.
Remote Homeowner: ah, it's Ned Flanders. *selects option to play sound of Homer snoring*
Interesting article, but his predictions about online music stores are still not foreward thinking enough. Anyway, here are two things that I think won't happen but would be cool: 1) music download stores should offer a browsing/shopping experience that merges Internet ease with brick-and-mortar interaction; 2) brick-and-mortar stores should offer downloading/burning stations in stores.
Suggestion #1 really means offering an interface that allows online music store customers to see who else is in the "aisle" their browsing through, and chat with them, while listening to an "aisle" specific audio stream that users in that aisle can manipulate. For example: Mindy75: hey, WebTurtle, have you heard the new Radiohead? Is it worth it? WebTurtle: Hi. Yes, it's good. But have you heard their live album? It's even better. Mindy75: Oh, no I haven't. WebTurtle: Let's cue it up--I suggest the third track.
This is cool because it returns the human interaction element of going to a physical store and brings it to the online environment, while adding all the potential benefits of an online environment, such as streaming audio previews of any song on any album, and instant purchasing.
Suggestion #2 is a way for physical music stores to compete with online music stores. Many people don't want to buy music online or have the resources to download music to their computer. But why not extend the benefits of buying individual tracks in-house? These people can come to the store and use a kiosk to preview and download songs that can be burned to disc while they wait or burned to be picked up later (e.g., after shopping in some other stores in the mall). This is a great way to get a single without all the crappy extra shit that comes on the CD single; also a great way to make mix CDs.
Anyway, I've been dreaming of these two suggestions for about three years now, but I don't have the wherewithall to implement either of them. But, nobody else has done it yet, either... at least not to my knowledge. I think it's a cool idea -- especially suggestion #1.
I live in Japan and have Yahoo!BB and their bundled phone service, BBPhone. The cost to call within Japan is 7.5 yen for 3 minutes. The cost to call the USA is 2.5 yen for 1 minute. The current exchange rate is about 108 yen/dollar, so these calls are incredibly cheap (about 2 cents/minute). However, the cost to other countries varies (usually much higher; it costs me about 25 yen/minute to call my friends in the UK). Anyway, this is much cheaper than what the new VoIP services will be charging, at least according to the Red Herring article. They state the cost will be 10.5 yen/minute, which is 4 times what I'm paying now. Why would people in Japan switch to VoIP when BBPhone is already so much cheaper than botht he new technology and the old NTT service charges?
BTW: the Slashdot post states that the cost is 1 cent/minute, but that doesn't match the article, which states that the cost is 10.5 yen/minute, which is about 9.5 cents/minute.
These projects and the directions look great, but there is something missing... None of these people have posted pictures of or described the quality of the output. As in, if you built one of these projectors, would you regret having laid out the $400, or would you be psyched and loving the high quality video image on your wall? I mean, I would be willing to make the investment for my own apartment, and would even bring one of these into my classroom (I am a teacher) to use with my classroom computer. But will the result be worth it?
This trojan alert is so overblown and clearly written by an MS-sponsored person (why else the irrational inclusion of Apache and the comparison to Code Red? There is no comparison!)... This feeling is confirmed when I visited the Qualys site and a pop-up advertisement for Microsoft Software greeted me.
Surely the advent of MacOSX is not enough to warrant the neglect of the PPC linux.
Maybe we should ask Linus or someone else who is officially working on the kernel before double-guessing as to why the patches aren't being incorporated.
Eric Flint's welcome page essay on the welcome page of the Baen Free Library is an excellent read. I have not read as well thought out an argument about the whole online "stealing" vs. "free-promotion" thing since it started. If only Metallica had read this article before allowing their managers to scare them into suing Napster at the behest of their arm-twisting label. Sigh. It does give some hope for the future...
I use eLance fairly regularly, and it has gained me several repeat clients. It is a great way to get extra work.
Sellers post RFPs on the site and you submit a bid. Lowest bidder doesn't necessarily win - in fact, almost never does in my experience. What wins bids are clearly written repsonses that address the main points of the RFP and refer to either a working prototype of the project they want done, or a freelance web page with lots of detail.
Unfortunately, one of the biggest problems is that freelancers don't take the time to write decent bid proposals, don't spell check, etc.
By the same token, a lot of companies don't post clear RFPs -- they are often infuriatingly vague. What is worse is that, although eLance provides an online message board for freelancers to ask the companies questions about the project, the companies rarely check back to answer those questions. It is hard to put in an accurate bid if you don't know exactly what the client wants done.
Despite these issues, eLance is a site worth checking out. Of course, YMMV.:)
This is a very well articulated and well argued article. When I read the headline and who it was from, I thought as many other posters seem to : just because he saved M$'s bacon doesn't make him qualified to start handing out advice. But, after reading his article I am willing to judge him by its merit. And It was a great article. He makes several good points, particularly in regards to the obvousness that this can hardly be considered a trade secret.
However, I would like to address one part of his post that he left open:
Given that Microsoft has made the information freely available, I can't imagine what this can gain for them.
It is clearly a challenge to the concept of OSS and the GPL. If they can prevail over the community by succeeding in keeping their kerberos "extension" closed source, they win. If they can simultaneously do a little media spinning that shows how lawless OSS advocates are, they win twice. By this I mean that "everyone" knows that Slashdot is a haven for rabid OSS zealots who do nothing but pirate software, trade illegal MP3s on Napster, and read that damn anti-corporatist Noam Chomsky all day long. If M$ can show that these types of people will stop at nothing, including violating license agreements, publishing trade secrets, and being generally abusive towards all things corporate, then they will help stem the tide of converts. It will damage the reputation of OSS and the Free Software movement. It will make conservative businessmen (who outnumber the liberals) baised against OSS in their organizations, etc.
We as a community need to be on guard against these tactics. One good court case taht goes against OSS on top of everything else that is happening regarding the RIAA, MPAA, DeCSS, MP3.com, Napster, etc. and we will have taht much more difficulty gaining broad acceptance. And M$ will have that much more sway over people's opinions.
Certainly they can try to slow the OSS movement down, and give it a bad name, but it can never be stopped unless precedents and laws get in the way of progress and evolution.
This type of broader outlook on information sharing and the benefits of having more open communication are so important to the future of every person on the planet as individuals. When all around us we see giant corporations and media conglomorates further controlling and dictating what the average person has access to - particularly in the news - there is an increasing need for information to be made freely available.
There was a front-page article in yesterday's Boston Globe about how Pfizer successfully hid evidence that Prozac caused a small but statistically significant number of otherwise happy people to become suicidal. This news is only now coming to light -- after the drug has been out for about a decade!
More freedom of information, more freedom of press, more protection from evil corporate greed.
You may want to look at RT (Request Tracker). It is an open-source GPLed trouble-ticketing system created by Jesse Vincent. They are about to release version 2. It has SQL backend, and is quite sophisticated.
politicians get misguided notions from media, and are spurred into action by misguided parents (ie, fear of being voted out of office), and they set into motion these wrongheaded projects that somehow always manage to do the most harm to the very things they profess to protect. Jon Katz makes an important point that the very people who need to be protected in this system are the ones who most stand to be wrongly identified - the ostracised geeks.
A lot of what is happening is the direct result of parents not accepting responsibility for the raising of their children.
As an example:
In my Philosophy of Education class we have been reading about the differences between how people within the realm of Education and those outside of it use the language of education. For example, the term "potential", and the concepts of the "aims" of education vs. "means to ends" in education. What becomes apparent is that because people talk at cross-purposes, meaning is ascribed to things such as the SATs, MCAS, and other well-meaning but mis-guided efforts at State regulation of education initiatives (such as curriculum frameworks). Now Test Scores are used by media and politicians as a way to "reform" the education system in ways the don't make sense simply because they equate test scores with the future health of our economy. This has been proven to be an unfounded connection (all the negative TIMMS scores of the late eighties/early nineties were construed to show that our economy was in dire straits and that we woudl be crushed in ten years by our rivals because our schoolchildren were failing these exams -- this hasn't happened !! We have had the strongest economy in our history for the last 10 years!
Just a clarification, this year's Linuxbierwanderung is in England, not Germany as someone else posted earlier.
The beer hike is going to be based in the village of Coniston in the Lake District -- this is about halfway up the country on the Western border.
England is such a perfect place for this event. I hope to attend. We may even be able to catch some soccer -- The European Championships are this summer, and the national team may have a few qualifying matches at home while we are there...
Slashdot Mirror
This technology should be made available to social scientists, anthropologists, cultural critics, etc. so that current social trends can be analyzed. Perhaps IBM would be kind enough to provide free access to this system to Universities?
It is a pity that the WebFountain system is geared toward corporate users. Of course, there must be some ROI... but, still it makes me sad that every new technology seems to be driven by corporate desire for good PR and world domination.
Interestingly, this article comes out right after Slashdot's coverage of the O'Reilly GeekCamp, in which the CNN article mentions the following relevant projects:
So, perhaps the Open Source community will be able to create some similar technology that is freely available for researchers, writers, scientists, etc. to use.
This announcement is important in that Verisign finally seems to recognize that they are part of a larger community, that those DNS records are not just some corporate asset sitting in a couple of computers in the corner.
Changes affect administrators around the globe. As part of a community, they have a responsibility to make their decisions transparent to the community, and to announce changes well-enough in advance that those who are affected have time to prepare.
This is not just a Verisign issue. The need for major Internet organizations to recognize the larger public as important stakeholders within the community is important. Awareness of the larger community should be followed by communication and actions that reflect that awareness, thus signalling a willingness to truly be a part of that community.
Verisign seems to be exhibiting a newfound awareness of community that ICANN seems to have abandoned.
I hope Verisign continues to be a good memeber of the community. Perhaps others can follow their lead.
In the US such a roll-out might be marked by long queues and frantic buyers worried about the store running out of stock. Not so here in Japan.
When I was in Akihabara last week they had huge banners in front of AsoBitCity (and other stores) under which there were several salesmen holding PSX units, running raffles, and demoing systems to crowds of people. However, there were plenty of units in stock and everyone around me was pretty calm.
I think the media center concept is a great one for Japan because space is at such a premium here. So having one unit that combines console gaming with DVD is huge since it reduces the number of items clogging up your precious shelf space.
Also note that most unmarried adults in their late 20's live at home with their parents, and like to have their own TVs and whatnot in their small bedrooms, so again, this device saves a lot of space... that's why it's so attractive to buyers here, whereas in the USA, where your living room is huge by comparison, there is no need to worry about space as much, so you have have multiple components sitting around being redundant.
My vision goes beyond chat. It's more like the combination of an online storefront with IRC and Shoutcast.
;)
The users browse certain genre "aisles" (i.e., Channels) and each aisle has it's own audio stream. Each audio stream plays a default music album from that genre (which is selected by the store)--similar to if you went into Newbury Comics and were listening to the employees' selection on the store PA, but genre specific.
The audio stream can be preempted by activating the music preview feature, to preview the songs from an album you are interested in buying -- this results in an individual stream to your computer, but the channel stream still continues for others in the aisle.
However, if you are chatting with others in the aisle and want to share a musical selection with everyone else, the channel audio stream can operate like a jukebox by allowing each user in the aisle to submit one song at a time into the playlist (to prevent hogging the stream). Leave the channel and your song is removed (or you can delete it yourself sooner).
Done browsing the Rock section? Move along to the Jazz section by changing asiles (channels) and you are now browsing the Jazz artists, listening to (and interacting with) the Jazz aisle's audio stream, and chatting with the other people in the Jazz aisle.
Hey, you get a private message from your friend Walsh1975 who is over in the Electronica section, so you switch aisles again to see what cool thing he's found to listen to.
Thus, in any given trip to the online store, you can listen to various types of music and interact with various different people to broaden your musical horizons and probably end up buying more music than you would have originally done had you visited the online store alone in the vaccuum of cyberspace. But more importantly, you would have a community experience that would be positive and encourage you to return to that store again in the future.
If anyone wants to use this idea, go ahead. But please remember: you heard it here first!
Although, I'd rather see someone from the open source community implement this than Microsoft, but obviously I can't control that (not being a developer myself).
Why not go a step further and add telephone notification or email notification to the system, plus ability to remote control the system from your phone via Java or email.
Here in Japan, everyone's mobile phone has email and all the new ones can run Java apps; in fact, the very latest Vodafone has a digital TV tuner. According to Charles Arthur's predictions for 2004, everyone in the States will have fancy phones, too. Imagine the following:
The home security system can send updates in real-time to the homeowner, including video-feeds from the outdoor or indoor cameras. From the mobile phone the homeowner can run a Java app to send commands back to the home security system (or send them via email if the phone doesn't support Java).
Incoming email: someone is tresspassing.
Remote Homeowner: *uses Java app to view video feed* -- ah, it's just my son coming home from school.
Incoming email: someone is tresspassing.
Remote Homeowner: *sees video feed: it's a stranger* -- selects option to play audio warning on outdoor speakers. (If that doesn't work, he or she can dial the police and report a burglary in real time!)
Incoming alert: someone is tresspassing.
Remote Homeowner: ah, it's Ned Flanders. *selects option to play sound of Homer snoring*
Why not go a step further and add telephone notification or email notification to the system, plus ability to remote control the system from your phone via Java or email. Here in Japan, everyone's mobile phone has email and all the new ones can run Java apps; in fact, the very latest Vodafone has a digital TV tuner. According to Charles Arthur's predictions for 2004, everyone in the States will have fancy phones, too. Imagine the following: The home security system can send updates in real-time to the homeowner, including video-feeds from the outdoor or indoor cameras. From the mobile phone the homeowner can run a Java app to send commands back to the home security system (or send them via email if the phone doesn't support Java). Incoming email: someone is tresspassing. Remote Homeowner: *uses Java app to view video feed* -- ah, it's just my son coming home from school. Incoming email: someone is tresspassing. Remote Homeowner: *sees video feed: it's a stranger* -- selects option to play audio warning on outdoor speakers. (if that doesn't work, he or she can dial the police and report a burglary in real time!) Incoming alert: someone is tresspassing. Remote Homeowner: ah, it's Ned Flanders. *selects option to play sound of Homer snoring*
Interesting article, but his predictions about online music stores are still not foreward thinking enough. Anyway, here are two things that I think won't happen but would be cool:
1) music download stores should offer a browsing/shopping experience that merges Internet ease with brick-and-mortar interaction; 2) brick-and-mortar stores should offer downloading/burning stations in stores.
Suggestion #1 really means offering an interface that allows online music store customers to see who else is in the "aisle" their browsing through, and chat with them, while listening to an "aisle" specific audio stream that users in that aisle can manipulate. For example:
Mindy75: hey, WebTurtle, have you heard the new Radiohead? Is it worth it?
WebTurtle: Hi. Yes, it's good. But have you heard their live album? It's even better.
Mindy75: Oh, no I haven't.
WebTurtle: Let's cue it up--I suggest the third track.
This is cool because it returns the human interaction element of going to a physical store and brings it to the online environment, while adding all the potential benefits of an online environment, such as streaming audio previews of any song on any album, and instant purchasing.
Suggestion #2 is a way for physical music stores to compete with online music stores. Many people don't want to buy music online or have the resources to download music to their computer. But why not extend the benefits of buying individual tracks in-house? These people can come to the store and use a kiosk to preview and download songs that can be burned to disc while they wait or burned to be picked up later (e.g., after shopping in some other stores in the mall). This is a great way to get a single without all the crappy extra shit that comes on the CD single; also a great way to make mix CDs.
Anyway, I've been dreaming of these two suggestions for about three years now, but I don't have the wherewithall to implement either of them. But, nobody else has done it yet, either... at least not to my knowledge. I think it's a cool idea -- especially suggestion #1.
I live in Japan and have Yahoo!BB and their bundled phone service, BBPhone. The cost to call within Japan is 7.5 yen for 3 minutes. The cost to call the USA is 2.5 yen for 1 minute. The current exchange rate is about 108 yen/dollar, so these calls are incredibly cheap (about 2 cents/minute). However, the cost to other countries varies (usually much higher; it costs me about 25 yen/minute to call my friends in the UK). Anyway, this is much cheaper than what the new VoIP services will be charging, at least according to the Red Herring article. They state the cost will be 10.5 yen/minute, which is 4 times what I'm paying now. Why would people in Japan switch to VoIP when BBPhone is already so much cheaper than botht he new technology and the old NTT service charges?
BTW: the Slashdot post states that the cost is 1 cent/minute, but that doesn't match the article, which states that the cost is 10.5 yen/minute, which is about 9.5 cents/minute.
These projects and the directions look great, but there is something missing... None of these people have posted pictures of or described the quality of the output. As in, if you built one of these projectors, would you regret having laid out the $400, or would you be psyched and loving the high quality video image on your wall? I mean, I would be willing to make the investment for my own apartment, and would even bring one of these into my classroom (I am a teacher) to use with my classroom computer. But will the result be worth it?
Derek
This trojan alert is so overblown and clearly written by an MS-sponsored person (why else the irrational inclusion of Apache and the comparison to Code Red? There is no comparison!)... This feeling is confirmed when I visited the Qualys site and a pop-up advertisement for Microsoft Software greeted me.
Surely the advent of MacOSX is not enough to warrant the neglect of the PPC linux.
Maybe we should ask Linus or someone else who is officially working on the kernel before double-guessing as to why the patches aren't being incorporated.
Eric Flint's welcome page essay on the welcome page of the Baen Free Library is an excellent read. I have not read as well thought out an argument about the whole online "stealing" vs. "free-promotion" thing since it started. If only Metallica had read this article before allowing their managers to scare them into suing Napster at the behest of their arm-twisting label. Sigh. It does give some hope for the future...
Sellers post RFPs on the site and you submit a bid. Lowest bidder doesn't necessarily win - in fact, almost never does in my experience. What wins bids are clearly written repsonses that address the main points of the RFP and refer to either a working prototype of the project they want done, or a freelance web page with lots of detail.
Unfortunately, one of the biggest problems is that freelancers don't take the time to write decent bid proposals, don't spell check, etc.
By the same token, a lot of companies don't post clear RFPs -- they are often infuriatingly vague. What is worse is that, although eLance provides an online message board for freelancers to ask the companies questions about the project, the companies rarely check back to answer those questions. It is hard to put in an accurate bid if you don't know exactly what the client wants done.
Despite these issues, eLance is a site worth checking out. Of course, YMMV. :)
However, I would like to address one part of his post that he left open:
Given that Microsoft has made the information freely available, I can't imagine what this can gain for them.
It is clearly a challenge to the concept of OSS and the GPL. If they can prevail over the community by succeeding in keeping their kerberos "extension" closed source, they win. If they can simultaneously do a little media spinning that shows how lawless OSS advocates are, they win twice. By this I mean that "everyone" knows that Slashdot is a haven for rabid OSS zealots who do nothing but pirate software, trade illegal MP3s on Napster, and read that damn anti-corporatist Noam Chomsky all day long. If M$ can show that these types of people will stop at nothing, including violating license agreements, publishing trade secrets, and being generally abusive towards all things corporate, then they will help stem the tide of converts. It will damage the reputation of OSS and the Free Software movement. It will make conservative businessmen (who outnumber the liberals) baised against OSS in their organizations, etc.
We as a community need to be on guard against these tactics. One good court case taht goes against OSS on top of everything else that is happening regarding the RIAA, MPAA, DeCSS, MP3.com, Napster, etc. and we will have taht much more difficulty gaining broad acceptance. And M$ will have that much more sway over people's opinions.
Certainly they can try to slow the OSS movement down, and give it a bad name, but it can never be stopped unless precedents and laws get in the way of progress and evolution.
This type of broader outlook on information sharing and the benefits of having more open communication are so important to the future of every person on the planet as individuals. When all around us we see giant corporations and media conglomorates further controlling and dictating what the average person has access to - particularly in the news - there is an increasing need for information to be made freely available.
There was a front-page article in yesterday's Boston Globe about how Pfizer successfully hid evidence that Prozac caused a small but statistically significant number of otherwise happy people to become suicidal. This news is only now coming to light -- after the drug has been out for about a decade!
More freedom of information, more freedom of press, more protection from evil corporate greed.
http://www.fsck.com/projects/rt/
politicians get misguided notions from media, and are spurred into action by misguided parents (ie, fear of being voted out of office), and they set into motion these wrongheaded projects that somehow always manage to do the most harm to the very things they profess to protect. Jon Katz makes an important point that the very people who need to be protected in this system are the ones who most stand to be wrongly identified - the ostracised geeks.
A lot of what is happening is the direct result of parents not accepting responsibility for the raising of their children.
As an example:
In my Philosophy of Education class we have been reading about the differences between how people within the realm of Education and those outside of it use the language of education. For example, the term "potential", and the concepts of the "aims" of education vs. "means to ends" in education. What becomes apparent is that because people talk at cross-purposes, meaning is ascribed to things such as the SATs, MCAS, and other well-meaning but mis-guided efforts at State regulation of education initiatives (such as curriculum frameworks). Now Test Scores are used by media and politicians as a way to "reform" the education system in ways the don't make sense simply because they equate test scores with the future health of our economy. This has been proven to be an unfounded connection (all the negative TIMMS scores of the late eighties/early nineties were construed to show that our economy was in dire straits and that we woudl be crushed in ten years by our rivals because our schoolchildren were failing these exams -- this hasn't happened !! We have had the strongest economy in our history for the last 10 years!
Just a clarification, this year's Linuxbierwanderung is in England, not Germany as someone else posted earlier.
The beer hike is going to be based in the village of Coniston in the Lake District -- this is about halfway up the country on the Western border.
England is such a perfect place for this event. I hope to attend. We may even be able to catch some soccer -- The European Championships are this summer, and the national team may have a few qualifying matches at home while we are there...
Also, don't forget the tasty British beer!
See you there! (I hope)     :-)