1) This is not hysterical[1]. It might be hysterical if it weren't so deadly serious. Disney, for all of their happiness, is probably the number one master of propaganda; and always has been. Go watch the war films of the 1940s. Watch the anti-drug movies. See if you can find the anti-black movies of the earliest years. Disney is a manipulator.
2) This is utterly hysterical. It is based entirely on hysteria--mass, unthinking response to carefully calculated images, designed to drive crowds.
Do you think that by recognising and avoiding being part of the 'mindless throng' you're safe? Go ask Pete Seeger about the 'witch trials' of the 1950s.
"That's just "When guns will have been outlawed, only outlaws will own guns" paraphrased yet again."
You're right--it is, and I HATE that argument. And yet, still I made it...
There is one fundamental difference between using the argument for guns vs. encryption: Guns are designed for the sole purpose of killing. They are a destructive weapon. Encryption is a means of enforcing privacy, and privacy can be used as an aid to a weapon.
Encryption isn't fundamentally a weapon and shouldn't be treated like one. What your post suggests is that if I don't want to play nice and give all of my correspondence to the government, I'm going to be treated like a criminal. Yes this happens in totalitarian states. That doesn't mean that it's a good thing, or that we should be trying to emulate it. In fact, we should be holding on tightly to the fact that we _can_ safely dissent and maintain our privacy.
There's another problem that no one in this thread has mentioned yet: Corruption. If the government has the ability to break your email encryption, rest assurred that someone will, sometime. If you're having an affair, expect to see blackmail letters sooner or later. Or possibly you're a schoolteacher who likes to dress in drag on the weekends, in a different town. No harm, no laws broken, but the school boards probably don't want you teaching, and you might pay to have them not find out.
The two problems with a government escrow are that it won't work for it's intended purpose, and it will be abused by corrupt individuals. You can count on that.
Well, I don't really believe it. There's another company that would probably be biding against IBM if they tried to buy Sun, and they've got significantly deeper coffers as well. (No, it's not MS.)
Besides, it just doesn't sound 'right.' Gut feeling is that it's just a rumour, no more.
"Stop burying your heads in the sand and telling yourselves the world isn't any different now."
I take offense to this remark. The world isn't really any different now than it was a month ago, and my saying that isn't an indication of me "burying my head in the sand." The only real difference is that some of you (mostly in the US) have pulled your heads _out_ of the sand and started to realise what's going on in the world.
As for your idea of a government run anonymizer service, there's just one problem: It won't work! It's exactly like banning secure encryption in the US now--the genie is already out of the bottle, and you can't put it back in. Criminals will always find ways around security, surveillance, and general watchfulness. By forcing bcakdoors on systems, you're only affecting (persecuting, in fact) the law-abiding citizens who will use them.
I agree entirely that different needs require different OSes. Furthermore, I would say (have, in fact quite often) that having different OSes in the world is inherently a good thing. Diversity leads to stability, and real competition.
But that said, there's no reason that any given OS shouldn't be capable of doing everything. You should be able to play MP3s on your web server, if you want to install the software (although it's a fairly daft idea if you ask me!). Likewise, you should be able to run apache on your desktop box at home, for a few friends.
But then with THAT said, I wouldn't consider benchmarks of either Quake3 or Apache to be a valid comparison of FreeBSD vs. Win98. Which is probably your original point, now that I think about it.
Are you kidding? I'm a professional computer admin and serious geek, and I don't like switching between OSes any more than necessary. I don't like rebooting. I don't like any excess (i.e. unnecessary) work just to switch applications. You can imagine how much the average user is thrilled by the idea of needing multiple OSes just to browse the web, write memos, and play games.
Hey, it's that guy from Alberta again. (Colin, by the way)
Please send me a copy of your resume, and if it looks at all like what we're doing here (Unix, esp. Sun stuff) then I'll pass it onto my manager. We're definitely hoping to get two people in Ontario very soon.
Heh. OK, maybe Canada and the US are repressed (the US moreso, I'd say); but probably not as much as we believe we are. There's a difference between being repressed, and being juvenile. How many/. readers noticed the nipples in Enterprise? Approximately 99%, I'd guess.:-) How many feel that they can't carry on whatever sexual relations they want, assuming it involves consenting adults? Probably much less than 10%.
The media tells us that we're sexually "repressed," and uses that as an excuse to keep us sexually _juvenile_. How bad of a thing that is is another issue.
And as an aside, we may need a SysAdmin in Toronto or thereabouts. I'll keep you posted.
Well damn, that almost makes sense! And to think that I read it on slashdot street!
Sorry, bit of a flashback there...
There is a "moral majority," and they're in the
minority. Just ask Jesse Jackson who he represents.
There _are_ people who follow him (dare I say?) religiously, and believe that anything besides husband-on-top missionary position sex is immoral. I've met these people. I've gotten drunk with the offspring of these people (which is an interesting moral statement right there, but that's another story...)
But here's the crux of the matter. The US government (and any democratically elected government) is going to pander to the lowest common denominator, and that is the "moral majority." Regardless of how important it is to the general populace to 'save the children,' the people who are going to _vote_ one way or another because of issues like that are going to oppose anything remotely liberal, modern, or unrepressed. So the government pushes their ultra-conservative agenda, screwing over the people who don't CARE what the government says about what consenting adults do.
You're probably right. HOWEVER, a company (Sprint) can't enforce a clause in their contracts that contravenes the law, and there IS a law against shite like this.
We'll see how it all pans out.
Re:GPS and Cell phones?
on
GPS Meets PCS
·
· Score: 2
Requires? Au contraire--nothing will be required. Nothing is EVER so blatant.
They'll just make some really incredibly cool device that will require an implant to use. Whether or not you get it is up to you, but you'll be left out of the 'information age' if you don't.
Then let marketing get 'hold of it, and you'll get the implant voluntarily. That's how things work these days.
OK, now that I've got that out of the way (and probably pushed myself to 10th post as a result) here's a real comment.
Ads. Ads on the phone that *I* pay for. Quite simply, there won't be any. If any company tries to advertise themselves on my phone for which I pay per-minute charges, they'll find themselves on the ugly end of a lawsuit involving the "junk fax" law and some very bloodthirsty lawyers.
If you want to advertise to my phone, then someone else will be paying my damned monthly charges. Otherwise, beware.
As an aside, I've been around long enough to see that advertisers have pushed the boundaries far enough that the pushing back we see now is an inevitable result of what's been going on for the last two decades. The end result is that we're not going to stand for much in the way of blatant advertising in anything we buy, do, or watch. All that means is that the advertisers will become sneakier.
When you have a 900lb gorilla, threatening people is usually effective enough, and much easier.
Even a 90% chance isn't good enough for MS to go to court unless someone was _really_ a thorn in their side. Even a guarantee of winning doesn't negate the fairly substantial costs of actually going through the process.
MS doesn't want to go to court unless they have to, and they have a VERY big gorilla to discourage anyone from forcing their hand.
Exactly right. That's why I said, "At present."
I'm not looking forward to the next iteration of audio media, because they'll make sure to license it more tightly every time.
"Hi, my name is Bill, and this is my 900lb gorilla. Although I really don't know what he's going to do, if you do something I don't like, I'll try to make him stomp on you. Do you want to take that chance?"
In other words, unless you are guaranteed to win the case, you're not likely to take MS to court over their license agreement. At that point, the license agreement becomes a de facto law.
However, at present you can legally resell music that you legitimately buy, and you definitely can make a perfect copy of an audio CD.
The only think that makes software 'special' is the license agreement saying, "You don't own this item. You have the right to use the contents of it according to our restrictions, and exactly nothing else."
Well, the original (REAL!) series had a pretty cool pilot way back when.
This show had cheesy foreshadowing of stuff we all naturally know (phase pistols, that transporter device, etc.), plot holes you could drive a truck through, and some big historical inaccuracies.
But you know what? It was pretty damned good. Pilots always suck, and this one sucked less than most. It wasn't preachy, it wasn't deadly serious, and it has some great potential for ongoing subplots. (just why _do_ the humans and klingons become enemies?)
It's got more promise than any other new show going, and more than any other new Trek had. Let's give it some time to find its legs.
If it's really the same code, then (a) extract a large payment from them, or (b) nail 'em to the fucking wall and watch 'em bleed.
Given that there are no honest companies in the world, all you have to do is convince them that you WILL carry out (b) to possibly accomplish (a). Just remember that there's no such thing as innocent.
Hah! That's the first thing that's made me smile today (with the possible exception of the image of a certain contractor's head getting run over by a truck).
Sorry, I wasn't clear. SunFire 6800's. Loads up to six system boards with 4 processors and 1GB/proc. each, at present. (plus four I/O boards)
Slashdot Mirror
1) This is not hysterical[1]. It might be hysterical if it weren't so deadly serious. Disney, for all of their happiness, is probably the number one master of propaganda; and always has been. Go watch the war films of the 1940s. Watch the anti-drug movies. See if you can find the anti-black movies of the earliest years. Disney is a manipulator.
...in a funny sense, that is
2) This is utterly hysterical. It is based entirely on hysteria--mass, unthinking response to carefully calculated images, designed to drive crowds.
Do you think that by recognising and avoiding being part of the 'mindless throng' you're safe? Go ask Pete Seeger about the 'witch trials' of the 1950s.
[1]
"That's just "When guns will have been outlawed, only outlaws will own guns" paraphrased yet again."
You're right--it is, and I HATE that argument. And yet, still I made it...
There is one fundamental difference between using the argument for guns vs. encryption: Guns are designed for the sole purpose of killing. They are a destructive weapon. Encryption is a means of enforcing privacy, and privacy can be used as an aid to a weapon.
Encryption isn't fundamentally a weapon and shouldn't be treated like one. What your post suggests is that if I don't want to play nice and give all of my correspondence to the government, I'm going to be treated like a criminal. Yes this happens in totalitarian states. That doesn't mean that it's a good thing, or that we should be trying to emulate it. In fact, we should be holding on tightly to the fact that we _can_ safely dissent and maintain our privacy.
There's another problem that no one in this thread has mentioned yet: Corruption. If the government has the ability to break your email encryption, rest assurred that someone will, sometime. If you're having an affair, expect to see blackmail letters sooner or later. Or possibly you're a schoolteacher who likes to dress in drag on the weekends, in a different town. No harm, no laws broken, but the school boards probably don't want you teaching, and you might pay to have them not find out.
The two problems with a government escrow are that it won't work for it's intended purpose, and it will be abused by corrupt individuals. You can count on that.
"At the time where SMP for 2 proc in NT was considered as a Technical Mastercraft."
You mean it isn't now???
(Now that's a JOKE, son!)
Well, I don't really believe it. There's another company that would probably be biding against IBM if they tried to buy Sun, and they've got significantly deeper coffers as well. (No, it's not MS.)
Besides, it just doesn't sound 'right.' Gut feeling is that it's just a rumour, no more.
"Stop burying your heads in the sand and telling yourselves the world isn't any different now."
I take offense to this remark. The world isn't really any different now than it was a month ago, and my saying that isn't an indication of me "burying my head in the sand." The only real difference is that some of you (mostly in the US) have pulled your heads _out_ of the sand and started to realise what's going on in the world.
As for your idea of a government run anonymizer service, there's just one problem: It won't work! It's exactly like banning secure encryption in the US now--the genie is already out of the bottle, and you can't put it back in. Criminals will always find ways around security, surveillance, and general watchfulness. By forcing bcakdoors on systems, you're only affecting (persecuting, in fact) the law-abiding citizens who will use them.
Ah well, that's a different issue.
I agree entirely that different needs require different OSes. Furthermore, I would say (have, in fact quite often) that having different OSes in the world is inherently a good thing. Diversity leads to stability, and real competition.
But that said, there's no reason that any given OS shouldn't be capable of doing everything. You should be able to play MP3s on your web server, if you want to install the software (although it's a fairly daft idea if you ask me!). Likewise, you should be able to run apache on your desktop box at home, for a few friends.
But then with THAT said, I wouldn't consider benchmarks of either Quake3 or Apache to be a valid comparison of FreeBSD vs. Win98. Which is probably your original point, now that I think about it.
I'll shut up now.
Generally agreed. However, one point:
"Why must we have one OS that does everything?"
Are you kidding? I'm a professional computer admin and serious geek, and I don't like switching between OSes any more than necessary. I don't like rebooting. I don't like any excess (i.e. unnecessary) work just to switch applications. You can imagine how much the average user is thrilled by the idea of needing multiple OSes just to browse the web, write memos, and play games.
Son of a...
Sorry, forgot the email address. Send it to:
colin@west.gecems.com
Hey, it's that guy from Alberta again. (Colin, by the way)
Please send me a copy of your resume, and if it looks at all like what we're doing here (Unix, esp. Sun stuff) then I'll pass it onto my manager. We're definitely hoping to get two people in Ontario very soon.
I noticed in the article that the guy had 'at least 63' trademark infringement lawsuits filed against him last year, 53 of which he lost.
:->
Maybe if he's lucky Canter & Siegel will represent him.
Heh. OK, maybe Canada and the US are repressed (the US moreso, I'd say); but probably not as much as we believe we are. There's a difference between being repressed, and being juvenile. How many /. readers noticed the nipples in Enterprise? Approximately 99%, I'd guess. :-) How many feel that they can't carry on whatever sexual relations they want, assuming it involves consenting adults? Probably much less than 10%.
The media tells us that we're sexually "repressed," and uses that as an excuse to keep us sexually _juvenile_. How bad of a thing that is is another issue.
And as an aside, we may need a SysAdmin in Toronto or thereabouts. I'll keep you posted.
Well damn, that almost makes sense! And to think that I read it on slashdot street!
Sorry, bit of a flashback there...
There is a "moral majority," and they're in the
minority. Just ask Jesse Jackson who he represents.
There _are_ people who follow him (dare I say?) religiously, and believe that anything besides husband-on-top missionary position sex is immoral. I've met these people. I've gotten drunk with the offspring of these people (which is an interesting moral statement right there, but that's another story...)
But here's the crux of the matter. The US government (and any democratically elected government) is going to pander to the lowest common denominator, and that is the "moral majority." Regardless of how important it is to the general populace to 'save the children,' the people who are going to _vote_ one way or another because of issues like that are going to oppose anything remotely liberal, modern, or unrepressed. So the government pushes their ultra-conservative agenda, screwing over the people who don't CARE what the government says about what consenting adults do.
You're probably right. HOWEVER, a company (Sprint) can't enforce a clause in their contracts that contravenes the law, and there IS a law against shite like this.
We'll see how it all pans out.
Requires? Au contraire--nothing will be required. Nothing is EVER so blatant.
They'll just make some really incredibly cool device that will require an implant to use. Whether or not you get it is up to you, but you'll be left out of the 'information age' if you don't.
Then let marketing get 'hold of it, and you'll get the implant voluntarily. That's how things work these days.
"So, um...like...second post d00dz!!!"
OK, now that I've got that out of the way (and probably pushed myself to 10th post as a result) here's a real comment.
Ads. Ads on the phone that *I* pay for. Quite simply, there won't be any. If any company tries to advertise themselves on my phone for which I pay per-minute charges, they'll find themselves on the ugly end of a lawsuit involving the "junk fax" law and some very bloodthirsty lawyers.
If you want to advertise to my phone, then someone else will be paying my damned monthly charges. Otherwise, beware.
As an aside, I've been around long enough to see that advertisers have pushed the boundaries far enough that the pushing back we see now is an inevitable result of what's been going on for the last two decades. The end result is that we're not going to stand for much in the way of blatant advertising in anything we buy, do, or watch. All that means is that the advertisers will become sneakier.
"a hell hole full of inbreds who havent left this twon for 6 generations."
Apparently. Your post proves it quite eloquently.
Read my original point.
When you have a 900lb gorilla, threatening people is usually effective enough, and much easier.
Even a 90% chance isn't good enough for MS to go to court unless someone was _really_ a thorn in their side. Even a guarantee of winning doesn't negate the fairly substantial costs of actually going through the process.
MS doesn't want to go to court unless they have to, and they have a VERY big gorilla to discourage anyone from forcing their hand.
Exactly right. That's why I said, "At present."
I'm not looking forward to the next iteration of audio media, because they'll make sure to license it more tightly every time.
"Hi, my name is Bill, and this is my 900lb gorilla. Although I really don't know what he's going to do, if you do something I don't like, I'll try to make him stomp on you. Do you want to take that chance?"
In other words, unless you are guaranteed to win the case, you're not likely to take MS to court over their license agreement. At that point, the license agreement becomes a de facto law.
However, at present you can legally resell music that you legitimately buy, and you definitely can make a perfect copy of an audio CD.
The only think that makes software 'special' is the license agreement saying, "You don't own this item. You have the right to use the contents of it according to our restrictions, and exactly nothing else."
That's the key--not the copyability of it.
Well, the original (REAL!) series had a pretty cool pilot way back when.
This show had cheesy foreshadowing of stuff we all naturally know (phase pistols, that transporter device, etc.), plot holes you could drive a truck through, and some big historical inaccuracies.
But you know what? It was pretty damned good. Pilots always suck, and this one sucked less than most. It wasn't preachy, it wasn't deadly serious, and it has some great potential for ongoing subplots. (just why _do_ the humans and klingons become enemies?)
It's got more promise than any other new show going, and more than any other new Trek had. Let's give it some time to find its legs.
Oh, no doubt about that. However, the original poster implied that they couldn't get it in Florida at all. Just a matter of not reading.
I don't suppose you could have gone so far as to read the very next sentence:
"The Internet carries our popular Real Audio broadcast to more than 37 countries."
No, of course not. TOo much work, apparently.
If it's really the same code, then (a) extract a large payment from them, or (b) nail 'em to the fucking wall and watch 'em bleed.
Given that there are no honest companies in the world, all you have to do is convince them that you WILL carry out (b) to possibly accomplish (a). Just remember that there's no such thing as innocent.
Hah! That's the first thing that's made me smile today (with the possible exception of the image of a certain contractor's head getting run over by a truck).
Sorry, I wasn't clear. SunFire 6800's. Loads up to six system boards with 4 processors and 1GB/proc. each, at present. (plus four I/O boards)