OK, I'm a security and privacy 'kinda guy' - have been ever since I read The Cuckoo's Egg, before my career ever got me into computers.
I don't like the government snoops, and I don't like Facebook's random security policy changes. HOWEVER, we've been saying this for decades:
If it's on the internet, it's visible. If it's on a computer, it's accessible.
The various governments are almost certainly monitoring much of the internet traffic, and have been doing so for quite a while. It still amazes me that most people don't know about Echelon, which has been going on since the 1960s, and growing all the time.
Don't want people to find out about stuff? DON'T POST IT ON FREAKING FACEBOOK!!! Don't post it _anywhere_. Don't put it on a computer. (and if you're truly paranoid, don't write it down).
Cryptography (and steganography) are the intermediate answers here, but they have one weakness: We don't know what we don't know. Safer to keep your secrets secret.
What comes around goes around. Before Apple was the 'small elite' of computers, it was the 900-lb gorilla against the world of Commodore, Atari, and the rest.
The important take-home lesson here is that regardless of the platform, monocultures don't last. Unfortunately, the lesson seems to be lost on the decision-makers. (over and over and over and over...)
This is just damned neat. Destroy a black hole! Observe a singularity! Watch the cosmos bend into itself! Or...?
The best science is the stuff that ends in a big question mark. e.e. cummings nailed it on the head: "always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question."
I got that from his actions, which have been consistent and coherent (and almost exactly at odds to what he claims).
Facebook makes money. How does facebook make money? By selling information to advertisers. By encouraging people to open up about their likes, dislikes, skills, and so forth--to advertisers. By getting people to play games which have 'purchased rewards', which can be bought with cash or by accepting...more advertising (Zynga, I'm looking at you!) Worse, facebook keeps changing what information is private, giving advertisers more access to customers who don't want to give it away.
Privacy is "...the vector around which Facebook operates." So said Zuckerberg a few years ago. Then a few months ago, he said that if he were to create Facebook again today, user information would by default be public. That was the same speech in which he declared "the age of privacy is over."
Zuckerberg is clearly doing what he does in order to change the world. I can't imagine how that would even be a question.
However, his image of the future seems a bit dystopian in my mind. Bring the consumers together, lead the dumb ones to the slaughter, and then force-herd the stubborn ones down the same path. Everything is marketing, everything is sales. Social interaction cannot exist, if not for the sake of making a profit. "There is no privacy" - unless you're one of the powerful elite.
By all appearances, he's trying to increase the class spread, and turn the entire world into marketing. O brave new world, that has such people in't!
Typical of most large organizations, our systems get an OS installed through a text console and a network boot.
If we need to have an actual graphical interface to the LOM, things are going to get harder to install. Current x86 BIOSes suck for this (compared to what Sparc OBP has done for twenty #$*& YEARS!!!)
All I want is something to type on, which allows a WAN-boot OS install. Will this make it easier or harder?
My wife and I are raising our son in a 900sq-ft home, have a single car, and one TV. We mostly walk, bus, or cycle to work. My parents have been laughing at us choosing such a backwards lifestyle for the last decade.
I can't imagine that someone could survive to adulthood being this stupid. It seems more likely that as soon as she was hit, she started thinking, "how can I make a buck on this?" That's not stupid, as much as it is evil. Following the instructions at all would be stupid.
My question is whether she read the instructions and thought, "I've got a decent chance at getting rich in a lawsuit here. I think I'll forego common sense and pedantically follow the path they gave me." Now that would be REALLY evil.
Sorry, but shipping crap that may or may not get fixed later on is how the entire industry works. Enterprises know to NEVER buy a *.0 release of anything, because it's guaranteed to suck.
The biggest problem, in my mind, was creating a business model that required constant upgrades. No longer is it possible to improve or develop a product, since as a developer, you have to replace it completely in three years.
Lazy as hell? I happily plead guilty to that charge. I'm as lazy as I can be, most of the time - it leads to efficiency and time to do things I enjoy.
You're missing a point here - we SHOULD learn things. We SHOULD push ourselves, and stretch as much as we can. However, I'm not interested in spending my time learning an overly-difficult way of doing a fairly simple task. Simple tasks should be made simple. There are enough complicated things out there already without needlessly making new ones.
Ah yes, the good ol' days. I'm still living there.:-)
The list of groups I actually read has dwindled down to less than a dozen, and there are only a few which have much active discussion. (rec.bicycles.tech is a huge one, curiously.) As you say, usenet doesn't generate revenue, because it doesn't get people reading ads. Also, a full usenet feed is expensive to maintain - when we (an ISP) shut down our usenet servers (we still offer the service, outsourced), we cleared up three or four racks of gear. That's a lot of equipment, a lot of maintenance, a lot of power, and a lot of cooling; not to mention the real estate itself. Time was, usenet service was considered a mandatory part of being an ISP, along with email and a dial-up option. However, when users no longer demand a non-profitable service, no ISP is going to spend money to offer that service. Hardly anyone cares about usenet anymore, and nobody is going to cancel their account with an ISP because they don't offer it.
Facebook is the best replacement we have for usenet. God have mercy on us.
If you think that forums are way better than usenet, then you misunderstand usenet.
1) Usenet is software-agnostic--there are dozens of news readers encompassing every OS available. Web forums require a web browser. 2) Usenet is centralized. ALL groups come through one interface (of your choosing). Forums have different interfaces with different rules, and you have to register for each one individually. 3) Usenet is DE-centralized. Data is distributed worldwide, with no central authority or repository. Forums are owned and operated by a person or group who can block people, drive their own agenda, or shut down the service with no backup. A forum can also crash and burn. 4) Usenet _can_ be moderated. Moderated groups have been around since 1984 (!).
Forums are newer. Usenet is better. Sadly, newer almost always wins over better--especially when people don't understand the options.
I've looked briefly at it, and it seems to be a 'throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks' mess. Totally incoherent, not to mention centrally-controlled by a corporation.
I know the article is poorly written, but you could at least read it.
"...adding that the project had made open-use software available online to enable people to decipher data stored in defunct formats."
Isn't that what you're asking for?
Furthermore, what about the hardware? The article didn't say clearly, but it sounds like they've included hardware, so I would expect to see gear to read 9-track, Exabyte, paper tape, punchcard, QIC, floppy (about a dozen formats), WORM, Zip, Diablo, and more. (All of which - except for punchcard - I've used.)
I like the idea, but it's a geek idea - not an average user idea.
As an example of what I mean, I went to the diaspora website as an average user, expecting an alternative to facebook. Instead of seeing "register here and create your profile", I saw several paragraphs explaining the distributed paradigm, how your local profile for different web-applications is stored elsewhere (on your computer or in 'the cloud'), and so forth.
Guess what? People don't want to read. People don't want to have to figure out a new paradigm that involves personal involvement. What people want is facebook, but with a better interface and security policy. (and with Zuckerberg nowhere to be seen)
How many people use citizendium over wikipedia? How many people muck with bittorrent or even grooveshark, vs. buying songs on iTunes? How many auction sites have usurped eBay, after they changed their pricing model, paypal affiliation, etc.? People just don't switch to something better-but-different, unless it's (a) familiar looking, and/or (b) totally ground-breakingly new *for them* (i.e. the background and model don't matter).
We have a better variation on this system in much of Western Canada (and likely the rest of the country). First of all, there are no more paper tickets to put on the dash. When you pay, you enter your license plate number and the zone you parked in, and that plate is then entered into the system with the appropriate amount of time. Secondly, you don't _have_ to use the kiosk--you can phone in your payment, as you're walking away from your car. On average, there are two kiosks per block on each side of the street, so you don't have to go (much) out of your way. Once you've paid, you don't have to go back to your car, and you no longer have to carry change, since you can pay with debit or credit cards. Also, you can pay at _any_ kiosk in the city, not just the one in your parking zone. Thus, if you've parked half a block past the kiosk, you can just keep walking to wherever you're going and pay at the next one you pass. (there's a bit of a grace period, probably at least ten minutes, although I'm not sure.)
It's a very good system, and much more scaleable than buying thousands upon thousands of mechanical meters that have to be emptied out every few hours. The only drawback is that the keypad and display on the kiosks we have are total crap.
Agree completely. However, the industry is demanding CompSci degrees for work as a tradesman (programmer), and the Universities work towards that goal.
Eventually we may learn to put programming into a two or three year diploma at a college/trade school, and use comp sci degrees for development of the field. This model works in most other fields, but the problem is that computing is so young that until about 20 years ago, 'mere programming' _was_ developing the field.
"If piracy dropped 30% in one year, Jesus and Muhammad would come back to life and smoke a peace pipe thus ending pain and suffering all over the world."
And of course, this would be OK because cancer is caused by software piracy. Of course, those pesky pirates keep promoting the lie that it has to do with smoking.
Slashdot Mirror
Also from the article:
"...on the website Game of Life News."
Gee, do you think maybe the context was implicitly limited to patterns within the Game of Life?
Why does Intel want to network your clothes dryer?
1) Money
2) Control
That's what drives companies. It's not very complicated.
OK, I'm a security and privacy 'kinda guy' - have been ever since I read The Cuckoo's Egg, before my career ever got me into computers.
I don't like the government snoops, and I don't like Facebook's random security policy changes. HOWEVER, we've been saying this for decades:
If it's on the internet, it's visible.
If it's on a computer, it's accessible.
The various governments are almost certainly monitoring much of the internet traffic, and have been doing so for quite a while. It still amazes me that most people don't know about Echelon, which has been going on since the 1960s, and growing all the time.
Don't want people to find out about stuff? DON'T POST IT ON FREAKING FACEBOOK!!! Don't post it _anywhere_. Don't put it on a computer. (and if you're truly paranoid, don't write it down).
Cryptography (and steganography) are the intermediate answers here, but they have one weakness: We don't know what we don't know. Safer to keep your secrets secret.
Unfortunately, that describes the education system in most countries far too well.
What comes around goes around. Before Apple was the 'small elite' of computers, it was the 900-lb gorilla against the world of Commodore, Atari, and the rest.
The important take-home lesson here is that regardless of the platform, monocultures don't last. Unfortunately, the lesson seems to be lost on the decision-makers. (over and over and over and over...)
This is just damned neat. Destroy a black hole! Observe a singularity! Watch the cosmos bend into itself! Or...?
The best science is the stuff that ends in a big question mark. e.e. cummings nailed it on the head: "always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question."
I got that from his actions, which have been consistent and coherent (and almost exactly at odds to what he claims).
Facebook makes money. How does facebook make money? By selling information to advertisers. By encouraging people to open up about their likes, dislikes, skills, and so forth--to advertisers. By getting people to play games which have 'purchased rewards', which can be bought with cash or by accepting...more advertising (Zynga, I'm looking at you!) Worse, facebook keeps changing what information is private, giving advertisers more access to customers who don't want to give it away.
Privacy is "...the vector around which Facebook operates." So said Zuckerberg a few years ago. Then a few months ago, he said that if he were to create Facebook again today, user information would by default be public. That was the same speech in which he declared "the age of privacy is over."
Yeah, but the original plan was 'with infinite power comes Felicia Day.' Unfortunately, that didn't work out so well. Pity.
Zuckerberg is clearly doing what he does in order to change the world. I can't imagine how that would even be a question.
However, his image of the future seems a bit dystopian in my mind. Bring the consumers together, lead the dumb ones to the slaughter, and then force-herd the stubborn ones down the same path. Everything is marketing, everything is sales. Social interaction cannot exist, if not for the sake of making a profit. "There is no privacy" - unless you're one of the powerful elite.
By all appearances, he's trying to increase the class spread, and turn the entire world into marketing. O brave new world, that has such people in't!
How about Dr. Horrible? Same story--give me infinite power, and I'll make things better.
Typical of most large organizations, our systems get an OS installed through a text console and a network boot.
If we need to have an actual graphical interface to the LOM, things are going to get harder to install. Current x86 BIOSes suck for this (compared to what Sparc OBP has done for twenty #$*& YEARS!!!)
All I want is something to type on, which allows a WAN-boot OS install. Will this make it easier or harder?
Heh.
My wife and I are raising our son in a 900sq-ft home, have a single car, and one TV. We mostly walk, bus, or cycle to work. My parents have been laughing at us choosing such a backwards lifestyle for the last decade.
We are the future!!!
...idle. Why isn't this posted there?
I can't imagine that someone could survive to adulthood being this stupid. It seems more likely that as soon as she was hit, she started thinking, "how can I make a buck on this?" That's not stupid, as much as it is evil. Following the instructions at all would be stupid.
My question is whether she read the instructions and thought, "I've got a decent chance at getting rich in a lawsuit here. I think I'll forego common sense and pedantically follow the path they gave me." Now that would be REALLY evil.
Sorry, but shipping crap that may or may not get fixed later on is how the entire industry works. Enterprises know to NEVER buy a *.0 release of anything, because it's guaranteed to suck.
The biggest problem, in my mind, was creating a business model that required constant upgrades. No longer is it possible to improve or develop a product, since as a developer, you have to replace it completely in three years.
Lazy as hell? I happily plead guilty to that charge. I'm as lazy as I can be, most of the time - it leads to efficiency and time to do things I enjoy.
You're missing a point here - we SHOULD learn things. We SHOULD push ourselves, and stretch as much as we can. However, I'm not interested in spending my time learning an overly-difficult way of doing a fairly simple task. Simple tasks should be made simple. There are enough complicated things out there already without needlessly making new ones.
Ah yes, the good ol' days. I'm still living there. :-)
The list of groups I actually read has dwindled down to less than a dozen, and there are only a few which have much active discussion. (rec.bicycles.tech is a huge one, curiously.) As you say, usenet doesn't generate revenue, because it doesn't get people reading ads. Also, a full usenet feed is expensive to maintain - when we (an ISP) shut down our usenet servers (we still offer the service, outsourced), we cleared up three or four racks of gear. That's a lot of equipment, a lot of maintenance, a lot of power, and a lot of cooling; not to mention the real estate itself. Time was, usenet service was considered a mandatory part of being an ISP, along with email and a dial-up option. However, when users no longer demand a non-profitable service, no ISP is going to spend money to offer that service. Hardly anyone cares about usenet anymore, and nobody is going to cancel their account with an ISP because they don't offer it.
Facebook is the best replacement we have for usenet. God have mercy on us.
If you think that forums are way better than usenet, then you misunderstand usenet.
1) Usenet is software-agnostic--there are dozens of news readers encompassing every OS available. Web forums require a web browser.
2) Usenet is centralized. ALL groups come through one interface (of your choosing). Forums have different interfaces with different rules, and you have to register for each one individually.
3) Usenet is DE-centralized. Data is distributed worldwide, with no central authority or repository. Forums are owned and operated by a person or group who can block people, drive their own agenda, or shut down the service with no backup. A forum can also crash and burn.
4) Usenet _can_ be moderated. Moderated groups have been around since 1984 (!).
Forums are newer. Usenet is better. Sadly, newer almost always wins over better--especially when people don't understand the options.
I've looked briefly at it, and it seems to be a 'throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks' mess. Totally incoherent, not to mention centrally-controlled by a corporation.
We outsourced our NNTP service recently, and shut down our in-house servers. We had about 60TB of data on them.
Not quite download-sized, yet.
I know the article is poorly written, but you could at least read it.
"...adding that the project had made open-use software available online to enable people to decipher data stored in defunct formats."
Isn't that what you're asking for?
Furthermore, what about the hardware? The article didn't say clearly, but it sounds like they've included hardware, so I would expect to see gear to read 9-track, Exabyte, paper tape, punchcard, QIC, floppy (about a dozen formats), WORM, Zip, Diablo, and more. (All of which - except for punchcard - I've used.)
I like the idea, but it's a geek idea - not an average user idea.
As an example of what I mean, I went to the diaspora website as an average user, expecting an alternative to facebook. Instead of seeing "register here and create your profile", I saw several paragraphs explaining the distributed paradigm, how your local profile for different web-applications is stored elsewhere (on your computer or in 'the cloud'), and so forth.
Guess what? People don't want to read. People don't want to have to figure out a new paradigm that involves personal involvement. What people want is facebook, but with a better interface and security policy. (and with Zuckerberg nowhere to be seen)
How many people use citizendium over wikipedia? How many people muck with bittorrent or even grooveshark, vs. buying songs on iTunes? How many auction sites have usurped eBay, after they changed their pricing model, paypal affiliation, etc.? People just don't switch to something better-but-different, unless it's (a) familiar looking, and/or (b) totally ground-breakingly new *for them* (i.e. the background and model don't matter).
We have a better variation on this system in much of Western Canada (and likely the rest of the country). First of all, there are no more paper tickets to put on the dash. When you pay, you enter your license plate number and the zone you parked in, and that plate is then entered into the system with the appropriate amount of time. Secondly, you don't _have_ to use the kiosk--you can phone in your payment, as you're walking away from your car. On average, there are two kiosks per block on each side of the street, so you don't have to go (much) out of your way. Once you've paid, you don't have to go back to your car, and you no longer have to carry change, since you can pay with debit or credit cards. Also, you can pay at _any_ kiosk in the city, not just the one in your parking zone. Thus, if you've parked half a block past the kiosk, you can just keep walking to wherever you're going and pay at the next one you pass. (there's a bit of a grace period, probably at least ten minutes, although I'm not sure.)
It's a very good system, and much more scaleable than buying thousands upon thousands of mechanical meters that have to be emptied out every few hours. The only drawback is that the keypad and display on the kiosks we have are total crap.
Agree completely. However, the industry is demanding CompSci degrees for work as a tradesman (programmer), and the Universities work towards that goal.
Eventually we may learn to put programming into a two or three year diploma at a college/trade school, and use comp sci degrees for development of the field. This model works in most other fields, but the problem is that computing is so young that until about 20 years ago, 'mere programming' _was_ developing the field.
"If piracy dropped 30% in one year, Jesus and Muhammad would come back to life and smoke a peace pipe thus ending pain and suffering all over the world."
And of course, this would be OK because cancer is caused by software piracy. Of course, those pesky pirates keep promoting the lie that it has to do with smoking.