not linking per se, but attributes of linking
on
You Can't Link Here
·
· Score: 2
There are a couple of common mistakes in other replies to this thread:
1) the fact that you allow your website to exist is an implied license to allow for linking to your website, so linking _per se_ is not an issue, but the issue is the context of the link and whether it is misleading or inappropriate in some way (such as the link suggesting a false endorsement, or an untrue fact that is libelious, etc). It's entirely fair to allow a website to place _some_ _reasonable_ restrictions on how other websites can link to it, and it's entirely fair and appropriate to apply existing issues of fair dealing, passing off, law of confidentiality, law of tort, etc. The issue is that there finer point sof how these laws / principles allow is not yet fleshed out - it's a bit pointless to thow up very abstract statements about "deep linking = yes / no", as the answer will be either depending upon various other attributes and circumstance.
2) using technical issues (e.g. HTTP_REFER blocking) to prevent inbound deep / inappropriate links is not entirely all of the issue, part of the issue is that there still exists an inappropriate link on another website (e.g. a link to other_host/internal/junk/etc potentially reveals misleading information "internal/junk/etc" and disrupts legitimate user activity); sure I redirect those inappropriate links, but it potentially damages the experience for my users, and leads to a loss of goodwill for my business/website, potentially because users are mislead into thinking that my website is inappropriately configured, or find it a nuisance, or something else). again, I would say that the rule is not hard and fast either way and the law requires depending of some general principles / doctrines, and an understandign that within those, there is scope for variation depending upon particular circumstances of the case in question.
It is a defence, but it is one provided by statute. There's no obligation for content creator to make it easy or possible, but I would suggest that that any considerably widely implemented DRM technology that didn't allow for fair use (which, as suggested, may not be made easy) would come under scrutiny.
EU copyright is 'harmonised' at 70 years in all EU countries - it is now relatively consistent. The goal of the EU has been to leave IP to individual countries, but to gradually harmonise and integrate. I don't know where you get the 95 year figure from ? 95 years may be a US figure, but it has no relevance in the EU. The maximum protection of any copyright in the EU is 70 years beyond death of creator.
This was harmonised across the EEA, for instance, the UK previously gave 50 years protection, but harmonised with the protection of the CDPA 1988 at 70 years. This caused issues (and a couple of legal cases) with works that had expired, but were now covered again.
Articles 28-30 of the EU treaty are concerned with free movement of goods, and of course this has come into conflict with the differing levels of protection afforded in different countries - which has been one of the reasons why harmonisation is necessary.
The EU has established 'the exhaustion of rights principle' which means that once an IP is placed onto the market, it is generally not possible to restrict its further movement within the community. You can, however, restrict its importation into the EU.
These are the concerns that EFF and others have over the implementation of DRM technologies : that they must include provisions for fair use / expiration / etc. In fact, I think that any DRM technology that doesn't include provision for fair use could get a manufacturer in hot water if a case was pursued in the courts (e.g. as class action, or by lobby group such as EFF). There is a statutory right to fair use : DRM technologies can't just override it.
copyrights survive beyond RIP of the author to allow benefits to transfer to children / offspring. 50-70 years beyond death is quite a reasonable amount of time - one extra generation is able to benefit, allowing author to know that benefits of their work go to a worthy cause: their children, not a greedy corporation (or the public domain).
try Pair Networks. i've had good experiences, good value, good service. their operation is very diligent, and very much engineering based. they offer sign up and transfer bonuses, an associated NIC, variety of hosting plans from simple FTP only to high volume dedicated (prices are very competitive for the level/quality of service offered). you only need to look around their site at the support, notices, and various other parts of the operation to get a feel for their approach - and there is a distinct community feel.
You need to talk to your lawyers about legal jurisdiction. These jurisdictional arguments are well established in legal community (I am currently a law student).
The "telling lies" and "information was received" are not the issue, the issue is "theft/break into computer" which clearly happened in the US. Although the act was initiated elsewhere, it clearly happened in the US (the server is in the US - how much more clear can that be?).
Your point about treason has mixed relevance. Firstly treason only applies to citizens of a country, not to non-citizens, and it relates to state secrets and issues that affect the security/wellbeing of a country, not mere criticism (although the line can be fuzzy, most sensible people know where it is). Although in international law under the "doctrine of effects", some activity outside of a country that has impact upon the country can be taken as affecting law within that country (so, for example, an external person inciting hatred within a country causing significant legal problems could be considered to have violated said countries laws -- whether or not extradition will help, though...).
I agree with you about general US foreign policy. It is typically one-sided.
What I meant was that the ICC or a World Court is not directly relevant in this case: what is relevant are international treaties and agreements on extradiction and recognition of crimes - irrespective of anything to do with the ICC or a World Court.
You said: ''yet tries to extend US jurisdiction outside its borders. But this is ridiculous. If the actions took place in the EU, on what basis could there be extradition to the US?''
Incorrect: The actions did not take place in the EU - the act of intrusion occurred in the US, because the physical machines are located in the US. He was a legal entity ''reaching into'' the US and acting within the US.
The crime is "intrusion into computer". Where is the computer: US. He is located outside of the US, but the act occurred in the US.
You don't know what you're talking about. The International Criminal Court is only concerned with "mass crimes" against humanity, especially this committed by by states.
1. The jurisdiction of the Court shall be limited to the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole. The Court has jurisdiction in accordance with this Statute with respect to the following crimes:
(a) The crime of genocide;
(b) Crimes against humanity;
(c) War crimes;
(d) The crime of aggression.
I think HP is wrong with its DMCA style threats, because they are not appropriate. However, I can sympathise with HP and understand why they may have "lashed out". I think the hacker in question was wrong to irresponsibly post the exploit for script kiddies to start playing with fire. For all the debate about various sorts of disclosure processes, it's quite clear that this approach potentially has a high impact upon any deployed systems and gives no time for either the vendors or the administrators to take action. This is just not a responsible real-world approach to dealing with security issues.
For portable CORBA and threading support, try omniORB (http://www.uk.research.att.com/omniORB/omniORB.ht ml). We use it for seamless portability between NT4.0 & Solaris components and its very effective.
Irrespective of where fault lies, anyone not familiar with Australia should realise that "Telstra Bashing" is virtually a national sport, and typically involves a lack of objectivity. This usually clouds any issue involving the company.
>Things will get more consistent as Cingular and >AT&T migrate to GSM, but until there are >business reasons to support SMS interconnect, >the networks in the US will be slow to move.
The first reason is easy: "revenue". SMS messaging has proven to be one of the highest growth features of GSM services in Europe. Interconnect between carriers only further helped this.
The second reason is harder (at least, for the United States): conformity to technical standards regarding interoperability. What if you couldn't call a west coast RBOC number from an east coast RBOC ? Yet, apparently you can't send an SMS from one network to another.
We had our gun rights restricted because a lot of us wanted it to be that way. Unlike the United States, we see little need to "bear arms" as individuals - and the history of our country is one of reasonable peace and stability.
The "standard" contractor rate in the UK is 40GBP/hr as an embedded software engineer. I do know people receiving +/- 10GBP around that, and have been told that it may be possible to go higher if you are really good. If you work "in the city" for a financial house, you can expect greater remuneration - the figure I have quoted is for engineering product development work.
Having said that. I have worked in an engineering consultancy where our chargout rate started at 80GBP/hr, rising to 118GBP/hr and more. We did not receive this as employees, because our billability was not 100% - and for larger jobs we would apply a discount rate - so rates would depend upon the nature of the work and the contract agreed upon.
Cost of living in the UK is high. A direct exchange rate comparison will not work well. I am amazed at how many british people survive on a meagre income, it astounds me - many british people and press wonder about "who is taking the cut in the middle", and it is something of a national economic mystery.
There are one or two other avenues that it could have leaked through. I should state for the record that we were always conscious of the power of that tool. In any case there is much best left unsaid - as is generally the case in life. You may be interested to know that I have accepted an invitation to speak at SANS2001 about my experiences of being on the inside. Otherwise, I am not interested in making much personal gain out of those experiences.
This is an important book, because it helps to illustrate the psychological and sociological background to people "in the underground" - and help understand that computers, the internet and so on are not inherently evil or a media more suseptible to criminality, but the problems are the ever present problems of children, families, society and the swathe of humanity. Congratulations to Suelette and Julian for putting this important work into the public domain.
I am an Australian, but I have been living outside of Australia for the past three years, however I think I can offer a few perspectives.
Firstly, Australia is a geographically large country, although the majority of the population is strewn along the eastern coast. Also, the major cities tend to be large urban sprawls. What this means is that the costs and economies of scale for cable networks are perhaps a little different than other countries. Complete market freedom may not produce a good result for everyone (I am an advocate of market freedom and competition, but I also realise that in some cases, regulation and control is necessary - I don't think that I have enough knowledge to judge whether it is appropriate in this case, but I making this point). It is interesting to note that attempts to provide pay television (notably Australis) were not very successful - the market did not grow very fast, and there were several companies competing for what is a small market (and a large financial and infrastructure investment). Consider the difference between mobile networks in the US and Europe. In Europe, there is network competition, but fortunately just about everyone offers that competition on the GSM network - so there is no technological competition, perhaps it would be more useful in Australia if there was a common technological platform, on which competition could occur, that would be more beneficial in the long run, than wasted competition between different technological platforms.
Secondly, Australian media is control by a few interests - kerry packer, rupert murdoch, the fairfax family, kerry stokes and others. And these constitute some powerful groups that have political weight. Unfortunately, this can lead to some regressive media policies.
There are some other perspectives on this project:
- the engineering experience of this project could be worthwhile for other projects (perhaps on a smaller scale) around the planet.
- the use of the line for goods transport is likely not to be economic. shipping is the number one intercontinental transport medium, and so pervasive and well defined that a long train trek across the north is not likely to be cheaper.
- it would be fantastic for tourism, because i could see many people wanting to take the journey, but the tourism is not going to cover the massive cost. not just to build it, but to maintain it.
in short, it is a "neat" project, but ultimately the stuff of dreams.
There are other more important lessons
on
The Renaissance
·
· Score: 3
The criticism levelled against Katz is partially deserved, and partially not. It is fairly obvious to most intelligent people that there are similarities between the development of writing and the development of computing. Both provided humanity with greater freedom of expression, all of which gave rise to phenomenal changes in the world landscape.
Katz could discuss more pertinent issues such as how precisely can we learn from the renaissance, other than realising that what is happening now is approximately similar.
Also, reading up on the Medici family and the history of Florence, one would realise that a large reason for the flowering of arts was due to the patronage of the ruling families (Cosimo I and Lorenzo). Now if the present day wealth of the United States is squandered away, then humanity won't be left with great things, but will be squandered on suburban acreage.
I have to agree with another poster about the hero worship thing and the lack of criticsm.
With regards to Linux - there is a classic and well known email debate between Linus Torvalds and Andy Tanembaum (it is reproduced in the back of a book about Linux, someone must know the reference, I forget it) where first the argument begins about Linux and Minix, and the purpose of Linux and why it tries to be different from Minix, but the significant points in the discussion are the criticism of Linux not being microkernel based, or being a truly distributed operating system. These criticisms are invalid if you just want a stand alone operating system, but they are valid if you want the "next generation operating system for the computing world" that Linux is often touted at being (when it was not designed to be that, and has sort of evolved into being it in a fuzzy way). One only has to look at the criticisms levied at DLLs and shared libraries (although, they are sort of at the periphery). By virtue of being ported to many platforms, Linux does have a sort of "ad hoc" microkernel.
I am sure many academics and specialists in operating systems would have to agree that Linux is not designed from the ground up to embody the state of the art operating system approachs, but rather it has sort of evolved that way simply because of mass popularity - what people really want to do now and in the future is distributed computing, and Linux does this not in an inherent way.
In the same way, people in the field of information engineering will tell you that they wish Tim Berners Lee did not invent HTML, because the internet as it has become should have been based on something else (which is why XML/Java/etc is now taking over, if only because people are finding engineering problems with using HTML, and realise now how XML/Java/etc scales better). That's not to say that TBL did not do something amazing for humanity, because he did, and obviously he did not forsee what was going to happen, and he cannot be denied that acclaim, but it is fair to make objective criticism about the technologies being used.
Coming back to Linux - the importance of Linux is not so much in the nature of the operating system itself, but lies in the development model (global community, open source, etc) that can be seen as a culmination of many things before it (GNU, fsf, ietf, etc). An analogy is in the fine arts : in the history of fine arts, there are masterpieces, and those are undoubtedly masterpieces, and it is possible to trace the developments of style and technical issues to understand how they was evolving and then took full force in a particular masterpiece - for instance, the amazing works of the mid renaissance are built upon the developments of brunelleschi, giotto and leonardo da vinci who pioneered the development of perspective and broke away from classicism. So, the similiarity is that Linux is a sort of masterpiece that embodies a suite of many different things that were evolving - unfortunately, the internal technical construction of Linux is definitely not state of the art, and I am sure experts would agree, unfortunately many of the people on Slashdot are not experts or academics and do not have extensive experience or understanding of operating systems.
The sad thing is that the mass popularity driving Linux is now upsetting companies that were developing seriously robust operating systems (e.g. real time operating systems for embedded systems), and perhaps they will have problems funding the kind of research that should be carried out into operating system design.
A recent survey in the The Economist on Australia pointed to Australias "sensible" use of technology. What they meant, is that rather than the maniac tech frenzy in the United States, what Australian businesses seemed to do was to adopt technology into existing business practices in a much more sensible way - for instance, a guy in the outback producing some sort of original good just creates a pretty basic by effective web page, information and ordering system.
A few more facts - Australia has always had the highest penetration of Internet, we have been rapid earlyt adopters of ISDN and mobile phone technology, electronic banking systems (EFTPOS), and there are probably more examples. We're not super-tech-guru people, but we take the new stuff in our stride. As a people, we tend to be pretty fair minded, pragmatic and sensible, but not adverse to "going over the top" at times, and having a good dose of fun. We're somewhat hedonistic and even pagan in our love of food, sun, outdoors and so on.
(I like my country, can you tell:)
Matthew Gream
Australian ex-patriot
San Sebastian, Spain
It needs to be WAPable, and then, tied into a location based service, which is plausible with a GSM phone. Then wherever you are, you can find the nearest toilet.
What would be a more advanced business model, would be then to allow users to rate it according to a number of criteria (with, say, levels 1 to 5), and if they do this, give them a small discount on the WAP access cost - i.e. as an incentive to spending the extra time providing some feedback - then future users can see which toilets are better than others.
Actually I have just had another thought - one of the positive things that could result from "deep linking" is more competition and better presentation of information.
For instance, someone could create another interface to buying books that they think is superior to amazons, but rather than store all details about books, it could call up Amazon, or Borders by dereferencing their sites with the books ISBN number. In fact, it could eventually be the case that no one uses the original Amazon or Borders interface, but goes for this new interface. Amazon or Borders could decide to try and buy the new interface, or they could just resign to the fact that they do not have the "value added" end of the chain any more, and all they are doing is the raw guts of selling the books, which is perhaps not so lucrative.
The same could occur with a movie company that has a dodgy web interface - some entrepreneur could create a new WAP interface, and deep link into the movie companies web site - and perhaps do a better business than the movie company. The movie company could perhaps try and redesign its site so prevent this occuring (it can do as it pleases), but it should not be against the law for someone to try and create meta sites.
Coming back to Gopher - what this means is that gopheresque interfaces could be created by people with economic or other interests (they may make money out of the new interface, or do it for "good will" type reasons) to existing data bases or web sites.
Slashdot Mirror
There are a couple of common mistakes in other replies to this thread:
1) the fact that you allow your website to exist is an implied license to allow for linking to your website, so linking _per se_ is not an issue, but the issue is the context of the link and whether it is misleading or inappropriate in some way (such as the link suggesting a false endorsement, or an untrue fact that is libelious, etc). It's entirely fair to allow a website to place _some_ _reasonable_ restrictions on how other websites can link to it, and it's entirely fair and appropriate to apply existing issues of fair dealing, passing off, law of confidentiality, law of tort, etc. The issue is that there finer point sof how these laws / principles allow is not yet fleshed out - it's a bit pointless to thow up very abstract statements about "deep linking = yes / no", as the answer will be either depending upon various other attributes and circumstance.
2) using technical issues (e.g. HTTP_REFER blocking) to prevent inbound deep / inappropriate links is not entirely all of the issue, part of the issue is that there still exists an inappropriate link on another website (e.g. a link to other_host/internal/junk/etc potentially reveals misleading information "internal/junk/etc" and disrupts legitimate user activity); sure I redirect those inappropriate links, but it potentially damages the experience for my users, and leads to a loss of goodwill for my business/website, potentially because users are mislead into thinking that my website is inappropriately configured, or find it a nuisance, or something else). again, I would say that the rule is not hard and fast either way and the law requires depending of some general principles / doctrines, and an understandign that within those, there is scope for variation depending upon particular circumstances of the case in question.
It is a defence, but it is one provided by statute. There's no obligation for content creator to make it easy or possible, but I would suggest that that any considerably widely implemented DRM technology that didn't allow for fair use (which, as suggested, may not be made easy) would come under scrutiny.
EU copyright is 'harmonised' at 70 years in all EU countries - it is now relatively consistent. The goal of the EU has been to leave IP to individual countries, but to gradually harmonise and integrate. I don't know where you get the 95 year figure from ? 95 years may be a US figure, but it has no relevance in the EU. The maximum protection of any copyright in the EU is 70 years beyond death of creator.
This was harmonised across the EEA, for instance, the UK previously gave 50 years protection, but harmonised with the protection of the CDPA 1988 at 70 years. This caused issues (and a couple of legal cases) with works that had expired, but were now covered again.
Articles 28-30 of the EU treaty are concerned with free movement of goods, and of course this has come into conflict with the differing levels of protection afforded in different countries - which has been one of the reasons why harmonisation is necessary.
The EU has established 'the exhaustion of rights principle' which means that once an IP is placed onto the market, it is generally not possible to restrict its further movement within the community. You can, however, restrict its importation into the EU.
These are the concerns that EFF and others have over the implementation of DRM technologies : that they must include provisions for fair use / expiration / etc. In fact, I think that any DRM technology that doesn't include provision for fair use could get a manufacturer in hot water if a case was pursued in the courts (e.g. as class action, or by lobby group such as EFF). There is a statutory right to fair use : DRM technologies can't just override it.
copyrights survive beyond RIP of the author to allow benefits to transfer to children / offspring. 50-70 years beyond death is quite a reasonable amount of time - one extra generation is able to benefit, allowing author to know that benefits of their work go to a worthy cause: their children, not a greedy corporation (or the public domain).
try Pair Networks. i've had good experiences, good value, good service. their operation is very diligent, and very much engineering based. they offer sign up and transfer bonuses, an associated NIC, variety of hosting plans from simple FTP only to high volume dedicated (prices are very competitive for the level/quality of service offered). you only need to look around their site at the support, notices, and various other parts of the operation to get a feel for their approach - and there is a distinct community feel.
You need to talk to your lawyers about legal jurisdiction. These jurisdictional arguments are well established in legal community (I am currently a law student).
...).
k e.html
The "telling lies" and "information was received" are not the issue, the issue is "theft/break into computer" which clearly happened in the US. Although the act was initiated elsewhere, it clearly happened in the US (the server is in the US - how much more clear can that be?).
Your point about treason has mixed relevance. Firstly treason only applies to citizens of a country, not to non-citizens, and it relates to state secrets and issues that affect the security/wellbeing of a country, not mere criticism (although the line can be fuzzy, most sensible people know where it is). Although in international law under the "doctrine of effects", some activity outside of a country that has impact upon the country can be taken as affecting law within that country (so, for example, an external person inciting hatred within a country causing significant legal problems could be considered to have violated said countries laws -- whether or not extradition will help, though
I'd prefer not to continue this debate.
Read this: http://www.law.indiana.edu/fclj/pubs/v50/no1/wils
I agree with you about general US foreign policy. It is typically one-sided.
What I meant was that the ICC or a World Court is not directly relevant in this case: what is relevant are international treaties and agreements on extradiction and recognition of crimes - irrespective of anything to do with the ICC or a World Court.
You said: ''yet tries to extend US jurisdiction outside its borders. But this is ridiculous. If the actions took place in the EU, on what basis could there be extradition to the US?''
Incorrect: The actions did not take place in the EU - the act of intrusion occurred in the US, because the physical machines are located in the US. He was a legal entity ''reaching into'' the US and acting within the US.
The crime is "intrusion into computer". Where is the computer: US. He is located outside of the US, but the act occurred in the US.
You don't know what you're talking about. The International Criminal Court is only concerned with "mass crimes" against humanity, especially this committed by by states.
Try reading ICC Jurisdiction:
1. The jurisdiction of the Court shall be limited to the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole. The Court has jurisdiction in accordance with this Statute with respect to the following crimes: (a) The crime of genocide; (b) Crimes against humanity; (c) War crimes; (d) The crime of aggression.I think HP is wrong with its DMCA style threats, because they are not appropriate. However, I can sympathise with HP and understand why they may have "lashed out". I think the hacker in question was wrong to irresponsibly post the exploit for script kiddies to start playing with fire. For all the debate about various sorts of disclosure processes, it's quite clear that this approach potentially has a high impact upon any deployed systems and gives no time for either the vendors or the administrators to take action. This is just not a responsible real-world approach to dealing with security issues.
For portable CORBA and threading support, try omniORB (http://www.uk.research.att.com/omniORB/omniORB.ht ml). We use it for seamless portability between NT4.0 & Solaris components and its very effective.
Irrespective of where fault lies, anyone not familiar with Australia should realise that "Telstra Bashing" is virtually a national sport, and typically involves a lack of objectivity. This usually clouds any issue involving the company.
>Things will get more consistent as Cingular and >AT&T migrate to GSM, but until there are >business reasons to support SMS interconnect, >the networks in the US will be slow to move. The first reason is easy: "revenue". SMS messaging has proven to be one of the highest growth features of GSM services in Europe. Interconnect between carriers only further helped this. The second reason is harder (at least, for the United States): conformity to technical standards regarding interoperability. What if you couldn't call a west coast RBOC number from an east coast RBOC ? Yet, apparently you can't send an SMS from one network to another.
We had our gun rights restricted because a lot of us wanted it to be that way. Unlike the United States, we see little need to "bear arms" as individuals - and the history of our country is one of reasonable peace and stability.
Now you have connected the parts together to see the future. Well done.
Although this is all early generation, it will be the kind of thing that is "in principle" on the path towards star trek type replicators.
The "standard" contractor rate in the UK is 40GBP/hr as an embedded software engineer. I do know people receiving +/- 10GBP around that, and have been told that it may be possible to go higher if you are really good. If you work "in the city" for a financial house, you can expect greater remuneration - the figure I have quoted is for engineering product development work.
Having said that. I have worked in an engineering consultancy where our chargout rate started at 80GBP/hr, rising to 118GBP/hr and more. We did not receive this as employees, because our billability was not 100% - and for larger jobs we would apply a discount rate - so rates would depend upon the nature of the work and the contract agreed upon.
Cost of living in the UK is high. A direct exchange rate comparison will not work well. I am amazed at how many british people survive on a meagre income, it astounds me - many british people and press wonder about "who is taking the cut in the middle", and it is something of a national economic mystery.
There are one or two other avenues that it could have leaked through. I should state for the record that we were always conscious of the power of that tool. In any case there is much best left unsaid - as is generally the case in life. You may be interested to know that I have accepted an invitation to speak at SANS2001 about my experiences of being on the inside. Otherwise, I am not interested in making much personal gain out of those experiences.
This is an important book, because it helps to illustrate the psychological and sociological background to people "in the underground" - and help understand that computers, the internet and so on are not inherently evil or a media more suseptible to criminality, but the problems are the ever present problems of children, families, society and the swathe of humanity. Congratulations to Suelette and Julian for putting this important work into the public domain.
I am an Australian, but I have been living outside of Australia for the past three years, however I think I can offer a few perspectives.
Firstly, Australia is a geographically large country, although the majority of the population is strewn along the eastern coast. Also, the major cities tend to be large urban sprawls. What this means is that the costs and economies of scale for cable networks are perhaps a little different than other countries. Complete market freedom may not produce a good result for everyone (I am an advocate of market freedom and competition, but I also realise that in some cases, regulation and control is necessary - I don't think that I have enough knowledge to judge whether it is appropriate in this case, but I making this point). It is interesting to note that attempts to provide pay television (notably Australis) were not very successful - the market did not grow very fast, and there were several companies competing for what is a small market (and a large financial and infrastructure investment). Consider the difference between mobile networks in the US and Europe. In Europe, there is network competition, but fortunately just about everyone offers that competition on the GSM network - so there is no technological competition, perhaps it would be more useful in Australia if there was a common technological platform, on which competition could occur, that would be more beneficial in the long run, than wasted competition between different technological platforms.
Secondly, Australian media is control by a few interests - kerry packer, rupert murdoch, the fairfax family, kerry stokes and others. And these constitute some powerful groups that have political weight. Unfortunately, this can lead to some regressive media policies.
There are some other perspectives on this project:
- the engineering experience of this project could be worthwhile for other projects (perhaps on a smaller scale) around the planet.
- the use of the line for goods transport is likely not to be economic. shipping is the number one intercontinental transport medium, and so pervasive and well defined that a long train trek across the north is not likely to be cheaper.
- it would be fantastic for tourism, because i could see many people wanting to take the journey, but the tourism is not going to cover the massive cost. not just to build it, but to maintain it.
in short, it is a "neat" project, but ultimately the stuff of dreams.
The criticism levelled against Katz is partially deserved, and partially not. It is fairly obvious to most intelligent people that there are similarities between the development of writing and the development of computing. Both provided humanity with greater freedom of expression, all of which gave rise to phenomenal changes in the world landscape.
Katz could discuss more pertinent issues such as how precisely can we learn from the renaissance, other than realising that what is happening now is approximately similar.
Also, reading up on the Medici family and the history of Florence, one would realise that a large reason for the flowering of arts was due to the patronage of the ruling families (Cosimo I and Lorenzo). Now if the present day wealth of the United States is squandered away, then humanity won't be left with great things, but will be squandered on suburban acreage.
I have to agree with another poster about the hero worship thing and the lack of criticsm.
With regards to Linux - there is a classic and well known email debate between Linus Torvalds and Andy Tanembaum (it is reproduced in the back of a book about Linux, someone must know the reference, I forget it) where first the argument begins about Linux and Minix, and the purpose of Linux and why it tries to be different from Minix, but the significant points in the discussion are the criticism of Linux not being microkernel based, or being a truly distributed operating system. These criticisms are invalid if you just want a stand alone operating system, but they are valid if you want the "next generation operating system for the computing world" that Linux is often touted at being (when it was not designed to be that, and has sort of evolved into being it in a fuzzy way). One only has to look at the criticisms levied at DLLs and shared libraries (although, they are sort of at the periphery). By virtue of being ported to many platforms, Linux does have a sort of "ad hoc" microkernel.
I am sure many academics and specialists in operating systems would have to agree that Linux is not designed from the ground up to embody the state of the art operating system approachs, but rather it has sort of evolved that way simply because of mass popularity - what people really want to do now and in the future is distributed computing, and Linux does this not in an inherent way.
In the same way, people in the field of information engineering will tell you that they wish Tim Berners Lee did not invent HTML, because the internet as it has become should have been based on something else (which is why XML/Java/etc is now taking over, if only because people are finding engineering problems with using HTML, and realise now how XML/Java/etc scales better). That's not to say that TBL did not do something amazing for humanity, because he did, and obviously he did not forsee what was going to happen, and he cannot be denied that acclaim, but it is fair to make objective criticism about the technologies being used.
Coming back to Linux - the importance of Linux is not so much in the nature of the operating system itself, but lies in the development model (global community, open source, etc) that can be seen as a culmination of many things before it (GNU, fsf, ietf, etc). An analogy is in the fine arts : in the history of fine arts, there are masterpieces, and those are undoubtedly masterpieces, and it is possible to trace the developments of style and technical issues to understand how they was evolving and then took full force in a particular masterpiece - for instance, the amazing works of the mid renaissance are built upon the developments of brunelleschi, giotto and leonardo da vinci who pioneered the development of perspective and broke away from classicism. So, the similiarity is that Linux is a sort of masterpiece that embodies a suite of many different things that were evolving - unfortunately, the internal technical construction of Linux is definitely not state of the art, and I am sure experts would agree, unfortunately many of the people on Slashdot are not experts or academics and do not have extensive experience or understanding of operating systems.
The sad thing is that the mass popularity driving Linux is now upsetting companies that were developing seriously robust operating systems (e.g. real time operating systems for embedded systems), and perhaps they will have problems funding the kind of research that should be carried out into operating system design.
A recent survey in the The Economist on Australia pointed to Australias "sensible" use of technology. What they meant, is that rather than the maniac tech frenzy in the United States, what Australian businesses seemed to do was to adopt technology into existing business practices in a much more sensible way - for instance, a guy in the outback producing some sort of original good just creates a pretty basic by effective web page, information and ordering system.
A few more facts - Australia has always had the highest penetration of Internet, we have been rapid earlyt adopters of ISDN and mobile phone technology, electronic banking systems (EFTPOS), and there are probably more examples. We're not super-tech-guru people, but we take the new stuff in our stride. As a people, we tend to be pretty fair minded, pragmatic and sensible, but not adverse to "going over the top" at times, and having a good dose of fun. We're somewhat hedonistic and even pagan in our love of food, sun, outdoors and so on.
(I like my country, can you tell
Matthew Gream
Australian ex-patriot
San Sebastian, Spain
It needs to be WAPable, and then, tied into a location based service, which is plausible with a GSM phone. Then wherever you are, you can find the nearest toilet.
What would be a more advanced business model, would be then to allow users to rate it according to a number of criteria (with, say, levels 1 to 5), and if they do this, give them a small discount on the WAP access cost - i.e. as an incentive to spending the extra time providing some feedback - then future users can see which toilets are better than others.
Actually I have just had another thought - one of the positive things that could result from "deep linking" is more competition and better presentation of information.
For instance, someone could create another interface to buying books that they think is superior to amazons, but rather than store all details about books, it could call up Amazon, or Borders by dereferencing their sites with the books ISBN number. In fact, it could eventually be the case that no one uses the original Amazon or Borders interface, but goes for this new interface. Amazon or Borders could decide to try and buy the new interface, or they could just resign to the fact that they do not have the "value added" end of the chain any more, and all they are doing is the raw guts of selling the books, which is perhaps not so lucrative.
The same could occur with a movie company that has a dodgy web interface - some entrepreneur could create a new WAP interface, and deep link into the movie companies web site - and perhaps do a better business than the movie company. The movie company could perhaps try and redesign its site so prevent this occuring (it can do as it pleases), but it should not be against the law for someone to try and create meta sites.
Coming back to Gopher - what this means is that gopheresque interfaces could be created by people with economic or other interests (they may make money out of the new interface, or do it for "good will" type reasons) to existing data bases or web sites.