From the looks of the picture, I have to wonder what sort of business card is being used for comparison. Because, assuming that the hole in the center is the same size as that of a normal disk (and it would have to be, wouldn't it?), these cd's are much bigger than normal business cards. Or perhaps I jsut have a non-standard sized implimentation of BusinessCard?
It seems impossible to understand why amazon.com is patenting such fundamental concepts as one click ordering and referral fees. If the ideas were patented with the intent of keeping someone else from patenting it and abusing it, this might make sense. If there was some validity to the patents, it might make sense.
Neither of these is the case. It does not make amazon.com look good to file these suits, nor is it very profitable. The question remains, then, as to why one would do this.
Perhaps what every parent needs is a computer hardwired to their brain. They could decide exactly what sites they wanted their child to see. Brains work very quickly, and web pages are relatively small, compared to the amount of other information we deal with, so this shouldn't be too much of a problem. Of course, the whole issue of available technology is a bit of a problem, but we should be able to get around that in a year or two.
And to think I was all worried about S10K! I had visions of the world as I know it ending, people running through the streets crazed, trying to find a copy of some computer publication. No. It didn't happen. Nice to know that the wonderful people at/. are S10K compliant
I read the New York Times every day. I read/. and some other internet news sources most every day, too. And I really don't think that they are in competition with each other.
I like/. because it brings together a wide variety of information in an easy to use package, information that before I had to read WIRED, 2600, and Science to get. So in this sense, internet publications are in competition with magazines, not newspapers. But/. is unique among newspapers, in the variety of information that it provides, while still appealing to such a specific group of people.
I have a difficult time finding the same value in the online version of a newspaper as the paper version. I tried reading the internet version of the New York Times for a while - it was nice to get the headlines earlier, but it was so difficult to read. There is so much less text on the screen than there is on the same area of paper, which makes it much more difficult to glace ahead to the end of the article, or to refer to something previously stated. Yes, it is possible to use the back button, or scroll, but that requires some physical action, whereas the print version needs only the movement of the eyes. Perhaps a big expensive monitor would solve these problems. It still would not provide the same value as the print newspaper.
I can get the New York Times in almost every city I go to, wherever I am, without having to worry about connecting to the internet, without even being anywhere near a computer. It is lightweight, flexible, and easy to use. It is extremely portable, rugged, and the size is right. Give me a laptop that weighs a pound an has a 14 x 22 screen, and I will switch in a second. Given all this, it does not seem, for me, that electronic newspapers are in competition with print ones.
If anything, online newspapers are in competition with the radio. I like the five minute summary NPR provides on the hour of the days news events. Before it was available as RealAudio on demand, I used the digital newspapers for the same purpose, to get the headline news. Now that I can get that audio at any time, I do not use the internet newspapers so much. This illustrates the advantage of radio (at least quality radio) over internet publication - it is interesting, provides the news in a much more timely manner than print, and does not require much interaction.
The point here has become a bit convoluted - but I think it is made.
Perhaps you have been so lucky so as to never use a computer with filtering software installed on it. Filters are really rather random, many excluding pages based only on the occurance of a single word, like "porn" in a TIME magazine article about porn on the internet, or "breast" in a page about breast cancer research. Thus pages that are completely legitimate are blocked without any real reason. Whereas when sites are chosen by and editor, of one sort or another, it is a very absolute decision, done by someone who knows exactly what they are choosing. Perhaps we need a nationwide directory, with work done on the directory by people at every library in the country, thus providing a useful database, and also a system of checks and balances.
Its all in what terms you use when looking for chocolate cookie recipies - you get two very different sets of results when you use "chocolate chip cookies" and when you use "sexy naked ladies"
The solution I propose here is one that will not win me any friends, and that will probably make quite a few people mad at me. I realize this. There is logic behind my argument, however convoluted.
I do not think that most libraries should be in the business of providing unrestricted internet access to their patrons. Libraries have never provided unrestricted access to anything - this, to some degree, is what makes them so useful. They select content that they feel is appropriate and useful within their given community, based on community standards, relavance, and the interests of their patrons. There has always been a considerable amount of material that they have chosen not to provide, things for which there is a demand, like Playboy magazine, or which people would give to the library for free, like the publications of some white supremacist groups. I do not mean for this to sound like the library only selects by elimination. Part of the value the library provides is by creating collections of value to the area they serve, like books and records of the history of the community.
I think that libraries should do the same with internet access - that is, select the content that is most useful to their community, and provide it in an organized manner, and to some degree, determine which sources are legitimate, and which are not. There is an enormous wealth of information out there, but it is difficult to find it, and to always determine the legitimiacy of the sources. The details of such a directory of information would have to be worked out, but such a resource would, for most, be a valuable tool.
I do not think this is the answer for every library. Major research libraries, colleges, and universities should provide unrestricted access, although some sort of well done directory in addition to that would be wonderful.
I propose this solution only because it seems to be the best mean between two solutions already suggested. Filtering does not work, plain and simple. It blocks out completely reasonable sites (I recall, in high school, a search for the term "soccer" being blocked), and yet still allows pornography and other objectional material to be accessed.
I wish the people of this country were smart enough, as a whole, to not go crazy over the possiblity of someone perhaps at some point in time looking at pornography on a computer screen. However, I have seen what has happened to the National Endowment for the Arts in the past ten years. It's budget has been cut in half (actually more than that if you account for inflation) due to a few situations where the money was used for things that some people found objectionable. The total amount of money spent on these things was a couple thousand dollars at the most, a small fraction of a percent of the NEA's budget. I can see the same thing happening to the libraries - libraries unable to get any additional tax money, and probably even getting fewer dollars, because of an incident or two where a child looked at pornography on the internet in the library.
I do not know what the best solution to this problem is. I think that a well made directory is a good one. And I would take it any day over a filtering program.
As someone who has used computers for about two thirds of my life, I feel I can say that, at least for me, the computer does isolate me from the rest of society. My primary computer is a desktop. It is physically located in my dorm room, which means that when I am using it, I am by myself. Occasionally my roommate or a friend is there when I am using the computer, but my room is certainly not one of the social areas on campus, a room set aside by the college for people to congregate. By using the computer, I choose to be away from other people. Much of the time I spend using the computer is time I would spend socializing if I was not using the computer. Another problem I see is email. It may allow more rapid communication, but I am not sure that this is neccessarily a good thing. When timeliness is important, it is wonderful. But it also lacks something important that handwritten letters have. It becomes unpersonal. Friendships that I kept up via email became incredibly stronger when I started writing real letters.
I think the internet is a valuable tool, quite possibly of equal significance to movable type. But I think that it can isolate, and that we need to consider how the technology is affecting us.
The real problem I see here is the way people view libraries.
Libraries have always selected material based partially on community standards and partially upon other things, like usefulness, quality of material, and local relevance. This is reasonable, as the library has a limited space and budget. Some popular materials are excluded, like Playboy magazine. This does not bother me at all. I can go to the local adult book store and get a copy. In short, libraries provide a variety of material, judged to be of a certain quality, and to meet community standards.
Similar action needs to be taken with the internet. Filtering is the wrong means to this end. Instead, libraries need to choose material based on the same standards as they choose books. Rather than trying to block out objectionable sites, they should instead provide a limited group of quality sites. Different sorts of libraries would provied access to different sorts of information, just like they do now. And those people who want access to information the libraries do not select would still find it, just as they do now.
I have seen how upset people get about filtering and free access, and I cannot see a way that either could work. Libraries need to select information, as they have in the past. I want everyone to have free access to the internet, but I don't think it is the job of the library to provice that access.
It is good to hear about a school supporting something other than Windows. I understand that from the schools point of view Windows is easy, but the lengths some places go to to make it difficult for people to use other systems is really ridiculous. Like the Hiram College, where I happen to be right now, expects you to give them the MAC address of your machine before they will activate the port in your dorm room, and they provide a detailed, illustrated text showing how to get it in Windows. But for other systems they provide virtually nothing. The people in the computer center aren't much help either.
Anyway, to keep from making this too long, I think it is great that they are providing so much support for Linux. I certainly would have it running on my machine if it were that easy.
I keep reading these posts about DeCSS and other things pertaining to big companies trying to enforce their copyrights, and I wonder if/. readers really believe in copyright at all. Then I read other articles that involve people complaining about big companies trying to look at "free" software crosseyed or vaguely incorporating it in their product or some such thing.
Come on folks! You can't have it both ways! Either copyright does not matter and people can do whatever they want with open source software, including making it closed, or copyright does matter and the big companies (and little companies, and everyone else) gets to enforce their copyrights.
I am not a proponent of big corporations, and I think arresting minors for things like this is pretty lousy, but I think the way many people are behaving is counterproductive. How does one achieve anything then? Ask nicely. Write a letter telling x company that you would really like to buy a dvd drive, that you think their products are just great, and that as soon as they can provide a dvd drive that will work on your linux box, you will happily buy it. Be nice to these people. I understand that they are the big corporation, but they are people too. People like to help (or even just do business with) people who are nice to them - they prefer it vastly over people who say nasty things about them all the time.
In short, be polite. Ask nicely. And if those two fail, create your own video standard. (remember betamax, which Sony only licensed with rather hefty fees? Remember what happened to it?)
Its the Slashdot effect! All the computer people who normally don't go to amazon.com because they don't like certain patents amazon wants to enforce went there after they heard about the DoS attack. What might have been a brief system outage lasted for hours because of all the people trying to see if it was really true.
The others... how to explain those? Probably/. too, after all, they have mentioned Napster and DeCSS, who knows what other mischief they might be up to?
It has been mentioned in this discussion that part of the problem of compromised machines, which may be used for DoS attacks, is that many broadband users are given their own IP addresses. This problem is not limited to broadband users. Many colleges (I know of two, and I am sure there are more) give each user an ip, and do not use firewalls because they cannot get them to work properly. One might blame the system admins here, and certainly they are to blame, but that still does nothing for the individual users.
The problem for any individual trying to secure their own computer is a lack of easy to understand information on the subject. I would hope that there would be a way for the windows or mac user to secure his or her machine easily. This information needs to be spread, not to the readers of/., who can probably figure out this security stuff, but to the average user.
I have not read a large number of your stories, but those I have read have been useful, because they have been insightful for me or for others. The "Voices from Hellmouth" series, was especially valuable, as it was just about the only coverage of those events that had any real meaning.
Most of your stories seem to really take sides on the issues at stake, to label one side as "good" and the other as "bad". As someone with some experience in journalism, I know that one sometimes lets ones sympathies affect an article. This seems reasonable enough, after all, does the story "All is well in Pleasantville" have any real value? My question is this: Do you describe opposing viewpoints with such great contrasts in order to involve the reader, to make the story more interesting, and to better explain events to the specific reader base, or do you really see things as so black and white?
The world I see is not black and white, it is rather gray. Yet I see so many people trying to paint it as black and white, and that fails for me.
The intent of my statement is not about good or bad business; I do not pretend to know how to operate a business. I just feel that one has a better chance of making a product that reaches and speaks to a wide variety of people if a wide variety of people create the product. I have not seen very many new things that are interesting to me in the computer industry, and it seems that it might be appropriate to look outside the people traditionally in the industry, in order to make more interesting content.
Again, I am not speaking about the interests of business - the computer industry seems to be doing that well enough already. I would like more interesting products, more interesting content, and this is but one means to that end.
The problem, as I see it, is not that there are not enough women in the computer industry.
The problem is a general lack of variety. The computer industry, right now, is dominated almost entirely by white men, and mainly those with a background in computers. Because computers are such a large part of many of our lives, we cannot afford to have them controlled by such a small group. Computer companies need to hire people of both sexes, of all ethnic backgrounds. They need to hire artists, writers, and other such people.
The poor, the minorities, and the women of our society are missing out on the revolution caused by computers. This might be attributed to income or education, but I think that part of the problem is the failure to include these groups in the development of computers.
As evidence of the idea that people want a computer that they feel more comfortable with, I point to the iMac. Like the computer or not, is is much more comforable of an object, and very different from the beige boxes most companies sell.
Companies need to get a broader view, try new things, include more people. Perhaps then we will get computers that are more than just tools. Perhaps then the revolution will finally come.
One solution, and probably not the best one, would be to include certain words (warez, filez, crackz, etc.) in every web page. Although not exactly a solution, it would certainly make the work of anyone trying to find criminal pages more difficult.
This alone is not a solution. But this, combined with protest of such laws might be.
This sounds wonderful! People do need to learn how to use computers, if not at the level of most of the users of/., in order just to feel comfortable working in the world today. Ford seems to understand how important it is for its employees to have computers and have access to the internet. Some will argue about the people that this will somehow make all of these employees drones, and that they will have no choice with the computers, and that M$ and Ford will use them to controll the employees. This is a choice the employess will have to make. It is a choice. If you don't like the deal, don't get the computer. I laugh in response to those individuals who suggest that the computers should have Linux preinstalled, and that to not do so is evil. Find me a distribution that is easy enough to use that someone who does not own a computer can figure it out, and I will gladly (and happily) endorse its use. Lets be realistic.
Don't know why everyone seems to think that a computer business startup is so difficult.
Home computers are easy to start up, just flip the power switch, from 0 to 1. Business computers don't seem to be much different, although you do need to remember to turn on any additional appliances that may be attached to the machine.
Perhaps you need to have some tech stock, or free kevin bumperstickers, or something, for the computer business startup. But it really should not be too hard.
I am not sure how valid it is to use what people build with Legos for admissions purposes, but it is very important to realize that there are other ways of determining to admit a student other than test scores. Such an opportunity should be given to all students - each student would have the possibility of including some other additional material with the college application, something they felt would speak to their advantage. A student who chose not to include additional material, be it a computer program, a work of art, or whatever, would not be penalized, but it would just be a way for certain students to display abilities that normally do not show up on standardized tests.
The current version of Windows Media Player for MacOS does not even run on many Macs. And I am not referring to older machines, but to G3s. The program just sits there when you click he icon.
Perhaps people will look for a different media player for Linux, like Quicktime, or Realplayer
We do have a great long term storage media, stone!
Thousands of years after people made monuments in Egypt and other places, hundreds of years after people had forgotten what the messages meant, the message still remained, because it was etched into stone.
Stone works very well as a long term storage media, as it is sufficiently heavy and difficult to work with. And there is usually little benefit in trying to make it into something else. (Example. The ancient Greeks made truly great statues from marble and bronze. The bronze statues, for the most part, were melted down by other peoples, because they could be used for war purposes. The marble statues, however, lasted, because they were not very useful outside of being statues.) What if we make a very reliable metal disk, and all of them are melted down for a future war effort? Or perhaps we run out of oil, and all the CDs are melted down to power our cars?
For real permanence, we need to use something that will last when people do not care about it, or create something of such significance that people will always care about it.
Slashdot Mirror
From the looks of the picture, I have to wonder what sort of business card is being used for comparison. Because, assuming that the hole in the center is the same size as that of a normal disk (and it would have to be, wouldn't it?), these cd's are much bigger than normal business cards. Or perhaps I jsut have a non-standard sized implimentation of BusinessCard?
It seems impossible to understand why amazon.com is patenting such fundamental concepts as one click ordering and referral fees. If the ideas were patented with the intent of keeping someone else from patenting it and abusing it, this might make sense. If there was some validity to the patents, it might make sense.
Neither of these is the case. It does not make amazon.com look good to file these suits, nor is it very profitable. The question remains, then, as to why one would do this.
Perhaps what every parent needs is a computer hardwired to their brain. They could decide exactly what sites they wanted their child to see. Brains work very quickly, and web pages are relatively small, compared to the amount of other information we deal with, so this shouldn't be too much of a problem. Of course, the whole issue of available technology is a bit of a problem, but we should be able to get around that in a year or two.
And to think I was all worried about S10K! /. are S10K compliant
I had visions of the world as I know it ending, people running through the streets crazed, trying to find a copy of some computer publication. No. It didn't happen. Nice to know that the wonderful people at
I read the New York Times every day. I read /. and some other internet news sources most every day, too. And I really don't think that they are in competition with each other.
/. because it brings together a wide variety of information in an easy to use package, information that before I had to read WIRED, 2600, and Science to get. So in this sense, internet publications are in competition with magazines, not newspapers. But /. is unique among newspapers, in the variety of information that it provides, while still appealing to such a specific group of people.
I like
I have a difficult time finding the same value in the online version of a newspaper as the paper version. I tried reading the internet version of the New York Times for a while - it was nice to get the headlines earlier, but it was so difficult to read. There is so much less text on the screen than there is on the same area of paper, which makes it much more difficult to glace ahead to the end of the article, or to refer to something previously stated. Yes, it is possible to use the back button, or scroll, but that requires some physical action, whereas the print version needs only the movement of the eyes. Perhaps a big expensive monitor would solve these problems. It still would not provide the same value as the print newspaper.
I can get the New York Times in almost every city I go to, wherever I am, without having to worry about connecting to the internet, without even being anywhere near a computer. It is lightweight, flexible, and easy to use. It is extremely portable, rugged, and the size is right. Give me a laptop that weighs a pound an has a 14 x 22 screen, and I will switch in a second. Given all this, it does not seem, for me, that electronic newspapers are in competition with print ones.
If anything, online newspapers are in competition with the radio. I like the five minute summary NPR provides on the hour of the days news events. Before it was available as RealAudio on demand, I used the digital newspapers for the same purpose, to get the headline news. Now that I can get that audio at any time, I do not use the internet newspapers so much. This illustrates the advantage of radio (at least quality radio) over internet publication - it is interesting, provides the news in a much more timely manner than print, and does not require much interaction.
The point here has become a bit convoluted - but I think it is made.
Perhaps you have been so lucky so as to never use a computer with filtering software installed on it. Filters are really rather random, many excluding pages based only on the occurance of a single word, like "porn" in a TIME magazine article about porn on the internet, or "breast" in a page about breast cancer research. Thus pages that are completely legitimate are blocked without any real reason. Whereas when sites are chosen by and editor, of one sort or another, it is a very absolute decision, done by someone who knows exactly what they are choosing. Perhaps we need a nationwide directory, with work done on the directory by people at every library in the country, thus providing a useful database, and also a system of checks and balances.
Its all in what terms you use when looking for chocolate cookie recipies - you get two very different sets of results when you use "chocolate chip cookies" and when you use "sexy naked ladies"
The solution I propose here is one that will not win me any friends, and that will probably make quite a few people mad at me. I realize this. There is logic behind my argument, however convoluted.
I do not think that most libraries should be in the business of providing unrestricted internet access to their patrons. Libraries have never provided unrestricted access to anything - this, to some degree, is what makes them so useful. They select content that they feel is appropriate and useful within their given community, based on community standards, relavance, and the interests of their patrons. There has always been a considerable amount of material that they have chosen not to provide, things for which there is a demand, like Playboy magazine, or which people would give to the library for free, like the publications of some white supremacist groups. I do not mean for this to sound like the library only selects by elimination. Part of the value the library provides is by creating collections of value to the area they serve, like books and records of the history of the community.
I think that libraries should do the same with internet access - that is, select the content that is most useful to their community, and provide it in an organized manner, and to some degree, determine which sources are legitimate, and which are not. There is an enormous wealth of information out there, but it is difficult to find it, and to always determine the legitimiacy of the sources. The details of such a directory of information would have to be worked out, but such a resource would, for most, be a valuable tool.
I do not think this is the answer for every library. Major research libraries, colleges, and universities should provide unrestricted access, although some sort of well done directory in addition to that would be wonderful.
I propose this solution only because it seems to be the best mean between two solutions already suggested. Filtering does not work, plain and simple. It blocks out completely reasonable sites (I recall, in high school, a search for the term "soccer" being blocked), and yet still allows pornography and other objectional material to be accessed.
I wish the people of this country were smart enough, as a whole, to not go crazy over the possiblity of someone perhaps at some point in time looking at pornography on a computer screen. However, I have seen what has happened to the National Endowment for the Arts in the past ten years. It's budget has been cut in half (actually more than that if you account for inflation) due to a few situations where the money was used for things that some people found objectionable. The total amount of money spent on these things was a couple thousand dollars at the most, a small fraction of a percent of the NEA's budget. I can see the same thing happening to the libraries - libraries unable to get any additional tax money, and probably even getting fewer dollars, because of an incident or two where a child looked at pornography on the internet in the library.
I do not know what the best solution to this problem is. I think that a well made directory is a good one. And I would take it any day over a filtering program.
As someone who has used computers for about two thirds of my life, I feel I can say that, at least for me, the computer does isolate me from the rest of society.
My primary computer is a desktop. It is physically located in my dorm room, which means that when I am using it, I am by myself. Occasionally my roommate or a friend is there when I am using the computer, but my room is certainly not one of the social areas on campus, a room set aside by the college for people to congregate. By using the computer, I choose to be away from other people. Much of the time I spend using the computer is time I would spend socializing if I was not using the computer.
Another problem I see is email. It may allow more rapid communication, but I am not sure that this is neccessarily a good thing. When timeliness is important, it is wonderful. But it also lacks something important that handwritten letters have. It becomes unpersonal. Friendships that I kept up via email became incredibly stronger when I started writing real letters.
I think the internet is a valuable tool, quite possibly of equal significance to movable type. But I think that it can isolate, and that we need to consider how the technology is affecting us.
At least it is not AOL-TimeWarner-EMI buying the Muppets. Don't know much about EM-TV, but it should be interesting to see what happens.
The real problem I see here is the way people view libraries.
Libraries have always selected material based partially on community standards and partially upon other things, like usefulness, quality of material, and local relevance. This is reasonable, as the library has a limited space and budget. Some popular materials are excluded, like Playboy magazine. This does not bother me at all. I can go to the local adult book store and get a copy. In short, libraries provide a variety of material, judged to be of a certain quality, and to meet community standards.
Similar action needs to be taken with the internet. Filtering is the wrong means to this end. Instead, libraries need to choose material based on the same standards as they choose books. Rather than trying to block out objectionable sites, they should instead provide a limited group of quality sites. Different sorts of libraries would provied access to different sorts of information, just like they do now. And those people who want access to information the libraries do not select would still find it, just as they do now.
I have seen how upset people get about filtering and free access, and I cannot see a way that either could work. Libraries need to select information, as they have in the past. I want everyone to have free access to the internet, but I don't think it is the job of the library to provice that access.
It is good to hear about a school supporting something other than Windows. I understand that from the schools point of view Windows is easy, but the lengths some places go to to make it difficult for people to use other systems is really ridiculous. Like the Hiram College, where I happen to be right now, expects you to give them the MAC address of your machine before they will activate the port in your dorm room, and they provide a detailed, illustrated text showing how to get it in Windows. But for other systems they provide virtually nothing. The people in the computer center aren't much help either.
Anyway, to keep from making this too long, I think it is great that they are providing so much support for Linux. I certainly would have it running on my machine if it were that easy.
No, what Microsoft knows about is the DoJ
I keep reading these posts about DeCSS and other things pertaining to big companies trying to enforce their copyrights, and I wonder if /. readers really believe in copyright at all. Then I read other articles that involve people complaining about big companies trying to look at "free" software crosseyed or vaguely incorporating it in their product or some such thing.
Come on folks! You can't have it both ways! Either copyright does not matter and people can do whatever they want with open source software, including making it closed, or copyright does matter and the big companies (and little companies, and everyone else) gets to enforce their copyrights.
I am not a proponent of big corporations, and I think arresting minors for things like this is pretty lousy, but I think the way many people are behaving is counterproductive. How does one achieve anything then? Ask nicely. Write a letter telling x company that you would really like to buy a dvd drive, that you think their products are just great, and that as soon as they can provide a dvd drive that will work on your linux box, you will happily buy it. Be nice to these people. I understand that they are the big corporation, but they are people too. People like to help (or even just do business with) people who are nice to them - they prefer it vastly over people who say nasty things about them all the time.
In short, be polite. Ask nicely. And if those two fail, create your own video standard. (remember betamax, which Sony only licensed with rather hefty fees? Remember what happened to it?)
Its the Slashdot effect!
/. too, after all, they have mentioned Napster and DeCSS, who knows what other mischief they might be up to?
All the computer people who normally don't go to amazon.com because they don't like certain patents amazon wants to enforce went there after they heard about the DoS attack. What might have been a brief system outage lasted for hours because of all the people trying to see if it was really true.
The others... how to explain those? Probably
It has been mentioned in this discussion that part of the problem of compromised machines, which may be used for DoS attacks, is that many broadband users are given their own IP addresses. This problem is not limited to broadband users. Many colleges (I know of two, and I am sure there are more) give each user an ip, and do not use firewalls because they cannot get them to work properly. One might blame the system admins here, and certainly they are to blame, but that still does nothing for the individual users.
/., who can probably figure out this security stuff, but to the average user.
The problem for any individual trying to secure their own computer is a lack of easy to understand information on the subject. I would hope that there would be a way for the windows or mac user to secure his or her machine easily. This information needs to be spread, not to the readers of
I have not read a large number of your stories, but those I have read have been useful, because they have been insightful for me or for others. The "Voices from Hellmouth" series, was especially valuable, as it was just about the only coverage of those events that had any real meaning.
Most of your stories seem to really take sides on the issues at stake, to label one side as "good" and the other as "bad". As someone with some experience in journalism, I know that one sometimes lets ones sympathies affect an article. This seems reasonable enough, after all, does the story "All is well in Pleasantville" have any real value? My question is this: Do you describe opposing viewpoints with such great contrasts in order to involve the reader, to make the story more interesting, and to better explain events to the specific reader base, or do you really see things as so black and white?
The world I see is not black and white, it is rather gray. Yet I see so many people trying to paint it as black and white, and that fails for me.
The intent of my statement is not about good or bad business; I do not pretend to know how to operate a business. I just feel that one has a better chance of making a product that reaches and speaks to a wide variety of people if a wide variety of people create the product. I have not seen very many new things that are interesting to me in the computer industry, and it seems that it might be appropriate to look outside the people traditionally in the industry, in order to make more interesting content.
Again, I am not speaking about the interests of business - the computer industry seems to be doing that well enough already. I would like more interesting products, more interesting content, and this is but one means to that end.
The problem, as I see it, is not that there are not enough women in the computer industry.
The problem is a general lack of variety. The computer industry, right now, is dominated almost entirely by white men, and mainly those with a background in computers. Because computers are such a large part of many of our lives, we cannot afford to have them controlled by such a small group. Computer companies need to hire people of both sexes, of all ethnic backgrounds. They need to hire artists, writers, and other such people.
The poor, the minorities, and the women of our society are missing out on the revolution caused by computers. This might be attributed to income or education, but I think that part of the problem is the failure to include these groups in the development of computers.
As evidence of the idea that people want a computer that they feel more comfortable with, I point to the iMac. Like the computer or not, is is much more comforable of an object, and very different from the beige boxes most companies sell.
Companies need to get a broader view, try new things, include more people. Perhaps then we will get computers that are more than just tools. Perhaps then the revolution will finally come.
One solution, and probably not the best one, would be to include certain words (warez, filez, crackz, etc.) in every web page. Although not exactly a solution, it would certainly make the work of anyone trying to find criminal pages more difficult.
This alone is not a solution. But this, combined with protest of such laws might be.
This sounds wonderful! /., in order just to feel comfortable working in the world today.
People do need to learn how to use computers, if not at the level of most of the users of
Ford seems to understand how important it is for its employees to have computers and have access to the internet. Some will argue about the people that this will somehow make all of these employees drones, and that they will have no choice with the computers, and that M$ and Ford will use them to controll the employees. This is a choice the employess will have to make. It is a choice. If you don't like the deal, don't get the computer.
I laugh in response to those individuals who suggest that the computers should have Linux preinstalled, and that to not do so is evil. Find me a distribution that is easy enough to use that someone who does not own a computer can figure it out, and I will gladly (and happily) endorse its use. Lets be realistic.
Don't know why everyone seems to think that a computer business startup is so difficult.
Home computers are easy to start up, just flip the power switch, from 0 to 1. Business computers don't seem to be much different, although you do need to remember to turn on any additional appliances that may be attached to the machine.
Perhaps you need to have some tech stock, or free kevin bumperstickers, or something, for the computer business startup. But it really should not be too hard.
I am not sure how valid it is to use what people build with Legos for admissions purposes, but it is very important to realize that there are other ways of determining to admit a student other than test scores.
Such an opportunity should be given to all students - each student would have the possibility of including some other additional material with the college application, something they felt would speak to their advantage. A student who chose not to include additional material, be it a computer program, a work of art, or whatever, would not be penalized, but it would just be a way for certain students to display abilities that normally do not show up on standardized tests.
Really!!!
The current version of Windows Media Player for MacOS does not even run on many Macs. And I am not referring to older machines, but to G3s. The program just sits there when you click he icon.
Perhaps people will look for a different media player for Linux, like Quicktime, or Realplayer
We do have a great long term storage media, stone!
Thousands of years after people made monuments in Egypt and other places, hundreds of years after people had forgotten what the messages meant, the message still remained, because it was etched into stone.
Stone works very well as a long term storage media, as it is sufficiently heavy and difficult to work with. And there is usually little benefit in trying to make it into something else. (Example. The ancient Greeks made truly great statues from marble and bronze. The bronze statues, for the most part, were melted down by other peoples, because they could be used for war purposes. The marble statues, however, lasted, because they were not very useful outside of being statues.) What if we make a very reliable metal disk, and all of them are melted down for a future war effort? Or perhaps we run out of oil, and all the CDs are melted down to power our cars?
For real permanence, we need to use something that will last when people do not care about it, or create something of such significance that people will always care about it.