From my point of view, Java is completely obsolete. If you want to build fast and stable solutions, either on the client or server side, you should use proven technology like Perl, ANSI-C, ANSI-C++ (or Delphi/VB on the client side). I cannot see any advantages in using Java (beside of attracting programmers that cannot handle pointers and dynamic allocation:)) )
So, how do you write a function that will print to the system printer in C++ that works across all systems?
Or do anything that involves graphic displays?
The point is while there are differences in the speed and memory requirements of the various VMs, they (At least to be java certified) will all perform the same functionality. Yes, there's still clutter between differences of M$'s VM and Sun's VM, and the like, but that's why Sun insists that only programs that have been tested to be fully compatible to be able to display this logo.
Now, I won't argue that there are C and C++ toolkits that work across platforms. But too many of the times, these toolkits are limited to Unix and WinXX. And they are closed source, so that if you aren't one of the priveledged many, you're screwed.
While Java's Open source-ness is still not for sure, there is nothing stopping anyone from making a new VM for their system, as they know what calls they have to put in.
I would agrue that Java's dream never materiallized... but in the sense of being the windows killer. But Java's found other niches that they are easily killing. Any device with WinCE, for example... Java's footprint is much smaller, and more open and robust.
I read articles like this and nod in believing the truth of it (from news and word of mouth).
Then I think about workplaced that don't and will most likely never have this, and again, I nod in believing the truth of it (again, news and word of mouth).
Maybe the difference between the workplaces where something like this will most likely be implemented, and were it won't, depends on the computer-savvy of the employees at the place. I think about places that are most likely never to implement this, and I think of game programming shops, web shops, unix shops, etc.. basically where unless you are the boss' son, you've got your job because of your computer savvy. At those places, from what I've been told, they are relaxed, might be on IRC, might be ICQing, may send out 50 emails a day.. yet still get out the product on time. Maybe because they know how to juggle their computer time wisely (I know that when I'm not busy with research stuff at home, I can chat in 2 or 3 irc windows and still get web or java programming done). Which suggests that any job that requires compilation might lead into this:-)
On the other hand, an office full of suit & tie bankers or accountants, that think the paper clip in Word is cool, might end up wasting hours on IRC or ICQ because they don't know computers and aren't efficient in doing something else while they wait for their friends to respond to mail (I've seen someone do this at my workplace. Type a message, sip coffee.. wait wait wait... message comes in...type a reply, and sip sip sip... an hour later, he gets back to work. Oy!)
AGain, a lot of whether your workplace is computer savvy or not.
However, I still stand by the point that if it's during the 8hr day that you're paid to be doing and on company property with company computer and a company-funded internet connection, the company has every right to watch what you are doing. They're stupid if they go Big Brother on the workplace, but they have that right to do that. And you have every right to find someplace that doesn't do that.
Oh, and did anyone notice that Bill G and wife *JUST* recently, donated a billion dollars (yes, with a b) to scholarships. (The story is here). Anyone else think Bill G.'s hand was caught in the cookie jar, and he's now trying to distract as much attention before the Judge Jackson decision is made?
I know and understand that many sites, including our beloved slashdot, require banner ads to run. However, maybe something like this, along with some additional (gah) self-regulation can fix the problems with banner ads.
The biggest problem (or benefit if you are the advertizer) is that these ads are the perfect combination of television ads (push technology - you can't refuse the ads *AND* they're animated!), and individualized marketing. And in neither case, unless you really know what you are doing, can you *AVOID* either. I'm surprised with all the privacy concerns of late, that no one has flamed off at double click for collecting user profiles, and you cannot disable that unless you set up the appropriate proxy or host redirect as mentioned elsewhere in this thread.
Furthermore, the ad designers are getting trickier in their techniques - Java, ActiveX scripts, FORMs, Javascript -- you name it, I've seen it. Not only do these slow loading of pages, but all you need is a script kiddie getting into the ad server, and *BAM*, the ad distributor has suddenly allowed that kiddie to access a large number of user's computers. And this can be done unobtrusively -- wedge the code in tight enough, and no one will notice till it's too late.
What can be done about ads? It's a necessary evil for many of the non-corporation, non-profit sites to run with good bandwidth, but it will get out of hand shortly. I've got my own suggestions:
Introduce a new HTML block element, <AD>, such that anything inside that element is condisered an ad. Old browsers will ignore the code and display the ad as normal, while newer browsers can do whatever they want (based on user's prefs) with it. Problems with this are that HTML tags are mention to reflect the document structure and shouldn't be as specific as this, and that ad companies will fiercely complain if even a free, open-sourced browser comes out that strips the ads clearly. Thus, this approach is not very good and will be hard to get accepted.
Limit the content of the ad banner. It should be a simple IMG or a MAP tag, and the total bytes transmitted should be under 20k. This would require self-regulation on the ad designers' part, as well as the necessary coding in the ad distributers' part, but would be the best.
Get the ad distributers' to post privacy notices and opt-up statements on their sites. I doubt that many ad distributers' have any privacy states (Because, duh, they serve the person paying for the ad, not the people that it's pushed to)
If there was an ad company that did any of these things, and did not to targeted advertizing beyond what I specify for my site (For example, my MST3K page, I would allow movie ads, sci-fi related ads, etc, and nothing else), I may consider banner ads again. But until they become less of a bear, I refuse to use them, and hope that this 'patent' will force others away from them, just as the Unisys LZW patent has done for GIFs. It can only make the web a better place.
Maybe Link Exchange was, but I definitely know that Commonwealth (something that riddler.com started) was around in 1995/1996, as I used it for a brief time on my own pages. (I refuse to do ads myself anymore unless I control how they are displayed).
Actually, that's rather ingenious:-) (Those of you that are windows users, get "TweakDUN" and modify the host cache to point ad.doubleclick.net to 127.0.0.1)
This is why most of the establishment believes the "building blocks" of life came on a meteor or some other extraterrestrial vehicle.
Which then begs the question, "Where did THOSE building blocks of life come from originally?" Now we can start throwing in all the Star Trek and Doctor Who theories on the evolution of life.:-)
But seriously, if life's building blocks were extra-terristial in origin, what sort of environment would they be developed in? Maybe not one like Earth in that time, maybe one much colder (Mars like?)
However, it is hard to argue against the fact that *ONCE* those amino acids formed DNA and monocelled organisms, the environs of earth at that time were sufficient to cause mass reproduction and genetic drift (aka evolution). Specifically, the fact there was liquid water (Do you realize how *narrow* the radius band is for a planet to have liquid water orbiting the Sun? Makes one think...)
Read or rent "Contact". (The book's a bit better for this purpose). Sagan appeared to have spent a lot of time debating with himself what effect science and religon would have on a major God-disproving event. A quick summary of this is that when the board responsible to select candidates to send in the probe, the question of the main character's atheist beliefs are brought up, and it's pointed out that 90-some percent of the world population believes in some higher intelligence/God-like figure. As such, she's initially prevented from going on the journey (although later she does get to go under different circumstances).
You also see some of the reactions of religious and scientific zeolots towards the alien contact, and how many are quick to try to disprove the others' theories.
True, it's unrealistic, but because the chamber was continuously charged as to accelerate the process (At least, of what I can remember of the details). They postulated that during the time life was created, the earth had much more in the way of electrical activity than it does now in addition to higher temperatures. Certainly, the 'soup' wasn't charged all the time, and given a few millenia, it would be expected that enough of the amino acids would be formed near the surface, then transported to some point sufficiently distant such that the molecules were not as exposed to the charge, and thus had time to form more complex structures (the proteins). OF course, as scientists, we don't have that kind of time to wait:-).
It's still fascinating how basic chemistry lead to the first reproducing cell. Yes, it was a process that took millions of years to develop, so it becomes a "million monkeys and a million typewriters"-type situation, but it's still amazing how it all came together in the end.
What I meant by "right direction" was not meant to be taken as the ethically right direction, as we obvious know that won't happen.
However, say you want to produce a bacteria that will consume the oil out of sea water but is otherwise benign (Hypothetical). Say you happen to find a strain that does this, but at a slow slow rate (a gram of oil every year). The "right direction" in this case is to improve the speed at which this happens, and this MIGHT be found by manipulating the genes to get it.
Well back before the genetic code was being worked on, some experimenters demonstrated the ability to create the basic amino acids (the building blocks of protiens) can be made in lab conditions that simulated the Earth millions/billions of years ago (namely, lots of H2O, CO, NOx, and methane).
The only difference between this particular experiment and evolution is a few million years of experimental time to allow natural selection.
Now that mankind can understand what specific genes do, they can use this basic experiment to guide the evolution of life in the right direction.
Now, specifically on the article, I did not see mention if this artifical bacteria is based on an existing one or not. Chances are, it is, and all the researchers are doing is instead of manipulating existing DNA strands, they will build their own DNA stand that should be a clone of the above, one nucliotide base at a time. It's impressive, definitely, but it's still a far cry from developing species that are specific for a task, as we yet still don't understand the genetic makeup perfectly.
First, Java was doomed as soon as Sun decided on a closed-source format that invited companies like HP and Microsoft to 'modify' it without incorporating the changes into the 'official' distribution. Sun should have followed the appropriate standards committee, and forfeited the ownership of Java to avoid the fragmentation of Java.
Java has yet to deliever the promise of Write Once, Run Anyway. The poor Java support of systems beyond Solaris and WinXX, the existence of inconsistant versions with the same major version number (1.0 and 1.2) are just some examples.
Finally, and most importantly, Java is still bug ridden. While the rest of their developement is closed, Sun fixed bugs in an open-source sort of way with the Bug Parade. The problem is, no release ever clears out all the bugs in the bug parade. Does that seem wrong to anyone else (and reminisent of a Gates statement a while back?)
Thus, Java is currently difficult to work with outside of an intranet environment. Sure, I think it's a great language, if the above problems were non-existant, and it won't die in any short time, but some of the hype on Java is long-dead. It is NOT the next Windows killer.
Now look at Linux. It's open sourced, no one owns it, and the key element, the kernel, is controlled by one man in the open source model. Sure, you could go off and make your own modifications, but that's got to be a lot of work to do those. It could conviecibly happen but I doubt anyone wants to undertake it.
The kernel works for nearly every system, and with the modularity of it, can be easily met to fit the needs of any system. And save for the libc5 to glibc2 switch, nearly every problem works under every version of the kernel. And this is true for multiple architectures as well.
And of course, Linux may have bugs, but once found, they are generally squashed and patched within a week, if not shorter. No other company on the planet can promise that.
secondary benefit of the above: a shortened presidential campaign, to prevent voter burnout
HOW FRICKEN TRUE!!!!
I get Newsweek and USN&WR, and both magazines had campaign news as early as Jan 1999 -- 22 months before the election.
Yes, the Presidency is important, as well as the primaries for both parties, but YESSH, I'm already sick of the 2000 election, and it's not even 2000 yet!!
My solution: If you are running for office, you may not campaign a month ahead of time, and the campaign budget is fixed for each candidate (cannot add extra funds at the end), and MUCH smaller than it is now (say, $100,000 instead of multi-millions). That way, you have to be more effective of your campaign and resorting to mudslinging would hurt terrible.
Of course there are obvious flaws, but its much better than 2 years of mudslinging.:-P
Eliminate registration, and you suddenly get graveyards voting for a candidate (Remember Chicago?)
However, you've got a good point. People forget to register, and thus, can't vote on Election day. The registration is necessary to prove you're a valid citizen of the nation/state/county/city, but it should be possible to do this as 'securely' as possible on the voting site.
And right now, there's a lot of apathy for the government and the democratic method, because of circular arguments: Voters know that the elected officials rarely represent their constituents and don't vote, but one vote is hardly enough to change those specific officials to a new one. Getting to a place of voting can be difficult, as it is only on one day and generally during the normal business hours, but that's not the entire picture of low voter turnout. Voting by the internet would help to some extent, but it will still be low turn out (I'm expecting less than 20% voter turnout in the 2000 election for President).
I wonder if a Starship Troopers-like setup might be necessary, *hypothetically* - only those that have done a service to their country can vote and have the rights and priviledges of a citizen of the country -- every once just pays their taxes.
This is not the first time this has happened with Apple.
When the PowerPC chip first came out, Apple put out 3 systems, the 6100, 7100, and 8100, and pushed these heavily. (I myself upgraded an old mac to a 7100/66, an excellent performace for the price at that time). This was pushed to academia big time as well.
However, Apple neglicated to mention that at that time, those systems would be the last NUBUS ones, and that further systems would be PCI based.
This really hasn't been a big problem until recently: the Nubus machines will not be able to run some of the later mac software and such (And to upgrade to G3, they are the most as the G3 cannot run Nubus). Thus, everyone that got one of those first PPC machines got bit badly.
Only recently has my faith in Apple been restored, but I am still bitter about this deception, even if it was unintentional. Apple should have not pushed the dead end line so hard when it first came out. And now, they're going to have G3 owners in a bind now, and start to go downhill.
That while the USPTO is still functioning as per usual, they have lowered the bar on patents that are approved, and let the courts sort out any patent disputes (This is not just in the computer field, but all over.) I think that the USPTO should be told to spend more time researching patent applications beyond the normal stupidity checks such that less of the courts time is spent in patent disputes.
Amen. I don't care for Win9x (and if you read the article, the 'backdoor' is in there as well), but I have to use it because of my chosen profession. Plus, I like to play games. Sure, Linux is great for everything else, but until it gets a *FULLY* compatible Office app, and a tons more in terms of recent or coreleased commercial games, I cannot get rid of Microsoft products.
Obviously, stories like these seem to throw mud in Slashdot's face - not because of the people running the site but the HUGE amount on negative posts that come with it. (This also happened with the Unisys/GIF thing, and the Aussie CDA story)
Not all the stories are like this, of course, but there's a good number that start as rumors or press releases which could have wide ranging impact and responce.
Instead of posting these stories as they were submitted, maybe there could be a small group (10 or 20) people that would be willing to follow up on a rumor before it was posted to slashdot in order to qualm the negative responses.
Yes, that probably means a day or two turnaround for some stories. If it's necessary to tell people that these are being worked on, maybe/. could include a "In progress" box to let us know that this team is in gear. This would hopefully cut down the submissions of the same story about 1000 times.
And again, this is only for rumors or stories were the full details and implications aren't know. Factual stories eg "Linux 3.0 out today!" can be posted without question.
IMO, if you are a *cracker*, and go around and maliciously change sites, especially those with the means and ways to prosecute you, you get exactly what you deserve.
On the other hand, if you are a hacker and find a security loophole on the same sort of sites and quietly let the owners of the site know about that, you should be able to report that without fear of being prosecuted.
Unfortunately there's a fine line here and it's rather hard to define. Maybe we need to have people join a Hackers Union to allow them ethical hacking privaledges.
As mentioned before, someone noted that phone lines cannot be monitored as they are considered a common carrier. I would also suspect that this extends to the internet bandwidth that connects your computer to the net.
That said, the company most likely owns the mail server and the computer that you type mail from, as well as the email address you have at work. While the medium on which this goes out is public and cannot be scanned, there is nothing wrong with the company caring about how their server and email addresses are being used. (and as pointed out, this strictly has to be on outgoing mail; Any malicious person can easily send a porn ad to your work email without your consent. Additionally, Melissa-like email viruses must be taken into consideration as well, as too many companies are Outlook Express and Office people).
So if you are working for MegaCorp.com, they have every right to scan the mail on mail.megacorp.com for problematic ones. Not only is that their company policy, but if underpaid_worker@megacorp.com starts spamming bgates@microsoft.com with porn, MegaCorp's reputation can also be tarnished.
The problem is how they approach this. Porn in the workplace is a bad thing to begin with (Shades of Clarence Thomas here), and email is no exception; not only is in inappropriate, but it can lead to sexual harassment suits (In the past, I've seen a coworker talk rather vulgar and get bad glares from other workers, and that person was then talked to behind closed doors). Additionally, that email address is provided by your place of work for work-related purposes; unless you work for a porn place, porn is not work related, much less numbers of mailing lists and such. Many places are lax on that only because all work and no play == low productivity.
However, if the place of work started to demand access to your aol.com account that you paid for, sue the heck out of them.
Anyone that is intelligent enough, IMO, would have a mail account that is for more private things, whether personal communications between friends or porn or whatever, and would only access that from home.
1) Will this really hold up? Not only is GIF use so widely spread among commercial vendors, but it is also spread among the ~users of the world, that built up their web pages with shareware programs (read: Paint Shop Pro). Is Unisys going to go after every ~user home page???? Additionally, while they have been pushing people around trying to defend their patent for *YEARS* (that is, shortly after NS 2.0 came out), they havent done anything until now. This seems not only unethical, but illegal as well as they didn't strive legally to defend their patent. Additionally, isn't this a bit late to defend this? IANAL, but this move seems to have no legal ground for what already exists on the web.
2) Exactly what should we do as web site operators? I realize that the best thing is to switch everything to.png, however, the question is when, if ever? (I do plan to, myself). I know that Burn all Gifs day is yet set, but question is, when if any is Unisys Police going to start combing the web sites? Right now is not the best time for me (defense is within a month) though I'll find the time if the UP will be out soon enough...
Slashdot Mirror
So, how do you write a function that will print to the system printer in C++ that works across all systems?
Or do anything that involves graphic displays?
The point is while there are differences in the speed and memory requirements of the various VMs, they (At least to be java certified) will all perform the same functionality. Yes, there's still clutter between differences of M$'s VM and Sun's VM, and the like, but that's why Sun insists that only programs that have been tested to be fully compatible to be able to display this logo.
Now, I won't argue that there are C and C++ toolkits that work across platforms. But too many of the times, these toolkits are limited to Unix and WinXX. And they are closed source, so that if you aren't one of the priveledged many, you're screwed.
While Java's Open source-ness is still not for sure, there is nothing stopping anyone from making a new VM for their system, as they know what calls they have to put in.
I would agrue that Java's dream never materiallized... but in the sense of being the windows killer. But Java's found other niches that they are easily killing. Any device with WinCE, for example... Java's footprint is much smaller, and more open and robust.
Then I think about workplaced that don't and will most likely never have this, and again, I nod in believing the truth of it (again, news and word of mouth).
Maybe the difference between the workplaces where something like this will most likely be implemented, and were it won't, depends on the computer-savvy of the employees at the place. I think about places that are most likely never to implement this, and I think of game programming shops, web shops, unix shops, etc.. basically where unless you are the boss' son, you've got your job because of your computer savvy. At those places, from what I've been told, they are relaxed, might be on IRC, might be ICQing, may send out 50 emails a day.. yet still get out the product on time. Maybe because they know how to juggle their computer time wisely (I know that when I'm not busy with research stuff at home, I can chat in 2 or 3 irc windows and still get web or java programming done). Which suggests that any job that requires compilation might lead into this :-)
On the other hand, an office full of suit & tie bankers or accountants, that think the paper clip in Word is cool, might end up wasting hours on IRC or ICQ because they don't know computers and aren't efficient in doing something else while they wait for their friends to respond to mail (I've seen someone do this at my workplace. Type a message, sip coffee.. wait wait wait... message comes in...type a reply, and sip sip sip... an hour later, he gets back to work. Oy!)
AGain, a lot of whether your workplace is computer savvy or not.
However, I still stand by the point that if it's during the 8hr day that you're paid to be doing and on company property with company computer and a company-funded internet connection, the company has every right to watch what you are doing. They're stupid if they go Big Brother on the workplace, but they have that right to do that. And you have every right to find someplace that doesn't do that.
Oh, and did anyone notice that Bill G and wife *JUST* recently, donated a billion dollars (yes, with a b) to scholarships. (The story is here). Anyone else think Bill G.'s hand was caught in the cookie jar, and he's now trying to distract as much attention before the Judge Jackson decision is made?
The biggest problem (or benefit if you are the advertizer) is that these ads are the perfect combination of television ads (push technology - you can't refuse the ads *AND* they're animated!), and individualized marketing. And in neither case, unless you really know what you are doing, can you *AVOID* either. I'm surprised with all the privacy concerns of late, that no one has flamed off at double click for collecting user profiles, and you cannot disable that unless you set up the appropriate proxy or host redirect as mentioned elsewhere in this thread.
Furthermore, the ad designers are getting trickier in their techniques - Java, ActiveX scripts, FORMs, Javascript -- you name it, I've seen it. Not only do these slow loading of pages, but all you need is a script kiddie getting into the ad server, and *BAM*, the ad distributor has suddenly allowed that kiddie to access a large number of user's computers. And this can be done unobtrusively -- wedge the code in tight enough, and no one will notice till it's too late.
What can be done about ads? It's a necessary evil for many of the non-corporation, non-profit sites to run with good bandwidth, but it will get out of hand shortly. I've got my own suggestions:
If there was an ad company that did any of these things, and did not to targeted advertizing beyond what I specify for my site (For example, my MST3K page, I would allow movie ads, sci-fi related ads, etc, and nothing else), I may consider banner ads again. But until they become less of a bear, I refuse to use them, and hope that this 'patent' will force others away from them, just as the Unisys LZW patent has done for GIFs. It can only make the web a better place.
Maybe Link Exchange was, but I definitely know
that Commonwealth (something that riddler.com
started) was around in 1995/1996, as I used it
for a brief time on my own pages. (I refuse
to do ads myself anymore unless I control
how they are displayed).
Actually, that's rather ingenious :-)
(Those of you that are windows users, get
"TweakDUN" and modify the host cache to
point ad.doubleclick.net to 127.0.0.1)
Which then begs the question, "Where did THOSE building blocks of life come from originally?" Now we can start throwing in all the Star Trek and Doctor Who theories on the evolution of life. :-)
But seriously, if life's building blocks were extra-terristial in origin, what sort of environment would they be developed in? Maybe not one like Earth in that time, maybe one much colder (Mars like?)
However, it is hard to argue against the fact that *ONCE* those amino acids formed DNA and monocelled organisms, the environs of earth at that time were sufficient to cause mass reproduction and genetic drift (aka evolution). Specifically, the fact there was liquid water (Do you realize how *narrow* the radius band is for a planet to have liquid water orbiting the Sun? Makes one think...)
You also see some of the reactions of religious and scientific zeolots towards the alien contact, and how many are quick to try to disprove the others' theories.
It's still fascinating how basic chemistry lead to the first reproducing cell. Yes, it was a process that took millions of years to develop, so it becomes a "million monkeys and a million typewriters"-type situation, but it's still amazing how it all came together in the end.
to be taken as the ethically right direction,
as we obvious know that won't happen.
However, say you want to produce a bacteria that
will consume the oil out of sea water but is
otherwise benign (Hypothetical). Say you happen
to find a strain that does this, but at a slow
slow rate (a gram of oil every year). The
"right direction" in this case is to improve
the speed at which this happens, and this MIGHT
be found by manipulating the genes to get it.
The only difference between this particular experiment and evolution is a few million years of experimental time to allow natural selection.
Now that mankind can understand what specific genes do, they can use this basic experiment to guide the evolution of life in the right direction.
Now, specifically on the article, I did not see mention if this artifical bacteria is based on an existing one or not. Chances are, it is, and all the researchers are doing is instead of manipulating existing DNA strands, they will build their own DNA stand that should be a clone of the above, one nucliotide base at a time. It's impressive, definitely, but it's still a far cry from developing species that are specific for a task, as we yet still don't understand the genetic makeup perfectly.
First, Java was doomed as soon as Sun decided on a closed-source format that invited companies like HP and Microsoft to 'modify' it without incorporating the changes into the 'official' distribution. Sun should have followed the appropriate standards committee, and forfeited the ownership of Java to avoid the fragmentation of Java.
Java has yet to deliever the promise of Write Once, Run Anyway. The poor Java support of systems beyond Solaris and WinXX, the existence of inconsistant versions with the same major version number (1.0 and 1.2) are just some examples.
Finally, and most importantly, Java is still bug ridden. While the rest of their developement is closed, Sun fixed bugs in an open-source sort of way with the Bug Parade. The problem is, no release ever clears out all the bugs in the bug parade. Does that seem wrong to anyone else (and reminisent of a Gates statement a while back?)
Thus, Java is currently difficult to work with outside of an intranet environment. Sure, I think it's a great language, if the above problems were non-existant, and it won't die in any short time, but some of the hype on Java is long-dead. It is NOT the next Windows killer.
Now look at Linux. It's open sourced, no one owns it, and the key element, the kernel, is controlled by one man in the open source model. Sure, you could go off and make your own modifications, but that's got to be a lot of work to do those. It could conviecibly happen but I doubt anyone wants to undertake it.
The kernel works for nearly every system, and with the modularity of it, can be easily met to fit the needs of any system. And save for the libc5 to glibc2 switch, nearly every problem works under every version of the kernel. And this is true for multiple architectures as well.
And of course, Linux may have bugs, but once found, they are generally squashed and patched within a week, if not shorter. No other company on the planet can promise that.
How about ST:MST3K where our crew (one guy and 3
robots) visits strange alien cultures and make
fun of their cinema?
Or did Steven R.'s idea get shot down at the :-)
start?
HOW FRICKEN TRUE!!!!
I get Newsweek and USN&WR, and both magazines had campaign news as early as Jan 1999 -- 22 months before the election.
Yes, the Presidency is important, as well as the primaries for both parties, but YESSH, I'm already sick of the 2000 election, and it's not even 2000 yet!!
My solution: If you are running for office, you may not campaign a month ahead of time, and the campaign budget is fixed for each candidate (cannot add extra funds at the end), and MUCH smaller than it is now (say, $100,000 instead of multi-millions). That way, you have to be more effective of your campaign and resorting to mudslinging would hurt terrible.
Of course there are obvious flaws, but its much better than 2 years of mudslinging. :-P
graveyards voting for a candidate (Remember
Chicago?)
However, you've got a good point. People forget
to register, and thus, can't vote on Election
day. The registration is necessary to prove
you're a valid citizen of the nation/state/county/city, but it should be possible to do this as 'securely' as possible
on the voting site.
And right now, there's a lot of apathy for the
government and the democratic method, because of
circular arguments: Voters know that the
elected officials rarely represent their
constituents and don't vote, but one vote
is hardly enough to change those specific officials to a new one. Getting to a place of
voting can be difficult, as it is only on one
day and generally during the normal business
hours, but that's not the entire picture of
low voter turnout. Voting by the internet
would help to some extent, but it will still
be low turn out (I'm expecting less than
20% voter turnout in the 2000 election for
President).
I wonder if a Starship Troopers-like setup might
be necessary, *hypothetically* - only those that
have done a service to their country can vote
and have the rights and priviledges of a
citizen of the country -- every once just pays
their taxes.
Didn't Al Gore initiate a plan for a permanent satelite in space that would transmit images to a web site 24/7?
When the PowerPC chip first came out, Apple put out 3 systems, the 6100, 7100, and 8100, and pushed these heavily. (I myself upgraded an old mac to a 7100/66, an excellent performace for the price at that time). This was pushed to academia big time as well.
However, Apple neglicated to mention that at that time, those systems would be the last NUBUS ones, and that further systems would be PCI based.
This really hasn't been a big problem until recently: the Nubus machines will not be able to run some of the later mac software and such (And to upgrade to G3, they are the most as the G3 cannot run Nubus). Thus, everyone that got one of those first PPC machines got bit badly.
Only recently has my faith in Apple been restored, but I am still bitter about this deception, even if it was unintentional. Apple should have not pushed the dead end line so hard when it first came out. And now, they're going to have G3 owners in a bind now, and start to go downhill.
That while the USPTO is still functioning as per usual, they have lowered the bar on patents that are approved, and let the courts sort out any patent disputes (This is not just in the computer field, but all over.) I think that the USPTO should be told to spend more time researching patent applications beyond the normal stupidity checks such that less of the courts time is spent in patent disputes.
Not all the stories are like this, of course, but there's a good number that start as rumors or press releases which could have wide ranging impact and responce.
Instead of posting these stories as they were submitted, maybe there could be a small group (10 or 20) people that would be willing to follow up on a rumor before it was posted to slashdot in order to qualm the negative responses.
Yes, that probably means a day or two turnaround for some stories. If it's necessary to tell people that these are being worked on, maybe /. could include a "In progress" box to let us know that this team is in gear. This would hopefully cut down the submissions of the same story about 1000 times.
And again, this is only for rumors or stories were the full details and implications aren't know. Factual stories eg "Linux 3.0 out today!" can be posted without question.
On the other hand, if you are a hacker and find a security loophole on the same sort of sites and quietly let the owners of the site know about that, you should be able to report that without fear of being prosecuted.
Unfortunately there's a fine line here and it's rather hard to define. Maybe we need to have people join a Hackers Union to allow them ethical hacking privaledges.
That said, the company most likely owns the mail server and the computer that you type mail from, as well as the email address you have at work. While the medium on which this goes out is public and cannot be scanned, there is nothing wrong with the company caring about how their server and email addresses are being used. (and as pointed out, this strictly has to be on outgoing mail; Any malicious person can easily send a porn ad to your work email without your consent. Additionally, Melissa-like email viruses must be taken into consideration as well, as too many companies are Outlook Express and Office people).
So if you are working for MegaCorp.com, they have every right to scan the mail on mail.megacorp.com for problematic ones. Not only is that their company policy, but if underpaid_worker@megacorp.com starts spamming bgates@microsoft.com with porn, MegaCorp's reputation can also be tarnished.
The problem is how they approach this. Porn in the workplace is a bad thing to begin with (Shades of Clarence Thomas here), and email is no exception; not only is in inappropriate, but it can lead to sexual harassment suits (In the past, I've seen a coworker talk rather vulgar and get bad glares from other workers, and that person was then talked to behind closed doors). Additionally, that email address is provided by your place of work for work-related purposes; unless you work for a porn place, porn is not work related, much less numbers of mailing lists and such. Many places are lax on that only because all work and no play == low productivity.
However, if the place of work started to demand access to your aol.com account that you paid for, sue the heck out of them.
Anyone that is intelligent enough, IMO, would have a mail account that is for more private things, whether personal communications between friends or porn or whatever, and would only access that from home.
2) Exactly what should we do as web site operators? I realize that the best thing is to switch everything to .png, however, the question is when, if ever? (I do plan to, myself). I know that Burn all Gifs day is yet set, but question is, when if any is Unisys Police going to start combing the web sites? Right now is not the best time for me (defense is within a month) though I'll find the time if the UP will be out soon enough...