I looked at what's there already, and I'm not terribly impressed. For example, and this is terribly superficial, but your tarball expands into the directory you untar it in, not into it's own subdirectory like every other project that uses a tarball.
I like a lot of the writing about how a distributed social networking thing should be constructed and the analysis of potential problems and things. I don't see a lot of acknowledgement of the things in the area that have already been done. No mention of OpenID for example.
Supposedly, there will be. I'm a 'backer', but I fully realize I may well have tossed away my $50. It was worth it to me because these people look like they have a clue and this is been something I've been wanting for a long time.
Also, I knew that my money would do a bit to increase the media coverage. I want people to be well aware that this project exists and that there's an alternative. I suppose it's rather early for the spotlight. The risk (aside from, you know, that they'll just commit fraud) is that now instead of being hungry and creating something that works they'll go the route of designing the perfect thing.
People who complain that being completely open is a path to financial ruin may once have been being prudently cautious, but nowadays they are basically living in a state of willful ignorance.
There are so many cases of companies that even people on Slashdot think are open enough (Redhat, for example) that are also profitable that it's quite clear that it's definitely possible to be open enough for Slashdot and profitable at the same time, particularly for important pieces of web infrastructure.
One is being developed, gnash. Unfortunately, in my experience it doesn't actually work very well for most Flash content out there, at least not yet. When and if it does, I will withdraw my argument.
I don't care about the existence of a public specification. The OOXML debacle highlighted exactly how completely and utterly useless a public spec really is. The useful thing is a public interoperable implementation. And until one exists, I will not call a standard open, no matter how many pages of specifications they've published.
I agree, it is depressing. Where is my working Open Source Flash player Adobe? Is there an open standard for Flash that has any implementations that work for over 99% of Flash out there other than yours? When you can answer these questions, then maybe you have a leg to stand on in complaining about Apple. But until then, I sincerely hope that Flash dies the death it so richly deserves.
Excuse me?! You just contradicted yourself, and were even rude and vulgar when you did it.
My phone stores a ton of stuff on Google's servers. Amazon's kindle stores a ton of stuff on Amazon's servers. How else does it know what books you should have on your new Kindle, and how else can it transfer all your notes over? My PS3 is talking to Sony all the time, and I'm sure that, at the very least, the list of things I've bought is on their servers.
All these new DRM laden devices do indeed store a ton of stuff on remote servers.
Why doesn't the Kindle give me the option to store all the notes on my own personal server in my apartment? Why can't I set my phone to sync my contact database with one on my own personal server in my apartment?
All I have to do is procure/install a new Kindle, enter the appropriate account identification, and my books and notes are transferred to the new device.
I have a computer that's connected to the Internet 24/7. It runs an IMAP server, an SMTP server, a web server, Mailman, a few wikis, and other miscellaneous things.
Why do all of these devices insist on storing things on Google's cloud, or Amazon's cloud, or someone else's cloud? What about mine? I want my data right where I can see it, not in the dubiously benevolent hands of some random third party. Why isn't that happening with any of these devices?
Even collecting information about 'most popular passages' is, IMHO, kind of invasive. Especially when it happens without you even realizing it. When you highlight something on a personal device you hold in your lap where you 'buy' the books the expectation is not that the highlight becomes public knowledge in any way, even as part of an aggregate.
The plain fact is, the idea that you 'own' your Kindle or any of the books on it is a complete fiction. Amazon should not be allowed to imply that you do in any way.
This is why I'm so very insistent about owning the hardware I buy. Mostly. Unfortunately, I sort of share vague ownership of a PS3 with Sony.:-( But generally, it's not a concession I'm willing to make.
Sadly, I don't think most people are aware of the choice they're making. And when you tell them, they think you're a raving lunatic or some kind of bizarre idealist. But their choices have real consequences, and the network effect of their choices have consequences for me.
I think their hard-line ideology is the only pragmatic one when it comes to software.
Your definition of pragmatic would have the potential to destroy the web ecosystem for small players. In the long run, that destroys it for everybody. I call that self-destructive and short-sighted, not pragmatic.
Saying that not adopting technology is better than adopting one that has self-destruction embedded in the legal framework surrounding it seems like a very pragmatic stance to me.
Flash is a despicable disgrace. Most of the time when I talk to a Flash developer, the thing they're the happiest about is the control they get over my computer. This is directly because the Flash player is a piece of garbage closed source tool that purposely caters to developers over end-users. The Open Source gnash (not ganash) player has an option to pause a Flash program. The Adobe player will never, ever end up with that option, ever. Giving me control over my own computer is against Adobe's best interest. Adobe's Flash player is little more than a widely deployed trojan horse that, IMHO, is little better than spyware (Flash cookies anyone? Where's my control over those?).
I wouldn't complain so bitterly about this if the gnash player were actually a decent drop in replacement for the closed source Flash player, but it isn't. I have to either choose my freedom and Flash that is broken most of the time, or Flash that works while giving up my freedom. I will choose my freedom, thank you very much, but I will be bitter about the stupid choice I'm forced to make.
So, when one maker of a closed, proprietary platform that steals people's freedom purposely does things to the detriment of another closed proprietary platform that steals people's freedom, I can't help but cheer. And I hope Adobe finds a way to play nasty games with Apple too. The more these two companies can find ways to hurt eachother, the more the rest of us benefit.
*sigh* Oops, another wonderful theory slain by reality.:-) I've not played much with either an iPhone or an iPad so I wasn't aware that they had a program to support YouTube on them.
This move from Apple and the Microsoft's statement about only supporting H.264 are a reaction to Google's purchase of VP8. Both Apple and Microsoft are terrified of Google. They are willing to give up quicktime and wmv as long as Google doesn't succeed in pushing an open source, patent free solution to web video.
I think you're absolutely correct in this. I wonder if that's the biggest reason Steve Jobs does not want Flash on the iOwnYou products, to try to decrease YouTube's market share.
I agree. I think Apple hasn't had the opportunity to be nearly as evil as Microsoft yet. But the ways things are going, I have no doubt they'll take the opportunity as soon as it presents itself.
And, while I half expected this, I'm still angry about it.
I didn't notice that there were numerous discussions and explanations from management. In fact, the juror who provided the interview felt that Terry Childs had a boss who was weak and let him get away with stuff.
One thing I notice here is very black & white thinking. Either someone is wholly evil and untrustworthy and deserves every single possible bad thing that could be done within the law and then some. Or they are perfectly good and doing the right thing.
That's not how people are. That's not how the world is. Things aren't that simple and people don't fall neatly into 'good' and 'evil' categories like some poorly written book or video game.
I suspect that given a situation in which Terry Childs was clearly not in control and required to let other people to have access to all the administered systems and have that access checked periodically, that he would be a fine and useful employee. In fact, I doubt that you would have to do more than reprimand him once or twice until he learned what the limits on his behavior were and learned that those limits would be enforced.
I did not say that a jury should be solely responsible for causing justice to be done, just that they ought to be concerned with justice being done and consider the sentence someone might get for a crime. Insisting that they very narrowly interpret actions against law and decide whether or not the law was broken isn't allowing them to fulfill their duty to do justice.
I agree that juries should not be responsible for sentencing, nor should they be allowed to convict you of crimes that you aren't being accused of. They should be allowed to acquit based on sentences being too harsh, a law being unjustly applied, or a law simply being unjust, and they should be allowed to advise a judge on what they think an appropriate sentence would be.
If I were locked out of my house by someone who I hired to handle all the house security issues for me I'd have a much different opinion than if I were locked out by someone who was a guest. Especially if that person refused to give my children the keys but was willing to give them to me.
You have to do it objectively and I think knowing that you're personally responsible for sending some guy to jail for 20 years might make some people "iffy" on returning a guilty verdict.
I disagree. I think a big part of the jury's job is justice, not necessarily just determining guilt or innocence. There needs to be a better brake on politicians for requiring ever increasing and ridiculous punishments for a crime, and one big brake would be a jury refusing to convict because the sentence is too severe.
except that "denial-of-service" doesn't mean denying them your services.
And that's not the conclusion the jury reached. They defined 'denial-of-service' as denying the city the ability to administrate its network without Terry Childs, and I think that's legitimate and clearly the case.
I see bad behavior combined with a smug sense of self-importance causing real damage and being properly punished for it.
Interestingly, that could describe Hans Reiser has well. I think it's the disease of our profession.
I would be willing to hire him, though I think maybe I'd want to review the case and work history a little more before making that decision. I would just make it very clear to him that he did not have sole authority over the network and make sure that others always had access.
When a jury reaches a verdict, I usually give them the benefit of a doubt. They saw the trial, I didn't.
But I will not hesitate to defend someone again when it seems like they might be wrongfully accused. Far too often people are thought of as guilty just because they are charged. The state should have to make its case against a vigorous and heated defense. Being convicted in the court of public opinion can be quite damaging to someone, and there is no recourse. I'm happy to have that conviction happen after the real one instead of before.
They clearly understood the issues and had a very fine judgement call to make. I don't necessarily agree with it, but I no longer feel they were idiots who made a clearly bad call.
I hope they recommended the lightest possible sentence when giving their verdict. They can't determine the sentence, but I think they can give the judge advice.
I was speaking metaphorically. I meant criminal. And, in my opinion, it's a gross miscarriage of justice to make someone pay for their own prosecution. It's basically punishing them for not pleading guilty and trying to defend themselves. That would have the effect of causing a lot of innocent people to plead guilty.
Of course, plea bargaining already does that, and in my opinion is a strong argument against plea bargaining. They all come from the mindset that a conviction is better than justice.
Slashdot Mirror
I looked at what's there already, and I'm not terribly impressed. For example, and this is terribly superficial, but your tarball expands into the directory you untar it in, not into it's own subdirectory like every other project that uses a tarball.
I like a lot of the writing about how a distributed social networking thing should be constructed and the analysis of potential problems and things. I don't see a lot of acknowledgement of the things in the area that have already been done. No mention of OpenID for example.
Yes, not terribly impressed. *sigh*
Supposedly, there will be. I'm a 'backer', but I fully realize I may well have tossed away my $50. It was worth it to me because these people look like they have a clue and this is been something I've been wanting for a long time.
Also, I knew that my money would do a bit to increase the media coverage. I want people to be well aware that this project exists and that there's an alternative. I suppose it's rather early for the spotlight. The risk (aside from, you know, that they'll just commit fraud) is that now instead of being hungry and creating something that works they'll go the route of designing the perfect thing.
People who complain that being completely open is a path to financial ruin may once have been being prudently cautious, but nowadays they are basically living in a state of willful ignorance.
There are so many cases of companies that even people on Slashdot think are open enough (Redhat, for example) that are also profitable that it's quite clear that it's definitely possible to be open enough for Slashdot and profitable at the same time, particularly for important pieces of web infrastructure.
One is being developed, gnash. Unfortunately, in my experience it doesn't actually work very well for most Flash content out there, at least not yet. When and if it does, I will withdraw my argument.
I don't care about the existence of a public specification. The OOXML debacle highlighted exactly how completely and utterly useless a public spec really is. The useful thing is a public interoperable implementation. And until one exists, I will not call a standard open, no matter how many pages of specifications they've published.
I agree, it is depressing. Where is my working Open Source Flash player Adobe? Is there an open standard for Flash that has any implementations that work for over 99% of Flash out there other than yours? When you can answer these questions, then maybe you have a leg to stand on in complaining about Apple. But until then, I sincerely hope that Flash dies the death it so richly deserves.
The answer is simple: They don't, strawman.
Excuse me?! You just contradicted yourself, and were even rude and vulgar when you did it.
My phone stores a ton of stuff on Google's servers. Amazon's kindle stores a ton of stuff on Amazon's servers. How else does it know what books you should have on your new Kindle, and how else can it transfer all your notes over? My PS3 is talking to Sony all the time, and I'm sure that, at the very least, the list of things I've bought is on their servers.
All these new DRM laden devices do indeed store a ton of stuff on remote servers.
Why doesn't the Kindle give me the option to store all the notes on my own personal server in my apartment? Why can't I set my phone to sync my contact database with one on my own personal server in my apartment?
All I have to do is procure/install a new Kindle, enter the appropriate account identification, and my books and notes are transferred to the new device.
I have a computer that's connected to the Internet 24/7. It runs an IMAP server, an SMTP server, a web server, Mailman, a few wikis, and other miscellaneous things.
Why do all of these devices insist on storing things on Google's cloud, or Amazon's cloud, or someone else's cloud? What about mine? I want my data right where I can see it, not in the dubiously benevolent hands of some random third party. Why isn't that happening with any of these devices?
Even collecting information about 'most popular passages' is, IMHO, kind of invasive. Especially when it happens without you even realizing it. When you highlight something on a personal device you hold in your lap where you 'buy' the books the expectation is not that the highlight becomes public knowledge in any way, even as part of an aggregate.
The plain fact is, the idea that you 'own' your Kindle or any of the books on it is a complete fiction. Amazon should not be allowed to imply that you do in any way.
This is why I'm so very insistent about owning the hardware I buy. Mostly. Unfortunately, I sort of share vague ownership of a PS3 with Sony. :-( But generally, it's not a concession I'm willing to make.
Sadly, I don't think most people are aware of the choice they're making. And when you tell them, they think you're a raving lunatic or some kind of bizarre idealist. But their choices have real consequences, and the network effect of their choices have consequences for me.
I think their hard-line ideology is the only pragmatic one when it comes to software.
Your definition of pragmatic would have the potential to destroy the web ecosystem for small players. In the long run, that destroys it for everybody. I call that self-destructive and short-sighted, not pragmatic.
Saying that not adopting technology is better than adopting one that has self-destruction embedded in the legal framework surrounding it seems like a very pragmatic stance to me.
But it's just as black.
Flash is a despicable disgrace. Most of the time when I talk to a Flash developer, the thing they're the happiest about is the control they get over my computer. This is directly because the Flash player is a piece of garbage closed source tool that purposely caters to developers over end-users. The Open Source gnash (not ganash) player has an option to pause a Flash program. The Adobe player will never, ever end up with that option, ever. Giving me control over my own computer is against Adobe's best interest. Adobe's Flash player is little more than a widely deployed trojan horse that, IMHO, is little better than spyware (Flash cookies anyone? Where's my control over those?).
I wouldn't complain so bitterly about this if the gnash player were actually a decent drop in replacement for the closed source Flash player, but it isn't. I have to either choose my freedom and Flash that is broken most of the time, or Flash that works while giving up my freedom. I will choose my freedom, thank you very much, but I will be bitter about the stupid choice I'm forced to make.
So, when one maker of a closed, proprietary platform that steals people's freedom purposely does things to the detriment of another closed proprietary platform that steals people's freedom, I can't help but cheer. And I hope Adobe finds a way to play nasty games with Apple too. The more these two companies can find ways to hurt eachother, the more the rest of us benefit.
*chuckle* I'm amused this got marked flamebait when it's likely at least a significant portion of the truth. I guess it's all in how you say things.
If you would've read the thread following this, you'll see that I didn't know this was the case. My comment certainly didn't deserve to be modded up.
*sigh* Oops, another wonderful theory slain by reality. :-) I've not played much with either an iPhone or an iPad so I wasn't aware that they had a program to support YouTube on them.
This move from Apple and the Microsoft's statement about only supporting H.264 are a reaction to Google's purchase of VP8. Both Apple and Microsoft are terrified of Google. They are willing to give up quicktime and wmv as long as Google doesn't succeed in pushing an open source, patent free solution to web video.
I think you're absolutely correct in this. I wonder if that's the biggest reason Steve Jobs does not want Flash on the iOwnYou products, to try to decrease YouTube's market share.
I agree. I think Apple hasn't had the opportunity to be nearly as evil as Microsoft yet. But the ways things are going, I have no doubt they'll take the opportunity as soon as it presents itself.
And, while I half expected this, I'm still angry about it.
I didn't notice that there were numerous discussions and explanations from management. In fact, the juror who provided the interview felt that Terry Childs had a boss who was weak and let him get away with stuff.
One thing I notice here is very black & white thinking. Either someone is wholly evil and untrustworthy and deserves every single possible bad thing that could be done within the law and then some. Or they are perfectly good and doing the right thing.
That's not how people are. That's not how the world is. Things aren't that simple and people don't fall neatly into 'good' and 'evil' categories like some poorly written book or video game.
I suspect that given a situation in which Terry Childs was clearly not in control and required to let other people to have access to all the administered systems and have that access checked periodically, that he would be a fine and useful employee. In fact, I doubt that you would have to do more than reprimand him once or twice until he learned what the limits on his behavior were and learned that those limits would be enforced.
I did not say that a jury should be solely responsible for causing justice to be done, just that they ought to be concerned with justice being done and consider the sentence someone might get for a crime. Insisting that they very narrowly interpret actions against law and decide whether or not the law was broken isn't allowing them to fulfill their duty to do justice.
I agree that juries should not be responsible for sentencing, nor should they be allowed to convict you of crimes that you aren't being accused of. They should be allowed to acquit based on sentences being too harsh, a law being unjustly applied, or a law simply being unjust, and they should be allowed to advise a judge on what they think an appropriate sentence would be.
If I were locked out of my house by someone who I hired to handle all the house security issues for me I'd have a much different opinion than if I were locked out by someone who was a guest. Especially if that person refused to give my children the keys but was willing to give them to me.
Your analogy is pretty ridiculous actually.
You have to do it objectively and I think knowing that you're personally responsible for sending some guy to jail for 20 years might make some people "iffy" on returning a guilty verdict.
I disagree. I think a big part of the jury's job is justice, not necessarily just determining guilt or innocence. There needs to be a better brake on politicians for requiring ever increasing and ridiculous punishments for a crime, and one big brake would be a jury refusing to convict because the sentence is too severe.
except that "denial-of-service" doesn't mean denying them your services.
And that's not the conclusion the jury reached. They defined 'denial-of-service' as denying the city the ability to administrate its network without Terry Childs, and I think that's legitimate and clearly the case.
Interestingly, that could describe Hans Reiser has well. I think it's the disease of our profession.
I would be willing to hire him, though I think maybe I'd want to review the case and work history a little more before making that decision. I would just make it very clear to him that he did not have sole authority over the network and make sure that others always had access.
When a jury reaches a verdict, I usually give them the benefit of a doubt. They saw the trial, I didn't.
But I will not hesitate to defend someone again when it seems like they might be wrongfully accused. Far too often people are thought of as guilty just because they are charged. The state should have to make its case against a vigorous and heated defense. Being convicted in the court of public opinion can be quite damaging to someone, and there is no recourse. I'm happy to have that conviction happen after the real one instead of before.
They clearly understood the issues and had a very fine judgement call to make. I don't necessarily agree with it, but I no longer feel they were idiots who made a clearly bad call.
I hope they recommended the lightest possible sentence when giving their verdict. They can't determine the sentence, but I think they can give the judge advice.
I was speaking metaphorically. I meant criminal. And, in my opinion, it's a gross miscarriage of justice to make someone pay for their own prosecution. It's basically punishing them for not pleading guilty and trying to defend themselves. That would have the effect of causing a lot of innocent people to plead guilty.
Of course, plea bargaining already does that, and in my opinion is a strong argument against plea bargaining. They all come from the mindset that a conviction is better than justice.