Katz' pontificating is obnoxious enough when he sticks to subjects relevant to Slashdot. What are reviews of those two movies doing on here? Did Katz actually get paid for that column? Can *I* write short movie summaries culled from other news sites and get on the Slashdot payroll?
People might be interested to know that when I saw Pearl Harbor on opening night at an AMC theater, that new Lord Of The Rings trailer discussed on/. a few days ago was shown. Might be worth the ticket price.:-)
The movie itself was a lot like Saving Private Ryan, in that the big battle scene was an excellent way of showing how horrifying war can be but the rest of the movie was fairly mediocre. One other problem I had as I watched it was the bizarre and erratic combination of true historical references and total fiction. A handful of characters in the movie were real people, a handful were composites of real people, but it was never clear which those were. Same goes for a lot of events; it's impossible to tell what really happened and what didn't, but the very existence of true events in the movie leaves one predisposed to find it all accurate. Like some others have commented, I find that troubling, especially because in this day and age lots of parents take their kids to such movies because they are "educational."
Just a factual correction: it was NBC that was doing the digital work, and they were using it to replace lots of the actual ads in Times Square with ones of their choosing.
I like how he says he's just going to shoot 32 miles up in the air, then drift back down and land in roughly the same place he took off from. Think he's heard of "wind"?
Part of the idea of "convergence" is that the magical box won't need to do so many different things. We shouldn't need equipment to handle 5 different types of or sources for video. DVDs (or something similar representing physical distribution) and streamed MPEG5;-) (something for wire or satellite distribution) should be all that's needed. Similar principles apply for audio. "Convergence" will only be worthwhile if the sources for media are consolidated too (I mean, of course, through common formats, not AOL-TimeWarner-CNN-Disney-Etc). Otherwise we just end up with, as Taco discusses, the need for a "do everything" box of nightmarish complexity.
Reviewer needed some real science know-how
on
Excess Heat
·
· Score: 5
Hey moderators, this is NOT a troll.
Quite frankly, cold fusion, at least in the sense that Fleischmann & Pons used it, has been utterly disproven. According to the reviewer, the book says that "nuclear physicists declared that because no nuclear products could be demonstrated, the measurement of excess heat was flawed." That's not quite right. They did say that, but then nuclear physicists then went on to explain where the excess heat was probably coming from -- definitely NOT fusion. They never got a chance to prove it for sure, because Fleischmann & Pons wouldn't ever tell anyone exactly how cold fusion was supposed to work.
It is quite obvious from the review that the book makes a lot of outrageous statements that, quite frankly, amount to straight lies. For example, the reviewer has learned from the book that "it is now obvious that any critic of cold fusion will have to do more than present illogical arguments or simply ridicule the scientists involved in the research." Oh my god. The whole problem with the cold fusion "discovery" was that Fleischmann & Pons refused to allow their work to be peer-reviewed! By not doing so, scientists had to slowly work to duplicate their experiment piece by piece, on the way doing a lot of speculating about what Fleischmann & Pons had done. Those two, along with some stupid members of Congress and the media, were the ones who dragged the whole thing through the mud.
There are probably any number of GOOD scientific books on the subject of this whole scientific debacle. I would direct readers in particular to "Voodoo Science" by Robert Park. It's a fairly good book anyway with an excellent long section about cold fusion.
I do not mean to insult the reviewer, but I would speculate he just isn't qualified to really judge most of the scientific statements made in the book he reviewed. I hope he explores the literature a little further to perhaps obtain a more reasonable perspective.
Ok, I can sort of understand the -1 mod to this, but not really. It's a totally serious comment on what seems to be a very insulting statement by Taco. Don't be so damn touchy!
"...the folks capable of, say, defacing a website, usually aren't the same folks able to intelligently communicate a message." Nice choice of words there, Taco. It's interesting of you to insult the intelligence of what is probably a fairly decent portion of your readership. (Of course, I totally agree with what you said.)
The interview refers to what sounds like a pretty nasty spat between the two artists. Perhaps I'm just a couple years too young, but I never heard about this. Anyone have a fuller explanation?
I think the point regarding this comment is that if the person who sent in the Ask Slashdot submision knows what should be done, how the company could survive, why the hell isn't he/she the manager? In most cases, I'd think what someone would do would say "ok, I know how to do things better, so I'm going to go find a company where I can do them." I doubt it's possible for him to go to the management and say "you people have really screwed up, let's switch jobs so I can take a shot at it." I suppose such an attempt might be worth it if he/she already has a solid alternative lined up -- as in, another job -- but does anyone actually picture it working?
I think the important thing is what's ethical when considering issues of corporate loyalty. It is unethical to jump ship in order to get money for bringing trade-secret-type information to a competitor. It is unethical to make a false committment to a company's project and then (barring an extremely good reason, of course) bail when they are depending on you to do what you said you would. It is certainly ethical to watch out for your personal welfare and leave a failing company.
Damnit Hemos...to be perfectly honest, political coverage on/. is horrid. Anytime a post-election item has been put on the main page, it's always accompanied by a totally uninformed blanket statement like "Bush is the winner." It's STILL not over -- to be precise, the Supreme Court decision was that the justices were not convinced that the Florida Supreme Court could rely on the Florida State Constitution for what they did, and said the Florida court needed to find a different way to justify its decision, like statutory clarification. One possible (and likely) scenario is that the Florida Supreme Court will look for a way to rewrite its opinion, probably just by removing any references to the state constitution so that it is merely deciding a conflict between two seemingly contradictory laws. This is beside the fact that simply reversing the Florida Supreme Court's decision does not end the election anyway because there are proceedings in other courts that remain uneffected.
Anyway, PLEASE don't attempt to be a political reporter! It can be very misleading if you don't know all the details. Just link to an AP story or something and let it be.
I think that one crucial point often lost in discussions of free software is that for open source projects that rely on more than a handful of people there is always a central individual or group needed to 'moderate' the code. One way XCF could possibly maintain usefulness is to be a leader in higher-profile open source efforts. Its members could begin a project and contribute their coding expertise while inviting others to do the same. I'm guessing that getting to work on an 'XCF project' would be a pretty big draw, and that the resulting software would be of high quality.
I Agree. It doesn't sound like this book is making any attempt at glorification. It mostly seems to fit right in with a white-hat hacker ethic of exposing flaws in systems that effect others. I doubt the guy set out to do just that, but it works anyway. There are some aspects of the story that are pretty disgusting -- passing bad checks is plain old thievery, and someone flying jetliners without a pilot's license is a horrendously scary thing to contemplate -- but overall it's an important lesson.
I don't think the idea is that tetrachromats see "other colors." They have cells that are sensitive to a fourth frequency somewhere in what we know as the visible band of light, where most of us have cells sensitive to only three particular frequencies (which vary slightly among individuals, but are always supposed to be red, green, and blue). What this means is that when you look at two red shirts and think they're the same color, a tetrachromat might be able to see that they are in fact slightly different colors. It's kinda neat, but it doesn't give night-vision or anything like that. The real significance, like the article said, is that this could tell us something fundamental about the human brain and its malleability.
A middle ground is needed
on
eLection '04
·
· Score: 1
There is a much simpler and more reliable middle ground that can be achieved. Instead of trying to make the entire process electronic, just make the counting at the polling places both immediate and infallible. What this would require would be specific devices (or pared-down PCs running an open system with some extra equipment) to do the following when a voter has made their choices using a traditional system:
1) Upon insertion into a reader, examine a voter's punch card and verify their choices on a screen. Highlight any reason the ballot would be rejected (two votes for one office, for example).
2) Upon approval of the ballot according to voting rules and the voter's verification of their choices, seal the ballot in a locked box while adding the votes to an internal electronic count.
3) At the end of the polling day, an election official could 'unlock' the machine, with both a key to get to the ballots and a password for the electronics, and the vote total would be immediately available. Ta da!
This has several advantages, the most important of which are instant, error-free vote counting, and the retention of physical records of the votes themselves. This also avoids the potential hazard of communication problems and equipment failures inherent to a totally electronic system. The cost probably wouldn't be too bad either.
Sorry folks, but you can't just grab one study and yell "this is how it is!" The Washington Post covered this same story, and in their write-up they mention how the findings by UCLA are in direct contradition to an equally massive study performed by people at Stanford earlier this year. Sorry Katz, but independent verification is still a requirement of scientific research.
I think the author makes some very good points, but he misses a possible reason for this huge push towards 'ease of use': company profits. There are millions of computer users -- not to mention people who could afford to buy a computer but haven't -- who use a very expensive and powerful piece of machinery for only 3 or 4 tasks. This is not good for software companies, whose potential markets are severely limited because people a) don't know what can be done with their computer, and b) think more interesting things must be too complicated to learn. The easiest and fastest way for companies to draw in new customers is to create software that is easy to use without other knowledge -- like the generalized sense of how a computer functions that the author of the article mentions. Have you ever seen a software advertisement targeted at the general public that didn't say something to the effect of "so easy to use you'll be ______ in no time" (think AOL)?
In my opinion, when more people are more educated about how their computers work, the incentive for pure ease-of-use will disappear. Most customers, like current 'advanced' computer users, will be interested in powerful and elegant software, and will accept a learning curve for the sake of functionality.
It touches on the humorous to see so many criticisms of the article in the comments here on/. but it's mostly just plain sad. It's a shame when people get the rug pulled out from under them, but people who deny that it's happening as their collective *ss hits the ground lose sympathy and just look stupid. Practically every week here on/. there is a item detailing the latest example of how a lack of understanding by legal and legislative bodies is working against people who want to move society forward through technology. And all a lot of you can do -- just like the article says -- is post useless responses on a website. Because you can trade digital media with impunity (gee, that'll solve the world's problems) you seem to think that traditional sources of power no longer matter, and you don't take the time to 1) learn about how they work, and 2) participate so your voice is heard. Members of Congress don't read slashdot.
By the way...did someone make sure to send Jon Katz the URL for the article?
The most obvious thing the authors' argument ignores is that people do not live in cyberspace. Physical goods do not exist in cyberspace. Currency, while often transferred electronically, is still rooted in the physical and is ultimately controled by physical institutions. For these very simple reasons, you can not totally circumvent a physical nation-state (or a future equivalent). I do not know why the authors think a cyberzone of some sort could be created where taxation is impossible. Taxes on individual transactions might be difficult, but those are definitely not the only kinds of taxes we have. Physical goods traded in a cyberzone must be produced somewhere, purchased by someone with currency, and delivered somewhere. Unless all of these are performed outside the physical boundaries of a nation-state, the state still has myriad mechanisms available for control.
No, a nation-state can't (using even marginally reasonable and feasible means) stop the trading of MP3s. But a strong nation-state with the support of its people can easily exert enormous influence on economic activity that involves physical goods. I am glad that Katz isn't yet writing off the nation-state, but it is disappointing (though not surprising) that he acts as though the physical world is irrelevant for electronic commerce and goods. Two of those companies that he cites as examples of possible cyber merchant republics - AOL/Time-Warner and Microsoft - deal almost totally in immaterial goods. Their products require physical products like computers to have any use at all. Intel deals in physical goods and is therefore prone to control. Disney's revenues come from both kinds of products. None are at all free from the constraints of the physical world and the nation-state. If Microsoft moved to an island, a nation-state could get rid of Microsoft with a single missle.
I think the basic point here is that any realm or zone in cyberspace can only be useful for "cybergoods." And no matter what people like Katz say, we will always need food, shelter, and a whole lot of other physical goods to have a society where cyberspace even exists. Given that, the power of a cyberzone is ultimately very limited, and I don't think it's an alternative or challenge to the nation-state at all.
Smart/responsible/politically correct/whatever use of anything -- particularly technology -- is soley up to the user. It is impossible to fully protect people from themselves unless you get rid of any potential harm. In other words, you can't let people use the Internet and be totally sure that they won't be accessing any objectionable material. For an extreme example, look at nuclear weapons. There are tons and tons of safeguards designed to prevent their misuse (those who think any use is a misuse will just have to bear with me). Many of the safeguards are technological, but weapons are made to be used by people, and in the end the final safeguards must be people too. If those people decide to misuse a nuclear warhead, there isn't much that can stop them. The only way to be totally sure that this wouldn't happen is to get rid of the weapons entirely.
In my opinion, smart use of something so advanced and complex like the Internet really depends on a fantastic level of intellectual development. I'm not talking modern ideas of genius or anything here. But as you can see from the things that are most popular on the American section of the Internet (read: porn), a pretty big chunk of our population doesn't measure up. We're not interested in expanding our world view; we're interested in convenience and titilation.
You can't take people who want to look at porn, put them on the internet, and expect it not to happen without fundamentally crippling the technology. People will only use the Internet in an intelligent manner if they want to. So there's a pretty simple choice: if your potential users are responsible enough, install computers, and if they aren't, don't. (It seems to me this is a pretty old problem. The ancient Greek legends about humans obtaining fire tell the same basic story.)
The problem with responses like this one - though they're intelligently written - is that they totally miss the big picture. Think about it a little...before the industrial revolution, most people were farmers. A few lived in towns and, say, ran a general store, but not many. Then comes industrialization. Suddenly, there are cities everywhere. People spend their lives doing things that no one had ever dreamed of before - working in gigantic factories, assemblying machinery. Things people use every day, like clothing, can suddenly be produced at astonishing rates. Now that is a transformation for humanity.
As this post pointed out, thanks to computers and the internet that industrial life is speeding up. But have things changed on the same scale as when we industrialized? Neither I nor Paul Krugman are saying the digital world isn't different. But we still live in downtown high-rises or white two-stories in suburbs just like we did 20 years ago. We still go to the local grocery store or mall when we need things - mostly the same things we needed 20 years ago. Even more importantly, most of the social problems we face are the same as 20 years ago as well.
Those of us rich enough to reap the benefits can see a difference in our lives, but for the vast majority of humanity the digital age hasn't changed a thing (think Africa, India, and China...that's half the world's population right there). Industrialization did.
I think it's a pretty good ruling. It clearly says to people like the ones who run Bidder's Edge that they can not free-load off others to make money. The ruling doesn't hurt innovation or the market at all. If Bidder's Edge thought they had developed a better way to handle auction information, they should have started their own auction site using their new ideas. Assuming their ideas really were useful, they could have made money without unfairly taking advantage of others' equipment and resources.
Slashdot Mirror
Katz' pontificating is obnoxious enough when he sticks to subjects relevant to Slashdot. What are reviews of those two movies doing on here? Did Katz actually get paid for that column? Can *I* write short movie summaries culled from other news sites and get on the Slashdot payroll?
The movie itself was a lot like Saving Private Ryan, in that the big battle scene was an excellent way of showing how horrifying war can be but the rest of the movie was fairly mediocre. One other problem I had as I watched it was the bizarre and erratic combination of true historical references and total fiction. A handful of characters in the movie were real people, a handful were composites of real people, but it was never clear which those were. Same goes for a lot of events; it's impossible to tell what really happened and what didn't, but the very existence of true events in the movie leaves one predisposed to find it all accurate. Like some others have commented, I find that troubling, especially because in this day and age lots of parents take their kids to such movies because they are "educational."
Read a book, damnit. :-)
Just a factual correction: it was NBC that was doing the digital work, and they were using it to replace lots of the actual ads in Times Square with ones of their choosing.
I like how he says he's just going to shoot 32 miles up in the air, then drift back down and land in roughly the same place he took off from. Think he's heard of "wind"?
Part of the idea of "convergence" is that the magical box won't need to do so many different things. We shouldn't need equipment to handle 5 different types of or sources for video. DVDs (or something similar representing physical distribution) and streamed MPEG5 ;-) (something for wire or satellite distribution) should be all that's needed. Similar principles apply for audio. "Convergence" will only be worthwhile if the sources for media are consolidated too (I mean, of course, through common formats, not AOL-TimeWarner-CNN-Disney-Etc). Otherwise we just end up with, as Taco discusses, the need for a "do everything" box of nightmarish complexity.
Hey moderators, this is NOT a troll.
Quite frankly, cold fusion, at least in the sense that Fleischmann & Pons used it, has been utterly disproven. According to the reviewer, the book says that "nuclear physicists declared that because no nuclear products could be demonstrated, the measurement of excess heat was flawed." That's not quite right. They did say that, but then nuclear physicists then went on to explain where the excess heat was probably coming from -- definitely NOT fusion. They never got a chance to prove it for sure, because Fleischmann & Pons wouldn't ever tell anyone exactly how cold fusion was supposed to work.
It is quite obvious from the review that the book makes a lot of outrageous statements that, quite frankly, amount to straight lies. For example, the reviewer has learned from the book that "it is now obvious that any critic of cold fusion will have to do more than present illogical arguments or simply ridicule the scientists involved in the research." Oh my god. The whole problem with the cold fusion "discovery" was that Fleischmann & Pons refused to allow their work to be peer-reviewed! By not doing so, scientists had to slowly work to duplicate their experiment piece by piece, on the way doing a lot of speculating about what Fleischmann & Pons had done. Those two, along with some stupid members of Congress and the media, were the ones who dragged the whole thing through the mud.
There are probably any number of GOOD scientific books on the subject of this whole scientific debacle. I would direct readers in particular to "Voodoo Science" by Robert Park. It's a fairly good book anyway with an excellent long section about cold fusion.
I do not mean to insult the reviewer, but I would speculate he just isn't qualified to really judge most of the scientific statements made in the book he reviewed. I hope he explores the literature a little further to perhaps obtain a more reasonable perspective.
Ok, I can sort of understand the -1 mod to this, but not really. It's a totally serious comment on what seems to be a very insulting statement by Taco. Don't be so damn touchy!
"...the folks capable of, say, defacing a website, usually aren't the same folks able to intelligently communicate a message." Nice choice of words there, Taco. It's interesting of you to insult the intelligence of what is probably a fairly decent portion of your readership. (Of course, I totally agree with what you said.)
The interview refers to what sounds like a pretty nasty spat between the two artists. Perhaps I'm just a couple years too young, but I never heard about this. Anyone have a fuller explanation?
I think the point regarding this comment is that if the person who sent in the Ask Slashdot submision knows what should be done, how the company could survive, why the hell isn't he/she the manager? In most cases, I'd think what someone would do would say "ok, I know how to do things better, so I'm going to go find a company where I can do them." I doubt it's possible for him to go to the management and say "you people have really screwed up, let's switch jobs so I can take a shot at it." I suppose such an attempt might be worth it if he/she already has a solid alternative lined up -- as in, another job -- but does anyone actually picture it working?
I think the important thing is what's ethical when considering issues of corporate loyalty. It is unethical to jump ship in order to get money for bringing trade-secret-type information to a competitor. It is unethical to make a false committment to a company's project and then (barring an extremely good reason, of course) bail when they are depending on you to do what you said you would. It is certainly ethical to watch out for your personal welfare and leave a failing company.
Damnit Hemos...to be perfectly honest, political coverage on /. is horrid. Anytime a post-election item has been put on the main page, it's always accompanied by a totally uninformed blanket statement like "Bush is the winner." It's STILL not over -- to be precise, the Supreme Court decision was that the justices were not convinced that the Florida Supreme Court could rely on the Florida State Constitution for what they did, and said the Florida court needed to find a different way to justify its decision, like statutory clarification. One possible (and likely) scenario is that the Florida Supreme Court will look for a way to rewrite its opinion, probably just by removing any references to the state constitution so that it is merely deciding a conflict between two seemingly contradictory laws. This is beside the fact that simply reversing the Florida Supreme Court's decision does not end the election anyway because there are proceedings in other courts that remain uneffected.
Anyway, PLEASE don't attempt to be a political reporter! It can be very misleading if you don't know all the details. Just link to an AP story or something and let it be.
I think that one crucial point often lost in discussions of free software is that for open source projects that rely on more than a handful of people there is always a central individual or group needed to 'moderate' the code. One way XCF could possibly maintain usefulness is to be a leader in higher-profile open source efforts. Its members could begin a project and contribute their coding expertise while inviting others to do the same. I'm guessing that getting to work on an 'XCF project' would be a pretty big draw, and that the resulting software would be of high quality.
I Agree. It doesn't sound like this book is making any attempt at glorification. It mostly seems to fit right in with a white-hat hacker ethic of exposing flaws in systems that effect others. I doubt the guy set out to do just that, but it works anyway. There are some aspects of the story that are pretty disgusting -- passing bad checks is plain old thievery, and someone flying jetliners without a pilot's license is a horrendously scary thing to contemplate -- but overall it's an important lesson.
I don't think the idea is that tetrachromats see "other colors." They have cells that are sensitive to a fourth frequency somewhere in what we know as the visible band of light, where most of us have cells sensitive to only three particular frequencies (which vary slightly among individuals, but are always supposed to be red, green, and blue). What this means is that when you look at two red shirts and think they're the same color, a tetrachromat might be able to see that they are in fact slightly different colors. It's kinda neat, but it doesn't give night-vision or anything like that. The real significance, like the article said, is that this could tell us something fundamental about the human brain and its malleability.
Will it be open source? Can I contribute?
There is a much simpler and more reliable middle ground that can be achieved. Instead of trying to make the entire process electronic, just make the counting at the polling places both immediate and infallible. What this would require would be specific devices (or pared-down PCs running an open system with some extra equipment) to do the following when a voter has made their choices using a traditional system: 1) Upon insertion into a reader, examine a voter's punch card and verify their choices on a screen. Highlight any reason the ballot would be rejected (two votes for one office, for example). 2) Upon approval of the ballot according to voting rules and the voter's verification of their choices, seal the ballot in a locked box while adding the votes to an internal electronic count. 3) At the end of the polling day, an election official could 'unlock' the machine, with both a key to get to the ballots and a password for the electronics, and the vote total would be immediately available. Ta da! This has several advantages, the most important of which are instant, error-free vote counting, and the retention of physical records of the votes themselves. This also avoids the potential hazard of communication problems and equipment failures inherent to a totally electronic system. The cost probably wouldn't be too bad either.
Sorry folks, but you can't just grab one study and yell "this is how it is!" The Washington Post covered this same story, and in their write-up they mention how the findings by UCLA are in direct contradition to an equally massive study performed by people at Stanford earlier this year. Sorry Katz, but independent verification is still a requirement of scientific research.
I think the author makes some very good points, but he misses a possible reason for this huge push towards 'ease of use': company profits. There are millions of computer users -- not to mention people who could afford to buy a computer but haven't -- who use a very expensive and powerful piece of machinery for only 3 or 4 tasks. This is not good for software companies, whose potential markets are severely limited because people a) don't know what can be done with their computer, and b) think more interesting things must be too complicated to learn. The easiest and fastest way for companies to draw in new customers is to create software that is easy to use without other knowledge -- like the generalized sense of how a computer functions that the author of the article mentions. Have you ever seen a software advertisement targeted at the general public that didn't say something to the effect of "so easy to use you'll be ______ in no time" (think AOL)?
In my opinion, when more people are more educated about how their computers work, the incentive for pure ease-of-use will disappear. Most customers, like current 'advanced' computer users, will be interested in powerful and elegant software, and will accept a learning curve for the sake of functionality.
By the way...did someone make sure to send Jon Katz the URL for the article?
The most obvious thing the authors' argument ignores is that people do not live in cyberspace. Physical goods do not exist in cyberspace. Currency, while often transferred electronically, is still rooted in the physical and is ultimately controled by physical institutions. For these very simple reasons, you can not totally circumvent a physical nation-state (or a future equivalent). I do not know why the authors think a cyberzone of some sort could be created where taxation is impossible. Taxes on individual transactions might be difficult, but those are definitely not the only kinds of taxes we have. Physical goods traded in a cyberzone must be produced somewhere, purchased by someone with currency, and delivered somewhere. Unless all of these are performed outside the physical boundaries of a nation-state, the state still has myriad mechanisms available for control.
No, a nation-state can't (using even marginally reasonable and feasible means) stop the trading of MP3s. But a strong nation-state with the support of its people can easily exert enormous influence on economic activity that involves physical goods. I am glad that Katz isn't yet writing off the nation-state, but it is disappointing (though not surprising) that he acts as though the physical world is irrelevant for electronic commerce and goods. Two of those companies that he cites as examples of possible cyber merchant republics - AOL/Time-Warner and Microsoft - deal almost totally in immaterial goods. Their products require physical products like computers to have any use at all. Intel deals in physical goods and is therefore prone to control. Disney's revenues come from both kinds of products. None are at all free from the constraints of the physical world and the nation-state. If Microsoft moved to an island, a nation-state could get rid of Microsoft with a single missle.
I think the basic point here is that any realm or zone in cyberspace can only be useful for "cybergoods." And no matter what people like Katz say, we will always need food, shelter, and a whole lot of other physical goods to have a society where cyberspace even exists. Given that, the power of a cyberzone is ultimately very limited, and I don't think it's an alternative or challenge to the nation-state at all.
Smart/responsible/politically correct/whatever use of anything -- particularly technology -- is soley up to the user. It is impossible to fully protect people from themselves unless you get rid of any potential harm. In other words, you can't let people use the Internet and be totally sure that they won't be accessing any objectionable material. For an extreme example, look at nuclear weapons. There are tons and tons of safeguards designed to prevent their misuse (those who think any use is a misuse will just have to bear with me). Many of the safeguards are technological, but weapons are made to be used by people, and in the end the final safeguards must be people too. If those people decide to misuse a nuclear warhead, there isn't much that can stop them. The only way to be totally sure that this wouldn't happen is to get rid of the weapons entirely.
In my opinion, smart use of something so advanced and complex like the Internet really depends on a fantastic level of intellectual development. I'm not talking modern ideas of genius or anything here. But as you can see from the things that are most popular on the American section of the Internet (read: porn), a pretty big chunk of our population doesn't measure up. We're not interested in expanding our world view; we're interested in convenience and titilation.
You can't take people who want to look at porn, put them on the internet, and expect it not to happen without fundamentally crippling the technology. People will only use the Internet in an intelligent manner if they want to. So there's a pretty simple choice: if your potential users are responsible enough, install computers, and if they aren't, don't. (It seems to me this is a pretty old problem. The ancient Greek legends about humans obtaining fire tell the same basic story.)
It's really just a matter of practicality - if they don't add .porn they're stupid.
The problem with responses like this one - though they're intelligently written - is that they totally miss the big picture. Think about it a little...before the industrial revolution, most people were farmers. A few lived in towns and, say, ran a general store, but not many. Then comes industrialization. Suddenly, there are cities everywhere. People spend their lives doing things that no one had ever dreamed of before - working in gigantic factories, assemblying machinery. Things people use every day, like clothing, can suddenly be produced at astonishing rates. Now that is a transformation for humanity.
As this post pointed out, thanks to computers and the internet that industrial life is speeding up. But have things changed on the same scale as when we industrialized? Neither I nor Paul Krugman are saying the digital world isn't different. But we still live in downtown high-rises or white two-stories in suburbs just like we did 20 years ago. We still go to the local grocery store or mall when we need things - mostly the same things we needed 20 years ago. Even more importantly, most of the social problems we face are the same as 20 years ago as well.
Those of us rich enough to reap the benefits can see a difference in our lives, but for the vast majority of humanity the digital age hasn't changed a thing (think Africa, India, and China...that's half the world's population right there). Industrialization did.
I think it's a pretty good ruling. It clearly says to people like the ones who run Bidder's Edge that they can not free-load off others to make money. The ruling doesn't hurt innovation or the market at all. If Bidder's Edge thought they had developed a better way to handle auction information, they should have started their own auction site using their new ideas. Assuming their ideas really were useful, they could have made money without unfairly taking advantage of others' equipment and resources.