Mr. Katz, before you go any further with this anti-blocking crusade of yours, I think that you should sit down and view the sci-fi classic "Forbidden Planet." In this movie you will see the logical end product of your desires, the Krell machine. The Krell machine is everything that the Internet aspires to be. I tend to view the Internet as humankind's crude, first-order approximation of the Krell machine. In the movie the Krell machine was built entirely without safety features, no filtering software, no blocking software, nada, neyet (sp?), zippo. It was the libertarian worker's paradise, no censorship of any kind.
I'm sure that when "Doc" Ostrow was dying on Dr. Morbius's sofa that he had to give Commander Adams the "Reader's Digest" version of the last days of the Krell. What probably happened was as follows. The Krell engineers actually designed safety override features, but then the KCLU got wind of this development and filed a First Amendment brief with the Krell Supreme Court. The court, controlled by libertarian justices, struck down the safety override features as being an unconstitutional abridgement of freedom of expression. So the Krell engineers had to scrap the safety override features.
When they completed the great machine it stood to reason that every Krell wanted to go on-line and link up ASAP. The WYTIWYG (What You Think Is What You Get) interface was irresistible to a race of creative geniuses. It wasn't long before the demands became so heavy that system performance started to suffer. What with all those Krell brains constructing cloud-piercing towers of atomantine steel, even the mighty Krell machine started to groan under the work load. Then the inevitable happened, net congestion. Imagine the frustration of being in mid-3-D rendering and having the connection to the Krell machine stall out. There is nothing worse that to be interrupted in the middle of a particularly exquisite 3-D molecular morph routine, seeking to get just the right patina on one's cloud-piercing tower. Naturally tempers started to flare, and soon intemperate thoughts started to be exchanged over the censorship-free Krell net. Well soon the mother of all flame wars broke out, and the Krell were history.
We can see that the actions of the monsters of the id are present and functioning on the Internet. The flamers, the spammers, the virus writers, and the hate sites are all firmly under the control of their id monsters. I credit the general absence of death to a lack of opportunity, not a lack of desire. Why is it that you counsel caution when it comes to Techno-War, but you place blind faith in the Internet? The Internet did originate from out of the DOD. There is no technology that cannot be abused by those of bad will. I think that that is the whole point of the "Star Wars" films. George Lucas has said that these films are a story of human failure. That was why Luke unmasked Darth Vader in the ROTJ movie.
The twentieth century has been both the most technologically advanced and the most barbaric in the recorded history of our race. No other century can rival the body count of our own. Scholars credit about three thousand deaths to the three hundred-year history of the Inquisition. Three thousand too many, but compared to Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and the Cambodian killing fields, they were bumbling fools and amateurs. They aren't even in the same league as this century's secular mass murderers, who liquidated tens of millions of their fellow human beings. Upon what do you base your faith that the Internet can somehow be made immune to these socially destructive forces? We humans are all too easily blinded by the sin of pride, as was Dr. Morbius.
I have been following the discussion about Consumer Linux. The CLI aficionados seem to be offended that Caldera is adding the Lizard to the distribution. Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know Caldera is not taking anything out of Linux. It is simply adding the Lizard to make the OS more user-friendly for new Linux users. I think of it as more being Linux on training wheels, not as a lobotomized Linux. So long as Caldera doesn't remove anything from the Consumer Linux product I don't see what the commotion is all about.
This situation reminds me of the time when Windows first came out and the die-hard DOS fans treated it like it was sacrilege. They called Windows DOS with a clown suit. Now I agree that the OS under Windows leaves a lot to be desired, but the user interface is great for end-users. I think that some of the difference of opinion may have something to do with what people have grown use to using. Doing business in DOS is a different experience from using the GUI of Windows. I had to relearn how to use a PC in order to get the greatest benefit from the GUI of Windows. I still use the CLI of the MS-DOS command prompt from time to time, but I've been doing more and more work with the GUI tools. The MS-DOS vs Windows debate prompted me to write a bit of doggerel that goes as follows:
You've Got To Be Carefully Taught --------------------------------- You've got to be taught to hate and fear, you've got to be taught from year to year. It's got to be drummed into your dear little ear, you've got to be carefully taught.
You've got to be taught to be afraid, of interfaces that accept user input that's not keyboard made, And interfaces whose screen output is a graphical shade, you've got to be carefully taught.
You've got to be taught before it's too late, before you are six or seven or eight, to hate interfaces that are up to date, you've got to be carefully taught! You've got to be carefully taught!
(With apologies to Rodgers and Hammerstein)
(Sorry I couldn't resist.):)
At about this same time I remembered having read an article where it was claimed that Mac users used about twice as many software packages as their IBM PC DOS counterparts. I credit this to the consistent user interface of the Mac. People like to talk about write once, run anywhere programs. The GUI of the Mac and Windows is a learn once, use anywhere user-interface. You don't have to keep reinventing the user-interface wheel for each new application that an end-user installs on his or her Windows PC or Mac. I'm pretty sure that the corporate market is going to demand a similar consistent user interface in any Linux productivity applications. Training and support costs are such that it is the only sane course of action. Otherwise, Linux will end up being a boutique OS that will fail to claim the desktop.
FWIW for those who are wondering about my Linux background I have successfully installed Red Hat Linux 4.2, 5.0, 5.1, and 5.2. I have also installed KDE 1.0 and 1.1, Star Office 5.0 Personal Edition, WordPerfect 8 for Linux, Adobe Acrobat 3.0, Netscape 4.51, and I use the kppp dialer to connect with a local ISP. My sound card is fully configured and functional, as is my CD-ROM, and I can read my Windows/DOS partitions from Linux. I did this with the assistance of the HOW-TOs and a couple of books about Linux. I'm probably a run-of -the mill Linux newbie. Virtually all my installs worked SOTB, as did the X-Windows system. When X-Windows worked SOTB it was almost anti-climatic, what with all the horror stories that I had read. I know quite well from first hand experience the steep learning curve associated with the Linux OS. If Caldera can make this process easier with various GUI wizards I say more power to them.
Given recent events, I'm wondering if Linux is renamed, could it end up being called Gore/Linux? Of course, the media will abbreviate it and it will end up being called Gorenux. Then, as a final indignity, GNU will come to be known as Gore's Not Unix. I think that it might be best to leave well enough alone.;^)
After having read your posting I feel obligated to respond to your incorrect representations of those who are opposed to abortion. I am pro-life, and I can tell you that all responsible members of the pro-life movement oppose the killing of abortionists and also oppose the use of violence while protesting abortion. Your own posting demonstrates clearly how wrong-headed and counter-productive these practices are. Killing abortionists is a violation of everything that all true followers of pro-life stand for. It also does nothing but give the pro-choice side sympathetic press coverage, and gives the pro-choice side more opportunities to push their agenda in public.
I regard the killers of abortionists as being traitors and turncoats to the pro-life cause. When anyone drops the hammer on an abortionist, or kills someone in an abortion clinic bombing, that person is no longer pro-life. People who do these things have found the abortion providers to be unwanted, and inconvenient, so they give themselves the right of choice to terminate these individuals. They have defected to the pro-choice side of the argument.
If you want to know where we in pro-life come from you only have to look at the "Declaration of Independence." In this document it is stated that all men are CREATED equal and that they have inalienable human rights, and that the right to life is the first right that is stated. We in pro-life are accused of being intolerant moral absolutists. We are no more intolerant than our predecessors, the abolitionists.
Human rights can never be universal unless they are absolute and not subject to choice. The experience of blacks under slavery has shown how easily individual human rights can be trampled on by the choice of others. Abolitionists were just as hated and reviled in their day as we pro-lifers are today. Plenty of people thought that slavery should have been pro-choice, and that what a man did on his own plantation was his own personal, private business. The main accusation leveled against the abolitionists was that they were trying to impose their morality on the Old South.
I happen to live in the South and I lived through desegregation during the 1960's. The enforcement of black civil rights often required the use of civil and military force. Black civil rights were forced down the unwilling throat of the Old South through the barrel of a gun. Whenever I see letters to the editor defending the Confederacy, these letters are always couched in the language of pro-choice. In fact, I challenge you and any other pro-choice person to go back and read the writings of the abolitionists and those that were pro-choice on slavery and perform the following variable assignments:
Woman = Slaveholder Unborn = Slave Women's own body = Plantation Fetus = N-word Fetus lover = N****r lover Roe v. Wade = Dred Scott
When you perform these assignments, you will see that we in pro-life are the modern abolitionists, and that we are trying to see if this nation is capable of keeping the promises that it freely made in its own founding document.
What is this "We The People" business that I see on/. every time the CDA is discussed? I rarely see any signs of "We The People" in the responses that I read here. The responses that I see are almost always narcissistic and self-centered. Real communities have laws governing the First Amendment. If an R-rated movie is played on WTBS, TNT, or the TV networks it is cut and has dialog substitution to bring it in with about a PG rating. In stores certain magazines are kept behind a counter where they have to be requested. I would also say that many of the profanity-laced messages that I see posted on this web site wouldn't see the light of day in the letters to the editor section of most major print publications.
For those who believe in an absolutist First Amendment I ask you to perform a thought experiment. Let's say that there is this city that has plumbing that runs everywhere. It goes to schools, day care centers, preschools, homes, all sorts of places where children are likely to be. What if one day it is discovered that this plumbing is dispensing both water and adult beverage, and that children can freely consume this adult beverage? Would we expect responsible parents to simply say that this was OK? Would the parents be responsible if they were content to simply control access to this adult beverage in their own homes, and ignored all the other points where this adult beverage was being dispensed?
There those who site the testimony of psychologists that pornography is not harmful to children. I wonder what makes these people experts in morality and ethics? I have listened to the radio talk shows hosted by Dr. Joy Brown and Dr. Laura, where I hear daily about people whose lives are a complete mess because they tried to live out the lifestyle depicted by pornography. Dr. Laura says point blank that her morality comes from her religion. Her life reminds me of the life of St. Augustine, who was a real hell raiser until he got religion.
The Internet wants the age-old dream of all despots, power without responsibility. It wants the power to be a well nigh ubiquitous presence in people's lives, without the burden of a social conscience as to the consequences of the material that it distributes. It is an interesting irony that the First Amendment, which was founded in part to foster intellectual inquiry, is being used to defend pornography, which is completely anti-intellectual.
For those want to bring up the international aspect of the Internet, I remember having read a recent article about the U.N. being interested the Internet and its involvement in pedophilia.
Can anyone show me where there is any "We The People" in the Internet?
I think that this technology might be useful for dedicated functions, but some of the ideas being floated here about implanted PCs, I think are fanciful. How do you upgrade, add more RAM, or secondary storage? With the pace of PC development you would need to have a zipper at the implant site. In order to have a Gateway style Your-ware program you would need to put a surgeon on retainer. Imagine having to wait at the doctor's office in order to get a defective unit repaired or replaced.
I would have to say that a story originating from out of Blarney, Ireland does tend to give one pause for thought. Isn't this where the Blarney stone originated? From some of the replies that I've read here it does sound like the story is on the level, but the Blarney reference was making me wonder about the story.
In this discussion there are some things to consider. From what I remember, one of the crackers who was caught by Cliff Stoll in his cyber-sting, as covered in the book "The Cuckoos Egg," turned up dead under suspicious circumstances. Recently China sentenced some crackers to death for embezzlement. Needless to say, the evidence of the real world shows that the consequences of cracking can be serious.
Any cracker who is successful in disrupting a nation's IT infrastructure in a big way can become a target for reprisals. The same can be said for the location where the cracker's computer equipment is situated. Both can become subject to retaliation. Between nations often the only law is that of the jungle. In this world there are plenty of people who play it rough, and play it for keeps.
Slashdot Mirror
Mr. Katz, before you go any further with this anti-blocking crusade of yours, I think that you should sit down and view the sci-fi classic "Forbidden Planet." In this movie you will see the logical end product of your desires, the Krell machine. The Krell machine is everything that the Internet aspires to be. I tend to view the Internet as humankind's crude, first-order approximation of the Krell machine. In the movie the Krell machine was built entirely without safety features, no filtering software, no blocking software, nada, neyet (sp?), zippo. It was the libertarian worker's paradise, no censorship of any kind.
I'm sure that when "Doc" Ostrow was dying on Dr. Morbius's sofa that he had to give Commander Adams the "Reader's Digest" version of the last days of the Krell. What probably happened was as follows. The Krell engineers actually designed safety override features, but then the KCLU got wind of this development and filed a First Amendment brief with the Krell Supreme Court. The court, controlled by libertarian justices, struck down the safety override features as being an unconstitutional abridgement of freedom of expression. So the Krell engineers had to scrap the safety override features.
When they completed the great machine it stood to reason that every Krell wanted to go on-line and link up ASAP. The WYTIWYG (What You Think Is What You Get) interface was irresistible to a race of creative geniuses. It wasn't long before the demands became so heavy that system performance started to suffer. What with all those Krell brains constructing cloud-piercing towers of atomantine steel, even the mighty Krell machine started to groan under the work load. Then the inevitable happened, net congestion. Imagine the frustration of being in mid-3-D rendering and having the connection to the Krell machine stall out. There is nothing worse that to be interrupted in the middle of a particularly exquisite 3-D molecular morph routine, seeking to get just the right patina on one's cloud-piercing tower. Naturally tempers started to flare, and soon intemperate thoughts started to be exchanged over the censorship-free Krell net. Well soon the mother of all flame wars broke out, and the Krell were history.
We can see that the actions of the monsters of the id are present and functioning on the Internet. The flamers, the spammers, the virus writers, and the hate sites are all firmly under the control of their id monsters. I credit the general absence of death to a lack of opportunity, not a lack of desire. Why is it that you counsel caution when it comes to Techno-War, but you place blind faith in the Internet? The Internet did originate from out of the DOD. There is no technology that cannot be abused by those of bad will. I think that that is the whole point of the "Star Wars" films. George Lucas has said that these films are a story of human failure. That was why Luke unmasked Darth Vader in the ROTJ movie.
The twentieth century has been both the most technologically advanced and the most barbaric in the recorded history of our race. No other century can rival the body count of our own. Scholars credit about three thousand deaths to the three hundred-year history of the Inquisition. Three thousand too many, but compared to Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and the Cambodian killing fields, they were bumbling fools and amateurs. They aren't even in the same league as this century's secular mass murderers, who liquidated tens of millions of their fellow human beings. Upon what do you base your faith that the Internet can somehow be made immune to these socially destructive forces? We humans are all too easily blinded by the sin of pride, as was Dr. Morbius.
I have been following the discussion about Consumer Linux. The CLI aficionados seem to be offended that Caldera is adding the Lizard to the distribution. Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know Caldera is not taking anything out of Linux. It is simply adding the Lizard to make the OS more user-friendly for new Linux users. I think of it as more being Linux on training wheels, not as a lobotomized Linux. So long as Caldera doesn't remove anything from the Consumer Linux product I don't see what the commotion is all about.
:)
This situation reminds me of the time when Windows first came out and the die-hard DOS fans treated it like it was sacrilege. They called Windows DOS with a clown suit. Now I agree that the OS under Windows leaves a lot to be desired, but the user interface is great for end-users. I think that some of the difference of opinion may have something to do with what people have grown use to using. Doing business in DOS is a different experience from using the GUI of Windows. I had to relearn how to use a PC in order to get the greatest benefit from the GUI of Windows. I still use the CLI of the MS-DOS command prompt from time to time, but I've been doing more and more work with the GUI tools. The MS-DOS vs Windows debate prompted me to write a bit of doggerel that goes as follows:
You've Got To Be Carefully Taught
---------------------------------
You've got to be taught to hate and fear,
you've got to be taught from year to year.
It's got to be drummed into your dear little ear,
you've got to be carefully taught.
You've got to be taught to be afraid,
of interfaces that accept user input that's not keyboard made,
And interfaces whose screen output is a graphical shade,
you've got to be carefully taught.
You've got to be taught before it's too late,
before you are six or seven or eight,
to hate interfaces that are up to date,
you've got to be carefully taught!
You've got to be carefully taught!
(With apologies to Rodgers and Hammerstein)
(Sorry I couldn't resist.)
At about this same time I remembered having read an article where it was claimed that Mac users used about twice as many software packages as their IBM PC DOS counterparts. I credit this to the consistent user interface of the Mac. People like to talk about write once, run anywhere programs. The GUI of the Mac and Windows is a learn once, use anywhere user-interface. You don't have to keep reinventing the user-interface wheel for each new application that an end-user installs on his or her Windows PC or Mac. I'm pretty sure that the corporate market is going to demand a similar consistent user interface in any Linux productivity applications. Training and support costs are such that it is the only sane course of action. Otherwise, Linux will end up being a boutique OS that will fail to claim the desktop.
FWIW for those who are wondering about my Linux background I have successfully installed Red Hat Linux 4.2, 5.0, 5.1, and 5.2. I have also installed KDE 1.0 and 1.1, Star Office 5.0 Personal Edition, WordPerfect 8 for Linux, Adobe Acrobat 3.0, Netscape 4.51, and I use the kppp dialer to connect with a local ISP. My sound card is fully configured and functional, as is my CD-ROM, and I can read my Windows/DOS partitions from Linux. I did this with the assistance of the HOW-TOs and a couple of books about Linux. I'm probably a run-of -the mill Linux newbie. Virtually all my installs worked SOTB, as did the X-Windows system. When X-Windows worked SOTB it was almost anti-climatic, what with all the horror stories that I had read. I know quite well from first hand experience the steep learning curve associated with the Linux OS. If Caldera can make this process easier with various GUI wizards I say more power to them.
Bill Gates and Richard Stallman Meet in Airport; Thousands Killed in Resulting Explosion. News at 11."
A matter-antimatter explosion?
-GBorter
Given recent events, I'm wondering if Linux is renamed, could it end up being called Gore/Linux? Of course, the media will abbreviate it and it will end up being called Gorenux. Then, as a final indignity, GNU will come to be known as Gore's Not Unix. I think that it might be best to leave well enough alone. ;^)
After having read your posting I feel obligated to respond to your incorrect representations of those who are opposed to abortion. I am pro-life, and I can tell you that all responsible members of the pro-life movement oppose the killing of abortionists and also oppose the use of violence while protesting abortion. Your own posting demonstrates clearly how wrong-headed and counter-productive these practices are. Killing abortionists is a violation of everything that all true followers of pro-life stand for. It also does nothing but give the pro-choice side sympathetic press coverage, and gives the pro-choice side more opportunities to push their agenda in public.
I regard the killers of abortionists as being traitors and turncoats to the pro-life cause. When anyone drops the hammer on an abortionist, or kills someone in an abortion clinic bombing, that person is no longer pro-life. People who do these things have found the abortion providers to be unwanted, and inconvenient, so they give themselves the right of choice to terminate these individuals. They have defected to the pro-choice side of the argument.
If you want to know where we in pro-life come from you only have to look at the "Declaration of Independence." In this document it is stated that all men are CREATED equal and that they have inalienable human rights, and that the right to life is the first right that is stated. We in pro-life are accused of being intolerant moral absolutists. We are no more intolerant than our predecessors, the abolitionists.
Human rights can never be universal unless they are absolute and not subject to choice. The experience of blacks under slavery has shown how easily individual human rights can be trampled on by the choice of others. Abolitionists were just as hated and reviled in their day as we pro-lifers are today. Plenty of people thought that slavery should have been pro-choice, and that what a man did on his own plantation was his own personal, private business. The main accusation leveled against the abolitionists was that they were trying to impose their morality on the Old South.
I happen to live in the South and I lived through desegregation during the 1960's. The enforcement of black civil rights often required the use of civil and military force. Black civil rights were forced down the unwilling throat of the Old South through the barrel of a gun. Whenever I see letters to the editor defending the Confederacy, these letters are always couched in the language of pro-choice. In fact, I challenge you and any other pro-choice person to go back and read the writings of the abolitionists and those that were pro-choice on slavery and perform the following variable assignments:
Woman = Slaveholder
Unborn = Slave
Women's own body = Plantation
Fetus = N-word
Fetus lover = N****r lover
Roe v. Wade = Dred Scott
When you perform these assignments, you will see that we in pro-life are the modern abolitionists, and that we are trying to see if this nation is capable of keeping the promises that it freely made in its own founding document.
What is this "We The People" business that I see on /. every time the CDA is discussed? I rarely see any signs of "We The People" in the responses that I read here. The responses that I see are almost always narcissistic and self-centered. Real communities have laws governing the First Amendment. If an R-rated movie is played on WTBS, TNT, or the TV networks it is cut and has dialog substitution to bring it in with about a PG rating. In stores certain magazines are kept behind a counter where they have to be requested. I would also say that many of the profanity-laced messages that I see posted on this web site wouldn't see the light of day in the letters to the editor section of most major print publications.
For those who believe in an absolutist First Amendment I ask you to perform a thought experiment. Let's say that there is this city that has plumbing that runs everywhere. It goes to schools, day care centers, preschools, homes, all sorts of places where children are likely to be. What if one day it is discovered that this plumbing is dispensing both water and adult beverage, and that children can freely consume this adult beverage? Would we expect responsible parents to simply say that this was OK? Would the parents be responsible if they were content to simply control access to this adult beverage in their own homes, and ignored all the other points where this adult beverage was being dispensed?
There those who site the testimony of psychologists that pornography is not harmful to children. I wonder what makes these people experts in morality and ethics? I have listened to the radio talk shows hosted by Dr. Joy Brown and Dr. Laura, where I hear daily about people whose lives are a complete mess because they tried to live out the lifestyle depicted by pornography. Dr. Laura says point blank that her morality comes from her religion. Her life reminds me of the life of St. Augustine, who was a real hell raiser until he got religion.
The Internet wants the age-old dream of all despots, power without responsibility. It wants the power to be a well nigh ubiquitous presence in people's lives, without the burden of a social conscience as to the consequences of the material that it distributes. It is an interesting irony that the First Amendment, which was founded in part to foster intellectual inquiry, is being used to defend pornography, which is completely anti-intellectual.
For those want to bring up the international aspect of the Internet, I remember having read a recent article about the U.N. being interested the Internet and its involvement in pedophilia.
Can anyone show me where there is any "We The People" in the Internet?
I think that this technology might be useful for dedicated functions, but some of the ideas being floated here about implanted PCs, I think are fanciful. How do you upgrade, add more RAM, or secondary storage? With the pace of PC development you would need to have a zipper at the implant site. In order to have a Gateway style Your-ware program you would need to put a surgeon on retainer. Imagine having to wait at the doctor's office in order to get a defective unit repaired or replaced.
I would have to say that a story originating from out of Blarney, Ireland does tend to give one pause for thought. Isn't this where the Blarney stone originated? From some of the replies that I've read here it does sound like the story is on the level, but the Blarney reference was making me wonder about the story.
In this discussion there are some things to consider. From what I remember, one of the crackers who was caught by Cliff Stoll in his cyber-sting, as covered in the book "The Cuckoos Egg," turned up dead under suspicious circumstances. Recently China sentenced some crackers to death for embezzlement. Needless to say, the evidence of the real world shows that the consequences of cracking can be serious.
Any cracker who is successful in disrupting a nation's IT infrastructure in a big way can become a target for reprisals. The same can be said for the location where the cracker's computer equipment is situated. Both can become subject to retaliation. Between nations often the only law is that of the jungle. In this world there are plenty of people who play it rough, and play it for keeps.