What the Saudis are doing is not so much attempting to preserve their Islamic culture and heritage as perpetuate it by restricting access to alternatives. As another poster pointed out, cultural preservation is the domain of museums and heritage societies. Legislative attempts to perpetuate culture and heritage fall afoul of the first amendment in the USA with some frequency -- are these legislative attempts at cultural status-quo-maintenance "valid" in Saudi Arabia because they don't have such a first amendment type of thing in their present culture?
Walls and ceiling seems to fall down, but don't. The sound pressure is concentrated at the listening point and stopped by a 2 meters high woolglass anechoic wall on the back of the listening position.
Would you dare sit at this listening point? Is this where the Spanish Inquisition positions the comfy chair?
With a little research, I've managed to pretty much answer my own question, and the answer is, "yes, they're doing it for the air of official legitimacy" -- more or less. The answer is in the.mail TLD FAQ, question 15, which I'll reproduce here for your convenience, so you can see it in their own words.
15) Couldn't this be done using a normal example.com type domain instead of creating a TLD?
Yes... but in reality no. In truth, *any* TLD could really be a SLD (second level domain). In fact, many are (example.co.uk). The concept behind TLDs is to differentiate them, and their users - especially in the case of an sTLD (sponsored TLD) - from the internet at large and the other TLDs.
There are also other reasons:
Setting up the system behind.mail as a TLD will also help insure its acceptance and its longevity. It will be an ongoing effort run by a sponsoring organization rather than just a smaller entity. Also, psychology tends to show that "example.com.mail" will be accepted more readily than something like "example.com.this-is-not-spam.com"
Running a system like this on an existing TLD would also bind it to the rules and regulations of that TLD. Each existing TLD has some rules and regulations that are not compatible with the stated rules and regulations of the.mail TLD as it is to be used in anti-spam.
On the technical side, a TLD's infrastructure is also set up to be more robust and attack resistant than a normal domain from the outset. Whenever dealing with spammers, one must expect some level of attack.
Why do they need the.mail TLD to pull this off? Why not just go right ahead and do it under mail.spamhaus.org? Is it the air of official legitimacy associated with a TLD that they're after?
Just in case anyone takes the AC above too seriously, here are a bunch of more-informative links.
On hunting around, I found the EPIA Linux Howto, which is a January 2004 publication (apparently), and fairly nifty. In the chapter on video support, the editor interjects with a clarifying comment about hardware MPEG support, stating, "The source code is available to large OEM customers under NDA/licensing agreements. It is not available to end-users." Strike one for open source.
The video drivers for EPIA-M boards can be downloaded from their CLE266 Linuxpage. There is a note about source code at the bottom of this page. They say the following about full source code access: "Users need to sign Binary License Agreement (BLA) and Source Code Addendum (SCABLA) to obtain the source. Typically, only requests from companies developing product for sale will be approved." Strike two for open source.
But there's a more limited source release available, apparently, and for that you need to go to the VIA Open Source Developer's Data Request Form. Here you will be warmly greeted with the following notice, accompanied by a honking great form full of mandatory personal information fields.
VIA want to make available code and other resources to appropriate open source developers. In order to be accepted into the programme and have downloads made available, requests must be made via this form.
Once the form is complete, has been submitted and reviewed, your application may be approved. If successful you will receive an e-mail to the address specified by you on this form. This mail must be responded to otherwise your access will not be enabled.
VIA's open source support is weak at best. Maybe there are good reasons why they are obliged to put obstacles in the way of everything, rather than just providing the damn code, but their pitch as given leaves me pretty cold. I like their stuff, but I'm sick of half-baked software support.
Indeed. I'm wondering whether VIA is going to pull their finger out and actually offer some active support to the development of XFree86 drivers, for example. I've had VIA EPIA (Mini-ITX) systems for quite some time now, but it's only in the last month or so that native video chipset support has become available for them in XFree86. Presumably VIA funds the development of their own Windows drivers -- is it too much to ask that they aid in the development of X drivers just by releasing some programming specs? I like VIA's stuff a lot, but their all-too-common policy of "details on how to actually use this stuff are a closely guarded and valuable trade secret" ticks me off.
AOL answers this question, and others like it. More helpful than you were expecting, no? In answer to your question, the servers are for bounced messages. Block them, and the worst false positive you'll get is a legitimate bounce.
The external fanless power supply I am using is just a brick that provides 12VDC at 4+A -- the kind of power supply you might find on a laptop. Inside the computer case is a DC-DC converter, which is then attached to the standard ATX power connector on the motherboard.
I have (and am posting this using) a VIA EPIA-M motherboard with passive heatsinking, no hard drive, an external fanless power supply, and no case fans. (It acts as an X terminal for another system.) There are no moving parts in the system at all. Believe it or not, however, I can hear a small electrically-generated squelching sound when there is ethernet activity (when all else is quiet in the dead of night). I could try WiFi, I suppose.
I am not employee #3877643 away from the office...
Right on! Away from the office you are Slashdot user #323026, and post comments like #8461887. Or... hang on... are you posting from work? Now I'm confused.
Funny you should mention TMNT. A couple of my friends and I used to play TMNT and Vendetta through to completion. That cooperative play is something that I miss in an arcade game these days. The only machine that I ever achieved "wizard" status on was also cooperative: Silkworm. Back in 1988 I got to the stage where one credit on that machine was lasting me 45 minutes if I played the jeep together with a good partner. That attracted an audience. It was always impressive to see two players navigate across a right-left scrolling playfield utterly swarming with incoming missiles and enemy craft, yet somehow manage to remain untouched, especially when you realise that they are mostly covering each other rather than themselves.
So does this mean that e-tax 2004 won't require the use of Windows to lodge your tax return electronically? I do keep a spare Windows machine lying around for use in case of emergency, but I refuse to entrust it with any important financial information, passwords, or things that could facilitate "identity theft", so there's no way I'm going to fill out a tax return on it.
I'm betting that e-tax will be Windows-only again this year, but it's a bet I wouldn't mind losing.
Pianos can take alternate tunings too, you know, and you sure as heck don't want to be re-tuning a piano manually in mid-performance. Although not all the following are intended for piano-like instruments, the Korg TR-Rack synth module (for which I have the manual at hand) can be configured for the following tunings: Equal Temprament (the standard tuning, where every note differs from the adjacent semitone by a factor of the twelfth root of two), Pure Major, Pure Minor, Arabic, Pythagorean, Werckmeister III, Kirnberger III (mainly for harpsichords), Slendro (Indonesian gamelean scale of five notes), Pelog (Indonesian gamelean scale of seven notes), Stretch, and a couple of user-programmable settings.
Pragmatically speaking, there are (as far as I'm aware) alternate tunings for pianos, organs, and harpichords which relate to specific musical periods, such as the baroque. Thus, for truly faithful reproduction, you may want to tune to the Werckmeister III scale for performing some baroque pieces. Not to mention the different "pure" tunings for all the major and minor keys.
He's the greatest, he's fantastic,
Wherever there is danger he'll be there.
He's the ace, he's amazing,
He's the strongest, he's the quickest, he's the best!
Danger Mouse.
He's terrific, he's magnific,
He's the greatest secret agent in the world.
Danger Mouse -- powerhouse!
He's the fastest, he's the quickest, he's the best!
The suggestion that the generic TLDs should be administered by a non-profit organisation (with international representation, I would add) is entirely reasonable and seems like the Right Answer. The point that David Monosov seems to have missed, however, is that politics doesn't work on the basis of finding the Right Answer and applying it. If politics were like that, it would be a branch of engineering. The actual process of placing the management of the GTLDs under the control of an appropriate organisation would involve a reduction in control for those presently in charge, including the government of the USA. This is a showstopper of a problem, and it doesn't rank a mention in Monosov's analysis.
Putting it simply, I think the present organisation works this way: people with power (government) and people with money (corporation) get together so that some of the power can be used to generate more money. The corporation is happy because of easy money; the government can use the threat of taking the money away to influence the behaviour of the corporation, which is happy to appease its master so long as the money is there. Both parties are happy. Everyone else doesn't really figure in on the equation unless the corporation does something to rile the general public, at which point the government may be obliged to take steps which make it look like it's doing its job.
Suppose the government delegates control of the GTLDs to a non-profit organisation which has a mandate to ensure the smooth operation of DNS infrastructure, and can be relied upon to do a good job of that. What's in it for the government? They can't easily coerce the organisation into doing things in a manner which leaves them in control (governments thrive on control), since there's no greed to manipulate. Further, no filthy lucre means no pork for the politicians to direct back to their electorate. What's in it for the politicians?
How do you sell a politician on an idea when the best you can come up with is, "this is obviously the Right Thing to do." What you really need is a P.R. headline which emphasises how it's good for employment, or the economy, or security, or will save the children, and a subtle undergirding of, "this will make you (politicians) more powerful and/or popular and/or provide economic benefits to your constituents."
So what we need is some very creative P.R. spin, and I'm not very talented at it. Any suggestions?
The main vulnerability to which they leave themselves open is small upstarts like this: companies that aren't really producing anything other than patent infringement lawsuits, and thus don't have any incentive to cross-license. The large company usually has little choice but to either license the patent (if it looks like the cheaper option), or slug it out in court, hoping to drag the proceedings on long enough that the small party runs out of cash and drops it. Take Eolas for example: Microsoft still have a half-billion dollar ruling against them with regards to Eolas, and there's no opportunity for a patent infringement countersuit. Even IBM is vulnerable to this kind of attack, so don't be too sure they're overjoyed with the status quo.
So by your reasoning, Aboriginies who have never experienced politics and religion...
I disagree with this at a very fundamental level. All the "aboriginies" I'm aware of have both political and religious views, and have done so since well before they had any external cultural influence. They may not have politicial parties and religious organisations with special names like, "libertarian" or "unitarian", but they have political and religious views even so.
So the ideal situation is unrealistic, but has no religion OR politics.
The only situation which has no religion or politics is the situation in which no people are present. Introduce one person, and you introduce religion. Introduce a second, and you have politics. "Anarchy" is a political regime just as surely as "democracy" is, lack of politicians notwithstanding.
But it's clear that we are talking about very different things when we use the terms "religion" and "politics", so we may as well let it drop.
The agenda being followed is "goodwill," or "betterment of mankind" or "hey, this sounds neat, let's try it!"
My point is that those are relative targets. The "betterment of mankind" is such a noble goal that nobody could reasonably speak against it, but one's opinion on what constitutes the betterment of mankind is a subjective matter, shaped by one's own political and religious value system. Carl Sagan's vision of a better world probably diverges significantly from Billy Graham's.
Imagine if everyone on earth was able to combine their resources and technology with no political, religious, or cultural boundries.
Imagine there's no heaven, etc. No doubt you are right that a united humanity could achieve some impressive feats, be it for good or ill. One question, though: if there are to be no political, religious, or cultural boundaries, then whose political, religious, or cultural agenda is being followed?
2034: An American finally lands on Mars, although only symbolically. A statue of the last President of the United States, Jenna Bush, is erected in the new Martian People's Republic History Museum.
Lends a whole new meaning to the term, "red planet".
Slashdot Mirror
What the Saudis are doing is not so much attempting to preserve their Islamic culture and heritage as perpetuate it by restricting access to alternatives. As another poster pointed out, cultural preservation is the domain of museums and heritage societies. Legislative attempts to perpetuate culture and heritage fall afoul of the first amendment in the USA with some frequency -- are these legislative attempts at cultural status-quo-maintenance "valid" in Saudi Arabia because they don't have such a first amendment type of thing in their present culture?
I may RTFA when the slashdot effect passes over. Meanwhile, I'm reminded of this.
Would you dare sit at this listening point? Is this where the Spanish Inquisition positions the comfy chair?
Why do they need the .mail TLD to pull this off? Why not just go right ahead and do it under mail.spamhaus.org? Is it the air of official legitimacy associated with a TLD that they're after?
On hunting around, I found the EPIA Linux Howto, which is a January 2004 publication (apparently), and fairly nifty. In the chapter on video support, the editor interjects with a clarifying comment about hardware MPEG support, stating, "The source code is available to large OEM customers under NDA/licensing agreements. It is not available to end-users." Strike one for open source.
The video drivers for EPIA-M boards can be downloaded from their CLE266 Linuxpage. There is a note about source code at the bottom of this page. They say the following about full source code access: "Users need to sign Binary License Agreement (BLA) and Source Code Addendum (SCABLA) to obtain the source. Typically, only requests from companies developing product for sale will be approved." Strike two for open source.
But there's a more limited source release available, apparently, and for that you need to go to the VIA Open Source Developer's Data Request Form. Here you will be warmly greeted with the following notice, accompanied by a honking great form full of mandatory personal information fields.
VIA's open source support is weak at best. Maybe there are good reasons why they are obliged to put obstacles in the way of everything, rather than just providing the damn code, but their pitch as given leaves me pretty cold. I like their stuff, but I'm sick of half-baked software support.
Indeed. I'm wondering whether VIA is going to pull their finger out and actually offer some active support to the development of XFree86 drivers, for example. I've had VIA EPIA (Mini-ITX) systems for quite some time now, but it's only in the last month or so that native video chipset support has become available for them in XFree86. Presumably VIA funds the development of their own Windows drivers -- is it too much to ask that they aid in the development of X drivers just by releasing some programming specs? I like VIA's stuff a lot, but their all-too-common policy of "details on how to actually use this stuff are a closely guarded and valuable trade secret" ticks me off.
AOL answers this question, and others like it. More helpful than you were expecting, no? In answer to your question, the servers are for bounced messages. Block them, and the worst false positive you'll get is a legitimate bounce.
The external fanless power supply I am using is just a brick that provides 12VDC at 4+A -- the kind of power supply you might find on a laptop. Inside the computer case is a DC-DC converter, which is then attached to the standard ATX power connector on the motherboard.
I have (and am posting this using) a VIA EPIA-M motherboard with passive heatsinking, no hard drive, an external fanless power supply, and no case fans. (It acts as an X terminal for another system.) There are no moving parts in the system at all. Believe it or not, however, I can hear a small electrically-generated squelching sound when there is ethernet activity (when all else is quiet in the dead of night). I could try WiFi, I suppose.
Right on! Away from the office you are Slashdot user #323026, and post comments like #8461887. Or... hang on... are you posting from work? Now I'm confused.
Boss: What's your Slashdot screen name?
Employee: The correct Slashdot term is "nickname", you ignorant AOLer!
I misread that subject as "SCO IQ statement", and expected to see body text of "below 90" or similar.
Funny you should mention TMNT. A couple of my friends and I used to play TMNT and Vendetta through to completion. That cooperative play is something that I miss in an arcade game these days. The only machine that I ever achieved "wizard" status on was also cooperative: Silkworm. Back in 1988 I got to the stage where one credit on that machine was lasting me 45 minutes if I played the jeep together with a good partner. That attracted an audience. It was always impressive to see two players navigate across a right-left scrolling playfield utterly swarming with incoming missiles and enemy craft, yet somehow manage to remain untouched, especially when you realise that they are mostly covering each other rather than themselves.
I'm assuming you haven't reached the episode where he jumps the shark, then?
(Well, it seemed like a funny remark at the time.)
I'm betting that e-tax will be Windows-only again this year, but it's a bet I wouldn't mind losing.
Yes, but the target market for this sort of thing is concert pianists and classical music, so that was pretty much given already. :-)
Pragmatically speaking, there are (as far as I'm aware) alternate tunings for pianos, organs, and harpichords which relate to specific musical periods, such as the baroque. Thus, for truly faithful reproduction, you may want to tune to the Werckmeister III scale for performing some baroque pieces. Not to mention the different "pure" tunings for all the major and minor keys.
He's the greatest, he's fantastic,
Wherever there is danger he'll be there.
He's the ace, he's amazing,
He's the strongest, he's the quickest, he's the best!
Danger Mouse.
He's terrific, he's magnific,
He's the greatest secret agent in the world.
Danger Mouse -- powerhouse!
He's the fastest, he's the quickest, he's the best!
Danger Mouse -- amazing!
Danger Mouse -- astounding!
Danger Mouse!
(Fanfare, and bomb explosion.)
The abbreviated version didn't have the second verse.
<span style="voice: David Jason">Penfold. Shush.</span>
Putting it simply, I think the present organisation works this way: people with power (government) and people with money (corporation) get together so that some of the power can be used to generate more money. The corporation is happy because of easy money; the government can use the threat of taking the money away to influence the behaviour of the corporation, which is happy to appease its master so long as the money is there. Both parties are happy. Everyone else doesn't really figure in on the equation unless the corporation does something to rile the general public, at which point the government may be obliged to take steps which make it look like it's doing its job.
Suppose the government delegates control of the GTLDs to a non-profit organisation which has a mandate to ensure the smooth operation of DNS infrastructure, and can be relied upon to do a good job of that. What's in it for the government? They can't easily coerce the organisation into doing things in a manner which leaves them in control (governments thrive on control), since there's no greed to manipulate. Further, no filthy lucre means no pork for the politicians to direct back to their electorate. What's in it for the politicians?
How do you sell a politician on an idea when the best you can come up with is, "this is obviously the Right Thing to do." What you really need is a P.R. headline which emphasises how it's good for employment, or the economy, or security, or will save the children, and a subtle undergirding of, "this will make you (politicians) more powerful and/or popular and/or provide economic benefits to your constituents."
So what we need is some very creative P.R. spin, and I'm not very talented at it. Any suggestions?
The main vulnerability to which they leave themselves open is small upstarts like this: companies that aren't really producing anything other than patent infringement lawsuits, and thus don't have any incentive to cross-license. The large company usually has little choice but to either license the patent (if it looks like the cheaper option), or slug it out in court, hoping to drag the proceedings on long enough that the small party runs out of cash and drops it. Take Eolas for example: Microsoft still have a half-billion dollar ruling against them with regards to Eolas, and there's no opportunity for a patent infringement countersuit. Even IBM is vulnerable to this kind of attack, so don't be too sure they're overjoyed with the status quo.
I disagree with this at a very fundamental level. All the "aboriginies" I'm aware of have both political and religious views, and have done so since well before they had any external cultural influence. They may not have politicial parties and religious organisations with special names like, "libertarian" or "unitarian", but they have political and religious views even so.
So the ideal situation is unrealistic, but has no religion OR politics.
The only situation which has no religion or politics is the situation in which no people are present. Introduce one person, and you introduce religion. Introduce a second, and you have politics. "Anarchy" is a political regime just as surely as "democracy" is, lack of politicians notwithstanding.
But it's clear that we are talking about very different things when we use the terms "religion" and "politics", so we may as well let it drop.
My point is that those are relative targets. The "betterment of mankind" is such a noble goal that nobody could reasonably speak against it, but one's opinion on what constitutes the betterment of mankind is a subjective matter, shaped by one's own political and religious value system. Carl Sagan's vision of a better world probably diverges significantly from Billy Graham's.
Imagine there's no heaven, etc. No doubt you are right that a united humanity could achieve some impressive feats, be it for good or ill. One question, though: if there are to be no political, religious, or cultural boundaries, then whose political, religious, or cultural agenda is being followed?
Lends a whole new meaning to the term, "red planet".