There's no sane reason to burden the protocol with 'wiretapping' capabilities. If the gov't wants to 'wiretap' my IP connections they should be required to go to my ISP and physically listen in on the line - with a warrant, of course.
Specific problems with the whole thing:
1. Supporting wiretapping 'protocols' adds the same security holes as any other back-door behaviour. If done right it's only 'a tiny bit' more insecure, but still.
2. If we have a 'Voice Over I/P Protocal w/wiretap' there's nothing to stop someone from writing a voice-over-IP program that sends a pre-recorded conversation to listening 'wiretaps' and another conversation to the other client. (Presume, for example, that the 'wiretap' facility is a 'voice-over-ip' signature identifying the communicating parties... I design a 'spoof-voice-over-IP' that appends the real data to a valid voice-over-ip packet, or sends an untagged packet at the same time as tagged packet, or uses a sneaky algorithm to 'nest' voice2 data inside of the primary voice data, or... )
3. If people don't want it, they'll use something else. Speak-freely does voice over IP, and doesn't have any 'wiretapping' capability...
4. A certain segment of the population (ie, the crowd here at/.) is probably going to refuse to use anything with backdoors, and indeed, eventually write an encrypted-voice-over-ip without backdoors if the 'standard' voice-over-ip has backdoors...
This is probably a fairly common attitude (security is for consumer confidence// what the consumer doesn't know won't hurt him or her// why spend the extra money) Conscientious software folks will push for this to be done correctly, but, well, I'm sure there are unconscientious software folks out there.
So... the point then is our credit card numbers could be bantered around in the clear, stored on non-firewalled servers for any length of time, compiled into lists and e-mailed between purchasing and marketing...
Okay, so, the credit-card company will cover us on abuse of our credit card number, but - the people exposing our numbers to vulnerability may never be caught. Certainly not anyone as big as M$. Smaller outfits might get caught on statistical analysis... joe, bob, mary, and jane all bought from A-Store on june 6 and never did all four buy from the same store before or sense... therefore, the cracker stole numbers on June 6 from A-Store. Anyone know if the credit card companies are in the habit of this kind of test? I'd imagine they are.
OTOH, the fact that joe, bob, mary, and jane all used M$ Passport on June 6th would be statistically meaningless, (given that it reaches a certain size, which I expect it to.) It would be like saying they all used a Cirrus ATM... so what? It's not compelling. It might be four seperate cracks, or it might be a crack of M$, there's no reason to believe one or the other.
This is not parallel to brick & mortar, btw, because in the brick & mortar case, there aren't thousands of crackers roaming the halls looking for the unsecured office with a list of cc #'s... not to say everyone's honest, just, that it's impossible to probe hundreds of physical buildings in cities spanning the globe on an idle evening...
Start->Settings->Control Panel->Keyboard->Language->Properties->Keyboard Layout Select, 'United States - Dvorak.'
This will require an install disk the first time. Path may very slightly between windows versions, this is correct for Win98, and it is not much if at all different for WinNT or Win95.
Dvorak does not work in the MS-DOS window on Win9x, although it did on WinNT and hopefully will on Win2K. Theoretically a driver can be installed in the dos-window's autoexec but I've not done this yet, just use Cygnus bash instead. Some windows native utilities and some unix-alike utilities, even under bash, are disrespectful of proper calling conventions and read raw keycodes or otherwise avoid the dvorak mapping, so you have to memorize which programs want the 'real' "Y" or "N" keys and which respect the remapping.
Nonetheless, most states have a sales tax, and those that don't, have something else. Vermont has the State Liquor Stores... I don't know what Oregon has. Maybe liquor stores and lotteries and licensing fees for gambling and so on are a viable way to run things, but they aren't the norm, and the 45 or so states that -do- have sales tax are going to have to find a new source of income PDQ if the e-commerce becomes the standard way to shop.
What's so great about this? What's the effect going to be? We're going to have no taxes on good-and-services purchased over the internet but we -will- have local sales tax for brick-and-mortar stores, which means, basically, business goes to the net. That means two things -
First, that real stores will slowly but surely be driven out of business. They can't have the overhead for 'frontage property' and the tax penalty and remain viable. Second, that the net is going to be even more filled with e-commerce. Personally, I don't much like e-commerce. Yeah, banner ads pay for some stuff, but at the same time all that e-commerce eats up bandwidth. I certainly don't see it as a purely good thing to make e-commerce grow as fast as possible. What about those lost local stores that you used to be able to go to? Okay, most local stores have already been driven out of business by chain stores, but still, I like shopping in a physical place, and there -are- some actual local retailers left. Then, these taxes that are being lost from the states? That's not paying for maintenence on an absurd national debt or $200 military screwdrivers, that's paying for the schools, roads, scholarships and other state and local programs that affect you and me every day. I've never once resented paying state taxes. (Federal taxes are another story).
To summarize, this says to me, a way to increase net-congestion and cut funding to essential civic programs at the same time.
Isn't MSN free in the UK or something? Then why are they raising the price here?
Most internet service is 'free' in the UK. UK customers get charged a per-minute fee for local calls. ISPs make a deal with the phone company, and get a 'kickback' for the extra billable minutes that the ISP is generating for the phone company. In other words, it's not really free... my typical internet use here in the states would cost me a couple hundred quid... pound's worth more than a buck, so call it, say US$300/month. Take of $100 for 'overhead' (absurd, but it makes the approximations neat) take $100 profit for the phone company and give $100 to the ISP, everybody has goes to a four-star resteraunt for dinner... As for why they're raising prices here, I haven't got a clue. Maybe they figure that they can? Stupid. It -will- hurt their marketshare, as long as everyone else stays at $19.95/month.
1. It says absolutely nothing that hasn't already been said and shows no insight whatsoever.
2. 'I do this for a living' implies he's a computer professional. His comments clearly show that he's no such thing. Using a word-processor in your job hardly makes you a computer expert, anymore than you would expect a columnist two decades ago to be able to repair typewriters.
3. Stupid install complaints. Have to partition? Need to do that for windows. Need to know what com port your modem is on? Need to do that for windows. Need to know if you have scsi or ide? Either know that for windows or risk locking up your machine during an 'autoprobe' for every scsi under the sun. The -real- install complaints were glossed over, making them sound even worse than they actually are.
4. Unsubstantiated claims about linux advocates, 'most of whom have never tried to install linux' (paraphrased, because I don't want to re-read the article). How else -do- you run Linux besides installing it? Linux (mostly, barring VAResearch and a couple others) didn't come pre-installed until recently. More accurate to say Mac and Windows users haven't tried installing their favorite OS's - may not be true, but at least it's -plausible-.
5. With KDE, WordPerfect, and Netscape... actually, I think Linux is just fine for 'ordinary users'... if they get it preinstalled. My GF uses my Linux box without a problem, and she borders on computer illiterate. (Or claims she does, I think she's learning something, against her will...:))
6. It is, an earlier poster pointed out, an article from -March-, re-published with a June date on the heading. If true, (I didn't check) it's incredibly misleading. I'm a Debian user, so I don't know, but I'd expect that RedHat 6.0 is easier to install than Redhat 5.2. If this article -is- current and the other poster was wrong, then it's even worse - shall I criticize the Win3.1 install to say why Windows is no good? Whichever way, it's a question of who did something wrong, not whether anything is wrong.
7. 'Can't do much else'... uh... sure. Can't do graphic design with GIMP, can't play Quake. Why didn't I notice that. And of course, 'normal users' probably wouldn't want to write programs in Perl,Python,C/C++,Java,etc, or raytrace in Povray, or listen to their e-mail in the Festival Speech Synthesis System or set up their home box with a static IP address as a web server or do IP Masquerading so more than one person can be on the net at the same time or... well, so none of that counts. Naturally.
Oh, and there -was- one thing write with this article.
1. Accurately points out that printing under Linux is difficult. We really should have streamline the printing process, but really - I don't even have a printer. Don't ever print anything except my resume - which I just dump to a floppy as postscript and take to my local copy-shop. Yeah, well. We all know this. Nobody's started the Central Unified Streamlined Printing Project (CUSPP) yet.
I meant, how to respond to the tactic of people publishing flames to the public. You can't click 'delete' for a website or a newscast.
The nearest equivalent - just ignore it - might work. Or it might not. A failure to respond to mudslinging, unfortunately, leaves you covered in mud. Ignoring it may be the best tactic - one-sided mud-slinging makes the attacker look vicious and petty. The problem is that this particular kind of mud-slinging is designed to make the linux community look like the aggressor, so ignoring it may not work, in the sense that the public may believe MindCraft, or others that try similar tactics, and start to hate us, or at least think of us as too immature to deal with.
These are just flames, not even atypical flames in the net-world. There is nothing unique about them, except that they are selected examples posted to the web for PR purposes.
I'm disappointed in the people who did this, but I think you have to be realistic - out of the millions of people on the net, -any- topic is going to generate a certain amount of flamage. There are always going to be a few who just -have- to vent, however incoherently. I hope everyone will try to remember that putting even one gratuitous insult in your e-mail, no matter how good it feels, is only going to get you lumped in with the people incapable of spelling or finishing a sentence without a four-letter word.
I'm also disappointed in MindCraft. These kinds of e-mails are not unique to them, and the only appropriate response is to click 'delete.' (Mailbombs are another story - then you contact a net administrator for action.) It's no more mature to say, 'My goodness, everyone come and see how stupid and foul-mouthed this person is,' than it is to issue gratituitous and foul-mouthed insults.
I'm almost tempted to collect an assortment of flames from MS-fanatics speaking against linux from the newsgroups and post them as a rebuttal, but that would be too hypocritical given what I just said. I don't know -how- to respond to this. It would be nice if nobody that supports linux would ever send flames, in newsgroups or by e-mail, but it's not realistic. I hope someone can think of some way responding to such things before the day Microsoft's inbox gets read - with appropriate 'bleeps' on the evening news.
Right, yes, certainly a clone is a human just as much as any other human, in discussion between two sensible individuals (of a modern Western background, with moderate religious views... other times and cultures may differ). The problem is, however, that laws only erratically reflect the ethical agreements of humanitarian philosophers, and even when they do, not everyone obeys the laws. There are several scenarious that are likely to actually happen at least once in the future.
An eventual problem will be slave-clones, born and raised to work in factories. This is going to be science fiction only for a long time to come - it requires that cloning be relatively cheap and reliable, and that it can be done without a human host mother. The last I heard, the latter hadn't been accomplished. Advantages to this technique - in some countries with views other than ours, such clones -may not- be legally human, and this will be legal. Even if it is not legal - there are no mothers, no birth records, no evidence at all. If the international ethics groups come looking, the slavers can just fire the whole setup, and claim accidental disaster. Look for the problem in 50-100 years.
Then there's the immortality quest - a forward-thinking individual who makes his first million by 25 or inherits his money could freeze a sample of his cells, start a clone growing when he's sixty, and at his age 80, depending on if the Dolly problem is solved, have either 45 or 25 have fully genetically compatible parts. This requires only the technology we have, but will be rendered pointless if we learn to clone body parts without growing a whole person. Good argument for continuing research. Look for this problem in as little as 20-30 years, or the moment the Dolly problem of aged organs has been solved.
A more subtle, creeping problem - genetic purism. Take a cell sample of an 'ideal person' (probably the cloner him/her self), tweak any genetic deficiencies (anemia, nearsightedness, colorblindness, allergies, crooked teeth, whatever) and raise a flock of children with the same ideals who in turn raise another generation... This is not a problem when it's one looney in a backwater. Look for it as a problem if cloning-as-reproduction becomes acceptable, but remains expensive, because then racial wealth divisions come into play. Look for this problem in... oh... a few centuries. No society I know of would tolerate this right now, so time is needed for culture shift. May be self-solving when the lack of genetic diversity of the 'problem nation' does them in.
Perfect Soldiers and Perfect Spies - in combination with genetic engineering, raised by espionage agencies to replace field agents. This could begin immediately, but there's little benefit. Once the Dolly problem has been solved, there will be clones of the very best soldiers and spies. If artificial aging can be induced, there may be perfect dopplegangers, but as another poster pointed out, cloning isn't magic - the clone grows at human rates. Solving the Dolly problem may (or may not) reveal a way to induce artificial aging selectively so you can age features but leave organs intact - or age everything - depending on the accuracy needed. Replacements will still probably need -at least- ten years to be grown, maybe a full 18-20, so they will be rare. Perfect soldiers and spies have the all the advantages of the slaves in the first scenario - look for them almost immediately.
None of which means that we should not research cloning technology, of course. Human beings will be vicious animals towards each other with or without technology, and -I'd- sure like to be able to live for two or three hundred years, which cloning research will directly and indirectly enable, with replacement organs and a better understanding of aging triggers. I just want my replacement organs grown -without- my twin.
This kind of competition is actually a good thing for those of us more interested in using computers than arguing about them.
On the OSS side, it means intensive research of a kind that will expose flaws and bugs that are not so easily discovered in everyday use - which means they'll get fixed, as we've already seen from MindCraft I. Meanwhile, the peer review process of OSS will continue in parallel, of course...
On the Microsoft side, it means that bugs and flaws will be exposed to the public eye, meaning they will have to fix them to salvage their reputation in the public eye...
I don't think that it's particularly good for either the Linux-companies or Microsoft's profit lines, but we'll see what happens. I think chances are it will cost research $$$ on both sides and not really affect sales of either side very much.
But I'm not trying to sell Linux, just use it - and sometimes work requires me to use Windows... so for me, this is a good thing. I say bring on more competitions like it!
The CIA and it's predecessor organization (the name of which I forget) do most of the wartime decryption, as well as decrypting any encrypted messages their field agents snare, so it's perfectly appropriate where it is.
Now, whether or not the NSA should have its own statue, is another question. Actually, sources inform me that they d- {{{p{p{prSAOD" NO CARRIER
Re:Why Did This Have To Be Another Katz Soapbox?
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Buffy and Dr. Varnus
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Point the first, Jon writes about what Jon writes about. Just because Jon writes an editorial does not mean that CmdrTaco or Hemos cannot also post a link and a comment on the same topic.
Point the second, your links aren't links, they're just bold words.
Canadians are north americans, but they are not Americans. There's a good reason for this, actually... a certain country on the other side of the United States of America is known formally as the United States of Mexico and/or, uhm, Estados Mexico Unidos, or something close to that, I don't speak Spanish and it's been a long time since I've heard a Mexican radio frequency announcement.
Anyway, people from the United States of America can not be 'United Statsians' even if it didn't sound ridiculous because it would be confused with Mexico (and probably several other 'United States of X' around the world). And I hope everyone will agree that 'United States of American' is an absurdly awkward phrase.
So Canadians are Canadians, Americans are Americans, Mexicans are Mexicans, and they're all north americans.
And none of this has anything to do with software piracy!
There are such problems as heat exhaustion and heat stroke, and they do claim lives. The fact that your brother survived is beside the point - maybe he lived in a naturally cool region of Arizona or spent the worst of the day (working hours) in an air conditioned office. Or maybe he was just young and in good health. Anyway, Arizona is relatively dry, so by contrast to some regions, it's 'safe' heat - just drink a lot of water. In the deep south, the humidity reduces the ability to lose heat by sweat evaporation because the air is already near saturation. I have heard news reports detailing deaths due to heat stroke in the deep south during particularly cruel heat waves. I can't say the same for Arizona - which doesn't prove anything, of course, anymore than the fact that your brother survived one summer proves anything.
Now, (and to bring it back around to on topic) you wanted to say that CPU super-cooling was not a necessity or that R12 Freon was not a necessity, you'd probably be correct.
I do wonder, though, whether or not hotter climates make computer operation impossible... in which case A/C would become a necessity - for productivity, thought not for survival.
Don't bother telling 'them' anything. What is a 'computer nerd' anyway? Someone smarter than the average joe who knows his way around computers. This is something to be ashamed of? 'Computer nerd' is just a perjorative version of the 'computer genius' that computing-challenged mothers, S.O.'s, assorted friends and relatives like to throw around when they're bragging.
Same meaning, different implications - but y'know, I think that anyone who thinks that being smart is something to be ashamed if is a someone who's opinion is not worth worrying about.
(And yeah, I know, it's easier to say than to do with shifts in internal reactions to things like that, but just try telling yourself, every time you hear that, 'nerd==genius => he just complimented me, but thinks he insulted me.' I think it'll help.)
I have to admit that I like cowboy a bit. Shades of Neuromancer. Of course, he was a cracker, not a hacker - but still... And I think the term cowboy in neuromancer included all the 'net pros, not just the crackers, but the corporate security teams and the coders and basically everyone but the netcops. But maybe I'm wrong, or forgetful, and you probably weren't thinking of that anyway.
That usage of 'cracker' is about analogous to 'darkie' to refer to a black person. The origin is 'white as a [georgia] cracker.' I'm sure that the rural southerners who get labeled with that appelation would be just as happy for the meaning to be diluted.
I've never heard geek used to describe a mental or physical inability. Perjoritavely, I hear it used the same way as nerd, except maybe a bit stronger. 'Geeking' is an increasingly frequently used verb in my circles, used to describe the act of waxing passionate about linux, IPv6, crypto regulations, or other typical/. subjects.
In my mind, the only difference between nerd and geek is that the latter -must- where glasses, and it's optional for the former. Since I wear glasses... 8-)
Besides, I don't see why we should 'reclaim' the word geek any less than the word nerd - both are gradeschool/highschool terms to describe the a subset of the population that most of us belonged to.
I seem to recall that NASA acquired Moffett Field. It may have changed hands again since, but, in any case it is not (or was not) a military base anymore.
The thing is, Moffett has so much gunk in the ground from all the years of use as an airfield, that it can't be used for anything else without a huge cleanup effort to get past EPA regs. So, either it's an airfield for someone, or it's a derelict lot. Nobody's going to pay what it takes to clean up a place that's been in use as long as Moffett has. (Notice that it still has dirigible hangers... that's a lot of years and a lot of corrosive fluids every year... )
Anyway, it was more than a name change, it was a shift from the military branch of government to the civil branch.
How on -earth- has the NSA been screwing over the american people for years? To the best of my knowledge, which is reasonably lay-educated but not expert, the NSA doesn't do much of anything except collect and analyze every bit of data they can get their hands on, and presumably make advisories to the president from time to time. Personally, I'm not much worried. I believe that they're as close-mouthed to the rest of the intelligence community as they are to congress, the public, and the press. So what if they have a lot of information? They don't use it against ordinary citizens. Or even ordinary criminals. Presumably they do inform someone about issues involving international terrorism or plots to assassinate heads of state in the USA and friendly countries, but you know, some days I wonder if they even tell anyone about anything.
Now, if you want an intelligence agency to worry about, look to the CIA. If I thought the NSA would cooperate with the CIA, -then- I'd be worried.
So - how do you think the NSA has been harming American citizens, exactly?
Europeans and Brits are not being charged for -bandwidth- they're being charged -per minute-. This means they get charged the same to connect to the net at 56.6 (or as close as they can get) and continuously download.tgz files for an hour as they do to connect to the net at, say, 9600, and chat on IRC or ICQ or play a mud or mush or even read slashdot (with images off, of course.)
Per minute charges do not have that great an affect on bandwidth usage - people will connect just long enough to download the big file they want and then disconnect again. What per minute charges do is make it ridiculously expensive to do anything interesting or informative on the net. If it takes you five minutes to read an online article, that's five minutes you payed for while using -no- bandwidth. (unless you're doing a download in a background process).
And personally, I find it frustrating when a British friend tells me they can only stay connected and chat for twenty minutes because they have to conserve time to keep their phone bill down. I can imagine that those in that situation are much, much, much more frustrated.
So, re-think your position, and try to address the actual issue.
Make anti-aliasing an option that has to be explictly turned on for given window. Then old apps will continue to function, and new apps that need it (web browsers, word processers, other 'pretty text' programs) can turn it on. And new apps that don't need it can keep the speed of not antialiasing.
Personally, I've never had a problem with X's text anyway, so I could care less. I don't think much, and never have, of true type fonts. Adobe Type 1 fonts work fine for me. But I think the above would work for those who need/want antialiased fonts.
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There's no sane reason to burden the protocol with 'wiretapping' capabilities. If the gov't wants to 'wiretap' my IP connections they should be required to go to my ISP and physically listen in on the line - with a warrant, of course.
/.) is probably going to refuse to use anything with backdoors, and indeed, eventually write an encrypted-voice-over-ip without backdoors if the 'standard' voice-over-ip has backdoors...
Specific problems with the whole thing:
1. Supporting wiretapping 'protocols' adds the same security holes as any other back-door behaviour. If done right it's only 'a tiny bit' more insecure, but still.
2. If we have a 'Voice Over I/P Protocal w/wiretap' there's nothing to stop someone from writing a voice-over-IP program that sends a pre-recorded conversation to listening 'wiretaps' and another conversation to the other client.
(Presume, for example, that the 'wiretap' facility is a 'voice-over-ip' signature identifying the communicating parties... I design a 'spoof-voice-over-IP' that appends the real data to a valid voice-over-ip packet, or sends an untagged packet at the same time as tagged packet, or uses a sneaky algorithm to 'nest' voice2 data inside of the primary voice data, or... )
3. If people don't want it, they'll use something else. Speak-freely does voice over IP, and doesn't have any 'wiretapping' capability...
4. A certain segment of the population (ie, the crowd here at
This is probably a fairly common attitude (security is for consumer confidence // what the consumer doesn't know won't hurt him or her // why spend the extra money)
Conscientious software folks will push for this to be done correctly, but, well, I'm sure there are unconscientious software folks out there.
So... the point then is our credit card numbers could be bantered around in the clear, stored on non-firewalled servers for any length of time, compiled into lists and e-mailed between purchasing and marketing...
Okay, so, the credit-card company will cover us on abuse of our credit card number, but - the people exposing our numbers to vulnerability may never be caught. Certainly not anyone as big as M$.
Smaller outfits might get caught on statistical analysis... joe, bob, mary, and jane all bought from A-Store on june 6 and never did all four buy from the same store before or sense... therefore, the cracker stole numbers on June 6 from A-Store.
Anyone know if the credit card companies are in the habit of this kind of test? I'd imagine they are.
OTOH, the fact that joe, bob, mary, and jane all used M$ Passport on June 6th would be statistically meaningless, (given that it reaches a certain size, which I expect it to.) It would be like saying they all used a Cirrus ATM... so what? It's not compelling. It might be four seperate cracks, or it might be a crack of M$, there's no reason to believe one or the other.
This is not parallel to brick & mortar, btw, because in the brick & mortar case, there aren't thousands of crackers roaming the halls looking for the unsecured office with a list of cc #'s... not to say everyone's honest, just, that it's impossible to probe hundreds of physical buildings in cities spanning the globe on an idle evening...
My answer to 'too many network services' is,
/etc/hosts.deny
bash# echo 'ALL : ALL' >
YMMV.
Asimov, Sagan, and even Heinlein, are dead.
Arthur C. Clarke and Ray Bradbury are still living. Elderly, admittedly, but quite alive.
Start->Settings->Control Panel->Keyboard->Language->Properties->Keyboard Layout
Select, 'United States - Dvorak.'
This will require an install disk the first time.
Path may very slightly between windows versions, this is correct for Win98, and it is not much if at all different for WinNT or Win95.
Dvorak does not work in the MS-DOS window on Win9x, although it did on WinNT and hopefully will on Win2K. Theoretically a driver can be installed in the dos-window's autoexec but I've not done this yet, just use Cygnus bash instead. Some windows native utilities and some unix-alike utilities, even under bash, are disrespectful of proper calling conventions and read raw keycodes or otherwise avoid the dvorak mapping, so you have to memorize which programs want the 'real' "Y" or "N" keys and which respect the remapping.
Nonetheless, most states have a sales tax, and those that don't, have something else. Vermont has the State Liquor Stores... I don't know what Oregon has. Maybe liquor stores and lotteries and licensing fees for gambling and so on are a viable way to run things, but they aren't the norm, and the 45 or so states that -do- have sales tax are going to have to find a new source of income PDQ if the e-commerce becomes the standard way to shop.
What's so great about this? What's the effect going to be? We're going to have no taxes on good-and-services purchased over the internet but we -will- have local sales tax for brick-and-mortar stores, which means, basically, business goes to the net. That means two things -
First, that real stores will slowly but surely be driven out of business. They can't have the overhead for 'frontage property' and the tax penalty and remain viable. Second, that the net is going to be even more filled with e-commerce.
Personally, I don't much like e-commerce. Yeah, banner ads pay for some stuff, but at the same time all that e-commerce eats up bandwidth. I certainly don't see it as a purely good thing to make e-commerce grow as fast as possible.
What about those lost local stores that you used to be able to go to? Okay, most local stores have already been driven out of business by chain stores, but still, I like shopping in a physical place, and there -are- some actual local retailers left.
Then, these taxes that are being lost from the states? That's not paying for maintenence on an absurd national debt or $200 military screwdrivers, that's paying for the schools, roads, scholarships and other state and local programs that affect you and me every day. I've never once resented paying state taxes. (Federal taxes are another story).
To summarize, this says to me, a way to increase net-congestion and cut funding to essential civic programs at the same time.
Isn't MSN free in the UK or something? Then why are they raising the price here?
Most internet service is 'free' in the UK. UK customers get charged a per-minute fee for local calls. ISPs make a deal with the phone company, and get a 'kickback' for the extra billable minutes that the ISP is generating for the phone company. In other words, it's not really free... my typical internet use here in the states would cost me a couple hundred quid... pound's worth more than a buck, so call it, say US$300/month. Take of $100 for 'overhead' (absurd, but it makes the approximations neat) take $100 profit for the phone company and give $100 to the ISP, everybody has goes to a four-star resteraunt for dinner...
As for why they're raising prices here, I haven't got a clue. Maybe they figure that they can? Stupid. It -will- hurt their marketshare, as long as everyone else stays at $19.95/month.
Since you asked...
... actually, I think Linux is just fine for 'ordinary users' ... if they get it preinstalled. My GF uses my Linux box without a problem, and she borders on computer illiterate. (Or claims she does, I think she's learning something, against her will ... :))
... uh... sure. Can't do graphic design with GIMP, can't play Quake. Why didn't I notice that. And of course, 'normal users' probably wouldn't want to write programs in Perl,Python,C/C++,Java,etc, or raytrace in Povray, or listen to their e-mail in the Festival Speech Synthesis System or set up their home box with a static IP address as a web server or do IP Masquerading so more than one person can be on the net at the same time or ... well, so none of that counts. Naturally.
... you asked. :)
1. It says absolutely nothing that hasn't already been said and shows no insight whatsoever.
2. 'I do this for a living' implies he's a computer professional. His comments clearly show that he's no such thing. Using a word-processor in your job hardly makes you a computer expert, anymore than you would expect a columnist two decades ago to be able to repair typewriters.
3. Stupid install complaints. Have to partition? Need to do that for windows. Need to know what com port your modem is on? Need to do that for windows. Need to know if you have scsi or ide? Either know that for windows or risk locking up your machine during an 'autoprobe' for every scsi under the sun. The -real- install complaints were glossed over, making them sound even worse than they actually are.
4. Unsubstantiated claims about linux advocates, 'most of whom have never tried to install linux' (paraphrased, because I don't want to re-read the article). How else -do- you run Linux besides installing it? Linux (mostly, barring VAResearch and a couple others) didn't come pre-installed until recently. More accurate to say Mac and Windows users haven't tried installing their favorite OS's - may not be true, but at least it's -plausible-.
5. With KDE, WordPerfect, and Netscape
6. It is, an earlier poster pointed out, an article from -March-, re-published with a June date on the heading. If true, (I didn't check) it's incredibly misleading. I'm a Debian user, so I don't know, but I'd expect that RedHat 6.0 is easier to install than Redhat 5.2. If this article -is- current and the other poster was wrong, then it's even worse - shall I criticize the Win3.1 install to say why Windows is no good? Whichever way, it's a question of who did something wrong, not whether anything is wrong.
7. 'Can't do much else'
Oh, and there -was- one thing write with this article.
1. Accurately points out that printing under Linux is difficult. We really should have streamline the printing process, but really - I don't even have a printer. Don't ever print anything except my resume - which I just dump to a floppy as postscript and take to my local copy-shop. Yeah, well. We all know this. Nobody's started the Central Unified Streamlined Printing Project (CUSPP) yet.
Anyway, remember,
I meant, how to respond to the tactic of people publishing flames to the public. You can't click 'delete' for a website or a newscast.
The nearest equivalent - just ignore it - might work. Or it might not. A failure to respond to mudslinging, unfortunately, leaves you covered in mud. Ignoring it may be the best tactic - one-sided mud-slinging makes the attacker look vicious and petty. The problem is that this particular kind of mud-slinging is designed to make the linux community look like the aggressor, so ignoring it may not work, in the sense that the public may believe MindCraft, or others that try similar tactics, and start to hate us, or at least think of us as too immature to deal with.
These are just flames, not even atypical flames in the net-world. There is nothing unique about them, except that they are selected examples posted to the web for PR purposes.
I'm disappointed in the people who did this, but I think you have to be realistic - out of the millions of people on the net, -any- topic is going to generate a certain amount of flamage. There are always going to be a few who just -have- to vent, however incoherently. I hope everyone will try to remember that putting even one gratuitous insult in your e-mail, no matter how good it feels, is only going to get you lumped in with the people incapable of spelling or finishing a sentence without a four-letter word.
I'm also disappointed in MindCraft. These kinds of e-mails are not unique to them, and the only appropriate response is to click 'delete.' (Mailbombs are another story - then you contact a net administrator for action.) It's no more mature to say, 'My goodness, everyone come and see how stupid and foul-mouthed this person is,' than it is to issue gratituitous and foul-mouthed insults.
I'm almost tempted to collect an assortment of flames from MS-fanatics speaking against linux from the newsgroups and post them as a rebuttal, but that would be too hypocritical given what I just said. I don't know -how- to respond to this. It would be nice if nobody that supports linux would ever send flames, in newsgroups or by e-mail, but it's not realistic. I hope someone can think of some way responding to such things before the day Microsoft's inbox gets read - with appropriate 'bleeps' on the evening news.
Right, yes, certainly a clone is a human just as much as any other human, in discussion between two sensible individuals (of a modern Western background, with moderate religious views ... other times and cultures may differ). The problem is, however, that laws only erratically reflect the ethical agreements of humanitarian philosophers, and even when they do, not everyone obeys the laws. There are several scenarious that are likely to actually happen at least once in the future.
An eventual problem will be slave-clones, born and raised to work in factories. This is going to be science fiction only for a long time to come - it requires that cloning be relatively cheap and reliable, and that it can be done without a human host mother. The last I heard, the latter hadn't been accomplished. Advantages to this technique - in some countries with views other than ours, such clones -may not- be legally human, and this will be legal. Even if it is not legal - there are no mothers, no birth records, no evidence at all. If the international ethics groups come looking, the slavers can just fire the whole setup, and claim accidental disaster. Look for the problem in 50-100 years.
Then there's the immortality quest - a forward-thinking individual who makes his first million by 25 or inherits his money could freeze a sample of his cells, start a clone growing when he's sixty, and at his age 80, depending on if the Dolly problem is solved, have either 45 or 25 have fully genetically compatible parts. This requires only the technology we have, but will be rendered pointless if we learn to clone body parts without growing a whole person. Good argument for continuing research. Look for this problem in as little as 20-30 years, or the moment the Dolly problem of aged organs has been solved.
A more subtle, creeping problem - genetic purism. Take a cell sample of an 'ideal person' (probably the cloner him/her self), tweak any genetic deficiencies (anemia, nearsightedness, colorblindness, allergies, crooked teeth, whatever) and raise a flock of children with the same ideals who in turn raise another generation... This is not a problem when it's one looney in a backwater. Look for it as a problem if cloning-as-reproduction becomes acceptable, but remains expensive, because then racial wealth divisions come into play. Look for this problem in... oh... a few centuries. No society I know of would tolerate this right now, so time is needed for culture shift. May be self-solving when the lack of genetic diversity of the 'problem nation' does them in.
Perfect Soldiers and Perfect Spies - in combination with genetic engineering, raised by espionage agencies to replace field agents. This could begin immediately, but there's little benefit. Once the Dolly problem has been solved, there will be clones of the very best soldiers and spies. If artificial aging can be induced, there may be perfect dopplegangers, but as another poster pointed out, cloning isn't magic - the clone grows at human rates. Solving the Dolly problem may (or may not) reveal a way to induce artificial aging selectively so you can age features but leave organs intact - or age everything - depending on the accuracy needed. Replacements will still probably need -at least- ten years to be grown, maybe a full 18-20, so they will be rare. Perfect soldiers and spies have the all the advantages of the slaves in the first scenario - look for them almost immediately.
None of which means that we should not research cloning technology, of course. Human beings will be vicious animals towards each other with or without technology, and -I'd- sure like to be able to live for two or three hundred years, which cloning research will directly and indirectly enable, with replacement organs and a better understanding of aging triggers. I just want my replacement organs grown -without- my twin.
This kind of competition is actually a good thing for those of us more interested in using computers than arguing about them.
On the OSS side, it means intensive research of a kind that will expose flaws and bugs that are not so easily discovered in everyday use - which means they'll get fixed, as we've already seen from MindCraft I. Meanwhile, the peer review process of OSS will continue in parallel, of course...
On the Microsoft side, it means that bugs and flaws will be exposed to the public eye, meaning they will have to fix them to salvage their reputation in the public eye...
I don't think that it's particularly good for either the Linux-companies or Microsoft's profit lines, but we'll see what happens. I think chances are it will cost research $$$ on both sides and not really affect sales of either side very much.
But I'm not trying to sell Linux, just use it - and sometimes work requires me to use Windows... so for me, this is a good thing. I say bring on more competitions like it!
The CIA and it's predecessor organization (the name of which I forget) do most of the wartime decryption, as well as decrypting any encrypted messages their field agents snare, so it's perfectly appropriate where it is.
Now, whether or not the NSA should have its own statue, is another question. Actually, sources inform me that they d- {{{p{p{prSAOD"
NO CARRIER
Point the first, Jon writes about what Jon writes about. Just because Jon writes an editorial does not mean that CmdrTaco or Hemos cannot also post a link and a comment on the same topic.
Point the second, your links aren't links, they're just bold words.
Canadians are north americans, but they are not Americans. There's a good reason for this, actually... a certain country on the other side of the United States of America is known formally as the United States of Mexico and/or, uhm, Estados Mexico Unidos, or something close to that, I don't speak Spanish and it's been a long time since I've heard a Mexican radio frequency announcement.
Anyway, people from the United States of America can not be 'United Statsians' even if it didn't sound ridiculous because it would be confused with Mexico (and probably several other 'United States of X' around the world). And I hope everyone will agree that 'United States of American' is an absurdly awkward phrase.
So Canadians are Canadians, Americans are Americans, Mexicans are Mexicans, and they're all north americans.
And none of this has anything to do with software piracy!
There are such problems as heat exhaustion and heat stroke, and they do claim lives. The fact that your brother survived is beside the point - maybe he lived in a naturally cool region of Arizona or spent the worst of the day (working hours) in an air conditioned office. Or maybe he was just young and in good health. Anyway, Arizona is relatively dry, so by contrast to some regions, it's 'safe' heat - just drink a lot of water. In the deep south, the humidity reduces the ability to lose heat by sweat evaporation because the air is already near saturation. I have heard news reports detailing deaths due to heat stroke in the deep south during particularly cruel heat waves. I can't say the same for Arizona - which doesn't prove anything, of course, anymore than the fact that your brother survived one summer proves anything.
Now, (and to bring it back around to on topic) you wanted to say that CPU super-cooling was not a necessity or that R12 Freon was not a necessity, you'd probably be correct.
I do wonder, though, whether or not hotter climates make computer operation impossible... in which case A/C would become a necessity - for productivity, thought not for survival.
Don't bother telling 'them' anything. What is a 'computer nerd' anyway? Someone smarter than the average joe who knows his way around computers. This is something to be ashamed of? 'Computer nerd' is just a perjorative version of the 'computer genius' that computing-challenged mothers, S.O.'s, assorted friends and relatives like to throw around when they're bragging.
Same meaning, different implications - but y'know, I think that anyone who thinks that being smart is something to be ashamed if is a someone who's opinion is not worth worrying about.
(And yeah, I know, it's easier to say than to do with shifts in internal reactions to things like that, but just try telling yourself, every time you hear that, 'nerd==genius => he just complimented me, but thinks he insulted me.' I think it'll help.)
I have to admit that I like cowboy a bit. Shades of Neuromancer. Of course, he was a cracker, not a hacker - but still...
And I think the term cowboy in neuromancer included all the 'net pros, not just the crackers, but the corporate security teams and the coders and basically everyone but the netcops. But maybe I'm wrong, or forgetful, and you probably weren't thinking of that anyway.
That usage of 'cracker' is about analogous to 'darkie' to refer to a black person. The origin is 'white as a [georgia] cracker.' I'm sure that the rural southerners who get labeled with that appelation would be just as happy for the meaning to be diluted.
I've never heard geek used to describe a mental or physical inability. Perjoritavely, I hear it used the same way as nerd, except maybe a bit stronger. 'Geeking' is an increasingly frequently used verb in my circles, used to describe the act of waxing passionate about linux, IPv6, crypto regulations, or other typical /. subjects.
In my mind, the only difference between nerd and geek is that the latter -must- where glasses, and it's optional for the former. Since I wear glasses... 8-)
Besides, I don't see why we should 'reclaim' the word geek any less than the word nerd - both are gradeschool/highschool terms to describe the a subset of the population that most of us belonged to.
I seem to recall that NASA acquired Moffett Field. It may have changed hands again since, but, in any case it is not (or was not) a military base anymore.
The thing is, Moffett has so much gunk in the ground from all the years of use as an airfield, that it can't be used for anything else without a huge cleanup effort to get past EPA regs. So, either it's an airfield for someone, or it's a derelict lot. Nobody's going to pay what it takes to clean up a place that's been in use as long as Moffett has. (Notice that it still has dirigible hangers... that's a lot of years and a lot of corrosive fluids every year... )
Anyway, it was more than a name change, it was a shift from the military branch of government to the civil branch.
How on -earth- has the NSA been screwing over the american people for years? To the best of my knowledge, which is reasonably lay-educated but not expert, the NSA doesn't do much of anything except collect and analyze every bit of data they can get their hands on, and presumably make advisories to the president from time to time. Personally, I'm not much worried. I believe that they're as close-mouthed to the rest of the intelligence community as they are to congress, the public, and the press. So what if they have a lot of information? They don't use it against ordinary citizens. Or even ordinary criminals. Presumably they do inform someone about issues involving international terrorism or plots to assassinate heads of state in the USA and friendly countries, but you know, some days I wonder if they even tell anyone about anything.
Now, if you want an intelligence agency to worry about, look to the CIA. If I thought the NSA would cooperate with the CIA, -then- I'd be worried.
So - how do you think the NSA has been harming American citizens, exactly?
Europeans and Brits are not being charged for -bandwidth- they're being charged -per minute-. This means they get charged the same to connect to the net at 56.6 (or as close as they can get) and continuously download .tgz files for an hour as they do to connect to the net at, say, 9600, and chat on IRC or ICQ or play a mud or mush or even read slashdot (with images off, of course.)
Per minute charges do not have that great an affect on bandwidth usage - people will connect just long enough to download the big file they want and then disconnect again. What per minute charges do is make it ridiculously expensive to do anything interesting or informative on the net. If it takes you five minutes to read an online article, that's five minutes you payed for while using -no- bandwidth. (unless you're doing a download in a background process).
And personally, I find it frustrating when a British friend tells me they can only stay connected and chat for twenty minutes because they have to conserve time to keep their phone bill down. I can imagine that those in that situation are much, much, much more frustrated.
So, re-think your position, and try to address the actual issue.
Make anti-aliasing an option that has to be explictly turned on for given window. Then old apps will continue to function, and new apps that need it (web browsers, word processers, other 'pretty text' programs) can turn it on. And new apps that don't need it can keep the speed of not antialiasing.
Personally, I've never had a problem with X's text anyway, so I could care less. I don't think much, and never have, of true type fonts. Adobe Type 1 fonts work fine for me. But I think the above would work for those who need/want antialiased fonts.