Agreed, we've been installing a lot of 100BT and have not had the problems described. Get a real cat5 tester and test the cable. Are you using cat5 rated patch panels? If everything checks out, it's your NIC and/or the hub/switch.
Do you have any concept of how much it would cost to pull out all the cat5 and replace it with fiber in any significantly large organization that would consider gigabit Ethernet?
According to the Gigabit Ethernet Alliance web page, 802.3ab has a maximum cable length of 100M. This happens to be the same for 10/100BT, so I don't call that "short range."
Most Ethernets seem to start having collision problems above 50% utilization. The worst case was a Sun implementation of Ethernet where the wait time after a collision was fixed at the minimum, resulting in the NICs dropping into lockstep when collisions started and network utilization dropping to 0%.
Then the SUN implementation was not to spec. True Ethernet devices are supposed to wait a random, or pseudo random, time before trying to retransmit after a collision. I'd say their implementation was broken.
Also, if you are talking full-duplex connections, there is no such thing as a collision anymore. Since you can transmit and receive at the same time, you can't have a collision. Buffers can backup on the switches and you could drop traffic, but you wouldn't have a "collision." "Good" switches can also do flow-control, so that their buffers will not overflow. See the 802.3x spec.
Looking at the Gigabit Ethernet Alliance FAQ, it looks like they extend the carrier time and slot time to 512B from 512b. This, in effect, makes the minimum packet length 512B instead of 64B (The official min packet length is still 64B but it will pad it to 512B) for non-full duplex devices. So, unless you have full-duplex connections you are not gaining that much. However, it looks like they try to make up for this with the packet-burst feature, which allows stations to send out multiple consecutive packets without giving up control of the line (supposedly up to the 512B slot time).
Interesting that they say on the page linked to by Intel Serves Up UNIX that the first version of UDI will be released Q2 99 with Linux as the reference platform. It's been a while since I heard anything significant about UDI. And the Q2 is almost half way over...
Yes but what may have been meant as far as the libraries were the development libraries. You know, the header files, static, debugging, profile libraries. Are they "standard" bundled items, or do they only come with the compiler?
If they only come with the compiler, don't you have to use alternate libraries, like glibc, if you want to use gcc and have debug, static, and profile versions of the libraries around for testing?
For what they are doing, there is no reason to have something as complicated as Windows or Linux running.
Linux doesn't have to be "complicated" it just has the ability to serve in complex systems. For example, you don't have to and probably don't want to install news servers, mail servers, etc on "client" boxes. You can "scale down" Linux to a very small size.
Windows is inherently complicated because you generally can't take "out" pieces of the OS as you can with Linux.
Gee, I seem to remember that a stock, regular Solaris license was included when you buy Sun hardware. You'd pay like $100 for the CD's and manuals or something. For the big servers, like the 10K, you'd have higher cost, but I'm pretty certain we got the software "free" (now don't start, you know what I mean).
Gee, how fsck'n difficult is it to remember to put a terminator on the end of the bus? Do you have problems remembering to wipe after you use the bathroom? (Sorry I couldn't resist. But honestly do people really have that much difficulty remembering things? I guess that's why they have computer engineers that can do the technical work for end-users).
Later SCSI standards allow 15 devices per card, and longer cable lengths.
if I had to use drives, I'd use solid state drives (the kind with built in battery and automatic disk backup) for ultimate performance.
I don't think you would want to do that for NT systems. I've had direct quotes from Microsoft employees that the EMC drives are not "reliable" under NT and he recommended NOT using them.
BTW... two different services on the same box? Aside from the fact that it is bad design on the NT side, the two functions really require different configurations.
Well, that brings up a point. It would be interesting to run both tests at the same time under NT and Linux and see how they come out then!
Don't be so sure about that (OS price dwindles in comparison to the h/w). What are you going to run on that high-end hardware? More connections for users. More Client Access Licenses. Want to run Exchance on it? More licenses for that too. You'd be surprised at how much MS licenses can cost for a high end box (or may be you wouldn't:-)
I just send an email off to mindcraft listing a few things that I thought needed to be addressed in the test before I thought them valid.
1) Why only test 1 or 4 CPU's? 2 CPU's is a more common occurance for web servers.
2) No mention of testing various amounts of RAM. How about testing with 512MB, 1GB, 2GB, and 4GB?
3) The limit on the fixes or enhancements does not reflect the real-world. One of the greatest features of Linux over NT is that it enables the end user to fix problems themselves. This is the exact opposite of the situation with NT, where you have to wait for Microsoft to come out with a fix. Limiting the tests in this way can be viewed as unfair to Linux as it takes away one of it's best features.
Well that's rather ignorant. Why not use random noise as the pad and have a field in the message that would indicate the true length of the plaintext. Through away everything else after that lenght once decoded. The field would be encoded also, so you couldn't easily pick out the plaintext length.
but you can get up to 7 Mbps downlink, which is roughly a T2
Err, what the hell is a T2? I've been in the networking business for quite a while and I've never heard of a T2. You may mean 2 T1's (2x 1.536Mbps = 3.072Mbps) but you'd be wrong anyway. 7Mbps is more like 4 T1's (4x 1.536bps = 6.144Mbps). It's more like a Fractional T3, but you'd probably have to have a HSSI interface if you actually had a FT3.
Note, the T1 speeds are if you are running ESF and B8ZS. If you're stuck with AMI/D4 you run at more like 1.344 Mbps. Moral of the story, demand ESF/B8ZS on your T1 lines, it gives you 192Kbps more bandwidth.
[I'd swear I remembered a T1 being at 1.544, but doing the calculations it seems it is 1.536. Guess I got it confused with a T1 running with AMI/D4.]
I believe I heard somewhere that you have to have (at least) cookie support for the @Home service to work. You may also need Java support (or JavaScript, I'm not sure). If you're using something like Junkbusters that blocks cookies, this may be your problem...
Boy what a wacko. I suppose you don't ever ride in a car because of the risks associated with that also?
Coming from a family that has a father who worked for the Navy for 23 years and a nuclear power plant for 18 years as head of dosimetry, a brother who refuled nuclear power plants, and another brother who works in the Virgina nuclear ship yards (in dosimetry also), I'd say you're a paranoid freak.
Yes mistakes were made in the past because we didn't know the effects of radiation on the body (and some cold-war related bad decisions by the government). For example, some people were fatally exposed to radioactivity who worked in watch manufacuring plants. They used to use a radioactive substance mixed in the paint use on the hands of the watch so it would glow in the dark. The watch painters used to lick the brush so that they could paint the very small hands of the watch by making the paint brush pointy, and ingested the radioactive paint. Their bones will still "self-xray" themselves if you dug them up and placed them on xray film. This was done because we were "stupid" back them. Radioactivity was just discovered, and people thought that it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. They used to call it the "Atomic Age."
We know a lot more now. And I personally don't think there is a problem at all with a few millirem a year from this. With a chest xray at 30-100mrem (their numbers, I don't feel like looking it up at the moment) you would have to pass thorough this thing at least 200 times to receive more than the average xray. Plus, this is pure external radiation, no substance enters your body to get lodged in a lung or liver or thyroid or bone marrow or one of the other common places that radioactive isotopes like to accumulate and constantly radiate the surrounding tissue. Once you're through, you're through.
For example, it's only been in this decade that we finally persuaded EPA to review **average** human exposure to a relatively small family of chlorinated dioxins, dibenzofurans, and biphenyls that act by a common toxic mechanism, but still ignoring the fact that a broad class of halogenated hydrocarbons share the same aryl hydrocarbon hydroxylase mechanism at the cellular level. And what of the more than 10,000 new chemicals that enter commerce every year? Can you assure us that none of them will increase our susceptibility to radiation?
What the hell does this have to do with radiation? If these products do increase our susceptibility to radiation I suggest you continue your "fight" to get them banned, as the levels of radiation levels of this product are less than background levels. So, these products would effect everyone whether they went through the scanners or not. I'd say that they were where you should concentrate you're energies.
One of the risks of this is they will start hiding these things as they get cheaper, and the average person will get "one hour's dose" of radiation every time he/she enters a secure building.
At 0.5 mR it's nothing to worry about.
Slashdot and mailing lists are different!
on
ISP Sues Spammer
·
· Score: 1
I don't think there should be anything wrong with setting up a mailing list or other system that sends out mass mailing (like vger). However, it's quite different when you use an ISP's mail gateway to send out mass mailings. Slashdot "pays" for the bandwidth for each message (I assume). Spammers generally send only a few emails with tons of recipients and the ISP mail gateways "generate" the traffic. If spammers would pay for a full T1 or fractional T3 line in order to send out mass mailings, more power to them. They would have to get a permanent IP address and we could block that. But, "relaying" mass email through and ISP gateway is evil.
(I assume that Slashdot sends out individual news updates because my name is on the subject line.)
I think that everyone is missing the point on complaining that the remedies offered do not address the "aggrieved parties." The whole suit is about Microsoft being a monopoly (which is not in-itself a crime) and using it's monopoly power illegally against the aggrieved parties. Seems to me there are two general "remedies" that can be explored:
1) Make Microsoft an non-monopoly. Do "things" to Microsoft or require them to do things that will remove the monopoly power that they have and make it impossible for them to use that power illegally in the future. RMS' three items seem to prefer this remedy by allowing other competitors greater access to Microsoft's APIs in order to slowly bring "real" competition back to the desktop OS and application market.
2) Punish Microsoft for the things that they have done by fines or retribution to the aggrieved parties and implement a regulatory body to oversee all Microsoft future dealings. This would allow Microsoft to remain a monopoly, but allow the MRC (Microsoft Regulatory Commission) to oversee future business dealings to make sure they don't use their monopoly power illegally in the future.
I believe that everyone (who believes that Microsoft is a monopoly and needs to be dealt with due to their illegal use of that monopoly power) would opt for a remedy of the first ilk rather than the second. The Microsoft monopoly is different than any other monopoly in the past, such as oil companies and telephone, in that it is an "intellectual" monopoly. Past monopolies have been "physical" monopolies, because of the ownership of oil fields or the telephone network. I don't think anyone would wish for the "thought police" that would be required with a #2 like remedy.
Also, you must keep in mind that it is a product based monopoly, but it is non-physical. If someone had a monopoly on cars, you could still buy a car and readily design a car stereo that would compete with the car manufacturers model. That's because it is relatively easy to discern the "interface" required for the car stereo. Software is much different. An application vendor can not readily discern the complete interface to the OS when that OS is developed by a monopoly company like Microsoft. Even if they do provide the "interface" or API details to the OS, there are still "hidden" interfaces that they can use in their app product that the competitor can not. This is why it is important to include the APIs in any remedy. Either that, or you need to hire a load of government programmers to go over each and every Microsoft application to make sure they are not using internal interfaces unfairly against their competition. I don't think anyone wants that either...
The Twin Problems of Free Speech
on
ShutUp Software
·
· Score: 1
Filtering posts causes us to narrow our range of experience making us less well-rounded and well-informed citizens.
I would dis-agree with this statement. While this may have been true in the past, when the information flow was miniscule compared to today, I don't think this hold water anymore. Today, anyone connected on the Internet has an overflow of ideas, views, and experiences. Filtering software (when chosen by the viewer and not imposed) is a good thing because it allows one to concentrate on the information you are seeking. I would, and I would hazard to say that you would, be stuck in front of the computer all day if we didn't "filter" our input. As another poster said, you are filtering with "wetware" (i.e., your own brain and what you choose to drill down into) even if you don't have and software filters enabled. You don't read EVERY/. article and response do you? I didn't think so...
Difference between types of filtering
on
ShutUp Software
·
· Score: 1
I was wondering if someone was going to mention the programs like JunkBusters (which I also love) and how/if they are different than the scoring/filtering options available on popular online services. I personally don't think there is much of a difference. As you said, it's the viewer's choice of what they block and what they don't.
I think Jon made a mistake when he lumped filtering that is done by others like AOL that the end users have no control over. I remember seeing a list of the guidelines that the AOL censors are supposed to use. One of them was you couldn't say anything bad about AOL?!?! This would be unacceptable to me, and that's why I would never use AOL, even if offered free. If he didn't include these types of filtering in his argument, I think many more would disagree with him. If he was only talking about this type of censorship, then I think many more would agree with him.
It seems to me that the generally accepted definition of socialism is an economic system where the means of production are owned or otherwise controlled by the government, as opposed to communism (owned/controlled by the people) or capitalism (owned/controlled by various individuals/corporations).
And, in the case of software, I would be inclined to call source code the "means of production." And, the best way to keep the software under control, and help make sure people will pay for it, is *not* to make the software "free." And, the "freedom" of "sharing" that embodies the GPL is not compatible with requiring people to pay for software
I would disagree. I believe the "means of production" for software is the programmer, not the results of that production - the product/software/code. So, you are advocating that the "means of production" (programmers) should be controlled by individuals/corporations. I don't think this is what anyone would particularly like, as it sounds a bit too much like slavery (and no, I'm not trying to inflame).
I think the whole concept is different for "intellectual property" and can't be compared to physical property. A corporation can "own" a gold mine, and use people to extract the gold and produce the "product" (gold ingots?). The "control" is over the gold mine. People are just hired to do the work of extracting the product from the source.
Software "production" is quite different. Corporations don't "own" ANYTHING when it comes to software production. Where does software come from? It comes from the intelligence of the workers. So for the company to "own" the source of production, they would have to "own" the workers. Unlike the gold mine, "intellectual property" is not transferrable from one person to another easily. In the gold mine, you could more easily fire all workers and hire all new ones and have them "producing" for you a LOT faster than if you did the same thing with a large programming staff (think if Microsoft fired each and every Windows programmer and hired all new ones. Even with the source code, how LONG do you think it would take that new staff to get up to speed?). So, software is more of a "product" of the individual programmer than the company they work for. That is not how it is generally viewed now, but in reality that's the truth.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed, we've been installing a lot of 100BT and have not had the problems described. Get a real cat5 tester and test the cable. Are you using cat5 rated patch panels? If everything checks out, it's your NIC and/or the hub/switch.
Do you have any concept of how much it would cost to pull out all the cat5 and replace it with fiber in any significantly large organization that would consider gigabit Ethernet?
So you're sending the HDTV signals non-compressed? That doesn't seem like a particularly bright thing to do.
According to the Gigabit Ethernet Alliance web page, 802.3ab has a maximum cable length of 100M. This happens to be the same for 10/100BT, so I don't call that "short range."
Most Ethernets seem to start having collision problems above 50% utilization. The worst case was a Sun
implementation of Ethernet where the wait time after a collision was fixed at the minimum, resulting in the NICs
dropping into lockstep when collisions started and network utilization dropping to 0%.
Then the SUN implementation was not to spec. True Ethernet devices are supposed to wait a random, or pseudo random, time before trying to retransmit after a collision. I'd say their implementation was broken.
Also, if you are talking full-duplex connections, there is no such thing as a collision anymore. Since you can transmit and receive at the same time, you can't have a collision. Buffers can backup on the switches and you could drop traffic, but you wouldn't have a "collision." "Good" switches can also do flow-control, so that their buffers will not overflow. See the 802.3x spec.
Looking at the Gigabit Ethernet Alliance FAQ, it looks like they extend the carrier time and slot time to 512B from 512b. This, in effect, makes the minimum packet length 512B instead of 64B (The official min packet length is still 64B but it will pad it to 512B) for non-full duplex devices. So, unless you have full-duplex connections you are not gaining that much. However, it looks like they try to make up for this with the packet-burst feature, which allows stations to send out multiple consecutive packets without giving up control of the line (supposedly up to the 512B slot time).
Interesting that they say on the page linked to by Intel Serves Up UNIX that the first version of UDI will be released Q2 99 with Linux as the reference platform. It's been a while since I heard anything significant about UDI. And the Q2 is almost half way over...
Remember, Intel is not going to ship the motherboards that support 8 processors until later this year, let alone one that would support 16.
Yes but what may have been meant as far as the libraries were the development libraries. You know, the header files, static, debugging, profile libraries. Are they "standard" bundled items, or do they only come with the compiler?
If they only come with the compiler, don't you have to use alternate libraries, like glibc, if you want to use gcc and have debug, static, and profile versions of the libraries around for testing?
For what they are doing, there is no reason to have something as complicated as Windows or Linux running.
Linux doesn't have to be "complicated" it just has the ability to serve in complex systems. For example, you don't have to and probably don't want to install news servers, mail servers, etc on "client" boxes. You can "scale down" Linux to a very small size.
Windows is inherently complicated because you generally can't take "out" pieces of the OS as you can with Linux.
Gee, I seem to remember that a stock, regular Solaris license was included when you buy Sun hardware. You'd pay like $100 for the CD's and manuals or something. For the big servers, like the 10K, you'd have higher cost, but I'm pretty certain we got the software "free" (now don't start, you know what I mean).
Gee, how fsck'n difficult is it to remember to put a terminator on the end of the bus? Do you have problems remembering to wipe after you use the bathroom? (Sorry I couldn't resist. But honestly do people really have that much difficulty remembering things? I guess that's why they have computer engineers that can do the technical work for end-users).
Later SCSI standards allow 15 devices per card, and longer cable lengths.
KISS is for stupid people, hence the last S...
if I had to use drives, I'd use solid state drives (the kind with built in battery and automatic disk backup) for ultimate performance.
I don't think you would want to do that for NT systems. I've had direct quotes from Microsoft employees that the EMC drives are not "reliable" under NT and he recommended NOT using them.
BTW... two different services on the same box? Aside from the fact that it is bad design on the NT side, the two functions really require different configurations.
Well, that brings up a point. It would be interesting to run both tests at the same time under NT and Linux and see how they come out then!
Don't be so sure about that (OS price dwindles in comparison to the h/w). What are you going to run on that high-end hardware? More connections for users. More Client Access Licenses. Want to run Exchance on it? More licenses for that too. You'd be surprised at how much MS licenses can cost for a high end box (or may be you wouldn't :-)
I just send an email off to mindcraft listing a few things that I thought needed to be addressed in the test before I thought them valid.
1) Why only test 1 or 4 CPU's? 2 CPU's is a more common occurance for web servers.
2) No mention of testing various amounts of RAM. How about testing with 512MB, 1GB, 2GB, and 4GB?
3) The limit on the fixes or enhancements does not reflect the real-world. One of the greatest features of Linux over NT is that it enables the end user to fix problems themselves. This is the exact opposite of the situation with NT, where you have to wait for Microsoft to come out with a fix. Limiting the tests in this way can be viewed as unfair to Linux as it takes away one of it's best features.
Well that's rather ignorant. Why not use random noise as the pad and have a field in the message that would indicate the true length of the plaintext. Through away everything else after that lenght once decoded. The field would be encoded also, so you couldn't easily pick out the plaintext length.
Is this overly easy or am I missing something?
but you can get up to 7 Mbps downlink, which is roughly a T2
Err, what the hell is a T2? I've been in the networking business for quite a while and I've never heard of a T2. You may mean 2 T1's (2x 1.536Mbps = 3.072Mbps) but you'd be wrong anyway. 7Mbps is more like 4 T1's (4x 1.536bps = 6.144Mbps). It's more like a Fractional T3, but you'd probably have to have a HSSI interface if you actually had a FT3.
Note, the T1 speeds are if you are running ESF and B8ZS. If you're stuck with AMI/D4 you run at more like 1.344 Mbps. Moral of the story, demand ESF/B8ZS on your T1 lines, it gives you 192Kbps more bandwidth.
[I'd swear I remembered a T1 being at 1.544, but doing the calculations it seems it is 1.536. Guess I got it confused with a T1 running with AMI/D4.]
I believe I heard somewhere that you have to have (at least) cookie support for the @Home service to work. You may also need Java support (or JavaScript, I'm not sure). If you're using something like Junkbusters that blocks cookies, this may be your problem...
Well then, go hide in your hole and never-ever get a sun tan, and for God's sake don't ride in a car!
Boy what a wacko. I suppose you don't ever ride in a car because of the risks associated with that also?
Coming from a family that has a father who worked for the Navy for 23 years and a nuclear power plant for 18 years as head of dosimetry, a brother who refuled nuclear power plants, and another brother who works in the Virgina nuclear ship yards (in dosimetry also), I'd say you're a paranoid freak.
Yes mistakes were made in the past because we didn't know the effects of radiation on the body (and some cold-war related bad decisions by the government). For example, some people were fatally exposed to radioactivity who worked in watch manufacuring plants. They used to use a radioactive substance mixed in the paint use on the hands of the watch so it would glow in the dark. The watch painters used to lick the brush so that they could paint the very small hands of the watch by making the paint brush pointy, and ingested the radioactive paint. Their bones will still "self-xray" themselves if you dug them up and placed them on xray film. This was done because we were "stupid" back them. Radioactivity was just discovered, and people thought that it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. They used to call it the "Atomic Age."
We know a lot more now. And I personally don't think there is a problem at all with a few millirem a year from this. With a chest xray at 30-100mrem (their numbers, I don't feel like looking it up at the moment) you would have to pass thorough this thing at least 200 times to receive more than the average xray. Plus, this is pure external radiation, no substance enters your body to get lodged in a lung or liver or thyroid or bone marrow or one of the other common places that radioactive isotopes like to accumulate and constantly radiate the surrounding tissue. Once you're through, you're through.
For example, it's only been in this decade that we finally persuaded EPA to review **average** human exposure to a relatively small family of chlorinated dioxins, dibenzofurans, and biphenyls that act by a common toxic mechanism, but still ignoring the fact that a broad class of halogenated hydrocarbons share the same aryl hydrocarbon hydroxylase mechanism at the cellular level. And what of the more than 10,000 new chemicals that enter commerce every year? Can you assure us that none of them will increase our susceptibility to radiation?
What the hell does this have to do with radiation? If these products do increase our susceptibility to radiation I suggest you continue your "fight" to get them banned, as the levels of radiation levels of this product are less than background levels. So, these products would effect everyone whether they went through the scanners or not. I'd say that they were where you should concentrate you're energies.
One of the risks of this is they will start hiding these things as they get cheaper, and the average person will get "one hour's dose" of radiation every time he/she enters a secure building.
At 0.5 mR it's nothing to worry about.
I don't think there should be anything wrong with setting up a mailing list or other system that sends out mass mailing (like vger). However, it's quite different when you use an ISP's mail gateway to send out mass mailings. Slashdot "pays" for the bandwidth for each message (I assume). Spammers generally send only a few emails with tons of recipients and the ISP mail gateways "generate" the traffic. If spammers would pay for a full T1 or fractional T3 line in order to send out mass mailings, more power to them. They would have to get a permanent IP address and we could block that. But, "relaying" mass email through and ISP gateway is evil.
(I assume that Slashdot sends out individual news updates because my name is on the subject line.)
I think that everyone is missing the point on complaining that the remedies offered do not address the "aggrieved parties." The whole suit is about Microsoft being a monopoly (which is not in-itself a crime) and using it's monopoly power illegally against the aggrieved parties. Seems to me there are two general "remedies" that can be explored:
1) Make Microsoft an non-monopoly. Do "things" to Microsoft or require them to do things that will remove the monopoly power that they have and make it impossible for them to use that power illegally in the future. RMS' three items seem to prefer this remedy by allowing other competitors greater access to Microsoft's APIs in order to slowly bring "real" competition back to the desktop OS and application market.
2) Punish Microsoft for the things that they have done by fines or retribution to the aggrieved parties and implement a regulatory body to oversee all Microsoft future dealings. This would allow Microsoft to remain a monopoly, but allow the MRC (Microsoft Regulatory Commission) to oversee future business dealings to make sure they don't use their monopoly power illegally in the future.
I believe that everyone (who believes that Microsoft is a monopoly and needs to be dealt with due to their illegal use of that monopoly power) would opt for a remedy of the first ilk rather than the second. The Microsoft monopoly is different than any other monopoly in the past, such as oil companies and telephone, in that it is an "intellectual" monopoly. Past monopolies have been "physical" monopolies, because of the ownership of oil fields or the telephone network. I don't think anyone would wish for the "thought police" that would be required with a #2 like remedy.
Also, you must keep in mind that it is a product based monopoly, but it is non-physical. If someone had a monopoly on cars, you could still buy a car and readily design a car stereo that would compete with the car manufacturers model. That's because it is relatively easy to discern the "interface" required for the car stereo. Software is much different. An application vendor can not readily discern the complete interface to the OS when that OS is developed by a monopoly company like Microsoft. Even if they do provide the "interface" or API details to the OS, there are still "hidden" interfaces that they can use in their app product that the competitor can not. This is why it is important to include the APIs in any remedy. Either that, or you need to hire a load of government programmers to go over each and every Microsoft application to make sure they are not using internal interfaces unfairly against their competition. I don't think anyone wants that either...
Filtering posts causes us to narrow our range of experience making us less well-rounded and well-informed citizens.
/. article and response do you? I didn't think so...
I would dis-agree with this statement. While this may have been true in the past, when the information flow was miniscule compared to today, I don't think this hold water anymore. Today, anyone connected on the Internet has an overflow of ideas, views, and experiences. Filtering software (when chosen by the viewer and not imposed) is a good thing because it allows one to concentrate on the information you are seeking. I would, and I would hazard to say that you would, be stuck in front of the computer all day if we didn't "filter" our input. As another poster said, you are filtering with "wetware" (i.e., your own brain and what you choose to drill down into) even if you don't have and software filters enabled. You don't read EVERY
I was wondering if someone was going to mention the programs like JunkBusters (which I also love) and how/if they are different than the scoring/filtering options available on popular online services. I personally don't think there is much of a difference. As you said, it's the viewer's choice of what they block and what they don't.
I think Jon made a mistake when he lumped filtering that is done by others like AOL that the end users have no control over. I remember seeing a list of the guidelines that the AOL censors are supposed to use. One of them was you couldn't say anything bad about AOL?!?! This would be unacceptable to me, and that's why I would never use AOL, even if offered free. If he didn't include these types of filtering in his argument, I think many more would disagree with him. If he was only talking about this type of censorship, then I think many more would agree with him.
It seems to me that the generally accepted definition of socialism is an economic system where the means of production are owned or otherwise controlled by the government, as opposed to communism (owned/controlled by the people) or capitalism (owned/controlled by various individuals/corporations).
And, in the case of software, I would be inclined to call source code the "means of production." And, the best way to keep the software under control, and help make sure people will pay for it, is *not* to make the software "free." And, the "freedom" of "sharing" that embodies the GPL is not compatible with requiring people to pay for software
I would disagree. I believe the "means of production" for software is the programmer, not the results of that production - the product/software/code. So, you are advocating that the "means of production" (programmers) should be controlled by individuals/corporations. I don't think this is what anyone would particularly like, as it sounds a bit too much like slavery (and no, I'm not trying to inflame).
I think the whole concept is different for "intellectual property" and can't be compared to physical property. A corporation can "own" a gold mine, and use people to extract the gold and produce the "product" (gold ingots?). The "control" is over the gold mine. People are just hired to do the work of extracting the product from the source.
Software "production" is quite different. Corporations don't "own" ANYTHING when it comes to software production. Where does software come from? It comes from the intelligence of the workers. So for the company to "own" the source of production, they would have to "own" the workers. Unlike the gold mine, "intellectual property" is not transferrable from one person to another easily. In the gold mine, you could more easily fire all workers and hire all new ones and have them "producing" for you a LOT faster than if you did the same thing with a large programming staff (think if Microsoft fired each and every Windows programmer and hired all new ones. Even with the source code, how LONG do you think it would take that new staff to get up to speed?). So, software is more of a "product" of the individual programmer than the company they work for. That is not how it is generally viewed now, but in reality that's the truth.