it sure would be nice if there was a bit more uniformity amongst the tools for the various Distro's. I suppose that they are all variations on a theme but they *do* work differently (especially from end-user perspective). From a hobbiest point of view I guess it isn't a big deal but from a commercial perspective it might be. I've been using RH on my intel boxes and a friend gave me a Sparc 10 to fool around with. No RH7 distro for that so off to debian or some other....files located in different places, apt-get and other oddities when compared to RH distro. It drives me nuts.
A friend of mine got a PS2 and rented quake II (I guess, unsure about the version). It sucked. The feedback game pads were kinda neat but having one joystick that controlled looking up and down and lateral movement and another that controlled the remaining functions was very strange. Also, when we played two player the screen was split horizontally. Almost unplayable.
Other than the high-handed tone of your screed, You some good points....and some not so good points. For instance, you *do* pay to receive "spam" via US mail. As the volume of mail grows, the facilities required to handle this mail grows along with it. Who the hell do you think pays for more delivery men, sorters, trucks and all of the other shit that goes along with it. The people who produce junk mail don't make one lump sum payment to enhance the facilities of the USPS. The volume increase isn't due to personal letters my friend. You also pay as you have to fedex stuff around the country so that it will get there in a reasonable amount of time. I think that this particular argument is far more than a "tired old analogy". As far as the content of the spam goes, it's not my "pet cause", I'm just sick of having to explain to my parents, and other older users of the medium why they get emails about "hot teens" and whatnot.
Here in Virginia, the legislature recently passed a law banning "Unsolicited Commercial Email". UUnet appears to have taken someone to court under this statute. I think that this is a step in the right direction and that Virginia is in a unique position to help choke off the flow of spam as I'd guess that most AOL traffic goes through there but it won't fix things in the end. As many others have pointed out, spammers will move to other jurisdictions and then offshore. Along the same lines, the cat and mouse games between spammers and those who create filtering software will never end. I think the only way to stop this shit is to create something akin to an electric stamp. Think about it. The only other outfit that has to deal with this type of stuff is the Post Office and they keep it in check by making somebody pay to deliver it. Or course, I haven't a clue as to how you would go about this but it's a start.
It occurs to me that there are two problems here: 1) everyone likes to bitch about spam but how much of the bitching has to do with getting unsolicited email and how much has to do with the larger problems (and costs) that the ever-increasing volume of spam (and legit) email produces? I think that the fundamental nature of the internet has clearly gone from the early "Internet Club" (duh) to a commercial medium. Every other commercial medium (TV, Radio, even US mail) produces huge amounts of unsolicited advertisements. Anyone ever complain to the USPS about the gigantic volume of junk mail that shows up in your mail every day? Anyone ever tried to "unsubscribe" from junk mail in your regular mail? I'd bet 99% of people haven't. It seems to me that the thing to do is to figure out a way to make commercial users of email (advertisers specificly) pay to support the medium. In addition to supporting the medium, there should be some rules about what kind of content is allowable in these emails. And don't even start yammering about fucking first amendment issues. I've yet to get a piece of mail from the postman about some chick that likes to take it in the ass.
The second issue is that this mob rules mentality that most anti-spammers seem to have screws up other legitimate uses of email. The "Newsletters" that many sites send out seem to fall into a gray area that threatens to eliminate this otherwise useful feature. Many small sites (who seem to constitute an ever-increasing percentage of sites) use newsletters to keep users coming back and these newsletters are an important piece of their strategy!
In summary, perhaps this is a good place for the gov't to get more fully involved. I don't normally advocate this type of governmental activity but I think it would be best to solve this problem in a coherent manner before one of the spammers manages to line up a court case involving an equal protection issue or some such.
It depends on what kind of wireless access you are talking about. I suppose that there are 3 different kinds: Internet "enabled" phone, fixed wireless and mobile wireless.
Internet enabled phones are, by and large, a joke. Unless you are using a service that pushes data to the phone or some sort of bookmark, they're useless. I've used it on my phone exactly once, to pull up my website.
Fixed wireless is a good thing and, imo, will be successful. It allows hops between buildings for network connections and the like. It's really only good in cities as its range is limited.
Mobile wireless is a niche market and I don't know if the market will emerge to the point where it will sustain the investment necessary to make if fly but it definately has uses. It's a great solution for salesmen and Sales engineers who need mobile access to an internet service they are trying to sell. That way they aren't dependant on having a phone line available or worse yet, ridiculous cell modem schemes.
This seems like a good idea, at least on the face of it. However, the possibility of misuse on MS's part is big.
I didn't see any mention of being able to block unsigned apps at different "levels" though. It seems like this sort of blanket protection, while good, may be a bit much. If you wanted to keep something like the Melissa email virus from running you need to kill of the ability to run unsigned apps *everywhere*. Too bad they can't just fix the applications like outlook that seem to have the worst problems.
two different kinds of distro's. Server and Desktop. Absolute technical enhancements aside, you will have on one hand those that want to use linux as a server OS and those that want to get their hands dirty. For this group the current crop of tools and capabilities (with some added features) is/will be great. They don't mind editing configuration files manually, patching things and the like. The other kind of distro will be a desktop distro. This distro may or may not have more or less horsepower but it will be easier to get around in. Specificly, it will also be much easier to use, configure and install software. apt-get and all that other stuff will be rolled into an easy to use gui client. linuxconf will grow up to include many more options such as real PRINTING configuration. Like it or not, this is the future and here's why: companies like Redhat and other commercial entities know that while the hobbiest/server market is their bread and butter right now, the *real* untapped market, and thus the path to expanded sales/support revenue is the the desktop market. IMHO the real question is wether or not any of these companies have the resources/willpower to make it happen. If not, linux's growth will reach a certain percentage and level off while its feature set is surpassed by commercial (Winxx) offerings. At that point, non-technical publications coverage of Linux will dissapear and we will all slide into a quiet backwater. Hopefully this doesn't happen but that's my.02
It was awhile ago, I haven't used DMOZ in some time unless it's associated with google somehow. Anyways, it was for a home-improvement section. I don't really remember much about the application...just the fact that I was rejected..:) As far as being familiar with the subject matter, I run a home improvement web site. Perhaps my rejection was due to conflict of interest? Dunno, there wasn't a reason included....
I tried good old DMOZ awhile ago and quickly left. The sites I have submitted in the past (several times) seem to just disappear into the ozone and never make it into the directory. The category I was trying to submit to said it needed an editor. I submitted an application and was rejected within an hour...twice.
You're right. Aggregation has value in some markets and the search engine market is clearly one of them. However, for the service to have value it has to be at least as good as others in the field (unless you have a monopoly). This is the problem with yahoo. It isn't as good as many others. I don't know whether it was/is their algo or the organization of the directory but IMO google bypassed them long ago. I just don't get great results when searching yahoo. Yahoo does have a very strong brand name but that too is being eroded somewhat by companies like ask and google.
Re:There is always a way.
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That's what this argument boils down to, isn't it? Whether there's a centralized federal authority responsible for ballot design or computer driven voting, there's always a way to screw up or rig the results.
Re:If nothing else has come...
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I'm not one of them but those "states rights" and "local control" freaks *do* derive their arguments from the constitution. Keep in mind that the authority that the federal government has is granted *explicitely* by the constitution. The rest devolves to the states. Do you really think that some sort of centralized authority will end this kinda bickering? Not likely. Each ballot would still wind up looking different as each municipality has it's own elections and initiatives to vote on.
Hell, it would cause some problems if the pictures were approved. The ballots that are causing all of this uproar were approved in advance by both parties.
Re:Do you know who you voted for
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I don't really assume that this happened but there's little I can do to rectify it. I guess that my best hope is that people now understand how important this stuff is and people stop sitting on their asses and vote.
Re:Mechanical Voting Machines
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I agree with this. We have these machines here in VA and they seem fool proof. You *can't* vote twice for the same position, short of damaging the machine, even if you want to. The names are in big print. The only downside to the machines we have in VA is that when you press a lever down, it exposes a small red "X" which is generally equated with something being wrong....
Re:19,000 Botched Votes?
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I can't cite anything that says ALL of those people received new ballots. Nor can I cite anything that indicates some fraction did or did not. This, however, is the point. The main remedy being discussed (at least on the channels that I've watched) is this statistical distribution of those votes. My question is how do you determine how many of them to count? I think they need to remain invalidated. Now, on to your other points - yes, the turnout is ridiculously low. It should be illegal to bitch if you don't vote...:) Back on topic: could computer driven or assisted or based voting reduce the percentage of errors? I don't think so. A touch screen or something *will* eliminate the discarded (2 vote) ballots as it will, presumably, show you the picture of everyone who is running and you just touch the one you want. It will not, however, eliminate mistakes. The same error that people are bitching about now would apply even if there was a confirmation screen. How many "Submit" buttons on the web have "only click once" next to them.
Re:Do you know who you voted for
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How, exactly, would you implement a third party vote checker? There is only *one* person that is responsible for your ballot - you. If you poke 2 holes by accident and upon reflection you see the mistake, you get a new ballot. If you think you voted for the wrong guy, you can get a new ballot. If you are so careless as to not double check and fully understand your ballot before casting it, don't vote.
Re:19,000 Botched Votes?
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no, he's right. There are around 17k "invalid" votes that have two holes punched out. By rule, if the ballot has more than one candidate for a single office indicated, it is discarded. This isn't out of the ordinary at all. In the same district during the last election (1996) there were around 15k ballots discarded for the same reason. This is "normal" and happens all of the time...unless you use some other mechanism to vote that doesn't include paper ballots. What the hullablo is all about is the fact that this time around, those 17k ballots could change the election and people want a revote or to reinstate those tossed ballots. Both options are very unlikely although FL law does give a judge the option of doing a statistical analysis of votes cast and "redistributing" those voided ballots. There is one problem with this: if you screw up, you can request a new ballot (irregularities aside). This means that, in theory, all of (or a vast majority of) those ballots that were discarded could have a corresponding valid ballot which is being counted.
Re:Here's what you all seem to be forgetting...
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I don't see all of this as likely at all. I think that the American electorate is, by and large, lazy and that after this blows over the problem will evaporate.
HAHAHAHAHA....adopt someone else's system. Oh no, we'd have to spend a billion dollars to design the thing and hire a batalion of lawyers to make sure it passes muster and doesn't discriminate or otherwise predjudice (sp) someone's choice. Maybe we could get a "stealth" voting booth...:)
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it sure would be nice if there was a bit more uniformity amongst the tools for the various Distro's. I suppose that they are all variations on a theme but they *do* work differently (especially from end-user perspective). From a hobbiest point of view I guess it isn't a big deal but from a commercial perspective it might be. I've been using RH on my intel boxes and a friend gave me a Sparc 10 to fool around with. No RH7 distro for that so off to debian or some other....files located in different places, apt-get and other oddities when compared to RH distro. It drives me nuts.
American, or and English
Indeed....
A friend of mine got a PS2 and rented quake II (I guess, unsure about the version). It sucked. The feedback game pads were kinda neat but having one joystick that controlled looking up and down and lateral movement and another that controlled the remaining functions was very strange. Also, when we played two player the screen was split horizontally. Almost unplayable.
shit, I wouldn't drink it. All those flyash ponds and other waste piles around? Did you actually read that link?
Other than the high-handed tone of your screed, You some good points....and some not so good points. For instance, you *do* pay to receive "spam" via US mail. As the volume of mail grows, the facilities required to handle this mail grows along with it. Who the hell do you think pays for more delivery men, sorters, trucks and all of the other shit that goes along with it. The people who produce junk mail don't make one lump sum payment to enhance the facilities of the USPS. The volume increase isn't due to personal letters my friend. You also pay as you have to fedex stuff around the country so that it will get there in a reasonable amount of time. I think that this particular argument is far more than a "tired old analogy".
As far as the content of the spam goes, it's not my "pet cause", I'm just sick of having to explain to my parents, and other older users of the medium why they get emails about "hot teens" and whatnot.
Here in Virginia, the legislature recently passed a law banning "Unsolicited Commercial Email". UUnet appears to have taken someone to court under this statute. I think that this is a step in the right direction and that Virginia is in a unique position to help choke off the flow of spam as I'd guess that most AOL traffic goes through there but it won't fix things in the end. As many others have pointed out, spammers will move to other jurisdictions and then offshore. Along the same lines, the cat and mouse games between spammers and those who create filtering software will never end. I think the only way to stop this shit is to create something akin to an electric stamp. Think about it. The only other outfit that has to deal with this type of stuff is the Post Office and they keep it in check by making somebody pay to deliver it. Or course, I haven't a clue as to how you would go about this but it's a start.
It occurs to me that there are two problems here: 1) everyone likes to bitch about spam but how much of the bitching has to do with getting unsolicited email and how much has to do with the larger problems (and costs) that the ever-increasing volume of spam (and legit) email produces? I think that the fundamental nature of the internet has clearly gone from the early "Internet Club" (duh) to a commercial medium. Every other commercial medium (TV, Radio, even US mail) produces huge amounts of unsolicited advertisements. Anyone ever complain to the USPS about the gigantic volume of junk mail that shows up in your mail every day? Anyone ever tried to "unsubscribe" from junk mail in your regular mail? I'd bet 99% of people haven't. It seems to me that the thing to do is to figure out a way to make commercial users of email (advertisers specificly) pay to support the medium. In addition to supporting the medium, there should be some rules about what kind of content is allowable in these emails. And don't even start yammering about fucking first amendment issues. I've yet to get a piece of mail from the postman about some chick that likes to take it in the ass.
The second issue is that this mob rules mentality that most anti-spammers seem to have screws up other legitimate uses of email. The "Newsletters" that many sites send out seem to fall into a gray area that threatens to eliminate this otherwise useful feature. Many small sites (who seem to constitute an ever-increasing percentage of sites) use newsletters to keep users coming back and these newsletters are an important piece of their strategy!
In summary, perhaps this is a good place for the gov't to get more fully involved. I don't normally advocate this type of governmental activity but I think it would be best to solve this problem in a coherent manner before one of the spammers manages to line up a court case involving an equal protection issue or some such.
It depends on what kind of wireless access you are talking about. I suppose that there are 3 different kinds: Internet "enabled" phone, fixed wireless and mobile wireless.
Internet enabled phones are, by and large, a joke. Unless you are using a service that pushes data to the phone or some sort of bookmark, they're useless. I've used it on my phone exactly once, to pull up my website.
Fixed wireless is a good thing and, imo, will be successful. It allows hops between buildings for network connections and the like. It's really only good in cities as its range is limited.
Mobile wireless is a niche market and I don't know if the market will emerge to the point where it will sustain the investment necessary to make if fly but it definately has uses. It's a great solution for salesmen and Sales engineers who need mobile access to an internet service they are trying to sell. That way they aren't dependant on having a phone line available or worse yet, ridiculous cell modem schemes.
This seems like a good idea, at least on the face of it. However, the possibility of misuse on MS's part is big.
I didn't see any mention of being able to block unsigned apps at different "levels" though. It seems like this sort of blanket protection, while good, may be a bit much. If you wanted to keep something like the Melissa email virus from running you need to kill of the ability to run unsigned apps *everywhere*. Too bad they can't just fix the applications like outlook that seem to have the worst problems.
About the cost issue. I've got a 600mhz athlon system. Are you saying that I could stick a 1ghz athlon in it w/o modification?
two different kinds of distro's. Server and Desktop. Absolute technical enhancements aside, you will have on one hand those that want to use linux as a server OS and those that want to get their hands dirty. For this group the current crop of tools and capabilities (with some added features) is/will be great. They don't mind editing configuration files manually, patching things and the like. .02
The other kind of distro will be a desktop distro. This distro may or may not have more or less horsepower but it will be easier to get around in. Specificly, it will also be much easier to use, configure and install software. apt-get and all that other stuff will be rolled into an easy to use gui client. linuxconf will grow up to include many more options such as real PRINTING configuration.
Like it or not, this is the future and here's why: companies like Redhat and other commercial entities know that while the hobbiest/server market is their bread and butter right now, the *real* untapped market, and thus the path to expanded sales/support revenue is the the desktop market. IMHO the real question is wether or not any of these companies have the resources/willpower to make it happen. If not, linux's growth will reach a certain percentage and level off while its feature set is surpassed by commercial (Winxx) offerings. At that point, non-technical publications coverage of Linux will dissapear and we will all slide into a quiet backwater. Hopefully this doesn't happen but that's my
It was awhile ago, I haven't used DMOZ in some time unless it's associated with google somehow. Anyways, it was for a home-improvement section. I don't really remember much about the application...just the fact that I was rejected..:) As far as being familiar with the subject matter, I run a home improvement web site. Perhaps my rejection was due to conflict of interest? Dunno, there wasn't a reason included....
I tried good old DMOZ awhile ago and quickly left. The sites I have submitted in the past (several times) seem to just disappear into the ozone and never make it into the directory. The category I was trying to submit to said it needed an editor. I submitted an application and was rejected within an hour...twice.
You're right. Aggregation has value in some markets and the search engine market is clearly one of them. However, for the service to have value it has to be at least as good as others in the field (unless you have a monopoly). This is the problem with yahoo. It isn't as good as many others. I don't know whether it was/is their algo or the organization of the directory but IMO google bypassed them long ago. I just don't get great results when searching yahoo. Yahoo does have a very strong brand name but that too is being eroded somewhat by companies like ask and google.
That's what this argument boils down to, isn't it? Whether there's a centralized federal authority responsible for ballot design or computer driven voting, there's always a way to screw up or rig the results.
I'm not one of them but those "states rights" and "local control" freaks *do* derive their arguments from the constitution. Keep in mind that the authority that the federal government has is granted *explicitely* by the constitution. The rest devolves to the states. Do you really think that some sort of centralized authority will end this kinda bickering? Not likely. Each ballot would still wind up looking different as each municipality has it's own elections and initiatives to vote on.
Hell, it would cause some problems if the pictures were approved. The ballots that are causing all of this uproar were approved in advance by both parties.
I don't really assume that this happened but there's little I can do to rectify it. I guess that my best hope is that people now understand how important this stuff is and people stop sitting on their asses and vote.
I agree with this. We have these machines here in VA and they seem fool proof. You *can't* vote twice for the same position, short of damaging the machine, even if you want to. The names are in big print. The only downside to the machines we have in VA is that when you press a lever down, it exposes a small red "X" which is generally equated with something being wrong....
I can't cite anything that says ALL of those people received new ballots. Nor can I cite anything that indicates some fraction did or did not. This, however, is the point. The main remedy being discussed (at least on the channels that I've watched) is this statistical distribution of those votes. My question is how do you determine how many of them to count? I think they need to remain invalidated.
Now, on to your other points - yes, the turnout is ridiculously low. It should be illegal to bitch if you don't vote...:)
Back on topic: could computer driven or assisted or based voting reduce the percentage of errors? I don't think so. A touch screen or something *will* eliminate the discarded (2 vote) ballots as it will, presumably, show you the picture of everyone who is running and you just touch the one you want. It will not, however, eliminate mistakes. The same error that people are bitching about now would apply even if there was a confirmation screen. How many "Submit" buttons on the web have "only click once" next to them.
How, exactly, would you implement a third party vote checker? There is only *one* person that is responsible for your ballot - you. If you poke 2 holes by accident and upon reflection you see the mistake, you get a new ballot. If you think you voted for the wrong guy, you can get a new ballot. If you are so careless as to not double check and fully understand your ballot before casting it, don't vote.
no, he's right. There are around 17k "invalid" votes that have two holes punched out. By rule, if the ballot has more than one candidate for a single office indicated, it is discarded. This isn't out of the ordinary at all. In the same district during the last election (1996) there were around 15k ballots discarded for the same reason. This is "normal" and happens all of the time...unless you use some other mechanism to vote that doesn't include paper ballots. What the hullablo is all about is the fact that this time around, those 17k ballots could change the election and people want a revote or to reinstate those tossed ballots. Both options are very unlikely although FL law does give a judge the option of doing a statistical analysis of votes cast and "redistributing" those voided ballots. There is one problem with this: if you screw up, you can request a new ballot (irregularities aside). This means that, in theory, all of (or a vast majority of) those ballots that were discarded could have a corresponding valid ballot which is being counted.
I don't see all of this as likely at all. I think that the American electorate is, by and large, lazy and that after this blows over the problem will evaporate.
HAHAHAHAHA....adopt someone else's system. Oh no, we'd have to spend a billion dollars to design the thing and hire a batalion of lawyers to make sure it passes muster and doesn't discriminate or otherwise predjudice (sp) someone's choice. Maybe we could get a "stealth" voting booth...:)