The point of this system is to promote free speech on the Internet, nothing else.
I'm not sure I understand the purpose of this. How does it promote 'free speech'? All I see this is a pretty neat idea on how to hide data (I'm not sure if this can be technically called 'encryption'). But since when does encryption free speech? Encryption adds another layer that has to be taken off before the underlying information can be found. It adds complexity to finding this information. It blocks out other users, be they 'good' or 'evil'.
If you want to free speech, you need to work with the people or groups going against free speech, especially in the large scale. By 'in the large scale' I mean that encryption/padding is not the right way to promoto free speech if you want to carry your message to the public, to the masses. You do that by letting your message become extremely accessible.
If I suddenly found, say, a working method for cold fusion (or something else along those lines). The worst thing you can do is keep this a secret to be protected among a chosen few. And if you did want this to be widely known, how do you do it? Encrypt it among dozens of sites, and then there's a hidden, secret site with the link? Or get the information far and wide, so users only have to look at it and not 'find links' etc.
This isn't free speech. This is a way to hide data from those that don't want to see it. It's "close-sourcing" information to the unprivileged.
Ok, it's bad enough that the HDs with nuclear secrets were lost. It's worse that they were found behind, of all places, a copy machine. What really gets me is this:
The drives have been missing since at least May 7, when Los Alamos employees prepared to evacuate the facility due to wildfires in the surrounding New Mexico countryside.
I can see it now... Lab Attendant #1: Oh no! The wildfires are coming closer! We have to evacuate! Lab Attendant #2: What about the Nuclear Secrets? Shouldn't we take those along? Lab Attendant #1: Yes, we should definitely save them... But who knows, they might burn up in the fire. Take them out of the secret, underground, highly protected fire-proof room they are in and put them behind the copy machine in the first floor employee lounge! Lab Attendant #2: My God, that's genius!
I think the problem is how the 'effectiveness' of a banner ad is measured. I find it ridiculous that companies still follow this mantra of 'low-click throughs = bad'. It's like they are missing some basic information.
First of all, advertising effectiveness is one of THE hardest things to measure in the field of business. There's no clear way (currently) to measure how 'good' your ad is. Sales, especially in consumer products, are influenced by many other forces (media, store promotions, seasonality, etc.). Ad executives already know that if sales for their soft-drink jump 15% while they are running an ad campaign, that it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the campaign. Now, with the interactivity of banner ads, some people think that advertising can be "figured out". Guess what. It can't. Click-through rates do not mean I was interested in the ad. A click-through rate means I was interested in the ad, but it doesn't mean I was interested in purchasing the product. Maybe I was just clicking ads to support the website (I do that with smaller websites). Or maybe I clicked on something that looked like content by mistake (take a look at the side columns on the front page of Sharky Extreme). People need to realize that click-through rates aren't a good approximation of wether or not the advertising was succesful. Yes, it may be "the best estimate," but trust me, it's not a very good one.
I also think that this 'click-through' mentality has created a lot of bad advertising ('Click on he Monkey to Win $20'). In order to have users click on ads, they throw in every possible gimmick that's in the book: animated GIFs, Java applets, sounds, etc.). As a firm, I would rather have a banner ad that informs, rather than entertains. If it can entertain while it informs, that's not a problem. But I'm still amazed at the number of banner ads that promise something ('Speed Up Defragmentation and 10 Other utilities!'), yet the ad itself never shows a brand, or a webpage. I'm not going to click on an ad to find out what it's about, that's something the ad should do. And if it can do that, it's done SOME service to the company or product it is promoting by increasing brand awareness.
Oh boy, now I'm way off-topic.
I think the Internet is going to stay, for the most part, free. As long as the service you are looking for can be found free on one site, you can go there. As long as/. keeps the site the way it is (free speech, free beer), I'm not going to any other site that wants me to pay for it's information. And when all the sites suddenly start charging, there's very little that will keep someone from making a free site of their own to steal customers.
More importantly though, I don't think a lot of sites will be able to migrate to pay-per-view or a monthly charge, at least not for a lot of their main content. Once someone is getting something free, they're not too likely to enjoy paying for it (some exceptions to this case exist, obviously).
If you've come this far and understood what I said, I applaud you. I lost myself after the second paragraph.
Well, from the looks of it, according to this section of the webpage, the organization sponsoring this is the only 'youth-run youth center' and it is designed to to 'promote creative expression, independent learning, community awareness, and youth empowerment'...
This, to me, leads me to ask a question: What is the goal of your lab? Is it just a place where kids can check e-mail, browse the web, and maybe do homework with office applications? Or is this a lab aimed at introducing computers to youth who may not have much experience with them?
The way I see it, it's a question that can't be answered with a blanket solution. If the lab is more of a 'web-cafe' for the community center, so to speak, you'd just need to have some cheap Celeron's run Netscape off the network, and maybe have some office suit installed. Looking at the what the youth center was designed to do, however, doesn't make me believe that this lab will be just a way for users to browse the internet or type a paper. If you want to attract the interests of talented youth in your area (graphic artists, programmers, web designers, the 'people-skilled'), you'll have to give them access to tools they may be interested in, but haven't yet used.
Think about it. If you're a semi-savvy 17-yr old kid, where would you rather work? A computer lab where you get paid to sit and make sure no one steals the mice while you chat with your friends on Instant Messenger? Or a lab where the youth community is involved in computer projects they are interested in (programming software, graphic arts, web design, etc.)? I would see the lab really succeeding if it uses a mix of the different OSs. Windows for those who just need access to the Internet or want to relax with a Quake DM, Linux for those who want to fiddle with kernels, etc, and Macs with scanners and video-editing software for the digital artists. That way, you don't need to rely solely on one aspect of the lab (iMacs with DV, learning Linux) to draw in both users and motivated volunteers.
Also, I tend to agree with the poster that argued for giving users free reign of the system. Again, here. What's going to attract more users and volunteers? A place where you can't fiddle with the systems, or a place where you can try and figure out (if you want) how a system works, both software and hardware wise. Taking that a step further, why not have a couple of boxen in permanent 'in construction mode'). Not expensive systems, of course, just a place for computer users can see what's 'under the hood' so to speak. "Here's the video card... it's on this PCI slot, and you can remove it like this *POP*... let's install an AGP card." If you have a well-stocked library of computer books (can you ask for book donations?), a lot of users and volunteers will have a place to start, and maybe something will catch their eye as well ("Perl, what's this?").
The way I see it, the more interactive a lab is, the more likely are users to flock to it, and if you can spark enough interest in the users, you can have some of them become devoted volunteers.
Just have a clear mission plan, set out before any of the equipment is shipped to you or you hire more than a skeleton crew. This sounds like an awesome project, but not one to be taken lightly. With sound planning, this is sure to be a success. Best of luck!
Honestly, I tried my best to read it. When I read the word 'kewl' I let it slide, and when the reviewer referred to himself and his friends as 'DooDz' I cringed. Once 'schweet' and 'so happenin' appeared, I gave up.
On a more serious note, these monitors will never catch on, in the same way that those kitchy mid-90's 'VR' goggles/lenses never caught on, and the same reason most movies stopped requiring 3D-lenses sometime after 1957.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure I understand the purpose of this. How does it promote 'free speech'? All I see this is a pretty neat idea on how to hide data (I'm not sure if this can be technically called 'encryption'). But since when does encryption free speech? Encryption adds another layer that has to be taken off before the underlying information can be found. It adds complexity to finding this information. It blocks out other users, be they 'good' or 'evil'.
If you want to free speech, you need to work with the people or groups going against free speech, especially in the large scale. By 'in the large scale' I mean that encryption/padding is not the right way to promoto free speech if you want to carry your message to the public, to the masses. You do that by letting your message become extremely accessible.
If I suddenly found, say, a working method for cold fusion (or something else along those lines). The worst thing you can do is keep this a secret to be protected among a chosen few. And if you did want this to be widely known, how do you do it? Encrypt it among dozens of sites, and then there's a hidden, secret site with the link? Or get the information far and wide, so users only have to look at it and not 'find links' etc.
This isn't free speech. This is a way to hide data from those that don't want to see it. It's "close-sourcing" information to the unprivileged.
That's not freedom.
I can see it now...
Lab Attendant #1: Oh no! The wildfires are coming closer! We have to evacuate!
Lab Attendant #2: What about the Nuclear Secrets? Shouldn't we take those along?
Lab Attendant #1: Yes, we should definitely save them... But who knows, they might burn up in the fire. Take them out of the secret, underground, highly protected fire-proof room they are in and put them behind the copy machine in the first floor employee lounge!
Lab Attendant #2: My God, that's genius!
Siiigh.
First of all, advertising effectiveness is one of THE hardest things to measure in the field of business. There's no clear way (currently) to measure how 'good' your ad is. Sales, especially in consumer products, are influenced by many other forces (media, store promotions, seasonality, etc.). Ad executives already know that if sales for their soft-drink jump 15% while they are running an ad campaign, that it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the campaign. Now, with the interactivity of banner ads, some people think that advertising can be "figured out". Guess what. It can't. Click-through rates do not mean I was interested in the ad. A click-through rate means I was interested in the ad, but it doesn't mean I was interested in purchasing the product. Maybe I was just clicking ads to support the website (I do that with smaller websites). Or maybe I clicked on something that looked like content by mistake (take a look at the side columns on the front page of Sharky Extreme). People need to realize that click-through rates aren't a good approximation of wether or not the advertising was succesful. Yes, it may be "the best estimate," but trust me, it's not a very good one.
I also think that this 'click-through' mentality has created a lot of bad advertising ('Click on he Monkey to Win $20'). In order to have users click on ads, they throw in every possible gimmick that's in the book: animated GIFs, Java applets, sounds, etc.). As a firm, I would rather have a banner ad that informs, rather than entertains. If it can entertain while it informs, that's not a problem. But I'm still amazed at the number of banner ads that promise something ('Speed Up Defragmentation and 10 Other utilities!'), yet the ad itself never shows a brand, or a webpage. I'm not going to click on an ad to find out what it's about, that's something the ad should do. And if it can do that, it's done SOME service to the company or product it is promoting by increasing brand awareness.
Oh boy, now I'm way off-topic.
I think the Internet is going to stay, for the most part, free. As long as the service you are looking for can be found free on one site, you can go there. As long as /. keeps the site the way it is (free speech, free beer), I'm not going to any other site that wants me to pay for it's information. And when all the sites suddenly start charging, there's very little that will keep someone from making a free site of their own to steal customers.
More importantly though, I don't think a lot of sites will be able to migrate to pay-per-view or a monthly charge, at least not for a lot of their main content. Once someone is getting something free, they're not too likely to enjoy paying for it (some exceptions to this case exist, obviously).
If you've come this far and understood what I said, I applaud you. I lost myself after the second paragraph.
This, to me, leads me to ask a question: What is the goal of your lab? Is it just a place where kids can check e-mail, browse the web, and maybe do homework with office applications? Or is this a lab aimed at introducing computers to youth who may not have much experience with them?
The way I see it, it's a question that can't be answered with a blanket solution. If the lab is more of a 'web-cafe' for the community center, so to speak, you'd just need to have some cheap Celeron's run Netscape off the network, and maybe have some office suit installed.
Looking at the what the youth center was designed to do, however, doesn't make me believe that this lab will be just a way for users to browse the internet or type a paper. If you want to attract the interests of talented youth in your area (graphic artists, programmers, web designers, the 'people-skilled'), you'll have to give them access to tools they may be interested in, but haven't yet used.
Think about it. If you're a semi-savvy 17-yr old kid, where would you rather work? A computer lab where you get paid to sit and make sure no one steals the mice while you chat with your friends on Instant Messenger? Or a lab where the youth community is involved in computer projects they are interested in (programming software, graphic arts, web design, etc.)? I would see the lab really succeeding if it uses a mix of the different OSs. Windows for those who just need access to the Internet or want to relax with a Quake DM, Linux for those who want to fiddle with kernels, etc, and Macs with scanners and video-editing software for the digital artists. That way, you don't need to rely solely on one aspect of the lab (iMacs with DV, learning Linux) to draw in both users and motivated volunteers.
Also, I tend to agree with the poster that argued for giving users free reign of the system. Again, here. What's going to attract more users and volunteers? A place where you can't fiddle with the systems, or a place where you can try and figure out (if you want) how a system works, both software and hardware wise. Taking that a step further, why not have a couple of boxen in permanent 'in construction mode'). Not expensive systems, of course, just a place for computer users can see what's 'under the hood' so to speak. "Here's the video card... it's on this PCI slot, and you can remove it like this *POP* ... let's install an AGP card." If you have a well-stocked library of computer books (can you ask for book donations?), a lot of users and volunteers will have a place to start, and maybe something will catch their eye as well ("Perl, what's this?").
The way I see it, the more interactive a lab is, the more likely are users to flock to it, and if you can spark enough interest in the users, you can have some of them become devoted volunteers.
Just have a clear mission plan, set out before any of the equipment is shipped to you or you hire more than a skeleton crew. This sounds like an awesome project, but not one to be taken lightly. With sound planning, this is sure to be a success. Best of luck!
On a more serious note, these monitors will never catch on, in the same way that those kitchy mid-90's 'VR' goggles/lenses never caught on, and the same reason most movies stopped requiring 3D-lenses sometime after 1957.