It's hard to find words for the kind of abject abuse and ethical poverty involved in raising children in 1/3 G, in an environment that is otherwise much more hostile than Antarctica.
And there's our clue that colonies (as opposed to bases where adults work) are not feasible for the forseeable future: Antarctica doesn't have even a single colony.
Its much more comfortable to type with than qwerty (a lot less finger movement), and as of 10.7 Lion it comes built-into Mac OS X so there is nothing extra to install.
There are critical bugs in XP that Microsoft said (years ago) they will never patch. It leaves the OS open to attack over the Internet. I don't call that proper support.
MS is also known to be a promoter of bloat, encouraging OEMs to load up systems with garbage and making people feel they have to have their systems constantly thrashing with anivirus scanning activity. Because of decades of piss-poor engineering, they allowed organized crime to gain a foothold and become very well financed and resourceful at a rate that was absolutely needless.
I agree, though my Macbook C2D will not be supported.
Apple has become hooked on planned obsolescence via the iPod, and more so with the iPhone, to the point where they are now worse than Microsoft and their clonemaker army. At this point I would be open to something laptop-centric based on Android.
I agree, the headline/summary is a nasty twisting of the original paper and a reader has to be comfortable with scientific jargon and phrasing in the Nature article in order to un-twist it.
Slashdot, you are being sent to bed without dinner (no ad loading for a week).
In your mind, that is. Today more people recognize that sustainability has to be part and parcel of high tech, or else it is merely "so-called high-tech".
...how generous of them to take away my very expensive hardware (that would have otherwise only needed minor repair) in exchange for a 10% discount on an iPod./sarcasm
This move by Apple shows they no longer have any shred of conscience post-Jobs and that is the final straw for me. The very minimum I would expect from a corp trying to be responsible in conjunction with a move like this would be to extend the warranty options (by years) over what is currently available through Applecare. If you think that is infeasible with portable devices, you may be right. But that would also mean Apple's new policy is unworkable as well.
One could argue that any desktop system built expressly for development is a "workstation" and not a PC (though many workstations today are based on PC hardware, the licensing and support terms differ greatly from PCs as do their prices). Its not mainly a question of raw power, but about the freedom the user has and the terms of sale that permit that freedom (something we didn't have to think about too much before the DMCA).
IMO, the closest thing we have as a replacement for the PC is actually the low-end server, which should stay relatively open because the user base (sysadmins) demand similar architecture and levels of freedom to the classic PC and in that demographic the standards are unlikely to change.
and most of the time it offers a only choice in false dualism. You may not remember the Clinton-era Democrats branded themselves "New Democrats" for a time, signifying their new pro-capital focus; on economics, they were determined to be Republican Lite (conservatives without the siege mentality or tactics employed by Newt Gingrich and those who came after him). The result is that the "New Democrats" drifted in the Republicans' wake as the latter engaged in a war with the non-wealthy.
Despite having ~50% support in the polls, Walker was able to outspend his opposition by more than 7-to-1. Wisconsin was flooded with pro-Walker propaganda and other means of support by wealthy corporatists (and to add insult to injury, his out-of-state funding was 62% compared to Barret's 26%). That election had record turnout and the overall result is that it produced political gridlock. Should the public be impressed? Are we apathetic, or disillusioned?
Going back to the 2000 presidential race we had a news media with a reconfigured ownership profile, essentially representing Wall St. banks. Their coverage of Gore was so laden with disdain, ridicule and misinformation that any appearance of impartiality was out the window.
We have a system that is designed to manufacture consent -- to give plutocracy a veneer of democratic respectability. It keeps the public awash in myths, fear and insecurity, with just enough misinformation to hold onto power and some sense of credibility at the same time. The public can only have a chance at representation in the wake of a massive failure of the establishment (as in 2008) which pierces their credibility, and having that kind of occasional, punctuated surfacing of public interest is no way to run a society because it is largely not representative.
Phones/tablets don't come with the same expectations that the user can modify both what's in the case (hardware) and on the HD (software) with any compatible off-the shelf product. Not only may you lose support for attempting unsanctioned mods, but you could find yourself blocked from the net or charged with a crime. They are not PCs because the 'personal' in the acronym denotes a certain minimum amount of user control. When we start with PCs and remove a lot of control from them, we call them thick clients instead.
Interestingly, the closed software distribution model for the new Apple devices seems to follow in the footsteps of the Linux distro repositories: About 6-7 years ago we saw Lindows and others start to build monetized repositories and Apple followed this model with the iPhone. The difference was that you didn't have the freedom to add other repos to the iPhone, but both kinds of system are hostile to "off the shelf" app distribution in their own way. Now, other companies are imitating Apple's walled garden.
You don't cast them aside because of industry-driven trendiness (at least you don't without looking like a corporate shill).
"...it's failed to keep up with the times."
In advocating a return to the former trend of making products that are increasingly disposable, I think that's an example of how blind consumerism promotes backwardness.
If Apple's sales do not take a dent for this policy, then that will prove to me they are a self-satisfied cult.
I drank the "Linux Desktop" koolaid for years. It won't supplant Windows because to consumers it isn't a real thing with a consistent UI and something that tech support can easily/predictably deal with over the phone. The companies like Dell and Walmart and Asus/eeepc who tried the Linux Desktop all had distros that were dissimilar, and could never attract app developers anyway because there was no SDK.
Linux is just a kernel, and maybe a bit more because the GNU userland is assumed (but only on a desktop or server). Everything above that low level is in flux.
Furthermore, Android is not another Linux distro. It is its own vertically-integrated OS (with an SDK) that happens to use the Linux kernel. In terms of how its packaged and distributed, and how app developers interact with it, Android has very little in common with 'Linux distro X'. This is because the distro culture is server/hacker centric and it eschews attempts at standardizing anything that primarily manifests itself in a GUI. So if Android succeeds on the desktop, it won't be as if another distro took Ubuntu's place and then became popular; It would spell the end of the distro subculture on the desktop and its users will not think of it as "Linux" the way a Fedora of Ubuntu user does, nor will they identify as Linux users. I think that could be a good thing.
Most of that stuff is tweaks, or borrowed, or inane (the "Taskbar" is really a window list, and Apple's dock is much truer to the concept and more useful to boot).
"Lots of small innovations in.NET"... are mainly features borrowed from Delphi and elsewhere.
Shadow Copy... I very much doubt this one, as copy-on-write capability goes back to other systems in the 1970s.
To me, their biggest contributions seem to be in fonts and in pushing GUI programming environments (of which I consider MS Office to be a member).
Why not just require a password of a minimum size (say 25 char) and a couple of punctuation chars, and a certain minimum entropy... and call it a 'passphrase'? Whether or not dictionary words are allowed, what matters is overall complexity (i.e. char sequences aren't repeated) and you don't need to reference a dictionary.
Their products have features like "SocialMiner" and of course "lawful intercept" -- which is the perennial code phrase used by a raft of corporations to denote their backdoor and MITM spying activities.
Ignoring the "worse is better" and whitespace comments, I'd say from the comments here that the way to go with your project is to make Python scripts easier to deploy and manage on LAMP. Specifically, I'd make sure that user sessions were not managed under a single, monolithic instance; also I'd implement a way for Python to effortlessly share web session data between instances (in a way that doesn't compromise security).
Another commenter suggested Groovy as an alternative, although I'd bet that suffers from Java's monolith and memory footprint issues.
I believe what it's really saying is that the 'Anglosphere' might no longer be able to dominate coverage of world events.
The state vs private spin is largely made up to play on the readers' cultural insecurities: There is no "private" news bureau from the post-1990s West that hasn't been driven out of existence or made extensive campaign contributions and deals that provide, among other things, control over access to most of our culture in the form of maximalist 'IP' laws, regional monopolies in some parts of the US (and the possibility to form more), and an "embedded with the military" status. We are talking about the media aspect of the corporate plutocracy... they no longer get the benefit of being considered separate from the state.
As far as pure funding goes (in the direction of the media) the BBC's foreign reporting is funded from the UK government's budget. PBS and NPR receive significant funding from the US government budget. But in light of the above, it seems almost quaint to point this out.
Never trust people who wish you to hold two mutually-exclusive things to be 'true'. We need to come up with a name for people like that. I don't think 'fanboy' does it justice.
The old contract for most was with employers who valued employees who valued jobs with employers like them.
No, you're pushing the BS. What a silly platitude to add to a debate on labor.
The non-union automakers in the U.S. have pay and benefits just a hair better than the union shops because they know that less could result in their workers forming a union. Other industries followed suit for many decades.
There's no trust left in the US workplace because you can't count on your co-workers to back you up for anything whatsoever. The work environment is hyper-competitive and so we have no leverage with our bosses.
Because of these conditions, the executive culture in this country has become extremely corrupt. Appealing to them to stop listening to MBAs will get us nowhere fast.
One of the underlying problems with the labor situation in this country has been that corporations and unions are too adversarial. A way to remedy that would be to make it mandatory for unionized workplaces to reserve a seat for the union on their board of directors.
Picking controversial entries is bound to lead you to examples of contention, on Wikipedia or elsewhere. And as GreatBunzinni (642500) pointed out, the Slashdot summary misrepresents the study just to be sensational.
The old work contract implied loyalty in both directions.
The old work contract was formed against the background of a strong labor movement, whereas nowadays most of the entertainment-addled high-schoolers think they are going to become the next Bill Gates.
Up to a point the company would be loyal to their more valuable workers
There's your clue right there on what's wrong and how to fix it: Workers already receive differing pay scales based on their skill sets. But your attitude suggests that the less valuable positions should also suffer an absence of loyalty from their employers (from everyone, actually, so worker solidarity would be nonexistent as indeed it is within most American work environments today).
I don't think the "most highly skilled" workers can have a thriving field to work within if that field exists within a society of expanding desperation and squalor. That is, unless the area of expertise is the kind sought after during a civil war.
Lowry treats the music industry as if it exists separate from the rest of society and technology. But all of society is going through the computer revolution which is changing the nature of information. So for Lowry to insist that music continue to be treated according to the late-20th century consensus is to insist that all consumer computing products be locked-down according to the whims of the "record labels" (multinational corporations that are acting as though most of our culture needs to stay in a vault, to be re-marketed according to their leisure or greed). This is an all or nothing proposition because A) that industry have shown themselves to be copyright maximalists with a zeal for punishing its best customers, and B) there is no marketable alternative to digital formats - you cannot go back to analog except as a minor curiosity among collectors.
So Lowry needs to be reminded there is more at stake here than just how entertainment is copied. It is also about whether fully user-programmable computers can continue to exist, which IMHO is the larger consideration by far. Even if computers weren't more important, the data strongly suggest that artists would continue making art and lots of money (i.e. the continuation of the dubious celebrity subculture) without a strict copyright regime.
I agree with your analysis more than I agree with the reviewer. I don't think anyone is saying that Facebook is a totalitarian state; just that it's an enabler for one or at least helps set the stage.
Beyond that, I disagree with the notion that Orwell's '1984' defines what a totalitarian state is like. His examples seem to be taken to an extreme degree, and that's not how I imagine the totalitarian-minded prefer to operate. Instead, it is the public and/or institutional acceptance of the invasive techniques, not the constant and pervasive exploitation thereof, that define the totalitarian... um, not state but establishment.
I also disliked the reviewer's overall tone and writing style... Maybe it's intended to imitate the style of 'newspeak', but in any case I found it rather robotic and obtuse. His point about experian is a rather poor one: If you have been following the development of online marketing practices, you know that the aggregators can correct for most of the lies and omissions on the part of the user. Having even a halfway robust Facebook "social life" will result in many small communiques that betray your real birthday and probably even your age without anyone even mentioning a number. The experian way of 'knowing' is brittle and limited to commercial activities, while an entity like Facebook traffics in interpersonal expressions. IMHO, that part of Keen's thesis that I know from this article still stands.
Slashdot Mirror
It's hard to find words for the kind of abject abuse and ethical poverty involved in raising children in 1/3 G, in an environment that is otherwise much more hostile than Antarctica.
And there's our clue that colonies (as opposed to bases where adults work) are not feasible for the forseeable future: Antarctica doesn't have even a single colony.
Its much more comfortable to type with than qwerty (a lot less finger movement), and as of 10.7 Lion it comes built-into Mac OS X so there is nothing extra to install.
There are critical bugs in XP that Microsoft said (years ago) they will never patch. It leaves the OS open to attack over the Internet. I don't call that proper support.
MS is also known to be a promoter of bloat, encouraging OEMs to load up systems with garbage and making people feel they have to have their systems constantly thrashing with anivirus scanning activity. Because of decades of piss-poor engineering, they allowed organized crime to gain a foothold and become very well financed and resourceful at a rate that was absolutely needless.
Throw enough ridiculously cheap fuel at them (and comparisons that ignore the cost of ownership), and almost anything looks worse than an automobile.
I agree, though my Macbook C2D will not be supported.
Apple has become hooked on planned obsolescence via the iPod, and more so with the iPhone, to the point where they are now worse than Microsoft and their clonemaker army. At this point I would be open to something laptop-centric based on Android.
I agree, the headline/summary is a nasty twisting of the original paper and a reader has to be comfortable with scientific jargon and phrasing in the Nature article in order to un-twist it.
Slashdot, you are being sent to bed without dinner (no ad loading for a week).
It's a sad state of affairs.
In your mind, that is. Today more people recognize that sustainability has to be part and parcel of high tech, or else it is merely "so-called high-tech".
...how generous of them to take away my very expensive hardware (that would have otherwise only needed minor repair) in exchange for a 10% discount on an iPod. /sarcasm
This move by Apple shows they no longer have any shred of conscience post-Jobs and that is the final straw for me. The very minimum I would expect from a corp trying to be responsible in conjunction with a move like this would be to extend the warranty options (by years) over what is currently available through Applecare. If you think that is infeasible with portable devices, you may be right. But that would also mean Apple's new policy is unworkable as well.
One could argue that any desktop system built expressly for development is a "workstation" and not a PC (though many workstations today are based on PC hardware, the licensing and support terms differ greatly from PCs as do their prices). Its not mainly a question of raw power, but about the freedom the user has and the terms of sale that permit that freedom (something we didn't have to think about too much before the DMCA).
IMO, the closest thing we have as a replacement for the PC is actually the low-end server, which should stay relatively open because the user base (sysadmins) demand similar architecture and levels of freedom to the classic PC and in that demographic the standards are unlikely to change.
and most of the time it offers a only choice in false dualism. You may not remember the Clinton-era Democrats branded themselves "New Democrats" for a time, signifying their new pro-capital focus; on economics, they were determined to be Republican Lite (conservatives without the siege mentality or tactics employed by Newt Gingrich and those who came after him). The result is that the "New Democrats" drifted in the Republicans' wake as the latter engaged in a war with the non-wealthy.
Despite having ~50% support in the polls, Walker was able to outspend his opposition by more than 7-to-1. Wisconsin was flooded with pro-Walker propaganda and other means of support by wealthy corporatists (and to add insult to injury, his out-of-state funding was 62% compared to Barret's 26%). That election had record turnout and the overall result is that it produced political gridlock. Should the public be impressed? Are we apathetic, or disillusioned?
Going back to the 2000 presidential race we had a news media with a reconfigured ownership profile, essentially representing Wall St. banks. Their coverage of Gore was so laden with disdain, ridicule and misinformation that any appearance of impartiality was out the window.
We have a system that is designed to manufacture consent -- to give plutocracy a veneer of democratic respectability. It keeps the public awash in myths, fear and insecurity, with just enough misinformation to hold onto power and some sense of credibility at the same time. The public can only have a chance at representation in the wake of a massive failure of the establishment (as in 2008) which pierces their credibility, and having that kind of occasional, punctuated surfacing of public interest is no way to run a society because it is largely not representative.
Phones/tablets don't come with the same expectations that the user can modify both what's in the case (hardware) and on the HD (software) with any compatible off-the shelf product. Not only may you lose support for attempting unsanctioned mods, but you could find yourself blocked from the net or charged with a crime. They are not PCs because the 'personal' in the acronym denotes a certain minimum amount of user control. When we start with PCs and remove a lot of control from them, we call them thick clients instead.
Interestingly, the closed software distribution model for the new Apple devices seems to follow in the footsteps of the Linux distro repositories: About 6-7 years ago we saw Lindows and others start to build monetized repositories and Apple followed this model with the iPhone. The difference was that you didn't have the freedom to add other repos to the iPhone, but both kinds of system are hostile to "off the shelf" app distribution in their own way. Now, other companies are imitating Apple's walled garden.
You don't cast them aside because of industry-driven trendiness (at least you don't without looking like a corporate shill).
"...it's failed to keep up with the times."
In advocating a return to the former trend of making products that are increasingly disposable, I think that's an example of how blind consumerism promotes backwardness.
If Apple's sales do not take a dent for this policy, then that will prove to me they are a self-satisfied cult.
I drank the "Linux Desktop" koolaid for years. It won't supplant Windows because to consumers it isn't a real thing with a consistent UI and something that tech support can easily/predictably deal with over the phone. The companies like Dell and Walmart and Asus/eeepc who tried the Linux Desktop all had distros that were dissimilar, and could never attract app developers anyway because there was no SDK.
Linux is just a kernel, and maybe a bit more because the GNU userland is assumed (but only on a desktop or server). Everything above that low level is in flux.
Furthermore, Android is not another Linux distro. It is its own vertically-integrated OS (with an SDK) that happens to use the Linux kernel. In terms of how its packaged and distributed, and how app developers interact with it, Android has very little in common with 'Linux distro X'. This is because the distro culture is server/hacker centric and it eschews attempts at standardizing anything that primarily manifests itself in a GUI. So if Android succeeds on the desktop, it won't be as if another distro took Ubuntu's place and then became popular; It would spell the end of the distro subculture on the desktop and its users will not think of it as "Linux" the way a Fedora of Ubuntu user does, nor will they identify as Linux users. I think that could be a good thing.
Most of that stuff is tweaks, or borrowed, or inane (the "Taskbar" is really a window list, and Apple's dock is much truer to the concept and more useful to boot).
"Lots of small innovations in .NET"... are mainly features borrowed from Delphi and elsewhere.
Shadow Copy... I very much doubt this one, as copy-on-write capability goes back to other systems in the 1970s.
To me, their biggest contributions seem to be in fonts and in pushing GUI programming environments (of which I consider MS Office to be a member).
Why not just require a password of a minimum size (say 25 char) and a couple of punctuation chars, and a certain minimum entropy... and call it a 'passphrase'? Whether or not dictionary words are allowed, what matters is overall complexity (i.e. char sequences aren't repeated) and you don't need to reference a dictionary.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/07/a-pound-of-flesh-how-ciscos-unmitigated-gall-derailed-one-mans-life.ars
Their products have features like "SocialMiner" and of course "lawful intercept" -- which is the perennial code phrase used by a raft of corporations to denote their backdoor and MITM spying activities.
https://www.networkworld.com/community/node/57070
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/11/03/2137233/Cisco-Social-Software-Lets-You-Stalk-Customers
Ignoring the "worse is better" and whitespace comments, I'd say from the comments here that the way to go with your project is to make Python scripts easier to deploy and manage on LAMP. Specifically, I'd make sure that user sessions were not managed under a single, monolithic instance; also I'd implement a way for Python to effortlessly share web session data between instances (in a way that doesn't compromise security).
Another commenter suggested Groovy as an alternative, although I'd bet that suffers from Java's monolith and memory footprint issues.
I believe what it's really saying is that the 'Anglosphere' might no longer be able to dominate coverage of world events.
The state vs private spin is largely made up to play on the readers' cultural insecurities: There is no "private" news bureau from the post-1990s West that hasn't been driven out of existence or made extensive campaign contributions and deals that provide, among other things, control over access to most of our culture in the form of maximalist 'IP' laws, regional monopolies in some parts of the US (and the possibility to form more), and an "embedded with the military" status. We are talking about the media aspect of the corporate plutocracy... they no longer get the benefit of being considered separate from the state.
As far as pure funding goes (in the direction of the media) the BBC's foreign reporting is funded from the UK government's budget. PBS and NPR receive significant funding from the US government budget. But in light of the above, it seems almost quaint to point this out.
Never trust people who wish you to hold two mutually-exclusive things to be 'true'. We need to come up with a name for people like that. I don't think 'fanboy' does it justice.
The old contract for most was with employers who valued employees who valued jobs with employers like them.
No, you're pushing the BS. What a silly platitude to add to a debate on labor.
The non-union automakers in the U.S. have pay and benefits just a hair better than the union shops because they know that less could result in their workers forming a union. Other industries followed suit for many decades.
There's no trust left in the US workplace because you can't count on your co-workers to back you up for anything whatsoever. The work environment is hyper-competitive and so we have no leverage with our bosses.
Because of these conditions, the executive culture in this country has become extremely corrupt. Appealing to them to stop listening to MBAs will get us nowhere fast.
One of the underlying problems with the labor situation in this country has been that corporations and unions are too adversarial. A way to remedy that would be to make it mandatory for unionized workplaces to reserve a seat for the union on their board of directors.
Picking controversial entries is bound to lead you to examples of contention, on Wikipedia or elsewhere. And as GreatBunzinni (642500) pointed out, the Slashdot summary misrepresents the study just to be sensational.
The old work contract implied loyalty in both directions.
The old work contract was formed against the background of a strong labor movement, whereas nowadays most of the entertainment-addled high-schoolers think they are going to become the next Bill Gates.
Up to a point the company would be loyal to their more valuable workers
There's your clue right there on what's wrong and how to fix it: Workers already receive differing pay scales based on their skill sets. But your attitude suggests that the less valuable positions should also suffer an absence of loyalty from their employers (from everyone, actually, so worker solidarity would be nonexistent as indeed it is within most American work environments today).
I don't think the "most highly skilled" workers can have a thriving field to work within if that field exists within a society of expanding desperation and squalor. That is, unless the area of expertise is the kind sought after during a civil war.
Lowry treats the music industry as if it exists separate from the rest of society and technology. But all of society is going through the computer revolution which is changing the nature of information. So for Lowry to insist that music continue to be treated according to the late-20th century consensus is to insist that all consumer computing products be locked-down according to the whims of the "record labels" (multinational corporations that are acting as though most of our culture needs to stay in a vault, to be re-marketed according to their leisure or greed). This is an all or nothing proposition because A) that industry have shown themselves to be copyright maximalists with a zeal for punishing its best customers, and B) there is no marketable alternative to digital formats - you cannot go back to analog except as a minor curiosity among collectors.
So Lowry needs to be reminded there is more at stake here than just how entertainment is copied. It is also about whether fully user-programmable computers can continue to exist, which IMHO is the larger consideration by far. Even if computers weren't more important, the data strongly suggest that artists would continue making art and lots of money (i.e. the continuation of the dubious celebrity subculture) without a strict copyright regime.
I agree with your analysis more than I agree with the reviewer. I don't think anyone is saying that Facebook is a totalitarian state; just that it's an enabler for one or at least helps set the stage.
Beyond that, I disagree with the notion that Orwell's '1984' defines what a totalitarian state is like. His examples seem to be taken to an extreme degree, and that's not how I imagine the totalitarian-minded prefer to operate. Instead, it is the public and/or institutional acceptance of the invasive techniques, not the constant and pervasive exploitation thereof, that define the totalitarian... um, not state but establishment.
I also disliked the reviewer's overall tone and writing style... Maybe it's intended to imitate the style of 'newspeak', but in any case I found it rather robotic and obtuse. His point about experian is a rather poor one: If you have been following the development of online marketing practices, you know that the aggregators can correct for most of the lies and omissions on the part of the user. Having even a halfway robust Facebook "social life" will result in many small communiques that betray your real birthday and probably even your age without anyone even mentioning a number. The experian way of 'knowing' is brittle and limited to commercial activities, while an entity like Facebook traffics in interpersonal expressions. IMHO, that part of Keen's thesis that I know from this article still stands.