How can you make anything more than a sham of 'free speech' when groups representing the largest demographic on campus have a deserved reputation for excluding people based on details like ethnicity, skin color, religious background, sexual orientation, and gender?
Having the acceptability one's ethnicity, sexuality or gender debated while trying to learn is itself extremely disruptive.
To maximize participation on campus and in society, good justifications are required for excluding people from campus and from debate: An ideology of arbitrary exclusivity is necessarily one of them.
It doesn't matter whether you identify this ethic with labels such as "liberal" to make it appear 'partisan'; That ethic is a core part of a pluralistic society, and an obtuse refusal to accept it is no more and no less part of the cryptofascist reflex being exercised among the "fair and balanced" set today.
And what are the chances these UI generalists will break very specific and important browser semantics?
I'd say its very high, unfortunately. Apple is a UI design powerhouse, and they loused-up Safari by making status bar invisible by default (teaches people not to took at the URLs before clicking on them) and changed the SSL warning dialogs to flow in a way that doesn't seem secure.
And don't think this move isn't about Mozilla copying Apple; It probably is. Apple have added some nice things in the way of touchscreen / trackpad gestures. Unfortunately Mozilla could end up copying their dangerous features as well.
Another example of broken browsers is the one that comes with the OLPC XO. There is no Address Bar, and of course icons cannot uniquely distinguish web sites (since images are easily copied). Its scary that we have prominent FOSS projects and major corporations promoting this level of brokenness, encouraging users to rely on how a website's graphics look for identification even more than they are doing already.
And why would corporations resist the edicts of the lawmakers who are 'sponsored' by the very same corporations? This is all going in the direction they prefer, which is merging corporate and government power.
Among other similar distinctions, this is the reason why I consider media "self-censorship" to be an oxymoron in today's society. In most cases it is just censorship.
You joke, But in reality that's probably why the RealID cards stop at people born before 1964. That's the baby-boomer cutoff year, representing a very large demographic who still remember what its like to organize against repression.
They'd rather use GenXers as guinea pigs, a much smaller demographic that's not used to having governments and markets abide by their demands (or needs). They are also much more steeped in the individualist mindset such that they're capable of mass-organizing very little outside of the corporate environment.
So yes, you could say the Bill Of Rights is only for old people...
Limit the number of domains per individual to 10, and per organization to 30. It may be the only way to make the registration process somewhat fair. And here I thought it was an interesting suggestion. But I realize that egalitarian spirit is in short supply among Slashdotters...
We don't need a repressive bureaucracy on the domain naming process.
What we need is to teach people what domains ARE in the first place; that they are crucial (down to the last character) for reaching one's proper destination; that checking links by hovering over them first and looking at the tooltip/status bar is important for safety; that establishing the HTTPS lock is no good unless one looks at the domain at the same time.
...to protect against almost all vulnerabilities is to run the promiscuous browser under another user specifically setup for risky activity:
$ ssh -X risky@localhost firefox &
Then setup this other firefox with a different theme and keep it on a seperate desktop space so as to avoid confusion.
Using 'xhost' is another way to do this, but less secure. If the 'risky' user falls to a code exploit, then it can theoretically gain access to your main user account through direct X11 access.
It should be noted that when using Tor for anonymity, you should always assume that the exit nodes will try to inject hostile code into web pages from even the most trusted sites. For this reason I also recommend Noscript, along with some others like SafeCache, SafeHistory, ImgLikeOpera (defaulting to load images from originating site only) and CookieSafe. You can forego those last 4 extensions if you use Clear Private Data frequently.
Name-calling aside, that is not a very bright thing to say.
"PC Compatible" and "IBM Compatible" meant one thing: An x86 system with a clone BIOS and MS-DOS. Otherwise you had A) an IBM with PC-DOS, or B) something that would never be formally tested with the software you were trying to use with it.
Why harp about the PC Compatible term, anyway? It doesn't even cover "Linux" systems.
As is almost always the case in these discussions, your pro-"Linux" argument falls apart when you look at the history of OS X, which is an operating system.
You won't get that critical core of intermediate users installing distros if those intermediates are left bewildered. "Linux" has no coherent product with which most users and techs can get on the same page; One set of instructions for getting a shared printer working on one "Linux" can be entirely different on another distro, and after setup the functionality will often differ to boot. Same with installing software, as with almost every other critical feature that users are immediately aware of.
I use and like Kubuntu myself. But Canonical are making the same old mistake: Letting other derivative products use the Ubuntu moniker.
Distro vendors aren't even smart enough to emphasize that you must check for hardware compatibility before trying to switch. And there is no comprehensive, easy way to check before buying hardware. There is widespread denial that Linux' reverse-engineered hardware support is a poor substitute for genuine (even if closed) Wintel compatibility, so the "Linux" purveyors set users' expectations up to unrealistic levels.
Most people referred to the new IBM compatible computers running MS DOS as an operating system as "PCs" or "IBM compatibles", yet this widespread confusion in nomenclature did not stop adoption. They all used the same OS. Not very confusing, esp. when on the hardware end everyone were already tripping over themselves to offer compatible products; That is all a side-effect of IBM's clout in the early 80s.
Anyway, forget my earlier Firefox comparison. The Gimp would be much more appropriate.
Indeed, MS is being subjected to considerable criticsm in Vista and Server 2008 for overinvesting in security with respect to neat new features. Certainly if you count the performance-killing DRM features as "security". Most of us here are talking about the users' security, not Hollywood's.
Of course, the presence of DRM itself throws their crypto incompetence into high relief.
The Secure Development Lifecycle process that was introduced a few years ago has a cryptographic portion that requires crypto usage to conform to reasonable standards... I know of one MS systems architect who thinks that SSL is broken (but of course, no evidence is ever forthcoming). They are FUD-spewing charlatans, and you believe in them.
Do tell us more about Microsoft's reasonable "standards". Is it anything like what they are doing with kerberos or OOXML?
I agree with the overall thrust of your post, BUT:
unless we actually do something to fix the social barriers to the adoption of Linux ...seems to imply the problem mainly lies with society in general. But the problem is basically within the Linux community: You are trying to sell people on nothing. At least nothing they can grasp, being non-sysadmins and non-programmers.
Contrast the product structure of "Linux" with more successful FOSS projects like Firefox and OpenOffice, and learn the lesson well... or be content watching MS not only rebound in desktop share, but use that to eventually kick FOSS out of the server space as well. MS already has the cooperation of governments to standardize on Active Directory for Internet/Web logins! Think about that.
In short, by referring to "Linux" as anything more than a kernel, you are leading all sorts of people (even programmers from the end-user application space) into a great deal of unexpected confusion, denying them a stable computing platform in the process... a platform that could have been a viable alternative to Redmond's greedy mendacity. It as if we all started referring to any browser or other program with Gecko in it as "Firefox", and millions of people put those "Firefox" distros on the shelf intending to switch over "someday".
The Linux geekdom think they are so intelligent; In truth they've yet to learn even how to speak. Count me off that bandwagon.
I have been working with the cryptographers at Microsoft for some time and I have been working in crypto related areas for > 20 years. A dubious distinction. Microsoft is almost criminally negligent when it comes to encryption and most other security issues. Between that and your obvious conflict of interest here, why should anyone believe you?
I'll heed Schneier's concerns over your schilling any day. I'd set his words to music before accepting that soiled "expert opinion" you're pushing, because at the very least you are deranged for smearing those concerns as "paranoid" against the backdrop of massive government spying we see today.
To the customer, they are selling a one-off jobber with a combination of programs and UI features that represent no platform in particular. Even if they have looked at other "Linux" PCs, they are not likely to see something they recognize in a highly customized Enlightenment desktop. If they buy the system they
Linux boosters are showing their derangement here: Promoting "Linux" to end-users is like promoting Gecko to people who want a browser. But Linux and Gecko are effectively invisible to non-techies. The difference is that Mozilla are not stupid enough to work on only the Gecko engine, and then let umpteen distros implement various browsers and promote them all as "Gecko". Instead they made a complete product Firefox that users can consistently recognize and use, and protect their trademarks such that other browsers using Mozilla technology are not confused with Firefox in the slightest bit.
In short: Stop confusing end-users and yourselves with "desktop Linux" promotion. If you must promote a FOSS operating system to the public, then focus on a specific free distro that adheres to the LSB Desktop spec.
That's not true. USA lawmakers and executives receive a great deal of positive coverage for their initiatives; indeed the media and their sister operations in conglomerate have often paid for those office holders, and are so kind to help with writing legislation too.
The western media demonize those who have not been bought out by Wall Street at a sweet discount. At the very least, you have to keep throwing your goods and resources at them in exchange for mountains of green paper, or else your democracy breathlessly turns into a dictatorship that needs to be "liberated" on the TV screens and newspapers of America.
The last two US presidential elections were orderly, but not democratic, yet the US had not recently experienced anything like a civil war. What excuse does that country have for its state of affairs?
You might as well harp about the BBC, which is Western media, as most of its foreign services are funded by the UK government to dispense that government's point of view. And the prime minister meets privately with Rupert Murdoch (The Sun, News Corp) to cut deals on how much propaganda support he will receive in return for allowing media monopoly to grow. That covers the lion's share of UK media.
Even Canada's CBC is funded entirely though the government budget.
And yet none of the above are described as "state-run" in the west, so if you believe their characterizations then you are swallowing lies. They also publish a great deal of negative news (or at least, insinuations) about Russia's power elite, but that is a given considering the above circumstances.
Slashdot Mirror
How can you make anything more than a sham of 'free speech' when groups representing the largest demographic on campus have a deserved reputation for excluding people based on details like ethnicity, skin color, religious background, sexual orientation, and gender?
Having the acceptability one's ethnicity, sexuality or gender debated while trying to learn is itself extremely disruptive.
To maximize participation on campus and in society, good justifications are required for excluding people from campus and from debate: An ideology of arbitrary exclusivity is necessarily one of them.
It doesn't matter whether you identify this ethic with labels such as "liberal" to make it appear 'partisan'; That ethic is a core part of a pluralistic society, and an obtuse refusal to accept it is no more and no less part of the cryptofascist reflex being exercised among the "fair and balanced" set today.
And what are the chances these UI generalists will break very specific and important browser semantics?
I'd say its very high, unfortunately. Apple is a UI design powerhouse, and they loused-up Safari by making status bar invisible by default (teaches people not to took at the URLs before clicking on them) and changed the SSL warning dialogs to flow in a way that doesn't seem secure.
And don't think this move isn't about Mozilla copying Apple; It probably is. Apple have added some nice things in the way of touchscreen / trackpad gestures. Unfortunately Mozilla could end up copying their dangerous features as well.
Another example of broken browsers is the one that comes with the OLPC XO. There is no Address Bar, and of course icons cannot uniquely distinguish web sites (since images are easily copied). Its scary that we have prominent FOSS projects and major corporations promoting this level of brokenness, encouraging users to rely on how a website's graphics look for identification even more than they are doing already.
And why would corporations resist the edicts of the lawmakers who are 'sponsored' by the very same corporations? This is all going in the direction they prefer, which is merging corporate and government power.
Among other similar distinctions, this is the reason why I consider media "self-censorship" to be an oxymoron in today's society. In most cases it is just censorship.
You joke, But in reality that's probably why the RealID cards stop at people born before 1964. That's the baby-boomer cutoff year, representing a very large demographic who still remember what its like to organize against repression.
They'd rather use GenXers as guinea pigs, a much smaller demographic that's not used to having governments and markets abide by their demands (or needs). They are also much more steeped in the individualist mindset such that they're capable of mass-organizing very little outside of the corporate environment.
So yes, you could say the Bill Of Rights is only for old people...
Totalitarian my ass.
On what grounds could an ICANN crack down on anyone without some kind of stated limits?
...frameworks and apps written in Python. It got off to a good early start with Zope, but the hype over PHP sadly swamped all else.
Limit the number of domains per individual to 10, and per organization to 30. It may be the only way to make the registration process somewhat fair.
...would probably help: http://www.poemsthatgo.com/gallery/winter2004/jabber/index.htm
Yes, and the status bar is important for checking a link's URL before clicking on it.
My understanding was that the Boomer generation ended about 1963, and GenX was roughly 1964 - 1984.
We don't need a repressive bureaucracy on the domain naming process.
What we need is to teach people what domains ARE in the first place; that they are crucial (down to the last character) for reaching one's proper destination; that checking links by hovering over them first and looking at the tooltip/status bar is important for safety; that establishing the HTTPS lock is no good unless one looks at the domain at the same time.
I thought the amount of randomness counted for the temperature of a system. Speed cannot be the sole factor.
So I would have guessed something like speed * entropy = temp.
...to protect against almost all vulnerabilities is to run the promiscuous browser under another user specifically setup for risky activity:
$ ssh -X risky@localhost firefox &
Then setup this other firefox with a different theme and keep it on a seperate desktop space so as to avoid confusion.
Using 'xhost' is another way to do this, but less secure. If the 'risky' user falls to a code exploit, then it can theoretically gain access to your main user account through direct X11 access.
It should be noted that when using Tor for anonymity, you should always assume that the exit nodes will try to inject hostile code into web pages from even the most trusted sites. For this reason I also recommend Noscript, along with some others like SafeCache, SafeHistory, ImgLikeOpera (defaulting to load images from originating site only) and CookieSafe. You can forego those last 4 extensions if you use Clear Private Data frequently.
Name-calling aside, that is not a very bright thing to say.
"PC Compatible" and "IBM Compatible" meant one thing: An x86 system with a clone BIOS and MS-DOS. Otherwise you had A) an IBM with PC-DOS, or B) something that would never be formally tested with the software you were trying to use with it.
Why harp about the PC Compatible term, anyway? It doesn't even cover "Linux" systems.
You won't get that critical core of intermediate users installing distros if those intermediates are left bewildered. "Linux" has no coherent product with which most users and techs can get on the same page; One set of instructions for getting a shared printer working on one "Linux" can be entirely different on another distro, and after setup the functionality will often differ to boot. Same with installing software, as with almost every other critical feature that users are immediately aware of.
I use and like Kubuntu myself. But Canonical are making the same old mistake: Letting other derivative products use the Ubuntu moniker.
Distro vendors aren't even smart enough to emphasize that you must check for hardware compatibility before trying to switch. And there is no comprehensive, easy way to check before buying hardware. There is widespread denial that Linux' reverse-engineered hardware support is a poor substitute for genuine (even if closed) Wintel compatibility, so the "Linux" purveyors set users' expectations up to unrealistic levels. Most people referred to the new IBM compatible computers running MS DOS as an operating system as "PCs" or "IBM compatibles", yet this widespread confusion in nomenclature did not stop adoption. They all used the same OS. Not very confusing, esp. when on the hardware end everyone were already tripping over themselves to offer compatible products; That is all a side-effect of IBM's clout in the early 80s.
Anyway, forget my earlier Firefox comparison. The Gimp would be much more appropriate.
Of course, the presence of DRM itself throws their crypto incompetence into high relief. The Secure Development Lifecycle process that was introduced a few years ago has a cryptographic portion that requires crypto usage to conform to reasonable standards... I know of one MS systems architect who thinks that SSL is broken (but of course, no evidence is ever forthcoming). They are FUD-spewing charlatans, and you believe in them.
Do tell us more about Microsoft's reasonable "standards". Is it anything like what they are doing with kerberos or OOXML?
Contrast the product structure of "Linux" with more successful FOSS projects like Firefox and OpenOffice, and learn the lesson well... or be content watching MS not only rebound in desktop share, but use that to eventually kick FOSS out of the server space as well. MS already has the cooperation of governments to standardize on Active Directory for Internet/Web logins! Think about that.
In short, by referring to "Linux" as anything more than a kernel, you are leading all sorts of people (even programmers from the end-user application space) into a great deal of unexpected confusion, denying them a stable computing platform in the process... a platform that could have been a viable alternative to Redmond's greedy mendacity. It as if we all started referring to any browser or other program with Gecko in it as "Firefox", and millions of people put those "Firefox" distros on the shelf intending to switch over "someday".
The Linux geekdom think they are so intelligent; In truth they've yet to learn even how to speak. Count me off that bandwagon.
I'll heed Schneier's concerns over your schilling any day. I'd set his words to music before accepting that soiled "expert opinion" you're pushing, because at the very least you are deranged for smearing those concerns as "paranoid" against the backdrop of massive government spying we see today.
...for an UAE robot would be taking the place of slave labor.
To the customer, they are selling a one-off jobber with a combination of programs and UI features that represent no platform in particular. Even if they have looked at other "Linux" PCs, they are not likely to see something they recognize in a highly customized Enlightenment desktop. If they buy the system they
Linux boosters are showing their derangement here: Promoting "Linux" to end-users is like promoting Gecko to people who want a browser. But Linux and Gecko are effectively invisible to non-techies. The difference is that Mozilla are not stupid enough to work on only the Gecko engine, and then let umpteen distros implement various browsers and promote them all as "Gecko". Instead they made a complete product Firefox that users can consistently recognize and use, and protect their trademarks such that other browsers using Mozilla technology are not confused with Firefox in the slightest bit.
In short: Stop confusing end-users and yourselves with "desktop Linux" promotion. If you must promote a FOSS operating system to the public, then focus on a specific free distro that adheres to the LSB Desktop spec.
Again, stop confusing people!!
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/09/2049204
That's not true. USA lawmakers and executives receive a great deal of positive coverage for their initiatives; indeed the media and their sister operations in conglomerate have often paid for those office holders, and are so kind to help with writing legislation too.
The western media demonize those who have not been bought out by Wall Street at a sweet discount. At the very least, you have to keep throwing your goods and resources at them in exchange for mountains of green paper, or else your democracy breathlessly turns into a dictatorship that needs to be "liberated" on the TV screens and newspapers of America.
The last two US presidential elections were orderly, but not democratic, yet the US had not recently experienced anything like a civil war. What excuse does that country have for its state of affairs?
You might as well harp about the BBC, which is Western media, as most of its foreign services are funded by the UK government to dispense that government's point of view. And the prime minister meets privately with Rupert Murdoch (The Sun, News Corp) to cut deals on how much propaganda support he will receive in return for allowing media monopoly to grow. That covers the lion's share of UK media.
Even Canada's CBC is funded entirely though the government budget.
And yet none of the above are described as "state-run" in the west, so if you believe their characterizations then you are swallowing lies. They also publish a great deal of negative news (or at least, insinuations) about Russia's power elite, but that is a given considering the above circumstances.