One Micros~1 tactic which has worked well (especially vs. DR-DOS) is to announce plans for something just to keep the public from seriously considering competing products. By the time the Micros~1 version rolls out (often much later) the enthusiasm for the competitor's product is diminished considerably. I wonder if they are thinking about this strategy again - make some teaser announcements about moving towards "open source", so that the public won't put any faith in open source that is already available: "After all, we'd be better off to wait for the Microsoft version, right?"
This sort of strategy wouldn't really dissuade the developers of open source software, because they already know what it's about and in many cases they're writing it for their own purposes anyway. But it might slow down adoption by the public of open source. If all you know are the buzzwords, then open source is good but Microsoft Windows with New Open-Source Technology(tm) is even better, right?
Some people think that Ballmer's just making crazy off-the-cuff comments when he mentions open source like this, but I think there might be a deeper motivation. If Bill Gates wanted to keep the lid on this sort of thing, he could have told Ballmer to shut up about it weeks ago. Since Ballmer keeps talking about it, Micros~1 must see some benefit in keeping open source associated with them in the press. It remains to be seen whether their approach to open source is really a shift or just more of the usual tactics from Redmond.
I believe, sir, that you have formed a false impression of my underlying beliefs. I am in no sense an apologist for the actions of Serbia. Allow me to explain my thoughts on the points you brought up:
I suppose M's idea of throwing out reporters was a stupid idea too, eh? I don't see you commenting on that as a bad idea. Essentially, this rant of yours really boils down to you hoisting up a double standard.
Throwing out the Western journalists only makes sense if there is something to hide in Yugoslavia. That action on the part of Serbia should make a reasonably critical person more distrustful of Milosevic's motives, not less. I made this same comment when that issue came up in this forum last month. Unfortunately, Slashdot doesn't have the link to my comment anymore. I didn't mention it here because that's not really the topic anymore, is it?
You maybe do not effectively have formed in your mind that traffic coming out and *in* is cut off and constrained. You only present reasons why NATO would be listening or that Serbia can't get their news out. You protest this US action inhibits this.
Actually, if you'll read carefully you'll see that I mentioned information flow in both directions - the Serbs getting information from outside of their country and NATO getting information from inside of Serbia. In both cases it's important that people get information from other sources besides the "traditional" media, as we know that these can be co-opted during wartime.
The percentage of the Serbians online and listening (to anything online, I'm not talking just US propaganda but whatever they choose to) are nothing compared to the number listening to TV, which you readily admit is state generated TV. It's a joke to think that the move of information INTO Serbia reaches enough people to make a difference. It's a joke to consider that state run TV would find a story from outside Serbian, e.g. pro-NATO argument, and run it. They wouldn't and couldn't before. So cutting of the lines does nothing to what they could do.
Of course not too many people get their information from the Internet yet. I was trying to be forward-looking when I wrote my original comments. But even if news from outside Serbia only reaches a few people in that country, it can still make a difference. As long some people know that the official party line isn't the whole truth, then the information can spread. In this situation you can't forcibly change the mindset of a nation, even if TV, radio, and newspapers were all open to opposing viewpoints. But you can make all the information available to people, and let them draw their own conclusions. Just the knowledge that there may be more to the story could be enough.
By killing the Serb connection, the US kills off the stuff from the inside going out. The US population easily uses the internet a lot more, and the potential impact for stories going out of Serbia and being listened to is greater, and easily far greater than any Serb on the inside listening. Yes, the US population still uses TV and radio by far over the Internet, but don't forget the rising percentage of people that do use the Internet as an info source, not to mention all the reporters that use online material for (debatedly) news-worthy material.
Given how the US media latches on to misrepresentative tidbits, and the facts information in Serbia is already effectively slanted to a state-run propaganda machne, it's a very easy decision to cut off the information flow to the outside.
If I understand you correctly, your argument is that since more people use the Internet for news in the U.S. than in Serbia, citizens of the U.S. are more likely to believe Serbian propaganda than citizens of Serbia are to believe the NATO propaganda. I don't agree with you for two reasons.
First, I don't think the numbers of people involved in each country directly affects their viewpoints. Just because more people in the U.S. get their news from the Internet doesn't mean that they are somehow less critical of it. In fact, getting your information off the Internet tends to make people much more critical of what they read, because it's so easy to check for opposing views. Sure, more people in the U.S. may check out the Serbian government web page, but more people may also check out the NATO web page, or the web pages of Kosovar supporters worldwide. As far as I'm concerned, the more opposing views available on the Internet, the better.
Second, I think you are making the assumption that the U.S. perspective is automatically more valid than the Serbian perspective. There is no reason to trust the statements of the U.S. over the statements of any other government. The United States is a sovereign nation and, like all sovereign nations, has no interest in dealing fairly with other nations if it doesn't suit their interests. I'm a U.S. citizen and I generally support the NATO actions, but that doesn't mean that I can't consider the motivations of my government as well as the Serbian motives in this conflict. A knee-jerk uncritical reaction of "USA all the way!" is just as wrong as the people who automatically demonize and question everything the U.S. does. In both cases, the more open-minded consideration of the issues the better.
To get off-topic and into war opinion...[snip]
As I said before, I support the NATO position in this matter, just as you do. I've also argued with people who say that there is no ethnic cleansing, that NATO has somehow caused 780,000 (as of 5/14/99, on NPR) people to leave home, or that President Clinton is the next Hitler (I know, Godwin's law is now in effect). These people are exactly the reason that the lines of communication need to stay open - so that more people can hear both sides of the story and form their own opinions. I've considered all the information I can about the conflict, and I decided that NATO has the moral high ground in this case. But I want people all over the world to come to their own conclusions without listening to the propaganda of NATO, their own governments, or the Serbs. That is the point I was trying to make before - I hope I have explained it more clearly now.
The joke is going to be on the Chinese government - once their citizens realize that they can protest things they don't like, we'll see some real changes in China. Their government made a strategic blunder when they encouraged people to take to the streets. Authoritarian regimes really don't want to be encouraging any sort of activism in the citizenry.
I was just able to access Radio Television of Serbia at 08:22 CST, so it's either up or I got a cached copy from somewhere. So this particular item may be more rumor than fact. However, it wouldn't have surprised me if it were true, and it would have been a major mistake if that were the case.
Why? Because the more people who have access to information, the better. It's important for the people of Serbia to be able to get information from outside their own (state-controlled) media, and it's also important for the citizens of NATO countries to be able to understand just what the Serbs are thinking, rather than getting it through their own (possibly slanted) media. It's sort of like Radio Free Europe, except that the information transfer goes both ways. The more people who can access all the facts and form their own opinions, rather than getting their opinions prepared by CNN or Radio Television of Serbia, the better.
Let's face it, it's a lot harder to fight a war when every day you see what's happening to the other side - that they're people too. I don't think we're going to see governments whipping up their citizens through propaganda during wartime as much in the future, because anyone can find out exactly how their nation's actions are perceived by the rest of the world. In a way, this will bring war into the home the same way that TV coverage of Vietnam did. Once individuals can see the effects of war on other people, they will be swayed less by nationalism and patriotism and more by simple humanity.
Of course, none of these factors are working at 100% right now. Most citizens still get their news from TV, radio, or newspapers, which have local or national distribution rather than international. And some countries even try to block access to the Internet when there is information that they don't want their citizens to know. But in the long run, I see everyone connected to the global network as a matter of course. When that is the case I don't think any government will be able to effectively block information transfer from one citizen of the world to another.
This is why the U.S. would be making a mistake in cutting off 'net access to Yugoslavia. If the U.S. and NATO are on the moral high ground in this conflict, then there's no reason not to let people in Serbia find out about it on the Internet. Conversely, if it turns out that the Serbians are the victims, then the rest of the world should be able to get that information as well. Without this exchange, the people of the world are forced to follow their government's national policy, because they can't find out about their other options. That would be the real tragedy of disconnecting Serbia from the rest of the world.
Re: Don't be fooled by Satan Trek!!!
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May Ten Quickies
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I'm glad that your religious experiences aren't like the ones that are spoofed in Satan Trek. I agree with you - I hope that's not what god is about either. However, there are some people who will tell you to your face many of the "truths" which were put forth satirically at this web site, and those are the people that the author is really poking fun at. I don't think that god cares too much about TV shows or who has been "saved" either, but there are plenty of people who do care about this sort of thing and who will take god's name and authority to pass judgment on other people.
I don't see robotics as central to the development of AI. Certainly you need some form of input/output with the AI, but I don't see why you would need to duplicate the environment that we humans experience. For example, some humans have handicaps which limit their experience of the environment but they are still considered intelligent beings. Helen Keller would be one good example, as would an autistic person.
Exactly. I was prepared to be disappointed in The Matrix, mostly because of the Keanu Reeves factor and the fact that every TV ad I saw for it featured him doing his "whoa" line. (For some reason I always think "Evil Robot Uses!" when he does that.) This made The Matrix that much more fun when it really turned out to be a great flick.
Episode 1, by contrast, has raised expectations so much that it almost can't help but be a disappointment to the really hard-core fans. The most interesting review comment that I read was that Episode one seemed to depend a lot on the next two movies to build interest, rather than standing on its own regard. Of course, most movies aren't released with a guaranteed 5 sequels, three of which are already released.
It depends on what you're hiring for. If someone is hiring a tech or an admin to run your network, then you certainly have impressive qualifications. But if someone is hiring you to design a network, or to create an entirely new networking system, then you want someone that has training and/or experience in engineering and design. There's a difference between running a system that already exists and designing a new system from the ground up without including design flaws such as the Y2K problem. Good design can be learned entirely from experience, but a good education means that you don't have to make mistakes and learn from them; you can learn from others' mistakes and avoid them entirely. Formal education isn't a complete substitute for industry experience, but it does give you a jump-start in the direction you're headed.
"Many have called themselves software engineers," said John R. Speed, executive director of the Texas Board of Professional Engineers. "Wrong. They're the local music dropout who chooses to use that title."
Those of us who actually have degrees in computer engineering or software engineering have a right to use that title - it represents a substantial investment of time and money. Just because software engineers can't currently use the title "Professional Engineer" doesn't mean that all software engineers are charlatans and dropouts.
It's fairly amusing to see the Y2K problem portrayed as an ethical problem, as if a bunch of weaselly fly-by-night coders were trying to hoodwink the public back in the 60s and 70s. In hindsight it was a poor design, but it fit the design constraints at the time, which were considerably different. It's not an ethical mistake that bridges from the 1930s can't carry modern tractor-trailer trucks, is it? Of course, anyone building a bridge like that nowadays should be criticized, just like anyone who was still writing Y2K-noncompliant software in the last several years (Windows '98, anyone?)
Personally, I don't have any problem with Software Engineering being a professional field jsut like Civil Engineering. Four years of engineering school separates the wheat from the chaff pretty effectively in other engineering disciplines, as it did in my major. Requiring software engineers to pass the EIT or similar standard requirement isn't much more of a step. It would certainly cut down on the hordes of people that read one or two books or get their MCSE and immediately jump into the field. Those of us with real skills have nothing to fear from certification.
I am not a Mozilla contributor, but IIRC it's not just Mozilla employees that are contributing. The situation is that while only 30 non-Netscape developers have CVS commit privileges, many other outside developers have submitted and are continuing to submit code to Mozilla. They just don't have CVS commit privileges, probably because you wouldn't want to trust just anyone with commit privileges to your code repository.
Of course, I could be way off base on this, but at one point this is what I read on Slashdot. Sorry, I don't have a reference URL for this.
Paraphrased from "Operating Systems Concepts", the dinosaur book (5th ed.), there are four divisions of security model and several levels of each division. In order of increasing security they are:
D = doesn't meet the requirements of the other three divisions. MS-DOS and Windows 3.1.
C1 = some form of group permissions. This includes most Unices.
C2 = C1 plus individual permissions too. Some more highly-secured Unices have been certified C2.
B1 = C2 plus sensitivity labels on objects for hierarchical security. Thus if a user is level secret, they can access all objects at their level or below if they have permissions to it. Also processes are isolated in distinct address spaces.
B2 = B1 plus extends the sensitivity labels to each system resource (devices). Also includes covert channels and auditing on those channels.
B3 = B2 plus access control lists and monitoring for any violations of security policy.
A1 = equivalent to a B3 system, but is written using formal design and verification techniques to make sure that you haven't left any security bugs in the B3 implementation. A system above level A1 might have been created this way by trusted personnel at a trusted location.
As other posters have noted, you can't certify an operating system, just a particular installation of that OS on specified hardware at a particular site. So realistically the highest NT or Linux could be certified would be B3, and even that would require a lot of additions to the base system. Don't hold your breath.
This ruling isn't as bad as some people think. According to the NYTimes, you can still use a competitor's trademark in your META tag if you are comparing your product to theirs. So you can still use Coca-Cola in your page which compares it to Slashdot Cola (apologies to another poster).
Apparently you can also use someone's trademark in a META tag if that is used to "fairly index" your site (according to the Times, although they said litigation was ongoing in that case). So you can still put up a fan page for whatever and include the corresponding META tag. These are both fair use.
The only thing this ruling seems to prevent is using a trademark in your META tags to deliberately confuse someone into thinking that your site is something it's not. That seems like a good idea to me - truth in advertising and so on.
Of course, you could always set up your web site in a country that doesn't abide by U.S. trademark and copyright law. As the Internet becomes more regulated in the U.S., people will just set up their servers overseas and sidestep the whole issue.
To post a reply to the main topic, you have to press the Reply button at the top of the page. This is in the same row as the Threshold, and comment-ordering drop-down menus. It wasn't immediately obvious to me either:)
The Matrix SUCKS in my opinion, because it may be interesting to watch the affects, but thre was NO way you can believe "that could happen."
I think the question is more along the lines of "If the Matrix really existed, would we even realize it?". The answer is probably not. The whole movie was a comment on how tenuous our perception of reality really is. And hardware, lots of military hardware. It was really a live-action comic book more than anything.
I don't see any reason not to categorize this man's emails the same as spam such as "Make Money Fast", "Hundreds of Sexy Young Girls Are Waiting For You!!!", and so forth. They're all unsolicited and they tie up resources for those who receive and process them. Individuals who pay for the time it takes to download spam from their ISPs are understandably upset about receiving it, as are their ISPs when they have to handle it. I don't see any reason a corporation shouldn't demonstrate the same unhappiness with the appropriation of their mail-handling resources, whether or not they agree with the content that is transmitted.
I don't agree with the argument that this case makes any email's sender liable to suit for trespass. If you have a publicly posted email address with a specific purpose identified, then you certainly wouldn't be able to sue people who used the address for that purpose./.ing the posted ZDnet comments address with arguments about an article, for example, isn't trespass even if there are 30000 replies because that address was provided for that purpose. If Intel had provided a public "cranky ex-employees" email address, then they wouldn't be able to sue this guy for posting to it (although 30000 times would be a bit much). But unsolicited email to a public email address which doesn't match the purpose of that address is spam, plain and simple.
I've never been able to understand why you would want to carry a concealed weapon versus a non-concealed one. If I understand correctly, you are arguing that if everyone had a gun, it would have had a deterrent effect on these kids. How is there a deterrent effect if the weapon is concealed? It seems to me that if you believe that guns will deter violence (which I don't agree with, but just for the sake of argument) then won't they deter violence better if they are not concealed but instead are carried in plain view? Why would a criminal be deterred by a gun they don't know you have?
Please explain why concealed weapons are better, because it doesn't make sense to me.
60-70 years ago, the newspapers would have blamed that crazy jazz music. 30-40 years ago, rock and roll was the culprit. Whenever there are societal changes afoot (increasing usage of the Internet, for example), everything that goes wrong will be blamed on those changes no matter how tenuous the connection. This issue is sadly no different.
The only comment I can make (that hasn't been made already) is that every person is responsible for their own words and actions, and their own words and actions only. Nobody forced these kids to open fire - not gun manufacturers, not Doom or iD software, not Hitler or Marilyn Manson. They chose for themselves, and if they were still alive we would expect them to bear the consequences of their actions.
So I think the more important issue is: how does a person decide which action to take? Ultimately, you make decisions mostly based on the morals that you are taught by your parents and to a lesser extent the morals you learn from your environment. Many of us have undergone the same treatment as these kids, listened to the same music, played violent games, perhaps owned and/or used guns. We have all been exposed to the same admittedly violent culture that we live in. In fact, the only difference between these killers and ourselves is...the parents.
What your parents teach you (or fail to teach you) is the most important influence on your choice of actions. When the media stops making knee-jerk accusations about Doom and that crazy Goth music, maybe we'll start to hear about the home lives of these two kids. Their parents didn't force them to pull the trigger at school, but kids that were raised correctly would never think that it was OK to take guns and 30 pipe bombs to school.
Try www.jwz.org/xscreensaver. It's a much better collection of screen savers than you would get with Windows, and (of course) it's free software. The 3D ones require Mesa, however. libXpm is also required or recommended for a few others.
Was copying the exact drawings copyright infringement?
Maybe. It certainly didn't make things look better for the rotten.com folks. If I was the artist I would be understandably upset that my drawings were being used for that. So this may be a copyright violation.
Was the whole thing trademark infringement?
Again, maybe, depending on your reading of fair use. If they had called it anythingelsebert, they would be in better shape, versus using the Dilbert name. I don't see how you could trademark the suffix -bert. However, I don't think there was any way that the public could mistake these for the being the real Dilbert/United Media cartoons, and I don't think that rotten & company could have made any money off of that confusion (not that they were trying to).
As I understand it, the real point of trademark law is to prevent other people from using your trademark and your hard-earned reputation for their financial gain. There was no chance of that happening here - the site was clearly plastered with notices that they were not associated with Dilbert, United Media, and so forth. So I think using parody and fair use as a defense on the trademark law grounds would work. Of course, IANAL.
Was it funny?
Fooled you - whether it was funny or not doesn't matter at all in these circumstances. Why should the legal standing of the previous two arguments be affected by what you think is humorous? I found the cartoons in bad taste too, but I don't see why that makes it a less affective parody. Some people on Slashdot found it funny, others didn't. That suggests to me that it was a not entirely effective parody, not that it failed to be a parody at all.
The bottom line is that the right to poke fun at a anything should be protected, whether or not the majority agrees with with the humor. If we went along with what the majority thought all the time, this forum wouldn't exist.
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has been developing OSS products since 1983 but has had little success in reducing consumer allegiance to proprietary software. The organization is headed by Richard Stallman, a programmer who quit his job at MIT's Artificial Intelligence Lab to pursue an end to "the commercialization of system software." FSF's main activity is its GNU Project, which has developed a complete OSS computer operating system called GNU (a.k.a. GNU's Not Unix). Unix is a proprietary operating system intended to compete against Microsoft Windows; originally OSS, later versions of Unix were made proprietary by Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard and other companies.
So first off, I'm afraid I did not misquote the article. I'm curious how you expect to comment on something you haven't read properly:p
Second, if Sun, HP, and other companies have made the GNU HURD or the GNU utilities proprietary, then someone should pass this info on to the FSF folks, because that would be a serious violation of the licensing terms of GNU software. This is not the case, of course.
Sorry, but the authors of this article are attempting to refer to the original Unix, which originated at AT&T. The reference to Unix in the middle of a paragraph about GNU is confusing, but then the rest of the article isn't particularly accurate either, it it?
Capital Research Center (CRC) was established in 1984 to study non-profit organizations, with a special focus on reviving the American traditions of charity, philanthropy, and voluntarism.
Since the launching of the Great Society, thousands of nonprofit advocacy groups have emerged, often promoting more government welfare programs in areas once considered the domain of families, charities, neighborhood associations, and other voluntary organizations. The growth of government has increasingly supplanted the voluntary action and community-based problem solving that the great observer of early American society, Alexis de Tocqueville, recognized as a defining feature of our country.
CRC specializes in analyzing organizations that promote the growth of the welfare state - now almost universally recognized as a failure - and in identifying viable private alternatives to government welfare programs. Our research forms the basis for a variety of publications:
...
They seem to be focused on protecting business from the effects of government charities. Apparently they heard about the Microsoft trial and free software, put the two together and decided that the government was out to destroy businesses who make money off of software. Last time I checked, that wasn't the situation at all, but if you read their article with that perspective in mind, it does seem a little less circular and convoluted.
When you think about it, it's strange that they came down on the FSF in the article, because the FSF is an example of exactly what they are trying to encourage: a private group of individuals volunteering for the public good. No government involvement there, which seems to be Capital Research's main concern.
My favorite parts:
"Unix is a proprietary operating system intended to compete against Microsoft Windows"
I thought that originally Unix was distributed for free (source and all, with no support) because AT&T was prohibited from entering the OS market. Unfortunately for the folks at Capital Research, Unix had to wait several years before it could begin competing with Windows, because Windows didn't exist yet.
"Such protocols would dampen the creativity and progress of software developers like Microsoft, which develops and periodically changes its own protocols for its own software."
I, for one, would love to dampen that creativity, and skip a little progress as far as incompatible, obscure file formats.
This was definitely the best Jon Katz that I have read here yet. The difference was I was able to read the story seamlessly without noticing "Katzisms" throughout - nothing really jarred the stream of thought of the article.
That being said, I was fairly disturbed by the content of the article, so much so that it's taken me overnight to determine exactly what bothered me:
Does anyone else here find it deplorable that the two people from the article think that the Internet is the real world? That it alone can be trusted, even looked to as a father figure (according to Katz, at least)? I'm not blaming them for their viewpoint - either society really let them down in some very basic ways, as was suggested in the article, or perhaps they suffer from a medical condition which is causing this alienation, as suggested by another poster. Either way, I feel profoundly sorry for someone that can only find life and meaning in an artificial world filled with objects and people that may never be exactly what they seem. I'll admit that real life can be very difficult to deal with, but a life spent only in front of a computer avoiding real feelings and interaction seems to be more of an escape from reality than an acceptable substitute.
My other reaction after reading the article is that I don't agree with Mr. Katz on the topic of character. Certainly risking everything to start a new life somewhere you've never been is a big step, and I wish Jesse and Eric luck. If they succeed by working hard and persevering in the face of difficulty, they will have demonstrated character. Even failure after making their best attempt will demonstrate character. But their lives up to this point don't demonstrate character, and after reading the article I don't have any impression that they intend to change. I understand that they were poor and marginalized by the society that they lived in, but that doesn't excuse making fake IDs and stealing software and music.
Real character involves living with honor and sticking to your ideals in the face of hardship. Some posters have pointed out that in some cases the law may be wrong and a person in good conscience may break the law because of their belief that the law is wrong. Standing up for your beliefs in this manner would demonstrate real character, but this isn't the impression I get from the article. They weren't making fake IDs because they had strong beliefs that 19 year olds should be able to drink, they were doing it to make a fast buck. Likewise, they don't appear to have strong beliefs concerning the freedom of software (source or otherwise) or music on the Internet - they just don't pay for these things because it's inconvenient for them. That is not living with honor, and these are not actions that should be held up as examples to the community.
Before ducking into my flame-shelter, I'll leave you with one point to ponder. I'm not perfect either. I've never faked an ID, but I have copied software that I shouldn't have. It was wrong when I did it, and I'm not going to do it again. Probably no one reading this has lead a blameless life. However, even though you or I are not perfect, we still should stand up for what is right. It isn't right to fake IDs, it isn't right to violate copyright laws for software or music, but it also isn't right for society to marginalize two people who are obviously intelligent but may have problems interacting with other people. Again, I wish Jesse and Eric good luck at their jobs in Chicago, and I hope that they have some more opportunities to discover the wonders of the world outside their apartment.
Slashdot Mirror
One Micros~1 tactic which has worked well (especially vs. DR-DOS) is to announce plans for something just to keep the public from seriously considering competing products. By the time the Micros~1 version rolls out (often much later) the enthusiasm for the competitor's product is diminished considerably. I wonder if they are thinking about this strategy again - make some teaser announcements about moving towards "open source", so that the public won't put any faith in open source that is already available: "After all, we'd be better off to wait for the Microsoft version, right?"
This sort of strategy wouldn't really dissuade the developers of open source software, because they already know what it's about and in many cases they're writing it for their own purposes anyway. But it might slow down adoption by the public of open source. If all you know are the buzzwords, then open source is good but Microsoft Windows with New Open-Source Technology(tm) is even better, right?
Some people think that Ballmer's just making crazy off-the-cuff comments when he mentions open source like this, but I think there might be a deeper motivation. If Bill Gates wanted to keep the lid on this sort of thing, he could have told Ballmer to shut up about it weeks ago. Since Ballmer keeps talking about it, Micros~1 must see some benefit in keeping open source associated with them in the press. It remains to be seen whether their approach to open source is really a shift or just more of the usual tactics from Redmond.
I believe, sir, that you have formed a false impression of my underlying beliefs. I am in no sense an apologist for the actions of Serbia. Allow me to explain my thoughts on the points you brought up:
Throwing out the Western journalists only makes sense if there is something to hide in Yugoslavia. That action on the part of Serbia should make a reasonably critical person more distrustful of Milosevic's motives, not less. I made this same comment when that issue came up in this forum last month. Unfortunately, Slashdot doesn't have the link to my comment anymore. I didn't mention it here because that's not really the topic anymore, is it?
Actually, if you'll read carefully you'll see that I mentioned information flow in both directions - the Serbs getting information from outside of their country and NATO getting information from inside of Serbia. In both cases it's important that people get information from other sources besides the "traditional" media, as we know that these can be co-opted during wartime.
Of course not too many people get their information from the Internet yet. I was trying to be forward-looking when I wrote my original comments. But even if news from outside Serbia only reaches a few people in that country, it can still make a difference. As long some people know that the official party line isn't the whole truth, then the information can spread. In this situation you can't forcibly change the mindset of a nation, even if TV, radio, and newspapers were all open to opposing viewpoints. But you can make all the information available to people, and let them draw their own conclusions. Just the knowledge that there may be more to the story could be enough.
If I understand you correctly, your argument is that since more people use the Internet for news in the U.S. than in Serbia, citizens of the U.S. are more likely to believe Serbian propaganda than citizens of Serbia are to believe the NATO propaganda. I don't agree with you for two reasons.
First, I don't think the numbers of people involved in each country directly affects their viewpoints. Just because more people in the U.S. get their news from the Internet doesn't mean that they are somehow less critical of it. In fact, getting your information off the Internet tends to make people much more critical of what they read, because it's so easy to check for opposing views. Sure, more people in the U.S. may check out the Serbian government web page, but more people may also check out the NATO web page, or the web pages of Kosovar supporters worldwide. As far as I'm concerned, the more opposing views available on the Internet, the better.
Second, I think you are making the assumption that the U.S. perspective is automatically more valid than the Serbian perspective. There is no reason to trust the statements of the U.S. over the statements of any other government. The United States is a sovereign nation and, like all sovereign nations, has no interest in dealing fairly with other nations if it doesn't suit their interests. I'm a U.S. citizen and I generally support the NATO actions, but that doesn't mean that I can't consider the motivations of my government as well as the Serbian motives in this conflict. A knee-jerk uncritical reaction of "USA all the way!" is just as wrong as the people who automatically demonize and question everything the U.S. does. In both cases, the more open-minded consideration of the issues the better.
As I said before, I support the NATO position in this matter, just as you do. I've also argued with people who say that there is no ethnic cleansing, that NATO has somehow caused 780,000 (as of 5/14/99, on NPR) people to leave home, or that President Clinton is the next Hitler (I know, Godwin's law is now in effect). These people are exactly the reason that the lines of communication need to stay open - so that more people can hear both sides of the story and form their own opinions. I've considered all the information I can about the conflict, and I decided that NATO has the moral high ground in this case. But I want people all over the world to come to their own conclusions without listening to the propaganda of NATO, their own governments, or the Serbs. That is the point I was trying to make before - I hope I have explained it more clearly now.
I feel so used...
I thought it was "Don't get involved in a land war in southeast Asia?"
The joke is going to be on the Chinese government - once their citizens realize that they can protest things they don't like, we'll see some real changes in China. Their government made a strategic blunder when they encouraged people to take to the streets. Authoritarian regimes really don't want to be encouraging any sort of activism in the citizenry.
I was just able to access Radio Television of Serbia at 08:22 CST, so it's either up or I got a cached copy from somewhere. So this particular item may be more rumor than fact. However, it wouldn't have surprised me if it were true, and it would have been a major mistake if that were the case.
Why? Because the more people who have access to information, the better. It's important for the people of Serbia to be able to get information from outside their own (state-controlled) media, and it's also important for the citizens of NATO countries to be able to understand just what the Serbs are thinking, rather than getting it through their own (possibly slanted) media. It's sort of like Radio Free Europe, except that the information transfer goes both ways. The more people who can access all the facts and form their own opinions, rather than getting their opinions prepared by CNN or Radio Television of Serbia, the better.
Let's face it, it's a lot harder to fight a war when every day you see what's happening to the other side - that they're people too. I don't think we're going to see governments whipping up their citizens through propaganda during wartime as much in the future, because anyone can find out exactly how their nation's actions are perceived by the rest of the world. In a way, this will bring war into the home the same way that TV coverage of Vietnam did. Once individuals can see the effects of war on other people, they will be swayed less by nationalism and patriotism and more by simple humanity.
Of course, none of these factors are working at 100% right now. Most citizens still get their news from TV, radio, or newspapers, which have local or national distribution rather than international. And some countries even try to block access to the Internet when there is information that they don't want their citizens to know. But in the long run, I see everyone connected to the global network as a matter of course. When that is the case I don't think any government will be able to effectively block information transfer from one citizen of the world to another.
This is why the U.S. would be making a mistake in cutting off 'net access to Yugoslavia. If the U.S. and NATO are on the moral high ground in this conflict, then there's no reason not to let people in Serbia find out about it on the Internet. Conversely, if it turns out that the Serbians are the victims, then the rest of the world should be able to get that information as well. Without this exchange, the people of the world are forced to follow their government's national policy, because they can't find out about their other options. That would be the real tragedy of disconnecting Serbia from the rest of the world.
I'm glad that your religious experiences aren't like the ones that are spoofed in Satan Trek. I agree with you - I hope that's not what god is about either. However, there are some people who will tell you to your face many of the "truths" which were put forth satirically at this web site, and those are the people that the author is really poking fun at. I don't think that god cares too much about TV shows or who has been "saved" either, but there are plenty of people who do care about this sort of thing and who will take god's name and authority to pass judgment on other people.
I don't see robotics as central to the development of AI. Certainly you need some form of input/output with the AI, but I don't see why you would need to duplicate the environment that we humans experience. For example, some humans have handicaps which limit their experience of the environment but they are still considered intelligent beings. Helen Keller would be one good example, as would an autistic person.
Exactly. I was prepared to be disappointed in The Matrix, mostly because of the Keanu Reeves factor and the fact that every TV ad I saw for it featured him doing his "whoa" line. (For some reason I always think "Evil Robot Uses!" when he does that.) This made The Matrix that much more fun when it really turned out to be a great flick.
Episode 1, by contrast, has raised expectations so much that it almost can't help but be a disappointment to the really hard-core fans. The most interesting review comment that I read was that Episode one seemed to depend a lot on the next two movies to build interest, rather than standing on its own regard. Of course, most movies aren't released with a guaranteed 5 sequels, three of which are already released.
It depends on what you're hiring for. If someone is hiring a tech or an admin to run your network, then you certainly have impressive qualifications. But if someone is hiring you to design a network, or to create an entirely new networking system, then you want someone that has training and/or experience in engineering and design. There's a difference between running a system that already exists and designing a new system from the ground up without including design flaws such as the Y2K problem. Good design can be learned entirely from experience, but a good education means that you don't have to make mistakes and learn from them; you can learn from others' mistakes and avoid them entirely. Formal education isn't a complete substitute for industry experience, but it does give you a jump-start in the direction you're headed.
Those of us who actually have degrees in computer engineering or software engineering have a right to use that title - it represents a substantial investment of time and money. Just because software engineers can't currently use the title "Professional Engineer" doesn't mean that all software engineers are charlatans and dropouts.
It's fairly amusing to see the Y2K problem portrayed as an ethical problem, as if a bunch of weaselly fly-by-night coders were trying to hoodwink the public back in the 60s and 70s. In hindsight it was a poor design, but it fit the design constraints at the time, which were considerably different. It's not an ethical mistake that bridges from the 1930s can't carry modern tractor-trailer trucks, is it? Of course, anyone building a bridge like that nowadays should be criticized, just like anyone who was still writing Y2K-noncompliant software in the last several years (Windows '98, anyone?)
Personally, I don't have any problem with Software Engineering being a professional field jsut like Civil Engineering. Four years of engineering school separates the wheat from the chaff pretty effectively in other engineering disciplines, as it did in my major. Requiring software engineers to pass the EIT or similar standard requirement isn't much more of a step. It would certainly cut down on the hordes of people that read one or two books or get their MCSE and immediately jump into the field. Those of us with real skills have nothing to fear from certification.
I am not a Mozilla contributor, but IIRC it's not just Mozilla employees that are contributing. The situation is that while only 30 non-Netscape developers have CVS commit privileges, many other outside developers have submitted and are continuing to submit code to Mozilla. They just don't have CVS commit privileges, probably because you wouldn't want to trust just anyone with commit privileges to your code repository.
Of course, I could be way off base on this, but at one point this is what I read on Slashdot. Sorry, I don't have a reference URL for this.
Paraphrased from "Operating Systems Concepts", the dinosaur book (5th ed.), there are four divisions of security model and several levels of each division. In order of increasing security they are:
As other posters have noted, you can't certify an operating system, just a particular installation of that OS on specified hardware at a particular site. So realistically the highest NT or Linux could be certified would be B3, and even that would require a lot of additions to the base system. Don't hold your breath.
This ruling isn't as bad as some people think. According to the NYTimes, you can still use a competitor's trademark in your META tag if you are comparing your product to theirs. So you can still use Coca-Cola in your page which compares it to Slashdot Cola (apologies to another poster).
Apparently you can also use someone's trademark in a META tag if that is used to "fairly index" your site (according to the Times, although they said litigation was ongoing in that case). So you can still put up a fan page for whatever and include the corresponding META tag. These are both fair use.
The only thing this ruling seems to prevent is using a trademark in your META tags to deliberately confuse someone into thinking that your site is something it's not. That seems like a good idea to me - truth in advertising and so on.
Of course, you could always set up your web site in a country that doesn't abide by U.S. trademark and copyright law. As the Internet becomes more regulated in the U.S., people will just set up their servers overseas and sidestep the whole issue.
To post a reply to the main topic, you have to press the Reply button at the top of the page. This is in the same row as the Threshold, and comment-ordering drop-down menus. It wasn't immediately obvious to me either :)
The Matrix SUCKS in my opinion, because it may be interesting to watch the affects, but thre was NO way you can believe "that could happen."
I think the question is more along the lines of "If the Matrix really existed, would we even realize it?". The answer is probably not. The whole movie was a comment on how tenuous our perception of reality really is. And hardware, lots of military hardware. It was really a live-action comic book more than anything.
That's also my ATM number.
I don't see any reason not to categorize this man's emails the same as spam such as "Make Money Fast", "Hundreds of Sexy Young Girls Are Waiting For You!!!", and so forth. They're all unsolicited and they tie up resources for those who receive and process them. Individuals who pay for the time it takes to download spam from their ISPs are understandably upset about receiving it, as are their ISPs when they have to handle it. I don't see any reason a corporation shouldn't demonstrate the same unhappiness with the appropriation of their mail-handling resources, whether or not they agree with the content that is transmitted.
I don't agree with the argument that this case makes any email's sender liable to suit for trespass. If you have a publicly posted email address with a specific purpose identified, then you certainly wouldn't be able to sue people who used the address for that purpose. /.ing the posted ZDnet comments address with arguments about an article, for example, isn't trespass even if there are 30000 replies because that address was provided for that purpose. If Intel had provided a public "cranky ex-employees" email address, then they wouldn't be able to sue this guy for posting to it (although 30000 times would be a bit much). But unsolicited email to a public email address which doesn't match the purpose of that address is spam, plain and simple.
I've never been able to understand why you would want to carry a concealed weapon versus a non-concealed one. If I understand correctly, you are arguing that if everyone had a gun, it would have had a deterrent effect on these kids. How is there a deterrent effect if the weapon is concealed? It seems to me that if you believe that guns will deter violence (which I don't agree with, but just for the sake of argument) then won't they deter violence better if they are not concealed but instead are carried in plain view? Why would a criminal be deterred by a gun they don't know you have?
Please explain why concealed weapons are better, because it doesn't make sense to me.
60-70 years ago, the newspapers would have blamed that crazy jazz music. 30-40 years ago, rock and roll was the culprit. Whenever there are societal changes afoot (increasing usage of the Internet, for example), everything that goes wrong will be blamed on those changes no matter how tenuous the connection. This issue is sadly no different.
The only comment I can make (that hasn't been made already) is that every person is responsible for their own words and actions, and their own words and actions only. Nobody forced these kids to open fire - not gun manufacturers, not Doom or iD software, not Hitler or Marilyn Manson. They chose for themselves, and if they were still alive we would expect them to bear the consequences of their actions.
So I think the more important issue is: how does a person decide which action to take? Ultimately, you make decisions mostly based on the morals that you are taught by your parents and to a lesser extent the morals you learn from your environment. Many of us have undergone the same treatment as these kids, listened to the same music, played violent games, perhaps owned and/or used guns. We have all been exposed to the same admittedly violent culture that we live in. In fact, the only difference between these killers and ourselves is ...the parents.
What your parents teach you (or fail to teach you) is the most important influence on your choice of actions. When the media stops making knee-jerk accusations about Doom and that crazy Goth music, maybe we'll start to hear about the home lives of these two kids. Their parents didn't force them to pull the trigger at school, but kids that were raised correctly would never think that it was OK to take guns and 30 pipe bombs to school.
Try www.jwz.org/xscreensaver. It's a much better collection of screen savers than you would get with Windows, and (of course) it's free software. The 3D ones require Mesa, however. libXpm is also required or recommended for a few others.
It seems that there are three issues here:
Maybe. It certainly didn't make things look better for the rotten.com folks. If I was the artist I would be understandably upset that my drawings were being used for that. So this may be a copyright violation.
Again, maybe, depending on your reading of fair use. If they had called it anythingelsebert, they would be in better shape, versus using the Dilbert name. I don't see how you could trademark the suffix -bert. However, I don't think there was any way that the public could mistake these for the being the real Dilbert/United Media cartoons, and I don't think that rotten & company could have made any money off of that confusion (not that they were trying to).
As I understand it, the real point of trademark law is to prevent other people from using your trademark and your hard-earned reputation for their financial gain. There was no chance of that happening here - the site was clearly plastered with notices that they were not associated with Dilbert, United Media, and so forth. So I think using parody and fair use as a defense on the trademark law grounds would work. Of course, IANAL.
Fooled you - whether it was funny or not doesn't matter at all in these circumstances. Why should the legal standing of the previous two arguments be affected by what you think is humorous? I found the cartoons in bad taste too, but I don't see why that makes it a less affective parody. Some people on Slashdot found it funny, others didn't. That suggests to me that it was a not entirely effective parody, not that it failed to be a parody at all.
The bottom line is that the right to poke fun at a anything should be protected, whether or not the majority agrees with with the humor. If we went along with what the majority thought all the time, this forum wouldn't exist.
I'm afraid you are mistaken. The entire paragraph, found at http://www.capitalresearch.org/ trends/ot-0499a.html, is as follows:
So first off, I'm afraid I did not misquote the article. I'm curious how you expect to comment on something you haven't read properly :p
Second, if Sun, HP, and other companies have made the GNU HURD or the GNU utilities proprietary, then someone should pass this info on to the FSF folks, because that would be a serious violation of the licensing terms of GNU software. This is not the case, of course.
Sorry, but the authors of this article are attempting to refer to the original Unix, which originated at AT&T. The reference to Unix in the middle of a paragraph about GNU is confusing, but then the rest of the article isn't particularly accurate either, it it?
From their web page (emphasis added):
They seem to be focused on protecting business from the effects of government charities. Apparently they heard about the Microsoft trial and free software, put the two together and decided that the government was out to destroy businesses who make money off of software. Last time I checked, that wasn't the situation at all, but if you read their article with that perspective in mind, it does seem a little less circular and convoluted.
When you think about it, it's strange that they came down on the FSF in the article, because the FSF is an example of exactly what they are trying to encourage: a private group of individuals volunteering for the public good. No government involvement there, which seems to be Capital Research's main concern.
My favorite parts:
I thought that originally Unix was distributed for free (source and all, with no support) because AT&T was prohibited from entering the OS market. Unfortunately for the folks at Capital Research, Unix had to wait several years before it could begin competing with Windows, because Windows didn't exist yet.
I, for one, would love to dampen that creativity, and skip a little progress as far as incompatible, obscure file formats.
I think one of these will end up as a sig quote.
This was definitely the best Jon Katz that I have read here yet. The difference was I was able to read the story seamlessly without noticing "Katzisms" throughout - nothing really jarred the stream of thought of the article.
That being said, I was fairly disturbed by the content of the article, so much so that it's taken me overnight to determine exactly what bothered me:
Real character involves living with honor and sticking to your ideals in the face of hardship. Some posters have pointed out that in some cases the law may be wrong and a person in good conscience may break the law because of their belief that the law is wrong. Standing up for your beliefs in this manner would demonstrate real character, but this isn't the impression I get from the article. They weren't making fake IDs because they had strong beliefs that 19 year olds should be able to drink, they were doing it to make a fast buck. Likewise, they don't appear to have strong beliefs concerning the freedom of software (source or otherwise) or music on the Internet - they just don't pay for these things because it's inconvenient for them. That is not living with honor, and these are not actions that should be held up as examples to the community.
Before ducking into my flame-shelter, I'll leave you with one point to ponder. I'm not perfect either. I've never faked an ID, but I have copied software that I shouldn't have. It was wrong when I did it, and I'm not going to do it again. Probably no one reading this has lead a blameless life. However, even though you or I are not perfect, we still should stand up for what is right. It isn't right to fake IDs, it isn't right to violate copyright laws for software or music, but it also isn't right for society to marginalize two people who are obviously intelligent but may have problems interacting with other people. Again, I wish Jesse and Eric good luck at their jobs in Chicago, and I hope that they have some more opportunities to discover the wonders of the world outside their apartment.