I don't understand what Microsoft would have to gain by porting Office to Linux. Seems to me they'd just be undermining themselves. Can anyone shed any light on this?
Dammit! DAMMIT! Curses! I keep seeing references to the concept of "free as in beer," but what the high-holy hell does that MEAN? I've never seen the term explained anywhere.
While I'm sure IRC chatting with Bruce Perens is a very worthwhile way to spend one's evening, I feel obliged to point out that 9:00pm Eastern is when the X-Files airs. To say that more than a few of us geeks will be torn would be putting it mildly.
Is anyone else getting the impression that Mr. Katz is preaching to the choir here? If anyone knows the reality of the internet, it's the typical Slashdot reader.
The first generation Internet belonged to the engineers, dreamers and military researchers. The second belongs to the Geeks and the Dotcommers, who battled one another, sometimes directly, sometimes not, for attention and primacy. It was the Microsoft Era, and it's over.
This entire article suffers from the underlying assumption that the internet is somehow what the media makes it out to be, even while it proports to argue against exactly that! The internet has always been populated by engineers, dreamers, geeks, military researchers, and dot-commers, not to mention the Unwashed Masses. All that has ever changed is the proportions. The fact that the media fixated on the "dot-com phenomenon" during last few years didn't stop the engineers from engineering, the geeks from geeking, the dreamers from dreaming, or the military researchers from devising more efficient ways to kill and/or avoid being killed. It should also be noted that there's a significant amount of overlap between the above-mentioned groups. Many engineers involved in military research are geeks, and it would be hard to deny that most dot-commers are dreamers.
Katz acts as if it's some great revelation that things like Napster, Gnutella, and Freenet came to be during the "dot-com era." It's no surprise at all - the "dot-com era" was about the media fixating on dot-coms, not about what was really happening on the internet. The geeks kept on geeking, and more than a few really cool things emerged. I'm sure plenty of military research continued quietly in the background, too.
The dot-com era was not the Microsoft Era. If anything, the Microsoft Era is yet to come, and that scares me.
My prediction: computing will spur the creation of Open Societies, digital technologies being applied to open government, different models for doing business, a revamping of intellectual property and a breaking down of hierarchies, barriers between citizens and government, even some national boundaries.
Katz is showing his Wired roots again. Media outlets like Wired have been promising a technology-driven utopia for years now. So far, the closest we've gotten is Slashdot. <snicker>
The Net is almost ferociously anti-hierarchical. Online authority reflects online architecture -- it is so de-centralized that the idea of a central information control seems almost impossible.
Since it was mentioned in the article, and since I haven't posted anything in a while, I think it's time for me to rant against the wholesale dismissal by the traditional scientific community of UFO's, extraterrestrials, and other paranormal/fringe science phenomena. In my defense, I'm not a "UFO nut" - heck, I'm not even a "believer." I'm careful not to "believe" anything, but to work from the best evidence I have at the time. Sometimes I'll take the word of experts, provided that what they say makes sense to me, but I rarely if ever take anything at face value, and I prefer to base my assumptions on evidence I've seen first hand.
The problem I have is this: traditional science is only set up to understand that which is easily and repeatedly observable under controlled conditions. Traditional science is unlikely to be able to investigate paranormal phenomena because many of these phenomena are transient and almost impossible to produce on demand. This doesn't mean such phenomena don't exist; it simply means that traditional science is ill suited to the study of such phenomena.
Another factor enters in at this point: ego. Traditional science is conducted by PhD's at universities and research institutions. Most of us have gone to college or are at least familiar with the academic environment. The egos, narrow-mindedness and short-sightedness of some of these experts is unbelievable! They're as dogmatic as the most fanatical religious fundamentalists. They worship knowledge rather than question it. If something doesn't fit their picture of how things work, it's discarded, ridiculed, and those who proposed the idea are ostracized and regarded as fools. Only the smallest, most obvious new ideas, or those with overwhelming evidence in their favor, are accepted by the traditional scientific community. The problem is that this leaves little or no room for quantum leaps forward in understanding.
I know a lot of you must think I'm full of shit by now, so let me give you an example most of you can relate to. Have you ever had a transient problem with a piece of equipment and the manufacturer/vendor/whatever refused to admit the problem existed? Most of us have. I remember having a problem with static on a phone line once. It was so bad that my modem wouldn't stay connected, and often couldn't connect at all. It wasn't always like this - some days it was almost okay, and others it was terrible. The telco insisted that there was nothing wrong with the line. They tested it from the central office - "looks okay from here!" They sent a tech out to my house. He hooked up some piece of equipment that tested the voltage, impedence, and other line characteristics. "They all look normal." They told me the problem was with my in-house wiring (even though the static was still there when I disconnected the indoor wiring and tapped in directly at the telco interface). After many days of calling and complaining I finally got a competant tech who started at the house and traced the line step-by-step back toward the central office. He found a bad splice a couple hops down the line, in a junction box on another street. Well, what do you know - I was right all along!
Sounds a lot like how the traditional scientific community works, doesn't it? Now, imagine if the telco worked even more like the scientific community. Imagine if, when I first called to report a problem, they not only denied the problem's existance but cancelled my phone service and refused to speak to me ever again on the grounds that I spoke heresy. I would have been right all along, but proving it would have been damn near impossible. That is how the scientific community works. It's roughly on a par with the Catholic church in open-mindedness.
Just because paranormal phenomena are difficult to observe under controlled conditions, that does not mean they don't exist. The explanations for them may be other than what people think (strange lights in the sky being aliens from outer space vs. secret military aircraft, for example), but the phenomena themselves are quite real and quite explainable for those who are willing to open their minds to possibilities and just look.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't understand what Microsoft would have to gain by porting Office to Linux. Seems to me they'd just be undermining themselves. Can anyone shed any light on this?
Dammit! DAMMIT! Curses! I keep seeing references to the concept of "free as in beer," but what the high-holy hell does that MEAN? I've never seen the term explained anywhere.
While I'm sure IRC chatting with Bruce Perens is a very worthwhile way to spend one's evening, I feel obliged to point out that 9:00pm Eastern is when the X-Files airs. To say that more than a few of us geeks will be torn would be putting it mildly.
The first generation Internet belonged to the engineers, dreamers and military researchers. The second belongs to the Geeks and the Dotcommers, who battled one another, sometimes directly, sometimes not, for attention and primacy. It was the Microsoft Era, and it's over.
This entire article suffers from the underlying assumption that the internet is somehow what the media makes it out to be, even while it proports to argue against exactly that! The internet has always been populated by engineers, dreamers, geeks, military researchers, and dot-commers, not to mention the Unwashed Masses. All that has ever changed is the proportions. The fact that the media fixated on the "dot-com phenomenon" during last few years didn't stop the engineers from engineering, the geeks from geeking, the dreamers from dreaming, or the military researchers from devising more efficient ways to kill and/or avoid being killed. It should also be noted that there's a significant amount of overlap between the above-mentioned groups. Many engineers involved in military research are geeks, and it would be hard to deny that most dot-commers are dreamers.
Katz acts as if it's some great revelation that things like Napster, Gnutella, and Freenet came to be during the "dot-com era." It's no surprise at all - the "dot-com era" was about the media fixating on dot-coms, not about what was really happening on the internet. The geeks kept on geeking, and more than a few really cool things emerged. I'm sure plenty of military research continued quietly in the background, too.
The dot-com era was not the Microsoft Era. If anything, the Microsoft Era is yet to come, and that scares me.
My prediction: computing will spur the creation of Open Societies, digital technologies being applied to open government, different models for doing business, a revamping of intellectual property and a breaking down of hierarchies, barriers between citizens and government, even some national boundaries.
Katz is showing his Wired roots again. Media outlets like Wired have been promising a technology-driven utopia for years now. So far, the closest we've gotten is Slashdot. <snicker>
The Net is almost ferociously anti-hierarchical. Online authority reflects online architecture -- it is so de-centralized that the idea of a central information control seems almost impossible.
Tell that to ICANN.
The problem I have is this: traditional science is only set up to understand that which is easily and repeatedly observable under controlled conditions. Traditional science is unlikely to be able to investigate paranormal phenomena because many of these phenomena are transient and almost impossible to produce on demand. This doesn't mean such phenomena don't exist; it simply means that traditional science is ill suited to the study of such phenomena.
Another factor enters in at this point: ego. Traditional science is conducted by PhD's at universities and research institutions. Most of us have gone to college or are at least familiar with the academic environment. The egos, narrow-mindedness and short-sightedness of some of these experts is unbelievable! They're as dogmatic as the most fanatical religious fundamentalists. They worship knowledge rather than question it. If something doesn't fit their picture of how things work, it's discarded, ridiculed, and those who proposed the idea are ostracized and regarded as fools. Only the smallest, most obvious new ideas, or those with overwhelming evidence in their favor, are accepted by the traditional scientific community. The problem is that this leaves little or no room for quantum leaps forward in understanding.
I know a lot of you must think I'm full of shit by now, so let me give you an example most of you can relate to. Have you ever had a transient problem with a piece of equipment and the manufacturer/vendor/whatever refused to admit the problem existed? Most of us have. I remember having a problem with static on a phone line once. It was so bad that my modem wouldn't stay connected, and often couldn't connect at all. It wasn't always like this - some days it was almost okay, and others it was terrible. The telco insisted that there was nothing wrong with the line. They tested it from the central office - "looks okay from here!" They sent a tech out to my house. He hooked up some piece of equipment that tested the voltage, impedence, and other line characteristics. "They all look normal." They told me the problem was with my in-house wiring (even though the static was still there when I disconnected the indoor wiring and tapped in directly at the telco interface). After many days of calling and complaining I finally got a competant tech who started at the house and traced the line step-by-step back toward the central office. He found a bad splice a couple hops down the line, in a junction box on another street. Well, what do you know - I was right all along!
Sounds a lot like how the traditional scientific community works, doesn't it? Now, imagine if the telco worked even more like the scientific community. Imagine if, when I first called to report a problem, they not only denied the problem's existance but cancelled my phone service and refused to speak to me ever again on the grounds that I spoke heresy. I would have been right all along, but proving it would have been damn near impossible. That is how the scientific community works. It's roughly on a par with the Catholic church in open-mindedness.
Just because paranormal phenomena are difficult to observe under controlled conditions, that does not mean they don't exist. The explanations for them may be other than what people think (strange lights in the sky being aliens from outer space vs. secret military aircraft, for example), but the phenomena themselves are quite real and quite explainable for those who are willing to open their minds to possibilities and just look.