Bench the latest Mozilla build (turn off debugging and turn on optimization, just like a normal release build) and post that again. Of course, to really shine, run it on Linux or a free BSD.
Seriously, it's fast and its implementation of little things like CSS (which as far as I'm concerned is the future of online content) is light years ahead if IE anyways.
Then again, you might be interested to know that as of IE 5.5, IE was backported from the Macintosh version. That's right, the MS-IE-Mac-port team did it so much better that they backported it to Windows. That's where the speed and decent standards support came from!
I think that this goes to show that Microsoft doesn't re-write something from scratch on purpose. They had to force their Mac team to basically do so (because, like, it's IE not on Windows, you have to redo a bunch of stuff) before they figured out that they needed to reimplement. The sad thing is that they don't seem to be willing to do it where it counts, no matter how "security focused they become" they don't ever figure out that it's impossible to effectively rewrite Windows "a piece at a time".
If you follow the link to the description of the problem, it gets really wierd. Apparently this is one of those problems where you have to prove it for 1=7} but no one ever managed n=3 (which was the original, non-generalized conjecture anyways). Funny that this guy just had to fill in the last blank.
Yeah, whatever. Before you go around criticizing someone's "lack of programming skill", maybe you should check to see that his resume's ONLINE.
Why not go to:
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/resume.html
Besides, what does ESR not being in a Unix history book have to do with being a decent programmer. Life would be very different for the average home Unix-like OS user without, say, ncurses or fetchmail (two of the newer projects he's associated with).
As for "attaching" to a "revolutionary movement" to get attention, check out some of his publications in, say, the Linux journal. He's been around longer than some people realize.
Re:The best he can build is a disintegration chamb
on
Time Travel
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
This is actually not that new of an idea. Larry Niven (sci-fi novelist) wrote a short story called "All The Myriad Ways" about something like this. It basically was about a detective researching suicides in people that travel parallel dimensions. It also has the notion that each second infinitely many parallel universes appear as each possible outcome of the present.
The real kicker is about how when the dimension travellers get home. When they leave, a little point is set on their display as to which universe to return to. As time passes, the universes multiply, and that single point becomes a band of points--because their universe has already been going on without them. The "widening of the bands" apparently causes these guys to get depressed and off themselves.
This begs the question (with regards to those timelines appearing out of nowhere) about whether a time traveller will be able to direct which universe they could head towards. There was another book, Novelty (can't seem to find the author), that had an idea that you couldn't travel contrafactually (so universes containing many time travellers just got wierder and wierder), so it was possible for a set of parallel universes to exist where people, were their own grandfather, but not a universe where someone killed their grandfather (or if they did, they got kinda stuck in that universe because they couldn't go back, or something like that). Although, the book didn't explore the idea too thoroughly.
Anyways, seeing how nature would sort out this kind of hubris would be damn interesting.
I know that the Calvin and Hobbes guy didn't enforce his rights over the Calvin character until people started making big money off of it. Then, in court, someone demonstrated he had prior knowledge and a lot of time to persecute (err...prosecute) and the judge threw out his trademark/copyright/patent/whatever. Is there a clarification on the difference (IANAL)? That's why you see all of those little Calvin-peeing-on-something stickers everywhere.
I've always found this line of reasoning to be interesting.
The warez kiddies commit a crime with an otherwise legal tool, so sue the toolmaker.
This applies to all IP, right? So if someone locks out portions of an Excel Spreadsheet, and I happen to export the file to text (which exports the whole thing), is Microsoft liable? I don't think so.
After all, Microsoft didn't implement (in their 3rd party program) sufficient protection against stealing someone's IP.
The lunacy can go way too far. People still build CD burners (even though they make possible piracy of physical media). Heck, originally the 'uncopyable' CD was *THE* copy protection for years. What about Windows Networking allowing a single CD to be used over a network? Doesn't that allow circumventional of your 'exclusive-media' copy protection system.
Face it, the DMCA exists as a legal club that will never really get tested all the way to the Supreme Court for quite some time. Literally, companies would rather have it as a way to sap money from opposition. They never want to risk a conviction, appeals could overturn everything! It's one more tool in their 'circumventing fair use' toolkit.
Here's a radical idea. Laws are IP. They provide some sort of protection, right? Let's pass the CLUE (Corporate Lobbyists Usurpation Enactment). Laws exist for reasons. Lobbyists lobby for laws that make other laws and judgements ineffective since they can't achieve a direct repeal of the laws. Well, laws can be repealed for a reason--so instead, make it a crime to propose or lobby for a law the nullifies another standing law or judgement without repealing it. IP legislation needs to butt heads *directly* with fair use. After all, doesn't fair use exist purely because they were obviously implied by the nature of copyright? When did we lose that? I mean, copyright didn't even *CHANGE*! So why a "Digital Millenium Act" as anything other than as a convenient excuse.
While we're at it, let's legislate some limits on contract law too...
There is a poorly documented (gee, surprise surprise) option to add indexes (at least for the ldbm backend). Try putting
index cn,gn,sn,uid,objectclass,o,ou pres,eq,sub
in your database definition in SlapD. Note that you will need to rebuild the DB after that. I suggest exporting it to ldif (via 'ldbmcat -n > file.ldif' with slapd offline), delete the db, then reimport (via 'ldif2ldbm -i file.ldif') and restart slapd. You will notice a *SERIOUS* speed increase during search and a *SERIOUS* speed loss during the initial import. Unless you're doing tonnes of updates, you shouldn't have any speed issues with updating it, though.
Admittedly, he is kinda screwing the pooch. But it's not like he's breaking new ground.
Certainly, a lot of really nasty bugs showed up after release (around 2.4.5). I'd have to say that his solution, while bumpy, will probably give us the best fix.
I mean, did you actually look at some of the VM code? After a while it became quite clear that there were just layers of hacks being put on to fix it. It *NEEDED* Andrea's rewrite.
That being said, while there were about two months of real ugliness, it seems that the worst is behind us.
However, I do concede that there might need to be a bit more testing, but I really think that we're doing marvelously.
A very good assumption, however, is that when Linus "releases a new kernel", it is not like a "new release of RedHat". He's always pretty much maintained that QA is up to distros. He's not releasing each one in the context that tomorrow the whole world will upgrade. Truthfully, they seem to be more a release to the developer community. Sometimes there are rough edges, but, in general, the people don't get hurt (I don't care what OS you run, if your data is important--you DO NOT upgrade on a whim).
Finally some good points. This probably shouldn't be a reply to this
message but it's too late now.
I would point out that this bug does not turn up readily.
This bug allows a system to boot up normally, run fine, and then when you
reboot (and only when you reboot) some files are missing if (and only
if) their buffers were dirty when you rebooted.
This is NOT easy to catch. The average Linux system has upwards of 50,000
files. A few disappearing is not easy to notice. In addition, buffers
tend to get flushed pretty well during the shutdown process, so it
wouldn't show up too often either (I avoided on accident it due to a
peculiar RAID shutdown script I have that sync's and sleep's for a bit).
For the M$ zealots out there be careful to practice what you preach. One
of the core arguements of the Slaves of the Empire is that the Linux
zealots bash M$ but can't take criticism themselves. If you'll check your
precious windowsupdate.microsoft.com on a fresh Win98 install, you'll find
the IDE Hard Drive Cache Update. For the uninitiated, this patch fixes a
problem where Windows doesn't write all of the data to disk on
shutdown. Ironically, this tended to completely hose Win98 systems
beyond fixing by Scandisk (usually registry damage).
So, Win98 and Linux have similar problems. In a week, the Linux bug will
be history, but the M$ one is still being minted on CD and requires an
Internet download (because it's a "minor problem", the fix is to "wait
before shut down so the data is written"). I don't remember too much
babbling on Slashdot about that bug and it's been there for YEARS.
Gosh, I guess I should write this off as being dribble by "Linux
Bashers".
Oh, and to completely trash my karma, I've had disk corruption in a stable
FreeBSD due to a bug in FreeBSD code, so don't get too high on your own
superiority yet. You've got older code--sometimes it's a strength,
sometimes it's a weakness. Like the FreeBSD development process isn't
ever rocky.
Is it slightly more permissible for an OS upgrade to trash a filesystem
than, say, a piece of multimedia software, no?
I mean, this problem just requires a check of a the disk (something I
believe Win9x does at the drop of a hat). iTunes nuked files and it
didn't even have any business with the file access beyond reading them.
Actually, the Ringworld would never have been safe enough for the cowardly puppeteers. They wouldn't risk the danger involved with a break in/large impact on the Ringworld. Similar reasons are why the Pak probably didn't build it.
Check out the Larry Niven Mailing List. It's larryniven-l@bucknell.edu
The one thing to remember about lawyers is that they are very picky with words. If it doesn't say "public domain" and says "copyright" on it (GPL'd software is supposed to) then this ploy definitely does not work. Never listen to the AC's.
Re:Linux stocks falling independently of market
on
Tech Stocks Tumble
·
· Score: 1
Have you ever actually run Linux in a production environment? Have you ever had to make, say Exchange Server be half as functional of sendmail on the same box? For that matter, has the "VAXman" ever run a good UNIX (still bitter that VAX didn't do better or something)?
Linux is, hands down, a better server environment for most things. Make a benchmark sometime. Try it under huge load. Unless you blow tens of thousands of dollars on NT Enterprise Edition, you can't come close to the performance or the reliability.
So don't tell me it's technically inadequate, it works for more small to enterprise businesses than you would imagine. And don't tell me it's financially inadequate, because I make a living with it.
The important thing to realize is that, unlike other software, it is difficult to exploit Linux. You can't just "sell linux" and expect to build a business on it. This is good for the economy. It stops people from making money doing nothing. Perhaps any falling Linux stocks are just the value of the companies reflecting the value that a company has, rather than artificially inflating it using preferential business tactics and expensive licensing.
Stock value is not a measure of technical superiority. And the financial value of Linux isn't just selling IT, but rather doing things with it.
Actually, I don't necessarily think that pornography should be viewed in public on those terminals. However, I do still maintain that the computer has no good way to determine what is or isn't pornography. Furthermore, the line between fine art and pornography has always been blurry. Art has always had a place in the library--even controversial art is often available.
At any rate, a watchful librarian, children's library, or, at least, separate Internet facilities for adults would be an infinitely better solution to the problem. One that respected the rights of adults to request material they want--and the rights of others to be heard in a public forum.
Thanks for your input. Adult sections or hours are a good step in the right direction.
(1) Library acquisitions are and must be governed by local community standards.
If that is true, then why would that mean much desirable content is lost? If a member of the community desires the content, then it seems to meet community standards, doesn't it?
Now if you mean the lowest common community standard, then say it--but remind people that they are working to force a public, educational institution to the lowest common denominator of content.
The Internet is not like a book, anyways. A library acquires books so that people don't need to acquire them for home. Library internet serves the same purpose. However, acquisition of the Internet gives the whole Internet. Not just a book, every book! At any rate, the "library acquisitions" analogy doesn't apply to the Internet. When you get it, you get it all. Censoring software is there to change that--but does so in a fundamentally indiscriminant and arbitrary way--that is the issue. Don't sidestep it.
People go to libraries to be educated. How do you expect people to learn if they are restricted to children's material? People grow--the library needs to be for people of all ages. Let librarians deal with the pornography viewers--the computers just aren't smart or flexible enough (yet?).
Why do you expect a third-party to be honest in determining what is acceptable to view? Would you be happy if every newspaper consolidated into "The Daily News" but it was okay because they say they will responsibly determine what is good news? Hopefully not. Why? Because you just can't trust a "third party" to be fair and have no biased agenda.
Your "third-party" needs funding. Most people don't fund it. And with funding comes the agenda of those doing the funding. A bit trusting, no? I, for one, hope you don't enrage anyone with a few hundred thousand dollars to spare . ..
With regards to the above, I defer to another/. poster. "Some things never change. Why would you expect them to?"
To briefly address number 2, there are standards on the Internet--they're just very low.;P
Ever hear the phrase "Tyranny of the Majority"? It was coined by one of the founders of the United States (don't remember which one, but I'm reminded of Hamilton or Jefferson).
The majority of people want nothing more than a warm bed, food, and a few shiny things to make their lives worthwhile. A society that provides that doesn't need documents like the American Bill of Rights. If you like that, look at Communism, Socialism, or Monarchy done well. There have been marches in Russia calling for a return to the days of Joseph Stalin. Why? Those people aren't stupid or brainwashed, they're hungry and cold. Their newfound freedom hasn't gained them what they want. They remember food, warmth, and safe streets. The oppression was, to them, worth it. So you may see, this is not just about protecting the children--this is about people who either:
a) Want freedoms for themselves but don't feel them appropriate for children. -or- b) Don't want people to excersize freedoms they have and can't get around that pesky First Amendment.
It's not about what the majority wants. It's about living the life that you want to live--quality of life. If people want to view controversial pages at the library, they should. Knowledge (and thus libraries) are not about what the entire community feels comfortable showing their children.
If you want to protect your children, that's fine--but you do it. You can't leave children alone in the world. The Internet and Libraries reflect the world--as they should. Why should you be able to leave your child alone there? Don't try to make the world be a parent for you. If you don't have enough time to spend with your children, don't have them . . . it's that simple.
While library terminals are obviously not the place to be viewing pornography, a librarian can be infinitely more effective than blocking software. A community of tens of millions of people can post pornography at a rate with which active blocking can never compete. It's impractical. Computers just aren't that smart yet.
Furthermore, incorrect blocking clearly violates the rights of minorities who need to be heard. They can never recover the damage from being blocked--mindshare.
Given that, you must understand that the library is responsible--as a public institution--to aide them in being heard. They are not responsible for protecting your children from the world. It is impractical at best--censorship at worst.
At any rate, has anyone proposed a compromise? Bottom line, anything that is blocked is *LEGAL* material for adults to view. Has anyone considered blocking software that can be deactivated for adults?
The issue is that there are some things that can have an adverse effect on children because they are not prepared to deal with those things. Adults don't have that problem. What about conditional blocking?
At any rate, just because you find it unpleasant or unsuitable for your children, doesn't mean it has no place in a public library or in our society. It's just not for you or your children.
That said, try conditional blocking that accomplishes the same thing without violating others' rights--or better yet, start a children's library. That would completely solve the problem, wouldn't it?
Slashdot Mirror
Bench the latest Mozilla build (turn off debugging and turn on optimization, just like a normal release build) and post that again. Of course, to really shine, run it on Linux or a free BSD.
Seriously, it's fast and its implementation of little things like CSS (which as far as I'm concerned is the future of online content) is light years ahead if IE anyways.
Then again, you might be interested to know that as of IE 5.5, IE was backported from the Macintosh version. That's right, the MS-IE-Mac-port team did it so much better that they backported it to Windows. That's where the speed and decent standards support came from!
I think that this goes to show that Microsoft doesn't re-write something from scratch on purpose. They had to force their Mac team to basically do so (because, like, it's IE not on Windows, you have to redo a bunch of stuff) before they figured out that they needed to reimplement. The sad thing is that they don't seem to be willing to do it where it counts, no matter how "security focused they become" they don't ever figure out that it's impossible to effectively rewrite Windows "a piece at a time".
If you follow the link to the description of the problem, it gets really wierd. Apparently this is one of those problems where you have to prove it for 1=7} but no one ever managed n=3 (which was the original, non-generalized conjecture anyways). Funny that this guy just had to fill in the last blank.
Yeah, whatever. Before you go around criticizing someone's "lack of programming skill", maybe you should check to see that his resume's ONLINE.
Why not go to:
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/resume.html
Besides, what does ESR not being in a Unix history book have to do with being a decent programmer. Life would be very different for the average home Unix-like OS user without, say, ncurses or fetchmail (two of the newer projects he's associated with).
As for "attaching" to a "revolutionary movement" to get attention, check out some of his publications in, say, the Linux journal. He's been around longer than some people realize.
This is actually not that new of an idea. Larry Niven (sci-fi novelist) wrote a short story called "All The Myriad Ways" about something like this. It basically was about a detective researching suicides in people that travel parallel dimensions. It also has the notion that each second infinitely many parallel universes appear as each possible outcome of the present.
The real kicker is about how when the dimension travellers get home. When they leave, a little point is set on their display as to which universe to return to. As time passes, the universes multiply, and that single point becomes a band of points--because their universe has already been going on without them. The "widening of the bands" apparently causes these guys to get depressed and off themselves.
This begs the question (with regards to those timelines appearing out of nowhere) about whether a time traveller will be able to direct which universe they could head towards. There was another book, Novelty (can't seem to find the author), that had an idea that you couldn't travel contrafactually (so universes containing many time travellers just got wierder and wierder), so it was possible for a set of parallel universes to exist where people, were their own grandfather, but not a universe where someone killed their grandfather (or if they did, they got kinda stuck in that universe because they couldn't go back, or something like that). Although, the book didn't explore the idea too thoroughly.
Anyways, seeing how nature would sort out this kind of hubris would be damn interesting.
That's just too funny. I especially like the parts about "truckshardware.com", and buying out AMD with "excess nForce stock in the channel".
I know that the Calvin and Hobbes guy didn't enforce his rights over the Calvin character until people started making big money off of it. Then, in court, someone demonstrated he had prior knowledge and a lot of time to persecute (err...prosecute) and the judge threw out his trademark/copyright/patent/whatever. Is there a clarification on the difference (IANAL)? That's why you see all of those little Calvin-peeing-on-something stickers everywhere.
I've always found this line of reasoning to be interesting.
The warez kiddies commit a crime with an otherwise legal tool, so sue the toolmaker.
This applies to all IP, right? So if someone locks out portions of an Excel Spreadsheet, and I happen to export the file to text (which exports the whole thing), is Microsoft liable? I don't think so.
After all, Microsoft didn't implement (in their 3rd party program) sufficient protection against stealing someone's IP.
The lunacy can go way too far. People still build CD burners (even though they make possible piracy of physical media). Heck, originally the 'uncopyable' CD was *THE* copy protection for years. What about Windows Networking allowing a single CD to be used over a network? Doesn't that allow circumventional of your 'exclusive-media' copy protection system.
Face it, the DMCA exists as a legal club that will never really get tested all the way to the Supreme Court for quite some time. Literally, companies would rather have it as a way to sap money from opposition. They never want to risk a conviction, appeals could overturn everything! It's one more tool in their 'circumventing fair use' toolkit.
Here's a radical idea. Laws are IP. They provide some sort of protection, right? Let's pass the CLUE (Corporate Lobbyists Usurpation Enactment). Laws exist for reasons. Lobbyists lobby for laws that make other laws and judgements ineffective since they can't achieve a direct repeal of the laws. Well, laws can be repealed for a reason--so instead, make it a crime to propose or lobby for a law the nullifies another standing law or judgement without repealing it. IP legislation needs to butt heads *directly* with fair use. After all, doesn't fair use exist purely because they were obviously implied by the nature of copyright? When did we lose that? I mean, copyright didn't even *CHANGE*! So why a "Digital Millenium Act" as anything other than as a convenient excuse.
While we're at it, let's legislate some limits on contract law too...
Actually, it takes some tweaking.
There is a poorly documented (gee, surprise surprise) option to add indexes (at least for the ldbm backend). Try putting
index cn,gn,sn,uid,objectclass,o,ou pres,eq,sub
in your database definition in SlapD. Note that you will need to rebuild the DB after that. I suggest exporting it to ldif (via 'ldbmcat -n > file.ldif' with slapd offline), delete the db, then reimport (via 'ldif2ldbm -i file.ldif') and restart slapd. You will notice a *SERIOUS* speed increase during search and a *SERIOUS* speed loss during the initial import. Unless you're doing tonnes of updates, you shouldn't have any speed issues with updating it, though.
Admittedly, he is kinda screwing the pooch. But it's not like he's breaking new ground.
Certainly, a lot of really nasty bugs showed up after release (around 2.4.5). I'd have to say that his solution, while bumpy, will probably give us the best fix.
I mean, did you actually look at some of the VM code? After a while it became quite clear that there were just layers of hacks being put on to fix it. It *NEEDED* Andrea's rewrite.
That being said, while there were about two months of real ugliness, it seems that the worst is behind us.
However, I do concede that there might need to be a bit more testing, but I really think that we're doing marvelously.
A very good assumption, however, is that when Linus "releases a new kernel", it is not like a "new release of RedHat". He's always pretty much maintained that QA is up to distros. He's not releasing each one in the context that tomorrow the whole world will upgrade. Truthfully, they seem to be more a release to the developer community. Sometimes there are rough edges, but, in general, the people don't get hurt (I don't care what OS you run, if your data is important--you DO NOT upgrade on a whim).
Finally some good points. This probably shouldn't be a reply to this
message but it's too late now.
I would point out that this bug does not turn up readily.
This bug allows a system to boot up normally, run fine, and then when you
reboot (and only when you reboot) some files are missing if (and only
if) their buffers were dirty when you rebooted.
This is NOT easy to catch. The average Linux system has upwards of 50,000
files. A few disappearing is not easy to notice. In addition, buffers
tend to get flushed pretty well during the shutdown process, so it
wouldn't show up too often either (I avoided on accident it due to a
peculiar RAID shutdown script I have that sync's and sleep's for a bit).
For the M$ zealots out there be careful to practice what you preach. One
of the core arguements of the Slaves of the Empire is that the Linux
zealots bash M$ but can't take criticism themselves. If you'll check your
precious windowsupdate.microsoft.com on a fresh Win98 install, you'll find
the IDE Hard Drive Cache Update. For the uninitiated, this patch fixes a
problem where Windows doesn't write all of the data to disk on
shutdown. Ironically, this tended to completely hose Win98 systems
beyond fixing by Scandisk (usually registry damage).
So, Win98 and Linux have similar problems. In a week, the Linux bug will
be history, but the M$ one is still being minted on CD and requires an
Internet download (because it's a "minor problem", the fix is to "wait
before shut down so the data is written"). I don't remember too much
babbling on Slashdot about that bug and it's been there for YEARS.
Gosh, I guess I should write this off as being dribble by "Linux
Bashers".
Oh, and to completely trash my karma, I've had disk corruption in a stable
FreeBSD due to a bug in FreeBSD code, so don't get too high on your own
superiority yet. You've got older code--sometimes it's a strength,
sometimes it's a weakness. Like the FreeBSD development process isn't
ever rocky.
Is it slightly more permissible for an OS upgrade to trash a filesystem
than, say, a piece of multimedia software, no?
I mean, this problem just requires a check of a the disk (something I
believe Win9x does at the drop of a hat). iTunes nuked files and it
didn't even have any business with the file access beyond reading them.
In conclusion, all generalizations are bad.
Actually, the Ringworld would never have been safe enough for the cowardly puppeteers. They wouldn't risk the danger involved with a break in/large impact on the Ringworld. Similar reasons are why the Pak probably didn't build it.
Check out the Larry Niven Mailing List. It's larryniven-l@bucknell.edu
The one thing to remember about lawyers is that they are very picky with words. If it doesn't say "public domain" and says "copyright" on it (GPL'd software is supposed to) then this ploy definitely does not work. Never listen to the AC's.
Have you ever actually run Linux in a production environment? Have you ever had to make, say Exchange Server be half as functional of sendmail on the same box? For that matter, has the "VAXman" ever run a good UNIX (still bitter that VAX didn't do better or something)?
Linux is, hands down, a better server environment for most things. Make a benchmark sometime. Try it under huge load. Unless you blow tens of thousands of dollars on NT Enterprise Edition, you can't come close to the performance or the reliability.
So don't tell me it's technically inadequate, it works for more small to enterprise businesses than you would imagine. And don't tell me it's financially inadequate, because I make a living with it.
The important thing to realize is that, unlike other software, it is difficult to exploit Linux. You can't just "sell linux" and expect to build a business on it. This is good for the economy. It stops people from making money doing nothing. Perhaps any falling Linux stocks are just the value of the companies reflecting the value that a company has, rather than artificially inflating it using preferential business tactics and expensive licensing.
Stock value is not a measure of technical superiority. And the financial value of Linux isn't just selling IT, but rather doing things with it.
Actually, I don't necessarily think that pornography should be viewed in public on those terminals. However, I do still maintain that the computer has no good way to determine what is or isn't pornography. Furthermore, the line between fine art and pornography has always been blurry. Art has always had a place in the library--even controversial art is often available.
At any rate, a watchful librarian, children's library, or, at least, separate Internet facilities for adults would be an infinitely better solution to the problem. One that respected the rights of adults to request material they want--and the rights of others to be heard in a public forum.
Thanks for your input. Adult sections or hours are a good step in the right direction.
If that is true, then why would that mean much desirable content is lost? If a member of the community desires the content, then it seems to meet community standards, doesn't it?
Now if you mean the lowest common community standard, then say it--but remind people that they are working to force a public, educational institution to the lowest common denominator of content.
The Internet is not like a book, anyways. A library acquires books so that people don't need to acquire them for home. Library internet serves the same purpose. However, acquisition of the Internet gives the whole Internet. Not just a book, every book! At any rate, the "library acquisitions" analogy doesn't apply to the Internet. When you get it, you get it all. Censoring software is there to change that--but does so in a fundamentally indiscriminant and arbitrary way--that is the issue. Don't sidestep it.
People go to libraries to be educated. How do you expect people to learn if they are restricted to children's material? People grow--the library needs to be for people of all ages. Let librarians deal with the pornography viewers--the computers just aren't smart or flexible enough (yet?).
Why do you expect a third-party to be honest in determining what is acceptable to view? Would you be happy if every newspaper consolidated into "The Daily News" but it was okay because they say they will responsibly determine what is good news? Hopefully not. Why? Because you just can't trust a "third party" to be fair and have no biased agenda.
Your "third-party" needs funding. Most people don't fund it. And with funding comes the agenda of those doing the funding. A bit trusting, no? I, for one, hope you don't enrage anyone with a few hundred thousand dollars to spare . . .
With regards to the above, I defer to another /. poster. "Some things never change. Why would you expect them to?"
To briefly address number 2, there are standards on the Internet--they're just very low. ;P
The problem transcends the majority.
Ever hear the phrase "Tyranny of the Majority"? It was coined by one of the founders of the United States (don't remember which one, but I'm reminded of Hamilton or Jefferson).
The majority of people want nothing more than a warm bed, food, and a few shiny things to make their lives worthwhile. A society that provides that doesn't need documents like the American Bill of Rights. If you like that, look at Communism, Socialism, or Monarchy done well. There have been marches in Russia calling for a return to the days of Joseph Stalin. Why? Those people aren't stupid or brainwashed, they're hungry and cold. Their newfound freedom hasn't gained them what they want. They remember food, warmth, and safe streets. The oppression was, to them, worth it. So you may see, this is not just about protecting the children--this is about people who either:
a) Want freedoms for themselves but don't feel them appropriate for children.
-or-
b) Don't want people to excersize freedoms they have and can't get around that pesky First Amendment.
It's not about what the majority wants. It's about living the life that you want to live--quality of life. If people want to view controversial pages at the library, they should. Knowledge (and thus libraries) are not about what the entire community feels comfortable showing their children.
If you want to protect your children, that's fine--but you do it. You can't leave children alone in the world. The Internet and Libraries reflect the world--as they should. Why should you be able to leave your child alone there? Don't try to make the world be a parent for you. If you don't have enough time to spend with your children, don't have them . . . it's that simple.
While library terminals are obviously not the place to be viewing pornography, a librarian can be infinitely more effective than blocking software. A community of tens of millions of people can post pornography at a rate with which active blocking can never compete. It's impractical. Computers just aren't that smart yet.
Furthermore, incorrect blocking clearly violates the rights of minorities who need to be heard. They can never recover the damage from being blocked--mindshare.
Given that, you must understand that the library is responsible--as a public institution--to aide them in being heard. They are not responsible for protecting your children from the world. It is impractical at best--censorship at worst.
At any rate, has anyone proposed a compromise? Bottom line, anything that is blocked is *LEGAL* material for adults to view. Has anyone considered blocking software that can be deactivated for adults?
The issue is that there are some things that can have an adverse effect on children because they are not prepared to deal with those things. Adults don't have that problem. What about conditional blocking?
At any rate, just because you find it unpleasant or unsuitable for your children, doesn't mean it has no place in a public library or in our society. It's just not for you or your children.
That said, try conditional blocking that accomplishes the same thing without violating others' rights--or better yet, start a children's library. That would completely solve the problem, wouldn't it?