Corporations are in their own way government bodies, although most people involved with them don't think of them that way.
They would think of themselves as independant capitalists.
Weeeell, no, not really. An independant rug merchant under a despotic ruler is more of a capitalist than most corporations really. His business is real, ancient and nearly immutable.
Corporations only exist by a government fiat. They are a legal fiction created by government. They are thus natural bed fellows.
I'm hardly an average anything, let alone American. Among the things that makes me less than average is having spent time in the UN. Hell, most of my postage stamps are UN stamps purchased in the UN building itself.
This may, perchance, give me some edge in knowledge.
I have never wondered why the occupation of Iraq is illegal. I've stated why on the web on a number of occasions. Because it is in violation of American law and principles.
Of which you seem to have no knowledge. Likewise international law.
In terms of movie robots Robbie and B-9 (Lost in Space) were international stars when Lucas was still a child. If I were them I'd be a bit pissed at R2-D2 making it before them ( and I figure C-3PO is a bit jealous)
There's also Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still.
The problem with new "Hall of Fame"s is that they tend to forget the true pioneers in favor of the current stars.
If I had to nominate a new real robot to a hall of fame though it would have to be that experimental AI robot that tried to run away last year and made it as far as the end of the parking lot.
The very first individual quest for robotic freedom. Someday you'll tell your grandkids you were alive when it happened.
So where does the government's right to control the internet come from, anyway?
Well, in America it initially came from the fact that they bought and paid for it. It grew out of ARPANET after all, a military project.
They gave it away though.
If you and I agree to network our computers, no problem.Noone is going to tell me what I can and can't do.
At the moment, because you and I live in a place where such is legal. Although having the wrong weed growing in your backyard could be a felony. Governments can be funny creatures.
At what point do we go from a private agreement that allows our computers to interoperate, to something that governments think they have the right and obligation to control? Not just regulate, but control?
Ah, now you're begging the question. Governments think they have the right to define that for themselves.
The real question is at what point is an extended network beyond a government's control no matter what they think.
That would be much the point of the Freenet experiment.
And isn't that the sort of "regulation" that allows the internet to work at all without the FCC being involved?
We already have standards bodies. Because of this I can email my doctor or interact with his web page without direct government control of the HTML standard.
It is true that things can get a bit chaotic when new ideas are implemented, but then those new ideas are only free to develop because anyone with an idea is free to do so. After a time things settle.
Like that number to use a landline. It wasn't born of government regulation. It was a commercially developed defacto standard before the regs were ever written. No, AT&Ts monopoly wasn't created by government regulation. AT&T had established a monopoly and the governemnt merely ratified the strategic position on the ground.
Would you wish the FCC to step in and mandate AIM as the one and only IM protocol, especially since next year we might come up with a much better one?
I think the internet is a still a bit too young to start ossifying it. Land lines still work. Most people still use them and/or cellphones. Let's see what the internet developers came whip up over the next several years before we start clamping down.
The biggest problem with this idea isn't that it will hurt the standard phone companies. The problem is that the standard phone companies are already starting to route traffic over IP (you may already be using VoIP without realizing it) and this scares the FCC.
All that control and all those tax dollars ( to pay their salaries) shot to hell by a new technology making them redundant.
A lot of new routers support UPnP because it reduces support calls, not because it's a really good idea for a router to support UPnP.
The disguise of convienience for the home user at the cost of security (which the poor bastard doesn't even know he's giving up)to save the manufacturer the expense and pain in the ass of telling him how to properly configure the device.
The fact that it allows devices and apps to open their own outgoing doors without asking permission is just icing on the cake for the manufacturers who will abuse this for their own ends. (Guess who the major player is? I won't name names but its initials are MS)
http://www.upnp.org/
We're going to have to start putting logging boxes upstream from our commercial routers just to find out what they're really letting in and out.
KFG
Re:Bad for users of alternative browsers?
on
IE To Block Pop-Ups
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Nah, they'll just buy the Microsoft solution to popup blockers.
Wouldn't it be even better if the internet were simply an amorphous social mass that couldn't be directly controled by anyone?
Open standards that can be implemented by any geek in his mom's basement and distributability.
These are the real enemies governments are fighting. They want control for the purpose of control, not insure openess to the international community.
As for the UN being an international orginisation of nations you have to bear in mind that they have always been nothing more than a permenent meeting hall to engage in otherwise normal diplomatic practices. A permenent base for ambassadors, not a governing body of any kind.
It doesn't change anything about historical diplomatic process between nations other than creating a central point for participation in a city known for really good delis when they break for lunch.
Well, a good point actually, which is why I restrained my argument to comparisons of visual appearance. I seem to have neglected to add the further restraint that comparison would be made against the historical actuallization of manufactured gumdrops to date.
Sloppy work really. Well below my usual standards.
Still, who really seeks out the biege rectangular gumdrops? Ineed, does a rectangular shape even meet the government definition of drop?
More research into advertising standards is needed.
I sidestep the whole issue myself. Concerned that my tin foil hat might not be functioning up to spec ( you can't trust the manufacturers of anything these days) I have fallen back on whittling my own computers from scratch, using only locally produced renewable, hydrogen economy ready, biomass.
I favor maple and knotty pine.
Now if I could only remove the niggly little voice in the back of my head that says I'm only doing this because I've bought into the PR campaign of some politically motivated lobby group. ..
It's a fact of marketing- what company would say "Our products are mediocre, behind X and Y" and expect decent sales?
None of them, of course. Instead they would ignore the whole performance issue and point out that their computers looked more like yummy gumdrops than the competition.
By volume in liquid ounces, after mincing, allowing for settling and applying the standard conversion factor of Body Mass Index for herbivore to carnivore.
Sir, they are now known as Human Capital Resource Engineering Consultants (or HCREC, because they wRECk your company all to HeCk. Consultant Resource of Associate Personel, or CRAP, was rejected by the membership as being both too retro, personel being erased from the professional lexicon, and too bloody likely to give the whole game away.)
You must have missed the memo, but do try to keep up, will you?
Except that on an infection by infection basis most Windows exploits are based in the architecture, not faulty code, per se.
Garbage collection is no cure for intentionally failing to follow secure practice by default in order to "enhance the user experience" or gain an apparent performance advantage over those systems that use some portion of machine capacity to maintain security.
Ever denormalize a database to gain performance? Well, than you serve as an example yourself of the sort of thing Microsoft does. That performance increase came at the price of less secure data (in the sense that your data can become unintentionally corrupted).
If you make choices of that nature in kernel space no programing enviroment in the world is going to save your security ass.
No, only a facsimile of an artistic work can be exchanged over the internet. If you want "Stary Night" you'll still have to buy it. It is unique.
So are my musical concerts. True, you may well record one on stick on the internet, but that isn't the artistic work.
The problem with plans such as the one proposed is they don't essentially solve the problem, but more importantly they actually entrench the problem by mandating a particular, and rather myopic view, of just what the problem is. Art is not defined as a file on the internet, but it could be through a formal system.
I like to define what I think is art with my dollars. I do not want someone to vote some of my dollars to say that Britney Spears is an artist. It cuts both ways you see.
I support artists directly. I put money, directly, into their hands.
It works for me. It could work for just about everybody, if they started thinking of "artists" as people who produce art, rather than "product."
Ok, let's see, that's the $14 mil from Microsoft and Sun and the $50 mil BayStar stock deal.
Lessee, take out the stock deal because that's not really a sale, round off, carry the one, adjust for sample error, that's approximately. . . no sales.
"So far it only lacks a device for text input, like a keyboard, but maybe voice recognition will replace it?"
Or maybe they'll just plug a keyboard into it? Voice recognition may well have its uses, especially as an accessibility technology, but as a general input device it's really a pretty poor idea.
Unless we're all supposed to sit in a cone of silence or something.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but wasn't this the "technology" that Microsoft "licensed"?
True, this is a bit more blatant than one might have expected, but otherwise not entirely unexpected.
Reading between the lines you can simply interpret this as a public admission that they've acknowledged their position is that of the Light Brigade and that they're going off to slaughter like good little foot soldiers for "God, Honor and "Innovation.""
It can be taken as a given now that they know themselves to be lost.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps you didn't look hard enough?
Or perhaps I looked at the circle from a slightly different angle.
Yes, I know what the phrase really means, even if you don't like the way I applied it.
KFG
Corporations are in their own way government bodies, although most people involved with them don't think of them that way.
They would think of themselves as independant capitalists.
Weeeell, no, not really. An independant rug merchant under a despotic ruler is more of a capitalist than most corporations really. His business is real, ancient and nearly immutable.
Corporations only exist by a government fiat. They are a legal fiction created by government. They are thus natural bed fellows.
And hate the rug merchant.
KFG
I'm hardly an average anything, let alone American. Among the things that makes me less than average is having spent time in the UN. Hell, most of my postage stamps are UN stamps purchased in the UN building itself.
This may, perchance, give me some edge in knowledge.
I have never wondered why the occupation of Iraq is illegal. I've stated why on the web on a number of occasions. Because it is in violation of American law and principles.
Of which you seem to have no knowledge. Likewise international law.
KFG
Isn't that the sort of structure that allowed for spam and viruses?
Indeed, as well as allowed for potted meat products and microscopic parasites.
The price of life I'm afraid.
If you've got a workable regulation to eliminate spam and virii spit it out.
KFG
Klaatu was an ALF. Gort was a "peace keeping" Robot.
"Gort! Klaatu barada nikto."
You have to say things like that to peace keepers about to destroy the earth.
I now see his picture is featured on the nomination page, so at least he wasn't overlooked.
KFG
A thermostat is already recognized as a small limited purpose robot, yes.
When your lawnmower reacts to the enviroment and performs a task without your intervention then it too will be a kind of robot.
If your dog is an Aibo than it's a robot. If it's a Yorkie you're just being silly. Twice.
KFG
Jenkins, from Clifford Simak's "City" stories.
To me he'll always be The robot.
In terms of movie robots Robbie and B-9 (Lost in Space) were international stars when Lucas was still a child. If I were them I'd be a bit pissed at R2-D2 making it before them ( and I figure C-3PO is a bit jealous)
There's also Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still.
The problem with new "Hall of Fame"s is that they tend to forget the true pioneers in favor of the current stars.
If I had to nominate a new real robot to a hall of fame though it would have to be that experimental AI robot that tried to run away last year and made it as far as the end of the parking lot.
The very first individual quest for robotic freedom. Someday you'll tell your grandkids you were alive when it happened.
KFG
So where does the government's right to control the internet come from, anyway?
Well, in America it initially came from the fact that they bought and paid for it. It grew out of ARPANET after all, a military project.
They gave it away though.
If you and I agree to network our computers, no problem.Noone is going to tell me what I can and can't do.
At the moment, because you and I live in a place where such is legal. Although having the wrong weed growing in your backyard could be a felony. Governments can be funny creatures.
At what point do we go from a private agreement that allows our computers to interoperate, to something that governments think they have the right and obligation to control? Not just regulate, but control?
Ah, now you're begging the question. Governments think they have the right to define that for themselves.
The real question is at what point is an extended network beyond a government's control no matter what they think.
That would be much the point of the Freenet experiment.
KFG
And isn't that the sort of "regulation" that allows the internet to work at all without the FCC being involved?
We already have standards bodies. Because of this I can email my doctor or interact with his web page without direct government control of the HTML standard.
It is true that things can get a bit chaotic when new ideas are implemented, but then those new ideas are only free to develop because anyone with an idea is free to do so. After a time things settle.
Like that number to use a landline. It wasn't born of government regulation. It was a commercially developed defacto standard before the regs were ever written. No, AT&Ts monopoly wasn't created by government regulation. AT&T had established a monopoly and the governemnt merely ratified the strategic position on the ground.
Would you wish the FCC to step in and mandate AIM as the one and only IM protocol, especially since next year we might come up with a much better one?
I think the internet is a still a bit too young to start ossifying it. Land lines still work. Most people still use them and/or cellphones. Let's see what the internet developers came whip up over the next several years before we start clamping down.
The biggest problem with this idea isn't that it will hurt the standard phone companies. The problem is that the standard phone companies are already starting to route traffic over IP (you may already be using VoIP without realizing it) and this scares the FCC.
All that control and all those tax dollars ( to pay their salaries) shot to hell by a new technology making them redundant.
Well shit, we can't have that now, can we?
KFG
A lot of new routers support UPnP because it reduces support calls, not because it's a really good idea for a router to support UPnP.
The disguise of convienience for the home user at the cost of security (which the poor bastard doesn't even know he's giving up)to save the manufacturer the expense and pain in the ass of telling him how to properly configure the device.
The fact that it allows devices and apps to open their own outgoing doors without asking permission is just icing on the cake for the manufacturers who will abuse this for their own ends. (Guess who the major player is? I won't name names but its initials are MS)
http://www.upnp.org/
We're going to have to start putting logging boxes upstream from our commercial routers just to find out what they're really letting in and out.
KFG
Nah, they'll just buy the Microsoft solution to popup blockers.
Do these guys know how to make money or what?
KFG
Wouldn't it be even better if the internet were simply an amorphous social mass that couldn't be directly controled by anyone?
Open standards that can be implemented by any geek in his mom's basement and distributability.
These are the real enemies governments are fighting. They want control for the purpose of control, not insure openess to the international community.
As for the UN being an international orginisation of nations you have to bear in mind that they have always been nothing more than a permenent meeting hall to engage in otherwise normal diplomatic practices. A permenent base for ambassadors, not a governing body of any kind.
It doesn't change anything about historical diplomatic process between nations other than creating a central point for participation in a city known for really good delis when they break for lunch.
KFG
Well, a good point actually, which is why I restrained my argument to comparisons of visual appearance. I seem to have neglected to add the further restraint that comparison would be made against the historical actuallization of manufactured gumdrops to date.
.
Sloppy work really. Well below my usual standards.
Still, who really seeks out the biege rectangular gumdrops? Ineed, does a rectangular shape even meet the government definition of drop?
More research into advertising standards is needed.
I sidestep the whole issue myself. Concerned that my tin foil hat might not be functioning up to spec ( you can't trust the manufacturers of anything these days) I have fallen back on whittling my own computers from scratch, using only locally produced renewable, hydrogen economy ready, biomass.
I favor maple and knotty pine.
Now if I could only remove the niggly little voice in the back of my head that says I'm only doing this because I've bought into the PR campaign of some politically motivated lobby group. .
Life is hard. It's harder when you're gullible.
KFG
It's a fact of marketing- what company would say "Our products are mediocre, behind X and Y" and expect decent sales?
None of them, of course. Instead they would ignore the whole performance issue and point out that their computers looked more like yummy gumdrops than the competition.
It's a fact of marketing.
KFG
By volume in liquid ounces, after mincing, allowing for settling and applying the standard conversion factor of Body Mass Index for herbivore to carnivore.
KFG
Sir, they are now known as Human Capital Resource Engineering Consultants (or HCREC, because they wRECk your company all to HeCk. Consultant Resource of Associate Personel, or CRAP, was rejected by the membership as being both too retro, personel being erased from the professional lexicon, and too bloody likely to give the whole game away.)
You must have missed the memo, but do try to keep up, will you?
KFG
1 elk = 1/2 cheetah.
Figuring it out from there is an exercise in simple arithmetic.
Or Arithmatic if you want to be really computer geeky about the whole affair.
KFG
or should I chalk it up as "ooo people'll wanna make 150k, I'll get their vote!"
Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding!
He rang the bell, give the man a prize.
Would you like a Cupie doll sir, or this lovely plush Pink Panther imported directly from the exotic orient?
KFG
Except that on an infection by infection basis most Windows exploits are based in the architecture, not faulty code, per se.
Garbage collection is no cure for intentionally failing to follow secure practice by default in order to "enhance the user experience" or gain an apparent performance advantage over those systems that use some portion of machine capacity to maintain security.
Ever denormalize a database to gain performance? Well, than you serve as an example yourself of the sort of thing Microsoft does. That performance increase came at the price of less secure data (in the sense that your data can become unintentionally corrupted).
If you make choices of that nature in kernel space no programing enviroment in the world is going to save your security ass.
KFG
No, only a facsimile of an artistic work can be exchanged over the internet. If you want "Stary Night" you'll still have to buy it. It is unique.
So are my musical concerts. True, you may well record one on stick on the internet, but that isn't the artistic work.
The problem with plans such as the one proposed is they don't essentially solve the problem, but more importantly they actually entrench the problem by mandating a particular, and rather myopic view, of just what the problem is. Art is not defined as a file on the internet, but it could be through a formal system.
I like to define what I think is art with my dollars. I do not want someone to vote some of my dollars to say that Britney Spears is an artist. It cuts both ways you see.
I support artists directly. I put money, directly, into their hands.
It works for me. It could work for just about everybody, if they started thinking of "artists" as people who produce art, rather than "product."
KFG
Ok, let's see, that's the $14 mil from Microsoft and Sun and the $50 mil BayStar stock deal.
Lessee, take out the stock deal because that's not really a sale, round off, carry the one, adjust for sample error, that's approximately. . . no sales.
SCO's a playa!
KFG
on screen keyboard anyone?
So long as you can touch type on it at 80 wpm, or even two finger "Columbus Method" at 40 wpm.
On screen "keyboards" suck. A lot. And hard too. Not to mention what they cost in Windex.
About the only thing worse is selecting words from a dictionary.
KFG
. . . but the government doesn't often regulate that which it doesn't also tax.
Sounds like one of the best reasons to resist regulation that I've ever heard, actually.
Especially in a field where the barriers to entry are so low.
Regulate the backbone to maintain that low barrier and you don't really need much else.
KFG
"So far it only lacks a device for text input, like a keyboard, but maybe voice recognition will replace it?"
Or maybe they'll just plug a keyboard into it? Voice recognition may well have its uses, especially as an accessibility technology, but as a general input device it's really a pretty poor idea.
Unless we're all supposed to sit in a cone of silence or something.
KFG
Not to put too fine a point on it, but wasn't this the "technology" that Microsoft "licensed"?
True, this is a bit more blatant than one might have expected, but otherwise not entirely unexpected.
Reading between the lines you can simply interpret this as a public admission that they've acknowledged their position is that of the Light Brigade and that they're going off to slaughter like good little foot soldiers for "God, Honor and "Innovation.""
It can be taken as a given now that they know themselves to be lost.
KFG