KDE is a one trick pony. It is probably the best option for someone who loves C++ and probably grew up on VC++ on 'Doze.
GNOME has bindings for any language somebody liked enough to add support for. Got some C code you want to port to KDE? Delete it and start over, it would probably be faster. And what about the dozen or so 'lesser' languages? Even less likely.
And that is why GNOME will eventually win out. C++ is supported so any KDE app can potentially port but only a small subset of GNOME apps can migrate in the other direction.
Diversity usually beats a monoculture even though the monoculture often excels in a couple of areas.
Would I die to protect my right to send PGP encrypted email? Maybe. I wouldn't have a problem with wartime limitations, we have seen that before with wartime censorship in snailmail and I would go along with it. But I'd have a hard time understanding a ban on clearsigning for authentication purposes. (Think domain registering with NSI, etc.)
It would also have to be clear that they were TEMPORARY wartime restrictions, to be lifted when the crisis was past.
Same goes for any other legitimate hardships and sacrifice America requires of me. Ask and I'm there, 100%. Petty (and even profound) internal political squabbles should go on hold while we engage in a war for our very survival with a determined and relentless foe.
But I also have a very healthy distrust of a government who has been wanting to get backdoors into encryption for years and is looking to use this act of barbarism as an excuse to make a permanent change to the liberties of the citizens of our former Republic.
You see, encryption is used in a lot of places. No way in Hell I'm going to agree to key escrow for my SSH keys. I'm the sysadmin, not the NSA and if they want into my systems they can bring me the warrant and I'll help any way I can, but I ain't doing the equivalent of handing then root ahead of time.
Let 'em try to restrict my mere POSSESSION of encryption and I'm a rebel. They will pry the CD-ROM out of my cold dead hand that isn't in the trigger guard of a gun. The 1st Amendment is not a suggestion and 'shall not be infringed' can only be twisted so far before it becomes a joke.
In WWII they banned Ham operators from the airwaves, for obvious reasons. They didn't go door to door collecting transmitters. That was a reasonable balance between individual rights and public safety.
A perfect example of the rot in our educational system is exposed by Katz himself:
"Certain rights -- equality, liberty -- are considered inviolate. But almost all rights are subject to a series of checks and balances, always subject to circumstance, never absolutes granted without reservation, in perpetuity, regardless of external circumstance."
Sorry Putzboy, guess you never got a chance to read the Declaration of Independence in your school. Our Rights are Inalienable and not subject to some politician's decision to 'Grant' or withhold them. Politicians can Infringe them and we can agree to accept it in extreme enough circumstances, but they can't grant Rights we are all born with and carry into the grave.
I know Slashdot is run by a bunch of young skulls full of mush right out of college so some socialist indoctrination is expected. And missle defense has been politicized almost to death by the hate america first crowd so I could ALMOST excuse Taco & Co for not knowing shit from shinola about it because almost all coverage is so one sided.... but phlease!
The pentagon was very up front about the transponder on the target. They didn't yet have the new super duper high res radar installed that they will need to guide the interceptor missle into the ballpark with it's target so they kludged it. They KNOW they can build that part, it's just a really good radar installation. What they needed to test was whether it, if put near a hostile missle, could indeed home in on a fast moving target and blow it up. That part was the new tech being tested and it worked as advertised.
Missle defense is something we have needed for thirty or more years, 'bout damn time we actually started getting close to building one.
MAD at least made a perverted kind of sense in teh old Cold War days, when it was just two sides who were both clueful enough to understand that winning was not a real option. But trusting madmen like SoDamn Insane not to EVER launch one at anybody is not just MAD, it's crazy.
And before anybody starts going on about suitcase nukes, ask yourself a question. Why hasn't anybody tried it yet? There has to be scads of material running loose in the world since the collapse of the Soviet Union and lots of terrorists who would love to try it. So why?
My pet theory is that the spooks thought of that and stuck neutron detectors and such along enough of the border that they get tipped off.
No irony needed. That's what we have been on about for these last two decades. Smaller government means YOU get to keep your money and put it where you think it will do the most good. And if you think the EFF is the best use of it, great! And if you decide that new tires for the car is what you need most that is also your call.
It's called freedom, and someday we hope to live again in the country our forefathers fought and died to create. Without a overpowerful central government we wouldn't have the DMCA ya know. It is a dream we conservatives have, we could use your help.
OK, it was late and I wasn't being very clear. SMTP isn't broken. It can easilly be made to work with any of a number of filtering services, MAPS being only one example. Putting some new extension into the protocol will only do two things: a) kill every existing MUA, and b) codify the exact rules for a long period of time so the spammers will know what they can get away with.
The problem is trying to fix the problem of network abuse at that level.
We need to fix it in the routers if we are going to do a "once and for all" fix; the distributed list of abusers need to be fed into the routers so the same effort can block the DDOS sites as they go 'active' plus whatever new forms of abuse become popular tomorrow. Securing a weapon so deadly so it doesn't itself become a target for script kiddies and other abuse should happen before the first trials.
And yes, I'm aware of the consequences. Implementing such a scheme is the end of the Net as we know it. Large sections would no longer be able to talk to other large sections at any point in time. Welcome to the Internet after AOL, etc. showed up with the great unwashed masses.
I am tired of hearing this drivel about SMTP being somehow 'broken'. Some implementations of the protocol ship with broken config files and some might have actual issues in their implementations, but the protocol is just fine.
And hell no, I don't want to pay postage to send email. And neither does anyone else using the Internet so forget that idea. Ain't happening. It is a more stupid idea than the wet dream every 'content provider' seems to have about getting micropayments for every pageview.
MAPS is dead because their service can't scale to handle the load without throwing massive money at the problem. Kinda like what is/will be happening with M$ Passport/.NET:)
What we need is a decentralized replacement without a central authority. Perhaps a 'web of trust' like PGP where any site can black hole another site on their OWN server, and others will pick up the ban automatically when enough servers they trust do so.
Actually, I didn't find anything in that piece that was far off the mark until the last paragraph. But since it was in the "World Socialist Web Site" it's expected to have everything devolve into another reason why world socialism is the right thing. It's like reading a piece by RMS and getting the stock sermon about GNU/Linux. It would only be remarkable by it's absence.
All told, good article. Plenty of time to bash communists (and as a Libertarian I do it regular) later, for now praise them for a rare example of good journalism in a computer related piece outside the trade press. It it such a rare thing that it should be noted.
Other than offering an overstressed KDE developer a chance to vent, what other purpose did the article serve? When will Taco & Co. learn to stop feeding the trolls?
I admin at a public library so am following this one fairly close. Assuming ALA can't get this think killed off, we have been discussing how we will deal with it.
Currently we have an X-Stop filter installed, but it is switchable. We have three groups of users:
1. Adults sitting at one of our stations with a recessed monitor. These users are totally unfiltered.
2. Adults at an exposed monitor. These users go through the X-Stop for web access, but their use of IRC and Telnet, etc is unmolested. The logic is that p0rn pics are visible to others but text should be fairly safe.
3. Children are catagory three. If their parent has signed off for unfiltered access we treat them under the above rules for adults. Otherwise they get X-Stopped and access to common ports like Telnet and IRC are filtered.
Here in the very Buckle of the Bible Belt (Beauregard Parish is in the Record Books with highest per capita number of Churches) we have had zero complaints about this policy because it puts control in the hands of the parents and they like that.
If they force us to filter everyone our current plan is to modify our login scripts to do the filter, but if a patron would have had unfiltered access under OUR rules throw up a large box explaining what we did, why and the contact information for their masters in Washington.
Then start researching exactly WHAT qualifies as a filter and if possible code up a minimal filter that only blocks the really nasty stuff and drop THAT into the system as what adults get.
The best solution if to eliminate E-Rate, otherwise this battle won't ever end and even if we win this round, they will try again in a few years. So long as the money comes from Washington, eventually they WILL win control of what happens with it. We had a T1 line years before E-rate and we will still have one if it went away.
If the ALA doesn't get a restraining order in time, I'm going to have to apply a filter toour adult users. Ok, since NO filter is 100% accurate, what qualifies?
Can I build a list of a few hundred sites, add in anything linked from persiankitty and call that our adult filter? (We already use an X-stop for children whose parents ask us to filter.)
Ok, a few innocent hosting customers are getting their MAIL blocked to MAPS subscribers. If they don't like it they should either pressure their hosting company to get get the spammers off their IP block or move their account to a more reputable hosting outfit. Moving would probably be the more effective option.
Hiding spammers among innocents is about as ethical as hiding military targets in civilian areas and whining when civilians take collateral dammage. Don't blame the fighter pilots whose bombs miss, blame the cowards using their own civilians as a shield.
Personally I think that blocking ALL access to spam related address is the only way to stop the problem. After all, AOL/MSN accounts are an inexaustable resource to originate the crap from, but it has to be able to point to a reasonably stable address if they are to profit from their wickedness. Blocking access to sites that are promoted by spam or sell spam related products and services is required for any campaign against it to succeed.
Spammers, and nobody else for that matter, has a RIGHT to send traffic across or into another's network without their consent. If those of us who detest spam wish to exercise our right of free association to choose NOT to associate with someone, let nobody speak against it.
So the votes of rural people and minorities should count more than everyone else's? Get real.
Yup, that's exactly what the Founding Fathers intended and they are 100% correct. Your problem arises from mistaking this Republic for a Democracy.
Actually the Founding Fathers understood the evils of Democracy all too well, and went to a lot of bother to supress it. If even 10% of the population were to read the constitution and grok it we might even have a chance to restore the Old Republic. Instead, each day we slide a little closer to mob rule and anarchy.
But we ain't there yet and the smaller states will vote themselves out of a Electoral College when hell freezes over. Of course I'd have said the same thing about the States being stupid enough to give up control of the Senate, so what do I know.
Since it appears the/. readership is about as ignorant in it's math and civics skills as the general popularion (judging by the discussion I have seen in the last week) here is a quick refresher course.
The reason why the recount numbers keep rising is extremely simple, and not any sort of consipracy or fraud. All of the principles know about it, along with the talking heads on TV. It does appear that speaking it is verboten though, so lets see if I get 'disappeared' for saying this in public.:)
Those paper vote counting machines have a crock rate of between 1% and 2.5% depending on who you want take the spec from. This is due to both the 'hanging chad' being endlessly babbled about on TV and just plain miss counted ballots. This has been known since almost the day the machines went into service but it isn't a problem! They are still far more accurate than any manual count for two reasons.
1. The error is RANDOM so it hits all candidates/ballot issues evenly so while it fudges the number of votes a bit it hits the percentages very closely.
2. It is a MACHINE. It can't be biased in favor of one candidate over another. If you have three machines (in good working order, which is testable by running a batch of known sample material through) lined up they are all impartial instead of having two Democrats and a token Republican like the board overseeing the manual recount.
As you run the ballots through multiple times more of the partially punched or otherwise problematic chads dislodge enough for the sensor to pick them up... along with the parallel problem of holes falling out that voters DIDN'T punch, which is why after two or three runs they are considered unreliable. A perfect manual count (assuming it were possible to actually conduct an impartial manual count of ballots designed to only be read by a machine) would increase the total counted votes by that 1-2.5 percent that the machines missed, which is why the two sides are behaving the way they are.
The Gore camp KNOWS that they can pick up 1-2.5% more votes because statistically the extra votes will come out in the same proportions as the county at large. Since only heavily Democratic counties are being recounted manually, if the recount gets accepted he wins. The odds of a meteor hitting Gore smack in the forehead are greater than the odds the recount in those four counties would net Bush a single vote.
The bush camp also KNOWS these facts and is therefore fighting like mad to prevent the Gore camp from using the public's ignorance of statistics to steal the election. If the entire state were recounted by hand both sides would pick up votes in proportion to their current numbers. But since the spread IS inside the margin of error it would all come down to random chance or outright fraud. Personally I'd bet that (especially considering Daley and the whole history of the Democratic party in the 20th Century) fraud would play a much larger role than random sampling noise and I suspect Bush is smart enough to know that also. Basically the Bush camp is faced with the reality that EVERY recount will net Gore votes (like it has been doing so far) and they are left with the hopeless task of keeping the numbers shifting to Gore slowly enough that they still lead when the public finally says "Enough!" Iceburgs have better odds in hell, but it's the hand they have to play so they are giving it their best shot.
In my more cynical moods I say that Bush is still tilting at this windmill to 'salt the ground' so that Gore will be unable to accomplish anything and be a one term wonder. Can't really say that I blame him or the Repubs. The Democrats adopted the 'win at all costs' rules so it's only fair that they see them turned back on them once in a while.
Hmm, first I heard of us having anything newer than the ancient mechanical voting machines we use here in Beauregard Parish. (Thats county for those of you in the other 49 states.)
Personally I'd be scared witless at anything computerized in a voting booth that hadn't been designed in a very paranoid way and with all hardware and software exposed and vetted by impartial experts.
1. If they insist on a Windows solution they are probably idiots. Unless it's the only job available it's not worth it for that reason alone.
2. If they know so much, why are they hiring me? If they aren't going to trust my decisions at the start of a project, you can be damn sure they would be second guessing and micromanaging before it was over.
3. No craftsman should accept second rate tools.
4. If it's a team effort, working on a Windows project would mean having to bail out the clueless MSCE/VB kiddies they will stick on the project with you.
5. Corallary to #4. UNIX folks are more fun to be around. Windows people tend to be suits.
I don't really see a problem with the described incident. I see a Y2K warning as on a par with a Product Recall Notice or similar "Important Notice" that a good argument can be made for disiminating as widely as possible to every customer on file. If for no other reason than self defense against the lawsuits likely to let fly next year.
Not a lot of pure Black & White in the real world, and this is one of those grey areas. Now if I had dropped a subscription to their mailing lists and got a pitch for W2K I'd be pissed.
Damn, I feel icky after defending M$... better go take another shower now.
Look at the problems described: Lack of plugins, Java glitches and outright refusing connects based on browser/platform ID. NONE WOULD BE FIXED IF MOZILLA SHIPPED TODAY!
If we allow the battle to be defined in these terms we have already lost. Period.
Basically what this amounts to is "we have to be able to run the Win32 copy of IE with all the plugins or we are doomed." Nope, what we need is a hall of shame for crappy sites like those described and make outcasts out of them. For now only do it to the ones who exclude for stupid reasons, sites that could easily handle all comers but just don't give a damn because it works just fine on their Win98 boxes with IE5. The important thing is to not pick on the rare site that is actually doing something interesting with one of those plugins that really can't be done any other way yet. Then so long as they make as much of the content available as possible to non-M$ clients leave em alone while working out a platform independent way of doing it.
As for a solution to the lady who is pining away for Windows, give her a partition or VMWare box with Win98 and let em experience the horror firsthand,
Another success story here..... Almost (we still have one lab that we haven't migrated yet....) every printjob at the Beauregard Parish Public Library has been passing through lpd on a Linux box on it's way to a JetDirect on one of our three HP printers for a year or so now. That's internal staff, patrons, everything.
Will admit though that while stuff printed from Windows is unchanged, printing graphics via Ghostscript kinda sucks compared to the same thing printed out of Windows. After a lot of tinkering I once got a Canon BubbleJet 610 to print a picture ALMOST as good as Windows... But I won't be able to finish converting the Scanning/DTP workstation completely until it's AS good. (Also still waiting on Corel Draw for Linux so it isn't yet a priority.)
Pros: Fast. Really fast. The audio quality (on a properly supported player) appears as good as l3enc.
Cons: Closed software. Only a few current players will play back files (other players 'warble', 'hiss' and do other wierd things from time to time) produced with it even if you don't go all the way to the bleeding edge and use Variable Bitrate Encoding. In their favor though, Xing has released a decoder which plays back their stuff under the GPL so it is hard to fault them. Freeamp seems to be the only one with a linux player based on the Xing code.
I'll second that, but I'm already involved in DOING it. I'm the Netadmin for a rural library system in Louisiana (buckle of the bible belt, dry Parish, the works) and don't have problems from parents over net content. We get the parents to select how their kids can access the Internet from four options:
1. No net access at all. Almost none do that.
2. Can only access with a parent present in the library and/or actually with the child at the computer. Also not a popular choice, but it is important to have it available.
3. Access only on workstations with X-Xtop filtering. Popular choice, especially on the younger kids.
4. Unrestricted. Quite a few parents of teens are picking it.
We worked out this policy three years ago and haven't needed to revisit it since then. The only time we hear universal 'censorship' being called for is from politicians, not parents.
We have twenty six public machines distributed around the parish and in the afternoons there is usually a waiting list. I haven't noticed this perported racial or socioeconomic divide either, at least among our patrons.
If they are worried about people 'stealing their work' they should consider getting into another line of work. Kinda wierd to have a company in the business of packaging free software worry about code reuse.
Fortunately they aren't as clueless as you make them out because they DO share quite a bit of code, and someday one would hope they get smart enough to realize that being anal about the installer only hurts them. Sure every install of Mandrake is a RedHat sale lost, but it is another machine in the RedHat 'camp' as opposed to a SUSE or Caldera user.
Legal solutions won't ever stop spam because it crosses too many borders. Law enforcement agencies who can't stop much more serious offenses won't have the resources to put much effort into stopping spam.
Given that reality, laws against spam are doomed to fail. Laws requiring headers or real return addresses will fail for exactly the same reason. Outlaws ignore laws by defination.
The problem is easy enough to solve if people were really mad as hell and ready to not take it anymore. Try this one:
Get the top ten providers into cahoots and build a database. Every time an email comes into one of them check the IP of the relay against the database and take action as follows:
If it is a known secure relay pass the mail normally.
If it is a known open relay bounce it or trash it.
If it is unknown, try to forge an email through it. Example: AOL wants to know if cannery.spamnet.com is ok so it forges an email from an AOL IP through the relay in question to a netcom address (using the closed accounts of previous spammers as the test accounts). Propagate the results to the other copies of the database.
Within a couple of weeks all of the open relays will get the hint and fix their relays. Once the problem of open relays have been addressed there are only two more sources of spam:
1. Spam canneries, which the Realtime Blackhole can easily deal with.
2. Disposable accounts. The RBH can help with this problem also, but in the end there is really only one solution to this problem. End disposable accounts.
This is also easily done. Enact an RFC requiring anyone given access to a system to have been authenticated in some way by the provider if said provider wants to be absolved from blame for that customer's actions. Enforce 'SMTP death sentences' against sites that can't control their users.
AOL could still pass out bisks, just put a warning in big type that new users MUST read and consent to stating that their credit card will be charged $100US and their account closed if they are found guilty of spamming. If it is legal, build and share a database of people/business entities that spam and just ban the bastards from the Internet for five years. (Or as an alternate, since that probably isn't legal in most of the popular spamming countries like the US, require an upfront security deposit for any future accounts.)
Spam could be a distant memory by this time next year if we the users would a) demand such firm steps be taken and b) be understanding of the disruptions such steps would likely cause and not raise a ruckus. This sort of voluntary action would actually solve the problem without requiring censorship by either the government or industry.
INteresting disconnect there. YOu don't want people profiting from your work but prefer the BSD license. Doh!
Ever looked at the docs to a Cisco router? Yup, they took the BSD codebase and stuffed it in a little box. Granted that over the years I'm sure they have modified the hell out of it so that very little of the original remains, but the license requires the credit in the docs to this day. How many billions did they make off of the BSD license? Granted they could also have used GPL code but they would have had to give their changes back to the community which I suspect all reading this would have considered a square deal.
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KDE is a one trick pony. It is probably the best option for someone who loves C++ and probably grew up on VC++ on 'Doze.
GNOME has bindings for any language somebody liked enough to add support for. Got some C code you want to port to KDE? Delete it and start over, it would probably be faster. And what about the dozen or so 'lesser' languages? Even less likely.
And that is why GNOME will eventually win out. C++ is supported so any KDE app can potentially port but only a small subset of GNOME apps can migrate in the other direction.
Diversity usually beats a monoculture even though the monoculture often excels in a couple of areas.
Would I die to protect my right to send PGP encrypted email? Maybe. I wouldn't have a problem with wartime limitations, we have seen that before with wartime censorship in snailmail and I would go along with it. But I'd have a hard time understanding a ban on clearsigning for authentication purposes. (Think domain registering with NSI, etc.)
It would also have to be clear that they were TEMPORARY wartime restrictions, to be lifted when the crisis was past.
Same goes for any other legitimate hardships and sacrifice America requires of me. Ask and I'm there, 100%. Petty (and even profound) internal political squabbles should go on hold while we engage in a war for our very survival with a determined and relentless foe.
But I also have a very healthy distrust of a government who has been wanting to get backdoors into encryption for years and is looking to use this act of barbarism as an excuse to make a permanent change to the liberties of the citizens of our former Republic.
You see, encryption is used in a lot of places. No way in Hell I'm going to agree to key escrow for my SSH keys. I'm the sysadmin, not the NSA and if they want into my systems they can bring me the warrant and I'll help any way I can, but I ain't doing the equivalent of handing then root ahead of time.
Let 'em try to restrict my mere POSSESSION of encryption and I'm a rebel. They will pry the CD-ROM out of my cold dead hand that isn't in the trigger guard of a gun. The 1st Amendment is not a suggestion and 'shall not be infringed' can only be twisted so far before it becomes a joke.
In WWII they banned Ham operators from the airwaves, for obvious reasons. They didn't go door to door collecting transmitters. That was a reasonable balance between individual rights and public safety.
A perfect example of the rot in our educational system is exposed by Katz himself:
"Certain rights -- equality, liberty -- are considered inviolate. But almost all rights are subject to a series of checks and balances, always subject to circumstance, never absolutes granted without reservation, in perpetuity, regardless of external circumstance."
Sorry Putzboy, guess you never got a chance to read the Declaration of Independence in your school. Our Rights are Inalienable and not subject to some politician's decision to 'Grant' or withhold them. Politicians can Infringe them and we can agree to accept it in extreme enough circumstances, but they can't grant Rights we are all born with and carry into the grave.
I know Slashdot is run by a bunch of young skulls full of mush right out of college so some socialist indoctrination is expected. And missle defense has been politicized almost to death by the hate america first crowd so I could ALMOST excuse Taco & Co for not knowing shit from shinola about it because almost all coverage is so one sided.... but phlease!
The pentagon was very up front about the transponder on the target. They didn't yet have the new super duper high res radar installed that they will need to guide the interceptor missle into the ballpark with it's target so they kludged it. They KNOW they can build that part, it's just a really good radar installation. What they needed to test was whether it, if put near a hostile missle, could indeed home in on a fast moving target and blow it up. That part was the new tech being tested and it worked as advertised.
Missle defense is something we have needed for thirty or more years, 'bout damn time we actually started getting close to building one.
MAD at least made a perverted kind of sense in teh old Cold War days, when it was just two sides who were both clueful enough to understand that winning was not a real option. But trusting madmen like SoDamn Insane not to EVER launch one at anybody is not just MAD, it's crazy.
And before anybody starts going on about suitcase nukes, ask yourself a question. Why hasn't anybody tried it yet? There has to be scads of material running loose in the world since the collapse of the Soviet Union and lots of terrorists who would love to try it. So why?
My pet theory is that the spooks thought of that and stuck neutron detectors and such along enough of the border that they get tipped off.
No irony needed. That's what we have been on about for these last two decades. Smaller government means YOU get to keep your money and put it where you think it will do the most good. And if you think the EFF is the best use of it, great! And if you decide that new tires for the car is what you need most that is also your call.
It's called freedom, and someday we hope to live again in the country our forefathers fought and died to create. Without a overpowerful central government we wouldn't have the DMCA ya know. It is a dream we conservatives have, we could use your help.
OK, it was late and I wasn't being very clear. SMTP isn't broken. It can easilly be made to work with any of a number of filtering services, MAPS being only one example. Putting some new extension into the protocol will only do two things: a) kill every existing MUA, and b) codify the exact rules for a long period of time so the spammers will know what they can get away with.
The problem is trying to fix the problem of network abuse at that level.
We need to fix it in the routers if we are going to do a "once and for all" fix; the distributed list of abusers need to be fed into the routers so the same effort can block the DDOS sites as they go 'active' plus whatever new forms of abuse become popular tomorrow. Securing a weapon so deadly so it doesn't itself become a target for script kiddies and other abuse should happen before the first trials.
And yes, I'm aware of the consequences. Implementing such a scheme is the end of the Net as we know it. Large sections would no longer be able to talk to other large sections at any point in time. Welcome to the Internet after AOL, etc. showed up with the great unwashed masses.
I am tired of hearing this drivel about SMTP being somehow 'broken'. Some implementations of the protocol ship with broken config files and some might have actual issues in their implementations, but the protocol is just fine.
:)
And hell no, I don't want to pay postage to send email. And neither does anyone else using the Internet so forget that idea. Ain't happening. It is a more stupid idea than the wet dream every 'content provider' seems to have about getting micropayments for every pageview.
MAPS is dead because their service can't scale to handle the load without throwing massive money at the problem. Kinda like what is/will be happening with M$ Passport/.NET
What we need is a decentralized replacement without a central authority. Perhaps a 'web of trust' like PGP where any site can black hole another site on their OWN server, and others will pick up the ban automatically when enough servers they trust do so.
Actually, I didn't find anything in that piece that was far off the mark until the last paragraph. But since it was in the "World Socialist Web Site" it's expected to have everything devolve into another reason why world socialism is the right thing. It's like reading a piece by RMS and getting the stock sermon about GNU/Linux. It would only be remarkable by it's absence.
All told, good article. Plenty of time to bash communists (and as a Libertarian I do it regular) later, for now praise them for a rare example of good journalism in a computer related piece outside the trade press. It it such a rare thing that it should be noted.
Yup, RH6.2/Sparc ships with Communicator. 5.2 doesn't though so make sure you get the last RH/Sparc version.
Other than offering an overstressed KDE developer a chance to vent, what other purpose did the article serve? When will Taco & Co. learn to stop feeding the trolls?
I admin at a public library so am following this one fairly close. Assuming ALA can't get this think killed off, we have been discussing how we will deal with it.
Currently we have an X-Stop filter installed, but it is switchable. We have three groups of users:
1. Adults sitting at one of our stations with a recessed monitor. These users are totally unfiltered.
2. Adults at an exposed monitor. These users go through the X-Stop for web access, but their use of IRC and Telnet, etc is unmolested. The logic is that p0rn pics are visible to others but text should be fairly safe.
3. Children are catagory three. If their parent has signed off for unfiltered access we treat them under the above rules for adults. Otherwise they get X-Stopped and access to common ports like Telnet and IRC are filtered.
Here in the very Buckle of the Bible Belt (Beauregard Parish is in the Record Books with highest per capita number of Churches) we have had zero complaints about this policy because it puts control in the hands of the parents and they like that.
If they force us to filter everyone our current plan is to modify our login scripts to do the filter, but if a patron would have had unfiltered access under OUR rules throw up a large box explaining what we did, why and the contact information for their masters in Washington.
Then start researching exactly WHAT qualifies as a filter and if possible code up a minimal filter that only blocks the really nasty stuff and drop THAT into the system as what adults get.
The best solution if to eliminate E-Rate, otherwise this battle won't ever end and even if we win this round, they will try again in a few years. So long as the money comes from Washington, eventually they WILL win control of what happens with it. We had a T1 line years before E-rate and we will still have one if it went away.
If the ALA doesn't get a restraining order in time, I'm going to have to apply a filter toour adult users. Ok, since NO filter is 100% accurate, what qualifies?
Can I build a list of a few hundred sites, add in anything linked from persiankitty and call that our adult filter? (We already use an X-stop for children whose parents ask us to filter.)
Ok, a few innocent hosting customers are getting their MAIL blocked to MAPS subscribers. If they don't like it they should either pressure their hosting company to get get the spammers off their IP block or move their account to a more reputable hosting outfit. Moving would probably be the more effective option.
Hiding spammers among innocents is about as ethical as hiding military targets in civilian areas and whining when civilians take collateral dammage. Don't blame the fighter pilots whose bombs miss, blame the cowards using their own civilians as a shield.
Personally I think that blocking ALL access to spam related address is the only way to stop the problem. After all, AOL/MSN accounts are an inexaustable resource to originate the crap from, but it has to be able to point to a reasonably stable address if they are to profit from their wickedness. Blocking access to sites that are promoted by spam or sell spam related products and services is required for any campaign against it to succeed.
Spammers, and nobody else for that matter, has a RIGHT to send traffic across or into another's network without their consent. If those of us who detest spam wish to exercise our right of free association to choose NOT to associate with someone, let nobody speak against it.
So the votes of rural people and minorities should count more than everyone else's? Get real.
Yup, that's exactly what the Founding Fathers intended and they are 100% correct. Your problem arises from mistaking this Republic for a Democracy.
Actually the Founding Fathers understood the evils of Democracy all too well, and went to a lot of bother to supress it. If even 10% of the population were to read the constitution and grok it we might even have a chance to restore the Old Republic. Instead, each day we slide a little closer to mob rule and anarchy.
But we ain't there yet and the smaller states will vote themselves out of a Electoral College when hell freezes over. Of course I'd have said the same thing about the States being stupid enough to give up control of the Senate, so what do I know.
Since it appears the /. readership is about as ignorant in it's math and civics skills as the general popularion (judging by the discussion I have seen in the last week) here is a quick refresher course.
:)
The reason why the recount numbers keep rising is extremely simple, and not any sort of consipracy or fraud. All of the principles know about it, along with the talking heads on TV. It does appear that speaking it is verboten though, so lets see if I get 'disappeared' for saying this in public.
Those paper vote counting machines have a crock rate of between 1% and 2.5% depending on who you want take the spec from. This is due to both the 'hanging chad' being endlessly babbled about on TV and just plain miss counted ballots. This has been known since almost the day the machines went into service but it isn't a problem! They are still far more accurate than any manual count for two reasons.
1. The error is RANDOM so it hits all candidates/ballot issues evenly so while it fudges the number of votes a bit it hits the percentages very closely.
2. It is a MACHINE. It can't be biased in favor of one candidate over another. If you have three machines (in good working order, which is testable by running a batch of known sample material through) lined up they are all impartial instead of having two Democrats and a token Republican like the board overseeing the manual recount.
As you run the ballots through multiple times more of the partially punched or otherwise problematic chads dislodge enough for the sensor to pick them up... along with the parallel problem of holes falling out that voters DIDN'T punch, which is why after two or three runs they are considered unreliable. A perfect manual count (assuming it were possible to actually conduct an impartial manual count of ballots designed to only be read by a machine) would increase the total counted votes by that 1-2.5 percent that the machines missed, which is why the two sides are behaving the way they are.
The Gore camp KNOWS that they can pick up 1-2.5% more votes because statistically the extra votes will come out in the same proportions as the county at large. Since only heavily Democratic counties are being recounted manually, if the recount gets accepted he wins. The odds of a meteor hitting Gore smack in the forehead are greater than the odds the recount in those four counties would net Bush a single vote.
The bush camp also KNOWS these facts and is therefore fighting like mad to prevent the Gore camp from using the public's ignorance of statistics to steal the election. If the entire state were recounted by hand both sides would pick up votes in proportion to their current numbers. But since the spread IS inside the margin of error it would all come down to random chance or outright fraud. Personally I'd bet that (especially considering Daley and the whole history of the Democratic party in the 20th Century) fraud would play a much larger role than random sampling noise and I suspect Bush is smart enough to know that also. Basically the Bush camp is faced with the reality that EVERY recount will net Gore votes (like it has been doing so far) and they are left with the hopeless task of keeping the numbers shifting to Gore slowly enough that they still lead when the public finally says "Enough!" Iceburgs have better odds in hell, but it's the hand they have to play so they are giving it their best shot.
In my more cynical moods I say that Bush is still tilting at this windmill to 'salt the ground' so that Gore will be unable to accomplish anything and be a one term wonder. Can't really say that I blame him or the Repubs. The Democrats adopted the 'win at all costs' rules so it's only fair that they see them turned back on them once in a while.
Hmm, first I heard of us having anything newer than the ancient mechanical voting machines we use here in Beauregard Parish. (Thats county for those of you in the other 49 states.)
Personally I'd be scared witless at anything computerized in a voting booth that hadn't been designed in a very paranoid way and with all hardware and software exposed and vetted by impartial experts.
Amen. Life is too short to waste on idiots.
Reasons to NOT do Windows:
1. If they insist on a Windows solution they are probably idiots. Unless it's the only job available it's not worth it for that reason alone.
2. If they know so much, why are they hiring me? If they aren't going to trust my decisions at the start of a project, you can be damn sure they would be second guessing and micromanaging before it was over.
3. No craftsman should accept second rate tools.
4. If it's a team effort, working on a Windows project would mean having to bail out the clueless MSCE/VB kiddies they will stick on the project with you.
5. Corallary to #4. UNIX folks are more fun to be around. Windows people tend to be suits.
Ok, this has gone far enough.
Here's my mirror of one of the packages, a description of the encoding and a taunt for Digital Convergance to 'come get some'. http://www.beau.lib.la.us/~jmorris/linux/cuecatI don't really see a problem with the described incident. I see a Y2K warning as on a par with a Product Recall Notice or similar "Important Notice" that a good argument can be made for disiminating as widely as possible to every customer on file. If for no other reason than self defense against the lawsuits likely to let fly next year.
Not a lot of pure Black & White in the real world, and this is one of those grey areas. Now if I had dropped a subscription to their mailing lists and got a pitch for W2K I'd be pissed.
Damn, I feel icky after defending M$... better go take another shower now.
Look at the problems described: Lack of plugins, Java glitches and outright refusing connects based on browser/platform ID. NONE WOULD BE FIXED IF MOZILLA SHIPPED TODAY!
If we allow the battle to be defined in these terms we have already lost. Period.
Basically what this amounts to is "we have to be able to run the Win32 copy of IE with all the plugins or we are doomed." Nope, what we need is a hall of shame for crappy sites like those described and make outcasts out of them. For now only do it to the ones who exclude for stupid reasons, sites that could easily handle all comers but just don't give a damn because it works just fine on their Win98 boxes with IE5. The important thing is to not pick on the rare site that is actually doing something interesting with one of those plugins that really can't be done any other way yet. Then so long as they make as much of the content available as possible to non-M$ clients leave em alone while working out a platform independent way of doing it.
As for a solution to the lady who is pining away for Windows, give her a partition or VMWare box with Win98 and let em experience the horror firsthand,
Another success story here..... Almost (we still have one lab that we haven't migrated yet....) every printjob at the Beauregard Parish Public Library has been passing through lpd on a Linux box on it's way to a JetDirect on one of our three HP printers for a year or so now. That's internal staff, patrons, everything.
Will admit though that while stuff printed from Windows is unchanged, printing graphics via Ghostscript kinda sucks compared to the same thing printed out of Windows. After a lot of tinkering I once got a Canon BubbleJet 610 to print a picture ALMOST as good as Windows... But I won't be able to finish converting the Scanning/DTP workstation completely until it's AS good. (Also still waiting on Corel Draw for Linux so it isn't yet a priority.)
Xing offers their encoder for Linux for $20.
Pros: Fast. Really fast. The audio quality (on a properly supported player) appears as good as l3enc.
Cons: Closed software. Only a few current players will play back files (other players 'warble', 'hiss' and do other wierd things from time to time) produced with it even if you don't go all the way to the bleeding edge and use Variable Bitrate Encoding. In their favor though, Xing has released a decoder which plays back their stuff under the GPL so it is hard to fault them. Freeamp seems to be the only one with a linux player based on the Xing code.
I'll second that, but I'm already involved in DOING it. I'm the Netadmin for a rural library system in Louisiana (buckle of the bible belt, dry Parish, the works) and don't have problems from parents over net content. We get the parents to select how their kids can access the Internet from four options:
1. No net access at all. Almost none do that.
2. Can only access with a parent present in the library and/or actually with the child at the computer. Also not a popular choice, but it is important to have it available.
3. Access only on workstations with X-Xtop filtering. Popular choice, especially on the younger kids.
4. Unrestricted. Quite a few parents of teens are picking it.
We worked out this policy three years ago and haven't needed to revisit it since then. The only time we hear universal 'censorship' being called for is from politicians, not parents.
We have twenty six public machines distributed around the parish and in the afternoons there is usually a waiting list. I haven't noticed this perported racial or socioeconomic divide either, at least among our patrons.
If they are worried about people 'stealing their work' they should consider getting into another line of work. Kinda wierd to have a company in the business of packaging free software worry about code reuse.
Fortunately they aren't as clueless as you make them out because they DO share quite a bit of code, and someday one would hope they get smart enough to realize that being anal about the installer only hurts them. Sure every install of Mandrake is a RedHat sale lost, but it is another machine in the RedHat 'camp' as opposed to a SUSE or Caldera user.
Legal solutions won't ever stop spam because it crosses too many borders. Law enforcement agencies who can't stop much more serious offenses won't have the resources to put much effort into stopping spam.
Given that reality, laws against spam are doomed to fail. Laws requiring headers or real return addresses will fail for exactly the same reason. Outlaws ignore laws by defination.
The problem is easy enough to solve if people were really mad as hell and ready to not take it anymore. Try this one:
Get the top ten providers into cahoots and build a database. Every time an email comes into one of them check the IP of the relay against the database and take action as follows:
If it is a known secure relay pass the mail normally.
If it is a known open relay bounce it or trash it.
If it is unknown, try to forge an email through it. Example: AOL wants to know if cannery.spamnet.com is ok so it forges an email from an AOL IP through the relay in question to a netcom address (using the closed accounts of previous spammers as the test accounts). Propagate the results to the other copies of the database.
Within a couple of weeks all of the open relays will get the hint and fix their relays. Once the problem of open relays have been addressed there are only two more sources of spam:
1. Spam canneries, which the Realtime Blackhole can easily deal with.
2. Disposable accounts. The RBH can help with this problem also, but in the end there is really only one solution to this problem. End disposable accounts.
This is also easily done. Enact an RFC requiring anyone given access to a system to have been authenticated in some way by the provider if said provider wants to be absolved from blame for that customer's actions. Enforce 'SMTP death sentences' against sites that can't control their users.
AOL could still pass out bisks, just put a warning in big type that new users MUST read and consent to stating that their credit card will be charged $100US and their account closed if they are found guilty of spamming. If it is legal, build and share a database of people/business entities that spam and just ban the bastards from the Internet for five years. (Or as an alternate, since that probably isn't legal in most of the popular spamming countries like the US, require an upfront security deposit for any future accounts.)
Spam could be a distant memory by this time next year if we the users would a) demand such firm steps be taken and b) be understanding of the disruptions such steps would likely cause and not raise a ruckus. This sort of voluntary action would actually solve the problem without requiring censorship by either the government or industry.
INteresting disconnect there. YOu don't want people profiting from your work but prefer the BSD license. Doh!
Ever looked at the docs to a Cisco router? Yup, they took the BSD codebase and stuffed it in a little box. Granted that over the years I'm sure they have modified the hell out of it so that very little of the original remains, but the license requires the credit in the docs to this day. How many billions did they make off of the BSD license? Granted they could also have used GPL code but they would have had to give their changes back to the community which I suspect all reading this would have considered a square deal.