Good post! But you assume there is only one law applicable to the net, the US one. But that's not true. The net may not be regulated all over, at least enless the US is able to confine the EU to regulate the same. And that will never happen. The EU allready does things just to do the opposite of the US... And how much the companies of the US successes to regulate it there (Not taxes, but regulations (regulations on what you are able to say and do online)), there will allways be oversea-sites running providing free infomation. The only risk is if you start to censor yourself with some blocking software... And if you do, that is a proof of the US being equal to China.
-- One party system, two party system -- what's the difference? Where did all the other parties go? --The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Where I live, in sweden, all schools are by law requered to have a plan and to act against teasing of "different" childrens. You seem to slowly develope the very opposite. Please note: These actions and plans are not allways that good, but the intention is to help the teased children get rid of the teasing. A bit scary, thought...
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
I too checked out her web site. And was amazed about how non-consistent a web-page may be. Not one page looked like the other. I do not say pages has to be exactly the same - that would be boring. But they need to share some common design ideas so that they may be cognished as a whole. Secondly, she seems to have forgotten about compatibility - her site is not even (as you mention) optimized for a specific window size, btu for a specific OS. She has not shoosen any "fallback"-fonts, thus the default is used, which with her font-sizer setting gives totally unreadable text under most UNIXes (And probably Mac too, and Mac users who are so daring about look!)... As to your comment about tables: Tables are much much better to format the text and create coloured blocks, than the zillions of pictures used on many web sites, so there she's finally right... --The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
I recently installed Mandrake 7.0. OK I selected "paranoid", but I hope the following holds for all security levels: You are not allowed to log in as root. At all. Not even locally. The only way to gain root privilegies is to su. This is The Right Way. Hope that the other distros will follow... I know of peoples who runs as root all the time...Perheaps I'l write them a viri just to prove them they are stupid... No, I won't they may spread it... --The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
I once attempted to compile sshd under cygwin. Unfourtunately, I didn't manage to get it working for some strange reason I've now forgotten... However the client works fine... --The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Isn't cygwin a certified UNIX? (For those who doesn't know - cygwin is a libc and POSIX lib set and set of traditional UNIX and GNU tools for Windows).
Anyway, I would say that a requerement for a UNIX is the two basic UNIX philosophies; pipes and the file tree. The previous being that everything is done in small programs linked to each other to do complicated tasks, and the latter being that all communication with the outer world is done through the filesystem through device files.
But if the latter is a criterion, most unices aren't unices - the network interfaces are rarely real device files.
Another aspect of UNIX may be that everything is done in human readable format - you rather patch and recompile a source file than you binary patch or relinks. --The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Why in hell doesn't you (parents) all realize that if a kid is grown up and educated enought to actually _search_ for porn, they are grown up enought not to be harmed by it... School kids talks about sex alot. And no one is screaming for teachers listening to all the kids says... --The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
You forget that Mandrake (At least 7.0) does come with a range of security levels, which you could shoose from from the installer. When I switched from RedHat 6.0 to Mandrake 7.0, and selected the highest security level, I (And I am not a security professional, I'm just a programmer)noticed several security fixes and things done in another and better way than in RedHat 6.0. Perheaps RH61 is better, I don't know. But Mandrake has done at least partly right when it comes to security. --The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Of course I was joking! I thought that was obvious! Perheaps I should have put a;) there to guide you... --The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
I think we should bypass all of the OS and program the hardware directly, as done in windows to get better single user acceleration. --The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
It doesn't matter if there are 100 of ways to do something. But a user shouldn't be presented all of them and all of the 4711 other features as toolbuttons and 100s of other GUI thingies. Until now, desktops has looked like rooms from the 16th cenury. Clouded with small widgets. Simplicity in look together with ortogonality in function will give a much more user-friendly user interface. The MS user interfcae is clouded with new graphical features and toolbars. It is NOT user friendly. It is viewd as such only because of the _huge_ user base who can help newcomers learn the howto's and hownotto's. The Mac UI is very user friendly. Unfortunately, it is in fact expert hostile. The realy hard thing is to develope a user interface that is both newbie, user, power user and expert friendly. And, very little research have been done about merging those requerements... Happy hacking you UI hackers! And remember - simplicity in functionality is much more important than good-looking widgets! --The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Isn't it only a problem if the encryption scheme is clamed to be a _copy_ protection scheme? Which the stupid filter producers doesn't claim (They claim it's a security against children viewing porn). At least this should hold as long as you don't _distribute_ the database, only a decoder for it (thus people has to buy the database in order to decrypt and read it), thus the filter producers have got their money. --The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
In sweden (And possibly other countries), the format of dates are year-month-day, thus it's a bit more accurate. Bad though that MAX_MINUTE=60, otherwise 00-03-14 15/92/65 would have existed... --The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
If it is hidden, another person can still reinvent it, while inventions are "in the air" (For example, a lot of mathematical innovations has been done independently at the same time in different countries). But if it is patented, no one can use the algorithm. In addition, you can often infere algorithms or reverse-engineer them if they are used in an actual product. --The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
In other areas, the cost of a patent is a small fragment of the whole developement/research cost, and thus, most of the innovators are able to patent their innovations. In the computing area, research is fairly cheap - you need a good brain and an ordinary PC for most of it. Thus, the main cost for an invention is the patent itself, thus patents are empowering only the allready powerfull, and thus not beneficial to the public (Neither the innovators nor the consumers). --The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Re:More sorrow than love?
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To program a device not to react to persons with exactly the same, but at least and at most a bit different, should not be impossible.
Anyway, that would be a good way to make friends - "Oh, sorry, I don't think I will fall in love with you, but would you mind to play a good game of quake with me an my friends this sunday?"... --The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Users are stupid. By definition. And that is what makes it hard. You can not, as you do with another programmer or a poweruser, ask him/her to help you so that you can improove their program. No, you have to pay them for being test-dummies. And no free-software project will ever be able to afford that. That said, I'l like to point out some errors in the article. The first is that commercial programs often comes up with innovative user interfaces. This is some rare times true, but most often, commercial applications are must-get-it-working-before-deade-line-programs. Those are never innovative. Most commercial programs have very clouded user interfaces, filled with toolbars and buttons, just confusing the user. There are two simple guidelines to help free software projects on this point; ask your parents about the interface. They'l probably be users, _and_ like you enought not to ask you for money:). And design the user interface minimalistic. It is easier to misplace or misname buttons if there are hundreds of them than if you just have two of them. Also, just the huge number of widgets may disturb or confuse a user. --The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
No, we'l never have One GUI. We'l always have several GUI frameworks (Qt, Gtk, the Xt-based (Motif, AThena), OpenLook, etc). But they'l all emerge to a state when they are all interoperaple, and share a huge set of basic features like drag-n-drop, available themes, etc. They will all be configurable to look the same. And you are there again - Linux is not that easy to set up, but to use. But m4, some clever scripts and some GUI-front-ends (Like Gnorpm for the RPM packages) will do it for you!
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Recently, I was listening to RMS, and after the show I was able to ask him some questions. One question I asked was his opinion about where the border between hardware and software is (firmware comes to mind), and if he would like to see an open-hardware movement. Strangely, though, said that open-hardware was not that important, while the copying cost for hardware is quite high. Still, I beleave such a movement is important, and partly, the PC is such a standard. Perheaps time to start another open-movement, and to convince RMS that he is wrong:) --The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
We're allready there. Do it their way or don't do it. Of course your thoughts are owned by someone. But that's not you. --The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Free software has actually been given out by Microsoft (remember Internet Explorer? Netmeeting? Messenger?)
This shows that you have no knowledge about what Free software is or stand for. Free software is not the same as freeware. Freeware stands for "free as in beer" (It doesn't cost anything), while free software stands for free as in freedom (you have certain rights). Microsoft Internet Explorer is freeware - it doesn't cost you anything. But it only gives you the freedom of usage and redistribution - not modification, nor distribution of modified versions, which is requered for Free Software. "considering the incredible time-commitment it takes to become a lawyer" - Then consider the amount of time it takes to become a good programmer. I, for example have learned programming for five years - and still only knows 9 out of possible hundreds or thousands of languages, and yet, there are the data structures and algorithms to learn, for each field of programming.
Not being able to help yourself or your neightbours is the worst sentence you could possibly get.
/"Egil Möller" a.k.a. "RMS (clone)" --The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Or just send him/her some random data, and you know for sure they can not crack it to provide the police with the key...
But I think I've heard this debate here at v/. before, with exactly this argument, and the arguments of the commented... --The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
You don't have to be encouraged. You just have not to be discouraged, which many girls in fact are. No, I wouldn't say that. But I'm a hacker (at least I regard myself as one, but that doesn't make me one, but for the purposae of this argument, there is no difference). That argument is the old "girls-likes-this-and-boys-likes-that-and-nothing- will-change-that"-attitude. Come on. Most differences stems from nurture! --The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Slashdot Mirror
Good post!
But you assume there is only one law applicable to the net, the US one. But that's not true. The net may not be regulated all over, at least enless the US is able to confine the EU to regulate the same. And that will never happen. The EU allready does things just to do the opposite of the US... And how much the companies of the US successes to regulate it there (Not taxes, but regulations (regulations on what you are able to say and do online)), there will allways be oversea-sites running providing free infomation. The only risk is if you start to censor yourself with some blocking software... And if you do, that is a proof of the US being equal to China.
-- One party system, two party system -- what's the difference? Where did all the other parties go?
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Where I live, in sweden, all schools are by law requered to have a plan and to act against teasing of "different" childrens. You seem to slowly develope the very opposite. Please note: These actions and plans are not allways that good, but the intention is to help the teased children get rid of the teasing. A bit scary, thought...
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
I too checked out her web site. And was amazed about how non-consistent a web-page may be. Not one page looked like the other. I do not say pages has to be exactly the same - that would be boring. But they need to share some common design ideas so that they may be cognished as a whole.
Secondly, she seems to have forgotten about compatibility - her site is not even (as you mention) optimized for a specific window size, btu for a specific OS. She has not shoosen any "fallback"-fonts, thus the default is used, which with her font-sizer setting gives totally unreadable text under most UNIXes (And probably Mac too, and Mac users who are so daring about look!)...
As to your comment about tables: Tables are much much better to format the text and create coloured blocks, than the zillions of pictures used on many web sites, so there she's finally right...
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Why doesn't anyone even know of 'ExistenZ'? It is far better than 'The Matrix', but from the same genre... Go see it!
Other good movies are 'Pi' and 'The Cube'.
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
I recently installed Mandrake 7.0. OK I selected "paranoid", but I hope the following holds for all security levels: You are not allowed to log in as root. At all. Not even locally. The only way to gain root privilegies is to su. This is The Right Way. Hope that the other distros will follow...
I know of peoples who runs as root all the time...Perheaps I'l write them a viri just to prove them they are stupid... No, I won't they may spread it...
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
I once attempted to compile sshd under cygwin. Unfourtunately, I didn't manage to get it working for some strange reason I've now forgotten... However the client works fine...
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Isn't cygwin a certified UNIX? (For those who doesn't know - cygwin is a libc and POSIX lib set and set of traditional UNIX and GNU tools for Windows).
Anyway, I would say that a requerement for a UNIX is the two basic UNIX philosophies; pipes and the file tree. The previous being that everything is done in small programs linked to each other to do complicated tasks, and the latter being that all communication with the outer world is done through the filesystem through device files.
But if the latter is a criterion, most unices aren't unices - the network interfaces are rarely real device files.
Another aspect of UNIX may be that everything is done in human readable format - you rather patch and recompile a source file than you binary patch or relinks.
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Why in hell doesn't you (parents) all realize that if a kid is grown up and educated enought to actually _search_ for porn, they are grown up enought not to be harmed by it... School kids talks about sex alot. And no one is screaming for teachers listening to all the kids says...
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
You forget that Mandrake (At least 7.0) does come with a range of security levels, which you could shoose from from the installer. When I switched from RedHat 6.0 to Mandrake 7.0, and selected the highest security level, I (And I am not a security professional, I'm just a programmer)noticed several security fixes and things done in another and better way than in RedHat 6.0. Perheaps RH61 is better, I don't know. But Mandrake has done at least partly right when it comes to security.
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Of course I was joking! I thought that was obvious! Perheaps I should have put a ;) there to guide you...
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
I think we should bypass all of the OS and program the hardware directly, as done in windows to get better single user acceleration.
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
But windows IS UNIX. At leats with cygwin (It is UNIX certified, and it is GPLed).
SysV-init for NT. The dream for an admin.
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
It doesn't matter if there are 100 of ways to do something. But a user shouldn't be presented all of them and all of the 4711 other features as toolbuttons and 100s of other GUI thingies. Until now, desktops has looked like rooms from the 16th cenury. Clouded with small widgets. Simplicity in look together with ortogonality in function will give a much more user-friendly user interface.
The MS user interfcae is clouded with new graphical features and toolbars. It is NOT user friendly. It is viewd as such only because of the _huge_ user base who can help newcomers learn the howto's and hownotto's. The Mac UI is very user friendly. Unfortunately, it is in fact expert hostile.
The realy hard thing is to develope a user interface that is both newbie, user, power user and expert friendly. And, very little research have been done about merging those requerements...
Happy hacking you UI hackers! And remember - simplicity in functionality is much more important than good-looking widgets!
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Isn't it only a problem if the encryption scheme is clamed to be a _copy_ protection scheme? Which the stupid filter producers doesn't claim (They claim it's a security against children viewing porn). At least this should hold as long as you don't _distribute_ the database, only a decoder for it (thus people has to buy the database in order to decrypt and read it), thus the filter producers have got their money.
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
In sweden (And possibly other countries), the format of dates are year-month-day, thus it's a bit more accurate. Bad though that MAX_MINUTE=60, otherwise 00-03-14 15/92/65 would have existed...
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
If it is hidden, another person can still reinvent it, while inventions are "in the air" (For example, a lot of mathematical innovations has been done independently at the same time in different countries). But if it is patented, no one can use the algorithm. In addition, you can often infere algorithms or reverse-engineer them if they are used in an actual product.
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
In other areas, the cost of a patent is a small fragment of the whole developement/research cost, and thus, most of the innovators are able to patent their innovations. In the computing area, research is fairly cheap - you need a good brain and an ordinary PC for most of it. Thus, the main cost for an invention is the patent itself, thus patents are empowering only the allready powerfull, and thus not beneficial to the public (Neither the innovators nor the consumers).
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
To program a device not to react to persons with exactly the same, but at least and at most a bit different, should not be impossible.
Anyway, that would be a good way to make friends - "Oh, sorry, I don't think I will fall in love with you, but would you mind to play a good game of quake with me an my friends this sunday?"...
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Users are stupid. By definition. And that is what makes it hard. You can not, as you do with another programmer or a poweruser, ask him/her to help you so that you can improove their program. No, you have to pay them for being test-dummies. And no free-software project will ever be able to afford that. :). And design the user interface minimalistic. It is easier to misplace or misname buttons if there are hundreds of them than if you just have two of them. Also, just the huge number of widgets may disturb or confuse a user.
That said, I'l like to point out some errors in the article. The first is that commercial programs often comes up with innovative user interfaces. This is some rare times true, but most often, commercial applications are must-get-it-working-before-deade-line-programs. Those are never innovative. Most commercial programs have very clouded user interfaces, filled with toolbars and buttons, just confusing the user.
There are two simple guidelines to help free software projects on this point; ask your parents about the interface. They'l probably be users, _and_ like you enought not to ask you for money
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
No, we'l never have One GUI. We'l always have several GUI frameworks (Qt, Gtk, the Xt-based (Motif, AThena), OpenLook, etc). But they'l all emerge to a state when they are all interoperaple, and share a huge set of basic features like drag-n-drop, available themes, etc. They will all be configurable to look the same. And you are there again - Linux is not that easy to set up, but to use. But m4, some clever scripts and some GUI-front-ends (Like Gnorpm for the RPM packages) will do it for you!
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Recently, I was listening to RMS, and after the show I was able to ask him some questions. One question I asked was his opinion about where the border between hardware and software is (firmware comes to mind), and if he would like to see an open-hardware movement. Strangely, though, said that open-hardware was not that important, while the copying cost for hardware is quite high. Still, I beleave such a movement is important, and partly, the PC is such a standard. Perheaps time to start another open-movement, and to convince RMS that he is wrong :)
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
We're allready there. Do it their way or don't do it. Of course your thoughts are owned by someone. But that's not you.
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Microsoft Internet Explorer is freeware - it doesn't cost you anything. But it only gives you the freedom of usage and redistribution - not modification, nor distribution of modified versions, which is requered for Free Software.
"considering the incredible time-commitment it takes to become a lawyer" - Then consider the amount of time it takes to become a good programmer. I, for example have learned programming for five years - and still only knows 9 out of possible hundreds or thousands of languages, and yet, there are the data structures and algorithms to learn, for each field of programming.
Not being able to help yourself or your neightbours is the worst sentence you could possibly get.
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Or just send him/her some random data, and you know for sure they can not crack it to provide the police with the key...
But I think I've heard this debate here at v/. before, with exactly this argument, and the arguments of the commented...
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
You don't have to be encouraged. You just have not to be discouraged, which many girls in fact are.- will-change-that"-attitude. Come on. Most differences stems from nurture!
No, I wouldn't say that. But I'm a hacker (at least I regard myself as one, but that doesn't make me one, but for the purposae of this argument, there is no difference).
That argument is the old "girls-likes-this-and-boys-likes-that-and-nothing
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.