According to
this comment, "the leak is in the rhnsd daemon which is installed and running by default after installation. Even people who never start the update agent will get bitten by this, unless they disabled the daemon after installation."
You know, I can live with bugs in new versions of stuff. But I didn't ask to have any update daemon included in my RH7 install! A little question saying "Could you care less about the RH update network?" would have been nice!
So instead this daemon that I've never heard of and hadn't noticed yet (my bad), installed without my consent, would have crashed my recently-upgraded personal IMAP/SMTP/CVS/web server, were it not for the fact that I read Slashdot. I've received no email from RedHat even though I purchased RH7 direct from their site. The server's colocated elsewhere, so this would have been a real hassle for me.
Installing update daemons without asking you is exactly the kind of thing Microsoft does. Sheesh! OK, I'm ready to switch distributions. My only problem is I like having reasonably bleeding-edge versions of everything (other than unwanted update daemons), and I understand that's not what Debian is about.
That kind of product will open an opportunity for a competitor whose products are not as well protected. It's the same as one of the arguments for open source software: it isn't practical for most users to reverse engineer closed-source software to fix bugs in it or otherwise understand its workings. Very few highly successful products can thrive without a third-party/aftermarket, and the ability to reverse engineer to various degrees is one of the things that allows a 3rd party market to function. Companies that try to close their products entirely may find their lunch being eaten by others who are less paranoid.
I went through this same decision process, somewhat in reverse. For a year or so I used a 15" LCD, which I was very happy with, but 1024x768 gets a bit tiresome after a while. I looked into the SGI and other larger LCD displays, but found similar limitations to the ones you mention.
There are plenty of 21" and 19" monitors that don't flicker at 1600x1200. I went for one of those in the end, a flat-screen Sony, and I'm very happy.
I'm sure big LCDs will be more viable in a few years time. In the meantime, I'd rather save my money for some other toy.
Re:The ultimate win/lin compatibility already exis
on
User Mode Linux
·
· Score: 1
I take your point about the heavyweight-ness of vmware. It does a really good job for my purposes, though: development and targeting to different platforms, as well as installing, testing and running packages I wouldn't necessarily want on my base install. So I like it a lot.
Plus, it's not open source so there's no way to change it to do what I want.
Since it provides a true virtual machine, you can do just about anything you like inside that machine. Unfortunately, it just so happens the particular things you want to do (like run a non-X version of the VMWare tools, or giving it away free) depend on closed source.
I'd like something I could put on a CD so that when I sit down at someone else's machine I could pop it in and launch, with no install. This would be a good way to evangelize linux, and to provide tech support and stuff.
This is more a potential use, since UML only runs on Linux right now. But once it's ported to another OS, it is a completely authentic Linux environment - it will run any Linux executable. This would be an interesting shortcut for an OS vendor looking for Linux binary compatibility.
if the virtual x86 has access to disk hardware, or net hardware with NFS, then hacked daemons could do real damage to the VM host.
VMWare (see my other reply to you) virtualizes the disk and network too. The host disk is completely safe (as far as I can tell.) A hacked daemon could access the network, but if you're that concerned, you can disable networking in the VM.
The ultimate win/lin compatibility already exists!
on
User Mode Linux
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· Score: 3
For many people who already have Windows installed, running a linux kerel on top of it would provide an easy path to get the capabilities of linux.
You can already run Linux on Windows, using VMWare. I'm running Linux on WinNT4 right now. You can download an eval. They have a $99 hobbyist price, too.
Also, Cygwin provides a good implementation of the GNU tools on Windows, which lets you run GCC and compile and run lots of open source stuff.
I think your question is really "which is easier, and cheaper, now." The answer is clearly a 2D-based solution. But almost any infant technology is more expensive than the systems it improves upon. Even now, for example, LCD displays are significantly more expensive than CRTs, yet people still buy them, for good reason.
Volumetric displays probably won't replace 2D displays for a long time, if ever, but I'll bet they'll have niches in which they're considered very useful. One such might be for collaborative work - having a group of people standing around a cube containing a 3D display.
That gets into the theory of karma relativity - one person's Troll is another's Funny, and for some the two are equivalent. Really, moderation categories should be decoupled from their sign. It's just basic design factorization!
I suspect anyone who's ever worked with a complex model using a high-end 3D graphics visualization program would recognize the benefit of something like this. Manipulating 3D objects on a 2D screen, with or without 3D goggles, still leaves a lot to be desired.
Take a look at some of the pictures on this page to see some examples of the kind of images I'm talking about. Or, if you have some spare time, download IBM's open source viz program, OpenDX, and play with it (warning: time consuming business, this isn't your typical end user app.)
One of the benefits of a volumetric display is being able to move your head or body and actually see the object from a different angle. Humans are intuitively programmed to be able to understand the 3D objects that we interact with in real life, and cues like what happens when you move your head are important. Dealing with a 2D representation of a 3D object, some of this is inevitably lost.
For a concrete example of this, run a game like Doom and position your character near a window. If you move your (real) head from side to side, the view outside the window doesn't change. This isn't realistic, and gives a misleading impression of the relationships between objects on the screen. When the objects are unfamiliar ones, like the innards of a virus, this makes a difference to one's intuitive grasp of the object's structure.
The bug is in your husband, not the game. Unfortunately upgrading that model is rather tricky. Your best bet is to trade him in. To find a suitable replacement, I suggest submitting your requirements as an Ask Slashdot.
I agree there's potential for abuse. I think systems like MB are much more useful, and less dangerous, when used for self-evaluation, or perhaps analysis in conjunction with a therapist. Michael used INTP to describe himself, which is OK.
Trying to use something like MB to drive HR decisions in a company, say, is asking for trouble. I've come across efforts of this kind - I was once even asked to work on a software project which involved developing interactive tests for certain kinds of financial trading skills, which I refused to do. The enormous problem with these tests is that they're only as good as the people who conceive, administer and interpret them. Also, anything like this being used in a business or government environment is invariably being pushed by someone with a financial interest, so it's not uncommon to see snake-oil tactics used to promote the systems, and that misinformation gets blindly incorporated into management's attitudes towards the testing system, resulting in further abuse and distortion.
But, also in my experience, people's bullshit detectors are usually good enough to prevent this kind of thing being taken too far, so I don't see these systems as much of a danger.
I don't know how Meyers-Brigg came up with their system. I'm sure they must have done some analysis! Social sciences and especially psychology don't easily lend themselves to rigorous solutions, though. Even the most basic assumptions can be questioned, you usually end up having to create some axioms, typically based on a combination of intuition, guesswork, and prevailing fashion. (The postmodernists would like that last part!)
Idealist! Obviously what'll happen is you'll just get corporations that will try to buy or sue everyone else out of all the asteroids. The next Bill Gates will own 60 billion asteroids, and the average joanne will only be able to afford timeshare on an asteroid in an unstable orbit. With a snake and a little volcano.
It seems to me that to get too carried away with deciding whether there are n types of people or n^100 types of people is to miss the point. The point is to try to segment the personality landscape in a meaningful way, so that if you can locate a person's rough position in that landscape, you may be able to infer things about that person's personality and thought processes (even if the person in question is yourself.)
You seem to be focused on the granularity of the divisions. Clearly a balance is needed between 12 (horoscopes, generally useless) and 6 billion (pop. of Earth). Sure, everyone is unique, but everyone also shares common traits, often in predictable combinations.
You're Hemos posting anonymously, right? Sneaky of you to change the article before posting this! I coulda sworn the bit about the fungus "inside and outside" the station wasn't in italics when I read the article last night.
I had a 45-year old friend of mine express a similar sentiment to yours, in about 1995: "I really don't see the point of shopping on the web, I've never bought anything that way." Of course, in '95, options were more limited and perhaps he couldn't anticipate how things were going to change. (I noticed he still invested in tech stocks and made some money on the ride up, though.)
But it's 2000 now, and he buys all sorts of stuff online. When I reminded him of what he had said, he laughed. The web and e-commerce is a fait accompli. In 2000, a Slashdot post saying "I hate shopping online" and "I've only bought two things online" is a troll, almost by definition.
We all know you can't feel stuff online (well, not without a Vivid Video bodysuit, anyway.) You're not telling anybody anything new. Perhaps you don't buy things like software, CDs, CD-R disks, books, videos, electronics, and perhaps you don't book flights, hotels, or rental cars, and perhaps you don't purchase information in any form online. I, and millions of others, including many here on Slashdot, do. (Lately I've been renting DVDs online at netflix.com: it rocks! No late fees or time limits; beats Blockbuster senseless.)
So if you have something to say about why this all isn't good, or doesn't make sense, by all means, say it. But "I'm sick of this stupid "e-commerce"" isn't particularly constructive or interesting, and might just as easily be posted by a clever troll as by someone who really feels that way.
The subject references the fact that even if expressing his honest opinion, AFCArchvile is at heart, a troll.
But I thought I'd just relate a little international e-shopping experience I had the other day. I was sitting at home in Connecticut, instant messaging my friend in Colombia (you know, the place where cocaine comes from.) At the time, she was busy making hotel and car reservations online for her next vacation, while I was busy ordering some bicycle accessories and exercise equipment. Neither of us had to spend any time on hold, talking to an undertrained operator who's not familiar with their product line. Or worse, sitting in traffic. Instead, we chatted with each other in between filling out HTML forms.
Sure, the e-industry is filled with marketdroid buzzwords and hype. But that shouldn't bother you any more than the next Jon Katz story about killer high school students whose Luddite tendencies have erotic undertones; just ignore it and go about your life.
Re:Why Shockwave Rider was a stunning SF achieveme
on
The Shockwave Rider
·
· Score: 2
Napster is the most visible example of an industry with its head in the sand, being forced by developments on the Internet to pay attention to the wishes of their one and only source of revenue, namely their customers.
This is analogous to the situation with the government in Shockwave Rider, being forced to pay attention to its citizens, because of the ability of those citizens to communicate with each other and disseminate information via a ubiquitous network that is difficult to for any single entity to control.
Sure, there's a difference between Halflinger's actions, which essentially achieved the same end result as something like the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, and what's happening right now with Napster. But things aren't always as cut and dried as they often are in novels.
Saying that "Napster is the Dark Side of a free world" makes a lot of assumptions about the current state and direction of thinking regarding intellectual property. The thinking which leads to laws like the U.S. DMCA and Digital Signature Bill, which grants incredible power to corporations while removing it from customers, is wrong. And I don't only mean wrong in a moral sense, since certainly morals aren't absolute, but it is wrong in the sense that it cannot and will not survive. It will not survive because of the Internet - because of the ability for individuals to communicate with each other freely.
The cliche that "the Internet views censorship as damage and routes around it" is being extended to society as a whole, but it goes far beyond just censorship. I would restate that phrase in a more unwieldy form: "The Internet enables individuals to treat attempts at central control and exercise of excessive power as damage, and route around it."
I think Patricia Seybold puts it well in the September issue of Fast Company magazine:
"The music industry is now at the mercy of customers who are taking it upon themselves to do the kinds of things that used to be done by studios and publishers: marketing and disseminating songs that they like. Now, you could just say, "copyright violation", and be done with it. But think about what's really happening. End users - customers - are voting with their feet (well, their ears) and bringing into question the longstanding roles of the studio, the producer, and the the publisher."
If all you see is "copyright violation", you need to look deeper. Think about issues like what "intellectual property" really means, what open source software can teach us about the benefits of open information exchange, and the direction in which the prevailing legal and corporate attitudes towards intellectual property ownership seem to be leading us. Patents on hyperlinks and one-click shopping? Legally enforceable restrictions on intellectual property far more onerous than anything that was ever applied to physical property?
Sure, Napster is also about "free stuff". But it's simplistic and short-sighted to see it as only that. The "middle layer" of the recording industry will either have to transform itself or get out of the way. It sat on its hands for decades watching digital technology develop, and bitterly fought anything that might weaken its monopoly on stamping and distributing bits of plastic. It's no longer about bits of plastic, though. The noise being made is coming from a group of wealthy but obsolete businessmen who are doing their best to resist being disintermediated, instead of trying to find ways of actually serving both the customers and the artists that are supposed to be the core of their corporate mission.
The more foresighted artists agree: Courtney Love, Chuck D, Limp Bizkit. Napster is a symptom of the rot at the core of the music industry. The only things that rot are things that are already dead.
I'll wrap up my rant with this great statement quoted in the Slashdot article Sony VP On Stopping Napster, by Steve Heckler, senior VP of Sony Pictures Entertainment:
"The [music] industry will take whatever steps it needs to protect itself and protect its revenue streams. It will not lose that revenue stream, no matter what. [...] Sony is going to take aggressive steps to stop this. We will develop technology that transcends the individual user. We will firewall Napster at source -- we will block it at your cable company, we will block it at your phone company, we will block it at your [ISP]. We will firewall it at your PC."
I'm not sure if this attitude arises from an "honest" distrust of individual customers, or from fear, sheer greed, or simple small-mindedness. Whichever it is, it's sad. But John Brunner has already shown us how it's all going to end, and I share his optimism.
Why Shockwave Rider was a stunning SF achievement
on
The Shockwave Rider
·
· Score: 2
In Shockwave Rider, published in 1975, Brunner effectively not only predicted the Internet, but predicted many of the kinds of political and social changes that would be brought about by the Internet. Perhaps he was basing it on Toffler's work, and in turn the technical details were previously laid out by Vannevar Bush in 1945, but Brunner nevertheless created a very credible story which touched on and made real many of the most important implications of a global computer network.
Anyone interested in speculative fiction, and the relationship between technology and human society, should read this book. It should be required reading for the legislators and politicians dealing with issues such as the DMCA, UCITA, Napster, and deCSS. It might help them understand, on a more concrete level, why you can't just legislate against everything that the old guard and uninformed happen to have a kneejerk reaction to.
Some of the "predictions" in Brunner's book have yet to come true, but I firmly believe that they will, and I look forward to it. However, it would be a plot spoiler to reveal exactly what those are. Hint: Napster is just the beginning!
Slashdot Mirror
According to this comment, "the leak is in the rhnsd daemon which is installed and running by default after installation. Even people who never start the update agent will get bitten by this, unless they disabled the daemon after installation."
So instead this daemon that I've never heard of and hadn't noticed yet (my bad), installed without my consent, would have crashed my recently-upgraded personal IMAP/SMTP/CVS/web server, were it not for the fact that I read Slashdot. I've received no email from RedHat even though I purchased RH7 direct from their site. The server's colocated elsewhere, so this would have been a real hassle for me.
Installing update daemons without asking you is exactly the kind of thing Microsoft does. Sheesh! OK, I'm ready to switch distributions. My only problem is I like having reasonably bleeding-edge versions of everything (other than unwanted update daemons), and I understand that's not what Debian is about.
Recommendations, anyone?
That kind of product will open an opportunity for a competitor whose products are not as well protected. It's the same as one of the arguments for open source software: it isn't practical for most users to reverse engineer closed-source software to fix bugs in it or otherwise understand its workings. Very few highly successful products can thrive without a third-party/aftermarket, and the ability to reverse engineer to various degrees is one of the things that allows a 3rd party market to function. Companies that try to close their products entirely may find their lunch being eaten by others who are less paranoid.
...some of it might end up in your brain. Not much chance of that though!
C'mon, Slashdot posters on crack?? Nah! That unposible!
There are plenty of 21" and 19" monitors that don't flicker at 1600x1200. I went for one of those in the end, a flat-screen Sony, and I'm very happy.
I'm sure big LCDs will be more viable in a few years time. In the meantime, I'd rather save my money for some other toy.
Plus, it's not open source so there's no way to change it to do what I want.
Since it provides a true virtual machine, you can do just about anything you like inside that machine. Unfortunately, it just so happens the particular things you want to do (like run a non-X version of the VMWare tools, or giving it away free) depend on closed source.
I'd like something I could put on a CD so that when I sit down at someone else's machine I could pop it in and launch, with no install. This would be a good way to evangelize linux, and to provide tech support and stuff.
Did you see this in the What it's good for page for user-mode Linux:
Time to get hacking? ;) It's a tempting idea!
VMWare (see my other reply to you) virtualizes the disk and network too. The host disk is completely safe (as far as I can tell.) A hacked daemon could access the network, but if you're that concerned, you can disable networking in the VM.
You can already run Linux on Windows, using VMWare. I'm running Linux on WinNT4 right now. You can download an eval. They have a $99 hobbyist price, too.
Also, Cygwin provides a good implementation of the GNU tools on Windows, which lets you run GCC and compile and run lots of open source stuff.
Volumetric displays probably won't replace 2D displays for a long time, if ever, but I'll bet they'll have niches in which they're considered very useful. One such might be for collaborative work - having a group of people standing around a cube containing a 3D display.
That gets into the theory of karma relativity - one person's Troll is another's Funny, and for some the two are equivalent. Really, moderation categories should be decoupled from their sign. It's just basic design factorization!
Take a look at some of the pictures on this page to see some examples of the kind of images I'm talking about. Or, if you have some spare time, download IBM's open source viz program, OpenDX, and play with it (warning: time consuming business, this isn't your typical end user app.)
One of the benefits of a volumetric display is being able to move your head or body and actually see the object from a different angle. Humans are intuitively programmed to be able to understand the 3D objects that we interact with in real life, and cues like what happens when you move your head are important. Dealing with a 2D representation of a 3D object, some of this is inevitably lost.
For a concrete example of this, run a game like Doom and position your character near a window. If you move your (real) head from side to side, the view outside the window doesn't change. This isn't realistic, and gives a misleading impression of the relationships between objects on the screen. When the objects are unfamiliar ones, like the innards of a virus, this makes a difference to one's intuitive grasp of the object's structure.
Second, companies as clueless as DC deserve to be embarassed, in public and in the courtroom. It's a pity the RIAA and MPAA aren't such easy targets.
Third, if Linux has to depend for its "image" on the behavior of every one of its users, it's in trouble. Luckily, it doesn't.
Fourth, self-censorship is still censorship. You should re-examine your own position before you turn into a PHB.
If you didn't get disoriented the first time you walked down the Disneyfied 42nd St., you are made of strong stuff indeed!!!
The bug is in your husband, not the game. Unfortunately upgrading that model is rather tricky. Your best bet is to trade him in. To find a suitable replacement, I suggest submitting your requirements as an Ask Slashdot.
Trying to use something like MB to drive HR decisions in a company, say, is asking for trouble. I've come across efforts of this kind - I was once even asked to work on a software project which involved developing interactive tests for certain kinds of financial trading skills, which I refused to do. The enormous problem with these tests is that they're only as good as the people who conceive, administer and interpret them. Also, anything like this being used in a business or government environment is invariably being pushed by someone with a financial interest, so it's not uncommon to see snake-oil tactics used to promote the systems, and that misinformation gets blindly incorporated into management's attitudes towards the testing system, resulting in further abuse and distortion.
But, also in my experience, people's bullshit detectors are usually good enough to prevent this kind of thing being taken too far, so I don't see these systems as much of a danger.
I don't know how Meyers-Brigg came up with their system. I'm sure they must have done some analysis! Social sciences and especially psychology don't easily lend themselves to rigorous solutions, though. Even the most basic assumptions can be questioned, you usually end up having to create some axioms, typically based on a combination of intuition, guesswork, and prevailing fashion. (The postmodernists would like that last part!)
Idealist! Obviously what'll happen is you'll just get corporations that will try to buy or sue everyone else out of all the asteroids. The next Bill Gates will own 60 billion asteroids, and the average joanne will only be able to afford timeshare on an asteroid in an unstable orbit. With a snake and a little volcano.
Great idea for a moderation option!
(Score: -1, Insane Dude)
You seem to be focused on the granularity of the divisions. Clearly a balance is needed between 12 (horoscopes, generally useless) and 6 billion (pop. of Earth). Sure, everyone is unique, but everyone also shares common traits, often in predictable combinations.
You're Hemos posting anonymously, right? Sneaky of you to change the article before posting this! I coulda sworn the bit about the fungus "inside and outside" the station wasn't in italics when I read the article last night.
I mean, the reading comprehension level of Slashdot editors couldn't be that bad, could it? Wait, what am I saying?!
No accounting for taste!
I had a 45-year old friend of mine express a similar sentiment to yours, in about 1995: "I really don't see the point of shopping on the web, I've never bought anything that way." Of course, in '95, options were more limited and perhaps he couldn't anticipate how things were going to change. (I noticed he still invested in tech stocks and made some money on the ride up, though.)
But it's 2000 now, and he buys all sorts of stuff online. When I reminded him of what he had said, he laughed. The web and e-commerce is a fait accompli. In 2000, a Slashdot post saying "I hate shopping online" and "I've only bought two things online" is a troll, almost by definition.
We all know you can't feel stuff online (well, not without a Vivid Video bodysuit, anyway.) You're not telling anybody anything new. Perhaps you don't buy things like software, CDs, CD-R disks, books, videos, electronics, and perhaps you don't book flights, hotels, or rental cars, and perhaps you don't purchase information in any form online. I, and millions of others, including many here on Slashdot, do. (Lately I've been renting DVDs online at netflix.com: it rocks! No late fees or time limits; beats Blockbuster senseless.)
So if you have something to say about why this all isn't good, or doesn't make sense, by all means, say it. But "I'm sick of this stupid "e-commerce"" isn't particularly constructive or interesting, and might just as easily be posted by a clever troll as by someone who really feels that way.
But I thought I'd just relate a little international e-shopping experience I had the other day. I was sitting at home in Connecticut, instant messaging my friend in Colombia (you know, the place where cocaine comes from.) At the time, she was busy making hotel and car reservations online for her next vacation, while I was busy ordering some bicycle accessories and exercise equipment. Neither of us had to spend any time on hold, talking to an undertrained operator who's not familiar with their product line. Or worse, sitting in traffic. Instead, we chatted with each other in between filling out HTML forms.
Sure, the e-industry is filled with marketdroid buzzwords and hype. But that shouldn't bother you any more than the next Jon Katz story about killer high school students whose Luddite tendencies have erotic undertones; just ignore it and go about your life.
This is analogous to the situation with the government in Shockwave Rider, being forced to pay attention to its citizens, because of the ability of those citizens to communicate with each other and disseminate information via a ubiquitous network that is difficult to for any single entity to control.
Sure, there's a difference between Halflinger's actions, which essentially achieved the same end result as something like the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, and what's happening right now with Napster. But things aren't always as cut and dried as they often are in novels.
Saying that "Napster is the Dark Side of a free world" makes a lot of assumptions about the current state and direction of thinking regarding intellectual property. The thinking which leads to laws like the U.S. DMCA and Digital Signature Bill, which grants incredible power to corporations while removing it from customers, is wrong. And I don't only mean wrong in a moral sense, since certainly morals aren't absolute, but it is wrong in the sense that it cannot and will not survive. It will not survive because of the Internet - because of the ability for individuals to communicate with each other freely.
The cliche that "the Internet views censorship as damage and routes around it" is being extended to society as a whole, but it goes far beyond just censorship. I would restate that phrase in a more unwieldy form: "The Internet enables individuals to treat attempts at central control and exercise of excessive power as damage, and route around it."
I think Patricia Seybold puts it well in the September issue of Fast Company magazine:
"The music industry is now at the mercy of customers who are taking it upon themselves to do the kinds of things that used to be done by studios and publishers: marketing and disseminating songs that they like. Now, you could just say, "copyright violation", and be done with it. But think about what's really happening. End users - customers - are voting with their feet (well, their ears) and bringing into question the longstanding roles of the studio, the producer, and the the publisher."
If all you see is "copyright violation", you need to look deeper. Think about issues like what "intellectual property" really means, what open source software can teach us about the benefits of open information exchange, and the direction in which the prevailing legal and corporate attitudes towards intellectual property ownership seem to be leading us. Patents on hyperlinks and one-click shopping? Legally enforceable restrictions on intellectual property far more onerous than anything that was ever applied to physical property?
Sure, Napster is also about "free stuff". But it's simplistic and short-sighted to see it as only that. The "middle layer" of the recording industry will either have to transform itself or get out of the way. It sat on its hands for decades watching digital technology develop, and bitterly fought anything that might weaken its monopoly on stamping and distributing bits of plastic. It's no longer about bits of plastic, though. The noise being made is coming from a group of wealthy but obsolete businessmen who are doing their best to resist being disintermediated, instead of trying to find ways of actually serving both the customers and the artists that are supposed to be the core of their corporate mission.
The more foresighted artists agree: Courtney Love, Chuck D, Limp Bizkit. Napster is a symptom of the rot at the core of the music industry. The only things that rot are things that are already dead.
I'll wrap up my rant with this great statement quoted in the Slashdot article Sony VP On Stopping Napster, by Steve Heckler, senior VP of Sony Pictures Entertainment:
"The [music] industry will take whatever steps it needs to protect itself and protect its revenue streams. It will not lose that revenue stream, no matter what. [...] Sony is going to take aggressive steps to stop this. We will develop technology that transcends the individual user. We will firewall Napster at source -- we will block it at your cable company, we will block it at your phone company, we will block it at your [ISP]. We will firewall it at your PC."
I'm not sure if this attitude arises from an "honest" distrust of individual customers, or from fear, sheer greed, or simple small-mindedness. Whichever it is, it's sad. But John Brunner has already shown us how it's all going to end, and I share his optimism.
Anyone interested in speculative fiction, and the relationship between technology and human society, should read this book. It should be required reading for the legislators and politicians dealing with issues such as the DMCA, UCITA, Napster, and deCSS. It might help them understand, on a more concrete level, why you can't just legislate against everything that the old guard and uninformed happen to have a kneejerk reaction to.
Some of the "predictions" in Brunner's book have yet to come true, but I firmly believe that they will, and I look forward to it. However, it would be a plot spoiler to reveal exactly what those are. Hint: Napster is just the beginning!