that America Online (AOL Germany, at any rate) is liable for the content of its servers, even where it has no control over that content.
Under what circumstances does AOL have no control over the content of its servers?
When AOL is drunk?
When AOL is intoxicated by inhalation of $3 crack cocaine?
When AOL is asleep, and a tree falls on the telephone line, rendering AOL unable to communicate with the outside world?
When AOL has fallen victim to a bizarre and tragic cheese accident, and is suffering from "locked-in syndrome", so it can only communicate by twitching its nose, and its nose is tired?
When AOL is looking the other way?
When invisible monkeys have impersonated AOL to the phone company, and transferred all of AOL's phone lines to their underwater lair?
AOL is in control of what exists on its servers. It has the power to remove material at any time. If it wants to remove material it can, and if it refuses to do so after it has been informed that the material is illegal, it ought to expect some consequences. AOL's relationship to the material is far, far, more like that of a publisher to a pamphlet than that of a telephone company to a conversation, or for that matter of Home Depot to a piece of lead. The fact that the German courts failed to accept AOL's moves to remove the material is far more likely to indicate that these moves were token and not in good faith (of course, nobody wants to do anything so radical as to rad the transcripts) than anything else.
I like the idea of a super-free Internet with no responsibility as much as anyone else, but I also like the idea of retaining some privacy, control over my life and protection from slander. The Internet is not so vastly different from other media that we can lift the normal rules of human decency. --streetlawyer, abusing his +2 bonus since last week
However, in at least one sense, I can claim superiority over him, as I can remember quite a few of the lyrics to the Anfield Rap. Here goes (from memory):
Liverpool FC is hot as hell Everton Tottenham Arse-nel But they don't just play, they can rap as well
[...] (John Barnes)
I come from Jamaica, my name is John Barnes When I do my thing, the crowd go bananas (historical not: "throw bananas" would have been more accurate)
(Steve McMahon, plus the other scouser, can't remember his name)
How can he do de Jamaican rap? He comes from just south of the Watford Gap!
(historical note: this is bollocks: Barnes played for Watford, but was a Jamaican)
(Stevo again, with his mate -- ALDRIDGE! It was John Aldridge, of course):
Alright dere Aldo, sound as a pound I'm cushty la, but there's nothing down de rest of de lads ain't got it sussed We'll 'ave to lern em to talk like us
(Bruce Grobelaar, wearing huge comedy hands)
Well I'm rapping now, I'm rapping for fun I'm your goalie, the number one You can take the mick and call me a clown But any more lip and you're going down (Aldridge comes right back, swapping lines, Run-DMC style)
Dey don't tak like we do do dey do la we'll have to lern 'em to talk prop-ah
All these typed from memory.
streetlawyer, abusing his +2 bonus since a week ago
The actual lyrics can be found at this mad bastard's site. I seem to have got about 20%, but I'm not sure his version is right -- he doesn't seem to have Aldo's comeback.
As the owner of a vibrating pager, and of a few pairs of those boxer shorts with the pocket in the crotch, I have to say that I don't object to being spammed in this way anything like as much as normal spam. Just not when I'm trying to put my contact lenses in, OK?
According to economic theory, utility is what motivates you to make decisions in your own self interest. Simple games, like the prisoner's dilemma, rationalize utility with numeric values to illustrate the concept, but it isn't money at all. If someone behaves in an unpredictable way, we must have our definition of their utility wrong.
As a young economist and philosopher (which gives you a clue which univ. I went to), I wrestled with this one for a long time, and came to the conclusion that Jordan is wrong on this one. There is just too much variety of human behaviour to ascribe it to seeking to maximise a single maximand. You end up with a conception of "utility" which is completely tautologous -- ie utility is "that which makes people do what they do"
For example, consider someone who hates himself and wants to frustrate all of his goals, but doesn't realise this fact (the fact that subconscious beliefs and motivations are possible creates yet more problems for utility theorists). What will this person do? Well, in fact, they tend to just become inactive, severely depressed people. In so far as this is a result of genuine subconscious desires (which is to say, in so much as a talking cure is possible (which is to say, not in most cases of clinical depression)), a talking cure for this kind of depression often involves pointing out to the person concerned that at some level, they are hanging around feeling depressed because they want to be. Then they stop doing it. If the cure isn't complete, they then realise that they have a new goal, attempt to frustrate themselves in this, forget the cure (subconsciously, they want to forget the cure) and sink back into depression. All the while remaining terribly unhappy. How can you explain this thoroughly predictable behaviour pattern by using utility?
Utility also has problems with anomie, religious experience and all manner of common human behaviours. As a heuristic for social science, it's excellent. But it shouldn't be elevated to a principle of logic or rationality.
Either way, Opensource will triumph over closed source because we're faster and better. It's like the small, fast mammal (Open Source) running around the huge lumbering dinosaur (Microsoft).
.. and that dinosaur has just looked up into the sky and realized it's beginning to snow.
Your analogy is accurate, but not for the reasons you think. Dinosaurs did not die out because of any intrinsic inferiority, and not all of them were "slow and lumbering". The mammals which were scampering round at that time had no very obvious advantage in terms of intelligence over some of the smarter dinosaurs. Dinosaurs, never forget, lasted on the earth for several times longer than mammals have; it is distinctly too early to tell which was the better design.
What happened was that a catastrophe happened for which the mammals happened to be suited, through blind chance, and for which the dinosaurs were not suited, again through blind chance. If the asteroid had taken a slightly different path, it is extremely probable that to this day, mammals would still be scampering around, trying to evolve better strategies for not getting stamped on, while dinosaurs continued to rule the earth.
Open source can be analogous to mammals, and Microsoft to dinosaurs. But the DoJ is analogous to that asteroid, and it has not struck yet.
but already, "Moron of the Year" contest is hotting up. Disgusting analogy of the day: Whether or not copyright violations are good or bad or neither is irrelevant. It's the law. Certainly stupid laws have shown up before - would you classify slavery (quite legal for a very long time) as good during the time that the law permitted it?
So now not being able to copy other peoples' work is the equivalent of slavery, is it? Here's another analogy, in no worse taste: Windows NT is really bad, just like killing six million Jews.
As for me, I think that current copyright law is blantantly unconstitutional
Well then, as for you, you're a moron. Not only is the copyright law not "unconstitutional", it's specifically mentioned in the constitution. Unlike all manner of other laws we have today, the US Constitution specifically states that Congress shall pass a law protecting the rights of the creators of useful works.
I can see the competition's gonna be fierce this year.
Apparently, in five years, we will have multi-gigabyte hard disk drives, a global network of computers, we'll be able to transmit 58.8Kb over voice telephone netowkrs, wireless data networks and x86 chips running at 300MHz will be cheap. Yeah, I'll believe it when I see it [1995]
Apparently, in five years, we'll all have Xerox PARC style desktop environments, hard disk size will be so big we'll be able to forget about our archive of floppies and we'll have moving pictures on our PCs. Yeah, I'll believe it when I see it. [1990]
Apparently, in five years, we'll all have affordable IBM computers with hard disk drives in our homes. And we'll all be walking round with mobile telephones. Yeah, I'll believe it when I see it. [1985]
Apparently in five years, we'll all have over 512K of RAM and we'll be able to do graphics on desktop computers. {Note: I remember hearing someone around this time talk about a "gigabyte" as if it were an obviously made-up word or at best, a whimsical extension of "kilobyte"}. Yeah, I'll believe it when I see it. [1980]
[....]
"I can see a global market for maybe five computers"
Er, I think it's time to stop reading radical feminist literature,
Of course you do. But you have that luxuiry, not being a woman.
By the way, the article was written by a woman. I guess she's just been corrupted by the male-dominated world, and she feels she has to attack her "sistahs" in order to break through.
You're completely wrong, of course. Like all other GPL'd software, Linux fully satisfies the ShareWare Foundation's "ShareWare Definition[SM]. It's a bit inexact, but not a falsehood, to refer to Linux as Shareware. Check the Jargon File if you don't believe me.
whooooo, a link to dictionary dot com. Somebody get out the +1, informative moderation, quick.
Unlike you, I am aware of the meaning of the word "misogynistic" without having to visit a lame website. And it is used in feminist theory to refer to patriarchal discourse aimed at marginalising women and removing them (treating them, if you will, as Other) from the main field of discourse. Dyson is a woman, she fails to meet the narrow standards demanded of women, therefore she cannot be treated as a human being. We, the New York Times, reserve the right to take one look at her and then dismiss her as "funny" because she is a woman. I think that counts as "hatred of women", don't you?
Sadly, there is no "getridofyourtiredpatriarchalpreconceptions dot com", otherwise I could post a link and get +1, informative, too.
At 5 foot 3 and 47 years of age, Dyson is a wiry, almost elfin figure, with seeming disregard for the trappings of makeup and fashion. She keeps her hair short and simply cut. She scurries around her office and official meetings wearing socks without shoes. And she often wears faded blue jeans, typically accompanied by an oversized T-shirt.
Let's face it, we don't get treated to descriptions of Stallman and Torvaaldes' dress sense and grooming. How much of this "friction" is due to Dyson, and how much of it is due to the fact that lots of self-styled "hackers" can't hack it when faced with an intelligent, articulate woman? And in either case, why can't the MY Times get rid of its annoying misogynistic habits?
As you can tell, I'm not exactly a geek (I'm going by what I've gleaned from discussions here), but don't I need "BSD" in order to be secure, and Linux doesn't yet support BSD? As far as I can tell, only BSD keeps your data secure out of the Unixes, Microcrap is useless. And I've never seen anything about Mac security, but we've never had a problem. I would truly hate to be the guy who advocated installing an operating system that caused one of our deals to be leaked to the WSJ ahead of time!
It's not like spending money on hardware is a problem -- if we need PC's we'll just buy them. We just need something that can run WordPerfect and maybe Excel. Can I get a Unix with BSD that does that?
Do I look like I know? Someone told me that Unix was what they used in PC shops. I never even bothered with DOS (though given the calibre of dumbass that did use it, I can't imagine it was terribly difficult). Can you run Unix on Macs? I mean proper Unix, not some lame-ass slowed down version like Java. I'm a bit out of my depth here, tech-wise
But all too often I'm called upon to provide some free:^) phone/on-site tech support to undo a change one of them has made
Never do that. Just because they're your parents, doesn't mean they can get a free ride. Lawyers learn this early on in their training -- if you want your advice to be considered valuable, charge for it. Ask the most popular cheerleader in your high school -- once you've got a reputation for giving something away, it's difficult to charge for it in later life.
Yeh, but it's your mom and dad, you say. You think you have a point, but you don't. First it's mom and dad. Then it's bro and sis. Then it's Aunty Murtle. Pretty soon you're getting woken up at four AM (after being out drinking martinis to three) in order to get down to some fucken city drunk tank to knock out a misdemeanour plea bargain, gratis, for your third cousin twice removed's stepchild from her third marriage. And it's always "Oh Johnny, could you do this just once? We're faaaammmilleeeee! Have you forgotten where you came from?" Yak yak yak. No, I haven't forgotten where I came from, it's just that now I don't have to fucken go back to that craphole in South Bklyn, I choose not to.
The way I play it, is that I don't make my family sign a check. But if they want my professional services, they should be prepared to give me some of theirs. So I get my car washed, my plumbing done, my dinner cooked, and on occasion a little recreational fellatio (only from relatives no closer than first cousin, naturally -- I'm not a fucken pig).
With more and more people having net connections, and all manner of what have you, it strikes me that technology types are going to be almost as much in demand as lawyers in the next few years. So I'd advise you guys to learn a few lessons from the legal profession. We learned the lesson from the teamsters -- Gas, Grass or Ass, nobody rides for free.
Yeh, I think you're onto something. At a recent meeting, I was a bit taken aback by a partner on the opposing side. We'd mentioned something offhand that we'd do this that and the other "if we can drag the phone number out of Lotus Notes", and he said that these days they just "stored all that shit in a text file and used grep".
Apparently various versions of Unix (mainly the BSDs -- I don't think anyone who cares about data security is quite ready for free software yet) are the weapon of choice in go-ahead legal and corporate planning departments. The cluelessness of most VPs is greatly overexaggerated; half of them had PCs as status symbols in the old days, so they can use DOS (which works just like Unix), and they quite like the idea of a CLI. And the old Hewlett Packard Financial Analyst calculator is another example of how tech-savvy finance suits can be if it's something they care about rather than something dull and non-revenue generating like network adminisatration
It's getting to the stage where Unix is reaching the corporate desktop -- I've seen a couple of job ads for secretaries and receptionists which state "must be able to use basic Unix commands". So I guess it's probably time for me to throw the good old Mac away and get with the winning side. I don't understand why all the techie elite types are keen to throw away their only unique selling point at all
to take on The Enemy directly would have been too risky
What, risky compared to the "Frodo Solo strategy"? They could have given him one bodyguard, or a magic sword of his own, or at the very least a freakin' map, but they actually hung him out to dry.
In any case, there is an actual explanation of why it has to be Frodo Solo, in the book, and it isn't that one. I'd remember something like that.
Oh My God, a science fiction writer with nutty political opinions? Whatever next? We certainly didn't get those back in the good old days of Asimov and Heinlein, did we?
Right, I need an answer to this question from a Lord of the Rings fan. The question is this:
Given that the Ring was so goddamned important, and that its destruction was literally the central event of the entire history of Middle-Earth, why did the supposedly wise Elves entrust this mission to a young hobbit with no military experience, supported by any friends he happened to pick up along the way? Particularly as the hobbit in question had never previously been more than a few miles from his native village.
Surely, the obvious solution would have been to assign a company of elven cavalry with magic swords, supported by Ents, and accompanied by guides familiar with the terrain. It's clear from the book that the elves could raise a huge military force when they had to -- why not use it for this mission?
The really annoying thing is that there *is* a reason why this was not an option, and a Lord of the Rings fan told me what it was three years ago. I forgot it, though, and it's been driving me mad ever since.
There is also the problem that most of the advice this kid is getting is going to be fucking useless. He's been set a paper on "Cryptography and its Effects on Society" -- which sounds like a social science topic, needing references on US export policy, terrorism, privacy, e-commerce, etc, etc. And he's asked a bunch of geeks with no special knowledge of policy issues. So they've given him a bunch of references to "Applied Cryptography", public-key structures, double-blind protocols and elliptic curves. He's going to write a paper which summarises (badly) a bunch of highly complicated mathematical literature. His teacher is going to say "Nice work, but there's not enough here on the efffects on society", and give him an F. Then his parents are going to sue the school for causing him mental distress, and the kid is going to have to walk around with a squint and a lisp to inflate the damages. Slashdot will be dragged in as a party to the action, and every single Slashbot on this thread will get subpoenaed for providing such bad advice (contributory negligence). Taco will get a court order requiring him to disclose the identity of the Anonymous Coward. He won't be able to do so, will be found in contempt, and get shot off to jail. In jail, he'll probably become a gang-land boss, and develop a wicked taste for clove cigarettes, shivving the wardens and sodomising his crew of prison-bitches in the exercise yard. Since he'd most likely be sent to a low-security, "open" prison, this behaviour is likely to stand out a bit. Then he gets out of the joint and leaves andover.net to start a site devoted to his new career as a crack and whores baron. Then he sues andover for using his proprietary "look and feel".
All of which means that some honest member of my profession gets to put food on his family's table for another night. So, you see, there is a silver lining in every cloud. --montoya
Search engines give all sorts of junk. It takes forever to wade through it and figure out whether or not anything is of use
Jesus! Does anyone remember the days of library catalogues? Walking in with no knowledge of the subject, trying to work out what freakin' Dewey Decimal categorisation fitted your subject, browsing indices, etc, etc. Library use used to be a skill
Now people are able to do natural language searches, at the touch of a button, and not only that, but they start to piss and moan that the search engines don't measure quality well enough!
A search engine is an incredible tool (imagine what some of the great 19th century philologists would have achieved if they'd been able trep). And the construction of a reading list is not a trivial piece of research
In many ways, this worries me more than letting kids use calculators and forget to add up (or at least, it's the equivalent brain damage for nonmathematical subjects). What the hell happens when these kids get to law school and are presented with five hundred yards of transcripts and no search engine in sight.
This is the most blatant example of censorship through moderation I have ever seen. This post is presented in polite language throughout, is reasonably grammatical and makes a clear point of view, well-argued by the standards of slashdot. And it's marked "troll".
Lissen you dumbfuck, long-haired, Quake playing socially retarded thirteen year olds, you wouldn't know a troll if it came up and bit you hard on the anus. As a very wise man once said to me "Fuck you". My name's John Saul Montoya, from the East Fucken Coast, and speaking as a leading lawyer with experience of the open source (or "freeware" movement from its beginning in 1996, I have to say that the communist Linux users have no idea of the necessity for gun control. They'd probably rather be indoctrinating children with pseudoscientific gobbledegook in the name of "evolution", while lying about the effects of abortion on women in order to peddle the gay agenda.
Now that is fucken trolling. Although the last bit about the gay agenda was arguably on-topic since the main subject of this article is an intensely dull bitch-fight between two cliques of Metropolitan London queens (why does the free speech movement always pick cases to defend where the one thing you want the defendants to do is shut the fuck up?)
I know trolling. I've had troll threads that took up 30% of an entire discussion. The post above is merely a departure from the slashdot consensus. It's probably intentionally provocative, but it isn't an attempt to draw flames, it certainly isn't off-topic, and it doesn't contain any troll hooks (oh yeh, Python is fundamentally better than Perl. And Linux needs to be able to support DirectX and other industry standards if it is ever to be taken seriously in the high-end enterprise-level server market)
Flame, my ass, as another very wise man said to me, holding a match to his ass and farting.
Let me guess, you're American. No offense, but every country in the world has an equal proportion of idiots, but only one of them encourages them to use their right to free speech. Elsewhere in the world, we exort our fools to shut up. Shut up.
Because of this, at the end of the day, all British citizens are SUBJECTS, not equal citizens of the state
One of the dumbest yet most persistent myths on Earth. British citizens are citizens -- if you don't believe me, check page 3 of a British passport, where Her Britannic Majesty's Foreign Secretary kindly explains the difference between a British Citizen (having the right of abode in the United Kingdom), a British National (having the right to a British passport), a British Dependent Territories Citizen, a British Protected Person, a British National (Overseas), a British Overseas Citizen (mainly Falklanders and Gibraltarians) and a British subject. British subjects are not the same as British Citizens, and British Citizens are very definitely citizens.
In the UK, you are not guaranteed the right to free speech. There is no genesis document like our Constitution that explicitly says that you are allowed to express your opinion due to it being a right granted to you as a human being.
Now that's fucking funny, because I seem to remember that Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ratified by the UK and enforceable in UK courts, with appeal to the European Court of Human Rights) guarantees me exactly that freedom. Ah yes, I remember rightly. I often rmember these things correctly, due to not being a fucking moron.
It helps that, unlike you, I'm not lumbering under the myth that everything has to be like the US Constitution, and that only "genesis documents" (for crying out loud) can confer "inalienable rights".
Why, Oh Lord, must it be the case that the loudest defenders of free speech are those who have fucking nothing to say? Why do you care about free speech? You've clearly never had an original thought in your life. No government in history has ever put people in prison for mindlessly parroting the party line. You're completely safe.
Slashdot Mirror
Under what circumstances does AOL have no control over the content of its servers?
When AOL is drunk?
When AOL is intoxicated by inhalation of $3 crack cocaine?
When AOL is asleep, and a tree falls on the telephone line, rendering AOL unable to communicate with the outside world?
When AOL has fallen victim to a bizarre and tragic cheese accident, and is suffering from "locked-in syndrome", so it can only communicate by twitching its nose, and its nose is tired?
When AOL is looking the other way?
When invisible monkeys have impersonated AOL to the phone company, and transferred all of AOL's phone lines to their underwater lair?
AOL is in control of what exists on its servers. It has the power to remove material at any time. If it wants to remove material it can, and if it refuses to do so after it has been informed that the material is illegal, it ought to expect some consequences. AOL's relationship to the material is far, far, more like that of a publisher to a pamphlet than that of a telephone company to a conversation, or for that matter of Home Depot to a piece of lead. The fact that the German courts failed to accept AOL's moves to remove the material is far more likely to indicate that these moves were token and not in good faith (of course, nobody wants to do anything so radical as to rad the transcripts) than anything else.
I like the idea of a super-free Internet with no responsibility as much as anyone else, but I also like the idea of retaining some privacy, control over my life and protection from slander. The Internet is not so vastly different from other media that we can lift the normal rules of human decency. --streetlawyer, abusing his +2 bonus since last week
However, in at least one sense, I can claim superiority over him, as I can remember quite a few of the lyrics to the Anfield Rap. Here goes (from memory):
Liverpool FC is hot as hell
Everton Tottenham Arse-nel
But they don't just play, they can rap as well
[...]
(John Barnes)
I come from Jamaica, my name is John Barnes
When I do my thing, the crowd go bananas (historical not: "throw bananas" would have been more accurate)
(Steve McMahon, plus the other scouser, can't remember his name)
How can he do de Jamaican rap?
He comes from just south of the Watford Gap!
(historical note: this is bollocks: Barnes played for Watford, but was a Jamaican)
(Stevo again, with his mate -- ALDRIDGE! It was John Aldridge, of course):
Alright dere Aldo, sound as a pound
I'm cushty la, but there's nothing down
de rest of de lads ain't got it sussed
We'll 'ave to lern em to talk like us
(Bruce Grobelaar, wearing huge comedy hands)
Well I'm rapping now, I'm rapping for fun
I'm your goalie, the number one
You can take the mick and call me a clown
But any more lip and you're going down
(Aldridge comes right back, swapping lines, Run-DMC style)
Dey don't tak like we do
do dey do la
we'll have to lern 'em
to talk prop-ah
All these typed from memory.
streetlawyer, abusing his +2 bonus since a week ago
The actual lyrics can be found at this mad bastard's site. I seem to have got about 20%, but I'm not sure his version is right -- he doesn't seem to have Aldo's comeback.
As the owner of a vibrating pager, and of a few pairs of those boxer shorts with the pocket in the crotch, I have to say that I don't object to being spammed in this way anything like as much as normal spam. Just not when I'm trying to put my contact lenses in, OK?
As a young economist and philosopher (which gives you a clue which univ. I went to), I wrestled with this one for a long time, and came to the conclusion that Jordan is wrong on this one. There is just too much variety of human behaviour to ascribe it to seeking to maximise a single maximand. You end up with a conception of "utility" which is completely tautologous -- ie utility is "that which makes people do what they do"
For example, consider someone who hates himself and wants to frustrate all of his goals, but doesn't realise this fact (the fact that subconscious beliefs and motivations are possible creates yet more problems for utility theorists). What will this person do? Well, in fact, they tend to just become inactive, severely depressed people. In so far as this is a result of genuine subconscious desires (which is to say, in so much as a talking cure is possible (which is to say, not in most cases of clinical depression)), a talking cure for this kind of depression often involves pointing out to the person concerned that at some level, they are hanging around feeling depressed because they want to be. Then they stop doing it. If the cure isn't complete, they then realise that they have a new goal, attempt to frustrate themselves in this, forget the cure (subconsciously, they want to forget the cure) and sink back into depression. All the while remaining terribly unhappy. How can you explain this thoroughly predictable behaviour pattern by using utility?
Utility also has problems with anomie, religious experience and all manner of common human behaviours. As a heuristic for social science, it's excellent. But it shouldn't be elevated to a principle of logic or rationality.
Your analogy is accurate, but not for the reasons you think. Dinosaurs did not die out because of any intrinsic inferiority, and not all of them were "slow and lumbering". The mammals which were scampering round at that time had no very obvious advantage in terms of intelligence over some of the smarter dinosaurs. Dinosaurs, never forget, lasted on the earth for several times longer than mammals have; it is distinctly too early to tell which was the better design.
What happened was that a catastrophe happened for which the mammals happened to be suited, through blind chance, and for which the dinosaurs were not suited, again through blind chance. If the asteroid had taken a slightly different path, it is extremely probable that to this day, mammals would still be scampering around, trying to evolve better strategies for not getting stamped on, while dinosaurs continued to rule the earth.
Open source can be analogous to mammals, and Microsoft to dinosaurs. But the DoJ is analogous to that asteroid, and it has not struck yet.
So now not being able to copy other peoples' work is the equivalent of slavery, is it? Here's another analogy, in no worse taste: Windows NT is really bad, just like killing six million Jews.
As for me, I think that current copyright law is blantantly unconstitutional
Well then, as for you, you're a moron. Not only is the copyright law not "unconstitutional", it's specifically mentioned in the constitution. Unlike all manner of other laws we have today, the US Constitution specifically states that Congress shall pass a law protecting the rights of the creators of useful works.
I can see the competition's gonna be fierce this year.
Apparently, in five years, we will have multi-gigabyte hard disk drives, a global network of computers, we'll be able to transmit 58.8Kb over voice telephone netowkrs, wireless data networks and x86 chips running at 300MHz will be cheap. Yeah, I'll believe it when I see it [1995]
Apparently, in five years, we'll all have Xerox PARC style desktop environments, hard disk size will be so big we'll be able to forget about our archive of floppies and we'll have moving pictures on our PCs. Yeah, I'll believe it when I see it. [1990]
Apparently, in five years, we'll all have affordable IBM computers with hard disk drives in our homes. And we'll all be walking round with mobile telephones. Yeah, I'll believe it when I see it. [1985]
Apparently in five years, we'll all have over 512K of RAM and we'll be able to do graphics on desktop computers. {Note: I remember hearing someone around this time talk about a "gigabyte" as if it were an obviously made-up word or at best, a whimsical extension of "kilobyte"}. Yeah, I'll believe it when I see it. [1980]
[....]
"I can see a global market for maybe five computers"
Christ, this year's crop of unthinking sexist slashbots is even denser than last year's
Of course you do. But you have that luxuiry, not being a woman.
By the way, the article was written by a woman. I guess she's just been corrupted by the male-dominated world, and she feels she has to attack her "sistahs" in order to break through.
You say this as if it were funny. It is not.
You're completely wrong, of course. Like all other GPL'd software, Linux fully satisfies the ShareWare Foundation's "ShareWare Definition[SM]. It's a bit inexact, but not a falsehood, to refer to Linux as Shareware. Check the Jargon File if you don't believe me.
Unlike you, I am aware of the meaning of the word "misogynistic" without having to visit a lame website. And it is used in feminist theory to refer to patriarchal discourse aimed at marginalising women and removing them (treating them, if you will, as Other) from the main field of discourse. Dyson is a woman, she fails to meet the narrow standards demanded of women, therefore she cannot be treated as a human being. We, the New York Times, reserve the right to take one look at her and then dismiss her as "funny" because she is a woman. I think that counts as "hatred of women", don't you?
Sadly, there is no "getridofyourtiredpatriarchalpreconceptions dot com", otherwise I could post a link and get +1, informative, too.
Let's face it, we don't get treated to descriptions of Stallman and Torvaaldes' dress sense and grooming. How much of this "friction" is due to Dyson, and how much of it is due to the fact that lots of self-styled "hackers" can't hack it when faced with an intelligent, articulate woman? And in either case, why can't the MY Times get rid of its annoying misogynistic habits?
Well, this is a thread about FreeNet, a system with no moderation, free from any sort of control over content, with total anonymity.
And this thread is absolutely swamped with useless, moronic, offensive posts, drowning out all useful discussion, and wasting everybody's bandwidth.
Somehow, I get the feeling that a point is being tragically missed here.
As you can tell, I'm not exactly a geek (I'm going by what I've gleaned from discussions here), but don't I need "BSD" in order to be secure, and Linux doesn't yet support BSD? As far as I can tell, only BSD keeps your data secure out of the Unixes, Microcrap is useless. And I've never seen anything about Mac security, but we've never had a problem. I would truly hate to be the guy who advocated installing an operating system that caused one of our deals to be leaked to the WSJ ahead of time!
It's not like spending money on hardware is a problem -- if we need PC's we'll just buy them. We just need something that can run WordPerfect and maybe Excel. Can I get a Unix with BSD that does that?
thanks
montoya
Do I look like I know? Someone told me that Unix was what they used in PC shops. I never even bothered with DOS (though given the calibre of dumbass that did use it, I can't imagine it was terribly difficult). Can you run Unix on Macs? I mean proper Unix, not some lame-ass slowed down version like Java. I'm a bit out of my depth here, tech-wise
Never do that. Just because they're your parents, doesn't mean they can get a free ride. Lawyers learn this early on in their training -- if you want your advice to be considered valuable, charge for it. Ask the most popular cheerleader in your high school -- once you've got a reputation for giving something away, it's difficult to charge for it in later life.
Yeh, but it's your mom and dad, you say. You think you have a point, but you don't. First it's mom and dad. Then it's bro and sis. Then it's Aunty Murtle. Pretty soon you're getting woken up at four AM (after being out drinking martinis to three) in order to get down to some fucken city drunk tank to knock out a misdemeanour plea bargain, gratis, for your third cousin twice removed's stepchild from her third marriage. And it's always "Oh Johnny, could you do this just once? We're faaaammmilleeeee! Have you forgotten where you came from?" Yak yak yak. No, I haven't forgotten where I came from, it's just that now I don't have to fucken go back to that craphole in South Bklyn, I choose not to.
The way I play it, is that I don't make my family sign a check. But if they want my professional services, they should be prepared to give me some of theirs. So I get my car washed, my plumbing done, my dinner cooked, and on occasion a little recreational fellatio (only from relatives no closer than first cousin, naturally -- I'm not a fucken pig).
With more and more people having net connections, and all manner of what have you, it strikes me that technology types are going to be almost as much in demand as lawyers in the next few years. So I'd advise you guys to learn a few lessons from the legal profession. We learned the lesson from the teamsters -- Gas, Grass or Ass, nobody rides for free.
--just call me streetlawyer, ma'am
Apparently various versions of Unix (mainly the BSDs -- I don't think anyone who cares about data security is quite ready for free software yet) are the weapon of choice in go-ahead legal and corporate planning departments. The cluelessness of most VPs is greatly overexaggerated; half of them had PCs as status symbols in the old days, so they can use DOS (which works just like Unix), and they quite like the idea of a CLI. And the old Hewlett Packard Financial Analyst calculator is another example of how tech-savvy finance suits can be if it's something they care about rather than something dull and non-revenue generating like network adminisatration
It's getting to the stage where Unix is reaching the corporate desktop -- I've seen a couple of job ads for secretaries and receptionists which state "must be able to use basic Unix commands". So I guess it's probably time for me to throw the good old Mac away and get with the winning side. I don't understand why all the techie elite types are keen to throw away their only unique selling point at all
--montoya
What, risky compared to the "Frodo Solo strategy"? They could have given him one bodyguard, or a magic sword of his own, or at the very least a freakin' map, but they actually hung him out to dry.
In any case, there is an actual explanation of why it has to be Frodo Solo, in the book, and it isn't that one. I'd remember something like that.
Oh My God, a science fiction writer with nutty political opinions? Whatever next? We certainly didn't get those back in the good old days of Asimov and Heinlein, did we?
Right, I need an answer to this question from a Lord of the Rings fan. The question is this:
Given that the Ring was so goddamned important, and that its destruction was literally the central event of the entire history of Middle-Earth, why did the supposedly wise Elves entrust this mission to a young hobbit with no military experience, supported by any friends he happened to pick up along the way? Particularly as the hobbit in question had never previously been more than a few miles from his native village.
Surely, the obvious solution would have been to assign a company of elven cavalry with magic swords, supported by Ents, and accompanied by guides familiar with the terrain. It's clear from the book that the elves could raise a huge military force when they had to -- why not use it for this mission?
The really annoying thing is that there *is* a reason why this was not an option, and a Lord of the Rings fan told me what it was three years ago. I forgot it, though, and it's been driving me mad ever since.
thanks, streetlawyer
Thank you for blowing apart the stereotype of Scandinavians as desperately boring, humourless drones.
All of which means that some honest member of my profession gets to put food on his family's table for another night. So, you see, there is a silver lining in every cloud. --montoya
Jesus! Does anyone remember the days of library catalogues? Walking in with no knowledge of the subject, trying to work out what freakin' Dewey Decimal categorisation fitted your subject, browsing indices, etc, etc. Library use used to be a skill
Now people are able to do natural language searches, at the touch of a button, and not only that, but they start to piss and moan that the search engines don't measure quality well enough!
A search engine is an incredible tool (imagine what some of the great 19th century philologists would have achieved if they'd been able trep). And the construction of a reading list is not a trivial piece of research
In many ways, this worries me more than letting kids use calculators and forget to add up (or at least, it's the equivalent brain damage for nonmathematical subjects). What the hell happens when these kids get to law school and are presented with five hundred yards of transcripts and no search engine in sight.
Lissen you dumbfuck, long-haired, Quake playing socially retarded thirteen year olds, you wouldn't know a troll if it came up and bit you hard on the anus. As a very wise man once said to me "Fuck you". My name's John Saul Montoya, from the East Fucken Coast, and speaking as a leading lawyer with experience of the open source (or "freeware" movement from its beginning in 1996, I have to say that the communist Linux users have no idea of the necessity for gun control. They'd probably rather be indoctrinating children with pseudoscientific gobbledegook in the name of "evolution", while lying about the effects of abortion on women in order to peddle the gay agenda.
Now that is fucken trolling. Although the last bit about the gay agenda was arguably on-topic since the main subject of this article is an intensely dull bitch-fight between two cliques of Metropolitan London queens (why does the free speech movement always pick cases to defend where the one thing you want the defendants to do is shut the fuck up?)
I know trolling. I've had troll threads that took up 30% of an entire discussion. The post above is merely a departure from the slashdot consensus. It's probably intentionally provocative, but it isn't an attempt to draw flames, it certainly isn't off-topic, and it doesn't contain any troll hooks (oh yeh, Python is fundamentally better than Perl. And Linux needs to be able to support DirectX and other industry standards if it is ever to be taken seriously in the high-end enterprise-level server market)
Flame, my ass, as another very wise man said to me, holding a match to his ass and farting.
streetlawyer.
Because of this, at the end of the day, all British citizens are SUBJECTS, not equal citizens of the state
One of the dumbest yet most persistent myths on Earth. British citizens are citizens -- if you don't believe me, check page 3 of a British passport, where Her Britannic Majesty's Foreign Secretary kindly explains the difference between a British Citizen (having the right of abode in the United Kingdom), a British National (having the right to a British passport), a British Dependent Territories Citizen, a British Protected Person, a British National (Overseas), a British Overseas Citizen (mainly Falklanders and Gibraltarians) and a British subject. British subjects are not the same as British Citizens, and British Citizens are very definitely citizens.
In the UK, you are not guaranteed the right to free speech. There is no genesis document like our Constitution that explicitly says that you are allowed to express your opinion due to it being a right granted to you as a human being.
Now that's fucking funny, because I seem to remember that Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ratified by the UK and enforceable in UK courts, with appeal to the European Court of Human Rights) guarantees me exactly that freedom. Ah yes, I remember rightly. I often rmember these things correctly, due to not being a fucking moron.
It helps that, unlike you, I'm not lumbering under the myth that everything has to be like the US Constitution, and that only "genesis documents" (for crying out loud) can confer "inalienable rights".
Why, Oh Lord, must it be the case that the loudest defenders of free speech are those who have fucking nothing to say? Why do you care about free speech? You've clearly never had an original thought in your life. No government in history has ever put people in prison for mindlessly parroting the party line. You're completely safe.
montoya