the.za "top-level" domain name: adminned by a single (competent) individual working without pay. the "top-level" domains.com,.net and.org: adminning by a corporation (Network Solutions) recently sold (to Verisign) for $21 billion. how can Network Solutions be worth that much money UNLESS their new owners plan to use its monopoly (in running root nameservers) to set up "toll roads" rather than delivering value.
The Salon article uses the phrase "facilities-based competition", which we have now in DSL markets, where the owner of the facility (the ILEC) has to open the facility (and its copper pairs, etc) up to CLECs like Covad. I would be willing to forgo facilities-based competition, like the FCC is considering, only in exchange for "packet-based" competition, whereby the monopolizer of the facility must without prejudice allow all IP packets to travel through their facility. Specifically, under packet-based competition, ILECs and other providers of IP connectivity would not be able to use their monopoly/oligopoly on connectivity to gain an advantage in services or content that runs atop the IP layer. Bob Frankston advocates this, but I'm afraid that he's not cynical enough about government's tendency to kowtow to big corporations. Specifically, it is easier to fight to keep a right one already enjoys (to buy from facilities-based competitors like Covad) than to fight for a new right (to buy services from packet-based competitors). Thus, I will fight to keep facilities-based competition.
I purchase a lot of doctor's services. so far, in all but one case, the doctor has written his notes on paper. I will probably refuse to consult a doctor that keeps his notes on a computer, because of the privacy issue. but if I ever decide that my privacy is worth gambling with, then I sure as hell want the copy of the records that *I* get (which I'm entitled to under law) in electronic form, too, not on paper, and not in some proprietary format. the one security measure that would impress me is if the doctor's office or clinic kept my name, address, phone number, SSN and other "identifying" info on paper. then the computer records by themselves do not betray very much.
maybe the reason that SETI has found no EMR created by other civilizations is because EMR turns out to be destructive to civilizations in some way unknown to us. given the rate of discovery of new physics in the last century, it is foolish to suppose that there does not exist lots of new physics waiting to be discovered.
those of us who refuse to use IE could benefit from some way of knowing before we follow a link whether that link leads to a page that relies on Microsoft's proprietary extensions.
although I am not competent to design such a service, one way to implement it is probably with a "web proxy" like crit.org.
moreover, the same service could be used for other political goals, like helping people avoid Web servers running Microsoft's IIS or NT/W2000 when servers running open-source software would do just as well (links to pages served by Microsoft software could be a different color, for instance) or helping Lynx users avoid wasting time downloading pages that dont display under Lynx.
some will object that this will fragment the Internet. but fragmentation of the Net is inevitiable: e.g., it is already fractured along the Realtime Blackhole List. fragmentation for frivolous reason or to help some dot com make a buck is a bad thing, but fragmentation to fight Microsoft is noble. the time has come to realize that boycotting Microsoft is not enough: we must start boycotting the sheep who willingly drink Microsoft's Kool-Aid. and we need tools that make that boycotting easy and flexible.
Meyer writes: the US political system has a remarkable combination of checks and balances making the imposition of a dictatorship rather unlikely; the historical exceptions to this observation--such as McCarthyism and institutionalized racial discrimination--were not, if memory serves us well, met by armed resistance from an outraged citizenry; the Black Panther Party of Oakland would show up when police were detaining black men, and stand at a respectful distance with shotguns to observe for police mistreatment. (this behavior was probably lawful, btw.)
Some of the comments on slashdot describe horror stories of smart, technically savvy people who failed in their attempts to install Linux. Or who spent 20 hours getting it to work right. Keep in mind that many future Linux users are very smart people, who happen to be busy with other things. If Linux is difficult to install or configure, these people will give up -- even though they are "smart enough". They just don't have time.
Some of the comments on slashdot describe horror stories of smart, politically savvy people who failed in their attempts to understand the election coverage in the newspaper. Or who spent 20 hours informing themselves about some tedious issue, like nuclear weapons. Keep in mind that many potential voters are very smart people, who happen to be busy with other things. If picking the right candidate is difficult, these people will give up -- even though they are "smart enough". They just don't have time.
Some of the comments on slashdot describe horror stories of bright, healthy children who failed in their attempts to learn to read. Or who spent 20 hours learning. Keep in mind that many children are very smart people, who happen to have many entertainment options. If reading is difficult to learn, these kids will give up -- even though they are "smart enough".
Some of the comments on slashdot describe horror stories of presentable sensitive people who failed in their attempts to get a girlfriend. Or who spent 20 hours getting to know a woman before the woman would "get naked". Keep in mind that many men are attractive caring people, who happen to be busy with other things. If a girlfriend is difficult to get or keep, these people will give up -- even though they would make a good boyfriend. They just don't have time.
some things are worth the time!
the freedom to fork versus wrtie-once-run-anywhere
on
RMS on Java and GPL
·
· Score: 2
I read through the 20 or so comments at JavaLobby. most were against a GPLed Java clone because the GPL allows forking. forking destroys Java's write-once-run-anywhere (WORA) property. these commentators at JavaLobby value WORA over freedom. the best single comment is here. (scrolling up and down brings you to the other 19 or so comments.)
a year ago, I browsed verisign and thawte's web sites to educate myself on certs. Verisign's web site was full of legal disclaimers, uninformative in the grand old bureaucratic style, and without humor or humanity. Thawte's web site was informative --a geek can learn things from it-- and had a human voice. what gubmint agency do I write to protest this merger?
signing a petition costs the signatories nothing. what would impress me is if the supporters of the Mars plan collectively escrowed a large sum of money for a Mars mission.
before today, most people were not aware of that many people were displeased with the WTO. the riot is a more effective way of publicizing this fact than purchasing 10s of millions of dollars in ads. "bad publicity is better than no publicity", the saying goes.
if infoware is going to become more important than software, then perhaps the GPL needs updating to prevent the dominant infoware vendors (Amazon.com, AOL,...) from being able to build monopolistic, proprietary infoware apps (websites) atop GPLed software. again: distributing software is likely to become less important than operating web sites. the GPL currently gets its power by regulating the distribution of (modified or verbatim) GPLed software. it does not attempt to regulate the operation of a website built on GPLed software. so for example, it does me no good to insist that my online bookstore use GPLed software: that online bookstore can still become the next bully of the computer industry. in this way is the GPL in danger of becoming irrelevant--or at least not as effective as it could be if we take Mr. O'Reilly's words to heart.
the intro to this story referred to "Tim" without a last name so naturally I assumed it meant Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Web (and the first Yahoo-like subject index, btw). but it means that windy Tim O'Reilly.
I'm replying to a comment scored *5* that implies that Microsoft invent BASIC. BASIC was invented in 1965 at Dartmouth College. MS developed a BASIC interpreter, first for the MITS Altair I think.
"a post can be put under public domain and then no one would ever be able to own it for themselves."
Bzzt. Wrong. Thanks for playing. A corporation can make a few easy modifications to a public-domain work and claim an exclusive copyright on the result. Case in point is decisions published by courts. like most documents created a taxpayer expense, these documents are in the public domain. some company repackaged these public domain documents in books and sold the books and successfully defended its copyright on the books because they had added page numbers. (a competitor could copy the decisions but was enjoined from duplicating the same page numbering as the first company.) In software, we have the famous case of BSD, which is under a license very much resembling public domainhood. the university where it was developed said, well we ought to put this in the public domain because it was developed with government funds, but lets add a very permissive license instead mainly so that each copy of BSD'd say, "THIS SOFTWARE IS DISTRIBUTED AS-IS WITH ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANY". Anyway, lots of workstation vendors --one named Sun-- made some changes to BSD and slapped a copyright on the result.
Bottom line: the GPL works better than putting stuff in the public domain when the goal is to approximate under our legal system an environment/community-of-authors in which copyright does not exist.
Well, how many lines of code would it take to achieve compliance? 1 million? more? I'm a "lines-of-code" minimalist: the fewer lines of source code I rely on day-to-day, the more reliable and modifiable my software environment will tend to be. You havent explained *why* w3c's reccommendations outweigh the cost in LOC of their implementation.
the "Concurrent virtual Workspaces" recently released as open source and mentioned above reads like a MUD with support for sharing.DOCs and.XLSes etc and video/audio. Not as good as a mailing list I would say at recording past discussion --never mind sophisticated stuff like transclusion.
lynx 2.6 is unusable on a 486 with a math coprocessor. just too slow. and lynx seems to need ~8 megs to render a really big page. Info was comfortable on a computer 1/5 the speed and 1/2 the mem. but, as much as I dig Info, I hafta admit that html can and prob should replace it now that computers are faster.
Re:No X -- we need a media-savvy, compositing GUI
on
Is X The Future?
·
· Score: 1
Name another windowing systems that is as flexible as X? plan 9's windowing system will run another instance of itself in one of its windows. and it is at least as good at remote display as X.
when my ISP or a site I visit regularly like/. goes down for a day or 2, it rarely bothers me. "It'll be back up in a day or 2," I say to myself. No problem.
Slashdot Mirror
the .za "top-level" domain name: adminned by a single (competent) individual working without pay. .com, .net and .org: adminning by a corporation (Network Solutions) recently sold (to Verisign) for $21 billion.
the "top-level" domains
how can Network Solutions be worth that much money UNLESS their new owners plan to use its monopoly (in running root nameservers) to set up "toll roads" rather than delivering value.
The Salon article uses the phrase "facilities-based competition", which we have now in DSL markets, where the owner of the facility (the ILEC) has to open the facility (and its copper pairs, etc) up to CLECs like Covad.
I would be willing to forgo facilities-based competition, like the FCC is considering, only in exchange for "packet-based" competition, whereby the monopolizer of the facility must without prejudice allow all IP packets to travel through their facility. Specifically, under packet-based competition, ILECs and other providers of IP connectivity would not be able to use their monopoly/oligopoly on connectivity to gain an advantage in services or content that runs atop the IP layer.
Bob Frankston advocates this, but I'm afraid that he's not cynical enough about government's tendency to kowtow to big corporations.
Specifically, it is easier to fight to keep a right one already enjoys (to buy from facilities-based competitors like Covad) than to fight for a new right (to buy services from packet-based competitors).
Thus, I will fight to keep facilities-based competition.
I purchase a lot of doctor's services. so far, in all but one case, the doctor has written his notes on paper.
I will probably refuse to consult a doctor that keeps his notes on a computer, because of the privacy issue. but if I ever decide that my privacy is worth gambling with, then I sure as hell want the copy of the records that *I* get (which I'm entitled to under law) in electronic form, too, not on paper, and not in some proprietary format.
the one security measure that would impress me is if the doctor's office or clinic kept my name, address, phone number, SSN and other "identifying" info on paper. then the computer records by themselves do not betray very much.
Greenspun took about 10 years to get his PhD.
given this slowness, I wonder if he could survive under the regimen he imposes on his programmers.
maybe the reason that SETI has found no EMR created by other civilizations is because
EMR turns out to be destructive to civilizations in some way unknown to us. given the rate of discovery of new physics in the last century, it is foolish to suppose that there does not exist lots of new physics waiting to be discovered.
those of us who refuse to use IE could benefit from some way of knowing before we follow a link whether that link leads to a page that relies on Microsoft's proprietary extensions.
although I am not competent to design such a service, one way to implement it is probably with a "web proxy" like crit.org.
moreover, the same service could be used for other political goals, like helping people avoid Web servers running Microsoft's IIS or NT/W2000 when servers running open-source software would do just as well (links to pages served by Microsoft software could be a different color, for instance) or helping Lynx users avoid wasting time downloading pages that dont display under Lynx.
some will object that this will fragment the Internet. but fragmentation of the Net is inevitiable: e.g., it is already fractured along the Realtime Blackhole List. fragmentation for frivolous reason or to help some dot com make a buck is a bad thing, but fragmentation to fight Microsoft is noble. the time has come to realize that boycotting Microsoft is not enough: we must start boycotting the sheep who willingly drink Microsoft's Kool-Aid. and we need tools that make that boycotting easy and flexible.
Meyer writes: the US political system has a remarkable combination of checks and balances making the imposition of a dictatorship rather unlikely; the historical exceptions to this observation--such as McCarthyism and institutionalized racial discrimination--were not, if memory serves us well, met by armed resistance from an outraged citizenry; the Black Panther Party of Oakland would show up when police were detaining black men, and stand at a respectful distance with shotguns to observe for police mistreatment. (this behavior was probably lawful, btw.)
Some of the comments on slashdot describe horror stories of
smart, technically savvy people who failed in their attempts to
install Linux. Or who spent 20 hours getting it to work right. Keep in
mind that many future Linux users are very smart people, who happen to
be busy with other things. If Linux is difficult to install or
configure, these people will give up -- even though they are "smart
enough". They just don't have time.
Some of the comments on slashdot describe horror stories of smart,
politically savvy people who failed in their attempts to understand
the election coverage in the newspaper. Or who spent 20 hours
informing themselves about some tedious issue, like nuclear weapons.
Keep in mind that many potential voters are very smart people, who
happen to be busy with other things. If picking the right candidate is
difficult, these people will give up -- even though they are "smart
enough". They just don't have time.
Some of the comments on slashdot describe horror stories of bright,
healthy children who failed in their attempts to learn to read. Or who
spent 20 hours learning. Keep in mind that many children are very
smart people, who happen to have many entertainment options. If reading is
difficult to learn, these kids will give up -- even though they are
"smart enough".
Some of the comments on slashdot describe horror stories of presentable
sensitive people who failed in their attempts to get a girlfriend. Or who
spent 20 hours getting to know a woman before the woman would "get naked".
Keep in mind that many men are attractive caring people, who happen to be busy
with other things. If a girlfriend is difficult to get or keep, these people
will give up -- even though they would make a good boyfriend. They just don't
have time.
some things are worth the time!
I read through the 20 or so comments at JavaLobby. most were against a GPLed Java clone because the GPL allows forking. forking destroys Java's write-once-run-anywhere (WORA) property. these commentators at JavaLobby value WORA over freedom. the best single comment is here. (scrolling up and down brings you to the other 19 or so comments.)
a year ago, I browsed verisign and thawte's web sites to educate myself on certs. Verisign's web site was full of legal disclaimers, uninformative in the grand old bureaucratic style, and without humor or humanity. Thawte's web site was informative --a geek can learn things from it-- and had a human voice.
what gubmint agency do I write to protest this merger?
signing a petition costs the signatories nothing. what would impress me is if the supporters of the Mars plan collectively escrowed a large sum of money for a Mars mission.
before today, most people were not aware of that many people were displeased with the WTO.
the riot is a more effective way of publicizing this fact than purchasing 10s of millions of dollars in ads.
"bad publicity is better than no publicity", the saying goes.
if infoware is going to become more important than software, then perhaps the GPL needs updating to prevent the dominant infoware vendors (Amazon.com, AOL, ...) from being able to build monopolistic, proprietary infoware apps (websites) atop GPLed software.
again: distributing software is likely to become less important than operating web sites. the GPL currently gets its power by regulating the distribution of (modified or verbatim) GPLed software. it does not attempt to regulate the operation of a website built on GPLed software. so for example, it does me no good to insist that my online bookstore use GPLed software: that online bookstore can still become the next bully of the computer industry. in this way is the GPL in danger of becoming irrelevant--or at least not as effective as it could be if we take Mr. O'Reilly's words to heart.
the intro to this story referred to "Tim" without a last name so naturally I assumed it meant Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Web (and the first Yahoo-like subject index, btw).
but it means that windy Tim O'Reilly.
The Fable of the Keys compares Dvorak and qwerty only along the axis of typing speed. I am more interested in whether Dvorak can help me avoid RSI.
did you just say that on a typical day, you receive over 100 messages or calls or visits from other women? (that's a lot!)
I'm replying to a comment scored *5* that implies that Microsoft invent BASIC. BASIC was invented in 1965 at Dartmouth College. MS developed a BASIC interpreter, first for the MITS Altair I think.
"a post can be put under public domain and then no one would ever be able to own it for themselves."
Bzzt. Wrong. Thanks for playing. A corporation can make a few easy modifications to a public-domain work and claim an exclusive copyright on the result. Case in point is decisions published by courts. like most documents created a taxpayer expense, these documents are in the public domain. some company repackaged these public domain documents in books and sold the books and successfully defended its copyright on the books because they had added page numbers. (a competitor could copy the decisions but was enjoined from duplicating the same page numbering as the first company.) In software, we have the famous case of BSD, which is under a license very much resembling public domainhood. the university where it was developed said, well we ought to put this in the public domain because it was developed with government funds, but lets add a very permissive license instead mainly so that each copy of BSD'd say, "THIS SOFTWARE IS DISTRIBUTED AS-IS WITH ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANY". Anyway, lots of workstation
vendors --one named Sun-- made some changes to BSD and slapped a copyright on the result.
Bottom line: the GPL works better than putting stuff in the public domain when the goal is to approximate under our legal system an environment/community-of-authors in which copyright does not exist.
Well, how many lines of code would it take to achieve compliance? 1 million? more? I'm a "lines-of-code" minimalist: the fewer lines of source code I rely on day-to-day, the more reliable and modifiable my software environment will tend to be. You havent explained *why* w3c's reccommendations outweigh the cost in LOC of their implementation.
Yeah, well, I've got a copyright on the phrase, "patent the concept of attempting to trademark Linux." Erase your post or I sue.
the "Concurrent virtual Workspaces" recently released as open source and mentioned above reads like a MUD with support for sharing .DOCs and .XLSes etc and video/audio. Not as good as a mailing list I would say at recording past discussion --never mind sophisticated stuff like transclusion.
lynx 2.6 is unusable on a 486 with a math coprocessor. just too slow. and lynx seems to need ~8 megs to render a really big page.
Info was comfortable on a computer 1/5 the speed and 1/2 the mem.
but, as much as I dig Info, I hafta admit that html can and prob should replace it now that computers are faster.
Name another windowing systems that is as flexible as X?
plan 9's windowing system will run another instance of itself in one of its windows. and it is at least as good at remote display as X.
other ftp servers would get much busier then.
hackers would fork off a GPLed installation routine.
when my ISP or a site I visit regularly like /. goes down for a day or 2, it rarely bothers me. "It'll be back up in a day or 2," I say to myself. No problem.