I'm basically a lurker, but I can't let this "article" go by without some sort of comment.
I remember this sort of metaphor from windows 95. I hated it then and turned it off, not because I am an uninformed luddite, ignorant of the One True Way, but because I ended up swimming in windows and that was a real pain in the ass.
No doubt our fine author would tell me that I am at fault for having a directory structure which is too deep. This *might* be a valid argument in small scale home directories, but what about accessing the corporate network?
We have literally millions of files broken out by department or project. The directory structure is both wide and deep, and not because we don't know how to organize our files. Just try rolling out spatial Gnome in this environment. No one wants to pay for this level of retraining and no one wants the aggravation.
A good idea? Maybe. Scalable to even a mid-sized corporate environment? No.
It may not have been something when it started, but it is about something now. We've all had a taste of freedom in the form of freedom of information. Whether it be OpenSource or Napster or just a little girl with a Harry Potter fan site, we've had freedom to consume or produce content as we see fit.
And now we are being threatened. Our new found freedom is being threatened by the existing establishment. If we weren't in some sense a revolution, why would they fight so vigourously against us? OpenSource is threatened by UCITA, Napster is threatened by RIAA, and Time/Warner sends threatening legal letters to little girls who run Harry Potter fan sites.
We are under siege. If anyone is confused about that fact, allow me to list a few of the recent initiatives against us:
- CPRM
- D/FAST
- UCITA
- DMCA
- The GPS chip which disables consumer electornics
- Region Encoding
- Countless RIAA/MPAA lawsuits
- E-publishing trying to shut down libraries
- Continued opposition of encryption by the US
Many old industries which are threatened by the Internet world are fighting pretty hard against us. They are trying a machine gun approach. Sooner or later one bullet will get through. When it does, not only will we lose the new freedoms that the Internet has given us, we will lose ones we already had such as Fair Use.
Our new technology has the capacity to give us a freedom of information such as we have never enjoyed, or to put us into a bondage such as we have never seen. The world won't be 1984 and it won't be a brave new world. Not unless we let it.
We can fight. We already are, but more must be done. More donations and involvement in organizations like EFF and EPIC. More volunteers for projects such as freenet. More advocacy to lay people. An American president once said, "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." It is time for each of us to be vigilant. If we fail and lose everything we have, we will have only ourselves to blame.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm basically a lurker, but I can't let this "article" go by without some sort of comment.
I remember this sort of metaphor from windows 95. I hated it then and turned it off, not because I am an uninformed luddite, ignorant of the One True Way, but because I ended up swimming in windows and that was a real pain in the ass.
No doubt our fine author would tell me that I am at fault for having a directory structure which is too deep. This *might* be a valid argument in small scale home directories, but what about accessing the corporate network?
We have literally millions of files broken out by department or project. The directory structure is both wide and deep, and not because we don't know how to organize our files. Just try rolling out spatial Gnome in this environment. No one wants to pay for this level of retraining and no one wants the aggravation.
A good idea? Maybe. Scalable to even a mid-sized corporate environment? No.
It may not have been something when it started, but it is about something now. We've all had a taste of freedom in the form of freedom of information. Whether it be OpenSource or Napster or just a little girl with a Harry Potter fan site, we've had freedom to consume or produce content as we see fit.
And now we are being threatened. Our new found freedom is being threatened by the existing establishment. If we weren't in some sense a revolution, why would they fight so vigourously against us? OpenSource is threatened by UCITA, Napster is threatened by RIAA, and Time/Warner sends threatening legal letters to little girls who run Harry Potter fan sites.
We are under siege. If anyone is confused about that fact, allow me to list a few of the recent initiatives against us:
- CPRM
- D/FAST
- UCITA
- DMCA
- The GPS chip which disables consumer electornics
- Region Encoding
- Countless RIAA/MPAA lawsuits
- E-publishing trying to shut down libraries
- Continued opposition of encryption by the US
Many old industries which are threatened by the Internet world are fighting pretty hard against us. They are trying a machine gun approach. Sooner or later one bullet will get through. When it does, not only will we lose the new freedoms that the Internet has given us, we will lose ones we already had such as Fair Use.
Our new technology has the capacity to give us a freedom of information such as we have never enjoyed, or to put us into a bondage such as we have never seen. The world won't be 1984 and it won't be a brave new world. Not unless we let it.
We can fight. We already are, but more must be done. More donations and involvement in organizations like EFF and EPIC. More volunteers for projects such as freenet. More advocacy to lay people. An American president once said, "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." It is time for each of us to be vigilant. If we fail and lose everything we have, we will have only ourselves to blame.