The Kyocera 2255 (on Sprint) allows you to jack in any computer. I like being able to carry the phone without lugging even the smallest computer everywhere. But for the times when I'd like a computer along... what is currently the minimal (in terms of size and cost) unit that can take a reasonable-size folding keyboard and would be capable of running SSH sessions? Does anyone have their Linux PDA working through their Kyocera on Sprint?
As any old hi-fi fan knows, "components are better."
According to a recent PBS special most premies do not develop full, normal cognitive skills because the brain is evolved to develop within the specific environment of a woman's body. If missing, say, the last 60 days in the womb results in permanent dysfunctions, consider what missing the whole 9 months will do.
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If this goes on credit cards and drivers licenses
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Sun Joins RFID Program
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· Score: 3, Interesting
If this goes on credit cards and drivers licenses then I can scan you and get everything but your signature and (perhaps) the expiration dates. I can check that you're not carrying cards or IDs in more than one name (useful for airport security). I can scan you as you walk in the door of my rug store and check whether your cards are gold or platinum, and have my systems check whether a purchase of a certain amount can be covered. This means in many situations it won't matter if you dress up or dress down, because there will be a more accurate metric of your worth available - presuming you aren't carrying someone else's stolen wallet. Clothing would be an obvious use for this since many stores already have bar code plus security tag on each item - this would replace both. Serve 'em right if the introduction of the technology drives down sales by subtracting from the semiotic value of rags as wealth indicators.
Many comments here are along the lines of, "Do you know what a T-1 costs?" Okay, a copper T-1 is just an older generation of DSL, so that response is about like replying to a complaint about a slow computer with, "Do you know what an Apple II costs?" and answering it with the 1982 retail price.(You can still get a T-1 for about $500 in NYC, but you're paying for a higher support level, not bandwidth.) But I quibble, because some put it in terms of, "Do you know what an OC3 costs?" Still a fair question.
But it's a question that assumes that OC3 pricing is based on a legitimate bandwidth shortage, which is just not the case. Remember all those millions of miles of high-capacity fiber that haven't even been lit? With firms that laid them going into bankruptcy (Global Crossing) that bandwidth should be available at very minimal pricing - any return at all to the creditors of those firms is better than zilch.
Now, lots of folks complain that the "last mile" to the home is the bottleneck. But the discussion here regards pricing for people for whom that is solved. What needs analysis is the distortions in the upstream bandwidth market, where firms appear happy to keep selling you that OC3 at last year's price (like that Apple II), based on a false assumption of bandwidth scarcity.
It's like the electricity scam that hit California. By witholding resources large firms can charge more for delivering less. And your cable providers aren't necessarily the victims here - they could cheaply acquire some of that dark cable.
The thing to be afraid of isn't "intelligent robots" but the gullible public who will see the Wizard of Oz rather than the man behind the curtain. The super-rich who frequent events like the World Economic Forum will be able to fool us into thinking their computational equipment and remote-controlled weaponry instantiates superior intelligence we should surrender fully to - when it's really just the folks behind the curtain getting more in control. The "new robotry" will be another scam on the order of the "new economy."
So the fear shouldn't be machines becoming human, but people surrendering themselves into zombihood out of misplaced respect for machines which have no will or intelligence beyond that of the rich folks behind them, who will in effect be riding those machines to victory the same as Cortez rode his horse into the Aztec capital, obtaining the surrender of an emperor mystified by the damn horse.
Did you know that today in southern Mexico Indians are being told that continuing to hold their land communally (as they have for many centuries) violates "free trade" agreements, and must be ended? Just goes to show that the "free trade" rhetoric is as empty as "intelligent robots" is - but we can be sure both will be foisted on us in future as reasons to surrender whatever we most value, if someone richer wants it too.
Read an argument like that just a couple years back, that one claiming specifically that without the stabilization of the Moon's orbit the Earth would itself be less regular (in just what way I can't remember, but it seemed sensible at the time). If that argument's right, then to get a planet stable enough for an ecology of Earth's complexity you might just about need to be a binary planet like we are. Then you might also need to have relative giants in outer orbits to sweep the crap out of your way.
They do seem to be saying the planets they see or deduce elsewhere tend to be on wilder orbits than ours too - more like Pluto than the rest of our planets. That again would throw off the stability that helps as a base for ecological richness.
Of course, now that we're throwing out our ecological richness we might as well explode the Moon as the fastest way to free up its natural mineral resources. It's not like there are caribou running _on_ it or anything. And its effect on lovers in its present form is a significant secondary contributor to disease vectors.
So that's what happens. Advancing civilizations arise only on worlds like ours with Moons, which they proceed to exploit, which finishes off their ecologies, so they turn the husks of their worlds into spaceships. Then, already being on spaceships, the romantic lure of building other spaceships to be on loses its attraction. Especially after they learned that every advanced ecology develops pathogens which are entirely effective against all lifeforms evolved on other worlds. Evolutionarily, worlds which can't do this get overwhelmed by invasive weeds, and their ecologies stay as relatively primitive as the grass field by a truck stop in Kansas. Since worlds featuring organisms entirely evolved for those worlds' own unique niches produce the strongest ecologies, new worlds which are able to seed from the morphogenic "spore" of such rich planets win the evolutionary battle because of coming from richer, stronger, more successful morphogenes.
And that's all you need to know, people of Earth, at this stage of your progression to the Dyson sphere.
GCC isn't the worlds best compiler As a sysadmin who often compiles packages, but doesn't write them, all I care is that./configure;make;make install produces the desired results. Since I'm always multitasking anyhow over several machines, what do I care if a different compiler would make a 5 minute compile 4 minutes, if the end result - as it is with gcc - is a program that runs and runs well.
Mozilla (the shining jewel of Open Source) BS. Konqueror is better, and KDE and Gnome the shining jewels, after Apache of course. (Sendmail? Bind? Proftpd? PHP? - not jewels perhaps, but great workhorses.)
Loki... listened to the Linux zealots and got screwed So sad, Linux may never be primary platform for gaming. I could care. And my Toyota will never enter the Indy 500.
Slashdot... dream is gone and good riddance. If you don't like the moderation, set up your own board and invite in only folks you agree with./. works for me - what gets modded up is generally what I end up agreeing is most worth reading.
One case where you could really want to run iptables (which requires 2.4.x) is if you run an ftp server. With ipchains, you have to leave port 20 and a range of ports > 1024 wide open to connections from anywhere (to allow both active and passive ftp). With iptables, you only need to open them to folks who have already established a port 21 ftp negotiation. I'm much happier running 2.4.17 on several systems because of this.
IP spoofing has legitimate uses when you have connections through two different ISPs and have situations where it makes sense to have stuff route in over one and then route out via the other, but identifying itself so that the responses come in via the first one again. For a good reference on when this is useful, see Matthew Marsh's Policy Routing Using Linux.
Your suggestion is in line with the basic Microsoft approach: take power away from the user; dumb down the options. Yet as we well know, that approach in practice hardly makes us more safe!
Considering we all agree that if the memo is real, it's lame. Considering that some/. readers actually are 'dows partisans. Considering that the best war game is one where you give your best talent to playing the enemy. What would one of us who sees the obviousness of Linux's quick victory (prediction: in less than 6 months it will present an unqualifiedly superior desktop/workstation alternative - okay, this is probably wrong, but the improbable happens often)... um, what would a good war-gaming Linux partisan do to play the Microsoft hand? What would the 'soft propoganda statement be if ESR sold out for, say, the value his VA stock once had?
No shit, I'd really like to see the best case, the one Microsoft's own brilliant idiots are too blindered to see. It's the best prep for our victory.
As someone who has occassionally carried an ACLU card, my reaction to this sort of fluff is to continue to put off rejoining. Vacuous political correctness has become confused with the defense of true liberty. True liberty means that the KKK can march in Indiana, but also means that the police should pay special attention to white guys wearing sheets after there's been a church burning or lynching. True liberty means professors are welcome to make silly "We must understand why they hate us" speaches, but it also means the feds should pay special attention to Muslim males of extremist persuasion - especially those on overstayed visas - after the WTC.
All the fund raising mailings I've received from the ACLU in the last five years are cliched and without the sort of substance whose bedrock is documented events. If our liberties are at threat - and I'm quite ready to believe they are - this is not the way to present an effective defense. Rather than preach to the converted, civil liberties leaders need to convert those who believe they believe in liberty, but don't see the contradiction in support our current leaders, who mention 'defense of freedom' in every other breath.
That's hard work, but it's real work. By contrast, this jerk, in this interview, is just playing a part from central casting. A fun job if you can get it, but I'm not about to pay him for this sorry performance through donation, time, or even lip service.
The Supreme Court's ruling on the legality of taping TV shows was based on fair use doctrine, which goes back to English Common Law, which is still the bedrock of law in America (altho alas no longer in England). On the same fair use basis, courts have ruled it's okay to tape your records. Section 107 of the Copyright Act merely establishes additional fair use rights - it does nothing to remove those already present.
It's like a law that says, "It will not be considered murder if self-defense can be proved." Such a law does not establish that all other cases will be considered murder. The common law, common sense defense of "I was nowhere nearby, nor part of any conspiracy related to that death" still holds against, say, a prosecutor claiming you did it by witchcraft. Witchcraft does not become a crime because of not being included in a specific exception in a newly passed extension of the murder statutes.
Your logic resembles Ashcroft's: "If they weren't guilty terrorists, they wouldn't abuse our freedoms by insisting on a fair trial!"
Asperger published in the early 40s in Germany. He produced a diagnosis that medicalized personality traits that didn't add up to being a good Nazi. He was part of the patriotic Nazi medical establishment.
On this whole, the diagnosis is strangely close to the stereotype of an excentric Englishman.
The only thing to worry about is that his diagnosis has recently become so popular. What does that say about the current stage of our society?
only 10,000 of the 300,000 (or 3%) damaged lines have not been restored, most of those in Chinatown
Chinatown is a couple of neighborhoods away from the WTC site. While it's below Canal Street, it's on the east side of the island, while the WTC was on the west. There was no direct damage there. Would it be cynical to suggest that Verizon said, "Who has the least political power, who we can restore last?" Chinatown has taken a hard economic hit from the fall in tourism, plus the difficulty for some weeks of even getting to the neighborhood. And there are still 10,000 phone lines down, because "We don't care. We don't have to. We're Verizon."
I'd put this as an example of why Verizon should be taken over by the state or city, if it weren't that the state and city also scrimp on services to Chinatown. It's certainly no reason Verizon should be trusted on anything.
"The Emergence of Consciousness"
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Emergence
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· Score: 2
Those interested in current discussion of various models involving emergence and their specific use (or uselessness) in comprehending consciousness should check out The Emergence of Consciousness - which is the book version of the Sept.-Oct. 2001 issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies. Robert Van Gulick's overview of different types of emergence which have been theorized is particularly valuable.
my Great uncle made several tractors from the ground up
My granddad and three associates built a car from the ground up. That was back when everyone in the country wanted to start a car company. There were 200 established automobile makers by the early '20s, and many more attempts - like granddad's - that didn't quite establish themselves.
What happenned of course was Henry Ford, and the assembly line were the individual worker didn't have to know how to build a car from the ground up, but just how to put together a small piece of it as it got to his station on the assembly line.
Free software has some resonance with Ford's method. While Linus built a kernel "from the ground up," a lot of the effectiveness of the method is because one guy can stay at one station and just work on a single, special-purpose utility (say, fetchmail). That's how must of it happens - individuals or small teams working on something only they need to fully understand, because it fits in a standardized framework - apt-get or rpm or./configure-make-make install is all the general building capability most folks need.
The odd thing about Ford was that, while he devised a system for people with less knowledge and capability, individually, to be more productive, he didn't pay them less - instead he paid them several times more than what workers with much more knowledge and ability were getting working in "build each one from the ground up" car concerns. He response to the supposed "alienation of labor" was to be sure his labor could afford the cars they were building, and so not be alienated from them.
Of course, by the '30s Ford was a big Hitler fan - he really believed in sweeping, utopian reorganizations of society. And of course the issue in software isn't between building from the ground up or just filling one station well, but between starting with a vehicle resistant to customization deeper than the paint (or wallpaper), and one that's easy to hotrod, with many custom parts and plans available - one with more freedom.
Anyone bringing Marx into this should specify in what way Marx was wrong when he declared that "freedom" is just capitalist ideological cover, and valuing freedom to be "false consciousness." The real historical motion has been, long term, towards more freedom - the essence of capitalism is freedom in the markets for both goods and capital. Free software is nothing but the further extension of the historical wave of freedom. As such, what can it learn from Marx, who thought freedom a cruel fraud, and wanted societies to retreat from it?
It is the hope of every fascist, marxist and fundamentalist that people will back off from their movement towards ever greater spheres of freedom. Free software is a small way of saying no to their dreams of retreat for the many, and enthronement for themselves.
We use guns on the battlefield today, not crossbows, no?
Today, guns are better. At the time of the American Revolution, Washington would have had an advantage on the British if he'd armed his troops with crossbows. 'Me-tooism' cost American lives.
But if we grant that Ashcroft is right and a computer should scare us more than a gun, then we're back to asking why computers have done so little to effectively change a power structure so corrupt that a proposal to give large corporations with close ties to the party in power billions in retroactive tax refunds counts as "economic stimulus" for the good of us all.
Of course, readers of the New York Times know this theft and fraud is being perpretrated, but most cities are served by chain newspapers which don't even cover the issue - which gets at best a half a sentence on network broadcasts. So then, why hasn't the Net enabled information truly in the political self-interest of large numbers of people - about having public funds siphoned off to the already-rich in a time of national peril - to be more broad disseminated and acted upon? Why will the politicians behind the theft, who have in the past depended on the expensiveness of advertising and the duplicity of media to hoodwink the public, not be threatened by the end-run made possible by low-cost, uncontrolled Net dissemination?
Well, for one thing because I've certainly thought of being more cautious in my postings since realizing that Ashcroft likely has the NSA scanning this stuff like never before - and that under new laws and regulations some of my posts can probably be construed as giving aid and comfort to the "enemy." As a citizen with friends in high places I've decided to go ahead and stay free with my opinions - but the point is if I had to think about it, then others have surely been chilled. And that's not the climate both sides of my family fought the American Revolution to create here. If you're not saddenned, I question whether you are a true American. You should hope that, after a future change of government, precident hasn't already been established by which my questioning that could chill your own expression - which is why Bush and Ashcroft usurping the Constitution is both tragedy and treason, however popular.
Having watched the towers fall from my apartment window, don't think I'm not as revenge-happy as the next New Yorker - but we need to be more careful our revenge doesn't catch us in blowback.
At the close of the 16th Century, Queen Elizabeth's Privy Council met and decided that henceforth English troops would use muskets rather than crossbows. What remains unclear was the rationale behind the decision. Crossbows shot farther and more accurately, reloaded faster, and had been key to English victories in France and elsewhere - the English had the best bow technology. Long guns remained technologically and operationally inferior to the crossbow for many decades afterwards. (Pistols had the small advantage of being small - but there's a reason real soldiers continued to carry swords along too.)
Evidently you could do enough of the sort of thing you'd do with a crossbow with a long gun that it the difference wasn't fatal to England, and the guns must have seemed gee-wiz modern and cool, at least. But the change in technology didn't really gain anything for the English, beyond the psychological, until guns improved to a point past prior crossbow technology in the 19th Century. The realities in the field remained much the same - except you had to get closer to hit anything with the gun, and it made noise that more easily gave away your position.
So in networked computers we've got this new weapon with which to penetrate people with our ideas. But does it penetrate better than the front page of the Times or a well-printed book? Or is the advantage more purely psychological - "Look, I've got the new thing!"
In any case you've still got to marshall your troops, engage the enemy, retain the support of your hinterland... and have a strategy that actually can conquer and govern. A change in weaponry doesn't compensate for weakness of strategy and execution, even when the weapons are better. Building a free land is no more a matter of just giving everyone computers than it was of just giving everyone guns.
However, given the right strategy and leadership, computers and guns have their obvious place in social transformation. Since Ashcroft refuses to match gun purchase records with arrested terrorist suspects - claiming that would infringe on gun rights - but wants to closely monitor the Net - it's clear which he and his friends are more scared of. Thinking that a computer is scarier than a gun is about as rational as prefering a musket to a crossbow. Isn't it?
Making security tools illegal or restricted will doubtless work as well as the war on drugs in promoting innovation (as well as disrespect for a government whose current strategy towards being respected is to promote a world situation wherein we are besieged by terrorists from all sides as well as within - this being the replacement for the old model where government legitimacy was maintained by implicit conspiracy with the Soviet Union to terrorize each others' populations and allies).
Remember, the more enemies we can cultivate, the surer the civilian support for the institution of 'strong government' and a proud imperial role in the world. Don't get me wrong. I support the war on Muslim fundamentalism. I only question the extension of it to domestic computer professionals and errant teenage hobbiests. The saner extension of it would be to include our domestic fundamentalists, who truly threaten science, culture and civilization. Of course, no one becomes Senator by openly taking them on. But no one who wants to see progress in technology and our economy puts one of them (cough, Ashcroft) in control of laws limiting technology.
Like any content-rich site, it's also expensive -- bandwidth, storage (our site is nearly 6GB), software purchases, licenses, travel for interviews, etc. -- even if we (there are two of us) don't get paid.
You're streaming audio, and that's going to cost. But you've also found a way around that - send people to composers you feature at mp3.com. Also, many composers have ties to academia, where space can be available.
One thing to remember: the site isn't the community. The site is one location, like a coffee house or bar, where some of the community can meet sometimes. I've been webmastering a site for the Jazz Journalists Association since '96. Why? Because I share your belief in the value of encouraging real music. What does it cost? Well, I've built it up incrementally, so it's not a big time drain. Content is donated by association members - it's an adjunct to an already existing community. At first it was hosted at a local not-for-profit ISP I volunteered with (to learn the trade - which worked out fine for me). Then I used a couple of hosting services (service quality was problematic - it was Superb and Pair). Now it's sitting on a Speakeasy DSL line, which actually ends up getting better reports from users than hosting, and is a whole lot more convenient to administer. Plus I've got that connection for other uses, so only a portion of the cost is attributable to this project.
Does it create a sense of community? Well, the Association is growing nicely, although conducting most activities in the real world, which makes most sense for an artform that works best live anyway. Attempts to get visitor discussions going on a BBS-type section haven't gone anywhere. People do add occassional comments to stories - but we're not set up as a weblog. Special events where journalists log on together for a few hours to publicly discuss a special topic, with questions coming in from the public, have some success - especially when they draw in existing communities, for instance from special-purpose mailing lists on the topics.
Money? Nope. Referrals for book and record sales have brought zilch. Taking the Association to a formal not-for-profit and pursing grants is the long-term plan.
But to reiterate: It's rare to form a brand new community. But communities are out there, and adding new service for an existing community can more likely find at least modest success, especially if you can piggyback your hosting and connectivity on systems and lines you have other good uses for.
Design and the randon in Afghani cultures
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The Evolution of Linux
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· Score: 0, Offtopic
Even taking the model of accelerated evolution through human breeding of species: you direct two animals together to breed.
Has anyone else been impressed with how good looking many of the Afghani men are? This from a society where marriage is not only arranged, but in its most traditional form arranged by families where the groom's family has never seen the bride's face. If it results in men so handsome and devilish (some truly evil, I have it on our highest authority), perhaps they do have good cause to hide the women... but I digress.
Fans of Afghani family values would tell the story as above, of designed matches resulting in superior beauty, not to mention performance and endurance on the battlefield. But in truth a great many births in Afghanistan result from widespread practice of rape... one of the more intensive random breeding programs in the history of human cultures. It's even futher randomized because the rapist traditionally has no good view of the woman before the act. (This has led to something of a preference for boys among many of the brigands... that and, of course, the Afghani success in producing good looking ones.)
Where is the new Bill Burroughs among the war correspondents?
I'm reminded of the story that when Bill Gates' mother was on her death bed, Bill promised her he'd finally settle down and get married. Soon after, he presented her with portfolios on three candidate wives, from which Mom selected Melinda for him.
Am I guessing right that all that would be required to get your own Magic Lantern is set up a moderately suspicious system and then wait for the FBI to come install your copy? Ought to be not too complicated to put a Windows box behind a *nix firewall with standard packet sniffers in place so you can catch Magic Lantern's signatures on its way in. The hard part might be, if you want to use it yourself on other parties, dealing with any encryption it might be doing on data it sends back to base. But unless the encryption code itself is part of the signature that allows it past Symantec's firewall and/or antivirus detector, it should be possible to patch in your own routine there, rather than needing to fully disassemble the government's and break its keys.
What am I missing? What will keep thousands of curious kiddies from getting their own Magic Lanterns for fun and exploration? This kind of guarantees wide-spread vulnerability, doesn't it?
I'm not saying that the US is directly responsible for the treatment of Saudi Arabia's people, but I am saying that the US ensures that the status quo is maintained without being concerned about what this entails. Morality just doesn't come into it at all, it's all strictly business.
Given that it was mostly Saudi citizens who attacked NY, that bin Laden has much of his funding from Saudi princes, that the Saudi government funds the Wahabbi schools in Pakistan that teach hate-America fundamentalism, there's an argument that the US should take out the Saudi government. But considering how oil prices were conveniently manipulated so that gasoline went up just before the last US presidential election, Bush will remember his debt to the Sauds, as they remembered theirs to his father, so it's not gonna happen.
So, given that these are morally ugly people we're doing business with (Saudi princes routinely skip 10-15% off the top of all government contracts there, meanwhile religious police beat women in the street), what would a kinder, more moral US do with Saudi relations? We could stop buying oil; but most Saudi oil is sold to our European and Asian allies, not to us; so that wouldn't do much. We could try to arrange an international boycott of oil from non-democratic countries; yeah, right. We could support local forces which would like to replace the monarchy; those forces being mostly Muslim extremists. And who are we to force our model of government on the world?
So what would, like, the most beautiful thing the US could do vis-a-vis Saudi Arabi? A boycott like with Iraq doesn't look pretty either. Yet doing business with them necessarily "props them up." I suppose we could withdraw our troops and encourage Saddam to invade?
Please make a positive suggestion, don't just slime the US for living in the real world.
Slashdot Mirror
As any old hi-fi fan knows, "components are better."
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If this goes on credit cards and drivers licenses then I can scan you and get everything but your signature and (perhaps) the expiration dates. I can check that you're not carrying cards or IDs in more than one name (useful for airport security). I can scan you as you walk in the door of my rug store and check whether your cards are gold or platinum, and have my systems check whether a purchase of a certain amount can be covered. This means in many situations it won't matter if you dress up or dress down, because there will be a more accurate metric of your worth available - presuming you aren't carrying someone else's stolen wallet. Clothing would be an obvious use for this since many stores already have bar code plus security tag on each item - this would replace both. Serve 'em right if the introduction of the technology drives down sales by subtracting from the semiotic value of rags as wealth indicators.
Many comments here are along the lines of, "Do you know what a T-1 costs?" Okay, a copper T-1 is just an older generation of DSL, so that response is about like replying to a complaint about a slow computer with, "Do you know what an Apple II costs?" and answering it with the 1982 retail price.(You can still get a T-1 for about $500 in NYC, but you're paying for a higher support level, not bandwidth.) But I quibble, because some put it in terms of, "Do you know what an OC3 costs?" Still a fair question.
But it's a question that assumes that OC3 pricing is based on a legitimate bandwidth shortage, which is just not the case. Remember all those millions of miles of high-capacity fiber that haven't even been lit? With firms that laid them going into bankruptcy (Global Crossing) that bandwidth should be available at very minimal pricing - any return at all to the creditors of those firms is better than zilch.
Now, lots of folks complain that the "last mile" to the home is the bottleneck. But the discussion here regards pricing for people for whom that is solved. What needs analysis is the distortions in the upstream bandwidth market, where firms appear happy to keep selling you that OC3 at last year's price (like that Apple II), based on a false assumption of bandwidth scarcity.
It's like the electricity scam that hit California. By witholding resources large firms can charge more for delivering less. And your cable providers aren't necessarily the victims here - they could cheaply acquire some of that dark cable.
The thing to be afraid of isn't "intelligent robots" but the gullible public who will see the Wizard of Oz rather than the man behind the curtain. The super-rich who frequent events like the World Economic Forum will be able to fool us into thinking their computational equipment and remote-controlled weaponry instantiates superior intelligence we should surrender fully to - when it's really just the folks behind the curtain getting more in control. The "new robotry" will be another scam on the order of the "new economy."
So the fear shouldn't be machines becoming human, but people surrendering themselves into zombihood out of misplaced respect for machines which have no will or intelligence beyond that of the rich folks behind them, who will in effect be riding those machines to victory the same as Cortez rode his horse into the Aztec capital, obtaining the surrender of an emperor mystified by the damn horse.
Did you know that today in southern Mexico Indians are being told that continuing to hold their land communally (as they have for many centuries) violates "free trade" agreements, and must be ended? Just goes to show that the "free trade" rhetoric is as empty as "intelligent robots" is - but we can be sure both will be foisted on us in future as reasons to surrender whatever we most value, if someone richer wants it too.
Why go to amateurs when the US gov. will seel you top quality biowar instructions for fifteen bucks!
Read an argument like that just a couple years back, that one claiming specifically that without the stabilization of the Moon's orbit the Earth would itself be less regular (in just what way I can't remember, but it seemed sensible at the time). If that argument's right, then to get a planet stable enough for an ecology of Earth's complexity you might just about need to be a binary planet like we are. Then you might also need to have relative giants in outer orbits to sweep the crap out of your way.
They do seem to be saying the planets they see or deduce elsewhere tend to be on wilder orbits than ours too - more like Pluto than the rest of our planets. That again would throw off the stability that helps as a base for ecological richness.
Of course, now that we're throwing out our ecological richness we might as well explode the Moon as the fastest way to free up its natural mineral resources. It's not like there are caribou running _on_ it or anything. And its effect on lovers in its present form is a significant secondary contributor to disease vectors.
So that's what happens. Advancing civilizations arise only on worlds like ours with Moons, which they proceed to exploit, which finishes off their ecologies, so they turn the husks of their worlds into spaceships. Then, already being on spaceships, the romantic lure of building other spaceships to be on loses its attraction. Especially after they learned that every advanced ecology develops pathogens which are entirely effective against all lifeforms evolved on other worlds. Evolutionarily, worlds which can't do this get overwhelmed by invasive weeds, and their ecologies stay as relatively primitive as the grass field by a truck stop in Kansas. Since worlds featuring organisms entirely evolved for those worlds' own unique niches produce the strongest ecologies, new worlds which are able to seed from the morphogenic "spore" of such rich planets win the evolutionary battle because of coming from richer, stronger, more successful morphogenes.
And that's all you need to know, people of Earth, at this stage of your progression to the Dyson sphere.
As a sysadmin who often compiles packages, but doesn't write them, all I care is that
Mozilla (the shining jewel of Open Source)
BS. Konqueror is better, and KDE and Gnome the shining jewels, after Apache of course. (Sendmail? Bind? Proftpd? PHP? - not jewels perhaps, but great workhorses.)
Loki ... listened to the Linux zealots and got screwed
So sad, Linux may never be primary platform for gaming. I could care. And my Toyota will never enter the Indy 500.
Slashdot ... dream is gone and good riddance.
/. works for me - what gets modded up is generally what I end up agreeing is most worth reading.
If you don't like the moderation, set up your own board and invite in only folks you agree with.
ipchains does an adequate job under 2.2
One case where you could really want to run iptables (which requires 2.4.x) is if you run an ftp server. With ipchains, you have to leave port 20 and a range of ports > 1024 wide open to connections from anywhere (to allow both active and passive ftp). With iptables, you only need to open them to folks who have already established a port 21 ftp negotiation. I'm much happier running 2.4.17 on several systems because of this.
Hey, ZD has added a warning now! Which means they get their news from /. ?! Shouldn't there be another warning about that, too? ;
IP spoofing has legitimate uses when you have connections through two different ISPs and have situations where it makes sense to have stuff route in over one and then route out via the other, but identifying itself so that the responses come in via the first one again. For a good reference on when this is useful, see Matthew Marsh's Policy Routing Using Linux.
Your suggestion is in line with the basic Microsoft approach: take power away from the user; dumb down the options. Yet as we well know, that approach in practice hardly makes us more safe!
Considering we all agree that if the memo is real, it's lame. Considering that some /. readers actually are 'dows partisans. Considering that the best war game is one where you give your best talent to playing the enemy. What would one of us who sees the obviousness of Linux's quick victory (prediction: in less than 6 months it will present an unqualifiedly superior desktop/workstation alternative - okay, this is probably wrong, but the improbable happens often) ... um, what would a good war-gaming Linux partisan do to play the Microsoft hand? What would the 'soft propoganda statement be if ESR sold out for, say, the value his VA stock once had?
No shit, I'd really like to see the best case, the one Microsoft's own brilliant idiots are too blindered to see. It's the best prep for our victory.
As someone who has occassionally carried an ACLU card, my reaction to this sort of fluff is to continue to put off rejoining. Vacuous political correctness has become confused with the defense of true liberty. True liberty means that the KKK can march in Indiana, but also means that the police should pay special attention to white guys wearing sheets after there's been a church burning or lynching. True liberty means professors are welcome to make silly "We must understand why they hate us" speaches, but it also means the feds should pay special attention to Muslim males of extremist persuasion - especially those on overstayed visas - after the WTC.
All the fund raising mailings I've received from the ACLU in the last five years are cliched and without the sort of substance whose bedrock is documented events. If our liberties are at threat - and I'm quite ready to believe they are - this is not the way to present an effective defense. Rather than preach to the converted, civil liberties leaders need to convert those who believe they believe in liberty, but don't see the contradiction in support our current leaders, who mention 'defense of freedom' in every other breath.
That's hard work, but it's real work. By contrast, this jerk, in this interview, is just playing a part from central casting. A fun job if you can get it, but I'm not about to pay him for this sorry performance through donation, time, or even lip service.
It's like a law that says, "It will not be considered murder if self-defense can be proved." Such a law does not establish that all other cases will be considered murder. The common law, common sense defense of "I was nowhere nearby, nor part of any conspiracy related to that death" still holds against, say, a prosecutor claiming you did it by witchcraft. Witchcraft does not become a crime because of not being included in a specific exception in a newly passed extension of the murder statutes.
Your logic resembles Ashcroft's: "If they weren't guilty terrorists, they wouldn't abuse our freedoms by insisting on a fair trial!"
Asperger published in the early 40s in Germany. He produced a diagnosis that medicalized personality traits that didn't add up to being a good Nazi. He was part of the patriotic Nazi medical establishment.
On this whole, the diagnosis is strangely close to the stereotype of an excentric Englishman.
The only thing to worry about is that his diagnosis has recently become so popular. What does that say about the current stage of our society?
Chinatown is a couple of neighborhoods away from the WTC site. While it's below Canal Street, it's on the east side of the island, while the WTC was on the west. There was no direct damage there. Would it be cynical to suggest that Verizon said, "Who has the least political power, who we can restore last?" Chinatown has taken a hard economic hit from the fall in tourism, plus the difficulty for some weeks of even getting to the neighborhood. And there are still 10,000 phone lines down, because "We don't care. We don't have to. We're Verizon."
I'd put this as an example of why Verizon should be taken over by the state or city, if it weren't that the state and city also scrimp on services to Chinatown. It's certainly no reason Verizon should be trusted on anything.
Those interested in current discussion of various models involving emergence and their specific use (or uselessness) in comprehending consciousness should check out The Emergence of Consciousness - which is the book version of the Sept.-Oct. 2001 issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies. Robert Van Gulick's overview of different types of emergence which have been theorized is particularly valuable.
My granddad and three associates built a car from the ground up. That was back when everyone in the country wanted to start a car company. There were 200 established automobile makers by the early '20s, and many more attempts - like granddad's - that didn't quite establish themselves.
What happenned of course was Henry Ford, and the assembly line were the individual worker didn't have to know how to build a car from the ground up, but just how to put together a small piece of it as it got to his station on the assembly line.
Free software has some resonance with Ford's method. While Linus built a kernel "from the ground up," a lot of the effectiveness of the method is because one guy can stay at one station and just work on a single, special-purpose utility (say, fetchmail). That's how must of it happens - individuals or small teams working on something only they need to fully understand, because it fits in a standardized framework - apt-get or rpm or ./configure-make-make install is all the general building capability most folks need.
The odd thing about Ford was that, while he devised a system for people with less knowledge and capability, individually, to be more productive, he didn't pay them less - instead he paid them several times more than what workers with much more knowledge and ability were getting working in "build each one from the ground up" car concerns. He response to the supposed "alienation of labor" was to be sure his labor could afford the cars they were building, and so not be alienated from them.
Of course, by the '30s Ford was a big Hitler fan - he really believed in sweeping, utopian reorganizations of society. And of course the issue in software isn't between building from the ground up or just filling one station well, but between starting with a vehicle resistant to customization deeper than the paint (or wallpaper), and one that's easy to hotrod, with many custom parts and plans available - one with more freedom.
Anyone bringing Marx into this should specify in what way Marx was wrong when he declared that "freedom" is just capitalist ideological cover, and valuing freedom to be "false consciousness." The real historical motion has been, long term, towards more freedom - the essence of capitalism is freedom in the markets for both goods and capital. Free software is nothing but the further extension of the historical wave of freedom. As such, what can it learn from Marx, who thought freedom a cruel fraud, and wanted societies to retreat from it?
It is the hope of every fascist, marxist and fundamentalist that people will back off from their movement towards ever greater spheres of freedom. Free software is a small way of saying no to their dreams of retreat for the many, and enthronement for themselves.
Today, guns are better. At the time of the American Revolution, Washington would have had an advantage on the British if he'd armed his troops with crossbows. 'Me-tooism' cost American lives.
But if we grant that Ashcroft is right and a computer should scare us more than a gun, then we're back to asking why computers have done so little to effectively change a power structure so corrupt that a proposal to give large corporations with close ties to the party in power billions in retroactive tax refunds counts as "economic stimulus" for the good of us all.
Of course, readers of the New York Times know this theft and fraud is being perpretrated, but most cities are served by chain newspapers which don't even cover the issue - which gets at best a half a sentence on network broadcasts. So then, why hasn't the Net enabled information truly in the political self-interest of large numbers of people - about having public funds siphoned off to the already-rich in a time of national peril - to be more broad disseminated and acted upon? Why will the politicians behind the theft, who have in the past depended on the expensiveness of advertising and the duplicity of media to hoodwink the public, not be threatened by the end-run made possible by low-cost, uncontrolled Net dissemination?
Well, for one thing because I've certainly thought of being more cautious in my postings since realizing that Ashcroft likely has the NSA scanning this stuff like never before - and that under new laws and regulations some of my posts can probably be construed as giving aid and comfort to the "enemy." As a citizen with friends in high places I've decided to go ahead and stay free with my opinions - but the point is if I had to think about it, then others have surely been chilled. And that's not the climate both sides of my family fought the American Revolution to create here. If you're not saddenned, I question whether you are a true American. You should hope that, after a future change of government, precident hasn't already been established by which my questioning that could chill your own expression - which is why Bush and Ashcroft usurping the Constitution is both tragedy and treason, however popular.
Having watched the towers fall from my apartment window, don't think I'm not as revenge-happy as the next New Yorker - but we need to be more careful our revenge doesn't catch us in blowback.
Evidently you could do enough of the sort of thing you'd do with a crossbow with a long gun that it the difference wasn't fatal to England, and the guns must have seemed gee-wiz modern and cool, at least. But the change in technology didn't really gain anything for the English, beyond the psychological, until guns improved to a point past prior crossbow technology in the 19th Century. The realities in the field remained much the same - except you had to get closer to hit anything with the gun, and it made noise that more easily gave away your position.
So in networked computers we've got this new weapon with which to penetrate people with our ideas. But does it penetrate better than the front page of the Times or a well-printed book? Or is the advantage more purely psychological - "Look, I've got the new thing!"
In any case you've still got to marshall your troops, engage the enemy, retain the support of your hinterland ... and have a strategy that actually can conquer and govern. A change in weaponry doesn't compensate for weakness of strategy and execution, even when the weapons are better. Building a free land is no more a matter of just giving everyone computers than it was of just giving everyone guns.
However, given the right strategy and leadership, computers and guns have their obvious place in social transformation. Since Ashcroft refuses to match gun purchase records with arrested terrorist suspects - claiming that would infringe on gun rights - but wants to closely monitor the Net - it's clear which he and his friends are more scared of. Thinking that a computer is scarier than a gun is about as rational as prefering a musket to a crossbow. Isn't it?
Making security tools illegal or restricted will doubtless work as well as the war on drugs in promoting innovation (as well as disrespect for a government whose current strategy towards being respected is to promote a world situation wherein we are besieged by terrorists from all sides as well as within - this being the replacement for the old model where government legitimacy was maintained by implicit conspiracy with the Soviet Union to terrorize each others' populations and allies).
Remember, the more enemies we can cultivate, the surer the civilian support for the institution of 'strong government' and a proud imperial role in the world. Don't get me wrong. I support the war on Muslim fundamentalism. I only question the extension of it to domestic computer professionals and errant teenage hobbiests. The saner extension of it would be to include our domestic fundamentalists, who truly threaten science, culture and civilization. Of course, no one becomes Senator by openly taking them on. But no one who wants to see progress in technology and our economy puts one of them (cough, Ashcroft) in control of laws limiting technology.
You're streaming audio, and that's going to cost. But you've also found a way around that - send people to composers you feature at mp3.com. Also, many composers have ties to academia, where space can be available.
One thing to remember: the site isn't the community. The site is one location, like a coffee house or bar, where some of the community can meet sometimes. I've been webmastering a site for the Jazz Journalists Association since '96. Why? Because I share your belief in the value of encouraging real music. What does it cost? Well, I've built it up incrementally, so it's not a big time drain. Content is donated by association members - it's an adjunct to an already existing community. At first it was hosted at a local not-for-profit ISP I volunteered with (to learn the trade - which worked out fine for me). Then I used a couple of hosting services (service quality was problematic - it was Superb and Pair). Now it's sitting on a Speakeasy DSL line, which actually ends up getting better reports from users than hosting, and is a whole lot more convenient to administer. Plus I've got that connection for other uses, so only a portion of the cost is attributable to this project.
Does it create a sense of community? Well, the Association is growing nicely, although conducting most activities in the real world, which makes most sense for an artform that works best live anyway. Attempts to get visitor discussions going on a BBS-type section haven't gone anywhere. People do add occassional comments to stories - but we're not set up as a weblog. Special events where journalists log on together for a few hours to publicly discuss a special topic, with questions coming in from the public, have some success - especially when they draw in existing communities, for instance from special-purpose mailing lists on the topics.
Money? Nope. Referrals for book and record sales have brought zilch. Taking the Association to a formal not-for-profit and pursing grants is the long-term plan.
But to reiterate: It's rare to form a brand new community. But communities are out there, and adding new service for an existing community can more likely find at least modest success, especially if you can piggyback your hosting and connectivity on systems and lines you have other good uses for.
Even taking the model of accelerated evolution through human breeding of species: you direct two animals together to breed.
... but I digress.
... one of the more intensive random breeding programs in the history of human cultures. It's even futher randomized because the rapist traditionally has no good view of the woman before the act. (This has led to something of a preference for boys among many of the brigands ... that and, of course, the Afghani success in producing good looking ones.)
Has anyone else been impressed with how good looking many of the Afghani men are? This from a society where marriage is not only arranged, but in its most traditional form arranged by families where the groom's family has never seen the bride's face. If it results in men so handsome and devilish (some truly evil, I have it on our highest authority), perhaps they do have good cause to hide the women
Fans of Afghani family values would tell the story as above, of designed matches resulting in superior beauty, not to mention performance and endurance on the battlefield. But in truth a great many births in Afghanistan result from widespread practice of rape
Where is the new Bill Burroughs among the war correspondents?
I'm reminded of the story that when Bill Gates' mother was on her death bed, Bill promised her he'd finally settle down and get married. Soon after, he presented her with portfolios on three candidate wives, from which Mom selected Melinda for him.
Am I guessing right that all that would be required to get your own Magic Lantern is set up a moderately suspicious system and then wait for the FBI to come install your copy? Ought to be not too complicated to put a Windows box behind a *nix firewall with standard packet sniffers in place so you can catch Magic Lantern's signatures on its way in. The hard part might be, if you want to use it yourself on other parties, dealing with any encryption it might be doing on data it sends back to base. But unless the encryption code itself is part of the signature that allows it past Symantec's firewall and/or antivirus detector, it should be possible to patch in your own routine there, rather than needing to fully disassemble the government's and break its keys.
What am I missing? What will keep thousands of curious kiddies from getting their own Magic Lanterns for fun and exploration? This kind of guarantees wide-spread vulnerability, doesn't it?
I'm not saying that the US is directly responsible for the treatment of Saudi Arabia's people, but I am saying that the US ensures that the status quo is maintained without being concerned about what this entails. Morality just doesn't come into it at all, it's all strictly business.
Given that it was mostly Saudi citizens who attacked NY, that bin Laden has much of his funding from Saudi princes, that the Saudi government funds the Wahabbi schools in Pakistan that teach hate-America fundamentalism, there's an argument that the US should take out the Saudi government. But considering how oil prices were conveniently manipulated so that gasoline went up just before the last US presidential election, Bush will remember his debt to the Sauds, as they remembered theirs to his father, so it's not gonna happen.
So, given that these are morally ugly people we're doing business with (Saudi princes routinely skip 10-15% off the top of all government contracts there, meanwhile religious police beat women in the street), what would a kinder, more moral US do with Saudi relations? We could stop buying oil; but most Saudi oil is sold to our European and Asian allies, not to us; so that wouldn't do much. We could try to arrange an international boycott of oil from non-democratic countries; yeah, right. We could support local forces which would like to replace the monarchy; those forces being mostly Muslim extremists. And who are we to force our model of government on the world?
So what would, like, the most beautiful thing the US could do vis-a-vis Saudi Arabi? A boycott like with Iraq doesn't look pretty either. Yet doing business with them necessarily "props them up." I suppose we could withdraw our troops and encourage Saddam to invade?
Please make a positive suggestion, don't just slime the US for living in the real world.