Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin - a machine used to separate cotton during the harvest. This was to be a boon for the South, because cotton cultivation there was becoming too expensive compared to emerging producers elsewhere. The number of persons employed as slaves had actually started to decline with the decline of cotton production.
But the invention of the gin allowed enterprising Southern businessmen to lower production costs and regain their former predominance in the world cotton market, not just restoring the number of productive slave positions they had formerly provided, but creating new slave jobs - which in turn reinvigorated the market for slaves.
We can confidently assert there is no parallel in today's relationship between the inventor and the job-creating business person. Either that, or blame Eli Whitney rather than the plantation owners for fully employing so many slaves.
Technologist's A-bombs don't threaten to kill people, it's the generals who point them at us. And technology is the road to freedom.
If a prior patent had prevented production of the cotton gin, we might have been spared the glory of the Civil War. Technology brings us together.
I've been using BBS's since '84, the internet since '93. I've gone from 300 baud to 384 SDSL. I've also gone from Seattle to Brooklyn in '89, so I've seen the wash of technology, good beer, and pretentious coffee... the last two being incentives for sharing public spaces, come east. As a subscriber to CoEvolution Quarterly in the early '80s, I was victim of the earliest virtual community hype.
Now, not all venues are for everybody. Enough people will say "Bars aren't real," or "Coffee houses aren't real," or "BBS's aren't real." Hey, it's what's real for you. Me, I have better discussions, on average, in bars than online. But I've had some great, transformational discussions online. Some people do the same thing through the mail (Jefferson, for instance).
And I work in open source, which would be totally impossible if I didn't know my way around the online community in order to solve the inevitable problems. Same as electricians can benefit from knowing their way around the guild hall - but with so many specializations in programming and sys admin, there's no way you'd find the right knowledge if we built guild halls instead. And I pursue my academic-related hobby online, taking remote courses which lead to conference attendance where I have real community with folks who would normally be far outside the circle of friends I make through other friends and bar going.
I just don't see the divide. I've gotten better at making conversation with strangers generally because of online experience, as well as offline. And at turning strangers into friends. It's all community, and this guy saying that one of the places it's important to me to hang - online generally - isn't 'real' enough in his book. Well, isn't he just hipper enough to know?
As for the notion that it's too elite a club, sorry but alot of the people I know in systems administration are the sorts of guys who a generation ago would have become auto mechanics - you've got to take an interest in how things go together and come apart, and how to tune them for performance - very much the same attitude bias. With my SDSL I host a handful of Websites that get hits from around the world - pretty accessible publishing if you ask me. It costs a bit more each month than my car insurance. Expensive if you're in the half of humanity living on $2 a day, but then they don't have cars either.
Cars - there's a technology that destroys communities, all in all. But the notion that there's no community advantage to cyberspace is just bunk. Of course, there were always those who argued against bars and coffee houses too.
Soon any self-respecting portable computer/thingie will have wireless communication, and adding a TV tuner costs about, what, 30 bucks top for the manufacturer? As for being a remote controller, all you need is an infrared lamp - another 2 bucks, and software to send out the codes, gee that might take all afternoon to write. Touchscreen - those are nasty, how 'bout a flexible keyboard? So what is Sony selling? Please be sure they don't get any patents, 'cause this is not inventive, it's just what we're gonna use those S3 Linux Transmetta pads for anyhow. (Well, I hope they don't add the TV tuner, but then again, as on option, why not? It's cheap.)
Look, 6 years is about as long as anyone can stay fully fresh in tech anyhow - about 3 years to reach the peak of a current programming language and style, about 3 years to refine it, and then what one's learned begins to be bad habbits rather than good - which is why there are so many highly experienced citizens over 35 or 40 who can't get work because we keep bringing these foreign youngsters in... meanwhile, if we care about development in the rest of the world, these people, trained in US business practices, are the best possible contribution we could make to their home countries.
Oh, they'd like to stay in the US? Well, there are plenty of over-the-hill citizen programmers who'd like to stay in the industry... compromises on all sides, that's what makes life fair.
Do you see any relation between this locking up of information and the political wind, which as it blows from the mouths of Hillary and "Just Plain" Joe this week, strongly favors being able to "protect" children (and they want us all to be their children) "from" all media?
What level of speech is most obviously protected, when it comes to transmitting the DeCSS code and the like, and even referencing where it can be found? Seeing a need for civil resistance to the encroaching infantilization of the general population, and the wisdom of building a good final line of resistance, in case the front line heros like yourselves falter, how can those of us well behind the lines (but often with great access to information technologies) fortify the fallback position so that we can in some future year, like the fabled monks of Ireland, re-establish civilization?
We're currently blocking some French cheeses from import because they won't take our hormone-laced beef. If they won't take our Nazi-laced memorabelia, why, we should refuse to let their Concords land here or something. The fraternity of trade must be allowed equal liberty in all corners of the world (unless the formerly-Nazi Germans want to buy a wireless company here, or the Brazillians want to sell us oranges... let's be real).
In the spirit of trade retaliation, let's block all *.fr addresses from any access to American E-Bay, and also block all commercial *.fr domains from any access to or from the rest of the world. That way we can keep the French quaint, and more wonderful for tourists, like they want to be.
Those who won't come out and play, can close themselves in and wither away (and softly hum La Marseillaise).
Along the lines of the guy who slashed the old painting in Holland a decade ago and got off by telling the judge he'd made a new work of art, set your filters to do creative substitution, so that 'hot bitch' becomes 'Tipper Gore' and so on. Then on any page that has more than a couple of substitutions, also replace all jpegs with devotional images - preferably not Tantric. This is allowable parody under copyright law, and places you squarely on the side favoring free expression, rather than among Satan's minions, the state censors.
On the other hand, you could be fair about it by performing a similar improvement to all religious pages. Use your creativity! Just make sure you do block those breast cancer pages, or else kids will start playing doctor and giving each other exams.
On a PPro running Red Hat 6 and a 2.2.14 kernel, invoking "mozilla" immediately seg faults, dumps core, and offers to debug, which saying yes to results in a process that runs so far and then stalls at "#0 0x400abdc4 in nsComponentManagerImpl::AddComponentToRegistry ()" - which may mean something to someone, but the nightly builds have been much better than this, why is this a "milestone"?
There are a vast number of artworks in our museums and private collections which were either (1) stolen by the Nazis (or from the Nazis by our own soldiers) and then laundered through art dealers, or (2) smuggled out of countries (for example China) which do not allow export of antiquities. More often than not, the law protects the museums, particularly if they can claim innocence about the originally illegal provenance. The point is, 'possession of stolen property' is often only a problem if you knew it was stolen when you took possession.
If you like the ancient Chinese stuff, by the way, any of the major Asian art shows these days displays collections superior to most museums - over 90% of it moved illegally from China, and much of it stolen from museums and archaeological sites there to begin with. When China asks for items to be returned (for example, a major statue that recently showed up in a Japanese museum), it rarely gets them. And we complain when the Chinese make a few copies of Windows?
Hey, I was in Austria drinking a Budweiser. Yup, the non-Busch, unAmerican one. And in mentioning that I'm not violating Busch's trademark in the slightest. If I offerred to _sell_ you one here I'd be in trouble. But there's nothing wrong with talking about it.
Isn't the law the same in Germany on this? Can't German's talk about "the American freeware, Samba" all they like as long as they aren't selling it?
If I were named McDonald, and cooked hamburgers, and you went on a newsgroup or Website and said "This guy McDonald's hamburgers suck," that again doesn't have jack in the box to do with the McDonald's trademark - only if I _sell_ my hamburgers and call them "McDonald's."
Seems like the only folks who even have to change the name are the distros, for their German version. Maybe to Son-of-Samba-Not? They have to translate the manuals to German anyway, so renaming should come cheap enough.
Thanks for the ref to the Galeon site. Shortcomings: It's Gnome (nothing against Gnome, but the last time I chose desktops, KDE was more stable, and I'm not going to rebuild my whole customized setup just to use an immature browser). It doesn't look like it has basic capabilities to deal with JavaScript, Java, and SSL (some of us do do our banking and investing over the Net - even sometimes, sigh, buy things - and a browser which can't even have this stuff toggled on to deal with sites offerring these services does not have 'basic' browser functionality today). Also, the Galeon site doesn't fully specify what its capabilities are and will be, when - which I hope they post soon, as it's vital stuff to know.
So I second all the calls for 'just a browser,' and it needs to be fast - Mozilla sucks on an AMD 450 with 64 megs, fer chrissake, if you can't get snappy response on this CPU, you shouldn't be coding - there's no reason to require more hardware power for the next generation of net appliances, or desktops, for that matter. And a browser that makes affordable hardware look good will have a definite advantage.
Lars on Charlie Rose a couple weeks back said that they had no problem with cassette tapes of albums, because of the loss of fidelity. But they have a problem with mp3 copies from albums, because they are "digital" and, he implied, therefore have no loss of fidelity. Which is bull - a good cassette deck is audibly higher fidelity than the lossy compression of mp3.
So either Lars (1) can't hear the difference because he's deaf or (2) can hear the difference but pretends he can't because, well, it's "digital." An mp3, even from a studio master, is not the same as a studio master - far from it - and doesn't compete with the CD release any more than cassette tapes do. And when you tape a friend's record and decide you really like it, you buy it, or the artist's other releases.
Does the British law have any provision browser-based communications? It's simple enough to set up Apache-SSL and set up something like Phorum to exchange messages - have your discussion, nuke the messages, and run the whole thing through strong encryption. And if someone knocks on the door asking for the key to something they'd intercepted - what key? Sure, there was one, but is it saved anywhere?
Or think of a pet store. If you go in and buy one hamster or gerbil per week, pretty soon they're going to wise up and stop selling them to you.
... unless they already sold you a snake, which requires a live hamster or gerbil per week to live. Then you're their favorite customer.
All hail RIAA, the Great Serpent! Capitalism is a particularly ecological system - moreso than socialism, with its social engineering./. readers, being top-heavy in engineering, may despite themselves favor an engineered solution in which every cute gerbil - every innocent furry musician even - can be given a long and pampered life. But in the ecological view we should be content to feed the beasts - the serpentine corporations - which are the top predators in our planetary niche. If the bigger corporations can manage to constrict on or poison Napster, mp3.com, etc., and then choke them down, bon appetite!
The good news is that if you go to another registrar when renewal comes around (e.g. jumpdomain.com), it goes through smoothly in recent months, and you just saved $20 and your soul, maybe.
The bad news is that first Net Sol sends you a threatening 'late reminder' bill, addressed to the billing contact. Not much real threat there. Then a couple weeks later they send a threatening bill to the "CEO/President" of the registrant, announcing that the billing contact, who is named, has failed in renewing the domain, and that you better get your ass in gear and send 'em their 35 bucks or you're sold down the river. Now, this even happens after, in response to the first billing, you e-mailed them and - wow! - actually got an answer back that sure things were cool. They're just gonna try to bill your boss anyhow and get your ass in the fire.
The French Academy should be happy about Echelon, because it means that people in the English-speaking world alliance (note Echelon membership) will have to study French to read and listen to all those intercepts!
First, the French plot to poison our minds by exporting deconstruction. But it's lost something in translation. They should realize that it's not so much the flavor of philosophical poison (anyone remember extentialism?), but the language itself that contains the toxins. Encouraging our 'intelligence' community to continue to study French is the surest way to incapacitate it.
On second thought, French complaining must be meant to encourage exactly that. Reverse psychology. "Oh, don't delve into those French language intercepts, that hurts us so much!"
Look at the Palm - not even a fraction of the power of an Intel chip, and whips the pants off of any Win CE system (or whatever they've optimistically renamed it) in sales. You want stability (Linux), battery life (Transmeta)....
The CPU price points at this end of the range just don't matter. You'll pay $50 more for the battery life - hell, a spare battery costs more than that. So unless Intel lowers its mobil CPU costs to 0 and gives them away when you buy the spare battery....
On the other hand, we should be surprised if the devices which use the Caruso well come from IBM. They've designed some nice laptops around Intel for people who maybe don't need the battery life because they only use 'em for a half-hour at a time to revamp their Power Point shows. The Caruso devices will be for new markets, folks like me whose last portable was a KayPro II because the industry hasn't made something that's really handy enough to be worth using rather than pen and a notebook in the field.
To drive the evolution of sites towards the acceptable, the following sort of ranking system may be applied, where content is equivalent:
Sites with no adverts beyond small bottom-of-page notices about donors of hosting and similar services
Sites with only one banner advert per page
Sites that sell all the advertising they can fit on the page
There can be a secondary ranking like:
Noncommercial sites
Independent commercial sites
Sites which are parts of conglomerates which keep advertising and editorial separate
Sites part of conglomerates which blend advertising and editorial
So/. rates 2,3. Infoworld.com rates 3,3. Anything with Internet.com rates 3,4. The point is that by choosing to point our eyeballs towards the lowest numbers that are consonant with good content, this establishes an evolutionary gradient which at the least keeps noncommercial and independent sites happenning.
The tainting of editorial by advertising (including cross-promotional) purposes is part of the dreck that's coming down not just on the Net but in all the CBS news coverage of characters in Survivor. Hey, you don't need to be in the audience for that. Or you can be a sucker... free world.
Amazing that several of the high-moderated posts make the RIAA-encouraged mistake of equating mp3.com with Napster. mp3.com is not, has not, presented or linked to any music that wasn't either (1) provided by the musicians for the express purpose or (2) already owned by the remote user.
Back to the real topic here: If I put something that I own, say a copyrighted art poster, out in my front yard and you come by and snap it with your digital camera and then run it off on your home printer, I'm guilty? Of what? Providing an 'attractive nuisance'? Think that statute generally applies to things like and unfenced swimming pool after the neighbor kid drowns.
And then if someone puts up a guide to Places Where You Can Snap Photos of Intellectual Property they're contributing to crime? Hell, every privately owned famous building is intellectual property under the law - you can't use it as backdrop in your commercial work without negotiating terms with the owner. So the AIA guide to NYC architecture contributes to crime because a commercial photographer might take it and snap away without negotiating compensation with the owners? Sure thing!
Note that the current Napster defense is that individuals sharing music by, say, lending a record to tape, is de facto legal, so Napster is doing nothing to contribute to crime because there's _no crime_.
One small question: Why does the Times play up the claim of "Oh, we're so innocent. See, the brothers Mom likes better get away with the stuff she punishes me for." And this without really looking at whether the firm is question is fundamentally slimeballs? Like, sociopaths always know how to talk the prettiest, but the Times once had reporters who weren't quite so easily suckered in.
Keep in mind that the damages these jackasses are looking for would more than bankrupt ICANN. Now, sure ICANN is truly unfortunate, but can some of you say "It sure was better when Network Solutions ran everything." ICANN kisses too much corporate ass, but there's no way to win at all except play the corporations off against each other. Like, someone want to change the GNU license so IBM can't use Linux? Course not, even the most pure want to use the corporations to destroy each other. There's no other game - it's not like you can defect to the Soviets anymore if you're looking for a truly competing power. Don't sell ICANN short. Help them stomp Alternic, and NetSol, and then push on to the next frontier.
The access from anywhere thing, sure it's worth it. So you hang a Linux applicance on your DSL or cable or whatever always-connected system, and you access it from anywhere. No bucks to Redmond. Of course, you have to get online from the road, but many DSL providers will also give you a national, toll-free dialin account.
Now, there's a bit of work to do on the Linux end to produce a simple enough 'access from anywhere' box for the masses. But it's fairly trivial work (this is Unix, after all) - and it could be a real advantage for Linux to have the apps that you can access from anywhere on your own base box, while Microsoft will now be committed to having its apps only do satisfactory remote access via their pay-by-the-minute services.
So the new release means: "Here's how we're going to cripple our next generation of products, to try to tie the user to yet another product we plan to offer."
An auction site has to handle intense bursts of traffic, unless you're auctioning something only a few people care about (which could happen, I suppose, in specialty steel or some more obscure industrial material), so you probably should budget for your own data center. Do you really want your business hostage to someone else's staff? Can you afford _not_ to have your own staff right at the machines when trouble comes down?
That said, in my own experience, between co-location (good size outfits, well-connected, even reasonably-responsive staff) and setting up in-house servers over DSL lines... guess what, from the outside world, service looks better with the DSL lines. I dunno why, but guess it might partly because SDSL providers buy bandwidth based on reasonable incoming saturation levels, while co-lo providers buy it based on outgoing saturation levels, so there's more clear bandwidth available outgoing on a decent SDSL provider's lines. And I've seen this with both Covad and Northpoint service.
All the posts about the big backbone players having the content? Nah. The big content players have to go to the big backbone players, because otherwise they can't get decent bandwidth... but this isn't something the backbone players should get credit for, it's a byproduct of their oligoploy. And the backboners can't provide customers for E-bay or Yahoo unless all the small ISPs can connect. So the fair place to put the cost is with E-bay and Yahoo. Why should a small ISP pay to deliver customers with a good E-bay or Yahoo experience (which, after all, depends on the quality of the connect)?? It's like a store charging admission - makes no sense at all.
Now, you could say the Net isn't just about the commercial operations. But the good noncommercial pages are as likely to be on a local ISP (or, these days, on a Linux box on a DSL line) - and there's as much e-mail sent as received per customer no matter what size the provider (except for the spammers favoring UU Net lately).
I'm standing on this road. I'm bigger than you are. I can beat you up. So give me the money.
For each top level country domain, there should be two: one controlled by the current national government of said country, the other controlled by a not-for-profit government-in-exile (which in extraordinary conditions of civil freedom may actually choose to base itself within the physical territory controlled by the so-called legitimate government). The governments-controlled domain set should have dues enforced by the rigorous UN collection agents; the in-exile domains should be provided through the free services of the international hackers union, whose members will refuse to work at any corporation that doesn't tithe itself to pay for the redundant, distributed in-exile server farms.
Slashdot Mirror
Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin - a machine used to separate cotton during the harvest. This was to be a boon for the South, because cotton cultivation there was becoming too expensive compared to emerging producers elsewhere. The number of persons employed as slaves had actually started to decline with the decline of cotton production.
But the invention of the gin allowed enterprising Southern businessmen to lower production costs and regain their former predominance in the world cotton market, not just restoring the number of productive slave positions they had formerly provided, but creating new slave jobs - which in turn reinvigorated the market for slaves.
We can confidently assert there is no parallel in today's relationship between the inventor and the job-creating business person. Either that, or blame Eli Whitney rather than the plantation owners for fully employing so many slaves.
Technologist's A-bombs don't threaten to kill people, it's the generals who point them at us. And technology is the road to freedom.
If a prior patent had prevented production of the cotton gin, we might have been spared the glory of the Civil War. Technology brings us together.
I've been using BBS's since '84, the internet since '93. I've gone from 300 baud to 384 SDSL. I've also gone from Seattle to Brooklyn in '89, so I've seen the wash of technology, good beer, and pretentious coffee ... the last two being incentives for sharing public spaces, come east. As a subscriber to CoEvolution Quarterly in the early '80s, I was victim of the earliest virtual community hype.
Now, not all venues are for everybody. Enough people will say "Bars aren't real," or "Coffee houses aren't real," or "BBS's aren't real." Hey, it's what's real for you. Me, I have better discussions, on average, in bars than online. But I've had some great, transformational discussions online. Some people do the same thing through the mail (Jefferson, for instance).
And I work in open source, which would be totally impossible if I didn't know my way around the online community in order to solve the inevitable problems. Same as electricians can benefit from knowing their way around the guild hall - but with so many specializations in programming and sys admin, there's no way you'd find the right knowledge if we built guild halls instead. And I pursue my academic-related hobby online, taking remote courses which lead to conference attendance where I have real community with folks who would normally be far outside the circle of friends I make through other friends and bar going.
I just don't see the divide. I've gotten better at making conversation with strangers generally because of online experience, as well as offline. And at turning strangers into friends. It's all community, and this guy saying that one of the places it's important to me to hang - online generally - isn't 'real' enough in his book. Well, isn't he just hipper enough to know?
As for the notion that it's too elite a club, sorry but alot of the people I know in systems administration are the sorts of guys who a generation ago would have become auto mechanics - you've got to take an interest in how things go together and come apart, and how to tune them for performance - very much the same attitude bias. With my SDSL I host a handful of Websites that get hits from around the world - pretty accessible publishing if you ask me. It costs a bit more each month than my car insurance. Expensive if you're in the half of humanity living on $2 a day, but then they don't have cars either.
Cars - there's a technology that destroys communities, all in all. But the notion that there's no community advantage to cyberspace is just bunk. Of course, there were always those who argued against bars and coffee houses too.
Soon any self-respecting portable computer/thingie will have wireless communication, and adding a TV tuner costs about, what, 30 bucks top for the manufacturer? As for being a remote controller, all you need is an infrared lamp - another 2 bucks, and software to send out the codes, gee that might take all afternoon to write. Touchscreen - those are nasty, how 'bout a flexible keyboard? So what is Sony selling? Please be sure they don't get any patents, 'cause this is not inventive, it's just what we're gonna use those S3 Linux Transmetta pads for anyhow. (Well, I hope they don't add the TV tuner, but then again, as on option, why not? It's cheap.)
Oh, they'd like to stay in the US? Well, there are plenty of over-the-hill citizen programmers who'd like to stay in the industry ... compromises on all sides, that's what makes life fair.
Do you see any relation between this locking up of information and the political wind, which as it blows from the mouths of Hillary and "Just Plain" Joe this week, strongly favors being able to "protect" children (and they want us all to be their children) "from" all media?
What level of speech is most obviously protected, when it comes to transmitting the DeCSS code and the like, and even referencing where it can be found? Seeing a need for civil resistance to the encroaching infantilization of the general population, and the wisdom of building a good final line of resistance, in case the front line heros like yourselves falter, how can those of us well behind the lines (but often with great access to information technologies) fortify the fallback position so that we can in some future year, like the fabled monks of Ireland, re-establish civilization?
In the spirit of trade retaliation, let's block all *.fr addresses from any access to American E-Bay, and also block all commercial *.fr domains from any access to or from the rest of the world. That way we can keep the French quaint, and more wonderful for tourists, like they want to be.
Those who won't come out and play, can close themselves in and wither away (and softly hum La Marseillaise).
On the other hand, you could be fair about it by performing a similar improvement to all religious pages. Use your creativity! Just make sure you do block those breast cancer pages, or else kids will start playing doctor and giving each other exams.
On a PPro running Red Hat 6 and a 2.2.14 kernel, invoking "mozilla" immediately seg faults, dumps core, and offers to debug, which saying yes to results in a process that runs so far and then stalls at "#0 0x400abdc4 in nsComponentManagerImpl::AddComponentToRegistry ()" - which may mean something to someone, but the nightly builds have been much better than this, why is this a "milestone"?
If you like the ancient Chinese stuff, by the way, any of the major Asian art shows these days displays collections superior to most museums - over 90% of it moved illegally from China, and much of it stolen from museums and archaeological sites there to begin with. When China asks for items to be returned (for example, a major statue that recently showed up in a Japanese museum), it rarely gets them. And we complain when the Chinese make a few copies of Windows?
Hey, I was in Austria drinking a Budweiser. Yup, the non-Busch, unAmerican one. And in mentioning that I'm not violating Busch's trademark in the slightest. If I offerred to _sell_ you one here I'd be in trouble. But there's nothing wrong with talking about it.
Isn't the law the same in Germany on this? Can't German's talk about "the American freeware, Samba" all they like as long as they aren't selling it?
If I were named McDonald, and cooked hamburgers, and you went on a newsgroup or Website and said "This guy McDonald's hamburgers suck," that again doesn't have jack in the box to do with the McDonald's trademark - only if I _sell_ my hamburgers and call them "McDonald's."
Seems like the only folks who even have to change the name are the distros, for their German version. Maybe to Son-of-Samba-Not? They have to translate the manuals to German anyway, so renaming should come cheap enough.
So I second all the calls for 'just a browser,' and it needs to be fast - Mozilla sucks on an AMD 450 with 64 megs, fer chrissake, if you can't get snappy response on this CPU, you shouldn't be coding - there's no reason to require more hardware power for the next generation of net appliances, or desktops, for that matter. And a browser that makes affordable hardware look good will have a definite advantage.
Lars on Charlie Rose a couple weeks back said that they had no problem with cassette tapes of albums, because of the loss of fidelity. But they have a problem with mp3 copies from albums, because they are "digital" and, he implied, therefore have no loss of fidelity. Which is bull - a good cassette deck is audibly higher fidelity than the lossy compression of mp3.
So either Lars (1) can't hear the difference because he's deaf or (2) can hear the difference but pretends he can't because, well, it's "digital." An mp3, even from a studio master, is not the same as a studio master - far from it - and doesn't compete with the CD release any more than cassette tapes do. And when you tape a friend's record and decide you really like it, you buy it, or the artist's other releases.
Does the British law have any provision browser-based communications? It's simple enough to set up Apache-SSL and set up something like Phorum to exchange messages - have your discussion, nuke the messages, and run the whole thing through strong encryption. And if someone knocks on the door asking for the key to something they'd intercepted - what key? Sure, there was one, but is it saved anywhere?
... unless they already sold you a snake, which requires a live hamster or gerbil per week to live. Then you're their favorite customer.
All hail RIAA, the Great Serpent! Capitalism is a particularly ecological system - moreso than socialism, with its social engineering. /. readers, being top-heavy in engineering, may despite themselves favor an engineered solution in which every cute gerbil - every innocent furry musician even - can be given a long and pampered life. But in the ecological view we should be content to feed the beasts - the serpentine corporations - which are the top predators in our planetary niche. If the bigger corporations can manage to constrict on or poison Napster, mp3.com, etc., and then choke them down, bon appetite!
What if the aliens are peaceful, fat, edible, and can be induced to land in Africa?
The bad news is that first Net Sol sends you a threatening 'late reminder' bill, addressed to the billing contact. Not much real threat there. Then a couple weeks later they send a threatening bill to the "CEO/President" of the registrant, announcing that the billing contact, who is named, has failed in renewing the domain, and that you better get your ass in gear and send 'em their 35 bucks or you're sold down the river. Now, this even happens after, in response to the first billing, you e-mailed them and - wow! - actually got an answer back that sure things were cool. They're just gonna try to bill your boss anyhow and get your ass in the fire.
The French Academy should be happy about Echelon, because it means that people in the English-speaking world alliance (note Echelon membership) will have to study French to read and listen to all those intercepts!
First, the French plot to poison our minds by exporting deconstruction. But it's lost something in translation. They should realize that it's not so much the flavor of philosophical poison (anyone remember extentialism?), but the language itself that contains the toxins. Encouraging our 'intelligence' community to continue to study French is the surest way to incapacitate it.
On second thought, French complaining must be meant to encourage exactly that. Reverse psychology. "Oh, don't delve into those French language intercepts, that hurts us so much!"
Look at the Palm - not even a fraction of the power of an Intel chip, and whips the pants off of any Win CE system (or whatever they've optimistically renamed it) in sales. You want stability (Linux), battery life (Transmeta)....
The CPU price points at this end of the range just don't matter. You'll pay $50 more for the battery life - hell, a spare battery costs more than that. So unless Intel lowers its mobil CPU costs to 0 and gives them away when you buy the spare battery....
On the other hand, we should be surprised if the devices which use the Caruso well come from IBM. They've designed some nice laptops around Intel for people who maybe don't need the battery life because they only use 'em for a half-hour at a time to revamp their Power Point shows. The Caruso devices will be for new markets, folks like me whose last portable was a KayPro II because the industry hasn't made something that's really handy enough to be worth using rather than pen and a notebook in the field.
- Sites with no adverts beyond small bottom-of-page notices about donors of hosting and similar services
- Sites with only one banner advert per page
- Sites that sell all the advertising they can fit on the page
There can be a secondary ranking like:- Noncommercial sites
- Independent commercial sites
- Sites which are parts of conglomerates which keep advertising and editorial separate
- Sites part of conglomerates which blend advertising and editorial
SoThe tainting of editorial by advertising (including cross-promotional) purposes is part of the dreck that's coming down not just on the Net but in all the CBS news coverage of characters in Survivor. Hey, you don't need to be in the audience for that. Or you can be a sucker ... free world.
Back to the real topic here: If I put something that I own, say a copyrighted art poster, out in my front yard and you come by and snap it with your digital camera and then run it off on your home printer, I'm guilty? Of what? Providing an 'attractive nuisance'? Think that statute generally applies to things like and unfenced swimming pool after the neighbor kid drowns.
And then if someone puts up a guide to Places Where You Can Snap Photos of Intellectual Property they're contributing to crime? Hell, every privately owned famous building is intellectual property under the law - you can't use it as backdrop in your commercial work without negotiating terms with the owner. So the AIA guide to NYC architecture contributes to crime because a commercial photographer might take it and snap away without negotiating compensation with the owners? Sure thing!
Note that the current Napster defense is that individuals sharing music by, say, lending a record to tape, is de facto legal, so Napster is doing nothing to contribute to crime because there's _no crime_.
One small question: Why does the Times play up the claim of "Oh, we're so innocent. See, the brothers Mom likes better get away with the stuff she punishes me for." And this without really looking at whether the firm is question is fundamentally slimeballs? Like, sociopaths always know how to talk the prettiest, but the Times once had reporters who weren't quite so easily suckered in.
Keep in mind that the damages these jackasses are looking for would more than bankrupt ICANN. Now, sure ICANN is truly unfortunate, but can some of you say "It sure was better when Network Solutions ran everything." ICANN kisses too much corporate ass, but there's no way to win at all except play the corporations off against each other. Like, someone want to change the GNU license so IBM can't use Linux? Course not, even the most pure want to use the corporations to destroy each other. There's no other game - it's not like you can defect to the Soviets anymore if you're looking for a truly competing power. Don't sell ICANN short. Help them stomp Alternic, and NetSol, and then push on to the next frontier.
Now, there's a bit of work to do on the Linux end to produce a simple enough 'access from anywhere' box for the masses. But it's fairly trivial work (this is Unix, after all) - and it could be a real advantage for Linux to have the apps that you can access from anywhere on your own base box, while Microsoft will now be committed to having its apps only do satisfactory remote access via their pay-by-the-minute services.
So the new release means: "Here's how we're going to cripple our next generation of products, to try to tie the user to yet another product we plan to offer."
An auction site has to handle intense bursts of traffic, unless you're auctioning something only a few people care about (which could happen, I suppose, in specialty steel or some more obscure industrial material), so you probably should budget for your own data center. Do you really want your business hostage to someone else's staff? Can you afford _not_ to have your own staff right at the machines when trouble comes down?
... guess what, from the outside world, service looks better with the DSL lines. I dunno why, but guess it might partly because SDSL providers buy bandwidth based on reasonable incoming saturation levels, while co-lo providers buy it based on outgoing saturation levels, so there's more clear bandwidth available outgoing on a decent SDSL provider's lines. And I've seen this with both Covad and Northpoint service.
That said, in my own experience, between co-location (good size outfits, well-connected, even reasonably-responsive staff) and setting up in-house servers over DSL lines
Now, you could say the Net isn't just about the commercial operations. But the good noncommercial pages are as likely to be on a local ISP (or, these days, on a Linux box on a DSL line) - and there's as much e-mail sent as received per customer no matter what size the provider (except for the spammers favoring UU Net lately).
I'm standing on this road. I'm bigger than you are. I can beat you up. So give me the money.
For each top level country domain, there should be two: one controlled by the current national government of said country, the other controlled by a not-for-profit government-in-exile (which in extraordinary conditions of civil freedom may actually choose to base itself within the physical territory controlled by the so-called legitimate government). The governments-controlled domain set should have dues enforced by the rigorous UN collection agents; the in-exile domains should be provided through the free services of the international hackers union, whose members will refuse to work at any corporation that doesn't tithe itself to pay for the redundant, distributed in-exile server farms.