We need to think of this as a infra-structure solution for the future, not for now. It would take too long to put in place to be able to use as an immediate solution for the current California solution.
California's problem is more of an infrastructure problem based on contradictory laws, many of which seek to avoid the consequences of the laws of nature. Mix that in with corporate and civic oportunism, and there is enough blame to go around to tar and feather everyone.
They have run into the classic "Pick two out of thre problem": Cheap, Reliable, Easy/Fast
* There is a high rate of scamming in the security industry, wherein "auditors" will go in and scan, poke, prod, and bleed a network into shambles, dump the results into a tidy little report, and walk out with a cool $5,000 (or even up to $15,000). No answers. No solutions. No fixes. And certainly no security. Now where'd I put my ethics...
This is the same thing as all of those internet consultants who advised spending huge amounts if investment capital to make a name and run up the stock price of a IPO. Who then bail out when the company has not enough income flow to justify the existance of the company in the first place.
After all they made theirs. Not that I am all that surprised.
One could also call it karma whoring. You didn't think the rest of your article carried any weight, so you threw in a anti-Microsoft attack hoping that the polarized community of slashdot would see that and go "Ohhhh, he's insightful!" and mod you up.
I've been maxed out on karma for awhile now. It is a summer weekend, and the odds on anyone one being interested enough to mod it up are slim. But that point was intended as a bit of irony given the polarized nature of the community. If a member of the polarized community can think this through, the enhancement of nueron connections will be theraputic.
..the "Linux is a cancer" comment that Ballmer made yesterday...oh wail, that wasn't satire...
Exactly!
if you substituted all the terms so that it was MS giving amnesty to users of Linux, the MS freaks would complain that it was too mean spirited. and it would be just a bit chilling, since it would expose the inherent evil in the action a little too forcefully.
Flipping it around so that Linux users would be giving amnesty to MS users would be funnier as a satire.
You realize that with Linux would force MS to innovate. This is an admission that MS has not innovated in the past. a tragic slip of the tongue that reveals the truth
While the example of King Canute trying to order the tides to stop is an example of the overwhelming power of nature, perhaps this example is not entirely appropriate. Certainly the conclusions are not shared.
Humans as a force of nature have a certain capacity to muck up nature. Easy examples are areas where humans have lived for a while.
Evidence now suggests that Iceland was well forested when first discovered. The same applies to Easter Island. Both are devoid of trees now. In the Middle East we have from classical literature and the Bible mentions of the Trees of Lebanon, specimens of which are said to have been used for some of the pillars in the temple of King Solomon. Obviously, the region used to be well forested, and now it is not. (Isreal has a long term reforestation program in place). Similarly, the deserts of Iraq all used to be well forested, rich in plant and animal life. The removal of trees changed the climate. We now have a desert. I wonder how much of the Sahara desert is based purely on climate change, and how much climate change was human caused. The Sahara, too, was forested 10 to 15 thousand years ago.
In the Middle East, part of this was a certain type of political warfare. One of old religions there worshipped the trees, among other things. One of their competitors did not, and took to things like building homes out of wood. This went hand in hand with certain like the introduction of goats, etc.
so the point of this is that people in their short sightedness do things that are destructive to the things the like and want to preserve. Part of the problem here is the quantity of people who move in, so that by the time things are figured out, it is too late. If they figure it out at all.
Looking at the example in the NY Times article:
On the conservative Web site
"FreeRepublic.com," the discussion began by referring relatively mildly to Mr. Sunstein's book about the political consequences of the Internet as "thinly veiled liberal." But as the discussion picked up steam, the rhetoric of the respondents, who insisted that they had not and would not read the book itself, became more heated. Eventually, they were referring to Mr. Sunstein as "a
nazi" and a "pointy headed socialist windbag."
The discussion illustrated the phenomenon that Mr. Sunstein and various social scientists have called "group polarization" in which like-minded people in an isolated group reinforce one another's views, which then harden into more extreme positions. Even one of his critics on the site acknowledged the shift. "Amazingly enough," he wrote, "it looks like Sunstein has polarized this group into unanimous agreement about him." An expletive followed.
We see this in many places, even in Slashdot, where people familiar with technologies, philosophies, and even religions not condoned by the group are harrased and punished by the virulent commentary and conduct of some members. The alternate views are surpressed, even if there may be some benifit from them if you actually looked at them.
This isolates the communities and makes them easier to handle by outside interests. It isolates the slashdot community.
Philosophies are operating systems for the mind. It pays to understand the design principles of these operating systems in detail, and how they work and go together.
Coming back to our example of King Canute, the internet might not be like the ocean. To some extant, it may be like islands of territories that we are creating ourselves with our activities. It may be a universe built up of the activities of all of its participants. This universe, even though it is still growing at a large rate, is limited in thew technical sense. It may be large, but it is limited. You can control sections of it, even large sections of it. The game for some is to control the most important sections of it.
Thus we have MS usurping the jargon of calling the Internet the Net with their.NET. They are positioning themselves to control what they feel is the most important sector of the net, and marginalize the rest. Other interests are doing the same such as China, France, etc. each being polarized from the rest of the world.
The future of the Net (not the.NET) is difficult to predict indeed.
Of all those nicely dressed Microsoft staffers, which ones do you think were manning the booths, shaking hands, handing out swag, and answering dumb questions on their own dime? How many of them do you think would hang around if the district manager called and said, "Hey, we're a little over budget this quarter, so would you mind staffing the XP expo for free?"
Even if one or two of them agreed to spend a couple of hours there off the clock, it would be ridiculous to think for a second that any of them would spend most of their spare time for months preparing for the show, making repeated calls to vendors, recruiting assistance, and attending to the myriad details that go into getting a show presence ready. But that's exactly what the SLUG show committee did, tirelessly, just because they wanted to.
This is what they are afraid of, because ultimately, a drone is just a drone.
You get version 1.0 up which provides proof of concept and proof of potential coolness factor and lots of feedback.
This also gets you going on a basic website where you can find places to do basic merchandising for you life coffe mugs and t-shirts There are places out there that will seel t-shirts, for example, make their profit in the base price, and send you a check for your markup.
And then you can start moving to version 2.0 - Point being that you set yourself up so that the cost of everything is either free, or covered by the money you bring in.
Basic economics: Money In minus Money Out equals profits.
It is possible to be proftible from very early on, but it takes discipline
Let it said that unlimited freedom with no restrictions and no responsibilies and no consequences is as destructive as unlimited restrictionas. These are two sides of the same coin.
More and more often little thoughts come into my mind, things like MS is to the Net (not.NET) as Ebola is to a Human. With the rising security issues raised by Gibson of GRC Research, this is starting to become realistic.
Ms is becoming the thing they say they are not. Because MS has adopted the position a that anyone else's freedom is evil. That is the voice of a fascist.
Maybe not using the words of a fascist, but certainly, in the heart.
The best solution I ever saw to this problem that I ever saw proposed was to mix radioactive material in glass, encasing it in glass, then dump it at the bottom of the marianas trench (which is 7 miles deep) where it will eventually get subducted back into the earth.
You can make the glass pellets small enough that they will spread out evenly over a large area.
It is that, or launch it into the sun, but we do not want a challenger type disaster when launching nuclear waste.
DaimlerChrysler's decision to market its nine-foot-tall Unimog truck as a luxurious off-road vehicle has environmentalists fuming about the necessity for this oversized
"dinosaur" on US roads. The 12,500-pound behemoth--bigger than General Motors' Hummer and Ford's Excursion--gets about 10 miles to the gallon. SUVs, driven by many urban and suburban residents who never go off-road, have come under fire for a number of reasons, including poor gas mileage and safety issues when involved in two-car collisions.
I have this picture of this being driven by a short little old lady who only visists the grandkids, and plays doom on the weekends.
(I really did know a silver haired lady who used to go into one store to get the latest doom expansion packs. It was funny as heck to hear her talk!)
I have found that while Steve Gibson has had a taste for a melodramatic writing style, that the technical detail in his writing is fairly solid and is certainly above average. So with that grain of salt the article is worth looking at:
Fortunately -- the attacking machines were all security-compromised Windows-based PC's. In a fluke of laziness (or good judgement?) that has saved the Internet from untold levels of disaster, Microsoft's engineers never fully implemented the complete "Unix Sockets"
specification in any of the previous version of Windows. (Windows 2000 has it.) As a consequence, Windows machines (compared to Unix machines)
are blessedly limited in their ability to generate deliberately invalid Internet packets.
It is impossible for an application running under any version of Windows 3.x/95/98/ME or NT to "spoof" its source IP or generate malicious TCP packets such as SYN or ACK floods.
As a result, Internet security experts know that non-spoofing Internet attacks are almost certainly being generated by Windows-based PC's. Forging the IP address of an attacking machine (spoofing) is such a trivial thing to do under any of the various UNIX-like operating systems, and it is so effective in hiding the attacking machines, that no hacker would pass up the opportunity if it were available
This has horribly changed for the worse with the release of Windows 2000 and
the pending release of Windows XP. For no good reason whatsoever, Microsoft has equipped Windows 2000 and XP with the ability FOR ANY APPLICATION to generate incredibly malicious Internet traffic, including spoofed source IP's and SYN-flooding full scale Denial of Service (DoS) attacks!
So we are left with the vision of Loads of potentially insecure Windows boxes - open to the world - being used for more DDOS attacks.
None of which will be pleasing to the MS loyalists
thank you microsoft. This last point is kinda important:
I hope it is becoming clear to everyone reading this, that we can not have a stable Internet economy while 13 year-old children are free to deny arbitrary Internet services with impunity.
I think it is becoming obvious that we are going to need nore and more often the space going equivalent of a construction worker in space. Someone in their late 20s early 30s, who is not a scientist, but whose job it is to help handle the repair jobs and construction work.
I believe that the majority of people who make the flight average then to twenty years older. I hate to say it, but at that point often you are starting to slide physically, even if you are peaking metally. This will take a whole new training approach as well, since you are dealing with someone with a technician/mechanic level of knowledge. Side note: you will be looking for the short guys. The day of the 6'4" astronaut is not here yet, just due to weight considerations.
Which brings up the idea of a new job title: space mechanic.
And refeances an article from this past April from the Seattle times
"Boiling Frogs": A perfect example of plagerism and copyright violation with no credit to the original author.
Since this was in a discussion about Microsoft, so it does not win extra brownie points for irony in a discussion about the RIAA.
(Now to important matters)
Could Microsoft use copyright issues for getting control over the personal information of people?
Already we have seen the CDDB, built from the distributed contributions of individuals, turn ed around and taken private. What is to stop MS from placing their own copyright on this huge database of personal info and renting it to the highest bidder?
One Idea I have is for everyone to register their MS software codes via a generic public user profile. Suddenly Microsoft ends up with a couple hundred thousand users registering via a single name, address, phone number. Something like John Smith. This would impact on the reliability of their database, certainly.
While it is nice to know that the site got hacked, aren't we rewarding the hacked by posting all to info in a public forum?
Sort of between a rock and a hard place here. we need to inform the affected users, but we do not want to reward the hacker with the notoriety they crave.
this comment is strangely similar to the comment someone else posted here. - God and Commander Taco help me find it in the archives, but I DO recognize the writing from sometime in the past six months or so.
In fact I found the original comment here:
http://slashdot.org/yro/01/04/09/007213.shtml
It is about halfway down the page, Message number 74
this comment is strangely similar to the comment someone else posted here
God and Commander Taco help me find it in the archives, but I DO recognize the writing from sometime in the past six months or so. (I don't think the archives go back quite that far.)
That said, Hailstorm is going in the direction of a Microsoft Planet.
This is what they want. They envision a service oriented Internet where they are the toll takers.
And they will take a toll. But they will not nickel and dime us to death. more like a buck fifty, and more.
I suppose that someonem in Non US government should contact someone in the democratic side of the senate to conduct an investigationinto the conduct of ICANN.
After all, in a weird way it is trying to impose US sovereignity over other nations. I am sure that someone can make a big stink over this.
I am sure that these concerns should at least be looked at and sorted out by international treaty, instead of ad hoc for the benefit of the members.
Consider the panic if Bill Gates were a member of the ICANN board. or one of his underlings. Obviously Gates would never personally belong to such a low level organization, but you get the idea.
I look at this story, and think about who would care about this beyond a technical or professional interest.
This is important in case this technology becomes usable by the RIAA or similar agencies. Otherwise I take a look at this and see several reactions that become occasionally troublesome.
Most consumers will not care too much as long as the games don't cost too much.
Some will get not care, as long as their parents buy them the game.
Certain folks will take joy at a new toy to crack.
Some will be outraged that they actually have to pay money for a game since they will not be able to copy the game.
and then there are those that will figure out some way to apply this to their favorite hot button issue whether it applies to the situation or not, be it civil rights, crime in the inner city, or the massive Australian-American trade imbalance problem [joke]
(sigh) somehow I do not think of this as being very important by itself.
We need someone fromt he UK to clue us in on if they have something similar to civil rights legislation and anti monopoly regulations that can be enforced.
This kind of nonsense is expected in a totalitarian system, say China, or Iran (insert your favorite country to hate here)
Heck, in the US, I am sure there would be calls to the congressmen, investigations, etc.
Welcome to Microsoft Planet. God help us when the system crashes.
Corporate domination of the real world no longer seems possible unless companies like Microsoft and AOL/Time-Warner bring the virtual one under control.
Most corporations seem to have figured out that so long as they have the appropriate politicians in their pockets, that being king or president or prime minister is not where it is at. For one thing, you have all of those pesky people demanding something from you. There is no rest for the wicked in the world of politics.
so they stay out of politics, and enter it only to protect themselves. Then they get to have their fancy cars and jets and boats, and minions groveling at their feet. This only works well for the really big companies, but for them that is Good Enough(tm)
You worry about you favorite pet peeve, distro war, or whatever.
While all around you the age of the puppet kings is approaching. Some say it is here already.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.overclockers.com/articles154/
about wood computer cases by TechStyle Computers
There was this Ask Slashdot story on the EMF questions as well.
And Tech Style was featured in a slash story here
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
California's problem is more of an infrastructure problem based on contradictory laws, many of which seek to avoid the consequences of the laws of nature. Mix that in with corporate and civic oportunism, and there is enough blame to go around to tar and feather everyone.
They have run into the classic "Pick two out of thre problem": Cheap, Reliable, Easy/Fast
They want to have all three, and it isn't there.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
This is the same thing as all of those internet consultants who advised spending huge amounts if investment capital to make a name and run up the stock price of a IPO. Who then bail out when the company has not enough income flow to justify the existance of the company in the first place.
After all they made theirs. Not that I am all that surprised.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
I've been maxed out on karma for awhile now. It is a summer weekend, and the odds on anyone one being interested enough to mod it up are slim. But that point was intended as a bit of irony given the polarized nature of the community. If a member of the polarized community can think this through, the enhancement of nueron connections will be theraputic.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
Exactly!
if you substituted all the terms so that it was MS giving amnesty to users of Linux, the MS freaks would complain that it was too mean spirited. and it would be just a bit chilling, since it would expose the inherent evil in the action a little too forcefully.
Flipping it around so that Linux users would be giving amnesty to MS users would be funnier as a satire.
You realize that with Linux would force MS to innovate. This is an admission that MS has not innovated in the past. a tragic slip of the tongue that reveals the truth
;-)
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
Don't you love feedback loops? A classic example indeed!
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
While the example of King Canute trying to order the tides to stop is an example of the overwhelming power of nature, perhaps this example is not entirely appropriate. Certainly the conclusions are not shared.
Humans as a force of nature have a certain capacity to muck up nature. Easy examples are areas where humans have lived for a while.
Evidence now suggests that Iceland was well forested when first discovered. The same applies to Easter Island. Both are devoid of trees now. In the Middle East we have from classical literature and the Bible mentions of the Trees of Lebanon, specimens of which are said to have been used for some of the pillars in the temple of King Solomon. Obviously, the region used to be well forested, and now it is not. (Isreal has a long term reforestation program in place). Similarly, the deserts of Iraq all used to be well forested, rich in plant and animal life. The removal of trees changed the climate. We now have a desert. I wonder how much of the Sahara desert is based purely on climate change, and how much climate change was human caused. The Sahara, too, was forested 10 to 15 thousand years ago.
In the Middle East, part of this was a certain type of political warfare. One of old religions there worshipped the trees, among other things. One of their competitors did not, and took to things like building homes out of wood. This went hand in hand with certain like the introduction of goats, etc.
so the point of this is that people in their short sightedness do things that are destructive to the things the like and want to preserve. Part of the problem here is the quantity of people who move in, so that by the time things are figured out, it is too late. If they figure it out at all.
Looking at the example in the NY Times article:
On the conservative Web site "FreeRepublic.com," the discussion began by referring relatively mildly to Mr. Sunstein's book about the political consequences of the Internet as "thinly veiled liberal." But as the discussion picked up steam, the rhetoric of the respondents, who insisted that they had not and would not read the book itself, became more heated. Eventually, they were referring to Mr. Sunstein as "a nazi" and a "pointy headed socialist windbag."
The discussion illustrated the phenomenon that Mr. Sunstein and various social scientists have called "group polarization" in which like-minded people in an isolated group reinforce one another's views, which then harden into more extreme positions. Even one of his critics on the site acknowledged the shift. "Amazingly enough," he wrote, "it looks like Sunstein has polarized this group into unanimous agreement about him." An expletive followed.
We see this in many places, even in Slashdot, where people familiar with technologies, philosophies, and even religions not condoned by the group are harrased and punished by the virulent commentary and conduct of some members. The alternate views are surpressed, even if there may be some benifit from them if you actually looked at them.
This isolates the communities and makes them easier to handle by outside interests. It isolates the slashdot community.
Philosophies are operating systems for the mind. It pays to understand the design principles of these operating systems in detail, and how they work and go together.
Coming back to our example of King Canute, the internet might not be like the ocean. To some extant, it may be like islands of territories that we are creating ourselves with our activities. It may be a universe built up of the activities of all of its participants. This universe, even though it is still growing at a large rate, is limited in thew technical sense. It may be large, but it is limited. You can control sections of it, even large sections of it. The game for some is to control the most important sections of it.
Thus we have MS usurping the jargon of calling the Internet the Net with their .NET. They are positioning themselves to control what they feel is the most important sector of the net, and marginalize the rest. Other interests are doing the same such as China, France, etc. each being polarized from the rest of the world.
The future of the Net (not the .NET) is difficult to predict indeed.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
Of all those nicely dressed Microsoft staffers, which ones do you think were manning the booths, shaking hands, handing out swag, and answering dumb questions on their own dime? How many of them do you think would hang around if the district manager called and said, "Hey, we're a little over budget this quarter, so would you mind staffing the XP expo for free?"
Even if one or two of them agreed to spend a couple of hours there off the clock, it would be ridiculous to think for a second that any of them would spend most of their spare time for months preparing for the show, making repeated calls to vendors, recruiting assistance, and attending to the myriad details that go into getting a show presence ready. But that's exactly what the SLUG show committee did, tirelessly, just because they wanted to.
This is what they are afraid of, because ultimately, a drone is just a drone.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
You get version 1.0 up which provides proof of concept and proof of potential coolness factor and lots of feedback.
This also gets you going on a basic website where you can find places to do basic merchandising for you life coffe mugs and t-shirts There are places out there that will seel t-shirts, for example, make their profit in the base price, and send you a check for your markup.
And then you can start moving to version 2.0 - Point being that you set yourself up so that the cost of everything is either free, or covered by the money you bring in.
Basic economics: Money In minus Money Out equals profits.
It is possible to be proftible from very early on, but it takes discipline
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
Isn't this admitting that they had no innovation before?
sort of a fruedian slip there, accidently admit something that they wish to deny.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
More and more often little thoughts come into my mind, things like MS is to the Net (not .NET) as Ebola is to a Human. With the rising security issues raised by Gibson of GRC Research, this is starting to become realistic.
Ms is becoming the thing they say they are not. Because MS has adopted the position a that anyone else's freedom is evil. That is the voice of a fascist.
Maybe not using the words of a fascist, but certainly, in the heart.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
You can make the glass pellets small enough that they will spread out evenly over a large area.
It is that, or launch it into the sun, but we do not want a challenger type disaster when launching nuclear waste.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
http://www.ford-trucks.com/news/news88.html
Apparently there were going to run it off of propane.
But an even larger one is the Chrysler Unimog, snippet here:
http://www.climateark.org/articles/2001/1st/dachve hi.htm
which is somewhat imprssive:
DaimlerChrysler's decision to market its nine-foot-tall Unimog truck as a luxurious off-road vehicle has environmentalists fuming about the necessity for this oversized "dinosaur" on US roads. The 12,500-pound behemoth--bigger than General Motors' Hummer and Ford's Excursion--gets about 10 miles to the gallon. SUVs, driven by many urban and suburban residents who never go off-road, have come under fire for a number of reasons, including poor gas mileage and safety issues when involved in two-car collisions.
I have this picture of this being driven by a short little old lady who only visists the grandkids, and plays doom on the weekends.
(I really did know a silver haired lady who used to go into one store to get the latest doom expansion packs. It was funny as heck to hear her talk!)
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
Fortunately -- the attacking machines were all security-compromised Windows-based PC's. In a fluke of laziness (or good judgement?) that has saved the Internet from untold levels of disaster, Microsoft's engineers never fully implemented the complete "Unix Sockets" specification in any of the previous version of Windows. (Windows 2000 has it.) As a consequence, Windows machines (compared to Unix machines) are blessedly limited in their ability to generate deliberately invalid Internet packets.
It is impossible for an application running under any version of Windows 3.x/95/98/ME or NT to "spoof" its source IP or generate malicious TCP packets such as SYN or ACK floods.
As a result, Internet security experts know that non-spoofing Internet attacks are almost certainly being generated by Windows-based PC's. Forging the IP address of an attacking machine (spoofing) is such a trivial thing to do under any of the various UNIX-like operating systems, and it is so effective in hiding the attacking machines, that no hacker would pass up the opportunity if it were available
This has horribly changed for the worse with the release of Windows 2000 and the pending release of Windows XP. For no good reason whatsoever, Microsoft has equipped Windows 2000 and XP with the ability FOR ANY APPLICATION to generate incredibly malicious Internet traffic, including spoofed source IP's and SYN-flooding full scale Denial of Service (DoS) attacks!
So we are left with the vision of Loads of potentially insecure Windows boxes - open to the world - being used for more DDOS attacks.
None of which will be pleasing to the MS loyalists
thank you microsoft. This last point is kinda important:
I hope it is becoming clear to everyone reading this, that we can not have a stable Internet economy while 13 year-old children are free to deny arbitrary Internet services with impunity.
and we wonder about the future of the internet.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
I believe that the majority of people who make the flight average then to twenty years older. I hate to say it, but at that point often you are starting to slide physically, even if you are peaking metally. This will take a whole new training approach as well, since you are dealing with someone with a technician/mechanic level of knowledge. Side note: you will be looking for the short guys. The day of the 6'4" astronaut is not here yet, just due to weight considerations.
Which brings up the idea of a new job title: space mechanic.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
Hailstorm: Changing Society's Privacy Infrastructure
And refeances an article from this past April from the Seattle times
"Boiling Frogs": A perfect example of plagerism and copyright violation with no credit to the original author.
Since this was in a discussion about Microsoft, so it does not win extra brownie points for irony in a discussion about the RIAA.
(Now to important matters)
Could Microsoft use copyright issues for getting control over the personal information of people?
Already we have seen the CDDB, built from the distributed contributions of individuals, turn ed around and taken private. What is to stop MS from placing their own copyright on this huge database of personal info and renting it to the highest bidder?
One Idea I have is for everyone to register their MS software codes via a generic public user profile. Suddenly Microsoft ends up with a couple hundred thousand users registering via a single name, address, phone number. Something like John Smith. This would impact on the reliability of their database, certainly.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
Sort of between a rock and a hard place here. we need to inform the affected users, but we do not want to reward the hacker with the notoriety they crave.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
In fact I found the original comment here:
http://slashdot.org/yro/01/04/09/007213.shtml
It is about halfway down the page, Message number 74
And it is called "Boiling Frogs"
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
this comment is strangely similar to the comment someone else posted here
God and Commander Taco help me find it in the archives, but I DO recognize the writing from sometime in the past six months or so. (I don't think the archives go back quite that far.)
That said, Hailstorm is going in the direction of a Microsoft Planet.
This is what they want. They envision a service oriented Internet where they are the toll takers.
And they will take a toll. But they will not nickel and dime us to death. more like a buck fifty, and more.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
After all, in a weird way it is trying to impose US sovereignity over other nations. I am sure that someone can make a big stink over this.
I am sure that these concerns should at least be looked at and sorted out by international treaty, instead of ad hoc for the benefit of the members.
Consider the panic if Bill Gates were a member of the ICANN board. or one of his underlings. Obviously Gates would never personally belong to such a low level organization, but you get the idea.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
Actually, some folks never figure that out, y'know.
just look at some of the run of the mill comments in almost any story
;-)
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
Keyboards For One Handed Typing & Chording?
Not A Bat, Nor A Plane, But A Vertical Keyboard
Novelty/Unusual Cases, Keyboards, Rodents, Etc?
Very Cool, Very Vaporous 1-Handed Keyboard
Keyless Keyboard
In fact there is a whole bunch of stories available via this simply search
have fun!
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
This is important in case this technology becomes usable by the RIAA or similar agencies. Otherwise I take a look at this and see several reactions that become occasionally troublesome.
Most consumers will not care too much as long as the games don't cost too much.
Some will get not care, as long as their parents buy them the game.
Certain folks will take joy at a new toy to crack.
Some will be outraged that they actually have to pay money for a game since they will not be able to copy the game.
and then there are those that will figure out some way to apply this to their favorite hot button issue whether it applies to the situation or not, be it civil rights, crime in the inner city, or the massive Australian-American trade imbalance problem [joke]
(sigh) somehow I do not think of this as being very important by itself.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
We need someone fromt he UK to clue us in on if they have something similar to civil rights legislation and anti monopoly regulations that can be enforced.
This kind of nonsense is expected in a totalitarian system, say China, or Iran (insert your favorite country to hate here)
Heck, in the US, I am sure there would be calls to the congressmen, investigations, etc.
Welcome to Microsoft Planet. God help us when the system crashes.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
Most corporations seem to have figured out that so long as they have the appropriate politicians in their pockets, that being king or president or prime minister is not where it is at. For one thing, you have all of those pesky people demanding something from you. There is no rest for the wicked in the world of politics.
so they stay out of politics, and enter it only to protect themselves. Then they get to have their fancy cars and jets and boats, and minions groveling at their feet. This only works well for the really big companies, but for them that is Good Enough(tm)
You worry about you favorite pet peeve, distro war, or whatever.
While all around you the age of the puppet kings is approaching. Some say it is here already.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip