This could be a negative consequence of the MS monopoly. Developers now believe that the goal is 95% market penetration and anything less is failure. This of course is incorrect. We have a set of web standards, and what we need is a number of browsers targeting to various demographics. Even if we assume that IE and Safari will become the standards, that does not imply we need nothing else.
OTOH, there are two important issues that may hold Safari back. First, there are many sites that need IE, so Apple can't piss MS off too much. That means that it is unlikely we will see Safari as the default for a couple years. Second, Safari is fast but it is a long way from being stable. Chimera should continue to be the more mature product. Chimera is great, and besides speed, I have been unimpressed with Safari.
Safari at this point is more a marketing ploy than a product. It proves that the Mac is not the slowest browser platform on the planet. Chimera is a working product, Safari is a buggy concept package. Even if we stipulate that Safari will reach maturity, assuming massive market penetration is forgetting Cyberdog.
Public Radio brings up another issue not often discussed. While Clear Channel is a primary culprit in bad radio, the secondary culprit is right wing religious fanatics. While Clear Channel is trying to buy up most of the commercial FM band in a effort create local monopolies that will allow price fixing and promotion of corporate music, the religious right fanatics are trying to hijack or otherwise acquire most of the non-commercial FM band. They often have more money and their fanaticism often causes them to forget fair play or courtesy.
So why should anyone care? First, the non-commercial band is the only place one is likely to hear a range of non-corporate or local music. Most religious fanatics are not going to be dedicated to a wide range of music. Second, the airwaves are public property and should not be allowed to fall into the hands of the privileged few. The U.S. congress has consistently ignored this principle for the sake of personal profit. Third, a democracy only thrives if there is a broad dissemination of information. If the information sources are filtered, even by private or public NGO, that democracy will become an autocracy. For example, if all we hear is how the gays are evil, then, when we need a scapegoat for the bad economy, the gays will be ripe for the concentration camp.
So, even if you are happy with corporate music and corporate news, Rush, and honestly believe that an incarnate evil exists, there is still a need for diversity. If these public radio stations should not be supported, then at least perhaps they should not be actively destroyed.
I suppose this is an irony. A poster with lots of top rated posts using the karma bonus to post some dumb ass shit complaining about the moderation and bonus system. I understand. We that have karma to burn just occasionally feel like doing a bit of mischief. I guess having big swinging genitalia does that to a person.
In any case, lest we forget, I quoth the FAQ: Karma is used to remove risky users from the moderator pool, and to assign a bonus point to users who have contributed positively to Slashdot in the past. It is not your IQ, dick length/cup size, value as a human being, or a score in a video game. It does not determine your worth as a Slashdot reader. It does not cure cancer or grant you a seat on the secret spaceship that will be traveling to Mars when the Krulls return to destroy the planet in 2012. Karma fluctuates dramatically as users post, moderate, and meta-moderate. Don't let it bother you. It's just a number in the database.
And I just always wanted to note that the focus on dick length (not girth?) and cup size (not shape?) certainly lends credence to the concept of computer geeks being male dominated and female unfriendly.
The problem is that Linux has the same delusion as MS. That it is the the sufficient and necessary OS of the world. Rather than focus on specific things that it does well, it tries to do everything. For instance Linux is excellent for high demand server applications, as well as simple home application like email, web browsing, and simple apps. Likewise MS is very good at simple server application and dedicated office processing. With Linux it is even more complicated because of the many distributions,.
So this is the issue. The Red Hat and Debian distros may be very good for certain applications, but is absolutely wrong for the home user. I have used many distros, and I think Mandrake is the ideal ditro for the new, especially home, user. This is very important, as this is the critical desktop market. It is extremely price sensitive, is not necessarily dedicated to MS office, and just wants something that works. However, I think the zealots are trying to push 'their' favorite app to the detriment of over all success.
OTOH, home users can often 'borrow' software, so much of the market in impenetrable. As long as they buy a computer with Windows pre-installed and get the applications for free from work or friends, Linux has no chance. This is why we need to support every effort of MS that forces people to pay full price for MS product.
I suspect the question is not so much can internet economy handle this, but whether the U.S. economy can handle this. This is not an issue with the internet per se, but with mail order sales, and the states wanting to get a cut of mail order sales. This will be an added cost that at best may drive people to local stores, but will probably just reduce overall retail sales.
We can also talk about the sales tax being a regressive tax. Much like tariffs, it eats a greater percentage of income as total income decreases. One way that the middle class copes now is save on sales tax. The middle class cannot launder money through off shore credit card accounts. The middle class cannot launder retirement savings through dummy corporations. The only thing they can do is try to save a bit of money by buying out of state.
The great U.S.A., which has traditionally targeted the middle class for tax complience, is not actively trying to go after the money launderers that actually have massive amounts of disposable income. Rather, they go after the middle class and ask for an additional cut of the tiny amount of cash that is left after food, shelter, and clothes. I don't know about you, but if I have to pay an additional 10% on mail order purchases, I may just decide to test my luck at the thrift store instead, or probably go without.
I think this is the fundamental issue. Windows machines, for the longest time, were crappy graphics machines. Many graphics people bought and learned Mac OS, which is what they still still use. Windows machines may have caught up(I see not evidence that they are definitively more 'effective'), but it is not worth the time to learn something new, especially since, quite frankly, MS has much more unpredictable licensing schemes than Apple.
The same thing applies to every OS in any particular application. The requirement has to ask can my current equipment do the job adequately well, rather than can new equipment to the job just as well. From a marketing point of view, product manufacturers want to reverse the previous statement, which is just silly.
I am sick of these bogus excuses. We saw the fall in advertising revenue as early as 2000. As late as 2001 internet companies were still structuring deals where the only payment was shared advertising revenue. The vendor would pay the up front development costs and large commission payments to salespeople based only on anticipated furture revenue. The client was responsible for nothing. Increasingly those payment never came. In these cases, one cannot cite advertising, but negligence.
Blaming advertising for AOL is like blaming stock prices for Enron. The fall of Enron stock indirectly caused the bankruptcy. The actual cause was systematic malfeasance within the firm. I don't know that there was malfeasance in the AOL/TW deal, but I do know a lot of deals were made to benefit specific executives and not the companies they serve.
This is beautiful. The thing is that many people hide behind popular conceptions of economics so as not to face the reality of philosophy, ethics, and markets. I really believe if we rationally deal with the worlds problems, we can solve them.
I just want to add one more thing to the mix. Nike is a marketing company. The company has no sweatshops because it has no shops. Like so many other companies it contracts out work so that it does not have to worry about such things as taking care of employees. Improving the working conditions is not as simple as it used to be. We cannot go to company headquarters, show them the dismembered bodies.
Today we must convince the company executives that somewhere far away an agent of the company is treating humans badly. Perhaps, if enough money is at stake, they might set up some rules that the agents must promise to follow. If they especially dedicated to make the change they might actually pay the agent more money per unit. If the agent is particularly generous, some of that money may actually make it to the people who produce the product. In an especially ethical case, the agent may actually use the money to provide sick leave and the like.
To clarify, the issue is whether a corporation can make statements that it believes are true, but turn out not be true,. For the individual, most speech is going to be protected. If one makes statements, one, at least in the US, is protected from direct liability of those statements unless it can be proved that they were malicious or purposefully misleading.
On the other hand, commercial speech is held to a higher standard,. When a corporation makes a statement, it is assumed that the statements will greatly influence purchase decisions. For instance, Pizza Hut and Papa Johns were having quite a tiff a while back. The latter was insulting the formers sauce, and the former was insulting the latters water quality, Law suits ensued over truth in advertising. Clearly, if these statement were made by individuals in the street, there would be little contention. But misrepresenting commercial products is a different things.
As I understand it, the issue is whether a company can make public statement that it believes are true but are in fact false. For such a standard, we must accept the proposition the company officials make statements external to the PR machine. In the contemporary corporate world, this seems quite unlikely as communication is quite controlled (think fuckedcompany.com). It seems quite unlikely that statements made to the media are meant to be anything other than advertising. If it is advertising, then just thinking it is true is not enough.
Don't be silly. Not all speech is speech. If you and I are talking about stuff, and I tell you that the Holocaust never happened, or that GW Bush is a drunken drug addict that repeatedly tried to kill children by driving drunk, or that you are an idiot, that is protected speech. You must prove that I meant injury or was in some other way malicious, and that I in fact knew that they statements were false
OTOH, if I sell you a 14K diamond ring, and it turns out that it is pyrite cubic zirconia, you have the right to refund and damages irrelevant of my beliefs. As much as I wish to sell you worthless crap at incredible markups, that would just be wrong,
October attack was a DDoS "ping" attack. The attackers broke into machines on the Internet (popularly called "zombies") and programmed them to send streams of forged packets at the 13 DNS root servers via intermediary legitimate machines.
It seems to me that this is another call for more secure computers. If the "zombies" were not so easy to create, then such attacks would not be so easy to mount. I think security has gotten better, but there is still great room for improvements. I have some random thoughts that might help.
First, broadband providers should not sell bandwidth without standard firewall. I do not see such a proposition to be expensive, as a standalone unit is quite cheap, and the cost to integrate such circuitry into a DSL or cable box should be even less expensive. Broadband providers should stop their resistance to home networking and use bandwidth caps or other mechanism, if necessary.
Second, the default setting in web browsers must be more strict. Web browser should not automatically accept third party cookies or images. Web browser should not automatically pop up new windows or redirect to third party sites. Advertising should not be an issue. I know of no legitimate web site that requires third party domains. For instance/. uses "images.slashdot.org" and the New York Times uses "graphics7.nytimes.com". Of course, these default setting should be adjustable, with the appropriate message stating that web sites that use such techniques are likely to be illegitimate. I know of a few sites that require all imagers and cookies to be accepted, but I consider those to be fraudulent.
Third, email mail programs should by default render email as plain text. There should a button to allow the mail to render HTML and images. There should be a method to remember domains that will always render or never render. Again, third party domain should not render automatically. In addition, companies need to not promote HTML and image based email. Apple is particularly guilty of this. The emails they send tend to be illegible without images.
Fourth, the root must be the responsibility of the user or a third agent must have full liability for a hack. This should be basic common sense, but it apparently is not. MS wants access to the root of all Windows machines, but I do not see MS saying they will accept all responsibility for damage. Likewise, the RIAA wants access to everyone root, but again, are they going to pay for the time it takes to reinstall an OS. I think not. With privilege come responsibility. Without responsibility all you have are children playing with matches.
First, the reason the SCSI did not worked out for simple consumer things is that it was a little more expensive and was a little more difficult to use because of chaining. However once you understand the SCSI concept, connected new devices is trivial. Just look at the instructions for connecting a ZIP drive to a SCSI and parallel port. Single step with optional software in the former, command line hack with mandatory drivers in the latter.
Second, Firewire has not missed the boat. The fact is that most products are going to run over USB because that is the appropriate speed. The devices that need firewire will have firewire. In the PC world, where you have a diahrea of legacy ports and late adoption of innovative technology(it took a long time for the PC to include USB ports, and even longer for software to fully support the ports), one does not expect Firewire, to coin a phrase, catch fire. However on devices that are designed to be simple and usable, the usb/firewire/ethernet comination makes a lot of sense.
Third, Firewire's main advantage is only partially speed. The other advantages are that it is plug and play and can use a hub(the hub makes it simpler than SCSI). Until Ethernet becomes plug and play, Firewire still has the advantage.
I do not see why they should be forgiven. It is one thing for mozilla or openoffice.org to post beta software on their website. People who generally visit these sites understand the risks. In addition there is generally a choice between the latest build and the stable distribution. The warning are often very explicit and descriptive, as on the openoffice.org website. On the other hand, posting a link on the Apple home page to untested built code, it is an irresponsible act.
Don't get me wrong, I have been using Apple products for 20 years and still feel they are a great value. OTOH, they have been posting a lot of beta software lately for full public distribution. iTunes a while back; iCal just a few weeks ago; and now Safari. If Apple wants to build buzz by releasing beta software, they should have a specific page for that purpose. Releasing such low quality products from their home page, even as beta, it makes then look incompetent.
First, this might be an important thing. There are some things that can only be done with WMP(i.e. p0rn) and without access to those sites, lets face it, Linux is dead. Of course many of those sites also require IE specific bugs, so WMP will not be enough.
What i would like to see is WMP support in existing movie players through a plug in. This would keep MS infections more safely contained, yet allow existing software to play the content.
Some might complain that this will make DRM more attractive to distributors because then they will have a method of DRM (theoretically) available on all platforms. I do not believe this is true. As has been shown with music CDs, the companies are willing to make user equipment obsolete if they feel they need to do so in the name of copy protection.
The political calls don't bother me. They are usually isolated to certain times are very targeted. And if a representatives of political candidate you do not like does call, you can do some real damage by wasting the tele-marketers time. What really pisses me off is the junk mail sent by candidates. In the last election, we had silly candidate who made it her duty to destroy entire forests in her effort to get elected, and in the process screw Texas's seniority.
The true crime here is the non profit exemption. For a while, most calls I got were from the non-profits. It was fun asking about the commission they got for each donation, and if they had audited administration costs, but stuff like that gets boring fast. My suspicion is that a non-profit that uses tele-marketers probably have unreasonable administrative costs.
I think this is the basic question. If the trademark is not worth a few thousand dollars to protect, I wonder if it is worth the time and effort that it would take to pursue the effort. After all, one would expect to expend at least that much is real and opportunity costs to pursue the issue. I am not saying that it is wrong to pursue domain names that might violate trademarks, but that it might be misplaced thriftiness to use the cheap method.
I was told of a similar situation a while back. A religious non profit accidently let a registered domain elapse. In the few days that the domain was available, another person grabbed it and pointed it to a porn advertising site. The non profit registered a similar name and had to communicate the change to all it's members. Of course, quite a bit of ill will was generated. I, however, concluded that a dispute process was not practical, and the fault lied largely with the non profit. For one thing, they did not keep up with the payments to the registrar. For another, it was not very difficult to communicate the change. The money and time was better sent serving the members.
I would agree with you. At their best, plays, operas, movies, television, games, etc. provide a contrived social construct in which human relations may be formed. The art provides a basis for interactions, i.e. a couple may not have anything in common, but they can talk about the movie, or at the very least use the fantasy aspect to lower thier own inhibitions and make out with an otherwise unacceptable person. At the worst, these art forms create a substitute for social interaction. TV is particularly open to such abuse because it is so easily a solitary activity. It reminds me of something I once read in a sex ed book: masturbation is ok until in becomes an addictive behavior that keeps a person from proper social interaction.
In any case, all this is silly because we are really not talking about an entire art form. Losing Farscape is not going to sound the death knoll of the TV industry. However, I would agree with the original poster that some of the people who are so traumatized by the ending of Farscape might consider if their level of TV viewing is healthy. It kind of reminds me of the end of Northern Exposure. The cancelation was disappointing, but life goes on. I could not understand the people who got so angry over it.
This article seems to explain very little of data mining, and is far from concise. The real gist of the article seems to be that data mining companies, which may be guilty of fraud and certainly seem to lack a viable business plan, are once again suckling off the teat of mother U.S.A. instead of finding the private customers that they all would claim is the basis of capitalism. Likewise, the military contractors are desperately tying to get into the data mining game to maintain relevance.
I also take issue with the statement a customer whose IT ineptitude is matched only by its means
which is clearly a jab at the hard working professionals of the US government and an effort to push privatization of IT functions. I have work with IT professionals in Academic, Industrial, Commercial, and Government settings. I will tell you that IT professionals in all these setting range from incompetent to brilliant. The difference is that, until recently, US employees have not had to live with the fear of random layoffs or arbitrary insurance reductions. I often wonder why it is unpatriotic to insult policemen, firemen, or military officers, but when it comes to the professionals that allow these people to work, no insult is severe enough.
I don't understand this attitude. For $100 the user gets nearly ad free web hosting and web/pop/email service. I hear all sorts of complaints about downtime. I have never seen it. I have been a subscriber since it was just mac.com. I don't know if the downtime is in the web hosting. I admit it hasn't been perfect, but if you need perfect service, such as for a business, you really need to not use a consumer level service.
I don't know how you justify your computer purchase based on free software. Intel and windows has always had way more free software that a Macintosh. This was why MS took the market in the the 80's. It was much easier to get free software for MS machines. The Macintosh was always the more expensive choice because it was more likely you had to buy the software.
If you sprung for.Mac because of updates, that was probably a mistake. The reason to buy.Mac is the near ad free mail and web hosting, If those are not valuable to you, there are other services that will give you for free mail and web hosting in exchange for pop up ads and advertisements at the bottom of you email. Wow, isn't that professional.
Frankly, I do not see charging for some of the iStuff as such a big deal. I have these programs, and I will probably not need to buy them for a while. At that time, there may be some competing products out there, or perhaps I will finally get Gimp to install. I hope the do include some of the iStuff with.mac.
Nevertheless, one of the problems lately is that the major companies are giving away an expanding set of basics for free thus leaving a shrinking market for third party developers. Remember hypercard. Same deal.
Re:Maybe if teachers worked with technology instea
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Professors vs. WiFi
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First this is not college is not high school, so the only person to blame for not being on task is the student. The students do pay money, but if a student is off task, they disrupt the class and cause other students to lose value on their investments.
The difference between a high school senior and college freshman is less than the difference between a 5th grade elementary school student and a 6th grade Jr. High student. In general, the college student tends be more dedicated, but mostly still easily distracted. Furthermore, the professor is not their to entertain, but motivate.
Furthermore, it is mistake to assume a knowledge of technology. If we use technology, then we must teach it so that it can be used effectively. If we spend time teaching it, we should test it. In engineering they teach and test technology. In science, they tend not to.
Re:Look up the history of. . . `
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In general you are correct. All of us have the responsibility, and many have the opportunity, to make decisions that will help create the world we say we want. This is especially true in the somewhat capitalistic society in which many of us live.
There ate two issues that you miss. First, income is generally distributed unevenly. The few who have the largest share of the income, and who could make the most difference, have a vested interest in continuing the policies that made them rich and minimizing policies that might make others rich at their expense. The very many at the bottom generally have no real choice. The can either eat at Burger King or McDonalds. For instance, many lower income neighborhoods do not have a big grocery store, but the do have several fast food places, within walking distance. As such, it is cheaper to go a fast food place than to pay the relatively high prices at the corner store.
Second, the consequences of certain decisions are often purposely obfuscated to the consumer. For instance, parents feed McDonalds to their kids because the commercials equate taking your kids to McDonalds to love for your kid. Parents buy huge SUVs because they have been made so afraid of the outside world that destroying the environment seems to be the only way to save their kid from imminent death. We laugh at the folly of organic food while forgetting that so much or food is imported, and we really don't know what pesticides were used in foreign grown foods.
There are many other reasons why the bulk of the responsibility should be placed on the powerful elite. Yes, it is true that we as customers should try very hard to make decisions that won't harm us. However, we as citizens also need to put pressure on out representatives not push the FUD that forces otherwise rational people to choose irrational things.
The Yes Men could be at fault
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OK people, let take a chill pill and look at the situation. In my opinion a parody should be an original creation, be distinct from the object of satire, and not be deceptive. The Onion is an excellent example of effective and creative satire.
In the case of the "Yes Men" the attempt seems to be using parody and satire to effect social activism. This, in itself, is not a bad or uncommon thing. However, if one is going to do this, one has to make sure the creation is actually satire.
The main tool that they use on the web appears to be 'Reamweaver', a tool to copy a website and modify in small ways. From the Reamweaver website we have Reamweaver has everything you need to instantly "funhouse-mirror" anyone's website, copying the real-time "look and feel" but letting you change any words, images, etc. that you choose.
and Use Reamweaver for fun, or, if you like, for lots of fun...
by obtaining speaking opportunities on behalf of your adopted organization. Here's how to that:
1. (Optional) Register a domain not too different from your target's domain - e.g. we-forum.org, world-economic-forum.com, wtoo.org, rncommittee.org.
2. Put Reamweaver on your domain.
3. Tell search engines about your domain.
4. When invitations arrive, accept them!
This does not seem to a tool conducive to satire. This appears to be a tool that is to be used to misrepresent, decieve, and ultimately allow an individual to go into the community as the perceived representative of the company under attack.
Social activism is good. Trying to create a better world is good. However, when you invite a person from Dow Chemical to your office, one would expect that the person is actually from dow chemical. Furthermore, I am not sure I would equate the Reamweaver technique to a person who registers a slightly misspelled domain name and then puts up tons of pop ups and installs viruses when some unsuspecting visitors accidently hits the site.
I understand that the intention of the Yes Men are probably just. I understand that they are probably good people,. However, copying someone else's website and representing it as your own is not good. It is one thing to rip other artists CDs for personal use. It is another thing to rip those CDs and then sell the copies. It is yet another thing to rip those CDs change a few seconds, and then represent the tracks as your own. What they are doing might be peaceful disobendience. It does not seem to be satire
What this seems to mean is that there is no commitment for true 3G service. ATT is scaling back the agreement, from 4 to 13 cities. They apparently haven't completed the market research because they have not chosen all four of those cities. They leave a large loophole so that when they do get around to doing the market research, and find that there is no market, they can cite economic factors and pull out of the deal.
I have tried to do wireless data off and on for several years. In each case there were ill defined equipment costs, ill defined areas of operation, and convoluted 'data' plans. It shouldn't have been that hard. Hook the cell phone to the computer, dial the ISP, and be on the internet. Sure it would be slower, but it should have worked.
We now have these pseudo 3G services that claim internet connectivity. Of course to use such a service, you must subscribe to their content. I believe that even mail must be routed through their portal, at additional cost to the subscriber. It reminds me of the original bell attempt to make so much profit off modems that it threatened the BBS.
E=mc^2 is the simplified form used for massive particles. The equation, which must be used in general circumstances is
E^2= c^2 * p^2 + m^2 * c^4.
If the momentum(p=dx/dt) is zero, i.e, the particle is not accelerating(which is different from at rest or not moving), we end up with e=mc^2, or the oft cited rest energy. If the particle is massless, it still has momentum, and therefore energy.
The full equation describes the energy of all particles, both massive and massless, within theory of special reletivity.
I suspect that any discussion that uses the other two special cases is flawed.
This is well though out, but I have a few comments.
First, Spam is, to an extent, protected speech. Therefore, if you are going to raise the specter of protected speech, then you damn well better have a narrow enough definition of Spam to insure that it is clearly illegal speech. Without this, there is no way to stop it. For instance, telemarketers have a right to call you. You have a right to hang up. The telephone company does not have a right to filter. You have a right to prosecute.
Second, a black list, if properly implemented, can bypass some of these concerns. For instance, if one works from a standard TOS, and a provider violates that TOS, then they can be blacklisted. The problem with this is that it resembles vigilantism, and is very open to abuse. Also, customers that will be affected must be notified and given a chance to adjust. Several months ago speakeasy.org changed their blacklist and did not notify customers. Neither did they respond to complaints. That is just bad customer service and wrong.
Finally, the case that all email must get through is silly. The post office does not deliver every letter. Your answering machine does not guarantee delivery of a message. No web hosting guarantees 100% uptime. We can't even define what a piece of spam is. If we could, we would just prosecute the offenders legal like.
What, in reality, exists, is stuff we want and stuff we don't want. We have pretty much solved this in the mail and telephone situation not only because these are more mature than email, but also because they cost real money and are controlled by a few institutions. We still get stuff we don't want. Most of our mail is junk, and most of my phone calls are junk, but it is manageable. What we need are personal filters and general regulations.
Slashdot Mirror
OTOH, there are two important issues that may hold Safari back. First, there are many sites that need IE, so Apple can't piss MS off too much. That means that it is unlikely we will see Safari as the default for a couple years. Second, Safari is fast but it is a long way from being stable. Chimera should continue to be the more mature product. Chimera is great, and besides speed, I have been unimpressed with Safari.
Safari at this point is more a marketing ploy than a product. It proves that the Mac is not the slowest browser platform on the planet. Chimera is a working product, Safari is a buggy concept package. Even if we stipulate that Safari will reach maturity, assuming massive market penetration is forgetting Cyberdog.
So why should anyone care? First, the non-commercial band is the only place one is likely to hear a range of non-corporate or local music. Most religious fanatics are not going to be dedicated to a wide range of music. Second, the airwaves are public property and should not be allowed to fall into the hands of the privileged few. The U.S. congress has consistently ignored this principle for the sake of personal profit. Third, a democracy only thrives if there is a broad dissemination of information. If the information sources are filtered, even by private or public NGO, that democracy will become an autocracy. For example, if all we hear is how the gays are evil, then, when we need a scapegoat for the bad economy, the gays will be ripe for the concentration camp.
So, even if you are happy with corporate music and corporate news, Rush, and honestly believe that an incarnate evil exists, there is still a need for diversity. If these public radio stations should not be supported, then at least perhaps they should not be actively destroyed.
In any case, lest we forget, I quoth the FAQ:
Karma is used to remove risky users from the moderator pool, and to assign a bonus point to users who have contributed positively to Slashdot in the past. It is not your IQ, dick length/cup size, value as a human being, or a score in a video game. It does not determine your worth as a Slashdot reader. It does not cure cancer or grant you a seat on the secret spaceship that will be traveling to Mars when the Krulls return to destroy the planet in 2012. Karma fluctuates dramatically as users post, moderate, and meta-moderate. Don't let it bother you. It's just a number in the database.
And I just always wanted to note that the focus on dick length (not girth?) and cup size (not shape?) certainly lends credence to the concept of computer geeks being male dominated and female unfriendly.
So this is the issue. The Red Hat and Debian distros may be very good for certain applications, but is absolutely wrong for the home user. I have used many distros, and I think Mandrake is the ideal ditro for the new, especially home, user. This is very important, as this is the critical desktop market. It is extremely price sensitive, is not necessarily dedicated to MS office, and just wants something that works. However, I think the zealots are trying to push 'their' favorite app to the detriment of over all success.
OTOH, home users can often 'borrow' software, so much of the market in impenetrable. As long as they buy a computer with Windows pre-installed and get the applications for free from work or friends, Linux has no chance. This is why we need to support every effort of MS that forces people to pay full price for MS product.
We can also talk about the sales tax being a regressive tax. Much like tariffs, it eats a greater percentage of income as total income decreases. One way that the middle class copes now is save on sales tax. The middle class cannot launder money through off shore credit card accounts. The middle class cannot launder retirement savings through dummy corporations. The only thing they can do is try to save a bit of money by buying out of state.
The great U.S.A., which has traditionally targeted the middle class for tax complience, is not actively trying to go after the money launderers that actually have massive amounts of disposable income. Rather, they go after the middle class and ask for an additional cut of the tiny amount of cash that is left after food, shelter, and clothes. I don't know about you, but if I have to pay an additional 10% on mail order purchases, I may just decide to test my luck at the thrift store instead, or probably go without.
The same thing applies to every OS in any particular application. The requirement has to ask can my current equipment do the job adequately well, rather than can new equipment to the job just as well. From a marketing point of view, product manufacturers want to reverse the previous statement, which is just silly.
Blaming advertising for AOL is like blaming stock prices for Enron. The fall of Enron stock indirectly caused the bankruptcy. The actual cause was systematic malfeasance within the firm. I don't know that there was malfeasance in the AOL/TW deal, but I do know a lot of deals were made to benefit specific executives and not the companies they serve.
I just want to add one more thing to the mix. Nike is a marketing company. The company has no sweatshops because it has no shops. Like so many other companies it contracts out work so that it does not have to worry about such things as taking care of employees. Improving the working conditions is not as simple as it used to be. We cannot go to company headquarters, show them the dismembered bodies.
Today we must convince the company executives that somewhere far away an agent of the company is treating humans badly. Perhaps, if enough money is at stake, they might set up some rules that the agents must promise to follow. If they especially dedicated to make the change they might actually pay the agent more money per unit. If the agent is particularly generous, some of that money may actually make it to the people who produce the product. In an especially ethical case, the agent may actually use the money to provide sick leave and the like.
On the other hand, commercial speech is held to a higher standard,. When a corporation makes a statement, it is assumed that the statements will greatly influence purchase decisions. For instance, Pizza Hut and Papa Johns were having quite a tiff a while back. The latter was insulting the formers sauce, and the former was insulting the latters water quality, Law suits ensued over truth in advertising. Clearly, if these statement were made by individuals in the street, there would be little contention. But misrepresenting commercial products is a different things.
As I understand it, the issue is whether a company can make public statement that it believes are true but are in fact false. For such a standard, we must accept the proposition the company officials make statements external to the PR machine. In the contemporary corporate world, this seems quite unlikely as communication is quite controlled (think fuckedcompany.com). It seems quite unlikely that statements made to the media are meant to be anything other than advertising. If it is advertising, then just thinking it is true is not enough.
OTOH, if I sell you a 14K diamond ring, and it turns out that it is pyrite cubic zirconia, you have the right to refund and damages irrelevant of my beliefs. As much as I wish to sell you worthless crap at incredible markups, that would just be wrong,
It seems to me that this is another call for more secure computers. If the "zombies" were not so easy to create, then such attacks would not be so easy to mount. I think security has gotten better, but there is still great room for improvements. I have some random thoughts that might help.
First, broadband providers should not sell bandwidth without standard firewall. I do not see such a proposition to be expensive, as a standalone unit is quite cheap, and the cost to integrate such circuitry into a DSL or cable box should be even less expensive. Broadband providers should stop their resistance to home networking and use bandwidth caps or other mechanism, if necessary.
Second, the default setting in web browsers must be more strict. Web browser should not automatically accept third party cookies or images. Web browser should not automatically pop up new windows or redirect to third party sites. Advertising should not be an issue. I know of no legitimate web site that requires third party domains. For instance /. uses "images.slashdot.org" and the New York Times uses "graphics7.nytimes.com". Of course, these default setting should be adjustable, with the appropriate message stating that web sites that use such techniques are likely to be illegitimate. I know of a few sites that require all imagers and cookies to be accepted, but I consider those to be fraudulent.
Third, email mail programs should by default render email as plain text. There should a button to allow the mail to render HTML and images. There should be a method to remember domains that will always render or never render. Again, third party domain should not render automatically. In addition, companies need to not promote HTML and image based email. Apple is particularly guilty of this. The emails they send tend to be illegible without images.
Fourth, the root must be the responsibility of the user or a third agent must have full liability for a hack. This should be basic common sense, but it apparently is not. MS wants access to the root of all Windows machines, but I do not see MS saying they will accept all responsibility for damage. Likewise, the RIAA wants access to everyone root, but again, are they going to pay for the time it takes to reinstall an OS. I think not. With privilege come responsibility. Without responsibility all you have are children playing with matches.
Second, Firewire has not missed the boat. The fact is that most products are going to run over USB because that is the appropriate speed. The devices that need firewire will have firewire. In the PC world, where you have a diahrea of legacy ports and late adoption of innovative technology(it took a long time for the PC to include USB ports, and even longer for software to fully support the ports), one does not expect Firewire, to coin a phrase, catch fire. However on devices that are designed to be simple and usable, the usb/firewire/ethernet comination makes a lot of sense.
Third, Firewire's main advantage is only partially speed. The other advantages are that it is plug and play and can use a hub(the hub makes it simpler than SCSI). Until Ethernet becomes plug and play, Firewire still has the advantage.
Don't get me wrong, I have been using Apple products for 20 years and still feel they are a great value. OTOH, they have been posting a lot of beta software lately for full public distribution. iTunes a while back; iCal just a few weeks ago; and now Safari. If Apple wants to build buzz by releasing beta software, they should have a specific page for that purpose. Releasing such low quality products from their home page, even as beta, it makes then look incompetent.
What i would like to see is WMP support in existing movie players through a plug in. This would keep MS infections more safely contained, yet allow existing software to play the content.
Some might complain that this will make DRM more attractive to distributors because then they will have a method of DRM (theoretically) available on all platforms. I do not believe this is true. As has been shown with music CDs, the companies are willing to make user equipment obsolete if they feel they need to do so in the name of copy protection.
The true crime here is the non profit exemption. For a while, most calls I got were from the non-profits. It was fun asking about the commission they got for each donation, and if they had audited administration costs, but stuff like that gets boring fast. My suspicion is that a non-profit that uses tele-marketers probably have unreasonable administrative costs.
I was told of a similar situation a while back. A religious non profit accidently let a registered domain elapse. In the few days that the domain was available, another person grabbed it and pointed it to a porn advertising site. The non profit registered a similar name and had to communicate the change to all it's members. Of course, quite a bit of ill will was generated. I, however, concluded that a dispute process was not practical, and the fault lied largely with the non profit. For one thing, they did not keep up with the payments to the registrar. For another, it was not very difficult to communicate the change. The money and time was better sent serving the members.
In any case, all this is silly because we are really not talking about an entire art form. Losing Farscape is not going to sound the death knoll of the TV industry. However, I would agree with the original poster that some of the people who are so traumatized by the ending of Farscape might consider if their level of TV viewing is healthy. It kind of reminds me of the end of Northern Exposure. The cancelation was disappointing, but life goes on. I could not understand the people who got so angry over it.
I also take issue with the statement
a customer whose IT ineptitude is matched only by its means
which is clearly a jab at the hard working professionals of the US government and an effort to push privatization of IT functions. I have work with IT professionals in Academic, Industrial, Commercial, and Government settings. I will tell you that IT professionals in all these setting range from incompetent to brilliant. The difference is that, until recently, US employees have not had to live with the fear of random layoffs or arbitrary insurance reductions. I often wonder why it is unpatriotic to insult policemen, firemen, or military officers, but when it comes to the professionals that allow these people to work, no insult is severe enough.
I don't know how you justify your computer purchase based on free software. Intel and windows has always had way more free software that a Macintosh. This was why MS took the market in the the 80's. It was much easier to get free software for MS machines. The Macintosh was always the more expensive choice because it was more likely you had to buy the software.
If you sprung for .Mac because of updates, that was probably a mistake. The reason to buy .Mac is the near ad free mail and web hosting, If those are not valuable to you, there are other services that will give you for free mail and web hosting in exchange for pop up ads and advertisements at the bottom of you email. Wow, isn't that professional.
Frankly, I do not see charging for some of the iStuff as such a big deal. I have these programs, and I will probably not need to buy them for a while. At that time, there may be some competing products out there, or perhaps I will finally get Gimp to install. I hope the do include some of the iStuff with .mac.
Nevertheless, one of the problems lately is that the major companies are giving away an expanding set of basics for free thus leaving a shrinking market for third party developers. Remember hypercard. Same deal.
The difference between a high school senior and college freshman is less than the difference between a 5th grade elementary school student and a 6th grade Jr. High student. In general, the college student tends be more dedicated, but mostly still easily distracted. Furthermore, the professor is not their to entertain, but motivate.
Furthermore, it is mistake to assume a knowledge of technology. If we use technology, then we must teach it so that it can be used effectively. If we spend time teaching it, we should test it. In engineering they teach and test technology. In science, they tend not to.
There ate two issues that you miss. First, income is generally distributed unevenly. The few who have the largest share of the income, and who could make the most difference, have a vested interest in continuing the policies that made them rich and minimizing policies that might make others rich at their expense. The very many at the bottom generally have no real choice. The can either eat at Burger King or McDonalds. For instance, many lower income neighborhoods do not have a big grocery store, but the do have several fast food places, within walking distance. As such, it is cheaper to go a fast food place than to pay the relatively high prices at the corner store.
Second, the consequences of certain decisions are often purposely obfuscated to the consumer. For instance, parents feed McDonalds to their kids because the commercials equate taking your kids to McDonalds to love for your kid. Parents buy huge SUVs because they have been made so afraid of the outside world that destroying the environment seems to be the only way to save their kid from imminent death. We laugh at the folly of organic food while forgetting that so much or food is imported, and we really don't know what pesticides were used in foreign grown foods.
There are many other reasons why the bulk of the responsibility should be placed on the powerful elite. Yes, it is true that we as customers should try very hard to make decisions that won't harm us. However, we as citizens also need to put pressure on out representatives not push the FUD that forces otherwise rational people to choose irrational things.
In the case of the "Yes Men" the attempt seems to be using parody and satire to effect social activism. This, in itself, is not a bad or uncommon thing. However, if one is going to do this, one has to make sure the creation is actually satire.
The main tool that they use on the web appears to be 'Reamweaver', a tool to copy a website and modify in small ways. From the Reamweaver website we have .
Reamweaver has everything you need to instantly "funhouse-mirror" anyone's website, copying the real-time "look and feel" but letting you change any words, images, etc. that you choose.
and
Use Reamweaver for fun, or, if you like, for lots of fun... by obtaining speaking opportunities on behalf of your adopted organization. Here's how to that:
1. (Optional) Register a domain not too different from your target's domain - e.g. we-forum.org, world-economic-forum.com, wtoo.org, rncommittee.org
2. Put Reamweaver on your domain.
3. Tell search engines about your domain.
4. When invitations arrive, accept them!
This does not seem to a tool conducive to satire. This appears to be a tool that is to be used to misrepresent, decieve, and ultimately allow an individual to go into the community as the perceived representative of the company under attack.
Social activism is good. Trying to create a better world is good. However, when you invite a person from Dow Chemical to your office, one would expect that the person is actually from dow chemical. Furthermore, I am not sure I would equate the Reamweaver technique to a person who registers a slightly misspelled domain name and then puts up tons of pop ups and installs viruses when some unsuspecting visitors accidently hits the site.
I understand that the intention of the Yes Men are probably just. I understand that they are probably good people,. However, copying someone else's website and representing it as your own is not good. It is one thing to rip other artists CDs for personal use. It is another thing to rip those CDs and then sell the copies. It is yet another thing to rip those CDs change a few seconds, and then represent the tracks as your own. What they are doing might be peaceful disobendience. It does not seem to be satire
I have tried to do wireless data off and on for several years. In each case there were ill defined equipment costs, ill defined areas of operation, and convoluted 'data' plans. It shouldn't have been that hard. Hook the cell phone to the computer, dial the ISP, and be on the internet. Sure it would be slower, but it should have worked.
We now have these pseudo 3G services that claim internet connectivity. Of course to use such a service, you must subscribe to their content. I believe that even mail must be routed through their portal, at additional cost to the subscriber. It reminds me of the original bell attempt to make so much profit off modems that it threatened the BBS.
E=mc^2 is the simplified form used for massive particles. The equation, which must be used in general circumstances is
E^2= c^2 * p^2 + m^2 * c^4.
If the momentum(p=dx/dt) is zero, i.e, the particle is not accelerating(which is different from at rest or not moving), we end up with e=mc^2, or the oft cited rest energy. If the particle is massless, it still has momentum, and therefore energy.
The full equation describes the energy of all particles, both massive and massless, within theory of special reletivity.
I suspect that any discussion that uses the other two special cases is flawed.
First, Spam is, to an extent, protected speech. Therefore, if you are going to raise the specter of protected speech, then you damn well better have a narrow enough definition of Spam to insure that it is clearly illegal speech. Without this, there is no way to stop it. For instance, telemarketers have a right to call you. You have a right to hang up. The telephone company does not have a right to filter. You have a right to prosecute.
Second, a black list, if properly implemented, can bypass some of these concerns. For instance, if one works from a standard TOS, and a provider violates that TOS, then they can be blacklisted. The problem with this is that it resembles vigilantism, and is very open to abuse. Also, customers that will be affected must be notified and given a chance to adjust. Several months ago speakeasy.org changed their blacklist and did not notify customers. Neither did they respond to complaints. That is just bad customer service and wrong.
Finally, the case that all email must get through is silly. The post office does not deliver every letter. Your answering machine does not guarantee delivery of a message. No web hosting guarantees 100% uptime. We can't even define what a piece of spam is. If we could, we would just prosecute the offenders legal like.
What, in reality, exists, is stuff we want and stuff we don't want. We have pretty much solved this in the mail and telephone situation not only because these are more mature than email, but also because they cost real money and are controlled by a few institutions. We still get stuff we don't want. Most of our mail is junk, and most of my phone calls are junk, but it is manageable. What we need are personal filters and general regulations.