Opera 4b2 or 4b3 for Linux has replaced Netscape on about half the Linux boxes at my office. The fact that it's still beta, and the progress each release makes over the prior one, makes the occasional crashing worthwhile. It's fast, feature rich, and doesn't have a Shop button or any additional apps built in. The developers actually converse with the users (on the newsgroups). The only time I load NS is when I run into the odd Opera beta bug that I can't quickly work around.
Of course, it won't be free, but it will be worth the money.
More info: www.opera.com
Mozilla is okay, but it's just unbearably slow. So is Netscape, of course. I can actually say as a Linux user that I wish I had the option of having an enterprise-quality browser built into/my/ OS.
I use Yahoo! as my main mail client right now since I've had some instability in all my other addresses. I like it, for the most part. I hope it's going to be a -free- service. And I hope they have SSL support for the browser-to-server transactions.
Please note that Yahoo! isn't really an "evil corporation" - corporation, yes - but what do they do? Provide free service and information, lead the way (or at least make considerable progress) in the field of network-portal services and office apps, and offer the whole thing for free to anybody? Provide a wide variety of free community-building communication services?
Is this link working for anybody? Seems to be a page that redirects to itself after 0 seconds, and then finally I get "Connection closed." Or has it been/.ed?
I have the running theory that Life (with a capitol L) is like anything else - neither created nor destroyed.
With that in mind, let's address our current "model" of optimal vehicle, or least most technologically advanced vehicle - man.
Mankind was created by Life. This is of course debatable, but in my mind it's a true statement. We (as a mass of Life) have built progressively more complex vehicles for ourselves over eons of development. Through a process that we have yet to understand, DNA was obviously designed for a specific purpose. I postulate that we (speaking of our planet's collective pool of Life) followed what Plato believes is Life's natural tendency to take active steps to further our biology, and designed DNA. (Is this a stretch? Maybe. Bear with me.)
On that note, in effect, it is in our nature to build more efficient Intelligent Machines.
Were we to give a new machine sentience, it would more or less have to pull Life from somewhere. I think that the nature of just what Life is will need to be answered before we will ever move beyond creating things that emulate Life through very very very advanced Intelligence (which is somewhat different).
The question becomes, what is it about our observable lifeforms to which "Life" gravitates? Or by what process is it infused? I suspect that answering this question is a prerequisite to designing an electrical device that is truly alive.
Aristotle posed a question to his students once; "What is knowledge?" The answer (for those of you who are familiar with Platonic philosophy) is, in my estimation, that it is the Form of correct action. Therefore, a machine can have knowledge without life.
Designing a machine that is artificially intelligent doesn't mean that it's alive. However, I do believe that we can and probably will design/living/ machines. At that time, it is quite possible that the human species will thin in numbers, as we progress toward a biomechanical population. However, just as we still have "lower" forms with which we may or may not someday be able to communicate, we will probably continue to have humans sharing the earth with the new, "higher" form. The difference this time is that memory will (possibly) be preserved through a (hopefully) less violent attrition.
This is mostly apprentice-level philosophical babble, with some more traditional groundwork peppered in to make myself look smart.;)
Recently, I took a position - entry level, mind you - as a web programmer at a successful dot-com. When I was interviewed, they did the usual. There was a quick wave-through tour of the offices, I met some folks, they quizzed me, and all that.
What really interested me was the kitchen. They were pretty proud of it. Sandwich fixin's, soda pop, microwavable burritos, whatever. Buttloads of chips, cookies, and Little Debbie snacks. Basically it was stuffed to the gills with Geek Food.
On top of that were important things like a full medical/dental/optical plan, paid parking near the office, evaluations every 3 months, and a very flexible schedule (they really couldn't care less what time you show up or what time you leave, they just look at productivity vs. # of hours in the office).
So, even though they offered me the low-end of what I asked for in terms of salary, I accepted.
I was in love. I just got my first three month evaluation, and I still -am- in love.
I commute a little over an hour to work. My girlfriend graduates college next month and we're moving much closer, and so along with my pay increase, they're giving me some financial help with the move.
In terms of work load and working conditions - I have had a hand in training new employees, suggesting features for products already underway or completed by other departments, completing tasks on my own and in a team, and have had many suggestions (ranging from training and business development, up through company picnic fixins) taken seriously and followed through on.
You see, the IT industry is terribly unprofessional when it comes to internal dealings. IT workers are extremely resourceful and profitable. If you don't treat them like gold, eventually they'll find companies like the one I work for who will.
Having grown up in America, that's an easy statement to make. (Not that I've ever been out of the country) However, censorship isn't a holy (or unholy) thing, it's just a "lesser of two evils" - running on the theory that completely centralized approval of content on the basis of moral guidance, is slightly worse than letting anyone say/do anything they want. It's an imperfect solution, since a perfect one was never found. Read some Plato and you'll see examples of how total censorship could actually solve a LOT of social problems.
Next, we're not talking about banning. Banning is not the topic of discussion. Nazi memorbilia is still legal to display and sell on Yahoo! Auctions. Cooperating with a government to help them uphold their own laws is the discussion.
I know, it's all pretty touchy, but kneejerk reactions don't help things. =)
Firstly, we're not talking about blocking the -sale- of these items, we're talking about the ability to view them. Blocking the sale of items is considerably easier, because mechanisms for that sort of thing already exist. It's probably already being taken care of and is by no means Yahoo!'s problem.
Next, Yahoo! isn't selling anything here, they're providing a service. You already knew that, but I just wanted to point it out. Yahoo! isn't selling Nazi artifacts.
This ruling pisses Americans off (generally) for various reasons, but I only want to discuss two of them here.
"Business Imposition" Now, the traditional problem with a ruling like this has been "it can't be done." "It can't be done" in the Internet industry directly translates into "it hasn't been done, it will cost a lot of manhours to research and develop a way to do it, and we don't want to spend that money." France is replying to this claim (which Yahoo! made way back when the ruling was first passed down) by saying "too bad. Do it or else." Yahoo!, an American corporation, isn't going to take lightly to a foriegn country's government imposing regulations that they ordinarily wouldn't have to deal with.
Don't be surprised if this becomes yet another of the long strain of drawn-out legal battles over the Law of the Non-Land. Don't be surprised if it gets delegated to the WTO or some other non-aligned organization. Don't be surprised if the final ruling is a least-common-denominator solution - web content must be acceptible to the law of any area from which it is accessible.
"Cultural Imposition" This goes both ways. France claims we're imposing on their culture by providing their citizens a way to break the law. Most of the Americans in this discussion contend that Yahoo! is following every law that applies to them, and France is applying legal rulings where they have no jurisdiction. Who bends?
The Solution Technically speaking, the most sensible configuration for blocking these "illegal" internet requests to pages containing material pertaining to Nazi artifacts, is for the blocking mechanism to be a part of Yahoo!'s network. The reasons for this are obvious.
In terms of financial requirements and responsibility, however, it makes more sense for the French government or related organizations to develop the technology required to perform the block. They are the ones who WANT this imposition to happen, so they should impose it themselves. In turn, Yahoo! should, as a responsible and respectful member of the global community, agree to put these blocks in place and allow the French to maintain and administer them.
Finally We're not trying to piss anybody off. America's culture may be younger and far more promiscuous, but it is -our culture.- We have the right to broadcast whatever our law permits us to, under our regulations. No foriegn government has any say in the way that right is interpreted. The French, on the other hand, are responsible for enforcing their own laws.
If the pissing contests can be abandoned, Yahoo! and the French government, and any other parties with vested interest, can solve this problem together, since it is obviously a matter that needs a solution. If not, well, let the flaming commence!
It would tickle me pink if their IT folks got pissed off at the audacity of this "demand," revamped everything to use Helix Gnome and StarOffice, and then turned around and said, "Here's the receipts for all our workstations, here's the licenses that came with the Microsoft software that was preinstalled, and here's our network, which doesn't have a lick of your crap on it."
In my opinion, your post signifies an important point. There are all sorts of ways to 'make a statement,' and since persecution against individuality is exactly what's on trial here, maybe we shouldn't be making such a stink about whether the specific method in which a person chooses to 'make a statement' is appropos. I think that since both the kid in the article's story and your story (and hundreds of other stories) have taken the very real and positive steps to perform civil, responsible actions to make an impact, they should be praised, and nothing more.
So bravo, dammit. I hope my kids don't go to the same kind of high school environment I did, and if they don't, I'll remember guys like this.
That statistic, and the part that it plays in today's political attitude toward religious protection, was probably the whole point of the question. The 99% of the population you're referring to aren't the ones who need their religious rights protected.
On the one hand, I'd say no. Leave it alone. We already have one planet, and we haven't treated it all that well. Let natural selection take its place, killing our species. And hopefully when we're all dead and gone and the silicon-based, methane-breathing beings that build the next civilizations on Earth come to the moral ecological crossroads that we've so gracelessly botched, they'll get it right.
On the other hand, in the larger scale of things, how long does it take for a species to become truly civilized? Maybe we're not so far behind after all. And maybe humanity needs that scale of shock, of seeing the only planet we've ever known fall away in the distance, as we hurtle along towards our new one.
Oh, wait. We're only talking about the terraforming issue.
Well firstly, I don't think we're qualified as a species to do such a thing. We won't do it right, if we do it soon. We won't know enough about the planet, we'll just move in and do our thing, and if it turns out that there's life underground on Mars, or if terraforming causes some planetary-scale chemical imbalance, or what have you, then what? We fire somebody?
I tried to get BellSouth's "Fast Internet" directly recently, and here's what I went through.
BellSouth has 3 models of the Reliable Networks DSL modem; a Plug'n'Pray USB Winmodem, an internal Plug'n'Pray PCI version, and the Ethernet Modem. As we all well know, only the third model will work under Linux.
BellSouth will only send out the first version (the USB) with a Self Install. (note the properization)
A Self Install means you get the modem and a CD ROM that signs you up and installs Wintel drivers.
No matter what, they won't mail you either of the other two modems. You can only get them by having a BellSouth tech come to your location and install it, and configure your computer for access.
BellSouth's techs can only install the modem on a Windows or Mac box. They are not trained or permitted to work with Linux.
BellSouth's customer support folks, sales folks, and let's not forget their joke of a tech support department, have never heard of Linux. I actually had about an hour long screaming match with one guy because he insisted that "it doesn't matter what software you're using (referring to Linux), as long as it runs Windows" and "you must be mistaken, you can't run Linux without Windows."
I literally spent 6 hours on the phone in one day attempting to explain that, because of their own lack of technical knowledge, they had completely excluded a customer base that wanted to buy service from them.
When I finally got someone on the phone who had at least heard of Linux, she claimed that DSL could not be made to work on any operating system other than Mac or Windows.
The light at the end of the tunnel? An excellent company called I-55 Internet does DSL here. They go through Bell South for the line and what-not of course, but they have a unique (in my experience) relationship that allows them to think for themselves. I explained what had happened and the sales fella gave me the Ethernet Modem and my networking info. Bang zoom, to the moon.
As an epilogue, the phone jack in the apartment's office can't negotiate a DSL connection, so my girlfriend's Mac is currently the only computer connected to the DSL line.
Rereading the company's website will lead you to notice that the spacecraft they have in mind will be designed to be disposable. They will have an expected lifespan of 30-90 days, after which the company will guide them to crashland messily into the moon.
Returning to the original post on this thread, I have to agree that this company's proposal has some flaws. Finding cheaper solutions toward scientific problems will undoubtedly increase public sector involvement and innovation; but from our current perspective, well, we don't know much about Luna, its potential uses or dangers, etc. Seems to me that we're saving pennies now, but creating the expensive (and dangerous) problem of having to clean up the mess later.
This sort of topic is a two-sided coin, which boils down to this: is 3COM (or any company that might come under this sort of scrutiny) in business for business' sake, or are they in business in order to further the technological community?
Mind you, these two aren't mutually exclusive, but it's a point of view that defines _why_ and _how_ they'll respond (or _if_ they'll respond) to this sort of question.
Of course it would be great if they "open sourced" or otherwise publicised the specs for their unsupported products. At least a portion of their customers would be able to enjoy an extended useful life for that product. Their brand recognition would increase. Everybody would be happy, right?
On the other hand, such a venture is costly, time consuming, and utilizes human resources that, in the mind of a purely in-business-for-business firm, could be better spent producing the next item on the shelf. It's not that they don't recognize the potential for a community investment; they just don't feel that's their role.
Slashdot Mirror
Opera 4b2 or 4b3 for Linux has replaced Netscape on about half the Linux boxes at my office. The fact that it's still beta, and the progress each release makes over the prior one, makes the occasional crashing worthwhile. It's fast, feature rich, and doesn't have a Shop button or any additional apps built in. The developers actually converse with the users (on the newsgroups). The only time I load NS is when I run into the odd Opera beta bug that I can't quickly work around.
/my/ OS.
Of course, it won't be free, but it will be worth the money.
More info: www.opera.com
Mozilla is okay, but it's just unbearably slow. So is Netscape, of course. I can actually say as a Linux user that I wish I had the option of having an enterprise-quality browser built into
Heyyyyy... that wasn't offtopic, that quote is from the article. =P
I use Yahoo! as my main mail client right now since I've had some instability in all my other addresses. I like it, for the most part. I hope it's going to be a -free- service. And I hope they have SSL support for the browser-to-server transactions.
;)
Please note that Yahoo! isn't really an "evil corporation" - corporation, yes - but what do they do? Provide free service and information, lead the way (or at least make considerable progress) in the field of network-portal services and office apps, and offer the whole thing for free to anybody? Provide a wide variety of free community-building communication services?
Sorry. Hadda get my rant on.
Is this link working for anybody? Seems to be a page that redirects to itself after 0 seconds, and then finally I get "Connection closed." Or has it been /.ed?
PHP actually. (Yes, someone actually pays people to use Free Software!)
Actually there was never any VC involved. =) The company has been turning a profit for quite a while now.
Let me wax a bit philosophical on this one.
/living/ machines. At that time, it is quite possible that the human species will thin in numbers, as we progress toward a biomechanical population. However, just as we still have "lower" forms with which we may or may not someday be able to communicate, we will probably continue to have humans sharing the earth with the new, "higher" form. The difference this time is that memory will (possibly) be preserved through a (hopefully) less violent attrition.
;)
I have the running theory that Life (with a capitol L) is like anything else - neither created nor destroyed.
With that in mind, let's address our current "model" of optimal vehicle, or least most technologically advanced vehicle - man.
Mankind was created by Life. This is of course debatable, but in my mind it's a true statement. We (as a mass of Life) have built progressively more complex vehicles for ourselves over eons of development. Through a process that we have yet to understand, DNA was obviously designed for a specific purpose. I postulate that we (speaking of our planet's collective pool of Life) followed what Plato believes is Life's natural tendency to take active steps to further our biology, and designed DNA. (Is this a stretch? Maybe. Bear with me.)
On that note, in effect, it is in our nature to build more efficient Intelligent Machines.
Were we to give a new machine sentience, it would more or less have to pull Life from somewhere. I think that the nature of just what Life is will need to be answered before we will ever move beyond creating things that emulate Life through very very very advanced Intelligence (which is somewhat different).
The question becomes, what is it about our observable lifeforms to which "Life" gravitates? Or by what process is it infused? I suspect that answering this question is a prerequisite to designing an electrical device that is truly alive.
Aristotle posed a question to his students once; "What is knowledge?" The answer (for those of you who are familiar with Platonic philosophy) is, in my estimation, that it is the Form of correct action. Therefore, a machine can have knowledge without life.
Designing a machine that is artificially intelligent doesn't mean that it's alive. However, I do believe that we can and probably will design
This is mostly apprentice-level philosophical babble, with some more traditional groundwork peppered in to make myself look smart.
Recently, I took a position - entry level, mind you - as a web programmer at a successful dot-com. When I was interviewed, they did the usual. There was a quick wave-through tour of the offices, I met some folks, they quizzed me, and all that.
What really interested me was the kitchen. They were pretty proud of it. Sandwich fixin's, soda pop, microwavable burritos, whatever. Buttloads of chips, cookies, and Little Debbie snacks. Basically it was stuffed to the gills with Geek Food.
On top of that were important things like a full medical/dental/optical plan, paid parking near the office, evaluations every 3 months, and a very flexible schedule (they really couldn't care less what time you show up or what time you leave, they just look at productivity vs. # of hours in the office).
So, even though they offered me the low-end of what I asked for in terms of salary, I accepted.
I was in love. I just got my first three month evaluation, and I still -am- in love.
I commute a little over an hour to work. My girlfriend graduates college next month and we're moving much closer, and so along with my pay increase, they're giving me some financial help with the move.
In terms of work load and working conditions - I have had a hand in training new employees, suggesting features for products already underway or completed by other departments, completing tasks on my own and in a team, and have had many suggestions (ranging from training and business development, up through company picnic fixins) taken seriously and followed through on.
You see, the IT industry is terribly unprofessional when it comes to internal dealings. IT workers are extremely resourceful and profitable. If you don't treat them like gold, eventually they'll find companies like the one I work for who will.
Having grown up in America, that's an easy statement to make. (Not that I've ever been out of the country) However, censorship isn't a holy (or unholy) thing, it's just a "lesser of two evils" - running on the theory that completely centralized approval of content on the basis of moral guidance, is slightly worse than letting anyone say/do anything they want. It's an imperfect solution, since a perfect one was never found. Read some Plato and you'll see examples of how total censorship could actually solve a LOT of social problems.
Next, we're not talking about banning. Banning is not the topic of discussion. Nazi memorbilia is still legal to display and sell on Yahoo! Auctions. Cooperating with a government to help them uphold their own laws is the discussion.
I know, it's all pretty touchy, but kneejerk reactions don't help things. =)
An addition to your comments, _xeno_ ...
Firstly, we're not talking about blocking the -sale- of these items, we're talking about the ability to view them. Blocking the sale of items is considerably easier, because mechanisms for that sort of thing already exist. It's probably already being taken care of and is by no means Yahoo!'s problem.
Next, Yahoo! isn't selling anything here, they're providing a service. You already knew that, but I just wanted to point it out. Yahoo! isn't selling Nazi artifacts.
This ruling pisses Americans off (generally) for various reasons, but I only want to discuss two of them here.
"Business Imposition"
Now, the traditional problem with a ruling like this has been "it can't be done." "It can't be done" in the Internet industry directly translates into "it hasn't been done, it will cost a lot of manhours to research and develop a way to do it, and we don't want to spend that money."
France is replying to this claim (which Yahoo! made way back when the ruling was first passed down) by saying "too bad. Do it or else." Yahoo!, an American corporation, isn't going to take lightly to a foriegn country's government imposing regulations that they ordinarily wouldn't have to deal with.
Don't be surprised if this becomes yet another of the long strain of drawn-out legal battles over the Law of the Non-Land. Don't be surprised if it gets delegated to the WTO or some other non-aligned organization. Don't be surprised if the final ruling is a least-common-denominator solution - web content must be acceptible to the law of any area from which it is accessible.
"Cultural Imposition"
This goes both ways. France claims we're imposing on their culture by providing their citizens a way to break the law. Most of the Americans in this discussion contend that Yahoo! is following every law that applies to them, and France is applying legal rulings where they have no jurisdiction. Who bends?
The Solution
Technically speaking, the most sensible configuration for blocking these "illegal" internet requests to pages containing material pertaining to Nazi artifacts, is for the blocking mechanism to be a part of Yahoo!'s network. The reasons for this are obvious.
In terms of financial requirements and responsibility, however, it makes more sense for the French government or related organizations to develop the technology required to perform the block. They are the ones who WANT this imposition to happen, so they should impose it themselves. In turn, Yahoo! should, as a responsible and respectful member of the global community, agree to put these blocks in place and allow the French to maintain and administer them.
Finally
We're not trying to piss anybody off. America's culture may be younger and far more promiscuous, but it is -our culture.- We have the right to broadcast whatever our law permits us to, under our regulations. No foriegn government has any say in the way that right is interpreted. The French, on the other hand, are responsible for enforcing their own laws.
If the pissing contests can be abandoned, Yahoo! and the French government, and any other parties with vested interest, can solve this problem together, since it is obviously a matter that needs a solution. If not, well, let the flaming commence!
It would tickle me pink if their IT folks got pissed off at the audacity of this "demand," revamped everything to use Helix Gnome and StarOffice, and then turned around and said, "Here's the receipts for all our workstations, here's the licenses that came with the Microsoft software that was preinstalled, and here's our network, which doesn't have a lick of your crap on it."
</thinking>
HA! Even if you were serious, I think you should've gotten a "3, Funny." ;)
In my opinion, your post signifies an important point. There are all sorts of ways to 'make a statement,' and since persecution against individuality is exactly what's on trial here, maybe we shouldn't be making such a stink about whether the specific method in which a person chooses to 'make a statement' is appropos. I think that since both the kid in the article's story and your story (and hundreds of other stories) have taken the very real and positive steps to perform civil, responsible actions to make an impact, they should be praised, and nothing more.
So bravo, dammit. I hope my kids don't go to the same kind of high school environment I did, and if they don't, I'll remember guys like this.
That statistic, and the part that it plays in today's political attitude toward religious protection, was probably the whole point of the question. The 99% of the population you're referring to aren't the ones who need their religious rights protected.
Interesting that you should pose this question.
On the one hand, I'd say no. Leave it alone. We already have one planet, and we haven't treated it all that well. Let natural selection take its place, killing our species. And hopefully when we're all dead and gone and the silicon-based, methane-breathing beings that build the next civilizations on Earth come to the moral ecological crossroads that we've so gracelessly botched, they'll get it right.
On the other hand, in the larger scale of things, how long does it take for a species to become truly civilized? Maybe we're not so far behind after all. And maybe humanity needs that scale of shock, of seeing the only planet we've ever known fall away in the distance, as we hurtle along towards our new one.
Oh, wait. We're only talking about the terraforming issue.
Well firstly, I don't think we're qualified as a species to do such a thing. We won't do it right, if we do it soon. We won't know enough about the planet, we'll just move in and do our thing, and if it turns out that there's life underground on Mars, or if terraforming causes some planetary-scale chemical imbalance, or what have you, then what? We fire somebody?
I tried to get BellSouth's "Fast Internet" directly recently, and here's what I went through.
The light at the end of the tunnel? An excellent company called I-55 Internet does DSL here. They go through Bell South for the line and what-not of course, but they have a unique (in my experience) relationship that allows them to think for themselves. I explained what had happened and the sales fella gave me the Ethernet Modem and my networking info. Bang zoom, to the moon.
As an epilogue, the phone jack in the apartment's office can't negotiate a DSL connection, so my girlfriend's Mac is currently the only computer connected to the DSL line.
The moral? Third party DSL providers GOOOD.
Rereading the company's website will lead you to notice that the spacecraft they have in mind will be designed to be disposable. They will have an expected lifespan of 30-90 days, after which the company will guide them to crashland messily into the moon.
Returning to the original post on this thread, I have to agree that this company's proposal has some flaws. Finding cheaper solutions toward scientific problems will undoubtedly increase public sector involvement and innovation; but from our current perspective, well, we don't know much about Luna, its potential uses or dangers, etc. Seems to me that we're saving pennies now, but creating the expensive (and dangerous) problem of having to clean up the mess later.
This sort of topic is a two-sided coin, which boils down to this: is 3COM (or any company that might come under this sort of scrutiny) in business for business' sake, or are they in business in order to further the technological community?
Mind you, these two aren't mutually exclusive, but it's a point of view that defines _why_ and _how_ they'll respond (or _if_ they'll respond) to this sort of question.
Of course it would be great if they "open sourced" or otherwise publicised the specs for their unsupported products. At least a portion of their customers would be able to enjoy an extended useful life for that product. Their brand recognition would increase. Everybody would be happy, right?
On the other hand, such a venture is costly, time consuming, and utilizes human resources that, in the mind of a purely in-business-for-business firm, could be better spent producing the next item on the shelf. It's not that they don't recognize the potential for a community investment; they just don't feel that's their role.