Take a site on geocities. If I am in Japan and link to something there, I really need to go visit that page every day. The site I originally linked to may have gone away and been replaced by a site that is illegal. Now, I would be breaking the law.
For that matter this could happen anywhere (I use geocities as an example because of the high turnover). I had an account a long time ago on a server and had some stuff there I still find people linking to. The site has been gone for 4 years now. But it is very possible someone is going to come along and request that same account name, put something illegal up, and now those sites will be pointing to it.
This was in my email this morning. It is from the Palm Developers mailing list. I had to laugh because, well, Michael Mace hits it right on the head! Ya gotta like a guy who tells it like it is.
Dear Palm Solution Providers:
We've received some questions from the Palm economy regarding what we think about the new version of Windows CE, which Microsoft calls Pocket PC. We expect that Microsoft will make a very big launch event and advertising campaign starting April 19, just as they did with the last version of Windows CE.
Just like last time, some industry analysts will announce that Palm is dead, because Microsoft's handheld has more PC features than Palm handhelds. And just like last time, when the smoke clears we think Palm will still be on top.
We don't ever underestimate a competitor, though. The market is too competitive and changes too fast. Besides, there's no question that Windows CE is less unpleasant than it used to be. So we'll continue to work hard to tell Palm's story, including the amazing array of great software and hardware products that you bring to the Palm platform.
Now that we're a public company, we have very aggressive plans to drive the long-term growth of the Palm platform. We'll be revealing more about those plans in the next several months. And in the meantime, we think we have a great story to tell about Palm and our partners today. Here's some of the information we'll be distributing. You'll see this reflected in new and more aggressive marketing campaigns this summer. If you get questions about Palm's competitiveness, we encourage you to pass this information along. And we'd like to hear from you if you have comments on this memo, or ideas on things that we could do better.
Please email your comments and suggestions to devinfo@palm.com with "Pocket PC feedback" in the subject title.
Thanks very much for your support of the Palm family.
Michael Mace VP, Product Strategy Palm, Inc.
I was wondering something though. Will the Pocket PC come with a billiards game?
Yep. Sure do. You really almost hafta use motors unless you are taking pictures of the moon, sun, or the bright planets. Anything over a two second or so exposure through a telescope and you need motors.
Also note that I am using the ultra cheap method of CCD imaging - a Connectix QuickCam.
I did not mean for my posting to suggest that Celestron is the only game out there. I am just very familar with their equipment. Sorry if it came out that way.
Have you ever looked through a real telescope? No, you don't see what the Hubble sees. Things are not in color (usually).
For the price of a brand new all-the-bells-and-whistles-included Linux box, you can get a top of the line amateur telescope. Yet you don't have to spend that much if you don't want to. But do get a good one and not some department store piece of crap. Celestron makes some of the best ones out there I think.
What you will see is so astounding you will never ever forget it. You are seeing it with your own eyes - not some camera. I still remember the first time I saw Saturn 22 years ago. It was and still is something to sit and stare at for hours.
Yeah, I take pictures with my scope, and I stick em up on the web, but well, they don't compare to really seeing something for yourself. I guess when it comes to this I am a Luddite.
I guess a good way to put it are the porno webcams. Sure, it is fun to watch, but nothing beats being there.
I do like the idea, don't get me wrong. But seriously, if you are the least bit interested in astronomy, do yourself a favor and buy a real telescope. The experience is worth it.
Actually, it depends on the size of the dish they give you.
An 18 inch dish, like is used with DirecTV and Dish Network are really the absolute minimum size that is useable. It takes a really big thick cloud to knock out the signal you receive when you have one of these dishes.
However, you can use (and DirecTV/Dish have them available) 24 inch dishes. They give you a lot better signal reception and the nasty storm cloud effect is all but fixed (unless it is a really really really big cloud).
Transmitting, on the other hand is a bit different story. I am assuming this thing is going to be pretty low power - it would have to be unless this outfit wants to have a lot of it's customers burned by RF when they stand in front of the dish, which would be very very awful. Trust me, RF burns are not fun at all.
So, the dish is probably going to increase in size to 36 inch (like Primestar had) or maybe even bigger.
These rumors fly around every few months. They have been since May 1997 when DVD hit the shelves.
This same rumor mill (that is at The Digital Bits) is the same rumor mill that in Sept. 1997 was saying "Star Wars on DVD in Feb. 1998!" Then it became "There is a warehouse full of DVDs!" Then it became "Here is the cover art!" which was basically cover art from the Hong Kong black market VCD. Then we got to hear about "They have a warehouse full of discs they are sitting on!"
In other words, unless starwars.com says it is so, don't believe a bit of what you hear on from Digital Bits, E-Town, DVD Resource, or any of the other "In the Know" websites. They don't know.
I had honestly been considering going on the Linux Beer Hike, but have decided no thanks to this article and listening to Johnny Rotten this past weekend.
I have always been of the opinion that I refuse to visit a country where rights are trampled on, especially when it comes to free speech. So, I won't be visiting China anytime soon. Nor will I be going back to see Australia. Now Merry Ole England is out.
Yeah yeah yeah... "what's it matter what I do?" - I know some of you are saying that. I hear that stuff all the time. But, as the saying goes, if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. Or, as I say to friends of mine who make fun of me when I say I am boycotting something, "fuck you".
The RIAA looses. Okay, so they go running to the lawmakers.....
THIS TIME, boys and girls, every one of us had better get off our butts and do something to keep them from being successful.
Write your senator. Write your house member. You can do it very easily through email. It is not that hard. Call them on the phone and talk to them. Make them listen.
I wonder if anyone in the market is as smart as they seem to think they are.
MS gets slammed by Judge Jackson, suddenly everyone's stock drops. Why? Ya got me. MS is one company. We all know the evil that is Microsoft, but shouldn't them getting hurt help Inprise, Corel, Real, etc? Suddenly the market for competing products starts to look a little more rosey, yet the opposite happens. Everyone drops.
A few years ago in an issue of PC World, Penn Jillette (of Penn and Teller) brought up the question about just how advanced is AI, and how advanced has it really become?
For his example he came up with a weight guessing program, much like the weight guesser at a carinval sideshow. The program went like this:
Do you weigh 1 pound? (Y/N) N Do you weigh 2 pounds? (Y/N) N Do you weigh 3 pounds? (Y/N) N
Well, I think you get the picture. Eventually this program is going to guess your weight. But can it really be called AI?
Looking at most of the examples that are on websites, yours included, the programs are extremely simple in what they do. To be completely honest, they do not even appear to be much more complex in their "thinking" than the Weight Guesser.
Another example that I can think of are Expert Systems. To me this is nothing more than a simple linking of menus that ask questions. For example, "is the switch on?" Some people consider this to be a form of AI, but by that definition anything that has an if statement would be AI.
So, my question - are computer programs actually really honestly beyond this?
The problem here, as I see it, is not that it does not work, it is that all these claims have been made about having a standards compliant browser. MS does it. Netscape does it. XYZ does it.
Yet, when the browser hits the market, it is not. So, we people who write web pages have to find workarounds that end up not being standards compliant. In other words, what is the point in having standards if nobody is going to follow them?
Their (Netscape's) server was not letting bug reports in as of the time I made my post. Their (Netscape's) site for Netscape 6.0 bug report is http://home.netscape.com/browsers/6/feedback/index .html. . I just tried to submit a report again at 19:51 UTC and it is STILL not taking submissions.
As for even suggesting that I did not submit that bug, how about me saying "I have submitted that bug 4 different times"?
I don't mean this to be a flame, but it is going to come out as one.
A long time ago (when 4.5 came out) I griped right here on Slashdot because of the way it was handling the resizing of images in tables. When you told an image to be 100% of a cell wide, it worked fine. But when you told it to be 100% of a cell tall, it would not. So, I bitched.
Some lady from Netscape saw my post on here and sent me an email about "Well, we are not going to fix bugs in 4.x, but you are welcome to help us fix things in Mozilla by submitting bug reports!" Well, I did.
So, now I download 6.0 and what do I find? The same fricking bug is there.
Currently I am reading 1984. The first thought that came to my mind when reading about Pinkerton a few weeks ago was how much this sounds like the Spies in the book.
They guy that lived accross the hall from Winston was actually proud of his little girl for turning him in to the Thought Police because she overheard him talking in his sleep about "Death to Big Brother."
My question for the list: "Have you ever read Orwell's 1984, and what do you think of turning kids into real life Spies?"
Katz, please don't let him off the hook on this question if you do decide to ask it. I would love to hear a straight answer from him.
It is also extremely dangerous. What if the car in front blows a tire, throws a rod, breaks a driveshaft, has a wheel come off? They are mechanical things and mechanical things break.
There is a show on the Discovery Channel called "Future Cars" or something like that which deals with robocars. I suggest you check it out. It is a great show.
This is why it is funny!
on
Hoax-a-go-go!
·
· Score: 4
99% of the slashdot gang is able to tell the stupid things from the real (well, most of the time) and hoaxes like these may give ammunition to the luddites of the world.
But....
By letting the Blame The Net Crowd pick up on the stupid things, we are making our jobs of fighting them all that much easier.
Take for instance things like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. A while back they were running around Washington DC screaming and yelling that 50% of all missing kids were being abducted by satanic cults. The FBI did some investigating and found they were full of bunk. There is not a single case in US history where anyone has ever been killed by a satanic cult. It is balderdash.
Next we have an episode that happened when I was in high school - one of the local religious zealot groups was trying to crack down on kids playing D&D. At one of their meetings, they were claiming that "so and so's kid was playing and they had this sword laying on the table and the sword started hovering in the air!" Um, yeah right... whatever. Yet again another idiotic bunch of twits.
Finally we have yet more bunk from the State of Kansas (as if the whole evolution thing was not bad enough)... A few years back, people in Kansas were screaming and yelling about such and such a school district teaching kids how to masturbate. Everyone was pointing fingers at each other's school districts on this one saying "they are doing it!" Well, bring in the officials and guess what? Not a single claim could be proven. Zilch. None. Nada.
I say let the idiots and morons of the world run around screaming about stupid things. Let them tell the world about "the really big moon", "how you can get a free cellular phone", and "the $200 cookie recipe." It helps me filter out very easily who I want to associate with. As soon as something idiotic is claimed as truth, then I know they are morons. If it is someone trying to enact a law based on stupidity, then it makes our jobs as citizens even easier to fight them.
Okay, so we are looking at ourselves and it looks like all we can do any more is get in trouble. Face it, DeCSS got yanked, Mattel is being stupid, Amazon has some butt-head patent, and eToys showed the world what it thought about art. Things just don't look nice at all.
But, take a step back and look really hard. Know what I see? I see a bunch of corporate types who are doing nothing but making total asses out of themselves. In all of the above cases, only one did the internet come out on top. Why? Because we raised such a stink that there was nothing else that the money grubbers could do but to give in.
Things still are not over on the DeCSS front, nor the MP3 front, nor the Mattel front. We are being monkey wrenches in their corporate culture - a culture that says "money is all that counts!" and "you have no rights if it costs me a buck!" We are being attacked and we are fighting back. And ya know what? They are paying attention.
We are being told that we can't do stuff that has been done for years (reverse engineering). How are they going to stop us from doing that? They are going to have about as much success in keeping your typical hacker from doing any sort of RE as President Regan had with the moral majority type Meese Police laws back in the 80s.
I don't know about anyone else, but I personally have so much time on my hands to further monkey wrench corporate america that it is not even funny - and what is great is I never have to leave my house to do it. And neither does anyone else. Simply keep doing what you are doing. Keep coming up with great software like we are. Let them spend all their money and effort playing their little SLAP games.
This reminds me of an episode of Andy Griffith that I saw the other day. Barney Fife went to tell some road side vendors they were going to have to move. They were both bigger than he was and were very intimidating. He said something that we should all keep in mind: "You two may be bigger than I am, but just remember something - this badge represents a lot of people who are are bigger than the both of you."
And we are. You and I outnumber Mattel like crazy. We outnumber Amazon, eToys, and the RIAA. It is time for every one of us to either put up or shut up. It is simple as that.
First, I am a huge punk fan. But remember, the Ramones came up with punk because they were not good enough to play real music! They tried. They tried to do Beach Boys and decided they really sucked at it. But they wanted to play. So they did. Bingo! Punk was born.
I thought this too when I started to read the article.. that Linux is more like the early days of punk, and in a lot of ways it is, as you pointed out. Nobody gives a shit if it does not look pretty (and as the line in Rock 'n Roll High School goes, "They are ugly. Ugly, ugly, people.") but if it works then that is all that matters. Punk certainly does that.
It is very anti-establishment. Bob Young has said it. Red Hat's competition is not the other Linux companies. It is Microsoft. In the minds of corporate america, what is more anti-establishment than refusing to use a Microsoft Windows product? I can't think of anything.
So, taking all things into account, you are right. However, like I said, punk was started because the guys could not play worth a crap. The Linux code I have seen is brilliant.
but I can speak of my experiences with Quicken Bill Pay. It has never been a problem.
Of the 8 bills a months I get, only my credit card is done via electronic transfer - everything else is processed by an actual check (telephone, electric, gas, water, mortgage). There is no problem doing any of this except for one thing: lag time.
I talked to some folks at the bank about how all this stuff works, and it is quite amazing. All you do is tell the system who you want to pay, how much, and give them your account number and the address of the party you are sending the payment to. If they sign up with Quicken, in my case, then Quicken simply sends them a tape, otherwise, they send the payment as a real check just like it came from you. Say I want to pay my credit card bill - because it is done electronicly, I can schedule a payment to be made to them as soon as tomorrow. The other stuff that is sent out snail mail can be scheduled no less than 4 days ahead of time. Likewise I can also cancel payments as long as the cutoff time has not hit, which I do occassionally when I decide to shift around who gets what money.
And it does not need to be a business either. You can send a check to anyone. It makes it really easy when Christmas comes around... just hop on, make a payment and don't worry about it. Depending how far away they are from where the payments are sent from, they will get the check in a few days.
I think the nicest part of doing this stuff though is that I don't forget to make a payment. As soon as I get the bill, I enter the payment to be made to them and that is it. I also have things like my house payment scheduled for the next 6 months.
It may cost some money to do all this, but I still think it is wicked cool.
Slashdot Mirror
is a billiards game.
Um, if you have to ask... um, well, nevermind....
Take a site on geocities. If I am in Japan and link to something there, I really need to go visit that page every day. The site I originally linked to may have gone away and been replaced by a site that is illegal. Now, I would be breaking the law.
For that matter this could happen anywhere (I use geocities as an example because of the high turnover). I had an account a long time ago on a server and had some stuff there I still find people linking to. The site has been gone for 4 years now. But it is very possible someone is going to come along and request that same account name, put something illegal up, and now those sites will be pointing to it.
It's lunacy.
This was in my email this morning. It is from the Palm Developers mailing list. I had to laugh because, well, Michael Mace hits it right on the head! Ya gotta like a guy who tells it like it is.
Dear Palm Solution Providers:
We've received some questions from the Palm economy regarding what we think about the new version of Windows CE, which Microsoft calls Pocket PC. We expect that Microsoft will make a very big launch event and advertising campaign starting April 19, just as they did with the last version of Windows CE.
Just like last time, some industry analysts will announce that Palm is dead, because Microsoft's handheld has more PC features than Palm handhelds. And just like last time, when the smoke clears we think Palm will still be on top.
We don't ever underestimate a competitor, though. The market is too competitive and changes too fast. Besides, there's no question that Windows CE is less unpleasant than it used to be. So we'll continue to work hard to tell Palm's story, including the amazing array of great software and hardware products that you bring to the Palm platform.
Now that we're a public company, we have very aggressive plans to drive the long-term growth of the Palm platform. We'll be revealing more about those plans in the next several months. And in the meantime, we think we have a great story to tell about Palm and our partners today. Here's some of the information we'll be distributing. You'll see this reflected in new and more aggressive marketing campaigns this summer. If you get questions about Palm's competitiveness, we encourage you to pass this information along. And we'd like to hear from you if you have comments on this memo, or ideas on things that we could do better.
Please email your comments and suggestions to devinfo@palm.com with "Pocket PC feedback" in the subject title.
Thanks very much for your support of the Palm family.
Michael Mace
VP, Product Strategy
Palm, Inc.
I was wondering something though. Will the Pocket PC come with a billiards game?
Yep. Sure do. You really almost hafta use motors unless you are taking pictures of the moon, sun, or the bright planets. Anything over a two second or so exposure through a telescope and you need motors.
Also note that I am using the ultra cheap method of CCD imaging - a Connectix QuickCam.
I did not mean for my posting to suggest that Celestron is the only game out there. I am just very familar with their equipment. Sorry if it came out that way.
Have you ever looked through a real telescope? No, you don't see what the Hubble sees. Things are not in color (usually).
For the price of a brand new all-the-bells-and-whistles-included Linux box, you can get a top of the line amateur telescope. Yet you don't have to spend that much if you don't want to. But do get a good one and not some department store piece of crap. Celestron makes some of the best ones out there I think.
What you will see is so astounding you will never ever forget it. You are seeing it with your own eyes - not some camera. I still remember the first time I saw Saturn 22 years ago. It was and still is something to sit and stare at for hours.
Yeah, I take pictures with my scope, and I stick em up on the web, but well, they don't compare to really seeing something for yourself. I guess when it comes to this I am a Luddite.
I guess a good way to put it are the porno webcams. Sure, it is fun to watch, but nothing beats being there.
I do like the idea, don't get me wrong. But seriously, if you are the least bit interested in astronomy, do yourself a favor and buy a real telescope. The experience is worth it.
Well, I just typed in a great big long thing and before I submitted it I read a bunch of the comments about not commenting. All of them are right.
But, at the same time I think I can sum up the tech stock drop: Stupid people are investing in tech stocks.
It's as simple as that.
Actually, it depends on the size of the dish they give you.
An 18 inch dish, like is used with DirecTV and Dish Network are really the absolute minimum size that is useable. It takes a really big thick cloud to knock out the signal you receive when you have one of these dishes.
However, you can use (and DirecTV/Dish have them available) 24 inch dishes. They give you a lot better signal reception and the nasty storm cloud effect is all but fixed (unless it is a really really really big cloud).
Transmitting, on the other hand is a bit different story. I am assuming this thing is going to be pretty low power - it would have to be unless this outfit wants to have a lot of it's customers burned by RF when they stand in front of the dish, which would be very very awful. Trust me, RF burns are not fun at all.
So, the dish is probably going to increase in size to 36 inch (like Primestar had) or maybe even bigger.
These rumors fly around every few months. They have been since May 1997 when DVD hit the shelves.
This same rumor mill (that is at The Digital Bits) is the same rumor mill that in Sept. 1997 was saying "Star Wars on DVD in Feb. 1998!" Then it became "There is a warehouse full of DVDs!" Then it became "Here is the cover art!" which was basically cover art from the Hong Kong black market VCD. Then we got to hear about "They have a warehouse full of discs they are sitting on!"
In other words, unless starwars.com says it is so, don't believe a bit of what you hear on from Digital Bits, E-Town, DVD Resource, or any of the other "In the Know" websites. They don't know.
I had honestly been considering going on the Linux Beer Hike, but have decided no thanks to this article and listening to Johnny Rotten this past weekend.
I have always been of the opinion that I refuse to visit a country where rights are trampled on, especially when it comes to free speech. So, I won't be visiting China anytime soon. Nor will I be going back to see Australia. Now Merry Ole England is out.
Yeah yeah yeah... "what's it matter what I do?" - I know some of you are saying that. I hear that stuff all the time. But, as the saying goes, if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. Or, as I say to friends of mine who make fun of me when I say I am boycotting something, "fuck you".
This parable really shouldst be viewed using AskJesus.org
I mean, just so you can get the gist of it and all....
The RIAA looses. Okay, so they go running to the lawmakers.....
THIS TIME, boys and girls, every one of us had better get off our butts and do something to keep them from being successful.
Write your senator. Write your house member. You can do it very easily through email. It is not that hard. Call them on the phone and talk to them. Make them listen.
I wonder if anyone in the market is as smart as they seem to think they are.
MS gets slammed by Judge Jackson, suddenly everyone's stock drops. Why? Ya got me. MS is one company. We all know the evil that is Microsoft, but shouldn't them getting hurt help Inprise, Corel, Real, etc? Suddenly the market for competing products starts to look a little more rosey, yet the opposite happens. Everyone drops.
I goofed. It was not PC World, it was PC Computing. And I found the article Penn wrote. You can read it right'cha.
Also, it was not a weight guesser. It was an age guesser.
A few years ago in an issue of PC World, Penn Jillette (of Penn and Teller) brought up the question about just how advanced is AI, and how advanced has it really become?
For his example he came up with a weight guessing program, much like the weight guesser at a carinval sideshow. The program went like this:
Do you weigh 1 pound? (Y/N) N
Do you weigh 2 pounds? (Y/N) N
Do you weigh 3 pounds? (Y/N) N
Well, I think you get the picture. Eventually this program is going to guess your weight. But can it really be called AI?
Looking at most of the examples that are on websites, yours included, the programs are extremely simple in what they do. To be completely honest, they do not even appear to be much more complex in their "thinking" than the Weight Guesser.
Another example that I can think of are Expert Systems. To me this is nothing more than a simple linking of menus that ask questions. For example, "is the switch on?" Some people consider this to be a form of AI, but by that definition anything that has an if statement would be AI.
So, my question - are computer programs actually really honestly beyond this?
I had thought about that, however....
The problem here, as I see it, is not that it does not work, it is that all these claims have been made about having a standards compliant browser. MS does it. Netscape does it. XYZ does it.
Yet, when the browser hits the market, it is not. So, we people who write web pages have to find workarounds that end up not being standards compliant. In other words, what is the point in having standards if nobody is going to follow them?
I dunno. Maybe I am just in a grouchy mood today.
As you said, "I'll just say you are full of it."
x .html. . I just tried to submit a report again at 19:51 UTC and it is STILL not taking submissions.
Their (Netscape's) server was not letting bug reports in as of the time I made my post. Their (Netscape's) site for Netscape 6.0 bug report is http://home.netscape.com/browsers/6/feedback/inde
As for even suggesting that I did not submit that bug, how about me saying "I have submitted that bug 4 different times"?
I don't mean this to be a flame, but it is going to come out as one.
A long time ago (when 4.5 came out) I griped right here on Slashdot because of the way it was handling the resizing of images in tables. When you told an image to be 100% of a cell wide, it worked fine. But when you told it to be 100% of a cell tall, it would not. So, I bitched.
Some lady from Netscape saw my post on here and sent me an email about "Well, we are not going to fix bugs in 4.x, but you are welcome to help us fix things in Mozilla by submitting bug reports!" Well, I did.
So, now I download 6.0 and what do I find? The same fricking bug is there.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Check out the bug.
I would submit this as a bug, but their server is not letting bug reports in.
Currently I am reading 1984. The first thought that came to my mind when reading about Pinkerton a few weeks ago was how much this sounds like the Spies in the book.
They guy that lived accross the hall from Winston was actually proud of his little girl for turning him in to the Thought Police because she overheard him talking in his sleep about "Death to Big Brother."
My question for the list: "Have you ever read Orwell's 1984, and what do you think of turning kids into real life Spies?"
Katz, please don't let him off the hook on this question if you do decide to ask it. I would love to hear a straight answer from him.
The Bat Boy is on the loose! According to the article, people in Wheeling, WV. are in deep doo doo.
It is also extremely dangerous. What if the car in front blows a tire, throws a rod, breaks a driveshaft, has a wheel come off? They are mechanical things and mechanical things break.
There is a show on the Discovery Channel called "Future Cars" or something like that which deals with robocars. I suggest you check it out. It is a great show.
99% of the slashdot gang is able to tell the stupid things from the real (well, most of the time) and hoaxes like these may give ammunition to the luddites of the world.
But....
By letting the Blame The Net Crowd pick up on the stupid things, we are making our jobs of fighting them all that much easier.
Take for instance things like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. A while back they were running around Washington DC screaming and yelling that 50% of all missing kids were being abducted by satanic cults. The FBI did some investigating and found they were full of bunk. There is not a single case in US history where anyone has ever been killed by a satanic cult. It is balderdash.
Next we have an episode that happened when I was in high school - one of the local religious zealot groups was trying to crack down on kids playing D&D. At one of their meetings, they were claiming that "so and so's kid was playing and they had this sword laying on the table and the sword started hovering in the air!" Um, yeah right... whatever. Yet again another idiotic bunch of twits.
Finally we have yet more bunk from the State of Kansas (as if the whole evolution thing was not bad enough)... A few years back, people in Kansas were screaming and yelling about such and such a school district teaching kids how to masturbate. Everyone was pointing fingers at each other's school districts on this one saying "they are doing it!" Well, bring in the officials and guess what? Not a single claim could be proven. Zilch. None. Nada.
I say let the idiots and morons of the world run around screaming about stupid things. Let them tell the world about "the really big moon", "how you can get a free cellular phone", and "the $200 cookie recipe." It helps me filter out very easily who I want to associate with. As soon as something idiotic is claimed as truth, then I know they are morons. If it is someone trying to enact a law based on stupidity, then it makes our jobs as citizens even easier to fight them.
Okay, so we are looking at ourselves and it looks like all we can do any more is get in trouble. Face it, DeCSS got yanked, Mattel is being stupid, Amazon has some butt-head patent, and eToys showed the world what it thought about art. Things just don't look nice at all.
But, take a step back and look really hard. Know what I see? I see a bunch of corporate types who are doing nothing but making total asses out of themselves. In all of the above cases, only one did the internet come out on top. Why? Because we raised such a stink that there was nothing else that the money grubbers could do but to give in.
Things still are not over on the DeCSS front, nor the MP3 front, nor the Mattel front. We are being monkey wrenches in their corporate culture - a culture that says "money is all that counts!" and "you have no rights if it costs me a buck!" We are being attacked and we are fighting back. And ya know what? They are paying attention.
We are being told that we can't do stuff that has been done for years (reverse engineering). How are they going to stop us from doing that? They are going to have about as much success in keeping your typical hacker from doing any sort of RE as President Regan had with the moral majority type Meese Police laws back in the 80s.
I don't know about anyone else, but I personally have so much time on my hands to further monkey wrench corporate america that it is not even funny - and what is great is I never have to leave my house to do it. And neither does anyone else. Simply keep doing what you are doing. Keep coming up with great software like we are. Let them spend all their money and effort playing their little SLAP games.
This reminds me of an episode of Andy Griffith that I saw the other day. Barney Fife went to tell some road side vendors they were going to have to move. They were both bigger than he was and were very intimidating. He said something that we should all keep in mind: "You two may be bigger than I am, but just remember something - this badge represents a lot of people who are are bigger than the both of you."
And we are. You and I outnumber Mattel like crazy.
We outnumber Amazon, eToys, and the RIAA. It is time for every one of us to either put up or shut up. It is simple as that.
First, I am a huge punk fan. But remember, the Ramones came up with punk because they were not good enough to play real music! They tried. They tried to do Beach Boys and decided they really sucked at it. But they wanted to play. So they did. Bingo! Punk was born.
I thought this too when I started to read the article.. that Linux is more like the early days of punk, and in a lot of ways it is, as you pointed out. Nobody gives a shit if it does not look pretty (and as the line in Rock 'n Roll High School goes, "They are ugly. Ugly, ugly, people.") but if it works then that is all that matters. Punk certainly does that.
It is very anti-establishment. Bob Young has said it. Red Hat's competition is not the other Linux companies. It is Microsoft. In the minds of corporate america, what is more anti-establishment than refusing to use a Microsoft Windows product? I can't think of anything.
So, taking all things into account, you are right. However, like I said, punk was started because the guys could not play worth a crap. The Linux code I have seen is brilliant.
There was a great interview with Freeman Dyson on NPR's All Things Considered last night. Well worth the listen.
but I can speak of my experiences with Quicken Bill Pay. It has never been a problem.
Of the 8 bills a months I get, only my credit card is done via electronic transfer - everything else is processed by an actual check (telephone, electric, gas, water, mortgage). There is no problem doing any of this except for one thing: lag time.
I talked to some folks at the bank about how all this stuff works, and it is quite amazing. All you do is tell the system who you want to pay, how much, and give them your account number and the address of the party you are sending the payment to. If they sign up with Quicken, in my case, then Quicken simply sends them a tape, otherwise, they send the payment as a real check just like it came from you. Say I want to pay my credit card bill - because it is done electronicly, I can schedule a payment to be made to them as soon as tomorrow. The other stuff that is sent out snail mail can be scheduled no less than 4 days ahead of time. Likewise I can also cancel payments as long as the cutoff time has not hit, which I do occassionally when I decide to shift around who gets what money.
And it does not need to be a business either. You can send a check to anyone. It makes it really easy when Christmas comes around... just hop on, make a payment and don't worry about it. Depending how far away they are from where the payments are sent from, they will get the check in a few days.
I think the nicest part of doing this stuff though is that I don't forget to make a payment. As soon as I get the bill, I enter the payment to be made to them and that is it. I also have things like my house payment scheduled for the next 6 months.
It may cost some money to do all this, but I still think it is wicked cool.