I understand the reasoning behind wanting to have some time to work on a problem without the world's script kiddies causing the "immenent death of the internet" (or something equally bad) because everyone and their mother now knows the latest BIND exploit and a patch isn't ready yet. However, I don't think their method (inscrutible secrecy and legal agreements) is the best way to go. It seems to me that what they are basically looking for is time. Not an infinite amount of time, just enough to get a patch out before half the world knows about the bug.
In the scientific community when they want to keep a new story under wraps for a while they "embargo it". It's a very standard practice. Essentially every news organization that wants to cover the story signs an agreement that they won't release details about the story before a certain date. When the date arrives, all news sources who have opted into the system have complete and accurate information about the story and release their own stories at about the same time. It's a way to prevent incomplete information, rumors, distorted facts, etc. from being scattered across the news media while the different organizations try to scoop and one up each other and while the researchers vainly attempt to get serious and correct all the errors and misinformation.
It occurs to me that a similar system could be used for security bugs and breaches. Certain news organizations would be provided with all the information on the problem while agreeing not to release the details until after a certain date. It would provide the working time needed by the software makers to patch their product before the problem is exposed to the world in raw 1337 haxor friendly detail. The main problem I see with it is that most internet news organizations severely lack sophistication and organization news wise. However, I don't think it's anything that can't be worked around or surmounted.
Re: NEXTSTEP and porting
on
OS X on x86?
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· Score: 2
Hmmm, I thought everybody knew that Apple was second to none (not even Microsoft!) in the ability to quash all possible efficiency from the OS and turn it into a bloated resource hog. PowerPC processors have long been (cycle for cycle) faster than x86 procs, but the MacOS (and the programming geniuses at Apple) have been doing something (I'm still not sure how they manage it) that turns the performance advantage into at best a performance equivalence.
I'm surprised nobody thought of this yet, but couldn't you make a cable that plugged into the $10 paper cell-phone and went into a computer's audio out / in and then use some software to use it as a wireless modem?
I'm in exactly the same boat and it took me some time to figure out just what there was out there that was useful. First I made the rounds of all the well known job websites (monster, hotjobs, etc.) but none of them really suited what I was looking for so my hopes were pretty low. However, it just so happened that I got a few promotional emails (aka spam, but in this case it was very useful) about other job sites designed for freelance contract work.
Non-Compete agreements are rampant in high tech. And a lot of people sign them without even thinking about how it will affect their careers. Even if you get fired that non-compete agreement is a binding contract. If that non-compete agreement is too broad then it can really hurt someone's career (since most people these days won't stay at one company forever).
I haven't let myself get bound by non-compete agreements yet, but doing that has meant making sacrifices on my part and in many cases it would have been easier for me to just go along with things and maybe live by the agreement or just assume "they'll never know". It's a tough decision to make, and one I'm certain most techies (who often lack sophistication business and legal wise or more accurately do not care about it as much as they do the tech) have not put enough thought into.
Yeah, I like it too. It's really shaped up to be a "full featured browser". It supports SSL, Flash, javascript, and all the regular goodies. It's not completely spiffed up and polished yet, but that's to be expected. It's not as fast or nice as IE5, but it's actually not too much behind. Overall I'd say it's a good backup browser and I wouldn't hesitate to use it as a primary browser on linux.
Granted, OOP is not the silver bullet that will solve all your problems as some people seemed to think it was. It will not make your programs automatically more easily updated, faster, and give you a full glossy coat of fur. However, OOP is most definitely not a fad, it is here to stay and will continue to be very important. There are many circumstances where Object Oriented design is completely unnecessary and would give no advantages, however there are also many cases where OOP is in fact the magic bullet that makes everything click together.
Personally I write OOP only very rarely, but that's partly to do with the nature of my work which is more small program oriented than large system oriented. However, I do find OOP to be significantly useful in lots of occasions. One way that Objects are particularly useful is in extending programming languages. The old style of libraries is somewhat cumbersome and leads to unnecessarily bloated code that is more difficult to read (and to understand easily), whereas extension via object makes immenently more sense and keeps your code (which may or may not be Object Oriented) a lot tighter. Perl demonstrates this excellently since most Perl programs are not Object Oriented, but almost all the "extensions" to Perl that are being written (and being used) these days are Object Oriented.
And in some ways OOP is still playing catchup with older programming styles, it's a lot easier to change languages than it is to change to a whole new philosophy of programming and I think that has shown. OOP is not a fad, it's most definitely here to stay and in fact I think it will grow as more and more languages (other than C++ and Java) take on Object Oriented design and more and more programmers learn when and when not to use OOP.
Sounds better than I thought
on
"Traffic"
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· Score: 2
From what I could see from the trailers Traffic looked more like the old standard "anti-drug message" type of movies that we were pelted with during the 80s and 90s (you know the ones, where the whole plot revolves around some drug (usually a new drug) that's gonna totally ruin a city or a nation or whatever and the intrepid "good guys" have to save us all, blech).
However, it looks like this movie is deeper and more interesting than that and most importantly isn't just a 2 hour long "don't do drugs" PSA (and it looks like it has a good plot too).
Well, you could always create your own compiler, then step through it by hand to compile the compiler source into machine code. Or, these days, you could just download a new compiler off the internet.
Nevertheless, the advantage of open source in terms of "source code cleanliness" (i.e. no gotchas or backdoors) is that you don't have to put your trust in one individual or corporation. Nobody knows the MS Windows source code except MS, but everybody can look at the linux source code, and it only takes one whistleblower saying "look at this, this is NOT right!" to bring everybody's attention to a problem.
What happens when something goes really wrong in some 3rd world country where you're more likely to die of an infection at the hospital than get proper treatment? What happens in Antarctica when something goes wrong? What happens when you're on a sailboat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean? Or on Mt. Everest? There is an approx. $7,000 fee per person just to have the priveledge of climbing Mt. Everest and it presumably costs a hefty chunk of cash to get the equipment and proper training and guides as well. Yet, on average over 100 people climb (successfully) Mt. Everest every year. On average about 5 people die on Mt. Everest every year, in 1996 15 people died on Mt. Everest, since 1975 129 people have died on Mt. Everest.
Sure, space is dangerous, but there are lot's of things that are dangerous that we still "let" people do, and as long as people know what they are getting into we shouldn't stand in their way.
One time I was working at a particular company (I suppose it could be called a dot-com) and I decided I didn't want to work there anymore. I was just really disapointed with about every aspect of the company. Anyway, I just didn't go into work for about 5 weeks or so and eventually the boss called up and asked if I was quitting and I said "yeah".
The Pentium IV was designed and conceived to be somewhat of a different beast than the current cpu lineup. Not as different as IA-64 and all that. The current processor designs are reaching their limits in terms of speed and won't be able to go much faster than where they are now. The P4 is a different beast. It is primarily designed to simply allow for monstrously high clock frequencies. Now, making such a switch of technology and design is always difficult and combined with some of Intel's other problems (like the stupid contract with rambus, which is really hurting them badly all around) makes for a a rough road. This first generation of P4's quite plainly isn't much higher clocked than other chips (at most 50%) and even then it doesn't stack up well, partly due to chipset and memory problems though, and it is a huge chip (physically) which costs money. Combined with the normal amount of bugs and blunders in a new product and you get less than stellar performance.
However, that's not the whole story. Intel has always introduced new chips, tweaked them, put production in gear, lowered the cost, then inundated the public with high quality, high performance, low cost processors. I doubt the P4 will be much difference. With the process change (to 0.13 micron I believe) for the P4 comes, combined with the normal bug fixes, combined with better memory support (such as DDR SDRAM), combined with much higher clock speeds (we're talking over 2 GHz), combined with major production volumes and lower prices, the result will be a screaming fast processor that will be hard to beat. The P4's main advantage (and essentially it's entire raison d'etre) is that it has a whopping 20 stage pipeline. That means one thing, you can shove gigahertz down it's throat like you can't do to any other processor. Sure the P4 may not be as "tight" and efficient as some of the other processors out now (which is why it's foolish to be an early adopter), but what it lacks in effectiveness it will eventually make up for in raw cycles. Right now (with all of the P4's flaws, including those that can be fixed, mind you) the P4 runs at maybe 80% of what the idealized speed of a PIII or Athlon would be at the same clock speed, but they expect the P4 to hit 2GHz by Q3 '01 which means you need around a 1.6 GHz proc. of the old style to keep up with it. And this assumes that some of the weak points of the P4 (most importantly, the horrendous memory system forced on it by the Rambus contract) remain, which won't be the case.
I'm not saying the P4 will blow everything out of the water next year (it won't), but it will be fully mature and it will be leading the pack and will be very difficult to compete with.
I haven't gotten my hands personally on the DVD (though I did see the movie in the theaters), but I plan too very soon. However, I have talked to two of my friends that have it and they say it is excellent. One of them commented "that dvd is the new reference for how anime dvds should be made" and he's a rabid anime fan so I'm inclined to go along with that.
Why is testing and debugging not considered "work". It is perfectly valid and is in fact a major component of any programmers job (and it SHOULD be as well). Programs would be a lot better if there was more testing and debugging. In other industries this is called "refining" and "perfecting".
This is all fine and good, but plain old magnetic media continues to dominate the arena and looks to do so for a considerable time. Even if a new technology could ramp up to full production really fast (a few years) it would have to have some sort of additional edge against magnetic media to even remotely make a dent in the market, let alone become the new storage media king.
When a competing technology starts selling competitive devices (capacity, size, speed, reliability, etc.) at reasonable costs then I'll pay more attention.
On a side note, a little company called BiT Micro manufacturers high performance solid state storage devices in hard drive form factors, though at considerably higher cost.
A lot of business have begun leaning in the direction of "application service providers" (ASPs) instead of product makers. In many ways it is very tempting for a business to do this. For one, you retain more control over your product (partly through stronger contracts), for another you create a source of continued income instead of a single payment. This can allow for a higher profit margin (since income is periodical and not tied to product releases / new-product development you can keep charging for a product even after you've stopped development (and thus have less development costs)).
Microsoft has been doing a pretty good job of tweaking their products just enough to get people (and businesses) flocking to upgrade even with very little new development. Windows 98 SE and Me upgrades from Win98 cost the same as the Win98 upgrade from Win95, but there is much less development in them. Same price, less work, higher profits. Nothing new. Although in many cases the "less work" usually comes with higher productivity (so the end product is the same quality), but it doesn't seem like this will be the case.
Anywho, the advantage of services instead of products for the consumer is that (theoretically) setup, installation, upgrades, support, etc. are easier. However, (as mentioned above) services come at a significant loss of "rights" for the consumer. Ownership is very powerful, and in many ways very desireable. When you rent something you loose control over it and it's no longer yours entirely. In the next few years there will be a major "shakedown" of what people choose to be services and what people choose to own.
Personally, I think the service model (for some uses) is very valid, but I also worry about the transfer of rights and powers from the public to the big corporations. I think that ultimately most people won't want to give up their ownership of basic software, and (perhaps more importantly) there will be a large base of free or purchasable software out there keeping the big guys' services in check to keep things from getting out of hand. I suppose we will just have to wait and see, but it's bound to be interesting no matter how it plays out, let's just hope it's not too interesting.
Well, certainly ".kids" has some difficulties, but I don't see what's wrong with.adult or.xxx. I don't think they need to be enforced strictly (running all the pornographic.coms to.adult for example), but I do think there are porn merchants out there who would move to the new TLD. For one it gives people a better idea of the content of a site, for another, it can help parents keep their kids from looking at smut online (not that it'll stop them, but it would help).
Actually....that looks like it might be the most worthwhile of the TLDs. I'm not certain from what I read of the application but do you have to register for each.x.pro domain, or do you get them all when you register one.pro domain?
Although, the dual tiers tend to make it a bit more clunky.
It's interesting that not many people have thought of alternatives to the domain name / TLD system we have right now. Certainly it's not the optimal solution, and yet the powers that be and even the powers that don't be have given almost zero serious thought to even thinking up alternatives, let alone evaluationg and discussing them.
I am significantly non-plussed by this collection. What's the big important difference between.com and.biz? Some of the TLDs seem like they'll be useful (such as.museum), but overall I'd have to say that both the structure of ICANN (*cough*big*business*whore*cough*) and the process for this TLD "selection" have demonstratred their non-functionality very clearly. Does anyone doubt that just about any random collection of internet sophisticates couldn't have done better with a week of work? So, we end up with a measely selection of crap-tastic TLDs and ICANN's pockets substaintially heavier ($50,000 is a heavty chunk of change for a mere application wouldn't you say?).
And, they failed to create a new adult oriented TLD (which would be ENORMOUSLY useful to both the porn mongers and the concerned parents of the world).
Hmmm, let me see how hard this is:
.adult or.xxx (adult oriented sites) .news (professional news media site) .me or.self or.personal (personal web site) .kids (kid oriented material) .reg (internet registrar) .host (hosting service provider) .tourism or.travel or maybe.place (tourism / travel / booking etc.) .web (professional webdesign) .lib (libraries et al) .art (art galleries) .store (online stores, which seems a lot clearer to me than.biz) .sci (scientific web sites, especially those that don't fall into the.edu and.org varieties)
Any of these is better than most of the crap coughed up by ICANN.
ICANN is an excellent example of what happens when you combine huge committees, lawyers, big business, and good ol' fashioned bureaucracy into one big lovable ball of everything that tries to kill off inventiveness, efficiency, common sense, personal independance, and the human spirit.
It's been in the "real soon now" stage for a while. I'd like to see some progress (not everything, but something demonstrating they're closer). Perhaps if they really do have something at Comdex that'll be cool, I'll certainly stop by to see it.
I'm sure the first thing most people think about when it comes to copyright law is piracy and people not paying for what they use. However, this is not the main reason for copyright law.
Copyright law is there to protect businesses from each other. How much does it hurt if one person doesn't pay for something? Especially if you only consider the intelectual property costs (i.e. we're not talking about someone stealing CD's, we're talking about someone "stealing" music). The cost is actually not that great especially if the "thief" had no intention of actually buying the product. However, imagine for a moment what would happen if someone could re-brand a product and sell it for themselves, legally? Without copyright law someone could start printing copies of the latest book by (insert your favorite author here) and sell them for whatever price they chose without ever giving a dime back to the author.
Copyright law is intended to protect the interests of the "artist", but the most serious concern is organized "theft", not individual theft. If you look at the biggest concerns currently in terms of software piracy and copyright violation, it's not individuals duping copies for their friends, it's organized re-selling of copyrighted materials, things like counterfeit software (complete with fake registration cards), pre-release black market movies, etc. This is of the most concern because A) by laying down cash for these items we know that the buyers of these items are exactly the people who would potentially pay for the real product (assuming the price differential is not too great), so this represents money that should have gone to the "artists" but did not, and B) sometimes people do not know that these products are "phony" (this is especially the case with counterfeit software). Without copyright law, this kind of thing would be legal. Even more worrisome is that someone could manufacture packaging and product that looked identical to the "true" product and buyers would have no way to tell which purchase would result in money going back to the original developers / artists.
I think we do need copyright protection. The question is how it is used and how it is enforced. After all, both Bill Gates and Linus Torvalds protect their software under copyright law (Bill Gates to make sure people pay for his software, Linus to make sure people don't pretend his software is their's and charge too much money for it).
Oops, almost forget to mention that in order to get a search warrant the law enforcement officer needs probable cause (supported by a witness of some ilk). Plus, the search warrant needs to describe "the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
IOW, law enforcement officers couldn't say "we don't know if you're using pirated software or not, or even what software you're using, but we still want to have a look". Or, more clearly, they can't shake you down because you haven't proven you don't use pirated software, they have to find evidence (such as a witness) that you are violating license agreements or running pirated software.
And stepping on people's rights (though why am I not surprised?).
Legally, in the US, the 4th amendment to the constitution grants everyone protection from unwarranted searches and seizures. They would need to be a law enforcement officer (which they are not) WITH a search warrant (which they won't have either) to be able to force a company to show them their software licenses. And that over-rides any click-wrap EULA crap on the software (no matter how evil and draconian it might be).
Theoretically, a law enforcement officer "in hot pursuit" would be able to perform search and seizure without a search warrant before hand. But I don't see that as a possibility with software licenses.
No, it's just another big-business and/or big-business crony trying to quietly slip you under their domination, they love trying to do that when you're not watching.
First off, everything now comes down to Florida. Whoever wins Florida is the next president. Right now, bush is ahead by a mere 1,785 votes. There are still plenty more absentee ballots to come in. Plus, there will definitely be a recount (at about 0.03% difference it's definitely way too close not to have a recount). And, they might even have to have a re-vote in some disctricts due to improperly printed ballots!
Even without the re-vote this will take probably at least another day for the recount and getting all the absentee ballots. With a re-vote this could take many days or possibly even weeks!
Even then there's always the off-chance that an elector or two will "buck the system" and throw the election to the other candidate (if, for example, Gore wins Oregon and Bush takes Florida, the result would be 271 (Bush) to 267 (Gore), it would take only 2 electors switching from Bush to Gore to force a tie and throw the whole thing to the house and senate, highly unlikely, but perhaps more likely if Gore wins the popular vote).
Slashdot Mirror
In the scientific community when they want to keep a new story under wraps for a while they "embargo it". It's a very standard practice. Essentially every news organization that wants to cover the story signs an agreement that they won't release details about the story before a certain date. When the date arrives, all news sources who have opted into the system have complete and accurate information about the story and release their own stories at about the same time. It's a way to prevent incomplete information, rumors, distorted facts, etc. from being scattered across the news media while the different organizations try to scoop and one up each other and while the researchers vainly attempt to get serious and correct all the errors and misinformation.
It occurs to me that a similar system could be used for security bugs and breaches. Certain news organizations would be provided with all the information on the problem while agreeing not to release the details until after a certain date. It would provide the working time needed by the software makers to patch their product before the problem is exposed to the world in raw 1337 haxor friendly detail. The main problem I see with it is that most internet news organizations severely lack sophistication and organization news wise. However, I don't think it's anything that can't be worked around or surmounted.
Hmmm, I thought everybody knew that Apple was second to none (not even Microsoft!) in the ability to quash all possible efficiency from the OS and turn it into a bloated resource hog. PowerPC processors have long been (cycle for cycle) faster than x86 procs, but the MacOS (and the programming geniuses at Apple) have been doing something (I'm still not sure how they manage it) that turns the performance advantage into at best a performance equivalence.
I'm surprised nobody thought of this yet, but couldn't you make a cable that plugged into the $10 paper cell-phone and went into a computer's audio out / in and then use some software to use it as a wireless modem?
Check out allfreelance.com and especially eLance.com and guru.com. There is tons of contract programmer work out there.
I haven't let myself get bound by non-compete agreements yet, but doing that has meant making sacrifices on my part and in many cases it would have been easier for me to just go along with things and maybe live by the agreement or just assume "they'll never know". It's a tough decision to make, and one I'm certain most techies (who often lack sophistication business and legal wise or more accurately do not care about it as much as they do the tech) have not put enough thought into.
Yeah, I like it too. It's really shaped up to be a "full featured browser". It supports SSL, Flash, javascript, and all the regular goodies. It's not completely spiffed up and polished yet, but that's to be expected. It's not as fast or nice as IE5, but it's actually not too much behind. Overall I'd say it's a good backup browser and I wouldn't hesitate to use it as a primary browser on linux.
Personally I write OOP only very rarely, but that's partly to do with the nature of my work which is more small program oriented than large system oriented. However, I do find OOP to be significantly useful in lots of occasions. One way that Objects are particularly useful is in extending programming languages. The old style of libraries is somewhat cumbersome and leads to unnecessarily bloated code that is more difficult to read (and to understand easily), whereas extension via object makes immenently more sense and keeps your code (which may or may not be Object Oriented) a lot tighter. Perl demonstrates this excellently since most Perl programs are not Object Oriented, but almost all the "extensions" to Perl that are being written (and being used) these days are Object Oriented.
And in some ways OOP is still playing catchup with older programming styles, it's a lot easier to change languages than it is to change to a whole new philosophy of programming and I think that has shown. OOP is not a fad, it's most definitely here to stay and in fact I think it will grow as more and more languages (other than C++ and Java) take on Object Oriented design and more and more programmers learn when and when not to use OOP.
However, it looks like this movie is deeper and more interesting than that and most importantly isn't just a 2 hour long "don't do drugs" PSA (and it looks like it has a good plot too).
Nevertheless, the advantage of open source in terms of "source code cleanliness" (i.e. no gotchas or backdoors) is that you don't have to put your trust in one individual or corporation. Nobody knows the MS Windows source code except MS, but everybody can look at the linux source code, and it only takes one whistleblower saying "look at this, this is NOT right!" to bring everybody's attention to a problem.
Sure, space is dangerous, but there are lot's of things that are dangerous that we still "let" people do, and as long as people know what they are getting into we shouldn't stand in their way.
One time I was working at a particular company (I suppose it could be called a dot-com) and I decided I didn't want to work there anymore. I was just really disapointed with about every aspect of the company. Anyway, I just didn't go into work for about 5 weeks or so and eventually the boss called up and asked if I was quitting and I said "yeah".
However, that's not the whole story. Intel has always introduced new chips, tweaked them, put production in gear, lowered the cost, then inundated the public with high quality, high performance, low cost processors. I doubt the P4 will be much difference. With the process change (to 0.13 micron I believe) for the P4 comes, combined with the normal bug fixes, combined with better memory support (such as DDR SDRAM), combined with much higher clock speeds (we're talking over 2 GHz), combined with major production volumes and lower prices, the result will be a screaming fast processor that will be hard to beat. The P4's main advantage (and essentially it's entire raison d'etre) is that it has a whopping 20 stage pipeline. That means one thing, you can shove gigahertz down it's throat like you can't do to any other processor. Sure the P4 may not be as "tight" and efficient as some of the other processors out now (which is why it's foolish to be an early adopter), but what it lacks in effectiveness it will eventually make up for in raw cycles. Right now (with all of the P4's flaws, including those that can be fixed, mind you) the P4 runs at maybe 80% of what the idealized speed of a PIII or Athlon would be at the same clock speed, but they expect the P4 to hit 2GHz by Q3 '01 which means you need around a 1.6 GHz proc. of the old style to keep up with it. And this assumes that some of the weak points of the P4 (most importantly, the horrendous memory system forced on it by the Rambus contract) remain, which won't be the case.
I'm not saying the P4 will blow everything out of the water next year (it won't), but it will be fully mature and it will be leading the pack and will be very difficult to compete with.
I haven't gotten my hands personally on the DVD (though I did see the movie in the theaters), but I plan too very soon. However, I have talked to two of my friends that have it and they say it is excellent. One of them commented "that dvd is the new reference for how anime dvds should be made" and he's a rabid anime fan so I'm inclined to go along with that.
Why is testing and debugging not considered "work". It is perfectly valid and is in fact a major component of any programmers job (and it SHOULD be as well). Programs would be a lot better if there was more testing and debugging. In other industries this is called "refining" and "perfecting".
When a competing technology starts selling competitive devices (capacity, size, speed, reliability, etc.) at reasonable costs then I'll pay more attention.
On a side note, a little company called BiT Micro manufacturers high performance solid state storage devices in hard drive form factors, though at considerably higher cost.
Microsoft has been doing a pretty good job of tweaking their products just enough to get people (and businesses) flocking to upgrade even with very little new development. Windows 98 SE and Me upgrades from Win98 cost the same as the Win98 upgrade from Win95, but there is much less development in them. Same price, less work, higher profits. Nothing new. Although in many cases the "less work" usually comes with higher productivity (so the end product is the same quality), but it doesn't seem like this will be the case.
Anywho, the advantage of services instead of products for the consumer is that (theoretically) setup, installation, upgrades, support, etc. are easier. However, (as mentioned above) services come at a significant loss of "rights" for the consumer. Ownership is very powerful, and in many ways very desireable. When you rent something you loose control over it and it's no longer yours entirely. In the next few years there will be a major "shakedown" of what people choose to be services and what people choose to own.
Personally, I think the service model (for some uses) is very valid, but I also worry about the transfer of rights and powers from the public to the big corporations. I think that ultimately most people won't want to give up their ownership of basic software, and (perhaps more importantly) there will be a large base of free or purchasable software out there keeping the big guys' services in check to keep things from getting out of hand. I suppose we will just have to wait and see, but it's bound to be interesting no matter how it plays out, let's just hope it's not too interesting.
Well, certainly ".kids" has some difficulties, but I don't see what's wrong with .adult or .xxx. I don't think they need to be enforced strictly (running all the pornographic .coms to .adult for example), but I do think there are porn merchants out there who would move to the new TLD. For one it gives people a better idea of the content of a site, for another, it can help parents keep their kids from looking at smut online (not that it'll stop them, but it would help).
Although, the dual tiers tend to make it a bit more clunky.
It's interesting that not many people have thought of alternatives to the domain name / TLD system we have right now. Certainly it's not the optimal solution, and yet the powers that be and even the powers that don't be have given almost zero serious thought to even thinking up alternatives, let alone evaluationg and discussing them.
And, they failed to create a new adult oriented TLD (which would be ENORMOUSLY useful to both the porn mongers and the concerned parents of the world).
Hmmm, let me see how hard this is:
Any of these is better than most of the crap coughed up by ICANN.
ICANN is an excellent example of what happens when you combine huge committees, lawyers, big business, and good ol' fashioned bureaucracy into one big lovable ball of everything that tries to kill off inventiveness, efficiency, common sense, personal independance, and the human spirit.
It's been in the "real soon now" stage for a while. I'd like to see some progress (not everything, but something demonstrating they're closer). Perhaps if they really do have something at Comdex that'll be cool, I'll certainly stop by to see it.
Copyright law is there to protect businesses from each other. How much does it hurt if one person doesn't pay for something? Especially if you only consider the intelectual property costs (i.e. we're not talking about someone stealing CD's, we're talking about someone "stealing" music). The cost is actually not that great especially if the "thief" had no intention of actually buying the product. However, imagine for a moment what would happen if someone could re-brand a product and sell it for themselves, legally? Without copyright law someone could start printing copies of the latest book by (insert your favorite author here) and sell them for whatever price they chose without ever giving a dime back to the author.
Copyright law is intended to protect the interests of the "artist", but the most serious concern is organized "theft", not individual theft. If you look at the biggest concerns currently in terms of software piracy and copyright violation, it's not individuals duping copies for their friends, it's organized re-selling of copyrighted materials, things like counterfeit software (complete with fake registration cards), pre-release black market movies, etc. This is of the most concern because A) by laying down cash for these items we know that the buyers of these items are exactly the people who would potentially pay for the real product (assuming the price differential is not too great), so this represents money that should have gone to the "artists" but did not, and B) sometimes people do not know that these products are "phony" (this is especially the case with counterfeit software). Without copyright law, this kind of thing would be legal. Even more worrisome is that someone could manufacture packaging and product that looked identical to the "true" product and buyers would have no way to tell which purchase would result in money going back to the original developers / artists.
I think we do need copyright protection. The question is how it is used and how it is enforced. After all, both Bill Gates and Linus Torvalds protect their software under copyright law (Bill Gates to make sure people pay for his software, Linus to make sure people don't pretend his software is their's and charge too much money for it).
IOW, law enforcement officers couldn't say "we don't know if you're using pirated software or not, or even what software you're using, but we still want to have a look". Or, more clearly, they can't shake you down because you haven't proven you don't use pirated software, they have to find evidence (such as a witness) that you are violating license agreements or running pirated software.
Legally, in the US, the 4th amendment to the constitution grants everyone protection from unwarranted searches and seizures. They would need to be a law enforcement officer (which they are not) WITH a search warrant (which they won't have either) to be able to force a company to show them their software licenses. And that over-rides any click-wrap EULA crap on the software (no matter how evil and draconian it might be).
Theoretically, a law enforcement officer "in hot pursuit" would be able to perform search and seizure without a search warrant before hand. But I don't see that as a possibility with software licenses.
No, it's just another big-business and/or big-business crony trying to quietly slip you under their domination, they love trying to do that when you're not watching.
Even without the re-vote this will take probably at least another day for the recount and getting all the absentee ballots. With a re-vote this could take many days or possibly even weeks!
Even then there's always the off-chance that an elector or two will "buck the system" and throw the election to the other candidate (if, for example, Gore wins Oregon and Bush takes Florida, the result would be 271 (Bush) to 267 (Gore), it would take only 2 electors switching from Bush to Gore to force a tie and throw the whole thing to the house and senate, highly unlikely, but perhaps more likely if Gore wins the popular vote).
In comparison, the distributed.net project utilizes abut 13 teraflops of computing power and SETI@Home utilizes about 25 teraflops of computing power.
That should provide a bit of comparison between these mega-computers and distributed computing projects.