It's rather sad to see people dismissing this so quickly.
That's the weakness of the Microsoft brand. Whatever they do is usually designed poorly. Even when the design is Ok, the implementation is bad. Even if properly implemented, the thing will be crippled by several of -- at least -- the following:
having to support legacy concepts (such as drive letters);
licensing concerns (like XP workstation allowing only one user at a time);
wide-spread security concerns resulting in the feature being turned off by default on most installations;
wide-spread fears of accidental and intentional incompatability;
being only available as part of an expensive (and extensive!) upgrade;
etc.
Their bad (as in both -- nasty and foolish) ways of doing things are catching up with them all the time.
Neither of them ever saw anything else, and as far as I could see, learning KMail and Konqueror was not any more difficult for them, than Outlook and IE would've been.
The thing "just works" and I can get in over the Internet to add or correct something.
One problem, however, is editing ppp.conf:-( The old lady can't even find the semicolon on the keyboard most of the time, so, now that her ISP changed the dial-up phone numbers, she needs to wait for one of the family members to update the file for her -- one thing, that can not be done remotely, of course...
Although MAPS did, indeed, only blacklist the actual spammers at the beginning, they changed not because they 'got carried away' (Paul Graham's words), but because the spammers adapted.
Here is the link, that responsible editors would've offered in a story like this...
Considering how many spams come at us from zombie PC's owned by clueless users, there could be a lot of innocent bystanders that get stepped on when someone unleashes a DDOS on a spammer.
Why would you call them "innocent"? Imagine a driver's defense after an accident: "Oh, all this driving things are just too technical." Innocent? I don't think so...
I'm not going into legalities here, but morally you are responsible for what your things (and kids and pets) do to others (legal responsibility exists too, BTW). And -- just as with other things -- some of the responsibility may be forwarded onto the thing's manufacturer.
But there is nothing wrong in disabling the clueless' PC to stop it from attacking you and others. If you disagree, you should advocate the removal of the highway railguards, which stop errant cars from doing more damage to others (and, sometimes, themselves).
They wouldn't be where they are today were it not for the public domain.
They did not break the law. But if they don't sue your poster day care centers now, they'll lose the trademarks completely -- opening up the doors for cheap Mickey mice on everything.
You should do some research on the situation in Venezuela before accusing someone of being an enemy of freedom.
The farther a person is to the left, the more they seem to like Chavez and the more they seem to hate Bush.
This is despite Chavez actually having done some of the things, that Bush is being accused of secretly wanting to do -- most infamously changing the Constitution of his country to increase his office's power. Chavez has done it twice already...
Prof. Lessig has done a disservice to his cause by attending the gathering, which featured this dictator as a key speaker.
(Use the links above to compare with another nation.) On average Brasilieros (sp?) live 7-9 years less than Americans. They are also over 13 times poorer... Read the BBC's overview for more reasons. As many places in the world, Brasil may be fun to visit, but you -- most probably -- do not really want to move there.
arodland's point was, that FCC did in fact pursue the interests of the public.
However "interesting" javaxman's post was moderated, it was thinly veiled flamebait trying to pitch the HAM enthusiasts (automatically good) and the (heavens!!) emergency workers against "corporations" (automatically bad).
Again, the idea may or may not be "stupid", but it was perfectly apropriate for the FCC to pursue it to the fullest -- contrary to javaxman's opinion...
The state also endows corporate entities with their very existence or "personhood".
Err, no. The state merely organizes them -- one's right to engage in business is considered inalienable -- stems right from right to the "pursuit of happiness". Sounds familiar?
But it does not matter -- this is not, what I was talking about. See below.
A US state can threaten and carry-out termination of a commercial corporation just as effectively as the UK could threaten a public corporation like the BBC.
BBC is government-controlled because government makes paypments compulsory -- not because it can be threatened/terminated by the government (which, BTW, is rather difficult in US due to the, gasp, 1st Ammendment).
If you want to know why a news monoculture doesn't work just look at the news media's performance in the US, or in the former Soviet Union for that matter.
News media in US is incomparable with that of the ex-USSR. And not because Soviet's was monocultural, but because it was government-controlled (to a much higher degree, than BBC is, of course).
If you want to see, how monoculture can work, just look at the wide distribution of vertebraeted. Yahoo! is more different from CNN, than pinguin is from a mole...
You can say a fundamental difference exists all you want, that doesn't make the charters of these commercial corporations go away.
Oh, I see. These companies are "the same" in your mind, because they are all commercial entities. A tuna and a crane must be "the same" as far as you are concerned, because both are vertebrated. If that is, what you reject as "monoculture", you need to try much harder, explaining, why it is wrong.
The existence of a strong UK public broadcaster in your mind collapses their entire viewing experience to that single provider.
My point is, UK viewer are obligated to pay for this broadcaster, whether they watch it or not. And yes, it is government run, because the law of the land mandates the payments.
BBC has a charter that is up for renewal every 10 years and is nowhere near a guarantee.
10 years of guaranteed funding is much better than commercial news sources have. I wonder, what would bring it "nearer a guarantee" in your opinion...
like massive voter-roll fraud in PBS's own back yard
There was no "massive voter-roll fraud". But let's not change the subject.
I do not accept an entire news culture essentially having only one organizing principle.
I find the organizing principles of Yahoo! and, say, CNN to be different. Different yet are the "blogs". Closer to BBC is Bloomberg and printed news-papers and magazines, which charge subscribers/buyers. It is possible to have the diversity you wish for without the compulsory payments by all of the potential users.
You have no problems with regular payments for TV-set use even by those, who buy it for watching DVDs and/or other non-BBC content. Yet, I'm quite sure, you are against the "piracy-compensating" surcharges proposed for CD-R media, MP3-players and other things, which can potentially be used for piracy.
Is it because the music and movie industries are not government entities? Would you really like them to be? Why not?
British voters are, evidently, different from Americans. We here prefer to change the pictures shown on our screens with our remotes. The "gratification" is instant compared to waiting for the government to decide (once in a decade), what another government organization ought to show.
[...] instead of insisting on software perfection.
Firefox is doomed if its "lead developer" thinks, users can be satisfied without software perfection.
Thanks to this perfection, KDE builds and runs, while Mozilla/Firefox can fall over when you pick wrong compiler flags -- especially on "exotic" platforms like FreeBSD/amd64.
The amount of compiler warnings in Mozilla code is astounding. Quite clearly it was written by result-oriented professional engineers, rather than the process-enjoying hobbyists.
The BBC is funded by license-payers not from taxes.
What is the practical difference?
Because of this they are as close to a public-interest or populist entity as I can imagine.
Their income is guaranteed -- how is that an insentive for anything?
keep the news culture from sinking into a delusional state benefitting wealthy shareholders.
The above is priceless. Where did you find it?
The UK's number of celebrity magazines is the highest in the world... At the same time, the perfectly commercialEconomist magazine -- also from UK -- is, probably, the world's best periodic publication today.
Contrast with PBS in the United States, which is paid for (and therefore largely controlled by) a combination of government spending, commercial sponsors, and well-off individuals.
PBS' funding is not that different in principle -- it is just much smaller. So they have no foreign reporters of their own, and so on. It is also a "government job", and thus does not attract the brightest talent.
Its (and BBC's) very existence is due to a disagreable notion, that a government needs its own mass media outlet. The notion finds a lot less support in USA, hence PBS' lesser size and influence.
their confidence in the BBC's push into the digital world is rather high.
I'm perfectly fine in this world with Yahoo! and others like it. They had RSS feeds and customizable news-pages for many years already. Occasionally I even click on a BBC's link on my page.
It was, of course, for the wealthy shareholders' benefit, so you can not accept it. But I can, thank you.
I'm saying the current system is less worse than what's being proposed
This is where we began, when I wondered aloud, how exactly is RealID worsening the situation. And you replied, that it makes it easier for a government abuser to go on abusing. The fact, that it also makes it easier for law-abiding officers and officials to do their jobs, is not enough of a benefit for you.
I think, I disagree. Your own example (with a Minnesota cop) shows, how the current ("less worse") system was abuse-conductive. There is nothing in the new one, that would make that cop's stalking easier.
I have no problem with improvement, as long as it comes with [...]
I'd welcome these things too -- with either the current or the newly proposed system...
Frankly, I do not have any clue what you mean with your P2P analogy.
You are against RealID because it can be abused. But you have no problem with P2P file-sharing (and other Slashdot's favorite causes) even though they can be (and in fact are) abused every day -- because you see plenty of legitimate (and cool!) uses for them.
Where are the convictions? "No charges have been brought," -- says the FA. New York's Spitzer's record is not all that much better -- most of his work results in settlements without admission of guilt.
Is an unrealized danger of OSS that others may take your project in a direction you didn't intend?
How exactly did KHTML suffer from whatever happened? It may not have benefitted as much as expected -- lack (or shortage) of positive, but where is the negative?
I said it's harder, as you do. And harder, in this case, is fine by me. It means it takes a bit of effort and thought to do by {insert duly authorized agent of government}, and by extension makes it easier to show (criminal?) intent when you do find out that someone committed an abuse
So you are advocating keeping the current inefficiencies, because they make life harder for the occasional criminals (among the government officials). The hurdles in the perfectly legitimate every-day "fair use" seem fair to you...
I don't think, you would agree with, say, banning P2P file-sharing on similar premises...
It is not a paranoia, but all the things you do not want are already possible -- just a little harder technically (rather than legally). And nothing, that is not currently possible, is made possible by this new provision.
Don't forget, though, that stable civil societies do not begin to exhibit totalitarian behavior overnight--it's the boiling frog.
Here is the main question -- is 100% successfull law enforcement a desired ideal, or a grim distopia, where dissent is impossible?
Use the openlog(3) and syslog(3). Document the facility you are going to use (like LOG_LOCAL0) and allow it to be changed through config-file or command-line option.
Once there, use different priorities for messages of different importance (from LOG_DEBUG to LOG_EMERG) -- the verbosity can be set once during the config-processing through the openlog(3).
There are tools to process such logs, rotate them, and to send messages to a central location. You don't need to worry about timestamping either. On better OSes (with modern syslog-daemons) run-time processing of certain messages (identified by the above-mentioned facility) is possible -- a sysadmin will be able to set things to her own liking.
If you have to support Windows -- it has logging too, and there are API-compatible syslog.h implementations.
Without it, OOo would've started shipping its own version of Java -- just as they ship just about everything else -- dmake, expat, BerkeleyDB, you name it...
Slashdot Mirror
Their bad (as in both -- nasty and foolish) ways of doing things are catching up with them all the time.
The thing "just works" and I can get in over the Internet to add or correct something.
One problem, however, is editing ppp.conf :-( The old lady can't even find the semicolon on the keyboard most of the time, so, now that her ISP changed the dial-up phone numbers, she needs to wait for one of the family members to update the file for her -- one thing, that can not be done remotely, of course...
Here is the link, that responsible editors would've offered in a story like this...
One uses our DSL connection (they live very close) and the other is still on dial-up.
I'm not going into legalities here, but morally you are responsible for what your things (and kids and pets) do to others (legal responsibility exists too, BTW). And -- just as with other things -- some of the responsibility may be forwarded onto the thing's manufacturer.
But there is nothing wrong in disabling the clueless' PC to stop it from attacking you and others. If you disagree, you should advocate the removal of the highway railguards, which stop errant cars from doing more damage to others (and, sometimes, themselves).
The farther a person is to the left, the more they seem to like Chavez and the more they seem to hate Bush.
This is despite Chavez actually having done some of the things, that Bush is being accused of secretly wanting to do -- most infamously changing the Constitution of his country to increase his office's power. Chavez has done it twice already...
Prof. Lessig has done a disservice to his cause by attending the gathering, which featured this dictator as a key speaker.
That is if you are not disgusted by anything called "Socialism" as I am in the first place...
Just compare USA with Brasil.
(Use the links above to compare with another nation.) On average Brasilieros (sp?) live 7-9 years less than Americans. They are also over 13 times poorer... Read the BBC's overview for more reasons. As many places in the world, Brasil may be fun to visit, but you -- most probably -- do not really want to move there.
Only two replies, but the site is dead already. I wonder, what his analogy would be to that...
Again, the idea may or may not be "stupid", but it was perfectly apropriate for the FCC to pursue it to the fullest -- contrary to javaxman's opinion...
But it does not matter -- this is not, what I was talking about. See below.
BBC is government-controlled because government makes paypments compulsory -- not because it can be threatened/terminated by the government (which, BTW, is rather difficult in US due to the, gasp, 1st Ammendment). News media in US is incomparable with that of the ex-USSR. And not because Soviet's was monocultural, but because it was government-controlled (to a much higher degree, than BBC is, of course).If you want to see, how monoculture can work, just look at the wide distribution of vertebraeted. Yahoo! is more different from CNN, than pinguin is from a mole...
You have no problems with regular payments for TV-set use even by those, who buy it for watching DVDs and/or other non-BBC content. Yet, I'm quite sure, you are against the "piracy-compensating" surcharges proposed for CD-R media, MP3-players and other things, which can potentially be used for piracy.
Is it because the music and movie industries are not government entities? Would you really like them to be? Why not?
British voters are, evidently, different from Americans. We here prefer to change the pictures shown on our screens with our remotes. The "gratification" is instant compared to waiting for the government to decide (once in a decade), what another government organization ought to show.
Compiler-warnings are the first layer of testing. Developers who ignore them deliver shoddy software.
Firefox is a fine example -- try building it for amd64 with ``-march=opteron''...
Thanks to this perfection, KDE builds and runs, while Mozilla/Firefox can fall over when you pick wrong compiler flags -- especially on "exotic" platforms like FreeBSD/amd64.
The amount of compiler warnings in Mozilla code is astounding. Quite clearly it was written by result-oriented professional engineers, rather than the process-enjoying hobbyists.
The UK's number of celebrity magazines is the highest in the world... At the same time, the perfectly commercial Economist magazine -- also from UK -- is, probably, the world's best periodic publication today.
PBS' funding is not that different in principle -- it is just much smaller. So they have no foreign reporters of their own, and so on. It is also a "government job", and thus does not attract the brightest talent.Its (and BBC's) very existence is due to a disagreable notion, that a government needs its own mass media outlet. The notion finds a lot less support in USA, hence PBS' lesser size and influence.
I'm perfectly fine in this world with Yahoo! and others like it. They had RSS feeds and customizable news-pages for many years already. Occasionally I even click on a BBC's link on my page.It was, of course, for the wealthy shareholders' benefit, so you can not accept it. But I can, thank you.
I think, I disagree. Your own example (with a Minnesota cop) shows, how the current ("less worse") system was abuse-conductive. There is nothing in the new one, that would make that cop's stalking easier.
I'd welcome these things too -- with either the current or the newly proposed system... You are against RealID because it can be abused. But you have no problem with P2P file-sharing (and other Slashdot's favorite causes) even though they can be (and in fact are) abused every day -- because you see plenty of legitimate (and cool!) uses for them.I don't think, you would agree with, say, banning P2P file-sharing on similar premises...
Do not invent your own.
Use the openlog(3) and syslog(3). Document the facility you are going to use (like LOG_LOCAL0) and allow it to be changed through config-file or command-line option.
Once there, use different priorities for messages of different importance (from LOG_DEBUG to LOG_EMERG) -- the verbosity can be set once during the config-processing through the openlog(3).
There are tools to process such logs, rotate them, and to send messages to a central location. You don't need to worry about timestamping either. On better OSes (with modern syslog-daemons) run-time processing of certain messages (identified by the above-mentioned facility) is possible -- a sysadmin will be able to set things to her own liking.
If you have to support Windows -- it has logging too, and there are API-compatible syslog.h implementations.
Without it, OOo would've started shipping its own version of Java -- just as they ship just about everything else -- dmake, expat, BerkeleyDB, you name it...