Re:I said it before, and I'll say it again...
on
Legitimacy Of ICANN?
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· Score: 1
Ok, I apologize for the approved TLDs mixup, but I still feel.museum,.coop,.pro and.aero are stupid. There are a handful of major aerospace companies, and nowhere near enough medium and small AS buisinesses to require their own TLD. Same with museums, although there are more of them, it's still not a super-common thing..coop and.pro are absurd as well. Coops are usually non-profit companies (I said usually, not always, don't go nuts), so the.com or.org is perfectly fine. And you say your company got.name. I'm sorry, but that's as useless as.tel.
As for the fee, I again apologize, but 50k is even worse.
And I didn't confuse registrar with registry. A registrar runs the registry for that TLD under the ICANN scheme (again, don't go nuts, I know there are current registrars that don't have their own registries, relax). The REAL point of new TLDs was to create more name real-estate. Instead, ICANN decided the point was to create new TLD registrar's, and the TLD they had control of was a secondary concern. Saying the intent was to gain experience is just as stupid. They could have gained experience without picking TLDs that have little to no use. I perfectly understand th ePoC phase of a project. And I further know that PoC's rarely make it to production status, which these new TLD's essentially are, since they can be registered.
In the future, correct my errors of fact, don't tell me what I was thinking.
ICANN started out as a GREAT idea. Finally, ONE place to help guidethe domain name world. A Jon Postel (R.I.P.) for DNS.
Then came the lousy job of self organization. Ok, I can tolerate this if they actualyl get things done.
Then came the voting fiasco. Sure you can register to vote for the At Large members! It doesn't mean you can actually VOTE, but you can register!
Then the process for proposing new TLDs. What? $10,000 just to PROPOSE a new TLD?
Then came the final decision on TLDs. EVERYONE expected.biz and.sex or.xxx. TLDs such as.web and.info, were all widely expected as well. What did we get? Crap like.tel and.news. Talk about useless. Last I checked, the.com TLD wasn't exactly overcrowded with news sites or sites devoted to telephones. And another slap in teh face was that the control over these new TLDs would remain solely in the laps of their proposers. Oh, did you think new TLDs was to expand potential web real estate? Silly you! No, of course not, it was to create more registrars! Oh, you thought they'd pick TLDs based on usefulness? Silly times two! No! They were picked on the basis of how capable the registrar is! Be thankful NSI didn't try to propose.NSIisyourfriend.
And then there was their ignorant stance on trademarks and the like. Ignorance bested only by WIPO.
At this point, I'm totally unenthused about ICANN now, and frankly, want it either revamped from stem to stern and repopulated with people who are neither brain dead nor marketroids, or just destroyed.
I think RMS is just a little out of touch today anyway. He takes too much credit for himself, makes sure to put his ego first. Yeah, he's made good contributions, but it's not 1970 anymore. He's too unyeilding, and that never leads to success. I agree 23 licenses are a bit much, but you DO have to balance a company wanting to make money with open source work, and the community. I'm surprised someone hasn't lambasted id/Carmack for releasing the code to their games, and yet not making it Free.
Sometimes Free is better than Open, and sometimes Open is better than Free.
Ok, the REAL FACTS are that this was a mistranslation. In the bad translation, he was to have said this:
"If we are unable to see a positive response at E3, this will have a disasterous impact on Nintendo...and we may have to consider freezing the Gamecube business altogether."
BUT in reality what he was saying is that they would hold the release until a more favorable opinion came out. Don't think freeze as in stop, think freeze as in freeze-thaw.
I have a DSL connection, with an IP that is dynamic, but only changes a few times a year. My Cisco DSL router has a fairly robust CBOS implementation, so NAT is built in, and works beautifully. One machine on the other side of the router serves web pages, another separate machine does some FTP hosting for when I'm in the field, and another machine I use for a testbed. All 3 are addressable from the outside world via the same ip/domain name, and when you use port numbers as well, you could have a theoretical 64435 machines behind it, all off one IP.
So is it just me, or does this whole scheme seem redundant? Pop a DNS server behind the NAT box, and you could map all those ports to names.
You may not have meant to post at +2, but it's worth it. GameCube WILL succeed, just like the N64 has. Yes, I said the N64 was a success. It sold loads of consoles, megaloads of games, and made Nintendo gigadollars. Success lies in selling units, not being cool with geeks like us.;)
That I knew this would happen from the start.While I'm asure to be modded down, it needs to be said. Linux is a great OS, but the OS does NOT make the product. Even in the case of the Pilot/Palm Pilot/Palm/et al, the OS was only half the deal. The hardware was innovative as well. With Indrema, it was a neat idea, but not a fiscally sensible. Dreamcast has WinCE but VERY few games make use of it.
An OS on for a game console is like a bike for a fish. Te point of consoles is a standard, low cost set of hardware for mass distribution. The mass distribution makes it attractive to sell to, and the standard hardware makes it attractive to PROGRAM on. Indrema, a console based on Linux just didn't make sense. I'm sorry.
While this particular application seems ok, I'm one of the many people who are not releived to hear hwo soybeans can be made into every food product known to man. I'm allergic of soybeans. Soy meat, soy chips, soy milk, all of these things are BAD to people like me. And the fact that soy, soy beans, soybean oil, et al, is made into almost every product out there doesn't help. The next packaged food you eat, read the list of ingredients, it probably contains soy, even if you don't think it will.
The idea that we can make all sorts of foods from soy in the future, so they'll be healthier, is not good news for everyone. When I'm in the Hilton Orbital waiting for my PanAm flight to MArs, I don't want to have a food allergy reaction to some soysteak that they billed as a New York Strip Steak.
Assuming the conpiracy theorists are wrong, and the aliens come down in peace and all that, an alien (or aliens) wishing to stay would be treated like a foreign dignitary. It obviously a special circumstance where rules would be set aside for the duration.
Now, as far as AI would go, first AI will be created, but the rights of AI won't come for a long time. Historically human societies are loathe to grant new rights to groups not currently recognized. An AI would be treated like a machine for long before they ever get rights. What will have to happen is people who currently DO have rights (living people) will have to take up the cause on behalf os the AI. Possibly the first test of the potential rights of an IA would come if the owner of the machine the AI "lives" in wants to shut it down, or sell the AI, or somehow threaten it's status quo, and another person starts seeking injunctions and the court to recognize the AI as a being. This si going to be an extremely interesting set of legal ground greaking when it finally takes place. Kind of makes you wonder who the AI version of Rosa PArks will be...
I remember two years ago, they published the protocol specs. Why? Why bother to publish your specs when you have no intent to let anyone else use them to connect to your network? What was the purpose? All that it accomplished was to create AIM workalikes, and then make AOL look stupid by blocking them. They could have saved all the money they put into blocking these clients had they just NOT PUBLISHED the specs to begin with. Can someone explain their actions to me?
CDDB used to be free. Then they decided to screw everyone who donated time and energy to make them what they are, and charge money to software developers to be able to use the CDDB service. So, in revolt, FreeDB was created. THAT'S why we have two, and why we should ALWAYS have a choice in anything, because eventually one will do something you don't like, and you can change.
They go too far. I recently recommended a similar idea in the Mozilla project newsgroups, as it relates to old machines. People were constantly complaining that it wasn't running like lightning on old Pentiums with 16 or 32MB of RAM. The fact that it ran at all should have been a bonus. 166MHz is pathetic today, as are old browsers, but slicing off everything below the 5/6 version level is too much. I use NS 4.7 because NS6 sucks, and Mozilla isn't done (yes I know they're the same base platform, but Moz 0.8 is MUCH further ahead than NS6), and I refuse to use IE. I only upgraded my IE install to 5.0 about two months ago because a program needed it. I refuse to go to 5.5 if at all possible.
But the idea of axing old browser support is good. On sites I design, I don't bother to support anything older than the IE4 and NS4 level. I think cutting out IE/NS 4 is too much.
"I don't think fees on computer equipment will do anything to stop the bootleggers," said Mr. Weidner, the group's lead composer, adding that his group would probably get little added revenue. "Despite that, I would be in favor of the fees, because at least they have the virtue of being simple."
Translation: "It's going to make me money, so, sure, do it. I know it's wrong and unfair, but hey, money is money."
He admits to it's uselessness, yet still backs it. He should be a government official.
"Anyone who makes money out of my content ought to contribute something to my well-being," Mr. Wallis said.
That sounds reasonable. But if I'm NOT making money off his content, I should be able to tell him to sod off.
"It is pretty clear when people buy blank CD-ROM's that they want to do some copying, and it is fairly easy to argue that a certain levy should be imposed."
I strongly disagree. Out of the past40 CDRs I bought, only ONE has been to make a copy of a music disc, and that was only because I found that the plastic around the inner hole was starting to chip, letting it slip while spinning up in my portable CD player. So even there I am not violating copyright. Why should I pay a copyright tax on those other 39 discs that contain computer DATA, not music or copyrighted works?
But when you come to the actual machine, that will be harder for people to understand."
For those of us blessed with working minds, and who value fredoms more than money, it's already hard to grasp.
It should require new media in any case, much like you can't format a 1.44MB floppy 2.88MB in a 2.88 floppy drive.
Actually, you can. Just like you can format 720k floppies to 1.44 (I used to all the time) and smaller capacity 5.25" to a higher capacity. You can even format 1.44MB disks to 1.7 MB in a normal 1.44MB floppy drive, remember Microsoft's DMF format?
It sounds great. But aside from being a commercial dead end like the LS-120 and the Sony HiFD, the quality of floppy disks today is abhorrent. It seems like they go bad after just a dozen or two uses. It's awful. I used to have floppies for YEARS, and now I have tobuy a new box every couple weeks. (Why? You try booting off of a CD on a system that doesn't support it. Floppies are still useful for non-CD-R equipped machines when the net work is down (especially if that's why YOU'RE there.))
Company loyalty ends when the company is no longer loyal to the employees. It sounds like your companyisn't loyal to you. A successful company shouldn'tneed a whole lot of funding, nor should it need to look for it for extended periods of time. That's a sign. No one wants to invest in a company where the management is stupid. The fact that you feel they are a joke, and thus won't change if you give your input, shows ME that they aren't loyal to you or your fellow employees. I don't see bailing from this firm as a bad thing. They obviously don't care about your or your employees.
Go ahead and leave, but make sure you tell them explicitly WHY you're leaving. At least then, you're STILL being loyal, and maybe they'll be able to make some changes. I doubt it, but then you're still being loyal without sacrificing yourself to a dead company.
After this episode of Slashback went up, I received a mail from the Houston BBB:
We're looking for people who have had problems with Delux Electronics, Dulux
Electronics, and/or E Commerce here in Houston, TX.
Regards,
Stacey Allen
Houston Better Business Bureau
Direct number 713.341.6165
Better Business Bureau
5225 Katy Freeway #500
Houston, TX
Fax 713.867.4947
Houston is the home of Dulux, according to their site. Looks like they're not so Dulux after all...
Slashdot Mirror
As for the fee, I again apologize, but 50k is even worse.
And I didn't confuse registrar with registry. A registrar runs the registry for that TLD under the ICANN scheme (again, don't go nuts, I know there are current registrars that don't have their own registries, relax). The REAL point of new TLDs was to create more name real-estate. Instead, ICANN decided the point was to create new TLD registrar's, and the TLD they had control of was a secondary concern. Saying the intent was to gain experience is just as stupid. They could have gained experience without picking TLDs that have little to no use. I perfectly understand th ePoC phase of a project. And I further know that PoC's rarely make it to production status, which these new TLD's essentially are, since they can be registered.
In the future, correct my errors of fact, don't tell me what I was thinking.
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Then came the lousy job of self organization. Ok, I can tolerate this if they actualyl get things done.
Then came the voting fiasco. Sure you can register to vote for the At Large members! It doesn't mean you can actually VOTE, but you can register!
Then the process for proposing new TLDs. What? $10,000 just to PROPOSE a new TLD?
Then came the final decision on TLDs. EVERYONE expected .biz and .sex or .xxx. TLDs such as .web and .info, were all widely expected as well. What did we get? Crap like .tel and .news. Talk about useless. Last I checked, the .com TLD wasn't exactly overcrowded with news sites or sites devoted to telephones. And another slap in teh face was that the control over these new TLDs would remain solely in the laps of their proposers. Oh, did you think new TLDs was to expand potential web real estate? Silly you! No, of course not, it was to create more registrars! Oh, you thought they'd pick TLDs based on usefulness? Silly times two! No! They were picked on the basis of how capable the registrar is! Be thankful NSI didn't try to propose .NSIisyourfriend.
And then there was their ignorant stance on trademarks and the like. Ignorance bested only by WIPO.
At this point, I'm totally unenthused about ICANN now, and frankly, want it either revamped from stem to stern and repopulated with people who are neither brain dead nor marketroids, or just destroyed.
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for those of you who don't have one:
username: slashdot_reader
password: slashdot
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I think RMS is just a little out of touch today anyway. He takes too much credit for himself, makes sure to put his ego first. Yeah, he's made good contributions, but it's not 1970 anymore. He's too unyeilding, and that never leads to success. I agree 23 licenses are a bit much, but you DO have to balance a company wanting to make money with open source work, and the community. I'm surprised someone hasn't lambasted id/Carmack for releasing the code to their games, and yet not making it Free. Sometimes Free is better than Open, and sometimes Open is better than Free.
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BUT in reality what he was saying is that they would hold the release until a more favorable opinion came out. Don't think freeze as in stop, think freeze as in freeze-thaw.
Here's the real scoop.
Pardon me if this seems harsh, but people need to CHECK THEIR FACTS before they submit a story.
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So is it just me, or does this whole scheme seem redundant? Pop a DNS server behind the NAT box, and you could map all those ports to names.
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You may not have meant to post at +2, but it's worth it. GameCube WILL succeed, just like the N64 has. Yes, I said the N64 was a success. It sold loads of consoles, megaloads of games, and made Nintendo gigadollars. Success lies in selling units, not being cool with geeks like us. ;)
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An OS on for a game console is like a bike for a fish. Te point of consoles is a standard, low cost set of hardware for mass distribution. The mass distribution makes it attractive to sell to, and the standard hardware makes it attractive to PROGRAM on. Indrema, a console based on Linux just didn't make sense. I'm sorry.
--
The idea that we can make all sorts of foods from soy in the future, so they'll be healthier, is not good news for everyone. When I'm in the Hilton Orbital waiting for my PanAm flight to MArs, I don't want to have a food allergy reaction to some soysteak that they billed as a New York Strip Steak.
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a real good chance of finding life. Hospitable zone, not all we need is water...
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Now, as far as AI would go, first AI will be created, but the rights of AI won't come for a long time. Historically human societies are loathe to grant new rights to groups not currently recognized. An AI would be treated like a machine for long before they ever get rights. What will have to happen is people who currently DO have rights (living people) will have to take up the cause on behalf os the AI. Possibly the first test of the potential rights of an IA would come if the owner of the machine the AI "lives" in wants to shut it down, or sell the AI, or somehow threaten it's status quo, and another person starts seeking injunctions and the court to recognize the AI as a being. This si going to be an extremely interesting set of legal ground greaking when it finally takes place. Kind of makes you wonder who the AI version of Rosa PArks will be...
--
I remember two years ago, they published the protocol specs. Why? Why bother to publish your specs when you have no intent to let anyone else use them to connect to your network? What was the purpose? All that it accomplished was to create AIM workalikes, and then make AOL look stupid by blocking them. They could have saved all the money they put into blocking these clients had they just NOT PUBLISHED the specs to begin with. Can someone explain their actions to me?
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Alternatives are GOOD.
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It's times like this I wish I kept those moderator points an extra day.
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But the idea of axing old browser support is good. On sites I design, I don't bother to support anything older than the IE4 and NS4 level. I think cutting out IE/NS 4 is too much.
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Translation: "It's going to make me money, so, sure, do it. I know it's wrong and unfair, but hey, money is money."
He admits to it's uselessness, yet still backs it. He should be a government official.
"Anyone who makes money out of my content ought to contribute something to my well-being," Mr. Wallis said.
That sounds reasonable. But if I'm NOT making money off his content, I should be able to tell him to sod off.
"It is pretty clear when people buy blank CD-ROM's that they want to do some copying, and it is fairly easy to argue that a certain levy should be imposed."
I strongly disagree. Out of the past40 CDRs I bought, only ONE has been to make a copy of a music disc, and that was only because I found that the plastic around the inner hole was starting to chip, letting it slip while spinning up in my portable CD player. So even there I am not violating copyright. Why should I pay a copyright tax on those other 39 discs that contain computer DATA, not music or copyrighted works?
But when you come to the actual machine, that will be harder for people to understand."
For those of us blessed with working minds, and who value fredoms more than money, it's already hard to grasp.
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Another one down, and another one down, another one bites the dust!
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Actually, you can. Just like you can format 720k floppies to 1.44 (I used to all the time) and smaller capacity 5.25" to a higher capacity. You can even format 1.44MB disks to 1.7 MB in a normal 1.44MB floppy drive, remember Microsoft's DMF format?
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It sounds great. But aside from being a commercial dead end like the LS-120 and the Sony HiFD, the quality of floppy disks today is abhorrent. It seems like they go bad after just a dozen or two uses. It's awful. I used to have floppies for YEARS, and now I have tobuy a new box every couple weeks. (Why? You try booting off of a CD on a system that doesn't support it. Floppies are still useful for non-CD-R equipped machines when the net work is down (especially if that's why YOU'RE there.))
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There's the proof. Sorry. I'd like to see it too.
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Both companies released press releases today stating that it was NOT TRUE.
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Go ahead and leave, but make sure you tell them explicitly WHY you're leaving. At least then, you're STILL being loyal, and maybe they'll be able to make some changes. I doubt it, but then you're still being loyal without sacrificing yourself to a dead company.
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No no no, the line is: Think of it as evolution in action. Get your Niven quotes right.
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ROT13 only helps unless you've used it for so long that you can read the cipher text as though it were clear text... :)
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After this episode of Slashback went up, I received a mail from the Houston BBB: We're looking for people who have had problems with Delux Electronics, Dulux Electronics, and/or E Commerce here in Houston, TX. Regards, Stacey Allen Houston Better Business Bureau Direct number 713.341.6165 Better Business Bureau 5225 Katy Freeway #500 Houston, TX Fax 713.867.4947 Houston is the home of Dulux, according to their site. Looks like they're not so Dulux after all...
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