I didn't miss it -- it is a key in the issue. It is only transparent if you look for it and care. There are many attempts to cloud the issue, but one key one, freedom of the press, has been allowed in Kenya for some time.
Everyone in Kenya knows that the president (and the rest of the government) is corrupt. They accept it and live with it. The papers rail about it, but not much happens.
The information is available (US and Kenya) if you look for it. Accessibility of information is what the digital divide is about.
You still have to desire to have that information. That is a sociological problem.
Or, going back to basics: You can not solve a sociological problem with technology. (Whose law is that?)
However, I believe there is a corallary: Availability of technology can be a great asset in bringing about sociological change.
Again, things aren't quite that easy. There are many elected dicators out there. I lived in Kenya for 16 years. The president, since 1976, has been routinely elected, and has drained millions, probably billions, into his personal wealth.
Why does he keep getting elected? Because his party has lots of control. There has been an official opposition since 1992, but they have not been united enough to topple the president. Add to that that voters in rural areas hear little except how good the ruling party is, and they vote for the ruling party.
What is needed to fix the issues?
1) Leaders with vision. They have to be able to look beyond their own bank account.
2) Education for the general population. Democracy has to be understood to work. If people are used to being told what to do, and they only hear it from one side, they will do that.
2) Open communication with the people. Let them have the information to adequately decide for themselves.
Hmmmmm. Now that I've stated this, I look south of the border (I'm Canadian) and think that Americans could really benefit from some of the same things. While information tends to be far more available, you have to be educated to look beyond the attacks shown as so-called informational TV ads.
Democracy in an information society can be as simple as who spends the most money to "inform" voters. It can also be an excercise in groupthink. The general population in the US seems to think that an attack on Iraq is a good idea. Dissent isn't readily accepted in general conversation. Why listen to the world?
So, the third world can learn a lot about democracy. I'm not sure that the US is the place to learn it from.
AIDS kills far more people in Africa than it does in the west, but the few 10s of thousands it does kill in the west are enough to warrent the expenditure of millions of $$ in search or a cure or drugs that lessen the effects of AIDS.
The 2.2 Million people who die of AIDS in sub-saharan africa seldom have access to those drugs, although it is quite possible that future advancements will have a trikle-down effect.
There is no such core group in the west to do the same thing for malaria that has been done for AIDS. Nobody except publicly funded benevolent organizations would be interested in investing.
The larger the energy producer (converter, actually) the more efficient the process can be.
Automobile engines are responsible for horrendous amounts of pollution. If all that power were produced in one place much better emission controls could be put on them. Of course if the power was generated by nuclear,hydro, wind, solar, etc, greenhouse gasses would not be an issue.
It only matters if you are bring back the products that said money was spent on.
It isn't about how much you spent, it is about how much stuff you are importing.
Michael
my 2yo son used one as a retractable seat
on
When Users Attack
·
· Score: 1
I was not pleased. It was glued several times, and even used without the tray in my cdromless server for a while.
Its final task was to burn a CD -- and it wasn't a burner. I was trying to upgrade my old server to RH7.1. Due to some problem that I have yet to understand, It was spinning when it started emitting sparks and a big puff of smoke. The black marks on the CD made it unusable...
A reason for this -- customer confidence. People have heard so much about expensive breakdowns that Hyundai has to put on the good warantie to let people know that "breakdowns will be on us".
I refused extended warantee on my Hondas. From experience I know that the chance of an expensive breakdown is far less than the cost of the warantee.
Good luck finding their mail servers
on
Meet the Spammers
·
· Score: 1
They want to use mine!
I've noticed recent attacks in my web logs looking for an old formmail.pl vulnerability. I didn't have formmail installed, but now I do have a file of that name -- I doubt what it prints ever gets noticed, but I could log the attackers if I really wanted to do something about it.
Trying to recall things from many years ago. We had a Model 1 -- standard was a casette drive, floppys were available but expensive. Base system cost about Can$1000.
Model II wasn't very popular. It had 8" drives built in, made for business.
Model III was popular. Two built in 5-1/4" drives, single case with integrated Green Monitor.
Model IV was the last of their Z80 machines, I believe. It was intended to run CP/M, but everyone ran TRSDOS on it just like the model III. It still didn't have a hard drive as standard, but you could get a 15 Meg hard drive for about the price of the computer!
You have some valid points. Vi to me is the classic example of why Linux isn't ready for the masses yet. Make Pico the standard editor on everything and you will have moved one step in the right direction.
I've got a 486 running RH 6.1 as a firewall/ipmasq/mailserver and it has been great for a couple years. I want to upgrade it, but am terrified that I will break something and be without a net connection for a few days and many frustrating hours.
I can't install SpamAssassin because it won't compile. I think it is due to outdated gcc, but I'm not a programmer to fully understand the resulting errors.
Will it recognize my two network cards (many frustrating hours the first time round?) What will happen to iptables/ipchains? I don't understand the update enough to fully understand the issues.
A big annoyance is installing without any X support. The first time round I think I installed one program that required X, not knowing fully what it was that I was selecting(another problem). When it installed dependancies, it installed X. There went my drive space!
Linux has come a long way, but there are assumptions all through the process that assume that you know what you are doing, and it is a bit intimidating to ask basic questions when the only related answers you can find in a search are three levels deeper than what you are asking.
I don't like overtime. I have a life! I normally work 40 hr/wk. I am on night shift #12, with one day (night) off in the middle. 144 hours in 13 days is life-sucking.
But I still have time to read slashdot.
We hams don't associate with Cookie Bashers :-)
on
Field Day 2002
·
· Score: 1
A true ham would only buy a CB rig to convert it to 10 metres!
Of course the CBers have taken the aura of the early hams -- pushing things to their limits, and often beyond.
I got my licence when I was in Electrical Engineering. The theory was no big deal, so I just had to get my code. They bumped me up to the most advanced level when they changed the regulations a few years later.
My father has always been involved in radio, but never got his licence. They live in Kenya, and I hoped that getting my licence would be a catalyst for him to get his, and we could communicate easier than mail!
I thought there was hope. Then the internet came along. I lost interest in radio as I wanted to communicate, not have a 5 second exchange of call sign and location before moving on to the next contact. The internet allowed me to do that.
Then my parents got email, and the desire for radio communication disappeared altogether. Hanging around with the old geezers around town doesn't appeal to me any more than exchanging callsigns and locations with people around the world.
I've still got my licence. I might use it for something some day, but for now the internet does everything that I ever hoped from from Ham radio, and far more.
Since I bought my main computer on an interest free loan from work, which specified that it must be bought in-province, I went this route.
I spec'd all the components I was familiar with, and let them choose things I wasn't concerned with.
Could I have built it myself? Yes, but it would have taken hours of my time, which I don't seem to have much of, and the idea of being able to plug in a working system appealed to me. Of course I screwed them up a little by asking them to leave 10 gigs on the drive for me to install my own partitions on! They fixed it for me before I got it. Any major problems? Just drop off the machine and let them worry about it.
Now if only they could fix all those windows crashes....
p.s. my home server cost Can$85 from a local place that specializes in offloading siteloads of used computers. A compaq 486 to does a fine job running console linux. The bloody BIOS on the hard drive is a pain though.
I recall in university that we were told that a phone line was limited by physics to 1200 baud. They had a couple horrendously expensive Hayes 1200 baud modems in the lab to play with.
My 1.5 Mb/s DSL line runs over those identical copper lines.
Yes, physics limits what we can do over copper, but perhaps our understanding of those limits isn't quite as finely tuned as it will be in a few years.
That said, I have no problem with fibre for new installations, but even that will be upgraded over the years. This is cutting edge. It will become commonplace before too long.
I think this is the guy who is being "recognized". I'm working night shifts, and was watching some of this unfold on Slashdot. I'm quite sure there was someone else who used a different method of getting the password -- a utility which found the first letter of the password, then looked through the backup for words that started with "d" and found it quickly. Why can I not find those posts when I'm looking for them!
On a side note, this file was created before it was given to the museum, so their password policies did not cover the issue.
It is good to see the power of the internet and hackers used for good. All too often hackers only get mentioned in the negative sense.
I find this wonderful. One thing you learn very quickly in a society like that is that you can not change the entire society and alleviate poverty.
You have three choices. You can: a) pretend the poverty doesn't exist, and get caloused, b) try to make changes from the top, usually to be met with distain and feel like you are hitting your head on a brick wall, c) help people one at a time, or a few at a time.
by providing these kids with a little insight into computers and the internet, they discovered that there was opportunity out there. It would be a big step for a street-kid in India to manage to get an education enough to get into the anything computer related, but without the knowledge that such things existed, there would be no motivation either.
I see the analogy similar to giving the kids a soccer ball. They have fun, they exercise, and they learn a little of what the game is like. They may have goals of becoming a professional player which they wouldn't have without the ball.
New York definitely has an interest in having films shot in the city. Lots of money spent filming in the city, with side benefit of getting more tourists.
I know my small city has wooed film companies with cash and many breaks in order to reap the benifits. In return, I'm sure they have some level of say as to what goes in the movie.
I would expect NYC has the same thing, perhaps as simply as "we'll provide security services for your filming for free, you show NYC accurately".
This is sounding suspiciously like power metering on a commercial/industrial level. The big difference is that power is produced, bandwith is installed. There is no true charge for usage other than the cumulative cost of bandwith for the common paths.
Typical power cost is:
a)A base rate dependant on the peak usage. This covers the cost of installing the wires to the establishement big enough for a "worst case" situation.
b)usage costs. This affects how much power you actually use, and may depend on the time of day.
Of course the challenging part of transferring this model to network traffic is that with power, sombody can't shove power up your feed and charge you for it!
But I'd be hesitant to do it with an Israel stamp in my passport.
See This Site for one example, he mentions several others he met doing the same thing.
A couple other notes: A "Hi-Lux" is basically a 4-runner. The Land Cruiser is the flagship and the real workhorse.
One option that I've heard of that works for entering internationally blacklisted countries is to have two passports. Most of the people I've know have had duel citizenship, but others have just managed to get a second passport "somehow". Usually that is only effective if you plan to reenter the "somewhat friendly" country after your visit to the "unfriendly" country. I knew this to be used from Zimbabwe to South Africa back when ZA was the censured country. The main passport only showed entry and exit to Zimbabwe. The "reserve" passport had lots of border crossings from Zimbabwe to South Africa.
A typical way of doing these calculations would be to calculate everything to the nth decimal, then do a separate calculation to figure out uncertainty. The exact calculation goes down to a minute. The uncertainty is about two days.
The uncertainty is due to atmospheric density differences at high altitudes and uncertainty in drag due to spacecraft orientation.
Then again, I'm a nuclear engineer. What do I know about Rocket Science?
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't miss it -- it is a key in the issue. It is only transparent if you look for it and care. There are many attempts to cloud the issue, but one key one, freedom of the press, has been allowed in Kenya for some time.
Everyone in Kenya knows that the president (and the rest of the government) is corrupt. They accept it and live with it. The papers rail about it, but not much happens.
The information is available (US and Kenya) if you look for it. Accessibility of information is what the digital divide is about.
You still have to desire to have that information. That is a sociological problem.
Or, going back to basics: You can not solve a sociological problem with technology. (Whose law is that?)
However, I believe there is a corallary: Availability of technology can be a great asset in bringing about sociological change.
Michael
Again, things aren't quite that easy. There are many elected dicators out there. I lived in Kenya for 16 years. The president, since 1976, has been routinely elected, and has drained millions, probably billions, into his personal wealth.
Why does he keep getting elected? Because his party has lots of control. There has been an official opposition since 1992, but they have not been united enough to topple the president. Add to that that voters in rural areas hear little except how good the ruling party is, and they vote for the ruling party.
What is needed to fix the issues?
1) Leaders with vision. They have to be able to look beyond their own bank account.
2) Education for the general population. Democracy has to be understood to work. If people are used to being told what to do, and they only hear it from one side, they will do that.
2) Open communication with the people. Let them have the information to adequately decide for themselves.
Hmmmmm. Now that I've stated this, I look south of the border (I'm Canadian) and think that Americans could really benefit from some of the same things. While information tends to be far more available, you have to be educated to look beyond the attacks shown as so-called informational TV ads.
Democracy in an information society can be as simple as who spends the most money to "inform" voters. It can also be an excercise in groupthink. The general population in the US seems to think that an attack on Iraq is a good idea. Dissent isn't readily accepted in general conversation. Why listen to the world?
So, the third world can learn a lot about democracy. I'm not sure that the US is the place to learn it from.
Michael
AIDS kills far more people in Africa than it does in the west, but the few 10s of thousands it does kill in the west are enough to warrent the expenditure of millions of $$ in search or a cure or drugs that lessen the effects of AIDS.
The 2.2 Million people who die of AIDS in sub-saharan africa seldom have access to those drugs, although it is quite possible that future advancements will have a trikle-down effect.
There is no such core group in the west to do the same thing for malaria that has been done for AIDS. Nobody except publicly funded benevolent organizations would be interested in investing.
Michael
The larger the energy producer (converter, actually) the more efficient the process can be.
Automobile engines are responsible for horrendous amounts of pollution. If all that power were produced in one place much better emission controls could be put on them. Of course if the power was generated by nuclear,hydro, wind, solar, etc, greenhouse gasses would not be an issue.
Michael
It only matters if you are bring back the products that said money was spent on.
It isn't about how much you spent, it is about how much stuff you are importing.
Michael
I was not pleased. It was glued several times, and even used without the tray in my cdromless server for a while.
Its final task was to burn a CD -- and it wasn't a burner. I was trying to upgrade my old server to RH7.1. Due to some problem that I have yet to understand, It was spinning when it started emitting sparks and a big puff of smoke. The black marks on the CD made it unusable...
Michael
A reason for this -- customer confidence. People have heard so much about expensive breakdowns that Hyundai has to put on the good warantie to let people know that "breakdowns will be on us".
I refused extended warantee on my Hondas. From experience I know that the chance of an expensive breakdown is far less than the cost of the warantee.
They want to use mine!
I've noticed recent attacks in my web logs looking for an old formmail.pl vulnerability. I didn't have formmail installed, but now I do have a file of that name -- I doubt what it prints ever gets noticed, but I could log the attackers if I really wanted to do something about it.
Something like a J-pole. Compressed vertical pattern, omnidirectional horizontal pattern.
There is logic to it, but it doesn't necessicarily apply to the moniker!
Trying to recall things from many years ago. We had a Model 1 -- standard was a casette drive, floppys were available but expensive. Base system cost about Can$1000.
Model II wasn't very popular. It had 8" drives built in, made for business.
Model III was popular. Two built in 5-1/4" drives, single case with integrated Green Monitor.
Model IV was the last of their Z80 machines, I believe. It was intended to run CP/M, but everyone ran TRSDOS on it just like the model III. It still didn't have a hard drive as standard, but you could get a 15 Meg hard drive for about the price of the computer!
You have some valid points. Vi to me is the classic example of why Linux isn't ready for the masses yet. Make Pico the standard editor on everything and you will have moved one step in the right direction.
/ipchains? I don't understand the update enough to fully understand the issues.
I've got a 486 running RH 6.1 as a firewall/ipmasq/mailserver and it has been great for a couple years. I want to upgrade it, but am terrified that I will break something and be without a net connection for a few days and many frustrating hours.
I can't install SpamAssassin because it won't compile. I think it is due to outdated gcc, but I'm not a programmer to fully understand the resulting errors.
Will it recognize my two network cards (many frustrating hours the first time round?) What will happen to iptables
A big annoyance is installing without any X support. The first time round I think I installed one program that required X, not knowing fully what it was that I was selecting(another problem). When it installed dependancies, it installed X. There went my drive space!
Linux has come a long way, but there are assumptions all through the process that assume that you know what you are doing, and it is a bit intimidating to ask basic questions when the only related answers you can find in a search are three levels deeper than what you are asking.
Michael
Classic example. People will pay $200 for a cat, but if you try to give them away, nobody wants one!
I don't like overtime. I have a life! I normally work 40 hr/wk. I am on night shift #12, with one day (night) off in the middle. 144 hours in 13 days is life-sucking.
But I still have time to read slashdot.
A true ham would only buy a CB rig to convert it to 10 metres!
Of course the CBers have taken the aura of the early hams -- pushing things to their limits, and often beyond.
I got my licence when I was in Electrical Engineering. The theory was no big deal, so I just had to get my code. They bumped me up to the most advanced level when they changed the regulations a few years later.
My father has always been involved in radio, but never got his licence. They live in Kenya, and I hoped that getting my licence would be a catalyst for him to get his, and we could communicate easier than mail!
I thought there was hope. Then the internet came along. I lost interest in radio as I wanted to communicate, not have a 5 second exchange of call sign and location before moving on to the next contact. The internet allowed me to do that.
Then my parents got email, and the desire for radio communication disappeared altogether. Hanging around with the old geezers around town doesn't appeal to me any more than exchanging callsigns and locations with people around the world.
I've still got my licence. I might use it for something some day, but for now the internet does everything that I ever hoped from from Ham radio, and far more.
Michael (VE9MKS)
Since I bought my main computer on an interest free loan from work, which specified that it must be bought in-province, I went this route.
I spec'd all the components I was familiar with, and let them choose things I wasn't concerned with.
Could I have built it myself? Yes, but it would have taken hours of my time, which I don't seem to have much of, and the idea of being able to plug in a working system appealed to me. Of course I screwed them up a little by asking them to leave 10 gigs on the drive for me to install my own partitions on! They fixed it for me before I got it. Any major problems? Just drop off the machine and let them worry about it.
Now if only they could fix all those windows crashes....
p.s. my home server cost Can$85 from a local place that specializes in offloading siteloads of used computers. A compaq 486 to does a fine job running console linux. The bloody BIOS on the hard drive is a pain though.
On CBC the other night (paraphrased): One Legacy of Watergate has been an easy way to name political scandals.
I recall in university that we were told that a phone line was limited by physics to 1200 baud. They had a couple horrendously expensive Hayes 1200 baud modems in the lab to play with.
My 1.5 Mb/s DSL line runs over those identical copper lines.
Yes, physics limits what we can do over copper, but perhaps our understanding of those limits isn't quite as finely tuned as it will be in a few years.
That said, I have no problem with fibre for new installations, but even that will be upgraded over the years. This is cutting edge. It will become commonplace before too long.
I think this is the guy who is being "recognized". I'm working night shifts, and was watching some of this unfold on Slashdot. I'm quite sure there was someone else who used a different method of getting the password -- a utility which found the first letter of the password, then looked through the backup for words that started with "d" and found it quickly. Why can I not find those posts when I'm looking for them!
On a side note, this file was created before it was given to the museum, so their password policies did not cover the issue.
It is good to see the power of the internet and hackers used for good. All too often hackers only get mentioned in the negative sense.
Michael
What about us? Some of us have to drive west for two or three days to reach the "east" as in Toronto.
Of course we can also make the claim to be due east of Bangor Maine.
I find this wonderful. One thing you learn very quickly in a society like that is that you can not change the entire society and alleviate poverty.
You have three choices. You can:
a) pretend the poverty doesn't exist, and get caloused,
b) try to make changes from the top, usually to be met with distain and feel like you are hitting your head on a brick wall,
c) help people one at a time, or a few at a time.
by providing these kids with a little insight into computers and the internet, they discovered that there was opportunity out there. It would be a big step for a street-kid in India to manage to get an education enough to get into the anything computer related, but without the knowledge that such things existed, there would be no motivation either.
I see the analogy similar to giving the kids a soccer ball. They have fun, they exercise, and they learn a little of what the game is like. They may have goals of becoming a professional player which they wouldn't have without the ball.
Michael
I know my small city has wooed film companies with cash and many breaks in order to reap the benifits. In return, I'm sure they have some level of say as to what goes in the movie.
I would expect NYC has the same thing, perhaps as simply as "we'll provide security services for your filming for free, you show NYC accurately".
Typical power cost is:
a)A base rate dependant on the peak usage. This covers the cost of installing the wires to the establishement big enough for a "worst case" situation.
b)usage costs. This affects how much power you actually use, and may depend on the time of day.
Of course the challenging part of transferring this model to network traffic is that with power, sombody can't shove power up your feed and charge you for it!
See This Site for one example, he mentions several others he met doing the same thing.
A couple other notes: A "Hi-Lux" is basically a 4-runner. The Land Cruiser is the flagship and the real workhorse.
One option that I've heard of that works for entering internationally blacklisted countries is to have two passports. Most of the people I've know have had duel citizenship, but others have just managed to get a second passport "somehow". Usually that is only effective if you plan to reenter the "somewhat friendly" country after your visit to the "unfriendly" country. I knew this to be used from Zimbabwe to South Africa back when ZA was the censured country. The main passport only showed entry and exit to Zimbabwe. The "reserve" passport had lots of border crossings from Zimbabwe to South Africa.
A typical way of doing these calculations would be to calculate everything to the nth decimal, then do a separate calculation to figure out uncertainty. The exact calculation goes down to a minute. The uncertainty is about two days.
The uncertainty is due to atmospheric density differences at high altitudes and uncertainty in drag due to spacecraft orientation.
Then again, I'm a nuclear engineer. What do I know about Rocket Science?