NASA's been looking at inflatable technology for quite some time and I'm sure that this is just another application of new materials and ideas (the article must be Slashdotted).
If you think about it, inflation makes complete sense. Given the cargo limitations of today's launch vehicles, inflatable cargo takes up a lot less space. I saw NASA's 'architect', Constance Adams, speak at my school once and they've been designing an inflatable habitat for the space station for quite some time now. The great thing about an inflatable habitat is that it takes very little air in the vacuum of space for it to be structurally stable enough for construction habitation. Furthermore, inhabitable systems use an endoskeletal design for their interiors, rather than the exoskeletal designs of current tin cans, leading to a more flexible design. In addition, materials used for the skin are much lighter than their metallic counterparts, saving launch costs.
If you think about it, in space, most things are in tension because of the outward pressure of the required internal atmosphere. Why not use this force to your benefit, right?
Why are they making this out to be a piracy issue when it's clear that it's not?
It's this type of weighted question that really irks me about Slashdot readers. It's analogous to Jim Gray's line of questioning towards Pete Rose at the annoucement of the Century Team (where he basically tried to pressure Rose into admitting he was guilty or apologizing for something Rose doesn't think he's guilty of).
The MPAA is making this out to be a piracy issue because to them it is a piracy issue. It doesn't matter to them that you or any other Slashdot reader doesn't think it's a piracy issue. To them it is a piracy issue, because whether or not the program was intended to do so, the fact remains that it does make piracy easier. There's no getting around that. Now it's up to the courts to decide whether it really is a piracy issue and whether or not the MPAA has a valid complaint. You can argue that all you want.
I'm sorry, I don't want to answer questions that are going to someone else, but honestly, this is completely weighted. You're asking a question that automatically prejudges an answer and also requires that the person take a side they may or may not agree with. Jon may have a different answer than me, but I'm still of the opinion that blatant "leading" such as this should be pointed out immediately, especially since they get pushed up so high by moderators who share many of the same biases.
And that's before we get to the fact that your asking Jon to shed light on motives that he has had no part in shaping.
This is veering off-topic. Please don't mark down.
What Slashdot readers should be given the ability to do is read through article submissions. Slashdot fancies itself as a censorship-free society, but truly, whenever you have people selecting which information the group can read, you are making decisions that censor. I don't have an Ars box and I don't read Ars regularly, so I would never have known about this article, yet it's the most informative, well-written piece I've seen linked in a long time. Thank God that someone reposted it. When that Slashdot squirrel denied the post, he basically made a decision that said, "This isn't worthy of the general populace," which, to me, is an opinion-based decision that censored.
I'm sure Taco or Hemos could very quickly implement the functionality to read through the posts. They could even put it in a Slashbox. Basically, if the article has a URL, pull it out and check it (perl has this functionality via modules; it's very easy). If there's not already an article with that URL in the system, add it to a database, if that URL isn't already in the database. If the article is posted, mark it as posted. If it is rejected, mark it as rejected and make it available for viewing. If it is offensive for some reason (one of the reasons that the FAQ gives for not having such a list), just delete it altogether. The squirrels go through each and every article anyway, so this management must take place anyway. All they have to do is mark it. The database can store simply the subject and the URL (if they don't have a URL, tough luck), and then present a list of link titles that take people to various articles. Don't give people commenting rights on these posts. Only store rejects for, say, two weeks, to keep the database file small. I'm sure some of this functionality is already in (they have to store information for the squirrels in some manner), so implementing this on top shouldn't be too hard.
Maybe I should mail this to Rob. Eh, maybe not. He's a busy man.
Miguel was talking about implementing transparency features in GNOME like the menubars, which yes, could be done, but Aqua is far more than simply transparency. If you read the article, it goes into how and why Apple can do all that it's doing with the GUI ('third generation' displays), and why X can't do that ('second generation' display with extremely primitive primitives). As great as Miguel and GNOME are, it would take a completely new display layer (read: new windowing system) to implement these changes. GNOME still has to work with the existing X, so Miguel really can't implement Aqua on X, he can just make GNOME look like Aqua.
Also, for those watching the ABC commercials, Christopher Reeve is going to be on Good Morning America tomorrow to talk about why he did the commercial. Obviously, the people doing the commercial anticipated that some people might be somehow offended by the ad. I personally think it's great the we have someone like Christopher Reeve who uses his name recognition to solicit funds for research which will help many more people than him.
Everyone's talking about the monkey, and I agree, the monkey was hilarious, but I definitely think the one with the guy going to the hospital. They took a common American phrase that's being uttered more and more these days, "He's got money coming out the wazoo!" and made a brilliant commercial about it.
"Does he have health insurance?" "What are you talking about? He's got money coming out the wazoo!"
The monkey was just another one of the cheap commercials with a more creative tagline. The ass commercial actually made a very strong humorous play on the amount of money floating around in our economy these days.
And speaking of asses, 7-Up goes from 'Make 7-Up Yours', which is pretty funny, to 'Show Me Your Cans', which is even funnier. They have some good spots now as well.
*clink* *clink*
NOTE: This post may not be allowed through by certain web filters. If you are using such a web filter, it is your loss.
Well then here is a link for you my apathetic friend. You complain about an edition costing more. If you'd stand for something like the rest of us, it may just bring the prices down.
Real mature. Amazon isn't keeping prices high for me (in fact, Amazon's continually got lower prices than my regular bricks-n-mortars locations) and DeCSS has only turned out to be a pissing contests between people who think they have the right to everything and people who think those same people have the right to nothing. I can choose better battles than Amazon's patenting rights (which isn't doing jack for prices one way or the other) and DeCSS, both of which are destructive battles, not constructive battles. Simply because I do not share your views about OSS legal views is not a reason to lessen my opinion about Star Wars marketing habits.
The major point is, Lucas is releasing a common video format in a much more expensive 'Collector's Edition'. I'd rather he release a special edition with a DVD in it instead or a regular Widescreen edition, like he did with the Special Edition videos. It has nothing to do with boycotting Amazon or my views on DeCSS.
And as far as prices go, Amazon is $4 cheaper than Reel.com for the same Collector's Edition. I could care less about their patent. Fifteen percent off is a good bargain, and the fact that they patented their e-commerce model is a trivial reason to not take advantage of it. I'm sure millions of shoppers also agree.
You pick your battles. I'll pick mine. But my views about Star Wars have nothing to do with any of them.
Yes, but Lucas is like a father to us. Look at how well he has entertained us, and how long he's been doing it for. Why not reward him for his work? It's only $15. Go to the theatre and you're likely to spend more than that, and you only get to watch it once there.
Lucas isn't like a father to me. He's continually prevented me from watching Star Wars the way that I want to see it (widescreen, remastered, on DVD, etc.), and he's done the same with his other good movies. His bombs are crap. If I want my widescreen edition, I don't pay just $15 either. I pay $33, which is much more than I want to give the man for one of his movies, I don't care how much I like it or its predecessors.
Once you go widescreen, you never go back. Therefore, I went to Reel.com to see what the widescreen version cost (I don't get into all the boycotting BS and DeCSS bunk, so I don't really care; it was just the only link) and whoa, it's $15 more than the regular VHS version. Why the dramatic difference? It looks like Lucas is screwing us over. To get the widescreen version, you have to get the Collector's Edition, which comes with a collector's book, 35mm filmstrip (?), and a documentary. What if you don't want all that garbage? Well, you're screwed then.
Does Lucas know how to make money or what? Seriously, this guy is starting to make Bill Gates look like a kid with a cheap lemonade stand.
If you look at it, the foundation for open-source software has been laid out over the years. Functionality was always second place to aesthetics and usability. Now, OSS is entering a more mature age where those other concerns begin to exert themselves. KDE isn't a unique interface, but GNOME is pretty unique. If you take the ideas of themes, then you have an open-source GUI model. Some themes are extremely excellent in terms of their usability (some are downright awful). Granted, the code underlying all of that isn't beautiful, but end-users only see what's on top anyway. Programs like wmakerconf and sawmill's control panel allow people to make these changes extremely quickly, even directly from the gzipped tar file. You can't tell me that that's not extremely easy.
What this article says is that the OSS model has a hard time producing good GUIs, but that's not the case at all. We haven't needed good GUIs because our programs have never been for the end-user. Now that OSS is going mainstream, the end-user is being involved, and I think the OSS model is successfully tackling this challenge as well.
For the IE users out there, if you do a search on your computer for 'doubleclick', it will find all the cookie files associated with that domain (IE stores each cookie in a separate file). Just edit the files to say 'OPT_OUT' or delete them altogether.
I say put in 'OPT_OUT', since they can always reestablish the cookies. At least this way, if your information does end up in your stash, you can point to your cookie file and say, "See, it says, 'OPT_OUT'!"
2) if they make a deal with major sites that use banners from doubleclick where the sites relay personal information submited to them back to doubleclick, the name->cookie mapping may be done.
It's number two. They have setup limited partnerships with various companies to have that information relayed back to them. Yes, I do believe that it violates certain privacy laws, but I don't think that's the case if whatever forms they use to gather that information have an opt-out or opt-in procedure. The customer must be made aware of this information exchange.
Completely disagree. "Cracking the security" of a computer involves breaking into to someone else's computer, misusing someone else's property. The people who wrote DeCSS did so by taking apart a DVD player that they legally bought. Who are you to say what someone can or cannot do to their own private property? I hope you do not think the government or any other corporation or person has the right to control what you do in your own home.
Wrong. DeCSS doesn't involve your DVD player. DeCSS involves the code used to protect the DVD algorithm. That code is actually belongs to the industry magnates, and even though you may not like that they control it, it is theirs to control. Cracking it is like cracking a computer.
Now that the information is public, there is no security. Can't you see that?
I can perfectly see that, but that's not the issue. Just like a hacked system is thus available to all the world once the method of cracking is released, so the DVDs are effectively security-less. However, that doesn't stop the offended persons from going ahead and prosecuting the suspected offenders. Just because the security doesn't exist anymore does not mean that the perpetrators cannot be tried.
This is a straw man argument. Where are the people who are pirating DVDs? None of the defendents who showed up for trial ever copied a DVD and yet they get sued anyway.
Wrong again. It can be said that no one who ever wrote Napster ever pirated an MP3 song, yet those same people are being attacked, essentially for contributing to the crime, and like you said, the case can be made pretty strongly against them. It's the same issue with DeCSS. If someone did that in their home to copy their DVDs, no one would ever know, but they released a program that would allow others to do the same thing, which, most probably did nothing but contribute to DVD piracy. That's contributory infringement, as you say and can be prosecuted.
The Linux people wanted to buy DVDs and watch them so much that they built a player in their spare time! If the movie industry was sane, they'd recognize that these people would probably buy DVDs as fast as they could sell them! Instead, they hit them with a lawsuit.
Right. No one ever said that the people running megacorps were geniuses, but the fact remains that their technology has been attacked and broken, and the legality of the distribution of that technique is questioned. They have every right to prosecute, and if I were them, I would. If they really had smart minds, they would prosecute, both to send a message about crime and obtain lost revenue, and at the same time, release tools that would allow all their customers to view DVDs. But like I said, no one ever claimed they were smart.
The Internet is also not all under U.S. jurisdiction.
Realized. However, perpetrators can be tried under them when Internet actions affect U.S. interests.
I read the teaser. I read the first three paragraphs of Katz's article. Then I found myself being stupefied and read not further, both because it was babbling and it was sensationalist.
Yes, college campuses are banning Napster, but the primary impetus is not the RIAA. The RIAA has had some say, but the primary reason is that Napster is taking over bandwidth. College networks are set up for the transfer of educational information. Most colleges (at least the ones I've been to), also have lengthy AUPs that ban such things as game playing, porn sites, and even general servers. I don't see people getting up in arms about this. We had a kid shut off completely from our network for running a porn site. The reason: it was taking too much bandwidth (and it was, I saw the figures). No one said, "Hey, he has a right to serve his porn!" because really, he doesn't. Campus networks are managed by the campus, and they maintain that explicit right to regulate the type of data that runs over it. I feel no sympathy for the Napster kiddies out there who want to trade their MP3s. When I was a kid, we found tons of ways to do it that didn't involve Napster and I'm sure they will, too.
As for DeCSS, I have no sympathy for them, either. Hacking the proprietary encoding on a DVD I equate with cracking the security of a computer. DeCSS is then like giving out the method to the entire world. I support reverse engineering, but I don't support the maliciousness. I want DVD readability on all systems, and I want the ability to copy my DVDs, but I don't want to circumvent the security mechanisms in place that allow companies to make money so they can make films and make DVDs. I don't see DVDs as an expensive medium right now and the efforts by a few software vigilantes who want access to everything and anything has set back the industry. Companies don't want to get involved in a technology that is targeted by computer hackers. DeCSS hurt the computer community more than it helped it. I liken it to the EFNet smurfers who managed to bring down entire networks of servers. Those servers eventually just left EFNet, and now that network is just crap to be on. Did the kiddies win? Maybe, but there are far less servers to IRC on now. The same thing can happen to DVD.
The Internet is not devoid of laws. People cry when their systems get hacked or smurfed and call in law enforcement agencies to track down the villains. At the same time, those same people pirate music and crack DVDs all in the 'Spirit of the Internet'. To me, the Spirit of the Internet has always been about a global community respecting each other and sharing information for its benefit. I don't see that at all nowadays. I see companies who need to be educated in the ways of the Internet, and I also see a bunch of crybaby users who, when they don't get their way, take a very adverserial stance that doesn't seem to help anyone.
The 'heroes' of Slashdot are just as much a part of the problem as the 'villains'. I don't support either of them. In the end, it's the common person who doesn't belong to either group that gets screwed.
Lehigh University, my alma mater, and Princeton have been researching photonics for quite some time. Lehigh, being the engineering school that it is, has been focusing on the material considerations of actually building photonics systems and developing any new materials that will make it work properly. Princeton has an entire web site devoted to their research in photonics.
The field has been around for quite some time, so there's a lot of information on the web about it. Certainly, MIT's partnership will help push things along, but it is only a very small piece of the research puzzle.
I see a lot of comments both for and against this type of comprehensive system maintenance, and I have my own personal opinions on the matter that simply don't matter. I will summarize what I see, though, in these two statements:
Configuration shouldn't be complicated by GUIs that may not be able to handle hand-edited text files accurately. System administration should involve handling this configuration through text files as has been done before.
Yes, this is exactly what Unix needs. Configuration is two hard for newbies and making it graphical, like Windows and MacOS have done would encourage more people to switch to Linux.
The viewpoints are extreme oversimplifications, but the point is made. What we're seeing is a split both over how Linux should be used, and I think, how it will be used. And it says a lot about what Linux needs. Linux's install base is diversifying so much that one solution is not going to fit everyone. On the one hand I say, "Yes, a comprehensive graphical system manager would be fantastic!" On the other, "But you're not learning system administration, which is what Linux is all about."
Linux is too complex for the newbie. It's just a fact, and it's going to have to be accepted. Steps have already been taken to change that, but in large part, these efforts have been controlled by people who aren't newbies and don't understand all of the troubles. Microsoft does this sort of testing, and the Linux community does not. When we need something like this, something that targets an audience that's "not us", we copy Microsoft, and since our systems weren't designed like Microsoft's, it's a kludge. It works, but not necessarily very well, and it's certainly not cohesive, and probably never will be, simply because it's being done by many separate people, not one overarching company. It's one of the downfalls of open-source software, a minor one for anyone who doesn't use corporate software.
Someone can very easily develop a fully comprehensive system manager. Parts have already been started. The end result is something that really bastardizes the idea of what Linux is, a server OS that is very complex and very loosely organized, but it does work for the newbie, because it hides all that. The end result is really two different versions of Linux, which is really what Microsoft has with its Windows line. The Windows schism isn't necessarily a bad thing, except that they are two different implementations. With Linux, the community has a chance to produce that seeming "schism" in one implementation. If done right, security, which config files can of course break, can be set at install time, and the system manager will never touch it. A more advanced user, of course, would take care of all that on his own, and probably never need the manager. It's the same OS. The implementation is even the same. On one hand, though, you are setting the security at install time, and in the other, the user's taking care of it.
I don't want one of these 'system managers'. My Linux doesn't need one of these 'system managers'. But Linux as a community does, if it's ever going to be viewed as having its act together. Webmind and Linuxconf don't cut it. Newbies need a manager that can act just like we do when we manage our systems. Can a community that produces so many things separately do that as one? Who knows.
And before you call that a knee-jerk reaction, consdier that the original purpose of the patent law was to encourage inventors ro disseminate their techniques widely instead of keeping them as trade secrets.
I thought the original purpose of the patent system was to allow people to maintain control of their inventions so that they could profit off of them without having to worry about someone stealing their inventions. It wasn't to encourage people, it was to protect them. And that is still why people file patents today. It's not to keep other people from getting their hands on the technology, but to obtain the right to market the invention. Patents were never supposed to benefit the world at large. They were merely for the individual.
We must modify it so that it distinguish between intellectual property belonging to humanity in general, and intellectual property that has been genuinely created, and thus can be owned, for a time, by an individual.
How do you make this determination, and who do you get to make it? Thomas Edison patented the light bulb. Do you know where we would be today without the light bulb? Modern day society would be lost without it. Most American office buildings don't even allow natural light in past about 10 feet from the walls. It's a technology that certainly humanity can claim a right to, but one man patented it and held the rights to that product for 17 years. That didn't prevent the adoption of the invention, nor did it ever prevent people from using the light bulb. Your wallet analogy is completely off base. People don't just "find" algorithms and techniques. They work hard to develop them. As far as I know, no one has yet patented at "mathematical truth", either, as your whole post is based. Algorithms are not "truths" like "1+1=2" and "x*1=x". They are inventions. No one can patent light, but they can patent a light bulb. And they can develop a process whereby ordinary light can be reflected to increase its brightness 10 times (hypothetically speaking; this probably can't be done in actuality). The latter is certainly something that could be done in nature, but it took a man to figure out how.
And what's even worse is that the subject of this article isn't even patenting an algorithm, he's actually patenting a hardware implementation of that algorithm, which is completely within his right.
The only people who are miffed by the patent system are a) people who didn't think of it first and b) people who want everything to be freely available. As for the rest of us who live in a capitalist world and rather like it, patents serve only to reinforce that system and give people rights within it.
Most interesting to me are Gates' opinions about supporting software and the costs associated with such. I'm kind of brought back to the original story post, which says:
[Gates] talks at length about how no one will ever write software if they can't make money at it.
First off, Gates is talking about commercial software, not the garage software or college project software that frequented this time. Secondly, in the context of the time of the interview, he's absolutely right. I mean, we can look at the Open Source world today and say, "Look, Redhat's making money and giving away their software! So is Debian! Blah blah blah!" but really, they're not making money off the software. They make their money off of support, selling the manuals and consulting with large businesses. Gates mentions the incredible burden that supporting software could be, especially more technical issues. He's absolutely right. The reason it works so well today is because the base-entry level for technical support is so far above what it was back then. Kids routinely know more about the systems they use when they join the workforce than even their bosses do, and entry level tech support is around minimum wage. These types of people were 'experts' before, and commanded reasonable sums of money, not to mention they were rare. Back then, a company who said, "Hey, we'll give away our software and code and charge for support," would've lost money because of a) the more expensive costs of developing software and b) the more expensive costs of support.
You may or may not agree with Bill Gates, but he has an excellent business sense and does a good job of recognizing what is happening in the computer world around him. It's this kind of business attitude that has made him very successful. In this interview, you see a little of that, and especially with issues like support and free code, he clearly understood where money could be made in the industry and where it couldn't. That's the mark of a very successful (future) businessman.
In the 15th century, when illustrations were first placed into books, to take an image and put it in a book involved making a woodcut or an engraving -- a nontrivial amount of work, not one that would be undertaken simply to make a book "more enticing." I find it more likely that illustrations would be published with a purpose: maps, art, etc. If it did "nothing to enhance the story," I doubt that that publishers would have gone to so much trouble.
There were illustrations in books before the 15th century, and they were done by monks for religious texts. Two reasons: show the glory of God; explain the illiterate exactly what the page was about. And there's the famous hand-done first-letters; incredibly difficult and time-consuming for the effect of simply making the first letter of the paragraph look a little nicer.
What would be great is to have IE's rendering engine ported to Linux in an efficient manner. I suspect that this will all be irrelevant when the new Gecko engine is finalized. Basically, I use my Windows machine to browse the web, and the reason is solely because IE5 has a very speedy rendering engine and pretty solid support for upcoming CSS1/p/2 HTML4.0 standards. Yes, they've added in their own tags and they do support deprecated information, but that's in addition to standards support.
I can do without the extra infringement on my OS and the tendency for it to crash after rebooting from Windows Update.
This is the kind of crap that I hate seeing. People say, "The web was only meant for text," and "Graphics suck, they make the web slow." You know, when the first books came out, they had only words in them, no pictures (unless you count the letters as pictures). But then discovered that you could put images in books as well, too, and even though it cost more and took more time to print, the did it. Why did they do it? Because graphically it was more enticing. Sometimes it does absolutely nothing to enhance the story, but sometimes, they're very beneficial.
Slashdot readers talk, on one hand, about e-commerce and how it's revolutionizing our lives and how it'll be great when we have this perfect 'Netcentric society. On the other hand, they, they say, "Woe is me, the 'Net's changed so much since I was using back in the day!" Why do companies put graphics on their web page? Because it helps to make the web site more appealing graphically. Most Companies are defined by their corporate image. That's a visual representation. Microsoft in text and Microsoft in logo are two very different things. I would hate to go to a web site of a company that I use and not see their logo, because as a consumer, it's comforting to know that I have the right site, and that image confirms that. I'd hate to go to a friend's web site and read about how great his trip to Spain was and not be able to immediately pull up the images he's talking about. I can do that because of the power of graphics. I miss out on something when I use w3m or similar text-based graphics. A picture is worth a 1000 words, and who knows how many a moving picture can be.
If a Shockwave plugin means I get a presentation explaining a something to me in less bits than a similar animated GIF, great. If an animation shows me what the product looks like more clearly, that's great, too. If someone decides to simply scan their brochue and upload it, then yes, that sucks. But do not look down on Shockwave and GIFs and similar changes in the way that the Web is used. It's revolutionizing the world, and I for one am glad that people are making it at least a little nicer to look at.
Except for this guy. That's just awful, both in terms of images and in terms of text.
Mandrake says that supermount has been integrated into kernel 2.2.14. Does anyone know where the patches are for this so that people don't have to download Mandrake to get this incredibly useful technology?
First off, a lot of people are worried about what we as Slashdot veterans can do, and naturally, they're worried that we don't have the numbers or the influence to do anything. I don't think we really need to be too worried. I am willing to bet that most major corporations are not going to want to buy software that opens up their security systems. As much as software is needed, no company wants another company to shut it down, and they'll step up their lobbying efforts.
Second, consumers will never be able to understand the idea that what they paid for is not theirs. When I pay for my software, I am paying for my physical copy of it, not for the right to use it. That's how I see it. That's how the majority of Americans will see it. Trying to convince them of any other way of seeing it will probably get you labeled as a Communist (not that Communism is bad; Americans just think it is).
A lot of the talk of licensing is real interesting given the nature of software developments these days. Both Microsoft (as evidenced in their press release today) and Sun advocate going to a server-centric system, where you wouldn't buy a huge office bundle, but would rather get something akin to a connection to a server that would then serve this program to you. In that case, you really are buying permission to use the product. Transactions do become about licenses. The consumer really does lose quite a bit of control over the software that he is using. Right now, MS can't cut off my access to Office 2000, but in the future they could (provided they are still around).
And finally, why stop at software? I mean, this could be used much the same way in hand-held devices. Rather than owning it, you lease it, and if you don't pay, they send a signal somehow and shut it down. I mean, that may actually be beneficial. Rather than paying $200 for a device, I pay like $2/mo. or something and when it stops being useful, I just stop paying and they shut it off. I don't own the now piece of junk and if someone else wants it, they can pick back up the fee. But I digress.
But like I said, I don't see this bill as making it past the rest of big business unnoticed. This bill just isn't friendly to the lowly consumer; it's also not friendly to the big corporate consumer, and they carry just as much weight as the software industry.
Perhaps things are different there, but everywhere i know of in the US Internet access is available as a flat charge, with no relation to bandwidth used.
When T1s are used, especially by small organizations like libraries, they usually get sold in 'burstable' amounts. The organization pays for a certain amount of average bandwidth. Even without this consideration, though, these organizations still need to purchase the available bandwidth, and those decisions are based on what and how much is downloaded. The difference between a fractional T1 and full T1 is considerable.
Did i say AUP monitors needed to be hired? It's not exactly a demanding job for a librarian to look over once in a while, and to respond if a patron complains.
Abuse monitoring is never that simple. A library collection of computers would most likely be monitored by a dedicated individual.
Sure it won't. i know many people who object to the IRS, who object to Social Security as it's currently handled, who object to gigantic pork-barrel projects, who object to PBS, who object to NASA, who object to the Dakotas, who object to welfare, who object to the things some people do with federal grants for the arts (and i'm not referring to the elephant-dung thing in New York). Need i continue? Yes, some people support these things to varying degrees, but i'm sure some people would support porn mags in libraries as well.
Look at the New York thing. There was enough outrage that funding was pulled. There was enough outrage at the IRS, that reform was initiated. NASA's budget has been cut back because a majority of the nation thinks that it's wasting taxpayer dollars. In fact, all the examples are affected very strongly by what a nationwide community deems objectionable.
And finally, i want you to actually investigate these filters you champion. If you do a halfway decent job, you'll find that they block much more than just pornography, and you'll find that they don't do an extremely good job at blocking that. With today's technology it is completely impossible for a computer program to effectively "protect the children" without eliminating most of the usefulness of the Internet.
I'm not championing filters. I'm championing the right of communities to decide to use filters. Particularly, I'm angry at the fact that Slashdot needs to make Holland, MI, into a torch for it's own ideals. Holland doesn't need me or anyone else who doesn't live there telling it what to do or what filters to use. It can decide all that for itself, and if they choose to use these supposedly evil, it came to it on it's own terms.
Slashdot Mirror
NASA's been looking at inflatable technology for quite some time and I'm sure that this is just another application of new materials and ideas (the article must be Slashdotted).
If you think about it, inflation makes complete sense. Given the cargo limitations of today's launch vehicles, inflatable cargo takes up a lot less space. I saw NASA's 'architect', Constance Adams, speak at my school once and they've been designing an inflatable habitat for the space station for quite some time now. The great thing about an inflatable habitat is that it takes very little air in the vacuum of space for it to be structurally stable enough for construction habitation. Furthermore, inhabitable systems use an endoskeletal design for their interiors, rather than the exoskeletal designs of current tin cans, leading to a more flexible design. In addition, materials used for the skin are much lighter than their metallic counterparts, saving launch costs.
If you think about it, in space, most things are in tension because of the outward pressure of the required internal atmosphere. Why not use this force to your benefit, right?
Why are they making this out to be a piracy issue when it's clear that it's not?
It's this type of weighted question that really irks me about Slashdot readers. It's analogous to Jim Gray's line of questioning towards Pete Rose at the annoucement of the Century Team (where he basically tried to pressure Rose into admitting he was guilty or apologizing for something Rose doesn't think he's guilty of).
The MPAA is making this out to be a piracy issue because to them it is a piracy issue. It doesn't matter to them that you or any other Slashdot reader doesn't think it's a piracy issue. To them it is a piracy issue, because whether or not the program was intended to do so, the fact remains that it does make piracy easier. There's no getting around that. Now it's up to the courts to decide whether it really is a piracy issue and whether or not the MPAA has a valid complaint. You can argue that all you want.
I'm sorry, I don't want to answer questions that are going to someone else, but honestly, this is completely weighted. You're asking a question that automatically prejudges an answer and also requires that the person take a side they may or may not agree with. Jon may have a different answer than me, but I'm still of the opinion that blatant "leading" such as this should be pointed out immediately, especially since they get pushed up so high by moderators who share many of the same biases.
And that's before we get to the fact that your asking Jon to shed light on motives that he has had no part in shaping.
This is veering off-topic. Please don't mark down.
What Slashdot readers should be given the ability to do is read through article submissions. Slashdot fancies itself as a censorship-free society, but truly, whenever you have people selecting which information the group can read, you are making decisions that censor. I don't have an Ars box and I don't read Ars regularly, so I would never have known about this article, yet it's the most informative, well-written piece I've seen linked in a long time. Thank God that someone reposted it. When that Slashdot squirrel denied the post, he basically made a decision that said, "This isn't worthy of the general populace," which, to me, is an opinion-based decision that censored.
I'm sure Taco or Hemos could very quickly implement the functionality to read through the posts. They could even put it in a Slashbox. Basically, if the article has a URL, pull it out and check it (perl has this functionality via modules; it's very easy). If there's not already an article with that URL in the system, add it to a database, if that URL isn't already in the database. If the article is posted, mark it as posted. If it is rejected, mark it as rejected and make it available for viewing. If it is offensive for some reason (one of the reasons that the FAQ gives for not having such a list), just delete it altogether. The squirrels go through each and every article anyway, so this management must take place anyway. All they have to do is mark it. The database can store simply the subject and the URL (if they don't have a URL, tough luck), and then present a list of link titles that take people to various articles. Don't give people commenting rights on these posts. Only store rejects for, say, two weeks, to keep the database file small. I'm sure some of this functionality is already in (they have to store information for the squirrels in some manner), so implementing this on top shouldn't be too hard.
Maybe I should mail this to Rob. Eh, maybe not. He's a busy man.
Miguel was talking about implementing transparency features in GNOME like the menubars, which yes, could be done, but Aqua is far more than simply transparency. If you read the article, it goes into how and why Apple can do all that it's doing with the GUI ('third generation' displays), and why X can't do that ('second generation' display with extremely primitive primitives). As great as Miguel and GNOME are, it would take a completely new display layer (read: new windowing system) to implement these changes. GNOME still has to work with the existing X, so Miguel really can't implement Aqua on X, he can just make GNOME look like Aqua.
Also, for those watching the ABC commercials, Christopher Reeve is going to be on Good Morning America tomorrow to talk about why he did the commercial. Obviously, the people doing the commercial anticipated that some people might be somehow offended by the ad. I personally think it's great the we have someone like Christopher Reeve who uses his name recognition to solicit funds for research which will help many more people than him.
Everyone's talking about the monkey, and I agree, the monkey was hilarious, but I definitely think the one with the guy going to the hospital. They took a common American phrase that's being uttered more and more these days, "He's got money coming out the wazoo!" and made a brilliant commercial about it.
"Does he have health insurance?"
"What are you talking about? He's got money coming out the wazoo!"
The monkey was just another one of the cheap commercials with a more creative tagline. The ass commercial actually made a very strong humorous play on the amount of money floating around in our economy these days.
And speaking of asses, 7-Up goes from 'Make 7-Up Yours', which is pretty funny, to 'Show Me Your Cans', which is even funnier. They have some good spots now as well.
*clink* *clink*
NOTE: This post may not be allowed through by certain web filters. If you are using such a web filter, it is your loss.
Well then here is a link for you my apathetic friend. You complain about an edition costing more. If you'd stand for something like the rest of us, it may just bring the prices down.
Real mature. Amazon isn't keeping prices high for me (in fact, Amazon's continually got lower prices than my regular bricks-n-mortars locations) and DeCSS has only turned out to be a pissing contests between people who think they have the right to everything and people who think those same people have the right to nothing. I can choose better battles than Amazon's patenting rights (which isn't doing jack for prices one way or the other) and DeCSS, both of which are destructive battles, not constructive battles. Simply because I do not share your views about OSS legal views is not a reason to lessen my opinion about Star Wars marketing habits.
The major point is, Lucas is releasing a common video format in a much more expensive 'Collector's Edition'. I'd rather he release a special edition with a DVD in it instead or a regular Widescreen edition, like he did with the Special Edition videos. It has nothing to do with boycotting Amazon or my views on DeCSS.
And as far as prices go, Amazon is $4 cheaper than Reel.com for the same Collector's Edition. I could care less about their patent. Fifteen percent off is a good bargain, and the fact that they patented their e-commerce model is a trivial reason to not take advantage of it. I'm sure millions of shoppers also agree.
You pick your battles. I'll pick mine. But my views about Star Wars have nothing to do with any of them.
Yes, but Lucas is like a father to us. Look at how well he has entertained us, and how long he's been doing it for. Why not reward him for his work? It's only $15. Go to the theatre and you're likely to spend more than that, and you only get to watch it once there.
Lucas isn't like a father to me. He's continually prevented me from watching Star Wars the way that I want to see it (widescreen, remastered, on DVD, etc.), and he's done the same with his other good movies. His bombs are crap. If I want my widescreen edition, I don't pay just $15 either. I pay $33, which is much more than I want to give the man for one of his movies, I don't care how much I like it or its predecessors.
Once you go widescreen, you never go back. Therefore, I went to Reel.com to see what the widescreen version cost (I don't get into all the boycotting BS and DeCSS bunk, so I don't really care; it was just the only link) and whoa, it's $15 more than the regular VHS version. Why the dramatic difference? It looks like Lucas is screwing us over. To get the widescreen version, you have to get the Collector's Edition, which comes with a collector's book, 35mm filmstrip (?), and a documentary. What if you don't want all that garbage? Well, you're screwed then.
Does Lucas know how to make money or what? Seriously, this guy is starting to make Bill Gates look like a kid with a cheap lemonade stand.
If you look at it, the foundation for open-source software has been laid out over the years. Functionality was always second place to aesthetics and usability. Now, OSS is entering a more mature age where those other concerns begin to exert themselves. KDE isn't a unique interface, but GNOME is pretty unique. If you take the ideas of themes, then you have an open-source GUI model. Some themes are extremely excellent in terms of their usability (some are downright awful). Granted, the code underlying all of that isn't beautiful, but end-users only see what's on top anyway. Programs like wmakerconf and sawmill's control panel allow people to make these changes extremely quickly, even directly from the gzipped tar file. You can't tell me that that's not extremely easy.
What this article says is that the OSS model has a hard time producing good GUIs, but that's not the case at all. We haven't needed good GUIs because our programs have never been for the end-user. Now that OSS is going mainstream, the end-user is being involved, and I think the OSS model is successfully tackling this challenge as well.
For the IE users out there, if you do a search on your computer for 'doubleclick', it will find all the cookie files associated with that domain (IE stores each cookie in a separate file). Just edit the files to say 'OPT_OUT' or delete them altogether.
I say put in 'OPT_OUT', since they can always reestablish the cookies. At least this way, if your information does end up in your stash, you can point to your cookie file and say, "See, it says, 'OPT_OUT'!"
2) if they make a deal with major sites that use banners from doubleclick where the sites relay personal information submited to them back to doubleclick, the name->cookie mapping may be done.
It's number two. They have setup limited partnerships with various companies to have that information relayed back to them. Yes, I do believe that it violates certain privacy laws, but I don't think that's the case if whatever forms they use to gather that information have an opt-out or opt-in procedure. The customer must be made aware of this information exchange.
Completely disagree. "Cracking the security" of a computer involves breaking into to someone else's computer, misusing someone else's property. The people who wrote DeCSS did so by taking apart a DVD player that they legally bought. Who are you to say what someone can or cannot do to their own private property? I hope you do not think the government or any other corporation or person has the right to control what you do in your own home.
Wrong. DeCSS doesn't involve your DVD player. DeCSS involves the code used to protect the DVD algorithm. That code is actually belongs to the industry magnates, and even though you may not like that they control it, it is theirs to control. Cracking it is like cracking a computer.
Now that the information is public, there is no security. Can't you see that?
I can perfectly see that, but that's not the issue. Just like a hacked system is thus available to all the world once the method of cracking is released, so the DVDs are effectively security-less. However, that doesn't stop the offended persons from going ahead and prosecuting the suspected offenders. Just because the security doesn't exist anymore does not mean that the perpetrators cannot be tried.
This is a straw man argument. Where are the people who are pirating DVDs? None of the defendents who showed up for trial ever copied a DVD and yet they get sued anyway.
Wrong again. It can be said that no one who ever wrote Napster ever pirated an MP3 song, yet those same people are being attacked, essentially for contributing to the crime, and like you said, the case can be made pretty strongly against them. It's the same issue with DeCSS. If someone did that in their home to copy their DVDs, no one would ever know, but they released a program that would allow others to do the same thing, which, most probably did nothing but contribute to DVD piracy. That's contributory infringement, as you say and can be prosecuted.
The Linux people wanted to buy DVDs and watch them so much that they built a player in their spare time! If the movie industry was sane, they'd recognize that these people would probably buy DVDs as fast as they could sell them! Instead, they hit them with a lawsuit.
Right. No one ever said that the people running megacorps were geniuses, but the fact remains that their technology has been attacked and broken, and the legality of the distribution of that technique is questioned. They have every right to prosecute, and if I were them, I would. If they really had smart minds, they would prosecute, both to send a message about crime and obtain lost revenue, and at the same time, release tools that would allow all their customers to view DVDs. But like I said, no one ever claimed they were smart.
The Internet is also not all under U.S. jurisdiction.
Realized. However, perpetrators can be tried under them when Internet actions affect U.S. interests.
I read the teaser. I read the first three paragraphs of Katz's article. Then I found myself being stupefied and read not further, both because it was babbling and it was sensationalist.
Yes, college campuses are banning Napster, but the primary impetus is not the RIAA. The RIAA has had some say, but the primary reason is that Napster is taking over bandwidth. College networks are set up for the transfer of educational information. Most colleges (at least the ones I've been to), also have lengthy AUPs that ban such things as game playing, porn sites, and even general servers. I don't see people getting up in arms about this. We had a kid shut off completely from our network for running a porn site. The reason: it was taking too much bandwidth (and it was, I saw the figures). No one said, "Hey, he has a right to serve his porn!" because really, he doesn't. Campus networks are managed by the campus, and they maintain that explicit right to regulate the type of data that runs over it. I feel no sympathy for the Napster kiddies out there who want to trade their MP3s. When I was a kid, we found tons of ways to do it that didn't involve Napster and I'm sure they will, too.
As for DeCSS, I have no sympathy for them, either. Hacking the proprietary encoding on a DVD I equate with cracking the security of a computer. DeCSS is then like giving out the method to the entire world. I support reverse engineering, but I don't support the maliciousness. I want DVD readability on all systems, and I want the ability to copy my DVDs, but I don't want to circumvent the security mechanisms in place that allow companies to make money so they can make films and make DVDs. I don't see DVDs as an expensive medium right now and the efforts by a few software vigilantes who want access to everything and anything has set back the industry. Companies don't want to get involved in a technology that is targeted by computer hackers. DeCSS hurt the computer community more than it helped it. I liken it to the EFNet smurfers who managed to bring down entire networks of servers. Those servers eventually just left EFNet, and now that network is just crap to be on. Did the kiddies win? Maybe, but there are far less servers to IRC on now. The same thing can happen to DVD.
The Internet is not devoid of laws. People cry when their systems get hacked or smurfed and call in law enforcement agencies to track down the villains. At the same time, those same people pirate music and crack DVDs all in the 'Spirit of the Internet'. To me, the Spirit of the Internet has always been about a global community respecting each other and sharing information for its benefit. I don't see that at all nowadays. I see companies who need to be educated in the ways of the Internet, and I also see a bunch of crybaby users who, when they don't get their way, take a very adverserial stance that doesn't seem to help anyone.
The 'heroes' of Slashdot are just as much a part of the problem as the 'villains'. I don't support either of them. In the end, it's the common person who doesn't belong to either group that gets screwed.
Lehigh University, my alma mater, and Princeton have been researching photonics for quite some time. Lehigh, being the engineering school that it is, has been focusing on the material considerations of actually building photonics systems and developing any new materials that will make it work properly. Princeton has an entire web site devoted to their research in photonics.
The field has been around for quite some time, so there's a lot of information on the web about it. Certainly, MIT's partnership will help push things along, but it is only a very small piece of the research puzzle.
The viewpoints are extreme oversimplifications, but the point is made. What we're seeing is a split both over how Linux should be used, and I think, how it will be used. And it says a lot about what Linux needs. Linux's install base is diversifying so much that one solution is not going to fit everyone. On the one hand I say, "Yes, a comprehensive graphical system manager would be fantastic!" On the other, "But you're not learning system administration, which is what Linux is all about."
Linux is too complex for the newbie. It's just a fact, and it's going to have to be accepted. Steps have already been taken to change that, but in large part, these efforts have been controlled by people who aren't newbies and don't understand all of the troubles. Microsoft does this sort of testing, and the Linux community does not. When we need something like this, something that targets an audience that's "not us", we copy Microsoft, and since our systems weren't designed like Microsoft's, it's a kludge. It works, but not necessarily very well, and it's certainly not cohesive, and probably never will be, simply because it's being done by many separate people, not one overarching company. It's one of the downfalls of open-source software, a minor one for anyone who doesn't use corporate software.
Someone can very easily develop a fully comprehensive system manager. Parts have already been started. The end result is something that really bastardizes the idea of what Linux is, a server OS that is very complex and very loosely organized, but it does work for the newbie, because it hides all that. The end result is really two different versions of Linux, which is really what Microsoft has with its Windows line. The Windows schism isn't necessarily a bad thing, except that they are two different implementations. With Linux, the community has a chance to produce that seeming "schism" in one implementation. If done right, security, which config files can of course break, can be set at install time, and the system manager will never touch it. A more advanced user, of course, would take care of all that on his own, and probably never need the manager. It's the same OS. The implementation is even the same. On one hand, though, you are setting the security at install time, and in the other, the user's taking care of it.
I don't want one of these 'system managers'. My Linux doesn't need one of these 'system managers'. But Linux as a community does, if it's ever going to be viewed as having its act together. Webmind and Linuxconf don't cut it. Newbies need a manager that can act just like we do when we manage our systems. Can a community that produces so many things separately do that as one? Who knows.
And before you call that a knee-jerk reaction, consdier that the original purpose of the patent law was to encourage inventors ro disseminate their techniques widely instead of keeping them as trade secrets.
I thought the original purpose of the patent system was to allow people to maintain control of their inventions so that they could profit off of them without having to worry about someone stealing their inventions. It wasn't to encourage people, it was to protect them. And that is still why people file patents today. It's not to keep other people from getting their hands on the technology, but to obtain the right to market the invention. Patents were never supposed to benefit the world at large. They were merely for the individual.
We must modify it so that it distinguish between intellectual property belonging to humanity in general, and intellectual property that has been genuinely created, and thus can be owned, for a time, by an individual.
How do you make this determination, and who do you get to make it? Thomas Edison patented the light bulb. Do you know where we would be today without the light bulb? Modern day society would be lost without it. Most American office buildings don't even allow natural light in past about 10 feet from the walls. It's a technology that certainly humanity can claim a right to, but one man patented it and held the rights to that product for 17 years. That didn't prevent the adoption of the invention, nor did it ever prevent people from using the light bulb. Your wallet analogy is completely off base. People don't just "find" algorithms and techniques. They work hard to develop them. As far as I know, no one has yet patented at "mathematical truth", either, as your whole post is based. Algorithms are not "truths" like "1+1=2" and "x*1=x". They are inventions. No one can patent light, but they can patent a light bulb. And they can develop a process whereby ordinary light can be reflected to increase its brightness 10 times (hypothetically speaking; this probably can't be done in actuality). The latter is certainly something that could be done in nature, but it took a man to figure out how.
And what's even worse is that the subject of this article isn't even patenting an algorithm, he's actually patenting a hardware implementation of that algorithm, which is completely within his right.
The only people who are miffed by the patent system are a) people who didn't think of it first and b) people who want everything to be freely available. As for the rest of us who live in a capitalist world and rather like it, patents serve only to reinforce that system and give people rights within it.
Most interesting to me are Gates' opinions about supporting software and the costs associated with such. I'm kind of brought back to the original story post, which says:
[Gates] talks at length about how no one will ever write software if they can't make money at it.
First off, Gates is talking about commercial software, not the garage software or college project software that frequented this time. Secondly, in the context of the time of the interview, he's absolutely right. I mean, we can look at the Open Source world today and say, "Look, Redhat's making money and giving away their software! So is Debian! Blah blah blah!" but really, they're not making money off the software. They make their money off of support, selling the manuals and consulting with large businesses. Gates mentions the incredible burden that supporting software could be, especially more technical issues. He's absolutely right. The reason it works so well today is because the base-entry level for technical support is so far above what it was back then. Kids routinely know more about the systems they use when they join the workforce than even their bosses do, and entry level tech support is around minimum wage. These types of people were 'experts' before, and commanded reasonable sums of money, not to mention they were rare. Back then, a company who said, "Hey, we'll give away our software and code and charge for support," would've lost money because of a) the more expensive costs of developing software and b) the more expensive costs of support.
You may or may not agree with Bill Gates, but he has an excellent business sense and does a good job of recognizing what is happening in the computer world around him. It's this kind of business attitude that has made him very successful. In this interview, you see a little of that, and especially with issues like support and free code, he clearly understood where money could be made in the industry and where it couldn't. That's the mark of a very successful (future) businessman.
In the 15th century, when illustrations were first placed into books, to take an image and put it in a book involved making a woodcut or an engraving -- a nontrivial amount of work, not one that would be undertaken simply to make a book "more enticing." I find it more likely that illustrations would be published with a purpose: maps, art, etc. If it did "nothing to enhance the story," I doubt that that publishers would have gone to so much trouble.
There were illustrations in books before the 15th century, and they were done by monks for religious texts. Two reasons: show the glory of God; explain the illiterate exactly what the page was about. And there's the famous hand-done first-letters; incredibly difficult and time-consuming for the effect of simply making the first letter of the paragraph look a little nicer.
What would be great is to have IE's rendering engine ported to Linux in an efficient manner. I suspect that this will all be irrelevant when the new Gecko engine is finalized. Basically, I use my Windows machine to browse the web, and the reason is solely because IE5 has a very speedy rendering engine and pretty solid support for upcoming CSS1/p/2 HTML4.0 standards. Yes, they've added in their own tags and they do support deprecated information, but that's in addition to standards support.
I can do without the extra infringement on my OS and the tendency for it to crash after rebooting from Windows Update.
This is the kind of crap that I hate seeing. People say, "The web was only meant for text," and "Graphics suck, they make the web slow." You know, when the first books came out, they had only words in them, no pictures (unless you count the letters as pictures). But then discovered that you could put images in books as well, too, and even though it cost more and took more time to print, the did it. Why did they do it? Because graphically it was more enticing. Sometimes it does absolutely nothing to enhance the story, but sometimes, they're very beneficial.
Slashdot readers talk, on one hand, about e-commerce and how it's revolutionizing our lives and how it'll be great when we have this perfect 'Netcentric society. On the other hand, they, they say, "Woe is me, the 'Net's changed so much since I was using back in the day!" Why do companies put graphics on their web page? Because it helps to make the web site more appealing graphically. Most Companies are defined by their corporate image. That's a visual representation. Microsoft in text and Microsoft in logo are two very different things. I would hate to go to a web site of a company that I use and not see their logo, because as a consumer, it's comforting to know that I have the right site, and that image confirms that. I'd hate to go to a friend's web site and read about how great his trip to Spain was and not be able to immediately pull up the images he's talking about. I can do that because of the power of graphics. I miss out on something when I use w3m or similar text-based graphics. A picture is worth a 1000 words, and who knows how many a moving picture can be.
If a Shockwave plugin means I get a presentation explaining a something to me in less bits than a similar animated GIF, great. If an animation shows me what the product looks like more clearly, that's great, too. If someone decides to simply scan their brochue and upload it, then yes, that sucks. But do not look down on Shockwave and GIFs and similar changes in the way that the Web is used. It's revolutionizing the world, and I for one am glad that people are making it at least a little nicer to look at.
Except for this guy. That's just awful, both in terms of images and in terms of text.
Mandrake says that supermount has been integrated into kernel 2.2.14. Does anyone know where the patches are for this so that people don't have to download Mandrake to get this incredibly useful technology?
First off, a lot of people are worried about what we as Slashdot veterans can do, and naturally, they're worried that we don't have the numbers or the influence to do anything. I don't think we really need to be too worried. I am willing to bet that most major corporations are not going to want to buy software that opens up their security systems. As much as software is needed, no company wants another company to shut it down, and they'll step up their lobbying efforts.
Second, consumers will never be able to understand the idea that what they paid for is not theirs. When I pay for my software, I am paying for my physical copy of it, not for the right to use it. That's how I see it. That's how the majority of Americans will see it. Trying to convince them of any other way of seeing it will probably get you labeled as a Communist (not that Communism is bad; Americans just think it is).
A lot of the talk of licensing is real interesting given the nature of software developments these days. Both Microsoft (as evidenced in their press release today) and Sun advocate going to a server-centric system, where you wouldn't buy a huge office bundle, but would rather get something akin to a connection to a server that would then serve this program to you. In that case, you really are buying permission to use the product. Transactions do become about licenses. The consumer really does lose quite a bit of control over the software that he is using. Right now, MS can't cut off my access to Office 2000, but in the future they could (provided they are still around).
And finally, why stop at software? I mean, this could be used much the same way in hand-held devices. Rather than owning it, you lease it, and if you don't pay, they send a signal somehow and shut it down. I mean, that may actually be beneficial. Rather than paying $200 for a device, I pay like $2/mo. or something and when it stops being useful, I just stop paying and they shut it off. I don't own the now piece of junk and if someone else wants it, they can pick back up the fee. But I digress.
But like I said, I don't see this bill as making it past the rest of big business unnoticed. This bill just isn't friendly to the lowly consumer; it's also not friendly to the big corporate consumer, and they carry just as much weight as the software industry.
Perhaps things are different there, but everywhere i know of in the US Internet access is available as a flat charge, with no relation to bandwidth used.
When T1s are used, especially by small organizations like libraries, they usually get sold in 'burstable' amounts. The organization pays for a certain amount of average bandwidth. Even without this consideration, though, these organizations still need to purchase the available bandwidth, and those decisions are based on what and how much is downloaded. The difference between a fractional T1 and full T1 is considerable.
Did i say AUP monitors needed to be hired? It's not exactly a demanding job for a librarian to look over once in a while, and to respond if a patron complains.
Abuse monitoring is never that simple. A library collection of computers would most likely be monitored by a dedicated individual.
Sure it won't. i know many people who object to the IRS, who object to Social Security as it's currently handled, who object to gigantic pork-barrel projects, who object to PBS, who object to NASA, who object to the Dakotas, who object to welfare, who object to the things some people do with federal grants for the arts (and i'm not referring to the elephant-dung thing in New York). Need i continue? Yes, some people support these things to varying degrees, but i'm sure some people would support porn mags in libraries as well.
Look at the New York thing. There was enough outrage that funding was pulled. There was enough outrage at the IRS, that reform was initiated. NASA's budget has been cut back because a majority of the nation thinks that it's wasting taxpayer dollars. In fact, all the examples are affected very strongly by what a nationwide community deems objectionable.
And finally, i want you to actually investigate these filters you champion. If you do a halfway decent job, you'll find that they block much more than just pornography, and you'll find that they don't do an extremely good job at blocking that. With today's technology it is completely impossible for a computer program to effectively "protect the children" without eliminating most of the usefulness of the Internet.
I'm not championing filters. I'm championing the right of communities to decide to use filters. Particularly, I'm angry at the fact that Slashdot needs to make Holland, MI, into a torch for it's own ideals. Holland doesn't need me or anyone else who doesn't live there telling it what to do or what filters to use. It can decide all that for itself, and if they choose to use these supposedly evil, it came to it on it's own terms.