Perhaps has its root in the word "Diaspora" which refers to the scattering of the tribes of Israel, first at an invasion (by Syria? Babylon?) 'round 600 BC. Also sometimes used to refer to subsequent scatterings of the tribe of Judah (also known as Jews, who were pretty much all that were left of the twelve tribes in Israel after the first diaspora).
Or maybe it's a transpsoiton of the wrod disappearing.
provides details about how LinuxPPC will compete with MacOS X.
I didn't really see the article do that. I only saw a vague statement to the effect that most people who use MOSX probably won't know what an X server is. Which may be true, but it won't stop most of us who use LinuxPPC now from using an Xserver on a Mac (now, X's inherent problems may, but whatever).
But I do wonder how Linux can compete with MacOS X. Maybe....
Price? For a while, yes. While Mac OS X is still sold as an upgrade for current HW owners, unless it's really cheap, LinuxPPC will probably be cheaper. But at some point, MOSX will come with all apple machines.
Applications? Anything for Linux can and probably will be ported to OSX. Already I find binary RPMs for MOSX before I find RPMs for Linux PPC.
Ease? Ha!
Performance? Maybe. I think that the reason that Apple dropped non-G3 machines from the supported list for MOSX was that they didn't have the processor speed to keep the user experience snappy. I've heard stories of opening and closing the dock munching 75% of the CPU. LinuxPPC runs nicely on my 200 Mhz 604e. (Though how an OS that ran beautifully on the 68040 33mhz NeXTStation I have sitting next to me got this slow, I can't say).
In short, I think performance is the best competitive bet for LinuxPPC. That, and fanatical loyalty.
It seems you've thought a bit about this... do you have more thoughts/info/recommended readings? An email address (in case you want to become a public resource:)?
The name Timpanogos comes from a very prominant mountain sitting at the north end of Utah Valley, where Novell is headquartered. It's actually spelled with a "os" at the end. Curious that Merkey's company spelled it differently.
I also recall that there was a company called "Wolf Mountain" in Utah Valley -- or at least, it was called Wolf Mountain until it was discovered that this group of ex-novell employees was working on a clustering project remarkably similar to one at Novell, which had been intenally code named "Wolf Mountain". I think these are the same people.
The faustian Microsoft deal references seem to help explain why they were so blatant about everything at the time.
But really, it's the principle that I'm voting for: who will best defend the freedoms of individuals from monied interests.
Let's give the candidates I'm familiar with a score (1-10):
Bush 1
Gore 5 (optimistic, but possible)
Nader 10
Let's also give them an approximate showing in the polls:
Bush 40%
Gore 45%
Nader 10%
So, that gives us a sort of expected value for the principle I gave:
Bush:.4
Gore: 2.4
Nader: 1
Hmmmmmmmm.
I know that something seems subtly wrong with this. This is one of the things I don't like about game theory: it often encourages people to sacrifice principle for expediency.
Of course, if you put Gore down to a 3, then the matrix gets a lot more interesting.
Until this election , I have never really understood "strategic" voting -- that is, changing your vote on what the polls say everyone else is going to vote like.
But this time I'm concerned. You see, I would like to vote for Nader, but mostly, I don't want Bush to win. And when I try to persuade people to vote for Nader, I'm very aware that most of them are on the Gore side.
So unless Gore takes a wide lead in the polls, encouraging people to vote for Nader is taking away votes for Gore (never mind that if Nader started showing broad support everybody would start running hard to the left and things might change).
Ouch. Point taken. We've lost a lot of ground here.
Originally, I was thinking of China or Cuba or Chile or something like that... a country where even free speech rhetoric doesn't fly well. Free speech rights are being eroded in the US, and probably actually prizd by a small percentage of citizens. But free speech rhetoric still plays fairly well here....
And I do realize there are probably places that prize free speech as or more highly than the US.
OK, so here's some IOC US Members Addresses.
If you're displeased enough to actually write
a physical letter, and able to be articulate,
maybe you should use these. Please folks, don't
turn the flame level up high unless you do it
subtly. And nothing so immature as hacking or
death threats, please.
Oh. International slashdot readership. Haven't forgotten you, but I can't duplicate the whole list. Find it here.
---------------------------------
James L. Easton
7855 Haskell Avenue, Suite 202
Van Nuys CA 91406-1999
USA
---------------------------------
Anita L. DeFrantz
c/ o Amateur Athletic Foundation
2141 West Adams Boulevard
Los Angeles California 90018
United States of America.
---------------------------------
Robert Ctvrtlik is a US IOC rep, but
doesn't have an address listed.
Your idea is a good one; if enough of the athletes did this together, it'd certainly get folks to take notice.
It seems, however, a bit of a longshot to get everyone involved. Even everyone from one country. Especially countries that don't prize free speech the way the US does.
But if all the athletes mentioned the ban, and their disfavor towards it, that might even be enough.
It's very easy to imagine an organism becoming resistant to a nano-attack -- depending on what a nanobot would plan to do. Suppose a nanobot concentrates on puncturing a cell wall (for cellular organisms). Presumable, there are limitations on how much pressure a nanobot could exert. Perhaps soon there would only be organisms left that had a harder cell wall, impenetrable by nanobot -- or perhaps just hard enough to make it so that an organism tends to be pushed away, rather than punctured. Or perhaps some variants of an organism have more of an ability for motion.
In short, no matter what kind of attack you think of -- whether "chemical" or "physical" or "nano" or psionic (and at the nano level, they're sort of similar, except for maybe psionic) -- chances are, there's some variant of the organism that's resistant. When used massively on the organism, soon only the resistant variant is left. Then the attack is less effective...
Sometimes I wonder if using the attack actually makes things worse by the following mechanism in addition to the above selection: Presumably, a variant organism and a "standard" organism compete for resources in an environment. Thus the standard
organism keeps resources from the variant that it would otherwise have. So the standard organism actaully inhibits the spread of the variant (not to mention providing something for immune systems to cut their teeth on). Remove the standard organism, and the stronger variant has less competition....
Take a walk over to Stepwise... a grand central station for those who use NeXT/Openstep. Read a few editorials and opinions and you'll begin to pick up on a simple fact: Apple seems to be alienating Obj C developers, pushing the use of Java instead (C++ developers should have no trouble with Java).
SDMI essentially claims that it can make sure that people can only listen if they've paid. So, subtract greed and you get:
A system in which artists are compensated by fans appreciative of their work at reasonable prices.
Subtract draconian restrictions and:
You have a system in which there is fair use, perhaps a little fair abuse, but that copyright respect is encouraged.
You don't want these things?
But they could be better communities.
on
Disconnected
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· Score: 2
In some ways, you a very, very right. I love singing, and remember joining a choir my first year of college. They insisted that we have lots of socials and that we have "bonding" meetings periodically. Eventually, another guy in the group and I took to calling it the "choir cult." And I've worked for places where activities were likewise (though in a lesser degree) an attempt to create an ersatz sense of community/loyalty/warm fuzzy feelings.
But I've also worked for places that actually had this feeling. They never demanded that work become your life, that they became your whole community, and they mostly did they cool activities because they thought it would be fun (OK, the trip to see "Bugs Life" was professional review of what was happening in the field, but everything else was for fun).
I recently read a book called "In His Steps" by Charles Shelton. I think it's the origin of the phrase "What would Jesus do?" Now, before you non-christians mock me off slashdot, hold up: the book is really about a group of people who reexamine their ethics and take them very seriously in ALL areas of their life. That's a powerful thing. The reason I bring this up is that in the book some of the people reexamine their ethics in the workplace. They notice their neighbor. Some of those people run businesses. This doesn't necessarily result in everybody being best friends, but it does result in people being treated better and more fairly. A better place to work. Businesses SHOULD pay attention to the human factor of relationships. People don't have to get up in the middle of quarterly reviews and say "I LOVE you, man" -- that's suspect anyway. But having some social contact with people at work and remembering that they're human beings is almost always a good idea.
Do You Know Your Neighbor?
on
Disconnected
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· Score: 2
Once you learn to ignore people proximate to you,
this disconnection starts.
I think this is a problem with our culture, brought on especially in population centers. It's been growing ever since transportation/communication advances gave us the luxury of being able to ignore the people around us (that is, those who live close or are otherwise in proximity to us) during the day. Why be neighborly when you can go/talk anywhere? So you learn to be personally disproximate. Then you start at work...
An example of the neighbor thing: the other day, my girlfriend and I dropped by her old apartment, to see if some mail had come there for her. When we got there, there was a guy wandering around inside with a flashlight. No lights on. Very strange. She knocked on the door anyway, and the guy was very short with her. We became suspicious, and even more so when he finally turned on a light, because that meant he _could_ have had the light on the whole time. We waffled about what to do, and then finally decided to knock on the doors of the two neighboring apartments and see if they knew who their new neighbors were and if it matched the description of who my gf saw. Did they know their neighbors? Of course not. Heck, they wouldn't even answer the door at first, they were wrapped up enough in what was on TV, and they didn't even open the door when they did come to it (I am not a threatening looking person, either).
We get far too good at ignoring those around us.
Predictably, everyone seems to have misunderstood
on
Set Digital Music Free
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· Score: 2
Predictably, everyone seems to have misunderstood my comment. That's probably partly due to weakness in the way it was presented, but probably partially due to Slashdot blind spots.
_I_ understand that SDMI (and any other such format) is likely to be abused by the corps. I understand that individual rights are being erased by profit hungry/control freak execs. I can see there's danger here.
But only part of the point of my post was that the technology could be used legitimately. The other part of the point was this: the battle we need to fight ISN'T that of making sure that SDMI never happens. The battle we need to fight is making sure that alternatives are available, legally and technologically. We spend WAY too much time defending Napster and other such things that are legally and ethically questionable, on the grounds that our opponents are ethically (and often legally) questionable. I think in the case of SDMI, all we have to do is make sure that alternative ways of getting music (which respect the artists) exists, and it'll win out.
In short: I'm not afraid of a future in which SDMI exists. I AM afraid of a future in which it's the only choice. We might lose that battle, however, because we're perceived as freeloaders that don't respect those who create music. We need to work more actively on implementing systems that can compete with what SDMI claims it can accomplish, but without the greed and draconian restrictions.
Lately I've been thinking that we're drawing the lines for battle in the wrong places. Perhaps there SHOULD be a secure format that can be used for things like limited listening. I know we all cringe about self-destroying CDs and the like, but really it could be a great method of exposure -- 2 listens, and the disc is done, and then you can buy a PERMANENT CD. That might be an agreeable setup, material waste aside. A limited download might be used to accomplish the same thing. You can play it n times, but then you have to buy. Sort of like the trial period/limited number of times kind of shareware (which has a place, even if it's non-free).
Now, I think most of us fear that if secure initiatives come out:
1) they WON'T be used wisely. We might be forced to pay per every viewing/listening/reading.
2) that it will somehow be made illegal and/or very difficult to freely view/distribute stuff you actually have the rights to.
It seems to me that #1 is possible, but that if we start fighting the battle from the other end (#2),
we might be able to make a lot more headway with conservative policy makers AND preserve the freedoms that are truly important. Remember, the GPL doesn't stop Intellectual Property from existing under the law, and make everything free. It (and other free licences) just makes Free Software possible.
We are fighting the battle for #2 in a number of places (DeCSS I think falls in this category), but we're also wasting a lot of time on #1. Given a chance, I think secure initiatives might find a fair place next to free alternatives.
My parents have a Performa 6116; it has a PPC 601 @66 mhz and a 33 Mhz bus. Running Netscape 3 is quite a task for the poor machine (Netscape 4 is right out:).
It was even more of a task before I did just what you described and made a RAM Disk and told Netscape to use it. Sped it up by about 3 times.
Combine This With Doom System Administration Tools
on
Diablo Meets The Sims
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· Score: 4
Oooo! Oooo! What I'd like to see is this combined with the Doom System Administration Tool (where you can REALLY kill processes -- with a shotgun!). Never again while your routine system maintenance tasks be the same... will the httpd and sendmail demons devour the smaller user tasks? Can you find you keep PINE from running away with the system without shooting? Will find and grep get and stay together? What about the career of rcs?
Don't forget that they might also be able to switch to SPARC and whatever chips HP was using in their stations. OpenStep ran fine on no less than 4 platforms (which, for a commercial OS, was a great feat a few years ago).
NeXT/OpenStep/OS X (whatever) has always been well-designed enough that it was portable.
And don't forget Apple made a fairly flawless leap across architectures from 68k to PPC.
In short: the OS can jump Hardware. No mistake about that.
But the likelihood that PPC is going to die seems slim. Even supposing demand went down for them in personal computers, their demand in the embedded and communications market is fairly high.
OK. I've been thinking about this ever since I student taught Math at a public school. Of course some things were blocked.
The more I saw the temperament of some of my students, the more convinced I was that there really should be some blocking system in place. Despite my frustration at having to work around it sometimes.
What I envisioned was a simple blocking system, maybe not much more sophisticated than a (public) blacklist. If you came up against a block, you could simply call up someone (or call a library aid in the room or something), and say you needed to look at the URL. Give your name and the reason. They'd give you access, and look at the URL too.
What I figured is that embarassment alone might be enough to stop kids from looking at things they shouldn't, and the access would still be available for things they should. Yeah, this makes looking into circumcision and breast cancer and other such things harder (and that's embarassing to some people) but possible.
In short: most anything is accesible, but some (perhaps many) things require easily available permission.
Where is everybody? The above is funny. Laugh.
on
Technoromanticism
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· Score: 1
You'd think someone would have moded this up by now. It's funnier than some well-moded stuff I've posted in the last week.
Also, this discussion (at this moment) seems astoundingly empty for a Katz discussion. There oughta be about 30-50 "shaking their heads sadly" posts and 25-46 "Katz is an idiot" posts and 42-87 posts stating exactly why Katz is wrong. Minumum.
Did everyone just agree with him this time? Was he right? Did everyone who doesn't like him finally figure out how to use Slashdot Preferences to block him out?
I think I've discovered how you're going to finance the purchase, though.....
I clicked on your nifty link, I'm astounded: you are an entreprenuer of the most prodigous sort!
Not only are you selling your slashdot account, you're getting over $100 for it. Sure it's not stock in VA Linux, but who knew that we all had equity in our slashdot accounts? Now we can all Karma Farm for profit!
One note: you said the +1 bonus kicks in at about 50 in your auction. That may have been true once upon a time, but I have two accounts with +1 and they're not above fifty. Seems to me it kicked in about 25.
Bad Karma, and a big mistake. The rumors sites are some of Apple's best advertising.
I am not the Apple fan that I once was, but a few years ago, when everyone was still saying "Won't be long now before Apple dies," I was hearing other tunes from.... the rumors sites. They're some of the biggest supporters. They print the good news that everyone wants to beleive. They provide hints of things to come, soon, enticing fans to imagine and beleive in and most of all _eagerly anticipate_ them. Pop stars and politicians could take publicity lessons from the Apple Rumor Press.
And the rest of the people, who Steve Jobs wants to "Wow" and "Surprise"? The untamed masses who are just getting a computer? They don't read the sites, Steve. Your secrets are safe. The fans visit the rumor mills; most people don't. The fans will check your cool stuff anyway. The average consumer will be intruiged with your suprises. It's OK. Leave the rumor sites alone. Heck, use them like politicians use the press... leak info selectively. But don't sue them. Good grief.
Community Creation, Online Life, Blathering....
on
Technoromanticism
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· Score: 4
Wendell Berry also says that language and technology as they're now often used divide the world (see "Life is a Miracle" or really, just about anything else by him). I wonder what he thinks of the internet...
This reminds me of something that I was thinking about the other day as I passed some ad that said "communicate with anyone! anywhere! anytime!" I don't own a cell phone. Yes, I check my email twice a day, but I find that I don't really have to (several weeks in Australia reminded me of that).
How much of the communication ideals that seem to be pushed out (or community website ideas) do we really want? Need? I don't need to communicate with anyone, anywhere, anytime. Sometimes I need the opposite. Sometimes I just need to be able to communicate with a few people, in the right places, and then have time to do something useful, like build a bookshelf (so I'll have a place to put those collectors items when people buy only eBooks that expire in 4 months).
Yeah, I'm starting to sound like Cliff Stoll and I'm also something of a hypocrite because I like the internet and technology as much as the next guy. But there's just something about the promise of virtual community (and often "Insta" or
some other manufactured word like that) that, like virtual books, doesn't seem quite as promising as community in the real world.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps has its root in the word "Diaspora" which refers to the scattering of the tribes of Israel, first at an invasion (by Syria? Babylon?) 'round 600 BC. Also sometimes used to refer to subsequent scatterings of the tribe of Judah (also known as Jews, who were pretty much all that were left of the twelve tribes in Israel after the first diaspora).
Or maybe it's a transpsoiton of the wrod disappearing.
provides details about how LinuxPPC will compete with MacOS X.
I didn't really see the article do that. I only saw a vague statement to the effect that most people who use MOSX probably won't know what an X server is. Which may be true, but it won't stop most of us who use LinuxPPC now from using an Xserver on a Mac (now, X's inherent problems may, but whatever).
But I do wonder how Linux can compete with MacOS X. Maybe....
Price? For a while, yes. While Mac OS X is still sold as an upgrade for current HW owners, unless it's really cheap, LinuxPPC will probably be cheaper. But at some point, MOSX will come with all apple machines.
Applications? Anything for Linux can and probably will be ported to OSX. Already I find binary RPMs for MOSX before I find RPMs for Linux PPC.
Ease? Ha!
Performance? Maybe. I think that the reason that Apple dropped non-G3 machines from the supported list for MOSX was that they didn't have the processor speed to keep the user experience snappy. I've heard stories of opening and closing the dock munching 75% of the CPU. LinuxPPC runs nicely on my 200 Mhz 604e. (Though how an OS that ran beautifully on the 68040 33mhz NeXTStation I have sitting next to me got this slow, I can't say).
In short, I think performance is the best competitive bet for LinuxPPC. That, and fanatical loyalty.
How do you research your states voting rules?
:)?
It seems you've thought a bit about this... do you have more thoughts/info/recommended readings? An email address (in case you want to become a public resource
The name Timpanogos comes from a very prominant mountain sitting at the north end of Utah Valley, where Novell is headquartered. It's actually spelled with a "os" at the end. Curious that Merkey's company spelled it differently.
I also recall that there was a company called "Wolf Mountain" in Utah Valley -- or at least, it was called Wolf Mountain until it was discovered that this group of ex-novell employees was working on a clustering project remarkably similar to one at Novell, which had been intenally code named "Wolf Mountain". I think these are the same people.
The faustian Microsoft deal references seem to help explain why they were so blatant about everything at the time.
But really, it's the principle that I'm voting for: who will best defend the freedoms of individuals from monied interests.
.4
Let's give the candidates I'm familiar with a score (1-10):
Bush 1
Gore 5 (optimistic, but possible)
Nader 10
Let's also give them an approximate showing in the polls:
Bush 40%
Gore 45%
Nader 10%
So, that gives us a sort of expected value for the principle I gave:
Bush:
Gore: 2.4
Nader: 1
Hmmmmmmmm.
I know that something seems subtly wrong with this. This is one of the things I don't like about game theory: it often encourages people to sacrifice principle for expediency.
Of course, if you put Gore down to a 3, then the matrix gets a lot more interesting.
Until this election , I have never really understood "strategic" voting -- that is, changing your vote on what the polls say everyone else is going to vote like.
But this time I'm concerned. You see, I would like to vote for Nader, but mostly, I don't want Bush to win. And when I try to persuade people to vote for Nader, I'm very aware that most of them are on the Gore side.
So unless Gore takes a wide lead in the polls, encouraging people to vote for Nader is taking away votes for Gore (never mind that if Nader started showing broad support everybody would start running hard to the left and things might change).
I'm stumped. Ideas?
Ouch. Point taken. We've lost a lot of ground here.
Originally, I was thinking of China or Cuba or Chile or something like that... a country where even free speech rhetoric doesn't fly well. Free speech rights are being eroded in the US, and probably actually prizd by a small percentage of citizens. But free speech rhetoric still plays fairly well here....
And I do realize there are probably places that prize free speech as or more highly than the US.
OK, so here's some IOC US Members Addresses.
If you're displeased enough to actually write
a physical letter, and able to be articulate,
maybe you should use these. Please folks, don't
turn the flame level up high unless you do it
subtly. And nothing so immature as hacking or
death threats, please.
Oh. International slashdot readership. Haven't forgotten you, but I can't duplicate the whole list. Find it here.
---------------------------------
James L. Easton
7855 Haskell Avenue, Suite 202
Van Nuys CA 91406-1999
USA
---------------------------------
Anita L. DeFrantz
c/ o Amateur Athletic Foundation
2141 West Adams Boulevard
Los Angeles California 90018
United States of America.
---------------------------------
Robert Ctvrtlik is a US IOC rep, but
doesn't have an address listed.
Your idea is a good one; if enough of the athletes did this together, it'd certainly get folks to take notice.
It seems, however, a bit of a longshot to get everyone involved. Even everyone from one country. Especially countries that don't prize free speech the way the US does.
But if all the athletes mentioned the ban, and their disfavor towards it, that might even be enough.
It's very easy to imagine an organism becoming resistant to a nano-attack -- depending on what a nanobot would plan to do. Suppose a nanobot concentrates on puncturing a cell wall (for cellular organisms). Presumable, there are limitations on how much pressure a nanobot could exert. Perhaps soon there would only be organisms left that had a harder cell wall, impenetrable by nanobot -- or perhaps just hard enough to make it so that an organism tends to be pushed away, rather than punctured. Or perhaps some variants of an organism have more of an ability for motion.
In short, no matter what kind of attack you think of -- whether "chemical" or "physical" or "nano" or psionic (and at the nano level, they're sort of similar, except for maybe psionic) -- chances are, there's some variant of the organism that's resistant. When used massively on the organism, soon only the resistant variant is left. Then the attack is less effective...
Sometimes I wonder if using the attack actually makes things worse by the following mechanism in addition to the above selection: Presumably, a variant organism and a "standard" organism compete for resources in an environment. Thus the standard
organism keeps resources from the variant that it would otherwise have. So the standard organism actaully inhibits the spread of the variant (not to mention providing something for immune systems to cut their teeth on). Remove the standard organism, and the stronger variant has less competition....
Take a walk over to Stepwise ... a grand central station for those who use NeXT/Openstep. Read a few editorials and opinions and you'll begin to pick up on a simple fact: Apple seems to be alienating Obj C developers, pushing the use of Java instead (C++ developers should have no trouble with Java).
SDMI essentially claims that it can make sure that people can only listen if they've paid. So, subtract greed and you get:
A system in which artists are compensated by fans appreciative of their work at reasonable prices.
Subtract draconian restrictions and:
You have a system in which there is fair use, perhaps a little fair abuse, but that copyright respect is encouraged.
You don't want these things?
In some ways, you a very, very right. I love singing, and remember joining a choir my first year of college. They insisted that we have lots of socials and that we have "bonding" meetings periodically. Eventually, another guy in the group and I took to calling it the "choir cult." And I've worked for places where activities were likewise (though in a lesser degree) an attempt to create an ersatz sense of community/loyalty/warm fuzzy feelings.
But I've also worked for places that actually had this feeling. They never demanded that work become your life, that they became your whole community, and they mostly did they cool activities because they thought it would be fun (OK, the trip to see "Bugs Life" was professional review of what was happening in the field, but everything else was for fun).
I recently read a book called "In His Steps" by Charles Shelton. I think it's the origin of the phrase "What would Jesus do?" Now, before you non-christians mock me off slashdot, hold up: the book is really about a group of people who reexamine their ethics and take them very seriously in ALL areas of their life. That's a powerful thing. The reason I bring this up is that in the book some of the people reexamine their ethics in the workplace. They notice their neighbor. Some of those people run businesses. This doesn't necessarily result in everybody being best friends, but it does result in people being treated better and more fairly. A better place to work. Businesses SHOULD pay attention to the human factor of relationships. People don't have to get up in the middle of quarterly reviews and say "I LOVE you, man" -- that's suspect anyway. But having some social contact with people at work and remembering that they're human beings is almost always a good idea.
Once you learn to ignore people proximate to you,
this disconnection starts.
I think this is a problem with our culture, brought on especially in population centers. It's been growing ever since transportation/communication advances gave us the luxury of being able to ignore the people around us (that is, those who live close or are otherwise in proximity to us) during the day. Why be neighborly when you can go/talk anywhere? So you learn to be personally disproximate. Then you start at work...
An example of the neighbor thing: the other day, my girlfriend and I dropped by her old apartment, to see if some mail had come there for her. When we got there, there was a guy wandering around inside with a flashlight. No lights on. Very strange. She knocked on the door anyway, and the guy was very short with her. We became suspicious, and even more so when he finally turned on a light, because that meant he _could_ have had the light on the whole time. We waffled about what to do, and then finally decided to knock on the doors of the two neighboring apartments and see if they knew who their new neighbors were and if it matched the description of who my gf saw. Did they know their neighbors? Of course not. Heck, they wouldn't even answer the door at first, they were wrapped up enough in what was on TV, and they didn't even open the door when they did come to it (I am not a threatening looking person, either).
We get far too good at ignoring those around us.
Predictably, everyone seems to have misunderstood my comment. That's probably partly due to weakness in the way it was presented, but probably partially due to Slashdot blind spots.
_I_ understand that SDMI (and any other such format) is likely to be abused by the corps. I understand that individual rights are being erased by profit hungry/control freak execs. I can see there's danger here.
But only part of the point of my post was that the technology could be used legitimately. The other part of the point was this: the battle we need to fight ISN'T that of making sure that SDMI never happens. The battle we need to fight is making sure that alternatives are available, legally and technologically. We spend WAY too much time defending Napster and other such things that are legally and ethically questionable, on the grounds that our opponents are ethically (and often legally) questionable. I think in the case of SDMI, all we have to do is make sure that alternative ways of getting music (which respect the artists) exists, and it'll win out.
In short: I'm not afraid of a future in which SDMI exists. I AM afraid of a future in which it's the only choice. We might lose that battle, however, because we're perceived as freeloaders that don't respect those who create music. We need to work more actively on implementing systems that can compete with what SDMI claims it can accomplish, but without the greed and draconian restrictions.
Lately I've been thinking that we're drawing the lines for battle in the wrong places. Perhaps there SHOULD be a secure format that can be used for things like limited listening. I know we all cringe about self-destroying CDs and the like, but really it could be a great method of exposure -- 2 listens, and the disc is done, and then you can buy a PERMANENT CD. That might be an agreeable setup, material waste aside. A limited download might be used to accomplish the same thing. You can play it n times, but then you have to buy. Sort of like the trial period/limited number of times kind of shareware (which has a place, even if it's non-free).
Now, I think most of us fear that if secure initiatives come out:
1) they WON'T be used wisely. We might be forced to pay per every viewing/listening/reading.
2) that it will somehow be made illegal and/or very difficult to freely view/distribute stuff you actually have the rights to.
It seems to me that #1 is possible, but that if we start fighting the battle from the other end (#2),
we might be able to make a lot more headway with conservative policy makers AND preserve the freedoms that are truly important. Remember, the GPL doesn't stop Intellectual Property from existing under the law, and make everything free. It (and other free licences) just makes Free Software possible.
We are fighting the battle for #2 in a number of places (DeCSS I think falls in this category), but we're also wasting a lot of time on #1. Given a chance, I think secure initiatives might find a fair place next to free alternatives.
My parents have a Performa 6116; it has a PPC 601 @66 mhz and a 33 Mhz bus. Running Netscape 3 is quite a task for the poor machine (Netscape 4 is right out :).
It was even more of a task before I did just what you described and made a RAM Disk and told Netscape to use it. Sped it up by about 3 times.
Oooo! Oooo! What I'd like to see is this combined with the Doom System Administration Tool (where you can REALLY kill processes -- with a shotgun!). Never again while your routine system maintenance tasks be the same... will the httpd and sendmail demons devour the smaller user tasks? Can you find you keep PINE from running away with the system without shooting? Will find and grep get and stay together? What about the career of rcs?
Don't forget that they might also be able to switch to SPARC and whatever chips HP was using in their stations. OpenStep ran fine on no less than 4 platforms (which, for a commercial OS, was a great feat a few years ago).
NeXT/OpenStep/OS X (whatever) has always been well-designed enough that it was portable.
And don't forget Apple made a fairly flawless leap across architectures from 68k to PPC.
In short: the OS can jump Hardware. No mistake about that.
But the likelihood that PPC is going to die seems slim. Even supposing demand went down for them in personal computers, their demand in the embedded and communications market is fairly high.
OK. I've been thinking about this ever since I student taught Math at a public school. Of course some things were blocked.
The more I saw the temperament of some of my students, the more convinced I was that there really should be some blocking system in place. Despite my frustration at having to work around it sometimes.
What I envisioned was a simple blocking system, maybe not much more sophisticated than a (public) blacklist. If you came up against a block, you could simply call up someone (or call a library aid in the room or something), and say you needed to look at the URL. Give your name and the reason. They'd give you access, and look at the URL too.
What I figured is that embarassment alone might be enough to stop kids from looking at things they shouldn't, and the access would still be available for things they should. Yeah, this makes looking into circumcision and breast cancer and other such things harder (and that's embarassing to some people) but possible.
In short: most anything is accesible, but some (perhaps many) things require easily available permission.
You'd think someone would have moded this up by now. It's funnier than some well-moded stuff I've posted in the last week.
Also, this discussion (at this moment) seems astoundingly empty for a Katz discussion. There oughta be about 30-50 "shaking their heads sadly" posts and 25-46 "Katz is an idiot" posts and 42-87 posts stating exactly why Katz is wrong. Minumum.
Did everyone just agree with him this time? Was he right? Did everyone who doesn't like him finally figure out how to use Slashdot Preferences to block him out?
I think I've discovered how you're going to finance the purchase, though.....
I clicked on your nifty link, I'm astounded: you are an entreprenuer of the most prodigous sort!
Not only are you selling your slashdot account, you're getting over $100 for it. Sure it's not stock in VA Linux, but who knew that we all had equity in our slashdot accounts? Now we can all Karma Farm for profit!
One note: you said the +1 bonus kicks in at about 50 in your auction. That may have been true once upon a time, but I have two accounts with +1 and they're not above fifty. Seems to me it kicked in about 25.
Bad Karma, and a big mistake. The rumors sites are some of Apple's best advertising.
I am not the Apple fan that I once was, but a few years ago, when everyone was still saying "Won't be long now before Apple dies," I was hearing other tunes from.... the rumors sites. They're some of the biggest supporters. They print the good news that everyone wants to beleive. They provide hints of things to come, soon, enticing fans to imagine and beleive in and most of all _eagerly anticipate_ them. Pop stars and politicians could take publicity lessons from the Apple Rumor Press.
And the rest of the people, who Steve Jobs wants to "Wow" and "Surprise"? The untamed masses who are just getting a computer? They don't read the sites, Steve. Your secrets are safe. The fans visit the rumor mills; most people don't. The fans will check your cool stuff anyway. The average consumer will be intruiged with your suprises. It's OK. Leave the rumor sites alone. Heck, use them like politicians use the press... leak info selectively. But don't sue them. Good grief.
Wendell Berry also says that language and technology as they're now often used divide the world (see "Life is a Miracle" or really, just about anything else by him). I wonder what he thinks of the internet...
This reminds me of something that I was thinking about the other day as I passed some ad that said "communicate with anyone! anywhere! anytime!" I don't own a cell phone. Yes, I check my email twice a day, but I find that I don't really have to (several weeks in Australia reminded me of that).
How much of the communication ideals that seem to be pushed out (or community website ideas) do we really want? Need? I don't need to communicate with anyone, anywhere, anytime. Sometimes I need the opposite. Sometimes I just need to be able to communicate with a few people, in the right places, and then have time to do something useful, like build a bookshelf (so I'll have a place to put those collectors items when people buy only eBooks that expire in 4 months).
Yeah, I'm starting to sound like Cliff Stoll and I'm also something of a hypocrite because I like the internet and technology as much as the next guy. But there's just something about the promise of virtual community (and often "Insta" or
some other manufactured word like that) that, like virtual books, doesn't seem quite as promising as community in the real world.
Sigh. The David Letterman crowd wouldn't get it, but this is far funnier than anything on the list above. :)