This results in a 404 error where the banner ad should've been. The link will still work, but you won't have to see (or download) the 468x60 banner ad (or the treeloot Javascript monkey).
DEATH TO MODERN-DAY ADVERTISING!!! Today's ads don't just inform us of a product's existence; they also prey on our minds with flashing text, glitzy graphics, buzzwords by the dozen, and little white lies. Fortunately, we have the right to censor those ads; unfortunately, not all of us have the knowledge to do so. I'm striving to change that.
Hear, hear. What better way to encourage individuals to set up and maintain sites like SomethingAwful?
"Hey, I like your site and visit it every day, but no way in HELL am I gonna contribute to YOUR banner revenue!"
There are a handful of really quality websites out there that are run by dedicated individuals who generally end up paying considerable sums out of their own pockets to provide the world with their site. Pete at Sluggy Freelance is one. Jon at Goats is another. They're great people, and they pour a great deal of personal time, thought and energy into something that generally ends up costing them money. The more people there are blocking the ads on their site, the more they need to pay out of their own pocket to keep their site going.
I honestly hope your little crusade to "educate" people into blocking ads falls on it's ass. I don't like that Treeloot monkey much, either, but I'm not enough of a jerk to deny the keepers of my favorite sites what little return for their investment they get.
Or had you never really considered that you were telling the guy who writes all that stuff you really like to go piss up a rope?
information wants to be expensive...nothing is so valuable as the right information at the right time.
I seem to remember that the old camcorders (I mean pre 1984 old) had a camera attached to a separate vcr module that would do the recording on a full sized video tape.
It's easy enough to do with virtually any video camera worth it's salt today. Many video cameras have high-quality video out feeds to which the cameraperson can easily attach an external recording device (S-VHS deck, DV storage unit, laptop computer w/ DV editing capabilities) to capture the video/audio stream. In fact, a great number of semi-pro/professional camera crews do just that, as professional grade cameras often don't even have things like microphones and media recorders built in.
The catch is that it does, as you stated, create an unnecessary pain in the butt for the casual/home user, who's perfectly happy with having reasonable-quality parts packed tightly into a tiny package.
information wants to be expensive...nothing is so valuable as the right information at the right time.
And as for a leading lady, somebody will step in. There are a ton of great acresses out there that kick ass (It seems everyone is either taking Tae-bo or kickboxing now).
Errgh... Suggesting "somebody" that "is either taking Tae-bo or kickboxing" step in for Michelle Yeoh is quite possibly the most insulting thing you could say about Ms. Yeoh's formidable abilities, both as an actress and a martial artist.
...it's like saying that you could just as easily throw Burt Ward in the role of Kato in The Green Hornet instead of Bruce Lee. I mean, after all, Ward had a black belt in karate, as well as sidekick experience. He'd have worked just fine!
(Hint: Bruce Lee made The Green Hornet the success that it was, and he could have soundly kicked Burt Ward's candy-ass up and down the street.)
information wants to be expensive...nothing is so valuable as the right information at the right time.
I bet this release is a spur to the folks at both Intel and Transmeta -- isn't it nice to watch one-upmanship at work sometimes?
On the subjet of one-upsmanship, it merits mentioning that the new G4 PowerBooks are a formidable entry into the laptop arena; 5 hours' battery life on a 400-500 mHz ultraslim laptop is nothing to sneeze at.
In fact, it'd be really, really cool and worthy of our notice...if it had more than one mouse button! AW-HAW-HAW-HAW! *snort*
Ahem.
information wants to be expensive...nothing is so valuable as the right information at the right time.
I mean, you could spend the cash some of these cases cost on far more important things like more memory, a new hard drive or even a graphics card if you're not into so much serious stuff. But trying to turn your PC into some shrine to aesthetics is just silly.
So much for geeks being some of the last people to appreciate substance over style. What's next, "How Flash can liven up your website!"?
Who says that that "geeks" don't appreciate style over substance? I assure you that you can find far less expensive and better made T-shirts, beer glasses, desk calendars, coffee mugs, and hats than the ones you find at the above site. Yet somehow, this site makes a killing marketing almost exclusively style-oriented items to people supposedly immune to such folly.
While substance is undeniably important, we are creatures of senses and feelings, and our world would be an exceedingly dull place to live without style.
Thus, whether or not case windows and internal neon lights suit your personal taste (an entirely different question, on which I think we would probably share the same opinion,) to say that trying to inject some style into one's computer case is "just silly" strikes me as a little over-utilitarian. Why shouldn't a geek have a fast computer that looks nice, too?
information wants to be expensive...nothing is so valuable as the right information at the right time.
...well, it suddenly occured to me that I would go to Hooters in Amsterdam. At least, that's what my employer would think if they ever decided to check the proxy server logs. While they're fairly cool about web browsing in general, they are decidedly less cool about employees looking at "objectionable material" at work. I guess I'll need to institute a policy of proofreading Slashdot's front-page content for them, to check for things like goatse.cx links...
I'm really, really glad that the submitter didn't slip a really objectionable link in there. I'm also really, really pissed off at Slashdot for this kind of crap. This is total incompetence. (I'm not even taking into account the duplicate stories on the Chinese rocket lanunch in the Science section...)
This kind of fsck-up at virtually any other major online content provider would be grounds for immediate dismissal for the employee in question, for crying out loud. READ YOUR DAMNED FRONT PAGE SUBMISSIONS!
information wants to be expensive...nothing is so valuable as the right information at the right time.
$799 is too much for a system for which I have no apps.
I have thousands of dollars of Apps for Win32, and thousands of free apps for Linux and NetBSD.
On proprietary platforms the hardware is the cheap part, ya know. Unless you're into warez.
Well, a good chunk of UNIX/BSD space can be readily ported to OS X; little problem there. Free/shareware for the Mac has always been part of the Mac lifeblood; visit Ambrosia Software (www.ambrosiasw.com) or dig through the download.com or mac.tucows.com for a few examples.
information wants to be expensive...nothing is so valuable as the right information at the right time.
$799 for a system you can duplicate with Wintel for $400.
$1299 for a system you can duplicate with Wintel for $800.
Get the point on price yet?
The point at hand was affordability, not comparative pricing. I don't consider $799 for a complete system terribly expensive.
On your note, though, yes, you can get a similarly powerful Wintel box for $400. You can also be reasonably certain that the components will either be POS no-names thrown in a tin case or carefully hand-picked and self-installed by the buyer in question, an option that appeals to about as many computer users as building one's own car appeals to automobile drivers.
Show me a pre-built, ready-to-run Wintel box with quality components that work well together for $400, and you'll have a strong case.
information wants to be expensive...nothing is so valuable as the right information at the right time.
Fair enough. But what if I'm some neo-nazi not living in france. Americans would say he/she would have the right to buy nazi gear and the French laws shouldn't extend their bounds outside of France. By forcing Yahoo's hand they are effectively extending outside of France. Naturally Americans would be pissed about this because they didn't have any voice in the matter.
But the trick is that closing Nazi auctions wasn't Yahoo's only option. Yahoo could have re-engineered their systems to the point where the trafficing of these illegal items to France was reasonably controlled, at least to the satisfaction of the french judiciary; Yahoo could have simply abandoned their French office; Yahoo could have (and did) simply dropped Nazi auctions completely for the sake of preserving their revenue stream.
The issue doesn't lie with the French government; they are as justified in enforcing their own laws as the US is in enforcing theirs. Yahoo is a multinational company with offices in France, and thus falls under French jurisdiction. The issue lies with Yahoo. Yahoo decided that profit was more important than free speech, and instead of upgrading systems to only block traffic to France (which is all that Yahoo was legally required to do,) they decided to just yank the whole thing and affect the entire world. Saving money is more important to Yahoo than ensuring free speech.
If I had two markets, for instance let's pretend I'm intel, and I sell pentiums to ibm and controller chips to aopen. Could aopen turn around and tell me not to sell pentiums to ibm anymore just because they don't like it? Get a clue.
You're talking about two very different scenarios. Yours is interaction between two corporations; the Yahoo case is between a company and a nation. Nations and corporations are vastly different things. A law is a very different thing from a business practice. In any case, AOpen has absolutely no authority whatsoever to dictate how another business should operate; national governments, on the other hand, do.
If I was yahoo I'd just close my French branch and say hell with them.
Which is a perfectly valid way to end the whole thing. Apparently, though, Yahoo considers it worth the extra effort to hang on to their French branch and domain name, as they haven't just closed up shop and left yet.
What if tomorrow, Iran sued Wal-Mart demanding they take all copies of the Swimsuit Issue of SI, Kathy Ireland calendars, etc... off the shelf?
Then Wal-Mart would likely remove its physical presence from Iran (if it has one) and ignore the ruling.
What if tomorrow, Chnia sued demanding that Best Buy, CompUSA, etc... stop selling Linux?
Then Best Buy, CompUSA, etc... would likely remove their physical presence from China (if they have one) and ignore the ruling.
This decision would be fine if Yahoo had stood up on their own and said "Hey...we don't like this hateful crap - we won't let you sell it."
However, it is not their decision.
You're damn right it isn't Yahoo's decision. It is the French government enforcing their own laws on companies operating on their own soil. Tell me why Yahoo should be exempt from complying with the laws of a nation where they voluntarily and legally exist as a business entity?
It is the french government standing up and saying "Hey...we don't like this hateful crap - it reminds us of how we rolled over - you can't let people sell it."
I assure you that there is no lack of rememberance of what happened when the Nazis controlled France here. There do not exist in America memorial walls that list the names and dates of French citizens executed by the Nazis at that particular location. The one I see most often sits beside a freeway overpass near a client office, and usually has fresh flowers at it. You do not live in a building that once housed Nazis. You do not walk down streets that once rumbled with Panther tanks. You do not have a Holocaust depoortation memorial at the heart of your city. You do not take courses from a professor who very clearly remembers the whole invasion and occupation. You have ABSOLUTELY NO CONCEPT of the memory that lives here of Nazi Germany and Occupied France.
About the only differnce is that Yahoo has a "branch" in France, whereas Wal-Mart may not have one in Iran, or Best Buy in China - but with the Internet, does that matter anymore?
With the Internet, the sovereignty of a nation is more important than ever. It is crass, foolish and dangerously condescending to expect the rest of the world to fall in line with what is essentially the American ideology of How The Web Should Be.
Yes, they have offices in France, they run the French version of Yahoo there, which has no Nazi auctions. Why should the American/International site have to comply with French laws?
Look at it this way. Why should Yahoo, who is legally bound to follow the laws of France as a corporation because they have a physical presence in the country, be able to circumvent the letter and intent of French law simply by auctioning Nazi memorabilia off on a site that isn't "intended" for French audiences?
The tricky thing is, if you are a multinational web company and you have a physical presence in a country, then for all intents and purposes, you are responsible for making sure that all of your content meets that nation's legal standards.
Yahoo has voluntarily set up shop in France. As such, it is Yahoo's responsibility to abide by French law, not France's responsibility. It does not matter what URL people use to get to yahoo's content, or where the servers reside; what matters is that Yahoo The Multinational Corporation is responsible for piping illegal webpages to France. France can charge them with whatever they see fit and can fine them however they deem necessary so long as Yahoo does business in France.
I don't understand why yahoo should have to buckle to this pressure. Why is it up to them to enforce another country's laws?
...well, for starters, Yahoo is a multinational company, and has a physical business presence in France. Businesses in France need to follow French laws; if they don't they get sued and fined. Thus, Yahoo can be fined through their French division if they violate French laws. If they wanted to, they could probably avoid the whole mess by closing up their French operations, but that's a very costly step to take.
Users wanted to be infantilized, to return to a pre-linguistic condition in the using of computers, and the Xerox PARC technology's primary advantage was that it allowed users to address computers in a pre-linguistic way. This was to my mind a terribly socially retrograde thing to do, and I have not changed my mind about that.
Of course users want to be infantilized. It seems that Molgen is bemoaning the fact that a simple, non-precise interface ended up being more popular with Joe User than a rigorous, procedurally sound language interface. That's akin to bemoaning the widespread use of the dumbed-down word "sphere" to denote some unknown representation of the equation [f(x, y, z) = ax + by + cz + 2dxy + 2eyz + 2fxz + 2gx + 2hy + 2jz + k = 0], or using the imprecise and general "Taco Bell" to represent the global coordinates of (93W 14' 41", 44N 57' 47"). Would you enjoy living in a world where everything you did was bound to a precise, exhaustive and accurate lingustic definition? Why the heck would you want a computing experience to be exclusively defined in the same way?
It's important to note, too, that though he uses the Lisa memo as the subject, he specifically addresses the problem as being "Xerox PARC technology, the graphical user interface". This would imply that all the GUIs derived from the PARC model that exist today (Mac, Windows, X, KDE, Gnome, etc.) fit the same ug-me-bash label. As fun as it was to give them thar silly Mac users a kick in the ribs, Moglen's protest would extend quite handily to, well, pretty much anything that has mouse pointers and dialog boxes. Funny group that Gnome team is, so damn bent on the intellectual and emotional regression of Linux...
Like Gutenberg, and unlike some of the other self-taught inventive geniuses who spring to mind (like Franklin, Edison and Tesla), John Harrison was not a catholic inventor: his speciality was time.
I'm a bit confused by this analogy. How are the religious beliefs of an inventor assoiciated to their field of expertise? Is religion a significant theme in the book? It just strikes me as a bit of an odd way to open the review of a book about the father of the chronometer...
Your kid comes to you, and says, "Dad, I want to read news:soc.support.youth.gay-lesbian-bi because I think I might be gay", and you say...
Yet another painful reason that censorware invariably hurts more than it helps.
If you're a parent that genuinely cares about your child, you not only say, "OK, I'll take that filter off", but you also sit down and listen to your kid. Chances are they're scared stiff by the kind of hateful crap they hear everyday in the halls at schools, and they need your love and attention. Of course, chances are excellent that you never installed censorware in the first place.
If you're a parent that cares more about having your child turn out how you want them to turn out, then you'll tell them point-blank that they aren't gay, never will be gay, and eye them like a hawk for the rest of the time your child lives under your roof. Of course, your kid probably knows better than to tell you the truth, and probably hasn't for some time, with good reason.
Censorware just makes it easier for parents to try and mold their kids after the metal's already cooled. If your kid is still young enough that the contents of the internet pose a genuine hazard to their development, they shouldn't ever be using it unsupervised, anyway; if your kid is old enough to know right from wrong and make their own decisions regarding who they are, then censorware is just another wall to put between yourself and your child.
One question: how would this apply to the majority of users? The only times i restart Windows (you know, the OS that the majority of computer users use) are when it crashes or when i install new software. Now my Linux boxes with this stuff be cool, but the problem still exists in the stability of the OS for most people.
Well, if you're running a basic workstation (that is, nobody needs 24/7 remote access to it), You can save a fair chunk of energy by powering down your system without losing system state--a fair step up from current suspend methods, which basically need to write the contents of RAM to disk and then read and reinstate said contents to RAM (which can be a tricky/time consuming proposition.) Extend this tech to other components (processor, periphrials, etc) and you could eventually have a truly persistent-state computer, where the concept of "powering off" falls by the wayside, as power is simply siphoned when needed; since your computer wouldn't need a constant flow of electricity to maintain state, it could effectively draw zero power in an when idle, thus being (theoretically) as effecient as if it were off.
So basically, in the short term, snapping the power on and off when you finish using the computer becomes a quick, simple thing to do. If you get a little visionary with this, you may not even need a power switch on your computer eventually. Funky thought, huh?
How about not waiting a minute or more for your personal computer or laptop to boot up? With MRAM, "instant-on" computing becomes possible
Even though I'm well aware of the fact that MRAM is decidedly far more advanced than the magnetic RAM of old, I can't help but chuckle at the article's starry-eyed vision of tomorrow's "instant-on" computers. I can close my eyes and imagine...
...coding on the old PDP8/E my college had. That had magnetic memory, and it was indeed "instant on" (unless you count the 25-odd seconds it took the two cooling fans to rev up to full speed, that is.) Best of all, if the group before you forgot to erase their program, you could avoid the hassle of manually entering it yourself...
It seems corporatists want to have their cake and eat it too - they want to do as they please (pollute, collude, rape), but they want the rest of us (via our Corporatist $whoring$ governments) to guarantee their pocket books...
I, for one, would be honestly surprised to learn that you did not own several thousand dollars worth of corporation-spawned leisure goods. Do you own a computer? TV? VCR? DVD Player? Stereo? Stereo in your car? CD player in your car? Playstation? Dreamcast? CD player that you can carry around with you? MP3 player that you can carry around with you? Microwave oven? Internet connection? Cell phone? Pager? Handheld computer? Laptop computer? Digital camera? Camcorder? Cordless phone? CD library? DVD library?
You're fooling yourself if you honestly think that the Big Bad Meanie Government is the driving force behind corporate corruption. It's the ever-growing leisure class that drives corporate corruption--companies put the latest and greatest thing out on the shelves and people camp out inside Wal-Mart just to get the first one. It's hard to say that the corporation is raping society when society is clawing it's clothes off like a nymphomaniac. Corporations get away with the crap they do because people just keep throwing money at them.
If you own a DVD player, you've let the RIAA/MPAA win. If you regularly buy CDs, you're part of the pipeline that feeds the recording industry. If you own a Walkman, a Discman, a Vaio, play Everquest, or buy any number of the things Sony puts on the market, then you are part of the hand that feeds Sony. How much do you think a corporation will care about what you think of their business practices if you continue to buy their products, especially when said products are not necessities by any stretch of the imagination?
Sony manufactures consumer goods. To suggest that the government is somehow responsible for their business practices is absurd. Sony does and gets away with what it does because the people care more about getting their toys than they do about the ethics of the corporation. Wake up and smell your own damn complacency.
Slashdot Mirror
DEATH TO MODERN-DAY ADVERTISING!!! Today's ads don't just inform us of a product's existence; they also prey on our minds with flashing text, glitzy graphics, buzzwords by the dozen, and little white lies. Fortunately, we have the right to censor those ads; unfortunately, not all of us have the knowledge to do so. I'm striving to change that.
Hear, hear. What better way to encourage individuals to set up and maintain sites like SomethingAwful?
"Hey, I like your site and visit it every day, but no way in HELL am I gonna contribute to YOUR banner revenue!"
There are a handful of really quality websites out there that are run by dedicated individuals who generally end up paying considerable sums out of their own pockets to provide the world with their site. Pete at Sluggy Freelance is one. Jon at Goats is another. They're great people, and they pour a great deal of personal time, thought and energy into something that generally ends up costing them money. The more people there are blocking the ads on their site, the more they need to pay out of their own pocket to keep their site going.
I honestly hope your little crusade to "educate" people into blocking ads falls on it's ass. I don't like that Treeloot monkey much, either, but I'm not enough of a jerk to deny the keepers of my favorite sites what little return for their investment they get.
Or had you never really considered that you were telling the guy who writes all that stuff you really like to go piss up a rope?
information wants to be expensive...nothing is so valuable as the right information at the right time.
It's easy enough to do with virtually any video camera worth it's salt today. Many video cameras have high-quality video out feeds to which the cameraperson can easily attach an external recording device (S-VHS deck, DV storage unit, laptop computer w/ DV editing capabilities) to capture the video/audio stream. In fact, a great number of semi-pro/professional camera crews do just that, as professional grade cameras often don't even have things like microphones and media recorders built in.
The catch is that it does, as you stated, create an unnecessary pain in the butt for the casual/home user, who's perfectly happy with having reasonable-quality parts packed tightly into a tiny package.
information wants to be expensive...nothing is so valuable as the right information at the right time.
</sarcasm>
information wants to be expensive...nothing is so valuable as the right information at the right time.
Errgh... Suggesting "somebody" that "is either taking Tae-bo or kickboxing" step in for Michelle Yeoh is quite possibly the most insulting thing you could say about Ms. Yeoh's formidable abilities, both as an actress and a martial artist.
(Hint: Bruce Lee made The Green Hornet the success that it was, and he could have soundly kicked Burt Ward's candy-ass up and down the street.)
information wants to be expensive...nothing is so valuable as the right information at the right time.
On the subjet of one-upsmanship, it merits mentioning that the new G4 PowerBooks are a formidable entry into the laptop arena; 5 hours' battery life on a 400-500 mHz ultraslim laptop is nothing to sneeze at.
In fact, it'd be really, really cool and worthy of our notice...if it had more than one mouse button! AW-HAW-HAW-HAW! *snort*
Ahem.
information wants to be expensive...nothing is so valuable as the right information at the right time.
So much for geeks being some of the last people to appreciate substance over style. What's next, "How Flash can liven up your website!"?
Who says that that "geeks" don't appreciate style over substance? I assure you that you can find far less expensive and better made T-shirts, beer glasses, desk calendars, coffee mugs, and hats than the ones you find at the above site. Yet somehow, this site makes a killing marketing almost exclusively style-oriented items to people supposedly immune to such folly.
While substance is undeniably important, we are creatures of senses and feelings, and our world would be an exceedingly dull place to live without style. Thus, whether or not case windows and internal neon lights suit your personal taste (an entirely different question, on which I think we would probably share the same opinion,) to say that trying to inject some style into one's computer case is "just silly" strikes me as a little over-utilitarian. Why shouldn't a geek have a fast computer that looks nice, too?
information wants to be expensive...nothing is so valuable as the right information at the right time.
information wants to be expensive...nothing is so valuable as the right information at the right time.
Heh. Bets on you getting (+4, Funny), me sitting at (+1, Offtopic)?
information wants to be expensive...nothing is so valuable as the right information at the right time.
information wants to be expensive...nothing is so valuable as the right information at the right time.
I'm really, really glad that the submitter didn't slip a really objectionable link in there. I'm also really, really pissed off at Slashdot for this kind of crap. This is total incompetence. (I'm not even taking into account the duplicate stories on the Chinese rocket lanunch in the Science section...)
This kind of fsck-up at virtually any other major online content provider would be grounds for immediate dismissal for the employee in question, for crying out loud. READ YOUR DAMNED FRONT PAGE SUBMISSIONS!
information wants to be expensive...nothing is so valuable as the right information at the right time.
I did notice, however, that the required registration at the "New York Times" was not free...
information wants to be expensive...nothing is so valuable as the right information at the right time.
Well, a good chunk of UNIX/BSD space can be readily ported to OS X; little problem there. Free/shareware for the Mac has always been part of the Mac lifeblood; visit Ambrosia Software (www.ambrosiasw.com) or dig through the download.com or mac.tucows.com for a few examples.
information wants to be expensive...nothing is so valuable as the right information at the right time.
$1299 for a system you can duplicate with Wintel for $800.
Get the point on price yet?
The point at hand was affordability, not comparative pricing. I don't consider $799 for a complete system terribly expensive.
On your note, though, yes, you can get a similarly powerful Wintel box for $400. You can also be reasonably certain that the components will either be POS no-names thrown in a tin case or carefully hand-picked and self-installed by the buyer in question, an option that appeals to about as many computer users as building one's own car appeals to automobile drivers.
Show me a pre-built, ready-to-run Wintel box with quality components that work well together for $400, and you'll have a strong case.
information wants to be expensive...nothing is so valuable as the right information at the right time.
$799 for a complete system too rich for your blood?
Dig around the Apple store. A lot has changed there in the past few years.
information wants to be expensive...nothing is so valuable as the right information at the right time.
But the trick is that closing Nazi auctions wasn't Yahoo's only option. Yahoo could have re-engineered their systems to the point where the trafficing of these illegal items to France was reasonably controlled, at least to the satisfaction of the french judiciary; Yahoo could have simply abandoned their French office; Yahoo could have (and did) simply dropped Nazi auctions completely for the sake of preserving their revenue stream.
The issue doesn't lie with the French government; they are as justified in enforcing their own laws as the US is in enforcing theirs. Yahoo is a multinational company with offices in France, and thus falls under French jurisdiction. The issue lies with Yahoo. Yahoo decided that profit was more important than free speech, and instead of upgrading systems to only block traffic to France (which is all that Yahoo was legally required to do,) they decided to just yank the whole thing and affect the entire world. Saving money is more important to Yahoo than ensuring free speech.
You're talking about two very different scenarios. Yours is interaction between two corporations; the Yahoo case is between a company and a nation. Nations and corporations are vastly different things. A law is a very different thing from a business practice. In any case, AOpen has absolutely no authority whatsoever to dictate how another business should operate; national governments, on the other hand, do.
If I was yahoo I'd just close my French branch and say hell with them.
Which is a perfectly valid way to end the whole thing. Apparently, though, Yahoo considers it worth the extra effort to hang on to their French branch and domain name, as they haven't just closed up shop and left yet.
Then Wal-Mart would likely remove its physical presence from Iran (if it has one) and ignore the ruling.
What if tomorrow, Chnia sued demanding that Best Buy, CompUSA, etc... stop selling Linux?
Then Best Buy, CompUSA, etc... would likely remove their physical presence from China (if they have one) and ignore the ruling.
This decision would be fine if Yahoo had stood up on their own and said "Hey...we don't like this hateful crap - we won't let you sell it." However, it is not their decision.
You're damn right it isn't Yahoo's decision. It is the French government enforcing their own laws on companies operating on their own soil. Tell me why Yahoo should be exempt from complying with the laws of a nation where they voluntarily and legally exist as a business entity?
It is the french government standing up and saying "Hey...we don't like this hateful crap - it reminds us of how we rolled over - you can't let people sell it."
I assure you that there is no lack of rememberance of what happened when the Nazis controlled France here. There do not exist in America memorial walls that list the names and dates of French citizens executed by the Nazis at that particular location. The one I see most often sits beside a freeway overpass near a client office, and usually has fresh flowers at it. You do not live in a building that once housed Nazis. You do not walk down streets that once rumbled with Panther tanks. You do not have a Holocaust depoortation memorial at the heart of your city. You do not take courses from a professor who very clearly remembers the whole invasion and occupation. You have ABSOLUTELY NO CONCEPT of the memory that lives here of Nazi Germany and Occupied France.
About the only differnce is that Yahoo has a "branch" in France, whereas Wal-Mart may not have one in Iran, or Best Buy in China - but with the Internet, does that matter anymore?
With the Internet, the sovereignty of a nation is more important than ever. It is crass, foolish and dangerously condescending to expect the rest of the world to fall in line with what is essentially the American ideology of How The Web Should Be.
Lowest Common Denominator.
Duly noted.
Look at it this way. Why should Yahoo, who is legally bound to follow the laws of France as a corporation because they have a physical presence in the country, be able to circumvent the letter and intent of French law simply by auctioning Nazi memorabilia off on a site that isn't "intended" for French audiences?
The tricky thing is, if you are a multinational web company and you have a physical presence in a country, then for all intents and purposes, you are responsible for making sure that all of your content meets that nation's legal standards.
Yahoo has voluntarily set up shop in France. As such, it is Yahoo's responsibility to abide by French law, not France's responsibility. It does not matter what URL people use to get to yahoo's content, or where the servers reside; what matters is that Yahoo The Multinational Corporation is responsible for piping illegal webpages to France. France can charge them with whatever they see fit and can fine them however they deem necessary so long as Yahoo does business in France.
Of course users want to be infantilized. It seems that Molgen is bemoaning the fact that a simple, non-precise interface ended up being more popular with Joe User than a rigorous, procedurally sound language interface. That's akin to bemoaning the widespread use of the dumbed-down word "sphere" to denote some unknown representation of the equation [f(x, y, z) = ax + by + cz + 2dxy + 2eyz + 2fxz + 2gx + 2hy + 2jz + k = 0], or using the imprecise and general "Taco Bell" to represent the global coordinates of (93W 14' 41", 44N 57' 47"). Would you enjoy living in a world where everything you did was bound to a precise, exhaustive and accurate lingustic definition? Why the heck would you want a computing experience to be exclusively defined in the same way?
It's important to note, too, that though he uses the Lisa memo as the subject, he specifically addresses the problem as being "Xerox PARC technology, the graphical user interface". This would imply that all the GUIs derived from the PARC model that exist today (Mac, Windows, X, KDE, Gnome, etc.) fit the same ug-me-bash label. As fun as it was to give them thar silly Mac users a kick in the ribs, Moglen's protest would extend quite handily to, well, pretty much anything that has mouse pointers and dialog boxes. Funny group that Gnome team is, so damn bent on the intellectual and emotional regression of Linux...
$ man reality
I'm a bit confused by this analogy. How are the religious beliefs of an inventor assoiciated to their field of expertise? Is religion a significant theme in the book? It just strikes me as a bit of an odd way to open the review of a book about the father of the chronometer...
Nit: "Catholic" is capitalized.
$ man reality
Yet another painful reason that censorware invariably hurts more than it helps.
If you're a parent that genuinely cares about your child, you not only say, "OK, I'll take that filter off", but you also sit down and listen to your kid. Chances are they're scared stiff by the kind of hateful crap they hear everyday in the halls at schools, and they need your love and attention. Of course, chances are excellent that you never installed censorware in the first place.
If you're a parent that cares more about having your child turn out how you want them to turn out, then you'll tell them point-blank that they aren't gay, never will be gay, and eye them like a hawk for the rest of the time your child lives under your roof. Of course, your kid probably knows better than to tell you the truth, and probably hasn't for some time, with good reason.
Censorware just makes it easier for parents to try and mold their kids after the metal's already cooled. If your kid is still young enough that the contents of the internet pose a genuine hazard to their development, they shouldn't ever be using it unsupervised, anyway; if your kid is old enough to know right from wrong and make their own decisions regarding who they are, then censorware is just another wall to put between yourself and your child.
$ man reality
Well, if you're running a basic workstation (that is, nobody needs 24/7 remote access to it), You can save a fair chunk of energy by powering down your system without losing system state--a fair step up from current suspend methods, which basically need to write the contents of RAM to disk and then read and reinstate said contents to RAM (which can be a tricky/time consuming proposition.) Extend this tech to other components (processor, periphrials, etc) and you could eventually have a truly persistent-state computer, where the concept of "powering off" falls by the wayside, as power is simply siphoned when needed; since your computer wouldn't need a constant flow of electricity to maintain state, it could effectively draw zero power in an when idle, thus being (theoretically) as effecient as if it were off.
So basically, in the short term, snapping the power on and off when you finish using the computer becomes a quick, simple thing to do. If you get a little visionary with this, you may not even need a power switch on your computer eventually. Funky thought, huh?
$ man reality
Even though I'm well aware of the fact that MRAM is decidedly far more advanced than the magnetic RAM of old, I can't help but chuckle at the article's starry-eyed vision of tomorrow's "instant-on" computers. I can close my eyes and imagine...
$ man reality
I, for one, would be honestly surprised to learn that you did not own several thousand dollars worth of corporation-spawned leisure goods. Do you own a computer? TV? VCR? DVD Player? Stereo? Stereo in your car? CD player in your car? Playstation? Dreamcast? CD player that you can carry around with you? MP3 player that you can carry around with you? Microwave oven? Internet connection? Cell phone? Pager? Handheld computer? Laptop computer? Digital camera? Camcorder? Cordless phone? CD library? DVD library?
You're fooling yourself if you honestly think that the Big Bad Meanie Government is the driving force behind corporate corruption. It's the ever-growing leisure class that drives corporate corruption--companies put the latest and greatest thing out on the shelves and people camp out inside Wal-Mart just to get the first one. It's hard to say that the corporation is raping society when society is clawing it's clothes off like a nymphomaniac. Corporations get away with the crap they do because people just keep throwing money at them.
If you own a DVD player, you've let the RIAA/MPAA win. If you regularly buy CDs, you're part of the pipeline that feeds the recording industry. If you own a Walkman, a Discman, a Vaio, play Everquest, or buy any number of the things Sony puts on the market, then you are part of the hand that feeds Sony. How much do you think a corporation will care about what you think of their business practices if you continue to buy their products, especially when said products are not necessities by any stretch of the imagination?
Sony manufactures consumer goods. To suggest that the government is somehow responsible for their business practices is absurd. Sony does and gets away with what it does because the people care more about getting their toys than they do about the ethics of the corporation. Wake up and smell your own damn complacency.
Its almost laughable
Amen to that.
$ man reality