Honestly I think even the PHBs can see through this one unless the sysadmins are mis-leading them.
"Hrm, our massive e-commerce system has been taken down because the password is 'Q'? You never thought to change it from the default that everyone else knows? Here's a slip of paper, although it's white, think of it as pink."
As I understand it, the 'overrun' bug doesn't show until you've breached the password. In light of that, this isn't a case against Open Source, it a case against lax security measures. MS has the same type of problem with defaut passwords in SQL.
Is it just me, or did they change the title too? I though it was something like "Who wants to register www.gates.sucks" After I submitted my first comment, I saw the new article title.
There standards issues with these proposed TLD's (all others are either 3 or 2 letters.)
They are way overly specific.
We all know that the domain namespace is artifically scarse and that new TLD's are needed, but let's start with proposals that create a more robust TLD..fam is good. So is.web,.biz,.xxx,.sex. Maybe even.per for personal sites, or.pol for political ones, or a hundred others. The sentiment that a company "is not green" should be in the domain, not the TLD.
Additionaly, there is the social issue of their incredible arrogance. It galls me. James Love, the director of the CPT tells Christopher Ambler who has been trying to get.web TLD'ized for four years:
"What's his point? That he has squatter's rights for applying for top level domain? He just wants to make a lot of money for it."
Oh, I see...you've got Ralph Presidential Candidate Nader on your side so your proposal should move to the top of the list despite being patently stupid? Can Nader alone part the seas of Red Tape that is the ICANN process? Get in line.
So you're not fighting for the First Amendment. You're not fighting for a technologically correct solution. You are trying to force porn on Little Jimmy (tm)!!!! You are a monster porn-lord.
If you want to win this fight, you must assure the audience that you do want to keep kids from porn. The first words out of your mouth at every opportunity should be, "While we all argee that we must keep Little Jimmy (tm) away from the nasty Porn-lords, filters are not the solution because..." Without assuring the general audience that you do agree with them, they assume that since you're agruing with the reasonable-sounding pro-filter guy, you are pro-porn.
Unfortunately, you probably can't win by just informing the masses of filters' failings. You need to get the people behind you, and then lead them to a better solution to what they perceive as a major problem.
Actually Professor, most of the successful national politicians become super-experts rather than jack-of-all-trades generalists.
Look at the former Rep. Sam Nunn on defense, Sen. Pete Dominici with the budget, Rep. Jim Leach on banking issues, Rep. Barney Frank's civil rights advocacy, Sen. Kennedy for everything liberal, Rep. Ron Paul with civil liberties, Reps. Dingell and Waxman on the environment can see that successful legislators specialize.
By specializing, they become an important source of advice and information. Other legislators come to depend on them for information. No one legislator can read the entire budget, and no one has time to read every 100+ page bill. But through the committee and sub-committee process, individual legislators become experts at a few issue areas.
Frankly, I am more comfortable with the idea of many experts relying on each other to make decisions rather than a group of generalists attempting to discern the ramifications of their votes. You are correct that, in large part, politicians are ignorant on many issues, but ask Lane Evans about veterans issues, and you'll find that you are talking to one of the foremost experts in the nation on that issue.
Just because they usually look like idiots, doesn't mean that they're always that way.
First of all, let me say that I am a staunch supporter of an open Internet and of free speech in all its forms. That said, I have to take issue with the "Open the Internet to all libraries!" proponents.
Call me a tight-assed conservative, but I don't think that the government ought to be subsidising the erotic arousal of others. Unless I'm missing a large part of the situation, these groups are calling for blocking software to be put on government libraries' computers. This is not a call to block private transmissions on the Internet.
I feel blocking porn, warez, and illegal sites (i.e. a site that descibes how to mass pirate software or movies) is not only acceptable, but an obligation on a governmentally supplied computer/Internet connection. Video games information, and other sometimes questioned sites should be blocked based on the situation, on a FEC computer, certainly, at a library, certainly not. Presumption should be to not block a site.
Beyond how governemnt administrates its own computers, there should be a completely free and open Internet. Filters should never be mandated on private computers, and sites should be free to post whatever they like. (Include the standard exception for child pornography and the like.)
I completely agree with guran's assement of the individual questions, but I disagree with the "most crappy survey" remark.
As a political consultant, I would not have my candidate base his decisions on this poll. But in the same capacity, I would use this poll to spin a press release.
The poll is biased in it's sampling of only regisered voters (although polling public at-large would, I think, generate a higher percentage of "Don't break up MS" responses.) The poll questions are slanted with heavy libertarian phrases. Finally, the break-downs provide only limited information (although Mason-Dixon may have provided ATL with a more detailed break-down that they didn't publish.) This isn't a crappy poll, it's a poll that was clearly intended to produce a certain result. As we can all guess, that last fact won't get any play in the general press.
As I mentioned in another reply to another thread, this poll is useless to determine a course of action. It would be more useful if we could see the results from just the 5% of respondants who know what they were talking about. This poll is misinformation. It reflects on the most vague assumptions of the public.
The danger with this poll is that it will be reported unquestioned. The general public will hear neither about the biases in it, nor about the significant problems in its methodology. Instead, the public will hear about the poll and incorporate into their "pseudo-environments" that MS is good. Then, when time someone asks them about MS, they'll just reguritate that MS is good.
Is that they spin these results as if they mean anything. When only 5% of the public is "Very Closely" following the trial, the rest of the questions regarding the trial or its results are meaningless. Only 5% of the public has enough knowledge to make a truely informed decision about MS's business practices. It's like the OJ case, everyone had an opinion, but the only ones qualified to make a judgement were the ones who part of or had watched the entire trial.
The first question on page 5 is a false dilemma, both options can be true. ("Some people say that MS has repeatedly benefited consumers with its products. Others say MS's business practices have hurt consumers. Which side do you agree with?") Since 95% of the respondents have only a limited experience to base their opinion, they're likely to think that since Windows and Office work fine for them, MS has help consumers.
Although the "break-up" question is better in that it is not a false dilemma, but the number of repondants that are clueless (95%) remained the same. Given the general cluelessness, it's not surprising that most people would rather take less invasive action.
Walter Lippmann's classic Public Opinion specifically talks about the problem of relying on public opinion when the public doesn't really have a grasp of the situation. It doesn't matter that 63% of people don't want MS broken up since 95% of the public doesn't understand the issues involved.
Has anyone read far enough (I'm thinking the last paragraph of this article) to realize that the investigation we're all up in arms about, has been closed for more than six and a half years?
Now while I am as staunch a defender of free speech as anyone, William Simpson was under investigation for about nine months because he was in a position to potentially break U.S. export laws against exportation of strong encryption. While I may not like the fact that we have such laws, Simpson could have helped to include "unexportably" strong encryption in an internet standard that would surely be exported.
Note: I do not support restrictions on encryption, nor to I support mandated back doors. I do not support unwarrented investigations of U.S. citizens (or any other people for that matter.) However, I also do not support getting hysterical over a six-year old dead issue just because the subject has had his Freedom of Information Act request fufilled.
As funny as the F2B stuff is, I much perfer the Lazlo letters.
The F2B e-mails are so far over the top that a company either 1) gets the joke (somewhat reducing the humor value) or 2) is so confused that they send either a form letter or nothing. Who wants to read a bunch of form letters, or worse, a bunch of sophmoric writing with a Y2K thing thrown in at the end?
I've seen this argument enough times that I finally have to respond. Let's break down the Fourth Amendment into two parts, the dicta and the meat (my informal term) of the amendment. The dicta is "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State" The meat of the amendment is "...the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Dicta, for those reading who might not already know, is the legal term for extranous, non-binding text. It is analogous to comments in code. For all of its worth in law, it could just as well be, "Since the sky is blue." The meat of the amendment is what is actual law.
Re-read the amendment. While it says that a militia is needed, the actual law it set down is that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. It says nothing about the rights of the militia to bear arms, it says nothing about the right of the people to bear arms only in militias, it says nothing about the right to arm bears.
While I often see people use grammar to link the right to bear arms to militias, the proper reading of the amendment seperates the right from the militias. The framers could have just as easily wrote the Fourth Amendment as "The right of the militias to keep and bear arms shall not be infrigned."
I think that the reason the framers might have thrown in the line about militias was not to limit the right, but to explain it. The framers didn't add the right to bear arms to hunt or for trap shooting or even for personal protection. They threw it in to ensure the "...security of a Free state..." (my bolding.) That's right kiddies, they put it in so that we don't forget that the Fourth Amendment's purpose to keep the government in check.
Hrm...I think I would have prefered it if Kazinscky and McVeigh (sp?) had used guns. Bombs are much more indiscriminate and have much less of a place in society.
I think the real solution to the problem is to enforce current laws (Harris and Klebold got off on a non-gun arrest) and to stop promoted the idea that a human life isn't worth much. I'm not just talking about the media either. The US, through its law enforcement (let a killer out early because you have to keep that dangerous pot-smoker in prison for life,) media ("A plane crashed today killing 250, but first, the weather,") and societial mores (ease your mourning by blaming and suing everyone remotely connected to the person who died) does not value life very highly.
Perhaps if we, as a society, valued life more highly and stoped promoting random killing, we might see fewer incidents like these. Then again, I could be completely wrong.
I picked up a copy in order to re-read the series (and to read Mostly Harmless and Young Zaphod for the first time.) I took it along on a long weekend to my new in-law's house. I had my mother-in-law impressed because I was so intent on reading the Bible.
One thing that I've noticed though, "Zaphod" is misspelled on the spine as "Zaphoid." Anyone else notice that, or do I have an ultra-rare copy?
There were a few non-IF games out of Infocom (some came out after Activision absorbed Infocom) that are not on the LTOI collections. "Frobiscky" (sp) was a multi-player party quiz game. "Quarterstaff: Tomb of Setmoth" was a graphical RPG for the Mac (I'd still give an arm for a copy of it.) And a Battletech game ("Cresent Hawk's Inception", I think) that was an overhead, turn-based RPG-like adventure game. I'm not mentioning Cornerstone or the dreadful InfoComics, but neither really qualifies as a "treasure" anyway.
As a side note, the ads for Quarterstaff, my experience playing Cresent Hawk's Inception, and reading a description of Larn for the Amiga all led me to write what I now recognize as a Rouge-like for the Commodore 64 called "Orn", but by the time I got done with it, I was off of Q-Link and didn't think anyone on the Internet would want it.
Towards the end of my C-64 days, I was spending a ton of time playing games from an IF-creation system that had been ported from Apple II, but I can't remember the name of it. The cool thing was that you could carry your character over from game to game. The bad thing was the parser sucked (verb/noun only). Ah, the good ol' days!
I've been looking for information on American Impressionist painter, Paul Cornoyer, for about a year now. I've used Google frequently to search for information.
I recently found an eBay auction of one of Cornoyer's works from Google, but when I jumped to eBay, the page was long gone. I was able to use Google's cached copy to get enough information to be useful. Without Google's caching, I would have missed out on a great painting.
While I, too, question the overall usefulness of caching very dynamic sites, if they've got it, I'll be happy to use it.
I also have to admit a secret affinity for MS hardware, except for nagging inconsistency. They get you hooked, and then they start cutting costs.
I love my MS Natural Keyboard (tm), but if I want a new one, I can forget about it. The only one now is the MSNK "Elite", which is a downsized version with maddeningly small arrows and F-keys.
Remember when MS mice first came out? The nice, solid, smooth, white plastic? After a while, they switch to this light, fraile, bumpy, greyish plastic. Then they do it with the next generation of mouse. They did it with the Intellimouse wheel just a couple of months ago.
Their software stinks, but the hardware is pretty nice when it first comes out.
Slashdot Mirror
Honestly I think even the PHBs can see through this one unless the sysadmins are mis-leading them.
"Hrm, our massive e-commerce system has been taken down because the password is 'Q'? You never thought to change it from the default that everyone else knows? Here's a slip of paper, although it's white, think of it as pink."
As I understand it, the 'overrun' bug doesn't show until you've breached the password. In light of that, this isn't a case against Open Source, it a case against lax security measures. MS has the same type of problem with defaut passwords in SQL.
Is it just me, or did they change the title too? I though it was something like "Who wants to register www.gates.sucks" After I submitted my first comment, I saw the new article title.
- There standards issues with these proposed TLD's (all others are either 3 or 2 letters.)
- They are way overly specific.
We all know that the domain namespace is artifically scarse and that new TLD's are needed, but let's start with proposals that create a more robust TLD.Additionaly, there is the social issue of their incredible arrogance. It galls me. James Love, the director of the CPT tells Christopher Ambler who has been trying to get .web TLD'ized for four years:
Oh, I see...you've got Ralph Presidential Candidate Nader on your side so your proposal should move to the top of the list despite being patently stupid? Can Nader alone part the seas of Red Tape that is the ICANN process? Get in line.Love and Nader...you're newbies in the worst way.
But in politics, appearance is everything, and the forces that Jamie is fighting against is making his position appear very bad. They do not respond to the technical arguments, they invoke the protection of the children argument. Suddenly, the parents don't care about being blocked from one or two health sites. The pro-filter groups say "But many of the computers that children use, such as those located at public libraries, don't include the filtering programs because of opposition to keeping kids away from pornography." (my emp.)
So you're not fighting for the First Amendment. You're not fighting for a technologically correct solution. You are trying to force porn on Little Jimmy (tm)!!!! You are a monster porn-lord.
If you want to win this fight, you must assure the audience that you do want to keep kids from porn. The first words out of your mouth at every opportunity should be, "While we all argee that we must keep Little Jimmy (tm) away from the nasty Porn-lords, filters are not the solution because..." Without assuring the general audience that you do agree with them, they assume that since you're agruing with the reasonable-sounding pro-filter guy, you are pro-porn.
Unfortunately, you probably can't win by just informing the masses of filters' failings. You need to get the people behind you, and then lead them to a better solution to what they perceive as a major problem.
Of course, those are just my rants...
Look at the former Rep. Sam Nunn on defense, Sen. Pete Dominici with the budget, Rep. Jim Leach on banking issues, Rep. Barney Frank's civil rights advocacy, Sen. Kennedy for everything liberal, Rep. Ron Paul with civil liberties, Reps. Dingell and Waxman on the environment can see that successful legislators specialize.
By specializing, they become an important source of advice and information. Other legislators come to depend on them for information. No one legislator can read the entire budget, and no one has time to read every 100+ page bill. But through the committee and sub-committee process, individual legislators become experts at a few issue areas.
Frankly, I am more comfortable with the idea of many experts relying on each other to make decisions rather than a group of generalists attempting to discern the ramifications of their votes. You are correct that, in large part, politicians are ignorant on many issues, but ask Lane Evans about veterans issues, and you'll find that you are talking to one of the foremost experts in the nation on that issue.
Just because they usually look like idiots, doesn't mean that they're always that way.
Call me a tight-assed conservative, but I don't think that the government ought to be subsidising the erotic arousal of others. Unless I'm missing a large part of the situation, these groups are calling for blocking software to be put on government libraries' computers. This is not a call to block private transmissions on the Internet.
I feel blocking porn, warez, and illegal sites (i.e. a site that descibes how to mass pirate software or movies) is not only acceptable, but an obligation on a governmentally supplied computer/Internet connection. Video games information, and other sometimes questioned sites should be blocked based on the situation, on a FEC computer, certainly, at a library, certainly not. Presumption should be to not block a site.
Beyond how governemnt administrates its own computers, there should be a completely free and open Internet. Filters should never be mandated on private computers, and sites should be free to post whatever they like. (Include the standard exception for child pornography and the like.)
As a political consultant, I would not have my candidate base his decisions on this poll. But in the same capacity, I would use this poll to spin a press release.
The poll is biased in it's sampling of only regisered voters (although polling public at-large would, I think, generate a higher percentage of "Don't break up MS" responses.) The poll questions are slanted with heavy libertarian phrases. Finally, the break-downs provide only limited information (although Mason-Dixon may have provided ATL with a more detailed break-down that they didn't publish.) This isn't a crappy poll, it's a poll that was clearly intended to produce a certain result. As we can all guess, that last fact won't get any play in the general press.
As I mentioned in another reply to another thread, this poll is useless to determine a course of action. It would be more useful if we could see the results from just the 5% of respondants who know what they were talking about. This poll is misinformation. It reflects on the most vague assumptions of the public.
The danger with this poll is that it will be reported unquestioned. The general public will hear neither about the biases in it, nor about the significant problems in its methodology. Instead, the public will hear about the poll and incorporate into their "pseudo-environments" that MS is good. Then, when time someone asks them about MS, they'll just reguritate that MS is good.
In more /.y terms...it's FUD.
The first question on page 5 is a false dilemma, both options can be true. ("Some people say that MS has repeatedly benefited consumers with its products. Others say MS's business practices have hurt consumers. Which side do you agree with?") Since 95% of the respondents have only a limited experience to base their opinion, they're likely to think that since Windows and Office work fine for them, MS has help consumers.
Although the "break-up" question is better in that it is not a false dilemma, but the number of repondants that are clueless (95%) remained the same. Given the general cluelessness, it's not surprising that most people would rather take less invasive action.
Walter Lippmann's classic Public Opinion specifically talks about the problem of relying on public opinion when the public doesn't really have a grasp of the situation. It doesn't matter that 63% of people don't want MS broken up since 95% of the public doesn't understand the issues involved.
Now while I am as staunch a defender of free speech as anyone, William Simpson was under investigation for about nine months because he was in a position to potentially break U.S. export laws against exportation of strong encryption. While I may not like the fact that we have such laws, Simpson could have helped to include "unexportably" strong encryption in an internet standard that would surely be exported.
Note: I do not support restrictions on encryption, nor to I support mandated back doors. I do not support unwarrented investigations of U.S. citizens (or any other people for that matter.) However, I also do not support getting hysterical over a six-year old dead issue just because the subject has had his Freedom of Information Act request fufilled.
The F2B e-mails are so far over the top that a company either 1) gets the joke (somewhat reducing the humor value) or 2) is so confused that they send either a form letter or nothing. Who wants to read a bunch of form letters, or worse, a bunch of sophmoric writing with a Y2K thing thrown in at the end?
Erp...Fourth^H^H^H^H^H^HSecond
Dicta, for those reading who might not already know, is the legal term for extranous, non-binding text. It is analogous to comments in code. For all of its worth in law, it could just as well be, "Since the sky is blue." The meat of the amendment is what is actual law.
Re-read the amendment. While it says that a militia is needed, the actual law it set down is that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. It says nothing about the rights of the militia to bear arms, it says nothing about the right of the people to bear arms only in militias, it says nothing about the right to arm bears.
While I often see people use grammar to link the right to bear arms to militias, the proper reading of the amendment seperates the right from the militias. The framers could have just as easily wrote the Fourth Amendment as "The right of the militias to keep and bear arms shall not be infrigned."
I think that the reason the framers might have thrown in the line about militias was not to limit the right, but to explain it. The framers didn't add the right to bear arms to hunt or for trap shooting or even for personal protection. They threw it in to ensure the "...security of a Free state..." (my bolding.) That's right kiddies, they put it in so that we don't forget that the Fourth Amendment's purpose to keep the government in check.
Interesting, eh?
Hrm...I think I would have prefered it if Kazinscky and McVeigh (sp?) had used guns. Bombs are much more indiscriminate and have much less of a place in society.
I think the real solution to the problem is to enforce current laws (Harris and Klebold got off on a non-gun arrest) and to stop promoted the idea that a human life isn't worth much. I'm not just talking about the media either. The US, through its law enforcement (let a killer out early because you have to keep that dangerous pot-smoker in prison for life,) media ("A plane crashed today killing 250, but first, the weather,") and societial mores (ease your mourning by blaming and suing everyone remotely connected to the person who died) does not value life very highly.
Perhaps if we, as a society, valued life more highly and stoped promoting random killing, we might see fewer incidents like these. Then again, I could be completely wrong.
I picked up a copy in order to re-read the series (and to read Mostly Harmless and Young Zaphod for the first time.) I took it along on a long weekend to my new in-law's house. I had my mother-in-law impressed because I was so intent on reading the Bible.
One thing that I've noticed though, "Zaphod" is misspelled on the spine as "Zaphoid." Anyone else notice that, or do I have an ultra-rare copy?
>EVERY SINGLE Infocom game
Not entirely true...
There were a few non-IF games out of Infocom (some came out after Activision absorbed Infocom) that are not on the LTOI collections. "Frobiscky" (sp) was a multi-player party quiz game. "Quarterstaff: Tomb of Setmoth" was a graphical RPG for the Mac (I'd still give an arm for a copy of it.) And a Battletech game ("Cresent Hawk's Inception", I think) that was an overhead, turn-based RPG-like adventure game. I'm not mentioning Cornerstone or the dreadful InfoComics, but neither really qualifies as a "treasure" anyway.
As a side note, the ads for Quarterstaff, my experience playing Cresent Hawk's Inception, and reading a description of Larn for the Amiga all led me to write what I now recognize as a Rouge-like for the Commodore 64 called "Orn", but by the time I got done with it, I was off of Q-Link and didn't think anyone on the Internet would want it.
Towards the end of my C-64 days, I was spending a ton of time playing games from an IF-creation system that had been ported from Apple II, but I can't remember the name of it. The cool thing was that you could carry your character over from game to game. The bad thing was the parser sucked (verb/noun only). Ah, the good ol' days!
It certainly gives a whole new meaning to "Fingering Uranus."
How effective are online campaign contribution appeals? Are they worth the effort?
What are the best methods for organizing outreach online? If it's through e-mail, how do you avoid the SPAM label?
I've been looking for information on American Impressionist painter, Paul Cornoyer, for about a year now. I've used Google frequently to search for information.
I recently found an eBay auction of one of Cornoyer's works from Google, but when I jumped to eBay, the page was long gone. I was able to use Google's cached copy to get enough information to be useful. Without Google's caching, I would have missed out on a great painting.
While I, too, question the overall usefulness of caching very dynamic sites, if they've got it, I'll be happy to use it.
I also have to admit a secret affinity for MS hardware, except for nagging inconsistency. They get you hooked, and then they start cutting costs.
I love my MS Natural Keyboard (tm), but if I want a new one, I can forget about it. The only one now is the MSNK "Elite", which is a downsized version with maddeningly small arrows and F-keys.
Remember when MS mice first came out? The nice, solid, smooth, white plastic? After a while, they switch to this light, fraile, bumpy, greyish plastic. Then they do it with the next generation of mouse. They did it with the Intellimouse wheel just a couple of months ago.
Their software stinks, but the hardware is pretty nice when it first comes out.