Milloy (the "Junkman") is is PR stooge who speaks for industry. His tactic is to mix up reasonable critiques of genuine "junk science" with diatribes on favourite industry issues such as global warming and regulation in general.
This is not to say he is necessarily wrong, but that you should treat everything he says with extreme caution.
In the case of DDT, Malloy and friends claim that it has been "demagogued out of use", but there is plenty of evidence to suggest that bans have followed on from real concerns carefully considered.
There would appear to be significant commercial interests in removing bans on DDT. The list of sponsors on a prominent pro-DDT site should cause you to approach the evidence there with some scepticism.
There's a lot of confusion over this issue. I had exactly the same problem and *never* solved it. I followed all the FAQs on the site, found out several new IE5 bugs, corresponded with Ralph, and gave up. The suggestions on the FAQ solve *some* IE5 problems, but your one (and mine...) doesn't go away. I ended up buying a 56-bit cert:(
I've also heard that Thwate certs work OK.
The only thing I never tried but saw suggested on a mailing list is recompiling openSSL without experimental ciphers (it's a compiler flag). Sounded plausible at the time.
I can't speak for apache-ssl, but I can echo some peoples' experience with mod_ssl / IE5 / Versign "Global Server Certificates" (128-bit certs with 'stepping up').
The problem is a nasty one and despite regular posts on the mailing lists, Ralph (the mod_ssl author) seemed to think that the problem was solved, and that all problems derived from IE's implementation of SSL. But the problem is not solved - look at the mailing list archives and every week someone has the same problem. In fact I think the problem derives from a *combination* of some of the experimental ciphers in OpenSSL 0.9.5a and IE5+.
The problem was eating up too much of my time, so now I'm only using 56-bit certs, for which there is no problem. But that's not what I would call an ideal situation...
Am I the only one who thinks this whole article stinks of marketing nonsense? It reads like a long series of prompts for Kahle to plug Alexa. How about this question / brown-nosing:
One of the things that's always been amazing about Alexa, and I think that people are increasingly realizing the power, is not just that you're able to see all this information about traffic patterns but that information slightly processed is being fed back to the users.
Mmm yes, I think I speak for everyone when I tell you that I'm increasingly realizing the power of the "what's related" button in nestcape.
All credit to them for opening up their archives to research centres free of charge, I think that's very important and a brilliant effort, but at heart Alexa are just a data-mining, marketing-driven outfit like hundreds of other dotcoms around the world.
He's eager to be painted out to be some kind of visionary, but really, since 1991 all he's done is push WAIS as a way of charging for material over the web. I mean, good work in inventing a protocol and all that, but the charge-for-content model looks like it's failing right now. I think Britannica used to be on WAIS but it's free now.
It's interesting the way he talks about the urgent need for a publishing system without once mentioning WAIS. I wondered what happened to WAIS, Inc, his attempt to provide a publishing system commercially back in 1991 or something. Go to www.wais.com and you'll end up by being redirected to www.hummingbird.com, an
Enterprise portal suite [which] is the industry's first, fully integrated, scaleable, end-to-end portal system
I disclose full details of my invention, and in return, I get monopoly on actually using it for a certain amount of time.
So a patent doesn't block the sharing of information, but it does block the implementation of that information, albeit on a more equitable basis than, for example, trade secrets?
Therefore the pro-patent argument is that patents actually encourage information sharing?
In that case, in this exchange between the patent office and the inventor, what does an inventor gain? They still get a monopoly of implementation of their ideas by making an invention a trade secret, plus they can keep that monopoly indefinitely.
I had the whole human genome project debate in mind when I was talking about scientific advances - it seems to me that if people have to enter into a contract with those who 'discovered' the human genome before they can use the genome data, it will hinder real progress. To my mind, there is always something altruistic about the kind of research that results in real paradigm shifts. Commerically-backed research does help knowledge progress, but it is rarely on the cutting edge.
I'm not very well informed on this issue. All I know is that patenting a sorting algorithm is counter to the traditional scientific value of sharing information for the greater good of humanity / the industry / sorting algorithms.
Also, an inability to patent software does not seem to hold back innovation. We write good software in Europe without patents.
But there must be an argument for this patenting stuff. I'd be interested to know what it is.
Does your daily newspaper run a front-page story about the same thing, even containing some identical content, every day? didn't think so.
And if I found the editorial of a newspaper that I liked so be getting a bit less quality, I'd write and make a comment. Maybe a bit less glibly, admittedly.
Of course I have now decided to remove articles about DeCSS from my preferences now. But personally, I have found that the general quality of Slashdot stories has gone downhill over the last few months.
I probably use the web less than you then, but I've probably looked at about 30-50 new sites a week for the last 5 years, 30% of the time in NS, and I've never been locked out. Must be lucky I suppose.
But "arrogant crap"?! I feel fairly well qualified to talk about what clients want from a website. The view from the development side is completely different. I've worked on tons of web projects and one thing I've learned is that you have to specify exactly what browsers you're supporting. Clients don't care about NS until their aunt / sponsors / children look at the site and can't see it. Then they ring you up and demand to know what's wrong. And not just on NS, also on IE3.02, IE4.5 on a Mac, just about whatever ancient or badly written browser that's ever been made. As long as NS has more than 10% of the morket, 99% of my clients will care about it.
I agree that IE is by far and away the best browser out there, for stability and rendering speed and being able to display XML, for example. In fact I often use windows platforms specifically and solely in order to browse the web. A sad state of affairs.
BUT...I have never found a site that I can only view with IE. Please point me to one. I'm sure they exist, but they're obviously not any sites that I ever use. In fact any web agency worth their salt will at least make sure a site downgrades elegantly into NS.
However, if Mozilla doesn't get quick and stable really soon, perhaps we will start seeing IE only sites.
Exactly. Surely this is non-news. What sinister thing could there possibly be?
Simple redirection's fair enough, it's just a bit of marketing information so Microsoft can sell their default bookmarks. Just what banner ads have been doing for years. Or, as someone else already said, it's some HCI research.
Looking at my IE 5.01, the query string for Capitol Records, for example, is
Presumably all that does is makes sure you've got the correct version of MediaPlayer before you actually go to the site. It also records that you went from the Favourites menu (marketing information), and has a version number for something. Is it very different on 5.5?
The only evil thing I can think of is if this the opening gambit in a world domination scheme to make the entire web only available via redirects on their own domain. Eventually everyone will be going via microsoft.com. Finally microsoft will be able to dump the Internet, and the whole world will be on a huge MS-owned mainframe.
This "news" was in all the papers in the UK well over a year ago, and featured on TV a few times. Since then I've been walking round with a mobile strapped to each ear. Any confusion that results from two people phoning me simultaneously is offset by my super sharp reactions and ultra-honed intellect.
AFAIK, most of them do. At least, all the banks I've dealt with demand that you follow certain security procedures before you use a merchant account for Internet transactions. The problem is, they get you to sign a bit of paper, but they don't enforce it, and their requirements are fairly lax (e.g. SSL and a firewall).
Indeed so. I recently worked on a very large (>$1m) project for a multinational client, with a significant ecom component, where:
The sysadmin had never heard of apache
I and several other developers had full root access to the production environment
The oracle manager account was system/manager
and various other nasties like that. In their defence, they never stored credit card numbers. But nonetheless, I couldn't believe it. IMHO, this all comes from abmitious young new media execs who know nothing about technology being given far too much money to throw around. They hire people who are good at BSing and dressing up their CVs, and they end up missing out the itsy little technical details, like getting a sysadmin who knows what routing is.
Just for fun, let me say that first bullet point again: "the sysadmin had never heard of apache".
Everyone seems to have their own take on what the author's trying to say (unusual for slashdot..) I'm not surprised, he keeps contradicting himself. But most of the time, it's fairly clear that he's not saying we should't make software easy to use. Rather, he's asking questions about the dark side of ease-of-use.
I think this is the whole reason why he keeps talking about ideology. Ideology, as he admits, is a disputed concept in itself. His understanding of ideology is taken from the Birmingham school, but he doesn't really go into what that means. For the benefit of those who don't have a sociological background (and who are interested - as for those people who complain that he uses obfuscating terminology, go see what your non-techy mates think about GUI, Corba and Rambus, before you carry on complaining about specialist terminology), here's a short, fairly inaccurate summary:
Ideology is the battlefield where social groups fight using culture / symbolism as their weapons. The classic example is punk. Here, a dominant culture clashes with an 'underground' culture, and the wider battle is mirrored in smaller struggles over the meaning of, for example, a safety pin (a piece of bourgeois haberdashery, or all-in-one ear piercing tool and earring). Later formulations of this approach have been keen to move away from an over-simplifying dominant / sub-dominant analysis of culture.
How is this relevant to the author's ease-of-use hobby horse? I'm not entirely sure, and that's a problem with this article. But he seems *very* upset about the fact that his students don't understand Unix, so perhaps what he's saying is this: the modern workstation is the battlefield where the macho hacker ethic comes into conflict with the self-perpetuating, dumbing-down tendencies of those that claim to act in the interests of market forces. And the UI is the weapon. The result is that the average user loses out all round. By making ease of use an end in itself, we find ourselves in situations where it is "...possible to use a computer without knowing how to manipulate the files located on it." I think this is very true. Most people don't know how to use computers, they know how to use specific applications. The concept of a file is alien to most users. Instead, they know that when they hit "save" in word, they can hit "load" another time, and get what they were writing back again. Because they can't generalise this knowledge back to a filesystem, they are unproductve when they switch between applications, let alone OSs.
If this is what the author's getting at, I couldn't agree more. What I'm disappointed about is his lack of analysis of the protagonists in this battle over the UI. He hints that the desktop in its current incarnations is "gendered" as feminine. This is an intruiging idea, but he never goes further than hinting at the equivalence in cultural stereotypes: feminine/soft/"easy"/average user/technologically inept versus masculine/hard/picky/el33t/hax0r.
What I want to know is: who does he think is fighting this struggle? What are their economic / social relations? And is the GUI desktop masculine or feminine?
I do worry about privacy and my rights, but i also agree that the task of collecting all data and filtering it for relevance is absolutely monumental. the kind of hardware, software and human resources that are needed to be effective at any level would surely make any such system incredibly expensive. now, the obvious question is why anyone would want to spend this kind of money. not to catch a few drug-takers or thieves, that's for sure. the key motivation for international espionage is surely money. governments doing each other out of arms deals, agents double-crossing and making huge amounts of money out of it. espionage is a multi-billion-dollar industry, not a law and order issue.
so i suppose what i'm saying is, yes, let's send as many encrypted nonsense emails around as possible, etc,etc, but at the end of the day, i've got a feeling pc plod will only be knocking on my door if i'm caught hacking government weapons research centres, and then only to offer me a job.
exactly; and we should encrypt the most mundane of our communications most of all, to *really* piss them off. if some agency has to use some really expensive cracking hardware and up-time to find out what time i'm meeting my girlfriend at the cinema tonight, i'm that little bit happier...
Slashdot Mirror
Milloy (the "Junkman") is is PR stooge who speaks for industry. His tactic is to mix up reasonable critiques of genuine "junk science" with diatribes on favourite industry issues such as global warming and regulation in general.
This is not to say he is necessarily wrong, but that you should treat everything he says with extreme caution.
In the case of DDT, Malloy and friends claim that it has been "demagogued out of use", but there is plenty of evidence to suggest that bans have followed on from real concerns carefully considered.
There would appear to be significant commercial interests in removing bans on DDT. The list of sponsors on a prominent pro-DDT site should cause you to approach the evidence there with some scepticism.
subject says it all...
There's a lot of confusion over this issue. I had exactly the same problem and *never* solved it. I followed all the FAQs on the site, found out several new IE5 bugs, corresponded with Ralph, and gave up. The suggestions on the FAQ solve *some* IE5 problems, but your one (and mine...) doesn't go away. I ended up buying a 56-bit cert :(
I've also heard that Thwate certs work OK.
The only thing I never tried but saw suggested on a mailing list is recompiling openSSL without experimental ciphers (it's a compiler flag). Sounded plausible at the time.
I can't speak for apache-ssl, but I can echo some peoples' experience with mod_ssl / IE5 / Versign "Global Server Certificates" (128-bit certs with 'stepping up'). The problem is a nasty one and despite regular posts on the mailing lists, Ralph (the mod_ssl author) seemed to think that the problem was solved, and that all problems derived from IE's implementation of SSL. But the problem is not solved - look at the mailing list archives and every week someone has the same problem. In fact I think the problem derives from a *combination* of some of the experimental ciphers in OpenSSL 0.9.5a and IE5+. The problem was eating up too much of my time, so now I'm only using 56-bit certs, for which there is no problem. But that's not what I would call an ideal situation...
Hey that sounds good - I want to make a radio of of those things, post links!
Mmm yes, I think I speak for everyone when I tell you that I'm increasingly realizing the power of the "what's related" button in nestcape.
All credit to them for opening up their archives to research centres free of charge, I think that's very important and a brilliant effort, but at heart Alexa are just a data-mining, marketing-driven outfit like hundreds of other dotcoms around the world.
He's eager to be painted out to be some kind of visionary, but really, since 1991 all he's done is push WAIS as a way of charging for material over the web. I mean, good work in inventing a protocol and all that, but the charge-for-content model looks like it's failing right now. I think Britannica used to be on WAIS but it's free now.
It's interesting the way he talks about the urgent need for a publishing system without once mentioning WAIS. I wondered what happened to WAIS, Inc, his attempt to provide a publishing system commercially back in 1991 or something. Go to www.wais.com and you'll end up by being redirected to www.hummingbird.com, an
Don't you just love that internet marketingese?
It's not perfect but it's some of the way there. It also has autoupdate functionality in the latest versions.
... 28.8 Kbps PPP connection]
- 1.0.1-1.i386.rpm
R edHat/RPMS/ImageMagick-3.9.1-1.i386.rpm
r t/RPMS/giflib-3.0-2.i386.rpm
g iflib-3.0-4.i386.rpm
R edHat/RPMS/libgr-progs-2.0.13-4.i386.rpm
/ 1998052417/RPMS/imlib-1.4-1998052414.i386. rpm
/ 1998052417/RPMS/glib-1.1.0-1998052414.i386 .rpm
/ 1998052417/RPMS/gtk+-1.1.0-1998052414.i386 .rpm
/ 1998052417/RPMS/gnome-libs-0.13-1998052414 .i386.rpm
/ 1998052417/RPMS/balsa-0.2.0-1998052416.i38 6.rpm
/tmp [Y/n/a] ? : n
------------------------------
[ from the rpmfind website ]
$ rpmfind -q --upgrade balsa
[search for approx 30 seconds
Installing balsa will requires 9574 KBytes
### To Transfer:
ftp://rpmfind.net/linux/freshmeat/libpng/libpng
ftp://rpmfind.net/linux/redhat/redhat-5.0/i386/
ftp://rpmfind.net/linux/redhat-labs/gnome/suppo
ftp://rpmfind.net/linux/contrib/hurricane/i386/
ftp://rpmfind.net/linux/redhat/redhat-5.0/i386/
ftp://rpmfind.net/linux/redhat-labs/gnome/devel
ftp://rpmfind.net/linux/redhat-labs/gnome/devel
ftp://rpmfind.net/linux/redhat-labs/gnome/devel
ftp://rpmfind.net/linux/redhat-labs/gnome/devel
ftp://rpmfind.net/linux/redhat-labs/gnome/devel
Do you want to download these files to
$
Is this what you mean:
I disclose full details of my invention, and in return, I get monopoly on actually using it for a certain amount of time.
So a patent doesn't block the sharing of information, but it does block the implementation of that information, albeit on a more equitable basis than, for example, trade secrets?
Therefore the pro-patent argument is that patents actually encourage information sharing?
In that case, in this exchange between the patent office and the inventor, what does an inventor gain? They still get a monopoly of implementation of their ideas by making an invention a trade secret, plus they can keep that monopoly indefinitely.
I had the whole human genome project debate in mind when I was talking about scientific advances - it seems to me that if people have to enter into a contract with those who 'discovered' the human genome before they can use the genome data, it will hinder real progress. To my mind, there is always something altruistic about the kind of research that results in real paradigm shifts. Commerically-backed research does help knowledge progress, but it is rarely on the cutting edge.
I'm not very well informed on this issue. All I know is that patenting a sorting algorithm is counter to the traditional scientific value of sharing information for the greater good of humanity / the industry / sorting algorithms.
Also, an inability to patent software does not seem to hold back innovation. We write good software in Europe without patents.
But there must be an argument for this patenting stuff. I'd be interested to know what it is.
Does your daily newspaper run a front-page story about the same thing, even containing some identical content, every day? didn't think so.
And if I found the editorial of a newspaper that I liked so be getting a bit less quality, I'd write and make a comment. Maybe a bit less glibly, admittedly.
Of course I have now decided to remove articles about DeCSS from my preferences now. But personally, I have found that the general quality of Slashdot stories has gone downhill over the last few months.
I love the cheeky little mouse emerging from her butt hole.
I probably use the web less than you then, but I've probably looked at about 30-50 new sites a week for the last 5 years, 30% of the time in NS, and I've never been locked out. Must be lucky I suppose.
But "arrogant crap"?! I feel fairly well qualified to talk about what clients want from a website. The view from the development side is completely different. I've worked on tons of web projects and one thing I've learned is that you have to specify exactly what browsers you're supporting. Clients don't care about NS until their aunt / sponsors / children look at the site and can't see it. Then they ring you up and demand to know what's wrong. And not just on NS, also on IE3.02, IE4.5 on a Mac, just about whatever ancient or badly written browser that's ever been made. As long as NS has more than 10% of the morket, 99% of my clients will care about it.
Can everyone please just drop this now and let us have some new news?
I've never been locked out of a site because I'm not using IE. Am I an ultra conservative web amateur or something?
OK, this happen more in the future, but while 25% still have NS, I don't really think it's a problem.
(I've already posted this question in a reply another comment, but I'm doing it again because I'm intrigued and I'd really like an answer)
I agree that IE is by far and away the best browser out there, for stability and rendering speed and being able to display XML, for example. In fact I often use windows platforms specifically and solely in order to browse the web. A sad state of affairs.
BUT...I have never found a site that I can only view with IE. Please point me to one. I'm sure they exist, but they're obviously not any sites that I ever use. In fact any web agency worth their salt will at least make sure a site downgrades elegantly into NS.
However, if Mozilla doesn't get quick and stable really soon, perhaps we will start seeing IE only sites.
Simple redirection's fair enough, it's just a bit of marketing information so Microsoft can sell their default bookmarks. Just what banner ads have been doing for years. Or, as someone else already said, it's some HCI research.
Looking at my IE 5.01, the query string for Capitol Records, for example, is
Presumably all that does is makes sure you've got the correct version of MediaPlayer before you actually go to the site. It also records that you went from the Favourites menu (marketing information), and has a version number for something. Is it very different on 5.5?
The only evil thing I can think of is if this the opening gambit in a world domination scheme to make the entire web only available via redirects on their own domain. Eventually everyone will be going via microsoft.com. Finally microsoft will be able to dump the Internet, and the whole world will be on a huge MS-owned mainframe.
This "news" was in all the papers in the UK well over a year ago, and featured on TV a few times. Since then I've been walking round with a mobile strapped to each ear. Any confusion that results from two people phoning me simultaneously is offset by my super sharp reactions and ultra-honed intellect.
AFAIK, most of them do. At least, all the banks I've dealt with demand that you follow certain security procedures before you use a merchant account for Internet transactions. The problem is, they get you to sign a bit of paper, but they don't enforce it, and their requirements are fairly lax (e.g. SSL and a firewall).
and various other nasties like that. In their defence, they never stored credit card numbers. But nonetheless, I couldn't believe it. IMHO, this all comes from abmitious young new media execs who know nothing about technology being given far too much money to throw around. They hire people who are good at BSing and dressing up their CVs, and they end up missing out the itsy little technical details, like getting a sysadmin who knows what routing is.
Just for fun, let me say that first bullet point again: "the sysadmin had never heard of apache".
Everyone seems to have their own take on what the author's trying to say (unusual for slashdot..) I'm not surprised, he keeps contradicting himself. But most of the time, it's fairly clear that he's not saying we should't make software easy to use. Rather, he's asking questions about the dark side of ease-of-use.
I think this is the whole reason why he keeps talking about ideology. Ideology, as he admits, is a disputed concept in itself. His understanding of ideology is taken from the Birmingham school, but he doesn't really go into what that means. For the benefit of those who don't have a sociological background (and who are interested - as for those people who complain that he uses obfuscating terminology, go see what your non-techy mates think about GUI, Corba and Rambus, before you carry on complaining about specialist terminology), here's a short, fairly inaccurate summary:
Ideology is the battlefield where social groups fight using culture / symbolism as their weapons. The classic example is punk. Here, a dominant culture clashes with an 'underground' culture, and the wider battle is mirrored in smaller struggles over the meaning of, for example, a safety pin (a piece of bourgeois haberdashery, or all-in-one ear piercing tool and earring). Later formulations of this approach have been keen to move away from an over-simplifying dominant / sub-dominant analysis of culture.
How is this relevant to the author's ease-of-use hobby horse? I'm not entirely sure, and that's a problem with this article. But he seems *very* upset about the fact that his students don't understand Unix, so perhaps what he's saying is this: the modern workstation is the battlefield where the macho hacker ethic comes into conflict with the self-perpetuating, dumbing-down tendencies of those that claim to act in the interests of market forces. And the UI is the weapon. The result is that the average user loses out all round. By making ease of use an end in itself, we find ourselves in situations where it is "...possible to use a computer without knowing how to manipulate the files located on it." I think this is very true. Most people don't know how to use computers, they know how to use specific applications. The concept of a file is alien to most users. Instead, they know that when they hit "save" in word, they can hit "load" another time, and get what they were writing back again. Because they can't generalise this knowledge back to a filesystem, they are unproductve when they switch between applications, let alone OSs.
If this is what the author's getting at, I couldn't agree more. What I'm disappointed about is his lack of analysis of the protagonists in this battle over the UI. He hints that the desktop in its current incarnations is "gendered" as feminine. This is an intruiging idea, but he never goes further than hinting at the equivalence in cultural stereotypes: feminine/soft/"easy"/average user/technologically inept versus masculine/hard/picky/el33t/hax0r.
What I want to know is: who does he think is fighting this struggle? What are their economic / social relations? And is the GUI desktop masculine or feminine?
I do worry about privacy and my rights, but i also agree that the task of collecting all data and filtering it for relevance is absolutely monumental. the kind of hardware, software and human resources that are needed to be effective at any level would surely make any such system incredibly expensive.
now, the obvious question is why anyone would want to spend this kind of money. not to catch a few drug-takers or thieves, that's for sure. the key motivation for international espionage is surely money. governments doing each other out of arms deals, agents double-crossing and making huge amounts of money out of it. espionage is a multi-billion-dollar industry, not a law and order issue.
so i suppose what i'm saying is, yes, let's send as many encrypted nonsense emails around as possible, etc,etc, but at the end of the day, i've got a feeling pc plod will only be knocking on my door if i'm caught hacking government weapons research centres, and then only to offer me a job.
exactly; and we should encrypt the most mundane of our communications most of all, to *really* piss them off. if some agency has to use some really expensive cracking hardware and up-time to find out what time i'm meeting my girlfriend at the cinema tonight, i'm that little bit happier...