Yahoo's decision not to sell porn is a victory for freedom: consumers' freedom to boycott businesses whose moralities they do not share and whose ethics they cannot abide.
Last week I succinctly explained why Yahoo's initial plans were a blight upon the consciences of the public. And now that there's been a complete reversal, there's cause for celebration.
Never forget what power the individual consumer has in charting the path that corporations must take. Even multinational conglomerates answer to a buying public, and if we can unite our voices against the oppressions of racism, pornography, and ablism, then such evils as these won't dare raise their heads.
Corporations have to respect the bottom line. We the people sign the bottom line. The Constitution left the power of regulating corporations not with the federal government nor with the state governments but with the people. It is that constitutional grant that allows us to oppose pornography with such fervent power.
The war on drugs is an unfortunate attempt by conservatives to impose their own blind view of proper private behavior upon others.
Pornography, in contrast, is a public enterprise dealing in wares that are by definition non-consensual. No one can consent to participating in pornography, just as no one can consent to non-sexual slavery under the 13th amendment.
Are you then prepared to boycott any each and every other business and orginization that sells pornography?
Yes.
Where is the line drawn? Do movies with sex scenes count as "pornography" and should be banned?
Draw the line at exploitation. Are women being exploited? Then it's pornography and should be banned. It's important to understand these issues by the power bases they draw from and the hegemonies they perpetuate.
Morality and the law are two completely and totally separate subjects.
That's false. Law is public morality. Law properly seeks to be moral. The fact that pornography is currently legal is not an argument for allowing to let it remain so, just as the existence of slavery didn't preclude the abolitionist movement.
Also, if you would look at the numbers the free market DOES thrive because of things such as this.
So does organized crime, at the expense of our neighbors and loved-ones.
Moses wasn't a Christian. The Old Testament isn't a Christian document. It's a Jewish one and one revered by Muslims as well.
There is nothing conservative about opposing pornography, any more than there's anything conservative or liberal about outlawing pickpocketing. We can all agree that pickpockets are bad for society. We can all agree that they're criminals. The same is true of pornographers.
When I celebrated Bonobos' sexuality yesterday, I was absolutely sincere. Bonobos are wonderful creatures whose sexualities aren't adulterated by our human problems of economic exploitation and coercion. When a Bonobo sexualizes another Bonobo, it is a pure and wonderful gesture. When humans do it to each other for the benefit of voyeuristic third parties, it's rape.
I'm insulted that you'd call me a conservative. Is Catherine MacKinnon a conservative? Is Andrea Dworkin? All proper feminists are antipornography.
Of course he isn't, because he's grown fat off the suffering of the women he exploits.
You must think you're smart because you caught me in a semantic slip. I wasn't speaking of everyone involved in pornography's financing and production. I was talking about the people sweating under the camera's gaze, penetrating and palpitating each other's bodies until they are extinguished by the shame and the horror of it.
Go read up on the statistics for suicides by former porn "actresses" (really "slaves"). They're illuminating. It's a testament to women's fortitude that more don't slit their wrists or gas themselves because of what men put them through.
I'd thought that Yahoo learned their lesson with all those French and German lawsuits about Nazi memorabilia. Now they're selling pornography?
Pornography is indistinguishable from rape. It runs women through a blender, converting their bodies into liquified youth. There is no such thing as consent in pornography, because every person involved is there because of dire economic need. But we tolerate women's public humiliation and public rape, because men universally crave and devour pornography.
How can Yahoo justify profiting from such exploitation? I understand Yahoo's stock prices are slipping and they're desperate to pump some new revenue sources, but pornography is unconscienable. Every dollar Yahoo makes is now tainted with the blood and tears of exploited women.
This calls for a boycott. This calls for a public outcry. There is no excuse for sitting by the sidelines and watching the world go by. Everyone who does not actively oppose this move is complicit in human suffering.
The Ten Commandments tell us, "Thou shalt not rape!" The Bible also tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves. Yahoo fails.
If we let Yahoo sell pornography like this, then it's a slippery slope down to having them sell videos of executions. If you thought it was bad that Dale Earnhardt's autopsy photos were almost published, imagine if you'd had to see photos of electricuted criminals in your Sunday newspaper.
The need to exploit others for profit is a pervasive one in our society, but it's not one that we can't arrest as we arrest other criminal passions. The free market cannot thrive unless we police it for criminal activity such as this, just as it cannot thrive unless we police the market square for pickpockets.
Pornography kills women's souls. Pornography burns men's souls. There is no victor here, except for the ugly head of capitalism. Yahoo must not be allowed to perpetuate this abomination against humanity.
Bonobos are more than that; they're people too
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Bonobo 1.0 released
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· Score: 3
Bonobos are sentient chimpanzees comparable in intelligence to humans. Like dolphins, they are as smart as (or smarter than) humans, but because of their evolutionary niche, they don't need to build machinery of death or destroy their habitats the way humans do. We could learn a lot from Bonobos.
But we haven't. We haven't learned a thing. We persecute them the way we persecute homosexuals, and even for the same reasons. Unlike Christians, Bonobos have no qualms about their sexualities. They live in a state of sexual bliss where all sexual relationships are practiced: heterosexual, homosexual, group, father-daughter, brother-sister, etc. (only apparently excluding mother-son). But just as Texas outlaws sodomy, so do humans hunt and kill Bonobos for their sexual deviance.
The future is pretty bleak for Bonobos. Their populations are getting corraled into smaller and smaller territories. Their numbers are being thinned. In many ways, it resembles the way American Indians were decimated by colonists. It's the genocide of our time.
Can we hope to live in a world free from sexual oppression? Can we hope to live in a world where a primate doesn't have to worry about where she puts her tongue, lest she be caged and lashed? If we cannot protect even the weakest among us, we cannot hope to achieve true justice.
Bonobos are people. They deserve full human rights.
By naming their distribution "Bonobo", the Gnome developers have done a little to bring the public attention to the crisis of Bonobos. But what will happen when the project is given its next codename? What will happen to the Bonobos then?
I don't want to throw stones at Gnome, but I almost want to suggest they chose the name "Bonobo" because they think monkeys are funny and they think it's a funny name. But let me tell you, monkeys are no laughing matter. Have you ever been a monkey? Have you ever experienced what it's like to be a monkey in today's fast-paced world? Have you ever wanted to scream out "But I'm an 'ape', not a 'monkey'!" and had no one listen to your cries?
We have a chance to make tomorrow brighter than today. We can do it piecemeal by giving ecologically conscious names to our distributions, or we can do it wholesale by invading Africa and reclaiming the Bonobos' ancestral tribal homelands in the name of Bonobos everywhere. But at no costs shall we squander this opportunity.
Solidarity!
Will Google's philosophy survive the merger?
on
Google Acquires Deja
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· Score: 1
Google and Deja have had different corporate cultures since day one: deja has positioned itself as a bloated portal, wheras google has prided itself on being sleek and lean with inobtrusive ads. Deja tried to be everything to everyone, whereas Google tried to be the useful tool that users reached for when they wanted to get a specific task done.
These are completely incompatible philosophies, so which one can we expect to win out? I'm afraid Google might decide to become more bloated as a result.
But more important than that is how Google will respond to other criticism leveled at Deja in the past. There has been a petition floating around for the past six months demanding that Deja reopen its pre-1999 usenet archives to general access. Can we expect Google to comply with these wishes, now that the archives are in their hands? Or will corporate expediency force them to maintain so many of Deja's odious practices?
This acquisition will be a key test of how open-source culture can survive in the face of extensive funding. Companies like RedHat and TurboLinux have done so with more or less success, but their markets, no matter how much linux users may trumpet their operating system's virtues, have always been constrained to a small number of zealots who are willing to go along with some corporate changes as long as their operating system is improved at the code level. Google, however, is bigger than all the linux companies combined in its user base. It's aimed at the average internet surfer.
How long can we expect Google to stay the same search engine we've always reached for? How long until we have to switch back to Altavista or embrace the next young upstart who can provide what we want and need without the bloat?
Lawrence Lessig might look like a friend of freedom and free software, and he's supported by the EFF, so the appearance is a convincing one. Unfortunately for those of us who trust the EFF and who cherish freedom, Lessig cannot be trusted.
In a 1998 interview with Indialine.com, Lessig argued in favor of internet taxation (calling the current tax-free model "temporary") and favored compulsory use of digital certificates for online commerce: "Using digital certificates, governments can require buyers and sellers to make their transactions accountable - and therefore taxable - in some sense. I see this happening on an increasing scale within the next couple of years." He has similarly expressed ambivalence as to whether technologies like encrypted watermarks in digital audio are good for freedom and consumers.
In Lessig's own words, he is "concerned that the legal profession and policymakers do not think enough about the technological and architectural issues of the Internet." Why should they? Why would we want governments invading these realms of human interaction, when they've only caused trouble with their regulations elsewhere? The internet has thrived because it is free, not because of any government help (much less regulation). Governments must not be allowed to enter the realm of the internet. They are not welcome.
If Lessig cannot get simple matters of policy as these correct, then why should we pay him any attention elsewhere? We should stick with people like Richard M Stallman, who know not to compromise on important principles. Those are the people who deserve our support. Lessig has let us down.
The name, I mean. Could we be any more juvenile here? You don't see RedHat calling their distro "Fundme" or RMS calling the next version of the GPL "Gippy". So why for eazel? It's not like they took it from their roots with Apple. Apple has always had respectable names for projects, names that convey their meaning like Sherlock for their search program. That conveys a sense of mastery, of pinazz, everything marketers dream of. "Eazel" just sounds like a child's art device.
Back when the College Board made the original move from pascal to C++, people complained: why move to C++ when alternatives like java existed? People even went so far as to articulate their complaints in protest letters like this from 1996. This quote is particularly telling:
Will Java be the solution to all of our problems? It's probably too early to tell right now, but I suspect it will be pretty obvious within the next 12 months, and it looks now like Java is going to be a winner. If this happens, very few schools will be teaching C++ in introductory courses by 1999, when the new ETS exam is first given.
Which is exactly what happened. Whether it's in brick/mortar colleges or upstart online learning programs, java is eating C++'s lunch, for better or worse. And the results are reflected in the workplace. A quick search on monster.com shows well more than a thousand jobs with java, and such jobs tend to pay more, as anyone who's been looking, lately. I'm glad to see the College Board listen to the best educational interests of our children.
Admit it. When you were a boy, you played with your GI Joe action figures and pretended to shoot each other with sticks and odd things you found around the house. But now you're all grown up and trying to write software for a living. Wouldn't it be nice to reconnect with that bit of your child hood and recapture a bit of those preadolescent cravings for a postadolescent testosterone rush?
It's not just a placebo effect. Numerous medical studies indicate that people behave differently in war-geared situations, even in times of peace. If you can convince software-developers to tap into their subconscious desire for conquest, then they can even begin to forgo sleep and food (though interestingly, not sex), in a pursuit of the artificially placed goal set by the company.
Building special "war rooms" both placates men's self-images (power-seeking) and provides a modicum of logistic support to enhance the illusion (nurture-seeking). Rather than discourage competition, today's companies are elevating it to the highest ideal, unmasking sublimated urges and unleashing great profit potential.
The ``permatemp'' settlement praised Microsoft for recent policy changes, saying that since 1997 it had hired some 3,000 former permatemps as workers with full benefits, and had adopted new practices to limit the length of temporary assignments.
For those who are wondering, Microsoft's new temp rules (effective as of this past July) are that each temp is not allowed to return to work for 100 days following a one-year stretch of employment. Yes, that's insane. No, temps are out of luck for that stretch of time. Some can hopefully find work at other agencies or companies, but it's still a dishonest (though now "legal") practice.
I know I'll be modded down, but bear with me here
on
Warez and Abandonware
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· Score: 2
If you don't own it, then it's not yours. Period. You may want it. You may even need it. But if it isn't yours, then you can't have it without permission. And that requirement of permission is absent in the abandonware movement.
Think about it, for a second. By saying "we recognize that you used to have a right to your copyright but aren't still using it", you're saying that anyone anywhere can determine which property rights are valid and which aren't and which should be respected and which shouldn't. If I broke into your home and took things out of your attic or basement, then you'd be outraged. But somehow calling it "IP" makes the difference? Does it really?
The law is ambiguous, to some extent, unfortunately. On slashdot a few months ago, there was a quote from David Boies about how copyright can be overruled if it's been exercised in bad faith. But no one is arguing about bad faith here. The owners are exercising their good faith in letting their use lapse. But that's not the same as letting their ownership lapse.
Ownership is fundamental to the American dream and to every other civilized nation's conception of self image and self worth. Today, we all dream that someday we will own our own homes or houses. When the housing shortage is solved in the future and we all don't have to worry about owning our own houses (just as today we mostly don't have to worry about owning our own rumproast), the focus will switch to owning intellectual property. It's almost inevitable. And I'll be on the front lines marching for copyright owners' rights, just as my cousins marched with Martin Luther King Jr for other civil rights.
And the next time my disk fails and my backups are inaccessible, can I count on you to remind me that Murphy's law isn't a law, either? Or the next time a usenet thread degenerates into argument-by-nazi-allusion, that Godwin's law isn't a law, either?
The law of gravity is merely a sophisticated conjecture fitted to manifest evidence. Moore's law is no different, and your need to find malicious economic motives is most disturbing. Intel is in the business of making fast processors, and if there's any way they could make a few technical changes and build a better processor, they would. That's what they've always done, and that's what they'll continue doing. Just ask AMD.
They built the first transistor (well, technically they didn't exist at the time, but it was the same brains that founded Intel), so they're the ones who've been doing it the longest. If there were a means, then they'd pursue it. Unlike companies like Microsoft which start with a few engineering innovations and coast on their legal verdicts from there, Intel has always relied on the merits of its products. They couldn't have gotten to where they are today if they hadn't.
And if you disagree with how much money Andy Grove has earned from his efforts, then do your part to vote and raise his taxes and finance a better wealth-redistribution scheme in this country. Don't just spout vitriolic words from the sidelines or spin your elaborate webs of conspiracy. Your path lacks moral conviction, and I urge you to reconsider.
Companies, like politicians, often find it necessary to redefine words they find discouraging or contrary to maximal profits, often in an Orwellian fashion. To pick two examples and one culprit familiar to most slashdot readers, Microsoft has redefined "kerberos" to mean "kerberos plus proprietary Microsoft extensions" and has redefined "java" to mean "anything that Sun doesn't want java to be". This brings me to my question:
You guys (John and John) can't seem to shake the label "quirky" -- it's there in practically every album review since 1985 and in almost every news report in the same period. Since you (or at least your fans) despise that word so much, do you have any plans to mount a Microsoft-like campaign to wrench that word from the English language and reshape it in your own image?
If I may humbly make a suggestion, I think "quirky" should mean "of or characteristic of people who are sick of being called 'quirky'". The recursiveness of this definition would garner instant appeal among much of your fanbase, and it is similar enough to the existing definition that it could surrepticiously enter the English language without much resistance.
There's no lit Christmas tree at California's capitol, this year, because of demands being put on the electricity network, and people are being encouraged not to turn on their christmas lights until late and turn them off early in order to save electricity and reduce burnouts and brownouts.
Just look at all that waste. 16 phone lines? Do you know how much electricity each additional phone line adds to a house's electricity load? Miles of cable? Wires are resistors, and the resistance increases as the linear distance grows. All those servers chugging away and additional air-conditioning waste to make the server room inhabitable? Come on, people. Have we truly reached the point where our hedonistic pleasures and preferences take priority over common sense?
I have no respect for Larry or anyone else who can't realize what's good for the earth. If everyone else is making a sacrifice, then so should they. Being rich gives them no right to an exemption.
As much as we cajole the Australians for their backwards-looking regulations from time to time, you have to hand it to them: we in the US would've never thought of this innovation in government. (Who can argue that government is no longer relevent with such pioneering efforts in the world around us?) But I (like many of my colleagues) fear that the US (beholden to our written constitution) may be too slow to close the gap in this new "Toilet Race".
In order to speed the process of toilet locating, every citizen must be equipped with a swallowable camera. Once all the cameras have been deposited, it will be a simple matter of "looking around" and the project will complete itself. Forty years ago, JFK sacrificed his life to ensure that we would not lose the space race to the Russians. We must not be any less dilligent in our own time.
Even if it is of terrestrial origin, the fact that it has been living and evolving in low earth orbit means it no longer has terrestrial citizenship. If we suddenly found your (for the sake of argument) IBM computer floating miles in the sky having transformed into an Amiga, then we could safely hypothesize that whatever its origin, it is now an alien species.
Very few shift workers actually get enough sleep at night^H^H^H^H^Hday;-); they have to fight their own circadian rhythms and the drudgery that most shift work comprises.
While to the best of my knowledge there haven't been any studies on shift workers in particular, there have been numerous studies in Scandinavia, where the high latitude and short winter days mimic many of the conditions shift workers experience. It's an interesting question to explore, while the human race self-immolates as it slowly descends into a new corporate dark age.
The link between sleeplessness and memory loss has always been intuitively known for eons. We've also known for quite some time that sleeplessness takes a toll on the workforce. According to some reports, 51% of Americans report that sleeplessness interferes with their productivity. People are going to bed late and failing to get up early, and not surprisingly, (according to that same source) a third of the population wishes they could nap on the job (and surprisingly, 16% of employers "endorse naps on the job" -- I wish I had that sort of employer).
Unfortunately, the outlook isn't good for people who fail to get their eight or so hours of sleep per night. Sleeplessness increases stress and raises bloodpressure (which can increase heart attacks), can precipitate ulcers, and can even promote alzhe ime rs. Sadly, very techies and engineers who are designing the technology that will preserve more information in the next few years than has been recorded in the history of humanity won't "be around" to see it happen, as debilitating diseases rob them of the ability to perceive the world they have constructed. What begins with immediate memory loss will ultimately be cemented in their old age.
The solution is clear. OSHA already has standards in place to prev ent RSI injuries in the workplace. Federal laws already exist governing how often and for how long truck drivers must sleep before returning to the road. New guidelines must be set for how much IT workers can be forced to work without sleep. In the footsteps of pioneers of the 10-hour work day of the nineteenth century, we must today pioneer the 8-hour sleep day. The safety of our IT infrastructure and ultimately of our fellow workers demands it.
Please, tell me you'll have to press a hot-key in order to activate the audio preview. It's one thing to have an inobtrusive visual cue appear when you accidentally let your cursor hover over an icon. It's an entirely different thing to start piping audio out to your speakers, which may be set extremely loud and have you wake up the rest of the household in the process. Combine that with the extra load spikes due to sudden mp3 decoding, and I'm even more wary of any such "accidental" preview.
There is no clear winner or loser. Each interface has it's [sic] advantages and disadvantages.
This surprised me, though I've never been disappointed by Jeff Field before. Newsforge is still, as its mission states, a forum for "open-source news" -- just look at the banner atop the front page, where "GNU/Linux" is prominently displayed where "Linux" would suffice for most. For such a site to publish an article that doesn't universally deride Microsoft or celebrate OSS offerings is a pleasant change from the earlier years.
It looks like linux-centric media are finally growing up. I'm glad, because it would be a shame for the movement's mouthpieces to stumble just when the movement itself is gaining such momentum.
Slashdot Mirror
Yahoo's decision not to sell porn is a victory for freedom: consumers' freedom to boycott businesses whose moralities they do not share and whose ethics they cannot abide.
Last week I succinctly explained why Yahoo's initial plans were a blight upon the consciences of the public. And now that there's been a complete reversal, there's cause for celebration.
Never forget what power the individual consumer has in charting the path that corporations must take. Even multinational conglomerates answer to a buying public, and if we can unite our voices against the oppressions of racism, pornography, and ablism, then such evils as these won't dare raise their heads.
Corporations have to respect the bottom line. We the people sign the bottom line. The Constitution left the power of regulating corporations not with the federal government nor with the state governments but with the people. It is that constitutional grant that allows us to oppose pornography with such fervent power.
$ ls -l index.html
-rw------- 1 anne_m anne_m 8676 Apr 12 2001 index.html
$ ls -l 2001_5k.gif
-rw------- 1 anne_m anne_m 3316 Apr 12 2001 2001_5k.gif
$
That's well more than 5Kb.
Pornography, in contrast, is a public enterprise dealing in wares that are by definition non-consensual. No one can consent to participating in pornography, just as no one can consent to non-sexual slavery under the 13th amendment.
Yes.
Draw the line at exploitation. Are women being exploited? Then it's pornography and should be banned. It's important to understand these issues by the power bases they draw from and the hegemonies they perpetuate.
That's false. Law is public morality. Law properly seeks to be moral. The fact that pornography is currently legal is not an argument for allowing to let it remain so, just as the existence of slavery didn't preclude the abolitionist movement.
So does organized crime, at the expense of our neighbors and loved-ones.
You are without a moral or legal leg to stand on.
Moses wasn't a Christian. The Old Testament isn't a Christian document. It's a Jewish one and one revered by Muslims as well.
There is nothing conservative about opposing pornography, any more than there's anything conservative or liberal about outlawing pickpocketing. We can all agree that pickpockets are bad for society. We can all agree that they're criminals. The same is true of pornographers.
When I celebrated Bonobos' sexuality yesterday, I was absolutely sincere. Bonobos are wonderful creatures whose sexualities aren't adulterated by our human problems of economic exploitation and coercion. When a Bonobo sexualizes another Bonobo, it is a pure and wonderful gesture. When humans do it to each other for the benefit of voyeuristic third parties, it's rape.
I'm insulted that you'd call me a conservative. Is Catherine MacKinnon a conservative? Is Andrea Dworkin? All proper feminists are antipornography.
Of course he isn't, because he's grown fat off the suffering of the women he exploits.
You must think you're smart because you caught me in a semantic slip. I wasn't speaking of everyone involved in pornography's financing and production. I was talking about the people sweating under the camera's gaze, penetrating and palpitating each other's bodies until they are extinguished by the shame and the horror of it.
Go read up on the statistics for suicides by former porn "actresses" (really "slaves"). They're illuminating. It's a testament to women's fortitude that more don't slit their wrists or gas themselves because of what men put them through.
I'd thought that Yahoo learned their lesson with all those French and German lawsuits about Nazi memorabilia. Now they're selling pornography?
Pornography is indistinguishable from rape. It runs women through a blender, converting their bodies into liquified youth. There is no such thing as consent in pornography, because every person involved is there because of dire economic need. But we tolerate women's public humiliation and public rape, because men universally crave and devour pornography.
How can Yahoo justify profiting from such exploitation? I understand Yahoo's stock prices are slipping and they're desperate to pump some new revenue sources, but pornography is unconscienable. Every dollar Yahoo makes is now tainted with the blood and tears of exploited women.
This calls for a boycott. This calls for a public outcry. There is no excuse for sitting by the sidelines and watching the world go by. Everyone who does not actively oppose this move is complicit in human suffering.
The Ten Commandments tell us, "Thou shalt not rape!" The Bible also tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves. Yahoo fails.
If we let Yahoo sell pornography like this, then it's a slippery slope down to having them sell videos of executions. If you thought it was bad that Dale Earnhardt's autopsy photos were almost published, imagine if you'd had to see photos of electricuted criminals in your Sunday newspaper.
The need to exploit others for profit is a pervasive one in our society, but it's not one that we can't arrest as we arrest other criminal passions. The free market cannot thrive unless we police it for criminal activity such as this, just as it cannot thrive unless we police the market square for pickpockets.
Pornography kills women's souls. Pornography burns men's souls. There is no victor here, except for the ugly head of capitalism. Yahoo must not be allowed to perpetuate this abomination against humanity.
Bonobos are sentient chimpanzees comparable in intelligence to humans. Like dolphins, they are as smart as (or smarter than) humans, but because of their evolutionary niche, they don't need to build machinery of death or destroy their habitats the way humans do. We could learn a lot from Bonobos.
But we haven't. We haven't learned a thing. We persecute them the way we persecute homosexuals, and even for the same reasons. Unlike Christians, Bonobos have no qualms about their sexualities. They live in a state of sexual bliss where all sexual relationships are practiced: heterosexual, homosexual, group, father-daughter, brother-sister, etc. (only apparently excluding mother-son). But just as Texas outlaws sodomy, so do humans hunt and kill Bonobos for their sexual deviance.
The future is pretty bleak for Bonobos. Their populations are getting corraled into smaller and smaller territories. Their numbers are being thinned. In many ways, it resembles the way American Indians were decimated by colonists. It's the genocide of our time.
Can we hope to live in a world free from sexual oppression? Can we hope to live in a world where a primate doesn't have to worry about where she puts her tongue, lest she be caged and lashed? If we cannot protect even the weakest among us, we cannot hope to achieve true justice.
Bonobos are people. They deserve full human rights.
By naming their distribution "Bonobo", the Gnome developers have done a little to bring the public attention to the crisis of Bonobos. But what will happen when the project is given its next codename? What will happen to the Bonobos then?
I don't want to throw stones at Gnome, but I almost want to suggest they chose the name "Bonobo" because they think monkeys are funny and they think it's a funny name. But let me tell you, monkeys are no laughing matter. Have you ever been a monkey? Have you ever experienced what it's like to be a monkey in today's fast-paced world? Have you ever wanted to scream out "But I'm an 'ape', not a 'monkey'!" and had no one listen to your cries?
We have a chance to make tomorrow brighter than today. We can do it piecemeal by giving ecologically conscious names to our distributions, or we can do it wholesale by invading Africa and reclaiming the Bonobos' ancestral tribal homelands in the name of Bonobos everywhere. But at no costs shall we squander this opportunity.
Solidarity!
Google and Deja have had different corporate cultures since day one: deja has positioned itself as a bloated portal, wheras google has prided itself on being sleek and lean with inobtrusive ads. Deja tried to be everything to everyone, whereas Google tried to be the useful tool that users reached for when they wanted to get a specific task done.
These are completely incompatible philosophies, so which one can we expect to win out? I'm afraid Google might decide to become more bloated as a result.
But more important than that is how Google will respond to other criticism leveled at Deja in the past. There has been a petition floating around for the past six months demanding that Deja reopen its pre-1999 usenet archives to general access. Can we expect Google to comply with these wishes, now that the archives are in their hands? Or will corporate expediency force them to maintain so many of Deja's odious practices?
This acquisition will be a key test of how open-source culture can survive in the face of extensive funding. Companies like RedHat and TurboLinux have done so with more or less success, but their markets, no matter how much linux users may trumpet their operating system's virtues, have always been constrained to a small number of zealots who are willing to go along with some corporate changes as long as their operating system is improved at the code level. Google, however, is bigger than all the linux companies combined in its user base. It's aimed at the average internet surfer.
How long can we expect Google to stay the same search engine we've always reached for? How long until we have to switch back to Altavista or embrace the next young upstart who can provide what we want and need without the bloat?
Lawrence Lessig might look like a friend of freedom and free software, and he's supported by the EFF, so the appearance is a convincing one. Unfortunately for those of us who trust the EFF and who cherish freedom, Lessig cannot be trusted.
In a 1998 interview with Indialine.com, Lessig argued in favor of internet taxation (calling the current tax-free model "temporary") and favored compulsory use of digital certificates for online commerce: "Using digital certificates, governments can require buyers and sellers to make their transactions accountable - and therefore taxable - in some sense. I see this happening on an increasing scale within the next couple of years." He has similarly expressed ambivalence as to whether technologies like encrypted watermarks in digital audio are good for freedom and consumers.
In Lessig's own words, he is "concerned that the legal profession and policymakers do not think enough about the technological and architectural issues of the Internet." Why should they? Why would we want governments invading these realms of human interaction, when they've only caused trouble with their regulations elsewhere? The internet has thrived because it is free, not because of any government help (much less regulation). Governments must not be allowed to enter the realm of the internet. They are not welcome.
If Lessig cannot get simple matters of policy as these correct, then why should we pay him any attention elsewhere? We should stick with people like Richard M Stallman, who know not to compromise on important principles. Those are the people who deserve our support. Lessig has let us down.
The name, I mean. Could we be any more juvenile here? You don't see RedHat calling their distro "Fundme" or RMS calling the next version of the GPL "Gippy". So why for eazel? It's not like they took it from their roots with Apple. Apple has always had respectable names for projects, names that convey their meaning like Sherlock for their search program. That conveys a sense of mastery, of pinazz, everything marketers dream of. "Eazel" just sounds like a child's art device.
Admit it. When you were a boy, you played with your GI Joe action figures and pretended to shoot each other with sticks and odd things you found around the house. But now you're all grown up and trying to write software for a living. Wouldn't it be nice to reconnect with that bit of your child hood and recapture a bit of those preadolescent cravings for a postadolescent testosterone rush?
It's not just a placebo effect. Numerous medical studies indicate that people behave differently in war-geared situations, even in times of peace. If you can convince software-developers to tap into their subconscious desire for conquest, then they can even begin to forgo sleep and food (though interestingly, not sex), in a pursuit of the artificially placed goal set by the company.
Building special "war rooms" both placates men's self-images (power-seeking) and provides a modicum of logistic support to enhance the illusion (nurture-seeking). Rather than discourage competition, today's companies are elevating it to the highest ideal, unmasking sublimated urges and unleashing great profit potential.
The ``permatemp'' settlement praised Microsoft for recent policy changes, saying that since 1997 it had hired some 3,000 former permatemps as workers with full benefits, and had adopted new practices to limit the length of temporary assignments.
For those who are wondering, Microsoft's new temp rules (effective as of this past July) are that each temp is not allowed to return to work for 100 days following a one-year stretch of employment. Yes, that's insane. No, temps are out of luck for that stretch of time. Some can hopefully find work at other agencies or companies, but it's still a dishonest (though now "legal") practice.
If you don't own it, then it's not yours. Period. You may want it. You may even need it. But if it isn't yours, then you can't have it without permission. And that requirement of permission is absent in the abandonware movement.
Think about it, for a second. By saying "we recognize that you used to have a right to your copyright but aren't still using it", you're saying that anyone anywhere can determine which property rights are valid and which aren't and which should be respected and which shouldn't. If I broke into your home and took things out of your attic or basement, then you'd be outraged. But somehow calling it "IP" makes the difference? Does it really?
The law is ambiguous, to some extent, unfortunately. On slashdot a few months ago, there was a quote from David Boies about how copyright can be overruled if it's been exercised in bad faith. But no one is arguing about bad faith here. The owners are exercising their good faith in letting their use lapse. But that's not the same as letting their ownership lapse.
Ownership is fundamental to the American dream and to every other civilized nation's conception of self image and self worth. Today, we all dream that someday we will own our own homes or houses. When the housing shortage is solved in the future and we all don't have to worry about owning our own houses (just as today we mostly don't have to worry about owning our own rumproast), the focus will switch to owning intellectual property. It's almost inevitable. And I'll be on the front lines marching for copyright owners' rights, just as my cousins marched with Martin Luther King Jr for other civil rights.
And the next time my disk fails and my backups are inaccessible, can I count on you to remind me that Murphy's law isn't a law, either? Or the next time a usenet thread degenerates into argument-by-nazi-allusion, that Godwin's law isn't a law, either?
The law of gravity is merely a sophisticated conjecture fitted to manifest evidence. Moore's law is no different, and your need to find malicious economic motives is most disturbing. Intel is in the business of making fast processors, and if there's any way they could make a few technical changes and build a better processor, they would. That's what they've always done, and that's what they'll continue doing. Just ask AMD.
They built the first transistor (well, technically they didn't exist at the time, but it was the same brains that founded Intel), so they're the ones who've been doing it the longest. If there were a means, then they'd pursue it. Unlike companies like Microsoft which start with a few engineering innovations and coast on their legal verdicts from there, Intel has always relied on the merits of its products. They couldn't have gotten to where they are today if they hadn't.
And if you disagree with how much money Andy Grove has earned from his efforts, then do your part to vote and raise his taxes and finance a better wealth-redistribution scheme in this country. Don't just spout vitriolic words from the sidelines or spin your elaborate webs of conspiracy. Your path lacks moral conviction, and I urge you to reconsider.
Companies, like politicians, often find it necessary to redefine words they find discouraging or contrary to maximal profits, often in an Orwellian fashion. To pick two examples and one culprit familiar to most slashdot readers, Microsoft has redefined "kerberos" to mean "kerberos plus proprietary Microsoft extensions" and has redefined "java" to mean "anything that Sun doesn't want java to be". This brings me to my question:
You guys (John and John) can't seem to shake the label "quirky" -- it's there in practically every album review since 1985 and in almost every news report in the same period. Since you (or at least your fans) despise that word so much, do you have any plans to mount a Microsoft-like campaign to wrench that word from the English language and reshape it in your own image?
If I may humbly make a suggestion, I think "quirky" should mean "of or characteristic of people who are sick of being called 'quirky'". The recursiveness of this definition would garner instant appeal among much of your fanbase, and it is similar enough to the existing definition that it could surrepticiously enter the English language without much resistance.
There's no lit Christmas tree at California's capitol, this year, because of demands being put on the electricity network, and people are being encouraged not to turn on their christmas lights until late and turn them off early in order to save electricity and reduce burnouts and brownouts.
Just look at all that waste. 16 phone lines? Do you know how much electricity each additional phone line adds to a house's electricity load? Miles of cable? Wires are resistors, and the resistance increases as the linear distance grows. All those servers chugging away and additional air-conditioning waste to make the server room inhabitable? Come on, people. Have we truly reached the point where our hedonistic pleasures and preferences take priority over common sense?
I have no respect for Larry or anyone else who can't realize what's good for the earth. If everyone else is making a sacrifice, then so should they. Being rich gives them no right to an exemption.
As much as we cajole the Australians for their backwards-looking regulations from time to time, you have to hand it to them: we in the US would've never thought of this innovation in government. (Who can argue that government is no longer relevent with such pioneering efforts in the world around us?) But I (like many of my colleagues) fear that the US (beholden to our written constitution) may be too slow to close the gap in this new "Toilet Race".
In order to speed the process of toilet locating, every citizen must be equipped with a swallowable camera. Once all the cameras have been deposited, it will be a simple matter of "looking around" and the project will complete itself. Forty years ago, JFK sacrificed his life to ensure that we would not lose the space race to the Russians. We must not be any less dilligent in our own time.
Step one: pick up cellphone
Step two: dial "information"
Step three: ask (in a hurried voice) where the nearest toilet is
Step four: hang up before entering aforesaid toilet
It's a cellphone/pda market.
Even if it is of terrestrial origin, the fact that it has been living and evolving in low earth orbit means it no longer has terrestrial citizenship. If we suddenly found your (for the sake of argument) IBM computer floating miles in the sky having transformed into an Amiga, then we could safely hypothesize that whatever its origin, it is now an alien species.
Very few shift workers actually get enough sleep at night^H^H^H^H^Hday ;-); they have to fight their own circadian rhythms and the drudgery that most shift work comprises.
While to the best of my knowledge there haven't been any studies on shift workers in particular, there have been numerous studies in Scandinavia, where the high latitude and short winter days mimic many of the conditions shift workers experience. It's an interesting question to explore, while the human race self-immolates as it slowly descends into a new corporate dark age.
The link between sleeplessness and memory loss has always been intuitively known for eons. We've also known for quite some time that sleeplessness takes a toll on the workforce. According to some reports, 51% of Americans report that sleeplessness interferes with their productivity. People are going to bed late and failing to get up early, and not surprisingly, (according to that same source) a third of the population wishes they could nap on the job (and surprisingly, 16% of employers "endorse naps on the job" -- I wish I had that sort of employer).
Unfortunately, the outlook isn't good for people who fail to get their eight or so hours of sleep per night. Sleeplessness increases stress and raises bloodpressure (which can increase heart attacks), can precipitate ulcers, and can even promote alzhe ime rs. Sadly, very techies and engineers who are designing the technology that will preserve more information in the next few years than has been recorded in the history of humanity won't "be around" to see it happen, as debilitating diseases rob them of the ability to perceive the world they have constructed. What begins with immediate memory loss will ultimately be cemented in their old age.
The solution is clear. OSHA already has standards in place to prev ent RSI injuries in the workplace. Federal laws already exist governing how often and for how long truck drivers must sleep before returning to the road. New guidelines must be set for how much IT workers can be forced to work without sleep. In the footsteps of pioneers of the 10-hour work day of the nineteenth century, we must today pioneer the 8-hour sleep day. The safety of our IT infrastructure and ultimately of our fellow workers demands it.
AT&T and BT have a strategic alliance ("Advance") to unite TDMA and GSM. They're banking on it.
Please, tell me you'll have to press a hot-key in order to activate the audio preview. It's one thing to have an inobtrusive visual cue appear when you accidentally let your cursor hover over an icon. It's an entirely different thing to start piping audio out to your speakers, which may be set extremely loud and have you wake up the rest of the household in the process. Combine that with the extra load spikes due to sudden mp3 decoding, and I'm even more wary of any such "accidental" preview.
There is no clear winner or loser. Each interface has it's [sic] advantages and disadvantages.
This surprised me, though I've never been disappointed by Jeff Field before. Newsforge is still, as its mission states, a forum for "open-source news" -- just look at the banner atop the front page, where "GNU/Linux" is prominently displayed where "Linux" would suffice for most. For such a site to publish an article that doesn't universally deride Microsoft or celebrate OSS offerings is a pleasant change from the earlier years.
It looks like linux-centric media are finally growing up. I'm glad, because it would be a shame for the movement's mouthpieces to stumble just when the movement itself is gaining such momentum.