That works for CDs, but won't work for DVD Audio. And as soon as they can, they will phase out CDs as a medium in favour of DVDs, much as they did with vinyl. And DVD Audio will be unrippable. (And playing it in through your soundcard doesn't count; for one, the quality on consumer gear is crap.)
Just think what kind of income they would have made if the music industry produced more stuff worth listening to, instead of the usual crap they're cranking out.
A much smaller one, I'd say.
You and I and a few others may be into "stuff worth listening to" (though I've no idea how you would define it), but 90% of the public wants Garth Brooks and Britney Spears.
Releasing only high-quality music doesn't scale well beyond the size of a niche label such as, say, 4AD or Mute; a behemoth like Universal or Warner couldn't afford to be so fussy and elitist.
If the MPAA's (so far massively successful) campaign against DeCSS is anything to go by, unprotected systems such as MP3 could be in for a major battle. As soon as anything like SDMI is in place, the RIAA will probably sue makers of unprotected players/encoders for violations of the DMCA and the like. Given recent interpretations of copyright as an absolute zero-sum property right, they could well win and MP3 could be outlawed.
As for the menace of unprotected CDs, DVD-Audio will remedy that, and introduce geographic zoning and other nasties. All they'd need to do once it's on the horizon is start manufacturing their ordinary CDs to deteriorate in a few years, all the while shipping them with a voucher redeemable for a new "enhanced" DVD Audio version. It would make them look generous and aggressively forward-looking and help phase out the fundamentally insecure CD format.
8. If you have to give out an email address for one-time use, tag it;/. asks, use something like slashdot_yanky@hotmail.com or some such (or better yet, get your own domain and mail server...quite handy!)
Or get a SpamCop account, run all your publically-known addresses through that and keep your private address secret. Spam ends up in a web-based in tray, from which you can automatically send complaints to relevant parties at the touch of a button.
I'm not connected with SpamCop's operators; I've been using it for several months now, and so far have seen only about 3 spams make it through (and those were soon dispatched via a URL in the headers). I highly recommend SpamCop.
A well-designed, inexpensive robot cat could have a place. If you cannot keep a live cat for some reason (i.e., live alone and travel a lot, or the landlord has a strict no-pets policy), a robot that fulfils the functions of a cat (i.e., receives and gives affection, responds positively to being stroked, plays with small objects/laser pointers, &c.) could be a good substitute. Implementing it well, however, is an entirely different question.
One could even envision a travel version, where the physical robot cat is dispensed with altogether, and replaced with a small box connected to a pair of video glasses and a tactile feedback glove. Switch it on and a virtual cat appears, which you can interact with.
I once came across a website named "Digital Phlargnarph", or something like that. Could this word be related to "gnarphlager", or is there some emergent neurolinguistic attractor that makes certain textures of nonsense words particularly appealing?
I am not going to buy/install Windows just to sync a palmtop.
Is it at all possible to make use of a WinCE machine (i.e., sync it, or transfer files from/to it) from a UNIX machine? Has anybody done anything of the sort, or tried it and failed heroically?
What I'd really like to see is a PalmPilot compatible with a larger screen resolution; 160x160 is woefully small; it's hard to fit much information on the screen.
(In contrast, Microsoft's ill-fated WinCE "palm-size PCs" do 240x320 or so... If they didn't require you to sell your soul to Redmond to be able to sync them, I'd be tempted to get one.)
A million wires? Hardly, try one. I sincerely doubt the decryption would be done at the demultiplexer that feeds your display matrix (let's assume this is a plasma or LCD display by this time).
The sensible thing for them to do would be to put as much of the decoder into the chip as possible, to render the outgoing data as unstructured and unusable as possible. I don't know much about how TFT displays work, but if they have 1024+768 row/column lines (or something like that, factoring in RGB components), that's not something recordable.
Of course that still means cracking open your tamper-protected sealed-unit display and risking a federal prison sentence for doing it
Interesting point. How long until we routinely see stickers reading things such as "This unit contains copyright enforcement mechanisms. Unauthorised examination prohibited by federal law" on consumer electronic devices, threatening fines and prison terms alongside voided warranties?
NOT TRUE This is weak FUD. Windows is JUST as hackable as Linux. The kernel mode portions actually have better documentation than Linux. Ref. all the device driver writing books for Windows compared to Linux's one.
In the places where you're meant to hack them (i.e., to write your own drivers). But there are undocumented portions. Some Windows binaries are written in such a way to make debugging impossible without a hardware ICE debugger. (And if the DeCSS decision is precedent, you can bet that you'll need a special licence to own/use such debuggers in future, much as you need a locksmithing licence to legally own lockpicking tools.)
Under Linux, you can always change the kernel under whatever program is running. Under Windows, you can write some DLLs, but the kernel itself is fixed. And while you could hand-disassemble it and diddle the machine language, most people aren't so masochistically bloody-minded.
Separating the decryptor and display is a lot easier if the entire system is not on one solid-state chip. If there's one monolithic blob of silicon between the encrypted signal and the million or so transistors on the display, your only option would be to take apart the display, solder a million or so wires to it and construct a custom digitiser. And you'd be better just pointing a camera at the display in that case.
Well how does this stop me from putting a recording device between the input and the screen, recording the encrypted signal, and then sending exactly the same encrypted signal to the screen again?
What you're describing is a replay attack, which depends on a cyphertext being valid regardless of context. There are a number of ways of thwarting these. Requiring a timestamp or serial number in the encrypted data, and discarding data with a repeated number, would do. If it's a two-way protocol, of course, it becomes easier. A challenge-response system, in which the monitor issues challenges which the transmitter must respond to, would weed out blindly replayed data. This could be as simple as having the monitor choose part of the next encryption key.
DeCSS was the first salvo in what looks like a battle to the death between strict copyright enforcement and the open-source movement.
The reason there aren't (and will never officially be) any software DVD players on Linux is because the Linux kernel is open-source, and thus not guaranteed to be trusted. With Windows, an evil pirate cannot recompile the kernel to snoop on a process, defeat anti-debugging measures or redirect output to a file. With Linux, if a process has something you want to get out of it, you can always get it, at most by hacking a few extra features into the kernel. This is also why Liquid Audio and such do not and will not support Linux.
The copyright barons are pushing for end-to-end encryption. One end (DVD drives) is implemented. The other end (video/sound cards) is coming. Needless to say, open-source drivers would defeat the purpose, and the copyright barons would spend billions on fighting them. As for binary-only drivers, the GPL forbids them.
So it's shaping up into a fight to the death between Linux and copyright control mechanisms. If Linux becomes massively popular before these systems are implemented and popularised, they will not catch on. However, if the copyright barons can get them out the door soon, they will be a blunt instrument against Linux on the desktop. After all, the GPL itself will lock Linux out of being able to access new "copyright-enhanced" hardware. And you can be sure Microsoft will be more than happy to hammer the point home.
Re:As for us social Outcasts....
on
LonelyNet
·
· Score: 2
If you're a social outcast, try a different social environment.
It is far easier finding social environments you fit into on the Net than offline, especially if you're an over-intellectual/bookish/geeky type. Just join some mailing lists (or in the old days subscribe to some newsgroups) and get involved in conversations; and there are forums for everyone, because the space is vast. Whether you're into mediæval warfare or typography or 70s prog rock or trainspotting, you can surely find people who share your interests; whether they live in Milwaukee, Manchester or Madras doesn't really matter as long as they speak your language.
In Real Life, your social sphere is constrained by geographical factors. Had you lived a century ago, you would most likely have never travelled more than a few miles in your life. The only people you'd know would be from your village/town. Which means that if your interests didn't sync with those of people nearby, you'd be out of luck. In the past century, transportation technologies have expanded this social sphere, but it's still there. And you can't just grep Real Life for other underwater macrame enthusiasts.
The key is to have a broad range of interests, with some that aren't too esoteric. If all you care about is hacking your customised Linux box, you're not going to be the life of the party, and probably won't have much to talk about with most people. However, if you can talk about other things more involving than the weather and yet not hopelessly esoteric, you can find common ground. These may range from movies and music to philosophy and the meaning of life. And if you don't have anything to say, listen and ask questions. You may learn something.
One key to not being an outcast is to not place yourself in specialised social environments based around interests you don't share. If you hang out with a group of wargamers (for example) and have no interest in wargaming, you'll be left out of the common milieu, and be by definition an outsider. You'd be better off in more general environments, where there are more unfixed variables.
Then, there's the mysterious case of a well-known TV chat-show host, who dared to suggest the American meat industry might have a non-zero level of BSE. A $60 million dollar lawsuit followed, for "damaging" the reputation of the industry.
Which the industry lost.
After causing him considerable trouble, and punishing him for speaking out. Not to the tune of $60 million, but punishing him no less.
I suppose people like you would prefer to take away the people's right to sue.
There's a difference between right to sue and right to sue frivolously without consequence. In countries such as Britain, the loser of a suit pays the winner's expenses. This makes filing frivolous lawsuits (which one would lose, but still cause the defendant grief and expense) a lot less attractive. In the U.S., lawsuits are used as a blunt instrument, and a tool of harrassment.
Back in the days when Copland was the Next Big Thing on the horizon, the future of MacOS' look was to be an insanely great new look named "high tech" or somesuch (I forget the name). Some people saw screenshots of it and made Kaleidoscope schemes based on it. Soon enough, these were pulled, no doubt because of Apple protecting its look and feel.
Apple regard their look and feel as a trademark and defend it jealously. It wouldn't surprise me if they had taken out design patents on key aspects of it. If Apple are to be open and non-proprietorial about anything, it is not going to be their look and feel.
I'd be very surprised if Apple allow this to be resolved with anything short of the withdrawal of anything vaguely Aqua-like.
That's unlikely, unless the player software reports the MAC address back. AFAIK, only the submission client does that.
I imagine the purpose is to build up a database of MAC addresses to lifestyle data. MAC addresses (being both unique and relatively immutable) are good keys for a database of things such as musical tastes, ad responses and such. That it can be correlated with an IP and an email address is a bonus.
A lot of Windows websurfers have a tendency to blindly download "cool" software, such as that web cursor changing plug-in that was discovered to send personal data back to its maker. It is in this way that the MAC may be accessed, and may become more useful than a DoubleClick cookie.
Unlike Java and its ilk, Python doesn't make you write everything as objects and methods. You can write scripts using only functions and control structures if you like. Though having classes for doing things such as HTTP, XML parsing, database access, &c., is very useful. Though if you're violently averse to OOP, you can ignore that completely.
Unlike Perl, the syntax and implementation of the object-oriented features isn't hideous. Doing OO in Perl is only slightly less bogus than doing it in raw C with structs of function pointers. Much of this bogosity comes from Perl's crufty syntax when it comes to type-handling and declaration, which seems to have been (to paraphrase Douglas Adams) not so much designed as congealed. Behaviours and modes of usage were added as a series of afterthoughts, and hence, inconsistencies abound.
And furthermore, Perl's lists aren't a first-class data type. Thus you cannot have a list of lists, only a list of references to lists, using the @ operator. Attempting to pass a list of lists to a function flattens them all into one list. The requirement to explicitly delve into language mechanics to get something as simple as a list of lists is not something you'd expect from a high-level language.
I worked with Perl for several years, both professionally and on personal projects. After learning Python recently, I can say that I will probably never use Perl for anything more than a short throwaway hack, in its awk-on-steroids capacity. Several other programmers I know have reported similar experiences.
Doesn't the Firewire tax only apply to the use of the trademark "Firewire"? From what I gathered, if you call it by the official (and much less sexy) name IEEE1394, you pay nothing.
I recall reading once (in Risks perhaps?) about a workplace where they were testing voice recognition. All was well until a disgruntled employee walked down the corridor, shouting "FILE! EXIT! NO!", with predictable results.
So we can say that the Inquisitors and Conquistadores weren't true Christians, and that the USSR and China weren't truly Communist. And where does that get us?
Labels are slippery things. Though two things that can be inferred: states which call themselves Communist are likely to be horrendously oppressive, and organised religion is a tempting justification for all manner of atrocity.
Or, in the words of William S. Burroughs, "if you're doing business with a religious sonofabitch, get it in writing. His word isn't worth shit, not with the good Lord telling him how to fuck you on the deal."
The problem with Katz is that a lot of his articles are half-baked. Take this one for example; a rough and arbitrary taxonomy of the Internet, which was obviously more of a passing thought than any sort of thesis or theory. Anybody here could produce something like this off the top of their head, and have much the same effect, but Katz gets to masquerade it as journalism.
And his previous, longer articles aren't much better. In general they consist of a rehashing of stories from two days earlier, with a modicum of facile "analysis", pompously restating the bleeding obvious from the mantle of journalistic authority.
In the US, a lot of science fiction (which, for obvious reasons, is popular with geek types) has a libertarian ideology. The obvious example would be Heinlein, though there are many others. I forget the historical reasons for this, but this phenomenon dates back to the 1930s at least.
How is communism a better system? It doesn't solve the problem of allocation of scarce resources as well as a decentralised system would, and then there's the small matter of it breaking down if central control is subverted (which means that all attempts to realise it require totalitarian authority).
If by "better" you mean nicer in an abstract, non-practical sense, that could be argued. But an even nicer system would be for everybody to have as much of everything they want. It looks quite peachy, unless you actually try to implement it.
REDMOND(AP): According to Microsoft, Windows has been proven to be the most reliable and cost-effective operating system for servers, clients, embedded systems and every other task.
Extensive independent testing at Microsoft's product testing labs has shown Windows to be not only more reliable than Sun, but also more reliable than the Sun itself.
A spokesperson for Microsoft Product Labs was quoted as saying "this report contains incontrovertible proof that Windows is not only the most reliable operating system ever released, but also the most reliable operating system that could exist in all possible worlds."
The report also demonstrates that Sun, Netscape and AOL are tools of Satan and establishes a causal link between usage of Linux and brain cancer.
Slashdot Mirror
That works for CDs, but won't work for DVD Audio. And as soon as they can, they will phase out CDs as a medium in favour of DVDs, much as they did with vinyl. And DVD Audio will be unrippable. (And playing it in through your soundcard doesn't count; for one, the quality on consumer gear is crap.)
Just think what kind of income they would have made if the music industry produced more stuff worth listening to, instead of the usual crap they're cranking out.
A much smaller one, I'd say.
You and I and a few others may be into "stuff worth listening to" (though I've no idea how you would define it), but 90% of the public wants Garth Brooks and Britney Spears.
Releasing only high-quality music doesn't scale well beyond the size of a niche label such as, say, 4AD or Mute; a behemoth like Universal or Warner couldn't afford to be so fussy and elitist.
If the MPAA's (so far massively successful) campaign against DeCSS is anything to go by, unprotected systems such as MP3 could be in for a major battle. As soon as anything like SDMI is in place, the RIAA will probably sue makers of unprotected players/encoders for violations of the DMCA and the like. Given recent interpretations of copyright as an absolute zero-sum property right, they could well win and MP3 could be outlawed.
As for the menace of unprotected CDs, DVD-Audio will remedy that, and introduce geographic zoning and other nasties. All they'd need to do once it's on the horizon is start manufacturing their ordinary CDs to deteriorate in a few years, all the while shipping them with a voucher redeemable for a new "enhanced" DVD Audio version. It would make them look generous and aggressively forward-looking and help phase out the fundamentally insecure CD format.
8. If you have to give out an email address for one-time use, tag it; /. asks, use
something like slashdot_yanky@hotmail.com or some such (or better yet, get your
own domain and mail server...quite handy!)
Or get a SpamCop account, run all your publically-known addresses through that and keep your private address secret. Spam ends up in a web-based in tray, from which you can automatically send complaints to relevant parties at the touch of a button.
I'm not connected with SpamCop's operators; I've been using it for several months now, and so far have seen only about 3 spams make it through (and those were soon dispatched via a URL in the headers). I highly recommend SpamCop.
A well-designed, inexpensive robot cat could have a place. If you cannot keep a live cat for some reason (i.e., live alone and travel a lot, or the landlord has a strict no-pets policy), a robot that fulfils the functions of a cat (i.e., receives and gives affection, responds positively to being stroked, plays with small objects/laser pointers, &c.) could be a good substitute. Implementing it well, however, is an entirely different question.
One could even envision a travel version, where the physical robot cat is dispensed with altogether, and replaced with a small box connected to a pair of video glasses and a tactile feedback glove. Switch it on and a virtual cat appears, which you can interact with.
I once came across a website named "Digital Phlargnarph", or something like that. Could this word be related to "gnarphlager", or is there some emergent neurolinguistic attractor that makes certain textures of nonsense words particularly appealing?
I am not going to buy/install Windows just to sync a palmtop.
Is it at all possible to make use of a WinCE machine (i.e., sync it, or transfer files from/to it) from a UNIX machine? Has anybody done anything of the sort, or tried it and failed heroically?
What I'd really like to see is a PalmPilot compatible with a larger screen resolution; 160x160 is woefully small; it's hard to fit much information on the screen.
(In contrast, Microsoft's ill-fated WinCE "palm-size PCs" do 240x320 or so... If they didn't require you to sell your soul to Redmond to be able to sync them, I'd be tempted to get one.)
A million wires? Hardly, try one. I sincerely doubt the decryption would be done at the
demultiplexer that feeds your display matrix (let's assume this is a plasma or LCD
display by this time).
The sensible thing for them to do would be to put as much of the decoder into the chip as possible, to render the outgoing data as unstructured and unusable as possible. I don't know much about how TFT displays work, but if they have 1024+768 row/column lines (or something like that, factoring in RGB components), that's not something recordable.
Of course that still means cracking open your tamper-protected sealed-unit display and risking a federal prison sentence for doing it
Interesting point. How long until we routinely see stickers reading things such as "This unit contains copyright enforcement mechanisms. Unauthorised examination prohibited by federal law" on consumer electronic devices, threatening fines and prison terms alongside voided warranties?
NOT TRUE This is weak FUD. Windows is JUST as hackable as Linux. The kernel mode portions actually have better documentation than Linux. Ref. all the device driver writing books for Windows compared to Linux's one.
In the places where you're meant to hack them (i.e., to write your own drivers). But there are undocumented portions. Some Windows binaries are written in such a way to make debugging impossible without a hardware ICE debugger. (And if the DeCSS decision is precedent, you can bet that you'll need a special licence to own/use such debuggers in future, much as you need a locksmithing licence to legally own lockpicking tools.)
Under Linux, you can always change the kernel under whatever program is running. Under Windows, you can write some DLLs, but the kernel itself is fixed. And while you could hand-disassemble it and diddle the machine language, most people aren't so masochistically bloody-minded.
Separating the decryptor and display is a lot easier if the entire system is not on one solid-state chip. If there's one monolithic blob of silicon between the encrypted signal and the million or so transistors on the display, your only option would be to take apart the display, solder a million or so wires to it and construct a custom digitiser. And you'd be better just pointing a camera at the display in that case.
Well how does this stop me from putting a recording device between the input and the screen, recording the encrypted signal, and then sending exactly the same encrypted signal to the screen again?
What you're describing is a replay attack, which depends on a cyphertext being valid regardless of context. There are a number of ways of thwarting these. Requiring a timestamp or serial number in the encrypted data, and discarding data with a repeated number, would do. If it's a two-way protocol, of course, it becomes easier. A challenge-response system, in which the monitor issues challenges which the transmitter must respond to, would weed out blindly replayed data. This could be as simple as having the monitor choose part of the next encryption key.
DeCSS was the first salvo in what looks like a battle to the death between strict copyright enforcement and the open-source movement.
The reason there aren't (and will never officially be) any software DVD players on Linux is because the Linux kernel is open-source, and thus not guaranteed to be trusted. With Windows, an evil pirate cannot recompile the kernel to snoop on a process, defeat anti-debugging measures or redirect output to a file. With Linux, if a process has something you want to get out of it, you can always get it, at most by hacking a few extra features into the kernel. This is also why Liquid Audio and such do not and will not support Linux.
The copyright barons are pushing for end-to-end encryption. One end (DVD drives) is implemented. The other end (video/sound cards) is coming. Needless to say, open-source drivers would defeat the purpose, and the copyright barons would spend billions on fighting them. As for binary-only drivers, the GPL forbids them.
So it's shaping up into a fight to the death between Linux and copyright control mechanisms. If Linux becomes massively popular before these systems are implemented and popularised, they will not catch on. However, if the copyright barons can get them out the door soon, they will be a blunt instrument against Linux on the desktop. After all, the GPL itself will lock Linux out of being able to access new "copyright-enhanced" hardware. And you can be sure Microsoft will be more than happy to hammer the point home.
If you're a social outcast, try a different social environment.
It is far easier finding social environments you fit into on the Net than offline, especially if you're an over-intellectual/bookish/geeky type. Just join some mailing lists (or in the old days subscribe to some newsgroups) and get involved in conversations; and there are forums for everyone, because the space is vast. Whether you're into mediæval warfare or typography or 70s prog rock or trainspotting, you can surely find people who share your interests; whether they live in Milwaukee, Manchester or Madras doesn't really matter as long as they speak your language.
In Real Life, your social sphere is constrained by geographical factors. Had you lived a century ago, you would most likely have never travelled more than a few miles in your life. The only people you'd know would be from your village/town. Which means that if your interests didn't sync with those of people nearby, you'd be out of luck. In the past century, transportation technologies have expanded this social sphere, but it's still there. And you can't just grep Real Life for other underwater macrame enthusiasts.
The key is to have a broad range of interests, with some that aren't too esoteric. If all you care about is hacking your customised Linux box, you're not going to be the life of the party, and probably won't have much to talk about with most people. However, if you can talk about other things more involving than the weather and yet not hopelessly esoteric, you can find common ground. These may range from movies and music to philosophy and the meaning of life. And if you don't have anything to say, listen and ask questions. You may learn something.
One key to not being an outcast is to not place yourself in specialised social environments based around interests you don't share. If you hang out with a group of wargamers (for example) and have no interest in wargaming, you'll be left out of the common milieu, and be by definition an outsider. You'd be better off in more general environments, where there are more unfixed variables.
After causing him considerable trouble, and punishing him for speaking out. Not to the tune of $60 million, but punishing him no less.
There's a difference between right to sue and right to sue frivolously without consequence. In countries such as Britain, the loser of a suit pays the winner's expenses. This makes filing frivolous lawsuits (which one would lose, but still cause the defendant grief and expense) a lot less attractive. In the U.S., lawsuits are used as a blunt instrument, and a tool of harrassment.
Back in the days when Copland was the Next Big Thing on the horizon, the future of MacOS' look was to be an insanely great new look named "high tech" or somesuch (I forget the name). Some people saw screenshots of it and made Kaleidoscope schemes based on it. Soon enough, these were pulled, no doubt because of Apple protecting its look and feel.
Apple regard their look and feel as a trademark and defend it jealously. It wouldn't surprise me if they had taken out design patents on key aspects of it. If Apple are to be open and non-proprietorial about anything, it is not going to be their look and feel.
I'd be very surprised if Apple allow this to be resolved with anything short of the withdrawal of anything vaguely Aqua-like.
That's unlikely, unless the player software reports the MAC address back. AFAIK, only the submission client does that.
I imagine the purpose is to build up a database of MAC addresses to lifestyle data. MAC addresses (being both unique and relatively immutable) are good keys for a database of things such as musical tastes, ad responses and such. That it can be correlated with an IP and an email address is a bonus.
A lot of Windows websurfers have a tendency to blindly download "cool" software, such as that web cursor changing plug-in that was discovered to send personal data back to its maker. It is in this way that the MAC may be accessed, and may become more useful than a DoubleClick cookie.
Unlike Java and its ilk, Python doesn't make you write everything as objects and methods. You can write scripts using only functions and control structures if you like. Though having classes for doing things such as HTTP, XML parsing, database access, &c., is very useful. Though if you're violently averse to OOP, you can ignore that completely.
Unlike Perl, the syntax and implementation of the object-oriented features isn't hideous. Doing OO in Perl is only slightly less bogus than doing it in raw C with structs of function pointers. Much of this bogosity comes from Perl's crufty syntax when it comes to type-handling and declaration, which seems to have been (to paraphrase Douglas Adams) not so much designed as congealed. Behaviours and modes of usage were added as a series of afterthoughts, and hence, inconsistencies abound.
And furthermore, Perl's lists aren't a first-class data type. Thus you cannot have a list of lists, only a list of references to lists, using the @ operator. Attempting to pass a list of lists to a function flattens them all into one list. The requirement to explicitly delve into language mechanics to get something as simple as a list of lists is not something you'd expect from a high-level language.
I worked with Perl for several years, both professionally and on personal projects. After learning Python recently, I can say that I will probably never use Perl for anything more than a short throwaway hack, in its awk-on-steroids capacity. Several other programmers I know have reported similar experiences.
Doesn't the Firewire tax only apply to the use of the trademark "Firewire"? From what I gathered, if you call it by the official (and much less sexy) name IEEE1394, you pay nothing.
I recall reading once (in Risks perhaps?) about a workplace where they were testing voice recognition. All was well until a disgruntled employee walked down the corridor, shouting "FILE! EXIT! NO!", with predictable results.
So we can say that the Inquisitors and Conquistadores weren't true Christians, and that the USSR and China weren't truly Communist. And where does that get us?
Labels are slippery things. Though two things that can be inferred: states which call themselves Communist are likely to be horrendously oppressive, and organised religion is a tempting justification for all manner of atrocity.
Or, in the words of William S. Burroughs, "if you're doing business with a religious sonofabitch, get it in writing. His word isn't worth shit, not with the good Lord telling him how to fuck you on the deal."
The problem with Katz is that a lot of his articles are half-baked. Take this one for example; a rough and arbitrary taxonomy of the Internet, which was obviously more of a passing thought than any sort of thesis or theory. Anybody here could produce something like this off the top of their head, and have much the same effect, but Katz gets to masquerade it as journalism.
And his previous, longer articles aren't much better. In general they consist of a rehashing of stories from two days earlier, with a modicum of facile "analysis", pompously restating the bleeding obvious from the mantle of journalistic authority.
In the US, a lot of science fiction (which, for obvious reasons, is popular with geek types) has a libertarian ideology. The obvious example would be Heinlein, though there are many others. I forget the historical reasons for this, but this phenomenon dates back to the 1930s at least.
How is communism a better system? It doesn't solve the problem of allocation of scarce resources as well as a decentralised system would, and then there's the small matter of it breaking down if central control is subverted (which means that all attempts to realise it require totalitarian authority).
If by "better" you mean nicer in an abstract, non-practical sense, that could be argued. But an even nicer system would be for everybody to have as much of everything they want. It looks quite peachy, unless you actually try to implement it.
REDMOND(AP): According to Microsoft, Windows has been proven to be the most reliable and cost-effective operating system for servers, clients, embedded systems and every other task.
Extensive independent testing at Microsoft's product testing labs has shown Windows to be not only more reliable than Sun, but also more reliable than the Sun itself.
A spokesperson for Microsoft Product Labs was quoted as saying "this report contains incontrovertible proof that Windows is not only the most reliable operating system ever released, but also the most reliable operating system that could exist in all possible worlds."
The report also demonstrates that Sun, Netscape and AOL are tools of Satan and establishes a causal link between usage of Linux and brain cancer.