Fair Use? Last I checked that was only for educational use, commentary, or criticism, not for profit or the betterment of the community. If i decide to say something in a crowded area, that is in no way allowing everyone there to publish it (with or without attributing it to me). That would require my permission -- no permission, no publication. Granted it would be very hard to find out who posted some of the comments, but there should definitely be a way to opt out. At the very least, the people involved will know who is being talked about, even anonymously. If i was a student harrassed by a teacher of mine, the idea of a comment about it which i posted on/. being published (even anonymously) would terrify me.
It is not possible to log -anything- (at least in our county). It is considered a violation of privacy to keep any sort of history or log.
We didn't make the policy (the supposedly enligtened souls at the head of the county system make the policy), but are forced to abide by it.
At least in our area, we have developed a policy of keeping adult computers uncensored and only using cutomizable, disablable censorware on childrens' computers. We have had incidents with adults viewing pornography, which we pointed out was a violation of their usage agreement (everyone is required to sign a use-policy stating that they will not defraud, viw p0rn, etc...).
We are totally incapable of living with the idea that some individuals are just plain fucking stupid. Thats the most disturbing realization thats come out of all of this.
Maybe i'm misunerstanding your use of 'stupid' here, but there's a big problem with your logic -- not all killers are dumb. That's not to say genius=isanity because everyone knows that's not true.
What America (and maybe the rest of the world, i can only speak for the sick portion i live in) refuses to admit is that everyone has potential to become a killer. Not everyone will snap, obviously, but those kids didn't do what they did because they were stupid. (they couldn't have)
So, the position that I see in a number of the messages here is that this technology will enable humans to engage in behavior that is unethical, irresponsible, and/or downright stupid.
Need i point out that humans were doing stupid, irresponsible things without technology?
Creating new technologies (biotech to replace a ruined liver, for example) is simply a cheap (and temporary) fix to the problem. Society needs to grow up and think about some implications.
Heck, there's nobody twisting your arm to make you eat that bacon and omlette, nor to hunt animals for trophies.
Some would argue that massive (and often incorrect) ad. campaigns and an entire culture are pretty big pushes in that direction though.
I mean, if the only thing stopping us from seriously soiling our own nest is that we lack the technology to do so, then we are in real trouble.
Yes, i think this is true. look at what happened with the atomic bomb and the nuclear buildup that followed it. (a pretty big step towards 'soiling the nest'). our hope is that we get scared -- we do eventually understand the ramifications (detente). For the Cold War, it took Russia disintegrating...hopefully next time we'll stop before that (NOTE: I'm not saying russia dissolved because of the Cold War, i'm saying the Cold War stopped because of Russia)
New technologies are always being invented, and many of them carry the potential for abuse. Must we suppress all of them too?
No, we must suppress the abuses. And if we are incapable of that then yes, the technology should be stopped because we aren't ready for it. Raw capability gets us nowhere as a species.
One effect of Biotech not mentioned in this thread is that it often favors the rich. (high cost means only the rich can pay to fix their 'mistakes')
BMG has a feature now where it's all done electronically - no postal mail at all, except, of course, when I order CDs. No more ship by default. When I first set it up (it's on their web page somewhere) i couldn't believe how much less paper it would be - and it really has elimanted all the mail from them. I get an email every month that procmail deals with quite well.
But that doesn't mean I'd ever consider going into my school or something and doing that. That's the difference between sane people who watch a movie like that, and insane people. Insane people would go kill people after seeing that(or at least some people would like to believe it's that simple).
I don't understand why everyone thinks this...yeah, the violence looked cool, but it was also very specifically emphasized that it was 'fake' and, (in the real world) very costly (the fact that they did feel the effects IRL).
What everyone sccreaming 'it's the media's fault' doesn't realize, (while they are at incredible fault for the way they portrayed the whole columbine thing and others) is that people were shooting in schools (jonesboro, etc) before The Matrix ever came out. These boys were not sociopaths, made by watching one too many horror flicks; they were sociopaths who happened to like horror/action movies.
If violent movies/music were why people kill; we'd all be dead by now (ayone watched the tv news lately?) Thera are so many other factors it's amazing and any psychologist who's not being paid for a tv interview should be able to explain that.
Marilyn Manson (who the Columbine boys actually did not listen to) wrote an article about how he sees the media as involved. It's interesting; probably not what the average parent would expect.
WB, etc will not stop any deaths by doing this, and i doubt they're even trying to. What they will do is possible remove the media connections to them and 'wash their hands'.
I think everyone should take a step back from this and look at why we are doing all these crazy things. It all leads almost directly out of Columbine. It was tragic to be sure, but to make major changes in laws and/or our society after 15 people die in a fairly isolated incident is ridiculous.
I think on one level my response to this would be "well, how many people do justify a change?" because i think it would be an okey thing if there were some isolated cause for it. But that's completely unrealistic.
"guns don't kill people...violent movies and trenchcoats kill people"
Perhaps persons should be rated in various categories, [...]
I think the idea takes a nosedive here... Any time people start getting put into arbitrary categories ('geek', 'suit', 'PHB') no matter how accurate they may be, bad things happen. It's discrimination.
I do think it's very inturiging to think of having posters pre-screened by lots of others, but there would be some big assumptions: One would be that the masses are correct (and based on windows usage, they're not).
Another would be that what other people consider good, i do. I'm happy to say i don't consider this true of myself now; I enjoy evolving my own taste in things. (perhaps a way around it would be to have adjectives like slashdot's and have them assigned rather than just numbers. A user could then say they wanted 'funny' rather than 'insightful' posts or whatever (obviously it would take lots more words and a complicated system that understood their interrelation).
BIOS can only deal with (currently) two controllers. However, the IDE spec allows at least 4 controllers to be present. Whether this conflicts with anything else in the system is another matter.
Linux doesn't need drives to be on a BIOS recognized controller does it? I thought it talked directly to the controller.... I've been running more (and larger) drives on my 486 than my BIOS recognizes for a long time. I thought this was possibly because linux does the conversing on a lower level (to my newer controller)...maybe not.
If so, then provided there is no limitaion in the (E)IDE specifications as bkosse thought and you can get the IRQ, etc to agree then it should be possible to address the drives... Perhaps this is different on newer systems (PCI, etc.) but i thought the controller would just be seen as another adapter by the BIOS. I know that's how it worked before they started sticking them on motherboards...
No! That's the brilliance of it. Society can support just about anything which it deems valuable. That value drives the society to utilize whatever that thing is. The utility, at the very least, drives and motivates some sort of action, which drives and motivates some other action.
This is, of course, assuming that society at lareg makes correct assumptions of value, which it doesn't.
This incessant chain of action, is what feeds, clothes and houses most of society.
But what about the portion that isn't fed, clothed, or housed at all? The system certainly isn't perfect. It's not a cuase for overthrow, but possibly reevaluation, but the problem se4ems to be that no one is willing to question the ffectiveness of a system that works so apparently well (in first world countries)
This is not a cry for socialism in any way, nor communism because i think both of those are even more flawed.
It is certainly true that not all members of the society thrive or even survive for that matter. But its better than the alternative of the entire society failing.
Is it? I'm not so sure our obsession with spreserving the current incarnation of 'society' has done us any good. If society collapsed, it wouldn't mean the end of humanity, and just maybe we would come up with a system with fewer bugs in it by starting from the beginning again. (NO, i'm not a terrorist or anarchist either)
The fact that everyone doesn't have to farm their own food makes it possible for the diversity of things that exist in our society.
If you've been watching farm prices lately, farmers aren't doing too well (at least in the U.S) Apparently people are willing to pay very well for the luxury of this diversity. And farming (unless it's on a huge, depoleting scale is never massively profitable. My gradfather often says "It's the occupation with the highest gross income, but the lowest profit" and he's pretty accurate.
he's right. and mac linux is not as good as linux for an x86 or a computer with alpha archs. IMHO I don't think it is even worth making linux for a mac,...
I don't see how it matters whether it's a better platform or not -- part of linux's appeal is that you don't have to choose which architecture to worry about, simply the OS.
What i love about the GNU/Linux phenomenon is that it favors giving the user control (over hiding everything behind set rules like M$ does). That control should extend to what hardware they choose as well. Not everyone is looking for the biggest, best, or fastest computer.
There are several wine-ish products out there; i haven't used any of them so i have no idea of the quality, but they do exist.
M$ was wise not to ignore the Macintosh as a platform and i think we would be just as smart to concentrate on porting the wonder of linux to every system we can...because when it comes down to it, what's the loss if only 40 people end up using it? Those are 40 people using a better OS. Obviously the people porting it feel that it's worth it, if only for their personal experience.
Also, linux is not exclusively about business. If it was it probably wouldn't be where it is now. It's an OS and you do with it what you choose, on what hardware you choose (ideally at least).
A.C. wrote: You measure an idea's worth the same way you measure the value of anything else. By how much someone is willing to pay for it
The problem with this is its subjectivity. And that's where capitalism runs into trouble. If i want/am able to pay more for something that does not increase its inherent worth. And that's tragic because someone who can't afford the increase, but still needs the product may be stuck paying more for it if it suddenly goes into demand.
Part of what Marx argued for was an objective measurement for worth so that everyone would be assured of fair treatment. The situation he proposed isn't terribly practical, but it does have merit.
(a) save time, (b) save money, (c) get a better product from an end-user standpoint.
I assume you mean saving time over a x86 version of linux...
A: Saving time...Essentially all mac hardware is supported afaik since it has to be all compatible just to run the MacOS
B: Saving money...If you do happen to prefer x86 for the many reasons you perhaps -SHOULD-, this at least gives you something to use your mac for. The ability to take an 'old' G3 and get a passable web server is a useful thing, regardless of its performance compared to another platform.
C: Better Product...I'm not sure i can answer this because i'm not sure what your product is -- i'll try. If it's hardware then in my experience Linux gives you better control which equals better testing if you're going for Mac compatibility. If you market software for linux then knowing how it will perform on various architectures is quite useful to a customer. If you make coffee holders, well i'm not sure a PPC linux will do you any good over another architecture's.
Apparently you've missed the relatively exciting things apple has done the the Mac architecture lately. The platform has grown up, partly because Apple has close control over what goes on.
Besides, what's the point of developing a unix for 286's etc. (minix)...for one because it can be done, but also because the more platforms an OS supports the more useful it can be -- even for that doorstop 8086 lying around (let's see you boot M$ Windows 98 on that.
I'll quickly admit,though, that i'm not a Mac advocate; i don't use one.
The problem with it is the assumption that money does (or even should) make the world go round. Money does not need to be what motivates everything and OpenSource has shown that quite nicely.
Money may work for some concrete things (i hr. work = $5.15, even that gets into subjective definitions of worth), but it's metaphor breaks down when it comes to more nebulous things like ideas.
Especially in information we're seeing more and more these days that many people feel that ideas shold be free. (Artists release Mp3's to bypass labels, authors free source, etc.)
In Marx's Das Kapital (brought to you online by altruism) he explains the transfer of money for physical goods and challenges how worth is defined. This is extremely relevant for intellectual property because how do you measure an idea's worth? By the amount of time it took to be thought up? By the gluclose expended? By the way it affects society?
All these things are essentially impossible to measure.
(hmm...i never intended to quote Marx. maybe i am a closet communist)
Slashdot Mirror
Fair Use? /. being published (even anonymously) would terrify me.
Last I checked that was only for educational use, commentary, or criticism, not for profit or the betterment of the community. If i decide to say something in a crowded area, that is in no way allowing everyone there to publish it (with or without attributing it to me). That would require my permission -- no permission, no publication.
Granted it would be very hard to find out who posted some of the comments, but there should definitely be a way to opt out. At the very least, the people involved will know who is being talked about, even anonymously. If i was a student harrassed by a teacher of mine, the idea of a comment about it which i posted on
from someone who works in a library...
It is not possible to log -anything- (at least in our county). It is considered a violation of privacy to keep any sort of history or log.
We didn't make the policy (the supposedly enligtened souls at the head of the county system make the policy), but are forced to abide by it.
At least in our area, we have developed a policy of keeping adult computers uncensored and only using cutomizable, disablable censorware on childrens' computers. We have had incidents with adults viewing pornography, which we pointed out was a violation of their usage agreement (everyone is required to sign a use-policy stating that they will not defraud, viw p0rn, etc...).
We are totally incapable of living with the idea that some individuals are just plain fucking stupid. Thats the most disturbing realization thats come out of all of this.
Maybe i'm misunerstanding your use of 'stupid' here, but there's a big problem with your logic -- not all killers are dumb. That's not to say genius=isanity because everyone knows that's not true.
What America (and maybe the rest of the world, i can only speak for the sick portion i live in) refuses to admit is that everyone has potential to become a killer. Not everyone will snap, obviously, but those kids didn't do what they did because they were stupid. (they couldn't have)
So, the position that I see in a number of the messages here is that this technology will enable humans to engage in behavior that is unethical, irresponsible, and/or downright stupid.
Need i point out that humans were doing stupid, irresponsible things without technology?
Creating new technologies (biotech to replace a ruined liver, for example) is simply a cheap (and temporary) fix to the problem. Society needs to grow up and think about some implications.
Heck, there's nobody twisting your arm to make you eat that bacon and omlette, nor to hunt animals for trophies.
Some would argue that massive (and often incorrect) ad. campaigns and an entire culture are pretty big pushes in that direction though.
I mean, if the only thing stopping us from seriously soiling our own nest is that we lack the technology to do so, then we are in real trouble.
Yes, i think this is true. look at what happened with the atomic bomb and the nuclear buildup that followed it. (a pretty big step towards 'soiling the nest'). our hope is that we get scared -- we do eventually understand the ramifications (detente). For the Cold War, it took Russia disintegrating...hopefully next time we'll stop before that (NOTE: I'm not saying russia dissolved because of the Cold War, i'm saying the Cold War stopped because of Russia)
New technologies are always being invented, and many of them carry the potential for abuse. Must we suppress all of them too?
No, we must suppress the abuses. And if we are incapable of that then yes, the technology should be stopped because we aren't ready for it. Raw capability gets us nowhere as a species.
One effect of Biotech not mentioned in this thread is that it often favors the rich. (high cost means only the rich can pay to fix their 'mistakes')
BMG has a feature now where it's all done electronically - no postal mail at all, except, of course, when I order CDs. No more ship by default. When I first set it up (it's on their web page somewhere) i couldn't believe how much less paper it would be - and it really has elimanted all the mail from them. I get an email every month that procmail deals with quite well.
But that doesn't mean I'd ever consider going into my school or something and doing that. That's the difference between sane people who watch a movie like that, and insane people. Insane people would go kill people after seeing that(or at least some people would like to believe it's that simple).
I don't understand why everyone thinks this...yeah, the violence looked cool, but it was also very specifically emphasized that it was 'fake' and, (in the real world) very costly (the fact that they did feel the effects IRL).
What everyone sccreaming 'it's the media's fault' doesn't realize, (while they are at incredible fault for the way they portrayed the whole columbine thing and others) is that people were shooting in schools (jonesboro, etc) before The Matrix ever came out. These boys were not sociopaths, made by watching one too many horror flicks; they were sociopaths who happened to like horror/action movies.
If violent movies/music were why people kill; we'd all be dead by now (ayone watched the tv news lately?) Thera are so many other factors it's amazing and any psychologist who's not being paid for a tv interview should be able to explain that.
Marilyn Manson (who the Columbine boys actually did not listen to) wrote an article about how he sees the media as involved. It's interesting; probably not what the average parent would expect.
WB, etc will not stop any deaths by doing this, and i doubt they're even trying to. What they will do is possible remove the media connections to them and 'wash their hands'.
I think everyone should take a step back from this and look at why we are doing all these crazy things. It all leads almost directly out of Columbine. It was tragic to be sure, but to make major changes in laws and/or our society after 15 people die in a fairly isolated incident is ridiculous.
I think on one level my response to this would be "well, how many people do justify a change?" because i think it would be an okey thing if there were some isolated cause for it. But that's completely unrealistic.
"guns don't kill people...violent movies and trenchcoats kill people"
Perhaps persons should be rated in various categories, [...]
I think the idea takes a nosedive here... Any time people start getting put into arbitrary categories ('geek', 'suit', 'PHB') no matter how accurate they may be, bad things happen. It's discrimination.
I do think it's very inturiging to think of having posters pre-screened by lots of others, but there would be some big assumptions:
One would be that the masses are correct (and based on windows usage, they're not).
Another would be that what other people consider good, i do. I'm happy to say i don't consider this true of myself now; I enjoy evolving my own taste in things. (perhaps a way around it would be to have adjectives like slashdot's and have them assigned rather than just numbers. A user could then say they wanted 'funny' rather than 'insightful' posts or whatever (obviously it would take lots more words and a complicated system that understood their interrelation).
It would definitely have to be optional.
BIOS can only deal with (currently) two controllers. However, the IDE spec allows at least 4 controllers to be present. Whether this conflicts with anything else in the system is another matter.
Linux doesn't need drives to be on a BIOS recognized controller does it? I thought it talked directly to the controller.... I've been running more (and larger) drives on my 486 than my BIOS recognizes for a long time. I thought this was possibly because linux does the conversing on a lower level (to my newer controller)...maybe not.
If so, then provided there is no limitaion in the (E)IDE specifications as bkosse thought and you can get the IRQ, etc to agree then it should be possible to address the drives... Perhaps this is different on newer systems (PCI, etc.) but i thought the controller would just be seen as another adapter by the BIOS. I know that's how it worked before they started sticking them on motherboards...
A.C. wrote:
No! That's the brilliance of it. Society can support just about anything which it deems valuable. That value drives the society to utilize whatever that thing is. The utility, at the very least, drives and motivates some sort of action, which drives and motivates some other action.
This is, of course, assuming that society at lareg makes correct assumptions of value, which it doesn't.
This incessant chain of action, is what feeds, clothes and houses most of society.
But what about the portion that isn't fed, clothed, or housed at all? The system certainly isn't perfect. It's not a cuase for overthrow, but possibly reevaluation, but the problem se4ems to be that no one is willing to question the ffectiveness of a system that works so apparently well (in first world countries)
This is not a cry for socialism in any way, nor communism because i think both of those are even more flawed.
It is certainly true that not all members of the society thrive or even survive for that matter. But its better than the alternative of the entire society failing.
Is it? I'm not so sure our obsession with spreserving the current incarnation of 'society' has done us any good. If society collapsed, it wouldn't mean the end of humanity, and just maybe we would come up with a system with fewer bugs in it by starting from the beginning again. (NO, i'm not a terrorist or anarchist either)
The fact that everyone doesn't have to farm their own food makes it possible for the diversity of things that exist in our society.
If you've been watching farm prices lately, farmers aren't doing too well (at least in the U.S) Apparently people are willing to pay very well for the luxury of this diversity. And farming (unless it's on a huge, depoleting scale is never massively profitable. My gradfather often says "It's the occupation with the highest gross income, but the lowest profit" and he's pretty accurate.
but a highly configurable one...
and cros-platform too (we hope).
Subculture wrote:
he's right. and mac linux is not as good as linux for an x86 or a computer with alpha archs. IMHO I don't think it is even worth making linux for a mac,...
I don't see how it matters whether it's a better platform or not -- part of linux's appeal is that you don't have to choose which architecture to worry about, simply the OS.
What i love about the GNU/Linux phenomenon is that it favors giving the user control (over hiding everything behind set rules like M$ does). That control should extend to what hardware they choose as well. Not everyone is looking for the biggest, best, or fastest computer.
There are several wine-ish products out there; i haven't used any of them so i have no idea of the quality, but they do exist.
M$ was wise not to ignore the Macintosh as a platform and i think we would be just as smart to concentrate on porting the wonder of linux to every system we can...because when it comes down to it, what's the loss if only 40 people end up using it? Those are 40 people using a better OS. Obviously the people porting it feel that it's worth it, if only for their personal experience.
Also, linux is not exclusively about business. If it was it probably wouldn't be where it is now. It's an OS and you do with it what you choose, on what hardware you choose (ideally at least).
A.C. wrote:
You measure an idea's worth the same way you measure the value of anything else. By how much someone is willing to pay for it
The problem with this is its subjectivity. And that's where capitalism runs into trouble. If i want/am able to pay more for something that does not increase its inherent worth. And that's tragic because someone who can't afford the increase, but still needs the product may be stuck paying more for it if it suddenly goes into demand.
Part of what Marx argued for was an objective measurement for worth so that everyone would be assured of fair treatment. The situation he proposed isn't terribly practical, but it does have merit.
Tom wrote:
(a) save time,
(b) save money,
(c) get a better product from an end-user standpoint.
I assume you mean saving time over a x86 version of linux...
A: Saving time...Essentially all mac hardware is supported afaik since it has to be all compatible just to run the MacOS
B: Saving money...If you do happen to prefer x86 for the many reasons you perhaps -SHOULD-, this at least gives you something to use your mac for. The ability to take an 'old' G3 and get a passable web server is a useful thing, regardless of its performance compared to another platform.
C: Better Product...I'm not sure i can answer this because i'm not sure what your product is -- i'll try. If it's hardware then in my experience Linux gives you better control which equals better testing if you're going for Mac compatibility. If you market software for linux then knowing how it will perform on various architectures is quite useful to a customer. If you make coffee holders, well i'm not sure a PPC linux will do you any good over another architecture's.
Apparently you've missed the relatively exciting things apple has done the the Mac architecture lately. The platform has grown up, partly because Apple has close control over what goes on.
Besides, what's the point of developing a unix for 286's etc. (minix)...for one because it can be done, but also because the more platforms an OS supports the more useful it can be -- even for that doorstop 8086 lying around (let's see you boot M$ Windows 98 on that.
I'll quickly admit,though, that i'm not a Mac advocate; i don't use one.
To risk sounding like a communist (gasp):
The problem with it is the assumption that money does (or even should) make the world go round. Money does not need to be what motivates everything and OpenSource has shown that quite nicely.
Money may work for some concrete things (i hr. work = $5.15, even that gets into subjective definitions of worth), but it's metaphor breaks down when it comes to more nebulous things like ideas.
Especially in information we're seeing more and more these days that many people feel that ideas shold be free. (Artists release Mp3's to bypass labels, authors free source, etc.)
In Marx's Das Kapital (brought to you online by altruism) he explains the transfer of money for physical goods and challenges how worth is defined. This is extremely relevant for intellectual property because how do you measure an idea's worth?
By the amount of time it took to be thought up?
By the gluclose expended?
By the way it affects society?
All these things are essentially impossible to measure.
(hmm...i never intended to quote Marx. maybe i am a closet communist)