My parent are ~ 70 years old, and their computers are probably healthier than mine.
How?
I knew they wouldn't understand all the trade-offs involved in Internet security, so I set them up with a basic secure setup (auto-updates from MS, anti-virus, anti-spyware), and gave them 3 simple rules:
1) When you aren't using the computer - turn it off. Bad guys can't get in, or do anything to the computer, if it's not on.
2) Stay in the "well-lit" areas of the Internet. By that I mean corporate and reputable public sites - as a general rule of thumb, if they've heard about it on the news, its "well-lit".
3) Only download something when *YOU* want it, not when a site says you need it. And anytime a site says you need their special application to view video, listen to audio, or read something, they LIE.
I've also worked over the years to transition them off IE and Outlook, but that was just really icing - the basic setup and the security rules did *ALL* the heavy lifting.
Now, every so often, I'll have to do basic maintenace - renew their AV, make sure they've got all the updates, defrag their drives, etc. - but it's all relatively painless stuff. And I've never had to rebuild their computer.
Hmm. Seems to repeat most of the arguments in the Skeptical Environmentalist, which was released soon after the original 2001 report, and is a very good and insightful read.
Both analyses are solid enough to make me doubt the vailidity of the "man-made global warming" conclusion.
First, let me point out that the Internet has already been through a phase where in had regionalized TLDs. Originally, there were these wide-area-networks (mostly US college-based) that had names like BITNET, FIDONET, and CLARINET. And it was a big deal for a college to be on multiple such. Often you had to get special permission to actually even access any of those, much less multiple ones. Internetwork gateways were magical arcane beasts, not to be trifled with.
This was in the early to mid-80's. By the early-90's the situation had changed dramatically. Gateways where well understood, bandwidth costs had dropped, transfer speeds had risen, and the last vestiges of the original regional networks had vanished for the most part. It was now more the norm for local networks to talk together than not, and most places didn't even wonder about it.
Technically, nothing prevents any nation today from regionalizing their networks; I imagine most have a few top-level DNS boxen that are for the most part wide-open, just as they are here in the U.S. But there are nations today - China, some of the Muslim/Arab countries - that have effectively already done this. And there's *very* little anyone can do to stop it.
In terms of what would be gained: one thing that leaps to mind is that it would stop the least-common-demnominator content laws that have already caused problems. Remember why there's an Ebay Europe, a Google Europe, etc.? A regionalized 'net would allow such issues to be handled without the need for international diplomacy. And you probably wouldn't need ICANN anymore either.
From the corporation's viewpoints, it would also allow much tighter control of their electronic IP. Something they'd enjoy greatly, but not ourselves as consumers.
People have already repeated pointed out various other down sides.
Me personally, I think it's more in the nature of growing pains. When the first small nets started sharing and cross-fertilizing there were a lot of similiar issues (on a smaller scale and with less heat, but similiar). The 'net grew past that. It'll grow past this.
The 'net might fracture. It might regionalize. And I'll miss all the wonderful things I used to access in the other regions. But so will everybody else. And they'll start looking for ways to regain the access, to share information. First, this will just happen with a very small cadre of determined network wizards. But it will propogate quickly down from there. And in short order, the default mode of the DNS won't be grumpy and quiescent, but euphoric and free-flowing as it is now. In some cases, it will be altruism that motivates the first ones. But there are plenty of self-interested reasons as well, many of which have already been touched on.
That new state will probably look a little different that it does now. But I have faith that it will happen.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, you mean like the 1e Wilderness Guide, Unearthed Arcana, ....
1e Splat books were the reason 2e came into being.
My parent are ~ 70 years old, and their computers are probably healthier than mine.
How?
I knew they wouldn't understand all the trade-offs involved in Internet security, so I set them up with a basic secure setup (auto-updates from MS, anti-virus, anti-spyware), and gave them 3 simple rules:
1) When you aren't using the computer - turn it off. Bad guys can't get in, or do anything to the computer, if it's not on.
2) Stay in the "well-lit" areas of the Internet. By that I mean corporate and reputable public sites - as a general rule of thumb, if they've heard about it on the news, its "well-lit".
3) Only download something when *YOU* want it, not when a site says you need it. And anytime a site says you need their special application to view video, listen to audio, or read something, they LIE.
I've also worked over the years to transition them off IE and Outlook, but that was just really icing - the basic setup and the security rules did *ALL* the heavy lifting.
Now, every so often, I'll have to do basic maintenace - renew their AV, make sure they've got all the updates, defrag their drives, etc. - but it's all relatively painless stuff. And I've never had to rebuild their computer.
It's a shame how bitter and how accurate this is.
Society doesn't really let you opt out of the Peter Principle. Which is even more of a shame.
Hmm. Seems to repeat most of the arguments in the Skeptical Environmentalist, which was released soon after the original 2001 report, and is a very good and insightful read.
Both analyses are solid enough to make me doubt the vailidity of the "man-made global warming" conclusion.
First, let me point out that the Internet has already been through a phase where in had regionalized TLDs. Originally, there were these wide-area-networks (mostly US college-based) that had names like BITNET, FIDONET, and CLARINET. And it was a big deal for a college to be on multiple such. Often you had to get special permission to actually even access any of those, much less multiple ones. Internetwork gateways were magical arcane beasts, not to be trifled with.
This was in the early to mid-80's. By the early-90's the situation had changed dramatically. Gateways where well understood, bandwidth costs had dropped, transfer speeds had risen, and the last vestiges of the original regional networks had vanished for the most part. It was now more the norm for local networks to talk together than not, and most places didn't even wonder about it.
Technically, nothing prevents any nation today from regionalizing their networks; I imagine most have a few top-level DNS boxen that are for the most part wide-open, just as they are here in the U.S. But there are nations today - China, some of the Muslim/Arab countries - that have effectively already done this. And there's *very* little anyone can do to stop it.
In terms of what would be gained: one thing that leaps to mind is that it would stop the least-common-demnominator content laws that have already caused problems. Remember why there's an Ebay Europe, a Google Europe, etc.? A regionalized 'net would allow such issues to be handled without the need for international diplomacy. And you probably wouldn't need ICANN anymore either.
From the corporation's viewpoints, it would also allow much tighter control of their electronic IP. Something they'd enjoy greatly, but not ourselves as consumers.
People have already repeated pointed out various other down sides.
Me personally, I think it's more in the nature of growing pains. When the first small nets started sharing and cross-fertilizing there were a lot of similiar issues (on a smaller scale and with less heat, but similiar). The 'net grew past that. It'll grow past this.
The 'net might fracture. It might regionalize. And I'll miss all the wonderful things I used to access in the other regions. But so will everybody else. And they'll start looking for ways to regain the access, to share information. First, this will just happen with a very small cadre of determined network wizards. But it will propogate quickly down from there. And in short order, the default mode of the DNS won't be grumpy and quiescent, but euphoric and free-flowing as it is now. In some cases, it will be altruism that motivates the first ones. But there are plenty of self-interested reasons as well, many of which have already been touched on.
That new state will probably look a little different that it does now. But I have faith that it will happen.