Would it be right to ban companies from requiring that their employees keep public silence over their tenure at that company, even when said tenure is done?
I would argue, with some regret, that it is not. If one signs an agreement with a company giving them carte blanche over your free speech for the rest of your life, then you have noone but yourself to blame should you find yourself being asked to shut your mouth at some later date.
It is a matter of the fundamental Rights of Man in a free country that companies, organisations and individuals be able to ask their employees or dependants to sign contracts of this nature.
Also, consider industrial espionage. This is an area where it is clearly in the interest of us all that the freedom of speech of employees be curtailed. You can't have your top researcher spend all your money finding things out and designing magnificient devices for you and then have them bugger off to the company down the road and give them all the info. There has to be safeguards against this sort of thing.
In the end, the world is not perfect people, and though many of you seem to have a sweet undergraduate notion of freedom of speech being absolute, in the real world it is often not practical. And there is no world more real than the world of industry.
In the end, freedom of speech is just another commodity. We shouldn't inflate its importance too much, less we lose our sense of perspective.
You know exactly what to do- Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
I can't help but feel that this is yesterdays news. I already have a cheap international phone service, and furthermore I can use it anywhere - on the bus, the train, while driving my car. Its called my mobile phone.
Thanks to the fact that most of the mobile phone companies are now huge multinationals, I can expect my one little device to work in over 100 countries. I am with Vodafone, the British mobile company that is the largest in the world, with the majority of the European, Asian and American market. With the exception of America, all these regions offer a unified mobile system, and the upcoming 3G liscenses will unify things even more.
Presently I am living in Cuba working on a Journalism project, and my phone works perfectly well here. It has also worked in India, Malaysia, Britain and Germany without any reconfiguring or dificulty. The only place I have difficulty is America, but I hardly ever have reason to go there anyway.
3G liscenses will give me 256kbits of modem connectivity in just a few years, with mobile videophone, easy to use all over the world. I can't help but think that this news is the last gasp of the morbid and dying landline industry, which can see the writing on the wall.
I'll be glad to see the back of landline telephones. In fact, I already have.
You know exactly what to do- Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
This is just another step in the regionalisation of Linux. I have mentioned this before on this site, and it is clear to me that what I have said is coming to pass.
Linux is splitting into different Distro's for different cultural areas of the world. The German speaking world has SuSE. The English speaking world Red Hat. The French speaking world goes with Mandrake, and the Japanese with turbo Linux.
Now, this shouldn't affect Linux at all, but I fear it will, and indeed I fear it already is. We are seeing the germination of different developer communities based on language, and not on a shared enthusiasm for Linux. For example, the german speaking world moves with KDE, and the Enflish with Gnome, and each have their own respective developer communities with their own cultural values. The recent establishment of a European branch of the FSF can only worsen this, IMO. The European Linux community is expediant - witness KDE liscensing issues - while the American is idealistic, and not really practical, as can be seen with its adherence to the values of the FSF.
I think this is bad news for Linux. We need to see more cross cultural integration, like we used to have in the early days of Linux.
You know exactly what to do- Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
dDoS'es, IMO, will be the curse of the Internet. They are becoming ever more frequent, and are frighteningly easy to implement. How are we to defend the new economy, the Internet, against the attacks of societies malevolent rejects, the Script Kiddies? The e-economy is like a shining jewel, offering a new way forward for mankind. But the ignorant and small minded have every desire to destroy it and tear down the towers of Babel.
How are we to protect ourselves, and save the new economy and way of life and working we see growing for the first time?
My suggestion is that we greatly improve punishments for script kiddies and throw cash at the problem by initiating 'online cops' with special dispensation to track them down. The Internet needn't be a lawless fronteir anymore.
Israel has done this to an extent. We should too.
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I expect it will make no difference at all.
on
Quake on IPv6
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· Score: 1
This is a bit like people who say they can tell the difference between 75fps and 100fps - the performance gain may theoretically be there, but in reality it is not consciously detectable.
Also, in the real world, it lag that is the killer performance hit, and that cannot be improved without breaking the laws of Einstein.
Over a network it is effectively impossible to improve QuakeIII performance without also breaking the laws of physics. Bandwidth may make a difference, but protocols won't.
You know exactly what to do- Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
There is little doubt that Microsoft want to dominate every field of the industry, from Cray supercomputers to the chips in toasters. Some moan at them as though this is somehow megalomaniacal of them, but the simple fact is that it is their right to do this, and give Linux some stiff competition.
Having MSWindows on embedded devices would be very useful. GUI's may seem simple to the/. crowd, but for the majority they are really not as intuitive as they are cracked up to be. It can only be good if people have the option to have the same GUI all around, everywhere. It reduces training costs at companies and the time people have to expend to learn what is, in the end, a simple tool.
Here's hoping that MS port their embedded CE to as many processors as possible.
You know exactly what to do- Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
This is all thanks to the invasion of the microchip into out lives. It is human nature that companies and people wish to use them to exert control over their property, by inserting them in headphones, stereos, etc.
So what is the solution? Well, we have two choices. We can either try to fundamentally change human nature, which is impossible (everyone wants to make a slave of others. Life is a struggle for power), or we can remove or prohibit the technology that grants such powers. I would move that we campaign for our governments to place restrictions on how embedded microchips are used, and even ban them in some instances, because all to often they are being used in an Orwellian fashion.
You know exactly what to do- Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
Reality is something that we percieve, without ever knowing whether it truly exists. Therefore, if we are participating in a 'virtual' reality (which really has just as much validity as reality), then we are just percieving a different environment in which things behave according to different laws.
Is it not then dangerous to play a console game in which agents are motivated by entirely different principles? There is no reason in evolutionary psychology to suppose that we are capable of differentiating in the long term between different representations of reality, which are all in the end subjective.I think it is dangerous that in this modern world there are so many differnt virtual universes for us to exist in. It could be that we are unnable to cope with this - our brains are made for the evolutionary plains of Africa, not the modern world of TV, books, consoles, the Internet, Radio, etc etc. We are suffering from an overload of representative realities. It has been speculated that this is the cause behind Alzhimers desease and Attention Deficit Disorder - the inability to be satisfied with just one reality.
Consoles of this hyperrealistic nature could well greatly exarcerbate the minimal problems we have in this area at the moment.
I just wish we knew more about these sorts of issues before we wantonly introduced new consoles.
This post may have seemed a littled bit off base, I suppose, and I am sorry if it appeared so. I just had to get it off my chest. It is interesting though, if slightly worrying.
You know exactly what to do- Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
The future of PDA's, and a possible cloud.
on
Cheap Linux PDAs
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· Score: 2
PDA's are becoming ever more ubiqitous. They are spreading everywhere, and no self respecting businessman is without one. Technologically speaking, they are marvellous, and in this respect they van only improve when better screen technologies, better batteries, better processors and better OS's, especially Linux based ones, arrive on the scene. They could become mobile desktops.
However, what of the social implications? PDA's represent a sort of slavery, as the user of the PDA is beholden to a time schedule and can never have any excuses. The electronic brain he carrys around with him has become a millstone, as it keeps him on the straight and narrow. This is not such a concern now, as PDA's are still simple, but in the future when they are web annabled they could be used by businesses to keep an eyes on their employees at all times, much like long distance lorry drivers in Europe are watched constantly by satellite. Is the employee of the future, and indeed today, to have to privacy at all? It is surely the right of the employee that he be able to do as he wish when not at work, and even to have privacy and time to think while at work, but PDA's are an incipient threat to this state of affairs. The most insidious thing about PDA's is that everyone see's them as benevolent. I am not saying that they need be dangerous for sure, I am just saying that it could well become an important issue. If I were a betting man, I would say that PDA's are the next major civil liberties issue.
You know exactly what to do- Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
The thing about security from the perspective of the company is that as far as they are concerned, they like to keep all the details secret. That way things are more secure, and people don't know how to crack them because nobody knows what the hell they are doing. But, the customer wants to know that his data is secure, and will want to know the details of how it is kept secure. So how do we resolve this conflict?
Well, the only way is to have an external body that will grant companies security certifiacations. The companies will be required by law to get a liscense to hold data, on the condition that a secure external body examines their security arrangements. This way the company does not have to reveal its security arrangements to anyone but the government, and the customer can be assured that his data is safe because the company he trades with is certified by an external body.
Its a bit like bob and alice. We need a third agent to make things really secure, it would seem to me.
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Been done here for ages, and it works.
on
The Unblinking Eye
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· Score: 5
Here in the UK, this sort of face scanning software has been used for some time. In the city of Glasgow, which is about 1 million strong, the entire town centre is saturated with CCTV systems. They have computer systems that can scan the faces of people walking in the street and compare with a national database of wanted people. Also, the computer can observe peoples behaviour and alert a human operator if one of them is doing something suspicious, such as breaking into a parked car.
Crime in Glasgow city centre has fallen by some 70% since this system was introduced, and the city has become a much safer place to socialise in.
These types of systems are permeating the UK at an amazing rate, and they are really showing results. As long as they are controlled by the police, and used in a responsible manner according to the law, I really have no problem with it at all. You have to be incurably paranoid to have a problem, I think. Its just a question of trusting the authoriteies. If they abuse this power, unlikely, you can just vote them out. That is what a democracy is for.
You know exactly what to do- Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
The linux industry does not matter a whit to Linux. Personally, I would be glad to see the back of it, but I realise that is a little too extreme for most. Linux has always been about the grass roots supporter, coder and advocate. The 'Industry' is just a bunch of sharp suited financiers who have come along and tried to make a fast buck off our efforts. I've never liked them.
I'm a true Linux user, and a follower of RMS and his insights. We don't need a Linux industry. I remember the days when this view was the mainstream, throughout the community, but ever since the 'Industry' came along, our ideals have shallowed. Look at that travesty Open Source - a retreat from our principles, not the first and not the last, caused by the 'Industry'.
I yearn for the good old days. If this article is correct, we will get them back.
You know exactly what to do- Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
It seems to me that this guy has a point. We are approaching the final endgame in computing, that of 'One User, One App, One Internet', if you will. Thin Client terminals running an Internet browser will be all we need in 10 years, what with the increase in bandwidth that the internet is going through.
This means that we will no longer require an OS. To use an OS on such a simple system is just an additional layer of complexity and a security risk. Its best just to run the browser on the metal, and elliminate these difficulties.
All OS's will be redundant. Noone will win the OS war. Whether you see this future as good or bad is up to you, but the corporations are thrusting it upon us already. I have seen the future, and it is.NET.
You know exactly what to do- Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
I think that one of the biggest beneficiaries of this technology will be the entertainment industries. Futurists always make the mistake, IMO, of only addressing industrial and business uses of new technologies. I think that this technology could be used to great affect by Hollywood, Computer Games companies and of course the porn industry, which are all in the process of merging gradually anyway.
The consequences of direct neural tapping are mind blowing, and in more than one sense. One question is that when everyone has their brains wired up to this tech and to the internet, everyone becomes educationally equal, and everyone can learn new skills very quickly. This technology is a step in the direction of a classless society.
You know exactly what to do- Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
And I don't understand why other people do. Whenever we use IVF on an infertile woman, the doctor will throw away, typically, 6 to 15 embryo's. That is 6 to 15 Human Lives, according to some interpretations. This seems to me to be much worse, ethically speaking, than cloning. If we look at what we are doing now with medical science, it is obvious that we are doing things a lot more dubious than cloning.
Cloning doesn't harm anyone, and it does not destroy any life. It creates life. So whats the problem? There would likely be very low demand anyway.
You know exactly what to do- Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
Too much design, too feature laden.
on
Freshmeat II
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· Score: 2
Lets face it, Freshmeat is basically an FTP site. I don't want fancy graphics, editorials, members areas, hottubs and god knows what. I'me getting fed up of all that shit. I just want something easily viewable in lynx that will allow me to search for the files I want!
Freshmeat are becoming another yahoo, and losing site of their central purpose. The problem is, that the linux community revolves around a few sites such as freshmeat and/., and these sites appear to be losing thier identity. Identity is important - it defines who we are as a community. But I fear that the Linux cummunity will lose out and the whims of the marketing department at Andover.net will win again. Its a damn shame.
You know exactly what to do- Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
Although Intel have an impressive grip on the processor market, I am tempted to buy shares at this news. You see, the foolish reactionary types who make buy/sell decisions at the major brokers will doubtless make a kneejerk reaction and announce Transmeta dead. However, I think that the future is still bright for Trandmeta. The market for these types of chips is growing hugely, and Transmeta have a head start. There is no reason why they shouldn't be able to improve what they have above and beyond what Intel have, especially considering that Intels engineering department appears to be run by the marketing department. We have seen the consequences of this with the P4.
Also, as Transmeta reduce feature sizes, they should be able to break into the embedded market at some stage over the next few years. I fear for Intels future, in this regard.
Transmeta have a bright future, despite this news.
You know exactly what to do- Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
Yes, but IMO, for intelligent life to arise depends on a number of chances. It would be all very well if apes had an IQ of 180, but they aren't going to get anywhere without a proper opposeable thumb and speech, are they? (not to mention a number of other things) For intelligence to be useful, a number of other things have to evolve first. It is this coincidence that provides the unlikelihood.
You know exactly what to do- Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
There may be life, but it is extremely improbable that any of it is intelligent apart from us. This can be deduced from simple statistics. Evolution is mostly a random process - it does not go in any particular 'direction'. It is a modern conceit that life has to aim towards being intelligent, that is no borne out by the facts. The fact that intelligent life arose here is due to a multitude of accidents.
Life may be trivial, but intelligent life is not. Let us be aware that we are truly remarkable as a species, and have a manifest destiny thanks to our special status. We should not mess it up.
You know exactly what to do- Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
And Nuclear weapons are dieing. States are now so used to Nuclear weapons, that it is taken as read they will never be used. Every state has become rational and technological in this regard by definition - otherwise they would be unable to develop Nuclear weapons at all.
We are seeing the next paradigm in weaponary. States are developing high tech conventional weapons that will operate in space and be able to strike out opponents hardware in small brushfire wars. There will never be a WWIII. If the US were to take on China, they would instead test each other, like rutting stags, without going the whole hog and destroying each other.
In any war, the contestants are trying to determine who's vision of freedom will prevail. In the case of USA V China, the Stags may well clash, but it is the most determined, the most suicidal of the two that will win, just as in real life. I very much fear that America has become weakened, in terms of its resolve I must stress, whereas the automatons of China will be able to behave in the brutal fashion required to win the contest. If the USA is to have a hope, it , like the stag, must cultivate a spirit of self sacrifice among its civil service and citizens.
It is the only way that America will get the resolve to win. The USA has done it before - lets see if it can do it again.
You know exactly what to do- Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
Is it just me or does every week bring news of a fyrther alliance between Red Hat and some other company? They seem to be aggressively postioning themselves as the 'only' Linux distro to be worthy of consideration by companies.
In Europe, SuSE has been doing much the same thing, but more focused towards KDE based companies. Are we seeing Linux regionalise into different camps? I am all for openness in the Linux world, but these lates moves by Red Hat and SuSE seem to be blocking the rest of the world off from their borders. With Turbo Linux becoming ever more dominant in Japan and the Far East, we seem to be seeing Linux Distro's being all powerful in their own spheres of influence, and growing apart gradually.
I can only hope that the wonderful technology that Eazel have will be spread around all three trading blocks. Nautilus is an excellent tool, and deserves to be developed for a wide, cross distro audience. I hope that Eazel will also strike deals with SuSE and Turbo Linux.
You know exactly what to do- Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
I think it is disgraceful that Hemos is trying to judge the best commercial before the superbowl is even over. Other advertisements will be discouraged from showing up due to the media having prematurely made up the American mind, especially before the repeats on the West Coast are fully over.
This is exactly like how the News Agencies called the result of the election before it was truly over. We require, in a proper democracy, that our influential media hold its tongue and refuse to offer influential opinion before the contest is done.
I can only hope that commercials yet to declare will not be disheartened, and will show up to stake their claim despite this knee jerk reaction.
Shame on you Hemos.
You know exactly what to do- Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
It is well known that Hollwood is not what it used to be. At one time, it was a centre of innovation and produced many films of astounding artistic depth and quality. Now, however, many films emerging from Hollywood do not, IMO, qualify as Art. I say this because they are made according to a robust procedure, every last detail id predtermined. The average flick that emerges from Hollywood has been made by a committee of marketing directors according to a formula. They decide on the demographics that will be interested and do their best to produce a formulaic film that will appease the average 21st century corporate drone's simple and unchallenging appetite.
For this reason, I would say that the average Hollywood film no longer qualifies as an Artform - there is no personal input, no striving for beauty or challenging thought. It is all about cynically appealling to a certain target audience and bringing in the money.
True Art is omething that gives the Artist, the maker, pain and which stretches the boundaries of thought and emotion in the viewer to places that they have never been before. Modern Hollywood films merely offer cheap thrills. I think it would benefit Hollywood if it were to go bust, and be rebuilt by a community of Artists. The Artist and his Art is at the centre of film. Hollywood seems to have forgotten that.
You know exactly what to do- Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
If the companies couldn't make money from their AIDS research, said AIDS research would not exist. Let us make that plain: 99% of the research effort into curing AIDS happening around the world right now would not be occurring at all.
Now we find that the companies are regarded as 'evil' because they are trying to make a profit from their extremely expensive drugs. Can we really take some sort of moral high ground and expect them to give away the rights to the production of the drugs they have spent so much time and money developing? The only way that these drugs will be seen in Africa is if the agencies whose responsibility it really is - our respective governments - stop moaning and do the right thing and pay up. Nothing, not even charity is free. Doctors expect a wage, nurses axpexta pension scheme, and drugs must be payed for. This is the simple truth, and it is about time that the various moaning idealists realised it.
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Copyright and patents grants a company the right to protect its intellectual property. It is the property of the company because it is the company that has invested money to develop them.
Property is the basis of the free market, of any market, in fact. Therefore to strike against copyright and patents is to strike against the notion of property, which is to strike against the idea of a market. We should revise and modify the patent system - it works perfectly well in the UK and Europe - not just abolish it because it has teething troubles. That is to take an extremist reaction.
You know exactly what to do- Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
Slashdot Mirror
I would argue, with some regret, that it is not. If one signs an agreement with a company giving them carte blanche over your free speech for the rest of your life, then you have noone but yourself to blame should you find yourself being asked to shut your mouth at some later date.
It is a matter of the fundamental Rights of Man in a free country that companies, organisations and individuals be able to ask their employees or dependants to sign contracts of this nature.
Also, consider industrial espionage. This is an area where it is clearly in the interest of us all that the freedom of speech of employees be curtailed. You can't have your top researcher spend all your money finding things out and designing magnificient devices for you and then have them bugger off to the company down the road and give them all the info. There has to be safeguards against this sort of thing.
In the end, the world is not perfect people, and though many of you seem to have a sweet undergraduate notion of freedom of speech being absolute, in the real world it is often not practical. And there is no world more real than the world of industry.
In the end, freedom of speech is just another commodity. We shouldn't inflate its importance too much, less we lose our sense of perspective.
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
Thanks to the fact that most of the mobile phone companies are now huge multinationals, I can expect my one little device to work in over 100 countries. I am with Vodafone, the British mobile company that is the largest in the world, with the majority of the European, Asian and American market. With the exception of America, all these regions offer a unified mobile system, and the upcoming 3G liscenses will unify things even more.
Presently I am living in Cuba working on a Journalism project, and my phone works perfectly well here. It has also worked in India, Malaysia, Britain and Germany without any reconfiguring or dificulty. The only place I have difficulty is America, but I hardly ever have reason to go there anyway.
3G liscenses will give me 256kbits of modem connectivity in just a few years, with mobile videophone, easy to use all over the world. I can't help but think that this news is the last gasp of the morbid and dying landline industry, which can see the writing on the wall.
I'll be glad to see the back of landline telephones. In fact, I already have.
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
Linux is splitting into different Distro's for different cultural areas of the world. The German speaking world has SuSE. The English speaking world Red Hat. The French speaking world goes with Mandrake, and the Japanese with turbo Linux.
Now, this shouldn't affect Linux at all, but I fear it will, and indeed I fear it already is. We are seeing the germination of different developer communities based on language, and not on a shared enthusiasm for Linux. For example, the german speaking world moves with KDE, and the Enflish with Gnome, and each have their own respective developer communities with their own cultural values. The recent establishment of a European branch of the FSF can only worsen this, IMO. The European Linux community is expediant - witness KDE liscensing issues - while the American is idealistic, and not really practical, as can be seen with its adherence to the values of the FSF.
I think this is bad news for Linux. We need to see more cross cultural integration, like we used to have in the early days of Linux.
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
How are we to protect ourselves, and save the new economy and way of life and working we see growing for the first time?
My suggestion is that we greatly improve punishments for script kiddies and throw cash at the problem by initiating 'online cops' with special dispensation to track them down. The Internet needn't be a lawless fronteir anymore.
Israel has done this to an extent. We should too.
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
Also, in the real world, it lag that is the killer performance hit, and that cannot be improved without breaking the laws of Einstein.
Over a network it is effectively impossible to improve QuakeIII performance without also breaking the laws of physics. Bandwidth may make a difference, but protocols won't.
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
Having MSWindows on embedded devices would be very useful. GUI's may seem simple to the /. crowd, but for the majority they are really not as intuitive as they are cracked up to be. It can only be good if people have the option to have the same GUI all around, everywhere. It reduces training costs at companies and the time people have to expend to learn what is, in the end, a simple tool.
Here's hoping that MS port their embedded CE to as many processors as possible.
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
So what is the solution? Well, we have two choices. We can either try to fundamentally change human nature, which is impossible (everyone wants to make a slave of others. Life is a struggle for power), or we can remove or prohibit the technology that grants such powers. I would move that we campaign for our governments to place restrictions on how embedded microchips are used, and even ban them in some instances, because all to often they are being used in an Orwellian fashion.
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
Is it not then dangerous to play a console game in which agents are motivated by entirely different principles? There is no reason in evolutionary psychology to suppose that we are capable of differentiating in the long term between different representations of reality, which are all in the end subjective.I think it is dangerous that in this modern world there are so many differnt virtual universes for us to exist in. It could be that we are unnable to cope with this - our brains are made for the evolutionary plains of Africa, not the modern world of TV, books, consoles, the Internet, Radio, etc etc. We are suffering from an overload of representative realities. It has been speculated that this is the cause behind Alzhimers desease and Attention Deficit Disorder - the inability to be satisfied with just one reality.
Consoles of this hyperrealistic nature could well greatly exarcerbate the minimal problems we have in this area at the moment.
I just wish we knew more about these sorts of issues before we wantonly introduced new consoles.
This post may have seemed a littled bit off base, I suppose, and I am sorry if it appeared so. I just had to get it off my chest. It is interesting though, if slightly worrying.
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
However, what of the social implications? PDA's represent a sort of slavery, as the user of the PDA is beholden to a time schedule and can never have any excuses. The electronic brain he carrys around with him has become a millstone, as it keeps him on the straight and narrow. This is not such a concern now, as PDA's are still simple, but in the future when they are web annabled they could be used by businesses to keep an eyes on their employees at all times, much like long distance lorry drivers in Europe are watched constantly by satellite. Is the employee of the future, and indeed today, to have to privacy at all? It is surely the right of the employee that he be able to do as he wish when not at work, and even to have privacy and time to think while at work, but PDA's are an incipient threat to this state of affairs. The most insidious thing about PDA's is that everyone see's them as benevolent. I am not saying that they need be dangerous for sure, I am just saying that it could well become an important issue. If I were a betting man, I would say that PDA's are the next major civil liberties issue.
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
Well, the only way is to have an external body that will grant companies security certifiacations. The companies will be required by law to get a liscense to hold data, on the condition that a secure external body examines their security arrangements. This way the company does not have to reveal its security arrangements to anyone but the government, and the customer can be assured that his data is safe because the company he trades with is certified by an external body.
Its a bit like bob and alice. We need a third agent to make things really secure, it would seem to me.
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
Crime in Glasgow city centre has fallen by some 70% since this system was introduced, and the city has become a much safer place to socialise in.
These types of systems are permeating the UK at an amazing rate, and they are really showing results. As long as they are controlled by the police, and used in a responsible manner according to the law, I really have no problem with it at all. You have to be incurably paranoid to have a problem, I think. Its just a question of trusting the authoriteies. If they abuse this power, unlikely, you can just vote them out. That is what a democracy is for.
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
I'm a true Linux user, and a follower of RMS and his insights. We don't need a Linux industry. I remember the days when this view was the mainstream, throughout the community, but ever since the 'Industry' came along, our ideals have shallowed. Look at that travesty Open Source - a retreat from our principles, not the first and not the last, caused by the 'Industry'.
I yearn for the good old days. If this article is correct, we will get them back.
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
This means that we will no longer require an OS. To use an OS on such a simple system is just an additional layer of complexity and a security risk. Its best just to run the browser on the metal, and elliminate these difficulties.
All OS's will be redundant. Noone will win the OS war. Whether you see this future as good or bad is up to you, but the corporations are thrusting it upon us already. I have seen the future, and it is .NET.
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
The consequences of direct neural tapping are mind blowing, and in more than one sense. One question is that when everyone has their brains wired up to this tech and to the internet, everyone becomes educationally equal, and everyone can learn new skills very quickly. This technology is a step in the direction of a classless society.
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
Cloning doesn't harm anyone, and it does not destroy any life. It creates life. So whats the problem? There would likely be very low demand anyway.
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Freshmeat are becoming another yahoo, and losing site of their central purpose. The problem is, that the linux community revolves around a few sites such as freshmeat and /., and these sites appear to be losing thier identity. Identity is important - it defines who we are as a community. But I fear that the Linux cummunity will lose out and the whims of the marketing department at Andover.net will win again. Its a damn shame.
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Also, as Transmeta reduce feature sizes, they should be able to break into the embedded market at some stage over the next few years. I fear for Intels future, in this regard.
Transmeta have a bright future, despite this news.
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You know exactly what to do-
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Life may be trivial, but intelligent life is not. Let us be aware that we are truly remarkable as a species, and have a manifest destiny thanks to our special status. We should not mess it up.
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We are seeing the next paradigm in weaponary. States are developing high tech conventional weapons that will operate in space and be able to strike out opponents hardware in small brushfire wars. There will never be a WWIII. If the US were to take on China, they would instead test each other, like rutting stags, without going the whole hog and destroying each other.
In any war, the contestants are trying to determine who's vision of freedom will prevail. In the case of USA V China, the Stags may well clash, but it is the most determined, the most suicidal of the two that will win, just as in real life. I very much fear that America has become weakened, in terms of its resolve I must stress, whereas the automatons of China will be able to behave in the brutal fashion required to win the contest. If the USA is to have a hope, it , like the stag, must cultivate a spirit of self sacrifice among its civil service and citizens.
It is the only way that America will get the resolve to win. The USA has done it before - lets see if it can do it again.
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In Europe, SuSE has been doing much the same thing, but more focused towards KDE based companies. Are we seeing Linux regionalise into different camps? I am all for openness in the Linux world, but these lates moves by Red Hat and SuSE seem to be blocking the rest of the world off from their borders. With Turbo Linux becoming ever more dominant in Japan and the Far East, we seem to be seeing Linux Distro's being all powerful in their own spheres of influence, and growing apart gradually.
I can only hope that the wonderful technology that Eazel have will be spread around all three trading blocks. Nautilus is an excellent tool, and deserves to be developed for a wide, cross distro audience. I hope that Eazel will also strike deals with SuSE and Turbo Linux.
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This is exactly like how the News Agencies called the result of the election before it was truly over. We require, in a proper democracy, that our influential media hold its tongue and refuse to offer influential opinion before the contest is done.
I can only hope that commercials yet to declare will not be disheartened, and will show up to stake their claim despite this knee jerk reaction.
Shame on you Hemos.
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For this reason, I would say that the average Hollywood film no longer qualifies as an Artform - there is no personal input, no striving for beauty or challenging thought. It is all about cynically appealling to a certain target audience and bringing in the money.
True Art is omething that gives the Artist, the maker, pain and which stretches the boundaries of thought and emotion in the viewer to places that they have never been before. Modern Hollywood films merely offer cheap thrills. I think it would benefit Hollywood if it were to go bust, and be rebuilt by a community of Artists. The Artist and his Art is at the centre of film. Hollywood seems to have forgotten that.
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Now we find that the companies are regarded as 'evil' because they are trying to make a profit from their extremely expensive drugs. Can we really take some sort of moral high ground and expect them to give away the rights to the production of the drugs they have spent so much time and money developing? The only way that these drugs will be seen in Africa is if the agencies whose responsibility it really is - our respective governments - stop moaning and do the right thing and pay up. Nothing, not even charity is free. Doctors expect a wage, nurses axpexta pension scheme, and drugs must be payed for. This is the simple truth, and it is about time that the various moaning idealists realised it.
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Property is the basis of the free market, of any market, in fact. Therefore to strike against copyright and patents is to strike against the notion of property, which is to strike against the idea of a market. We should revise and modify the patent system - it works perfectly well in the UK and Europe - not just abolish it because it has teething troubles. That is to take an extremist reaction.
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Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-