If you're using embedded computing, you probably have a very stripped down flavor of Linux--to the point of having Bourne shell as the only shell (if that). You would pull out a lot of the standard "unixisms" such as getty(). You basically wouldn't have a console.
Embedded devices are supposed to be zero-maintenance, so you couldn't interact with it in the field except by interacting with the device it is connected to. A simple parallel port may provide all the required I/O between Linux and the physical device.
In the shop, the device may well be PROM-programmed. The only time one would need to really interact with it is initial setup and programming. Again, use a serial port and Kermit (who needs a steenking TCP stack?), and connect to it from a real computer.
Such a machine would really never need a console, or a display. It would always do I/O to another machine (whether an embedded device or a programmer's computer) and the display load would be on the other device.
If W2K is scriptable, kudos to it; it will be much more useful.
Both W2K and Linux are innoculated against system-level viri. I still think that Linux is better innoculated against user-space viri. First, fewer Linux user applications can automagically run code. Secondly, those that do will only run them with the users' own permissions. That is, if I run a macro virus, all I can do is hose my own data and configurations. The virus won't be able to destroy applications because, as a rule, mere mortal end users lack the permissions to do so. They couldn't if they tried, so viruses running under their UID can't. A userspace virus in Windows (at least 95/98/NT) has more targets available to it.
In all, thank you. A couple of facts beats a baseless rant any day.
I used to work for a company that was doing diskless workstations. The purpose that we had was to make the world's cheapest X servers/Java clients. We needed zero administration, because we kept our customer base computer-illiterate.
W2K incorporates everything that every Unix zealot has ever complained about, along with everything that every Microsoft admin has complained about. It's frankly just seriously cool.
And not just because of the smoke and mirrors(i.e. Gnome and Enlightenment), but because of the technical details.
Care to share some facts on these technical details?
Is it stable? Is it lean? Can you run it remotely? Does it return all memory to the system when the program is finished? Has the BSOD been banished? Can I run it on under $1,000 in hardware? Is it permanently innoculated against viruses? Can security bugs be fixed in hours? Does it ship with a compiler? Can I monkey up some Perl scripts to make the machine administer itself?
With Linux, I can truthfully answer "Yes" to all of the above. That's why I like Linux. Can you answer "Yes" to all of the above concerning W2K? If you can, I am duly impressed and want to see it. If not, I suggest you re-think your position.
I have to disagree on this one. Linux can (and does) exist in a Windows-dominated world. Windows cannot exist as it currently does without absolutely dominant market share.
People don't run Windows because of its technical superiority. People run Windows because the software they want to run is built for Windows. It is built for Windows because everybody runs Windows--it's a lot harder to make money selling to a smaller market than Windows. People run Office because everybody else runs Office, and thus Office is the interoffice standard.
The biggest feature that Microsoft software gives you is community (or, in Microsoft lingo, market). The factors that make Microsoft software marketable are directly tied to the size of the user base.
If another useful "community" exists, that is big enough (perhaps 20-25% market share?), then you lose the biggest reason to join the Microsoft community. Once that happens, the entire Microsoft business model collapses.
Windows can't exist, in its current form, with a market share between (say) thirty and eighty percent. Microsoft simply cannot maintain a moderate market share; it can maintain either a high one or a low one. If it drops to seventy-five percent, it will either be pushed back up to eighty or freefall down to thirty.
Linux, OTOH, can survive regardless of market share, from point five (and lower) up to complete market dominance. Linux needs money to thrive in a corporate environment, but not to simply exist. To paraphrase Vinod himself, Linux cannot be driven out of business by the simple fact that it isn't in business; it's just freely available code.
I think what they're trying to prevent is M$ Terrorist [tm] complete with custom encryption specifically designed for use in harming national security. (Click OK to install!)
Hmmm...that would put a damper in Win98/IE5 sales. The fact that these things tell Microsoft lots of tidbits about you over the Internet implies that it tells lots of tidbits about everybody over the Internet.
IMHO, this is a great idea, and it can be handled through private enterprise. Geeks with capital, take note!
A "site acceptor" company could be set up. They would own a trademark that could be used as a META tag. The company would post an "open contract" of an accepted use policy that would spell out what sort of content was and was not acceptable. This policy requires payment (per page per month, per hit, whatever) from for-profit users (such as corporate Web sites), but usage would be free of charge for personal or non-profit use (such as personal home pages). To use the tag for personal use, you print out the contract, sign it, and send it in.
Anyone can force their browser to react to the META tag. Given this, users can freely set their browsers to only allow pages with this META tag. People don't pay for this service.
Here's the trick, however: the site acceptor company doesn't span the Web looking for violators. That would cost way too much.
Instead, it works on a modified honor system. The contract puts the burden on the tag user to make their page(s) comply with the site acceptor's published standards.
The site acceptor learns of violators from the client base. That is, if I find some porn palace (or somesuch) with that META tag, I send email to the site acceptor. From there, they investigate. If the site is noncompliant, the acceptor contacts the Webmaster and asks that they drop the page or the tag. If they fail to comply, the site acceptor sues the user for breach of contract and/or trademark infringement.
I believe that this is all possible with our current IP laws. If it isn't, it might be a good idea for Congress to pass laws allowing this sort of business model to work.
Alternately, the Federal government can do it themselves. I recommend against this for two reasons. The first is the general principle that the Federal government should never do something that other entities can do properly, and I think that private industry can do this. Secondly, the concept of government-approved content is abhorrent to me.
This sort of site acceptor company would be no monopoly, either. The market is big enough for several of them, each with different levels of acceptance. Conservative parents, or those with younger children, might lock their browsers down to only allow KidSafe(TM) sites. More liberal parents, or those with older children, may switch that browser to PornProof(TM). Each one would have different standards of "acceptable", and sites could carry both tags if they met both standards.
This could be carried even to the libraries. For one to use a browser in a library, the user has to swipe their library card. Adult cards have free access; the browser clears all blinders and displays pages regardless of META tags. Childrens' cards start with no browser priveleges. Parents can add META tags to the cards, or even give their childrens' cards full no-blinder priveleges.
Congress talks about giving parents the tools they need to protect their children from inappropriate material. Their walk, however, has been telling parents (and the rest of us) what is and what is not acceptable.
The above proposal puts the decision, and the power, directly into parental hands. It even give parents the ability to restrict what their children see at the library. And we probably don't need to consult Congress or Gore to do it.
I'm a big believer of "if we can, we should" science.
Thanks to modern science, we can blow up the Earth.
Please remind me not to vote for you on your next Presidential run.
IMHO, the fact that we can do something doesn't mean that we should. We should carefully consider the consequences before doing something drastic, such as directly meddling in human life.
I am not "pro-cloning" or "anti-cloning"; I am undecided. I am against cloning people right now, because I don't think we have enough of a clue. I don't think that we will for decades, at least. And if we miss something, the results can be harrowing, to say the least.
Then you get into the religious issue. Whether you agree with the religionists or not, they are a powerful force in the world today. I doubt many christians would buy into the idea that a clone is a human, simply because it "wasn't made by god." Although, I find it hard to fathom that "kind-hearted christian folk" could look into the pale blue eyes of a 7 year old girl and tell her she has no soul and that she's a monster. I also fear what would be done to the parents of a clone. They would be repeatedly harassed by closed-minded fools who think that just because something didn't follow the status quo of arrival into the world that they have fewer rights.
I am a Christian, and I am stating my best understanding of Jesus' viewpoint on this. Don't consider this Gospel; I am only human.
In short: clones are people too.
I'm avoiding the question of whether the act of cloning is a sin. Theologians will argue that for years, if not decades. I am no theologian. God's perspective on cloning, however, is entirely separate from God's perspective on clones. This distinction is important.
Here's how I know. Christians (and just about everybody else) believe that rape is immoral. Children can be conceived due to rape. The Christian perspective is that such children are no different from other children.
In short, Jesus does not hold you accountable for the circumstances of your birth. Children born of rape can be saved, can preach, can do anything other people can do.
Thus can clones. Cloning is certainly no more immoral than rape! Clones are viable people just as the rest of us are.
In Scripture, Jesus accepted Jews, Gentiles, Samaritans (though he railed against Samaritan viewpoints, he accepted those who chose to follow him), and prostitutes. To say that He will not accept a clone is ludicrous. And if He will, who is a Christian not to?
The certification mark can convey a lot more than any sentence will. While the term "Windows 98 compliant" doesn't even really get read, that little four-colored flag tells the corporate purchaser "This is safe; Microsoft likes it".
The sentence, "This product conforms with the Open Source Definition" will only make sense to people who know what the OSD is. If there is an OSD-compliant logo, business types can be trained to start equating that logo with "plays well with others", "our IS guys can customize/improve it", and "we can choose our support contract". The sentence will make no sense to most business types, but the logo might.
As a side note: we live in a post-literate society. We are literate, but we expect a lot of important information to be portrayed graphically. This is a sort of heraldry, where simple patterns signify complex concepts. Mere words don't cover it anymore.
Re:Watch the battle - it'll be an interesting war
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Salon on Mindcraft II
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· Score: 2
(As a side note - could we measure pages served per 24hrs instead of per second. Perhaps we can catch up during the reboots.:)
Better yet, and ha ha only serious--resurrect Core Wars.
If both tests are done simultaneously on the same network, we could add a side app on the Linux box that would utilize the latest NT/IIS exploit, creating a DoS, crashing their system, or (my personal favorite, if this is possible) taking down NT entirely and remotely installing Linux on it. Just imagine the looks on the NT engineers' faces!
After all, Microsoft pretty much invented the game of victory by keeping the competition from running (DR-DOS, "We aren't done 'Till Lotus Won't Run", WfW 3.11 vs. OS/2, the IE remover script). They'd be hypocrites to complain about Linux using such tactics (of course, why should that stop them?)
Microsoft, of course, would be able to return the favor and attempt to crash Linux. But methinks that Linux would survive the Battle of the Script Kiddies better than NT would.
I don't know.. reminds me of liberal.. and many people who use linux and other free software are accually believe it or not capitolist when it comes to everything else.
Two things. First, "liberal" doesn't always mean politically liberal. Secondly, Linux is capitalist when it wants to be.
The term "liberal" isn't always dirty, and it isn't always the political left. Have you ever seen a conservative arts college? Ever borrow a book from a conservatory? "Liberal" is not always associated with "Left", "Democrat", or "Socialism".
Concerning capitalism, a lot of us Linux types are pretty capitalist when it comes to Linux. I would certainly suggest that someone like Bob Young is at least fairly capitalist.
Free software is free as in speech, not beer. You just can't charge for licensing, because you can only limit licensing in certain ways. While this is more liberal than the license fee business model, this is right in line with the business model common to most "hard goods". That is, if you sell me a car, I own it and can do whatever I please with it, no strings attached.
Linux is both community and capitalist. You won't make money in Linux by selling licenses. For a time, you can make money selling the CDs (until everybody has fast download capability). You can make money by being a Linux guru, by writing books, supporting and maintaining, and providing service. The model works because those gurus who make money on Linux will want to code for it (and often will in the course of their professional duties).
How capitalist is Linux? A lot of people are betting a lot of money that Linux can take market share away from Microsoft, the undisputed king of the license-fee business model, while that business model is in place. Red Hat thinks that they can make money without licensing fees in an environment with a very hostile, license-fee-fortified market leader, as competition.
If making money by serving the customer is liberal and anti-capitalist, then Linux businesses are liberal and anti-capitalist. I am not cynical enough to believe that this is the case. Free software produces profits with a nonstandard business model, and is willing to prove it in the capitalist arena.
I don't claim to know about SEC codes on this. But step back a moment and think.
If Red Hat's Slashdot feed pulls all Red Hat stories, it makes it look as if Red Hat is unnewsworthy to Slashdot. That's some pretty nasty publicity there.
Sure, we do a lot of Red Hat bashing (personally, I like them), but the bashing is positive publicity. Some attacks are the overcommercialism. Others are attacks on being the top dog. Others are about quality. We keep on calling Red Hat the Microsoft of Linux: those are buy words in the securities market!
I don't claim to know whether Red Hat is required to remove those stories. However, they have nothing to gain and much to lose by doing so. I figure they wouldn't pull those stories if they didn't have to. An SEC ban sounds like a good explanation to me. Anybody have better ones?
I believe that artificial intelligence is defined as "technology required to perform impossible computing tasks". Thus, speech recognition used to be artificial intelligence. Now that it ships, it's just speech recognition.
It's hard to get a lock on the definition of artificial intelligence because it is hard to get a lock on the definition of intelligence. When the IQ test was invented, someone asked its inventor what intelligence was. He responded, "It is what my test measures".
We won't consider it AI until our computers tell us what to do. Sorry, must sign off--one of the programs here ran into an error and just sent me a help request by email.
The term "gweep" has staged a recovery around WPI in the 90's (as opposed to the original set of the 70's). For more information, go here. Though I don't believe my name is listed there, I am still an "official" WPI gweep. While we feel we "own" the name (more of an academic birthright than anything else), anyone who is truly a hacker should feel free to call themselves a gweep.
Fortunately, gweeps and gweeping have never taken on the meanings of crackers and cracking. And an even better feature: it's a syllable shorter than "hacker".
Re:What do you think Littleton WAS?
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Bootlegging Buffy
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· Score: 2
This discussion seems to be about morality. Seperating religion from morality is a losing strategy. For a lot of people (myself included), one's perception of right and wrong is inextricably linked to one's cosmology. This occurs from Atheism to Judaism, fnord Christain Science to Scientology.
Pull cosmology (such as presence or absence of demons) out of moral questions, and you have oversimplified the question. The fact that many of us have different cosmologies makes morality a very hairy question, but I think that it is necessary hair.
Censorship is a restriction on freedom. There must always be restrictions on freedom (else I can express my freedom with high-caliber weapons). The problem is always how many restrictions, how much freedom.
The "Buffy" issue is not about censorship. It is about freedom. WB used their freedom, and made a decision. They decided not to air the show, in the name of good taste. They did not do this for market share; the TV biz thrives on controversy. They probably lost ratings in this decision, but they did the Right Thing.
How dare we call this censorship and decry it as such? Who holds the right to censor WB, to take away their freedom and force them to air an episode they don't want to air?
Yes, force. That is exactly what the bootleggers did; they forced the release of this material. They were the ones who restricted WB's freedom not to release an episode they wanted not to release.
We don't own Buffy. WB does. They have the right to air, to pull, to make their own Buffy channel with 48 episodes per day. If you don't like that, pick up a web cam and write your own TV show.
Katz, you're just wrong.
This isn't about saying that this episode causes real world violence. This is about keeping people from having the very real pain of Littleton thrown in their faces again.
I've seen this done once before. When the Challenger exploded, MTV pulled all their "spaceman" ads. This wasn't censorship. NASA didn't force them to do it. NASA probably didn't even ask. MTV did this by itself. This wasn't some sort of political statement on the US space program. This was simple human decency. Even media companies are capable of this.
If they were forced to pull the ep, that would be a problem. When a company chooses to do the decent thing, they should be applauded. To harass them or complain about them doing the decent thing is to throw decency away entirely. That is the wrong path. To say that the government should not legislate decency is not to say that one should not display it one's self.
The bootleggers performed nothing short of grand theft. This was WB's episode, to show or not as they decided. I doubt even RMS would advocate this sort of activity, and his worldview appears to revolve around the freedom of IP. There is a big difference between activist and guerilla, you know.
>Actually, all but the most reactionary people and organizations seem to think that the Internet is more trouble than it's worth. >To be sure, the Internet is a hazardous environment, but all but the most reactionary recognize that the rewards outweigh the risks. Make up your mind man!
D'oh!
The second statement is correct. I got my inequalities reversed earlier. Sorry.
As one who works in E-Commerce, I disagree. First, E-commerce isn't a new way for people to make money (my paychecks are little different from anybody else's, for accounting purposes). E-commerce is a new way for people to spend money. And E-commerce tends to have better accounting than non-E-commerce. If I wanted to hide my "money trail" from the government, I would exclusively deal with cash (the lowest tech commerce there is). The last thing I would do would be to buy stuff from a Web site; that requires my name, my credit card data, and a shipping address.
If you want to hide personal income from the government (disclaimer: this is illegal in the US, and I don't recommend that anybody do this), you want to keep income-generating activity out of databases at all costs, preferably out of paper books as well. E-Commerce makes it easier for the government to track your economic activity.
Besides, even if governments can't track the personal income of its citizens, the government will not collapse. One can certainly run a government without income taxes. My home state of New Hampshire gets along well without one (we tax entertainment and property, and the state owns a monopoly on liquor sales)
I can just *hear* what 99% of the teachers and administrators at my catholic high school would have had to say about the internet...
Actually, all but the most reactionary people and organizations seem to think that the Internet is more trouble than it's worth. I've seen an Internet-connected computer lab at a Catholic grammar school. They certainly had posters telling the kids how to avoid getting "mugged" (never reveal your snailmail address tends to be the biggie).
To be sure, the Internet is a hazardous environment, but all but the most reactionary recognize that the rewards outweigh the risks. While I hesitate to use the analogy again, it's much like a road system. Roads are hazardous; people who don't understand how to use them have a good possibility of being run over. We accept the hazards because most of us feel that the benefits of roads outweighs the hazards, even with the huge body count roads are possibly responsible.
There are a number of data points to back this up; take the most conservative people and/or agendas you can find, and run a search engine over them. One data point stands above the crowd, especially after discussing Catholic schools; even the Pope has a Web site.
Yet it is the nature of Linux open-forum business model that GartnerGroup and others believe could harm Linux's chance of becoming a mainstream, general-purpose NOS. Author G. Weiss states in his book "Linux in the Mainstream: Key Make-or-Break Factors," "Linux sidesteps the issue of IS responsibility; many Linux converts unrealistically believe that IS departments can assume more responsibility and wean themselves from vendor dependence, since the worldwide resources of the community are available to leverage." The issue brings up a question: To whom will Linux IS managers turn in times of trouble to obtain fast relief in the absence of vendor support contracts?
We do not expect IS departments to take more platform responsibility. We expect them to get support contracts from a competent support firm. IS departments can expect to get better support out of Linux (and other open source software) because OSS demolishes the support monopoly.
You can only provide so much support for a piece of software without having the source code in your hands. If you find a bug, you can only fix it if you have the source code. With proprietary software, only the software vendor itself has that code, and thus it is the only truly competent support organization. If you really need a package to run, your chain of support must go to the vendor. If you don't get support from the vendor, you get support from someone who gets support from the vendor. If you don't like the support you get, you either live with it, or change support by changing vendors.
Every proprietary software firm is a monopoly in the support market for its own software.
With Linux, anybody with skills and a 486 can fix Linux bugs. You can support Linux to the hilt without selling Linux. There is no Linux support monopoly. The competition creates low-cost, competent support contractors.
This is a great way to hurt them in court. Court testimony, if proven false, is perjury. Advertised claims on your own product, if proven false, are false advertising. Nasty claims on somebody else's product, if proven false, are slander.
Microsoft needs to talk out of both sides, both in realms where lying is illegal. This means that every contradiction they make renders them civily or criminally liable.
I am not a fan of using lawyers (I consider them the last resort), but this is an industry of lawyers, simply because of copyright law. If we watch for their slip-ups, and Linux companies call them to legal task for it, we can get some really good PR.
If Microsoft tells the courts that Linux is a competitor because it has X (general X, not the windowing system), and then tells the PHBs that Linux doesn't have X, you can either send a Microsoft witness to jail (perjury) or force them to publicly retract the statement saying that Linux doesn't have X. That is the sort of embarrassment that Microsoft cannot afford.
My friends, features can be stolen. They have all the money in the world to steal features with.
Shipping is a feature.
Stability is a feature.
Hardware leanness--the ability to do more with less--is a feature.
The ability to choose the company that fixes your OS is a feature.
Microsoft can pull all the tools, software features, and gizmos they want out of Linux. They can make them themselves, or grab them straight from the distros and ship it with source code. But their business model and practices prevent them from getting the best features of Linux.
If they want to do get the stability, the ability to release on schedule, etc., they will have to change more than their entire code base; they will have to change the way they do business.
And then, my friends, they would no longer be the Microsoft we know today.
Many people believe that, because Microsoft is so good at screwing the customer, they can get away with bad software. I submit that they make bad software because they screw over the customer. You can't separate the two, any more than you can get a magnetic monopole.
As an example, I give remote access. Given the current business model, Microsoft will never give remote access to the complete functionality of an NT box. If they did, we would make fewer, bigger NT boxen and use thin clients to reach them. Remote access is never in the vendor's advantage when the vendor targets the desktop license market. Unix gets away with it because it targets the server license market; Linux gets away with it because it doesn't target licenses.
Another example is the release schedule. To get a constant revenue stream, they drop releases at seemingly long intervals. Linux distributions (not just the kernel itself) release more quickly than that. But almost every time Microsoft drops a release on us, it requires us to upgrade our machinery and most of our application base. They get to sell Office over and over again to the same people. Linux distros release more quickly, but you don't need to get each rev. With few exceptions, you can run the same apps on new Linux that you could on old Linux. And it will run on the same boxen. You choose when to upgrade your system based on your applications needing more digital macho, not your operating system needing more digital macho.
Microsoft can look like it provides the features of Linux. However, they cannot actually provide what Linux provides while still being Microsoft.
This leads to four possibilities. One is that Microsoft gets thoroughly trounced by Linux; it could in fact happen. A second one is that Microsoft FUDs Linux back into the hobby realm; I am not cynical enough to believe that to be possible. A third one is that Microsoft coexists with Linux, no longer as a monopoly platform. The fourth is that Microsoft beats Linux by producing the best features of Linux.
For either the third or fourth results to occur, Microsoft must change itself, likely to suit the customer. They cannot exist in present form without the monopoly, so they must change merely to coexist with Linux. For them to assimilate the features of Linux, they need to assimilate some of its business practices. For three of these four results, the customer wins.
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Embedded devices are supposed to be zero-maintenance, so you couldn't interact with it in the field except by interacting with the device it is connected to. A simple parallel port may provide all the required I/O between Linux and the physical device.
In the shop, the device may well be PROM-programmed. The only time one would need to really interact with it is initial setup and programming. Again, use a serial port and Kermit (who needs a steenking TCP stack?), and connect to it from a real computer.
Such a machine would really never need a console, or a display. It would always do I/O to another machine (whether an embedded device or a programmer's computer) and the display load would be on the other device.
Both W2K and Linux are innoculated against system-level viri. I still think that Linux is better innoculated against user-space viri. First, fewer Linux user applications can automagically run code. Secondly, those that do will only run them with the users' own permissions. That is, if I run a macro virus, all I can do is hose my own data and configurations. The virus won't be able to destroy applications because, as a rule, mere mortal end users lack the permissions to do so. They couldn't if they tried, so viruses running under their UID can't. A userspace virus in Windows (at least 95/98/NT) has more targets available to it.
In all, thank you. A couple of facts beats a baseless rant any day.
I used to work for a company that was doing diskless workstations. The purpose that we had was to make the world's cheapest X servers/Java clients. We needed zero administration, because we kept our customer base computer-illiterate.
And not just because of the smoke and mirrors(i.e. Gnome and Enlightenment), but because of the technical details.
Care to share some facts on these technical details?
Is it stable? Is it lean? Can you run it remotely? Does it return all memory to the system when the program is finished? Has the BSOD been banished? Can I run it on under $1,000 in hardware? Is it permanently innoculated against viruses? Can security bugs be fixed in hours? Does it ship with a compiler? Can I monkey up some Perl scripts to make the machine administer itself?
With Linux, I can truthfully answer "Yes" to all of the above. That's why I like Linux. Can you answer "Yes" to all of the above concerning W2K? If you can, I am duly impressed and want to see it. If not, I suggest you re-think your position.
People don't run Windows because of its technical superiority. People run Windows because the software they want to run is built for Windows. It is built for Windows because everybody runs Windows--it's a lot harder to make money selling to a smaller market than Windows. People run Office because everybody else runs Office, and thus Office is the interoffice standard.
The biggest feature that Microsoft software gives you is community (or, in Microsoft lingo, market). The factors that make Microsoft software marketable are directly tied to the size of the user base.
If another useful "community" exists, that is big enough (perhaps 20-25% market share?), then you lose the biggest reason to join the Microsoft community. Once that happens, the entire Microsoft business model collapses.
Windows can't exist, in its current form, with a market share between (say) thirty and eighty percent. Microsoft simply cannot maintain a moderate market share; it can maintain either a high one or a low one. If it drops to seventy-five percent, it will either be pushed back up to eighty or freefall down to thirty.
Linux, OTOH, can survive regardless of market share, from point five (and lower) up to complete market dominance. Linux needs money to thrive in a corporate environment, but not to simply exist. To paraphrase Vinod himself, Linux cannot be driven out of business by the simple fact that it isn't in business; it's just freely available code.
Hmmm...that would put a damper in Win98/IE5 sales. The fact that these things tell Microsoft lots of tidbits about you over the Internet implies that it tells lots of tidbits about everybody over the Internet.
I wonder how well this goes over at the Pentagon.
A "site acceptor" company could be set up. They would own a trademark that could be used as a META tag. The company would post an "open contract" of an accepted use policy that would spell out what sort of content was and was not acceptable. This policy requires payment (per page per month, per hit, whatever) from for-profit users (such as corporate Web sites), but usage would be free of charge for personal or non-profit use (such as personal home pages). To use the tag for personal use, you print out the contract, sign it, and send it in.
Anyone can force their browser to react to the META tag. Given this, users can freely set their browsers to only allow pages with this META tag. People don't pay for this service.
Here's the trick, however: the site acceptor company doesn't span the Web looking for violators. That would cost way too much.
Instead, it works on a modified honor system. The contract puts the burden on the tag user to make their page(s) comply with the site acceptor's published standards.
The site acceptor learns of violators from the client base. That is, if I find some porn palace (or somesuch) with that META tag, I send email to the site acceptor. From there, they investigate. If the site is noncompliant, the acceptor contacts the Webmaster and asks that they drop the page or the tag. If they fail to comply, the site acceptor sues the user for breach of contract and/or trademark infringement.
I believe that this is all possible with our current IP laws. If it isn't, it might be a good idea for Congress to pass laws allowing this sort of business model to work.
Alternately, the Federal government can do it themselves. I recommend against this for two reasons. The first is the general principle that the Federal government should never do something that other entities can do properly, and I think that private industry can do this. Secondly, the concept of government-approved content is abhorrent to me.
This sort of site acceptor company would be no monopoly, either. The market is big enough for several of them, each with different levels of acceptance. Conservative parents, or those with younger children, might lock their browsers down to only allow KidSafe(TM) sites. More liberal parents, or those with older children, may switch that browser to PornProof(TM). Each one would have different standards of "acceptable", and sites could carry both tags if they met both standards.
This could be carried even to the libraries. For one to use a browser in a library, the user has to swipe their library card. Adult cards have free access; the browser clears all blinders and displays pages regardless of META tags. Childrens' cards start with no browser priveleges. Parents can add META tags to the cards, or even give their childrens' cards full no-blinder priveleges.
Congress talks about giving parents the tools they need to protect their children from inappropriate material. Their walk, however, has been telling parents (and the rest of us) what is and what is not acceptable.
The above proposal puts the decision, and the power, directly into parental hands. It even give parents the ability to restrict what their children see at the library. And we probably don't need to consult Congress or Gore to do it.
Mozilla, are you listening?
Bzzzt, wrong.
If that were the case, Slashdot (and all the geeks who frequent it) would be a part of Microsoft by now. They know how to make money, big-time.
Or is Slashdot not part of the modern world?
Thanks to modern science, we can blow up the Earth.
Please remind me not to vote for you on your next Presidential run.
IMHO, the fact that we can do something doesn't mean that we should. We should carefully consider the consequences before doing something drastic, such as directly meddling in human life.
I am not "pro-cloning" or "anti-cloning"; I am undecided. I am against cloning people right now, because I don't think we have enough of a clue. I don't think that we will for decades, at least. And if we miss something, the results can be harrowing, to say the least.
Who here remembers Thalidomide?
I am a Christian, and I am stating my best understanding of Jesus' viewpoint on this. Don't consider this Gospel; I am only human.
In short: clones are people too.
I'm avoiding the question of whether the act of cloning is a sin. Theologians will argue that for years, if not decades. I am no theologian. God's perspective on cloning, however, is entirely separate from God's perspective on clones. This distinction is important.
Here's how I know. Christians (and just about everybody else) believe that rape is immoral. Children can be conceived due to rape. The Christian perspective is that such children are no different from other children.
In short, Jesus does not hold you accountable for the circumstances of your birth. Children born of rape can be saved, can preach, can do anything other people can do.
Thus can clones. Cloning is certainly no more immoral than rape! Clones are viable people just as the rest of us are.
In Scripture, Jesus accepted Jews, Gentiles, Samaritans (though he railed against Samaritan viewpoints, he accepted those who chose to follow him), and prostitutes. To say that He will not accept a clone is ludicrous. And if He will, who is a Christian not to?
The sentence, "This product conforms with the Open Source Definition" will only make sense to people who know what the OSD is. If there is an OSD-compliant logo, business types can be trained to start equating that logo with "plays well with others", "our IS guys can customize/improve it", and "we can choose our support contract". The sentence will make no sense to most business types, but the logo might.
As a side note: we live in a post-literate society. We are literate, but we expect a lot of important information to be portrayed graphically. This is a sort of heraldry, where simple patterns signify complex concepts. Mere words don't cover it anymore.
Better yet, and ha ha only serious--resurrect Core Wars.
If both tests are done simultaneously on the same network, we could add a side app on the Linux box that would utilize the latest NT/IIS exploit, creating a DoS, crashing their system, or (my personal favorite, if this is possible) taking down NT entirely and remotely installing Linux on it. Just imagine the looks on the NT engineers' faces!
After all, Microsoft pretty much invented the game of victory by keeping the competition from running (DR-DOS, "We aren't done 'Till Lotus Won't Run", WfW 3.11 vs. OS/2, the IE remover script). They'd be hypocrites to complain about Linux using such tactics (of course, why should that stop them?)
Microsoft, of course, would be able to return the favor and attempt to crash Linux. But methinks that Linux would survive the Battle of the Script Kiddies better than NT would.
Two things. First, "liberal" doesn't always mean politically liberal. Secondly, Linux is capitalist when it wants to be.
The term "liberal" isn't always dirty, and it isn't always the political left. Have you ever seen a conservative arts college? Ever borrow a book from a conservatory? "Liberal" is not always associated with "Left", "Democrat", or "Socialism".
Concerning capitalism, a lot of us Linux types are pretty capitalist when it comes to Linux. I would certainly suggest that someone like Bob Young is at least fairly capitalist.
Free software is free as in speech, not beer. You just can't charge for licensing, because you can only limit licensing in certain ways. While this is more liberal than the license fee business model, this is right in line with the business model common to most "hard goods". That is, if you sell me a car, I own it and can do whatever I please with it, no strings attached.
Linux is both community and capitalist. You won't make money in Linux by selling licenses. For a time, you can make money selling the CDs (until everybody has fast download capability). You can make money by being a Linux guru, by writing books, supporting and maintaining, and providing service. The model works because those gurus who make money on Linux will want to code for it (and often will in the course of their professional duties).
How capitalist is Linux? A lot of people are betting a lot of money that Linux can take market share away from Microsoft, the undisputed king of the license-fee business model, while that business model is in place. Red Hat thinks that they can make money without licensing fees in an environment with a very hostile, license-fee-fortified market leader, as competition.
If making money by serving the customer is liberal and anti-capitalist, then Linux businesses are liberal and anti-capitalist. I am not cynical enough to believe that this is the case. Free software produces profits with a nonstandard business model, and is willing to prove it in the capitalist arena.
If Red Hat's Slashdot feed pulls all Red Hat stories, it makes it look as if Red Hat is unnewsworthy to Slashdot. That's some pretty nasty publicity there.
Sure, we do a lot of Red Hat bashing (personally, I like them), but the bashing is positive publicity. Some attacks are the overcommercialism. Others are attacks on being the top dog. Others are about quality. We keep on calling Red Hat the Microsoft of Linux: those are buy words in the securities market!
I don't claim to know whether Red Hat is required to remove those stories. However, they have nothing to gain and much to lose by doing so. I figure they wouldn't pull those stories if they didn't have to. An SEC ban sounds like a good explanation to me. Anybody have better ones?
It's hard to get a lock on the definition of artificial intelligence because it is hard to get a lock on the definition of intelligence. When the IQ test was invented, someone asked its inventor what intelligence was. He responded, "It is what my test measures".
We won't consider it AI until our computers tell us what to do. Sorry, must sign off--one of the programs here ran into an error and just sent me a help request by email.
The term "gweep" has staged a recovery around WPI in the 90's (as opposed to the original set of the 70's). For more information, go here. Though I don't believe my name is listed there, I am still an "official" WPI gweep. While we feel we "own" the name (more of an academic birthright than anything else), anyone who is truly a hacker should feel free to call themselves a gweep.
Fortunately, gweeps and gweeping have never taken on the meanings of crackers and cracking. And an even better feature: it's a syllable shorter than "hacker".
Pull cosmology (such as presence or absence of demons) out of moral questions, and you have oversimplified the question. The fact that many of us have different cosmologies makes morality a very hairy question, but I think that it is necessary hair.
The "Buffy" issue is not about censorship. It is about freedom. WB used their freedom, and made a decision. They decided not to air the show, in the name of good taste. They did not do this for market share; the TV biz thrives on controversy. They probably lost ratings in this decision, but they did the Right Thing.
How dare we call this censorship and decry it as such? Who holds the right to censor WB, to take away their freedom and force them to air an episode they don't want to air?
Yes, force. That is exactly what the bootleggers did; they forced the release of this material. They were the ones who restricted WB's freedom not to release an episode they wanted not to release.
We don't own Buffy. WB does. They have the right to air, to pull, to make their own Buffy channel with 48 episodes per day. If you don't like that, pick up a web cam and write your own TV show.
Katz, you're just wrong.
This isn't about saying that this episode causes real world violence. This is about keeping people from having the very real pain of Littleton thrown in their faces again.
I've seen this done once before. When the Challenger exploded, MTV pulled all their "spaceman" ads. This wasn't censorship. NASA didn't force them to do it. NASA probably didn't even ask. MTV did this by itself. This wasn't some sort of political statement on the US space program. This was simple human decency. Even media companies are capable of this.
If they were forced to pull the ep, that would be a problem. When a company chooses to do the decent thing, they should be applauded. To harass them or complain about them doing the decent thing is to throw decency away entirely. That is the wrong path. To say that the government should not legislate decency is not to say that one should not display it one's self.
The bootleggers performed nothing short of grand theft. This was WB's episode, to show or not as they decided. I doubt even RMS would advocate this sort of activity, and his worldview appears to revolve around the freedom of IP. There is a big difference between activist and guerilla, you know.
D'oh!
The second statement is correct. I got my inequalities reversed earlier. Sorry.
Also per this page and the next, the NSA budget is classified, and its existence was publicly denied. Maybe that makes it Area 50?
If you want to hide personal income from the government (disclaimer: this is illegal in the US, and I don't recommend that anybody do this), you want to keep income-generating activity out of databases at all costs, preferably out of paper books as well. E-Commerce makes it easier for the government to track your economic activity.
Besides, even if governments can't track the personal income of its citizens, the government will not collapse. One can certainly run a government without income taxes. My home state of New Hampshire gets along well without one (we tax entertainment and property, and the state owns a monopoly on liquor sales)
Actually, all but the most reactionary people and organizations seem to think that the Internet is more trouble than it's worth. I've seen an Internet-connected computer lab at a Catholic grammar school. They certainly had posters telling the kids how to avoid getting "mugged" (never reveal your snailmail address tends to be the biggie).
To be sure, the Internet is a hazardous environment, but all but the most reactionary recognize that the rewards outweigh the risks. While I hesitate to use the analogy again, it's much like a road system. Roads are hazardous; people who don't understand how to use them have a good possibility of being run over. We accept the hazards because most of us feel that the benefits of roads outweighs the hazards, even with the huge body count roads are possibly responsible.
There are a number of data points to back this up; take the most conservative people and/or agendas you can find, and run a search engine over them. One data point stands above the crowd, especially after discussing Catholic schools; even the Pope has a Web site.
We do not expect IS departments to take more platform responsibility. We expect them to get support contracts from a competent support firm. IS departments can expect to get better support out of Linux (and other open source software) because OSS demolishes the support monopoly.
You can only provide so much support for a piece of software without having the source code in your hands. If you find a bug, you can only fix it if you have the source code. With proprietary software, only the software vendor itself has that code, and thus it is the only truly competent support organization. If you really need a package to run, your chain of support must go to the vendor. If you don't get support from the vendor, you get support from someone who gets support from the vendor. If you don't like the support you get, you either live with it, or change support by changing vendors.
Every proprietary software firm is a monopoly in the support market for its own software.
With Linux, anybody with skills and a 486 can fix Linux bugs. You can support Linux to the hilt without selling Linux. There is no Linux support monopoly. The competition creates low-cost, competent support contractors.
Microsoft needs to talk out of both sides, both in realms where lying is illegal. This means that every contradiction they make renders them civily or criminally liable.
I am not a fan of using lawyers (I consider them the last resort), but this is an industry of lawyers, simply because of copyright law. If we watch for their slip-ups, and Linux companies call them to legal task for it, we can get some really good PR.
If Microsoft tells the courts that Linux is a competitor because it has X (general X, not the windowing system), and then tells the PHBs that Linux doesn't have X, you can either send a Microsoft witness to jail (perjury) or force them to publicly retract the statement saying that Linux doesn't have X. That is the sort of embarrassment that Microsoft cannot afford.
Shipping is a feature.
Stability is a feature.
Hardware leanness--the ability to do more with less--is a feature.
The ability to choose the company that fixes your OS is a feature.
Microsoft can pull all the tools, software features, and gizmos they want out of Linux. They can make them themselves, or grab them straight from the distros and ship it with source code. But their business model and practices prevent them from getting the best features of Linux.
If they want to do get the stability, the ability to release on schedule, etc., they will have to change more than their entire code base; they will have to change the way they do business.
And then, my friends, they would no longer be the Microsoft we know today.
Many people believe that, because Microsoft is so good at screwing the customer, they can get away with bad software. I submit that they make bad software because they screw over the customer. You can't separate the two, any more than you can get a magnetic monopole.
As an example, I give remote access. Given the current business model, Microsoft will never give remote access to the complete functionality of an NT box. If they did, we would make fewer, bigger NT boxen and use thin clients to reach them. Remote access is never in the vendor's advantage when the vendor targets the desktop license market. Unix gets away with it because it targets the server license market; Linux gets away with it because it doesn't target licenses.
Another example is the release schedule. To get a constant revenue stream, they drop releases at seemingly long intervals. Linux distributions (not just the kernel itself) release more quickly than that. But almost every time Microsoft drops a release on us, it requires us to upgrade our machinery and most of our application base. They get to sell Office over and over again to the same people. Linux distros release more quickly, but you don't need to get each rev. With few exceptions, you can run the same apps on new Linux that you could on old Linux. And it will run on the same boxen. You choose when to upgrade your system based on your applications needing more digital macho, not your operating system needing more digital macho.
Microsoft can look like it provides the features of Linux. However, they cannot actually provide what Linux provides while still being Microsoft.
This leads to four possibilities. One is that Microsoft gets thoroughly trounced by Linux; it could in fact happen. A second one is that Microsoft FUDs Linux back into the hobby realm; I am not cynical enough to believe that to be possible. A third one is that Microsoft coexists with Linux, no longer as a monopoly platform. The fourth is that Microsoft beats Linux by producing the best features of Linux.
For either the third or fourth results to occur, Microsoft must change itself, likely to suit the customer. They cannot exist in present form without the monopoly, so they must change merely to coexist with Linux. For them to assimilate the features of Linux, they need to assimilate some of its business practices. For three of these four results, the customer wins.