What I intensely dislike about both Gnome and KDE is the fact that they are so bloated. I'm not sure why it is that there can't be a small, efficient, simple, window manager for X. One which minimizes the dexterity needed to do things like start an Xterm, maximize a window so it fills as much of the screen as possible without overlapping things you don't want it to, and minimize a window but still keep it on the desktop in an easy to access location.
KDE 1.x will do these things well if you reconfigure it properly, but its friggin HUGE! You have to load up all this nonsense into memory just to use a decent window manager, which is really sad. Gnome is even worse. Trying to use it is like fighting with your computer. It may have all kinds of nifty features and programs under the hood, but its desktop leaves much to be desired. If I open up netscape and maximize its window, netscape will overlap the damned gnome bar along the bottom of the screen. There are other issue I have with it, but that is the one that really pisses me off. KDE 2.x is almost worse. Instead of improving the window manager, they've taken out the best features and removed the ability to configure other features. I consider it a big step backwards, not forwards. Built in web browsers and point-and-drool file managers don't mean squat to me. I just want a window manager that works.
In the race to create the uber-desktop, lets not forget that people want to USE their computers, not just look at pretty desktops. Special effects on a computer are about as useful as special effects in a movie. Both are pointless without substance to back them up.
I for one would just love to see a window manager that recreates the best features of the win9x desktop. Create a taskbar at the bottom for all the currently running windows. Create a second bar along the left or right side that users can start commonly run applications such as netscape or xterm on to. Then have a menu system for other programs accessible via a "start" button as well as via drop down menus on the desktop itself. Add to this the ability to properly maximize windows so they fill the available real estate without overlapping these to bars, and to me you'll have the perfect desktop. To me this is far more important and useful than the creation of yet another theme for a desktop that doesn't work.
I'm almost at the point where I want to create a window manager of my own because of all this.
I'm suprised that so many people seem to love both KDE and Gnome when both are bloated hogs and the latest versions of them get in the way more than they help. Get rid of the nonsense. Lets have a desktop that's functional instead of merely flashy. Flashy may look pretty, but it sure doesn't make for a better user interface.
You can tell how desperate Microsoft is when it pulls something like this. I think they must be following Hitler's philosophy that bigger lies are more likely to be believed by the public.
A thousand dollars a copy? I'm sorry, but Windows isn't a car. It isn't a material product with a cost of manufacture subject to economies of scale. Windows is a successful product, one which generates vast profits for Microsoft. Were it to be spun off into a separate company, the division which had windows would still continue to make money.
It's like Dennis Miller said, Bill Gates is one persian cat away from being the villian in a James Bond movie.
I know exactly what you mean. I'm sure you remember the big scandal in L.A. recently with police officers being caught falsifying evidence to convict people of crimes. Last I heard eighty something convictions were overturned. Now those people may or may not have been innocent. In fact I'd bet that at least half of them were guilty as hell. But that doesn't mean the cops, or anyone else, gets to deny them a fair trial.
I'm not a criminal, at least as far as I know. Who knows what kooky law I might unwittingly be breaking just by breathing. But lets assume that I'm truly not breaking any laws at all in any way. I'd still be damned nervous if I had to deal with the police on anything. The reason is that I don't think they care about guilt or innocence. In fact I seriously suspect they consider the public at large as one huge group of criminals.
The police are organized as a military outfit. As such they are taught the idea of "Us" and "Them." They are taught that there is an enemy to be fought and destroyed. What happens when a cop trained like this locks his sights onto an innocent person? It would be far better to train and organize the police to serve and protect the public according to their motto instead of establishing them as a standing army among our citizens.
It is a very good thing that we are arming ourselves. I'm armed and I'd encourage everyone else to be armed as well. The increase in gun ownership over the past few years is what has led to the consistent fall in the rate of violent crime over the same period. Contrary to "liberal" propaganda, guns don't cause violence, they prevent it. A gun in the hand of an honest person who posesses it for defense and protection is one of the best deterrents against violent crime I know. That same person unarmed is just someone waiting to be victimized. Banning guns only takes them out of the hands of people such as this. It does nothing to take them out of the hands of those who are not honest and who would use guns to commit crimes.
What I think is particularly amusing is the idea that the police are going to protect us from violent crime. If the police just happen to be there before the crime can occur, and they notice it as it begins, then yes they can be a good protection in that case. But usually the police are not there and it takes them a significant ammount of time to come once called, which is usually after the crime has already been committed. Because of this the police mostly act as armed historians, taking statements and making reports of what happened before they ever got there. How are they supposed to protect anyone in that capacity? They can't. In fact the idea of the police does far more to deter crime than the actual police do. Then of course you must consider what would happen if the only people who were armed were the criminal element and the police. The rest of us would quickly get caught in the middle as the distinction between the two blurred. If police departments are corrupt right now, imagine how bad they would be with even more power over the population?
Anyway, I'm not saying anything that others before me have not expressed more eloquently. Freedom depends upon the ability of the free to protect that freedom. Without guns our ability to do that is severely weakened.
"In April of 1996 the United States Institute for Peace conducted a conference on "Virtual Diplomacy," exploring the interaction between new information technologies and international conflict management. During the conference many speakers observed that information technology threatens traditional political institutions. One panel explored the possibility that information technology threatens sovereignty itself.
Ordinary citizens as well as diplomats have instantaneous access to information about world events as they occur--through CNN sooner than through the CIA. Ordinary citizens interested in environmental protection or human rights can reach out and touch counterparts in other countries through the Internet, bypassing international treaty negotiators appointed by their own governments.
Overlapping revolutions in information technology and the convergence of communications, broadcast and data technologies into a single digital network of networks typified by the Internet, have undermined old political institutions and simultaneously made new international institutions likely because they make it feasible to reach across geographic political boundaries. [FN1]"
I for one don't understand why this is a problem.
The idea that the governments of the world are supposed to have some kind of priviliged existence above that of their citizens is incorrect.
Institutions exist because they are needed. They have no inherent right to exist beyond that. If an institution has something to fear from the empowerment of the people, then that institution is not working in the best interests of the people and should be reformed or abolished.
The internet does not threaten the sovereignty of any government whose power is truly derived from the consent of the governed. Government which works for the people and which is ultimately directed by the people can only benefit from technology which allows better communication and access to information.
Unfortunately much of the policy created by the US government is detrimental to the rights of its citizens and is therefore dependent upon their ignorance. The ability of spin doctors and politicians to paint a pretty picture on top of an ugly deed or policy depends on our being unaware of the true facts of the matter. The more we know, the less they can lie to us and get away with it.
I can only imagine that the situation is worse in other parts of the world where lies, corruption and oppression are the very foundation upon which the government sits. A government such as this has a great deal to fear from the internet. Take China for example. The leaders of its communist party should be very, very afraid right now. Its only a matter of time before the foundation of their power crubles. It may take decades but the beginning of the end for them is here now.
In short the internet worries the powers that be because it is what will replace them with the powers that will be.
"I tip my hat to the new constitution,
take a bow for the new revolution,
smile and grin at the changes all around.
Pick up my guitar and play,
just like yesterday.
And I get on my knees and pray,
we don't get fooled again."
Space is the future. I know that sounds rather corny in this day and age but it is the truth. I have NO problem with my tax dollars being spent exploring space and paving the way for our eventual migration to places such as the moon or Mars. The international space station is only the very smallest of baby steps into space.
If NASA has become bogged down with beauracracy and a monopolistic mindset, then it is time that we shake it up a bit and put it back on its toes. A two-tiered space exploration policy would go a long ways towards doing that and keeping America out front in the quest to explore and yes conquer other worlds.
I'd hate to wake up one day and find that Japan or the EU has laid claim to the moon as soverign territory before we could. I'm not sure such a claim would hold water anymore no matter who made it, but still.
I'd like to see human colonies on the moon or Mars before I depart this earth. I believe that if the human race stays put here on earth, we will stagnate. As Frank Herbert said, the question of ecology is not how many individuals can survive in an environment, but what kind of existence is possible for those who do. With the world population growing at an exponential rate I don't think a good existence is going to be possible much longer.
The really bad thing is not that we're bringing over all these guys from overseas, but that we're sending them back after giving them up to six years of paid training in how we do business.
Right now these workers are slave labor for the US firms who pay to bring them over here. But in the future they may very well become these firm's main competition.
I can't think of any reason why we should subsidize the creation of industry in foreign countries that my one day threaten the hegemony that the United States currently enjoys. It is this kind of short sightedness on the part of business and government that can cost this nation its empire.
I have no problem with bringing intelligent skilled workers into this country from other places. But once we have them here we should encourage them to stay. Here anything they produce benefits our economy and makes us an even greater world power than we already are. Not to mention improving the quality of our gene pool, which in the long run is even more important.
We have DSL and have had no problems with it at all. We're actually too far away from the "home office" (what a BS ridden euphemism) and our line was installed by mistake. Even so, after boosting the voltage the router uses for its uplink we got a 384/256 connection that is stable and hasn't given us any trouble at all.
We're using USWest to provide the copper of course, but we certainly aren't using them for our ISP. No, we're using another company called Inficad which provides us with a static IP which is always on. We're paying a little extra to go with Inficad, but I know better than to use "UsWorst." To be fair USwest does offer a good 56k dialup service, at least in my area. Even so, I'd heard enough rumors of problems with their DSL to avoid using them.
One of the nice things about using a small company like inficad is that they aren't bandwidth nazi's. They don't care if I set up apache or even an FTP server (not that I have one, I'm not some lame brained warez "dood"). Also we get 5 email addresses and 50 megs of web space if we want to set up a page on their servers. Not a bad deal for ten extra bucks a month.
No, I don't work for inficad and no I don't get kickbacks from them. I'm just happy with the service they have provided and wanted to pass this experience on as DSL seems to be taking a PR pounding.
Quite true, our Solaris boxes here on campus report themselves as running both SunOS 5.7 and Solaris 7.
Here at ASU the Sun guys I know in IT refer to the SysV versions of SunOS as Solaris and the previous BSD based versions which came before as just SunOS. What the vernacular terms are where you are at I don't know.
Maybe in ignorant 3rd world countries where religion and government are one and the same. But not here in America where there is separation of church and state.
It's not a matter of overt corruption as the president himself would have almost nothing to do with the outcome of the case directly. However who he nominates for the supreme court may play a very large role indeed. Many people are biting their nails with worry over this election because the next president will likely shape the makeup of the supreme court for a long time to come. Normally this isn't the case. This time there are several justices who are expected to retire, making it a very dangerous situation.
Personally I like the supreme court the way it is right now, roughly half "conservative" and half "liberal." This ensures that political ideology will take a back seat to the real issues at hand. Not that supreme court judges need concern themselves with political ideology as their terms are for life or until they retire. In other words they don't have to toe either party's line. But even so their personal character and the philosophies to which they subscribe are still important.
If someone like Judge Rehnquist can't be expected to be impartial then who can?
So what if it is his son. It's not like his son is Bill Gates. His son is representing Microsoft, nothing more. And while he can be expected to do his best to fight for Microsoft's side, he has no personal involvement in the company. Win or lose Rehnquist's son will still be an attorney and will go on to other cases and other clients.
So Judge Rehnquist should have no feelings of familial obligation towards the company his son is representing that would cause him to be less than impartial.
I don't like Microsoft, but I'm hardly going to pretend this is some kind of an issue just to have an excuse to complain about the company.
Kind of like the way the Jewish community does itself harm when it publishes articles and materials decrying the holocaust of their people by the Nazi's?
Is that the kind of harm you're talking about?
If Microsoft doesn't piss you off it either means you aren't paying attention or you own some of their stock.
The "liberal" Democrats are just as likely to screw you based on nutty socialistic ideology as the Republicans are for money or on behalf of the superstitious right. The Republicans generally act to make a fast buck, while the Democrats just seem to be a bunch of misled morons who think we need them to be our parents. Sheesh!
So while Gore might maybe be less likely to side with Microsoft, it doesn't mean he isn't going to screw us all in other ways that are far worse.
Not that Bush is any better, God only knows what would happen if the favored party of the supertitious right controlled congress and the white house. It would put an end to the "gridlock" that's been the only think keeping both parties from tearing the country apart at the seams.
Ultimately Dennis Miller had it right when he said that who we vote for is based on who we think will screw us the least. I just wish I could vote for "none of the above" because I don't see either candidate as being good for the future of this country.
Actually there is, the american public. We hold ultimate authority in this country. The government exists and derives its power from us. If the supreme court were to do something that the majority of americans were strongly opposed to, you can bet your bottom dollar something would be done about it directly or indirectly.
Not warranted? I'm going to rely on rational ignorance here when I say that Judge Jackson knew what he was talking about when he made is judgement. I'm doing this because I'm not familiar with every aspect of this case as played out in court. But then again neither are you.
I am familiar with Microsoft's track history and how they have violated antitrust law ever since they were paid by IBM for DOS. They used their monopoly on DOS to create monopolies in other areas. The fact that it took them till the windows days to finally pull it off is testament to the quality of their products more than anything.
Microsoft needs a good declawing. They are a long standing threat to the rest of the computer industry and they need to be taken out. If I woke up tomorrow in a world where there was no microsoft, I'd hardly be depressed about it.
The internet is changing our civilization itself in many ways, of which the political changes are only a small part. As I'm sure has been said many times before, the Internet is the most powerful too ever created for the storage and exchange of information and ideas. Each time new tools of this nature have been introduced, whether it be radio, television, the printing press, or written language itself, the world has changed dramatically and people have become more free.
At the dawn of civilization, increases in population led to new developments in agriculture. These allowed cultures which were formerly hunger-gatherers and nomads to settle in one location. From there populations increased over time and with them the need to keep track of things like who owned which cows and where did one person's land begin and another's end. To solve this problem primitive writing was created. This evolved as the culture grew and expanded with its population. Civilization was born. The great civilzations of the ancient Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, or the ancient Chinese would never have existed without written language. It is because of their written language that we know of them today.
The printing press changed world when it opened up a new world of knowledge and ideas to people who formerly would never be exposed to them. Books became something that many people could afford, increasing literacy and improving the average person's understanding of the world. This was something the church fought because they rightly feared that new knowledge and ideas would lead people to question church doctrine, undermining its authority. At one point it was illegal to print copies of the bible because it put the word of God in the hands of the common man, removing his need to get it through a priest.
Radio and television have by and large been used for entertainment, but not exclusively. News reports put people in touch with events happening anywhere and everywhere in a way that even the best newspaper reporter never could. Even the entertainment programming contains ideas that influence how people think.
Now we have the Internet, the greatest tool for social progress since the invention of the printing press or perhaps even the written word itself. It allows people to not only experience the ideas of others, but to put forth their own ideas. It makes it very difficult for those in power to control our civilization's beliefs by controlling our access to new and different ideas. This is partly why interest in politics has waned, people realize that the power to change the world rests with themselves. This of course undermines the existing power structures which depend on maintaining the status quo by misdirecting the people's energies for change into useless and even counterproductive activities.
Information and Knowledge are power, as is the ability to communicate information and ideas. As people aquire these things they aquire power over their own lives and the power to influence the world around them. It is this which spells the downfall of tyrrany and oppression and the birth of true freedom. It is very difficult for political or social ideologies which are based upon lies to gain a foothold in the face of thousands or millions of people who are willing and able to speak out against it and be heard. The internet makes true democracy possible.
In the future historians will look back on this time as the point at which things changed. Things like this remind me of how easy it is to be oblivious to history when we're the one's living it. I for one am glad to be here playing, playing my part in the changes all around us.
That is one of the greatest movies ever made!! Talk about Deja Vu!!
Having worked at Fry's electronics as a computer tech, that movie touched me deeply in a way that I can only describe as having a spiritual revelation. It is no coincidence that the night I saw it was exactly 2 weeks from last day I worked at Fry's.
From working at Fry's I went on to working at a locally owned bookstore. There I was the IT department. I reconfigured their LAN and moved it from Win31 and DOS on Lantastic to Win31 and 9x on netbeui/TCP. We had two servers, an NT box for the file and database server and a linux system for the NAT server and firewall. I would have used linux for both except the custom inventory database system which ran on the server wouldn't run on linux. The Linux NAT server meant that all 25 systems in the store were online from 7am to 11pm. To do this I got paid 6.50 an hour. But guess what, I was happy!
Now I work at Arizona State University babysitting one of our computer labs and getting paid more than I was at Fry's. Did I mention I get free tuition?
Lord give me the strength to change the things I can, the patience to accept the things I cannot change, and the wisdom to know how to get rid of the bodies of people like this poor guy's boss.
Lee
This is simply yet another example of how patent law is used to harrass competitors. Reminds me of how $cientology abuses and attempts to redefine copyright law to attack their critics.
Power in the hands of ordinary citizens which balances the power held by the government, this is the cornerstone of democracy.
I can forsee a time when encryption becomes every bit as important as free speech or the right to bear arms are to holding the government in check.
With things like the DMCA, Carnivore and other moves being made by the powers that be to undermine the power of the people, it is easy to get angry and discouraged. But then I see something like this and it reminds me that there are people out there willing to fight back. That not everyone has forgotten that the government derives its power from the consent of the governed and not the other way around.
Did you know that betamax was BETTER than VHS? But that didn't mean squat. Sony tried to control and license Betamax while VHS was an open standard. So what happened? VCR manufacturers made and sold VHS units and Betamax died a horrible death.
Better doesn't mean squat if it isn't compatible with the existing standard. This is something that firms have had to learn the hard way over and over again.
Yes but DVD is not used for the same purpose that VHS is. VHS is there so you can record television programs and movies. DVD is there so that MGM can sell you a prepackaged movie with great quality sound/video. The only way that VHS is going anywhere is if there is a viable replacement for it, which DVD is not.
Now I know that there are DVD recorders out there somewhere. I also know the cost about as much as a decent used car, so they're hardly an option for mainstream use.
Well you see that in and of itself is a problem. Artists and musicians aren't computer people. Some people are BOTH artists/musicians and computer people, but an artist/musician is not automatically someone who uses a computer. So how are they a market? I do hope not trying to compete in a niche market which doesn't even exist. If thats their business plan they they're already dead, just not broke yet. Instead of trying to regain some lost market share among a group which isn't big enough to support the company anyway, they should be working to gain a share of the mainstream market.
Slashdot Mirror
What I intensely dislike about both Gnome and KDE is the fact that they are so bloated. I'm not sure why it is that there can't be a small, efficient, simple, window manager for X. One which minimizes the dexterity needed to do things like start an Xterm, maximize a window so it fills as much of the screen as possible without overlapping things you don't want it to, and minimize a window but still keep it on the desktop in an easy to access location.
KDE 1.x will do these things well if you reconfigure it properly, but its friggin HUGE! You have to load up all this nonsense into memory just to use a decent window manager, which is really sad. Gnome is even worse. Trying to use it is like fighting with your computer. It may have all kinds of nifty features and programs under the hood, but its desktop leaves much to be desired. If I open up netscape and maximize its window, netscape will overlap the damned gnome bar along the bottom of the screen. There are other issue I have with it, but that is the one that really pisses me off. KDE 2.x is almost worse. Instead of improving the window manager, they've taken out the best features and removed the ability to configure other features. I consider it a big step backwards, not forwards. Built in web browsers and point-and-drool file managers don't mean squat to me. I just want a window manager that works.
In the race to create the uber-desktop, lets not forget that people want to USE their computers, not just look at pretty desktops. Special effects on a computer are about as useful as special effects in a movie. Both are pointless without substance to back them up.
I for one would just love to see a window manager that recreates the best features of the win9x desktop. Create a taskbar at the bottom for all the currently running windows. Create a second bar along the left or right side that users can start commonly run applications such as netscape or xterm on to. Then have a menu system for other programs accessible via a "start" button as well as via drop down menus on the desktop itself. Add to this the ability to properly maximize windows so they fill the available real estate without overlapping these to bars, and to me you'll have the perfect desktop. To me this is far more important and useful than the creation of yet another theme for a desktop that doesn't work.
I'm almost at the point where I want to create a window manager of my own because of all this.
I'm suprised that so many people seem to love both KDE and Gnome when both are bloated hogs and the latest versions of them get in the way more than they help. Get rid of the nonsense. Lets have a desktop that's functional instead of merely flashy. Flashy may look pretty, but it sure doesn't make for a better user interface.
Lee Reynolds
You can tell how desperate Microsoft is when it pulls something like this. I think they must be following Hitler's philosophy that bigger lies are more likely to be believed by the public.
A thousand dollars a copy? I'm sorry, but Windows isn't a car. It isn't a material product with a cost of manufacture subject to economies of scale. Windows is a successful product, one which generates vast profits for Microsoft. Were it to be spun off into a separate company, the division which had windows would still continue to make money.
It's like Dennis Miller said, Bill Gates is one persian cat away from being the villian in a James Bond movie.
Lee Reynolds
I know exactly what you mean. I'm sure you remember the big scandal in L.A. recently with police officers being caught falsifying evidence to convict people of crimes. Last I heard eighty something convictions were overturned. Now those people may or may not have been innocent. In fact I'd bet that at least half of them were guilty as hell. But that doesn't mean the cops, or anyone else, gets to deny them a fair trial.
I'm not a criminal, at least as far as I know. Who knows what kooky law I might unwittingly be breaking just by breathing. But lets assume that I'm truly not breaking any laws at all in any way. I'd still be damned nervous if I had to deal with the police on anything. The reason is that I don't think they care about guilt or innocence. In fact I seriously suspect they consider the public at large as one huge group of criminals.
The police are organized as a military outfit. As such they are taught the idea of "Us" and "Them." They are taught that there is an enemy to be fought and destroyed. What happens when a cop trained like this locks his sights onto an innocent person? It would be far better to train and organize the police to serve and protect the public according to their motto instead of establishing them as a standing army among our citizens.
It is a very good thing that we are arming ourselves. I'm armed and I'd encourage everyone else to be armed as well. The increase in gun ownership over the past few years is what has led to the consistent fall in the rate of violent crime over the same period. Contrary to "liberal" propaganda, guns don't cause violence, they prevent it. A gun in the hand of an honest person who posesses it for defense and protection is one of the best deterrents against violent crime I know. That same person unarmed is just someone waiting to be victimized. Banning guns only takes them out of the hands of people such as this. It does nothing to take them out of the hands of those who are not honest and who would use guns to commit crimes.
What I think is particularly amusing is the idea that the police are going to protect us from violent crime. If the police just happen to be there before the crime can occur, and they notice it as it begins, then yes they can be a good protection in that case. But usually the police are not there and it takes them a significant ammount of time to come once called, which is usually after the crime has already been committed. Because of this the police mostly act as armed historians, taking statements and making reports of what happened before they ever got there. How are they supposed to protect anyone in that capacity? They can't. In fact the idea of the police does far more to deter crime than the actual police do. Then of course you must consider what would happen if the only people who were armed were the criminal element and the police. The rest of us would quickly get caught in the middle as the distinction between the two blurred. If police departments are corrupt right now, imagine how bad they would be with even more power over the population?
Anyway, I'm not saying anything that others before me have not expressed more eloquently. Freedom depends upon the ability of the free to protect that freedom. Without guns our ability to do that is severely weakened.
Lee Reynolds
From Dr Perritt's paper:
"In April of 1996 the United States Institute for Peace conducted a conference on "Virtual Diplomacy," exploring the interaction between new information technologies and international conflict management. During the conference many speakers observed that information technology threatens traditional political institutions. One panel explored the possibility that information technology threatens sovereignty itself.
Ordinary citizens as well as diplomats have instantaneous access to information about world events as they occur--through CNN sooner than through the CIA. Ordinary citizens interested in environmental protection or human rights can reach out and touch counterparts in other countries through the Internet, bypassing international treaty negotiators appointed by their own governments.
Overlapping revolutions in information technology and the convergence of communications, broadcast and data technologies into a single digital network of networks typified by the Internet, have undermined old political institutions and simultaneously made new international institutions likely because they make it feasible to reach across geographic political boundaries. [FN1]"
I for one don't understand why this is a problem.
The idea that the governments of the world are supposed to have some kind of priviliged existence above that of their citizens is incorrect.
Institutions exist because they are needed. They have no inherent right to exist beyond that. If an institution has something to fear from the empowerment of the people, then that institution is not working in the best interests of the people and should be reformed or abolished.
The internet does not threaten the sovereignty of any government whose power is truly derived from the consent of the governed. Government which works for the people and which is ultimately directed by the people can only benefit from technology which allows better communication and access to information.
Unfortunately much of the policy created by the US government is detrimental to the rights of its citizens and is therefore dependent upon their ignorance. The ability of spin doctors and politicians to paint a pretty picture on top of an ugly deed or policy depends on our being unaware of the true facts of the matter. The more we know, the less they can lie to us and get away with it.
I can only imagine that the situation is worse in other parts of the world where lies, corruption and oppression are the very foundation upon which the government sits. A government such as this has a great deal to fear from the internet. Take China for example. The leaders of its communist party should be very, very afraid right now. Its only a matter of time before the foundation of their power crubles. It may take decades but the beginning of the end for them is here now.
In short the internet worries the powers that be because it is what will replace them with the powers that will be.
"I tip my hat to the new constitution,
take a bow for the new revolution,
smile and grin at the changes all around.
Pick up my guitar and play,
just like yesterday.
And I get on my knees and pray,
we don't get fooled again."
Lee Reynolds
Space is the future. I know that sounds rather corny in this day and age but it is the truth. I have NO problem with my tax dollars being spent exploring space and paving the way for our eventual migration to places such as the moon or Mars. The international space station is only the very smallest of baby steps into space.
If NASA has become bogged down with beauracracy and a monopolistic mindset, then it is time that we shake it up a bit and put it back on its toes. A two-tiered space exploration policy would go a long ways towards doing that and keeping America out front in the quest to explore and yes conquer other worlds.
I'd hate to wake up one day and find that Japan or the EU has laid claim to the moon as soverign territory before we could. I'm not sure such a claim would hold water anymore no matter who made it, but still.
I'd like to see human colonies on the moon or Mars before I depart this earth. I believe that if the human race stays put here on earth, we will stagnate. As Frank Herbert said, the question of ecology is not how many individuals can survive in an environment, but what kind of existence is possible for those who do. With the world population growing at an exponential rate I don't think a good existence is going to be possible much longer.
Lee Reynolds
The really bad thing is not that we're bringing over all these guys from overseas, but that we're sending them back after giving them up to six years of paid training in how we do business.
Right now these workers are slave labor for the US firms who pay to bring them over here. But in the future they may very well become these firm's main competition.
I can't think of any reason why we should subsidize the creation of industry in foreign countries that my one day threaten the hegemony that the United States currently enjoys. It is this kind of short sightedness on the part of business and government that can cost this nation its empire.
I have no problem with bringing intelligent skilled workers into this country from other places. But once we have them here we should encourage them to stay. Here anything they produce benefits our economy and makes us an even greater world power than we already are. Not to mention improving the quality of our gene pool, which in the long run is even more important.
Lee Reynolds
We have DSL and have had no problems with it at all. We're actually too far away from the "home office" (what a BS ridden euphemism) and our line was installed by mistake. Even so, after boosting the voltage the router uses for its uplink we got a 384/256 connection that is stable and hasn't given us any trouble at all.
We're using USWest to provide the copper of course, but we certainly aren't using them for our ISP. No, we're using another company called Inficad which provides us with a static IP which is always on. We're paying a little extra to go with Inficad, but I know better than to use "UsWorst." To be fair USwest does offer a good 56k dialup service, at least in my area. Even so, I'd heard enough rumors of problems with their DSL to avoid using them.
One of the nice things about using a small company like inficad is that they aren't bandwidth nazi's. They don't care if I set up apache or even an FTP server (not that I have one, I'm not some lame brained warez "dood"). Also we get 5 email addresses and 50 megs of web space if we want to set up a page on their servers. Not a bad deal for ten extra bucks a month.
No, I don't work for inficad and no I don't get kickbacks from them. I'm just happy with the service they have provided and wanted to pass this experience on as DSL seems to be taking a PR pounding.
Lee Reynolds
Quite true, our Solaris boxes here on campus report themselves as running both SunOS 5.7 and Solaris 7.
Here at ASU the Sun guys I know in IT refer to the SysV versions of SunOS as Solaris and the previous BSD based versions which came before as just SunOS. What the vernacular terms are where you are at I don't know.
Lee
Maybe in ignorant 3rd world countries where religion and government are one and the same. But not here in America where there is separation of church and state.
Huh????
Solaris is based off SysV 4.x. SunOS was based off BSD, but the current BSD's are not based off it, they are based off the same code it is based off.
It's not a matter of overt corruption as the president himself would have almost nothing to do with the outcome of the case directly. However who he nominates for the supreme court may play a very large role indeed. Many people are biting their nails with worry over this election because the next president will likely shape the makeup of the supreme court for a long time to come. Normally this isn't the case. This time there are several justices who are expected to retire, making it a very dangerous situation.
Personally I like the supreme court the way it is right now, roughly half "conservative" and half "liberal." This ensures that political ideology will take a back seat to the real issues at hand. Not that supreme court judges need concern themselves with political ideology as their terms are for life or until they retire. In other words they don't have to toe either party's line. But even so their personal character and the philosophies to which they subscribe are still important.
Lee
If the power of the government doesn't come from us then where does it come from?
Lee
If someone like Judge Rehnquist can't be expected to be impartial then who can?
So what if it is his son. It's not like his son is Bill Gates. His son is representing Microsoft, nothing more. And while he can be expected to do his best to fight for Microsoft's side, he has no personal involvement in the company. Win or lose Rehnquist's son will still be an attorney and will go on to other cases and other clients.
So Judge Rehnquist should have no feelings of familial obligation towards the company his son is representing that would cause him to be less than impartial.
I don't like Microsoft, but I'm hardly going to pretend this is some kind of an issue just to have an excuse to complain about the company.
Lee
Kind of like the way the Jewish community does itself harm when it publishes articles and materials decrying the holocaust of their people by the Nazi's?
Is that the kind of harm you're talking about?
If Microsoft doesn't piss you off it either means you aren't paying attention or you own some of their stock.
Which is it?
The "liberal" Democrats are just as likely to screw you based on nutty socialistic ideology as the Republicans are for money or on behalf of the superstitious right. The Republicans generally act to make a fast buck, while the Democrats just seem to be a bunch of misled morons who think we need them to be our parents. Sheesh!
So while Gore might maybe be less likely to side with Microsoft, it doesn't mean he isn't going to screw us all in other ways that are far worse.
Not that Bush is any better, God only knows what would happen if the favored party of the supertitious right controlled congress and the white house. It would put an end to the "gridlock" that's been the only think keeping both parties from tearing the country apart at the seams.
Ultimately Dennis Miller had it right when he said that who we vote for is based on who we think will screw us the least. I just wish I could vote for "none of the above" because I don't see either candidate as being good for the future of this country.
Lee
Actually there is, the american public. We hold ultimate authority in this country. The government exists and derives its power from us. If the supreme court were to do something that the majority of americans were strongly opposed to, you can bet your bottom dollar something would be done about it directly or indirectly.
Lee
So just how much stock in Microsoft do you own?
Not warranted? I'm going to rely on rational ignorance here when I say that Judge Jackson knew what he was talking about when he made is judgement. I'm doing this because I'm not familiar with every aspect of this case as played out in court. But then again neither are you.
I am familiar with Microsoft's track history and how they have violated antitrust law ever since they were paid by IBM for DOS. They used their monopoly on DOS to create monopolies in other areas. The fact that it took them till the windows days to finally pull it off is testament to the quality of their products more than anything.
Microsoft needs a good declawing. They are a long standing threat to the rest of the computer industry and they need to be taken out. If I woke up tomorrow in a world where there was no microsoft, I'd hardly be depressed about it.
The internet is changing our civilization itself in many ways, of which the political changes are only a small part. As I'm sure has been said many times before, the Internet is the most powerful too ever created for the storage and exchange of information and ideas. Each time new tools of this nature have been introduced, whether it be radio, television, the printing press, or written language itself, the world has changed dramatically and people have become more free.
At the dawn of civilization, increases in population led to new developments in agriculture. These allowed cultures which were formerly hunger-gatherers and nomads to settle in one location. From there populations increased over time and with them the need to keep track of things like who owned which cows and where did one person's land begin and another's end. To solve this problem primitive writing was created. This evolved as the culture grew and expanded with its population. Civilization was born. The great civilzations of the ancient Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, or the ancient Chinese would never have existed without written language. It is because of their written language that we know of them today.
The printing press changed world when it opened up a new world of knowledge and ideas to people who formerly would never be exposed to them. Books became something that many people could afford, increasing literacy and improving the average person's understanding of the world. This was something the church fought because they rightly feared that new knowledge and ideas would lead people to question church doctrine, undermining its authority. At one point it was illegal to print copies of the bible because it put the word of God in the hands of the common man, removing his need to get it through a priest.
Radio and television have by and large been used for entertainment, but not exclusively. News reports put people in touch with events happening anywhere and everywhere in a way that even the best newspaper reporter never could. Even the entertainment programming contains ideas that influence how people think.
Now we have the Internet, the greatest tool for social progress since the invention of the printing press or perhaps even the written word itself. It allows people to not only experience the ideas of others, but to put forth their own ideas. It makes it very difficult for those in power to control our civilization's beliefs by controlling our access to new and different ideas. This is partly why interest in politics has waned, people realize that the power to change the world rests with themselves. This of course undermines the existing power structures which depend on maintaining the status quo by misdirecting the people's energies for change into useless and even counterproductive activities.
Information and Knowledge are power, as is the ability to communicate information and ideas. As people aquire these things they aquire power over their own lives and the power to influence the world around them. It is this which spells the downfall of tyrrany and oppression and the birth of true freedom. It is very difficult for political or social ideologies which are based upon lies to gain a foothold in the face of thousands or millions of people who are willing and able to speak out against it and be heard. The internet makes true democracy possible.
In the future historians will look back on this time as the point at which things changed. Things like this remind me of how easy it is to be oblivious to history when we're the one's living it. I for one am glad to be here playing, playing my part in the changes all around us.
Lee Reynolds
That is one of the greatest movies ever made!! Talk about Deja Vu!!
Having worked at Fry's electronics as a computer tech, that movie touched me deeply in a way that I can only describe as having a spiritual revelation. It is no coincidence that the night I saw it was exactly 2 weeks from last day I worked at Fry's.
From working at Fry's I went on to working at a locally owned bookstore. There I was the IT department. I reconfigured their LAN and moved it from Win31 and DOS on Lantastic to Win31 and 9x on netbeui/TCP. We had two servers, an NT box for the file and database server and a linux system for the NAT server and firewall. I would have used linux for both except the custom inventory database system which ran on the server wouldn't run on linux. The Linux NAT server meant that all 25 systems in the store were online from 7am to 11pm. To do this I got paid 6.50 an hour. But guess what, I was happy!
Now I work at Arizona State University babysitting one of our computer labs and getting paid more than I was at Fry's. Did I mention I get free tuition?
Lee
Lord give me the strength to change the things I can, the patience to accept the things I cannot change, and the wisdom to know how to get rid of the bodies of people like this poor guy's boss. Lee
This is simply yet another example of how patent law is used to harrass competitors. Reminds me of how $cientology abuses and attempts to redefine copyright law to attack their critics.
Lee
Power in the hands of ordinary citizens which balances the power held by the government, this is the cornerstone of democracy.
I can forsee a time when encryption becomes every bit as important as free speech or the right to bear arms are to holding the government in check.
With things like the DMCA, Carnivore and other moves being made by the powers that be to undermine the power of the people, it is easy to get angry and discouraged. But then I see something like this and it reminds me that there are people out there willing to fight back. That not everyone has forgotten that the government derives its power from the consent of the governed and not the other way around.
Lee
Did you know that betamax was BETTER than VHS? But that didn't mean squat. Sony tried to control and license Betamax while VHS was an open standard. So what happened? VCR manufacturers made and sold VHS units and Betamax died a horrible death.
Better doesn't mean squat if it isn't compatible with the existing standard. This is something that firms have had to learn the hard way over and over again.
Lee
Yes but DVD is not used for the same purpose that VHS is. VHS is there so you can record television programs and movies. DVD is there so that MGM can sell you a prepackaged movie with great quality sound/video. The only way that VHS is going anywhere is if there is a viable replacement for it, which DVD is not.
Now I know that there are DVD recorders out there somewhere. I also know the cost about as much as a decent used car, so they're hardly an option for mainstream use.
Lee
Well you see that in and of itself is a problem. Artists and musicians aren't computer people. Some people are BOTH artists/musicians and computer people, but an artist/musician is not automatically someone who uses a computer. So how are they a market? I do hope not trying to compete in a niche market which doesn't even exist. If thats their business plan they they're already dead, just not broke yet. Instead of trying to regain some lost market share among a group which isn't big enough to support the company anyway, they should be working to gain a share of the mainstream market.
Lee