As a 31 year old adult, far from the years of high school, I can tell you that those years were absolutely the worst time of my life. As a computer head and social outcast I grew up in a wealthy suburban town in Massachusetts. Getting teased regularly is one thing, but these kids assaulted me in large groups. I didn't stand a chance and the faculty refused to provide relief from my tormenters. If I attempted to defend myself the administrators would take me to task for supporting violence, yet would not prevent or punish those committing blatant violence against me and the other outcasts.
This is a human rights issue. I know many who had to drop out of high school because it was just too dangerous to continue in school, even though we lived in a famous suburban town (known for it's involvement in the revolutionary war -- how ironic). School administrators use the threat of being outcast and regularly assaulted in order to force mental obedience. Because of my experience I will never place my children (when I do have children) in public schools. I would rather homeschool or find a good private school than potentially subject my children to that environment.
Of course what those kids did was wrong. It pains me to know that they were pushed up against the wall and mentally twisted to the point where they murdered 13 others and then committed suicide. But the very fact that they planned suicide from the very start is telling: as far as they were concerned their lives were worthless because of the regular abuse they received. So they struck back by taking the lives of their tormenters. Kids who take enjoyment from dishing out abuse should take note of this event; they may reap what they sow in lead from their targets.
And yes, nearly fifteen years after my walk through high school hell I am still angry over how I was treated and how the school administration prevented me from living in a reasonable non-violent and non-abusive environment. So, while banning trenchcoats, video games, and access to the Internet won't stop kids from going on insane murder sprees, school faculty and administrators might consider providing a safe and reasonable environment to learn without danger; that just might bring peace back to our schools.
Most of the current Y2K Web sites are written by men and (IMHO) tend to be focused on how to try and "fix" the problem -- they tend to be more analytical and emphasize the "big picture." Y2KWomen doesn't deal with the technical side of the Y2K problem; my goal is to focus on the practical side of the problem -- where the rubber meets the road -- and how this will impact our families and us.
A generalization, thus stereotyping all men into the roll analytical engine, of a thinking robot which can only solve problems, rather than appreciating that something which is both ethereal and physical about each special problem (and about why it somehow meets the road, squishy like rubber).
Oh. You want me to buy your book because you know What Every Woman Needs to Know and How to Keep Herself and Her Family Safe. Well, even though I'm not a woman, I feel that special comfort of wallet safety knowing, [you'll] also try and let [me] know when [I am] getting a really good price or when a higher price may be worth it because it will save [me] so much time.
You go girl! But please don't put your business in jeopardy. You need to make money too! ":-)"
I know that when there is a crisis, women are the first to help and encourage one another.
It's really nice to feel that golden warmth of good after a group affirmation followed by a hug. Especially when you don't have any power. And your bank account shows a negative balance (if it doesn't normally already ^cough!^ ). And then all the robot people rise up to overthrow humanity (just because their clocks got confused). I tell ya, we're in for the shit.
We need to pray and ask for God's strength to handle whatever happens together.
Amen to that!
Of course you could always learn some COBOL if you wanted to help stem the onslaught. Y2K is going to be one hairy ass ride. Kinda like Ken Kesey's "Furthur" bus, only with a mix of Stephen King gloom and a Charles Darwin-esq ride to extinction-ville, and the only thing that just might save us would be a groundswell of sympathetic and talented women COBOL PROGRAMMERS out there to protect us from Y2K anarchy. GO FOR IT!
As a man I ask you with all the humble acceptance of one who just cannot bring himself to the task, that we need your help. SAVE US KAREN ANDERSEN!!!!!!!!! You ARE the one! Yeah! ^clap!^ ^clap!^ ^clap^
Will it support glibc-2.1????
on
Red Hat 6.0
·
· Score: 1
Just a quick question... I'm evaluating whether to move our hosts up from libc5 to glibc and was hoping to hop over glibc-2.0.
Christianity is no longer the predominant philosophical force as it was during the Enlightenment. (In our time, corporatism is the nemesis of the individual.) america's founders separated Church and State, and other religions - Judaism, the Muslim - have become powerful in their own right.
In the past few years, a series of radical social and technological movements emanating from the Net and the Web have challenged conventional orthodoxy in its 20th century incarnation.
There is, of course, still a Holy Circle, and it has, at least until recently, dominated our social, political and cultural agenda. It still advances a collection of dogmatic ideas about politics, religion, sexuality, the form of government, morality and the control of information. Liberalism has a fixed dogma, and so does conservatism. The politically correct on the left and the moral purists on the right both constantly seek to control speech and curb free expression. Moral guardians dictate "appropriate" behavior. Corporations have extremely powerful notions about the flow of money and products, ideas that are ratified into law and enforced by government regulation. [emphases mine]
Multinational corporate control of the media is one of the most anti-democratic outcomes of modern communications technologies. Both Television and Radio don't allow for full duplex communication; those who own the transmitters control the communications content to all recipients. And they have used this monopoly to force everything from Playtex pantyhose to war without reasonable debate throughout much of the twentieth century.
Right now some of the largest multinational corporations are currently threatening everything from worldwide food production (Monsanto and it's Terminator gene) along with ADM and a number of other food producers and processors who appear intent on monopolizing world food production and distribution, the environmental devastation of core life sustaining bio-infrastructure (chemical and oil companies like DuPont and Exxon), along with almost total world capital control by the elite. If this Internet Thing gets out of hand and begins threatening elite control over worldwide resources I think we should expect a strong corporate backlash to control how the Internet is used and who has access. Given who finances congressional campaigns and the success they have achieved at incorporating special interest gains into leglislation through political action committees, don't expect our representatives to take a stand beyond their direct self interests.
We should all be frightened to note that hostID like serial numbers are being integrated into Pentium III chips at the same time that Microsoft has admitted that it collects personal data about end users and watermarks all documents generated from Microsoft Word. While this may seem great now that we've arrested the alleged Melisa virus author, anyone who writes dissident material should feel a chill down their spine. This threatens our very democracy as a basic violation of pricavy rights. Yet throughout the last twenty years our basic civil and property rights have been thwarted and subverted in the name of the Drug War, anti-terrorism, and tort reform. It should surprise no-one when we finally realize we have moved from a representative democracy (republic) to corporate socialism and individual social darwinism. This is really fascism, but that word has been so abused that it's meaningless in today's rhetoric.
The biggest human rights success of our age has been the discovery by the elite that propaganda is a cheaper method of control than outright brute force. But don't be foolish and think that a populist movement fueled by easy public access to bi-directional communications will cause the multinational elite to roll over and give up. They have shown time and again that when they're control and wealth is threatened they will take extreme (and often violent) action.
Wow. That must consume something like 250KW of power for CPU alone, never mind air conditioning power requirements. We have a ~300 machine Linux/Solaris/Irix cluster in my department and I can tell you the AC and UPS support costs are pretty serious.
PPC might be a good challenger to x86 for this market, ARM is an even better contender from a power consumption issue, but those new PlayStation 2's will supposedly support firewire and very fast single and double precision floating point. Sony has said that they will support a Linux software development kifor the PS2 (though probably a cross compiler on x86 with a cartridge2PC dongle)... but if Linux gets ported to the PS2 hardware directly (and Sony provides a memory upgrade kit), I could see these in scientific and image rendering machine rooms all over the world. If not the PS2, then something like the ARM based Netwinder which consumes an astonishing 14 Watts of power per unit... unfortunately the Netwinder has poor very floating performance.
What we need is a new machine which is small, consumes low power, and does floating point like mad. If the PS2 draws less than 20Watts per unit, it would really fit that bill!
Nowhere is this more evident than in the pages of this month's issue, which contains 80 PCs from 32 different manufacturers. While this might sound like a lot, consider this: last year's PC blockbuster had 91 systems from 39 manufacturers. While 24 of the companies in last year's round-up also submitted systems this year, that leaves 15 that didn't, for a number of reasons, not least of which is that many aren't around anymore. Only eight new companies have submitted PCs for the first time this year.
And this is the stated evidence that PC prices are unsustainable??? That a few integrators have gone out of business? Would he care to compare this result with the US airline industry deregulation? And then to claim this relates to the upcoming failure of Moores law because high tooling costs are driving volume manufacturing, which is what's also driving low prices, is either disingenuous or blatent ignorance. If, as he says:
So for Intel to continue to be successful, each new fab must be able to pay for itself, which means building not only faster microprocessors, but also more of them. This system encourages manufacturers like Compaq, Dell and IBM to take greater and greater volumes.
And:
Unfortunately, because of the volumes, price incentives and desire to grab market share, Machrone's Law is now broken. This has led to eroding margins for suppliers and downward pressure on prices. Even Intel has had to buckle under this pressure by cutting prices on CPUs to its largest customers, Dell, Compaq and IBM. Combined with pressure from AMD at the low end for even less expensive CPUs, one has to wonder where Intel is going to get the money to continue fab development into the future.
then Intel must be stupid enough to price themselves into oblivion by charging less than cost plus profit. By any rational free market position they deserve to go out of business because of critical poor planning (if this is actually the case, which I strongly doubt). That's the whole point of a free market, otherwise we'd need a regulatory body determining price structures -- which sounds suspiciously like Socialism. Somehow I doubt the author of this would admit to being a closet Socialist, so where are these arguments heading?
There's no such thing as free software, and there's no such thing as a cheap computer. Those who say otherwise are endangering tomorrow's IT choices.
OH, now I understand. Those arguments that Intel is damaging its future with low prices are really just a straw man to prop up the argument that Free Software will destroy the "tomorrow's IT choices." By this line of argument all collective effort by groups of individuals not managed by a for profit venture are somehow damaging tomorrows potential markets. One could include Churches, private non-profit charitable organizations, food co-ops, community theater (you could have spent that time at a movie -- think of the lost film industry profits!) community sponsored parks, you name it. This line of thinking, when taken to its extreme, would tear local communities apart -- along with Internet communities. And it's frightening... just look at the MAI (Multilateral Agreement on Investment) for a good look at what multinational business stands to gain when these kinds of rules get codified into law, and why it's a great threat to worldwide democratic progress.
It would be laughable were it not representative of worldwide trends in conservative elitist think tank, and multinational corporate, popular opinion.
[... ]Combine that with the fact that it is free and runs on damn near any hardware and most everything on it is written in C, which can be ported to any other platform or OS, and that it can do most anything Solaris or Irix or AIX or HPUX or VMS can do for a slightly monumental price, there is literally no stopping it; it will eventually dominate.
I like Linux. But you try to run Linux on a serious 4 CPU Sun Enterprise 4000 server; Solaris and Irix have much better thread implementations than Linux. I, along with three others in our systems group, are responsible for hundreds of Linux boxen at work. We also run a bunch 'o Sun {sparc,x86} SunOS 4/Solaris 2, AIX 4 on RS/6000, IRIX 4/5/6 on everything from Indigo to Challenge-S hardware, and SCO on x86 hosts; plus we have NT all over the place on people's desks -- many prefer Linux over NT on their desks but require a Windows application to perform their job. That's life.
I don't want to give up this heterogeneous environment of differing hardware and operating systems. We spent most of the seventies and eighties figuring out that homogeneous protocols was the solution to heterogeneous platform incompatibilities; standardizing on only x86 throws into the toilet nearly 30 years of computer science research. Just as standardizing on only Windows or Linux would lose us yet another degree of freedom when trying to solve various problems with a computer. Let's face it, A world of homogeneous Linux and only Linux would get stale... When that happens I think it will be time to re-invent those old LMI/Symbolics LISP/OS systems on modern hardware, begin a re-implementation of PRIME/OS or VMS, or maybe even take a job selling shoes.
Linux is not the only free and open source operating system which ports to a wide variety of hardware; NetBSD also shares this bragging right in about the same proportions of differing architectures supported. And that is Free software's most important contribution, not just that Linux and NetBSD are free for the taking (sans the greater licensing freedom any commercial organization would enjoy with NetBSD), but that finally we have the choice of a portable and common cross architecture OS environment and development API; this is almost the realization of true CPU independence in software. That success is a computer science milestone, which while irrelevant to those who have standardized on only x86 as a platform, is historicaly significant relative to much of the early thinking about handling architecture diversity in the early days of computer science.
But this is not entirely a theoretical excursion. Embedded systems manufacturers and possibly even new workstation manufacturers (just look at the ARM based Netwinder) could exploit performance gains from new architectures as these OS's grow in popularity. Since they're designed to be ported, and since the APIs are common, application software should port easily. WOW! I get choice, and my software "just works," and someone makes a buck. Sounds like good 'ol capitalism exploiting the potential of a new market previously unavailable in the closed source proprietary era.
As a sysadmin at BBN (now owned by GTE) I can tell you the crop of people I've interviewed over the last year has been abysmal. It's especially true of those with training in only NT. I've seen guys who don't know the difference between TCP, UDP, and ICMP and who didn't bother to read up on the OSI model. Many haven't learned even a basic scripting languages like sh (never mind C) yet sell themselves as competent mid-range system engineers. Or how about the guy who had never caculated the power requirements and heat dissipation (hence air conditioning requirements) for a machine room, yet calls himself a Sr. System Administrator. This is the kind of guy who calls in a consultant whenever he needs to get real work done.
And these attitudes are prevalent throughout the industry. It seems to me that much of the problem with acceptance of this kind of blatant incompetence by management is partly because of all these certificate training programs run by businesses like Microsoft and Novell, instead of accepting the standards set forth by nonprofit industry groups like LISA and SAGE. Microsoft isn't in the business of teaching skills, they are in the business of collecting money for handing out certificates. And most businesses would prefer to hire the less skilled admin with a certificate because he/she is cheaper than a good admin with a track record and job history. This is partly because many managers don't have their engineering staff interview potential candidates before hiring; management often seems to express a policy of 'what does an engineer know about hiring someone and conducting an interview???' Well, DUH! 'What does a manager know about engineering??? And why does he/she think they know enough to determine a candidates core competence of the requisite skills for that position???' I figure if you work at a place like this you're better off just looking for another job.
Hell, good admins don't take PHB bullshit too well because they know the next job is a telephone call away. I happen to know I'm good at what I do and deserve every dollar I earn (more, really). But I'm willing to take a cut in pay in order to stretch my skills and learn something new. Where I work we have several hundred Linux, Solaris, and IRIX hosts in our machine room running compute intensive batch jobs for speech modeling, very similar to a Beowulf or GNU/QUEUE cluster (though the software was internally written). This is a useful and fun skill to learn, but working in scientific and software development fields certainly doesn't pay top dollar. Could I double my salary to six figures? Tomorrow. I need only say yes to one of the multiple cold calls I get every week (the six figure offers usually come from financial houses). Now, Would I? And take that shit???? No way!
Black Parrot wrote: The problem with your proposal is that so long as MS maintained their current status, all they would have to do is "embrace and extend" the now-public API's and file formats. Sure, you could make them update the standard every time they came out with an new release of anything, but that would just mean they could push the standards around at will. Where's the consumer's advantage in that?
After all, there are already standards out there,a nd MS just ignores them, except when they need to pervert them to their own advantage.
Microsoft can't "pervert" a standard format if it's public. They can change the standard with their own products, but if they must release documentation for coding to that standard they cannot prevent others from maintaining compatibility. Soon, if these changes become a hassle for its users, the vast majority may decide to go somewhere else for their software.
Right now this cannot happen because Microsoft maintains a complete lock on their file formats. They change them with the sole intent of obfuscation to promote ignorance. The same is true of internal APIs to Windows and the kernel. These things should be documented and that documentation should be available either for free on the net, or in print for a nominal sum.
If the DOJ does that in five years Microsoft will be competing on their merits or closing in on bankruptcy.
So what if more vendors begin modifying and selling Windows? The issue isn't just Microsoft's monopolistic control over Windows and Office suite software, but their control over proprietary API, network and file formats. Two or more companies selling and developing the same product with interlocking NDA's could still leave us in the same position as before. More vendors selling Windows(tm) does not imply open standards or an end to monopolistic control over desktop software. This "solution" is a red herring which fails to resolve the core issues preventing competition in the desktop marketplace.
I suggest the government force Microsoft to document and release their Windows API, network and file formats to a standardization body like IEEE. Let the world know how to program to these standards while forcing Microsoft to either keep to those standards they created, or update the standards documentation with IEEE every time they make a change. The world doesn't need Microsoft's code, only reasonable documentation.
An AC wrote: While there is a fair bit of use for such a fuel, it won't solve the world's energy requirements. As you pointed out, the energy comes from the sun, and there is only so much energy in solar radiation. This isn't to say that it will not be useful, just wanted to point out that the most important thing is still to design stuff that's as efficient as possible and so minimises energy consuption in the first place...
Re: renewable fuels via biomass. First of all, I think a good deal of energy falls on the earth from the sun, more than enough to power our energy needs. Furthermore, a system whereby we "burned" some distilled crop or peat is environmentally friendly over the long term because the crop growth reabsorbes released carbon-dioxide generated during the burn. Hemp makes an excellent example of a crop which could be both grown in marginal soil and which output is high; several times more than corn. Burning oil, which is basically dead plant matter accumulated into pools over hundreds of millions of years, by its very nature releases all the stored carbon-dioxide accumulated over the eons. We're literally burning ourselves back to the Jurrasic. Or before.
So, if you agree with this supposition, do you think humanity has much of a choice? I'll take fusion when it arrives, but until then I'd like a sane long term engery generation and consumption policy.
Did anyone notice that there's not one mention of the word "Netscape" throughout the entire technical article? It's always sani-flush clean referred to with the euphemism Linux Compatible Web Browser. Go ahead, try an ALT-F (find in page) and see if that article mentions netscape even once. I wonder what's up with that???? Microsoft employees can't even utter (type) the word?
The second article by the slate staff writer mentions Netscape exactly twice.
If anything is flamebait then this is. Right or wrong may be fine for the number of lines of sourse code that so-and-so has written but what about the times when/. delves into more ideological discussion? For example, the discussion of Falwell vs. Teletubbies brought to the surface a number of ideological differences between slashdot members. Would it be fair so mark another's opinion as 'wrong'? And I don't even want to get INTO the whole KDE vs. gnome religious war. Perhaps if such a system as you suggest was put into place (not likely) a more appropriate method would be to rank the relevence of the comment instead of critiquing its writing style and verity.
Hi Will,
The problem I see with your statement is the notion that moderators could make moderation selections fairly and objectivly. People simply aren't objective no matter how hard you try. So it seems to me that the best solution to this problem is not to attempt hiding personal opinion over content, but to make it as open as possible. This way we get to both cut out those obnoxious 'first post!' and 'Meept!' comments and get a general consensus on readership oninion. Also, I'm not suggesting those radio buttons are the only solution to this problem, but I think it might work well.
The idea is you make all (logged in) users moderators. Everyone can vote. Gone are all the silly rules about giving away that you are a moderator. Gone is the elitism of a handful of moderators. Best, it'll work better, because there is more data available.
Yup, I made the same comment in an email to Rob and a post here before seeing this. I think you're (we're) absolutely right and am glad I'm not the only one promoting this as a fair solution.
I sent Rob an email regarding this suggestion, and I'm sure he's read it along with the thousands of other comments he's received. Still I'd like to present it in an open forum.
Why not allow anyone with an account to rate article quality? Then use this to create volume and quality metrics for individual comments and account holders. One could even maintain a database of votes which could provide valuable information of how/. readership opinion changes over time.
I realize Rob has already decided that not everyone will have moderation authority, but the problem with this is that by dividing the/. community between those with and those without these moderation privileges many moderators will abuse their responsibilities; Rob already seems quite aware of this problem.
One way to democratically resolve this issue is to let everyone who was willing to create a non anonymous account simply rate any article (but their own). Through such a system users would have by definition a fair sample of user opinion regarding comments; it makes rating articles a voting right and responsibility for the user community instead of a special priviledge for the few/. insiders. And since it relys on volume of votes in order to get a decent sample of user opinion, the system actually gets more accurate the more users vote (or rate) an article. This means that no one moderator could cut a comment down because of personal distaste for its contents.
One problem with such a solution is that many people might cut interesting comments down because of personal opinion. That is, giving intelligent comments a bad rap simply because many users don't agree with its content. It seems to me the solution to this is to provide extra selection critiera as radio buttons for each comments like:
o) This comment is complete flamebait crap. o) This comment is so poorly written as to be meaningless. o) This comment is well written but wrong! o) This comment is both well written and I agree with its contents.
Then allow for a signed integer value for users to give to the comment.
Based on this users could set threshold values for the volume of readers who have rated a comment along with which values any end user finds interesting. Also one could create GIF charts on the fly for each comment which would quickly show users how the/. community rated any one comment.
Good. Government agencies shouldn't force collusion with private industry in order to snoop on private citizens. Maybe this is one of a few examples of the 'net providing enough 'communication glue' among citizens to organize and act against what amounts to a financial tyranny.
DuaneGriffin wrote: Quickly, one problem is that even if only one generation of neighbouring crops is killed off because of 'infection', the farmer that owns them is still going to be mighty pissed. If it happens every year then they need to buy from Monsanto or go broke (and any suggestions that they can rely on the legal system for protection or redress are hereby laughed at in advance).
Excellent response. I wanted to make a similar statement but I was at work and got distracted by my responsibilities.
Basically it comes down to this: while by definition one can't create a fitness function for a system which won't self replicate, this doesn't mean that in the first iteration of that function it can't do something damaging. For example, consider the influenza epidemic of 1918, which killed a good 1% of the worlds population. Within a few months this flu killed all the susceptible people and died off, but it still killed a whole bunch of people.
In the same way if the Terminator Gene, in say soy, becomes airborne in pollen and germinates seeds from a standard soy crop growing in another farm, the result may not be a stable subspecies of soy but it would still prevent that neighboring farmer from reusing his/her "legally" produced seeds.
Suppose you lived in a third world country and all your next seasons seeds died off because a neighbor decided to grow Roundup Ready soy with the Terminator Gene; you would have no actionable recourse. Do you honestly think this farmer would be able to sue a company thousands of miles away situatated in another country (which seems hell bent on providing as many advantages to it's corporate campaign financers as possible)?
No, you would be fucked.
Finally, does anyone here think it makes sense to be copywriting genes produced by accident (or God if you like) from one species and then implanting those genes in another species and copywriting that new subspecies??? I understand the concept of patenting a process (such as a new transgenetic technique), but for our government to allow copywriting something which is available in the ambiant environment is bad policy.
Never mind the fact that for almost any of these species we haven't transcribed its genome. We have no idea what the long term consequences of introducing these new subspecies will be in our environment. We have no idea how they even work. We are fucking with life without even the slightest idea what might happen... bad policy.
Luddite my ass... I live for cool technology, but I don't like the idea of potentially trashing the worlds food supply, in what amounts to a huge experiment in transgenetics, without any public or scientific peer review.
mcelrath wrote: And the government monopoly currently controlling our food supply is any better? Are you arguing against monopoly (which doesn't make sense -- government) or corporate food production (which also doesn't make sense...unless you want to live in a communist state).
I respond to this at the tail end of my comment Such a contract undermines our food supply. I look forward to your response.
Nigri Wrote: The farmers who bought that seed signed a contract with Monstanto agreeing not to save any seed corn. They did this for the economic advantage of not having to worry about where they spray their noxious chemicals around. The fact that they'd like to break that contract should earn them no sympathy from anyone. If they had refrused en masse to sign that contract, Monsanto would have had to find another way to sell that seed.
That's right. Roundup Ready seeds are genetically engineered to handle mass saturation of Roundup pesticide. This is dangerous to our groundwater and food supply.
Monsanto plans to soon release Roundup Ready seeds with terminator genes which will prevent second generation seeds from germinating. Many environmentalists and geneticists have stated concerns that such terminator genes could be passed into the general crop population via pollen and potentially kill off our original crops leaving only corporate produced seeds available to farmers. Such a move is insanity if we consider survival a worthy goal for humanity.
It's one thing to support intellectual property laws for books and other creations. But to interpret IP laws in such a way that allows such basic survival needs as our food supply to fall in the hands of only a few corporations is asking for human extinction. We will go the way of the dinasours like this, or at the very least risk losing critical crops by genetic blunder.
I note that the European Union is fighting United States through the Word Trade Organization demanding that the EU stop labeling genetically engineered foods as such. In other words the United States is demanding that Europe ban labeling their food supply (which they consider a national health concern). Europe doesn't want to ban the sale of these foods, just label them like we do with our nutritional content labels. How is that trade restraint? It's not, what it shows is that companies like ADM and Monsanto have our congress and executive branches at their mercy. If this continues soon the worlds peoples will be at their mercy as well.
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Someone previously asked if I prefer food production be monopolized by the government instead of international corporations.
I respond with:
a) This is not the case today, nor has it ever been in the US. Most food prduction used to be handled by small farmers, this changed over the eighties as banks over-lent to indivudal farms and then collected the land from all the mortgage defaults during Paul Volker's (former head of the Federal Reserve board, see: "Secrets of the Temple," by William Greider) planned 'recession.' Guess who wound up with all that land? It wasn't other small time farmers.
b) Even if the government did nationalize all the farming land (which would be patently unconstitutional) at least we would have some power via our voting rights. All those idiots claiming the private sector provides better efficiency and more freedom forget that we citizens have _no say_ over how private industry manages these properties.
I'm not advocating communism, just pointing out that the private sector gives citizens far less freedoms than what is constitutionally protected by our government. The only people with power in the private sector are large scale corporate share holders, and they're such a nice small club, now aren't they?
Let them eat cake my ass... if this continues we may have no more grain producing crops left. What happens then?
Should Monsanto (and other Agri business and genetic engineering firms) be allowed to own genes as intellectual property? Monsanto calls saving seed from Roundup Ready(tm) crops and replanting in the next season "Seed Piracy." (*) Do you want a corporate monoploy controlling our food supply?
This is not just about software, the intellectual property laws are so broken that we're about to hand over something as critical to our survival as food production to huge international agri-businesses like ADM and Monsanto without even thinking of the long term consequences to our survival. This could get BAD....
* See April '99 issue of Harpers for an important article on this issue.
I looked over those pages and found nothing but yet another philosophical movement which claims to solve humanities problems by redefining [reframing] them into something else.
Starving masses cannot be reframed away.
For example, in this months Harpers is published a small story on Monsanto, the agri/chemi business which created and sells Roundup Ready crop seeds along with their pesticide, Roundup. They are claiming that Roundup Ready seeds are intellectual property, and therefore to save and replant these seeds from a Roundup Ready seed crop is "seed piracy." These seeds are genetically engineered to be resistant to the Roundup pesticide, allowing a farmer to saturate the crop with pesticide, where previously one had to be a little more judicious with its use, simply because it tends to kill the crop along with the pests. Of course the fact that Roundup runnoff into our water and food supply, and how that may affect the environment and people, isn't even considered.
Monsanto plans to soon release it's seeds with a "Terminator Gene," designed to prevent second generation seeds from germinating. The fear is that this gene could spread to original crops and wipe out our base food supply. For example, Roundup Ready soy when planted could spread the terminator gene through pollen to standard soy crops, and start a chain reaction which could lead to worldwide soy decimation. Of course, Monsanto Roundup Ready soy will always be readily available. That is, as long as Monsanto stays in business.
The United States is taking Europe to the WTO (World Trade Union) because Europe wants to label genetically engineered crops as they go to the store shelf. Europe doesn't want to ban these crops, only label them, yet the US is fighting to prevent this by calling it a trade sanction. That's right, informing the population about what they're eating is somehow trade restraint...
Your 'Extropy' philosophy may be a nice twist to the word entropy, but it won't change the suicidal path humanity is walking down as we hand over control of our food supply to corporate monoliths who seem prepared to let the world starve in order to monopolize worldwide food production and distribution. When local farmers can't store seed for the next generation, should worldwide calamity hit we will see devestation unlike anything since the dinasours took their last breath.
Just because the rabble can post a few rants on USENET doesn't change the political power structure. Here in the United States my father can't get decent medical attention because he can't obtain proper medical coverage (and he's on Medicare with a private MediGap insurance policy). Wasn't it the insurance industry who claimed single payer health coverage like in Europe and Canada would bankrupt the healthcare industry and force access 'rationing' for basic medical coverage? And isn't that what we have right now??? Who's talking about this on the net? Why isn't it getting large scale coverage? Could it be because even though individuals can present their views more readily, spreading that view is just as difficult as before?
What is this 'Renaissance'? One where cybersex and sex robots can electronically service shy geeks [as taken from your last story], while serious discourse is discouraged through boredom? This is 'enlightenment'? We're heading for a major 'correction' in the population (that means mass starvation) as international corporations gobble up all the agribusiness and force genetically engineered crops down our throats. Think anyone gives a rats ass about that? (they will when the food becomes scarce)
Or campaign finance reform? Does anyone in Amercia care about policitcal corruption and bribery among our elected officials? Does anyone really care that our lawmakers take campaign contributions and then slyly pass bills written by lobbyists from those very same contributors while poor children starve in schools literally falling to pieces?
This is not the kind of discourse I see on the net. No I see sex, sex, sex, and political commentary carefullly crafted by ABC News, MSNBC, CNN, and the like. I also notice that small individually written homepages have become almost impossible to find on the major search engines of late. Could this be because the major news outlets don't want their information monopoly disapated by individuals acting in their own best interests?
Just because we serfs can present our viewpoint to each other doesn't mean the power brokers in Washington give a rats ass. The unfortunate thing is that neither does the populace.
[...] Create an Enterprise standard, Home User/SOHO standard, and a Developer standard(which would be coordinated to allow ease of development for which ever branch they wanted to focus on and allow for compatibility with the other.)
AND:
[...] This would, in effect, short circuit the corporate steamrollers attempts from dictating thier view of standards on a community which requires the freedom to work as they please. Of course any sort of standard will place some restrictions on development, however it would be better to establish an open standard rather than have it be dictated by the needs of a corporate hierarchy.
I take this to mean that one way to solve the problem of standards is to allow for multiple distributions like we have now. I don't have a problem with that, but I think it's inevitable anyway. For example, I don't think a corporate controlled standard would ever be able to force the Debian project into implementing something they didn't like.
However, if the majority of the Linux community gets suckered into buying a commercial distribution which contained a core proprietary component, such as speech recognition in an office suite, that commercial vendor could wind up with quite a lot of standards control.
But somehow I suspect there will still be folks out there running command line Debian systems on 386's. No speech recognition necessary.
WOW. Not knowing the VA folks personally I can only vouce for them professionally. I bought a VA box for my company about four months ago or so. They were great! I want to do business with them again.
As for their business model, well - yeah, so what?
You think that ~$500 market niche ought to be filled? And you're complaining to someone else about the problem? Either start the business yourself or shut the fuck up!
Obviously, Gnome people give their rats asses. If you aren't only using their product, you're Satan.
I Agree.
Folks ought to take a little perspective on this issue. For example, if you're against the QPL, how can you support Sun JAVA and Netscape MGL licenses? Is the QPL worse than Sun's new "community License" for Solaris? Do you hate Sun with the same ferver?
Well, I take it in stride, even though I prefer free in the same sense rms prefers free. But what the hell, not everyone else agrees. Some people want to make money with their code, and the laws says this is their right. For Troll Tech to release their source code at all was a significant move for a private corporation. It allowed its users to scrutinize QT as a product totally, unlike how most other proprietary APIs were closed internally.
So I think all these self righteous verbal assaults against Troll Tech's previous and current licenses are misguided. They are truely one step above the likes of Microsoft, Oracle, and the other huge proprietary software vendors. And like Sun and Netscape, Troll Tech asserts some proprietary rights, but they still give out the source.
I use KDE because it's worked better over the last year than CDE (that horribly bug ridden product from the "Open" Group). Well, I like that integrated desktop stuff. So I'm downloading GNOME-1.0 right now and will use it for a good test run. I hope for smooth sailing ahead and a realistic impression of how I want to use this software down the road.
What I really want to see soon is both systems running together. I hope the KDE and GNOME developers agree on API standards so GNOME and KDE systems integrate better in the future. We should have both, and the developers should work together - without animosity. What drives these flames?
Slashdot Mirror
As a 31 year old adult, far from the years of high school, I can tell you that those years were absolutely the worst time of my life. As a computer head and social outcast I grew up in a wealthy suburban town in Massachusetts. Getting teased regularly is one thing, but these kids assaulted me in large groups. I didn't stand a chance and the faculty refused to provide relief from my tormenters. If I attempted to defend myself the administrators would take me to task for supporting violence, yet would not prevent or punish those committing blatant violence against me and the other outcasts.
This is a human rights issue. I know many who had to drop out of high school because it was just too dangerous to continue in school, even though we lived in a famous suburban town (known for it's involvement in the revolutionary war -- how ironic). School administrators use the threat of being outcast and regularly assaulted in order to force mental obedience. Because of my experience I will never place my children (when I do have children) in public schools. I would rather homeschool or find a good private school than potentially subject my children to that environment.
Of course what those kids did was wrong. It pains me to know that they were pushed up against the wall and mentally twisted to the point where they murdered 13 others and then committed suicide. But the very fact that they planned suicide from the very start is telling: as far as they were concerned their lives were worthless because of the regular abuse they received. So they struck back by taking the lives of their tormenters. Kids who take enjoyment from dishing out abuse should take note of this event; they may reap what they sow in lead from their targets.
And yes, nearly fifteen years after my walk through high school hell I am still angry over how I was treated and how the school administration prevented me from living in a reasonable non-violent and non-abusive environment. So, while banning trenchcoats, video games, and access to the Internet won't stop kids from going on insane murder sprees, school faculty and administrators might consider providing a safe and reasonable environment to learn without danger; that just might bring peace back to our schools.
Most of the current Y2K Web sites are written by men and (IMHO) tend to be focused on how to try and "fix" the problem -- they tend to be more analytical and emphasize the "big picture." Y2KWomen doesn't deal with the technical side of the Y2K problem; my goal is to focus on the practical side of the problem -- where the rubber meets the road -- and how this will impact our families and us.
A generalization, thus stereotyping all men into the roll analytical engine, of a thinking robot which can only solve problems, rather than appreciating that something which is both ethereal and physical about each special problem (and about why it somehow meets the road, squishy like rubber).
One of the questions I keep hearing over and over is, Where do I start?
Oh. You want me to buy your book because you know What Every Woman Needs to Know and How to Keep Herself and Her Family Safe. Well, even though I'm not a woman, I feel that special comfort of wallet safety knowing, [you'll] also try and let [me] know when [I am] getting a really good price or when a higher price may be worth it because it will save [me] so much time.
You go girl! But please don't put your business in jeopardy. You need to make money too! ":-)"
I know that when there is a crisis, women are the first to help and encourage one another.
It's really nice to feel that golden warmth of good after a group affirmation followed by a hug. Especially when you don't have any power. And your bank account shows a negative balance (if it doesn't normally already ^cough!^ ). And then all the robot people rise up to overthrow humanity (just because their clocks got confused). I tell ya, we're in for the shit.
We need to pray and ask for God's strength to handle whatever happens together.
Amen to that!
Of course you could always learn some COBOL if you wanted to help stem the onslaught. Y2K is going to be one hairy ass ride. Kinda like Ken Kesey's "Furthur" bus, only with a mix of Stephen King gloom and a Charles Darwin-esq ride to extinction-ville, and the only thing that just might save us would be a groundswell of sympathetic and talented women COBOL PROGRAMMERS out there to protect us from Y2K anarchy. GO FOR IT!
As a man I ask you with all the humble acceptance of one who just cannot bring himself to the task, that we need your help. SAVE US KAREN ANDERSEN!!!!!!!!! You ARE the one! Yeah! ^clap!^ ^clap!^ ^clap^
Just a quick question... I'm evaluating whether to move our hosts up from libc5 to glibc and was hoping to hop over glibc-2.0.
Christianity is no longer the predominant philosophical force as it was during the Enlightenment. (In our time, corporatism is the nemesis of the individual.) america's founders separated Church and State, and other religions - Judaism, the Muslim - have become powerful in their own right.
In the past few years, a series of radical social and technological movements emanating from the Net and the Web have challenged conventional orthodoxy in its 20th century incarnation.
There is, of course, still a Holy Circle, and it has, at least until recently, dominated our social, political and cultural agenda. It still advances a collection of dogmatic ideas about politics, religion, sexuality, the form of government, morality and the control of information. Liberalism has a fixed dogma, and so does conservatism. The politically correct on the left and the moral purists on the right both constantly seek to control speech and curb free expression. Moral guardians dictate "appropriate" behavior. Corporations have extremely powerful notions about the flow of money and products, ideas that are ratified into law and enforced by government regulation. [emphases mine]
Multinational corporate control of the media is one of the most anti-democratic outcomes of modern communications technologies. Both Television and Radio don't allow for full duplex communication; those who own the transmitters control the communications content to all recipients. And they have used this monopoly to force everything from Playtex pantyhose to war without reasonable debate throughout much of the twentieth century.
Right now some of the largest multinational corporations are currently threatening everything from worldwide food production (Monsanto and it's Terminator gene) along with ADM and a number of other food producers and processors who appear intent on monopolizing world food production and distribution, the environmental devastation of core life sustaining bio-infrastructure (chemical and oil companies like DuPont and Exxon), along with almost total world capital control by the elite. If this Internet Thing gets out of hand and begins threatening elite control over worldwide resources I think we should expect a strong corporate backlash to control how the Internet is used and who has access. Given who finances congressional campaigns and the success they have achieved at incorporating special interest gains into leglislation through political action committees, don't expect our representatives to take a stand beyond their direct self interests.
We should all be frightened to note that hostID like serial numbers are being integrated into Pentium III chips at the same time that Microsoft has admitted that it collects personal data about end users and watermarks all documents generated from Microsoft Word. While this may seem great now that we've arrested the alleged Melisa virus author, anyone who writes dissident material should feel a chill down their spine. This threatens our very democracy as a basic violation of pricavy rights. Yet throughout the last twenty years our basic civil and property rights have been thwarted and subverted in the name of the Drug War, anti-terrorism, and tort reform. It should surprise no-one when we finally realize we have moved from a representative democracy (republic) to corporate socialism and individual social darwinism. This is really fascism, but that word has been so abused that it's meaningless in today's rhetoric.
The biggest human rights success of our age has been the discovery by the elite that propaganda is a cheaper method of control than outright brute force. But don't be foolish and think that a populist movement fueled by easy public access to bi-directional communications will cause the multinational elite to roll over and give up. They have shown time and again that when they're control and wealth is threatened they will take extreme (and often violent) action.
Wow. That must consume something like 250KW of power for CPU alone, never mind air conditioning power requirements. We have a ~300 machine Linux/Solaris/Irix cluster in my department and I can tell you the AC and UPS support costs are pretty serious.
PPC might be a good challenger to x86 for this market, ARM is an even better contender from a power consumption issue, but those new PlayStation 2's will supposedly support firewire and very fast single and double precision floating point. Sony has said that they will support a Linux software development kifor the PS2 (though probably a cross compiler on x86 with a cartridge2PC dongle)... but if Linux gets ported to the PS2 hardware directly (and Sony provides a memory upgrade kit), I could see these in scientific and image rendering machine rooms all over the world. If not the PS2, then something like the ARM based Netwinder which consumes an astonishing 14 Watts of power per unit... unfortunately the Netwinder has poor very floating performance.
What we need is a new machine which is small, consumes low power, and does floating point like mad. If the PS2 draws less than 20Watts per unit, it would really fit that bill!
Nowhere is this more evident than in the pages of this month's issue, which contains 80 PCs from 32 different manufacturers. While this might sound like a lot, consider this: last year's PC blockbuster had 91 systems from 39 manufacturers. While 24 of the companies in last year's round-up also submitted systems this year, that leaves 15 that didn't, for a number of reasons, not least of which is that many aren't around anymore. Only eight new companies have submitted PCs for the first time this year.
And this is the stated evidence that PC prices are unsustainable??? That a few integrators have gone out of business? Would he care to compare this result with the US airline industry deregulation? And then to claim this relates to the upcoming failure of Moores law because high tooling costs are driving volume manufacturing, which is what's also driving low prices, is either disingenuous or blatent ignorance. If, as he says:
So for Intel to continue to be successful, each new fab must be able to pay for itself, which means building not only faster microprocessors, but also more of them. This system encourages manufacturers like Compaq, Dell and IBM to take greater and greater volumes.
And:
Unfortunately, because of the volumes, price incentives and desire to grab market share, Machrone's Law is now broken. This has led to eroding margins for suppliers and downward pressure on prices. Even Intel has had to buckle under this pressure by cutting prices on CPUs to its largest customers, Dell, Compaq and IBM. Combined with pressure from AMD at the low end for even less expensive CPUs, one has to wonder where Intel is going to get the money to continue fab development into the future.
then Intel must be stupid enough to price themselves into oblivion by charging less than cost plus profit. By any rational free market position they deserve to go out of business because of critical poor planning (if this is actually the case, which I strongly doubt). That's the whole point of a free market, otherwise we'd need a regulatory body determining price structures -- which sounds suspiciously like Socialism. Somehow I doubt the author of this would admit to being a closet Socialist, so where are these arguments heading?
There's no such thing as free software, and there's no such thing as a cheap computer. Those who say otherwise are endangering tomorrow's IT choices.
OH, now I understand. Those arguments that Intel is damaging its future with low prices are really just a straw man to prop up the argument that Free Software will destroy the "tomorrow's IT choices." By this line of argument all collective effort by groups of individuals not managed by a for profit venture are somehow damaging tomorrows potential markets. One could include Churches, private non-profit charitable organizations, food co-ops, community theater (you could have spent that time at a movie -- think of the lost film industry profits!) community sponsored parks, you name it. This line of thinking, when taken to its extreme, would tear local communities apart -- along with Internet communities. And it's frightening... just look at the MAI (Multilateral Agreement on Investment) for a good look at what multinational business stands to gain when these kinds of rules get codified into law, and why it's a great threat to worldwide democratic progress.
It would be laughable were it not representative of worldwide trends in conservative elitist think tank, and multinational corporate, popular opinion.
[... ]Combine that with the fact that it is free and runs on damn near any hardware and most everything on it is written in C, which can be ported to any other platform or OS, and that it can do most anything Solaris or Irix or AIX or HPUX or VMS can do for a slightly monumental price, there is literally no stopping it; it will eventually dominate.
I like Linux. But you try to run Linux on a serious 4 CPU Sun Enterprise 4000 server; Solaris and Irix have much better thread implementations than Linux. I, along with three others in our systems group, are responsible for hundreds of Linux boxen at work. We also run a bunch 'o Sun {sparc,x86} SunOS 4/Solaris 2, AIX 4 on RS/6000, IRIX 4/5/6 on everything from Indigo to Challenge-S hardware, and SCO on x86 hosts; plus we have NT all over the place on people's desks -- many prefer Linux over NT on their desks but require a Windows application to perform their job. That's life.
I don't want to give up this heterogeneous environment of differing hardware and operating systems. We spent most of the seventies and eighties figuring out that homogeneous protocols was the solution to heterogeneous platform incompatibilities; standardizing on only x86 throws into the toilet nearly 30 years of computer science research. Just as standardizing on only Windows or Linux would lose us yet another degree of freedom when trying to solve various problems with a computer. Let's face it, A world of homogeneous Linux and only Linux would get stale... When that happens I think it will be time to re-invent those old LMI/Symbolics LISP/OS systems on modern hardware, begin a re-implementation of PRIME/OS or VMS, or maybe even take a job selling shoes.
Linux is not the only free and open source operating system which ports to a wide variety of hardware; NetBSD also shares this bragging right in about the same proportions of differing architectures supported. And that is Free software's most important contribution, not just that Linux and NetBSD are free for the taking (sans the greater licensing freedom any commercial organization would enjoy with NetBSD), but that finally we have the choice of a portable and common cross architecture OS environment and development API; this is almost the realization of true CPU independence in software. That success is a computer science milestone, which while irrelevant to those who have standardized on only x86 as a platform, is historicaly significant relative to much of the early thinking about handling architecture diversity in the early days of computer science.
But this is not entirely a theoretical excursion. Embedded systems manufacturers and possibly even new workstation manufacturers (just look at the ARM based Netwinder) could exploit performance gains from new architectures as these OS's grow in popularity. Since they're designed to be ported, and since the APIs are common, application software should port easily. WOW! I get choice, and my software "just works," and someone makes a buck. Sounds like good 'ol capitalism exploiting the potential of a new market previously unavailable in the closed source proprietary era.
As a sysadmin at BBN (now owned by GTE) I can tell you the crop of people I've interviewed over the last year has been abysmal. It's especially true of those with training in only NT. I've seen guys who don't know the difference between TCP, UDP, and ICMP and who didn't bother to read up on the OSI model. Many haven't learned even a basic scripting languages like sh (never mind C) yet sell themselves as competent mid-range system engineers. Or how about the guy who had never caculated the power requirements and heat dissipation (hence air conditioning requirements) for a machine room, yet calls himself a Sr. System Administrator. This is the kind of guy who calls in a consultant whenever he needs to get real work done.
And these attitudes are prevalent throughout the industry. It seems to me that much of the problem with acceptance of this kind of blatant incompetence by management is partly because of all these certificate training programs run by businesses like Microsoft and Novell, instead of accepting the standards set forth by nonprofit industry groups like LISA and SAGE. Microsoft isn't in the business of teaching skills, they are in the business of collecting money for handing out certificates. And most businesses would prefer to hire the less skilled admin with a certificate because he/she is cheaper than a good admin with a track record and job history. This is partly because many managers don't have their engineering staff interview potential candidates before hiring; management often seems to express a policy of 'what does an engineer know about hiring someone and conducting an interview???' Well, DUH! 'What does a manager know about engineering??? And why does he/she think they know enough to determine a candidates core competence of the requisite skills for that position???' I figure if you work at a place like this you're better off just looking for another job.
Hell, good admins don't take PHB bullshit too well because they know the next job is a telephone call away. I happen to know I'm good at what I do and deserve every dollar I earn (more, really). But I'm willing to take a cut in pay in order to stretch my skills and learn something new. Where I work we have several hundred Linux, Solaris, and IRIX hosts in our machine room running compute intensive batch jobs for speech modeling, very similar to a Beowulf or GNU/QUEUE cluster (though the software was internally written). This is a useful and fun skill to learn, but working in scientific and software development fields certainly doesn't pay top dollar. Could I double my salary to six figures? Tomorrow. I need only say yes to one of the multiple cold calls I get every week (the six figure offers usually come from financial houses). Now, Would I? And take that shit???? No way!
Black Parrot wrote:
The problem with your proposal is that so long as MS maintained their current status, all they would have to do is "embrace and extend" the now-public API's and file formats. Sure, you could make them update the standard every time they came out with an new release of anything, but that would just mean they could push the standards around at will. Where's the consumer's advantage in that?
After all, there are already standards out there,a nd MS just ignores them, except when they need to pervert them to their own advantage.
Microsoft can't "pervert" a standard format if it's public. They can change the standard with their own products, but if they must release documentation for coding to that standard they cannot prevent others from maintaining compatibility. Soon, if these changes become a hassle for its users, the vast majority may decide to go somewhere else for their software.
Right now this cannot happen because Microsoft maintains a complete lock on their file formats. They change them with the sole intent of obfuscation to promote ignorance. The same is true of internal APIs to Windows and the kernel. These things should be documented and that documentation should be available either for free on the net, or in print for a nominal sum.
If the DOJ does that in five years Microsoft will be competing on their merits or closing in on bankruptcy.
So what if more vendors begin modifying and selling Windows? The issue isn't just Microsoft's monopolistic control over Windows and Office suite software, but their control over proprietary API, network and file formats. Two or more companies selling and developing the same product with interlocking NDA's could still leave us in the same position as before. More vendors selling Windows(tm) does not imply open standards or an end to monopolistic control over desktop software. This "solution" is a red herring which fails to resolve the core issues preventing competition in the desktop marketplace.
I suggest the government force Microsoft to document and release their Windows API, network and file formats to a standardization body like IEEE. Let the world know how to program to these standards while forcing Microsoft to either keep to those standards they created, or update the standards documentation with IEEE every time they make a change. The world doesn't need Microsoft's code, only reasonable documentation.
An AC wrote:
While there is a fair bit of use for such a fuel, it won't solve the world's energy requirements. As you pointed out, the energy comes from the sun, and there is only so much energy in solar radiation. This isn't to say that it will not be useful, just wanted to point out that the most important thing is still to design stuff that's as efficient as possible and so minimises energy consuption in the first place...
Re: renewable fuels via biomass. First of all, I think a good deal of energy falls on the earth from the sun, more than enough to power our energy needs. Furthermore, a system whereby we "burned" some distilled crop or peat is environmentally friendly over the long term because the crop growth reabsorbes released carbon-dioxide generated during the burn. Hemp makes an excellent example of a crop which could be both grown in marginal soil and which output is high; several times more than corn. Burning oil, which is basically dead plant matter accumulated into pools over hundreds of millions of years, by its very nature releases all the stored carbon-dioxide accumulated over the eons. We're literally burning ourselves back to the Jurrasic. Or before.
So, if you agree with this supposition, do you think humanity has much of a choice? I'll take fusion when it arrives, but until then I'd like a sane long term engery generation and consumption policy.
Did anyone notice that there's not one mention of the word "Netscape" throughout the entire technical article? It's always sani-flush clean referred to with the euphemism Linux Compatible Web Browser. Go ahead, try an ALT-F (find in page) and see if that article mentions netscape even once. I wonder what's up with that???? Microsoft employees can't even utter (type) the word?
The second article by the slate staff writer mentions Netscape exactly twice.
If anything is flamebait then this is. Right or wrong may be fine for the number of lines of sourse code that so-and-so has written but what about the times when /. delves into more ideological discussion? For example, the discussion of Falwell vs. Teletubbies brought to the surface a number of ideological differences between slashdot members. Would it be fair so mark another's opinion as 'wrong'? And I don't even want to get INTO the whole KDE vs. gnome religious war. Perhaps if such a system as you suggest was put into place (not likely) a more appropriate method would be to rank the relevence of the comment instead of critiquing its writing style and verity.
Hi Will,
The problem I see with your statement is the notion that moderators could make moderation selections fairly and objectivly. People simply aren't objective no matter how hard you try. So it seems to me that the best solution to this problem is not to attempt hiding personal opinion over content, but to make it as open as possible. This way we get to both cut out those obnoxious 'first post!' and 'Meept!' comments and get a general consensus on readership oninion. Also, I'm not suggesting those radio buttons are the only solution to this problem, but I think it might work well.
The idea is you make all (logged in) users moderators. Everyone can vote. Gone are all the silly rules about giving away that you are a moderator. Gone is the elitism of a handful of moderators. Best, it'll work better, because there is more data available.
Yup, I made the same comment in an email to Rob and a post here before seeing this. I think you're (we're) absolutely right and am glad I'm not the only one promoting this as a fair solution.
I sent Rob an email regarding this suggestion, and I'm sure he's read it along with the thousands of other comments he's received. Still I'd like to present it in an open forum.
/. readership opinion changes over time.
/. community between those with and those without these moderation privileges many moderators will abuse their responsibilities; Rob already seems quite aware of this problem.
/. insiders. And since it relys on volume of votes in order to get a decent sample of user opinion, the system actually gets more accurate the more users vote (or rate) an article. This means that no one moderator could cut a comment down because of personal distaste for its contents.
/. community rated any one comment.
Why not allow anyone with an account to rate article quality? Then use this to create volume and quality metrics for individual comments and account holders. One could even maintain a database of votes which could provide valuable information of how
I realize Rob has already decided that not everyone will have moderation authority, but the problem with this is that by dividing the
One way to democratically resolve this issue is to let everyone who was willing to create a non anonymous account simply rate any article (but their own). Through such a system users would have by definition a fair sample of user opinion regarding comments; it makes rating articles a voting right and responsibility for the user community instead of a special priviledge for the few
One problem with such a solution is that many people might cut interesting comments down because of personal opinion. That is, giving intelligent comments a bad rap simply because many users don't agree with its content. It seems to me the solution to this is to provide extra selection critiera as radio buttons for each comments like:
o) This comment is complete flamebait crap.
o) This comment is so poorly written as to be meaningless.
o) This comment is well written but wrong!
o) This comment is both well written and I agree with its contents.
Then allow for a signed integer value for users to give to the comment.
Based on this users could set threshold values for the volume of readers who have rated a comment along with which values any end user finds interesting. Also one could create GIF charts on the fly for each comment which would quickly show users how the
Just a suggestion!
Good. Government agencies shouldn't force collusion with private industry in order to snoop on private citizens. Maybe this is one of a few examples of the 'net providing enough 'communication glue' among citizens to organize and act against what amounts to a financial tyranny.
DuaneGriffin wrote:
Quickly, one problem is that even if only one generation of neighbouring crops is killed off because of 'infection', the farmer that owns them is still going to be mighty pissed. If it happens every year then they need to buy from Monsanto or go broke (and any suggestions that they can rely on the legal system for protection or redress are hereby laughed at in advance).
Excellent response. I wanted to make a similar statement but I was at work and got distracted by my responsibilities.
Basically it comes down to this: while by definition one can't create a fitness function for a system which won't self replicate, this doesn't mean that in the first iteration of that function it can't do something damaging. For example, consider the influenza epidemic of 1918, which killed a good 1% of the worlds population. Within a few months this flu killed all the susceptible people and died off, but it still killed a whole bunch of people.
In the same way if the Terminator Gene, in say soy, becomes airborne in pollen and germinates seeds from a standard soy crop growing in another farm, the result may not be a stable subspecies of soy but it would still prevent that neighboring farmer from reusing his/her "legally" produced seeds.
Suppose you lived in a third world country and all your next seasons seeds died off because a neighbor decided to grow Roundup Ready soy with the Terminator Gene; you would have no actionable recourse. Do you honestly think this farmer would be able to sue a company thousands of miles away situatated in another country (which seems hell bent on providing as many advantages to it's corporate campaign financers as possible)?
No, you would be fucked.
Finally, does anyone here think it makes sense to be copywriting genes produced by accident (or God if you like) from one species and then implanting those genes in another species and copywriting that new subspecies??? I understand the concept of patenting a process (such as a new transgenetic technique), but for our government to allow copywriting something which is available in the ambiant environment is bad policy.
Never mind the fact that for almost any of these species we haven't transcribed its genome. We have no idea what the long term consequences of introducing these new subspecies will be in our environment. We have no idea how they even work. We are fucking with life without even the slightest idea what might happen... bad policy.
Luddite my ass... I live for cool technology, but I don't like the idea of potentially trashing the worlds food supply, in what amounts to a huge experiment in transgenetics, without any public or scientific peer review.
mcelrath wrote:
And the government monopoly currently controlling our food supply is any better? Are you arguing against monopoly (which doesn't make sense -- government) or corporate food production (which also doesn't make sense...unless you want to live in a communist state).
I respond to this at the tail end of my comment Such a contract undermines our food supply. I look forward to your response.
Nigri Wrote:
The farmers who bought that seed signed a contract with Monstanto agreeing not to save any seed corn. They did this for the economic advantage of not having to worry about where they spray their noxious chemicals around. The fact that they'd like to break that contract should earn them no sympathy from anyone. If they had refrused en masse to sign that contract, Monsanto would have had to find another way to sell that seed.
That's right. Roundup Ready seeds are genetically engineered to handle mass saturation of Roundup pesticide. This is dangerous to our groundwater and food supply.
Monsanto plans to soon release Roundup Ready seeds with terminator genes which will prevent second generation seeds from germinating. Many environmentalists and geneticists have stated concerns that such terminator genes could be passed into the general crop population via pollen and potentially kill off our original crops leaving only corporate produced seeds available to farmers. Such a move is insanity if we consider survival a worthy goal for humanity.
It's one thing to support intellectual property laws for books and other creations. But to interpret IP laws in such a way that allows such basic survival needs as our food supply to fall in the hands of only a few corporations is asking for human extinction. We will go the way of the dinasours like this, or at the very least risk losing critical crops by genetic blunder.
I note that the European Union is fighting United States through the Word Trade Organization demanding that the EU stop labeling genetically engineered foods as such. In other words the United States is demanding that Europe ban labeling their food supply (which they consider a national health concern). Europe doesn't want to ban the sale of these foods, just label them like we do with our nutritional content labels. How is that trade restraint? It's not, what it shows is that companies like ADM and Monsanto have our congress and executive branches at their mercy. If this continues soon the worlds peoples will be at their mercy as well.
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Someone previously asked if I prefer food production be monopolized by the government instead of international corporations.
I respond with:
a) This is not the case today, nor has it ever been in the US. Most food prduction used to be handled by small farmers, this changed over the eighties as banks over-lent to indivudal farms and then collected the land from all the mortgage defaults during Paul Volker's (former head of the Federal Reserve board, see: "Secrets of the Temple," by William Greider) planned 'recession.' Guess who wound up with all that land? It wasn't other small time farmers.
b) Even if the government did nationalize all the farming land (which would be patently unconstitutional) at least we would have some power via our voting rights. All those idiots claiming the private sector provides better efficiency and more freedom forget that we citizens have _no say_ over how private industry manages these properties.
I'm not advocating communism, just pointing out that the private sector gives citizens far less freedoms than what is constitutionally protected by our government. The only people with power in the private sector are large scale corporate share holders, and they're such a nice small club, now aren't they?
Let them eat cake my ass... if this continues we may have no more grain producing crops left. What happens then?
Should Monsanto (and other Agri business and genetic engineering firms) be allowed to own genes as intellectual property? Monsanto calls saving seed from Roundup Ready(tm) crops and replanting in the next season "Seed Piracy." (*) Do you want a corporate monoploy controlling our food supply?
This is not just about software, the intellectual property laws are so broken that we're about to hand over something as critical to our survival as food production to huge international agri-businesses like ADM and Monsanto without even thinking of the long term consequences to our survival. This could get BAD....
* See April '99 issue of Harpers for an important article on this issue.
I looked over those pages and found nothing but yet another philosophical movement which claims to solve humanities problems by redefining [reframing] them into something else.
Starving masses cannot be reframed away.
For example, in this months Harpers is published a small story on Monsanto, the agri/chemi business which created and sells Roundup Ready crop seeds along with their pesticide, Roundup. They are claiming that Roundup Ready seeds are intellectual property, and therefore to save and replant these seeds from a Roundup Ready seed crop is "seed piracy." These seeds are genetically engineered to be resistant to the Roundup pesticide, allowing a farmer to saturate the crop with pesticide, where previously one had to be a little more judicious with its use, simply because it tends to kill the crop along with the pests. Of course the fact that Roundup runnoff into our water and food supply, and how that may affect the environment and people, isn't even considered.
Monsanto plans to soon release it's seeds with a "Terminator Gene," designed to prevent second generation seeds from germinating. The fear is that this gene could spread to original crops and wipe out our base food supply. For example, Roundup Ready soy when planted could spread the terminator gene through pollen to standard soy crops, and start a chain reaction which could lead to worldwide soy decimation. Of course, Monsanto Roundup Ready soy will always be readily available. That is, as long as Monsanto stays in business.
The United States is taking Europe to the WTO (World Trade Union) because Europe wants to label genetically engineered crops as they go to the store shelf. Europe doesn't want to ban these crops, only label them, yet the US is fighting to prevent this by calling it a trade sanction. That's right, informing the population about what they're eating is somehow trade restraint...
Your 'Extropy' philosophy may be a nice twist to the word entropy, but it won't change the suicidal path humanity is walking down as we hand over control of our food supply to corporate monoliths who seem prepared to let the world starve in order to monopolize worldwide food production and distribution. When local farmers can't store seed for the next generation, should worldwide calamity hit we will see devestation unlike anything since the dinasours took their last breath.
(and this is but one example of our idiocy)
Just because the rabble can post a few rants on USENET doesn't change the political power structure. Here in the United States my father can't get decent medical attention because he can't obtain proper medical coverage (and he's on Medicare with a private MediGap insurance policy). Wasn't it the insurance industry who claimed single payer health coverage like in Europe and Canada would bankrupt the healthcare industry and force access 'rationing' for basic medical coverage? And isn't that what we have right now??? Who's talking about this on the net? Why isn't it getting large scale coverage? Could it be because even though individuals can present their views more readily, spreading that view is just as difficult as before?
What is this 'Renaissance'? One where cybersex and sex robots can electronically service shy geeks [as taken from your last story], while serious discourse is discouraged through boredom? This is 'enlightenment'? We're heading for a major 'correction' in the population (that means mass starvation) as international corporations gobble up all the agribusiness and force genetically engineered crops down our throats. Think anyone gives a rats ass about that? (they will when the food becomes scarce)
Or campaign finance reform? Does anyone in Amercia care about policitcal corruption and bribery among our elected officials? Does anyone really care that our lawmakers take campaign contributions and then slyly pass bills written by lobbyists from those very same contributors while poor children starve in schools literally falling to pieces?
This is not the kind of discourse I see on the net. No I see sex, sex, sex, and political commentary carefullly crafted by ABC News, MSNBC, CNN, and the like. I also notice that small individually written homepages have become almost impossible to find on the major search engines of late. Could this be because the major news outlets don't want their information monopoly disapated by individuals acting in their own best interests?
Just because we serfs can present our viewpoint to each other doesn't mean the power brokers in Washington give a rats ass. The unfortunate thing is that neither does the populace.
Regarding Linux Standards Chris writes:
...] Create an Enterprise standard, Home User/SOHO standard, and a Developer standard(which would be coordinated to allow ease of development for which ever branch they wanted to focus on and allow for compatibility with the other.)
...] This would, in effect, short circuit the corporate steamrollers attempts from dictating thier view of standards on a community which requires the freedom to work as they please. Of course any sort of standard will place some restrictions on development, however it would be better to establish an open standard rather than have it be dictated by the needs of a corporate hierarchy.
[
AND:
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I take this to mean that one way to solve the problem of standards is to allow for multiple distributions like we have now. I don't have a problem with that, but I think it's inevitable anyway. For example, I don't think a corporate controlled standard would ever be able to force the Debian project into implementing something they didn't like.
However, if the majority of the Linux community gets suckered into buying a commercial distribution which contained a core proprietary component, such as speech recognition in an office suite, that commercial vendor could wind up with quite a lot of standards control.
But somehow I suspect there will still be folks out there running command line Debian systems on 386's. No speech recognition necessary.
WOW. Not knowing the VA folks personally I can only vouce for them professionally. I bought a VA box for my company about four months ago or so. They were great! I want to do business with them again.
As for their business model, well - yeah, so what?
You think that ~$500 market niche ought to be filled? And you're complaining to someone else about the problem? Either start the business yourself or shut the fuck up!
Obviously, Gnome people give their rats asses. If you aren't only using their product, you're Satan.
I Agree.
Folks ought to take a little perspective on this issue. For example, if you're against the QPL, how can you support Sun JAVA and Netscape MGL licenses? Is the QPL worse than Sun's new "community License" for Solaris? Do you hate Sun with the same ferver?
Well, I take it in stride, even though I prefer free in the same sense rms prefers free. But what the hell, not everyone else agrees. Some people want to make money with their code, and the laws says this is their right. For Troll Tech to release their source code at all was a significant move for a private corporation. It allowed its users to scrutinize QT as a product totally, unlike how most other proprietary APIs were closed internally.
So I think all these self righteous verbal assaults against Troll Tech's previous and current licenses are misguided. They are truely one step above the likes of Microsoft, Oracle, and the other huge proprietary software vendors. And like Sun and Netscape, Troll Tech asserts some proprietary rights, but they still give out the source.
I use KDE because it's worked better over the last year than CDE (that horribly bug ridden product from the "Open" Group). Well, I like that integrated desktop stuff. So I'm downloading GNOME-1.0 right now and will use it for a good test run. I hope for smooth sailing ahead and a realistic impression of how I want to use this software down the road.
What I really want to see soon is both systems running together. I hope the KDE and GNOME developers agree on API standards so GNOME and KDE systems integrate better in the future. We should have both, and the developers should work together - without animosity. What drives these flames?