I'm all for space flight and exploration - I think they're neat, and I'd like to live on the moon if at all possible.
But I am not in favor of a few favored companies getting a lion's share of tax dollars to do their space exploration on my / our / the Public's back, while other companies get panned by the governmental / industrial complex.
Contrary to what some people have implied, NASA has always had a commericial element, because those rockets have to be built by *somebody*; question is, now that there are actual businesses (that is, those trying to do space launches for the profit involved, and not rooting through the public trough 'for the children') either doing launches or working on space travel options, why should we protect NASA funding at all?
Several people have expressed distaste that they might be encouraged by being able to keep some of their income (rather than it going back the gubmint) to do less 'pure research' and more 'commercial stuff.' Remember that the money they get is not charity; it's money that people earn and have taken from them -- I say it *ought* to be being used practically, because if it isn't there are plenty of ways it could be. Like by me, on a new Airstream. Or, if it must be spent by the government, on chipping away at the incredible deficit.
A starving man shouldn't buy diamonds no matter how cheap, or whatever.
No one who goes without comment to mandatory government schooling should complain too much about what Internet sites aren't allowed to be seen.
But on the other hand, anyone who notices the bizarre ill-logic of not allowing kids to see the information about testicular cancer while giving a free pass to youngcollegepussy.com (or whatever) should also consider whether the State should be in the indoctrination business at all.
timothy (a believer in amendment 1 and 2 -- at least)
"The amount of money currently required to explore space is too much for any one person, or even a small group of people, to afford, and any benefits that may be obtained from it are strictly long term"
Actually, I disagree. I think there could be great incentive to explore space now. There are in fact several private initiatives to do low-orbit transport, private satellite launches, etc. There are plenty of short-term benefits too, with new technology being developed. The point I want to make is that nationalizing space research does for the possible realm of space research what HUD does for afforable housing - segregates, officializes, detracts from.
Space is expensive, but the potential rewards are huge -- just not guaranteed. I don't want tax money going into it for the same reason I don't want the government to use the Las Vegas Casinos to 'invest' tax money: the wins are great, but the losses are catastropic and the appeal irresistable.
All analogies are imperfect (like crystal), but I think the human brain seeks analogies as a way to understand things. If you walked out on the street, what familiar things would be similar in relavent ways to a Web document? (That is, not just an HTML document, but one that is on the World Wide Web.) I think a Kiosk flyer (with the Internet as the Kiosk and the WWW one part of it) is a close one.
Let's say there is a kiosk next to a newspaper dispenser that charges 25 cents for the daily paper. The newspaper publisher wouldn't be happy if you broke into the machine (which has an established price system and protocol, however imperfect or outdated), but the person who left a flyer on the kiosk should actually be happy that you took the time to scan their ad.
You can see this with the New York Times and their required registration to view their news stories, or the economist, which lets you see some things for free but requires a subscription for others. They have moved to something like a newspaper dispenser model.
If a movie company doesn't want people looking at their kiosk, take a hint, guys - Move it into the lobby! Trying to regulate or officalize what people may put on their Web page is silly. Will you also disallow people from typing the name into their browser's location bar? How about reading the URL over the radio? How about into a speech recognition program?
As people have pointed out, there are plenty of ways to restrict access without invading other people's lives with lawsuits. It might not be smart to restrict people who want to see your trailers, though, since the trailers are supposed to sell movie tickets and rentals, but I can't tell you not to cut off your own nose...
"Perhaps this is another sign that geeks need to start getting involved in politics. We sit and watch the clueless government do one thing after another to take away privacy, cripple technology research and advance, and just generally try to treat us like children."
I think that last point in the most important. Rather than allowing people to make informed, possibly risky choices, it is increasingly the role of the gub'mint to decide what you *ought* to want to decide - in other words, as you say, treat you like a child.
Several things flow together to make this happen -- here are the most obvious ones:
1) Life expectancy is growing, and the portion of life considered 'childhood' or 'youth' is right alongside.
2) People have come to expect / accept more guarantees in life; just like getting a free bed from Mom and Dad means you owe them (at least) filial piety, getting a free handout from Big Brother means the same.
3) Young people -- because they are young temporarily and are busy doing things that MTV tells them today's hip teenager ought, or getting into the Ivy League, or going to punk shows, or hacking -- are not much of a political force; even when they occasionally become one, it's more like a militia than...
4) the Standing Army of Gerontocrats, as in the AARP and many others. Unlike young people, old people both stay old and have the experience to organize effectively.
5) A general (and I think growing) tendency to accept regulation as necessary and appropriate, especially from non-elected bodies with no purpose *other* than to issue regulations. All the 3 and 4-letter acronyms you care to throw out: FDIC, FDA, FTC, FCC... the fact that their appointers are elected does not make these bodies answerable to anyone but themselves and the rare, half-hearted reviews.
6) Willingness to trade at every turn a little essential liberty for security.
America was founded as a radically free society (for its time). In our time though, American freedom is lukewarm. "Still freer than most other countries" is not a very exciting slogan.:(
Mandatory school attendence, overwhelmingly at State-run schools, ought to raise more hackles than it does. Both parents and students ought to resent the assumption that their time and bodies belong to the regulators.
Laws that prevent 18(19/20)-year-olds from sipping a glass of wine in a restaurant ought to disgust everyone.
Increasing regulations about gun ownership ought to frighten anyone who looks at previous disarmament campaigns. (See jpfo.org)
Answers? No good ones. I guess vote for (L)libertarian candidates and use encryption. Buy guns while you can.
mr marbles, in response to my suggestion that the space program resembled fascism, said:
"sure we can then divert all this tax money to beefing up the military (during peace times) and spend some more on weapon reasearch. im quite sure these activities would be much more valuable to the tax payers and give them their "benefit of reward". if anything the science and space programs don't get enough funding. "
Most millitary spending is wasteful and harmful. Having a standing army at all is something that I accept, but reluctantly.
But I wouldn't suggest scraping money from the space program frying pan into the military fire, no sirree. This country's military is too ripe for exploitation already (note use of military forces as domestic police forces already... not good.)
But when it comes to the space program, what would be "enough funding"? If I supported the space program as an essentially perfect investment -- that is, I always got greater benefit from money put into it than I could in any other way -- I can't think of a truly adequate funding level, because until I start cutting into my freezer full of turkeys, it's all going to come back threefold, right? In a world of infinite money and time, it wouldn't matter -- just do / fund everything you want, whenever you want. In a world of tradeoffs and limited resources (the real world), the surest way to negate individual freedom is to subordinate it to the will of an organized elite for the attainment of artificial, arbitrary 'goals,' 'guidelines' or 'milestones' which represent avarice rather than worth.
Again, I think space / Space is neat... I think it's great that people walked on the moon. The question now is, What For? To justify more moonwalks?
Let people invest their money (rather than take it from them as taxes and 'invest' in wonderful gubmint programs to reach the moon, build pyramids, etc.) and see what transpires from free markets.
"Now it may be other countries that will take the lead. The countries that fund this research will motivate their people in ways nothing else can."
Maybe he's right. Imagine arguments for the Pyramid Program in Egypt:
"Here, quick, you! Build the pyramids I've outlined on this blueprint, eh? This will really pull society together -- at least that lot of you who have to pay for it. We plan to make a lot of technical innovations and discoveries along the way though, so surely you won't mind being called upon to make a contribution. We'll elevate this Kingdom above the others in prestige and teamwork, right? Now if only we could get a bigger budget..."
People are not sheep. They are not to be *led* but rather to discover where their own journeys take them, and to join others in peaceful, voluntary enterprize.
I don't mind people exploring space - I think it's admirable, interesting, and inevitable. But I am opposed to tax money (which is exacted, and should *only* be used to fund those things which seem impossible to otherwise obtain) to send people to the moon or explorer ships into space, unless there is some reasonable benefit of reward. And if that were the case, it should be a risk undertaken by businesses organized by citizens of their own free will, not a psuedo-business enterprise imposed upon everyone because a controlling elite class decrees it.
Thanks, but that's fascism. They sure did make some purty buildings (if you're into severity and columns), but other than that, the compound belief that a) 'society' can have identifiable concrete goals even if individuals might find no sympathy for the goals by themselves and b) the government should be able to divert private property at its whim to achieve these goals is what characterizes tyranny of all kinds.
Maybe in the absence of a multi-billion dollar agency, private space research would explode -- it's actually doing fairly well right now, and could be ready for a leap.
A privilege is something you must earn, which allows you to voluntarily do something. Driving is a privilege (not a right, as many Americans might think!)
Well, not to get into the semantics of this (since many people use that as an example of the difference between a right and a privelege) but on a strictly literal level, Why is driving not a right?
If driving is not a right (or the manifestation of rights), what is? If there is freedom of assembly, it would be a huge abbrogation of that right if practical means of exercising it were banned. And more importantly, the pursuit of happiness requires a vehicle physical or mental.
I could as legtimately say that just about anything is 'a privelege, and not a right' because there are (inane) laws which intrude to regulate the use of everything from computers (FCC regs regarding interference) to construction (wetlands preservation rules which can destroy the worth of useful property) to bicycles (helmet laws). Is riding a bicycle a privelege rather than a right? In the eyes of statists / permissionists, Yes.
Given certain mitigations, the statement that driving is a privelege rather than a right makes more sense: since roads are government owned, those govts which pay for their construction and upkeep seem to have the right to determine who may drive and on what terms; however, since road right of ways are controlled (near) exclusively by the government, it should be the burden of the State to allow anyone to use them that will.
A more important point though is that only the most basic, broadest, universal rights should ever be placed into law (as in the US Constitution) -- never specific ones. There's no point in saying "You have the right to paint your living room walls red," because that's covered by your right to pursue happiness, to express your views non-violently, to trade with others (for paint and brushes and possibly labor), etc. And even these are getting too specific.
Enumerating 'rights' that are specific and minute weakens both those enumerated (because that which is given can also be taken away or 'updated') and those left out, because 'No one says you have the right to that!'
And if you still think driving should be termed a privelege rather than a right, I hope will agree that the onus of proving someone unworthy of that privelege lies with the state -- in other words, innocent until proven guilty.
IIRC, the horse was left by the attacking / beseiging (Spartan?) army. The soldiers exited the horse at night, unlocked the gates, and the attackers sacked Troy. Right?
Not that the basic message / metaphor is lost, of course.
I'm sure someone will correct me if this is wrong;)
Today really is pretty heavy on the business stuff, it's true.
But it's not really possible to neatly cleave business news from technical news: technical products are sold, after all, and the companies that make them and employ their designers grow, shrink, go new directions, make missteps...
Also, as Linux becomes better known and more successful among non-Uebergeek users (I fit somewhere in the slime-mold sequence of computer users;) so I know we're out here!), the fact is that more things which are undeniably Business will be significant to slashdotters. If a big hardware company is even a smidgeon more open about their design to Open Sourcerers, it's a big deal.
Also, since now many businesses are (figuratively) scratching their chins and mumbling about Free OS alternatives to the perpetually baited hook of MS Upgrade, it makes sense that business coverage is more and more relevant.
Remember the Coleco Adam? (And I think there were some similar motions by Atari...)
Game-machine as PC is not new, but your point is still basically true, that difference holds no matter how much convergence is always predicted for 'this time next year."
There have been a few funny things written about how pornography has led to much recent technological innovation. I hadn't thought about it with consoles before, though...
DVDs - porno transfers and new DVD-only productions are a huge part of the market, and were an even bigger part a year or two ago.
VCRs - its often been remarked that dirty movies are what sparked most early sales
Hard drive space - "Yeah, I need the extra 10 gigs for my... uncompleted novel."
HMDs - Ask the sweating, twitching guy in the window seat what he's watching on that Sony Glasstron. "Babe: Pig in the City"? I doubt it. "Babes: City Squeals" maybe.
"they might not be pretty or fast, but they could drive through a bloody wall and still get it there."
I have to disagree with this. I realize that anecdotal evidence is different from statistical evidence, but here are a few things that have happened to me via the USPS:
1) In spring 1993, a check mailed to me which I needed to pay my tuition didn't arrive for a week after sending. No big deal, I regularly expect the vaunted 3-5 days to be doubled, even between metro areas. But then it didn't arrive after another week, and payment was coming due. I asked for the check to be remailed, and it was -- this second check *again* didn't arrive after a week, then 10 days... it eventually came 2 weeks after it was postmarked, while the original one still did nor arrive. The original one did arrive. Six weeks later.
2) A package my mom sent about a month ago, which had (among other things) replacement car keys has not yet showed. Priority mail my ass.
That's not hearsay and rumor -- that's what has happened to *me*. Yes, I have sent far more postcards and letters than packages, but so far I have not had any trouble with UPS or FedEx.
Not to mention that the USPS now requires me to supply both drivers' license and passport (!!!) number in order to use a private mailbox, and the talk about USPS exacting an email tax. Bah, humbug.
Airlines.... From California, you can usually get to Bangkok cheaper than you can get to New York.
Yeah. And from California, you can get to New York cheaper than you can get to Des Moines or Omaha, or any other place about half way there. What gives? Must be the strange laws of the marketplace in action.
Yes, you can get to New York cheaper because there is a bigger overall demand for passage to New York, because there is a higher volume of traffic, because many more airlines have routes to New York than to Omaha, because there are at least two major airports serving NYC, etc...
There is just a much higher level of competition. Nothing too strange.;)
My chief qualification to comment on Ease of Use: I am the world's least intuitive person when it comes to computers, and regularly whine that things on-screen are either totally ambiguous, genuine non-sequiturs, or are written in a language I don't understand. (I exaggerate only slightly.)
At the same time, I have eventually wrestled Linux onto three different PCs, and the process has varied from gut-wrenching with old Slackware to "Whoah! That's it?" with Mandrake Linux.
Mandrake 6.0 (I have't used RedHat 6.0 but it should be about the same) autodetected my hardware, asked understandable questions, etc. My knowledge has been slowly increasing, but not as quickly as the various install tools have improved.
By contrast, when I installed Win98 on my mom's PC, it took three ridiculous days of aborted installs and crashes followed by restarts, followed by shouting and curses. So maybe a better question is whether *any* operating system runs easily on a PC.
I've not installed BeOS to comment... just want to point out that ease is relative, and if your alternative is Windows or NT, Linux might be the easier install.
bercovic@swi.psy.uva.nl wrote (approximately): "... the new keyboards SUCK!"
I haven't seen a new G3 laptop to comment, but I must say that the monstrosity (minstrosity?) that comes with the iMac is a horrible joke. My office computer is an iMac and despite many complaints I do like it in many ways. But the keyboard...
Well, I can't quote figure out which combination I'm hitting, but I constantly fumble onto some keystroke which tries to do a 'Save As' on my documents, and which could be disastrous if I didn't stop quickly before accidently hitting Return and having my document renamed "lkajsd."
C'mon, Apple! Users use their keyboards as input devices, not clever pieces of sculpture! (So far I've had to backspace and correct about 5 times in this stupid paragraph... jeez.) Sure, laptop keyboards are going to be smaller, but -- no, I take that back. Look at an iMac keyboard, subtract the number pad, and you have what looks and feels like a laptop keyboard. I hope the G3 one is at least not worse than this.
Austin has much more modern network infrastructure than your average city, as well as the need for it. I bet you live in North Austin, as well. Ack.
;) Guilty (at least that's where the cable modem is) but I just moved South into an Airstream trailer.
But even at the RV park, the SouthWestern Bell DSL page indicates that DSL is available, and preliminary nosing says cable should be available as well.
And as far as Austin being atypical... well, typicality requires context. Austin is a fairly spread out city, but it also has a lot of young, moderately well-off people (100,000-plus college / University community) and a lot of tech jobs. But every city has some mix of density / subcultures / etc, so I don't know what *would* be typical.
Suburbia is fairly well-provided with cable television, and in many areas that means cable modem as well. DSL is slowly spreading further from telco main offices, and residential ISDN service is no longer rare (though it is less of a reasonable option most places...) And few places in the country is POTS not available.
But yes, Austin does have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to connecting to the Internet. This city has plenty of faults, but if you want 24/7 connectivity, hard to beat. Ranked #2 is someone-or-others recent list of "Most Wired Places in America," behind SF. At the same time as all this, though, most of those in South and East Austin (the poorer sections) have few places to connect from. No 'Public Telepresence Points" like in a Bruce Sterling novel I just read. But where is this not true?
Also, what's typical now is perhaps not what will be typical in 10 or even 5 years, too. Though it has some oddball flaws and requirements, the hybrid phone / satellite Internet service you can get from Hughes brings high-speed access to quite rural places. Expensive for one person, but shared by several it seems like a possibility. Once those satellites are up, it's in their interest to get more people feeding off them.
All I'm saying is, bring on the divergent and at-best-semi-compatible standards for transmission, use compatible-as-possible file formats, and let the shakedown begin!
I don't want the regulatorities effectively putting under State control the 'last mile' of service to my house / business / mobile home, whether it be cable, phone line, or anything else.
When it comes to phone service, the old argument for a state monopoly on organization / chartering / close regulation was threefold (at least;)):
One: "The Market won't support multiple local phone companies, in part because startup costs of establishing service would discourage new entrants."
Two: "Left alone, the local phone company would gouge the public, draw usurious rates, etc."
Three: "Phone lines are a public good which should connect everyone with a phone to everyone else, and this requires that they all be on the same network rather than competing networks."
The result is that a single carrier was chosen, and given a shorter leash on how much it could gouge the public.
A better result (I assert) would have come out of unfettered competition. If only one company provided service, but was not legally protected from competition, it would have no laurels to comfortably rest upon.
Why all this talk about phone companies? Because it deeply affects ISPs, Internet access, broadband, etc. The problem with regulating anything is that by doing so, you tend to define the parameters of what it contains, consists of, appears as, etc. Laws that would govern exactly how Internet service should be delivered might look good for a year or so, but they would also serve as blinders to other alternatives.
Who knows what Internet access is "best"? No one and everyone. For some people, dialing up their friend's modem once a day with SLIP to check email and a stock quote or two might be best. For others (right now), a cable modem might be the best value of bandwidth for cash in a 24-hour access device. But ten years from now, maybe you'd rather have a fiber-optic cable strung straight into your house.
Do you want a moribund, tightly regulated market, or a more robust, inventive one? Look again at the threefold argument for regulation of phone service and decide whether the three apply well to Internet access.
1) Multiple ISPs? Yes, and multiple delivery systems along that Last Mile already. To my door in Austin, Texas, USA, Earth there are at least four possibilities: ISDN, POTS, DSL and Cable (RoadRunner / Time Warner). Note that the first three of them are controlled to some degree by Southwestern Bell.
2) Usurious rates: I don't think so, at least in Austin. (High speed access via DSL starts around $40, plus startup fees). There certainly might be if there were not three high-speed competitors, plain-ole phone lines and wireless all available. But again, that's an argument against rather than for competition. "Reasonable" rates can never be effectively determined without real competition.
3) Does anyone on Slashdot buy the argument that we should all be on the same ISP in order to receive messages from each other?;)
In sum, my worry with regulation of Last Mile, First Mile, or Any Mile in Between is not as much what would be established, as what potential developments would be squashed as a result. I'd love to see a few kiosks at the corner with switching equipment and a touchscreen each urging me to switch instantly ISP service and enjoy a lower rate, but that sort of flexibility is the antithesis of regulation by the Well-Meaning.
Ask yourself one last question: would you rather buy tickets at current, less-regulated prices or, say, 1980 prices adjusted for inflation?
That is all. This took so long to write, I bet I'm not first poster by a long shot anymore.
I just don't like all this Linux news from the business world... why doesn't/. ever talk about the new technical aspects of Linux or *BSD? I hate all this market watch business crap.
Haven - I know what you mean, and I'm sure you're not the only one who feels this way about it, even though I like the business / market stuff.
One way I see around this is to assign more than one category to the news items so that readers can do tighter filtering. So this one could be filed under at least categories like:
- Caldera - Business / marketplace - IPOs and Spinoffs - Embedded Linux
If in the user configuration menu, you could choose not to see things about Business and Marketplace, then you wouldn't see this, even if you would normally see things about Caldera, say.
Arranging the heirarchy so that it is understandable to users setting it up, and not too much of a pain to go back and change later would be the toughest part. UI is tough, even with an informed, savvy audience (and I'm on the low end of informed or savvy for slashdot), so making it better than the @$~# voicemail set-up menu at work is a real challenge.
BTW, I think a system like this (multiple indexes or tags on slashdot items) would be useful even if it was applied somewhat arbitrarily, as long as there were a few categories that were used consistently, so someone could, say, choose to "Always view items about the linux marketplace" and be confident that they would have been marked for inclusion if appropriate.
Exponential vs. Linear might not be right, but if rate of output > rate of input, then the eventual effect is the same. The pot, toilet tank, refrigerator, coke can, bank account etc all grow empty, at rates varying with the difference between the in- and out- streams.
Social security? Non-sequitur, except in a graveyard. The government made promises which it assumes our asses can keep (lying blithely about the actual set-up... ask the SS Admin. innocently if you can make a withdrawal on your "contribution account"), and made our elders dependent on its largesse. Robbing Peter to pay Pauls' kids, stealing candy from generations of babies.
As someone else pointed out, you don't need a multi-million dollar computer to show this, just the willingness to see truth. The US gubmint is lying to the young to justify its defrauding the rich in a setup which would be prosecuted as a Ponzi scheme if the applicable laws applied to federal agencies.
timothy
p.s. Not to mention the obvious Orwellian aspects of the ubiquitous "SS number, please," which for the sake of readers I will not get into right now;)
This example (the family burger joint vs. the evil Imperial Burger Corp.) illustrates that customers can have differential values, not that either company is particularly moral / immoral.
The idea that low prices may not bring the larger company a profit though they may crush competition has a corollary: if the prices are so low that the maker does not profit, but the burgers are good enough to be a good value at that price, then customers are receiving a net benefit. (Convince me as I get a day's worth of calories for half of the minimum wage that I'm getting a bad deal, just try.) Otherwise, they would continue to eat the Family Burgers down the block.
Only if the big company could secure a legal monopoly on the burger market ("Official Burgers of America, or Insert Country Name Here -- no competitors allowed!") would there be a problem for society. For the little burger place there could surely be a problem, if a larger company with greater economies of scale, capital base etc. can buy a good location, pay less per patty, etc. However, big and little companies each have advantages that the other can not possess, and no government can fully appreciate or account for these advantages; trying to is folly on a grand scale.
Do you go to a given restaurant *sheerly* because of the price? Even if price is indeed the biggest factor in your decision, you probably would be less likely to go to a slightly-cheaper alternative if you were regularly mistreated there, or if the food made you sick a few times, or if you thought the management was beating up the employees, etc. Small restaurants often have an atmosphere that is irreproducable in McBurger World, and are generally more responsive (not to mention more interesting). And since markets are dynamic, today's small burger joint may discover the killer hamburger and be a giant chain 10 years from now.
If *all* small burger places (or chip manufacturers, I haven't forgotten what this is about) go out of business, leaving MondoChip Inc. alone in the marketplace, then MondoChip had better make some killer designs rather than rest on its laurels for years, because the profits to be made by stealing even a small portion of market share are potentially huge. Maybe it would even be good for Intel to have a few years of sole possession of the desktop chip market. Think of the currents that could be stirred up in those years!
I don't want AMD to go out of business -- and I don't think they will anytime soon. (Cross fingers, buy stock.) But let's say they do: Intel cannot sit still and say "Eh, let's just sell them these leftover Pentium II 300s -- no competition, so why not?" Again, let's say they do: what then? COnsdering how many computers are in daily use, and how many are sold, I wouldn't be surprized if a bunch of Intel engineers etc. left to form a renegade chip maker on their own.
OK, too much rambling, but it would be good to at least consider that what the government tells you about "monopoly" may not be the most accurate rendition.
This post was succinct and informative regarding the advantages of PNG (Free, variable bit-depth, lossless), and gave a good, simple, workable explanation of alpha and gamma channels.
"I sure wish some sort of definite, linux consortium could be formed, like for GNOME, whereby ve[n]dors could post and archive their drivers.
It may seem like a small point, but I want to amplify the part about archive!...
One of the best things about linux is its wide-ranging hardware support (this is true of Free and NetBSD as well, but not as broad) -- being able to set up a system using hardware which would be impractically slow under NT or Win9X is a huge selling point. (Well, 'using point;)')
But when hardware is more than a few years old (and sometimes just more than a year or so) it is often hard to find drivers for it. But if your laser printer, or sound card, or video card, etc. works and you'd like to use it, it's frustrating to be driven to new hardware for lack of a small piece of software.
I appreciate companies that offer long-term value by keeping drivers available, but since most linux drivers are hacked together rather than Officially Released, the idea of an archive for this information is especially important.
Christopher Thomas - good response re. moderation!
I think the moderation would be better if if was more widespread, though... what percentage of the slashdot populace has moderation privelege at any one time?
There are quite a few things that get knocked down which perhaps ought not be, but when you are the moderator it's tough to dole out points to correct things like this. Maybe the averaging effect would work better if there were more people with moderation power at any given time, or if moderators had more points. Or (dare I suggest such a complicated thing?) there were specific points allocated for correcting over- or under-moderated posts? Actually, that wouldn't really add anything special other than semantically, since you could already spend your points up or down.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm all for space flight and exploration - I think they're neat, and I'd like to live on the moon if at all possible.
But I am not in favor of a few favored companies getting a lion's share of tax dollars to do their space exploration on my / our / the Public's back, while other companies get panned by the governmental / industrial complex.
Contrary to what some people have implied, NASA has always had a commericial element, because those rockets have to be built by *somebody*; question is, now that there are actual businesses (that is, those trying to do space launches for the profit involved, and not rooting through the public trough 'for the children') either doing launches or working on space travel options, why should we protect NASA funding at all?
Several people have expressed distaste that they might be encouraged by being able to keep some of their income (rather than it going back the gubmint) to do less 'pure research' and more 'commercial stuff.' Remember that the money they get is not charity; it's money that people earn and have taken from them -- I say it *ought* to be being used practically, because if it isn't there are plenty of ways it could be. Like by me, on a new Airstream. Or, if it must be spent by the government, on chipping away at the incredible deficit.
A starving man shouldn't buy diamonds no matter how cheap, or whatever.
timothy
No one who goes without comment to mandatory government schooling should complain too much about what Internet sites aren't allowed to be seen.
But on the other hand, anyone who notices the bizarre ill-logic of not allowing kids to see the information about testicular cancer while giving a free pass to youngcollegepussy.com (or whatever) should also consider whether the State should be in the indoctrination business at all.
timothy (a believer in amendment 1 and 2 -- at least)
Actually, I disagree. I think there could be great incentive to explore space now. There are in fact several private initiatives to do low-orbit transport, private satellite launches, etc. There are plenty of short-term benefits too, with new technology being developed. The point I want to make is that nationalizing space research does for the possible realm of space research what HUD does for afforable housing - segregates, officializes, detracts from.
Space is expensive, but the potential rewards are huge -- just not guaranteed. I don't want tax money going into it for the same reason I don't want the government to use the Las Vegas Casinos to 'invest' tax money: the wins are great, but the losses are catastropic and the appeal irresistable.
timothy
All analogies are imperfect (like crystal), but I think the human brain seeks analogies as a way to understand things. If you walked out on the street, what familiar things would be similar in relavent ways to a Web document? (That is, not just an HTML document, but one that is on the World Wide Web.) I think a Kiosk flyer (with the Internet as the Kiosk and the WWW one part of it) is a close one.
...
Let's say there is a kiosk next to a newspaper dispenser that charges 25 cents for the daily paper. The newspaper publisher wouldn't be happy if you broke into the machine (which has an established price system and protocol, however imperfect or outdated), but the person who left a flyer on the kiosk should actually be happy that you took the time to scan their ad.
You can see this with the New York Times and their required registration to view their news stories, or the economist, which lets you see some things for free but requires a subscription for others. They have moved to something like a newspaper dispenser model.
If a movie company doesn't want people looking at their kiosk, take a hint, guys - Move it into the lobby! Trying to regulate or officalize what people may put on their Web page is silly. Will you also disallow people from typing the name into their browser's location bar? How about reading the URL over the radio? How about into a speech recognition program?
As people have pointed out, there are plenty of ways to restrict access without invading other people's lives with lawsuits. It might not be smart to restrict people who want to see your trailers, though, since the trailers are supposed to sell movie tickets and rentals, but I can't tell you not to cut off your own nose
timothy
I think that last point in the most important. Rather than allowing people to make informed, possibly risky choices, it is increasingly the role of the gub'mint to decide what you *ought* to want to decide - in other words, as you say, treat you like a child.
Several things flow together to make this happen -- here are the most obvious ones:
1) Life expectancy is growing, and the portion of life considered 'childhood' or 'youth' is right alongside.
2) People have come to expect / accept more guarantees in life; just like getting a free bed from Mom and Dad means you owe them (at least) filial piety, getting a free handout from Big Brother means the same.
3) Young people -- because they are young temporarily and are busy doing things that MTV tells them today's hip teenager ought, or getting into the Ivy League, or going to punk shows, or hacking -- are not much of a political force; even when they occasionally become one, it's more like a militia than
4) the Standing Army of Gerontocrats, as in the AARP and many others. Unlike young people, old people both stay old and have the experience to organize effectively.
5) A general (and I think growing) tendency to accept regulation as necessary and appropriate, especially from non-elected bodies with no purpose *other* than to issue regulations. All the 3 and 4-letter acronyms you care to throw out: FDIC, FDA, FTC, FCC
6) Willingness to trade at every turn a little essential liberty for security.
America was founded as a radically free society (for its time). In our time though, American freedom is lukewarm. "Still freer than most other countries" is not a very exciting slogan.
Answers? No good ones. I guess vote for (L)libertarian candidates and use encryption. Buy guns while you can.
timothy
Most millitary spending is wasteful and harmful. Having a standing army at all is something that I accept, but reluctantly.
But I wouldn't suggest scraping money from the space program frying pan into the military fire, no sirree. This country's military is too ripe for exploitation already (note use of military forces as domestic police forces already
But when it comes to the space program, what would be "enough funding"? If I supported the space program as an essentially perfect investment -- that is, I always got greater benefit from money put into it than I could in any other way -- I can't think of a truly adequate funding level, because until I start cutting into my freezer full of turkeys, it's all going to come back threefold, right? In a world of infinite money and time, it wouldn't matter -- just do / fund everything you want, whenever you want. In a world of tradeoffs and limited resources (the real world), the surest way to negate individual freedom is to subordinate it to the will of an organized elite for the attainment of artificial, arbitrary 'goals,' 'guidelines' or 'milestones' which represent avarice rather than worth.
Again, I think space / Space is neat
Let people invest their money (rather than take it from them as taxes and 'invest' in wonderful gubmint programs to reach the moon, build pyramids, etc.) and see what transpires from free markets.
timothy
Maybe he's right. Imagine arguments for the Pyramid Program in Egypt:
"Here, quick, you! Build the pyramids I've outlined on this blueprint, eh? This will really pull society together -- at least that lot of you who have to pay for it. We plan to make a lot of technical innovations and discoveries along the way though, so surely you won't mind being called upon to make a contribution. We'll elevate this Kingdom above the others in prestige and teamwork, right? Now if only we could get a bigger budget
People are not sheep. They are not to be *led* but rather to discover where their own journeys take them, and to join others in peaceful, voluntary enterprize.
I don't mind people exploring space - I think it's admirable, interesting, and inevitable. But I am opposed to tax money (which is exacted, and should *only* be used to fund those things which seem impossible to otherwise obtain) to send people to the moon or explorer ships into space, unless there is some reasonable benefit of reward. And if that were the case, it should be a risk undertaken by businesses organized by citizens of their own free will, not a psuedo-business enterprise imposed upon everyone because a controlling elite class decrees it.
Thanks, but that's fascism. They sure did make some purty buildings (if you're into severity and columns), but other than that, the compound belief that a) 'society' can have identifiable concrete goals even if individuals might find no sympathy for the goals by themselves and b) the government should be able to divert private property at its whim to achieve these goals is what characterizes tyranny of all kinds.
Maybe in the absence of a multi-billion dollar agency, private space research would explode -- it's actually doing fairly well right now, and could be ready for a leap.
timothy
Well, not to get into the semantics of this (since many people use that as an example of the difference between a right and a privelege) but on a strictly literal level, Why is driving not a right?
If driving is not a right (or the manifestation of rights), what is? If there is freedom of assembly, it would be a huge abbrogation of that right if practical means of exercising it were banned. And more importantly, the pursuit of happiness requires a vehicle physical or mental.
I could as legtimately say that just about anything is 'a privelege, and not a right' because there are (inane) laws which intrude to regulate the use of everything from computers (FCC regs regarding interference) to construction (wetlands preservation rules which can destroy the worth of useful property) to bicycles (helmet laws). Is riding a bicycle a privelege rather than a right? In the eyes of statists / permissionists, Yes.
Given certain mitigations, the statement that driving is a privelege rather than a right makes more sense: since roads are government owned, those govts which pay for their construction and upkeep seem to have the right to determine who may drive and on what terms; however, since road right of ways are controlled (near) exclusively by the government, it should be the burden of the State to allow anyone to use them that will.
A more important point though is that only the most basic, broadest, universal rights should ever be placed into law (as in the US Constitution) -- never specific ones. There's no point in saying "You have the right to paint your living room walls red," because that's covered by your right to pursue happiness, to express your views non-violently, to trade with others (for paint and brushes and possibly labor), etc. And even these are getting too specific.
Enumerating 'rights' that are specific and minute weakens both those enumerated (because that which is given can also be taken away or 'updated') and those left out, because 'No one says you have the right to that!'
And if you still think driving should be termed a privelege rather than a right, I hope will agree that the onus of proving someone unworthy of that privelege lies with the state -- in other words, innocent until proven guilty.
My thoughts,
timothy
IIRC, the horse was left by the attacking / beseiging (Spartan?) army. The soldiers exited the horse at night, unlocked the gates, and the attackers sacked Troy. Right?
Not that the basic message / metaphor is lost, of course.
I'm sure someone will correct me if this is wrong;)
timothy
Today really is pretty heavy on the business stuff, it's true.
...
But it's not really possible to neatly cleave business news from technical news: technical products are sold, after all, and the companies that make them and employ their designers grow, shrink, go new directions, make missteps
Also, as Linux becomes better known and more successful among non-Uebergeek users (I fit somewhere in the slime-mold sequence of computer users;) so I know we're out here!), the fact is that more things which are undeniably Business will be significant to slashdotters. If a big hardware company is even a smidgeon more open about their design to Open Sourcerers, it's a big deal.
Also, since now many businesses are (figuratively) scratching their chins and mumbling about Free OS alternatives to the perpetually baited hook of MS Upgrade, it makes sense that business coverage is more and more relevant.
Just some thoughts,
timothy
Remember the Coleco Adam? (And I think there were some similar motions by Atari ...)
Game-machine as PC is not new, but your point is still basically true, that difference holds no matter how much convergence is always predicted for 'this time next year."
timothy
There have been a few funny things written about how pornography has led to much recent technological innovation. I hadn't thought about it with consoles before, though ...
... uncompleted novel."
DVDs - porno transfers and new DVD-only productions are a huge part of the market, and were an even bigger part a year or two ago.
VCRs - its often been remarked that dirty movies are what sparked most early sales
Hard drive space - "Yeah, I need the extra 10 gigs for my
HMDs - Ask the sweating, twitching guy in the window seat what he's watching on that Sony Glasstron. "Babe: Pig in the City"? I doubt it. "Babes: City Squeals" maybe.
Anyhow.
timothy
I have to disagree with this. I realize that anecdotal evidence is different from statistical evidence, but here are a few things that have happened to me via the USPS:
1) In spring 1993, a check mailed to me which I needed to pay my tuition didn't arrive for a week after sending. No big deal, I regularly expect the vaunted 3-5 days to be doubled, even between metro areas. But then it didn't arrive after another week, and payment was coming due. I asked for the check to be remailed, and it was -- this second check *again* didn't arrive after a week, then 10 days
2) A package my mom sent about a month ago, which had (among other things) replacement car keys has not yet showed. Priority mail my ass.
That's not hearsay and rumor -- that's what has happened to *me*. Yes, I have sent far more postcards and letters than packages, but so far I have not had any trouble with UPS or FedEx.
Not to mention that the USPS now requires me to supply both drivers' license and passport (!!!) number in order to use a private mailbox, and the talk about USPS exacting an email tax. Bah, humbug.
timothy
Yes, you can get to New York cheaper because there is a bigger overall demand for passage to New York, because there is a higher volume of traffic, because many more airlines have routes to New York than to Omaha, because there are at least two major airports serving NYC, etc
There is just a much higher level of competition. Nothing too strange.
timothy
My chief qualification to comment on Ease of Use: I am the world's least intuitive person when it comes to computers, and regularly whine that things on-screen are either totally ambiguous, genuine non-sequiturs, or are written in a language I don't understand. (I exaggerate only slightly.)
... just want to point out that ease is relative, and if your alternative is Windows or NT, Linux might be the easier install.
At the same time, I have eventually wrestled Linux onto three different PCs, and the process has varied from gut-wrenching with old Slackware to "Whoah! That's it?" with Mandrake Linux.
Mandrake 6.0 (I have't used RedHat 6.0 but it should be about the same) autodetected my hardware, asked understandable questions, etc. My knowledge has been slowly increasing, but not as quickly as the various install tools have improved.
By contrast, when I installed Win98 on my mom's PC, it took three ridiculous days of aborted installs and crashes followed by restarts, followed by shouting and curses. So maybe a better question is whether *any* operating system runs easily on a PC.
I've not installed BeOS to comment
timothy
bercovic@swi.psy.uva.nl wrote (approximately): " ... the new keyboards SUCK!"
...
... jeez.) Sure, laptop keyboards are going to be smaller, but -- no, I take that back. Look at an iMac keyboard, subtract the number pad, and you have what looks and feels like a laptop keyboard. I hope the G3 one is at least not worse than this.
I haven't seen a new G3 laptop to comment, but I must say that the monstrosity (minstrosity?) that comes with the iMac is a horrible joke. My office computer is an iMac and despite many complaints I do like it in many ways. But the keyboard
Well, I can't quote figure out which combination I'm hitting, but I constantly fumble onto some keystroke which tries to do a 'Save As' on my documents, and which could be disastrous if I didn't stop quickly before accidently hitting Return and having my document renamed "lkajsd."
C'mon, Apple! Users use their keyboards as input devices, not clever pieces of sculpture! (So far I've had to backspace and correct about 5 times in this stupid paragraph
an ambivalent Apple user*
timothy
* Still love the old SE/30, though!
;) Guilty (at least that's where the cable modem is) but I just moved South into an Airstream trailer.
But even at the RV park, the SouthWestern Bell DSL page indicates that DSL is available, and preliminary nosing says cable should be available as well.
And as far as Austin being atypical
Suburbia is fairly well-provided with cable television, and in many areas that means cable modem as well. DSL is slowly spreading further from telco main offices, and residential ISDN service is no longer rare (though it is less of a reasonable option most places
But yes, Austin does have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to connecting to the Internet. This city has plenty of faults, but if you want 24/7 connectivity, hard to beat. Ranked #2 is someone-or-others recent list of "Most Wired Places in America," behind SF. At the same time as all this, though, most of those in South and East Austin (the poorer sections) have few places to connect from. No 'Public Telepresence Points" like in a Bruce Sterling novel I just read. But where is this not true?
Also, what's typical now is perhaps not what will be typical in 10 or even 5 years, too. Though it has some oddball flaws and requirements, the hybrid phone / satellite Internet service you can get from Hughes brings high-speed access to quite rural places. Expensive for one person, but shared by several it seems like a possibility. Once those satellites are up, it's in their interest to get more people feeding off them.
All I'm saying is, bring on the divergent and at-best-semi-compatible standards for transmission, use compatible-as-possible file formats, and let the shakedown begin!
timothy
1) I meant to say "instantly switch ISPs" rather than "switch instantly."
2) I should have said "airline" in front of "tickets."
Other than that it is perfect. Golden. Without flaw. Unimpeachable. Undeniable. (heh!)
timothy
When it comes to phone service, the old argument for a state monopoly on organization / chartering / close regulation was threefold (at least;)):
The result is that a single carrier was chosen, and given a shorter leash on how much it could gouge the public.
A better result (I assert) would have come out of unfettered competition. If only one company provided service, but was not legally protected from competition, it would have no laurels to comfortably rest upon.
Why all this talk about phone companies? Because it deeply affects ISPs, Internet access, broadband, etc. The problem with regulating anything is that by doing so, you tend to define the parameters of what it contains, consists of, appears as, etc. Laws that would govern exactly how Internet service should be delivered might look good for a year or so, but they would also serve as blinders to other alternatives.
Who knows what Internet access is "best"? No one and everyone. For some people, dialing up their friend's modem once a day with SLIP to check email and a stock quote or two might be best. For others (right now), a cable modem might be the best value of bandwidth for cash in a 24-hour access device. But ten years from now, maybe you'd rather have a fiber-optic cable strung straight into your house.
Do you want a moribund, tightly regulated market, or a more robust, inventive one? Look again at the threefold argument for regulation of phone service and decide whether the three apply well to Internet access.
1) Multiple ISPs? Yes, and multiple delivery systems along that Last Mile already. To my door in Austin, Texas, USA, Earth there are at least four possibilities: ISDN, POTS, DSL and Cable (RoadRunner / Time Warner). Note that the first three of them are controlled to some degree by Southwestern Bell.
2) Usurious rates: I don't think so, at least in Austin. (High speed access via DSL starts around $40, plus startup fees). There certainly might be if there were not three high-speed competitors, plain-ole phone lines and wireless all available. But again, that's an argument against rather than for competition. "Reasonable" rates can never be effectively determined without real competition.
3) Does anyone on Slashdot buy the argument that we should all be on the same ISP in order to receive messages from each other?;)
In sum, my worry with regulation of Last Mile, First Mile, or Any Mile in Between is not as much what would be established, as what potential developments would be squashed as a result. I'd love to see a few kiosks at the corner with switching equipment and a touchscreen each urging me to switch instantly ISP service and enjoy a lower rate, but that sort of flexibility is the antithesis of regulation by the Well-Meaning.
Ask yourself one last question: would you rather buy tickets at current, less-regulated prices or, say, 1980 prices adjusted for inflation?
That is all. This took so long to write, I bet I'm not first poster by a long shot anymore.
timothy
Haven - I know what you mean, and I'm sure you're not the only one who feels this way about it, even though I like the business / market stuff.
One way I see around this is to assign more than one category to the news items so that readers can do tighter filtering. So this one could be filed under at least categories like:
- Caldera
- Business / marketplace
- IPOs and Spinoffs
- Embedded Linux
If in the user configuration menu, you could choose not to see things about Business and Marketplace, then you wouldn't see this, even if you would normally see things about Caldera, say.
Arranging the heirarchy so that it is understandable to users setting it up, and not too much of a pain to go back and change later would be the toughest part. UI is tough, even with an informed, savvy audience (and I'm on the low end of informed or savvy for slashdot), so making it better than the @$~# voicemail set-up menu at work is a real challenge.
BTW, I think a system like this (multiple indexes or tags on slashdot items) would be useful even if it was applied somewhat arbitrarily, as long as there were a few categories that were used consistently, so someone could, say, choose to "Always view items about the linux marketplace" and be confident that they would have been marked for inclusion if appropriate.
Exponential vs. Linear might not be right, but if
... ask the SS Admin. innocently if you can make a withdrawal on your "contribution account"), and made our elders dependent on its largesse. Robbing Peter to pay Pauls' kids, stealing candy from generations of babies.
rate of output > rate of input, then the eventual effect is the same. The pot, toilet tank, refrigerator, coke can, bank account etc all grow empty, at rates varying with the difference between the in- and out- streams.
Social security? Non-sequitur, except in a graveyard. The government made promises which it assumes our asses can keep (lying blithely about the actual set-up
As someone else pointed out, you don't need a multi-million dollar computer to show this, just the willingness to see truth. The US gubmint is lying to the young to justify its defrauding the rich in a setup which would be prosecuted as a Ponzi scheme if the applicable laws applied to federal agencies.
timothy
p.s. Not to mention the obvious Orwellian aspects of the ubiquitous "SS number, please," which for the sake of readers I will not get into right now;)
This example (the family burger joint vs. the evil Imperial Burger Corp.) illustrates that customers can have differential values, not that either company is particularly moral / immoral.
The idea that low prices may not bring the larger company a profit though they may crush competition has a corollary: if the prices are so low that the maker does not profit, but the burgers are good enough to be a good value at that price, then customers are receiving a net benefit. (Convince me as I get a day's worth of calories for half of the minimum wage that I'm getting a bad deal, just try.) Otherwise, they would continue to eat the Family Burgers down the block.
Only if the big company could secure a legal monopoly on the burger market ("Official Burgers of America, or Insert Country Name Here -- no competitors allowed!") would there be a problem for society. For the little burger place there could surely be a problem, if a larger company with greater economies of scale, capital base etc. can buy a good location, pay less per patty, etc. However, big and little companies each have advantages that the other can not possess, and no government can fully appreciate or account for these advantages; trying to is folly on a grand scale.
Do you go to a given restaurant *sheerly* because of the price? Even if price is indeed the biggest factor in your decision, you probably would be less likely to go to a slightly-cheaper alternative if you were regularly mistreated there, or if the food made you sick a few times, or if you thought the management was beating up the employees, etc. Small restaurants often have an atmosphere that is irreproducable in McBurger World, and are generally more responsive (not to mention more interesting). And since markets are dynamic, today's small burger joint may discover the killer hamburger and be a giant chain 10 years from now.
If *all* small burger places (or chip manufacturers, I haven't forgotten what this is about) go out of business, leaving MondoChip Inc. alone in the marketplace, then MondoChip had better make some killer designs rather than rest on its laurels for years, because the profits to be made by stealing even a small portion of market share are potentially huge. Maybe it would even be good for Intel to have a few years of sole possession of the desktop chip market. Think of the currents that could be stirred up in those years!
I don't want AMD to go out of business -- and I don't think they will anytime soon. (Cross fingers, buy stock.) But let's say they do: Intel cannot sit still and say "Eh, let's just sell them these leftover Pentium II 300s -- no competition, so why not?" Again, let's say they do: what then? COnsdering how many computers are in daily use, and how many are sold, I wouldn't be surprized if a bunch of Intel engineers etc. left to form a renegade chip maker on their own.
OK, too much rambling, but it would be good to at least consider that what the government tells you about "monopoly" may not be the most accurate rendition.
timothy
This post was succinct and informative regarding the advantages of PNG (Free, variable bit-depth, lossless), and gave a good, simple, workable explanation of alpha and gamma channels.
Thanks Frater.
timothy
It may seem like a small point, but I want to amplify the part about archive!
One of the best things about linux is its wide-ranging hardware support (this is true of Free and NetBSD as well, but not as broad) -- being able to set up a system using hardware which would be impractically slow under NT or Win9X is a huge selling point. (Well, 'using point;)')
But when hardware is more than a few years old (and sometimes just more than a year or so) it is often hard to find drivers for it. But if your laser printer, or sound card, or video card, etc. works and you'd like to use it, it's frustrating to be driven to new hardware for lack of a small piece of software.
I appreciate companies that offer long-term value by keeping drivers available, but since most linux drivers are hacked together rather than Officially Released, the idea of an archive for this information is especially important.
Just a thought,
timothy
Christopher Thomas - good response re. moderation!
... what percentage of the slashdot populace has moderation privelege at any one time?
I think the moderation would be better if if was more widespread, though
There are quite a few things that get knocked down which perhaps ought not be, but when you are the moderator it's tough to dole out points to correct things like this. Maybe the averaging effect would work better if there were more people with moderation power at any given time, or if moderators had more points. Or (dare I suggest such a complicated thing?) there were specific points allocated for correcting over- or under-moderated posts? Actually, that wouldn't really add anything special other than semantically, since you could already spend your points up or down.
Just a thought -
timothy