People can be hypocritical; groups can't. In any group, including the Slashdot community, there will be a variety of opinions. Some people like KDE; some like GNOME. Others think they both suck and use Window Maker. It's unreasonable to expect that we all think with the same mind. We don't.
Look at the people who are in favor of the Transmeta patent. Chances are they have never ever posted their opinion on the "evil" patents. You're looking different people expressing their opinions and treating them like they are the same person!
While I appreciate RMS's ideas, this one doesn't sound practical for general consumption.
You assume that the only reason people crack computer systems is for the challenge. Crackers like to push this image because it makes them look like the "tormented genius" who breaks into computer systems as an intellectual challenge. In fact, they provide a service by showing us our security holes! What wonderful people! (Sarcasm intended)
It is a well-known cracker ethic that once you break in, you don't damage the data. However, a number of crackers (especially the current onslaught of 13-16 year-olds who may or may not understand the "community" they have chosen to align themselves with) don't follow these guidelines and just break things. Denial of Service attacks have become more common, yet taking down a computer system is just a few steps less severe that destroying it's data. Sometimes having your information when you need it is as important as having it at all.
And I haven't even talked about the virus writers who have violated the "don't touch the data" principle more often than all crackers combined. That's another use of security: to keep programs from destroying the data of other programs. The only difference between a trojan horse and a buggy program is intent. A simple bug can trash a whole system if the operating system allows it.
Basically, to argue that security is unnecessary, one has to pretend people don't do things just to be annoying. They do, and they will if you let them. Cracking is driven by curiousity and the desire to destroy. You've only considered one of those motivations.
By your criteria, the only computers that ought to be hooked to the Internet are the vast majority of home machines that are used for games and web-surfing.
Everyone else has data to protect and work to get done.
Am I just too young (19) to get this? I've been looking at the paper for the past couple days, and I don't understand why people are fascinated with JFK, Jr. To me, it looks like a story about a guy who was an inexperienced pilot having the poor judgement to fly in an instrument-only situation without proper training. The tragedy here is that his lack of experience took the lives of two other people as well.
But where does all this "blow to a generation" come from? Honestly, people die all of the time in more tragic ways, and nobody bats an eyelash. Are people's lives so pathetically boring that they have to take the events in other people's lives and make them their own? All I can figure is that people like this kind of stuff because it gives them something to care about. Why they have nothing in their own lives to worry about, I won't pretend to understand.
He actually was trying to be funny! Doesn't he know there are some things you just don't joke about?! The correct spelling of Torvalds is our sacred duty, not to be trivialized by some twit who probably can't even create an ext2 partition with a hex editor! I think I'll go flame that satanic pod-scum jerk right now!
While it is nice to think that we could stop tampering with nature, it's not practical. As our population nears 7 billion, the human race is becoming a major influence on the environment, whether we want to or not. Just the amount of agriculture needed to support that kind of a population represents a lot of tampering with the environment. No amount of fad-environmentalism is going to change that.
Granted, this case of cloning birds is silly. This is being done as a PR stunt for the cloning industry to show the positive uses of cloning. Since it's politically correct to help animals, people will have a hard time arguing with this.
But as a general principle, "leave nature alone" is simply not an option. Unless you decide to execute 80% of the population, we have to tamper with nature, or nature will execute those people the slow way. Our only option is to try and understand the complex system we are living in a minimize unwanted side-effects.
Tampering with nature does produce unexpected consequences, but if we do our job right, the benefits outweigh the consequences. Penecillin saved millions of lives (perhaps even a billion), but it generated some drug resistant diseases. Do we regret penecillin? No. Someday we might, but as long as we can stay ahead of the bacteria, we'll be okay.
Or how about the plow? That gave us agriculture, (which gave us cities, etc.) but also indirectly helped cause the overpopulation problem we have today. Do I regret being well-fed? No! I have faith that we will figure out a way to deal with overpopulation.
So, you're right that "every time we tamper with nature, it has led to unexpected consequences." It has also led to some expected consequences which are often beneficial to us. The only decision we have to make is which is more significant.
The people who scream the loudest are the ones you should listen to the least.
I've observed this principle in everything from technical discussions to religious debates. The people who do all of the yelling are either ignorant and hope noise covers their lack of understanding, or they are hypocritical and trying to deflect attention from their own problems.
Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately?) the Internet lets these people spout off to thousands of people as opposed to the 2 or 3 who happened to be stuck next to them. The result is that people decide that the "gnashing of teeth" is normal behavior for the group, when in reality the majority of people are quite calm and normal. They just don't speak up that often.
The Free Software movement has just as many screaming groupies as any other mildly interesting organization. Just ignore them.
I get tired of hearing this "RMS is a commie" garbage. It makes me think I'm in some 1950's documentary about McCarthism.
I still don't get why people seem to think that since capitalism works on self-interest (true), people are *only* supposed to help themselves (false), and anyone who helps others is not a capitalist (false), so therefore he must be a communist (very, very false).
I recall a discussion about Positive Sum Games in the thread about ESR's new paper. It's an interesting idea to think that by giving something to someone else, the total value increases.
I have Cox@Home, and the other day I was at work and decide to check the speed of my connection. I sent a 10 Meg file to my home computer (on the @Home network) at 70 kilobytes/sec. That's normal for the amount of traffic on Cox and at my employer. I then reversed the process, sending the file from my home computer to my work computer and got only 15 kilobytes/sec. I was rather miffed.
My question is: Can anyone shed some light on why this might be?
I have four possible theories:
Since my work computer is a Pentium III and my home computer is 486DX4-100, there is some sort of speed issue, like my 486 can receive data quickly, but hasn't got the horespower to send it out quickly. (This doesn't sound right, but its a possibility.)
Cox@Home has already rolled out a bandwidth cap in my area. While this is possible, I don't think the cap would be this low. (We're talking 1/4 the cap described in the article.)
My friend tells me that Cox regularly portscans computers on the network, and if they find FTP servers, they cap the bandwidth for that computer. I don't know if this is real, or if it is even possible. I do have an FTP server on my 486, but it is only for personal use.
The availible bandwidth coming out of the Cox network was very low due to other people filling it up with their high-volume FTP servers.
I don't know which of these possibilities is more accurate, so I would be interested in hearing the experiences of other Cox@Home users.
After reading that not very substantial article, I hardly feel "blasted." More like hit with a Nerf ball. He just parroted a few things we've already heard before with the bonus comment about being "punk kids." I just laughed. It's very hard to take these kind of comments seriously. He sounds like a man who has realized he is rapidly on his way to bankruptcy and is struggling to maintain his appearance of importance.
Very amusing, but I somehow I don't see myself formatting my box and installing some other OS with "direction." Perhaps it is because I have become a disciple of the Linux Religion (TM). I am not open to the One True Religion of Commercially Supported Software (TM). My ability to think rationally has been taken from me by those Linux zealot punk kids, and now I need SCO to give it back! Please SCO! Show me the way of truth and light!
Whatever.
(I apologize for the sarcasm, but this article was just silly.)
CRT's are very heavy and bulky, so LCD screens will hopefully take over the desktop computer in 5 years (or less, technology estimates are always wrong). No one wants to design a technology that relies on another tech on its way to the graveyard.
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Look at the people who are in favor of the Transmeta patent. Chances are they have never ever posted their opinion on the "evil" patents. You're looking different people expressing their opinions and treating them like they are the same person!
That's not hypocracy. That's variety.
You assume that the only reason people crack computer systems is for the challenge. Crackers like to push this image because it makes them look like the "tormented genius" who breaks into computer systems as an intellectual challenge. In fact, they provide a service by showing us our security holes! What wonderful people! (Sarcasm intended)
It is a well-known cracker ethic that once you break in, you don't damage the data. However, a number of crackers (especially the current onslaught of 13-16 year-olds who may or may not understand the "community" they have chosen to align themselves with) don't follow these guidelines and just break things. Denial of Service attacks have become more common, yet taking down a computer system is just a few steps less severe that destroying it's data. Sometimes having your information when you need it is as important as having it at all.
And I haven't even talked about the virus writers who have violated the "don't touch the data" principle more often than all crackers combined. That's another use of security: to keep programs from destroying the data of other programs. The only difference between a trojan horse and a buggy program is intent. A simple bug can trash a whole system if the operating system allows it.
Basically, to argue that security is unnecessary, one has to pretend people don't do things just to be annoying. They do, and they will if you let them. Cracking is driven by curiousity and the desire to destroy. You've only considered one of those motivations.
By your criteria, the only computers that ought to be hooked to the Internet are the vast majority of home machines that are used for games and web-surfing.
Everyone else has data to protect and work to get done.
But where does all this "blow to a generation" come from? Honestly, people die all of the time in more tragic ways, and nobody bats an eyelash. Are people's lives so pathetically boring that they have to take the events in other people's lives and make them their own? All I can figure is that people like this kind of stuff because it gives them something to care about. Why they have nothing in their own lives to worry about, I won't pretend to understand.
Okay, really that was hilarious! I loved it!
Granted, this case of cloning birds is silly. This is being done as a PR stunt for the cloning industry to show the positive uses of cloning. Since it's politically correct to help animals, people will have a hard time arguing with this.
But as a general principle, "leave nature alone" is simply not an option. Unless you decide to execute 80% of the population, we have to tamper with nature, or nature will execute those people the slow way. Our only option is to try and understand the complex system we are living in a minimize unwanted side-effects.
Tampering with nature does produce unexpected consequences, but if we do our job right, the benefits outweigh the consequences. Penecillin saved millions of lives (perhaps even a billion), but it generated some drug resistant diseases. Do we regret penecillin? No. Someday we might, but as long as we can stay ahead of the bacteria, we'll be okay.
Or how about the plow? That gave us agriculture, (which gave us cities, etc.) but also indirectly helped cause the overpopulation problem we have today. Do I regret being well-fed? No! I have faith that we will figure out a way to deal with overpopulation.
So, you're right that "every time we tamper with nature, it has led to unexpected consequences." It has also led to some expected consequences which are often beneficial to us. The only decision we have to make is which is more significant.
Does anyone have any idea why the difference? Is the Linux TCP/IP stack slower? Also, why did Linux come out ahead on just Perl and C CGI scripts?
I've observed this principle in everything from technical discussions to religious debates. The people who do all of the yelling are either ignorant and hope noise covers their lack of understanding, or they are hypocritical and trying to deflect attention from their own problems.
Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately?) the Internet lets these people spout off to thousands of people as opposed to the 2 or 3 who happened to be stuck next to them. The result is that people decide that the "gnashing of teeth" is normal behavior for the group, when in reality the majority of people are quite calm and normal. They just don't speak up that often.
The Free Software movement has just as many screaming groupies as any other mildly interesting organization. Just ignore them.
I get tired of hearing this "RMS is a commie" garbage. It makes me think I'm in some 1950's documentary about McCarthism.
I still don't get why people seem to think that since capitalism works on self-interest (true), people are *only* supposed to help themselves (false), and anyone who helps others is not a capitalist (false), so therefore he must be a communist (very, very false).
I recall a discussion about Positive Sum Games in the thread about ESR's new paper. It's an interesting idea to think that by giving something to someone else, the total value increases.
It's definitely something to think about.
I found the Ethernet comment at the end quite amusing. Mocking your opponent while making a worthwhile observation earns you style points.
My question is: Can anyone shed some light on why this might be?
I have four possible theories:
- Since my work computer is a Pentium III and my home computer is 486DX4-100, there is some sort of speed issue, like my 486 can receive data quickly, but hasn't got the horespower to send it out quickly. (This doesn't sound right, but its a possibility.)
- Cox@Home has already rolled out a bandwidth cap in my area. While this is possible, I don't think the cap would be this low. (We're talking 1/4 the cap described in the article.)
- My friend tells me that Cox regularly portscans computers on the network, and if they find FTP servers, they cap the bandwidth for that computer. I don't know if this is real, or if it is even possible. I do have an FTP server on my 486, but it is only for personal use.
- The availible bandwidth coming out of the Cox network was very low due to other people filling it up with their high-volume FTP servers.
I don't know which of these possibilities is more accurate, so I would be interested in hearing the experiences of other Cox@Home users.After reading that not very substantial article, I hardly feel "blasted." More like hit with a Nerf ball. He just parroted a few things we've already heard before with the bonus comment about being "punk kids." I just laughed. It's very hard to take these kind of comments seriously. He sounds like a man who has realized he is rapidly on his way to bankruptcy and is struggling to maintain his appearance of importance.
Very amusing, but I somehow I don't see myself formatting my box and installing some other OS with "direction." Perhaps it is because I have become a disciple of the Linux Religion (TM). I am not open to the One True Religion of Commercially Supported Software (TM). My ability to think rationally has been taken from me by those Linux zealot punk kids, and now I need SCO to give it back! Please SCO! Show me the way of truth and light!
Whatever.
(I apologize for the sarcasm, but this article was just silly.)
CRT's are very heavy and bulky, so LCD screens will hopefully take over the desktop computer in 5 years (or less, technology estimates are always wrong). No one wants to design a technology that relies on another tech on its way to the graveyard.
I'm sorry, but that just conjures up weird images of geek confessions at church:
.25mm dot pitch screen.
Geek: Father, I have had impure thoughts about a Silicon Graphics workstation.
Father: Did it have 256 Meg of RAM and 15 Gig of hard drive space?
Geek: Yes, father. And a 21"
Father: Oh, my. For your penance you shall sing the Free Software Song 3 times and smash 10 AOL CD's on your forehead.
Geek: Thank you father.