It's not companies like doubleclick that worry me, it's the non internet based marketing companies that worry me. Like with storecards we don't actually *know* what they use the data they collect is used for, nor do we know who uses it.
I'm sure there are other companies that are not necessarily web based that are doing very similar things, and the only way we could really find out is through a leak from a member of staff somewhere.
I do wonder if it makes any difference at all, perhaps Big Brother is always watching?:o)
"(I'd love to see some of those "patriotic" Irish buisness men who funded the IRA start funding PGP-phone sales in Irland too. It would be a lot cheeper and win a lot more political sympathy)"
How do you figure this one out?? Most people don't give a flying f**k about this issue, where does the political sympathy come from? And why should the Irish be the ones complaining about the UK crypto laws? Why not the english too???
I am from England, and I have no problem with the laws here, they are not ideal but at least they gave up the escrow idea. There are other unrelated laws which scare me a lot more.
I also wonder why there is such a big outrage about echelon, yes there are issues with it for trade and industry (anti-competetive behaviour etc), but to your average Joe it means nothing (unless you are really paranoid about big brother). Monitoring has been happening since long distance communications began, it's nothing new and it wont be stopped. It's only the ways and means that have changed.
Of course, no-one cares about slashcode anymore do they, it's just a hack made by someone who doesn't care anymore because they now have lots of money.
Cynics:o) - Now we can do things properly, just like it should be, and I look forward to it developing into a true opensource project just like people have been wanting since/. began!:o)
Congrats CmdrTaco for getting it right! It looks like you have delivered exactly what you promised!
I beg to differ with your comments, I think that corporations in nature, are no different now to the way they were 10, 15 even 20 years ago. They have always taken advantage of the rules and regulations to breaking point. They use and abuse the environment and the people working for them, it has always been about making money and always will be. I am interested to note why 'you and others' are such experts on the subject, I myself am not but have never claimed to be. Collective suggestion does not make fact.
What I think has changed is the market and the economic/social conditions in which corporations exist. The advent of the internet makes corporatism a much bigger ball game, it's now on a truely global market with new (read almost no) laws, new ways of thinking and new possibilities. The fact however remains that in generally nothing has changed. Corporations and indeed business in general still works in similar ways and have similar goals, albeit attained through different methods.
There are many many issues you need to take into account while arguing points like these. Law, Economics, Athropology, Sociology, Psychology, Business Management, you cannot possibly hope to be able to pull all these together in a single column and expect to be able to come up with any reasonable arguments.
You can also apply similar arguments to that of society, we are in general becoming more corporate, the drive for efficiency, the idea that we feel compelled to justify our existance. Every moment of our lives is touched with at least some sense of corporatism of for most of us has been since the 2nd world war and the onset of the free market.
I fail to see the argument contained within your column, in fact I see a lot more scaremongering and sensationalism and almost what I wall could tabloid irrelevance (I refer to the comments about Steve Case, a bland man indeed but hardly relevant to the argument).
You come so close yet completely fail to hit the mark, you suggest that corporations are the root of all evil, you suggest that it is almost worse than the futures protrayed by the likes of Orwell and others.
I'm so sick of people whining on about how terrible this all is, how it dooms our privacy and our rights. I ask you this... what rights do we actually have, what rights have we ever had? I'm no conspiracy theorist but when it really comes down to it we have little. We have the right to earn money, the right to spend it (all of which contributes to corporatism in some way or another for most of us). We are the problem, corporatism is a symptom. You cannot escape that, it is something that every single one of us has helped create and continue to keep going. We all play a part even if it is only by accepting it and playing along.
You claim that we are safer and having more fun, I beg to differ again, on what pop quiz do you base these suggestions on? Define fun, qualify your statements. In the world of academia if you don't qualify statements then they get thrown out as idle speculation, I'm afraid I do the same. We may be having fun in a more superficial sense, but then that's part of the problem, fun isn't happiness and has no real meaning.
It seems to me that the main problem with society and life in general is that we have removed the personal from everything, we have no real sense of worth, we no longer play a part in something, and the things that we do play a part in is corporatism - do you sense a paradox here?
We take responsibility for our own lives and no-one elses (with the minor exception of those of our children). It is up to us how we act and react (there is a big difference between the two). We are ultimately reponsible for the society we create through our actions, and if we feel we have lost control of it then it is the fault of all of us, not Steve Case, not Bill Gates not any individual, *ALL* of us.
British Telecom come out with new and whacky marketing ideas about as regularly as intel do. This sounds remarkably like the DSL/ADSL promises that BT made about 2 years ago, and many other promises besides.
ADSL via BT was promised at 2MB down 512Kb up, they trialed, it went down to 1MB down 128Kb up, they trialed again, it went to 2MB down, 128Kb up, but shared between you and the rest of the city.
Now they are about ready to launch, but only if you live in sidcup and you have a bit of string long enough to stretch to the exchange, it doesn't go over a puddle and it doesn't endanger the lifes of any pigeons that may live in your area.
BT wouldn't know broadband if it jumped up behind them and pumped a rocket into their ass. They are incompetent mi-managed and generally wasteful!
I won't hold my breath, and I certainly wouldn't move country for it!
Preaching is just that, preaching - only a small few listen and even fewer care. It is not effective, it winds people up (as the response to Katz's recent articles demonstrates), and eventually it becomes ineffective.
Mostly we know the arguments, we are a semi intelligent bunch. As you rightly suggested preaching to the converted is a waste of time and in my mind an abuse of the platform, there are much more worthwhile issues at stake.
My suggestion was merely that we have to take personal responsibility and lead by example. Talk is just that, and as the maxim goes talk is cheap. We can only ever take responsibility for ourselves yet few of us actually bother doing that, instead we prefer to talk about it which gets us approximately nowhere.
I meant nothing more and nothing less. We can go round in circles criticising each other for our comments to Katzs' threads and I'm sure we will... but it is unlikely to go any further unless we each as individuals take the action we talk about so much.
Hello??? Have you been living your life entirely on the net for the past 15 years???
The western capitalist world *IS* corporate, the internet is just catching up, and what makes you think/. JonKatz or anyone else can do a damn thing to stop it?
Sure you can rebel, sure you can write nice non flaming letters in word95 format, but that aint gonna make a blind bit of difference.
Take a look around, where does it make a difference in the real world, forests still fall, people still die because they don't have decent medical insurance, people still starve. Shouldn't we be focusing on the slightly more important but less relevant to you issues here?
Jeez, get off your moral high horse and start talking about something the majority of people actually give a shit about.
We winge about crappy software patents but fail to notice companies are patenting human DNA, tell me which one is the more fundamental of the 2 there.
/. I say stick to the geek aspect and stop prentending to be useful to society, cos it's all full of shit and way off the mark.
Money talks, email and letters don't. The only way you can stop these things happening is to use your money wisely. Don't like the CSS encryption, then don't buy DVD. Think M$ is a monopoly, then don't buy M$ software.
It's the *ONLY* real way of harming these companies, and if other people chose not to follow you, then educate them to the issues, if they still don't then lump it. But don't just stand there and whine, it aint gonna get you anywhere.
Moderate me down, I don't care about Kama anymore, it's utterly pointless cos it means nothing. The more you whinge the more kama you get, whoopee!
Ben
Re:And great opportunity for the spin doctors!
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Total Lunar Eclipse
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How about polution checks on the shit people spout through their mouths?? *grin* - Can you call NP posts pollution?:o)
The USA creates 80% of the worlds pollutants, now I'm sorry but whichever way you look at it that can't be good, and is provenly unnecessary. If every other country can manage to cut down the so can the USA, and there is no reason for them not to do so.
I do however agree with the point that Global Warming is a catchphrase and still has no real basis in fact, but that doesn't excuse causing massive increases in asthma, cancers and other illnesses by pumping out tonnes of carcinogens into the atmosphere. You can't just say 'well global warming isn't proven so why do anything about pollution' it so much more complicated than that.
I have only 3 things to say against the comments made about them;
1) Their most basic $6/month account has no script or db access, big deal, their $30/month account has everything including multiple databases, you get what you pay for!
2) If you have just simple questions that are either of a homepage/website support nature then they don't answer quickly, why should they... they are not consultants! In my experience, if you have a network or server problem they answer by return.
3) In the 4 years I have hosted with them I can remember only 2 days downtime, both of which were for moves to new bigger offices. They are now in a state of the art data center which is pretty much future proof.
I can't say enough good things about pair, they simply do what they say.
This maybe construed as offtopic but I don't think it is...
With teleworking/networking and working from home, on the increase, plus the huge rise in internet related consultancy and the slow demise of the voice phone it should in theory make the internet more genderless, as someone has already suggested I too consider everyone on the net genderless until I meet them irl, of course 9/10 I know their gender but it makes zero difference. I also know that a lot of companies (like mine) are actively trying to find female staff, which is easier said than done. I don't think gender on the internet will make any difference at all, it's the workplace, managers, and HR depts that have to change,
The thing that worries me most about the internet and human interaction is the responsiblity aspect. It's incredibly easy to be completely anonymous on the internet, as far as the average user is concerned anyway.
This in turn means that anyone who wants to can completely re-invent themselves to be whatever they so choose, and the only thing you can really do is either a) accept everything as truth or b) doubt everything.
It looks as if doubt everything is going to be the norm, and I think that's very sad. It's an indication of the state of general society that people feel they have to do this (they always have to a certain extent, but not as much as now).
People are going to get hurt, and with the move/transition of official functions moving to the internet this could also be damaging for official lines too. It's much easier to spoof an internet document at the moment than it is an official document, although there are many many technologies to combat that.
I don't claim to have any idea about how to put the personal reponsiblity back into users, but I do worry about the validity of the kinds of people I talk to every day.
This is presumably intels attempt at cementing their foothold in the current iMac/WebTV and other cheap internet access markets.
It sounds like a bit of a prospective investment, reactions will be gauged and to be honest I can't see it taking off that well, but it's interesting to see none the less.
Intel are in a threatened situation, more and more home users are turning to TV top boxes and cheaper alternatives to PCs for net access, maybe this is intels answer?
Let me explain why my analogy was at least semi valid...
I made the analogy between releasing *opensource* drivers. I am fully supportive of hardware manufacturers releasing drivers free of charge for their hardware, and I can see why the analogy doesn't work here.
I don't however see why whingy whiny people demand opensource everything. Yes it's useful, it means you can hack. In some cases it means you can make things work in extreme situations. But other than that there is no point.
I maybe missing a point here, but while the argument goes that linux users should get the same treatment as windoze users, I don't see the argument for opensourced windows drivers.
It works both ways, but I don't see that latter case happening.
The only way hardware manufacturers will release drivers for a particular platform is if it makes financial/market sense for them to do so.
In most cases (for the more common hardware elements) it probably does, and indeed *most* companies have, even if they are not opensource.
However some of the more obscure companies will not, it doesn't make economic sense for them to do so, they have very little to gain from spending lots of money on it, they follow the 80/20 rule.
This still doesn't mean that they can't release the specs for the hardware though, particularly for older more obscure hardware. I'm suprised and dissapointed that they don't, but then again sometimes this doesn't make sense, they want you to buy the all new expensive stuff don't they, even if it wont go in your old obsolete 286.
I can't see things changing much, most of the hardware that is usefull has or will have drivers or specs released, those that don't probably never will have.
Then there is the whole opensource argument that I wont even go into... why should companies opensource their drivers and specs? Do you expect Coca Cola to give you their recipe. No, I think not.
One way round the search engine missing query URLs is to write to static pages for the purpose of submitting it to search engines, there are many clever ways of having truely dynamic sites without the need for long urls, you just have to put some effort into it.
Search engines not picking up on php3 is a bit worrying though, all my sites are written purely in php3, although I never seem to have any problems with getting listed.
Gateway pages are a good way of making sure you get listed with the keywords you want, although they aren't very dynamic and unless you get really clever don't tend to reflect the contents of a regularly update site... however it seems to me that you can only really hope for *a* listing these days, not an index of all of your site.
Even google has a 3 month disclaimer on it's submit page, that's a mighty long time if you are looking for support on a brand new motherboard.
LASE seems to be the way to go... subject specifc full text indexes which spider regularly and can index specialised data keeping it up to date.
However you would still need a search engine to find a LASE that will get you what you want, but at least it's a bit more structured!
There are many ways round the search engine problems, and keeping on top of it is a full time job, Submit-it doesn't come close, that hasn't changed in the past 3 years, Search engines however have!
IMO a combination of all of the above will get you where you want. Keywords and Meta Tags still count, and you have to be persistent.
Yes, I am well aware that there are very serious mental illnesses which aren't treatable with homeopathy and meditation etc, I myself was diagnosed with clinical depression and lost 3 jobs over it. I was on anti-depressants for 3 years and it's a *HORRIBLE* situation to be in.
I was advocating a *holistic* approach which by definition of the word means it covers *all* approaches. What I'm saying is that doctors *VERY* rarely consider things like meditation, herbal remedies and the like which for a lot of mental problems *CAN* be of great benefit, particularly in the cases of stress related illnesses.
I'm not trying to put anyone down or offend anyone.
Hey - the country that spends the most money in the world on psychs and shrinks already wants more?
How can this be, are we just inventing new disorders so that we can all be unique in our illness?
The stresses of life are always increasing, and we are having to work harder and harder to stay afloat, we have so many expectations and pressures that it doesn't surprise me that mental health is on a downward spiral. We don't have *time* to stay sane.
Perhaps it's time to promote a more natural and holistic approach to mental health and mental illness, how about promoting meditation, peaceful time, walks in the woods, true relaxing things. But oh no, we don't have time to do those things do we... maybe we should just do the prozac thing instead!
Hmm - and people insist on taking things absolutely literally too.
I'm sure you would be perfectly happy, millions wouldn't.
Technology has improved *your* communications skills, you are one of the blessed few that have access to good education and technology and chooses to use it in a constructive way, millions don't.
It's all to easy to take your stance on the world, and automatically assume that it is the same for everyone else. It isn't. Just like only the top (misnomer in itself) 3% of the western worlds population have an education past high school available to them, and even then only if you can afford it.
Step back a second, the world isn't rosy, and to answer your question, if you don't have personal wealth and values all there is is other peoples, and that isn't a very healthy situation to be in.
We are the lucky ones, and it's an american falacy to suppose it is available to everyone because it simply isn't.
People love money, and more than loving money they love to spend it on something bigger and better than the things their peers have. Rapidly evolving technology allows them to do this.
The content of TV doesnt make people happy, but the number of channels they have to choose from and the size of their TV does. Because it's probably more than the other people's.
Technology is evolving at a rapid pace, but community and society are degenerating at a similar rate. What good is one without the other.
Most people have no sense of self anymore, they only understand themselves in the context of how 'good' they are compared to the person standing either side of them. There is little value in personal wealth, values, and inherent personality. Only in what you can add to the the 'corporation'
It's a falacy, and one which too many people fall for.
And the point is?? Buzzword bingo again, sad thing is it actually works. People fall for the nice shine the M$ marketing merkins put on things. You can spray paint rust, and it may look like new, but it's stil rust, and it will still crumble eventually.
The USSR worked on policies very similar to this in the Red days, with the KGB and internal police seemingly doing very similar things, although only now do we get to hear about them. I guess that's the difference.
You can do anything in secret in the USA, but the principles are still the same.
Worrying worrying worrying, words I seem to be using a lot in slashdot comments at the moment.
There are many many arguments surrounding this whole issue... but in my opinion the 2 main ones are:
1) Nothing is effective unless it is constructive, this goes for criticism, conversation, relationships *anything*. Flaming is a pointless excersize and a complete waste of energy. Think of it from a simple point of view, surely it is so much better for both sides if the energy put into the argument was of a positive nature rather than negative. Not to mention the simple aspect of respect. - It's all be forgotten about on the web, primarily IMO because you are faceless and it's very unlikely you will get any comeback. Unlike IRL!
2) Dumbing down.... are we really getting more stupid??? Are we unevolving into chimps who don't understand subtleties anymore. Where satire and humor is lost totally? After all it was a satirical movie and if people decide to get scared about it then what are we to do. Is pulling it really the answer?
It's a strange situation, but one which is happening everywhere. TV, politics, almost everything has been dumbed down for the masses. It's a disturbing trend.
I have no easy answers, but the whole thing worries me deeply. It has such far reaching consequences not just to do with privacy and rights, but on a much more basic human interaction level.
Some URLs you may or may not have seen
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http://www.gumbley.demon.co.uk/psion-c.html has some psion/linux related material from people working on the psion-c project.
Which has a few threads about running linux on it. I can't see any reason why not, you can get it running on nokia phones and palms, and there is very little technical reason why it wouldn't that I can think of. Keep us posted!
Slashdot Mirror
Get your facts straight. That's not the MSN homepage. That's the host that carries MSN members homepages.
www.msn.com is running Microsoft-IIS/5.0 on Windows 2000
Hmm - you act like owning a car is a given right.
It's not. - It's a previledge which shouldn't be abused.
An interesting read, thank you for posting the link
It's not companies like doubleclick that worry me, it's the non internet based marketing companies that worry me. Like with storecards we don't actually *know* what they use the data they collect is used for, nor do we know who uses it.
:o)
I'm sure there are other companies that are not necessarily web based that are doing very similar things, and the only way we could really find out is through a leak from a member of staff somewhere.
I do wonder if it makes any difference at all, perhaps Big Brother is always watching?
Nice to see them admit defeat though.
"(I'd love to see some of those "patriotic" Irish buisness men who funded the IRA start funding PGP-phone sales in Irland too. It would be a lot cheeper and win a lot more political sympathy)"
How do you figure this one out?? Most people don't give a flying f**k about this issue, where does the political sympathy come from? And why should the Irish be the ones complaining about the UK crypto laws? Why not the english too???
I am from England, and I have no problem with the laws here, they are not ideal but at least they gave up the escrow idea. There are other unrelated laws which scare me a lot more.
I also wonder why there is such a big outrage about echelon, yes there are issues with it for trade and industry (anti-competetive behaviour etc), but to your average Joe it means nothing (unless you are really paranoid about big brother). Monitoring has been happening since long distance communications began, it's nothing new and it wont be stopped. It's only the ways and means that have changed.
Deal with it.
Of course, no-one cares about slashcode anymore do they, it's just a hack made by someone who doesn't care anymore because they now have lots of money.
:o) - Now we can do things properly, just like it should be, and I look forward to it developing into a true opensource project just like people have been wanting since /. began! :o)
Cynics
Congrats CmdrTaco for getting it right! It looks like you have delivered exactly what you promised!
:o)
I beg to differ with your comments, I think that corporations in nature, are no different now to the way they were 10, 15 even 20 years ago. They have always taken advantage of the rules and regulations to breaking point. They use and abuse the environment and the people working for them, it has always been about making money and always will be. I am interested to note why 'you and others' are such experts on the subject, I myself am not but have never claimed to be. Collective suggestion does not make fact.
What I think has changed is the market and the economic/social conditions in which corporations exist. The advent of the internet makes corporatism a much bigger ball game, it's now on a truely global market with new (read almost no) laws, new ways of thinking and new possibilities. The fact however remains that in generally nothing has changed. Corporations and indeed business in general still works in similar ways and have similar goals, albeit attained through different methods.
There are many many issues you need to take into account while arguing points like these. Law, Economics, Athropology, Sociology, Psychology, Business Management, you cannot possibly hope to be able to pull all these together in a single column and expect to be able to come up with any reasonable arguments.
You can also apply similar arguments to that of society, we are in general becoming more corporate, the drive for efficiency, the idea that we feel compelled to justify our existance. Every moment of our lives is touched with at least some sense of corporatism of for most of us has been since the 2nd world war and the onset of the free market.
I fail to see the argument contained within your column, in fact I see a lot more scaremongering and sensationalism and almost what I wall could tabloid irrelevance (I refer to the comments about Steve Case, a bland man indeed but hardly relevant to the argument).
You come so close yet completely fail to hit the mark, you suggest that corporations are the root of all evil, you suggest that it is almost worse than the futures protrayed by the likes of Orwell and others.
I'm so sick of people whining on about how terrible this all is, how it dooms our privacy and our rights. I ask you this... what rights do we actually have, what rights have we ever had? I'm no conspiracy theorist but when it really comes down to it we have little. We have the right to earn money, the right to spend it (all of which contributes to corporatism in some way or another for most of us). We are the problem, corporatism is a symptom. You cannot escape that, it is something that every single one of us has helped create and continue to keep going. We all play a part even if it is only by accepting it and playing along.
You claim that we are safer and having more fun, I beg to differ again, on what pop quiz do you base these suggestions on? Define fun, qualify your statements. In the world of academia if you don't qualify statements then they get thrown out as idle speculation, I'm afraid I do the same. We may be having fun in a more superficial sense, but then that's part of the problem, fun isn't happiness and has no real meaning.
It seems to me that the main problem with society and life in general is that we have removed the personal from everything, we have no real sense of worth, we no longer play a part in something, and the things that we do play a part in is corporatism - do you sense a paradox here?
We take responsibility for our own lives and no-one elses (with the minor exception of those of our children). It is up to us how we act and react (there is a big difference between the two). We are ultimately reponsible for the society we create through our actions, and if we feel we have lost control of it then it is the fault of all of us, not Steve Case, not Bill Gates not any individual, *ALL* of us.
British Telecom come out with new and whacky marketing ideas about as regularly as intel do. This sounds remarkably like the DSL/ADSL promises that BT made about 2 years ago, and many other promises besides.
ADSL via BT was promised at 2MB down 512Kb up, they trialed, it went down to 1MB down 128Kb up, they trialed again, it went to 2MB down, 128Kb up, but shared between you and the rest of the city.
Now they are about ready to launch, but only if you live in sidcup and you have a bit of string long enough to stretch to the exchange, it doesn't go over a puddle and it doesn't endanger the lifes of any pigeons that may live in your area.
BT wouldn't know broadband if it jumped up behind them and pumped a rocket into their ass. They are incompetent mi-managed and generally wasteful!
I won't hold my breath, and I certainly wouldn't move country for it!
:o)
Preaching is just that, preaching - only a small few listen and even fewer care. It is not effective, it winds people up (as the response to Katz's recent articles demonstrates), and eventually it becomes ineffective.
Mostly we know the arguments, we are a semi intelligent bunch. As you rightly suggested preaching to the converted is a waste of time and in my mind an abuse of the platform, there are much more worthwhile issues at stake.
My suggestion was merely that we have to take personal responsibility and lead by example. Talk is just that, and as the maxim goes talk is cheap. We can only ever take responsibility for ourselves yet few of us actually bother doing that, instead we prefer to talk about it which gets us approximately nowhere.
I meant nothing more and nothing less. We can go round in circles criticising each other for our comments to Katzs' threads and I'm sure we will... but it is unlikely to go any further unless we each as individuals take the action we talk about so much.
Hello??? Have you been living your life entirely on the net for the past 15 years???
/. JonKatz or anyone else can do a damn thing to stop it?
The western capitalist world *IS* corporate, the internet is just catching up, and what makes you think
Sure you can rebel, sure you can write nice non flaming letters in word95 format, but that aint gonna make a blind bit of difference.
Take a look around, where does it make a difference in the real world, forests still fall, people still die because they don't have decent medical insurance, people still starve. Shouldn't we be focusing on the slightly more important but less relevant to you issues here?
Jeez, get off your moral high horse and start talking about something the majority of people actually give a shit about.
We winge about crappy software patents but fail to notice companies are patenting human DNA, tell me which one is the more fundamental of the 2 there.
/. I say stick to the geek aspect and stop prentending to be useful to society, cos it's all full of shit and way off the mark.
Money talks, email and letters don't. The only way you can stop these things happening is to use your money wisely. Don't like the CSS encryption, then don't buy DVD. Think M$ is a monopoly, then don't buy M$ software.
It's the *ONLY* real way of harming these companies, and if other people chose not to follow you, then educate them to the issues, if they still don't then lump it. But don't just stand there and whine, it aint gonna get you anywhere.
Moderate me down, I don't care about Kama anymore, it's utterly pointless cos it means nothing. The more you whinge the more kama you get, whoopee!
Ben
How about polution checks on the shit people spout through their mouths?? *grin* - Can you call NP posts pollution? :o)
The USA creates 80% of the worlds pollutants, now I'm sorry but whichever way you look at it that can't be good, and is provenly unnecessary. If every other country can manage to cut down the so can the USA, and there is no reason for them not to do so.
I do however agree with the point that Global Warming is a catchphrase and still has no real basis in fact, but that doesn't excuse causing massive increases in asthma, cancers and other illnesses by pumping out tonnes of carcinogens into the atmosphere. You can't just say 'well global warming isn't proven so why do anything about pollution' it so much more complicated than that.
I have used pair for 4 years now.
I have only 3 things to say against the comments made about them;
1) Their most basic $6/month account has no script or db access, big deal, their $30/month account has everything including multiple databases, you get what you pay for!
2) If you have just simple questions that are either of a homepage/website support nature then they don't answer quickly, why should they... they are not consultants! In my experience, if you have a network or server problem they answer by return.
3) In the 4 years I have hosted with them I can remember only 2 days downtime, both of which were for moves to new bigger offices. They are now in a state of the art data center which is pretty much future proof.
I can't say enough good things about pair, they simply do what they say.
This maybe construed as offtopic but I don't think it is...
With teleworking/networking and working from home, on the increase, plus the huge rise in internet related consultancy and the slow demise of the voice phone it should in theory make the internet more genderless, as someone has already suggested I too consider everyone on the net genderless until I meet them irl, of course 9/10 I know their gender but it makes zero difference.
I also know that a lot of companies (like mine) are actively trying to find female staff, which is easier said than done. I don't think gender on the internet will make any difference at all, it's the workplace, managers, and HR depts that have to change,
The thing that worries me most about the internet and human interaction is the responsiblity aspect. It's incredibly easy to be completely anonymous on the internet, as far as the average user is concerned anyway.
This in turn means that anyone who wants to can completely re-invent themselves to be whatever they so choose, and the only thing you can really do is either a) accept everything as truth or b) doubt everything.
It looks as if doubt everything is going to be the norm, and I think that's very sad. It's an indication of the state of general society that people feel they have to do this (they always have to a certain extent, but not as much as now).
People are going to get hurt, and with the move/transition of official functions moving to the internet this could also be damaging for official lines too. It's much easier to spoof an internet document at the moment than it is an official document, although there are many many technologies to combat that.
I don't claim to have any idea about how to put the personal reponsiblity back into users, but I do worry about the validity of the kinds of people I talk to every day.
This is presumably intels attempt at cementing their foothold in the current iMac/WebTV and other cheap internet access markets.
It sounds like a bit of a prospective investment, reactions will be gauged and to be honest I can't see it taking off that well, but it's interesting to see none the less.
Intel are in a threatened situation, more and more home users are turning to TV top boxes and cheaper alternatives to PCs for net access, maybe this is intels answer?
Just a thought.
Erm, hello?
Let me explain why my analogy was at least semi valid...
I made the analogy between releasing *opensource* drivers. I am fully supportive of hardware manufacturers releasing drivers free of charge for their hardware, and I can see why the analogy doesn't work here.
I don't however see why whingy whiny people demand opensource everything. Yes it's useful, it means you can hack. In some cases it means you can make things work in extreme situations. But other than that there is no point.
I maybe missing a point here, but while the argument goes that linux users should get the same treatment as windoze users, I don't see the argument for opensourced windows drivers.
It works both ways, but I don't see that latter case happening.
The only way hardware manufacturers will release drivers for a particular platform is if it makes financial/market sense for them to do so.
In most cases (for the more common hardware elements) it probably does, and indeed *most* companies have, even if they are not opensource.
However some of the more obscure companies will not, it doesn't make economic sense for them to do so, they have very little to gain from spending lots of money on it, they follow the 80/20 rule.
This still doesn't mean that they can't release the specs for the hardware though, particularly for older more obscure hardware. I'm suprised and dissapointed that they don't, but then again sometimes this doesn't make sense, they want you to buy the all new expensive stuff don't they, even if it wont go in your old obsolete 286.
I can't see things changing much, most of the hardware that is usefull has or will have drivers or specs released, those that don't probably never will have.
Then there is the whole opensource argument that I wont even go into... why should companies opensource their drivers and specs? Do you expect Coca Cola to give you their recipe. No, I think not.
One way round the search engine missing query URLs is to write to static pages for the purpose of submitting it to search engines, there are many clever ways of having truely dynamic sites without the need for long urls, you just have to put some effort into it.
Search engines not picking up on php3 is a bit worrying though, all my sites are written purely in php3, although I never seem to have any problems with getting listed.
Gateway pages are a good way of making sure you get listed with the keywords you want, although they aren't very dynamic and unless you get really clever don't tend to reflect the contents of a regularly update site... however it seems to me that you can only really hope for *a* listing these days, not an index of all of your site.
Even google has a 3 month disclaimer on it's submit page, that's a mighty long time if you are looking for support on a brand new motherboard.
LASE seems to be the way to go... subject specifc full text indexes which spider regularly and can index specialised data keeping it up to date.
However you would still need a search engine to find a LASE that will get you what you want, but at least it's a bit more structured!
There are many ways round the search engine problems, and keeping on top of it is a full time job, Submit-it doesn't come close, that hasn't changed in the past 3 years, Search engines however have!
IMO a combination of all of the above will get you where you want. Keywords and Meta Tags still count, and you have to be persistent.
*yawn*
People taking things literally again!
Yes, I am well aware that there are very serious mental illnesses which aren't treatable with homeopathy and meditation etc, I myself was diagnosed with clinical depression and lost 3 jobs over it. I was on anti-depressants for 3 years and it's a *HORRIBLE* situation to be in.
I was advocating a *holistic* approach which by definition of the word means it covers *all* approaches. What I'm saying is that doctors *VERY* rarely consider things like meditation, herbal remedies and the like which for a lot of mental problems *CAN* be of great benefit, particularly in the cases of stress related illnesses.
I'm not trying to put anyone down or offend anyone.
Hey - the country that spends the most money in the world on psychs and shrinks already wants more?
How can this be, are we just inventing new disorders so that we can all be unique in our illness?
The stresses of life are always increasing, and we are having to work harder and harder to stay afloat, we have so many expectations and pressures that it doesn't surprise me that mental health is on a downward spiral. We don't have *time* to stay sane.
Perhaps it's time to promote a more natural and holistic approach to mental health and mental illness, how about promoting meditation, peaceful time, walks in the woods, true relaxing things. But oh no, we don't have time to do those things do we... maybe we should just do the prozac thing instead!
Why does GenX seem so very appealing now??
Hohum
Hmm - and people insist on taking things absolutely literally too.
I'm sure you would be perfectly happy, millions wouldn't.
Technology has improved *your* communications skills, you are one of the blessed few that have access to good education and technology and chooses to use it in a constructive way, millions don't.
It's all to easy to take your stance on the world, and automatically assume that it is the same for everyone else. It isn't. Just like only the top (misnomer in itself) 3% of the western worlds population have an education past high school available to them, and even then only if you can afford it.
Step back a second, the world isn't rosy, and to answer your question, if you don't have personal wealth and values all there is is other peoples, and that isn't a very healthy situation to be in.
We are the lucky ones, and it's an american falacy to suppose it is available to everyone because it simply isn't.
People love money, and more than loving money they love to spend it on something bigger and better than the things their peers have. Rapidly evolving technology allows them to do this.
The content of TV doesnt make people happy, but the number of channels they have to choose from and the size of their TV does. Because it's probably more than the other people's.
Technology is evolving at a rapid pace, but community and society are degenerating at a similar rate. What good is one without the other.
Most people have no sense of self anymore, they only understand themselves in the context of how 'good' they are compared to the person standing either side of them. There is little value in personal wealth, values, and inherent personality. Only in what you can add to the the 'corporation'
It's a falacy, and one which too many people fall for.
:o(
And the point is?? Buzzword bingo again, sad thing is it actually works. People fall for the nice shine the M$ marketing merkins put on things. You can spray paint rust, and it may look like new, but it's stil rust, and it will still crumble eventually.
The USSR worked on policies very similar to this in the Red days, with the KGB and internal police seemingly doing very similar things, although only now do we get to hear about them. I guess that's the difference.
You can do anything in secret in the USA, but the principles are still the same.
Worrying worrying worrying, words I seem to be using a lot in slashdot comments at the moment.
What exactly is any of this achieving??
There are many many arguments surrounding this whole issue... but in my opinion the 2 main ones are:
1) Nothing is effective unless it is constructive, this goes for criticism, conversation, relationships *anything*. Flaming is a pointless excersize and a complete waste of energy. Think of it from a simple point of view, surely it is so much better for both sides if the energy put into the argument was of a positive nature rather than negative. Not to mention the simple aspect of respect. - It's all be forgotten about on the web, primarily IMO because you are faceless and it's very unlikely you will get any comeback. Unlike IRL!
2) Dumbing down.... are we really getting more stupid??? Are we unevolving into chimps who don't understand subtleties anymore. Where satire and humor is lost totally? After all it was a satirical movie and if people decide to get scared about it then what are we to do. Is pulling it really the answer?
It's a strange situation, but one which is happening everywhere. TV, politics, almost everything has been dumbed down for the masses. It's a disturbing trend.
I have no easy answers, but the whole thing worries me deeply. It has such far reaching consequences not just to do with privacy and rights, but on a much more basic human interaction level.
http://www.gumbley.demon.co.uk/psion-c.html has some psion/linux related material from people working on the psion-c project.
/. story:
h tml
Also check out previous
http://slashdot.org/articles/99/09/16/2354216.s
Which has a few threads about running linux on it. I can't see any reason why not, you can get it running on nokia phones and palms, and there is very little technical reason why it wouldn't that I can think of. Keep us posted!