I'm sure there may be many parents that don't want their kids exposed to a liberal agenda untill they're old enough to make their own decisions.
And I'm sure that a lot of us liberals who earned our money the good old fashioned ways (hard work, inheritance, IPOs, and the stock market) would like to block any site you like.
The problem is that they're requiring my kid, with my tax dollars, to sit in a library where they block him from seeing good clean sites like that of the Democratic Party or the Green Party and instead let him look at sites of whiners like the GOP. I thought we killed all those people off with the black helicopters already, for gosh darn sakes!
Now if they'd just arm bears the way nature intended and set them loose in Miami and Texas, the world would be a lot saner, although the blood stains would take a while to clean up.
Think more before you use these words, Jon. Better yet, don't use them at all.
Sadly, he does use those words, and often. I can't count how many times I've heard people talking about how impossible something is, only to be proven wrong within a short span of years, just as those things pronounced inevitable turn out never to happen.
I think your point that anyone making a slashdot post should be encouraging discussion, rather than the urge to flame and/or troll, is well made. But, given Jon's track record, this is highly unlikely to happen. Note I did not say it was impossible - on occassion he's actually managed to make a brief post about something, not trying to tie up all the loose ends which posters could explore, and we've been the better for it. But this is a rare event.
Here, on the outer outskirts of the edge of non-being, we ask ourselves if the inevitable inevitability of nothingness is truly here, or is it in Redmond?
Many have tried, most calling themselves Jon, some trying to write their way out of a paper bag, most using a multitude of omnivorous words to describe the sensation of being in a state not quite unlike that of drowning in treacle.
But few have succeeded, mostly due to their lack of ability to use words sparingly, without excessive prevarication, in search of the one true grail which is Jon. This, this shining light, this flash light, resembles nothing less than a priceline.com commercial, but without the inner humor that allows one to watch it, or read it, or grok it over the Net. The Net, this vast interconnection of words, mostly meaning nothing, yet about which we must write pages, and still more pages, explaining nothing but examining everything which has no meaning.
"Where is my MetaMod for posts?" shout the masses, these Internet masses, in search of the science between the words, yet not realizing that the Katz principle makes the meaning of these words without meaning, as if written by someone out of his depth, in his utter versimilitude most unlike a paper bag, or a writer nonetheless.
[Note: the rest is left to the reader's imagination, in the hope that it still survives after having read the original article]
I know. At first, as I was reading the post and trying to see if Jon actually had a point that was hiding underneath the bushel of his words, I figured maybe I had missed it. Then, like you, I realized that he was just going on and on.
I'd like to plug my new book, "The Power Corrupted: A Tale Of Two Gates". Available in all fine net bookstores, cost only one MSFT share. Dirt cheap.
And don't forget to buy my upcoming sequel, "Jon Katz: Soviet Agent or Agent Provocateur?" It's a bone-chilling tale of a person posing as an author, who is forced to write, while lacking in both skill and talent, in a medium which he doesn't understand. Sadly, while it goes on for many pages (1,024pp), it has no point.
Katz doesn't seem nearly so interested in discussing/reviewing the book as he does in promoting it. I question the value and ethics of this piece.
As do I.
If this post had been about something truly relevant to slashdot, it would have been far more interesting. Instead, Jon seems to have come to loose ends for an article to post, needs his egoboo, and figures he might as well do promos for his friends, with the understanding that they will do similar things for him in the future.
Not to mention the inevitablity of any article talking about the Edge, the Precipice, the Balance when we're at one of our calender-imposed fin de siecles.
Original posts about interesting topics would be a welcome change of pace. More of the same isn't.
"Oui, avec un chapeau rouge, ce n'est que le Software Open Source, je demande pour le gouvernement francais..."
Actually, the French are really into garden gnomes right now, so I think they'd like to buy GNOME apps.
I can see it now - an ad campaign in French with garden gnomes and penguins, all wearing snappy red hats. The penguins should wear the black and white striped shirts and red berets, of course - the gnomes should wear Red Hat style hats.
And, they could sing together while marching over Bill G tied down with stakes, like Lilliputians over Gulliver.
France (not the people, but the government) has a few severe problems with it's economic system, and it is extending the same philosophy that caused these problems to software.
Not true. They have a nice 35 hour work week, their productivity is up dramatically due to enforcing it, and they use Linux for all the DSL access to their schools. If you're a Bill G type who wants to get rich on the backs of the people, you won't like them, but most Open Source coders don't have megabucks and aren't in search of them.
In France, the rights of a shareholder are minimal. Unlike in the US, where shareholder interests are supreme and codified into the law, France gives very few rights to shareholders - decisions to improve a companies financial health and the wealth of the shareholders take a back seat to worker "rights" to employment, etc.
And this is bad? I've owned French ADRs and I don't have a problem with the French way of doing things.
The result? France attracks little foreign investment, and investors in France do not invest domestically. The capital flows to countries where their property rights are protected (US, UK, Europe).
That was last century, ma vielle, massive inflows of capital to France are the hallmark of late 1999 and all of 2000. Wake up and smell the cafe au lait!
Thus France suffers from high unemployment and a lack of capital for new business start ups. When is the last time you bought anything that said "Made in France."
Last week, I did. And unemployment is dropping there as capital flows in. Try keeping up if you're going to invest worldwide, ok?
Now, they are extending this philosophy - a disregard for property rights - to the area of intellectual property.
If you mean a requirement that Privacy Rights of Citizens are higher than Property Rights of Companies, of course. And that's a good thing. Why should the EU follow the disasterous example of US Privacy Rights, which give away everything to corporations, including intellectual property that should belong to the people?
The same results will follow with software in France. It isn't that there is a problem with open source-like schemes. The problem is when the government compels is, no matter how well-intentioned.
I doubt it. I'm betting a lot of money that it's not so. And so are a lot of other worldwide investors, who think you're out to lunch on this subject. So, we have to accept a little bureaucracy, so what? At least we have an ordered and equal financial market with educated consumers. Not like Italy or Russia, where bribery is the way of the world.
If it weren't for the French and other governments in Europe, the lack of Privacy Rights in the US would spread worldwide, as would closed source software.
Now maybe we'll get the MSFT APIs...
It makes me look forward to Linux Velo 2001, when myself and a few other geeks on bikes will start at Paris (ok, Versailles) and bike during April to Chinon and then south to Bordeaux. Wine, Women, Cafe au Lait, Patisseries, and Linux - who could ask for more! Crash in the Auberges for EU20 a night and if we get behind there's always the trains...
Oh, hi to all who came to the Seattle Burn on Saturday night - next time my frogs will glow more brightly at Burning Man!
You can break MSFT into 500 parts and it's immaterial if the ownership is still mostly that of the current Board (e.g. Bill G and Paul A) for each part. What you need to do is, after splitting it up, require substantial holders (of more than 1% total value) to decide which two of three or three of four parts they will hold equal shares in.
And then there's Disclosure. All APIs transmitted between companies must be made public. Only by that means can we ensure that the different parts can't use insider tricks to get faster code. It's like Open Source - if everyone knows the code, we all can mod it. I'm not opting for publishing the code base, I doubt that would get through the political process of the courts, but requiring any unpublished API usage by the component parts must be published withing 30 days on the Net in an open form.
[note - yes, I own some MSFT stock, and yes, I'm buying some more - I intend to ride it until the post-breakup highs and dump it]
Now is a good time to buy, if you can hold out for six to nine months. Then, when it gets broken into OS, Net/IE, and Applications chunks, which hopefully Bill G will only own two of, sell off the OS and Net/IE chunks about six weeks later (to allow for bounce back) on a product announce (vaporware, most likely; or heavy mistware possible) and then ride the Applications chunk until it kicks out the Linux suites and drop it too.
Easy money.
And yes, this will mean Microsoft Office for Linux is coming...
One of the things I see missing from this large list of reasons is education.
Actually, they do mention it, but they call it skills improvement, which they think we do so we can get jobs. I guess they never heard of the challenge of an idea, or the satisfaction at feeling competent with some code you've never done or rarely done before.
One of the main reasons people job-hop in IT is they don't get training in new or improved skills - some of us do it ourselves, though.
Luckily, I'm not a patent attorney or a lawyer. Although my brother and my uncle are lawyers, doing corporate law in NYC.
We're saying that patents for software of 20 years with renew rights are nuts. Having a software program be patentable for 5 years is really stretching it, given the history of computer software and OS. Copyrights are more defensible, but 95 years is totally out to lunch.
And the bugaboo of being out of work shows that you don't grok tech - if it was true, how could Open Source be as successful as it is?
The problem is that we ask the question "Do patents work?" as if there is only one answer.
The question should be "How can patents work, if they should exist?"
Copyrights should be changed back to the old system, with stronger protections for the artists who create them, and Copyleft should be added to the legal definitions. Granting a Net use of a copyright should not imply a non-Net use of the copyright, for example.
Patents should be divided in a bifurcated system of Physical Patents (with the old 20 year period, non-renewable and non-extendable) and Software Patents (with a five or seven year period, non-renewable and non-extendable). If a company wants a longer period of protection, tough. It's Web Time, baby!
We have unsolicited commercial call bans on faxes and phone calls after certain hours which do apply in Washington State. And the recent ruling overturning our spam law is under appeal - our Attorney General has a very good track record in winning these cases.
Hey, we can regulate billboards for cigarette ads, according to the US Supreme Court - I'm sure we'll get spammers soon.
Who gives a flying hoot about the First Amendment anyway, it's subordinated by the EU's rights of privacy and it says nothing about the Internet.
The only way I can see a virus trying to use it is as a method of hiding the bulk of its code.
Reminds me of the first polymorphic pseudovirii with the code segments that appeared benign, but assembled into final executables all with different signatures to avoid detection.
The main problem with using the chip is that only some of the potential targets will be infectable. This might be cool if it's a viral spreader, which seeds target systems via HTTP or other requests. Use one method to deliver the code to the big servers, then use the servers to deliver the target virii to get all the victims. That way the server can avoid having the code that it delivers, since it just needs to pass on the request to deliver the final package. You could even set up a multi-tier distributed approach, with host virii, server virii, and delivery virii - all of which can adapt to different OS and anti-viral protections by using different delivery methods and different trigger events suited to the target OS.
One ring to rule them all Three rings to serve them all Five rings to infect the different OS Seven rings to make Bill G's day
That's interesting, given the amount of money AOL is spending in Europe on their subscribers. According to my latest annual report [yes, I own shares; yes, I voted against the merger].
What you said used to be true. It isn't any longer.
But my favorite trick of theirs is taking the non-broadcast channels that are part of basic cable... and moving them above cable channel 38... just so you can watch channels that you're already paying for.
Good point. Mind you, my VCR goes up to 99, which is a pain for recording anything abover 99, like all the cool movie channels and most of the Discovery channels.
So, we're agreed that both the networks and cable networks are out to get us. But what are we going to do about it?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure there may be many parents that don't want their kids exposed to a liberal agenda untill they're old enough to make their own decisions.
And I'm sure that a lot of us liberals who earned our money the good old fashioned ways (hard work, inheritance, IPOs, and the stock market) would like to block any site you like.
The problem is that they're requiring my kid, with my tax dollars, to sit in a library where they block him from seeing good clean sites like that of the Democratic Party or the Green Party and instead let him look at sites of whiners like the GOP. I thought we killed all those people off with the black helicopters already, for gosh darn sakes!
Now if they'd just arm bears the way nature intended and set them loose in Miami and Texas, the world would be a lot saner, although the blood stains would take a while to clean up.
Where's the Gnu World Order when you need it!
Actually, in Europe they're coming out with a lot of multi-function devices, such as wristwatch cell phones and PDA/cell devices.
I know that I bought my Palm V because I was sick of carrying around a pocket day calendar, an address book, and a calculator.
Of course, I own Palm stock from the IPO, so I'm biased.
An interesting point made in the news item was that they're thinking of phasing out the roman numerals. Maybe we'll just get arcane glyphs instead.
Think more before you use these words, Jon. Better yet, don't use them at all.
Sadly, he does use those words, and often. I can't count how many times I've heard people talking about how impossible something is, only to be proven wrong within a short span of years, just as those things pronounced inevitable turn out never to happen.
I think your point that anyone making a slashdot post should be encouraging discussion, rather than the urge to flame and/or troll, is well made. But, given Jon's track record, this is highly unlikely to happen. Note I did not say it was impossible - on occassion he's actually managed to make a brief post about something, not trying to tie up all the loose ends which posters could explore, and we've been the better for it. But this is a rare event.
This made my day!
... only lost 1 karma so far, though.
Well, someone had to say it.
And I've got 80 karma to burn
you're not really gonna' let him put up more of this drivel, are you?
...
They pay him to write this drivel.
Yeah, mind boggling, isn't it
Here, on the outer outskirts of the edge of non-being, we ask ourselves if the inevitable inevitability of nothingness is truly here, or is it in Redmond?
Many have tried, most calling themselves Jon, some trying to write their way out of a paper bag, most using a multitude of omnivorous words to describe the sensation of being in a state not quite unlike that of drowning in treacle.
But few have succeeded, mostly due to their lack of ability to use words sparingly, without excessive prevarication, in search of the one true grail which is Jon. This, this shining light, this flash light, resembles nothing less than a priceline.com commercial, but without the inner humor that allows one to watch it, or read it, or grok it over the Net. The Net, this vast interconnection of words, mostly meaning nothing, yet about which we must write pages, and still more pages, explaining nothing but examining everything which has no meaning.
"Where is my MetaMod for posts?" shout the masses, these Internet masses, in search of the science between the words, yet not realizing that the Katz principle makes the meaning of these words without meaning, as if written by someone out of his depth, in his utter versimilitude most unlike a paper bag, or a writer nonetheless.
[Note: the rest is left to the reader's imagination, in the hope that it still survives after having read the original article]
Problem #1: This is brainless psychobabble.
I know. At first, as I was reading the post and trying to see if Jon actually had a point that was hiding underneath the bushel of his words, I figured maybe I had missed it. Then, like you, I realized that he was just going on and on.
Patent Idea: Jon Katz perpetual word machine.
Is there anyway to mod Jon down?
I'd like to plug my new book, "The Power Corrupted: A Tale Of Two Gates". Available in all fine net bookstores, cost only one MSFT share. Dirt cheap.
And don't forget to buy my upcoming sequel, "Jon Katz: Soviet Agent or Agent Provocateur?" It's a bone-chilling tale of a person posing as an author, who is forced to write, while lacking in both skill and talent, in a medium which he doesn't understand. Sadly, while it goes on for many pages (1,024pp), it has no point.
I mean, I'd be willing to trade in 10 of my karma points to kill his post. C'mon, everyone, if you believe, clap your hands!
Where's the MetaMod for Poster Children button on this screen?
I'll take the Jon Katz egoboo special - twice the froth, four times the length, half the content.
...
Creamy, syrupy, and way too long
Yum!
Katz doesn't seem nearly so interested in discussing/reviewing the book as he does in promoting it. I question the value and ethics of this piece.
As do I.
If this post had been about something truly relevant to slashdot, it would have been far more interesting. Instead, Jon seems to have come to loose ends for an article to post, needs his egoboo, and figures he might as well do promos for his friends, with the understanding that they will do similar things for him in the future.
Not to mention the inevitablity of any article talking about the Edge, the Precipice, the Balance when we're at one of our calender-imposed fin de siecles.
Original posts about interesting topics would be a welcome change of pace. More of the same isn't.
Yes, when ah ordehr WINE, ah buy ze Open Source WINE. None of zis Mihcrosoft gahrbahge for ma descriminating palate.
Eet goes well wi' ma GNOME de jardin and I theenk ze penguins zeh are, how you say, ahdorahble?
Linus, he ees French, non?
"Oui, avec un chapeau rouge, ce n'est que le Software Open Source, je demande pour le gouvernement francais ..."
Actually, the French are really into garden gnomes right now, so I think they'd like to buy GNOME apps.
I can see it now - an ad campaign in French with garden gnomes and penguins, all wearing snappy red hats. The penguins should wear the black and white striped shirts and red berets, of course - the gnomes should wear Red Hat style hats.
And, they could sing together while marching over Bill G tied down with stakes, like Lilliputians over Gulliver.
Wouldn't that be a hoot!
France (not the people, but the government) has a few severe problems with it's economic system, and it is extending the same philosophy that caused these problems to software.
Not true. They have a nice 35 hour work week, their productivity is up dramatically due to enforcing it, and they use Linux for all the DSL access to their schools. If you're a Bill G type who wants to get rich on the backs of the people, you won't like them, but most Open Source coders don't have megabucks and aren't in search of them.
In France, the rights of a shareholder are minimal. Unlike in the US, where shareholder interests are supreme and codified into the law, France gives very few rights to shareholders - decisions to improve a companies financial health and the wealth of the shareholders take a back seat to worker "rights" to employment, etc.
And this is bad? I've owned French ADRs and I don't have a problem with the French way of doing things.
The result? France attracks little foreign investment, and investors in France do not invest domestically. The capital flows to countries where their property rights are protected (US, UK, Europe).
That was last century, ma vielle, massive inflows of capital to France are the hallmark of late 1999 and all of 2000. Wake up and smell the cafe au lait!
Thus France suffers from high unemployment and a lack of capital for new business start ups. When is the last time you bought anything that said "Made in France."
Last week, I did. And unemployment is dropping there as capital flows in. Try keeping up if you're going to invest worldwide, ok?
Now, they are extending this philosophy - a disregard for property rights - to the area of intellectual property.
If you mean a requirement that Privacy Rights of Citizens are higher than Property Rights of Companies, of course. And that's a good thing. Why should the EU follow the disasterous example of US Privacy Rights, which give away everything to corporations, including intellectual property that should belong to the people?
The same results will follow with software in France. It isn't that there is a problem with open source-like schemes. The problem is when the government compels is, no matter how well-intentioned.
I doubt it. I'm betting a lot of money that it's not so. And so are a lot of other worldwide investors, who think you're out to lunch on this subject. So, we have to accept a little bureaucracy, so what? At least we have an ordered and equal financial market with educated consumers. Not like Italy or Russia, where bribery is the way of the world.
If it weren't for the French and other governments in Europe, the lack of Privacy Rights in the US would spread worldwide, as would closed source software.
...
...
Now maybe we'll get the MSFT APIs
It makes me look forward to Linux Velo 2001, when myself and a few other geeks on bikes will start at Paris (ok, Versailles) and bike during April to Chinon and then south to Bordeaux. Wine, Women, Cafe au Lait, Patisseries, and Linux - who could ask for more! Crash in the Auberges for EU20 a night and if we get behind there's always the trains
Oh, hi to all who came to the Seattle Burn on Saturday night - next time my frogs will glow more brightly at Burning Man!
You can break MSFT into 500 parts and it's immaterial if the ownership is still mostly that of the current Board (e.g. Bill G and Paul A) for each part. What you need to do is, after splitting it up, require substantial holders (of more than 1% total value) to decide which two of three or three of four parts they will hold equal shares in.
And then there's Disclosure. All APIs transmitted between companies must be made public. Only by that means can we ensure that the different parts can't use insider tricks to get faster code. It's like Open Source - if everyone knows the code, we all can mod it. I'm not opting for publishing the code base, I doubt that would get through the political process of the courts, but requiring any unpublished API usage by the component parts must be published withing 30 days on the Net in an open form.
[note - yes, I own some MSFT stock, and yes, I'm buying some more - I intend to ride it until the post-breakup highs and dump it]
Actually, it's both.
...
Now is a good time to buy, if you can hold out for six to nine months. Then, when it gets broken into OS, Net/IE, and Applications chunks, which hopefully Bill G will only own two of, sell off the OS and Net/IE chunks about six weeks later (to allow for bounce back) on a product announce (vaporware, most likely; or heavy mistware possible) and then ride the Applications chunk until it kicks out the Linux suites and drop it too.
Easy money.
And yes, this will mean Microsoft Office for Linux is coming
One of the things I see missing from this large list of reasons is education.
Actually, they do mention it, but they call it skills improvement, which they think we do so we can get jobs. I guess they never heard of the challenge of an idea, or the satisfaction at feeling competent with some code you've never done or rarely done before.
One of the main reasons people job-hop in IT is they don't get training in new or improved skills - some of us do it ourselves, though.
Luckily, I'm not a patent attorney or a lawyer. Although my brother and my uncle are lawyers, doing corporate law in NYC.
We're saying that patents for software of 20 years with renew rights are nuts. Having a software program be patentable for 5 years is really stretching it, given the history of computer software and OS. Copyrights are more defensible, but 95 years is totally out to lunch.
And the bugaboo of being out of work shows that you don't grok tech - if it was true, how could Open Source be as successful as it is?
Note that my proposed changes are in line with the US Constitution, which is purposely vague as to the form of Patents and Copyrights.
The problem is that we ask the question "Do patents work?" as if there is only one answer.
The question should be "How can patents work, if they should exist?"
Copyrights should be changed back to the old system, with stronger protections for the artists who create them, and Copyleft should be added to the legal definitions. Granting a Net use of a copyright should not imply a non-Net use of the copyright, for example.
Patents should be divided in a bifurcated system of Physical Patents (with the old 20 year period, non-renewable and non-extendable) and Software Patents (with a five or seven year period, non-renewable and non-extendable). If a company wants a longer period of protection, tough. It's Web Time, baby!
We have unsolicited commercial call bans on faxes and phone calls after certain hours which do apply in Washington State. And the recent ruling overturning our spam law is under appeal - our Attorney General has a very good track record in winning these cases.
...
Hey, we can regulate billboards for cigarette ads, according to the US Supreme Court - I'm sure we'll get spammers soon.
Who gives a flying hoot about the First Amendment anyway, it's subordinated by the EU's rights of privacy and it says nothing about the Internet.
Get with the 21st Century
The only way I can see a virus trying to use it is as a method of hiding the bulk of its code.
...
Reminds me of the first polymorphic pseudovirii with the code segments that appeared benign, but assembled into final executables all with different signatures to avoid detection.
The main problem with using the chip is that only some of the potential targets will be infectable. This might be cool if it's a viral spreader, which seeds target systems via HTTP or other requests. Use one method to deliver the code to the big servers, then use the servers to deliver the target virii to get all the victims. That way the server can avoid having the code that it delivers, since it just needs to pass on the request to deliver the final package. You could even set up a multi-tier distributed approach, with host virii, server virii, and delivery virii - all of which can adapt to different OS and anti-viral protections by using different delivery methods and different trigger events suited to the target OS.
One ring to rule them all
Three rings to serve them all
Five rings to infect the different OS
Seven rings to make Bill G's day
Just a thought
AOL has no presence in Europe.
That's interesting, given the amount of money AOL is spending in Europe on their subscribers. According to my latest annual report [yes, I own shares; yes, I voted against the merger].
What you said used to be true. It isn't any longer.
But my favorite trick of theirs is taking the non-broadcast channels that are part of basic cable ... and moving them above cable channel 38 ... just so you can watch channels that you're already paying for.
Good point. Mind you, my VCR goes up to 99, which is a pain for recording anything abover 99, like all the cool movie channels and most of the Discovery channels.
So, we're agreed that both the networks and cable networks are out to get us. But what are we going to do about it?