First, as has been already pointed out, it IS possible to get the Windows source code. Microsoft, trying to capitolize on the Open Source popularity started their 'Shared Source' program. It shouldn't be that hard to get it, and even supponea(sp?) independant people who have studied it as expert witinesses.
Although Microsoft has some sort of really strict NDA on their source that they give to researchers, a judge could easily compel testimony, and give the witiness immunity from any sort of legal reprisals. There are probably already people who know the answers to the questions the states have.
If I had much influence in any of the states involved, I would suggest putting a little extra pressure in Microsoft. This could be accomplished legally easily. Simply phase out all Microsoft products on all state run organizations, give groups that recieve state funds a 'bonus' for not using Microsoft software, and give companies that don't use Microsoft software a bit better chance of getting a contract from the state if they don't use Microsoft software.
The threat of that much lost business in that many states would put a bit of economic pressure on Microsoft, and could be handled with internal state policies.
States can easily put the policy of only buying software when a non-free (beer, were talking ecomomics here[1]) alternative isn't available. It could easily be sold to the taxpayer as a way to cut government spending without putting anyone out of work. For the federal government to interfere with such things would be very bad indeed.
Some of the other stuff such as influencing other organizations or compainies might not fly as well, but it's at least worth a thought.
[1] A important as a lot of people on/. and elsewhere in the Open Source/Free Software world see the free as in speech approach to software, there is a huge segment of the population that has difficulty distinguinshint left and right click. Unfortunatly such people are often very influential. Free as in speech when it comes to source code won't matter to them, because they are incapable of understanding it.
Compound this with the fact that Microsoft was a huge campaign contributor in 2000.
So was Enron. To both parties.
Right now would be the perfect time to step in and really make Microsoft squirm. Sure the current administration has been a little more than favorable toward Microsoft. Right now, they can't afford to even appear to be colluding with another large corporation that is breaking the law.
It is very thinkable. It happens all the time in all parts of the world, and has happened throughout history.
China Currently allows slavery.
The United States allowed slavery officially until the end of the Civil War, but legal slavery existed in form if not in name at least until World War II. Illegal slavery exists even now within the United States.
The U.S. wasn't the first to have slavery however. Where did we learn to keep slaves? From our European cultural forefathers. Where did we get our slaves? Some would have you belive that we raided African villages for slaves, but in reality less than 1% came from raids. We bought them from costal villages who knew they had a good thing going, and raided inner villages for capitol to sell.
When looking back, it is difficult to find any culture that never in it's geneology allowed slavery. In western culture, some of the earliest documents we have reference slavery. The Bible (belive or not, most scholars agree that at least the surrounding context, if not the specifics, is reasonably accurate) references slavery.
If we are so willing to use other natural people as slaves, how is it so hard to see that humans are willing to do so with those who might be practically engineered to do so?
They shouldn't be used, period, and to raise the question is to expose us to a very slippery slope.
Onec again, from an ethical standpoint, you are right, but from a realistic standpoint, many ethical concers are unfortunatly not considered.
I was going to argue that we ahve always been exposed to that slippery slope, but that isn't quite right. It has only been rather recently (from a human history perspective) that we actually have been exposed to that slope. We exposed ourselves to that slope as soon as we tried to climb it. Before that we didn't worry about it because nobody had ever really considered a world without slavery. Nobody had ever considered the cause of human rights.
Sure everyone knew that being a slave sucked, but that's the way things were. Anything else was unthinkable.
We are now standing part way up that very slippery slope, not on the edge of it. We are making good progress climbig it, and I hope we continue to do so, but to close our eyes to how something might be abused is dangerous.
On the other hand, thinking about how someone with no ethical sense might think gives us insight into how someone might abuse the situation. We then apply ethics to defend against such people.
Your ethical viewpoint is admirable. Many others (particularly those with power) will not share it. They will try to do things like this, and unless some warnings can be given, they will do it before anyone really realizes what's going on. Then it will be to late.
How is this different from a couple's child being gestated in a surrogate mother's womb?
It isn't, much, but there are a lot of people who have ethical concerns about that too. I won't argue those here (I actually am rather apathetic about the surrogate mother issue) but your first comment actually illustrates the point of those who hold the opposing view.
There is also the somewhat frightening idea of someone running amok with these things, and creating some sort of slave class of person to run things. read Brave New World. People were engineered to belong to different classes. More likely I see someplace using mass produced people as a menial labor force. It sounds like some sort of bad SciFi, but I can still see it happening.
At least using surrogate mothers requires someone else to go through 9 months of serious discomfort and moderate threat to life (as all childbirth does), making it far more difficult to do something like this.
How is this different from a different organ - the kidney - being replaced with external machinery (dialysis)?
Once again, it isn't, much. The problem is that dialysis is usually used in one of two situations.
The kidneys have had a problem, the dialysis is used until the kidneys can resume normal function.
The kidneys no longer work, and dialysis is being used as a stopgap measure until a transplant organ can be obtained.
Few people spend large amounts of their lives on dialysis. It can keep you alive, but is painful, unplesant, work intensive, and doesn't work as well as the real thing. If a kidney doesn't work as well, your health is poor. If a womb doesn't work as well, you could end up with all sorts of interesting physical and mental problems. In this instance we are not talking about preserving life, we are talking about creating it. There are ethical concers about dabbling with such things when we don't understand them.
How is this different from the prosthetic limbs or the artifical hearts in development?
It is many orders of magnitude more complex than prosthetic limbs or artificial hearts. The ethical concern comes from creating human life in this manner. Would it really be fair to create a life that society will have no choice but to institutionalize in some manner?
Our bodies are imperfect and sometimes bits don't work properly or break. We have the means to workaround these shortcomings with technology; in this case, we still need parents to provide the genetic material and, obviously, raise the child once it is born.
Yes we can work around some things, but an artifical heart, kidney or limb doesn't work quite as well as the original. There are inevitably problems. If someone needs a leg, they effect themselves. Creating a womb however also affects the life of the person being 'born?'.
The other problem (as I cited above) is that genetic material is extremely easy to obtain. It isn't particularly difficult to harvest eggs from women. This is done for invitrio(sp?) fertilization. For men, it is even easier, and we all know how it's done.
With just a little work it would be possible to create vast numbers of offspring. How these offspring would be used is one of the major ethical questions. Even in this century, there are countries that have no problem whatsoever with slavery. Would those same countries have a problem with creating some sort of easy labor force? OK, I honestly can't say I see China doing this. One of the reasons they have slavery relates to their overpopulation problem. This would compound it. Still it could be a fairly cheap and constant labor source.
All this aside, I really don't see it as too bad. The potential for abuse is great, but all technology can be abused in some manner. This could allow women who can not carry a child to term to have a child without the problems involved in using a surrogate (some of the legal complications alone are epic).
I would suggest strongly trying this with various animals and getting several completely normal animals (including primates) before ever attempting this on a human.
Even then, there will be legitimate ethical questions, but I leave most of those for someone else.
This really has nothing to do with aunt Tille, Grandma, or what ever other prototypical uninitated user you might be talking about. Although it is a good idea to keep them in mind when developing things, there is far more potential than just to make it easier for a novice to configure a Linux Kernel.
Every time a new kernel comes out, I have to go through every option, and check what it is, I usually need to activate and follow every sub-menu, just to make sure that there isn't something bizarre down there that I need. Usually I don't, but I've been bitten more than once.
If you recompile your kernel every week or so, you get to know the menuconf menus pretty well (does anyone use the original make configure anymore?), but when something new is added or changed, everything changes, and you have to go through it all over again.
If you recompile occasionally, though, it becomes a very time consuming task to check and recheck that everything you have done is correct. Even then it usually takes me a couple of tries because I overlook something stupid.
This makes a lot of unnecessary work, that isn't difficult, but does take far more time than is really necessary.
Something very like what is being suggested would remedy this. It could detect the hardware, go out get the newest kernel, check for other drivers or patches that might work with the detected hardware (this has the advantage of making it possible to add support for some strange hardware), patches the kernel, then optionally allows the user the opportunity to do some basic or even full configuration tweaks on the config file.
This has the added benefit of making it easy to compile and install a kernel for unknown hardware. Laptops and the like are notorious for strange hardware configs. Without research as well as a lot of trial and error, it is usually not possible to have a fully functional system. You might have a usable one, but some components might not work quite right.
An automatic config generator would resolve this as well. Forget Aunt Tille, this would make my life easier. Sure, give me a way to tweak the configuration later, but something that would generate an intelligent config file for most hardware would make things a lot easier.
How about trying to create some sort of Linux network, say a hetrogenous lab. Something that would allow me to select some configuration options the kernel config that have nothing to do with the hardware, then automatically determine the hardware and compile a custom kernel for each machine. This would save a great deal of time and energy.
For that matter, it should be rather simple to create a utility that would take a newly created kernel image, put int in/boot or wherever else someone might want to put it, add the proper entry in lilo or grub config files, and get everything ready to run the new kernel on reboot. No this shouldn't be the only way to do it, but it would make things simpler.
If I were updating the kernel on say 30 or more hetrogenous machines, I sure wouldn't want to sit at each machine and configure it independantly. I'd want to be able to specify some config stuff, run a command, let the machines sit, and come back to check them later to pound on any that didn't work with the new kernel.
Some might fail, but a reboot into the old kernel, a little tweaking of the config file, and a retry would still be better than doing each one by hand.
What if I am a sysadmin, and I need to keep someone elses machine running? (Best is to keep a running kernel, but sometimes you need to upgrade.) Unless I know their exact hardware, I'm going to have to spend some time figuring out what they have. Why should I waste that time and effort (that could be used more constructively), if the machine can do most of it for me?
Yes, it would be nice if a novice user were able to get a new kernel automatically, and yes, it would be nice if all novice users were to learn how things work, but neither really cuts it for me as the best motive for going either way.
For me this or something very much like it could make life much much easier.
Ok some people might feel that a right is being violated, but online? They are advocating against toys marketed to children. They aren't trying to say that the toy can't be made. They aren't trying to say that YOU can't buy the toy. They aren't even trying to say that an 8 year old can't have the toy.
All they are trying to say is that the marketing of some toys to YOUNG children is wrong. They are advocating for putting limits on how toys can be marketed. This does IMHO tred on the First Amendment some, but society has decided that other things should not be marketed to children, so there is a chance it could pass in congress.
Personally, I would just rather see strict truth in advertising laws draconian punishments, as the First Amendment does not protect fraud. But I digress.
These people are advocating something I find distaseful, namely the abridgment of Free Speech. On the other hand, I support fully their right to advocate for whatever they want to advocate for. To congress, on the web, to whoever else they want. If they want to organize boycotts, that is their right. If they want to lobby congress that is their right. If you disagree with them, lobby congress too. If you want them silenced, lobby congress for that.
Are they annoying? Yes. Should parent's be able to see and make decisions for themselves? Yes. So what? Get over it and get back to fragging.
I do wish the general userdom in slashdot would get off it's high horse, and actually check some things. The page referenced makes no mention to "dangerous" toys. It makes reference to toys parent's may want to "avoid". The "Dangerous" bit was simply inflamatory from the slashdot community.
Slashdot editors need to take a bit more care to provide a more accurate and balanced view of the various 'news' items posted here as well. Slashdot is becomming the major news site for a lot of people. Although I see nothing wrong with posting a reasonable and informed opinion about a particular piece of news (as in The Register), but slashdot seems to not only present opinion as fact, but fails to check even simple facts before posting what an untrained, and un-responsibile (not not irresponsible, but rather someone who can't be held accountable) person decides to write on the subject.
Come on, is surfing to the site noting the error and posting a little comment at the bottom all that hard?
What happened to scissors, matches and lawn darts?
Lawn darts... they were my favorite. We used to make the neighbor kid catch 'em.
Lawn darts have been banned in many areas because someone was too stupid to know that they shouldn't stand in the target area. Kind of the same reasons my local McDonalds has to have a sign at the drive through "Caution! Hot coffee and hot applle pie are hot."
The simple fact is that the courts seem to feel that the stupid should be protected from themselves.
The website in question however is a whole other ball of wax. They aren't condemming toys because of danger, they are condemning them for "adult" content. By the way. Can people who post articles or slashdot editors look at the site and verify some of what's said? I didn't see anywhere on the site that said the toys were dangerous. It said that parents might want to avoid said toys. There is a difference.
Not that I'm saying my posting was well rounded or contained supporting documentation, but neither did the strawman that somehow rates a "2".
It didn't get modded up. The person replying to your previous post had earned the right to post at 2 by having a karma over 25.
However his post is common of the moronic arguments against homeschooling. It ignores children who are homeschooled generally score much higher on standardized tests, as well as being much better socialized. I could go on about this, in fact I could rant for pagess about the idiotic public school system, but as you said, all of this IS oftopic, so I will keep quiet for now.
Much of this has already been stated here, but here goes.
1. Keep it free.
The mantra here on slashdot is often information wants to be free. This isn't exactly true, and is rather antromorphic. A better statment is that information tends to move toward a state of being free. In other words, no matter what you do, you will be unable to make much money charging for 'premium' content. The only exceptions being large providers like AOL, and those who suffer from too many visitiors, not too few. If you are trying to get more visitior, charging for access will simply cause them to go elsewhere.
2. Keep advertisment to a minimum.
Keep the annoying ads to an absolute minimum. You need to pay for your site, but annoying me with popups, popunders, or banner ads will generally just piss me off. Honestly I can't recall even one ad (internet or otherwise) that convinced me to buy anything. On the other hand, there have been many times that I have stopped patronizing a business because of the ads.
3. Keep it open to everyone.
You should welcome anyone to discuss whatever topic you want. Don't allow flamers hotheads or assholes to dominate any discussions you have.
4. Keep a specific focus.
Although it should be open to everyone, keep it specific. Slasdot is 'news for nerds' instance. we discuss geeky things here. More mainstream things are generally shunned here. Keep true to the general purpose of the site.
5. Make it obvious what the site is about. I don't want to have to spend 20 minutes trying to figure what your site is talking about. I should know within 10-15 seconds of clicking the link.
6. Keep the site easy to access. Make it quick loading, with a minimum of extra crap. Stay away from flash, java, javascript, large images and anything else that increases the download/rendering time. Remember a large percentage of your users will likely be comming across a dialup connection. Make it friendly to low bandwith connections. Only use the major stuff when absolutely necessary. Javascript further should be avoided because of it's tendency to crash a browser. I have even turned good javascript into bad by pressing stop at an inopportune time. Wherever possible use server side processing. Client side processing could be used to take some of the burden off of your server, but even then it should be possible to make such things optional rather than manditory.
Education is about fundamentals. If you know how to perform the actual actions to perform the functions yourself, then a computer is just another tool that you can use to get your job done.
Um, What does this have to do with anything? Because a tool is available does not mean that you use it exclusively nor does it mean that you don't learn the fundamentals.
The thing is that computers are important in the world today. Very soon the inability to use a computer will be as debilitating as an inability to read.
The unfortunate thing is that the schools will take the same approach to computer learning that they take to everything else. Namely thay you must learn it completely by rote. The problem is that computers are too complex for this. Without the ablity to apply a little logic, you will be lost.
You are right, computers are just tools to get your job done, but they are important tools. A car is a tool too, but (at least in my area) we teach drivers training in the schools. Computers are complex and necessary. They can free us to do things that never could have been done before. In one math class I had, we were shown a huge linear algebra problem matrix multiplication. 2 500 * 500 matrices if I recall correctly.
To do this problem by hand would require years. To do it on the computer (after the data entry) required seconds.
Of course knowing how to do something is necessary. Unfortunatly with most non-theoretical advanced mathematics, you couldn't work it out within your lifetime it just takes too long.
In college, computer use is expected. You just don't hand write papers. In real life computer profiency is expected for most employability. You can't get around it.
The U.S. doesn't do political censorship. NBC can choose what they wish to air. That has nothingto do with the Government censoring something.
NBC or any other content provider can choose to air whatever they wish and not air whatever they wish as well. I get the impression from the reading that NBC feared reprisals from advertisers for suggesting that Cuba was better than the Unites States at anything.
Advertisers have to worry about what people buy piss off the viewer and you piss off a consumer. Piss off a consumer and your revenue drops. It's a pretty simple equation.
Like it or not the right to speak does not equate with the right to be heard. The right to publish something does not require that people read it, and the right to air something on television does not require that advertisers purchase ad time during that slot, or with your company at all for that matter. Nor does it require that the viewing public view something that they don't want to see.
Finally people have the right to choose what products they purchase using whatever critera they choose to use. If someone swears off a product or company because they aired a commercial during a news program that pissed them off, that is their right.
Finally disagreeing with the parent to your post about the U.S. having more censorship on television than any other nation, I suppose that he hadn't thought about afghanistan, iraq, iran...
Yes, the U.S. censors many things on broadcast television, less on the (almost nonexistant now) uhf band, or on cable, not at all for most pay stations.
The key to the power of the FCC is that they are regulating something with a limited bandwidth. If the radio band isn't full, the control can be relaxed a bit, but what happens if it is? What happens if there is a single available broadcast chanel, but two applicants? The Federal Radio commision was set up to regulate such things because the available radio bands were too full. Some criteria were set up to decide what could or couldn't be done.
If you suggest that there should be no control whatsoever, let me ask you:
Do you use wireless networking?
Do you use a cordless phone?
Do you use a cell phone?
... a pager?
... a gps device?
All of these rely on the regulation of the various regulatory bodies of various countries to stop people from stomping all over your transmission.
For the libertarian view that everyone would be a good citizen, this didn't happen before when broadcasters demanded the creation of the FRC (later called the FCC), what makes you think things have suddenly changed?
A lot of people get harmed as Microsoft increases their Monolopy.
I guess my point is that even though I don't agree with the business tactics that Microsoft has taken, even though I think that Windows XP is overpriced for what you get, I believe that there are alternatives out there.
For now, but Microsoft has and does try to leverage that monopoly into closed standards that prevent interoperability. Even if laws allow reverse engineering, they prevent a speedy driver release. Linux then looks like it's going slower, fewer companies release drivers or specs for their hardware, and there is this downward spiral.
Microsoft aggressively protects its intellectual property interests.
I doubt anyone has a problem with this. After all the GPL does the same thing. What the problem is that Microsoft swallows other IP, takes credit for and tries to stomp out anything else.
Microsoft preaches a computer on every desk and a Microsoft OS on every computer. Their party line is that there can be no exception.
I really don't care if Microsoft exists. I just think that they have far too much power in the market.
Why am I harmed? I don't want to use a Microsoft OS. Don't by one you say? Even taking into account your microsoft tax argumet, I didn't say I didn't want one, I said I don't want to use one. Not at home, and not at work. I want at least the option to use a real OS in my place of employment, or at least a chance that my place of employment might not force everyone to use Microsoft softwar, but with their current control, your current choice is between the various flavors of excrement offered by Microsoft.
I want decent games under Linux, but I can't get them. Why? because very few of the games I want have been ported to Linux. Most of the ones that have are ones that don't particularly interest me, and I'm not about to lay down money for a game I don't want just so someone might think of porting other games to the platform. If Microsoft were a small player, there would be no choice but to port games to several platforms.
Microsoft's dominance has harmed me, and even if you don't know it, it has harmed you.
As much as I like and respect the power of computers, it occurs to me that there are a number of higher priorities for schools, especially poor ones. How about books that aren't 25 years out of date? How about hot lunches for kids who can't afford to eat? How about pencils and other supplies? How about furnaces and boilers that actually work? How about kicking in a subsidy to help pay teachers what they're worth instead of keeping them at the poverty level?
Those are all good, and all more necessary than computer, but computers are becomming more and more necessary as well. The thing is I can't really see Red Hat or Microsoft providing either. On the other hand, if a book publisher were to offer to provide books, I doubt someone would be screaming that they should be providing food, or if Kraft were offering food, would someone gripe that they should provide books? I doubt anyone would take any such complaint seriously.
Computers are important, and becomming more so. They obviously aren't in the same class as books, or food, but thery are important in any case. Let each provide what they can provide best.
Microsoft and RedHat will continue to play their little P.R. power games, using our schools as pawns. But each time I hear a story like this, I lose a little more respect for each of them.
Every time someone bitches about this, I am astounded that so few people get what red hat is actually saying. What does Red Hat really have to do to provide Linux to all of the schools that want it? An email with the URL ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/redhat-7.2-en/iso/ i386/ should be sufficient. There they have provided the schools with Red Hat Linux for any hardware the want.
Red Hat simply pointed out in an obscure manner that if someone else provides the hardware Linux is always available at little or no cost. Microsoft could do the same, and it would cost them nothing, but since they get to set the 'cost', they can claim to be donating far more than they are.
Microsoft is trying to use the judgment against them on to deepen their control over the market, and using the schools to do it. Red Hat is simply tryint to call attention to that fact.
Red Hat is far better to call attention to this fact than is slashdot. Why? just look at the tone of most of the posts on slashot. Most people here write like 15 year old kids who think they know everything there is to know. Such individuals are usually ignored by those who hold the purse strings.
The point is that although M$ is trying to use the schools as pawns, Red Hat is trying to prevent it.
Finally some more specific comments on the teachers. My knee jerk response is most teachers aren't even worth what we're paying them, but that's just bitterness talking. The truth though is that the problems with teachers isn't the just the pay. It's a portion of it, but really a small one.
I once thought that schools would magically improve if teachers were paid more, but then I entered a University, and witinessed first hand how education majors are taught and where they come from.
About 10-15% of the Education students actually care about becomming educatiors. Unfortunatly many of them are doing so so that they can be qualified for something other than the public education system.
Most of the rest kind of end up in education as a major. It requires very little math, and very little science. There is a small amount of computer exposure (only after a being forced to do so), and most of the rest is theory. Except for bit teaching, and student teaching, there is little practical expierence, and most of the professors have the attitude that theory is better than practice. In other words, future teachers are learning how to teach children from people who have never taught children.
Education becomes a dumping ground for people who can't handle the elementry algebra, and science classes. It seems to be the last stop before going to the trade school and taking cosmetology (hairdressing) or some such.
Perhaps there are better education schools out there, but I've seen programs on just this problem. I tend to think that without a serious overhaul of who is becomming teachers, many of the problems with teachers will persist.
Now if requirments were similar to what is required for a university professorship...
Can someone explain why we really need to waste "more than $45 million... between 2000 and 2005." on these new toys?
I really hate to break this to you, but $45 million (are you sure you didn't meanb $45 billion?) isn't all that much. It's a fairly large powerball jackpot (but by no means huge), and a rounding error for Microsoft and several other large companies.
The military is willing to dump $45 million into things like this because a) one of them might pay off, and b) even if there is no direct payoff, things are learned that may be used later.
One only needs to look at the history of scientific development to realize that sometimes things that don't make sense need to be funded. How many technological advances of today are dependant upon scientific discoveries made years before they were considered useful? A lot. A simple example is anything that works on electricity. It took nearly 40 years from the first experiments by Michael Faraday in the generation of electricity before anyone found any real method of production, and over a century from Franklin's first investigation to real use.
Just because something doesn't have a use now, doesn't mean that knowledge gained isn't valuable. And since the military has the budget to fund things that no one else can, they tend to do so.
As to the reason the Marines do so much better than the Army with so much less has a lot to do with the training, and 'winnowing' process done on recruits. Say what you want about methods, the most severe of the branches of the service also seems to produce the most effective soldiers.
How does the military deal with changes in the force of gravity due to altitude and location? A 1% change in gravity is a big deal if you are firing an artillery shell at a target over a long distance. I was watching a documentary on the ENIAC computer and it said the computer's primary task was to calculate gunnery tables for the military. Wouldn't all of those carefully calculated tables be useless if the force of gravity changed
The change in gravity would be rather small over the fairly short distances used by artillery, so the error from firing from one gravitational level to another would be almost non-existant. The real worry would be firing in an area of high gravity vs low gravity, and my guess is that the error produced by differences in air density, wind direction temperature etc.. Although the tables may be very accurate, there are things that are impossible to measure, A change in air temperature (and therefore density) would affect the course of a shell. An undetected difference in wind direction above the ship would affect the shell. Even a difference in the temperature of the powder would make a difference in the explosive force. Also When the ENIAC tables were in use, there was also no computer control to compensate for the rocking of the ship on the water. The tables would be to get you very close, but not always dead on.
From everything I've seen, the military expects minor inaccuracies, and corrects by firing, correcting and firing again. I don't know about ships, but for ground based artillery the standard was to have people watch, tell them by how far they had missed, then fire again. Good response was to hit about a 5 foot area by the third shot.
I read once (I forget where) where someone was describing their expierence with network solutions. Their software was choking on their email, it had something to do with not liking how most mail software creates mail headers. This person had to use trial and error to figure out which one, then forge a 'properly' formatted email from himself.*
Another solution would be to get a decent regristrar, but that can cause other problems and can take even longer to sort out. Once you get it sorted out it will probably be very good, but actually making the transfer will make you question why you are doing it.
The easiest solution is likely to figure out what it doesn't like about your email, and forge one it does like.*
*Note to U.S. government. This is merely offered up as a hypothetical solution. I do not advocate the forging of email, nor the impersonation of oneself.
Despite what a bunch of idealistic teenaged know it all's think, this is a decent product. There are all manner of people who don't want to see certian things. That is their right. I have the right not to see read or listen to whatever I choose not to see read or listen too. You have no right to force me to see it.
This product gives people to see and enjoy movies that they otherwise wouldn't want to see because they object to things in the movie. It isn't censorship. It gives people a few more options. That's all.
There have been a lot of stupid arguments. "Kid's won't use it", "What happens if one of the objectional scenes has a critical piece of dialog"... My response is so what if it does? If someone wants to watch a movie and is willing to make that trade, what right do you have to say they can't? You get pissed when they say you can't watch it in your own home, but suddenly the/. crowd is pissed because someone wants to not watch it in the privacy of their own home.
"The artistic vision of the creator of the movie shouldn't be altered." Anyone that can use the word artistic in relation to nearly any American movie without negation and hold a straight face is either insane or someone I wouldn't want to play poker with. American movies are made to get maximum ratings. Most of the time sex and violence scenes have no 'artistic' value to the movie. They're there to get the R rating, because R rated movies make more money.
Now if someone were trying to say that these scenes shouldn't be allowed in movies, I'd be pissed at censorship, but that isn't the case here. No one is telling you that you can't do something, they are just saying that they don't want to participate in a particular activity. This in no way violates your rights.
If someone wants to buy and use a product, so what? Why should you care?
There are several problems with Globalism.
on
Defining Globalism
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· Score: 2
First off the general premise that globalism is so hard to define isn't exactly true. The problem with a definition is that it is a very complex issue, and not served by a short definition.
As to why do so many people hate globalization? and Why are are they from such diverse groups?
The reason goes to what it is about globalization that they hate.
You cited the dilution of the individual power of nation states, and that's partially true, but it comes down to the same issues in the American Civil War. One of the central issues was slavery, but the larger issue was states rights vs federal control. The danger of globalism is to create a world government that makes global laws that apply to everyone everywhere equally no mater the circumstances in a given area.
Let's take gun control for example in the United States. This is an emotional issue for a lot of people. Unfortunatly when people spend emotional energy making up their mind, they are quite reluctant to change it. I will concede that in large cities there is a valid argument for gun control (neglecting the issues of enforcement and implementation for now), but where I'm from a sizable fraction of the population either grow or kill most of their food. Fish and game will even often look the other way toward poaching when the poacher is known to be having financial trouble, and will need the meat.
Globalism creates the danger of not letting people in areas govern themselves according to their own needs.
The sovereignty of countries is something that wars have been fought over. On slashdot we generally hear about the first, and fourth amendments (there are a bunch of others, but that isn't the issue), but that isn't the issue. Remember that the U.S. revolutionary war was not fought for freedom of speech, or right to assemble, or freedom or religeon, or any or those reasons. Those came later, and were only added to the constiution after a good deal of argument. It was fought because the Americans thought they could do a better job of governing themselves than someone across an ocean. This is why the Articles of Confederation were so weak. The constitution was stronger, but comparatviely weak in relation to other governments of the day.
Even within the U.S. there is argument over how much authority the states have vs the federal government.
What would happen if some global government came in and were more restrictive than the constitution.
Another danger is in corpratism. We've dicussed this before on slashdot. In the United States right now jobs are going to Mexico, China, and whereever else that dirt cheap labor is available.
This isn't totally bad. It is good to provide relatively decent jobs to people in underdeveloped areas. When I was in the Dominican republic, people working for American companies earned much more than the national average, but by our standards, the wages were by U.S. standards criminal.
On the other hand, this exports our jobs elsewhere. This is one of the arguments many in labor have with it. It's exporting jobs we have our own with no jobs, providing jobs in Korea should be down on the list.
Others worry that the exportation of jobs from the U.S. weakens our position should there ever be a war. If for whatever reason we had an all out war with China, we would have problems. We would have to move all of that manufacturing back within the United States. Unfortunatly, we no longer have the manufacturing facilities to meet with our needs.
Others still have a problem with multination companies becoming the world government. Having large companies have several members of Congress and the President in ther pockets is bad enough, what would happen if countries were required by law to follow certain policies even if such policies were against the law of the land.
I found the argument that religeous groups hating it because they just want to control ideas tired and old, and the standard argument that comes from people who hate religeon. Funny that when someone attacks what someone says people scream first amendment, but the same people attack religeon at every opportunity, somehow forgetting that the same amendment protects religeon.
Some religeous groups (or political groups that use religeon as a control tool) want to control ideas, but many just want the right to decide how they live their lives, and fear that globalism will stop this. They fear one of the two possible outcomes. Since there are such differences among cultures, many of which couldn't easlily be reconciled, a global government must either allow nearly everything, or outlaw nearly everything. Both should scare nearly everyone, but for the religeous, it means that either there would be no way to avoid things they find immoral (contrary to what has been written in slashdot, most don't care if you participate, they just don't want to be forced to participate too), or the religeon itself would have to be banned to satisfy people in other countries.
Most of these fears and arguments are full of holes, but just real enough to make globalism something to be careful with. It seems to me that a global government could either be the best or worst possible thing we could do. If we do things just right it would be the single greatest thing ever to happen. If not, we will be lucky if humanity survives. Everything depends upon whether or not humanity is mature enough to handle it, and whether or not our leaders are smart enough to make it happen. Looking at the state of the world though, I tend to doubt it.
Well it just seems to me that if you are going talk about good documentation you should give a link to it. Otherwise people might think you are just talking out of your ass.
One might think that someone could go to google, type in "gtk" and click on the first link that appears.
...the humorous reference to HAL at the end makes it worth the read...
That wasn't just a joke on the part of the person writing the article. I tried it, and got the requisite response.
I also tried asking to play a game of Global Thermonuclear War, but that seems to have been a bad idea. I can't get to the site now...
Actually questioning it about how it works is rather interesting and informative. It gives good if short responses.
All in all, it would be a good algorithm to be used for a plain language help or information lookup program. Yes, there are better ways to get information, but this would be helpful to some.
The thing is that it is impossible to get any piece of software more complex than your CS 101 programming assignments totally bulletproof. Every service that runs under IIS (or Apache for that matter) is an added risk. The general security model is to only turn on services you need, thus minimizing the number of attacks that you are vunerable to.
Most security experts agree that it is impossible to stop all attacks. If someone wants to compromise your system badly enough, it will happen. The aim of most security precautions is to make the cost of doing so greater than the benefit.
This is akin to locking the door. I once heard a story about some art theives who had no trouble with door locks. Why? they backed a truck up to the house or building and cut a hole in the wall. They then loaded the truck through the wall and were gone without setting off any alarms. So why lock the door? Because for most thieves, a locked door makes things more difficult and will cut down on the number of break-ins.
With servers, it is best not to turn on any services that you don't need. This is what BSD does. If you then want or need a service you turn it on. You are then more vunerable to attacks, but not as vunerable as you would be if everything were on.
Turning on only of select services also makes getting security updates far easier. Instead of having to go through and get and apply everyting, you can get and apply only what you need. This gives you less downtime, and more reliable systems. Remember it is not always possible to put a patch into use without taking down a service, or even a machine.
Then there is the problem of problem patches. If I have 20 patches to apply for various services, I should apply each one in turn, and check to see if it worked. That way I can usually undo what I have done if one fails. If I apply all 20, then check the system, any problem will be difficult if not impossible to fix, greatly increasig downtime. For a personal machine that only has uptime listed for bragging rights, this isn't that important, but for critical servers running businesses, downtime can equate with lost money. It would be something to be minimized at all cost.
By using only the services I need, I only have to apply and test the patches for those services being used, reducing the need for downtime after applying a patch, and minimizing the chances of getting one that didn't work quite right.
When a particular media group pisses me off, I don't boycott the channel, newspaper, or website. I use it and endure the advertisment. I then make a note of whoever advertises with that particular company, and boycott the advertiser. Then I let them know that I am boycotting them and why. Yes, I see their ad, but I will take extra pains not to buy from them as long as they are advertising with that particular company.
The problem with boycotting a particular soruce of media is that all a company looses are potential eyeballs viewing their ad. On the other hand, a boycott of the company directly hurts them further.
I actually carry this even to commericals that annoy or offend me. A while back there was a series of Pizza Hut commercials that disgusted me. My solution? I go elsewhere for pizza now.
If more people did this, we would get more interesting commercials, and even better products, since products would have to compete more on quality than on marketing.
All of the stated advantages regarding corded keyboards are totally true, unfortunatly, there is the difficulty of training.
What should the chords be? Is it possible for all different types of corded keyboards to use the same chord to produce the same character? If not (which is the likely case), how many different sets of cords will someone have to learn?
With a traditional one character one key approach someone who has never typed before can be given a keyboard and can pound out a document. With a chorded approach, first a person must sit down and practice the chords. In order to type with any profeciency, one must practice long enough that the chords become part of muscle memory.
Furthermore, some of the corded designs, like the pyramid, would seem to accomidate only one handsize. It would be easy to make several sizes of keyboard, but each person would have to carry around their own keyboard.
The flat arrangement isn't going away any time soon. The QWERTY arrangement might not stay, and 'ergonomic' keyboards based on a flat arrangement are going to become more common, but going to chorded keyboards isn't likely to happen for the general populace because of the extreme amount of training required to operate one.
I have seen other arguments here that it isn't hard to learn DVORAK, so it shouldn't be hard to learn chording, but that's ignoring the most basic and obvious difference. If I can't remember where a particular key is, I can look. If I can't remember a particular chord, I need to look it up. In other words I need something seperate from the (read easily lost) pasted somewhere so I can use the thing. On the other hand If I were placed on a DVORAK keyboard right now I could still post this message. I would just have to use the hunt and peck method rather than the method that I currently use, which is a rather nonstandard form of touch typing, and the occasional look at the hands.
After all we're talking about requiring back doors in things. This means that 100% would get their bank accounts compromised.
I actually suspect that this law is the standard congress fare that they expect either to be impossible to implement, or unconstitutional. Many laws seem to be passed with the express purpose fo getting them defeated in the supreme court.
Why? Because it lets a contressperson say to his constituents "I voted for $FOO, it isn't my fault that the courts overturned it. I'm watching out for what YOU want so you'll reelect me and give me your money."
OK they don't actually say that, but you know that is what goes on in their heads. This is just a typical political game that they play. That doesn't make it any less amoral, it just explains the behaivor.
It would be nice to get this changed, the DMCA is another good example of a law that would be defeated by the Supreme Court were it pressed there, unfortunatly the nature of the DMCA makes it unlikely to ever be tried in court.
I also don't see how congress could require backdoors in anything but NEW crypto products. Requiring it in all crypto sounds good to those who are ignorant of crypto issues, but it isn't practical for larger (read large campaign contributors) companies etc, who have already invested a great deal in cryptographic systems that don't have backdoors.
I can honestly see congress passing some sort of bonehead legislation that does not really prevent the use of good crypto, won't stop terrorism, but will give the people a false sense of security.
A better response would be for congress to do something analagous to a declaration of war (the exact nature of this declaration is a matter of law with which I am not familiar), however a war declaration temporarily suspends most parts of The Constitution. When a state of war no longer exists, all laws or regulations enacted for the state of war revert to their original state.
This war declaration as I understand it was built into the constitution because during a all out war, there are problems with both being able to raise an army, fight the war, make sure the military gets the matierals they need etc, without permanantly hampering the citizens of the country.
Such a policy allowed the rationing that went on during World War II, without which we would not have possibly had the materials to support our soldiers in Europe and the South Pacific.
A temporary act would be far more likely to curtail much terrorist activity without permanantly impactig the liberties of the citizens.
Bin-laden has been tried and convicted in-abstencia(sp?) for several various terrorist attacks on the U.S.
Trying someone who isn't available is a little shaky leagally, but it would serve to get him arrested and get a new trial.
In addition to answer the questions of whether or not he is guilty. He may or may not be in this instance, but he has claimed responsibility in several prior terrorist attacks on the U.S. I don't remember which.
Even if he had nothing to do with the WTC, the U.S. would be more than justified in arresting him and putting him on trial for the numerous other crimes he as committed, some of which require NO PROOF, as we have his own confession (in the form of bragging) as proof. Confessions in most courts (except in extreme circumstances) are usually all the proof that is necessary.
Slashdot Mirror
First, as has been already pointed out, it IS possible to get the Windows source code. Microsoft, trying to capitolize on the Open Source popularity started their 'Shared Source' program. It shouldn't be that hard to get it, and even supponea(sp?) independant people who have studied it as expert witinesses.
/. and elsewhere in the Open Source/Free Software world see the free as in speech approach to software, there is a huge segment of the population that has difficulty distinguinshint left and right click. Unfortunatly such people are often very influential. Free as in speech when it comes to source code won't matter to them, because they are incapable of understanding it.
Although Microsoft has some sort of really strict NDA on their source that they give to researchers, a judge could easily compel testimony, and give the witiness immunity from any sort of legal reprisals. There are probably already people who know the answers to the questions the states have.
If I had much influence in any of the states involved, I would suggest putting a little extra pressure in Microsoft. This could be accomplished legally easily. Simply phase out all Microsoft products on all state run organizations, give groups that recieve state funds a 'bonus' for not using Microsoft software, and give companies that don't use Microsoft software a bit better chance of getting a contract from the state if they don't use Microsoft software.
The threat of that much lost business in that many states would put a bit of economic pressure on Microsoft, and could be handled with internal state policies.
States can easily put the policy of only buying software when a non-free (beer, were talking ecomomics here[1]) alternative isn't available. It could easily be sold to the taxpayer as a way to cut government spending without putting anyone out of work. For the federal government to interfere with such things would be very bad indeed.
Some of the other stuff such as influencing other organizations or compainies might not fly as well, but it's at least worth a thought.
[1] A important as a lot of people on
Compound this with the fact that Microsoft was a huge campaign contributor in 2000.
So was Enron. To both parties.
Right now would be the perfect time to step in and really make Microsoft squirm. Sure the current administration has been a little more than favorable toward Microsoft. Right now, they can't afford to even appear to be colluding with another large corporation that is breaking the law.
To "use" a normal offspring would be unthinkable.
It is very thinkable. It happens all the time in all parts of the world, and has happened throughout history.
China Currently allows slavery.
The United States allowed slavery officially until the end of the Civil War, but legal slavery existed in form if not in name at least until World War II. Illegal slavery exists even now within the United States.
The U.S. wasn't the first to have slavery however. Where did we learn to keep slaves? From our European cultural forefathers. Where did we get our slaves? Some would have you belive that we raided African villages for slaves, but in reality less than 1% came from raids. We bought them from costal villages who knew they had a good thing going, and raided inner villages for capitol to sell.
When looking back, it is difficult to find any culture that never in it's geneology allowed slavery. In western culture, some of the earliest documents we have reference slavery. The Bible (belive or not, most scholars agree that at least the surrounding context, if not the specifics, is reasonably accurate) references slavery.
If we are so willing to use other natural people as slaves, how is it so hard to see that humans are willing to do so with those who might be practically engineered to do so?
They shouldn't be used, period, and to raise the question is to expose us to a very slippery slope.
Onec again, from an ethical standpoint, you are right, but from a realistic standpoint, many ethical concers are unfortunatly not considered.
I was going to argue that we ahve always been exposed to that slippery slope, but that isn't quite right. It has only been rather recently (from a human history perspective) that we actually have been exposed to that slope. We exposed ourselves to that slope as soon as we tried to climb it. Before that we didn't worry about it because nobody had ever really considered a world without slavery. Nobody had ever considered the cause of human rights.
Sure everyone knew that being a slave sucked, but that's the way things were. Anything else was unthinkable.
We are now standing part way up that very slippery slope, not on the edge of it. We are making good progress climbig it, and I hope we continue to do so, but to close our eyes to how something might be abused is dangerous.
On the other hand, thinking about how someone with no ethical sense might think gives us insight into how someone might abuse the situation. We then apply ethics to defend against such people.
Your ethical viewpoint is admirable. Many others (particularly those with power) will not share it. They will try to do things like this, and unless some warnings can be given, they will do it before anyone really realizes what's going on. Then it will be to late.
It isn't, much, but there are a lot of people who have ethical concerns about that too. I won't argue those here (I actually am rather apathetic about the surrogate mother issue) but your first comment actually illustrates the point of those who hold the opposing view.
There is also the somewhat frightening idea of someone running amok with these things, and creating some sort of slave class of person to run things. read Brave New World. People were engineered to belong to different classes. More likely I see someplace using mass produced people as a menial labor force. It sounds like some sort of bad SciFi, but I can still see it happening.
At least using surrogate mothers requires someone else to go through 9 months of serious discomfort and moderate threat to life (as all childbirth does), making it far more difficult to do something like this.
How is this different from a different organ - the kidney - being replaced with external machinery (dialysis)?
Once again, it isn't, much. The problem is that dialysis is usually used in one of two situations.
Few people spend large amounts of their lives on dialysis. It can keep you alive, but is painful, unplesant, work intensive, and doesn't work as well as the real thing. If a kidney doesn't work as well, your health is poor. If a womb doesn't work as well, you could end up with all sorts of interesting physical and mental problems. In this instance we are not talking about preserving life, we are talking about creating it. There are ethical concers about dabbling with such things when we don't understand them.
How is this different from the prosthetic limbs or the artifical hearts in development?
It is many orders of magnitude more complex than prosthetic limbs or artificial hearts. The ethical concern comes from creating human life in this manner. Would it really be fair to create a life that society will have no choice but to institutionalize in some manner?
Our bodies are imperfect and sometimes bits don't work properly or break. We have the means to workaround these shortcomings with technology; in this case, we still need parents to provide the genetic material and, obviously, raise the child once it is born.
Yes we can work around some things, but an artifical heart, kidney or limb doesn't work quite as well as the original. There are inevitably problems. If someone needs a leg, they effect themselves. Creating a womb however also affects the life of the person being 'born?'.
The other problem (as I cited above) is that genetic material is extremely easy to obtain. It isn't particularly difficult to harvest eggs from women. This is done for invitrio(sp?) fertilization. For men, it is even easier, and we all know how it's done.
With just a little work it would be possible to create vast numbers of offspring. How these offspring would be used is one of the major ethical questions. Even in this century, there are countries that have no problem whatsoever with slavery. Would those same countries have a problem with creating some sort of easy labor force? OK, I honestly can't say I see China doing this. One of the reasons they have slavery relates to their overpopulation problem. This would compound it. Still it could be a fairly cheap and constant labor source.
All this aside, I really don't see it as too bad. The potential for abuse is great, but all technology can be abused in some manner. This could allow women who can not carry a child to term to have a child without the problems involved in using a surrogate (some of the legal complications alone are epic).
I would suggest strongly trying this with various animals and getting several completely normal animals (including primates) before ever attempting this on a human.
Even then, there will be legitimate ethical questions, but I leave most of those for someone else.
This really has nothing to do with aunt Tille, Grandma, or what ever other prototypical uninitated user you might be talking about. Although it is a good idea to keep them in mind when developing things, there is far more potential than just to make it easier for a novice to configure a Linux Kernel.
/boot or wherever else someone might want to put it, add the proper entry in lilo or grub config files, and get everything ready to run the new kernel on reboot. No this shouldn't be the only way to do it, but it would make things simpler.
Every time a new kernel comes out, I have to go through every option, and check what it is, I usually need to activate and follow every sub-menu, just to make sure that there isn't something bizarre down there that I need. Usually I don't, but I've been bitten more than once.
If you recompile your kernel every week or so, you get to know the menuconf menus pretty well (does anyone use the original make configure anymore?), but when something new is added or changed, everything changes, and you have to go through it all over again.
If you recompile occasionally, though, it becomes a very time consuming task to check and recheck that everything you have done is correct. Even then it usually takes me a couple of tries because I overlook something stupid.
This makes a lot of unnecessary work, that isn't difficult, but does take far more time than is really necessary.
Something very like what is being suggested would remedy this. It could detect the hardware, go out get the newest kernel, check for other drivers or patches that might work with the detected hardware (this has the advantage of making it possible to add support for some strange hardware), patches the kernel, then optionally allows the user the opportunity to do some basic or even full configuration tweaks on the config file.
This has the added benefit of making it easy to compile and install a kernel for unknown hardware. Laptops and the like are notorious for strange hardware configs. Without research as well as a lot of trial and error, it is usually not possible to have a fully functional system. You might have a usable one, but some components might not work quite right.
An automatic config generator would resolve this as well. Forget Aunt Tille, this would make my life easier. Sure, give me a way to tweak the configuration later, but something that would generate an intelligent config file for most hardware would make things a lot easier.
How about trying to create some sort of Linux network, say a hetrogenous lab. Something that would allow me to select some configuration options the kernel config that have nothing to do with the hardware, then automatically determine the hardware and compile a custom kernel for each machine. This would save a great deal of time and energy.
For that matter, it should be rather simple to create a utility that would take a newly created kernel image, put int in
If I were updating the kernel on say 30 or more hetrogenous machines, I sure wouldn't want to sit at each machine and configure it independantly. I'd want to be able to specify some config stuff, run a command, let the machines sit, and come back to check them later to pound on any that didn't work with the new kernel.
Some might fail, but a reboot into the old kernel, a little tweaking of the config file, and a retry would still be better than doing each one by hand.
What if I am a sysadmin, and I need to keep someone elses machine running? (Best is to keep a running kernel, but sometimes you need to upgrade.) Unless I know their exact hardware, I'm going to have to spend some time figuring out what they have. Why should I waste that time and effort (that could be used more constructively), if the machine can do most of it for me?
Yes, it would be nice if a novice user were able to get a new kernel automatically, and yes, it would be nice if all novice users were to learn how things work, but neither really cuts it for me as the best motive for going either way.
For me this or something very much like it could make life much much easier.
Ok some people might feel that a right is being violated, but online? They are advocating against toys marketed to children. They aren't trying to say that the toy can't be made. They aren't trying to say that YOU can't buy the toy. They aren't even trying to say that an 8 year old can't have the toy.
All they are trying to say is that the marketing of some toys to YOUNG children is wrong. They are advocating for putting limits on how toys can be marketed. This does IMHO tred on the First Amendment some, but society has decided that other things should not be marketed to children, so there is a chance it could pass in congress.
Personally, I would just rather see strict truth in advertising laws draconian punishments, as the First Amendment does not protect fraud. But I digress.
These people are advocating something I find distaseful, namely the abridgment of Free Speech. On the other hand, I support fully their right to advocate for whatever they want to advocate for. To congress, on the web, to whoever else they want. If they want to organize boycotts, that is their right. If they want to lobby congress that is their right. If you disagree with them, lobby congress too. If you want them silenced, lobby congress for that.
Are they annoying? Yes. Should parent's be able to see and make decisions for themselves? Yes. So what? Get over it and get back to fragging.
I do wish the general userdom in slashdot would get off it's high horse, and actually check some things. The page referenced makes no mention to "dangerous" toys. It makes reference to toys parent's may want to "avoid". The "Dangerous" bit was simply inflamatory from the slashdot community.
Slashdot editors need to take a bit more care to provide a more accurate and balanced view of the various 'news' items posted here as well. Slashdot is becomming the major news site for a lot of people. Although I see nothing wrong with posting a reasonable and informed opinion about a particular piece of news (as in The Register), but slashdot seems to not only present opinion as fact, but fails to check even simple facts before posting what an untrained, and un-responsibile (not not irresponsible, but rather someone who can't be held accountable) person decides to write on the subject.
Come on, is surfing to the site noting the error and posting a little comment at the bottom all that hard?
What happened to scissors, matches and lawn darts?
Lawn darts... they were my favorite. We used to make the neighbor kid catch 'em.
Lawn darts have been banned in many areas because someone was too stupid to know that they shouldn't stand in the target area. Kind of the same reasons my local McDonalds has to have a sign at the drive through "Caution! Hot coffee and hot applle pie are hot."
The simple fact is that the courts seem to feel that the stupid should be protected from themselves.
The website in question however is a whole other ball of wax. They aren't condemming toys because of danger, they are condemning them for "adult" content. By the way. Can people who post articles or slashdot editors look at the site and verify some of what's said? I didn't see anywhere on the site that said the toys were dangerous. It said that parents might want to avoid said toys. There is a difference.
Not that I'm saying my posting was well rounded or contained supporting documentation, but neither did the strawman that somehow rates a "2".
It didn't get modded up. The person replying to your previous post had earned the right to post at 2 by having a karma over 25.
However his post is common of the moronic arguments against homeschooling. It ignores children who are homeschooled generally score much higher on standardized tests, as well as being much better socialized. I could go on about this, in fact I could rant for pagess about the idiotic public school system, but as you said, all of this IS oftopic, so I will keep quiet for now.
Much of this has already been stated here, but here goes.
1. Keep it free.
The mantra here on slashdot is often information wants to be free. This isn't exactly true, and is rather antromorphic. A better statment is that information tends to move toward a state of being free. In other words, no matter what you do, you will be unable to make much money charging for 'premium' content. The only exceptions being large providers like AOL, and those who suffer from too many visitiors, not too few. If you are trying to get more visitior, charging for access will simply cause them to go elsewhere.
2. Keep advertisment to a minimum.
Keep the annoying ads to an absolute minimum. You need to pay for your site, but annoying me with popups, popunders, or banner ads will generally just piss me off. Honestly I can't recall even one ad (internet or otherwise) that convinced me to buy anything. On the other hand, there have been many times that I have stopped patronizing a business because of the ads.
3. Keep it open to everyone.
You should welcome anyone to discuss whatever topic you want. Don't allow flamers hotheads or assholes to dominate any discussions you have.
4. Keep a specific focus.
Although it should be open to everyone, keep it specific. Slasdot is 'news for nerds' instance. we discuss geeky things here. More mainstream things are generally shunned here. Keep true to the general purpose of the site.
5. Make it obvious what the site is about. I don't want to have to spend 20 minutes trying to figure what your site is talking about. I should know within 10-15 seconds of clicking the link.
6. Keep the site easy to access. Make it quick loading, with a minimum of extra crap. Stay away from flash, java, javascript, large images and anything else that increases the download/rendering time. Remember a large percentage of your users will likely be comming across a dialup connection. Make it friendly to low bandwith connections. Only use the major stuff when absolutely necessary. Javascript further should be avoided because of it's tendency to crash a browser. I have even turned good javascript into bad by pressing stop at an inopportune time. Wherever possible use server side processing. Client side processing could be used to take some of the burden off of your server, but even then it should be possible to make such things optional rather than manditory.
Education is about fundamentals. If you know how to perform the actual actions to perform the functions yourself, then a computer is just another tool that you can use to get your job done.
Um, What does this have to do with anything? Because a tool is available does not mean that you use it exclusively nor does it mean that you don't learn the fundamentals.
The thing is that computers are important in the world today. Very soon the inability to use a computer will be as debilitating as an inability to read.
The unfortunate thing is that the schools will take the same approach to computer learning that they take to everything else. Namely thay you must learn it completely by rote. The problem is that computers are too complex for this. Without the ablity to apply a little logic, you will be lost.
You are right, computers are just tools to get your job done, but they are important tools. A car is a tool too, but (at least in my area) we teach drivers training in the schools. Computers are complex and necessary. They can free us to do things that never could have been done before. In one math class I had, we were shown a huge linear algebra problem matrix multiplication. 2 500 * 500 matrices if I recall correctly.
To do this problem by hand would require years. To do it on the computer (after the data entry) required seconds.
Of course knowing how to do something is necessary. Unfortunatly with most non-theoretical advanced mathematics, you couldn't work it out within your lifetime it just takes too long.
In college, computer use is expected. You just don't hand write papers. In real life computer profiency is expected for most employability. You can't get around it.
The U.S. doesn't do political censorship. NBC can choose what they wish to air. That has nothingto do with the Government censoring something.
NBC or any other content provider can choose to air whatever they wish and not air whatever they wish as well. I get the impression from the reading that NBC feared reprisals from advertisers for suggesting that Cuba was better than the Unites States at anything.
Advertisers have to worry about what people buy piss off the viewer and you piss off a consumer. Piss off a consumer and your revenue drops. It's a pretty simple equation.
Like it or not the right to speak does not equate with the right to be heard. The right to publish something does not require that people read it, and the right to air something on television does not require that advertisers purchase ad time during that slot, or with your company at all for that matter. Nor does it require that the viewing public view something that they don't want to see.
Finally people have the right to choose what products they purchase using whatever critera they choose to use. If someone swears off a product or company because they aired a commercial during a news program that pissed them off, that is their right.
Finally disagreeing with the parent to your post about the U.S. having more censorship on television than any other nation, I suppose that he hadn't thought about afghanistan, iraq, iran...
Yes, the U.S. censors many things on broadcast television, less on the (almost nonexistant now) uhf band, or on cable, not at all for most pay stations.
The key to the power of the FCC is that they are regulating something with a limited bandwidth. If the radio band isn't full, the control can be relaxed a bit, but what happens if it is? What happens if there is a single available broadcast chanel, but two applicants? The Federal Radio commision was set up to regulate such things because the available radio bands were too full. Some criteria were set up to decide what could or couldn't be done.
If you suggest that there should be no control whatsoever, let me ask you:
Do you use wireless networking?
Do you use a cordless phone?
Do you use a cell phone?
... a pager?
... a gps device?
All of these rely on the regulation of the various regulatory bodies of various countries to stop people from stomping all over your transmission.
For the libertarian view that everyone would be a good citizen, this didn't happen before when broadcasters demanded the creation of the FRC (later called the FCC), what makes you think things have suddenly changed?
A lot of people get harmed as Microsoft increases their Monolopy.
I guess my point is that even though I don't agree with the business tactics that Microsoft has taken, even though I think that Windows XP is overpriced for what you get, I believe that there are alternatives out there.
For now, but Microsoft has and does try to leverage that monopoly into closed standards that prevent interoperability. Even if laws allow reverse engineering, they prevent a speedy driver release. Linux then looks like it's going slower, fewer companies release drivers or specs for their hardware, and there is this downward spiral.
Microsoft aggressively protects its intellectual property interests.
I doubt anyone has a problem with this. After all the GPL does the same thing. What the problem is that Microsoft swallows other IP, takes credit for and tries to stomp out anything else.
Microsoft preaches a computer on every desk and a Microsoft OS on every computer. Their party line is that there can be no exception.
I really don't care if Microsoft exists. I just think that they have far too much power in the market.
Why am I harmed? I don't want to use a Microsoft OS. Don't by one you say? Even taking into account your microsoft tax argumet, I didn't say I didn't want one, I said I don't want to use one. Not at home, and not at work. I want at least the option to use a real OS in my place of employment, or at least a chance that my place of employment might not force everyone to use Microsoft softwar, but with their current control, your current choice is between the various flavors of excrement offered by Microsoft.
I want decent games under Linux, but I can't get them. Why? because very few of the games I want have been ported to Linux. Most of the ones that have are ones that don't particularly interest me, and I'm not about to lay down money for a game I don't want just so someone might think of porting other games to the platform. If Microsoft were a small player, there would be no choice but to port games to several platforms.
Microsoft's dominance has harmed me, and even if you don't know it, it has harmed you.
As much as I like and respect the power of computers, it occurs to me that there are a number of higher priorities for schools, especially poor ones. How about books that aren't 25 years out of date? How about hot lunches for kids who can't afford to eat? How about pencils and other supplies? How about furnaces and boilers that actually work? How about kicking in a subsidy to help pay teachers what they're worth instead of keeping them at the poverty level?
/ i386/ should be sufficient. There they have provided the schools with Red Hat Linux for any hardware the want.
Those are all good, and all more necessary than computer, but computers are becomming more and more necessary as well. The thing is I can't really see Red Hat or Microsoft providing either. On the other hand, if a book publisher were to offer to provide books, I doubt someone would be screaming that they should be providing food, or if Kraft were offering food, would someone gripe that they should provide books? I doubt anyone would take any such complaint seriously.
Computers are important, and becomming more so. They obviously aren't in the same class as books, or food, but thery are important in any case. Let each provide what they can provide best.
Microsoft and RedHat will continue to play their little P.R. power games, using our schools as pawns. But each time I hear a story like this, I lose a little more respect for each of them.
Every time someone bitches about this, I am astounded that so few people get what red hat is actually saying. What does Red Hat really have to do to provide Linux to all of the schools that want it? An email with the URL ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/redhat-7.2-en/iso
Red Hat simply pointed out in an obscure manner that if someone else provides the hardware Linux is always available at little or no cost. Microsoft could do the same, and it would cost them nothing, but since they get to set the 'cost', they can claim to be donating far more than they are.
Microsoft is trying to use the judgment against them on to deepen their control over the market, and using the schools to do it. Red Hat is simply tryint to call attention to that fact.
Red Hat is far better to call attention to this fact than is slashdot. Why? just look at the tone of most of the posts on slashot. Most people here write like 15 year old kids who think they know everything there is to know. Such individuals are usually ignored by those who hold the purse strings.
The point is that although M$ is trying to use the schools as pawns, Red Hat is trying to prevent it.
Finally some more specific comments on the teachers. My knee jerk response is most teachers aren't even worth what we're paying them, but that's just bitterness talking. The truth though is that the problems with teachers isn't the just the pay. It's a portion of it, but really a small one.
I once thought that schools would magically improve if teachers were paid more, but then I entered a University, and witinessed first hand how education majors are taught and where they come from.
About 10-15% of the Education students actually care about becomming educatiors. Unfortunatly many of them are doing so so that they can be qualified for something other than the public education system.
Most of the rest kind of end up in education as a major. It requires very little math, and very little science. There is a small amount of computer exposure (only after a being forced to do so), and most of the rest is theory. Except for bit teaching, and student teaching, there is little practical expierence, and most of the professors have the attitude that theory is better than practice. In other words, future teachers are learning how to teach children from people who have never taught children.
Education becomes a dumping ground for people who can't handle the elementry algebra, and science classes. It seems to be the last stop before going to the trade school and taking cosmetology (hairdressing) or some such.
Perhaps there are better education schools out there, but I've seen programs on just this problem. I tend to think that without a serious overhaul of who is becomming teachers, many of the problems with teachers will persist.
Now if requirments were similar to what is required for a university professorship...
Can someone explain why we really need to waste "more than $45 million... between 2000 and 2005." on these new toys?
I really hate to break this to you, but $45 million (are you sure you didn't meanb $45 billion?) isn't all that much. It's a fairly large powerball jackpot (but by no means huge), and a rounding error for Microsoft and several other large companies.
The military is willing to dump $45 million into things like this because a) one of them might pay off, and b) even if there is no direct payoff, things are learned that may be used later.
One only needs to look at the history of scientific development to realize that sometimes things that don't make sense need to be funded. How many technological advances of today are dependant upon scientific discoveries made years before they were considered useful? A lot. A simple example is anything that works on electricity. It took nearly 40 years from the first experiments by Michael Faraday in the generation of electricity before anyone found any real method of production, and over a century from Franklin's first investigation to real use.
Just because something doesn't have a use now, doesn't mean that knowledge gained isn't valuable. And since the military has the budget to fund things that no one else can, they tend to do so.
As to the reason the Marines do so much better than the Army with so much less has a lot to do with the training, and 'winnowing' process done on recruits. Say what you want about methods, the most severe of the branches of the service also seems to produce the most effective soldiers.
How does the military deal with changes in the force of gravity due to altitude and location? A 1% change in gravity is a big deal if you are firing an artillery shell at a target over a long distance. I was watching a documentary on the ENIAC computer and it said the computer's primary task was to calculate gunnery tables for the military. Wouldn't all of those carefully calculated tables be useless if the force of gravity changed
The change in gravity would be rather small over the fairly short distances used by artillery, so the error from firing from one gravitational level to another would be almost non-existant. The real worry would be firing in an area of high gravity vs low gravity, and my guess is that the error produced by differences in air density, wind direction temperature etc.. Although the tables may be very accurate, there are things that are impossible to measure, A change in air temperature (and therefore density) would affect the course of a shell. An undetected difference in wind direction above the ship would affect the shell. Even a difference in the temperature of the powder would make a difference in the explosive force. Also When the ENIAC tables were in use, there was also no computer control to compensate for the rocking of the ship on the water. The tables would be to get you very close, but not always dead on.
From everything I've seen, the military expects minor inaccuracies, and corrects by firing, correcting and firing again. I don't know about ships, but for ground based artillery the standard was to have people watch, tell them by how far they had missed, then fire again. Good response was to hit about a 5 foot area by the third shot.
I read once (I forget where) where someone was describing their expierence with network solutions. Their software was choking on their email, it had something to do with not liking how most mail software creates mail headers. This person had to use trial and error to figure out which one, then forge a 'properly' formatted email from himself.*
Another solution would be to get a decent regristrar, but that can cause other problems and can take even longer to sort out. Once you get it sorted out it will probably be very good, but actually making the transfer will make you question why you are doing it.
The easiest solution is likely to figure out what it doesn't like about your email, and forge one it does like.*
*Note to U.S. government. This is merely offered up as a hypothetical solution. I do not advocate the forging of email, nor the impersonation of oneself.
Despite what a bunch of idealistic teenaged know it all's think, this is a decent product. There are all manner of people who don't want to see certian things. That is their right. I have the right not to see read or listen to whatever I choose not to see read or listen too. You have no right to force me to see it.
/. crowd is pissed because someone wants to not watch it in the privacy of their own home.
This product gives people to see and enjoy movies that they otherwise wouldn't want to see because they object to things in the movie. It isn't censorship. It gives people a few more options. That's all.
There have been a lot of stupid arguments. "Kid's won't use it", "What happens if one of the objectional scenes has a critical piece of dialog"... My response is so what if it does? If someone wants to watch a movie and is willing to make that trade, what right do you have to say they can't? You get pissed when they say you can't watch it in your own home, but suddenly the
"The artistic vision of the creator of the movie shouldn't be altered." Anyone that can use the word artistic in relation to nearly any American movie without negation and hold a straight face is either insane or someone I wouldn't want to play poker with. American movies are made to get maximum ratings. Most of the time sex and violence scenes have no 'artistic' value to the movie. They're there to get the R rating, because R rated movies make more money.
Now if someone were trying to say that these scenes shouldn't be allowed in movies, I'd be pissed at censorship, but that isn't the case here. No one is telling you that you can't do something, they are just saying that they don't want to participate in a particular activity. This in no way violates your rights.
If someone wants to buy and use a product, so what? Why should you care?
First off the general premise that globalism is so hard to define isn't exactly true. The problem with a definition is that it is a very complex issue, and not served by a short definition.
As to why do so many people hate globalization? and Why are are they from such diverse groups?
The reason goes to what it is about globalization that they hate.
You cited the dilution of the individual power of nation states, and that's partially true, but it comes down to the same issues in the American Civil War. One of the central issues was slavery, but the larger issue was states rights vs federal control. The danger of globalism is to create a world government that makes global laws that apply to everyone everywhere equally no mater the circumstances in a given area.
Let's take gun control for example in the United States. This is an emotional issue for a lot of people. Unfortunatly when people spend emotional energy making up their mind, they are quite reluctant to change it. I will concede that in large cities there is a valid argument for gun control (neglecting the issues of enforcement and implementation for now), but where I'm from a sizable fraction of the population either grow or kill most of their food. Fish and game will even often look the other way toward poaching when the poacher is known to be having financial trouble, and will need the meat.
Globalism creates the danger of not letting people in areas govern themselves according to their own needs.
The sovereignty of countries is something that wars have been fought over. On slashdot we generally hear about the first, and fourth amendments (there are a bunch of others, but that isn't the issue), but that isn't the issue. Remember that the U.S. revolutionary war was not fought for freedom of speech, or right to assemble, or freedom or religeon, or any or those reasons. Those came later, and were only added to the constiution after a good deal of argument. It was fought because the Americans thought they could do a better job of governing themselves than someone across an ocean. This is why the Articles of Confederation were so weak. The constitution was stronger, but comparatviely weak in relation to other governments of the day.
Even within the U.S. there is argument over how much authority the states have vs the federal government.
What would happen if some global government came in and were more restrictive than the constitution.
Another danger is in corpratism. We've dicussed this before on slashdot. In the United States right now jobs are going to Mexico, China, and whereever else that dirt cheap labor is available.
This isn't totally bad. It is good to provide relatively decent jobs to people in underdeveloped areas. When I was in the Dominican republic, people working for American companies earned much more than the national average, but by our standards, the wages were by U.S. standards criminal.
On the other hand, this exports our jobs elsewhere. This is one of the arguments many in labor have with it. It's exporting jobs we have our own with no jobs, providing jobs in Korea should be down on the list.
Others worry that the exportation of jobs from the U.S. weakens our position should there ever be a war. If for whatever reason we had an all out war with China, we would have problems. We would have to move all of that manufacturing back within the United States. Unfortunatly, we no longer have the manufacturing facilities to meet with our needs.
Others still have a problem with multination companies becoming the world government. Having large companies have several members of Congress and the President in ther pockets is bad enough, what would happen if countries were required by law to follow certain policies even if such policies were against the law of the land.
I found the argument that religeous groups hating it because they just want to control ideas tired and old, and the standard argument that comes from people who hate religeon. Funny that when someone attacks what someone says people scream first amendment, but the same people attack religeon at every opportunity, somehow forgetting that the same amendment protects religeon.
Some religeous groups (or political groups that use religeon as a control tool) want to control ideas, but many just want the right to decide how they live their lives, and fear that globalism will stop this. They fear one of the two possible outcomes. Since there are such differences among cultures, many of which couldn't easlily be reconciled, a global government must either allow nearly everything, or outlaw nearly everything. Both should scare nearly everyone, but for the religeous, it means that either there would be no way to avoid things they find immoral (contrary to what has been written in slashdot, most don't care if you participate, they just don't want to be forced to participate too), or the religeon itself would have to be banned to satisfy people in other countries.
Most of these fears and arguments are full of holes, but just real enough to make globalism something to be careful with. It seems to me that a global government could either be the best or worst possible thing we could do. If we do things just right it would be the single greatest thing ever to happen. If not, we will be lucky if humanity survives. Everything depends upon whether or not humanity is mature enough to handle it, and whether or not our leaders are smart enough to make it happen. Looking at the state of the world though, I tend to doubt it.
Well it just seems to me that if you are going talk about good documentation you should give a link to it. Otherwise people might think you are just talking out of your ass.
One might think that someone could go to google, type in "gtk" and click on the first link that appears.
...the humorous reference to HAL at the end makes it worth the read...
That wasn't just a joke on the part of the person writing the article. I tried it, and got the requisite response.
I also tried asking to play a game of Global Thermonuclear War, but that seems to have been a bad idea. I can't get to the site now...
Actually questioning it about how it works is rather interesting and informative. It gives good if short responses.
All in all, it would be a good algorithm to be used for a plain language help or information lookup program. Yes, there are better ways to get information, but this would be helpful to some.
The thing is that it is impossible to get any piece of software more complex than your CS 101 programming assignments totally bulletproof. Every service that runs under IIS (or Apache for that matter) is an added risk. The general security model is to only turn on services you need, thus minimizing the number of attacks that you are vunerable to.
Most security experts agree that it is impossible to stop all attacks. If someone wants to compromise your system badly enough, it will happen. The aim of most security precautions is to make the cost of doing so greater than the benefit.
This is akin to locking the door. I once heard a story about some art theives who had no trouble with door locks. Why? they backed a truck up to the house or building and cut a hole in the wall. They then loaded the truck through the wall and were gone without setting off any alarms. So why lock the door? Because for most thieves, a locked door makes things more difficult and will cut down on the number of break-ins.
With servers, it is best not to turn on any services that you don't need. This is what BSD does. If you then want or need a service you turn it on. You are then more vunerable to attacks, but not as vunerable as you would be if everything were on.
Turning on only of select services also makes getting security updates far easier. Instead of having to go through and get and apply everyting, you can get and apply only what you need. This gives you less downtime, and more reliable systems. Remember it is not always possible to put a patch into use without taking down a service, or even a machine.
Then there is the problem of problem patches. If I have 20 patches to apply for various services, I should apply each one in turn, and check to see if it worked. That way I can usually undo what I have done if one fails. If I apply all 20, then check the system, any problem will be difficult if not impossible to fix, greatly increasig downtime. For a personal machine that only has uptime listed for bragging rights, this isn't that important, but for critical servers running businesses, downtime can equate with lost money. It would be something to be minimized at all cost.
By using only the services I need, I only have to apply and test the patches for those services being used, reducing the need for downtime after applying a patch, and minimizing the chances of getting one that didn't work quite right.
When a particular media group pisses me off, I don't boycott the channel, newspaper, or website. I use it and endure the advertisment. I then make a note of whoever advertises with that particular company, and boycott the advertiser. Then I let them know that I am boycotting them and why. Yes, I see their ad, but I will take extra pains not to buy from them as long as they are advertising with that particular company.
The problem with boycotting a particular soruce of media is that all a company looses are potential eyeballs viewing their ad. On the other hand, a boycott of the company directly hurts them further.
I actually carry this even to commericals that annoy or offend me. A while back there was a series of Pizza Hut commercials that disgusted me. My solution? I go elsewhere for pizza now.
If more people did this, we would get more interesting commercials, and even better products, since products would have to compete more on quality than on marketing.
All of the stated advantages regarding corded keyboards are totally true, unfortunatly, there is the difficulty of training.
What should the chords be? Is it possible for all different types of corded keyboards to use the same chord to produce the same character? If not (which is the likely case), how many different sets of cords will someone have to learn?
With a traditional one character one key approach someone who has never typed before can be given a keyboard and can pound out a document. With a chorded approach, first a person must sit down and practice the chords. In order to type with any profeciency, one must practice long enough that the chords become part of muscle memory.
Furthermore, some of the corded designs, like the pyramid, would seem to accomidate only one handsize. It would be easy to make several sizes of keyboard, but each person would have to carry around their own keyboard.
The flat arrangement isn't going away any time soon. The QWERTY arrangement might not stay, and 'ergonomic' keyboards based on a flat arrangement are going to become more common, but going to chorded keyboards isn't likely to happen for the general populace because of the extreme amount of training required to operate one.
I have seen other arguments here that it isn't hard to learn DVORAK, so it shouldn't be hard to learn chording, but that's ignoring the most basic and obvious difference. If I can't remember where a particular key is, I can look. If I can't remember a particular chord, I need to look it up. In other words I need something seperate from the (read easily lost) pasted somewhere so I can use the thing. On the other hand If I were placed on a DVORAK keyboard right now I could still post this message. I would just have to use the hunt and peck method rather than the method that I currently use, which is a rather nonstandard form of touch typing, and the occasional look at the hands.
After all we're talking about requiring back doors in things. This means that 100% would get their bank accounts compromised.
I actually suspect that this law is the standard congress fare that they expect either to be impossible to implement, or unconstitutional. Many laws seem to be passed with the express purpose fo getting them defeated in the supreme court.
Why? Because it lets a contressperson say to his constituents "I voted for $FOO, it isn't my fault that the courts overturned it. I'm watching out for what YOU want so you'll reelect me and give me your money."
OK they don't actually say that, but you know that is what goes on in their heads. This is just a typical political game that they play. That doesn't make it any less amoral, it just explains the behaivor.
It would be nice to get this changed, the DMCA is another good example of a law that would be defeated by the Supreme Court were it pressed there, unfortunatly the nature of the DMCA makes it unlikely to ever be tried in court.
I also don't see how congress could require backdoors in anything but NEW crypto products. Requiring it in all crypto sounds good to those who are ignorant of crypto issues, but it isn't practical for larger (read large campaign contributors) companies etc, who have already invested a great deal in cryptographic systems that don't have backdoors.
I can honestly see congress passing some sort of bonehead legislation that does not really prevent the use of good crypto, won't stop terrorism, but will give the people a false sense of security.
A better response would be for congress to do something analagous to a declaration of war (the exact nature of this declaration is a matter of law with which I am not familiar), however a war declaration temporarily suspends most parts of The Constitution. When a state of war no longer exists, all laws or regulations enacted for the state of war revert to their original state.
This war declaration as I understand it was built into the constitution because during a all out war, there are problems with both being able to raise an army, fight the war, make sure the military gets the matierals they need etc, without permanantly hampering the citizens of the country.
Such a policy allowed the rationing that went on during World War II, without which we would not have possibly had the materials to support our soldiers in Europe and the South Pacific.
A temporary act would be far more likely to curtail much terrorist activity without permanantly impactig the liberties of the citizens.
Bin-laden has been tried and convicted in-abstencia(sp?) for several various terrorist attacks on the U.S.
Trying someone who isn't available is a little shaky leagally, but it would serve to get him arrested and get a new trial.
In addition to answer the questions of whether or not he is guilty. He may or may not be in this instance, but he has claimed responsibility in several prior terrorist attacks on the U.S. I don't remember which.
Even if he had nothing to do with the WTC, the U.S. would be more than justified in arresting him and putting him on trial for the numerous other crimes he as committed, some of which require NO PROOF, as we have his own confession (in the form of bragging) as proof. Confessions in most courts (except in extreme circumstances) are usually all the proof that is necessary.