The United States revolutionary war was more than just a violent overthrow of an oppressive regime, it was a philosophical revolution as well. It was a few intelligent men who said, "we can do better." Those same men also wrote extensively about the nature of authorities to corrupt, They saw the right of the populus to keep and bear arms as the only way to insure that the government had a healthy fear of its citizens. This, they believed, would help keep the government more honest than they otherwise would be.
That is why we in the United States of America see little wrong with selling guns. As for why we aren't as keen on nudity, well, that I can't say.
Either way, this is a moot point. Wal-Wart is as free as any other company in America to sell or not sell as it pleases. There is nothing inherantly wrong with taking a moral stand even when I don't agree with it.
If ya don't like it, don't use it
on
Passport vs. Plan 9
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
It's not like apache and plan9 are looking to make it mandatory. They just want the option available for those instances when it is a useful addition. Like ChiliASP and Tomcat, if you don't need what it provides, just don't add it to your server install. But definately do not gripe that they should do it at all. Such griping is shortsighted and pointless.
Nonrepudiation and psuedonymic technologies will/have/ to emerge if we want to see real commerce online, while I don't approve of MS having control of that technology, I recognize that MS is in some sense right...for some transactions to occur, nonrepudiation is a must.
The more people who are willing to act as trust servers in that sense, the better. Right now we have MS Hailstorm, XNS and OneName, Sun and the Liberty Alliance, and I see no reason not to add another to the mix, so long as we are moving toward standardization where players can compete on implementation of the standard.
Re:Crack to stop all this...
on
"Squishy" DRM?
·
· Score: 1
Except that the virus, by definition, cannot run on a DRM machine, so fat chance getting it propagated. That is the terrible beauty of their idea. It/will/ make for a safer computing environment for the end users..at the low low cost of their civil liberties and inalienable rights.
Concerns about the future of D&D under Hasbro are one of the main reasons why we at the Free Gaming Association have taken the d20 rules and are releasing them under the Open Gaming License with the missing bits being put back in by volunteer contributors. We are looking to flesh out the barebones rules that WotC released under the OGL back into a real and full system. Sort of acting as an OpenOffice to WotC/Hasbro's StarOffice, if you get the analogy.
Besides, who can't like a project that brings D&D, CVS, and free principles together?;)
You may as well stay away from Sams, Que, and all the rest too. This is how most if not all tech publishers work. I've been approached a few times. I have a friend who has participated in the process. It's not so bad, though the deadline you suggest is unusual. Either way, they all use collaborative writing and low compensation as the norm. Wrox still puts out the most consistently good tech books of them all, imo.
This isn't new information. We've known the MP3 codec was proprietary and yet most of us continued to use it. If you want a real alternative, then I suggest looking at Ogg Vorbis. It's free as in beer and speech. It's also better!
Buffer Overflow or Backhoe?
on
Byte Wars
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Combating terrorism isn't about protecting against sophisticated attacks. It's about protecting against very cheap, very simple attacks that have wide-reaching effects. They are FAR more likely to backhoe a cable or bomb a server location than to try hacking into it.
Osama isn't employing hackers OR script kiddies, he's employing desert fighters whose expertise is real-world destruction.
Adding in safegaurds against buffer overflows may be a perfectly good idea, but it won't matter a whit to a terrorist bend on causing damage to the Internet.
Autism is just an umbrella term to describe a certain somewhat similar collection of traits. Noone is/just/ autistic in that sense. One in usually diagnosed as a particular brand of autism. Aspergers is a form of autism with a specific set of traits. If a person with aspergers is diagnosed with autism, it isn't a misdiagnisis, it's the first stage to discovering what sort of autism.
Computers don't care where they are, and geographic domain suffixes are meaningless if localization isn't enforced. When anyone in the world can buy a.us or.tv or.rs domain, what does it mean to have a.us or.tv or.rm domain?
In an age when we are becoming increasing less concerned with geography, does it really make sense to perpetuate an artificially geographic-based Internet substructure?
You think it's already too easy to throw a Carnivore box in an ISP's infrastructure? Wait until the Government is asking ITSELF if it's OK that they tap connections.
The author of that piece thinks it's right for people to be compensated for the fruits of their intellect (eg, he should be paid for that article he wrote) but when it runs contrary to his own moral position (getting AIDS medicine to Africa or genetically modifed grains to thrid world farmers) he says morality should win out.
Easy for him to say since his words will never be of humanitarian use, and therefore never subject to mandatory public release under his proposed 'structure'.
As much as he want to change the vocabulary used in the IP debates, in the end it is a boolean arguement: Either there is or there is not Intellectual Property. True or False.
Changing the vocabulary may make for nicer conversation, and may even help to achieve comprimise faster, but it is an obfustication of the reality of the issue.
Disclaimer: I am of the camp that says the answer is "False, there is no such thing as IP and any attempt to suggest otherwise is an illusion thrown up by corporate fatcats looking to stuff their wallets just a bit thicker at the expense of the public and of reality.
Internet2 is great and I have no doubt that it'll have a serious impact on daily life, but the cost to roll out something like that to the general public is outrageous. We, John.Q.Public, will be using the plain old Internet for a while. That's why I have more interest in technologies like Dense Wave Division Multiplexing, that help us out in our current infrastructure and consequently will impact us in the home much sooner than the UberNet this article talks about.
Oh, fyi, since I mention it, here's where you can find more about DWDM:
http://www.ericsson.com/technology/DWDM.shtml
http://www.atmdigest.com/WDMResources.htm
http://www.iec.org/tutorials/dwdm/
---Ideological Argument---
This idea that some nodes should be pay-for-access flies in the face of not only the intent of the creators of the Internet but also of the architecture and infrastructure of the Internet.
The Internet was and is meant to be a decentralized structure of server/clients all chattering together.
We should be trying our best to create a federation of worthy sources using decentralized processes with trust/reliability algorithms, not a single uber-source that we pay for. A single uber-source can fail. A single uber-source can lie. A single uber-source cannot be checked with trust/reliability algorithms.
Ask yourself, "Is/. a community or a site?" and "Which would you like it to be?" These are the sorts of questions that we should be considering when we talk about pay-for-access sites and the resources they provide. (fyi, the above two questions are rhetorical, I know/. is both for now, but requiring payment for articles would change that answer. Really think about it.)
---Business Argument---
Selling bits in an age when bits are trivially copied and disseminated is not a sound business model.
A subscription model won't work for any but the most well established sources. Why in the world would I pay for the shoddy news I find online? Especially when I can get news offline for free from the TV/radio airwaves and my network of friends.
A micropayment model has two obstacles. Firstly, the Internet, at its core, cannot support the simple transparent transactions needed to pull it off properly (people will not click through a login screen, credit card entry screen, license agreement screen, and a confirmation screen just to see one/. article). Secondly micropayments must overcome the "but I'm already paying for my ISP" mindset. These obstacles are not likely to be oversome in the immediate future. By the time they are, your services will likely be obsolete by virtue of a better, more decentralized methodology.
Slashdot Mirror
The United States revolutionary war was more than just a violent overthrow of an oppressive regime, it was a philosophical revolution as well. It was a few intelligent men who said, "we can do better." Those same men also wrote extensively about the nature of authorities to corrupt, They saw the right of the populus to keep and bear arms as the only way to insure that the government had a healthy fear of its citizens. This, they believed, would help keep the government more honest than they otherwise would be.
That is why we in the United States of America see little wrong with selling guns. As for why we aren't as keen on nudity, well, that I can't say.
Either way, this is a moot point. Wal-Wart is as free as any other company in America to sell or not sell as it pleases. There is nothing inherantly wrong with taking a moral stand even when I don't agree with it.
It's not like apache and plan9 are looking to make it mandatory. They just want the option available for those instances when it is a useful addition. Like ChiliASP and Tomcat, if you don't need what it provides, just don't add it to your server install. But definately do not gripe that they should do it at all. Such griping is shortsighted and pointless.
/have/ to emerge if we want to see real commerce online, while I don't approve of MS having control of that technology, I recognize that MS is in some sense right...for some transactions to occur, nonrepudiation is a must.
Nonrepudiation and psuedonymic technologies will
The more people who are willing to act as trust servers in that sense, the better. Right now we have MS Hailstorm, XNS and OneName, Sun and the Liberty Alliance, and I see no reason not to add another to the mix, so long as we are moving toward standardization where players can compete on implementation of the standard.
Except that the virus, by definition, cannot run on a DRM machine, so fat chance getting it propagated. That is the terrible beauty of their idea. It /will/ make for a safer computing environment for the end users..at the low low cost of their civil liberties and inalienable rights.
Concerns about the future of D&D under Hasbro are one of the main reasons why we at the Free Gaming Association have taken the d20 rules and are releasing them under the Open Gaming License with the missing bits being put back in by volunteer contributors. We are looking to flesh out the barebones rules that WotC released under the OGL back into a real and full system. Sort of acting as an OpenOffice to WotC/Hasbro's StarOffice, if you get the analogy.
;)
Besides, who can't like a project that brings D&D, CVS, and free principles together?
You may as well stay away from Sams, Que, and all the rest too. This is how most if not all tech publishers work. I've been approached a few times. I have a friend who has participated in the process. It's not so bad, though the deadline you suggest is unusual. Either way, they all use collaborative writing and low compensation as the norm. Wrox still puts out the most consistently good tech books of them all, imo.
This isn't new information. We've known the MP3 codec was proprietary and yet most of us continued to use it. If you want a real alternative, then I suggest looking at Ogg Vorbis. It's free as in beer and speech. It's also better!
Combating terrorism isn't about protecting against sophisticated attacks. It's about protecting against very cheap, very simple attacks that have wide-reaching effects. They are FAR more likely to backhoe a cable or bomb a server location than to try hacking into it.
Osama isn't employing hackers OR script kiddies, he's employing desert fighters whose expertise is real-world destruction.
Adding in safegaurds against buffer overflows may be a perfectly good idea, but it won't matter a whit to a terrorist bend on causing damage to the Internet.
What makes you think they would stop /short/ of murder?
:/
Yeah, I know "-1 flamebait"...oh well.
Autism is just an umbrella term to describe a certain somewhat similar collection of traits. Noone is /just/ autistic in that sense. One in usually diagnosed as a particular brand of autism. Aspergers is a form of autism with a specific set of traits. If a person with aspergers is diagnosed with autism, it isn't a misdiagnisis, it's the first stage to discovering what sort of autism.
If you don't like MS, there are always alternatives:
http://www.xns.org
http://www.onename.com
If enough people use a competing system, (especially a more open like xns) then the market can't as easily galvanize around Passport.
Computers don't care where they are, and geographic domain suffixes are meaningless if localization isn't enforced. When anyone in the world can buy a .us or .tv or .rs domain, what does it mean to have a .us or .tv or .rm domain?
In an age when we are becoming increasing less concerned with geography, does it really make sense to perpetuate an artificially geographic-based Internet substructure?
You think it's already too easy to throw a Carnivore box in an ISP's infrastructure? Wait until the Government is asking ITSELF if it's OK that they tap connections.
-Tom
The author of that piece thinks it's right for people to be compensated for the fruits of their intellect (eg, he should be paid for that article he wrote) but when it runs contrary to his own moral position (getting AIDS medicine to Africa or genetically modifed grains to thrid world farmers) he says morality should win out.
Easy for him to say since his words will never be of humanitarian use, and therefore never subject to mandatory public release under his proposed 'structure'.
As much as he want to change the vocabulary used in the IP debates, in the end it is a boolean arguement: Either there is or there is not Intellectual Property. True or False.
Changing the vocabulary may make for nicer conversation, and may even help to achieve comprimise faster, but it is an obfustication of the reality of the issue.
Disclaimer: I am of the camp that says the answer is "False, there is no such thing as IP and any attempt to suggest otherwise is an illusion thrown up by corporate fatcats looking to stuff their wallets just a bit thicker at the expense of the public and of reality.
-Tom
AI is all well and good, but in the end people often call help desks just to gripe, not resolve things.
Install this software into a robotic punching bag that cries when beaten and you may have a runaway hit (www.BeatTheCrapOuttaOurTechs.com)
-Tom
Internet2 is great and I have no doubt that it'll have a serious impact on daily life, but the cost to roll out something like that to the general public is outrageous. We, John.Q.Public, will be using the plain old Internet for a while. That's why I have more interest in technologies like Dense Wave Division Multiplexing, that help us out in our current infrastructure and consequently will impact us in the home much sooner than the UberNet this article talks about.
Oh, fyi, since I mention it, here's where you can find more about DWDM:
http://www.ericsson.com/technology/DWDM.shtml
http://www.atmdigest.com/WDMResources.htm
http://www.iec.org/tutorials/dwdm/
Tom
I see two basic arguments here:
/. a community or a site?" and "Which would you like it to be?" These are the sorts of questions that we should be considering when we talk about pay-for-access sites and the resources they provide. (fyi, the above two questions are rhetorical, I know /. is both for now, but requiring payment for articles would change that answer. Really think about it.)
/. article). Secondly micropayments must overcome the "but I'm already paying for my ISP" mindset. These obstacles are not likely to be oversome in the immediate future. By the time they are, your services will likely be obsolete by virtue of a better, more decentralized methodology.
---Ideological Argument---
This idea that some nodes should be pay-for-access flies in the face of not only the intent of the creators of the Internet but also of the architecture and infrastructure of the Internet.
The Internet was and is meant to be a decentralized structure of server/clients all chattering together.
We should be trying our best to create a federation of worthy sources using decentralized processes with trust/reliability algorithms, not a single uber-source that we pay for. A single uber-source can fail. A single uber-source can lie. A single uber-source cannot be checked with trust/reliability algorithms.
Ask yourself, "Is
---Business Argument---
Selling bits in an age when bits are trivially copied and disseminated is not a sound business model.
A subscription model won't work for any but the most well established sources. Why in the world would I pay for the shoddy news I find online? Especially when I can get news offline for free from the TV/radio airwaves and my network of friends.
A micropayment model has two obstacles. Firstly, the Internet, at its core, cannot support the simple transparent transactions needed to pull it off properly (people will not click through a login screen, credit card entry screen, license agreement screen, and a confirmation screen just to see one
Tom