Anti-viruses are benign viruses, but all viruses are evil.
Myself, I don't want anything propagating through a clandestine channel onto my machine, thankyou very much. I certainly don't want some do-gooder code messing with my machine behind my back. Most of my friends feel the same way. I would very much not want to be responsible for transmiting such a virus to their machines.
Back in the good old days when software moved via 5.25in disks, did you ever propagate a virus, (even a benign one) to a bunch of friends? I remember what that felt like. "Did you get a disk from XYZ? Yeah? I got one; had a lot of viruses on it. I think you should check you machine." It's like having some horrible social disease.
Executive summary:
Keep your filty mits to yourselves, stay out of my machine.
What does it mean to talk about the "death penalty" for corporations? Simply this: Commit an egregious wrong and have your charter revoked. In other words, lose the state's permission to exist. It's an intriguing concept, because most of us never think about corporations needing anyone's permission to exist. But they do.
Companies don't want you to know about this, and politicians are paid by the companies, so this sort of knowledge is under attack from all sides. Read the article now and open your eyes, before someone passes a law against free speech! OOPS! Too late!
Looks like 15 years is a good travel time to start thinking seriously about it. Look at Voyager after two decades. We haven't exactly flown out in our jetpacks to retreive it, have we?
The DMCA needs to be stopped before it stunts technology permanantly.
More correctly, it will stunt _American_ technology permanently.
Here in Australia we don't have the DMCA yet - but you can be sure there are diplomats right now working on the problem, using very reasonable-sounding arguments like "let's try to unify our electronic commerce laws" and "can you please sign this treaty to place all your electronic commerce under the DMCA?"
The problem is that there are two kinds of users; one kind wants the computer to be an insanely configurable machine capable of performing any information processing task (geeks), and the other kind who just wants to be able to type a letter, surf the internet, send and receive email (humans).
Edward DeBono's excellent idea was for a single giant yellow button on the front of the computer marked "simplify" or "easy mode". When the user presses this button, the entire interface re-configures itself to treat the user as a newbie. All the complex icons, taskbars, menus and windows disappear, leaving only a full-screen page with simple buttons for launching a number of standard applications.
The applications themselves would also know that the user wants a simple interface, and would remove as many configuration options, windows, menus and buttons as they could while still retaining basic functionality.
How dumb can you get? In an e-world where the purse-strings are about to be tightened, how can any online game server ignore a revenue stream like this?
I reckon the best model would be:
Client - open source, free
Server - closed source, free access, plus very high price to buy (like a few thousand) REVENUE STREAM A!
Game objects
Let players buy and sell objects
Let the server operator sell objects REVENUE STREAM B!
Objects cannot be transferred to other servers
Add an auction engine inside the game!
Players auction items for real cash, work out payment between themselves
I haven't patented this business model... it's public domain. Hop to it, all you developers!
Please be clear and specific when making your report through the website. WAVE will not change or add any information provided by you. Complete the form in its entirety so that the contact at your school has all the information necessary to complete a formal investigation.
Important to know... Although the internet is a great way to communicate with one another in today's world, it is also very serious when someone makes any kind of threat that may injure someone or destroy property. Direct threats over the internet whether intentional or as a joke are considered a felony and is punishable by law.
Remember, you don't have to give your name if you don't want.
What are you concerned about?
This stupid web site making a mockery of the freedoms under which your country was founded.
What did you see or hear?
A commercial attempt to exploit the tyranny of the majority.
Where does this happen? (hallway, cafeteria, school grounds, parking lot, etc.)
On this web site.
When did this happen? ( today, yesterday, before lunch, etc.)
Very recently, but hopefully not for much longer.
When do you think it will happen again?
Periodically, I'm afraid.
Who is involved in the situation? Are they students? Do you know their names?
Hundreds of thousands of unnamed intelligent individuals.
If someone wanted to find out more about this, what should they do?
Read the constitution.
What is your relation to the school?
Non Parent Adult
What is your First Name? (optional)
{Correct name given}
What is your Last Name? (optional)
{Correct name given}
Do you want your name used in reports made to your school?
Yes
If we need more information how can we contact you?(optional) Evening Phone Daytime Phone
Did anyone hear about the protest made by a single man from Melbourne after the Tianenmen square massacre in China? Immediately after the crackdown, the Chinese government announced a toll-free number on TV and asked its citizens to report any remaining pro-democracy supporters. The broadcast was shown as a news item on Australian TV.
This one man ran up a huge international phone bill, continually ringing the number and announcing "I am {name escapes me}, private citizen of Australia calling you to protest at the actions of the Chinese Government..." and continuing for as long as they would allow him on the line. The Chinese changed the number. He found the new number and continued his harangue. The Chinese eventually abandoned broadcasting the number, and posted it on billboards instead.
My point? Why has no-one thought of doing this in this case? The number is toll free for goodness sake! Call them, don't call in a fake claim "Senator Bozo's son was doing crack in Math B," but announce who you are, why you are calling, and outline your points of objection in a calm and rational manner.
...the blitter chip - A much more sophisticted one than the simple rectangle movement chips in a lot of SVGA cards too. This could take 3 sources and AND and OR them together.
It was better than that - I remember a Conway's Life program for the Amiga which used the blitter for all the calculations! Blindingly fast in 320 x 200 on a 68000...
Ah Amiga, we hardly knew ye. Denise! Where are you? Fat Agnes? Gary? Paula? Ah, history.
The Amiga fanatics are a strange lot - I counted myself amongst their number until recently, when I rediscovered beauty in computing with Linux. Such a joy to be incharge of your own destiny, and not to be at the mercy of a single badly run company.
Speaking of which - does anyone know where I can get a copy of the Commodore Deathwatch video? Made by Commodore employees watching the slow march of Commodore into the black pit...
...being able to delete a file yet have it not actually get deleted until the last remaining process that has it open dies first...
Ah yes, one of my favourite features of *nix.
I once wrote a daemon to handle a spec which included "when a file appears in this directory, process it and then delete it". I had a hard time explaining that the daemon could:
To install linux and get it up to a state where it can be most effective, and work well, you need to be an admin. You need skills that take a good 6 months of real use to even begin to get good at.
A new user is not a qualified admin. I know I only got where I am today by shooting myself in the foot a few times (first under windows, then under linux).
My wife uses linux. I stay ssh-ed to the machine all day. When she has a problem, she starts a 'talk' session, tells me what she needs, and I fix and/or setup/install what she wants. One day she asked for a word processor... I downloaded, installed, and started AbiWord, all from my desk at work. Now THAT has got to be the easiest user interface EVER.
Linux needs something completely new, which NT simply cannot deliver - "Hire-a-remote-administrator"!
I visualise an installation which automagically calls the distributor, starts a chat session, and the user starts paying for support by the hour.
A demonstrator will bring up two Explorer windows, one on W2K, one on WNT.
"Behold! I drag this big file from one directory to another on the WNT box... and it starts copying... I'd say that was about 5 seconds, yes boys and girls? Ok, now let's try the same thing on Windows 2000. Bear witness to the marvel of negligible file copy time!".
Gasps of astonishment fill the auditorium! Rustle, rustle, the sound of a thousand fools reaching for their wallets....
"...just about every idea suggested below--no matter how unusual--was included on a long list of proposed solutions. That doesn't mean that everything is tried, because the Galileo engineers working on the antenna anomaly are guided by two basic principles:
The Health and Safety of the Spacecraft Must Be Safeguarded
Nothing Shall Be Done That May Seriously Threaten Probe Relay, Jupiter Orbit Insertion (JOI), or the Orbital Tour"
Well, surely now is the time to go wild! Let's try some aerobraking, spin that sucka, bash it about, kick it a few times, see what happens!
"...just about every idea suggested below--no matter how unusual--was included on a long list of proposed solutions. That doesn't mean that everything is tried, because the Galileo engineers working on the antenna anomaly are guided by two basic principles:
The Health and Safety of the Spacecraft Must Be Safeguarded
Nothing Shall Be Done That May Seriously Threaten Probe Relay, Jupiter Orbit Insertion (JOI), or the Orbital Tour
Well, surely now is the time to go wild! Let's try some aerobraking, spin that sucka, bash it about, kick it a few times, see what happens!
At the upper atmosphere, it's more than a thousand degrees celcius, and it's all whipping about rather harshly
Thousand degrees? Well, technically yes, but it's at a billionth of an atmosphere. From the same link, notice that at about 10 atmospheres the temperature is about 50 degrees F. Nice and comfy.. if you can live without water, handle 400kmh winds which blow north, south, east, west and up and down (alternatively taking you into space or down into the crushing depths), handle the incredible radiation levels, the planet-sized storm systems...
Our problem is we have no voice ourside our own circles.
At the risk of sounding impolite - Don't be daft! Of course you can reply to them. Write a meaningful and interesting letter which makes your points clearly, include your home address and phone number in the email (they won't publish it unless you do) and you can get your reply into the letters page. It really is that easy, and the Letters section of a newspaper will get many more readers than the Movies pages...
I beg of you - please don't flame, or the MPAA will win. Please read the Advocacy guide, and stay calm no matter how angry you might be.
...noted problems with depth perception and motor skills after using the headsets. They've even had to limit usage to make sure employees can drive home safely.
I have a friend who used to work on the virtual environment models for a driving simulator.
Four huge video screens (one at the back for the rear-view mirror), force-feedback steering, completely enclosed car, all powered by an SGI Onyx. They were going to use it for driver training.
Two very disturbing effects I wanted to share:
Hit the highway [maaaaaarm, mAAAAAARRRRM], get it up to 220Kph (about 125mph) [Ruummmmmmmm] with a full load of passengers, then open the driver's side door and walk out. Whoah, trippy!
If you've ever driven through Melbourne, you'll know the tram stops here have big yellow concrete ramps in the middle of the road, to protect waiting passengers from speeding cars. In the simulator, the code for collisions with the ramps was never finished, so you could drive through them. My friend (who was often testing the driving simulator) had great difficulty when driving in meat-space... convincing himself that the ramps were real...
... but these kinds of conversations are impossible here, short-circuited by angry kids often with anonymous pseuds
I've been pro-Katz for a long time, even before I read that inspired series on the aftermath of Columbine. I even read the first "Please Die" article in this series with interest.
But then when I saw this series entering its third installment, I lost the faith. This doesn't read link an article anymore, it reads like a whinge (whinge n. Incessant or repetitive complaint)
This would have been better handled with a page on a private Katz webpage with a story something like:
For some time now, John Katz has been a controversial correspondent on SlashDot, regularly flamed by attention-seeking idiots. He has written an interesting series of articles about flame and his experiences in the furnace which you can find
here, here and here.
My advice to the newbie in the furnace - Your critics are not your peers. They are far more likely to be pimply-faced fifteen-year-olds, with more testosterone than they know what to do with and either an exagerated sense of their own importance or full-scale pubescent insecurity. Leave them be, ignore their comments (especially "please die"s) and continue with your life. Flamers (and trollers) are addicted to attention: once they get it, they look for more. Ignore them or killfile them - that's what killfiles are for.
Short point about filtering: Filters (sufficiently powerful ones, and definitely notones where the list of filtered content is not available to you) let YOU decide what you want the net to contain. YOU are the ultimate censor, YOU can deny anyone access to your screenspace. YOU are in control. The internet can be whatever YOU want it to be, and if that means all references to the word FUCK are replaced with ":)", or if you don't want Microsoft to exist on the net (as far as you can tell) then that's YOUR choice, YOU can do it!
Yes, these are the very same fairy penguins which bit Linus on the finger, and the model for Tux the penguin.
The penguin parade happens every night at sunset on the southern beaches of Phillip Island, and is one of the things you MUST see if you come down here to Victoria, especially if you bring kids. I don't know if you can do it any more, but when I was a kid we used to wander among the sand dunes after the parade, and watch the penguins returning to their burrows to feed the chicks. Ah, memories.
Every great revolution needs revolutionary writers. Incessant slamming of Katz's work by the slavering slashdotters is discouraging other writers from joining the cause, sending them back to Time to write pieces worshipping the Demon Gates.
I went down to the local eatery this afternoon for lunch, saw the top 2 inches of Time, pulled it out and staggering back in shock and disbelief. We NEED someone like Katz to answer back on behalf of all of us. No, I take that back - I can't speak for everyone. I need him to answer back on behalf of ME.
As Linux grabs more media attention, there are going to be more negative articles. That's how the press works - you can't all be FOR something, that looks like bias.
Seriously though, this sort of article gives you an idea of the kind of problem the suits have with our OS:
These guys must be pretty dumb if they're working their butts off for free. Why don't they get together and make some money for us?
What a bunch of nasty pinko neo-commies! We've got to stop them! They'll be marching through the streets forcing people out of their offices and into Collective Workplaces next!
Command line? Must be primitive, hard-to-use, etc.
My solution? Explanation, installation, demonstration.
Slashdot Mirror
Anti-viruses are benign viruses, but all viruses are evil.
Myself, I don't want anything propagating through a clandestine channel onto my machine, thankyou very much. I certainly don't want some do-gooder code messing with my machine behind my back. Most of my friends feel the same way. I would very much not want to be responsible for transmiting such a virus to their machines.
Back in the good old days when software moved via 5.25in disks, did you ever propagate a virus, (even a benign one) to a bunch of friends? I remember what that felt like. "Did you get a disk from XYZ? Yeah? I got one; had a lot of viruses on it. I think you should check you machine." It's like having some horrible social disease.
Executive summary:
Looks like 15 years is a good travel time to start thinking seriously about it. Look at Voyager after two decades. We haven't exactly flown out in our jetpacks to retreive it, have we?
Please slashdot, rob, please hire an inhouse lawyer to respond to questions with actual legal advice?
Try salon.com:
Very clued-in article on Love and Outlook
Edward DeBono's excellent idea was for a single giant yellow button on the front of the computer marked "simplify" or "easy mode". When the user presses this button, the entire interface re-configures itself to treat the user as a newbie. All the complex icons, taskbars, menus and windows disappear, leaving only a full-screen page with simple buttons for launching a number of standard applications.
The applications themselves would also know that the user wants a simple interface, and would remove as many configuration options, windows, menus and buttons as they could while still retaining basic functionality.
Now THAT's a computer my mother could use.
I reckon the best model would be:
- Client - open source, free
- Server - closed source, free access, plus very high price to buy (like a few thousand) REVENUE STREAM A!
- Game objects
- Let players buy and sell objects
- Let the server operator sell objects REVENUE STREAM B!
- Objects cannot be transferred to other servers
- Add an auction engine inside the game!
- Players auction items for real cash, work out payment between themselves
I haven't patented this business model... it's public domain. Hop to it, all you developers!This one man ran up a huge international phone bill, continually ringing the number and announcing "I am {name escapes me}, private citizen of Australia calling you to protest at the actions of the Chinese Government..." and continuing for as long as they would allow him on the line. The Chinese changed the number. He found the new number and continued his harangue. The Chinese eventually abandoned broadcasting the number, and posted it on billboards instead.
My point? Why has no-one thought of doing this in this case? The number is toll free for goodness sake! Call them, don't call in a fake claim "Senator Bozo's son was doing crack in Math B," but announce who you are, why you are calling, and outline your points of objection in a calm and rational manner.
Ah Amiga, we hardly knew ye. Denise! Where are you? Fat Agnes? Gary? Paula? Ah, history.
The Amiga fanatics are a strange lot - I counted myself amongst their number until recently, when I rediscovered beauty in computing with Linux. Such a joy to be incharge of your own destiny, and not to be at the mercy of a single badly run company.
Speaking of which - does anyone know where I can get a copy of the Commodore Deathwatch video? Made by Commodore employees watching the slow march of Commodore into the black pit...
I once wrote a daemon to handle a spec which included "when a file appears in this directory, process it and then delete it". I had a hard time explaining that the daemon could:
My wife uses linux. I stay ssh-ed to the machine all day. When she has a problem, she starts a 'talk' session, tells me what she needs, and I fix and/or setup/install what she wants. One day she asked for a word processor... I downloaded, installed, and started AbiWord, all from my desk at work. Now THAT has got to be the easiest user interface EVER.
Linux needs something completely new, which NT simply cannot deliver - "Hire-a-remote-administrator"!
I visualise an installation which automagically calls the distributor, starts a chat session, and the user starts paying for support by the hour.
"Behold! I drag this big file from one directory to another on the WNT box... and it starts copying... I'd say that was about 5 seconds, yes boys and girls? Ok, now let's try the same thing on Windows 2000. Bear witness to the marvel of negligible file copy time!".
Gasps of astonishment fill the auditorium! Rustle, rustle, the sound of a thousand fools reaching for their wallets....
Did you know the main antenna on Galileo is screwed? Did you know they were once trying to fix it?
Well, surely now is the time to go wild! Let's try some aerobraking, spin that sucka, bash it about, kick it a few times, see what happens!Anyway, all this talk of contaminating the planet Jupiter is academic (we've already sent a probe into the atmosphere) it's the moons that we're worried about.
Something has gone horribly wrong with the world.
I beg of you - please don't flame, or the MPAA will win. Please read the Advocacy guide, and stay calm no matter how angry you might be.
Four huge video screens (one at the back for the rear-view mirror), force-feedback steering, completely enclosed car, all powered by an SGI Onyx. They were going to use it for driver training.
Two very disturbing effects I wanted to share:
But then when I saw this series entering its third installment, I lost the faith. This doesn't read link an article anymore, it reads like a whinge (whinge n. Incessant or repetitive complaint)
This would have been better handled with a page on a private Katz webpage with a story something like:
My advice to the newbie in the furnace - Your critics are not your peers. They are far more likely to be pimply-faced fifteen-year-olds, with more testosterone than they know what to do with and either an exagerated sense of their own importance or full-scale pubescent insecurity. Leave them be, ignore their comments (especially "please die"s) and continue with your life. Flamers (and trollers) are addicted to attention: once they get it, they look for more. Ignore them or killfile them - that's what killfiles are for.Short point about filtering: Filters (sufficiently powerful ones, and definitely not ones where the list of filtered content is not available to you) let YOU decide what you want the net to contain. YOU are the ultimate censor, YOU can deny anyone access to your screenspace. YOU are in control. The internet can be whatever YOU want it to be, and if that means all references to the word FUCK are replaced with ":)", or if you don't want Microsoft to exist on the net (as far as you can tell) then that's YOUR choice, YOU can do it!
Every great revolution needs revolutionary writers. Incessant slamming of Katz's work by the slavering slashdotters is discouraging other writers from joining the cause, sending them back to Time to write pieces worshipping the Demon Gates.
I went down to the local eatery this afternoon for lunch, saw the top 2 inches of Time, pulled it out and staggering back in shock and disbelief. We NEED someone like Katz to answer back on behalf of all of us. No, I take that back - I can't speak for everyone. I need him to answer back on behalf of ME.
Seriously though, this sort of article gives you an idea of the kind of problem the suits have with our OS:
- These guys must be pretty dumb if they're working their butts off for free. Why don't they get together and make some money for us?
- What a bunch of nasty pinko neo-commies! We've got to stop them! They'll be marching through the streets forcing people out of their offices and into Collective Workplaces next!
- Command line? Must be primitive, hard-to-use, etc.
My solution? Explanation, installation, demonstration.Why not split it up nice and fine?