"First, take away the guns from all law abiding people - now they can't hurt each other, or better yet let's use the media to teach the common person how evil guns are."
*Bullshit*
"Amendment II
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
Note: A _WELL_ _REGULATED_ _MILITIA_, [in its function of] being necessary to the security of a free state, [confers] the right of the people to keep and bear arms...
It is clear that the second amendment was intended, in a time when we had no free standing army, to allow a militia for the defense of the nation, and HENCE the right of the people to keep and bear arms to the extent required for said militia. The right of people to keep and bear arms is ONLY a CONSEQUENCE, and is CONTIGENT UPON, having a militia.
We have no militia. We have a free standing army. Which is well trained and well armed. That it is our God-given right to tote around guns for the sheer pleasure of doing so is a fantasy fabricated by the NRA and gun lobby, so that they can make people feel good, nay, MORAL, in holding up their "responsibility" as citizens.
Unless you are shooting a clay disk or bottle, or hunting some animal (for pure sport itself an activity of questionable ethics) guns ARE evil. Bombs ARE evil. Devices intended to kill people and things in general ARE evil. The media is not the one to confer these values to people, but still, the "common person" SHOULD be aware that these are generally "bad" things.
However, since most Americans believe it is their right to arbitrary own guns, the society for the most part plays along. In fact, of all things that it would seem should be extremely regulated, guns are regulated very little, if at all (despite the fact that the second amendment says "WELL REGULATED"). Toys for children go through intense scrutiny...but the gun they pick up and blow their heads off with goes through none.
"Second, let's make certain that we again use the media to educate the common man and tell them how infinately small and insignificant they are, and tell them they don't have the right to privacy."
Oh please. Stop charging your argument by attempting to link gun control with privacy. Since when has owning a gun lead to a social good? Does owning a gun confer freedom of speech or expression or religion? Having a right to privacy, and the freedoms that spring from it are not comparable with the "right" to own a gun. No freedoms spring from owning a gun, and a gun won't protect your freedoms (yeah, I'm so sure you're going to take on the entire military and police establishment by yourself with your magnum like some lone cowboy).
"Heston on Dateline the other day, he referred to Benjamin Franklin when someone asked "what kind of government have you given us?" - and when he replied "a democracy - if you keep it"."
Hmm...I suppose the gun lobby is actually trying to "keep" the democracy by dumping tons of lobbying money into the government. Sorry I was confused about that. Funny how this special interest has managed to stifle the voice of the vast majority of citizens for so long. Yes, please, let's have democracy. It certainly won't be in the gun lobby's favor.
I always thought Doom had a much more believable environment, atmosphere...even though it didn't have neat-o polygon graphics. Doom (hey, and even Wolf3d) kept me on the edge of my seat a lot more than Quake or Quake 2 did. I hope id is returning to spending a lot of time creating a rich atmosphere instead of just throwing more graphics on the screen at a faster rate (which I agree is itself a great accomplishment that has taken a tremendous amount of skill and effort).
I can't wait to get back to that good ole double barrel shotgun;)
Everybody should be very skeptical about wild claims on Slashdot.
"5. You may not use the Marks in a derogatory or defamatory manner, or in any negative context. Such use will terminate your license to use the Marks."
Ok, the very first thing that piqued my interest was the phrase "terminate your license". Now, if in fact, Apogee is giving somebody a license to do something, and they break the rules of that license, then Apogee has every right to terminate that person's license. This is not to say the license was fair in the first place, but just that this phrase makes it seem more like they are terminating some permission they have GRANTED you. Now I read down further and find that all the Marks they speak of are actually copyrighted IMAGES. Aha. So. They are ALLOWING you to use these copyrighted images. If you do things they don't like with their images they will terminate your license to use said images. Imagine if I had a webpage and did something like:
PEPSI (insert copyrighted Pepsi image) SUCKS!
Pepsi would naturally want to revoke the license it gave me to use its image in good faith. They probably couldn't stop me from saying "PEPSI SUCKS" because that is free speech. But they might be able to keep me from using their trademarked image in conjunction with that phrase to make them look bad. After all, these are official trademarked images of products. It is not entirely improbable that somebody could set up a website the looked very much like Apogee's and pretend to be them, and use their images to smear them. Whether using somebody's trademarked image is free speech, I don't know. THAT is the issue though.
1. remote and obscure location(s) 2. what you do every day 3. a whiz-bang internet gadget 4. expensive internet service 5. signifacant other
I have been swamped at work lately, 2., and feel totally burnt out. So I figured I needed a vacation. So, this summer, myself and 5. are going to 1. to get away from it all. However that will leave me without internet access. Without internet access I will be stranded, unable to do 2. Does anybody have any ideas? I mean, I could use 3. with 4., but is that necessary?
"Unlike Napster, however, it allows people to search for any kind of files; a random sampling of the search terms being used at any given time ranges from MP3s to blockbuster movies to pornography."
"The Department of Transportation released a shocking report this morning, in which it was discovered that the federal highway system, unlike rural routes, allow transportation of any kind of material. A random sampling of items being transported at any given time ranges from pirated music to pirated blockbuster movies, to pornography."
This is an analogy that I have floating in my head...is it valid, does it even make sense?
Ok, imagine a long line of people standing side by side. Each person can hold a cube above their head and one below their head. Just think of people as units of space and the cube position as an excitation level or something.
Now populate this line of people with some random distribution of cubes either in the high position or the low position or both or neither.
Now I come along to the first person in the line and have a pattern of cubes I want them to transmit to the other side. In order to take my first cube in the correct position they need to ensure they have room for it. So if they already have a cube in that position, they must pass it on to the next person in the line. And that person must pass it on to the next, and so on, until it reaches the end. I continue handing cubes to the first person in the pattern I want, and that person, to make room, implicitly propagates my pattern to the other side. It looks as if my pattern of cubes is coming out the other side before I even finish giving it to the first person! (somebody mentioned that in fact the pattern comes out the other side a bit before I have finished giving my cubes to the first person...let's just say then, I tell them ahead of time the pattern I am giving them - this is where the "head" of the wave comes in I guess) Now, the second I have completed giving the pattern to the first guy in the chain), my actual physical set of cubes needs to be physically transmitted to the other side. So each cube is handed over to the next person in order. Now, the last guy can't simply drop his cubes on the floor when he recieves them from the next person. The cubes must be preserved. So he magically simultaneously hands BACK the cubes he has as he recieves the new ones. As you can imagine, when the cubes he hands back reaches the center of the list of people they will annihilate with the cubes being propagated.
Does this make any sense? I know it really doesn't because the analogy is flawed with the pattern of cubes. It seems to me, that the pattern you push in from one side, is causing an equal and opposite reverse echo from the far end which annihilates in the middle as your pattern is physically passed. Fortunately your pattern has already come out the other side because in order to recieve your pattern, the pattern holding material has had to give up the necessary slots, thereby implicitly passing on (or pushing out the other side) the pattern before it is actually physically recieved. Make any sense? Do I need medication?
The software industry is rampant with low quality bug ridden code, and bad practice. You'd think that those with actual _experience_ would be very valuable. I'll be turning 21 in two months, and although some of the people I work with may not be up to speed with the latest whiz-bang languages and devices, their experience makes them VERY valuable. When you're young you can run fast...but you can also run fast down a blind dead-end alley.
I'm sort of cynical about bringing/forcing the internet on a totally unaware population. The internet is not some panacea. It won't feed people or make them content. A Kalihari bushman doesn't need a goddamn laptop. In fact the internet is a homogenizing force now that business has discovered it. Think what it could do to other cultures. Remember the Prime Directive;)
I think we are so caught up in our wonderful palm-pilot-toting, cell-phone-ringing, pager-vibrating, glazed-over-CRT-staring, technological world, that we arrogantly assume that everybody wants or needs it or that it can help everybody in some way. The internet brings all sorts of problems that developing countries don't need to have to deal with. First of all they need to stop being exploited by first-world countries. They need to be self-sufficient, in whatever their interpretation of that means (in many cases that doesn't mean exploiting natural resources for export so you can import that latest first-world Pokemon products). They need to be self-determining...not supported by stupid puppet regimes that the West patronizingly thinks will be the best for them.
There's a whole hell of a lot of more real problems that these countries face than the mythical problem of not having "enough" technology. If you're so concerned, join the Peace Corps, donate money (to an unconditional charity preferrably). Don't insist you know what's best and go in and institute your own changes. Help people help themselves. They need helping hands, not expensive crutches.
We cannot have it both ways. If we expect people to respect the same copyright that allows us to protect the IP of contributors, and keep source code open, we must also respect people's legitimate use of copyright to protect their works, whether it be by keeping them open, or closed, or whatever terms they dictate. We cannot do away with copyright, we need just reconsider what "limited time" means with respect to the market in which the copy right applies. Copyright, after all, was created for the PUBLIC good. It gives the right to creators to dictate the terms of use of the works they create for a "limited time", as an INCENTIVE to create such works. "Limited time" in the software world may need to be shortened, otherwise the public good is NOT being served. However, this doesn't mean we should rob artists of their copyright, or arrogantly expect them to work on a service-based open-source business model (what, are they going to provide tech support or manuals or something??). If it wasn't for Metallica's RIGHT to secure for a limited time exclusive rights to their own works, we'd all probably still be going to theaters and listening to chamber music for a per-visit fee.
Man, people should stop frothing at the mouth and just hear these guys out. I too was skeptical that Metallica had just been corporatized into some homogenous profit generating machine.
That's not the case.
Listen to what they are saying.
They are NOT arguing that MP3 trading or selling is some invalid activity. Hell, they even note that they allow bootlegs and couldn't give a damn what people do with them.
But there is one difference: Allowing bootlegs is THEIR choice! THEY got to make the decision. THEY got to decide who heard their music and what people did with it. Metallica is NOT fighting MP3 here. They are NOT fighting all us people who rip CDs to disk, or to tape, or even hand a friggen copy to our friends. What they are fighting is for their IP. They are fighting for the RIGHT to dictate the terms upon which their music is distributed. As they mention Napster never asked Metallica, "Hey, we have this really cool system here, do you mind if people rampantly exchange your IP on it? By the way, we would like you to have a say in the manner and limitations on which people exchange your stuff." No, that did not happen. Napster basically opened up a service which, although it may not have been designed explicitly for it, has enabled and promoted the exploitation of these guy's work. They are denied their IP and their copy rights. They are angered at Napster for denying these rights. They probably don't give a damn about the fans. In fact if they were ASKED they might have even/allowed/ this to go on. It is a matter of principal. Unfortunately, when it is not the underdog challenging it, we sometimes have a (perhaps healthy) knee-jerk reaction to discount somebody sticking up for their principals and their rights. This is not a record company issue. This is not a homogenous borg corporation issue. This is a band whom a third party didn't ask about enabling the free distribution of their stuff. Yes, it is a matter of degree. I can copy their stuff and give it to a neighbor. I can give it to the whole town. But after a certain order of magnitude increase in degree, it really becomes a whole different/class/ of problem and has to be dealt with differently. So Napster is NOT comparable to spending time and energy to make physical copies and physically distribute them to friends. Napster is enabling the irresponsible reproduction of their IP. That is their beef.
I think we should get off their case and stand behind them in saying that the definition and respect of IP rights are the most important thing in this brave new world. They are NOT on the other side of our "free community". They are on the SAME side. They want the freedom (not beer, as they say they couldn't care less about the pennies lost), to dictate how their IP is distributed. After all, isn't that what the GPL doesm in effect?
My first official procedural programming class was in Pascal. Pascal was designed as a language for instruction and it does quite well for that purpose, leaving complicated things like pointers under the covers (but still accessible if necessary), while supporting clean and intuitive top-down procedural design. Of course, it isn't object oriented, which is where Delphi comes in. Delphi is Object Pascal, the OO superset of Pascal. So Delphi can first be used to teach the kid normal, procedural console programming. Then graduate them up to OO concepts. And then onto full OO RAD GUI design. Delphi is really great in this respect...you can go from the very basics, to creating a full-blown OO and/or GUI app really painlessly. You don't have to expose any of the complicated stuff early on, unlike with C and C++ where you must have a tome of knowledge in your head, and a penchent for reading cryptic runes before you even create a Hello World. The language scales;) As is evidenced by the fact that Delphi is (or at least was, last time I checked) Borlands #1 selling product. Plus, Object Pascal is being brought to the Linux platform with Kylix, which is a great bonus, and will provide a smooth transition (hopefully) for moving from Windows development, to Linux development and understanding.
I really started with BASIC, but I don't think that is the ideal beginning language. It is loosely typed and doesn't give the same intuitive structure Pascal does (we should not have to explain the peculiarities of "DIM" and "REDIM" or the weirdness of different starting indexes, or that a type of variable can be denoted by the symbols $, #, !, %, & (*UGH!*)).
Yes, I think we should also extend this to real file sharing. I mean, we all KNOW that sharing files is just a front for piracy. I mean, just the other day I photocopied Webster's Dictionary and sold copies out of my garage. Once I even read a second-hand newspaper (yes, I admit it) that I didn't even buy myself! And just think of all the awful violations flea markets are promoting. We should just ban all trading in general. But wait a second...I'm trading electrons with the slashdot servers right now! Oh no...and these bits will be reproduced and distributed worldwide without a penny coming to me! I have to call my lawyer...
""Because its abilities are marked 'safe for scripting,' anything is possible," said the security researcher that found the hole, a hacker known as "Dildog" who works for the security firm @Stake Inc."
Wow...@Stake buys L0pht, and suddenly they are not some seedy "hackers", but "security researchers" who work at a "security firm". Magic.
""You don't mark something safe for scripting unless you are going to let someone activate it remotely," he said."
Huh? Shouldn't that be: You don't mark something safe for scripting unless you are !NOT! going to let someone activate it remotely?
Agreed. I prefer this fox logo: http://www.early.com/~emackey/linux/
At least a fox is agile, fast, and cunning. A penguin is just fat and slow (well, except in water), and just hobbles about. Yeah, that's what I want to think of my software as...
Please adopt the fox...hey, maybe someone should make a distro just to gain popularity for this logo...
"I say we change the Linux mascot to a Dinosaur who wears shades and flys an airplane."
Yeah, that did wonders for Netscape *cough*. Who wants their software associated with a dinosaur? I prefer this fox logo: http://www.early.com/~emackey/linux/
At least a fox is agile, fast, and cunning. A penguin is just fat and slow (well, except in water), and just hobbled about. Yeah, that's what I want to think of my software as...
Please adopt the fox...hey, maybe someone should make a distro just to gain popularity for this logo...
"I'm not arguing for linking to random information just because you can, but informative linking is why hypertext has the hyper."
And I'm not arguing the opposite. We shouldn't just link every single word to Everything2.com just because we can, and, God Forbid, our site would not be linked enough to the core if we did not. The content has to weighed. What frustrates me even more than a page with absolutely no applicable links (when it would be useful), is a site which has big blue glaring links all over the place and I can't find/anything/ relevant. An example would be Microsoft's knowledge base/help (sic) site. Try to find something there.
It was my impression that some ACs on Slashdot actually copied and posted the spec verbatim. If that is NOT the case than Microsoft does not have a leg to stand on and can go bugger off.
This is stupid. Both Microsoft and Slashdot are at fault. Microsoft is at fault by perverting an otherwise open standard, then claiming to have published the changes by forcing anyone wishing to view the documentation through a non-disclosure agreement (faithfully supported by brilliant UCITA legislature). Shame on Microsoft, although it can hardly be called unexpected. But even more shame on Slashdot. The core of the "information wants to be free" meme, is copyright, whether you like it or not. If you want information to be free, you must at the same time respect the same copyright that upholds the GPL (until such copyright laws are done away with). Refusing to remove blatently illegal material is not a first amendment issue...it is a juvenile snub to Microsoft. I'm sure Microsoft has no reservations from unleashing its legaldroids upon Slashdot. It is just dumb. Just as we would not like someone to violate GPL, we cannot at the same time violate an analogous legal (BUT STUPID!) binding. Slashdot should remove the stupid text. We should work to change the laws...not peurily snub our noses at it and then go crying that big bad Microsoft is opressing our first amendment.
I'm not sure if this could actually be full-blown AI, but what about some sort of overarching adaptive browsing environment? Something that learns where you go and prefetches/digests information. It might even "learn" that since you like Slashdot, it should parse the Slashdot headlines and provide a ticker for you. How it would know that I have no idea. AI magic. Or perhaps it might learn what type of sites you do not like cookies from...perhaps it does a lookup on doubleclick, fuzzily figures out what doubleclick is about, and subsequently by default denies cookies from other doubleclick-like sites. Same for ads.
Still that's admittedly AI-weak. How about the adaptive (dare I say even neural-net-ish), FreeNet project? Could you do some work for them in perhaps detecting "cancerous" nodes?
I hope people don't use this paper to promote arbitrary linkage to other sites. I mean/why/ do things have to be more connected? When I'm on my web page I don't want or need one click access to every other part of the web. That's why there are portals and search engines. Islands I understand. But we wouldn't necessarily/want/ those two sections of 24%, origin and termination, to be arbitrarily linked more to the core. We'd just end up with the whole web being a humongous hairball of a core in which each page linked to many other pages in the core. What a mess. People put indices in one place, at the BACK of a book, for a reason.
Slashdot Mirror
"First, take away the guns from all law abiding people - now they can't hurt each other, or better yet let's use the media to teach the common person how evil guns are."
*Bullshit*
"Amendment II
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
Note: A _WELL_ _REGULATED_ _MILITIA_, [in its function of] being necessary to the security of a free state, [confers] the right of the people to keep and bear arms...
It is clear that the second amendment was intended, in a time when we had no free standing army, to allow a militia for the defense of the nation, and HENCE the right of the people to keep and bear arms to the extent required for said militia. The right of people to keep and bear arms is ONLY a CONSEQUENCE, and is CONTIGENT UPON, having a militia.
We have no militia. We have a free standing army. Which is well trained and well armed. That it is our God-given right to tote around guns for the sheer pleasure of doing so is a fantasy fabricated by the NRA and gun lobby, so that they can make people feel good, nay, MORAL, in holding up their "responsibility" as citizens.
Unless you are shooting a clay disk or bottle, or hunting some animal (for pure sport itself an activity of questionable ethics) guns ARE evil. Bombs ARE evil. Devices intended to kill people and things in general ARE evil. The media is not the one to confer these values to people, but still, the "common person" SHOULD be aware that these are generally "bad" things.
However, since most Americans believe it is their right to arbitrary own guns, the society for the most part plays along. In fact, of all things that it would seem should be extremely regulated, guns are regulated very little, if at all (despite the fact that the second amendment says "WELL REGULATED"). Toys for children go through intense scrutiny...but the gun they pick up and blow their heads off with goes through none.
"Second, let's make certain that we again use the media to educate the common man and tell them how infinately small and insignificant they are, and tell them they don't have the right to privacy."
Oh please. Stop charging your argument by attempting to link gun control with privacy. Since when has owning a gun lead to a social good? Does owning a gun confer freedom of speech or expression or religion? Having a right to privacy, and the freedoms that spring from it are not comparable with the "right" to own a gun. No freedoms spring from owning a gun, and a gun won't protect your freedoms (yeah, I'm so sure you're going to take on the entire military and police establishment by yourself with your magnum like some lone cowboy).
"Heston on Dateline the other day, he referred to Benjamin Franklin when someone asked "what kind of government have you given us?" - and when he replied "a democracy - if you keep it"."
Hmm...I suppose the gun lobby is actually trying to "keep" the democracy by dumping tons of lobbying money into the government. Sorry I was confused about that. Funny how this special interest has managed to stifle the voice of the vast majority of citizens for so long. Yes, please, let's have democracy. It certainly won't be in the gun lobby's favor.
I just have to say this rox my sox off.
;)
I always thought Doom had a much more believable environment, atmosphere...even though it didn't have neat-o polygon graphics. Doom (hey, and even Wolf3d) kept me on the edge of my seat a lot more than Quake or Quake 2 did. I hope id is returning to spending a lot of time creating a rich atmosphere instead of just throwing more graphics on the screen at a faster rate (which I agree is itself a great accomplishment that has taken a tremendous amount of skill and effort).
I can't wait to get back to that good ole double barrel shotgun
Hey, ya think maybe after we clean up the atmosphere of Mars, we could, I dunno, maybe clean up our OWN damn planet?
Everybody should be very skeptical about wild claims on Slashdot.
"5. You may not use the Marks in a derogatory or defamatory manner, or in any negative context. Such use will terminate your license to use the Marks."
Ok, the very first thing that piqued my interest was the phrase "terminate your license". Now, if in fact, Apogee is giving somebody a license to do something, and they break the rules of that license, then Apogee has every right to terminate that person's license. This is not to say the license was fair in the first place, but just that this phrase makes it seem more like they are terminating some permission they have GRANTED you. Now I read down further and find that all the Marks they speak of are actually copyrighted IMAGES. Aha. So. They are ALLOWING you to use these copyrighted images. If you do things they don't like with their images they will terminate your license to use said images. Imagine if I had a webpage and did something like:
PEPSI (insert copyrighted Pepsi image) SUCKS!
Pepsi would naturally want to revoke the license it gave me to use its image in good faith. They probably couldn't stop me from saying "PEPSI SUCKS" because that is free speech. But they might be able to keep me from using their trademarked image in conjunction with that phrase to make them look bad. After all, these are official trademarked images of products. It is not entirely improbable that somebody could set up a website the looked very much like Apogee's and pretend to be them, and use their images to smear them. Whether using somebody's trademarked image is free speech, I don't know. THAT is the issue though.
1. remote and obscure location(s)
2. what you do every day
3. a whiz-bang internet gadget
4. expensive internet service
5. signifacant other
I have been swamped at work lately, 2., and feel totally burnt out. So I figured I needed a vacation. So, this summer, myself and 5. are going to 1. to get away from it all. However that will leave me without internet access. Without internet access I will be stranded, unable to do 2. Does anybody have any ideas? I mean, I could use 3. with 4., but is that necessary?
"Unlike Napster, however, it allows people to search for any kind of files; a random sampling of the search terms being used at any given time ranges from MP3s to blockbuster movies to pornography."
"The Department of Transportation released a shocking report this morning, in which it was discovered that the federal highway system, unlike rural routes, allow transportation of any kind of material. A random sampling of items being transported at any given time ranges from pirated music to pirated blockbuster movies, to pornography."
This is an analogy that I have floating in my head...is it valid, does it even make sense?
Ok, imagine a long line of people standing side by side. Each person can hold a cube above their head and one below their head. Just think of people as units of space and the cube position as an excitation level or something.
Now populate this line of people with some random distribution of cubes either in the high position or the low position or both or neither.
Now I come along to the first person in the line and have a pattern of cubes I want them to transmit to the other side. In order to take my first cube in the correct position they need to ensure they have room for it. So if they already have a cube in that position, they must pass it on to the next person in the line. And that person must pass it on to the next, and so on, until it reaches the end. I continue handing cubes to the first person in the pattern I want, and that person, to make room, implicitly propagates my pattern to the other side. It looks as if my pattern of cubes is coming out the other side before I even finish giving it to the first person! (somebody mentioned that in fact the pattern comes out the other side a bit before I have finished giving my cubes to the first person...let's just say then, I tell them ahead of time the pattern I am giving them - this is where the "head" of the wave comes in I guess) Now, the second I have completed giving the pattern to the first guy in the chain), my actual physical set of cubes needs to be physically transmitted to the other side. So each cube is handed over to the next person in order. Now, the last guy can't simply drop his cubes on the floor when he recieves them from the next person. The cubes must be preserved. So he magically simultaneously hands BACK the cubes he has as he recieves the new ones. As you can imagine, when the cubes he hands back reaches the center of the list of people they will annihilate with the cubes being propagated.
Does this make any sense? I know it really doesn't because the analogy is flawed with the pattern of cubes. It seems to me, that the pattern you push in from one side, is causing an equal and opposite reverse echo from the far end which annihilates in the middle as your pattern is physically passed. Fortunately your pattern has already come out the other side because in order to recieve your pattern, the pattern holding material has had to give up the necessary slots, thereby implicitly passing on (or pushing out the other side) the pattern before it is actually physically recieved. Make any sense? Do I need medication?
They might not realize it, but they have just validated the creed that black hats are doing us a service by exploiting holes to show us they exist...
*clap*
The software industry is rampant with low quality bug ridden code, and bad practice. You'd think that those with actual _experience_ would be very valuable. I'll be turning 21 in two months, and although some of the people I work with may not be up to speed with the latest whiz-bang languages and devices, their experience makes them VERY valuable. When you're young you can run fast...but you can also run fast down a blind dead-end alley.
I'm sort of cynical about bringing/forcing the internet on a totally unaware population. The internet is not some panacea. It won't feed people or make them content. A Kalihari bushman doesn't need a goddamn laptop. In fact the internet is a homogenizing force now that business has discovered it. Think what it could do to other cultures. Remember the Prime Directive ;)
I think we are so caught up in our wonderful palm-pilot-toting, cell-phone-ringing, pager-vibrating, glazed-over-CRT-staring, technological world, that we arrogantly assume that everybody wants or needs it or that it can help everybody in some way. The internet brings all sorts of problems that developing countries don't need to have to deal with. First of all they need to stop being exploited by first-world countries. They need to be self-sufficient, in whatever their interpretation of that means (in many cases that doesn't mean exploiting natural resources for export so you can import that latest first-world Pokemon products). They need to be self-determining...not supported by stupid puppet regimes that the West patronizingly thinks will be the best for them.
There's a whole hell of a lot of more real problems that these countries face than the mythical problem of not having "enough" technology. If you're so concerned, join the Peace Corps, donate money (to an unconditional charity preferrably). Don't insist you know what's best and go in and institute your own changes. Help people help themselves. They need helping hands, not expensive crutches.
As a follow up:
We cannot have it both ways. If we expect people to respect the same copyright that allows us to protect the IP of contributors, and keep source code open, we must also respect people's legitimate use of copyright to protect their works, whether it be by keeping them open, or closed, or whatever terms they dictate. We cannot do away with copyright, we need just reconsider what "limited time" means with respect to the market in which the copy right applies. Copyright, after all, was created for the PUBLIC good. It gives the right to creators to dictate the terms of use of the works they create for a "limited time", as an INCENTIVE to create such works. "Limited time" in the software world may need to be shortened, otherwise the public good is NOT being served. However, this doesn't mean we should rob artists of their copyright, or arrogantly expect them to work on a service-based open-source business model (what, are they going to provide tech support or manuals or something??). If it wasn't for Metallica's RIGHT to secure for a limited time exclusive rights to their own works, we'd all probably still be going to theaters and listening to chamber music for a per-visit fee.
Man, people should stop frothing at the mouth and just hear these guys out. I too was skeptical that Metallica had just been corporatized into some homogenous profit generating machine.
/allowed/ this to go on. It is a matter of principal. Unfortunately, when it is not the underdog challenging it, we sometimes have a (perhaps healthy) knee-jerk reaction to discount somebody sticking up for their principals and their rights. This is not a record company issue. This is not a homogenous borg corporation issue. This is a band whom a third party didn't ask about enabling the free distribution of their stuff. Yes, it is a matter of degree. I can copy their stuff and give it to a neighbor. I can give it to the whole town. But after a certain order of magnitude increase in degree, it really becomes a whole different /class/ of problem and has to be dealt with differently. So Napster is NOT comparable to spending time and energy to make physical copies and physically distribute them to friends. Napster is enabling the irresponsible reproduction of their IP. That is their beef.
That's not the case.
Listen to what they are saying.
They are NOT arguing that MP3 trading or selling is some invalid activity. Hell, they even note that they allow bootlegs and couldn't give a damn what people do with them.
But there is one difference: Allowing bootlegs is THEIR choice! THEY got to make the decision. THEY got to decide who heard their music and what people did with it. Metallica is NOT fighting MP3 here. They are NOT fighting all us people who rip CDs to disk, or to tape, or even hand a friggen copy to our friends. What they are fighting is for their IP. They are fighting for the RIGHT to dictate the terms upon which their music is distributed. As they mention Napster never asked Metallica, "Hey, we have this really cool system here, do you mind if people rampantly exchange your IP on it? By the way, we would like you to have a say in the manner and limitations on which people exchange your stuff." No, that did not happen. Napster basically opened up a service which, although it may not have been designed explicitly for it, has enabled and promoted the exploitation of these guy's work. They are denied their IP and their copy rights. They are angered at Napster for denying these rights. They probably don't give a damn about the fans. In fact if they were ASKED they might have even
I think we should get off their case and stand behind them in saying that the definition and respect of IP rights are the most important thing in this brave new world. They are NOT on the other side of our "free community". They are on the SAME side. They want the freedom (not beer, as they say they couldn't care less about the pennies lost), to dictate how their IP is distributed. After all, isn't that what the GPL doesm in effect?
My first official procedural programming class was in Pascal. Pascal was designed as a language for instruction and it does quite well for that purpose, leaving complicated things like pointers under the covers (but still accessible if necessary), while supporting clean and intuitive top-down procedural design. Of course, it isn't object oriented, which is where Delphi comes in. Delphi is Object Pascal, the OO superset of Pascal. So Delphi can first be used to teach the kid normal, procedural console programming. Then graduate them up to OO concepts. And then onto full OO RAD GUI design. Delphi is really great in this respect...you can go from the very basics, to creating a full-blown OO and/or GUI app really painlessly. You don't have to expose any of the complicated stuff early on, unlike with C and C++ where you must have a tome of knowledge in your head, and a penchent for reading cryptic runes before you even create a Hello World. The language scales ;) As is evidenced by the fact that Delphi is (or at least was, last time I checked) Borlands #1 selling product. Plus, Object Pascal is being brought to the Linux platform with Kylix, which is a great bonus, and will provide a smooth transition (hopefully) for moving from Windows development, to Linux development and understanding.
I really started with BASIC, but I don't think that is the ideal beginning language. It is loosely typed and doesn't give the same intuitive structure Pascal does (we should not have to explain the peculiarities of "DIM" and "REDIM" or the weirdness of different starting indexes, or that a type of variable can be denoted by the symbols $, #, !, %, & (*UGH!*)).
Yes, I think we should also extend this to real file sharing. I mean, we all KNOW that sharing files is just a front for piracy. I mean, just the other day I photocopied Webster's Dictionary and sold copies out of my garage. Once I even read a second-hand newspaper (yes, I admit it) that I didn't even buy myself! And just think of all the awful violations flea markets are promoting. We should just ban all trading in general. But wait a second...I'm trading electrons with the slashdot servers right now! Oh no...and these bits will be reproduced and distributed worldwide without a penny coming to me! I have to call my lawyer...
WTF are you talking about?? That's a /guy/ fox...
""Because its abilities are marked 'safe for scripting,' anything is possible," said the security researcher that found the hole, a
hacker known as "Dildog" who works for the security firm @Stake Inc."
Wow...@Stake buys L0pht, and suddenly they are not some seedy "hackers", but "security researchers" who work at a "security firm". Magic.
""You don't mark something safe for scripting unless you are going to let someone activate it
remotely," he said."
Huh? Shouldn't that be: You don't mark something safe for scripting unless you are !NOT! going to let someone activate it remotely?
Anybody planning a protest around Cornell U.?
Agreed. I prefer this fox logo:
http://www.early.com/~emackey/linux/
At least a fox is agile, fast, and cunning. A penguin is just fat and slow (well, except in water), and just hobbles about. Yeah, that's what I want to think of my software as...
Please adopt the fox...hey, maybe someone should make a distro just to gain popularity for this logo...
"I say we change the Linux mascot to a Dinosaur who wears shades and flys an airplane."
Yeah, that did wonders for Netscape *cough*. Who wants their software associated with a dinosaur? I prefer this fox logo: http://www.early.com/~emackey/linux/
At least a fox is agile, fast, and cunning. A penguin is just fat and slow (well, except in water), and just hobbled about. Yeah, that's what I want to think of my software as...
Please adopt the fox...hey, maybe someone should make a distro just to gain popularity for this logo...
"I'm not arguing for linking to random information just because you can, but informative linking is why hypertext has the hyper."
/anything/ relevant. An example would be Microsoft's knowledge base/help (sic) site. Try to find something there.
And I'm not arguing the opposite. We shouldn't just link every single word to Everything2.com just because we can, and, God Forbid, our site would not be linked enough to the core if we did not. The content has to weighed. What frustrates me even more than a page with absolutely no applicable links (when it would be useful), is a site which has big blue glaring links all over the place and I can't find
It was my impression that some ACs on Slashdot actually copied and posted the spec verbatim. If that is NOT the case than Microsoft does not have a leg to stand on and can go bugger off.
This is stupid. Both Microsoft and Slashdot are at fault. Microsoft is at fault by perverting an otherwise open standard, then claiming to have published the changes by forcing anyone wishing to view the documentation through a non-disclosure agreement (faithfully supported by brilliant UCITA legislature). Shame on Microsoft, although it can hardly be called unexpected. But even more shame on Slashdot. The core of the "information wants to be free" meme, is copyright, whether you like it or not. If you want information to be free, you must at the same time respect the same copyright that upholds the GPL (until such copyright laws are done away with). Refusing to remove blatently illegal material is not a first amendment issue...it is a juvenile snub to Microsoft. I'm sure Microsoft has no reservations from unleashing its legaldroids upon Slashdot. It is just dumb. Just as we would not like someone to violate GPL, we cannot at the same time violate an analogous legal (BUT STUPID!) binding. Slashdot should remove the stupid text. We should work to change the laws...not peurily snub our noses at it and then go crying that big bad Microsoft is opressing our first amendment.
I'm not sure if this could actually be full-blown AI, but what about some sort of overarching adaptive browsing environment? Something that learns where you go and prefetches/digests information. It might even "learn" that since you like Slashdot, it should parse the Slashdot headlines and provide a ticker for you. How it would know that I have no idea. AI magic. Or perhaps it might learn what type of sites you do not like cookies from...perhaps it does a lookup on doubleclick, fuzzily figures out what doubleclick is about, and subsequently by default denies cookies from other doubleclick-like sites. Same for ads.
Still that's admittedly AI-weak. How about the adaptive (dare I say even neural-net-ish), FreeNet project? Could you do some work for them in perhaps detecting "cancerous" nodes?
"In fact, I've run into web developers who have never HEARD of the w3c."
<<**SHUDDER**>>
I hope people don't use this paper to promote arbitrary linkage to other sites. I mean /why/ do things have to be more connected? When I'm on my web page I don't want or need one click access to every other part of the web. That's why there are portals and search engines. Islands I understand. But we wouldn't necessarily /want/ those two sections of 24%, origin and termination, to be arbitrarily linked more to the core. We'd just end up with the whole web being a humongous hairball of a core in which each page linked to many other pages in the core. What a mess. People put indices in one place, at the BACK of a book, for a reason.