Well, slow motion... sometimes it's hard to imagine what they could possibly have done to Pine to enhance it over what I used to use on the old Auburn University VAX's so many years ago, but then again I can't think of any other real application that has aged so well.
This is exactly why people are so attached to it. Not everyone likes to latch on to the latest and greatest bleeding-edge technology. Sometimes when you find a really good app for its day, you stick with it even when new ones come along that are better, though "better" being a relative term.
At my house, my wife is the Pine enthusiast. She only switched to using Mozilla mail because I got lazy and dragged my feet installing Pine on her shiny new RH 8.0 laptop and she got tired of waiting. Even with the increased ease of viewing images in emails inline and such, she still pines for Pine. And, yes, she loves pico.
I'll be you I'll wind up installing it on that laptop before the holidays.
Yet another reason why the greenniks should be locked in a cage and poked with red-hot branding irons.
On a side note, while this might be a potential consequence of global warming per se, it does nothing (and no one else has done anything) to plausibly correlate human activity to GW.
When I read this, I had a choice to either mod you as -1 Troll or respond. I decided to do the latter, since the former would be me reacting more out of emotion than logic, and at least by posting another moderator can decide if I did the right thing.
I will not go into a lengthy disseration about all the research that has been done that does indeed correlate human behavior in the past half century with global warming, for I am sure you will find fault with whatever study I cite, as I am sure other/. readers would.
At the same time, I think it can be safely said that many of the people to whom a clear connection has not been established in their minds still entertain the notion that it is possible that human actions have caused the current warming trend, or have exacerbated a natural warming trend. As a result, these people choose not to do anything about it until that connection is established.
My response to that is: you're taking one hell of a chance with the planet.
We have exactly one planet available to us to live on. While many may claim that there is no 100% hard and fast undeniable irrefutable undebateable proof of human-induced global warming, if there is even a possibility that there is indeed a link, do you really want to take that risk?
Here's a bit of a news flash for everyone waiting for that iron-clad evidence, including the environmentalists: You're never going to find it. The factors that control the Earth's climate are far too variable and numerous to calculate. Change a single variable and you get widely differing results. Yet at the same time, statistically speaking there is a general trend that says that it is possible we are causing it. If we're talking about the planet, I think that even that possibility, no matter how small, needs to be taken into consideration.
The reason for this should be clear: If we're wrong, and we ignore the problem, we will not be able to simply say later on "Oops, we'll go and fix it." You can't fix a planetary ecology once its been damaged that badly. Let me rephrase that: we will not be able to fix it to be habitable to us. The planetary environment will most likely adapt given time, but with no consideration for our civilization or even our species. The polar caps melt and flood our cities? Oh well, tough luck, so long as the overall ecology of the planet survives.
So think for a moment before you make comments like yours. Make a risk assessment. See if you really want to take that chance. Remember: one planet, no "backup copy", no spare parts, no warranty.
Here's something that I don't think anyone has touched on yet: WHY is Europe doing this? We're ready to condemn them for this violation of free speech without stopping to think of the motivations behind it. This is not to say I approve of the decision. I don't. But understanding where they're coming from on this helps me to sympathize with their position a little.
This decision by the Council of Europe was not made in a vacuum. This is following pattern of behavior that started after World War II. What you are seeing is a backlash, rippling down through a generation, against the heinous acts of Nazi Germany. When ordinary citizens were shown the abominations that were the death camps, which for the first time could be broadcast to a large audience thanks to the technological advances of the time in the news media, this had a profound effect on the next generation.
Take a look at WW II. It was a supreme embarrassment for all of Europe. Germany is embarrassed for having spawned the war in the first place, and much of the rest of Europe is embarrassed at having stupidly appeased Hitler in the first place, and then doing NOTHING while Poland was ripped to shreds, and finally letting the Soviet Union claim half of Europe as their backyard. There was a lot to answer for, and in a way, they still are answering for it.
So what you see is Europe swinging to the other extreme. The deepest fear of Europe, even in an "enlightened" time such as this, is the rise of another Hitler. So they compensate for this fear by enacting laws like this that they believe will prevent it from happening by removing the tools that a Hitleresque person might use to sway the masses.
It's not right. It's not even very feasible. But this is the mindset that I see driving this.
Don't you realize that the Earth is a giant chocolate chip cookie floating in an even bigger glass of milk? Don't go near the edge, you'll kill us all!
See, these are the kind of crackpot ideas we intelligent people have to put up with every day. Chocolate chip cookie, indeed.
Everyone knows the Earth is a huge disc sitting on the backs of four elephants standing on the back of an immense turtle.
In all the modded funny posts, no one said it, or it's getting filtered. The most hackneyed attempt at a cheap laugh on the internet today and nobody said it.
Okay, okay, I'll say it, I got a little karma to burn...
All your shells are belong to us.
Now don't make me do that again. Don't make me come over there.
How is it free? They look in the newspaper and see "I can buy this computer for $1295". They go to the store, and they buy a "computer". At no point whatsoever does it go through their mind that they are buying "a computer and Windows". They bring it home and turn it on. It is running Windows. At no point did the consumer ever think they were "buying Windows". At no point does the average consumer even have the tiniest smidgen of any concept of "I could save money by not buying Windows". For the average consumber Windows is FREE! in that it has no perceived cost!
Excellent point. Now let's take it a step further.
What if we got vendors to offer PCs with Linux pre-installed? Been done before, you say? Well, not really, not in the way that I'm thinking. Today, vendors offering Linux pre-installed do it from the dark corners of their business. You have to go to specific links on their website, or know the secret handshake, or whatever. In effect, you have to specifically SAY that you want Linux.
What if that could change? What if a vendor would offer it not as a special option, but just as their regular line of products? A customer walks in, says they want a computer to do this, this, this, and this. The vendor looks and says, hey here are two models that do everything that the customer wants. But one costs $200 less than the other. Why? Because one is running MS windows and the other is running insert your favorite distribution here Linux. Which one will the consumer take?
Most consumers would take the cheaper alternative. Assuming this is a PC with Linux installed and certified, the consumer does the same thing he/she did with the MS machine: take it home, plug it in, turn it on. And so long as the PC does everything the consumer wants, the consumer is not going to care whether it's Linux or Windows, except for the fact that the Linux version was cheaper.
That is how you will get Linux into the desktop market. You don't do it by making it easier for the end user to install, because the bulk of end users are going to already have an established system and are not likely to change until they have to buy a new computer. That's when you get them into Linux.
Yes, this sounds on the idealistics side. You have to first perform the trick of getting the vendors to see it this way. If MS keeps charging more exorbitant fees for their software, forcing vendors to jack up the price, perhaps they will. There's a reason PC sales have slumped; everyone has a PC that wants one and in the lousy economy, no one is willing to pay extra for the latest and greatest. Linux may be the way to pull the PC market out of its slump. If only the PC vendors would see it that way.
port 80 as used for http is a tcp port, not a udp port.
<ANAL>
There is no such thing as a "UDP port" or a "TCP port". A port is a port. What protocol it uses depends on the software that opens the port and listens on it, or how it is configured via/etc/services, or whatever your flavor of OS uses.
Yes, port 80 is normally used for http, which is a TCP protocol, but calling port 80 a "TCP port" is incorrect.
Remember AOL when it first started? Didn't it charge by usage? And it was a rather premium cost, if I recall.
Let's give the benefit of the doubt. Let's say that the reason that there was a by-usage cost was for the same reasons that the cable companies are (supposedly) claiming from the article. The technology was not cheap, and it cost big bucks to carry that bandwidth and maintain the modem pool.
So what ultimately happened? Technology improved and got cheaper. Rival ISPs started up, and started offering a flat-rate plan. Why? Because they realized that they could make a decent profit from it and undercut the competition. So what did AOL do? They went to a flat-rate plan as well to remain competitive.
So the cable companies want to charge by usage. Let them. The same thing will happen. Technology will improve, and someone will come along offering flat-rate again and undercut them. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Wow, you mean Texas actually wasn't the center of the world back then? What a horrible unenlightened time that was. No wonder the map scale is not in Standard Texas Units.
Re:What I would like to know is...
on
The End Of Minix?
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· Score: 4, Informative
If there have been no minix users since 1996, why did they wait six years to drop support?
Why do many TERMCAP databases contain vt100 definitions even though most people use a windowing system of some type? Why is the term tty used to describe your login session/device on many UNIX OS's when teletypes went out of fashion years ago? Why do we still refer to the act of the cursor returning to the beginning of a line as a carriage return?
Most likely the answer is cultural inertia. People are loathe to change things that either work just fine the way they are or simply show no pressing need to change them.
With regards to Microsoft, he's comparing selling a legitimate product, that was created using tools that were opened by the developer. To selling a chip, that likely uses copyrighted code in the chip, that's primarily designed to allow pirating of games for the Xbox. [Emphasis mine]
Prove it.
Prove to me that X-Box modchips were created primarily to play pirated games. I don't think you can. Certainly, I am not so naive as to think that this would not be a purpose that one might put the modchip too. But then again, people used to use the VCR to rip off pre-recorded movies, and a judge has long since decided that the VCR's primary purpose was not to make illegal copies of movies. The mere fact that it could do it is not enough.
Most hobbyists do not look at modchips and say "hey, I could play lots of ripped games and not pay a cent with this". They look at them and say "hey, look at the amazing things I can make this box do with this modchip!"
A great deal of hackery in software and hobbyist-ing (?) in hardware is motivated by the coolness factor. It's cool to pick apart something and learn how it works. I know that's what motivates me. On the rare occassion that I run proprietary software on my Linux machine, if something goes wrong with it, my first reaction is not just simply to contact customer support, but to whip out strace and similar tools and try to track down the source of the problem myself. An argument could be made that I'm violating the DMCA in doing this, since this is a form of reverse-engineering. I don't care, because I know I'm not trying to gain knowledge for illicit purposes. I just want to know how the damn thing works for my own purposes.
So I would say that there is really no way to make a blanket statement about the purpose of modchips.
I think the great majority of/. posters to this article can agree that censorship of websites carrying questionable content such as kiddie porn -- or all porn for that matter -- is not the answer. But the reason it is not the answer is only partially couched in the 1st amendment.
It's really about supply and demand.
Why do porn sites exist? Why does a search for the term "sex" on any search engine return bazillions of hits? Because there is a great demand for it. Have a big demand, and there will be a supply.
As distasteful as it is to me and many others, there is a demand for kiddie porn. Thus a supply has formed to meet the demand. The government's response to this has been -- as it always is in these cases -- is to choke off the supply. That does not solve the problem. As long as the demand exists, a supply will form. You only need to look at the so-called "drug war" to see this in action.
So the real solution would involve reducing the demand, which is totally outside the realm of website filtering. Yet that would mean taking a much more in-depth look at the problem, as well as a lot more time and effort, and the government (and the voters) are not interested in this. They want quick solutions, regardless of whether it is the right solution. Block the websites, throw the kidde-porn producers and consumers in jail. Lather, rinse, repeat. And the problem simply goes on., a vicious cycle of stupid legislation and lawsuits to have them repealed, and so on.
Okay, time to take another offtopic mod risk, but I had to reply to this...
We are techs/geeks, thats what we do. We don't politicize or make war! We do what we are best at.
And the fact that we're not politicizing may be part of the problem, and why (to try to make some semblance of being on-topic), we should be encouraging of companies that try to donate stuff back to the community. If we simply sit at our computers and code away, sure, that may be what we're best at, but then the rest of the world passes us by, and suddenly what we've always liked to work on is no longer relevant.
So I think it behooves us to get involved in the world past the computer. We can't live in our own little kingdoms, or we become just as bad as the monolithic companies we so like to criticize.
As for us not making war, I beg to differ. Here's a few wars that we are quite well-engaged in:
GNOME vs KDE
This Linux distro vs that Linux distro
Linux vs BSD
Really, if you look at it, the tech/geek culture is the world in microcosm.
Henry and his colleagues took a new look at the star identified as HD 192263, which both California and Swiss researchers said in 1999 had large, gaseous Jupiter-like planet swinging around it in a tight orbit.
The fact that this particular planet is not a planet at all actually neatly solves a dilemma that scientists had with this discovery in the first place. If I recall correctly, the fact that this was an apparent gas-giant type planet so close to its star threw a monkey wrench into the standard theory about star system formation. The standard theory calls for only those planets sufficiently distant from the primary to retain their primordial gas envelopes. The planets closer to the star would have theirs blown off by the intense solar wind generated by the star when it first ignites. I believe the technical term for this phenominon is the T-Tauri wind.
Naturally, the idea of gravitational capture after the star was formed is cited as an alternate explanation, but it would take a rather precise vector for the planet to be captured into such a tight orbit without crashing into the star or being flung out into space. This new information solves the problem,
I read this article several times to try to find where this is the End Of The World As We Know It and came up empty, and it took me only a few moments of reflection to discover why. The reason why is that the author fell into the same trap that many others do that really don't understand how the internet works. He based the article on a false analogy.
The author spends much time building up an example of the broadcast TV and cable industry, and how the cable companies are forced to carry certain content to keep customers. But the problem is that this line of reasoning fails utterly when applied to the internet.
In the TV industry, you have a limited number of content providers and a limited number of content carriers. It takes a few barrels of money to become either a provider or carrier. Not so with the internet, at least not entirely. While you could make the case that there are a limited number of carriers, there are too many providers to count. Anyone with rudimentary knowledge of computers can set himself up to be a provider.
So AOL would be just another provider, only the content would be sent over the cable pipe only if you subscribe to it. Unless they propose coming up with their own protocol for this, I don't see how this would differ from just another site on the internet, except serviced exclusively through the cable connection. I don't see how this model is very different from having a site on the regular internet and requiring people to pay subscription fees to get into it. And the moment that they did come up with some "killer app", someone else somewhere will duplicate it on a site that is more widely available, and people will then say "why am I paying AOL through the nose for this when I can get is more cheaply on my own"? You can't do this in the traditional broadcast model because of the cost factor involved in setting up your own content. But on the internet, this cost prohibition is either not there are greatly reduced.
In other words, AOL is too late. The internet has been so widely established as not simply an American phenomenon, but a global one. I can't think of very many other technologies that a single protocol (i.e. TCP/IP) is so widely and tacitly accepted as the de facto standard. Not so with broadcast content (try playing a European PAL DVD in your American NTSC player and you'll see what I mean, and I'm not talking about region codes).
Yes, some people will subscribe to this because they don't know any better. But I don't see it becoming the resounded success that they want it to be without reverting to the days of BBSs and isolated networks. And I don't see anything warranting the somewhat alarmist cry of the person that posted the story.
You shouldn't buy into Wall Street Journal's bullshit. They claim relevency for themselves, for their economic order, for their definition of achievement, for their suits and their lingo. But the free software we have was written by individuals, and they didn't wear those suits, they haven't been doing it for that model of success, and they don't use that lingo. They have been and continue to be relevant because of their actions and their creations.
I couldn't agree more with you. You're absolutely right, and this is what I meant to imply by the last part of my post. Hackers are not suits and should never try to be. But does that mean it's wrong to have suits promote them? Hell, I'd say that was an example of using the system against itself. Sure, the suits are interested in their own agendas and making their money. But if OSS can benefit at the same time, why not?
Certainly, the suits are not the only path to enlightenment. But it's still a way of getting people to pay attention to you. Then once you have their attention, you don't need the suits anymore.
But consider this: Look at the average hacker community. Most of the time, it's a well-knit, cooperative community. But all too often you get stupidity like the Gnome-KDE flamewars, Linux vs FreeBSD jihads, and the Linux vs GNU/Linux crusades. People outside of the hacker community look at this and once again trivialize us.
I'd love to get rid of the suits and not have to depend on them for a damn thing. But we have to clean up our act first. Until then, the suits can serve their purpose.
We didn't get here by asking suits what was important or trying to get their approval. We didn't need them then, and we need them even less now. We might be able to use them -- but they aren't us and never will be. We should not forget that.
You're right, we did not ask them what was important. The beauty of what's happening now is that they're looking at us and adopting (more or less) what we consider important. And, yes, we can use them, and we should use them -- until we don't need them anymore. At that point, they should get the hell out of the way.
The NewsForge article had a very interesting comment about the LinuxWorld Expo:
There are not a lot of hippie hackers hanging out, and hardly anyone is wearing funny costumes. The combination Trekkie convention and Renaissance Faire feel a lot of early Linux get-togethers had is gone. This is a business gathering.
The author apparantly meets this with dismay. I would like to argue instead that it's about time.
I hate doing things in stuffy, overly-businesslike ways. I much prefer the more freewheeling, hacker style, and I am sure that many/. readers do also. But these are also the same people that want Linux and OSS in general taken seriously. Well, as unfortunate as it may be, to be taken seriously by business-type people, you have to act like business-type people, or at least hire people to do it.
Like it or not, movements that have gatherings of people in "funny costumes" or that have a "trekkie convention" atmosphere are going to be trivialized. Columnists will report these events in the "for your amusement" part of the newspaper, sandwhiched between Dear Abby and the horoscopes. By adopting a more serious attitude at events like this, now you start to get recognition where it counts, like in the Wall Street Journal.
As much as it galls most hacker types (myself included), appearance is everything. But the OSS community needs to remember that it has something more than just appearance, something that many proprietary vendors are missing: substance. OSS code actually works and delivers on what it claims in most cases.
So OSS hackers should keep coding and wearing funny costumes, or whatever floats your boat. But also let the business people and marketers loose. Let them promote what you're doing (think of it this way: it gives you even more time to code).
They always lose out jocks and other whole people.
To put it very bluntly, the kind of girls that go to jocks and similar "pretty people" are generally brainless airheads that might look nice and maybe even might be good in bed, but the typical, intelligent techie-type person would grow bored from the lack of intellectual stimulation.
Tech-minded people have to be more willing to look for someone of substance to have a lasting relationship. I was fortunate enough to find one. I also found that these kind of women are less likely to demand nice-looking but ultimately useless trinkets like diamonds and gold. Had she insisted on a diamond ring, we would not now have the money for the down payment on the house we're looking at. At least a house is an investment that can gain equity in the long run.
At the same time, you have to be willing to look for someone of substance in the first place.
And before anyone asks, no, my wife does not have a sister you can ask out.
My post delves a bit into corporate politics and I'm risking an offtopic mod, but what the hell...
Most firms now realize that they can survive another year without upgrading their router or servers, which were either so expenseive originally that they simply must sit in the rack room longer, or are "good enough" even if they aren't the latest model.
This is a true enough statement, but the problem that I have seen several times in the industry is that some companies take IT cost-cutting to a ridiculous extent. I have worked at two other companies before my present job, and in talking with others that stayed on, in each case the company followed these actions:
Get into a budget crunch
Look for ways to cut budget, finally notice IT budget bloat
Some brilliant manager who is not even in the IT sector says "Why do we even need to keep this in-house? Let's out-source!"
Company outsources IT department
Budget problem solved, managers pat themselves on the back.
Meanwhile, the rest of the company is now stuck with the bozos from the outsourcing company, a contract that went to the lowest bidder, and as they say, you get what you pay for.
Productivity and morale nosedive and the managers never make the connection, instead blaming it on factors that are not even related,and they wonder why people keep leaving the company in droves.
The point of this is that, yes, some IT budgets are horrendously inflated, but many companies wind up throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Trimming the IT budget intelligently takes time and effort, and a lot of upper management does not want to deal with this. They have a "just get it done" mentality, and get kudos for the money they save each year and not necessarily for making smart decisions about how they got the budget down.
"You reached your goal of slashing costs by 25%? Excellent! Here's your bonus"
Meanwhile, it takes the average developer about twice as long to get someone to do something simple like set up a database or add a new user account.
Isn't this what we've wanted all along? Make the people stealing the music the ones who are culpable rather than outlawing the methodology... it seems like the right answer to me.
When I first read this comment, I agreed with it. I always thought that the law should concentrate on the perpetrators of crime and not the instruments of it. Which is why we take away the driver's license of irresponsible drivers rather than ban cars.
But then I thought of something else: This is covered under existing copyright laws. Why do we need a set of specific laws to cover P2P networks when existing laws provide for the prosecution of copyright infringers?
Also, not to put too fine a point on it, but did you read the entire article? I'm looking at this telling line:
In a July 25 letter released late Thursday, some 19 lawmakers from both sides of the aisle asked Ashcroft to prosecute "peer-to-peer" networks like Kazaa and Morpheus and the users who swap digital songs, video clips and other files without permission from artists or their record labels.
(Emphasis is mine) Seems to me they still want to go after the networks themselves.
So while your point is valid, I'm not sure it really is relevant in light of what Ashcroft is being asked to do.
What I find a lot more interesting is the fact that they claim that average rating is 3 out of 5 for every category, when approximiately 35 or 36 completely panned it (out of the 44 or so that were posted when I last looked), and of the rest, only one or two had 5's, and the rest were mediocre.
Ah, statistics... with them you can say anything you want.
The open source and free software community is facing a social transition from a small geek subculture to a significant dissident standing. This is going to present serious challenges.
This is perhaps running in parallel to a change that is shaping up in the user community, and I have to wonder if this is really what more of the gist of the speech was.
Consider the two types of users that you have out there for a moment:
First, you have Joe Sixpack. He wants to be able to turn on his computer, surf the web, play his MP3s, instant message, download the latest porn, whatever. And he wants his system to be "click and it shalt be done". He's totally oblivious to how the software is working. Ask him about that and he shrugs "I dunno. I ordered it, UPS dumped it at my door and I turned it on."
Next, you have Sid Hacker. He thinks little of spending hours to get something to compile just to be able to watch a movie in a particular format that Joe Sixpack would take five seconds to get up and running. He scrutinizes all the code he downloads because he wants to know exactly what it is doing (and moreover, because he can). He likes to hack the code just because he doen't like where a button showed up.
Up until recently, that was how the world was divided. But now that's changed. A perfect example of this new type of person would be my wife.
My wife does not want to use Microsoft. She doesn't like the idea of being afraid of clicking on attachments or of Microsoft knowing her personal information, as privacy is very important to her. But at the same time, she does not care about the fact that "hey, you can hack this code if you want it to do X!" So what does she do to use our Linux box? She comes to me and says "Here, make this work.". If she's in the right mood she might be interested in the details of the code, but usually she's not and it just bores her. She just knows it works. And when it doesn't, you can be sure I hear about it.
So now you have all these in-between people. They don't want the old solutions and are afraid of the new ones. So how do we handle that? That is probably the next challenge to the OSS community.
Reading this article on/. and seeing people's replies to it makes me feel just a little less old than I had been feeling. Either that or there are enough other old farts out there that I'm in good company (and you don't need to be all that old to be an old fart where computer tech is concerned).
A possible reason why you don't see the construction set games anymore that I don't think anyone has touched on yet is the growth of the hacker culture. Back when the construction set games were around, the hacker culture was confined largely to colleges and labs. Didn't Zork start on a mainframe in Fortran somewhere? The construction set games brought a kind of pseudo-hacker culture to non-hackers. Without having to know a lot of code, they could build their own games and run them.
But nowadays, many of these pseudo-hackers became real hackers. Now people build games from scratch. Witness the explosion in recent years in freeware/OSS game projects. Not many people focus on construction set games because they're busy building their own original games.
As for me, I think I get more joy out of the construction of the game mechanics rather than the actual coding of the game core. For that reason [begin shameless plug] I've been working on my own Perl modules to do game construction (I've only just started -- if any Perl programmers out there are interested, look for module Games::Object on search.cpan.org. I hope to have Games::TileMap released soon as well). I doubt I'll be leading any revolution with my efforts, but at least I'll get to put out a few games that I've been thinking about over the years.
Slashdot Mirror
This is exactly why people are so attached to it. Not everyone likes to latch on to the latest and greatest bleeding-edge technology. Sometimes when you find a really good app for its day, you stick with it even when new ones come along that are better, though "better" being a relative term.
At my house, my wife is the Pine enthusiast. She only switched to using Mozilla mail because I got lazy and dragged my feet installing Pine on her shiny new RH 8.0 laptop and she got tired of waiting. Even with the increased ease of viewing images in emails inline and such, she still pines for Pine. And, yes, she loves pico.
I'll be you I'll wind up installing it on that laptop before the holidays.
$ lpr
So are you saying you're the pointed-haired boss from Dilbert that has his secretary print out all his emails? :)
Yet another reason why the greenniks should be locked in a cage and poked with red-hot branding irons.
On a side note, while this might be a potential consequence of global warming per se, it does nothing (and no one else has done anything) to plausibly correlate human activity to GW.
When I read this, I had a choice to either mod you as -1 Troll or respond. I decided to do the latter, since the former would be me reacting more out of emotion than logic, and at least by posting another moderator can decide if I did the right thing.
I will not go into a lengthy disseration about all the research that has been done that does indeed correlate human behavior in the past half century with global warming, for I am sure you will find fault with whatever study I cite, as I am sure other /. readers would.
At the same time, I think it can be safely said that many of the people to whom a clear connection has not been established in their minds still entertain the notion that it is possible that human actions have caused the current warming trend, or have exacerbated a natural warming trend. As a result, these people choose not to do anything about it until that connection is established.
My response to that is: you're taking one hell of a chance with the planet.
We have exactly one planet available to us to live on. While many may claim that there is no 100% hard and fast undeniable irrefutable undebateable proof of human-induced global warming, if there is even a possibility that there is indeed a link, do you really want to take that risk?
Here's a bit of a news flash for everyone waiting for that iron-clad evidence, including the environmentalists: You're never going to find it. The factors that control the Earth's climate are far too variable and numerous to calculate. Change a single variable and you get widely differing results. Yet at the same time, statistically speaking there is a general trend that says that it is possible we are causing it. If we're talking about the planet, I think that even that possibility, no matter how small, needs to be taken into consideration.
The reason for this should be clear: If we're wrong, and we ignore the problem, we will not be able to simply say later on "Oops, we'll go and fix it." You can't fix a planetary ecology once its been damaged that badly. Let me rephrase that: we will not be able to fix it to be habitable to us. The planetary environment will most likely adapt given time, but with no consideration for our civilization or even our species. The polar caps melt and flood our cities? Oh well, tough luck, so long as the overall ecology of the planet survives.
So think for a moment before you make comments like yours. Make a risk assessment. See if you really want to take that chance. Remember: one planet, no "backup copy", no spare parts, no warranty.
Here's something that I don't think anyone has touched on yet: WHY is Europe doing this? We're ready to condemn them for this violation of free speech without stopping to think of the motivations behind it. This is not to say I approve of the decision. I don't. But understanding where they're coming from on this helps me to sympathize with their position a little.
This decision by the Council of Europe was not made in a vacuum. This is following pattern of behavior that started after World War II. What you are seeing is a backlash, rippling down through a generation, against the heinous acts of Nazi Germany. When ordinary citizens were shown the abominations that were the death camps, which for the first time could be broadcast to a large audience thanks to the technological advances of the time in the news media, this had a profound effect on the next generation.
Take a look at WW II. It was a supreme embarrassment for all of Europe. Germany is embarrassed for having spawned the war in the first place, and much of the rest of Europe is embarrassed at having stupidly appeased Hitler in the first place, and then doing NOTHING while Poland was ripped to shreds, and finally letting the Soviet Union claim half of Europe as their backyard. There was a lot to answer for, and in a way, they still are answering for it.
So what you see is Europe swinging to the other extreme. The deepest fear of Europe, even in an "enlightened" time such as this, is the rise of another Hitler. So they compensate for this fear by enacting laws like this that they believe will prevent it from happening by removing the tools that a Hitleresque person might use to sway the masses.
It's not right. It's not even very feasible. But this is the mindset that I see driving this.
Don't you realize that the Earth is a giant chocolate chip cookie floating in an even bigger glass of milk? Don't go near the edge, you'll kill us all!
See, these are the kind of crackpot ideas we intelligent people have to put up with every day. Chocolate chip cookie, indeed.
Everyone knows the Earth is a huge disc sitting on the backs of four elephants standing on the back of an immense turtle.
Wow ... I can't believe it ... nobody said it.
In all the modded funny posts, no one said it, or it's getting filtered. The most hackneyed attempt at a cheap laugh on the internet today and nobody said it.
Okay, okay, I'll say it, I got a little karma to burn ...
All your shells are belong to us.
Now don't make me do that again. Don't make me come over there.
How is it free? They look in the newspaper and see "I can buy this computer for $1295". They go to the store, and they buy a "computer". At no point whatsoever does it go through their mind that they are buying "a computer and Windows". They bring it home and turn it on. It is running Windows. At no point did the consumer ever think they were "buying Windows". At no point does the average consumer even have the tiniest smidgen of any concept of "I could save money by not buying Windows". For the average consumber Windows is FREE! in that it has no perceived cost!
Excellent point. Now let's take it a step further.
What if we got vendors to offer PCs with Linux pre-installed? Been done before, you say? Well, not really, not in the way that I'm thinking. Today, vendors offering Linux pre-installed do it from the dark corners of their business. You have to go to specific links on their website, or know the secret handshake, or whatever. In effect, you have to specifically SAY that you want Linux.
What if that could change? What if a vendor would offer it not as a special option, but just as their regular line of products? A customer walks in, says they want a computer to do this, this, this, and this. The vendor looks and says, hey here are two models that do everything that the customer wants. But one costs $200 less than the other. Why? Because one is running MS windows and the other is running insert your favorite distribution here Linux. Which one will the consumer take?
Most consumers would take the cheaper alternative. Assuming this is a PC with Linux installed and certified, the consumer does the same thing he/she did with the MS machine: take it home, plug it in, turn it on. And so long as the PC does everything the consumer wants, the consumer is not going to care whether it's Linux or Windows, except for the fact that the Linux version was cheaper.
That is how you will get Linux into the desktop market. You don't do it by making it easier for the end user to install, because the bulk of end users are going to already have an established system and are not likely to change until they have to buy a new computer. That's when you get them into Linux.
Yes, this sounds on the idealistics side. You have to first perform the trick of getting the vendors to see it this way. If MS keeps charging more exorbitant fees for their software, forcing vendors to jack up the price, perhaps they will. There's a reason PC sales have slumped; everyone has a PC that wants one and in the lousy economy, no one is willing to pay extra for the latest and greatest. Linux may be the way to pull the PC market out of its slump. If only the PC vendors would see it that way.
port 80 as used for http is a tcp port, not a udp port.
<ANAL>
There is no such thing as a "UDP port" or a "TCP port". A port is a port. What protocol it uses depends on the software that opens the port and listens on it, or how it is configured via /etc/services, or whatever your flavor of OS uses.
Yes, port 80 is normally used for http, which is a TCP protocol, but calling port 80 a "TCP port" is incorrect.
</ANAL>
Is it just me, or does this all ring familiar?
Remember AOL when it first started? Didn't it charge by usage? And it was a rather premium cost, if I recall.
Let's give the benefit of the doubt. Let's say that the reason that there was a by-usage cost was for the same reasons that the cable companies are (supposedly) claiming from the article. The technology was not cheap, and it cost big bucks to carry that bandwidth and maintain the modem pool.
So what ultimately happened? Technology improved and got cheaper. Rival ISPs started up, and started offering a flat-rate plan. Why? Because they realized that they could make a decent profit from it and undercut the competition. So what did AOL do? They went to a flat-rate plan as well to remain competitive.
So the cable companies want to charge by usage. Let them. The same thing will happen. Technology will improve, and someone will come along offering flat-rate again and undercut them. Lather, rinse, repeat.
A very telling line from the NewsForge article:
Many staffers of the 67 Congressman who signed are now claiming they didn't know what they were signing and the letter is being withdrawn.
So what this in effect says is at least 67 Congressmen don't read what they sign.
Ah, my tax dollars at work.
Wow, you mean Texas actually wasn't the center of the world back then? What a horrible unenlightened time that was. No wonder the map scale is not in Standard Texas Units.
Why do many TERMCAP databases contain vt100 definitions even though most people use a windowing system of some type? Why is the term tty used to describe your login session/device on many UNIX OS's when teletypes went out of fashion years ago? Why do we still refer to the act of the cursor returning to the beginning of a line as a carriage return?
Most likely the answer is cultural inertia. People are loathe to change things that either work just fine the way they are or simply show no pressing need to change them.
Prove it.
Prove to me that X-Box modchips were created primarily to play pirated games. I don't think you can. Certainly, I am not so naive as to think that this would not be a purpose that one might put the modchip too. But then again, people used to use the VCR to rip off pre-recorded movies, and a judge has long since decided that the VCR's primary purpose was not to make illegal copies of movies. The mere fact that it could do it is not enough.
Most hobbyists do not look at modchips and say "hey, I could play lots of ripped games and not pay a cent with this". They look at them and say "hey, look at the amazing things I can make this box do with this modchip!"
A great deal of hackery in software and hobbyist-ing (?) in hardware is motivated by the coolness factor. It's cool to pick apart something and learn how it works. I know that's what motivates me. On the rare occassion that I run proprietary software on my Linux machine, if something goes wrong with it, my first reaction is not just simply to contact customer support, but to whip out strace and similar tools and try to track down the source of the problem myself. An argument could be made that I'm violating the DMCA in doing this, since this is a form of reverse-engineering. I don't care, because I know I'm not trying to gain knowledge for illicit purposes. I just want to know how the damn thing works for my own purposes.
So I would say that there is really no way to make a blanket statement about the purpose of modchips.
It's really about supply and demand.
Why do porn sites exist? Why does a search for the term "sex" on any search engine return bazillions of hits? Because there is a great demand for it. Have a big demand, and there will be a supply.
As distasteful as it is to me and many others, there is a demand for kiddie porn. Thus a supply has formed to meet the demand. The government's response to this has been -- as it always is in these cases -- is to choke off the supply. That does not solve the problem. As long as the demand exists, a supply will form. You only need to look at the so-called "drug war" to see this in action.
So the real solution would involve reducing the demand, which is totally outside the realm of website filtering. Yet that would mean taking a much more in-depth look at the problem, as well as a lot more time and effort, and the government (and the voters) are not interested in this. They want quick solutions, regardless of whether it is the right solution. Block the websites, throw the kidde-porn producers and consumers in jail. Lather, rinse, repeat. And the problem simply goes on., a vicious cycle of stupid legislation and lawsuits to have them repealed, and so on.
We are techs/geeks, thats what we do. We don't politicize or make war! We do what we are best at.
And the fact that we're not politicizing may be part of the problem, and why (to try to make some semblance of being on-topic), we should be encouraging of companies that try to donate stuff back to the community. If we simply sit at our computers and code away, sure, that may be what we're best at, but then the rest of the world passes us by, and suddenly what we've always liked to work on is no longer relevant.
So I think it behooves us to get involved in the world past the computer. We can't live in our own little kingdoms, or we become just as bad as the monolithic companies we so like to criticize.
As for us not making war, I beg to differ. Here's a few wars that we are quite well-engaged in:
Really, if you look at it, the tech/geek culture is the world in microcosm.
Henry and his colleagues took a new look at the star identified as HD 192263, which both California and Swiss researchers said in 1999 had large, gaseous Jupiter-like planet swinging around it in a tight orbit.
The fact that this particular planet is not a planet at all actually neatly solves a dilemma that scientists had with this discovery in the first place. If I recall correctly, the fact that this was an apparent gas-giant type planet so close to its star threw a monkey wrench into the standard theory about star system formation. The standard theory calls for only those planets sufficiently distant from the primary to retain their primordial gas envelopes. The planets closer to the star would have theirs blown off by the intense solar wind generated by the star when it first ignites. I believe the technical term for this phenominon is the T-Tauri wind.
Naturally, the idea of gravitational capture after the star was formed is cited as an alternate explanation, but it would take a rather precise vector for the planet to be captured into such a tight orbit without crashing into the star or being flung out into space. This new information solves the problem,
The author spends much time building up an example of the broadcast TV and cable industry, and how the cable companies are forced to carry certain content to keep customers. But the problem is that this line of reasoning fails utterly when applied to the internet.
In the TV industry, you have a limited number of content providers and a limited number of content carriers. It takes a few barrels of money to become either a provider or carrier. Not so with the internet, at least not entirely. While you could make the case that there are a limited number of carriers, there are too many providers to count. Anyone with rudimentary knowledge of computers can set himself up to be a provider.
So AOL would be just another provider, only the content would be sent over the cable pipe only if you subscribe to it. Unless they propose coming up with their own protocol for this, I don't see how this would differ from just another site on the internet, except serviced exclusively through the cable connection. I don't see how this model is very different from having a site on the regular internet and requiring people to pay subscription fees to get into it. And the moment that they did come up with some "killer app", someone else somewhere will duplicate it on a site that is more widely available, and people will then say "why am I paying AOL through the nose for this when I can get is more cheaply on my own"? You can't do this in the traditional broadcast model because of the cost factor involved in setting up your own content. But on the internet, this cost prohibition is either not there are greatly reduced.
In other words, AOL is too late. The internet has been so widely established as not simply an American phenomenon, but a global one. I can't think of very many other technologies that a single protocol (i.e. TCP/IP) is so widely and tacitly accepted as the de facto standard. Not so with broadcast content (try playing a European PAL DVD in your American NTSC player and you'll see what I mean, and I'm not talking about region codes).
Yes, some people will subscribe to this because they don't know any better. But I don't see it becoming the resounded success that they want it to be without reverting to the days of BBSs and isolated networks. And I don't see anything warranting the somewhat alarmist cry of the person that posted the story.
Nothing more to see here. Move along.
I couldn't agree more with you. You're absolutely right, and this is what I meant to imply by the last part of my post. Hackers are not suits and should never try to be. But does that mean it's wrong to have suits promote them? Hell, I'd say that was an example of using the system against itself. Sure, the suits are interested in their own agendas and making their money. But if OSS can benefit at the same time, why not?
Certainly, the suits are not the only path to enlightenment. But it's still a way of getting people to pay attention to you. Then once you have their attention, you don't need the suits anymore.
But consider this: Look at the average hacker community. Most of the time, it's a well-knit, cooperative community. But all too often you get stupidity like the Gnome-KDE flamewars, Linux vs FreeBSD jihads, and the Linux vs GNU/Linux crusades. People outside of the hacker community look at this and once again trivialize us.
I'd love to get rid of the suits and not have to depend on them for a damn thing. But we have to clean up our act first. Until then, the suits can serve their purpose.
We didn't get here by asking suits what was important or trying to get their approval. We didn't need them then, and we need them even less now. We might be able to use them -- but they aren't us and never will be. We should not forget that.
You're right, we did not ask them what was important. The beauty of what's happening now is that they're looking at us and adopting (more or less) what we consider important. And, yes, we can use them, and we should use them -- until we don't need them anymore. At that point, they should get the hell out of the way.
There are not a lot of hippie hackers hanging out, and hardly anyone is wearing funny costumes. The combination Trekkie convention and Renaissance Faire feel a lot of early Linux get-togethers had is gone. This is a business gathering.
The author apparantly meets this with dismay. I would like to argue instead that it's about time.
I hate doing things in stuffy, overly-businesslike ways. I much prefer the more freewheeling, hacker style, and I am sure that many /. readers do also. But these are also the same people that want Linux and OSS in general taken seriously. Well, as unfortunate as it may be, to be taken seriously by business-type people, you have to act like business-type people, or at least hire people to do it.
Like it or not, movements that have gatherings of people in "funny costumes" or that have a "trekkie convention" atmosphere are going to be trivialized. Columnists will report these events in the "for your amusement" part of the newspaper, sandwhiched between Dear Abby and the horoscopes. By adopting a more serious attitude at events like this, now you start to get recognition where it counts, like in the Wall Street Journal.
As much as it galls most hacker types (myself included), appearance is everything. But the OSS community needs to remember that it has something more than just appearance, something that many proprietary vendors are missing: substance. OSS code actually works and delivers on what it claims in most cases.
So OSS hackers should keep coding and wearing funny costumes, or whatever floats your boat. But also let the business people and marketers loose. Let them promote what you're doing (think of it this way: it gives you even more time to code).
To put it very bluntly, the kind of girls that go to jocks and similar "pretty people" are generally brainless airheads that might look nice and maybe even might be good in bed, but the typical, intelligent techie-type person would grow bored from the lack of intellectual stimulation.
Tech-minded people have to be more willing to look for someone of substance to have a lasting relationship. I was fortunate enough to find one. I also found that these kind of women are less likely to demand nice-looking but ultimately useless trinkets like diamonds and gold. Had she insisted on a diamond ring, we would not now have the money for the down payment on the house we're looking at. At least a house is an investment that can gain equity in the long run.
At the same time, you have to be willing to look for someone of substance in the first place.
And before anyone asks, no, my wife does not have a sister you can ask out.
My post delves a bit into corporate politics and I'm risking an offtopic mod, but what the hell ...
Most firms now realize that they can survive another year without upgrading their router or servers, which were either so expenseive originally that they simply must sit in the rack room longer, or are "good enough" even if they aren't the latest model.
This is a true enough statement, but the problem that I have seen several times in the industry is that some companies take IT cost-cutting to a ridiculous extent. I have worked at two other companies before my present job, and in talking with others that stayed on, in each case the company followed these actions:
The point of this is that, yes, some IT budgets are horrendously inflated, but many companies wind up throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Trimming the IT budget intelligently takes time and effort, and a lot of upper management does not want to deal with this. They have a "just get it done" mentality, and get kudos for the money they save each year and not necessarily for making smart decisions about how they got the budget down.
"You reached your goal of slashing costs by 25%? Excellent! Here's your bonus"
Meanwhile, it takes the average developer about twice as long to get someone to do something simple like set up a database or add a new user account.
When I first read this comment, I agreed with it. I always thought that the law should concentrate on the perpetrators of crime and not the instruments of it. Which is why we take away the driver's license of irresponsible drivers rather than ban cars.
But then I thought of something else: This is covered under existing copyright laws. Why do we need a set of specific laws to cover P2P networks when existing laws provide for the prosecution of copyright infringers?
Also, not to put too fine a point on it, but did you read the entire article? I'm looking at this telling line:
In a July 25 letter released late Thursday, some 19 lawmakers from both sides of the aisle asked Ashcroft to prosecute "peer-to-peer" networks like Kazaa and Morpheus and the users who swap digital songs, video clips and other files without permission from artists or their record labels.
(Emphasis is mine) Seems to me they still want to go after the networks themselves.
So while your point is valid, I'm not sure it really is relevant in light of what Ashcroft is being asked to do.
What I find a lot more interesting is the fact that they claim that average rating is 3 out of 5 for every category, when approximiately 35 or 36 completely panned it (out of the 44 or so that were posted when I last looked), and of the rest, only one or two had 5's, and the rest were mediocre.
Ah, statistics ... with them you can say anything you want.
This is perhaps running in parallel to a change that is shaping up in the user community, and I have to wonder if this is really what more of the gist of the speech was.
Consider the two types of users that you have out there for a moment:
First, you have Joe Sixpack. He wants to be able to turn on his computer, surf the web, play his MP3s, instant message, download the latest porn, whatever. And he wants his system to be "click and it shalt be done". He's totally oblivious to how the software is working. Ask him about that and he shrugs "I dunno. I ordered it, UPS dumped it at my door and I turned it on."
Next, you have Sid Hacker. He thinks little of spending hours to get something to compile just to be able to watch a movie in a particular format that Joe Sixpack would take five seconds to get up and running. He scrutinizes all the code he downloads because he wants to know exactly what it is doing (and moreover, because he can). He likes to hack the code just because he doen't like where a button showed up.
Up until recently, that was how the world was divided. But now that's changed. A perfect example of this new type of person would be my wife.
My wife does not want to use Microsoft. She doesn't like the idea of being afraid of clicking on attachments or of Microsoft knowing her personal information, as privacy is very important to her. But at the same time, she does not care about the fact that "hey, you can hack this code if you want it to do X!" So what does she do to use our Linux box? She comes to me and says "Here, make this work.". If she's in the right mood she might be interested in the details of the code, but usually she's not and it just bores her. She just knows it works. And when it doesn't, you can be sure I hear about it.
So now you have all these in-between people. They don't want the old solutions and are afraid of the new ones. So how do we handle that? That is probably the next challenge to the OSS community.
My $0.02
A possible reason why you don't see the construction set games anymore that I don't think anyone has touched on yet is the growth of the hacker culture. Back when the construction set games were around, the hacker culture was confined largely to colleges and labs. Didn't Zork start on a mainframe in Fortran somewhere? The construction set games brought a kind of pseudo-hacker culture to non-hackers. Without having to know a lot of code, they could build their own games and run them.
But nowadays, many of these pseudo-hackers became real hackers. Now people build games from scratch. Witness the explosion in recent years in freeware/OSS game projects. Not many people focus on construction set games because they're busy building their own original games.
As for me, I think I get more joy out of the construction of the game mechanics rather than the actual coding of the game core. For that reason [begin shameless plug] I've been working on my own Perl modules to do game construction (I've only just started -- if any Perl programmers out there are interested, look for module Games::Object on search.cpan.org. I hope to have Games::TileMap released soon as well). I doubt I'll be leading any revolution with my efforts, but at least I'll get to put out a few games that I've been thinking about over the years.