I find the assumptions made by this commentor and "timothy" to be absurd. While it certainly is possible that SCO hired somebody to do this, even they aren't that foolish. The potential danger to them if they were found-out is an *instant* loss (in the business community) of whatever credibility they may still retain (which they care about a hell of a lot more than what a bunch of geeks on slashdot think), and the potential gain for them is minimal.
I see no reason at all to believe that it *wasn't* "some ticked-off linux fan", the psychology & motivation fits perfectly [this isn't to say that the OSS community as a whole endorses this position by any means.] But the Reichstag fire is a serious disanalogy.
I'm not defending SCO's other actions-I think their claims to IP are unlikely at best, just as with Microsoft and GW Bush, to shrilly denounce them at every opportunity, even for innocious actions, destroys your credibility, and makes rational, thinking people write you off as a fanatic. Conserve your clout, make what you say count!
The movies serve as a beautiful and epic-scale rendition of Tolkein's story: they "stand-on-their-own" as works of art though fully appreciating them requires being familiar with a prior work of art.
/SNIP/ "Having read the all three of the books the compromise TLOTR..."
This is a hilarious typo, I thought that you were going to go on to deconstruct Tolkein/P. Jackson, or something like that...the word you're looking for is "comprise"
That being said, I liked the books and movies too; but having read the former several times over the years, I don't have the slightest idea of how well the movies "stand on their own", nor do I particularily care that much (other than as an incentive to read the books). While it's not the most philosophically profound book (inclusive: Tolkein regarded LOTR as one book with three parts) ever written, speaking from a literary perspective, any educated person should have read it, for its lyric beauty and influence.
The "classical master" you're thinking of is probably the not-quite-as-illustrious-but-still-nifty Bertrand Russell, who along with A. N. Whitehead wrote the monolithic Principia Mathematica in an epic attempt to tie mathematics to logic through set-theory.
Unfortunately for Russell and Whitehead (and David Hilbert too, for that matter), Kurt Godel came along in 1931 and is regarded as definitively proving that "that anything with a set of rules at least as complex as basic arithmetic on integers cannot be both complete and consistent. By "complete", it means that any proposition that can be stated within that framework can be proved within that framework. By "consistent" it means that only one of the proposition and its negation can be proved within the framework." [gratutiously ripped from a lower post, who curiously didn't make this point]
Of course, all of this matters only if the foundations of mathematics have to be formally grounded in a formal logic system. My personal opinion is that this whole shebang is a giant red-herring, and that the *real* foundation/justification of mathematics is the full implications of "law of identity" (or some primitive conception of 'entity') compounded; e.g. You have 'I' thing(s) and you grab another 'I' thing(s), and now you have the set of ['I','I'] things, which we refer to by the arabic numeral '2', and so forth...
[btw, I think it is misleading to say that set-theory is the basis of mathematics; the most primitive concept (both chronologically & heirarchically) is that of 'entity' or 'identity' which is then compounded/abstracted into the concept of 'number'. Set-theory is a *much* higher level abstraction used to quantify/express the concept of 'numerosity', not a primitive in itself.]
What I want to know is how it compares with the other -real- 64bit processor out there...the much maligned Itanium. (Which by the way, is an excellent processor, just not at running 32-bit code in emulation mode.)
Eh, of course the problem with that Zaurus is that it won't sync with US "pim" programs. And compatability aside (not that it is a small issue,granted) X-11's windowing interface is overkill for a pda. And the newer Palm and Ipaq models offer features that Zaurus doesn't, out of the box, e.g. integrated WiFi networking (no annoying CF card antennas sticking out), bluetooth, or cell-phone capability. That being said, I'd probably get one if it sync'd with outlook, gotta love that 640x480 screen, and the form factor
I agree with your distinction between being anonymous on the internet and being anonymous getting connected to the internet, and should have made that distinction in my post. But it still seems like Barry Shein's proposal blurrs this distinction.
And while I think the "built-in" economic limitations of "charging-per-email" would work if they were implemented properly (a perhaps impossible task considering that ISP's that didn't charge per email would always have a competitive advatage (under the same economic analysis), the idea seems silly and restrictive in that (IMO) all an ISP should provide you with is bandwidth, and X-amount of storage space for email (ignoring website hosting for the moment). ISP's have to pay for (and therefore should only discriminate on the basis of, and make their customers pay for) bandwidth and storage space.
This isn't so much a matter of free speech (e.g. shouting 'fire' in a crowded theatre), as a matter of getting what you are paying for.
He says:
"To a great extent spam can be viewed as a form of system compromise and similar to malicious cracking in many ways.
One of my pleas back then to other ISPs was to make some sincere effort to know to whom you were giving accounts. Many of the ISPs with big funding and marketing departments to match would just give out new accounts to anyone with a drink coaster and worry about it later, oftentimes much later only when the bill wasn't paid."
Am I the only person the finds problems with this mentality? I mean, isn't anonimity (sp?) a huge part of what drives the internet? I mean this strikes me as comparable to the whole DRM approach. Spam is just one of the intractible problems of the modern world. Getting rid of "hotmail" style accounts and comparatively anonymous ISP's *isn't* the answer.
Slashdot Mirror
OMG, THAT WOULD BE SO COOL!!! Unfortunately, there's no way to do that.
make that 147,000 screws
*AND* 100 each of these 1470 combinations, which is fourteen thousand seven hundred screws...which is quite a few
I find the assumptions made by this commentor and "timothy" to be absurd. While it certainly is possible that SCO hired somebody to do this, even they aren't that foolish. The potential danger to them if they were found-out is an *instant* loss (in the business community) of whatever credibility they may still retain (which they care about a hell of a lot more than what a bunch of geeks on slashdot think), and the potential gain for them is minimal. I see no reason at all to believe that it *wasn't* "some ticked-off linux fan", the psychology & motivation fits perfectly [this isn't to say that the OSS community as a whole endorses this position by any means.] But the Reichstag fire is a serious disanalogy. I'm not defending SCO's other actions-I think their claims to IP are unlikely at best, just as with Microsoft and GW Bush, to shrilly denounce them at every opportunity, even for innocious actions, destroys your credibility, and makes rational, thinking people write you off as a fanatic. Conserve your clout, make what you say count!
(and I also wanted to point out that...)
The movies serve as a beautiful and epic-scale rendition of Tolkein's story: they "stand-on-their-own" as works of art though fully appreciating them requires being familiar with a prior work of art.
/SNIP/ "Having read the all three of the books the compromise TLOTR..."
This is a hilarious typo, I thought that you were going to go on to deconstruct Tolkein/P. Jackson, or something like that...the word you're looking for is "comprise"
That being said, I liked the books and movies too; but having read the former several times over the years, I don't have the slightest idea of how well the movies "stand on their own", nor do I particularily care that much (other than as an incentive to read the books). While it's not the most philosophically profound book (inclusive: Tolkein regarded LOTR as one book with three parts) ever written, speaking from a literary perspective, any educated person should have read it, for its lyric beauty and influence.
The "classical master" you're thinking of is probably the not-quite-as-illustrious-but-still-nifty Bertrand Russell, who along with A. N. Whitehead wrote the monolithic Principia Mathematica in an epic attempt to tie mathematics to logic through set-theory.
Unfortunately for Russell and Whitehead (and David Hilbert too, for that matter), Kurt Godel came along in 1931 and is regarded as definitively proving that "that anything with a set of rules at least as complex as basic arithmetic on integers cannot be both complete and consistent. By "complete", it means that any proposition that can be stated within that framework can be proved within that framework. By "consistent" it means that only one of the proposition and its negation can be proved within the framework." [gratutiously ripped from a lower post, who curiously didn't make this point]
Of course, all of this matters only if the foundations of mathematics have to be formally grounded in a formal logic system. My personal opinion is that this whole shebang is a giant red-herring, and that the *real* foundation/justification of mathematics is the full implications of "law of identity" (or some primitive conception of 'entity') compounded; e.g. You have 'I' thing(s) and you grab another 'I' thing(s), and now you have the set of ['I','I'] things, which we refer to by the arabic numeral '2', and so forth...
[btw, I think it is misleading to say that set-theory is the basis of mathematics; the most primitive concept (both chronologically & heirarchically) is that of 'entity' or 'identity' which is then compounded/abstracted into the concept of 'number'. Set-theory is a *much* higher level abstraction used to quantify/express the concept of 'numerosity', not a primitive in itself.]
What I want to know is how it compares with the other -real- 64bit processor out there...the much maligned Itanium. (Which by the way, is an excellent processor, just not at running 32-bit code in emulation mode.)
Eh, of course the problem with that Zaurus is that it won't sync with US "pim" programs. And compatability aside (not that it is a small issue,granted) X-11's windowing interface is overkill for a pda. And the newer Palm and Ipaq models offer features that Zaurus doesn't, out of the box, e.g. integrated WiFi networking (no annoying CF card antennas sticking out), bluetooth, or cell-phone capability. That being said, I'd probably get one if it sync'd with outlook, gotta love that 640x480 screen, and the form factor
That's why I can take a 25 year old vcr and still use it.
were there VCR's 25 years ago?
I agree with your distinction between being anonymous on the internet and being anonymous getting connected to the internet, and should have made that distinction in my post. But it still seems like Barry Shein's proposal blurrs this distinction. And while I think the "built-in" economic limitations of "charging-per-email" would work if they were implemented properly (a perhaps impossible task considering that ISP's that didn't charge per email would always have a competitive advatage (under the same economic analysis), the idea seems silly and restrictive in that (IMO) all an ISP should provide you with is bandwidth, and X-amount of storage space for email (ignoring website hosting for the moment). ISP's have to pay for (and therefore should only discriminate on the basis of, and make their customers pay for) bandwidth and storage space. This isn't so much a matter of free speech (e.g. shouting 'fire' in a crowded theatre), as a matter of getting what you are paying for.
He says: "To a great extent spam can be viewed as a form of system compromise and similar to malicious cracking in many ways. One of my pleas back then to other ISPs was to make some sincere effort to know to whom you were giving accounts. Many of the ISPs with big funding and marketing departments to match would just give out new accounts to anyone with a drink coaster and worry about it later, oftentimes much later only when the bill wasn't paid." Am I the only person the finds problems with this mentality? I mean, isn't anonimity (sp?) a huge part of what drives the internet? I mean this strikes me as comparable to the whole DRM approach. Spam is just one of the intractible problems of the modern world. Getting rid of "hotmail" style accounts and comparatively anonymous ISP's *isn't* the answer.