Someone has already made a much better chart of how various Linux browsers do at various banks around the world. Check out the site.
The chart lists 302 banks in 32 countries and indicates whether someone has reported success with Netscape 4, Netscape 6/7, Mozilla, Galeon, Konquerer 2, Konqueror 3, Opera, and Elinks.
Help him fill in the chart if you have info on an unlisted bank or on a browser for a listed bank by e-mailing Evan
It should be relatively easy to get people to start using PGP to encrypt all of their internal e-mails. So long as you can switch everyone to Mozilla or Netscape as their e-mail program of choice, then the Enigmail plugin makes using GPG or PGP encryption a breeze, and it can be easily set up to automatically ask for your password every time. That would be the only difficult part: Getting people to choose decent passwords and remembering them...but if you're in IT, you've faced that problem before.
Q. Why does the program not use the term "genius" regarding its Fellows?
A. We avoid using the term "genius" to describe MacArthur Fellows because it connotes a singular characteristic of intellectual prowess. The people we seek to support express many other important qualities: ability to transcend traditional boundaries, willingness to take risks, persistence in the face of personal and conceptual obstacles, capacity to synthesize disparate ideas and approaches.
So calling them "Genius Grants" is apparently not quite right.
You're basically talking about wireless NetZero. Even they have started charging a monthly fee for more than nominal monthly access. As others have said, ad-based revenue models don't work when you're giving out a service of value. The only reason anyone listened to such dot-coms during the boom was a belief that we were in a virtual "land-rush" where gaining users was all-important. Taking losses to build your user base was acceptable, but EVEN THEN the idea was to reach a critical mass and then find a way to make money off of these users. Most ran out of cash first...
Consider the following alternative: Offer a wireless access point and give people their first month free at sign-up. Afterwards charge a small $4.95-$9.95 monthly charge for unlimited usage and maybe also offer a $1-$2/day option for the occasional user/out-of-town businessman that just drops in.
Giving people something for free to get them hooked is a tried and true business method. Ask your local drug dealer. But make it a clearly limited free trial or you'll be another dot-bust.
I'd rather see some e-mail addresses of people we could write there. The Slashdot Effect on someone's inbox is likely a great way of making someone see that allowing a little interview isn't nearly as problematic as dealing with thousands of angry nerds.
I submitted this story and I wrote that last line not to imply anything in particular. I just figured if I included some sort of summary of what you'd find there then it'd be more likely to be accepted than rejected. So there's my dark motivation...
But, to address your statement, I think I would agree that it helps immensely to be a lawyer to speak with authority on legal issues, but I would never say that one must be a lawyer "to convincingly argue one's position". I am not a lawyer, and I feel I could give numerous arguments against the DMCA that many would find quite convincing. If I were a lawyer and were better versed in the relevant legal issues, I believe I could give even better or even more convincing arguments, or better yet, arguments that a court would accept, not just my neighbor.
Some legal training might help you not jump to conclusions about the implications of other's statements!
That was the quote that caught my eye too. Microsoft just got through funding ADTM to say OSS is inherently insecure due to publishing the code, and they said the same thing recently in the news, now all of the sudden, we can publish the source to our new secure system and it will be even MORE secure than what we're doing now. Hmmmm... sounds to me like OSS is not inherently insecure after all. This is the scariest piece of news I've seen in a while. This is a way to turn the general-purpose computer into an X-box that will only run Genuine Microsoft(TM) software and simultaneously appease the RIAA/MPAA crowd. These controls don't empower the user, they limit him. Only freedom truly empowers the user. Buy yourself a general-purpose computer while you still can folks...
Whoa there! I feel like/. has been overrun by Tivo employees or something with all the gushing going on in this thread. ("Cult" of Tivo indeed!) Let's try to remember:
2) The Privacy Foundation's report on Tivo points out that
a) Your Tivo serial number is sent multiple times during each phone call and there is no way to guarantee data is truly treated anonymously except to trust Tivo.
b) Tivo's definition of "personal" information is significantly more narrow than the average privacy policy reader would assume, and so guarantees about your "personal" information are hollow.
c) Tivo suggests that the viewing information is never transmitted. In fact, all of the constituent pieces of the personal viewing information are transmitted to TiVo's computers.
d) TiVo should disclose that their customer-identified diagnostic log can indicate when the TiVo remote control was in use.
3) Anyone heard of Replay TV here? They are actively fighting Hollywood to defend your rights. When a judge tried to force them to spy on users, they fought it. When Hollywood said users shouldn't be allowed to send programs to other devices, they fought it. When the networks said your skipping commercials was "theft", they fought it. I think a company that does all this for the privacy and rights of its users deserves our support (or at least a MENTION on this page).
Brian
Support EFF! http://www.eff.org
They're defending YOUR rights online!
The fallacy the poster had in mind was that of "False dilemma". Also, you are correct that the Law of the Excluded Middle is a logical truth (in most systems of logic, though it is denied in intuitionist logics and of course in n-valued logics, where n>2.)
The best news about this is that its pre-installed linux on a low-cost box. The installation process, no matter how easy, is a big hurdle for many novice computer users. They use whatever came on the machine for three to five years and then they buy a new computer and use whatever comes on that one, etc. Now, is Wal-Mart and Lindows perfect? No. Not at all, but if this is even slightly successful we may be able to get Best Buy and Circuit City and so on to start offering a pre-installed Red Hat/Mandrake/SuSE option and THEN comes the revolution baby... When you walk in and start looking at HP/Compaq computers in Best Buy and the first question the sales rep asks you is, "Are you interested in an HP with Windows or Linux on it?" then things will have drastically changed. I look forward to it.
It was Plato, not Aristotle who had the tri-partite theory of the soul. Also, the part you refer to as "Honor" was more often referred to as "Spirit", though a soldier's courage was a typical example of the spirt-part taking the lead. Also, Plato thought the soul was only in balance when Reason led the way. I'm not sure he ever speculated on what % of people were controlled primarily by appetite, but 80% would be a sorely pessimistic estimate. (Not saying that it couldn't be true!)
Also, while I agree it is sad that John Carroll can't seem to imagine someone caring for things other than personal gain, it seems to me that the more relevant criticism of his article is how sorely he has misunderstood Free software and open source software, constantly misusing the terms and making false assumptions about all such software being zero-cost.
Hello,
John Carroll, author of "The very real limitations of open source" has to be one of the least informed commentators I have ever read on ZDNet. I would recommend ZDNet think twice about asking him to write again, as he obviously doesn't care enough about his writing to do even the most basic fact checking. He makes so many confused off-base uses of the terms "Free" software and "open-source" that he illustrates beyond a doubt that he has no idea what he is talking about. His argument seems to be aimed at the conclusion that open source software is not a viable option for governments. He bases this conclusion on the false premise that open source software is cost-free and hence that there is and could be no reliable incentive to produce it. Tell this to the IBM programmers who are paid to work on open source projects (IBM says they have already invested 1 Billion, with a "B", dollars in linux) or the host of other companies like Sun, currently paying programmers to work on open source projects. As far as governments go, they have numerous reasons of principle to opt for open source software that the Congressman Villanueva of Peru outlined so brilliantly recently. The government does not have to rely on hobbyists to get the open source software it wants. They can obviously choose to PAY programmers to work on the open source software they want. The thing is, they won't have to, because the lure of government contracts will spur innovative software companies to offer open source solutions to the governments that seek them. Besides all this, it is simply false that all open software must be be zero-cost. In fact, much of it isn't, which your author would have known had he half a clue what he was talking about. Also, your author's arrogrant assumption that only 5-10% of programmers have contributed to an open source project is pure speculation. It is really the most confused piece of writing I have ever seen on ZDNet. If ZDNet hopes to continue being a reliable source of information to the computing world, I recommend they offer someone in the free software community like Richard Stallman, Eric Raymond, Alan Cox, etc the opportunity to respond to this drivel by John Carroll to set the record straight.
--
Brian W. Carver
Support EFF! http://www.eff.org/
They're defending YOUR rights online.
In telling them about a bad link on their site, I got a bounced message from another bogus e-mail address on that site. Wow. It's almost like an April Fool's hoax!
pr@turbolinux.com SMTP error from remote mailer after RCPT TO:: host mail.turbolinux.com [207.88.91.6]: 550... User unknown
Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 07:35:34 -0700
To: pr@turbolinux.com
Subject: Bad Link
At: http://unitedlinux.com/en/press/press_releases/uni ted_linux.html
under "Participation and Availability" (near the bottom) the link to
TurboLinux is actually a mailto:unitedlinux@suse.com
You might want to get this fixed.
- --
Brian
Support EFF! http://www.eff.org/
I'm surprised by the number of people who are taking up the side of the RIAA, Sen. Hollings, etc. and who also advocate system's administration through lies and deception. I'd be most interested in a solution that allows users the most freedom possible. As the prior poster said, don't be the police. It sounds like you don't have the authority to be the police anyway. Instead, let users police themselves, but at the same time we do need to recognize that users have LESS freedom if their network is grinding to a halt due to the massive bandwidth consumption of others. Try to find the minimum set of restrictions that you can tell people about in the open (without deceit/lies) and that will allow for normal educational uses to be unimpeded. This might include:
1) Asking for more bandwidth, which if you got, might solve everything with no restrictions on users.
2) Consider limiting bandwidth consumption by a workstation or blocking some ports only during school hours. Try to allow teachers/students unlimited access before school, during lunch, and after school. This would be unlikely to impede any classroom instructional use. If you go with some bandwidth limits, don't dial it down to a trickle as some have advised, but just enough to keep the network running smoothly.
3) Write a memo providing a balanced description of the situation. That is, don't say, "File-sharing is illegal, STOP!" but instead try, "File-sharing can consume a lot of bandwidth, which we have in a limited amount, and there can be legal ramifications if these services are abused." Ask people to examine their use and to make adjustments based on your concerns.
4) Gather some hard data (invading people's privacy as little as possible!) to find out what workstations, programs, or times of day are the biggest problems. Then try to think creatively about how to alleviate those problems with the least restrictive measures. This will make you a hero.
You get the idea by now... Good luck.
Slashdot Mirror
Someone has already made a much better chart of how various Linux browsers do at various banks around the world. Check out the site.
The chart lists 302 banks in 32 countries and indicates whether someone has reported success with Netscape 4, Netscape 6/7, Mozilla, Galeon, Konquerer 2, Konqueror 3, Opera, and Elinks.
Help him fill in the chart if you have info on an unlisted bank or on a browser for a listed bank by e-mailing Evan
Why read a lousy Google/Altavista translation, when the site has an English version?
It should be relatively easy to get people to start using PGP to encrypt all of their internal e-mails. So long as you can switch everyone to Mozilla or Netscape as their e-mail program of choice, then the Enigmail plugin makes using GPG or PGP encryption a breeze, and it can be easily set up to automatically ask for your password every time. That would be the only difficult part: Getting people to choose decent passwords and remembering them...but if you're in IT, you've faced that problem before.
Brian
They already have a system for accepting donations.
Go here to donate by credit card or mail.
They also provide a chart of their donations over the last year here.
BWCarver -- 1301 work units and counting...
You can see a picture of the New Zaurus at the following link.
Brian
From the FAQ about MacArthur Fellows:
So calling them "Genius Grants" is apparently not quite right.
Brian
You're basically talking about wireless NetZero. Even they have started charging a monthly fee for more than nominal monthly access. As others have said, ad-based revenue models don't work when you're giving out a service of value. The only reason anyone listened to such dot-coms during the boom was a belief that we were in a virtual "land-rush" where gaining users was all-important. Taking losses to build your user base was acceptable, but EVEN THEN the idea was to reach a critical mass and then find a way to make money off of these users. Most ran out of cash first...
Consider the following alternative: Offer a wireless access point and give people their first month free at sign-up. Afterwards charge a small $4.95-$9.95 monthly charge for unlimited usage and maybe also offer a $1-$2/day option for the occasional user/out-of-town businessman that just drops in.
Giving people something for free to get them hooked is a tried and true business method. Ask your local drug dealer. But make it a clearly limited free trial or you'll be another dot-bust.
Brian
I don't understand.
My haiku might not be great.
But why call it "troll"?
Brian
Haikus won't stop spam
no more than ISPs will
stop RIAA
Brian
I'd rather see some e-mail addresses of people we could write there. The Slashdot Effect on someone's inbox is likely a great way of making someone see that allowing a little interview isn't nearly as problematic as dealing with thousands of angry nerds.
Brian
I submitted this story and I wrote that last line not to imply anything in particular. I just figured if I included some sort of summary of what you'd find there then it'd be more likely to be accepted than rejected. So there's my dark motivation...
But, to address your statement, I think I would agree that it helps immensely to be a lawyer to speak with authority on legal issues, but I would never say that one must be a lawyer "to convincingly argue one's position". I am not a lawyer, and I feel I could give numerous arguments against the DMCA that many would find quite convincing. If I were a lawyer and were better versed in the relevant legal issues, I believe I could give even better or even more convincing arguments, or better yet, arguments that a court would accept, not just my neighbor.
Some legal training might help you not jump to conclusions about the implications of other's statements!
Brian
That was the quote that caught my eye too. Microsoft just got through funding ADTM to say OSS is inherently insecure due to publishing the code, and they said the same thing recently in the news, now all of the sudden, we can publish the source to our new secure system and it will be even MORE secure than what we're doing now. Hmmmm... sounds to me like OSS is not inherently insecure after all. This is the scariest piece of news I've seen in a while. This is a way to turn the general-purpose computer into an X-box that will only run Genuine Microsoft(TM) software and simultaneously appease the RIAA/MPAA crowd. These controls don't empower the user, they limit him. Only freedom truly empowers the user. Buy yourself a general-purpose computer while you still can folks...
Whoa there! I feel like /. has been overrun by Tivo employees or something with all the gushing going on in this thread. ("Cult" of Tivo indeed!) Let's try to remember:
1) Tivo forcing users to record programs
2) The Privacy Foundation's report on Tivo points out that
a) Your Tivo serial number is sent multiple times during each phone call and there is no way to guarantee data is truly treated anonymously except to trust Tivo.
b) Tivo's definition of "personal" information is significantly more narrow than the average privacy policy reader would assume, and so guarantees about your "personal" information are hollow.
c) Tivo suggests that the viewing information is never transmitted. In fact, all of the constituent pieces of the personal viewing information are transmitted to TiVo's computers.
d) TiVo should disclose that their customer-identified diagnostic log can indicate when the TiVo remote control was in use.
3) Anyone heard of Replay TV here? They are actively fighting Hollywood to defend your rights. When a judge tried to force them to spy on users, they fought it. When Hollywood said users shouldn't be allowed to send programs to other devices, they fought it. When the networks said your skipping commercials was "theft", they fought it. I think a company that does all this for the privacy and rights of its users deserves our support (or at least a MENTION on this page).
Brian
Support EFF! http://www.eff.org
They're defending YOUR rights online!
The fallacy the poster had in mind was that of "False dilemma". Also, you are correct that the Law of the Excluded Middle is a logical truth (in most systems of logic, though it is denied in intuitionist logics and of course in n-valued logics, where n>2.)
The best news about this is that its pre-installed linux on a low-cost box. The installation process, no matter how easy, is a big hurdle for many novice computer users. They use whatever came on the machine for three to five years and then they buy a new computer and use whatever comes on that one, etc. Now, is Wal-Mart and Lindows perfect? No. Not at all, but if this is even slightly successful we may be able to get Best Buy and Circuit City and so on to start offering a pre-installed Red Hat/Mandrake/SuSE option and THEN comes the revolution baby... When you walk in and start looking at HP/Compaq computers in Best Buy and the first question the sales rep asks you is, "Are you interested in an HP with Windows or Linux on it?" then things will have drastically changed. I look forward to it.
It was Plato, not Aristotle who had the tri-partite theory of the soul. Also, the part you refer to as "Honor" was more often referred to as "Spirit", though a soldier's courage was a typical example of the spirt-part taking the lead. Also, Plato thought the soul was only in balance when Reason led the way. I'm not sure he ever speculated on what % of people were controlled primarily by appetite, but 80% would be a sorely pessimistic estimate. (Not saying that it couldn't be true!) Also, while I agree it is sad that John Carroll can't seem to imagine someone caring for things other than personal gain, it seems to me that the more relevant criticism of his article is how sorely he has misunderstood Free software and open source software, constantly misusing the terms and making false assumptions about all such software being zero-cost.
Hello, John Carroll, author of "The very real limitations of open source" has to be one of the least informed commentators I have ever read on ZDNet. I would recommend ZDNet think twice about asking him to write again, as he obviously doesn't care enough about his writing to do even the most basic fact checking. He makes so many confused off-base uses of the terms "Free" software and "open-source" that he illustrates beyond a doubt that he has no idea what he is talking about. His argument seems to be aimed at the conclusion that open source software is not a viable option for governments. He bases this conclusion on the false premise that open source software is cost-free and hence that there is and could be no reliable incentive to produce it. Tell this to the IBM programmers who are paid to work on open source projects (IBM says they have already invested 1 Billion, with a "B", dollars in linux) or the host of other companies like Sun, currently paying programmers to work on open source projects. As far as governments go, they have numerous reasons of principle to opt for open source software that the Congressman Villanueva of Peru outlined so brilliantly recently. The government does not have to rely on hobbyists to get the open source software it wants. They can obviously choose to PAY programmers to work on the open source software they want. The thing is, they won't have to, because the lure of government contracts will spur innovative software companies to offer open source solutions to the governments that seek them. Besides all this, it is simply false that all open software must be be zero-cost. In fact, much of it isn't, which your author would have known had he half a clue what he was talking about. Also, your author's arrogrant assumption that only 5-10% of programmers have contributed to an open source project is pure speculation. It is really the most confused piece of writing I have ever seen on ZDNet. If ZDNet hopes to continue being a reliable source of information to the computing world, I recommend they offer someone in the free software community like Richard Stallman, Eric Raymond, Alan Cox, etc the opportunity to respond to this drivel by John Carroll to set the record straight. -- Brian W. Carver Support EFF! http://www.eff.org/ They're defending YOUR rights online.
In telling them about a bad link on their site, I got a bounced message from another bogus e-mail address on that site. Wow. It's almost like an April Fool's hoax! pr@turbolinux.com SMTP error from remote mailer after RCPT TO:: host mail.turbolinux.com [207.88.91.6]: 550 ... User unknown
Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 07:35:34 -0700
To: pr@turbolinux.com
Subject: Bad Link
At: http://unitedlinux.com/en/press/press_releases/uni ted_linux.html
under "Participation and Availability" (near the bottom) the link to
TurboLinux is actually a mailto:unitedlinux@suse.com
You might want to get this fixed.
- --
Brian
Support EFF! http://www.eff.org/
I'm surprised by the number of people who are taking up the side of the RIAA, Sen. Hollings, etc. and who also advocate system's administration through lies and deception. I'd be most interested in a solution that allows users the most freedom possible. As the prior poster said, don't be the police. It sounds like you don't have the authority to be the police anyway. Instead, let users police themselves, but at the same time we do need to recognize that users have LESS freedom if their network is grinding to a halt due to the massive bandwidth consumption of others. Try to find the minimum set of restrictions that you can tell people about in the open (without deceit/lies) and that will allow for normal educational uses to be unimpeded. This might include: 1) Asking for more bandwidth, which if you got, might solve everything with no restrictions on users. 2) Consider limiting bandwidth consumption by a workstation or blocking some ports only during school hours. Try to allow teachers/students unlimited access before school, during lunch, and after school. This would be unlikely to impede any classroom instructional use. If you go with some bandwidth limits, don't dial it down to a trickle as some have advised, but just enough to keep the network running smoothly. 3) Write a memo providing a balanced description of the situation. That is, don't say, "File-sharing is illegal, STOP!" but instead try, "File-sharing can consume a lot of bandwidth, which we have in a limited amount, and there can be legal ramifications if these services are abused." Ask people to examine their use and to make adjustments based on your concerns. 4) Gather some hard data (invading people's privacy as little as possible!) to find out what workstations, programs, or times of day are the biggest problems. Then try to think creatively about how to alleviate those problems with the least restrictive measures. This will make you a hero. You get the idea by now... Good luck.