I've never understood why browsers are designed the way they are. Basically, all HTML translation capability is built in to the browser itself, meaning that when new features come out you need to download a new !@#$% browser.
Why? Browsers are, for the most part, free these days. There's no competitive advantage for that.
If the browser were _modular_, with the display engine as part of the browser, but the information on all the tags and extras as a series of plugins -- you'd be able to add support for new HTML code ON THE FLY.
That's how XML is kind of supposed to work, isn't it?
I think what we need is a plugin-centric browser... one with a basic display engine that knows how to draw/display stuff, but doesn't come with any specific information. Then plugins with that information -- plugins that can be updated on the fly, or replaced when needed -- are added, and voia! Superbrowser!
So then you get your HTML 4.0, Cascading Stylesheet, XML, and proprietary tag support whenever you need to.
Oh, and you can have a program that sets your browser identification as whatever the hell you want it to say, or even change it on the fly.
it's not that my post came first, because #8 is of course after #6, it's that it _appeared_ before #6 on the list. I don't know why that is, just as I don't know why at one point my post (#8) appeared to be the first one on the list. I suspect it's some weird after affect of all this moderation/karma/metamoderation stuff.
Or perhaps it's a distortion in the space/time continuum.
My post appeared first at #3 or 4... for some reason, for a period of time it was actually the FIRST post you'd see on the list... and now it's here. All of the posts appear to fluctuate somewhat, I don't know why, but perhaps one of the Slashdot Engineers can explain it.
John Katz, like many strong-opinioned people, has fallen into a classic and STUPID trap, and for some reason it always really pisses me off.
Katz' column can be distilled into the following statement:
"Christians condemn video games as violence, but they've put out a Christian-themed violent video game that they say is ok because it's only killing 'bad people.' This is hypocritical but they don't see it and it's really funny."
What Katz ignores, ignores, IGNORES is the fallacy that is implied by the above statement. The fallacy is as follows:
"All Christians have exactly the same views, and all those views are terribly narrow-minded."
This statement is so laughably untrue that I don't even know where to begin.
Katz, where do you get this view? Do you really think there are no Christians who enjoy a good game of Doom? Do you really think there are no Christians who think that the idea of a link between video games and violence is, to put it bluntly, just plain STUPID?
Perhaps he's not aware of the strong (but unknown) anti-athoritarian movement in various branches of Christianity? Of course he is. And why is that? Because Katz, like many people, has fallen victim to the same source of information he whined about during the wake of the Columbine massacre:
The press.
The press, which has proven itself to be nothing more than a ratings seeking sensationalist group anyway. The press, which immediately following the Columbine massacre branded all internet geeks as bomb wielding withdrawn psychopaths, which branded goth's (of all people) as bloodthirsty ticking time bombs ready to take out a High School because they wear black trenchcoats and sometimes listen to German Industrial Bands and Marilyn Manson.
Yes, this press ALSO tends to focus only on the right-wing, conservative Christian Movement. And do you really think they do so for ANY OTHER REASON than the fact that the Right-Wing Christian Movement equals RATINGS?
So do you think, perhaps, that the entire sum of Christianity just MIGHT NOT be represented in a balanced manner on the news?
OF COURSE NOT. Just like any ideology, only the "exciting" part is reported in the Top Stories. Christians who leave people alone and volunteer in the community and do nice things for people are BORING and get IGNORED. Christians who like to play video games and believe in Free Speech and think of Women as Equals, rather than Objects, are BORING and get IGNORED.
So when a bunch of Christians come out with a violent computer game with a Christian theme, Katz cannot CONCEIVE of a group of Christians who wouldn't have a problem with that. Obviously, it's the same right-wing group that hates women and blame everything on the homosexual community and believe Clinton is the AntiChrist and the Internet is Satan's Tool.
Of course, Katz is also very pithy when he states that "religion and freedom don't get along."
Here's a clue: When religion is used as a method of SOCIAL CONTROL, it doesn't get along with ANYTHING. But anyone who has any kind of religious faith -- regardless of what it is, Christian, Judaism, Moslem, Buddhist, whatever -- will tell you that if it's being used as a form of social control, it ceases to be a religion.
Have you ever read Tosltoy? He's a Christian _Anarchist_. Do you admire Dr. Martin Luther King? He was a Minister, you know. He didn't leave the faith to start a civil rights movement. (Oh, and he even got on TV a few times, without being a conservative prick.)
Are you familiar with the Abolitionist movement in the pre-civil war era? Religious based. Familiar with a guy named Mahatma Ghandi? Well, he certainly was a religious leader -- oh, but he wasn't a Christian, so I guess that doesn't count.
This game seems unbelievably silly, and I have no interest in playing it -- I'd rather play one where I _can_ see the body parts fly apart -- but I don't see where you get off beating all Christians with the "Right Wing Idiot" stick. Game over, insert two tokens to play again...
Or, rather, the Industry doesn't care one way or the other.
The Computer Industry doesn't make it's money off of freedom of speech, it makes it's money off of computers that push data around. Whether that data is regulated is irrelevant, because regulated data needs computers to push it around just as much as unregulated data.
Since the industry makes money either way, they don't care. And if the industry doesn't care, it will always make nice noises at the powers that be, because then life is better for the industry.
Companies exist for one reason: to make money. Mitch Kapor may be very ardent about free speech, but he is not now nor has he ever been Lotus Personified. Even if he were still in Lotus that would be Lotus' stance, and he would be expected to back it up publicly or probably lose his job.
Companies only weigh in for rights when it affects their bottom line. That's why corporations are so gung-ho about loosening restrictions in encryption -- they want to sell it. That's why corporations are so gung-ho about whether or not the Govt should reign in Microsoft -- either they'll make more money without Microsoft, or they'll make more money WITH Microsoft.
That's also why Corporations are so hot on doing business in China, despite China's atrocious record on human rights -- they can make money in China. That's also why Corporations fought bitterly against Apartheid Sanctions.
Corporations see the green before anything else. It makes me sick, but that's the way it is.
So if Australia wants to censor the internet, why not? Unless you're an ISP, it doesn't affect your bottom line. So the Computer Industry is fully behind Censorship, as long as they keep making money...
It's a thing that holds stuff for another thing, until the other thing is ready to act on the stuff, then the first thing sends the stuff to the second thing, and it's done.
I'm a big fan of the idea behind open source software, and I do play around with Linux, but most of my time is spent with "closed source" operating systems. Due to the viral nature of many open source licenses -- most notably the GPL -- it seems like there should be a way to increase the amount of open source software on proprietary platforms, which would (in theory) make proprietary systems more open and strengthen open source software in general.
Didn't the courts already rule that AOL can't own the phrase "You've got mail"? I seem to recall reading that here in/.
If that's true, then there's no way they can sue someone for using a phrase that is derived from something they don't have the right to enforce as a trademark.
So I think that in return, the lady being sued should countersue for a whopping big sum of money. Seems fair to me.
I have a friend who belongs to a few racist watch groups (groups that monitor the ongoings of the Aryan Nation, KKK, etc.) and at one point she said I should look on the KKK's web site, b/c apparently they have a list of "approved" and "unapproved" muzik for Good White Folk (TM) that was apparently, er, poorly researched.:-) At any rate, not having any idea where to look, I decided to just type in www.kkk.com to see what would happen. Wouldn't you know it, the NAACP web site came up! I couldn't stop laughing. Imagine a white supremecist trolling on the web, looking for the KKK's home page and finding the NAACP staring them in the face. Heh.
Sadly, they don't apparently own the kkk.com domain name any more -- it's now run by some yahoo who wants to create a KKK museum.
Personally, I don't think you can consider the buying of these domain names cybersquatting so long as the URL is redirected to something relevant. I think it's very, very smart for the NAACP and other groups to be doing this.
Of course, at some point someone I don't like will do it to someone I do -- I suppose it's entirely possible that the Republican Right will buy the domain name anarchy.com...
I have a friend who belongs to a few racist watch groups (groups that monitor the ongoings of the Aryan Nation, KKK, etc.) and at one point she said I should look on the KKK's web site, b/c apparently they have a list of "approved" and "unapproved" muzik for Good White Folk (TM) that was apparently, er, poorly researched.:-) At any rate, not having any idea where to look, I decided to just type in www.kkk.com to see what would happen. Wouldn't you know it, the NAACP web site came up! I couldn't stop laughing. Imagine a white supremecist trolling on the web, looking for the KKK's home page and finding the NAACP staring them in the face. Heh.
Sadly, they don't apparently own the kkk.com domain name any more -- it's now run by some yahoo who wants to create a KKK museum.
Personally, I don't think you can consider the buying of these domain names cybersquatting so long as the URL is redirected to something relevant. I think it's very, very smart for the NAACP and other groups to be doing this.
Of course, at some point someone I don't like will do it to someone I do -- I suppose it's entirely possible that the Republican Right will buy the domain name anarchy.com...
IBM really just wants those of us who admire OS/2 to go away. We don't, and it pisses them off to no end. While Microsoft tries endlessly to bribe people into writing false testimony about their operating systems, IBM has to pretend they don't hear us. It must be embarrassing to be a multibillion dollar company who can't even KILL OFF an operating system properly.
I doubt OS/2 is quite dead yet, but this is certainly a very, very disappointing event to those of us who still use it.
On the other had, I guess this is the first time OS/2 has ever received the front-page Slashdot treatment. Too bad it had to be such bad news before Slashdot would recognize it...
Basically, while we all sit around and criticize these companies for throwing their weight around on smaller companies (don't get me wrong, I do it too), a company really has no other choice if they want to protect their trademark. According to corporate law, if someone can prove that you don't enforce your trademark, it becomes dilluted and your right to use it is weakened.
So a company with a trademark must use draconian measures of enforcement when defending their trademark -- they have no choice if they want to prove that to a court that they're enforcing it. And since cybersquatting has been a problem in the past, companies are probably advised by their lawyers that they MUST track down ANY potential use of their trademarked name, even in situations where it won't apply.
Of course, that means nothing to the poor small business owner (or private owner) who coincidentally is using a name that has been trademarked. It's certainly not fair to them at all -- and they don't really have the funds to defend against such matters, nine times out of ten.
It seems like a situation where no one can really win. If a company wants to retain the rights of their trademark, they have to crack down in every situation (which is why Red Hat is doing what they're doing these days). On the other hand, there's no reason why someone in a business completely unrelated to the trademark should ever have to be pushed around by a corporations legal teams.
The only way out of this is to either a) strengthen the rights of the people holding the trademark, so they don't have to enforce it all the time, or b) weaken the power of trademarks significantly, or even abolish it all together, so that no one can lay any kind of legal claim to a word or a phrase.
Either option has its problems, but I think that abolishing trademark would be better than strengthening it -- if it were strengthened, companies would probably find it more "convenient" to force people who had trademarked words in their domain names to hand them over, even if the domain names were used in a way completely unrelated to the trademark itself. If that were the case, sites like ajax.org would have been instantly overrun and they would have had no legal recourse whatsoever.
Ladies and gentlemen, we apologize for this simple misunderstanding, but apparently the $NSAKEY was not, I repeat, was NOT, an NSA backdoor. After a thorough investigation and careful examination of all facts, it turns out that $NSAKEY was actually a weather balloon flying over some swamp gasses.
Previous reports to the contrary are false. Indeed, they never happened. In fact, I don't remember any previous reports to the contrary. In truth, I don't even know why I'm telling you any of this, because we have received no credible reports of an NSA Backdoor in any windows platform.
Next week we will start investigating reports that farmers are finding strong encryption algorithms burned into their crop fields. Until we discover more about this pheonomena, we are banning all crop exports immediately and reclassifying corn, wheat, and other grains as munitiions.
When you've had the kind of career he has, doing all the serious acting he has, and suddenly you're remembered only for playing a Jedi Knight -- and the role has you speaking a whole lot of mumbo jumbo that is, at times, very trite -- you're going to be bitter.
"Hi Obi-Wan!"
"My name is not Obi-Wan."
"You're a great actor!"
"What have you seen me do?"
"Uhh... Obi-Wan Kenobi!"
*sound of molars grinding and head striking wall repeatedly*
Actors just can't help being upset about things like that. It may seem stupid to the casual observer, but when you spend your entire life doing theater full time and then in the later stages of it you're remembered only for one role -- in a movie that's admittedly cool, but definately NOT your best work -- it will get to you.
their actions when sent before meta-moderators. A Meta-moderator may disagree with a moderators actions, but that doesn't necessarily mean that action was done maliciously.
I suspect meta-moderators will be every bit as susceptible to abuse of power as regular moderators are. Who watches the watchers who are watching the watchmen?
No, I understand the difference between Free Software and the GPL very well. The GPL is free software, not all free software is GPL'd. I get that. I am responding mostly to all the people who are screaming "GPL GPL GPL" at the top of their lungs without acknowledging that they're singling out Caldera for a practice that is not terribly uncommon for most Linux distros.
For example, most Linux distros include the linux version of Netscape Communicator, which isn't free software at all -- it's not even open source, as far as I know! _Mozilla_ is, but the current non-beta releases of NS Communicator are simply "free beer", not "free speech."
I get the notion that people want them to releast the code under the GPL because I'm seeing posts that say "yet another stupid license -- why can't they just release under the GPL and be done with it!" and "Caldera will never get the support of the Linux community until they release software under the GPL."
Caldera seems to routinely get a lot of flack from the Linux community because it doesn't include 100% GPL'd software in its distribution. As far as I know, however, only Red Hat and one other (Debian? I think) can actually make that claim. So why is Caldera singled out?
So far, in the (few) responses to this thread, there has been one wholeheartedly positive response and the rest have ranged from "good but not enough" to "oh no it's the Linux Micro$oft, screw 'em, tattoo 'em, watch 'em burn."
Why?
Caldera is distributing their installer under something than the GPL. Heavens! Are you planning to go on a licensing ethnic cleansing rampage? Shall we omit every piece of software that isn't GPL'd? Well, say good-bye to Perl (Artistic) and XFree86 (can't remember that one). Don't bother ever trying to use WINE, because it ain't GPL'd! While we're at it, stop using Netscape immediately, because the source is not avaialable -- it's just free beer. And don't bother using Mozilla when it comes out, because it's distributed under the MozPL...
Now, I'm a big fan of the GPL -- I think it's probably one of the most important licenses out there today -- and I'm certainly happier when a software license is legitimately free software instead of merely "open source" (and there is a difference, yes there is). But the fact remains that long before corporate america became interested in Linux, long before Eric Raymond wrote "The Cathedral and the Bazzar," way back when, there were Linux users who didn't want to distribute their software under the GPL -- for whatever reason -- and chose another license. So it seems to me that the "GPL or die" mentality is simply not possible to apply consistently if you're using Linux.
Some companies seem to have very strong fears as to whether or not the GPL is a good license to use ALL THE TIME, and they're trying to experiment with others that provide many of the same benefits. Some of the licenses are a joke (I consider Apples "open source" license fairly useless, even today) and others need work (TollTech's QT license needed work, and still may need work) but are not horrible. The fact that a great many companies are even considering revealing their source code is something I consider nothing short of amazing, especially considering the state of the software industry at large (UCITA -- need I say more?)
This is not worth a holy war. It's just not worth it. Caldera makes a decent distribution for those of us who don't have the time to become Linux gurus, and if they haven't gone the 100% free software route yet, well, blasting them every time they come close but don't go far enough isn't going to make it happen. So calm down, take a deep breath, and go play with the latest kernel release.
Whenever you download an MTVMP3 (catchy, ain't it)? You will start to hear the song, but it will be overlaid with giggling teenage girls requesting the song, along with some frat guy talking about how "that song rawks", and halfway through the song some halfwit Veejay (MP3jay) will stop the song and suddenly you'll be taken to an excerpt of MTV's "the real world."
And a 2:20 song will suddenly be an 8 mb download.
I freakin' can't wait. The revolution will be pre-packaged and sold in styrofoam containers.
Dataquest isn't really a group I consider a purveyor of reliable information. Just look at their past predictions on the growth of NT (They've been wrong a LOT). For a long time they were considered a mouthpiece for MS products.
It's not that this is not good news for Linux users -- it's definately a sign that the winds of public opinion are changing direction. It's just that Dataquest reports tend to be reflective of what is trendy and buzzworthy, not necessarily what is statistically sound.
I took Sun Tzu's challenge and decided to do my own Slashdot Parody (for the record, I thought HashSnot was pretty amusing -- especially the concept of the Amish having web sites -- but I can't resist challenges like this.
Slashdot Mirror
I've never understood why browsers are designed the way they are. Basically, all HTML translation capability is built in to the browser itself, meaning that when new features come out you need to download a new !@#$% browser.
Why? Browsers are, for the most part, free these days. There's no competitive advantage for that.
If the browser were _modular_, with the display engine as part of the browser, but the information on all the tags and extras as a series of plugins -- you'd be able to add support for new HTML code ON THE FLY.
That's how XML is kind of supposed to work, isn't it?
I think what we need is a plugin-centric browser... one with a basic display engine that knows how to draw/display stuff, but doesn't come with any specific information. Then plugins with that information -- plugins that can be updated on the fly, or replaced when needed -- are added, and voia! Superbrowser!
So then you get your HTML 4.0, Cascading Stylesheet, XML, and proprietary tag support whenever you need to.
Oh, and you can have a program that sets your browser identification as whatever the hell you want it to say, or even change it on the fly.
Just a thought...
it's not that my post came first, because #8 is of course after #6, it's that it _appeared_ before #6 on the list. I don't know why that is, just as I don't know why at one point my post (#8) appeared to be the first one on the list. I suspect it's some weird after affect of all this moderation/karma/metamoderation stuff.
Or perhaps it's a distortion in the space/time continuum.
My post appeared first at #3 or 4... for some reason, for a period of time it was actually the FIRST post you'd see on the list... and now it's here. All of the posts appear to fluctuate somewhat, I don't know why, but perhaps one of the Slashdot Engineers can explain it.
From the article:
---
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com." The purpose of that site was not known.
---
:-)
I wonder if the author did that on purpose, or if it was a happy coincidence?
John Katz, like many strong-opinioned people, has fallen into a classic and STUPID trap, and for some reason it always really pisses me off.
Katz' column can be distilled into the following statement:
"Christians condemn video games as violence, but they've put out a Christian-themed violent video game that they say is ok because it's only killing 'bad people.' This is hypocritical but they don't see it and it's really funny."
What Katz ignores, ignores, IGNORES is the fallacy that is implied by the above statement. The fallacy is as follows:
"All Christians have exactly the same views, and all those views are terribly narrow-minded."
This statement is so laughably untrue that I don't even know where to begin.
Katz, where do you get this view? Do you really think there are no Christians who enjoy a good game of Doom? Do you really think there are no Christians who think that the idea of a link between video games and violence is, to put it bluntly, just plain STUPID?
Perhaps he's not aware of the strong (but unknown) anti-athoritarian movement in various branches of Christianity? Of course he is. And why is that? Because Katz, like many people, has fallen victim to the same source of information he whined about during the wake of the Columbine massacre:
The press.
The press, which has proven itself to be nothing more than a ratings seeking sensationalist group anyway. The press, which immediately following the Columbine massacre branded all internet geeks as bomb wielding withdrawn psychopaths, which branded goth's (of all people) as bloodthirsty ticking time bombs ready to take out a High School because they wear black trenchcoats and sometimes listen to German Industrial Bands and Marilyn Manson.
Yes, this press ALSO tends to focus only on the right-wing, conservative Christian Movement. And do you really think they do so for ANY OTHER REASON than the fact that the Right-Wing Christian Movement equals RATINGS?
So do you think, perhaps, that the entire sum of Christianity just MIGHT NOT be represented in a balanced manner on the news?
OF COURSE NOT. Just like any ideology, only the "exciting" part is reported in the Top Stories. Christians who leave people alone and volunteer in the community and do nice things for people are BORING and get IGNORED. Christians who like to play video games and believe in Free Speech and think of Women as Equals, rather than Objects, are BORING and get IGNORED.
So when a bunch of Christians come out with a violent computer game with a Christian theme, Katz cannot CONCEIVE of a group of Christians who wouldn't have a problem with that. Obviously, it's the same right-wing group that hates women and blame everything on the homosexual community and believe Clinton is the AntiChrist and the Internet is Satan's Tool.
Of course, Katz is also very pithy when he states that "religion and freedom don't get along."
Here's a clue: When religion is used as a method of SOCIAL CONTROL, it doesn't get along with ANYTHING. But anyone who has any kind of religious faith -- regardless of what it is, Christian, Judaism, Moslem, Buddhist, whatever -- will tell you that if it's being used as a form of social control, it ceases to be a religion.
Have you ever read Tosltoy? He's a Christian _Anarchist_. Do you admire Dr. Martin Luther King? He was a Minister, you know. He didn't leave the faith to start a civil rights movement. (Oh, and he even got on TV a few times, without being a conservative prick.)
Are you familiar with the Abolitionist movement in the pre-civil war era? Religious based. Familiar with a guy named Mahatma Ghandi? Well, he certainly was a religious leader -- oh, but he wasn't a Christian, so I guess that doesn't count.
This game seems unbelievably silly, and I have no interest in playing it -- I'd rather play one where I _can_ see the body parts fly apart -- but I don't see where you get off beating all Christians with the "Right Wing Idiot" stick. Game over, insert two tokens to play again...
Or, rather, the Industry doesn't care one way or the other.
The Computer Industry doesn't make it's money off of freedom of speech, it makes it's money off of computers that push data around. Whether that data is regulated is irrelevant, because regulated data needs computers to push it around just as much as unregulated data.
Since the industry makes money either way, they don't care. And if the industry doesn't care, it will always make nice noises at the powers that be, because then life is better for the industry.
Companies exist for one reason: to make money. Mitch Kapor may be very ardent about free speech, but he is not now nor has he ever been Lotus Personified. Even if he were still in Lotus that would be Lotus' stance, and he would be expected to back it up publicly or probably lose his job.
Companies only weigh in for rights when it affects their bottom line. That's why corporations are so gung-ho about loosening restrictions in encryption -- they want to sell it. That's why corporations are so gung-ho about whether or not the Govt should reign in Microsoft -- either they'll make more money without Microsoft, or they'll make more money WITH Microsoft.
That's also why Corporations are so hot on doing business in China, despite China's atrocious record on human rights -- they can make money in China. That's also why Corporations fought bitterly against Apartheid Sanctions.
Corporations see the green before anything else. It makes me sick, but that's the way it is.
So if Australia wants to censor the internet, why not? Unless you're an ISP, it doesn't affect your bottom line. So the Computer Industry is fully behind Censorship, as long as they keep making money...
It's a thing that holds stuff for another thing, until the other thing is ready to act on the stuff, then the first thing sends the stuff to the second thing, and it's done.
:)
Yes, I am a tech writer.
I'm a big fan of the idea behind open source software, and I do play around with Linux, but most of my time is spent with "closed source" operating systems. Due to the viral nature of many open source licenses -- most notably the GPL -- it seems like there should be a way to increase the amount of open source software on proprietary platforms, which would (in theory) make proprietary systems more open and strengthen open source software in general.
How would you suggest going about doing this?
Didn't the courts already rule that AOL can't own the phrase "You've got mail"? I seem to recall reading that here in /.
If that's true, then there's no way they can sue someone for using a phrase that is derived from something they don't have the right to enforce as a trademark.
So I think that in return, the lady being sued should countersue for a whopping big sum of money. Seems fair to me.
I only hope I can get one (and an electronic thumb) before the Vogons clear out our planet in order to make way for a new interstellar bypass...
I've been trying to learn to fly, but I don't have the whole "missing the ground" thing down yet.
Don't know what happened, but it wasn't on purpose...
I have a friend who belongs to a few racist watch groups (groups that monitor the ongoings of the Aryan Nation, KKK, etc.) and at one point she said I should look on the KKK's web site, b/c apparently they have a list of "approved" and "unapproved" muzik for Good White Folk (TM) that was apparently, er, poorly researched. :-) At any rate, not having any idea where to look, I decided to just type in www.kkk.com to see what would happen. Wouldn't you know it, the NAACP web site came up! I couldn't stop laughing. Imagine a white supremecist trolling on the web, looking for the KKK's home page and finding the NAACP staring them in the face. Heh.
Sadly, they don't apparently own the kkk.com domain name any more -- it's now run by some yahoo who wants to create a KKK museum.
Personally, I don't think you can consider the buying of these domain names cybersquatting so long as the URL is redirected to something relevant. I think it's very, very smart for the NAACP and other groups to be doing this.
Of course, at some point someone I don't like will do it to someone I do -- I suppose it's entirely possible that the Republican Right will buy the domain name anarchy.com...
I have a friend who belongs to a few racist watch groups (groups that monitor the ongoings of the Aryan Nation, KKK, etc.) and at one point she said I should look on the KKK's web site, b/c apparently they have a list of "approved" and "unapproved" muzik for Good White Folk (TM) that was apparently, er, poorly researched. :-) At any rate, not having any idea where to look, I decided to just type in www.kkk.com to see what would happen. Wouldn't you know it, the NAACP web site came up! I couldn't stop laughing. Imagine a white supremecist trolling on the web, looking for the KKK's home page and finding the NAACP staring them in the face. Heh.
Sadly, they don't apparently own the kkk.com domain name any more -- it's now run by some yahoo who wants to create a KKK museum.
Personally, I don't think you can consider the buying of these domain names cybersquatting so long as the URL is redirected to something relevant. I think it's very, very smart for the NAACP and other groups to be doing this.
Of course, at some point someone I don't like will do it to someone I do -- I suppose it's entirely possible that the Republican Right will buy the domain name anarchy.com...
IBM really just wants those of us who admire OS/2 to go away. We don't, and it pisses them off to no end. While Microsoft tries endlessly to bribe people into writing false testimony about their operating systems, IBM has to pretend they don't hear us. It must be embarrassing to be a multibillion dollar company who can't even KILL OFF an operating system properly.
I doubt OS/2 is quite dead yet, but this is certainly a very, very disappointing event to those of us who still use it.
On the other had, I guess this is the first time OS/2 has ever received the front-page Slashdot treatment. Too bad it had to be such bad news before Slashdot would recognize it...
but I knew what you meant.
Basically, while we all sit around and criticize these companies for throwing their weight around on smaller companies (don't get me wrong, I do it too), a company really has no other choice if they want to protect their trademark. According to corporate law, if someone can prove that you don't enforce your trademark, it becomes dilluted and your right to use it is weakened.
So a company with a trademark must use draconian measures of enforcement when defending their trademark -- they have no choice if they want to prove that to a court that they're enforcing it. And since cybersquatting has been a problem in the past, companies are probably advised by their lawyers that they MUST track down ANY potential use of their trademarked name, even in situations where it won't apply.
Of course, that means nothing to the poor small business owner (or private owner) who coincidentally is using a name that has been trademarked. It's certainly not fair to them at all -- and they don't really have the funds to defend against such matters, nine times out of ten.
It seems like a situation where no one can really win. If a company wants to retain the rights of their trademark, they have to crack down in every situation (which is why Red Hat is doing what they're doing these days). On the other hand, there's no reason why someone in a business completely unrelated to the trademark should ever have to be pushed around by a corporations legal teams.
The only way out of this is to either a) strengthen the rights of the people holding the trademark, so they don't have to enforce it all the time, or b) weaken the power of trademarks significantly, or even abolish it all together, so that no one can lay any kind of legal claim to a word or a phrase.
Either option has its problems, but I think that abolishing trademark would be better than strengthening it -- if it were strengthened, companies would probably find it more "convenient" to force people who had trademarked words in their domain names to hand them over, even if the domain names were used in a way completely unrelated to the trademark itself. If that were the case, sites like ajax.org would have been instantly overrun and they would have had no legal recourse whatsoever.
Hope that wasn't too disjointed...
Ladies and gentlemen, we apologize for this simple misunderstanding, but apparently the $NSAKEY was not, I repeat, was NOT, an NSA backdoor. After a thorough investigation and careful examination of all facts, it turns out that $NSAKEY was actually a weather balloon flying over some swamp gasses.
Previous reports to the contrary are false. Indeed, they never happened. In fact, I don't remember any previous reports to the contrary. In truth, I don't even know why I'm telling you any of this, because we have received no credible reports of an NSA Backdoor in any windows platform.
Next week we will start investigating reports that farmers are finding strong encryption algorithms burned into their crop fields. Until we discover more about this pheonomena, we are banning all crop exports immediately and reclassifying corn, wheat, and other grains as munitiions.
Thank you for your support in this matter.
Signed,
The Federal Government
When you've had the kind of career he has, doing all the serious acting he has, and suddenly you're remembered only for playing a Jedi Knight -- and the role has you speaking a whole lot of mumbo jumbo that is, at times, very trite -- you're going to be bitter.
"Hi Obi-Wan!"
"My name is not Obi-Wan."
"You're a great actor!"
"What have you seen me do?"
"Uhh... Obi-Wan Kenobi!"
*sound of molars grinding and head striking wall repeatedly*
Actors just can't help being upset about things like that. It may seem stupid to the casual observer, but when you spend your entire life doing theater full time and then in the later stages of it you're remembered only for one role -- in a movie that's admittedly cool, but definately NOT your best work -- it will get to you.
their actions when sent before meta-moderators. A Meta-moderator may disagree with a moderators actions, but that doesn't necessarily mean that action was done maliciously.
I suspect meta-moderators will be every bit as susceptible to abuse of power as regular moderators are. Who watches the watchers who are watching the watchmen?
No, I understand the difference between Free Software and the GPL very well. The GPL is free software, not all free software is GPL'd. I get that. I am responding mostly to all the people who are screaming "GPL GPL GPL" at the top of their lungs without acknowledging that they're singling out Caldera for a practice that is not terribly uncommon for most Linux distros.
For example, most Linux distros include the linux version of Netscape Communicator, which isn't free software at all -- it's not even open source, as far as I know! _Mozilla_ is, but the current non-beta releases of NS Communicator are simply "free beer", not "free speech."
I get the notion that people want them to releast the code under the GPL because I'm seeing posts that say "yet another stupid license -- why can't they just release under the GPL and be done with it!" and "Caldera will never get the support of the Linux community until they release software under the GPL."
Caldera seems to routinely get a lot of flack from the Linux community because it doesn't include 100% GPL'd software in its distribution. As far as I know, however, only Red Hat and one other (Debian? I think) can actually make that claim. So why is Caldera singled out?
So far, in the (few) responses to this thread, there has been one wholeheartedly positive response and the rest have ranged from "good but not enough" to "oh no it's the Linux Micro$oft, screw 'em, tattoo 'em, watch 'em burn."
Why?
Caldera is distributing their installer under something than the GPL. Heavens! Are you planning to go on a licensing ethnic cleansing rampage? Shall we omit every piece of software that isn't GPL'd? Well, say good-bye to Perl (Artistic) and XFree86 (can't remember that one). Don't bother ever trying to use WINE, because it ain't GPL'd! While we're at it, stop using Netscape immediately, because the source is not avaialable -- it's just free beer. And don't bother using Mozilla when it comes out, because it's distributed under the MozPL...
Now, I'm a big fan of the GPL -- I think it's probably one of the most important licenses out there today -- and I'm certainly happier when a software license is legitimately free software instead of merely "open source" (and there is a difference, yes there is). But the fact remains that long before corporate america became interested in Linux, long before Eric Raymond wrote "The Cathedral and the Bazzar," way back when, there were Linux users who didn't want to distribute their software under the GPL -- for whatever reason -- and chose another license. So it seems to me that the "GPL or die" mentality is simply not possible to apply consistently if you're using Linux.
Some companies seem to have very strong fears as to whether or not the GPL is a good license to use ALL THE TIME, and they're trying to experiment with others that provide many of the same benefits. Some of the licenses are a joke (I consider Apples "open source" license fairly useless, even today) and others need work (TollTech's QT license needed work, and still may need work) but are not horrible. The fact that a great many companies are even considering revealing their source code is something I consider nothing short of amazing, especially considering the state of the software industry at large (UCITA -- need I say more?)
This is not worth a holy war. It's just not worth it. Caldera makes a decent distribution for those of us who don't have the time to become Linux gurus, and if they haven't gone the 100% free software route yet, well, blasting them every time they come close but don't go far enough isn't going to make it happen. So calm down, take a deep breath, and go play with the latest kernel release.
Whenever you download an MTVMP3 (catchy, ain't it)? You will start to hear the song, but it will be overlaid with giggling teenage girls requesting the song, along with some frat guy talking about how "that song rawks", and halfway through the song some halfwit Veejay (MP3jay) will stop the song and suddenly you'll be taken to an excerpt of MTV's "the real world."
And a 2:20 song will suddenly be an 8 mb download.
I freakin' can't wait. The revolution will be pre-packaged and sold in styrofoam containers.
Dataquest isn't really a group I consider a purveyor of reliable information. Just look at their past predictions on the growth of NT (They've been wrong a LOT). For a long time they were considered a mouthpiece for MS products.
It's not that this is not good news for Linux users -- it's definately a sign that the winds of public opinion are changing direction. It's just that Dataquest reports tend to be reflective of what is trendy and buzzworthy, not necessarily what is statistically sound.
The result is Apostrophecolon . Hope you enjoy it.
After you view that, take a look at my comic strip on the rest of the Ubersoft.net website.