"It would seem that after the recent Russian debacle that could see a school headmaster jailed in a Siberian work camp for purchasing copies of Windows for his school, the Ministry of Education in Russia has decided that the school boards will no longer be purchasing any commercial software."
Excellent! This is exactly the kind of strong government action we need to see more of. Obviously the Russian government sees quite clearly that Windows' DRM, lack of security, and general brokenness presents both an economic and security threat to the state, and is willing to take a stand to prevent this cancer from spreading any further. I think anybody who voluntarily buys a copy of Windows deserves to spend time behind bars, and now it's time for Western governments to step up to the plate and make this a reality.
You swing at the Sun. You miss. The Sun swings. He hits you with a
575MB disk! You read the 575MB disk. It is written in an alien
tongue and cannot be read by your tired Sun-2 eyes. You throw the
575MB disk at the Sun. You hit! The Sun must repair your eyes.
The Sun reads a scroll. He hits your 130MB disk! He has defeated the
130MB disk! The Sun reads a scroll. He hits your Ethernet board!
He has defeated your Ethernet board! You read a scroll of
"postpone until Monday at 9 AM". Everything goes dark...
For me, the Atari 2600 version of asteroids never seems to get old. Even as laughably primitive as it is, I still fire up the emulator and blast rocks for an hour or two every now and again.
More recent (but still a decade old) is the Turbographix-16 game Military Madness (aka Nectaris). For some reason I keep coming back to this turn-based, hex-based strategy game -- I can't quite put a finger on why, but in my opinion it's even more addictive than Starcraft and all the other real-time strategy titles.
I think you've hit the nail on the head with this. For me, the thing that seems to most keenly illustrate this difference in attitudes for is the manual that shipped with my first computer (a Vic-20). A few pages in, I distinctly remember reading
There is no way you can break your computer by typing on it, unless you are an elephant.
(I may not have the phrasing exactly right, but that's the gist of it, including the elephant reference.)
Nowadays most people seem positively afraid of computers, an attitude that's certainly not discouraged by the big-name software vendors. People aren't likely to get into tinkering with computers and using them to design cool stuff so long as they regard them with a mindset usually reserved for unexploded ordnance -- as if the slightest false move will cause the thing to blow up in your lap.
Nethack has been around for a long time, and if you suck down a potion of hallucination your player experiences all kinds of far-out things. ("Oh wow! Everything looks so cosmic!")
I have three words for you: peer to peer. In this kind of situation, the client-server architecture concentrates thousands of leechers on a single resource that may not be equipped to handle it (as your friend unfortunately found out). With p2p, downloaders can help you out with bandwidth, which is only fair and often doesn't cost them anything.
The current state of p2p isn't very highly evolved, but it's continuing to improve. I'm hopeful that in the future it'll totally eradicate the small-guy problem that you outline.
If every website that buried their stuff under obnoxious ads fell off of the 'net tomorrow, I would cheer.
It seems a common misconception that only sites rife with ads serve up any worthwhile content. In fact, I often find that the obnoxiousness of a site's advertising is inversely proportional to the value of its content.
In a seeming parallel to open source programming, many people and institutions will happily put content up on the web because they want or need to, not because some ad agency is paying them to do so.
There was content on the web before advertising, and there'll be content on the web without it.
Au contraire -- you can opt to see almost no ads at all, and keep
your surfing habits private to boot.
Much to the marketers' chagrin, users can control what content they
see while browsing the web. And sure enough, if you annoy someone
enough with your ads, they'll try and figure out a way not to be
subjected to them -- whence cometh
Adblock,
Flashblock,
and
NoScript,
amongst others.
The message to marketers is loud and clear. Will they listen?
By and large, they haven't yet.
For example, cookies help a computer limit how many times the
user is exposed to annoying ads like a floating, animated message.
Such "frequency caps," to use industry parlance, are common among
publishers. "So cookies are a really good thing for managing the
user's experience," she said.
Of course, you could just not show the annoying
floating, animated ads to begin with -- that would improve the user's
experience even more. In fact, one has to wonder why you're showing
them in the first place, since your users hate them!
a) to the Parliament and government of Canada in respect of all matters within the authority of Parliament including all matters relating to the Yukon Territory and Northwest Territories; and
b) to the legislature and government of each province in respect of all matters within the authority of the legislature of each province.
Private entities aren't subject to Charter review. Of course, that doesn't mean that Telus won't get their ass beat down by a Human Rights Tribunal or some such.
(IANAL, but when your wife's a law student, you pick up a lot by osmosis.)
What types of security vendors are eligible for the advanced
notice?
In order to qualify for advanced notice, the security vendors must be
in a position to remediate or provide protection of vulnerabilities
with their solution, while not revealing details of the vulnerability
itself to customers. The security vendor's product must also be
resistant to discovery of the vulnerability through trivial reverse
engineering. An example of such a vendor would be an Intrusion
Prevention System, Intrusion Detection System, Vulnerability Scanner
or Vulnerability Management System vendor.
This clause seems to indicate that no open source projects are
going to benefit from this `advanced notification' scheme.
Since patches to open source code are, well, open source,
they'd be construed as revealing the nature of the vulnerability,
and so 3com won't release the vulnerability information.
I really don't like the fact that this clause seems to be giving
closed-source products and vendors a leg up when it comes to
security notifications.
That's a great argument. Unfortunately, it was also advanced
against advertising on cable TV, and we see how far that's gotten us.
If enough customers are turned off by the ads that it hits the
companies in the pocketbook, then they will stop, but as long as they
continue to make more money on ads than they lose in sales, the
advertising will continue.
There's really nothing innovative today that Linux does that we can't do.
And, by the same token, there's nothing that an olympic athlete can do that an out-of-shape coder like me can't. Har, har, har.
The real test isn't so much what an OS can be made to do with a Herculean effort, but what it can do with a reasonable investment of time, money, and coffee. Not to mention a minimum of cursing, swearing, and hair-pulling.
Lefty Canadians like myself would love to have you, but it's important to think about whether jumping ship is a better alternative than staying on board and continuing to fight for what you believe in. And, for what it's worth, not all of us outside the US believe that everyone within supports the policies of the Administration. We might think little of your Government, but we still love you, even if a lot of your countrymen don't.
At first I saw the name `Savvis', and I'm thinking, never heard of them before, who's that? Then I saw the mention of C&W in the article and the light went on -- "Oh, Clueless and Witless! It all makes sense now!"
Bah, who needs Smash TV? I'm down with Karate Champ!
(Man, that thing was a beast...I dumped many pocketfuls of quarters into it, and, despite being one of the best players in town, I still don't think I had all the moves down pat.)
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So, by the same logic, I'll just insert into my HTTP request:
HTTP Policy:
Any communication or material you or your web server transmit to this computer, by HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, or otherwise, including any data, multimedia, computer code, or the like, is, and will be treated as, nonconfidential and nonproprietary. Anything so transmitted becomes the property of myself and my affiliates and may be used for any purpose whatsoever, including, but not limited to, reproduction, disclosure, transmission, publication, broadcast, modification, redistribution, or reverse engineering. Furthermore, I am free to use any data, text, logos, trademarks, or correspondence contained in any communication you send to me for any purpose whatsoever including, but not limited to, satire, parody, and general mockery.
Slashdot Mirror
Excellent! This is exactly the kind of strong government action we need to see more of. Obviously the Russian government sees quite clearly that Windows' DRM, lack of security, and general brokenness presents both an economic and security threat to the state, and is willing to take a stand to prevent this cancer from spreading any further. I think anybody who voluntarily buys a copy of Windows deserves to spend time behind bars, and now it's time for Western governments to step up to the plate and make this a reality.
Now if Hollywood would only admit that their current crop of films sucked and promised better ones next month, then we would be on to something.
I found this one in a fortune file somewhere.
For me, the Atari 2600 version of asteroids never seems to get old. Even as laughably primitive as it is, I still fire up the emulator and blast rocks for an hour or two every now and again.
More recent (but still a decade old) is the Turbographix-16 game Military Madness (aka Nectaris). For some reason I keep coming back to this turn-based, hex-based strategy game -- I can't quite put a finger on why, but in my opinion it's even more addictive than Starcraft and all the other real-time strategy titles.
I think you've hit the nail on the head with this. For me, the thing that seems to most keenly illustrate this difference in attitudes for is the manual that shipped with my first computer (a Vic-20). A few pages in, I distinctly remember reading
(I may not have the phrasing exactly right, but that's the gist of it, including the elephant reference.)
Nowadays most people seem positively afraid of computers, an attitude that's certainly not discouraged by the big-name software vendors. People aren't likely to get into tinkering with computers and using them to design cool stuff so long as they regard them with a mindset usually reserved for unexploded ordnance -- as if the slightest false move will cause the thing to blow up in your lap.
Nethack has been around for a long time, and if you suck down a potion of hallucination your player experiences all kinds of far-out things. ("Oh wow! Everything looks so cosmic!")
I have three words for you: peer to peer. In this kind of situation, the client-server architecture concentrates thousands of leechers on a single resource that may not be equipped to handle it (as your friend unfortunately found out). With p2p, downloaders can help you out with bandwidth, which is only fair and often doesn't cost them anything.
The current state of p2p isn't very highly evolved, but it's continuing to improve. I'm hopeful that in the future it'll totally eradicate the small-guy problem that you outline.
If every website that buried their stuff under obnoxious ads fell off of the 'net tomorrow, I would cheer.
It seems a common misconception that only sites rife with ads serve up any worthwhile content. In fact, I often find that the obnoxiousness of a site's advertising is inversely proportional to the value of its content.
In a seeming parallel to open source programming, many people and institutions will happily put content up on the web because they want or need to, not because some ad agency is paying them to do so. There was content on the web before advertising, and there'll be content on the web without it.
Au contraire -- you can opt to see almost no ads at all, and keep your surfing habits private to boot. Much to the marketers' chagrin, users can control what content they see while browsing the web. And sure enough, if you annoy someone enough with your ads, they'll try and figure out a way not to be subjected to them -- whence cometh Adblock, Flashblock, and NoScript, amongst others.
The message to marketers is loud and clear. Will they listen? By and large, they haven't yet.
Hear, hear.
Of course, you could just not show the annoying floating, animated ads to begin with -- that would improve the user's experience even more. In fact, one has to wonder why you're showing them in the first place, since your users hate them!
The stupidity! It burns!
One problem with your analysis:
Private entities aren't subject to Charter review. Of course, that doesn't mean that Telus won't get their ass beat down by a Human Rights Tribunal or some such.
(IANAL, but when your wife's a law student, you pick up a lot by osmosis.)
I don't like the sound of this:
This clause seems to indicate that no open source projects are going to benefit from this `advanced notification' scheme. Since patches to open source code are, well, open source, they'd be construed as revealing the nature of the vulnerability, and so 3com won't release the vulnerability information. I really don't like the fact that this clause seems to be giving closed-source products and vendors a leg up when it comes to security notifications.
That's a great argument. Unfortunately, it was also advanced against advertising on cable TV, and we see how far that's gotten us. If enough customers are turned off by the ads that it hits the companies in the pocketbook, then they will stop, but as long as they continue to make more money on ads than they lose in sales, the advertising will continue.
And, by the same token, there's nothing that an olympic athlete
can do that an out-of-shape coder like me can't. Har, har, har.
The real test isn't so much what an OS can be made to do with a
Herculean effort, but what it can do with a reasonable
investment of time, money, and coffee. Not to mention a minimum of
cursing, swearing, and hair-pulling.
What? This guy's the Chief Privacy Officer for Doubleclick?
Isn't that a lot like being the Chief Legal Compliance Officer for the Mafia?
You might want to head over to Common Dreams and read Sarah Anderson's Ten Reasons Not to Move to Canada, as well as Bryant Urstadt's Readers Guide to Expatriating on November 3rd.
Lefty Canadians like myself would love to have you, but it's important to think about whether jumping ship is a better alternative than staying on board and continuing to fight for what you believe in. And, for what it's worth, not all of us outside the US believe that everyone within supports the policies of the Administration. We might think little of your Government, but we still love you, even if a lot of your countrymen don't.
As I'm typing this, you can listen to Kerry speak live over at NPR. They'll probably have a stream of the speech after it's finished, too.
At first I saw the name `Savvis', and I'm thinking, never heard of them before, who's that? Then I saw the mention of C&W in the article and the light went on -- "Oh, Clueless and Witless! It all makes sense now!"
Bah, who needs Smash TV? I'm down with Karate Champ!
(Man, that thing was a beast...I dumped many pocketfuls of quarters into it, and, despite being one of the best players in town, I still don't think I had all the moves down pat.)
From CIBA's linking policy:
Terms and Conditions
1. You may download, display or print information from this Site (the "Information") solely for non-commercial personal use.
2. You must retain and reproduce each and every copyright notice or other proprietary rights notice contained in any Information you download. You may not, however, distribute, modify, transmit, reuse, repost, or use the content of the Site for public or commercial purposes, including the text, images, audio, and video without written permission of CIBA Vision. You should assume that everything you see or read on this Site is copyrighted unless otherwise noted and may not be used except as provided in these Terms and Conditions or in the text on the Site without the written permission of CIBA Vision.
But...
6. Any communication or material you transmit to the Site by electronic mail or otherwise, including any data, questions, comments, suggestions or the like is, and will be treated as, nonconfidential and nonproprietary. Anything you transmit or post becomes the property of CIBA Vision or its affiliates and may be used for any purpose, including, but not limited to, reproduction, disclosure, transmission, publication, broadcast and posting. Furthermore, CIBA Vision is free to use any ideas, concepts, know-how, or techniques contained in any communication you send to the Site for any purpose whatsoever including, but not limited to, developing, manufacturing and marketing products using such information.
So, by the same logic, I'll just insert into my HTTP request:
HTTP Policy:
Any communication or material you or your web server transmit to this computer, by HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, or otherwise, including any data, multimedia, computer code, or the like, is, and will be treated as, nonconfidential and nonproprietary. Anything so transmitted becomes the property of myself and my affiliates and may be used for any purpose whatsoever, including, but not limited to, reproduction, disclosure, transmission, publication, broadcast, modification, redistribution, or reverse engineering. Furthermore, I am free to use any data, text, logos, trademarks, or correspondence contained in any communication you send to me for any purpose whatsoever including, but not limited to, satire, parody, and general mockery.
Me, "Didn't you see the sign? It says we're closed."
Clueless person, "What sign?"
After enough people missed the `Caution: Wet Floor' sign at a store I used to work at, the manager put up a new sign:
It helped, but not much.
This essay from the cypherpunks archive discusses a bit more the theme of technology as political catalyst.
This has doubtless been said hundreds of times in the above 2,000 comments, but...
Congratulations, Kathleen & Rob! Cheers!
IIRC I had heard that there is someone, somewhere, merrily hacking away writing PerlOS (complete with device drivers, of course.)
You might want to let the folks over at Peacefire know how they can know how they can know how they can turn the RBL off. Think about it.
They can turn the RBL off by switching ISPs.
Rather the point, don't you think?