Hah, just the sort of West Undershirtian reply I'd expect. You are people too? Not from what I can tell. You sub-human visigoths are what give America a bad name abroad.
Go back to your single-wide, artificial stucco, outhouse-using life. You pig.
Having Cherokee Indian blood in me, I don't see it as racism, for a couple of reasons:
One, there's nothing wrong with Indian. In fact, most Indians prefer Indian to "Native American". They were called Indians not because Columbus thought he reached India, but from his log, which he described the natives he found as being "in dios" (with God). (Columbus's spanish wasn't terribly good) I think that's a lot better than naming them after an Italian cartographer.
Two, the colloquialism "off the reservation" is an old one. I have no idea about it's origin. I use it because it best describes what happened -- Miguel, a true hacker, has wandered off the sacred tribal grounds and is basically throwing stones at Unix.
I wasn't trying to be offensive, just, as you say, "colorful".
As a side note, the Indians have more grounds than anybody in this country to bitch and moan about how they were treated. This is why I like Tribal casinos -- I like the idea of the Indians losing their land, but getting money for it from fat-assed yahoos from West Undershirt, Ohio.
Then there's the aolserver, whatever the advantages of that over apache I haven't a clue.
Gotta stand up for my webserver of choice, here:)
AOLserver is a full multi-threaded webserver that has a built-in TCL interpreter. It's easy to install, and the latest version (3.0) is wicked fast. It also excels at database connectivity.
Due to it's threaded nature, and the pooling of DB connections, it tends to be faster than Apache in dynamically generated web sites. An Apache God could probably match AOLserver with careful tuning, so speed isn't really much of an issue.
I just like AOLserver better than Apache, mainly due to the OpenACS guys and the work they've done. Great out-of-the-box functionality (and, soon available for Apache as well).
AOLserver 3.0 is also open-sourced (a true GPL, I believe). Be nice to those guys -- they did the right thing with AOLserver; maybe they'll do the same for AIM (errmmm.... maybe).
Wow, it's always tough when a true Indian wanders off the reservation!
Various people like to criticize Microsoft for producing "bloated and monolithic applications". Before we
criticize Microsoft, lets take a look at the end user applications that we have on Unix outside of GNOME:
Netscape, GhostView, XDVI, Acrobat, Mathematica, Maple, Purify, FrameMaker, Star Office.
The only common denominator on those applications is libc and Xlib. Some share Motif, but that is about
the extent that these applications are sharing any code. And of course, the Unix "components" play no role in
the equation: they are basically never used (I can only think of the printer spooler daemon being used, and
even in this case: it is not even compatible across operating systems).
Now, lets look at Microsoft "bloated and monolithic applications" again: lets consider "Internet Explorer".
Internet Explorer is not a single executable as you might think. Internet Explorer is built of a collection of
COM components. These components are developed individually, debugged individually, exported
individually, and eventually, all of them create the illusion of an integrated application.
Well, he has a point. Unix should be the first OS to use modularized components with rampant code-reuse, not one of the last. Remember part of the Hacker Ethic: do not re-invent the wheel.
Imagine! Maybe Microsoft does do some things very well! (I know IE has much better support of CSS than Netscape does -- not to beat a dead horse, but Mozilla isn't looking all that great either on several fronts). Could it be that this modularity (even done as slipshod as it is on Microsoft OSes) is part of what encourages people to write software for Microsoft? Ease of development? (I'm not a True Programmer, so <TAKE type="salt" size="grain">
I wish the best for Helixcode -- just before you get carried away with making it "easy to use", try to get some UI experts in there to help design things. Just because it has a button doesn't mean it's easy to use. Where the button is placed is just as important as having the button.
Good point. However, the East India company had an advantage in that their business was shipping goods and products, and as such had a method by which information could be passed easily, and at near-zero cost.
The East India Co. is a better example of how modern companies could learn something from old companies -- the EIC's local proctors at remote outposts were given a great deal of autonomy (more out of neccessity than through effusive good-will), and as such the company prospered. The local proctor was able to do things in the most efficient manner, as appropriate to the locale, rather than as a dictum from headquarters.
Still a good point, tho. I'd wager that at it's peak, though, EIC wasn't much larger (in terms of payroll) than a medium-sized business today. Say -- 1,000-2,000 employees. I'll see if I can look that up...
The centralized, one-corporation company is new, because until the advent of the telephone, it was difficult -- if not impossible -- to run a company larger than a few dozen to 100 people. If you couldn't be in the same room with them, managing them was very difficult.
The telephone (and now, by extension, the Internet and networks) allows a large corporation to exist in the hundreds of thousands -- because you now have instantaneous communications between West Undershirt, Nevada and Gstaad, Switzerland.
Be careful of easy analogies -- they are easy for a reason. The "next big thing" will be (IMHO) a change in attitudes about what the networked world will do for individuals, not companies.
Personally, I believe that once a company reaches more than one billion in revenues (not market evaluation) it takes quite a bit to un-seat them. There's quite a lot of inertia in a billion dollars...
If you're counting total bugs, maybe, but only if you ignore certain facts. Looks like to me, the RedHat bug list includes some non-server vulnerabilities -- XFree86 4.01/tmp vulnerability? I don't run XFree86 on my webserver, much less version 4.01.
Okay, let's look at RedHat v 6.2, i386 -- not RedHat as a whole, which would includ Sparc, Alpha, etc. By my count, there are 59 vulnerabilities, not 122. Of those vulnerabilities, I'd say maybe half are of concern to a server (which would be the target of a scheming cracker). Gnapster/Knapster? On a server?
This is a poorly written and baseless article. Besides, the logic is flawed -- basing an opinion on one set of data is stupid. It's like saying a Yugo is better than a BMW based on a gas-efficency metric.
The hard part about programming is thinking in a sufficiently formal manner in order to carefully plan and execute a design project (like a database backed web site).
Learning SQL is a great way to start. It's fairly simple, applicable to a lot of programs (Oracle, Sybase, MS-SQL Server), and is good at teaching somebody how to think formally.
Build a database backed web service (something that would do the school good would be great, but not neccessary), maybe a school calendar. The hard parts are handled by the database program and the web server -- the fun parts can be built in modules.
Break the class into groups, and have them work on individual modules -- what data must go in, what must come out, and how it should be formatted. Then, the groups work together so the modules can talk to each other (this teaches some basic OOP-thinking as well). Then, start building. You can divide the semester into three chunks:
Planning and organization
Building the modules and testing
Rewriting modules to finalize the design
Why rewrite? Well, it's not bad practice to assume that the first go-around will be thrown away as you learn new things after the first build -- you can make up for those mistakes in the rewrite.
I sure do wish something like that was available to me in HS. SQL is easier than basic, and much more useful in teaching concepts.
Here's a thought -- the RIAA's not staffed with fools, methinks. Even the most blinded sycophant would have to come to the realization that while Napster may go away, MP3s will not -- and neither will the method by which MP3s can be transmitted (i.e. the Internet)
The RIAA has been around long enough (and the record industry as well) to know how this will go. They'll fight, bitch and moan, but the end result will be the new technology catching on.
Napster's a red herring -- look for something more sinister than "Burn the Napster witch!" Napster fights for its survival, on whatever front that may appear. The RIAA is looking for something else from this.
I don't know what it is, but I suspect that they are looking for a definitive intellectual property ruling -- one that will make digital music more controllable. Remember silver certificates? You were supposed to turn those in back in the 60's, I believe. The government asked for you to return them, and in return, they give you paper money from the Federal Reserve -- no longer backed by silver.
Do I think the RIAA has something of that magnitude cooking on the back burner? No, but the concept I'm sure gives some of the top brass massive erections.
Watch this case carefully. RIAA hasn't tipped their hand yet -- don't get blinded by the piteous cries of Napster screaming "foul!" There will be more...
Love your column, love "Accidental Empires" -- now that the fanboy part is over:
Why do the rich and powerful among the Digital Illuminati talk to you? What do you think is it about you that Bill G himself will discuss, if not his secret plans for domination, at least his thoughts about the computing community?
What's really interesting to port is what we more often think of as "Linux apps" - stuff that you usually run under Gnome or KDE. Galeon is a good example, as are Gnumeric and LyX.
Sure, that could be done. No problem. But I don't think that would be the best use of nerdpower. To my eye, Linux apps are generally pretty poor in the UI category. Just because there's a menu and buttons, that doesn't mean it's "user friendly". I give TkRat as an example.
It would be better to think carefully about what you're purpose is and who your audience is and build from there. Gnumeric is a good program, sure, but to compete with MS Excel, you don't have to match feature-for-feature, but make the way the user interfaces with it easier and cleaner, with good, to-the-point help. (needless to say, don't emulate the dancing Mac SE/paperclip).
The Mac interface is heavily influenced by it's original toaster design: screen space is valuable, don't fill it up with pretty widgets, and only have a single menubar. It caries over to larger screens well, because it's easier for people to get confused when there are multiple menubars on the screen.
Total rewrite? Well, maybe. But by doing so, perhaps the whole Unix community can benefit by looking at current paradigms and re-thinking how things can be done.
One of the computers was a Quadra 700, but appeared to be running a Unix-like OS.
In a technical overview I read about Jurrasic Park's computer lab, one of the neat things was that all the computers in the lab were just dummy boxes -- another room about 50 feet away was the real control room. They FX guys even had to hack the video cards so they would sync at a rate that suited the special needs of film (48hz, if I remember correctly).
Apple had done their best to create a line of computers that were consumer products, not the hobbyist-oriented
Apple did their best to make a computer that appealed to the wider audience of people that knew that this "computer thing" could help them do stuff, but didn't want to take the time, or make the effort to learn how to program.
Of course, the Mac wasn't as popular as it could have been, mainly due to the price of the thing. $2500 was quite a chunk of change back in 1984, and people were hard pressed to realize how it would benefit them. It didn't help that those who used computers at their office knew them to be cantankerous, evil-minded things administered by bearded demi-gods who talked down to the small-minded doofuses that crowded around their offices begging for more time or disk space on the mini.
My thinking on how to make Open Source a driving force in a computer community. You need a few very important things:
A built-in programming language (compiled, interpreted, doesn't matter)
A way to interact with the computer's internals, including information on how to do so
A dearth of applications
A strong sense of community (maybe even with an underdog mentality)
A way for disparate community members to communicate
Apple had some of these -- the community was strong, and at the beginning there were very few applications, but Apple failed in supplying a programming language with the computer and a way to interact with the OS's guts. There was information, but the Inside Apple books were expensive, tough to read, and you could basically only get them from Apple. Plus, there was no public Internet, so the only communication that went on between community members came from BBS's and user groups.
Later, Apple provided AppleScript with all their computers, and the AppleScript community is sort of a snapshot of the Linux community circa 1991-92. They can trade scripts with each other and learn from each other, mainly do to the Internet, and have the ability to script the guts of the computer (the Finder).
I started out in DOS/Windows, but once I found the Mac, I knew where my real interests lay. Once I found Linux, my loyalties changed. Now, my interests lie in the BSD community. Seems I like jumping from underdog to underdog.
Coming from the other side (I was working at WorldCom before the MCI merger, and after), let me tell the other side of the story.
MCI was bought because it was a good deal -- the company was hemorraging money, as reflected by the dismal stock price, and was absolutely the most corporate of coporations. Especially when compared to the WorldCom culture. When the deal was inked, I believe one of the terms was that the MCI name would be retained, since the company had spent so much money on branding.
Unfortunately, the branding that the company spent money on was one of 9pm calls from pushy salespeople that were more annoying that successful.
One of the first things Bernard Ebbers did once the deal went through was to sell off 5 of the 8 corporate jets that MCI owned. Yes there were fairly significant layoffs, especially around the MCI water coolers. There was a reason for this. The WorldCom departments equivalent to MCI departments tended to be 50-60% of the size. There was a LOT of deadweight. Where my department was handled by 4 people and 1 executive, the MCI department had more than twice those numbers.
Now, I'm no longer with WorldCom, so I'm not "in the know", but I happen to believe that the main purpose of the Sprint deal is for their wireless. Those of you worried about WorldCom becoming a colossus of data lines, remember that UUNET is a part of WorldCom. Most of the Internet traffic goes over the UUNET network. Sorry, but WorldCom would give up the Sprint network in a heartbeat if it meant getting Sprint's wireless network. WorldCom doesn't have a wireless network right now (other than SkyTel).
If you're worried about long-distance competition, don't. You're wasting your time. WorldCom is already moving to "any-distance" phone service, i.e. a voice call is a voice call is a voice call, regardless of where it goes. Whether around the corner or around the world. The overhead of charging per-minute fares is quickly overshadowing the the going per-minute rates (10 cents down to 8 cents, down to 5 cents). Access charges, network overhead, etc have eaten the profit down to 10% of a 5 cent a minute call.
The AC above complaints don't make me cringe. Yes, there would be layoffs in a WorldCom/Sprint merger. There always are! That's one of the advantages of mergers! (Think "synergies", read "layoffs") Only, it would not be like the MCI merger, because, by and large, Sprint employees aren't as woefully inept as MCI employees tended to be. Sprint has remained competitive because of this reason. Now, there is an advantage to Sprint joining with WorldCom, because they can join their most successful functions -- data and wireless -- and make a powerfull post-millenial company, rather than an AT&T knockoff.
I'm not posting anonymously, because I think the WorldCom/Sprint deal would be great. I'm not just an ex-employee, I'm also a stock holder!:) So I'd take my words with however much salt you desire -- but I stand by them. (No, not from options, from the regular way of getting a broker to buy them)
Lessee -- I record a free-form monologue about how I first encountered Metallica (a bootleg tape of a concert that had "Hit The Lights" on it), how even over the much abused and much played crappy tape, that had made its way all the way from the West Coast to backwoods Mississippi, I could still make out the music and how much it affected me.
I tell about how I enjoyed the tape (that I made a copy of but unfortunately don't have anymore), and since then have bought every Metallica albumn up to S&M -- some of them TWICE, once on tape, once on CD. I tell about how Metallica's music helped me through some tough times in high school (tough to be a nerd in redneck land). I'll complain about how Jason got screwed in the "...And Justice For All" mix. I'll relate a quote from Lars who said, once, that "..more than any other band, we're like Rush".
I'll talk about the first time I heard about James's accident. I'll talk about how Metallica came back to Canada to finish the concert that James got hurt in, after Guns & Roses' Axl pitched a hissy-fit and walked off after 30 minutes.
I'll mention that Metallica's strength has always been their connection with their fans: how Jason tirelessly signs autographs, how the band once let people record their concerts, how hard-working the band has always been.
I'll say all this, and mention that Metallica, in their unique position of NOT being a slave to the record industry, who in fact seem to have always been in the position of leaders, have turned into followers (slaves, if you will), of a corporate mentality that denegrates their past efforts. I'll talk about how Metallica could be remembered, years after the band is no more, as the group that led the way, changing how musicians interact with their fans forever. I'll sadly mention that now, Metallica will most likely be remembered not for how much they cared and respected their fans, but how they attacked them.
I'll record this monologue and rip it to an MP3. I'll save multiple copies of it with the band's song titles, and put them up on Napster. With any luck, one of the band members will hear it, and know how disappointed I am with them, and how sad I will be because I will not listen to them anymore. And, since it's not their music, they can't ask me to take it down -- they can only ask that I change the titles. But that would be fine. I'd do that, and distribute the MP3 far and wide - hopefully, any potential fan would hear it first and then decide that Metallica isn't the band for them.
The ACS is a tour de force of web application design, to be sure, but as specified (Solaris, Oracle, AOLserver, massive redundancy, other tools), it makes it quite unatainable for small businesses to compete. Small businesses, IMHO, are who could benefit from a web presence the most, as compared to IPO-crazed dot-commers who push out a business plan first, and develop a strategy second.
Do you intend to target just the big-spenders, or are you hopeful that technology will drive down the costs to a point where smaller businesses can participate?
Looked at another way, will small businesses be looking at ACS for their web service needs when they get their MMDS hookup, or will they be looking at other solutions that don't require an Oracle DBA to get off the ground? Wouldn't that market segment (small business) be more interesting than big corporate clients?
Thanks for your work, BTW. You have already taught me more than 4 years of college at only the cost of buying your book and reading your site.
Okay, so I'm a lamer. The only IRC channel I've been on was #hottub back in 1991. So, I have to ask, what does this mean?
=icee= okay, we need to solve this trust problem, and prove you are who you say you are.. so the name of the channel.. it starts with a m. can you tell me it?
=icee= #bifemunix is a rival.
[mafiaboy] 3090
[mafiaboy] good enough?
So what does 3090 mean? It's just clicks and whisles to me...
Nerd Clusters, which are more widespread than Beowulf, and more scalable.
For example, a Nerd Cluster, using ChineseTakeOut messaging, are often used in last-minute, panic-striken Intranet roll-outs, yet each node of a Nerd Cluster can answer simple management questions such as, "Hey, my PC at home crashes all the time. How can I fix it?"
Nerd clusters are, however, more dangerous to operate. If, for example, you say "Let's migrate our core applications from Solaris to NT", you run the risk of massive memory leakage as individual Nerd-nodes began to prioritize jobs such as "update_resume" over your request queue.
Nerd clusters need a "master" node as well. These can generally be identified by their bushy beards, or a long string of nodes queueing up to beg for static IPs.
If there's one thing Microsoft is NOT good at, it's lobbying Congress. Say what you will about predatory practices and Not Playing Nice With Others, Microsoft doesn't seem to hardly notice Washington D.C., other than as a potential market segment. Up till very recently, Microsoft was spending very little on lobbyists and campaigns, I suppose figuring that Washington couldn't react fast enough to technological advancements to even be a worry.
Now that they're entangled with the DoJ, do they think that a highly paid, very successful lobbyist is going to turn the tide? Well, knowing Washington, it probably will. But why Ralph Reed? Sure, he has ties to G.W. Bush, sure he's proven success before. Is the hiring of Ralph Reed a smokescreen for something else? It got headlines, that's for sure. If it makes Brokaw/Jennings/etc., my opinion is that it probably IS a smokescreen. Get everybody talking about the "wacko Christian Coalition" and "evil George W. Bush", and NOT thinking about stock prices.
If my smokescreen theory is correct, Microsoft needs to hire smarter PR flacks. This won't last long, and the next round of announcements from Judge Jackson will overshadow the hiring of Ralph Reed.
First, Freenet is not a place where rape and mutilation take place, but instead a place where they may be documented. Second, he made no claim that kiddie porn was free speech, but only that it would be necessary to tolerate it in order to support free speech.
Okay, in order: I'm not saying Freenet should be illegal (as you seem to be saying -- if I've miscontrued your argument, I apologize and retract my following statement). I'm saying that it is a weakness of Freenet to not allow some level of control so that such activity does not take place. At any point in the process of "kiddie porn" -- creation, distribution, possesion -- the product and/or action is illegal. Hmm... I guess I AM saying it's illegal... your point.
I disagree that allowing free speech means tolerating legally and morally (oooh.. the "M" word) repugnant activities. It is the grossest of mistakes (or some kind of utopian happytalk) to say you cannot have one without the other. The world is not like a computer: there are many shades of gray in addition to the black and white binary world.
not every form of expression falls into free speech . . . Ass-fucking a 10 year old boy is not "expression".
. . . and noone at Freenet would tell you otherwise. In fact, its quite impossible to ass fuck a 10 year old boy on Freenet. You see, the real problem takes place in our heads and in our communities. The representation is mostly a symptom and it's something we should learn from. It's quite possible that this anticipated documentation of taboo subjects will encourage us to understand why people act this way (and not simply be disgusted by it).
Tough one -- I don't say that you will be sodomizing 10 year olds on Freenet. I say that Freenet provides no provision to defend against questionable material, and as such facilitates the distribution. Returning to your above statement, you can't have one without the other, whereas I say "Yes you can". Eliminating the control of one's own node may not attract the legions of free-thinking people the project hopes for. Rather, it may attract only the bottom-feeders of society, since it gives them untraceable conduits to pass their material around. I think the balance struck is the wrong balance -- some control needs to be there.
Ian talks about routing around "cancerous" nodes when Evil Corporate Geniuses will pollute the Pure Freenet Stream with corporate doubletalk. Yet, he simply says, "don't run Freenet if you don't want the possibility of hosting kiddie porn on your node". This seems to be a wildly dis-proportionate view. Corpoations may be dumb and witless, but evil? Not really.
Finally, I may or may not "stay away from Freenet." I like the idea, I like the ideology. I'm not thrilled about the seeming decision to give up on blatently illegal activities. It's a tough choice, and I don't envy the Freenet's team job ahead of them in defending what (in a more perfect world) would be an indispensible entity. Good luck and best wishes to them.
It's not a misparaphrase, it's an exact quote, copy-and-pasted from Ian's answer.
Ian does not seem to be implying the opposite: he seems to be equating free speech (specifically, speech that you personally do not agree with) with distribution of "kiddie porn". I went to the extreme, granted, by taking into the "action" part of creating kiddie porn, but it is a valid extension of the argument. Hair-splitting aside, kiddie porn (at any stage, whether creating, distributing, or possesion) is illegal now. Whether you're streaming bits, or actually sodomizing a 10 year old boy, if it's kiddie porn, it's illegal.
I have to concede the fact that action != speech. However, I remind you that Ian said:
You cannot have free speech without tolerating speech that you personally don't agree with. If you don't want to risk aiding the distribution of "kiddie porn" (which is *already* freely distributed on the Internet anyway), then steer clear of Freenet - it's not for you.
Semantics and logical hair-splitting aside, Freenet can allow and even facilitate the distribution of illegal material in a manner that makes it exceedingly difficult to defend against, under the auspices of "free speech". Noble words and intentions, to be sure, and a worthwhile endeavor. I think it's incomplete, and dangerously so.
Python is right -- action and speech are separate entities that cannot be equated. Ian seemed to equate them, so I commented on his answer. Assuming (as I do), that Ian doesn't really equate kiddie porn to free speech, he at least seems to be saying that on Freenet, you can only support free speech by simultaneously allowing a method by which the distribution of kiddie porn is *greatly* facilitated. I say "greatly" because there is the opportunity for a Freenet adminitrator's node to be used in a way the administrator may not like, and cannot defend against.
I'm not trying to make an ass of Ian: to the contrary, I wish the project much success. However, their decision to not allow node-administrator control -- indeed, no control whatsoever -- places their project in a dangerous position by which it can and will be used for such things as kiddie porn, and the good intentions of the project gets swept aside.
While I like the Freenet's technical capabilities (dynamic caching and mirroring), I dislike their philosophical stance on "free speech", to wit:
The simple answer is that copyright is economic censorship (ie. restricting the free distribution of information for economic reasons), and thus Freenet will make it difficult or impossible to enforce copyright.
This is ridiculous. Copyrights are not economic censorship, unless the copyright holder chooses to use it as such. For example, Philip Greenspun lets web admins use his photos, generally for free, as long as they attribute him. He maintains the copyright. This is economic censorship? No, it's a legally enforceable method of control of somebody's intellectual property. (I know, IP is a dirty word...) Philip might spend hours setting up and taking a shot -- if he wants to retain control of his interpretation of an idea, that's his legal right.
You cannot have free speech without tolerating speech that you personally don't agree with. If you don't want to risk aiding the distribution of "kiddie porn" (which is *already* freely distributed on the Internet anyway), then steer clear of Freenet - it's not for you.
So, in other words, "kiddie porn" is free speech. Really? I didn't know that. Guess ritual rape and mutilation is free speech too, and if done in a pointy hat with candles, it's a religious observance, too.
While I agree with the point that supporting free speech means supporting ideas and thoughts that you may not agree with, not every form of expression falls into free speech. Throwing a punch at someone, even if it's a cracker-ass Grand Wizard of the KKK, is not "expression". It's assault, and your butt will rightly be hauled into jail. Ass-fucking a 10 year old boy is not "expression". It's ass-fucking a 10 year old boy -- a minor, and protected (rightly) by law.
Developing a system whereby administrators (you can't even rightly call them that, since they "administer" nothing) have no control over content, you make a technically competent and interesting system that is *really* uninviting to operate, since your box can be the source of something nefarious (or something you disagree with, and do not wish to support). You are welcome to your ideas, but do *NOT* push them onto me.
A side issue is about the "voting" or "rating" system built into Freenet. I like the idea, but I think it overlooks something. What about tiny, insignificant, but really important things that don't get used much. For example, a HOW-TO on setting up an Amiga 2000 to run NetBSD. Not many A2000s out there, nobody runs NetBSD anyway... what's this node about Windows 2001? Looks neeto...
If unpopular nodes get pushed out, doesn't that run contrary to the "free speech" dictum? Unpopular now means "kill the niggers", but 40 years ago, unpopular meant "I have a dream...". Popularity is a poor substitute for personal decision.
Freenet is a great concept, but it's missing a few important concepts and components. I personally think that an philosophical ideal and a technical solution don't neccessarily mix very well. GNU software might be the rule-proving exception or the theory-smashing evidence. Freenet, however, is mostly concerned with ideology, and is developing a technical solution to promote that ideology at the expense of that self-same ideology.
At least, that's what I think. I'm also a well-known idiot
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Hah, just the sort of West Undershirtian reply I'd expect. You are people too? Not from what I can tell. You sub-human visigoths are what give America a bad name abroad.
Go back to your single-wide, artificial stucco, outhouse-using life. You pig.
<SARCASM type=":)">
This Post Is Way Off-Topic :)
Having Cherokee Indian blood in me, I don't see it as racism, for a couple of reasons:
One, there's nothing wrong with Indian. In fact, most Indians prefer Indian to "Native American". They were called Indians not because Columbus thought he reached India, but from his log, which he described the natives he found as being "in dios" (with God). (Columbus's spanish wasn't terribly good) I think that's a lot better than naming them after an Italian cartographer.
Two, the colloquialism "off the reservation" is an old one. I have no idea about it's origin. I use it because it best describes what happened -- Miguel, a true hacker, has wandered off the sacred tribal grounds and is basically throwing stones at Unix.
I wasn't trying to be offensive, just, as you say, "colorful".
As a side note, the Indians have more grounds than anybody in this country to bitch and moan about how they were treated. This is why I like Tribal casinos -- I like the idea of the Indians losing their land, but getting money for it from fat-assed yahoos from West Undershirt, Ohio.
Gotta stand up for my webserver of choice, here :)
AOLserver is a full multi-threaded webserver that has a built-in TCL interpreter. It's easy to install, and the latest version (3.0) is wicked fast. It also excels at database connectivity.
Due to it's threaded nature, and the pooling of DB connections, it tends to be faster than Apache in dynamically generated web sites. An Apache God could probably match AOLserver with careful tuning, so speed isn't really much of an issue.
I just like AOLserver better than Apache, mainly due to the OpenACS guys and the work they've done. Great out-of-the-box functionality (and, soon available for Apache as well).
AOLserver 3.0 is also open-sourced (a true GPL, I believe). Be nice to those guys -- they did the right thing with AOLserver; maybe they'll do the same for AIM (errmmm.... maybe).
Wow, it's always tough when a true Indian wanders off the reservation!
Well, he has a point. Unix should be the first OS to use modularized components with rampant code-reuse, not one of the last. Remember part of the Hacker Ethic: do not re-invent the wheel.
Imagine! Maybe Microsoft does do some things very well! (I know IE has much better support of CSS than Netscape does -- not to beat a dead horse, but Mozilla isn't looking all that great either on several fronts). Could it be that this modularity (even done as slipshod as it is on Microsoft OSes) is part of what encourages people to write software for Microsoft? Ease of development? (I'm not a True Programmer, so <TAKE type="salt" size="grain">
I wish the best for Helixcode -- just before you get carried away with making it "easy to use", try to get some UI experts in there to help design things. Just because it has a button doesn't mean it's easy to use. Where the button is placed is just as important as having the button.
Good point. However, the East India company had an advantage in that their business was shipping goods and products, and as such had a method by which information could be passed easily, and at near-zero cost.
The East India Co. is a better example of how modern companies could learn something from old companies -- the EIC's local proctors at remote outposts were given a great deal of autonomy (more out of neccessity than through effusive good-will), and as such the company prospered. The local proctor was able to do things in the most efficient manner, as appropriate to the locale, rather than as a dictum from headquarters.
Still a good point, tho. I'd wager that at it's peak, though, EIC wasn't much larger (in terms of payroll) than a medium-sized business today. Say -- 1,000-2,000 employees. I'll see if I can look that up...
The centralized, one-corporation company is new, because until the advent of the telephone, it was difficult -- if not impossible -- to run a company larger than a few dozen to 100 people. If you couldn't be in the same room with them, managing them was very difficult.
The telephone (and now, by extension, the Internet and networks) allows a large corporation to exist in the hundreds of thousands -- because you now have instantaneous communications between West Undershirt, Nevada and Gstaad, Switzerland.
Be careful of easy analogies -- they are easy for a reason. The "next big thing" will be (IMHO) a change in attitudes about what the networked world will do for individuals, not companies.
Personally, I believe that once a company reaches more than one billion in revenues (not market evaluation) it takes quite a bit to un-seat them. There's quite a lot of inertia in a billion dollars...
If you're counting total bugs, maybe, but only if you ignore certain facts. Looks like to me, the RedHat bug list includes some non-server vulnerabilities -- XFree86 4.01 /tmp vulnerability? I don't run XFree86 on my webserver, much less version 4.01.
Okay, let's look at RedHat v 6.2, i386 -- not RedHat as a whole, which would includ Sparc, Alpha, etc. By my count, there are 59 vulnerabilities, not 122. Of those vulnerabilities, I'd say maybe half are of concern to a server (which would be the target of a scheming cracker). Gnapster/Knapster? On a server?
This is a poorly written and baseless article. Besides, the logic is flawed -- basing an opinion on one set of data is stupid. It's like saying a Yugo is better than a BMW based on a gas-efficency metric.
You can safely ignore the article.
The hard part about programming is thinking in a sufficiently formal manner in order to carefully plan and execute a design project (like a database backed web site).
Learning SQL is a great way to start. It's fairly simple, applicable to a lot of programs (Oracle, Sybase, MS-SQL Server), and is good at teaching somebody how to think formally.
Build a database backed web service (something that would do the school good would be great, but not neccessary), maybe a school calendar. The hard parts are handled by the database program and the web server -- the fun parts can be built in modules.
Break the class into groups, and have them work on individual modules -- what data must go in, what must come out, and how it should be formatted. Then, the groups work together so the modules can talk to each other (this teaches some basic OOP-thinking as well). Then, start building. You can divide the semester into three chunks:
Why rewrite? Well, it's not bad practice to assume that the first go-around will be thrown away as you learn new things after the first build -- you can make up for those mistakes in the rewrite.
I sure do wish something like that was available to me in HS. SQL is easier than basic, and much more useful in teaching concepts.
Here's a thought -- the RIAA's not staffed with fools, methinks. Even the most blinded sycophant would have to come to the realization that while Napster may go away, MP3s will not -- and neither will the method by which MP3s can be transmitted (i.e. the Internet)
The RIAA has been around long enough (and the record industry as well) to know how this will go. They'll fight, bitch and moan, but the end result will be the new technology catching on.
Napster's a red herring -- look for something more sinister than "Burn the Napster witch!" Napster fights for its survival, on whatever front that may appear. The RIAA is looking for something else from this.
I don't know what it is, but I suspect that they are looking for a definitive intellectual property ruling -- one that will make digital music more controllable. Remember silver certificates? You were supposed to turn those in back in the 60's, I believe. The government asked for you to return them, and in return, they give you paper money from the Federal Reserve -- no longer backed by silver.
Do I think the RIAA has something of that magnitude cooking on the back burner? No, but the concept I'm sure gives some of the top brass massive erections.
Watch this case carefully. RIAA hasn't tipped their hand yet -- don't get blinded by the piteous cries of Napster screaming "foul!" There will be more...
Love your column, love "Accidental Empires" -- now that the fanboy part is over:
Why do the rich and powerful among the Digital Illuminati talk to you? What do you think is it about you that Bill G himself will discuss, if not his secret plans for domination, at least his thoughts about the computing community?
Whatever it is, I hope it doesn't go away!
Sure, that could be done. No problem. But I don't think that would be the best use of nerdpower. To my eye, Linux apps are generally pretty poor in the UI category. Just because there's a menu and buttons, that doesn't mean it's "user friendly". I give TkRat as an example.
It would be better to think carefully about what you're purpose is and who your audience is and build from there. Gnumeric is a good program, sure, but to compete with MS Excel, you don't have to match feature-for-feature, but make the way the user interfaces with it easier and cleaner, with good, to-the-point help. (needless to say, don't emulate the dancing Mac SE/paperclip).
The Mac interface is heavily influenced by it's original toaster design: screen space is valuable, don't fill it up with pretty widgets, and only have a single menubar. It caries over to larger screens well, because it's easier for people to get confused when there are multiple menubars on the screen.
Total rewrite? Well, maybe. But by doing so, perhaps the whole Unix community can benefit by looking at current paradigms and re-thinking how things can be done.
Of course, this is purely my opinion...
One of the computers was a Quadra 700, but appeared to be running a Unix-like OS.
In a technical overview I read about Jurrasic Park's computer lab, one of the neat things was that all the computers in the lab were just dummy boxes -- another room about 50 feet away was the real control room. They FX guys even had to hack the video cards so they would sync at a rate that suited the special needs of film (48hz, if I remember correctly).
dragonfly is right:
Apple did their best to make a computer that appealed to the wider audience of people that knew that this "computer thing" could help them do stuff, but didn't want to take the time, or make the effort to learn how to program.
Of course, the Mac wasn't as popular as it could have been, mainly due to the price of the thing. $2500 was quite a chunk of change back in 1984, and people were hard pressed to realize how it would benefit them. It didn't help that those who used computers at their office knew them to be cantankerous, evil-minded things administered by bearded demi-gods who talked down to the small-minded doofuses that crowded around their offices begging for more time or disk space on the mini.
My thinking on how to make Open Source a driving force in a computer community. You need a few very important things:
Apple had some of these -- the community was strong, and at the beginning there were very few applications, but Apple failed in supplying a programming language with the computer and a way to interact with the OS's guts. There was information, but the Inside Apple books were expensive, tough to read, and you could basically only get them from Apple. Plus, there was no public Internet, so the only communication that went on between community members came from BBS's and user groups.
Later, Apple provided AppleScript with all their computers, and the AppleScript community is sort of a snapshot of the Linux community circa 1991-92. They can trade scripts with each other and learn from each other, mainly do to the Internet, and have the ability to script the guts of the computer (the Finder).
I started out in DOS/Windows, but once I found the Mac, I knew where my real interests lay. Once I found Linux, my loyalties changed. Now, my interests lie in the BSD community. Seems I like jumping from underdog to underdog.
Coming from the other side (I was working at WorldCom before the MCI merger, and after), let me tell the other side of the story.
MCI was bought because it was a good deal -- the company was hemorraging money, as reflected by the dismal stock price, and was absolutely the most corporate of coporations. Especially when compared to the WorldCom culture. When the deal was inked, I believe one of the terms was that the MCI name would be retained, since the company had spent so much money on branding.
Unfortunately, the branding that the company spent money on was one of 9pm calls from pushy salespeople that were more annoying that successful.
One of the first things Bernard Ebbers did once the deal went through was to sell off 5 of the 8 corporate jets that MCI owned. Yes there were fairly significant layoffs, especially around the MCI water coolers. There was a reason for this. The WorldCom departments equivalent to MCI departments tended to be 50-60% of the size. There was a LOT of deadweight. Where my department was handled by 4 people and 1 executive, the MCI department had more than twice those numbers.
Now, I'm no longer with WorldCom, so I'm not "in the know", but I happen to believe that the main purpose of the Sprint deal is for their wireless. Those of you worried about WorldCom becoming a colossus of data lines, remember that UUNET is a part of WorldCom. Most of the Internet traffic goes over the UUNET network. Sorry, but WorldCom would give up the Sprint network in a heartbeat if it meant getting Sprint's wireless network. WorldCom doesn't have a wireless network right now (other than SkyTel).
If you're worried about long-distance competition, don't. You're wasting your time. WorldCom is already moving to "any-distance" phone service, i.e. a voice call is a voice call is a voice call, regardless of where it goes. Whether around the corner or around the world. The overhead of charging per-minute fares is quickly overshadowing the the going per-minute rates (10 cents down to 8 cents, down to 5 cents). Access charges, network overhead, etc have eaten the profit down to 10% of a 5 cent a minute call.
The AC above complaints don't make me cringe. Yes, there would be layoffs in a WorldCom/Sprint merger. There always are! That's one of the advantages of mergers! (Think "synergies", read "layoffs") Only, it would not be like the MCI merger, because, by and large, Sprint employees aren't as woefully inept as MCI employees tended to be. Sprint has remained competitive because of this reason. Now, there is an advantage to Sprint joining with WorldCom, because they can join their most successful functions -- data and wireless -- and make a powerfull post-millenial company, rather than an AT&T knockoff.
I'm not posting anonymously, because I think the WorldCom/Sprint deal would be great. I'm not just an ex-employee, I'm also a stock holder! :) So I'd take my words with however much salt you desire -- but I stand by them.
(No, not from options, from the regular way of getting a broker to buy them)
I LOVE the h2g2.com site. This is a well-thought out site, and really shows the potential of Internet-enabled collaboration.
Was it your intention to make what could become the ultimate travel guide (beating Michellin's Guides like a dirty rug), or was it just for funsies?
Now, if I could just fit it on my Palm...
Lessee -- I record a free-form monologue about how I first encountered Metallica (a bootleg tape of a concert that had "Hit The Lights" on it), how even over the much abused and much played crappy tape, that had made its way all the way from the West Coast to backwoods Mississippi, I could still make out the music and how much it affected me.
I tell about how I enjoyed the tape (that I made a copy of but unfortunately don't have anymore), and since then have bought every Metallica albumn up to S&M -- some of them TWICE, once on tape, once on CD. I tell about how Metallica's music helped me through some tough times in high school (tough to be a nerd in redneck land). I'll complain about how Jason got screwed in the "...And Justice For All" mix. I'll relate a quote from Lars who said, once, that "..more than any other band, we're like Rush".
I'll talk about the first time I heard about James's accident. I'll talk about how Metallica came back to Canada to finish the concert that James got hurt in, after Guns & Roses' Axl pitched a hissy-fit and walked off after 30 minutes.
I'll mention that Metallica's strength has always been their connection with their fans: how Jason tirelessly signs autographs, how the band once let people record their concerts, how hard-working the band has always been.
I'll say all this, and mention that Metallica, in their unique position of NOT being a slave to the record industry, who in fact seem to have always been in the position of leaders, have turned into followers (slaves, if you will), of a corporate mentality that denegrates their past efforts. I'll talk about how Metallica could be remembered, years after the band is no more, as the group that led the way, changing how musicians interact with their fans forever. I'll sadly mention that now, Metallica will most likely be remembered not for how much they cared and respected their fans, but how they attacked them.
I'll record this monologue and rip it to an MP3. I'll save multiple copies of it with the band's song titles, and put them up on Napster. With any luck, one of the band members will hear it, and know how disappointed I am with them, and how sad I will be because I will not listen to them anymore. And, since it's not their music, they can't ask me to take it down -- they can only ask that I change the titles. But that would be fine. I'd do that, and distribute the MP3 far and wide - hopefully, any potential fan would hear it first and then decide that Metallica isn't the band for them.
The ACS is a tour de force of web application design, to be sure, but as specified (Solaris, Oracle, AOLserver, massive redundancy, other tools), it makes it quite unatainable for small businesses to compete. Small businesses, IMHO, are who could benefit from a web presence the most, as compared to IPO-crazed dot-commers who push out a business plan first, and develop a strategy second.
Do you intend to target just the big-spenders, or are you hopeful that technology will drive down the costs to a point where smaller businesses can participate?
Looked at another way, will small businesses be looking at ACS for their web service needs when they get their MMDS hookup, or will they be looking at other solutions that don't require an Oracle DBA to get off the ground? Wouldn't that market segment (small business) be more interesting than big corporate clients?
Thanks for your work, BTW. You have already taught me more than 4 years of college at only the cost of buying your book and reading your site.
Okay, so I'm a lamer. The only IRC channel I've been on was #hottub back in 1991. So, I have to ask, what does this mean?
So what does 3090 mean? It's just clicks and whisles to me...
Nerd Clusters, which are more widespread than Beowulf, and more scalable.
For example, a Nerd Cluster, using ChineseTakeOut messaging, are often used in last-minute, panic-striken Intranet roll-outs, yet each node of a Nerd Cluster can answer simple management questions such as, "Hey, my PC at home crashes all the time. How can I fix it?"
Nerd clusters are, however, more dangerous to operate. If, for example, you say "Let's migrate our core applications from Solaris to NT", you run the risk of massive memory leakage as individual Nerd-nodes began to prioritize jobs such as "update_resume" over your request queue.
Nerd clusters need a "master" node as well. These can generally be identified by their bushy beards, or a long string of nodes queueing up to beg for static IPs.
If there's one thing Microsoft is NOT good at, it's lobbying Congress. Say what you will about predatory practices and Not Playing Nice With Others, Microsoft doesn't seem to hardly notice Washington D.C., other than as a potential market segment. Up till very recently, Microsoft was spending very little on lobbyists and campaigns, I suppose figuring that Washington couldn't react fast enough to technological advancements to even be a worry.
Now that they're entangled with the DoJ, do they think that a highly paid, very successful lobbyist is going to turn the tide? Well, knowing Washington, it probably will. But why Ralph Reed? Sure, he has ties to G.W. Bush, sure he's proven success before. Is the hiring of Ralph Reed a smokescreen for something else? It got headlines, that's for sure. If it makes Brokaw/Jennings/etc., my opinion is that it probably IS a smokescreen. Get everybody talking about the "wacko Christian Coalition" and "evil George W. Bush", and NOT thinking about stock prices.
If my smokescreen theory is correct, Microsoft needs to hire smarter PR flacks. This won't last long, and the next round of announcements from Judge Jackson will overshadow the hiring of Ralph Reed.
Okay, in order: I'm not saying Freenet should be illegal (as you seem to be saying -- if I've miscontrued your argument, I apologize and retract my following statement). I'm saying that it is a weakness of Freenet to not allow some level of control so that such activity does not take place. At any point in the process of "kiddie porn" -- creation, distribution, possesion -- the product and/or action is illegal. Hmm... I guess I AM saying it's illegal... your point.
I disagree that allowing free speech means tolerating legally and morally (oooh.. the "M" word) repugnant activities. It is the grossest of mistakes (or some kind of utopian happytalk) to say you cannot have one without the other. The world is not like a computer: there are many shades of gray in addition to the black and white binary world.
Tough one -- I don't say that you will be sodomizing 10 year olds on Freenet. I say that Freenet provides no provision to defend against questionable material, and as such facilitates the distribution. Returning to your above statement, you can't have one without the other, whereas I say "Yes you can". Eliminating the control of one's own node may not attract the legions of free-thinking people the project hopes for. Rather, it may attract only the bottom-feeders of society, since it gives them untraceable conduits to pass their material around. I think the balance struck is the wrong balance -- some control needs to be there.
Ian talks about routing around "cancerous" nodes when Evil Corporate Geniuses will pollute the Pure Freenet Stream with corporate doubletalk. Yet, he simply says, "don't run Freenet if you don't want the possibility of hosting kiddie porn on your node". This seems to be a wildly dis-proportionate view. Corpoations may be dumb and witless, but evil? Not really.
Finally, I may or may not "stay away from Freenet." I like the idea, I like the ideology. I'm not thrilled about the seeming decision to give up on blatently illegal activities. It's a tough choice, and I don't envy the Freenet's team job ahead of them in defending what (in a more perfect world) would be an indispensible entity. Good luck and best wishes to them.
It's not a misparaphrase, it's an exact quote, copy-and-pasted from Ian's answer.
Ian does not seem to be implying the opposite: he seems to be equating free speech (specifically, speech that you personally do not agree with) with distribution of "kiddie porn". I went to the extreme, granted, by taking into the "action" part of creating kiddie porn, but it is a valid extension of the argument. Hair-splitting aside, kiddie porn (at any stage, whether creating, distributing, or possesion) is illegal now. Whether you're streaming bits, or actually sodomizing a 10 year old boy, if it's kiddie porn, it's illegal.
I have to concede the fact that action != speech. However, I remind you that Ian said:
Semantics and logical hair-splitting aside, Freenet can allow and even facilitate the distribution of illegal material in a manner that makes it exceedingly difficult to defend against, under the auspices of "free speech". Noble words and intentions, to be sure, and a worthwhile endeavor. I think it's incomplete, and dangerously so.
Python is right -- action and speech are separate entities that cannot be equated. Ian seemed to equate them, so I commented on his answer. Assuming (as I do), that Ian doesn't really equate kiddie porn to free speech, he at least seems to be saying that on Freenet, you can only support free speech by simultaneously allowing a method by which the distribution of kiddie porn is *greatly* facilitated. I say "greatly" because there is the opportunity for a Freenet adminitrator's node to be used in a way the administrator may not like, and cannot defend against.
I'm not trying to make an ass of Ian: to the contrary, I wish the project much success. However, their decision to not allow node-administrator control -- indeed, no control whatsoever -- places their project in a dangerous position by which it can and will be used for such things as kiddie porn, and the good intentions of the project gets swept aside.
While I like the Freenet's technical capabilities (dynamic caching and mirroring), I dislike their philosophical stance on "free speech", to wit:
This is ridiculous. Copyrights are not economic censorship, unless the copyright holder chooses to use it as such. For example, Philip Greenspun lets web admins use his photos, generally for free, as long as they attribute him. He maintains the copyright. This is economic censorship? No, it's a legally enforceable method of control of somebody's intellectual property. (I know, IP is a dirty word...) Philip might spend hours setting up and taking a shot -- if he wants to retain control of his interpretation of an idea, that's his legal right.
So, in other words, "kiddie porn" is free speech. Really? I didn't know that. Guess ritual rape and mutilation is free speech too, and if done in a pointy hat with candles, it's a religious observance, too.
While I agree with the point that supporting free speech means supporting ideas and thoughts that you may not agree with, not every form of expression falls into free speech. Throwing a punch at someone, even if it's a cracker-ass Grand Wizard of the KKK, is not "expression". It's assault, and your butt will rightly be hauled into jail. Ass-fucking a 10 year old boy is not "expression". It's ass-fucking a 10 year old boy -- a minor, and protected (rightly) by law.
Developing a system whereby administrators (you can't even rightly call them that, since they "administer" nothing) have no control over content, you make a technically competent and interesting system that is *really* uninviting to operate, since your box can be the source of something nefarious (or something you disagree with, and do not wish to support). You are welcome to your ideas, but do *NOT* push them onto me.
A side issue is about the "voting" or "rating" system built into Freenet. I like the idea, but I think it overlooks something. What about tiny, insignificant, but really important things that don't get used much. For example, a HOW-TO on setting up an Amiga 2000 to run NetBSD. Not many A2000s out there, nobody runs NetBSD anyway... what's this node about Windows 2001? Looks neeto...
If unpopular nodes get pushed out, doesn't that run contrary to the "free speech" dictum? Unpopular now means "kill the niggers", but 40 years ago, unpopular meant "I have a dream...". Popularity is a poor substitute for personal decision.
Freenet is a great concept, but it's missing a few important concepts and components. I personally think that an philosophical ideal and a technical solution don't neccessarily mix very well. GNU software might be the rule-proving exception or the theory-smashing evidence. Freenet, however, is mostly concerned with ideology, and is developing a technical solution to promote that ideology at the expense of that self-same ideology.
At least, that's what I think. I'm also a well-known idiot