Re:What are you so damn afraid of?
on
CALEA update
·
· Score: 3
Yeah, and if the DEA kicks your door down, there's a really good chance you're a drug dealer right? Too bad for the old man who had a heart attack cause they got the wrong address, so sad.
I get so tired of people who haven't ever been a member of a disapproved minority thinking that everything is wonderful in America. This is how America oppresses people -- by making sure that 80% of the citizens never see it or experience it. It works wonderfully well too, especially when combined with TV brainwashing, the whitewashed Amercian history taught in schools, and the puff pieces that pass for journalism these days.
Occasionally, the mask is torn -- Vietnam, Watergate, S&L scandal, Rodney King, etc. But folks just go right back to sleep after the media circus like good little sheep. Gaahhh!
I have often thought that half the problem with our system is that it encourages those who wish to have power over others to run. A random selection would at least avoid that problem.
Another good side effect might be an increased interest in the average educational state of a citizen. But even a well-meaning rube might be better than a crook.
Another result would be breaking the two party system that is really a one party system. It would disenfranchise a lot of lobbyists. The election cycle that causes half of our politician's time to be spent getting re-elected would also be avoided.
It will never happen though -- it might work too well. And it might not -- I can think of lots of my neighbors that I wouldn't wish to see suddenly powerful. But damn, the current system is so broken it almost seems worth trying.
Maybe we should just invite all the politicians onto a slashdot-like forum, and the ones with the highest karma on election day are our leaders.
I like the idea of multiple meta-moderators per moderation. If there are enough volunteers, having three meta-moderators per moderation and only implementing "Unfair" if two out of the three agree might be useful to filter out mistaken or biased meta-moderating. Moderation mostly works, so meta-moderation should have small or positive effects on most moderator's karma or we risk losing good moderators from the pool.
I'm worried if moderators are losing huge chunks of karma from meta-moderation. If that's because they're not moderating well, fine, but if it's because people don't understand or abuse meta-moderation it's not. Could there be another reason for 20 point drops, such as a newly implemented time horizon, or changed rules for karma totalling?
I don't agree that "Funny" should be treated differently. If anything, slashdot discussions need more and better humor. The tendency to take ourselves too seriously is nicely punctured by that occasional post poking fun at one or more sides. More Shoeboy, not less!
Disclaimer - never gotten a "Funny" karma point yet -- but appreciate those who can and do.
"Why the hell do you want to colonise everything? Isn't it a better idea to stop polluting our own planet? Stop wasting its resources so rapidly?"
With that attitude we'd all still be on one continent. Not that I don't agree that pollution and resource depletion are serious problems.
One good and time tested way to stop using resources here is to get them somewhere else. It doesn't look like anyone else is too interested in the asteroids at the moment, perhaps we can be permitted to use some of them? Maybe even start some space colonies to support that activity?
It's likely going to be a long time before we're capable of even near interstellar voyages, let alone colonization missions. Perhaps we'll even have better ethics about destructive exploitation by then.
"If you had extensive physics (any freshman college course for example) you would know that heavy objects do in fact fall faster in a vacuum."
Sorry, the gravitational force is greater on a massier object, but this increase in force balances the increase in mass precisely, so the acceleration of an object due to gravity is independent of its mass.
Assuming m1 is the object exerting gravity, and m2 is the object affected, the acceleration a2 for m2 is
a2 = F/m2 = (G*m1*m2/d*d)/m2 = G*m1/d*d
That is, acceleration, and hence velocity, is independent of the size of the mass accelerated.
Science is inductive. A theory is proposed, then grows in acceptance as a large body of data is found to agree with the theory, while none is found that contradicts it.
We've had theories of solar system evolution, planetary spacing, formation of asteroid belts, and others, for a long time. But these theories are very unsatisfying because we only have one datapoint, our own solar system.
This may not seem important, if you believe that the solar system is completely typical. By the nature of a bell curve, most likely our system is in most respects. But there is very little evidence it is yet. We were already pretty certain that gas giant planets are not uncommon. This is the very first evidence that small rocky planets may not be uncommon either.
According to my calculations the feat is very roughly equivalent to detecting a speck one micrometer in radius at a distance of two kilometers, so I'm impressed anyway.
You argue very well, but I must disagree with some of your ideas.
One misconception is that the problem is that people are accidentally falling into the wrong sites, and if this never happened everyone would be content. Religious zealots surf porn, and scientologists surf for conflicting views, then apply political and legal pressure to suppress the information. They argue that this material is *wrong* and that no one should be allowed to view it, even willingly. Their attempts to block material will not cease on implementation of ratings, but increase, due to the ease of finding sites to target.
Another mistake is to think that the filtering will be done at the end user level. It is much cheaper and more effective to implement it at the ISP level or higher. ISPs are often shoestring operations that don't have budgets for big legal fights. A threat of a suit or even a vociferous complaint or three is often sufficient to get a site removed with most ISPs already. For them, adopting a conservative filter is very attractive, removing an incredible amount of hassle and potential expense. And don't be sure they'll lose customers in droves. How many people fail to use TVs because of the limited content and censorship?
Finally, I don't believe in the concept of harmful information. Yes, people can analyze information poorly, engage in illegal acts to gather it, certainly be ill prepared to handle it, but these are the problems, not the information. I say to parents -- its a diverse and sometimes ugly world your children will have to live in. Best prepare your children to encounter it. Believe me, you'll have more influence over how they handle ugly information if they view such material at home first, aided by your input, rather than later from their college dorm room. They *will* see it eventually, curiousity is a universal human trait.
If you want to keep very small kids off the internet, I understand, you could be right. But we don't need filtering to accomplish that, just as we don't have police on every block to keep them from crossing streets at that age.
If you could change the world, and people didn't care what their neighbors watched on the net, or at least were helpless to do anything about it, I would possibly agree with you. I certainly agree that if ratings had to be implemented, bottom up is the way to go.
I've always heard that the CIA was rather surprised by the events at the end of the cold war (and their threat estimates just prior to that time tend to show that too.)
Breaking a code is great, unless the enemy knows you've broken it, in which case it's a perfect channel for disinformation. Given that there was a mole fairly high in the CIA back then, it's not inconceivable that the Soviets knew, and took advantage to appear stronger than they were.
I hope there is a documentary about that period like this one about WWII someday.
"Feel free to select a high quality digital masterpiece from the ranks submitted by our readers and stored on the Picture Pages. Then add them to to your personal or corporate web page. Then email me and join the ranks of Slashdot supporters listed below. Fun for the whole family (well, maybe if your family is cooler than mine). Well maybe not, but its a nice little link for both of us which can't hurt *grin* "
The issue isn't linking to slashdot, but using slashdot servers to serve the slashdot logos at hundreds of other sites. As long as you store the logo on your own system, no problem. Until recently slashdot needed all the bandwidth it could scrape up! Even though there's more now, let's not waste it.
1) A non-active textual link vs hypertext link. 2) A link to a page containing illegal material. 3) A link only usable for viewing copyrighted content. 4) A link that starts an illegal content download.
In case 4) you could argue somewhat persuasively that the web author has knowingly created an object whose normal and expected use causes the law to be broken.
I also have to wonder if a company profiting from advertisement on a site with links to illegal content is liable.
The trouble with this is that to obey the law you need a lot of knowledge of a rather difficult and murky field, online copyright law. This is heading towards a world where it will be impossible to publish on the web without a lawyer and a staff of people to do ongoing research on the legality of all links (as they change.)
We will probably spend the next twenty years and who knows how much money defining copyright law for the web in the courts, and then even more money enforcing that law. Worse, the only real benefit will be to the distribution channels, not the content artists or end users.
You're right of course, sloppy users are the biggest threat.
Still, MS instills a culture where the machine does everything for you. You are not supposed to question what is really going on. The OS has deep roots in a single user non-networked system. A switch to Linux along with some training might be more effective in changing the state of some minds than you think.
For example, with all its security holes, I find Windows users rarely talk about security, except when headline news forces them to take note. Linux users on the other hand discuss it often, and developers code with the concept in mind from the start.
Many of the recent attacks by censors, such as the CDA, showed basic cluelessness about the internet -- laughable attempts to control it from within the legal framework of a single country.
These folks aren't kidding. They've realized that only a international ratings code can be practically implemented on a global system. They've also gotten a *lot* smarter at selling it. They claim this empowers users to make their own choices and politicians everywhere are likely happily buying this line.
Ok, whats wrong with this picture? Isn't it true that ratings don't harm anyone, they just let us filter our choices effectively? Yes, but there are several problems.
First, as the article pointed out so well, there is a stigma attached to the ratings that will encourage self-censorship, and inhibit people from seeking out contrary or disturbing views.
Second, think what an enabling technology this is for organizations to track down all the web sites in their area that displease them and start a campaign of legal threats to their ISPs. You think AOL is going to take a case to the supreme court so you can express an unpopular opinion? Don't count on it. Count on it even less if your site shows sexual imagery or violence. Also don't forget it makes it *easier* for tech savvy kids to find the interesing sites:).
Third, you've got to consider the possible abuses of the system. In how many countries will it be necessary to bribe someone for a good rating? How many web providers will be legally attacked for misrating controversial content? How many countries will use this to supress political opposition? Or sexual minorities?
Maybe you wouldn't mind being forced to wear a badge at all times that stated your religion. After all, this just empowers people to know something of your biases and culture. I know I'd fight such a measure with all at my disposal, and I don't think this plan is far different.
Heh, good one! Amazing no one saw any problem with that before it was published.
I suspect actually that "some programmer" got sick and tired of being asked for juicy computer catastrophe quotes and decided to have some fun at the media's expense. Might even be a useful training technique for journalists and editors who tend to pass on FUD uncritically.
True, NSA could be called expert in this area. But don't lose sight of the fact that they oppose general use of strong crypto both domestically and abroad. You shoudn't assume their interest is in improving MS's crypto security just because they know a lot about the subject.
There does not seem to be any irrefutable evidence that NSA's intention was to weaken crypto or backdoor Windows in this case, I agree.
If the NSAKEY is there to support NSA, or put there at their own request, it's highly amusing.
The one documented effect of the second NSAKEY is to defeat strong encryption control on Windows.
No matter which side of strong encryption debate you're on, Microsoft has probably lost reputation over this. Don't be surprised if an order for RedHat CDs arrives from Maryland...:)
I'm not trying to knock Java, I'm seriously curious. It was designed to be write once, run everywhere. Surely the concept of everywhere must have encompassed things like different X servers or sound systems? Or did Java always envision a narrowing of its market to just a few standard platforms, primarily Windows and Solaris?
Isn't Gosling really saying that Sun doesn't have the time to write all the different JVMs and whatnot required? The bazaar model worked rather well to make Linux cross platform. The developers who knew the most about each platform wrote the code to support it. Like the original poster, I think it would help fulfill the "any/everywhere" promise for Java too.
It's not true that topology is about geometry on surfaces, though many examples from it are. Topology is about which subsets of a space are open. Given a definition of openness of subsets that satisfies some requisite properties, you have a topology. Sometimes, as with function space topologies, there isn't a very good geometric analog.
The fractal dimension is an invariant of the topological space, so it's embedding in a superspace like 2D or 3D Euclidean space is not important in terms of it's fractal dimension.
I wasn't trying to imply that the lines have area, but a space filling curve has fractal dimension close to 2 because it "nearly" fills an area, and does so in the limit. It was a rough, and possibly poor, attempt at an analogy to this situation. You may be right that fractal dimension isn't important here, but it would be my guess that the increase in diameter from an given increase in nodes that was mentioned in the article was calculated could be based on that dimension, as it relates to how self-similar structures scale.
"To figure a shape to the web I would think you would first have to decide how many dimensions it has."
If you want to know geometrical shape that would be true. But topological shape is a little different. Topologically, a coffee cup and a donut both have the same shape. The shape in common is that they each have one hole.
Similarly, their power law reference means that the web is fractal in dimension, which is not the usual 1-2-3-4 dimensionality commonly meant. I would imagine this dimension is somewhere between 1 and 2. It's a set of lines (one dimensional) that are almost dense enough to fill an area (two dimensional.)
"But even if you only assume two or three dimensions, why 'clicks wide'? "
It sounds like they are looking at the web as a graph, a series of points (web pages) connected by edges (links). The width of a graph might be found like this:
For each pair of points in the graph, find the shortest path along edges between the points (in terms of number of edges.) The maximum length among all these shortest paths is the width of the graph.
It was an alien in a galaxy far away many billions of years ago.
Seriously, there wasn't much cross development between the early groups, none of them stole each other's work, so its fair to say they all invented it first. Locally.
Well, I hear you, I don't like gadgets in my programs either.
But this is open source, meaning those that contribute determine which itch to scratch. It also means that even should these functions not be removable (doubtful), someone can rapidly create a version in which they are, and redistribute it.
And as to cries for bloatware from the Linux community, maybe not. But Mozilla isn't for the Linux community alone, it has Windows, Mac, BeOs and other platform developers as well. Some of these may want an integrated platform even though many of us prefer tools for specific jobs. Integrated platforms can even be nice if the interfaces are suited to many different plug-ins for each function, especially when open source.
You can find a gazillion threads on whether mail, news, and other clients should be included with a browser in their netscape.public.mozilla.general newsgroup if you are curious as to their reasoning. You can even give them feedback if you think it that important.
This is not directed at you Synn, but let's quit kicking Mozilla, the media will do that for us. Either people should get involved and control the direction from within, or they might at least wait to see the gift before complaining about it.
Ok, our current government may not abuse this database.
But what makes you think that no US government in the future will? Do you consider a coup impossible? Is it absolutely inconceivable that a theocrat might get elected? Imagine, just for example, an election closely following a major terrorist incident in which huge numbers of people die.
Databases are forever. You need to worry about what the very worst government you can imagine would do with them, not what the government currently in power will do.
Even if you think a bad government is impossible in America, think about who can bribe their way to access it. If you were in the Witness Protection Program, how would you feel about this law?
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, and if the DEA kicks your door down, there's a really good chance you're a drug dealer right? Too bad for the old man who had a heart attack cause they got the wrong address, so sad.
I get so tired of people who haven't ever been a member of a disapproved minority thinking that everything is wonderful in America. This is how America oppresses people -- by making sure that 80% of the citizens never see it or experience it. It works wonderfully well too, especially when combined with TV brainwashing, the whitewashed Amercian history taught in schools, and the puff pieces that pass for journalism these days.
Occasionally, the mask is torn -- Vietnam, Watergate, S&L scandal, Rodney King, etc. But folks just go right back to sleep after the media circus like good little sheep. Gaahhh!
I have often thought that half the problem with our system is that it encourages those who wish to have power over others to run. A random selection would at least avoid that problem.
Another good side effect might be an increased interest in the average educational state of a citizen. But even a well-meaning rube might be better than a crook.
Another result would be breaking the two party system that is really a one party system. It would disenfranchise a lot of lobbyists. The election cycle that causes half of our politician's time to be spent getting re-elected would also be avoided.
It will never happen though -- it might work too well. And it might not -- I can think of lots of my neighbors that I wouldn't wish to see suddenly powerful. But damn, the current system is so broken it almost seems worth trying.
Maybe we should just invite all the politicians onto a slashdot-like forum, and the ones with the highest karma on election day are our leaders.
I see your point, the distance between two objects vanishes at a rate that does depend on the mass of both.
I should have stated that the reaction of a body to a fixed gravitational field does not depend on the mass of the body.
I like the idea of multiple meta-moderators per moderation. If there are enough volunteers, having three meta-moderators per moderation and only implementing "Unfair" if two out of the three agree might be useful to filter out mistaken or biased meta-moderating. Moderation mostly works, so meta-moderation should have small or positive effects on most moderator's karma or we risk losing good moderators from the pool.
I'm worried if moderators are losing huge chunks of karma from meta-moderation. If that's because they're not moderating well, fine, but if it's because people don't understand or abuse meta-moderation it's not. Could there be another reason for 20 point drops, such as a newly implemented time horizon, or changed rules for karma totalling?
I don't agree that "Funny" should be treated differently. If anything, slashdot discussions need more and better humor. The tendency to take ourselves too seriously is nicely punctured by that occasional post poking fun at one or more sides. More Shoeboy, not less!
Disclaimer - never gotten a "Funny" karma point yet -- but appreciate those who can and do.
"Why the hell do you want to colonise everything? Isn't it a better idea to stop polluting our own planet? Stop wasting its resources so rapidly?"
With that attitude we'd all still be on one continent. Not that I don't agree that pollution and resource depletion are serious problems.
One good and time tested way to stop using resources here is to get them somewhere else. It doesn't look like anyone else is too interested in the asteroids at the moment, perhaps we can be permitted to use some of them? Maybe even start some space colonies to support that activity?
It's likely going to be a long time before we're capable of even near interstellar voyages, let alone colonization missions. Perhaps we'll even have better ethics about destructive exploitation by then.
"If you had extensive physics (any freshman college course for example) you would know that heavy objects do in fact fall
faster in a vacuum."
Sorry, the gravitational force is greater on a massier object, but this increase in force balances the increase in mass precisely, so the acceleration of an object due to gravity is independent of its mass.
Assuming m1 is the object exerting gravity, and m2 is the object affected, the acceleration a2 for m2 is
a2 = F/m2 = (G*m1*m2/d*d)/m2 = G*m1/d*d
That is, acceleration, and hence velocity, is independent of the size of the mass accelerated.
Science is inductive. A theory is proposed, then grows in acceptance as a large body of data is found to agree with the theory, while none is found that contradicts it.
We've had theories of solar system evolution, planetary spacing, formation of asteroid belts, and others, for a long time. But these theories are very unsatisfying because we only have one datapoint, our own solar system.
This may not seem important, if you believe that the solar system is completely typical. By the nature of a bell curve, most likely our system is in most respects. But there is very little evidence it is yet. We were already pretty certain that gas giant planets are not uncommon. This is the very first evidence that small rocky planets may not be uncommon either.
According to my calculations the feat is very roughly equivalent to detecting a speck one micrometer in radius at a distance of two kilometers, so I'm impressed anyway.
You argue very well, but I must disagree with some of your ideas.
One misconception is that the problem is that people are accidentally falling into the wrong sites, and if this never happened everyone would be content. Religious zealots surf porn, and scientologists surf for conflicting views, then apply political and legal pressure to suppress the information. They argue that this material is *wrong* and that no one should be allowed to view it, even willingly. Their attempts to block material will not cease on implementation of ratings, but increase, due to the ease of finding sites to target.
Another mistake is to think that the filtering will be done at the end user level. It is much cheaper and more effective to implement it at the ISP level or higher. ISPs are often shoestring operations that don't have budgets for big legal fights. A threat of a suit or even a vociferous complaint or three is often sufficient to get a site removed with most ISPs already. For them, adopting a conservative filter is very attractive, removing an incredible amount of hassle and potential expense. And don't be sure they'll lose customers in droves. How many people fail to use TVs because of the limited content and censorship?
Finally, I don't believe in the concept of harmful information. Yes, people can analyze information poorly, engage in illegal acts to gather it, certainly be ill prepared to handle it, but these are the problems, not the information. I say to parents -- its a diverse and sometimes ugly world your children will have to live in. Best prepare your children to encounter it. Believe me, you'll have more influence over how they handle ugly information if they view such material at home first, aided by your input, rather than later from their college dorm room. They *will* see it eventually, curiousity is a universal human trait.
If you want to keep very small kids off the internet, I understand, you could be right. But we don't need filtering to accomplish that, just as we don't have police on every block to keep them from crossing streets at that age.
If you could change the world, and people didn't care what their neighbors watched on the net, or at least were helpless to do anything about it, I would possibly agree with you. I certainly agree that if ratings had to be implemented, bottom up is the way to go.
Interesting!
I've always heard that the CIA was rather surprised by the events at the end of the cold war (and their threat estimates just prior to that time tend to show that too.)
Breaking a code is great, unless the enemy knows you've broken it, in which case it's a perfect channel for disinformation. Given that there was a mole fairly high in the CIA back then, it's not inconceivable that the Soviets knew, and took advantage to appear stronger than they were.
I hope there is a documentary about that period like this one about WWII someday.
"Feel free to select a high quality digital masterpiece from the ranks submitted by our readers and stored on the Picture Pages. Then add them to to your personal or corporate web page. Then email me and join the ranks of Slashdot supporters listed below. Fun for the whole family (well, maybe if your family is cooler than mine). Well maybe not, but its a nice little link for both of us which can't hurt *grin* "
The issue isn't linking to slashdot, but using slashdot servers to serve the slashdot logos at hundreds of other sites. As long as you store the logo on your own system, no problem. Until recently slashdot needed all the bandwidth it could scrape up! Even though there's more now, let's not waste it.
There are more dividing lines.
1) A non-active textual link vs hypertext link.
2) A link to a page containing illegal material.
3) A link only usable for viewing copyrighted content.
4) A link that starts an illegal content download.
In case 4) you could argue somewhat persuasively that the web author has knowingly created an object whose normal and expected use causes the law to be broken.
I also have to wonder if a company profiting from advertisement on a site with links to illegal content is liable.
The trouble with this is that to obey the law you need a lot of knowledge of a rather difficult and murky field, online copyright law. This is heading towards a world where it will be impossible to publish on the web without a lawyer and a staff of people to do ongoing research on the legality of all links (as they change.)
We will probably spend the next twenty years and who knows how much money defining copyright law for the web in the courts, and then even more money enforcing that law. Worse, the only real benefit will be to the distribution channels, not the content artists or end users.
You're right of course, sloppy users are the biggest threat.
Still, MS instills a culture where the machine does everything for you. You are not supposed to question what is really going on. The OS has deep roots in a single user non-networked system. A switch to Linux along with some training might be more effective in changing the state of some minds than you think.
For example, with all its security holes, I find Windows users rarely talk about security, except when headline news forces them to take note. Linux users on the other hand discuss it often, and developers code with the concept in mind from the start.
"I don't know of any large government Linux contracts,"
:)
This could be a very stable revenue stream for some Linux companies. Distribute updates, security patches, and support on a contract basis.
It might be worth looking into the certification standard they mentioned and see what's missing, if anything.
I'd love to see slashdot.gov
"Come again? The MMIX machine had a rather completely specified instruction set, and 64-bit registers wasn't in it. "
From the MMIX link in the original post:
"MMIX is a machine that operates primarily on 64-bit words"
As I understood from the interview, Knuth is totally redoing the MIX architecture to produce a new one called MMIX. Sounds good to me.
Many of the recent attacks by censors, such as the CDA, showed basic cluelessness about the internet -- laughable attempts to control it from within the legal framework of a single country.
:).
These folks aren't kidding. They've realized that only a international ratings code can be practically implemented on a global system. They've also gotten a *lot* smarter at selling it. They claim this empowers users to make their own choices and politicians everywhere are likely happily buying this line.
Ok, whats wrong with this picture? Isn't it true that ratings don't harm anyone, they just let us filter our choices effectively? Yes, but there are several problems.
First, as the article pointed out so well, there is a stigma attached to the ratings that will encourage self-censorship, and inhibit people from seeking out contrary or disturbing views.
Second, think what an enabling technology this is for organizations to track down all the web sites in their area that displease them and start a campaign of legal threats to their ISPs. You think AOL is going to take a case to the supreme court so you can express an unpopular opinion? Don't count on it. Count on it even less if your site shows sexual imagery or violence. Also don't forget it makes it *easier* for tech savvy kids to find the interesing sites
Third, you've got to consider the possible abuses of the system. In how many countries will it be necessary to bribe someone for a good rating? How many web providers will be legally attacked for misrating controversial content? How many countries will use this to supress political opposition? Or sexual minorities?
Maybe you wouldn't mind being forced to wear a badge at all times that stated your religion. After all, this just empowers people to know something of your biases and culture. I know I'd fight such a measure with all at my disposal, and I don't think this plan is far different.
Heh, good one! Amazing no one saw any problem with that before it was published.
I suspect actually that "some programmer" got sick and tired of being asked for juicy computer catastrophe quotes and decided to have some fun at the media's expense. Might even be a useful training technique for journalists and editors who tend to pass on FUD uncritically.
True, NSA could be called expert in this area. But don't lose sight of the fact that they oppose general use of strong crypto both domestically and abroad. You shoudn't assume their interest is in improving MS's crypto security just because they know a lot about the subject.
There does not seem to be any irrefutable evidence that NSA's intention was to weaken crypto or backdoor Windows in this case, I agree.
If the NSAKEY is there to support NSA, or put there at their own request, it's highly amusing.
:)
The one documented effect of the second NSAKEY is to defeat strong encryption control on Windows.
No matter which side of strong encryption debate you're on, Microsoft has probably lost reputation over this. Don't be surprised if an order for RedHat CDs arrives from Maryland...
I'm not trying to knock Java, I'm seriously curious. It was designed to be write once, run everywhere. Surely the concept of everywhere must have encompassed things like different X servers or sound systems? Or did Java always envision a narrowing of its market to just a few standard platforms, primarily Windows and Solaris?
Isn't Gosling really saying that Sun doesn't have the time to write all the different JVMs and whatnot required? The bazaar model worked rather well to make Linux cross platform. The developers who knew the most about each platform wrote the code to support it. Like the original poster, I think it would help fulfill the "any/everywhere" promise for Java too.
It's not true that topology is about geometry on surfaces, though many examples from it are. Topology is about which subsets of a space are open. Given a definition of openness of subsets that satisfies some requisite properties, you have a topology. Sometimes, as with function space topologies, there isn't a very good geometric analog.
The fractal dimension is an invariant of the topological space, so it's embedding in a superspace like 2D or 3D Euclidean space is not important in terms of it's fractal dimension.
I wasn't trying to imply that the lines have area, but a space filling curve has fractal dimension close to 2 because it "nearly" fills an area, and does so in the limit. It was a rough, and possibly poor, attempt at an analogy to this situation. You may be right that fractal dimension isn't important here, but it would be my guess that the increase in diameter from an given increase in nodes that was mentioned in the article was calculated could be based on that dimension, as it relates to how self-similar structures scale.
"To figure a shape to the web I would think you would first have to decide how many dimensions it has."
If you want to know geometrical shape that would be true. But topological shape is a little different. Topologically, a coffee cup and a donut both have the same shape. The shape in common is that they each have one hole.
Similarly, their power law reference means that the web is fractal in dimension, which is not the usual 1-2-3-4 dimensionality commonly meant. I would imagine this dimension is somewhere between 1 and 2. It's a set of lines (one dimensional) that are almost dense enough to fill an area (two dimensional.)
"But even if you only assume two or three dimensions, why 'clicks wide'? "
It sounds like they are looking at the web as a graph, a series of points (web pages) connected by edges (links). The width of a graph might be found like this:
For each pair of points in the graph, find the shortest path along edges between the points (in terms of number of edges.) The maximum length among all these shortest paths is the width of the graph.
It was an alien in a galaxy far away many billions of years ago.
Seriously, there wasn't much cross development between the early groups, none of them stole each other's work, so its fair to say they all invented it first. Locally.
Well, I hear you, I don't like gadgets in my programs either.
But this is open source, meaning those that contribute determine which itch to scratch. It also means that even should these functions not be removable (doubtful), someone can rapidly create a version in which they are, and redistribute it.
And as to cries for bloatware from the Linux community, maybe not. But Mozilla isn't for the Linux community alone, it has Windows, Mac, BeOs and other platform developers as well. Some of these may want an integrated platform even though many of us prefer tools for specific jobs. Integrated platforms can even be nice if the interfaces are suited to many different plug-ins for each function, especially when open source.
You can find a gazillion threads on whether mail, news, and other clients should be included with a browser in their netscape.public.mozilla.general newsgroup if you are curious as to their reasoning. You can even give them feedback if you think it that important.
This is not directed at you Synn, but let's quit kicking Mozilla, the media will do that for us. Either people should get involved and control the direction from within, or they might at least wait to see the gift before complaining about it.
Ok, our current government may not abuse this database.
But what makes you think that no US government in the future will? Do you consider a coup impossible? Is it absolutely inconceivable that a theocrat might get elected? Imagine, just for example, an election closely following a major terrorist incident in which huge numbers of people die.
Databases are forever. You need to worry about what the very worst government you can imagine would do with them, not what the government currently in power will do.
Even if you think a bad government is impossible in America, think about who can bribe their way to access it. If you were in the Witness Protection Program, how would you feel about this law?