"The necessary precondition of a coercive monopoly is closed entry--the barring of all competing producers form a given field. THis can be accomplised only by an act of government intervention, in the form of special regulations, subsidies or franchises."
I'm confused. Suppose Microsoft were to simply refuse to sell Microsoft products to anyone that sold non-Microsoft software? Where is the government intervention in that? Do you argue that with a desktop share of over 90 percent that such an action would quickly result in a closed entry market? Do you think anything but the threat of anti-trust is keeping Microsoft from doing that?
They tried exactly that already in the pre-installed OS and browser market. With some success I might add.
My only comment is that it may not be as innocent as you depict. Who is in government? A few idealists, and many attracted to money and power. Those attracted to money and power will naturally use their money and power to accumulate more money and power. Result: corruption plus laws and behavior to keep power in the hands of politicians. Positive feedback leads to accumulation of power limited only by the need to be re-elected and to avoid provoking revolution. The means of discouragement are therefore subtle, and not planned so much as left in place as they occur naturally and happen to help the accumulation of power.
It is no accident that people are turned off by politics. The less people pay attention the more the politicians can do as they please.
Political education is poor. Many schools are poor in general, tend to teach history by convenient ommission of ugly details, and have student governments that are complete figureheads for the adminstration as a great practical example of democracy.
There is a two party system that relatively no one cares to pick between. Parties run on emotional ideologies, not critical analyses of issues. Demogogue A, or Demogogue B, let me see... well, B sounds more friendly and dresses better...
The low level details of politics are obscured. When was the last time you saw a public service announcement that a local caucus was taking place soon, be sure to attend? How many people could describe the entire process by which national candidates are selected and elected?
Usually both parents have to work to maintain an approved lifestyle. And work doesn't mean 8 hours a day for many, more like 10 or 12. We get a generous 2-3 week vacation while most of the first world takes 6. Where is the time to get involved in politics?
And presuming you do work hard and get a plank in place, what makes you think it will be implemented? The Christian conservatives have had much more luck getting conservative planks in place than outlawing abortion, using just the grassroots technique you suggest.
Yeah, it's our fault for not being disgusted enough to force ourselves to jump thru their hoops to take power back. But we've had a *lot* of help with that inertia, and if people ever seriously tried, it wouldn't be without very intense opposition. Worth doing, but you need a few major issues to mobilize around, and the powers that be can defeat the movement by giving in on those any time, so pick well -- they have to be truly hated by the powerful and very popular at the same time.
Yeah, our industrial base didn't get creamed in WWII. We were economically dominant in the 50's which created fat and lazy companies. We've also got a lot of stodgy 75 year or older companies around that only seem to want change when foreign competitors threaten to yank the rug. Cars, for example -- change/sell the body yearly, minimize structural costs, except when pushed by regulation or competition. No vision to create a market for a long lasting fuel efficient safe car.
Well, I appreciated the article. I was thinking of buying the book, but now I'll wait until I see differing reviews, get bored, or want to make a contribution to the FSF.
As long as the articles on Salon remain critical of Linux and open source, where deserved, I don't see a problem with realizing there is a lot of interest in the subject and capitalizing on it. Everyone benefits - thats what business is supposed to do.
Your stories, and others' about open source and Linux on Salon have been nearly always been well worth reading, something still pretty rare. Enough so that I do check Salon independently once a day or so, just to know what will be on Slashdot later;)
"The sad part is, for most of us this is (was?) just a cool way to check out stuff that interests us, and see that others are interested in the same things. Why is everyone so afraid of that idea?"
The first part of the answer is found in your other paragraph about smoke and mirrors democracy. A lot of money and power depend on that illusion, which makes an example of true democracy about as welcome as Bill Gates at ALS.
The second scary part is the bit about "see that others are interested in the same things." This strongly reinforces what the government would consider geeks, cults, perverts, radicals, militant nut-cases, and consumer and labor unions. While we might see it as a celebration of diversity and an empowerment of the individual, to them it is a breeding ground of dangerous ideas and a weapon against established power. It is all of that and more.
This suit just seems a bit clueless. But expect them to extend as many legal claws into the internet as they can without getting them chopped off. Keep your axes sharp and handy.
"The world will never be 100% equality, because men and women are different."
That's true to some extent, though I would say *people* are different. Some males may have a knack for nurturing and some females may do better as firefighters. There are 5'4" 98lb men, and 6'6" 250lb women, right?
People shouldn't be directed away from a profession due to their sex unless there is some objective reason it matters. If they're too short and weak to be a firefighter, fine, use that as the reason. To say *no* women can/should be firefighters, and *no* single men can/should be parents is what gets folks upset, there is no reason to use sex as the discriminating factor.
Let people find the direction that suits them without having statistical proof of unsuitability thrown in their face. We don't need strict roles for sexes, but rather job qualifications to determine if individuals, regardless of their demographics, are well enough suited to the task.
Gray refuses to sign a bill that merely requires prior notification of e-mail monitoring and his reason is it would interfere with "employer's rights". I thought these were basically property rights and contractual rights. How do these differ from civil rights?
While trespassing is illegal, you have a much better chance of succeeding in prosecution in court if you have posted "no trespassing" signs beforehand. Hell, even coffee cups warn about the dangers of hot coffee these days. Why wouldn't a business want to post their monitoring policy? You'd think this would deter inappropriate usage and that would be preferable to catching misuse after the fact. Possible reasons:
1) You might have more trouble hiring for occupations in high demand.
2) Some may morally prefer to catch "wrong-doers" not just prevent them.
3) Perhaps interesting commercial espionage data is available in e-mail to and from friends at competing companies.
4) They get a sexual kick (voyeurism) out of reading peoples private correspondence. Letting people know they are monitored would ruin all the fun.
5) They are afraid that fired workers might sue on the basis that they weren't informed? Can you say employment contract?
6) Companies might not move to California, or might move away, because of "draconian" legislation like this?
I'm at a loss, frankly, none of these seem like good reasons to me. Any ideas what might be wrong with this bill?
From the number of replies I got with themes like this I was obviously not clear enough.
I have no problem with criticizing Katz's ideas or even his presentation or logic. Many anti-Katz posts fail to do this though. They basically say, "I don't ever agree with you, shut up."
When a member of society is offended by an idea espoused by a second there are two possible solutions. One is for the offended member not to listen to things that offend them. The other is to prevent the offender from speaking. I am saying the former course is preferable. Do you disagree?
What is the effect if one of these suggestions that Katz go away is implemented? I and others who wish to listen are no longer able to. What is the effect if the complaining posters filter Katz? They are presumably happier in their new Katz-free world while those who wish to can still read Katz. I don't regard these suggestions as equivalent. Suggestions not to listen are not equivalent to suggestions not to talk.
Emotional ad hominem attacks do not promote consensus or add information, they are noise. I'm not suggesting gagging, locking up, or shooting violaters, merely pointing out that they are actually degrading the quality of the discussion. Perhaps even driving away those with good ideas but weak stomachs for conflict.
I wasn't intending to suggest that people shouldn't post if they want to. More responding to the screams of pain embedded in their comments. If reading Katz hurts too much, why not avoid it, rather than sharing the agony with the rest of us? Why not write about it in a letter to the Slashdot editors, where someone who cares might read it? Submit an article about it. Such posts, about Katz and his writing, *are* offtopic. In the posts, I expect to hear why he's wrong, not a critique of his writing or choice of topic. I recognize I am doomed to disappointment.
After reading the article I expected some discussion of the idea that censorship is imposed not just from above, but also below, thru political correctness and peer group pressure. Political correctness has far more to do with being nice than being correct. The Soviet Union was very much into political correctness when they enforced what could be said by their citizens. The U.S. needs perestroika as well, because not all politically incorrect ideas are wrong. The fact that the Soviet Union used goons to enforce it, while we rely on mobs of angry citizens and lawsuits is irrelevant.
Attack the idea, not the person who presented it. Is it so radical to suggest that free discourse works best when people voluntarily follow that rule?
As I write this, I see five comments of six suggesting Katz shut up, or not write the article.
This demonstrates exactly what he is talking about. As long as people can't speak without the fear of offending others, we aren't truly free. Not that Katz is going to be inhibited by the abuse he gets, but a more timid person with ideas as or more worthwhile might be.
When someone suggests euthanasia in cases where conciousness isn't present or survival is not possible he is reviled. Maybe the idea is wrong, but a free society attacks the idea, not the person behind it.
If I were to suggest revolution in my country, and it happened, innocent people would die. How is this any different from the euthanasia controversy? Is suggesting revolution worthy of being named a mass murderer then? And why aren't the founding fathers reviled?
Examining an idea never hurts. It may be wrong, but in the process of honestly determining that for yourself that you can learn important things.
Let Katz write. Filter him, or turn your eyes if you think it worthless. You at worst harm yourself that way. Inhibiting free discussion harms everyone else's right to be exposed to ideas they may find more valuable than you.
This sounds like a wonderful opportunity to get lots of people on the upgrade treadmill. Imagine a grower getting something like this:
Dear Seed'98 owner:
We are proud to announce Seed 2000! This novel product is an upgrade/replacement for Seed '98, for which our records show you are a registered customer.
Many people felt that the elimination of all birds eating Seed '98 was an overly ambitious goal. Heh, the insects really liked it anyway! In response to customer demand Seed 2000 is now completely bird friendly, causing at most mild diarrhea.
The gene that caused half the seeds to grow downwards has been fixed.
Plants will no longer expire on Y2K rollover, the death gene now handles negative ages correctly.
In addition Seed 2000 only requires twice the water that Seed '98 did.
We hope you will send us your money soon, so we can ship your new seeds.
Yours truly,
SeedSoft Inc.
P.S. If you have difficulty planting the new seeds due to high levels of insects in your fields, see our new genetically engineered Bird on our avian pages.
Re:Gnome/KDE: for script kiddies and windoze wanna
on
October Gnome Released
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· Score: 2
Ok, I'm biting:) Seriously, though your tone is flamish I think you raise a good question.
What do desktops have to do with developers? I develop from within a terminal window or a bare CLI and it sounds like you do too. This is true whether I'm working on Linux or Windows.
Desktops are for users.
Users like solitaire and desktop configurability.
Companies write drivers and most software for users, not developers. Open source, up til now, has been mostly written for developers. If you are satisfied developing Windows software on Linux with a paucity of drivers, that may be sufficient, otherwise users have to like Linux too.
This is not to say that creating a slim and mean desktop for development might not be a good idea, but extending the OS to users is more important just now.
"Free Software is at its strongest when it takes an existing idea, say a C compiler, or a Unix-like OS, makes a lifesize copy, and then keeps adding features until it is as good as, or better than, the commercial competition. I'd hazard a guess that very, very few Free Software projects are doing anything but copying, cloning, or porting existing products."
Open source isn't that good at overall design and architecture. It works best when it forms around an existing kernel of code. This allows religious flamewars to be quelled with the cry: "Show me the source." This is why most projects are working on something definite, most usually an existing body of code, or an application being cloned.
"So if you're looking to throw a few million into research and development, in order to turn your Cool New Idea for the Next Killer App into a reality, do you really want to have to be asking yourself "So... how long until a few bearded hippies come up with a free (speech/beer)knock-off?"
Figuring a modest $40/hr per developer, and 100 developers on an open source project, a few million amounts to roughly 750 hours, or five months of full-time work from each developer. Figuring half-time instead, call it a year -- not that long. This suggests that new ideas won't fail to happen just because the proprietary model is no longer profitable.
Open source software is indeed a threat to software that is packaged and sold on shelves. Fortunately the vast majority of software is not of this type. Nearly all of it is built to purpose to solve some company's need, or to control some hardware. These jobs are not threatened.
It is correct that what is being contemplated is a major change in the software industry and painful displacements will no doubt result. It is not a question of eliminating software as a profession however, merely software as a product. The question is whether you think the goal is worth the strife.
This is a case where the people who are being exposed have a clear right to inspect the software they are entrusting their records to. We should demand they open source the system in the public interest. At the least this will slow things down while the bugs are fixed.
Even if the software were completely secure, I still have doubts about this. Just how hard is it to find a licensed physician with a need for money that would be willing to broker requests? Blackmail? Besides the obvious problems with insurance companies and employers having access, if you have ever answered "yes" to a doctor's question about drug use, you may not want the government to have access either. You really think they won't?
Yes, this could do a lot of good for statistical studies. So we might consider a system where all individual identification data was stripped from the records prior to storage, and placed somewhere isolated from the internet with a warrant required for access. Difficult though, since you'd need to store hereditary relationships and approximate patient location to distinguish genetic from environmental disorders.
If I read the article right, the problem is that AOL users are opening an executable attachment to an e-mail. Sorry, but there is no way in the world to protect against this. People often say it doesn't matter on a Linux system since only user files can be affected, but this is little comfort to me. I can easily re-install a broken system. Protecting the user data I've created since last backup is far more important to me.
Users seem to be requesting that AOL identify all possible malicious attachments and install virus checking software that will identify them. AOL is quite right in saying this is hopeless. The only solution presently is for AOL users to grow a brain (after the appropriate education) and refuse to open attachments they did not solicit.
It would be nice if attachments could run/open on a VMWare virtual machine or something like it created specifically for the purpose, with monitors for suspicious activity. If the virtual machine gets destroyed, no biggee. Delete it and create it again. I doubt this is practical at the consumer level now however.
No, I have to agree with AOL that this problem is between keyboard and chair.
There have been far more serious security problems in the Microsoft world of late that would destroy a system on merely opening a mail or viewing a web page. These are real holes that need fixing, or better, making impossible.
I have never used HTML mail, and I wish no one would. Almost all of it I get is spam anyway. The internet was designed around text for a good reason, and even though HTML is text, any language that can embed executables is still dangerous. Limiting mail HTML to a formatting subset like Slashdot's would be an acceptable compromise.
I think it is far too early to give up on getting the government to see the light with regard to crypto, so I agree with you that *right now* it may not be worth the risk.
However, please do not dismiss the importance of a challenge, even a small one, to free speech. Should free speech fall or simply become ineffective you'll have a *very* tough time organizing demonstrations for *anything*.
This specific issue, encryption, is very important itself to effective free speech and the right of free assembly. Organized civil disobedience can make use of encryption just as any illegal group like criminals or terrorists can. It's just far less obvious we want to prevent it.
Many people think that the extreme sucessfulness and longevity of DOOM and Quake was partly due to the internet communities that sprung up around them, to discuss playing them and write new levels for them.
How important do you feel a viable gaming community is to the success of a new game today?
I'm curious if you learned of Binary Space Partitioning before or after DOOM was conceived as a game? For example, were you aware of it when Wolfenstein was written? Did you consider and reject other rendering methods for DOOM?
Yeah, I really hate that too. Happened with Win'95 and the Display Properties dialog when running at the system standard 640X480 resolution, e.g. in Safe Mode. You could workaround with some slightly esoteric knowledge, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't too helpful to a typical customer.
I suspect a lot of the problem is that developers and testers both avoid running the software in the worst resolutions as much as they can.
I don't really care for scrollbars all that much, I'd rather see it broken up into subsidiary dialogs available on buttons from the main.
"I'm sorry I don't really have time to discuss this point with you properly, but I must mention that this is quite a bizarre conclusion you get here. Gödel himself was a mathematical platonist; for example, he believed that there were such objects as nautral and real numbers, and that some statements were true of them while others were false of them, even beyond what we can actually prove about them. Thus Gödel's theorems show us an unprovable statement of arithmetic which is actually true (the statement that encodes its own unprovability)."
Yes, I'm aware Godel was a Platonist. However, thanks to his result, many mathematicians today aren't. And in fact there are competing theories of the reals (Robinson's infintesimal numbers e.g.) that suggest there may be more than one "correct" model of the reals. Though some mathematicians believe in a Platonic model for mathematics, it's just that -- philosophical belief. Religion enters here too, as religious mathematicians often prefer a God-created Platonic mathematics that humans discover. Others believe that mathematical systems are created by the mathemtician's choice of axioms, all consistent systems being just as "correct" as any other.
"I can't remember Tarksi's position regarding this, though."
What Tarski showed was that a mathematical system that defines truth internally (as Godel defined provability internally to number theory) must be inconsistent. Unlike Godel, I haven't read Tarski's actual paper, but that is my recollection of it from my foundations classes ages ago. What he believed, I don't know either, but I'm not sure it's relevant exactly.:)
Worse if CmdrTaco and Hemos were on the show. Then we'd have the entire MTV audience in our laps here on slashdot the next day. Good for business maybe, but hell on S/N.
But they might get some sales merely by being in stores, something Mozilla may not do. Linux users aren't very used to going to stores for software, but new converts from Windows may be different. They could also play the bundle game, with distros, or apps they play well with.
They may also have a shot at the browser market for embedded Linux devices if they are light enough.
I'm attracted to their tables-capable text only browser as well, I don't think Mozilla has done that.
If they want desktop market though, they better get out there well before Mozilla releases officially. Without being buggy. Ouch.
A XFCom X server for Linux is available for the single Rage 128 at Suse. I believe it will probably mainline in the next version of the XFree86 server, it seems quite stable. This should mean that most of the information for the dual processor version is already known, so hopefully a driver will follow quickly.
If you mean DRI and GL support, that's coming in version XFree86 v4.0, which hasn't announced a release date. The next snapshot, 3.9.17 should be available mid-month according to the XFree86 page.
Yes, I agree that the impossibility of disproving creationism is a strong argument against it. That's why the assumptions behind the theory are usually not explicitly stated.
"You say that effectiveness, or how much you can explain using a theory, is a better judge of a theory's value. Doesn't this imply that you believe that there is some sort of reality or truth (so to speak) with which you can evaluate theories by?"
I'm thinking along the lines of Occam's razor. The simpler your assumptions and the more verifiable they are, for a given predictive power, is the measure I'm thinking of.
I don't know if there is a physical reality or not. I'm still trying to recover from the shock that a mathematical reality doesn't exist:). There is certainly something closely resembling one, but then we get along quite well pretending there is one for math too.
As you say, science is essentially observational, which is different from mathematics. However, especially in physics, there is a strong tendency to reduce knowledge to a small number of laws, each very well verified, and base the remainder of physical knowledge on deductive reasoning, as with math. I suspect this pursuit is no less hopeless than mathematics' attempt to find the universal set of assumptions. I just hear too much talk about truth and provability in this debate, and I think it's missing the correct issue.
Creationism can predict current observation perfectly by assuming that God did whatever is necessary to bring about what we observe, but that is powerless to predict future evolution. Such a theory is "true" to the best of our ability to observe, but not useful.
Slashdot Mirror
"The necessary precondition of a coercive monopoly is closed entry--the barring of all competing producers form a given field. THis can be accomplised only by an act of government intervention, in the form of special regulations, subsidies or franchises."
I'm confused. Suppose Microsoft were to simply refuse to sell Microsoft products to anyone that sold non-Microsoft software? Where is the government intervention in that? Do you argue that with a desktop share of over 90 percent that such an action would quickly result in a closed entry market? Do you think anything but the threat of anti-trust is keeping Microsoft from doing that?
They tried exactly that already in the pre-installed OS and browser market. With some success I might add.
Very well written, and a great analysis.
My only comment is that it may not be as innocent as you depict. Who is in government? A few idealists, and many attracted to money and power. Those attracted to money and power will naturally use their money and power to accumulate more money and power. Result: corruption plus laws and behavior to keep power in the hands of politicians. Positive feedback leads to accumulation of power limited only by the need to be re-elected and to avoid provoking revolution. The means of discouragement are therefore subtle, and not planned so much as left in place as they occur naturally and happen to help the accumulation of power.
It is no accident that people are turned off by politics. The less people pay attention the more the politicians can do as they please.
Political education is poor. Many schools are poor in general, tend to teach history by convenient ommission of ugly details, and have student governments that are complete figureheads for the adminstration as a great practical example of democracy.
There is a two party system that relatively no one cares to pick between. Parties run on emotional ideologies, not critical analyses of issues. Demogogue A, or Demogogue B, let me see... well, B sounds more friendly and dresses better...
The low level details of politics are obscured. When was the last time you saw a public service announcement that a local caucus was taking place soon, be sure to attend? How many people could describe the entire process by which national candidates are selected and elected?
Usually both parents have to work to maintain an approved lifestyle. And work doesn't mean 8 hours a day for many, more like 10 or 12. We get a generous 2-3 week vacation while most of the first world takes 6. Where is the time to get involved in politics?
And presuming you do work hard and get a plank in place, what makes you think it will be implemented? The Christian conservatives have had much more luck getting conservative planks in place than outlawing abortion, using just the grassroots technique you suggest.
Yeah, it's our fault for not being disgusted enough to force ourselves to jump thru their hoops to take power back. But we've had a *lot* of help with that inertia, and if people ever seriously tried, it wouldn't be without very intense opposition. Worth doing, but you need a few major issues to mobilize around, and the powers that be can defeat the movement by giving in on those any time, so pick well -- they have to be truly hated by the powerful and very popular at the same time.
Yeah, our industrial base didn't get creamed in WWII. We were economically dominant in the 50's which created fat and lazy companies. We've also got a lot of stodgy 75 year or older companies around that only seem to want change when foreign competitors threaten to yank the rug. Cars, for example -- change/sell the body yearly, minimize structural costs, except when pushed by regulation or competition. No vision to create a market for a long lasting fuel efficient safe car.
Well, I appreciated the article. I was thinking of buying the book, but now I'll wait until I see differing reviews, get bored, or want to make a contribution to the FSF.
;)
As long as the articles on Salon remain critical of Linux and open source, where deserved, I don't see a problem with realizing there is a lot of interest in the subject and capitalizing on it.
Everyone benefits - thats what business is supposed to do.
Your stories, and others' about open source and Linux on Salon have been nearly always been well worth reading, something still pretty rare. Enough so that I do check Salon independently once a day or so, just to know what will be on Slashdot later
Thanks.
I Am Not A Lawyer
"The sad part is, for most of us this is (was?) just a cool way to check out stuff that interests us, and see that others are interested in the same things. Why is everyone so afraid of that idea?"
The first part of the answer is found in your other paragraph about smoke and mirrors democracy. A lot of money and power depend on that illusion, which makes an example of true democracy about as welcome as Bill Gates at ALS.
The second scary part is the bit about "see that others are interested in the same things." This strongly reinforces what the government would consider geeks, cults, perverts, radicals, militant nut-cases, and consumer and labor unions. While we might see it as a celebration of diversity and an empowerment of the individual, to them it is a breeding ground of dangerous ideas and a weapon against established power. It is all of that and more.
This suit just seems a bit clueless. But expect them to extend as many legal claws into the internet as they can without getting them chopped off. Keep your axes sharp and handy.
"The world will never be 100% equality, because men and women are different."
That's true to some extent, though I would say *people* are different. Some males may have a knack for nurturing and some females may do better as firefighters. There are 5'4" 98lb men, and 6'6" 250lb women, right?
People shouldn't be directed away from a profession due to their sex unless there is some objective reason it matters. If they're too short and weak to be a firefighter, fine, use that as the reason. To say *no* women can/should be firefighters, and *no* single men can/should be parents is what gets folks upset, there is no reason to use sex as the discriminating factor.
Let people find the direction that suits them without having statistical proof of unsuitability thrown in their face. We don't need strict roles for sexes, but rather job qualifications to determine if individuals, regardless of their demographics, are well enough suited to the task.
Gray refuses to sign a bill that merely requires prior notification of e-mail monitoring and his reason is it would interfere with "employer's rights". I thought these were basically property rights and contractual rights. How do these differ from civil rights?
While trespassing is illegal, you have a much better chance of succeeding in prosecution in court if you have posted "no trespassing" signs beforehand. Hell, even coffee cups warn about the dangers of hot coffee these days. Why wouldn't a business want to post their monitoring policy? You'd think this would deter inappropriate usage and that would be preferable to catching misuse after the fact. Possible reasons:
1) You might have more trouble hiring for occupations in high demand.
2) Some may morally prefer to catch "wrong-doers" not just prevent them.
3) Perhaps interesting commercial espionage data is available in e-mail to and from friends at competing companies.
4) They get a sexual kick (voyeurism) out of reading peoples private correspondence. Letting people know they are monitored would ruin all the fun.
5) They are afraid that fired workers might sue on the basis that they weren't informed? Can you say employment contract?
6) Companies might not move to California, or might move away, because of "draconian" legislation like this?
I'm at a loss, frankly, none of these seem like good reasons to me. Any ideas what might be wrong with this bill?
From the number of replies I got with themes like this I was obviously not clear enough.
I have no problem with criticizing Katz's ideas or even his presentation or logic. Many anti-Katz posts fail to do this though. They basically say, "I don't ever agree with you, shut up."
When a member of society is offended by an idea espoused by a second there are two possible solutions. One is for the offended member not to listen to things that offend them. The other is to prevent the offender from speaking. I am saying the former course is preferable. Do you disagree?
What is the effect if one of these suggestions that Katz go away is implemented? I and others who wish to listen are no longer able to. What is the effect if the complaining posters filter Katz? They are presumably happier in their new Katz-free world while those who wish to can still read Katz. I don't regard these suggestions as equivalent. Suggestions not to listen are not equivalent to suggestions not to talk.
Emotional ad hominem attacks do not promote consensus or add information, they are noise. I'm not suggesting gagging, locking up, or shooting violaters, merely pointing out that they are actually degrading the quality of the discussion. Perhaps even driving away those with good ideas but weak stomachs for conflict.
Touche, I feel somewhat toasty now :) However...
I wasn't intending to suggest that people shouldn't post if they want to. More responding to the screams of pain embedded in their comments. If reading Katz hurts too much, why not avoid it, rather than sharing the agony with the rest of us? Why not write about it in a letter to the Slashdot editors, where someone who cares might read it? Submit an article about it. Such posts, about Katz and his writing, *are* offtopic. In the posts, I expect to hear why he's wrong, not a critique of his writing or choice of topic. I recognize I am doomed to disappointment.
After reading the article I expected some discussion of the idea that censorship is imposed not just from above, but also below, thru political correctness and peer group pressure. Political correctness has far more to do with being nice than being correct. The Soviet Union was very much into political correctness when they enforced what could be said by their citizens. The U.S. needs perestroika as well, because not all politically incorrect ideas are wrong. The fact that the Soviet Union used goons to enforce it, while we rely on mobs of angry citizens and lawsuits is irrelevant.
Attack the idea, not the person who presented it. Is it so radical to suggest that free discourse works best when people voluntarily follow that rule?
As I write this, I see five comments of six suggesting Katz shut up, or not write the article.
This demonstrates exactly what he is talking about. As long as people can't speak without the fear of offending others, we aren't truly free. Not that Katz is going to be inhibited by the abuse he gets, but a more timid person with ideas as or more worthwhile might be.
When someone suggests euthanasia in cases where conciousness isn't present or survival is not possible he is reviled. Maybe the idea is wrong, but a free society attacks the idea, not the person behind it.
If I were to suggest revolution in my country, and it happened, innocent people would die. How is this any different from the euthanasia controversy? Is suggesting revolution worthy of being named a mass murderer then? And why aren't the founding fathers reviled?
Examining an idea never hurts. It may be wrong, but in the process of honestly determining that for yourself that you can learn important things.
Let Katz write. Filter him, or turn your eyes if you think it worthless. You at worst harm yourself that way. Inhibiting free discussion harms everyone else's right to be exposed to ideas they may find more valuable than you.
This sounds like a wonderful opportunity to get lots of people on the upgrade treadmill. Imagine a grower getting something like this:
Dear Seed'98 owner:
We are proud to announce Seed 2000! This novel product is an upgrade/replacement for Seed '98, for which our records show you are a registered customer.
Many people felt that the elimination of all birds eating Seed '98 was an overly ambitious goal. Heh, the insects really liked it anyway! In response to customer demand Seed 2000 is now completely bird friendly, causing at most mild diarrhea.
The gene that caused half the seeds to grow downwards has been fixed.
Plants will no longer expire on Y2K rollover, the death gene now handles negative ages correctly.
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Ok, I'm biting :) Seriously, though your tone is flamish I think you raise a good question.
What do desktops have to do with developers? I develop from within a terminal window or a bare CLI and it sounds like you do too. This is true whether I'm working on Linux or Windows.
Desktops are for users.
Users like solitaire and desktop configurability.
Companies write drivers and most software for users, not developers. Open source, up til now, has been mostly written for developers. If you are satisfied developing Windows software on Linux with a paucity of drivers, that may be sufficient, otherwise users have to like Linux too.
This is not to say that creating a slim and mean desktop for development might not be a good idea, but extending the OS to users is more important just now.
Speaking as "a bearded hippie." :)
"Free Software is at its strongest when it takes an existing idea, say a C compiler, or a Unix-like OS, makes a lifesize copy, and then keeps adding features until it is as good as, or better than, the commercial competition. I'd hazard a guess that very, very few Free Software projects are doing anything but copying, cloning, or porting existing products."
Open source isn't that good at overall design and architecture. It works best when it forms around an existing kernel of code. This allows religious flamewars to be quelled with the cry: "Show me the source." This is why most projects are working on something definite, most usually an existing body of code, or an application being cloned.
"So if you're looking to throw a few million into research and development, in order to turn your Cool New Idea for the Next Killer App into a reality, do you really want to have to be asking yourself "So... how long until a few bearded hippies come up with a free (speech/beer)knock-off?"
Figuring a modest $40/hr per developer, and 100 developers on an open source project, a few million amounts to roughly 750 hours, or five months of full-time work from each developer. Figuring half-time instead, call it a year -- not that long. This suggests that new ideas won't fail to happen just because the proprietary model is no longer profitable.
Open source software is indeed a threat to software that is packaged and sold on shelves. Fortunately the vast majority of software is not of this type. Nearly all of it is built to purpose to solve some company's need, or to control some hardware. These jobs are not threatened.
It is correct that what is being contemplated is a major change in the software industry and painful displacements will no doubt result. It is not a question of eliminating software as a profession however, merely software as a product. The question is whether you think the goal is worth the strife.
This is a case where the people who are being exposed have a clear right to inspect the software they are entrusting their records to. We should demand they open source the system in the public interest. At the least this will slow things down while the bugs are fixed.
Even if the software were completely secure, I still have doubts about this. Just how hard is it to find a licensed physician with a need for money that would be willing to broker requests? Blackmail? Besides the obvious problems with insurance companies and employers having access, if you have ever answered "yes" to a doctor's question about drug use, you may not want the government to have access either. You really think they won't?
Yes, this could do a lot of good for statistical studies. So we might consider a system where all individual identification data was stripped from the records prior to storage, and placed somewhere isolated from the internet with a warrant required for access. Difficult though, since you'd need to store hereditary relationships and approximate patient location to distinguish genetic from environmental disorders.
If I read the article right, the problem is that AOL users are opening an executable attachment to an e-mail. Sorry, but there is no way in the world to protect against this. People often say it doesn't matter on a Linux system since only user files can be affected, but this is little comfort to me. I can easily re-install a broken system. Protecting the user data I've created since last backup is far more important to me.
Users seem to be requesting that AOL identify all possible malicious attachments and install virus checking software that will identify them. AOL is quite right in saying this is hopeless. The only solution presently is for AOL users to grow a brain (after the appropriate education) and refuse to open attachments they did not solicit.
It would be nice if attachments could run/open on a VMWare virtual machine or something like it created specifically for the purpose, with monitors for suspicious activity. If the virtual machine gets destroyed, no biggee. Delete it and create it again. I doubt this is practical at the consumer level now however.
No, I have to agree with AOL that this problem is between keyboard and chair.
There have been far more serious security problems in the Microsoft world of late that would destroy a system on merely opening a mail or viewing a web page. These are real holes that need fixing, or better, making impossible.
I have never used HTML mail, and I wish no one would. Almost all of it I get is spam anyway. The internet was designed around text for a good reason, and even though HTML is text, any language that can embed executables is still dangerous. Limiting mail HTML to a formatting subset like Slashdot's would be an acceptable compromise.
I think it is far too early to give up on getting the government to see the light with regard to crypto, so I agree with you that *right now* it may not be worth the risk.
However, please do not dismiss the importance of a challenge, even a small one, to free speech. Should free speech fall or simply become ineffective you'll have a *very* tough time organizing demonstrations for *anything*.
This specific issue, encryption, is very important itself to effective free speech and the right of free assembly. Organized civil disobedience can make use of encryption just as any illegal group like criminals or terrorists can. It's just far less obvious we want to prevent it.
Many people think that the extreme sucessfulness and longevity of DOOM and Quake was partly due to the internet communities that sprung up around them, to discuss playing them and write new levels for them.
How important do you feel a viable gaming community is to the success of a new game today?
I'm curious if you learned of Binary Space Partitioning before or after DOOM was conceived as a game? For example, were you aware of it when Wolfenstein was written? Did you consider and reject other rendering methods for DOOM?
Yeah, I really hate that too. Happened with Win'95 and the Display Properties dialog when running at the system standard 640X480 resolution, e.g. in Safe Mode. You could workaround with some slightly esoteric knowledge, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't too helpful to a typical customer.
I suspect a lot of the problem is that developers and testers both avoid running the software in the worst resolutions as much as they can.
I don't really care for scrollbars all that much, I'd rather see it broken up into subsidiary dialogs available on buttons from the main.
"I'm sorry I don't really have time to discuss this point with you properly, but I must mention that this is quite a bizarre conclusion you get here. Gödel himself was a mathematical platonist; for example, he believed that there were such objects as nautral and real numbers, and that some statements were true of them while others were false of them, even beyond what we can actually prove about them. Thus Gödel's theorems show us an unprovable statement of arithmetic which is actually true (the statement that encodes its own unprovability)."
:)
Yes, I'm aware Godel was a Platonist. However, thanks to his result, many mathematicians today aren't. And in fact there are competing theories of the reals (Robinson's infintesimal numbers e.g.) that suggest there may be more than one "correct" model of the reals. Though some mathematicians believe in a Platonic model for mathematics, it's just that -- philosophical belief. Religion enters here too, as religious mathematicians often prefer a God-created Platonic mathematics that humans discover. Others believe that mathematical systems are created by the mathemtician's choice of axioms, all consistent systems being just as "correct" as any other.
"I can't remember Tarksi's position regarding this, though."
What Tarski showed was that a mathematical system that defines truth internally (as Godel defined provability internally to number theory) must be inconsistent. Unlike Godel, I haven't read Tarski's actual paper, but that is my recollection of it from my foundations classes ages ago. What he believed, I don't know either, but I'm not sure it's relevant exactly.
Worse if CmdrTaco and Hemos were on the show. Then we'd have the entire MTV audience in our laps here on slashdot the next day. Good for business maybe, but hell on S/N.
Tough road for opera I'd agree.
But they might get some sales merely by being in stores, something Mozilla may not do. Linux users aren't very used to going to stores for software, but new converts from Windows may be different. They could also play the bundle game, with distros, or apps they play well with.
They may also have a shot at the browser market for embedded Linux devices if they are light enough.
I'm attracted to their tables-capable text only browser as well, I don't think Mozilla has done that.
If they want desktop market though, they better get out there well before Mozilla releases officially. Without being buggy. Ouch.
A XFCom X server for Linux is available for the single Rage 128 at Suse. I believe it will probably mainline in the next version of the XFree86 server, it seems quite stable. This should mean that most of the information for the dual processor version is already known, so hopefully a driver will follow quickly.
If you mean DRI and GL support, that's coming in version XFree86 v4.0, which hasn't announced a release date. The next snapshot, 3.9.17 should be available mid-month according to the XFree86 page.
Yes, I agree that the impossibility of disproving creationism is a strong argument against it. That's why the assumptions behind the theory are usually not explicitly stated.
:). There is certainly something closely resembling one, but then we get along quite well pretending there is one for math too.
"You say that effectiveness, or how much you can explain using a theory, is a better judge of a theory's value. Doesn't this imply that you believe that there is some sort of reality or truth (so to speak) with which you can evaluate theories by?"
I'm thinking along the lines of Occam's razor. The simpler your assumptions and the more verifiable they are, for a given predictive power, is the measure I'm thinking of.
I don't know if there is a physical reality or not. I'm still trying to recover from the shock that a mathematical reality doesn't exist
As you say, science is essentially observational, which is different from mathematics. However, especially in physics, there is a strong tendency to reduce knowledge to a small number of laws, each very well verified, and base the remainder of physical knowledge on deductive reasoning, as with math. I suspect this pursuit is no less hopeless than mathematics' attempt to find the universal set of assumptions. I just hear too much talk about truth and provability in this debate, and I think it's missing the correct issue.
Creationism can predict current observation perfectly by assuming that God did whatever is necessary to bring about what we observe, but that is powerless to predict future evolution. Such a theory is "true" to the best of our ability to observe, but not useful.