This may be slightly off-topic, but I thought I'd let people know what the cable companies are doing in response to "common carrier" reg's, and competition in general.
For those who don't know, "common carrier" regulations are the regulations that city councils impose on local phone and electric utilites, forcing them to standardise rates, having any price increases approved by city councils, etc., in return for having a monopoly on a distribution system.
Recently, several cities (I can remember only two, Broward City, Fla, and (suprise!) Farfax City, VA) have voted to impose common carrier regulations on the cable companies, requiring unbundling of the cable modem pipes.
The bad news is that (and I got this from cable people I work with, so I'm pretty sure it's true) the cable company's response has been to completely stop all cable modem deployments in those cities. A very "It's my party" attitude, and IMHO, a very poor one.
p.s. The reason Fairfax isn't a real surise is that many AOL execs. live there.
In the Jane's article, I beilieve that they have made a ciritial logic mistake in lumping cemical, biological, radioactive,, and nuclear (CBRN) attacks in with "cyber" attacks. First, from the items quoted in the original/. story, there appears to be two directrly contradictory statements. First, the story says:
Acquiring a CBRN/Cyber capability requires extensive funding
then, in the next quote:
Commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software products can easily be obtained to conduct cyberterrorism, making CB/Cyber attacks much more feasible to launch than heretofore
Now, call me confused, but does the "cyber" capability require extensive funding, or not? The story seems to indicate both. But this brings me to the point of this post, and that is that I don't think you can lump a CBRN attack in the same category as a "cyber" attack. An attack on an information technology infrastructure doesn't destroy lives similar to a chemical weapons attack. Unfortunately, many of our elected and appointed officials apparently haven't gotten this point yet. It's this kind of correlation that can cause the loss of individual freedoms as officials expound on the threat of "cyber" attacks.
IMHO, I think the problem isn't that technology is moving too fast, but in too many directions at once. But I also believe that in the near future, we will see a type of "technological darwinism", where only the fittest survive.
If you look at the movie The Road to Wellville, you see a number of technological devices created as a result of mankind's ability to harness electric current. Around the time that Edison was bringing the elctric light to the world, a number of other inventors, both serious and "quacks" were creating everything from electric bathtubs to electric hairbrushes, in an attempt to garner a portion of the electricity consuming market share.
A large number of these devices didn't survive. Why? Some, because they were obvious frauds, but many didn't survive because people found that they could get along without them just as well. And I believe that a similar thinning of the technology market is coming too.
Right now, there are several ways to do anything computer-related, from keeping a calendar, to controlling your refrigerator. But simply because these things exist, does not necessarily mean that they are an immediate benifit, and should be embraced and consumed by the markets at large, or that they will be either. People will find, on their own, which methods work the best for them, and use them. If enough people center around a method (be it Java, *nix, whatever), these methods will prosper, and become defacto standards for accomplishing our goals in life, while other methods will wither and perish from lack of use.
In short, yes, we're moving very fast technologically. But we're also, like many new vairants on a species, trying to adapt to a changing enviroment through trying many mutations and variantions on the base form. Some of the variants will find usefullness in the enviroment, and flourish, while others will not, and drop by the wayside.
There's a story on The Register here that talks about Microsoft's interest (or at least, The Register's take on it) in Linux. Specifically, looks like Microsoft went and bought a company that was developing a Linux distro. and apps that would run on NT. Why? I don't know. But Microsoft bought 'em, so we may never know.
Can't find a link for it, but this morning's Wall Street Journal has an article about the space hotel. It says, in part:
Now it turns out the plan, while not a hoax, isn't exactly on the radar screens of Hilton's chairman, Barron Hilton, and it's chief executive, Stephen Bollenbach.
Marc Grossman, head of Hilton's investor and public relations...suggests that space buffs shouldn't anticipate a Hilton in space - or even any financial commitment to reasearching one. But "apparently," he adds, the previously scheduled symposium will take place.
Turns out, the stories are about a symposium to be held about exploring the possibility of a space hotel...entirely funded and run by Hilton's marketing department (for whom the woman in the original story, Jeannie Datz, works for).
If anyone can find a link to the story, or if you have a copy of the Wall Street Journal, it's on Page B1, bottom left.
I don't know if anyone's noticed this, but this is the second "desktop/workstation" OS topic to come up in the past two days. First was Corel Linux, and now this?
Could we be witnessing the birth of another OS battlefield? Linux/Apache vs NT/IIS on the server side, and now NT Workstation/Win2k vs CorelLinux/WinLinux 2000 on the desktop?
Personally, I can't wait to see if some H/W distributor picks up on this for pre-loading, a-la Win9X.
IIRC, a number of ATM/MAC machines run OS/2. I don't remember why exactly, but there was something about needing a GUI OS that would also support X.25 protocols for interfacing with the mainframes at the bank HQ's over telco lines, and OS/2 was it.
Since Network Solutions is handing these out based on registrars and domains, and they run the whois database, can/will they modify the whois database? Can someone with an account check this? (I don't have one, or its foo-bar).
I don't think they're allowed to, but it's their playground, so you never know.
I don't think what most/.'ers want to see is simply a "Net Candidate." What we'd like to see is a pro-net candidate. Someone who's not only going to get into the Open Source and Encryption debates, but is going to be pro-open source and pro-encryption. Someone who's going to fight for the things that we belive are good, not only for us, but for society at large.
That having been said, I think there are a number of reasons why we won't see someone like this anytime soon, and really, probably not ever at all:
I think a large part of the problem falls on us. As a wired society, we have spent too long amongst ourselves arguing over the finer (and not so fine) points of Internet regulations and laws, and less time making sure that the politicans who made these laws know loud and clear how we feel about their work, not only in the voting booths, but also on a day to day basis. For example, many politicans won't touch Social Security benifits. Why? Because they know that if they do, they'll be attacked (and as Sen, John Glenn can tell you, I'm not only speaking metaphorically here!) by seniors. And how do they know? Because the AARP is telling them they will. Every day. Right after they hand over a nice big check for the politican's next campaign.
So, if we want politicans to acknoledge us, and the things we see as benifical to the future, we should probably recognise that the Internet doesn't exist in a vacuum. WE should be out there, making our voices heard in ways that the politicians can hear, and we should make sure that when we're speaking about the future of the internet, we're all speaking in unison.
Because if we're only talking here on the Internet, no one outside the Internet can hear us. And if we all start talking outside on our own, it shounds like white noise. But if we're all saying the same thing, at the same time, it sounds more like a large part of America, and that voice is what the politicans are going to hear, and more importantly, listen to.
But, given the naturally chaotic nature of the Internet, I don't think that would really be feasable.
$.02 dropped in.
Re:What are you so damn afraid of?
on
CALEA update
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· Score: 1
You're probably right about the random Joe stuff. The real problem here is that history has shown that given power, an institution (people, govenment, etc) will (sometimes) tend to abuse it, or more precisely, if an institution is given leeway in a direction, they will try and take more, often in small steps, to hide their overall intentions.
The real problem is that this doesn't look like an invasion of privacy problem. But this is simply a small chink in the amror of personal privacy (or another straw in the camel's back).
As freedom loving people, we should strive to fight any infringement on our privacy, no matter how small, since a number of small infringements can combine to create a big problem.
I don't think they are trying to compete by offering a cheaper product, but perhaps they're looking to "out-feature" Star Office.
Most of the reviews of Star Office I've seen say it's great, but not as "bell and whistly" as MS Office. IMHO, I think that's great, since by the time I'd use any of those really deep features of MS Office, I'd have turned to a superior (and separate) product.
Unfortunately, it looks like now if we want to have Visio, and it's really great abilities, we're going to have to submit to having the whole MS Office mess dragged along with it.
BTW, this sort of thing has happened before, usually with diappointing results. There was (and maybe still is) a product that was called Org Chart Plus, which was a great little product for slapping together quickie org chart type documents. Microsoft bought them too, and now you can't use the Org Chart software unless you bring it up under some standard MS Office app, and have to drill through all that junk to get the part you want.
Given the way Microsoft has trated aquisitions in the past, I'd say overall it doesn't look to good for the future of VISIO.
Some thoughts about moderation...
on
Moderation Ideas
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· Score: 2
First of all, I think the idea of moderation, and the use of filtering by the individual user, is a good idea. Obviously, you guys are trying to make the best of an anarchistic situation at best, and (IMHO) I think you've done an admirable job at it.
That having been said, I think that there might be one area where moderation might be improved:
Instead of (or perhaps in addition to) giving someone more moderation points based on karma, how about increasing moderation based on the total score of all their previous posts in a given topic? Say for instance, that a person has posted a number of comments under a given topic, all of which have been moderated to a four or five, since they have all proven to be relevant, informative, insightful, etc. When later on, this user gets their moderation points, they get X points for general moderation, but Y points (where Y is a function of their total posts' moderation points) under the topic that they have been posting under? The point here is that if someone's posting under a given topic, and they have regularly posted well (and this could include some kind of deduction if they similarly post flames, trolls, etc.), they probably have a good understanding of the topic, and should perhaps be given a little more leeway and/or (dare I use this word?) power under that topic.
This power would, of course, be subject to revocation if the meta moderation found them suddenly becoming Mr. Bad Moderator (an obvious flaw in my suggestion, I know.)
I agree that the article is exemplary in it's suggesstion, but I don't think having a "stripped down" anything would be a good way to go...better still, have a distribution that would be setup by default with minimal requirements for users , but leave everything else available, but inactive, until users can figure out whoat it is, and how to use it properly. This might encourage some to do some more work, and build a better user.
The best explainion of porn I ever saw was: "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it."
You can't use a subjective qualifier like "pornographic" to separate domains, since that brings us right back to the question of who decides what is, and isn't pornographic.
Now, you could have web site providers choose to use a.xxx domain name, and certianly some would. But others would put themselves outside of that domain, simply for the extra revenue they could generate by being more available. Then, you'd have to have some kind of law forcing those sites into the.xxx domain, which might then be extended "to protect the children" to other sites that might have pictures of naked people, but be related to things like discussions of breast cancer, or AIDS, and how to prevent it, including pictures of how to put on a condom. And once you have a law that pushes ideas out of the mainstream of the internet, your right back to censorship again.
Going back to that original quote about the definition of pronography, the only true arbiter of what is and isn't pronographic is the individual themselves. In the case of children, who may not be able to fully identify harmful material, this responsibility should fall to a parent.
You're going to get different systems for different places. The story is kind of misleading. They say the amry is running on MAC's, but all that means is that the army.mil web servers are MAC's. Most army bases, commands, etc. will have their own web servers, as a subdomain under the army.mil domain.
IMHO, what we need to do now is not worry about the 9's thing, but the spurrious logic that will follow from "Y2K Experts".
I mean, yes, there were problems somewhere on the planet today, but were they caused by the date? Probably not, but you know that somehwere out there is some "expert" who's saying to the uninformed:
"You see! There was a power failure, and look at the date! Now you
have to give me money so I can tell you how to avoid the whole Y2K problem, before you're all out on the street, begging for money!"
If the date in a system caused a problem, fine. But don't blame the date, or try and create a non-existent correlation between the date, and any problems that occur today.
In short, all us/.'er's who know, must confront those who would use this as a tool to pry monies from the unwitting, and use the two words the "experts" hate the most: "Prove it!"
Having been both contract and permanent, having contractors working for me, I might be able to give you some hints that might help:
Know the people: If you have a contractor that you think might be good, ask them for other projects they've done, and call those folks. Ask about how they did, the quality of their work, how well the interacted (or didn't) with the full time staff. If you've got someone who's really good, but everyone hates, it doesn't make for a good work enviroment.
Know the project: One of my biggest gripes when I was contracting was coming in, having the hiring folks saying "You'll be doing job X", when they didn't know what they were talking about, they didn't know the technology, and the job turned out to be totally different. Point is, make sure that when you're talking to contractors about the possibility of doing some work, they (and you) know exactly what's expected, what kind of technologies are involved. If nothing else, it'll help you weed out contractors who are almost, but not quite, good enough for the job.
GET IT WRITTEN: I can't stress this enough. I've worked on contract jobs where the contract called for doing something, then the people who hired me asked for some more stuff to be done. Being a nice guy, I put in the extra time to do the stuff, but nothing ever came out of it (yes, as in money, but also, they refused to acknowledge that I did the work). If you might want your contractors to do something else that wouldn't normally be a part of the original work, add it into the contract. If it's there at the beginning, you'll be happier since you know you can ask the contractors for something, and the contractors will be happier, since they'll have a better understanding of the full scope of what they're expected to do.
Meanwhile, on a yacht somewhere in the Pacific, Larry Ellison prepares his "I tould you so" and "That was really my idea" speeches simultaneously.
Re:New Scientist Article
on
Smart Dust
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· Score: 1
There's also a site here, courtesy of DARPA. Not that much there (looks like a corporate, rather than research site, IMHO), but a related links page I haven't followed completely, if you're interested.
I downloaded the file offered to replace the original Key Provider...get it, and look in the TestReplacement.cpp file for the registry key they're hitting. While I'm at it, why isn't the source for this patch provided? They only provide the source for testing the patch...hmmmm...
If it was presented in a rump session, it should be on the Rump Session schedule, shouldn't it? I don't see it...unless that "Bill Gates' Private Key" part is it...
Slashdot Mirror
Even though TransMeta manages to get around Intel's patents, might they still license Intel to produce the chips? Or AMD?
Guess that's still a "wait and see", unless someone knows something???
For those who don't know, "common carrier" regulations are the regulations that city councils impose on local phone and electric utilites, forcing them to standardise rates, having any price increases approved by city councils, etc., in return for having a monopoly on a distribution system.
Recently, several cities (I can remember only two, Broward City, Fla, and (suprise!) Farfax City, VA) have voted to impose common carrier regulations on the cable companies, requiring unbundling of the cable modem pipes.
The bad news is that (and I got this from cable people I work with, so I'm pretty sure it's true) the cable company's response has been to completely stop all cable modem deployments in those cities. A very "It's my party" attitude, and IMHO, a very poor one.
p.s. The reason Fairfax isn't a real surise is that many AOL execs. live there.
First, from the items quoted in the original
But this brings me to the point of this post, and that is that I don't think you can lump a CBRN attack in the same category as a "cyber" attack. An attack on an information technology infrastructure doesn't destroy lives similar to a chemical weapons attack.
Unfortunately, many of our elected and appointed officials apparently haven't gotten this point yet. It's this kind of correlation that can cause the loss of individual freedoms as officials expound on the threat of "cyber" attacks.
$.02 deposited.
If you look at the movie The Road to Wellville, you see a number of technological devices created as a result of mankind's ability to harness electric current. Around the time that Edison was bringing the elctric light to the world, a number of other inventors, both serious and "quacks" were creating everything from electric bathtubs to electric hairbrushes, in an attempt to garner a portion of the electricity consuming market share.
A large number of these devices didn't survive. Why? Some, because they were obvious frauds, but many didn't survive because people found that they could get along without them just as well. And I believe that a similar thinning of the technology market is coming too.
Right now, there are several ways to do anything computer-related, from keeping a calendar, to controlling your refrigerator. But simply because these things exist, does not necessarily mean that they are an immediate benifit, and should be embraced and consumed by the markets at large, or that they will be either. People will find, on their own, which methods work the best for them, and use them. If enough people center around a method (be it Java, *nix, whatever), these methods will prosper, and become defacto standards for accomplishing our goals in life, while other methods will wither and perish from lack of use.
In short, yes, we're moving very fast technologically. But we're also, like many new vairants on a species, trying to adapt to a changing enviroment through trying many mutations and variantions on the base form. Some of the variants will find usefullness in the enviroment, and flourish, while others will not, and drop by the wayside.
Just my $.02.
There's a story on The Register here that talks about Microsoft's interest (or at least, The Register's take on it) in Linux. Specifically, looks like Microsoft went and bought a company that was developing a Linux distro. and apps that would run on NT. Why? I don't know. But Microsoft bought 'em, so we may never know.
If anyone can find a link to the story, or if you have a copy of the Wall Street Journal, it's on Page B1, bottom left.
Sorry if I burst any bubbles here!
Could we be witnessing the birth of another OS battlefield? Linux/Apache vs NT/IIS on the server side, and now NT Workstation/Win2k vs CorelLinux/WinLinux 2000 on the desktop?
Personally, I can't wait to see if some H/W distributor picks up on this for pre-loading, a-la Win9X.
IIRC, a number of ATM/MAC machines run OS/2. I don't remember why exactly, but there was something about needing a GUI OS that would also support X.25 protocols for interfacing with the mainframes at the bank HQ's over telco lines, and OS/2 was it.
Since Network Solutions is handing these out based on registrars and domains, and they run the whois database, can/will they modify the whois database? Can someone with an account check this? (I don't have one, or its foo-bar).
I don't think they're allowed to, but it's their playground, so you never know.
Network Solutions...we're the "duh" in dot com!
That having been said, I think there are a number of reasons why we won't see someone like this anytime soon, and really, probably not ever at all:
I think a large part of the problem falls on us. As a wired society, we have spent too long amongst ourselves arguing over the finer (and not so fine) points of Internet regulations and laws, and less time making sure that the politicans who made these laws know loud and clear how we feel about their work, not only in the voting booths, but also on a day to day basis. For example, many politicans won't touch Social Security benifits. Why? Because they know that if they do, they'll be attacked (and as Sen, John Glenn can tell you, I'm not only speaking metaphorically here!) by seniors. And how do they know? Because the AARP is telling them they will. Every day. Right after they hand over a nice big check for the politican's next campaign.
So, if we want politicans to acknoledge us, and the things we see as benifical to the future, we should probably recognise that the Internet doesn't exist in a vacuum. WE should be out there, making our voices heard in ways that the politicians can hear, and we should make sure that when we're speaking about the future of the internet, we're all speaking in unison.
Because if we're only talking here on the Internet, no one outside the Internet can hear us. And if we all start talking outside on our own, it shounds like white noise. But if we're all saying the same thing, at the same time, it sounds more like a large part of America, and that voice is what the politicans are going to hear, and more importantly, listen to.
But, given the naturally chaotic nature of the Internet, I don't think that would really be feasable.
$.02 dropped in.
The real problem is that this doesn't look like an invasion of privacy problem. But this is simply a small chink in the amror of personal privacy (or another straw in the camel's back).
As freedom loving people, we should strive to fight any infringement on our privacy, no matter how small, since a number of small infringements can combine to create a big problem.
Most of the reviews of Star Office I've seen say it's great, but not as "bell and whistly" as MS Office. IMHO, I think that's great, since by the time I'd use any of those really deep features of MS Office, I'd have turned to a superior (and separate) product.
Unfortunately, it looks like now if we want to have Visio, and it's really great abilities, we're going to have to submit to having the whole MS Office mess dragged along with it.
BTW, this sort of thing has happened before, usually with diappointing results. There was (and maybe still is) a product that was called Org Chart Plus, which was a great little product for slapping together quickie org chart type documents. Microsoft bought them too, and now you can't use the Org Chart software unless you bring it up under some standard MS Office app, and have to drill through all that junk to get the part you want.
Given the way Microsoft has trated aquisitions in the past, I'd say overall it doesn't look to good for the future of VISIO.
That having been said, I think that there might be one area where moderation might be improved:
Instead of (or perhaps in addition to) giving someone more moderation points based on karma, how about increasing moderation based on the total score of all their previous posts in a given topic? Say for instance, that a person has posted a number of comments under a given topic, all of which have been moderated to a four or five, since they have all proven to be relevant, informative, insightful, etc. When later on, this user gets their moderation points, they get X points for general moderation, but Y points (where Y is a function of their total posts' moderation points) under the topic that they have been posting under? The point here is that if someone's posting under a given topic, and they have regularly posted well (and this could include some kind of deduction if they similarly post flames, trolls, etc.), they probably have a good understanding of the topic, and should perhaps be given a little more leeway and/or (dare I use this word?) power under that topic.
This power would, of course, be subject to revocation if the meta moderation found them suddenly becoming Mr. Bad Moderator (an obvious flaw in my suggestion, I know.)
Just a thought.
I agree that the article is exemplary in it's suggesstion, but I don't think having a "stripped down" anything would be a good way to go...better still, have a distribution that would be setup by default with minimal requirements for users , but leave everything else available, but inactive, until users can figure out whoat it is, and how to use it properly. This might encourage some to do some more work, and build a better user.
Define Porn.
The best explainion of porn I ever saw was: "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it."
You can't use a subjective qualifier like "pornographic" to separate domains, since that brings us right back to the question of who decides what is, and isn't pornographic.
Now, you could have web site providers choose to use a .xxx domain name, and certianly some would. But others would put themselves outside of that domain, simply for the extra revenue they could generate by being more available. Then, you'd have to have some kind of law forcing those sites into the .xxx domain, which might then be extended "to protect the children" to other sites that might have pictures of naked people, but be related to things like discussions of breast cancer, or AIDS, and how to prevent it, including pictures of how to put on a condom. And once you have a law that pushes ideas out of the mainstream of the internet, your right back to censorship again.
Going back to that original quote about the definition of pronography, the only true arbiter of what is and isn't pronographic is the individual themselves. In the case of children, who may not be able to fully identify harmful material, this responsibility should fall to a parent.
Not that I know anything about that, tho...
avaiable here from American Express web site. Not much, some pretty pictures, some "offers", etc, but it's the "official" home.
I mean, yes, there were problems somewhere on the planet today, but were they caused by the date? Probably not, but you know that somehwere out there is some "expert" who's saying to the uninformed:
If the date in a system caused a problem, fine. But don't blame the date, or try and create a non-existent correlation between the date, and any problems that occur today.
In short, all us /.'er's who know, must confront those who would use this as a tool to pry monies from the unwitting, and use the two words the "experts" hate the most: "Prove it!"
Well, anyway, that's my $.02, hope it helps.
Meanwhile, on a yacht somewhere in the Pacific, Larry Ellison prepares his "I tould you so" and "That was really my idea" speeches simultaneously.
There's also a site here, courtesy of DARPA. Not that much there (looks like a corporate, rather than research site, IMHO), but a related links page I haven't followed completely, if you're interested.
I downloaded the file offered to replace the original Key Provider...get it, and look in the TestReplacement.cpp file for the registry key they're hitting.
While I'm at it, why isn't the source for this patch provided? They only provide the source for testing the patch...hmmmm...
If it was presented in a rump session, it should be on the Rump Session schedule, shouldn't it? I don't see it...unless that "Bill Gates' Private Key" part is it...