Did anyone else misread the headline of this piece as follows...
"How To Get High: Schoolers Involved In Real Science?"... and imagine a bunch of school kids conducting "science experiments";-);-) with marijuana?
"I still think that they are useful for stopping low level crime if they are linked to a national register of fingerprints and DNA"
Well, you might as well have said "I believe turning the UK into a police state would be useful for stopping low level crime" - because that's what this amounts to.
So what if ID cards can stop low level crime? Why should it be at the expense of the liberty of the rest of the millions of completely innocent, law abiding people living here?
We wouldn't accept CCTV in every room of our homes - even though it would help catch all kinds of domestic violence, child abuse, drug dealers, bomb preparation and so on. We wouldn't accept the government locking us in our homes and selling us a key, every time we wanted to go out - even though that would undoubtedly help cut crime, since people would think twice before leaving the house, so less people out (and the government keeping track) = less crime. We wouldn't accept tracking devices under our skin, even though it would help the police work out who was in a specific area at a certain time and identify potential suspects.
The fact is: being good at stopping crime is nowhere near a good enough reason for having ID cards, especially when they come at the expense of our fundamental liberties.
So they would be good at stopping low level crime... so was Saddam Hussein's regieme!!
If we give up our freedom so easily, remind me what exactly it is that we're trying to preserve here? Because the way I see it, ID cards just cut off our nose to spite our face.
I think the government are going to find out one way or another that the British people (at least, enough of them to completely thwart this system) will not give up their liberties on the back of such a flimsy argument. I for one will take bankruptcy and jail over ID, any day of the week.
I'd rather live with the possibility of encountering crime in a free country, than be locked in a completely safe government-enforced cotton wool wrap in a police state.
You can put a gun against my head, and the answer is still "no fucking way, not now, not ever"... Defy ID!
It's not theft - it's using legal loopholes in another country where this is legal. Exactly the same as Nike, Coca-Cola, Nestle or whoever can do rather unethical things in certain countries at lower cost than they could in the "developed world" where they are subject to more stringent regulations.
However much you want it to be, copyright infringement is not theft. Besides, I see far more similarities between globalised free trade and MP3 buyers using some shady Russian MP3 site to get cheap MP3s, than I do between copyright infringement and theft.
They wanted globalisation and free trade... is this not globalised free trade in action?
That it's in reverse to the usual may be bad news for big business, but they're only too happy to use it the regular way around for their own gain - exploiting people and legal loopholes in other countries in order to keep their expenses down. Why shouldn't MP3 downloaders be only too happy to do the same?
Tough shit to the big corporations, I say - although I'm not an allofmp3.com customer either. You wanted free trade - here it is.
Well, when people have a generally easy life, it breeds apathy about such things as free speech, freedom from excessive government intervention in daily life, going to war and so on.
I'm part of the NO2ID campaign here in the UK, campaigning against the compulsory biometric ID cards that the UK government are trying to introduce. Our main problem in finding supporters is not that people think ID cards are a good idea, just that the average member of the public out there really couldn't give a shit... about anything... as long as they have an easy life.
They don't know or care about history, they just pay their taxes, get in line and do what they are told to do. Don't dare require them to think for themselves!
It's why kids here are more than happy to skip school - why should they care, life is easy! Check another country like Uganda, where truancy is absolutely non-existent. Sure, the kids are only getting a basic education, but because life is hard and they've seen some serious shit, they appreciate every little scrap of chance that someone hands them.
People wonder why history repeats itself? It's because when you have it really easy, nobody gives enough of a shit to stop something terrible from happening, which brings the cycle back round again.
So don't be surprised that these kids don't see why freedom of speech is important - far too many of them have no cares in the world, as long as they get it easy.
I had a brief stint in a catholic school here in the UK in my early teens - for all intents and purposes it was actually one of the best schools in the area, which was cool with me, despite the fact I'm not catholic (was anglican at the time, until I learned to think for myself).
However, I will never forget the day when quite possibly the funniest letter ever was sent home from school, detailing the fact that the head teacher had discovered that certain students were listening to satanic death metal music - apparently a grievous sin - and thereby banning it from the school.
At the time I was into regular heavy metal - Megadeth, Metallica, Iron Maiden and so on - and my friends and I didn't even believe that satanic death metal existed. We thought the head teacher guy was just really confused. That is until we went music shopping, and actually managed to purchase some Cradle Of Filth, who had just come out at the time. From there it was on to lots of far more intersting bands: Immortal, Dark Throne, Burzum, Rotting Christ, Impaled Nazarene and so on. Lovely stuff!
So yes, I was introduced to satanic death metal music by the head teacher of a catholic school!
If only I'd kept that letter... it would be in a frame on my wall! Rock on!!
(These days I'm into electronica, reggae and funk... LOL!)
My dad, who used to work for a well-known UK building society, told me a story sometime in the early 1990s of how there had been some buggy code on all their ATMs. When making a withdrawl, the machine would issue the cash and wait around a minute. If you hadn't taken the cash by then, it assumed you were still waiting for the cash to be dispensed and would issue it again, possibly even several times over if you kept waiting and waiting. Apparently it took the company quite some time to discover this bug.
I'm reasonable sure the story is completely true, although since my dad isn't around anymore, I can't ask him about it.
Well, I didn't read their entire website. Basically, all I wanted to say is that their list of promises can be just as strong, if not stronger outside of the context of religion. Maybe they are a religious organisation with a family slant rather than vice-versa, in which case my comments don't particlarly make sense in reference to them changing their mission.
However, from a general point of view I don't see anything particularly bad in my altered version, and the fact that it could be applied as a list of promises "reaching beyond any racial and denominational barriers" (as their own promises profess to, as long as you accept their religion) makes it better, in my opinion. Add religion to the mix if it suits you and makes you a better person, on an individual basis.
As for "define morality" - take responsibility for your actions, never hurt, harm or exploit others in any way, spread peace, respect your fellow humans and your planet, grant everyone else the same freedoms. If in doubt, seek advice from those around you, but the buck always stops at you. Aside from that, do whatever you like in pursuit of inner happiness. No god required, but you can add one if you wish.
If everybody followed these guidelines, which are basically obvious human values for the preservation of our species and our environment, the world would be a much better place. Or we can have it how it is now, where people concentrate on picking out each other's differences and killing each other over them. To be honest, in an ideal world, we would abolish all countries, and all declare ourselves citizens of Earth. The less dividing lines between you and I, the better.
The trouble with anti-liberals is that they see everything in very black and white terms - they don't like having to make moral decisions for themselves, instead preferring to be dictated to by the state, or by their religion. The idea of personal responsibility almost doesn't exist, which is after all, what this entire story is about: removal of personal responsibility, by a nanny state that thinks it knows best.
Absolute terms like "good" and "evil" do indeed take some readjustment outside of a religious context, but they do make perfect sense when you consider them as relative terms regarding the way you as a person treat those around you. Still, if in doubt, reach concensus with your fellow humans about what constitutes good or evil behaviour. Can you think of a better way? Because to be honest, I don't see the current system working too perfectly.
When I make a mistake, I don't ask for "forgiveness" from some invisible metaphysical presence - I take responsibility, sort out the mess myself, and make very sure I don't make the same mistake again. If I were ever to make an error (whether accidental or deliberate) so bad I couldn't sort it out (for example, if I killed someone) then I would expect my fellow humans to decide my fate, and ensure an appropriate punishment.
I think for the large part, trusting people with more personal responsibility, and dealing appropriately with those who use it badly, is always preferable and will create a better society in the long run than applying a blanket diktat ever will. I guess we'll never really get to find out though.
Promise Keepers would be great if it wasn't for the incessently bible-bashing nature of it. You can do all these things that matter, and there need not be any religious angle on it at all. Which isn't to say that you can't add a religious side to it if you wish, but why exclude non-religious, moral people from it? (Do you perhaps see us as inferior humans?)
As a moral atheist, it really annoys me at times that we are automatically seen as somehow inferior and less moral than those who follow any particular religion. If anything, we are more moral, because our only reason for doing good is because we want to do it - why should we care otherwise, when there is no retribution to be feared? I do good because it is good, end of story.
So, I'm going to suggest a re-write of their list of seven promises, as follows:
Promise Keepers - Seven Promises For All Men:
A Promise Keeper is committed to honoring all humans and the greater world around him through kindness, compassion and love.
A Promise Keeper is committed to pursuing vital relationships with a few other men, understanding that he needs brothers to help him keep his promises.
A Promise Keeper is committed to practicing spiritual, moral, ethical, and sexual purity, by ensuring that he thinks for himself and always takes responsibility for his own actions.
A Promise Keeper is committed to building strong families, whatever shape they may take, through love, protection and positive human values.
A Promise Keeper is committed to supporting the betterment of his community by actively giving his time and resources.
A Promise Keeper is committed to reaching beyond any racial and denominational barriers to demonstrate the power of human unity.
A Promise Keeper is committed to influencing his world, by encouraging and helping others to adhere to these same strong human values.
There you go - just as much, if not more bite, with stronger commitment to all humans, and minus the religious bias. There is no reason you couldn't promise the above and apply whatever faith you have (or none whatsoever) to the way you carry out your promises in daily life. If the promises are worth making, they shouldn't deliberately exclude anyone.
So I ask you: who needs any kind of god to make them moral? Does not having a religion automatically make you a bad father? Do those who commit to each other and raise families, yet remain unmarried, automatically make worse parents?
Because I know a whole bunch of people who prove otherwise, and hope to be as strong, if not a stronger symbol of good human values (with no need whatsoever for religion) to my own kids one day.
So now that ReBirth is being given away for free, what are the chances of this guy being able to continue the ReBorn project? I want to email him and ask, but can't find an email address. Gonna try and track down the ReBorn sources anyway, so thanks for letting me know about a cool Open Source audio project I hadn't heard of before.
I have a similar way of thinking about this, but I don't think the solution is to eliminate copyrights. What is needed is to eliminate the major corporations who's business is to completely control the music industry.
We need to damage their bottom line enough by not buying their products, so that they get smaller and smaller and eventually become as insignificant as any other independent label, at which point independent music will be on an even footing, and therefore able to flourish in a marketplace that is currently totally dominated by the majors.
I am a musician and producer of sorts, and would probably have gone on to make a career from it if it wasn't for the completely undesirable market that is the modern music industry. I know a shitty job when I see one, thanks! To put it bluntly, musicians get anally raped by the industry - if you want to know how, read: The Problem With Music, by Steve Albini.
Copyright was actually intended as a good thing, but in order for it to be good, it needs to be limited in certain ways. For it to be any use, it requires a shelf-life and expiry date, which is what is being fucked at the moment.
I would suggest something like 10 years maximum before published copyrighted works become public domain, because it is absolutely not a god-given right to continue to profit forever from work one has done in the past! The benefits would be society-wide, since information and art enriches life for everyone, and should not be put aside at the whim of companies such as Disney that wish to reap massive profits by extending their copyrights forever.
Copyright is there to serve the people and protect their work, not to be abused by corporations. Of course, when you look at who has the money and the influence, it's no surprise the system is fucked and will possibly never be repaired... which is why we have what we have now, where most people just ignore an obvious load of crap, copy whatever the want, and get on with their lives. No time to waste messing around - who can blame them?
Still, in the last week alone, I have purchased through the Interweb: a CD direct from an independent artist (through his website), and have also bought a second-hand CD album that I use to love in about 1987. So it's not that CD sales are going down, it's just that they're changing because technology makes it easier to track down the more obscure stuff. Old stuff that was always cool, and new stuff that hasn't been turned into some crappy plastic product for the masses.
Get rid of the major labels, and that's when music will really start to get interesting and cool again. If anything, it will offer a viable career for millions of budding young musicians, who are currently kept locked out of the mainstream by the industry payola.
The death of the international megastar would herald the birth of a new type of musical star: musicians who have a smaller, more dedicated, more personal fanbase. Musicians who are able to earn a living wage (not a fortune) from being famous locally, and who can reach a wider audience directly via the Internet.
But I don't need to preach about this, because it's already happening. That's what's really going to derail the industry's gravy train - loss of the control of the market that they have dominated for so long through radio and TV payola. Well, now our voices can be just as loud as theirs, and their distribution problem (getting physical CDs to shops) is our distribution panacea (online sales).
The death of the giant that is the music industry will be when music really, really, really starts to get cool again. Mark my words.
Ooops, sorry, wrong wording. Not really cryptographically stronger, just "harder to guess". Someone could use a dictionary based attack against it, but only if they knew what the schema was, and you didn't modify the method at all with the addition of numbers / symbols / non-dictionary words / different interleave patterns.
Basically, what I'm proposing is a simpler way of helping users think up and remember stronger passwords.
This method is pretty good - it's not one I use, but it's one I've heard other people mention elsewhere.
Say you like pizza and Pepsi. Take those two words and interleave them to get "pPiezpzsai". Adjust for something easy for you to remember (perhaps your dog's name and your car model, or whatever).
Using this method, you get cryptographically fairly strong passwords that are pretty easy to remember as long as you can remember the component parts. Of course, you can do the usual replacing letters with numbers ("S" becomes "5" and so on) and alter the method a bit to make it even stronger, but on the basic level this method still makes pretty strong passwords.
I guess you can't force users to use it (although checking password strength should enforce something) but you can suggest it to them as a good method of coming up with a strong password that is easier to remember than a totally random password - it's a nice tradeoff.
drhamad: Sites cannot be run for free. Servers cost money. Bandwidth costs money. More importantly, quality content to fill the site with costs money.
True, but somehow still missing the point.
Server space and bandwidth costs are at an all time low, and if you're having to pay for quality content to fill your site, then perhaps you should just leave it to people who are perfectly capable of making interesting content-filled websites on their own. If you're having to pay people to make content for your personal site, then why do you have a site?
In the case of TV news companies with online news portals and so on, the revenue is already there from the other activities of the company. In fact, in the general case of a business website, the value it adds for customers and extra profit it brings to the company is worth the cost of the website many times over.
Business cards and custom stationary don't directly make money, but in the grand scheme of things they help improve the image of your company and bring customers your way. Same with a business website.
The web didn't start out as a commercial exercise, and to be quite honest, it doesn't need to be one. People will always want to generate content, and it doesn't have to be financially motivated. If we lose a few websites on the way, then so be it - there's too many crap-filled sites out there anyway.
Businesses who see it as worthwhile having a website will always pay for it, because it's an investment in terms of the exposure and added value to customers. Those that can't get the balance right and make their websites work for them really deserve little sympathy.
If your bandwidth costs are so high that your site can't afford to run, then it's time to adjust your business model and find a way of making your site pay (eg. subscription with bonus features, merchandise, ways of converting web visitors to customers and so on) because you blatantly already have enough visitors.
If you're starving yourself each month to keep your personal website running, then perhaps you need to re-examine your priorities in life.
One of the sites I run is pretty high bandwidth and I've been paying for it out of my own pocket for the last three or four years, because it's worthwhile and really not that expensive to do. If your website is worth running, you will find the funds to run it, and if not, there are plenty of other ways of making websites pay.
I like the fact that it costs money to run a website - that's exactly how it should be, because it's the shit filter that removes a lot of the crap from the net, either through lack of funding, or because those with worthy websites will stump up the cash to support them.
All you need is a realistic business model, of which intrusive adverts should form no part.
Quite frankly, I think you need to actually read what I wrote. I never said nanotechnology was bad, in fact, I actually stated that I wasn't going to comment on nanotechnology, as I'm undecided. Sure there are extremists who want to ban it outright, but I certainly don't agree with them. We need to study it, a hell of a lot, as I'm sure there are both good and bad uses, as with all technologies.
However, as has happened with GM crops, the commercialisation has taken place before the effects were properly studied. Maybe it is harmless, but maybe we won't really know until it's too late. We can't afford to go on making those kind of mistakes, because sooner or later we are going to screw up and wipe ourselves out.
What I'm advocating is neither left or right wing, it's a simple matter of the fact that we live here, and we should all be doing our utmost to ensure it stays that way, by protecting against damage to our environment.
So by all means study nanotechnology, just make sure it doesn't get out into the environment before it's long-term effects are properly known about.
I'd like to pick a bone with this labelling people with environmental concerns as some kind of wierdo hippy gang.
We live on a planet that is vital for our existence, yet we (as a species) seem to take every opportunity to destroy it or damage it, because each individual small piece of damage doesn't seem much on it's own. It seems that only once it's too late and we've poisoned the whole place will we think about changing our ways.
Quite frankly, if you aren't really, really concerned about protecting the environment that gives you and those you love the chance to live, then you don't deserve a life here at all.
When making money comes ahead of protecting our home, that's when you know we are fucked. But then, only a complete asshole would put profits ahead of planet anyway.
I'm not going to comment on the nanotechnology issue as I'm still undecided, but trying to label people who care about the environment as a minority freak group is just bullshit.
Everybody needs to care about the environment we live in, because if we don't, there will come a point where the environment we live in will be damaged beyond repair, and we will no longer be able to live in it.
Unlike nanotechnology, this isn't fiction. It's already happening, and will continue to get worse unless we act right now to improve our ways. No amount of technology can save us from the terminal stupidity of our species, and making fun of people for looking out for our home is about as low as you can go.
That's the exact approach I used on my girlfriend's parents (my willing guinea pigs), and on my mum too.
It worked pretty well, although I did tell them what I'd done, and that it was to help stop bad stuff happening to their computers.
Hide the IE icon, replace it everywhere with a shortcut to Firefox (using the IE icon), set Firefox as the default web browser, and as a final touch, deny Internet Explorer the right to connect to the 'net using Zone Alarm, so it can't be used by "accident".
As long as you remember to import their bookmarks, set up Flash and so on, it's pretty easy to make people switch. Once they've used Firefox a week or so, start showing them the cool extra features like tabbed browsing, adblocking and so on - it's a winning combination.
My mum complained a bit at first "what's this Firefox thing that keeps coming up?" but she soon got used to it. I also switched her over to Thunderbird without too much trouble - it really is getting easy to help average people switch to more secure internet tools.
Slashdot Mirror
Did anyone else misread the headline of this piece as follows... "How To Get High: Schoolers Involved In Real Science?" ... and imagine a bunch of school kids conducting "science experiments" ;-) ;-) with marijuana?
"I still think that they are useful for stopping low level crime if they are linked to a national register of fingerprints and DNA"
Well, you might as well have said "I believe turning the UK into a police state would be useful for stopping low level crime" - because that's what this amounts to.
So what if ID cards can stop low level crime? Why should it be at the expense of the liberty of the rest of the millions of completely innocent, law abiding people living here?
We wouldn't accept CCTV in every room of our homes - even though it would help catch all kinds of domestic violence, child abuse, drug dealers, bomb preparation and so on. We wouldn't accept the government locking us in our homes and selling us a key, every time we wanted to go out - even though that would undoubtedly help cut crime, since people would think twice before leaving the house, so less people out (and the government keeping track) = less crime. We wouldn't accept tracking devices under our skin, even though it would help the police work out who was in a specific area at a certain time and identify potential suspects.
The fact is: being good at stopping crime is nowhere near a good enough reason for having ID cards, especially when they come at the expense of our fundamental liberties.
So they would be good at stopping low level crime... so was Saddam Hussein's regieme!!
If we give up our freedom so easily, remind me what exactly it is that we're trying to preserve here? Because the way I see it, ID cards just cut off our nose to spite our face.
I think the government are going to find out one way or another that the British people (at least, enough of them to completely thwart this system) will not give up their liberties on the back of such a flimsy argument. I for one will take bankruptcy and jail over ID, any day of the week.
I'd rather live with the possibility of encountering crime in a free country, than be locked in a completely safe government-enforced cotton wool wrap in a police state.
You can put a gun against my head, and the answer is still "no fucking way, not now, not ever"... Defy ID!
It's not theft - it's using legal loopholes in another country where this is legal. Exactly the same as Nike, Coca-Cola, Nestle or whoever can do rather unethical things in certain countries at lower cost than they could in the "developed world" where they are subject to more stringent regulations.
However much you want it to be, copyright infringement is not theft. Besides, I see far more similarities between globalised free trade and MP3 buyers using some shady Russian MP3 site to get cheap MP3s, than I do between copyright infringement and theft.
They wanted globalisation and free trade... is this not globalised free trade in action?
That it's in reverse to the usual may be bad news for big business, but they're only too happy to use it the regular way around for their own gain - exploiting people and legal loopholes in other countries in order to keep their expenses down. Why shouldn't MP3 downloaders be only too happy to do the same?
Tough shit to the big corporations, I say - although I'm not an allofmp3.com customer either. You wanted free trade - here it is.
Well, remembering that this is Slashdot, nobody will actually RTFA anyway! ;-)
Well, when people have a generally easy life, it breeds apathy about such things as free speech, freedom from excessive government intervention in daily life, going to war and so on.
I'm part of the NO2ID campaign here in the UK, campaigning against the compulsory biometric ID cards that the UK government are trying to introduce. Our main problem in finding supporters is not that people think ID cards are a good idea, just that the average member of the public out there really couldn't give a shit... about anything... as long as they have an easy life.
They don't know or care about history, they just pay their taxes, get in line and do what they are told to do. Don't dare require them to think for themselves!
It's why kids here are more than happy to skip school - why should they care, life is easy! Check another country like Uganda, where truancy is absolutely non-existent. Sure, the kids are only getting a basic education, but because life is hard and they've seen some serious shit, they appreciate every little scrap of chance that someone hands them.
People wonder why history repeats itself? It's because when you have it really easy, nobody gives enough of a shit to stop something terrible from happening, which brings the cycle back round again.
So don't be surprised that these kids don't see why freedom of speech is important - far too many of them have no cares in the world, as long as they get it easy.
Yours sincerely,
Captain Obvious
I had a brief stint in a catholic school here in the UK in my early teens - for all intents and purposes it was actually one of the best schools in the area, which was cool with me, despite the fact I'm not catholic (was anglican at the time, until I learned to think for myself).
However, I will never forget the day when quite possibly the funniest letter ever was sent home from school, detailing the fact that the head teacher had discovered that certain students were listening to satanic death metal music - apparently a grievous sin - and thereby banning it from the school.
At the time I was into regular heavy metal - Megadeth, Metallica, Iron Maiden and so on - and my friends and I didn't even believe that satanic death metal existed. We thought the head teacher guy was just really confused. That is until we went music shopping, and actually managed to purchase some Cradle Of Filth, who had just come out at the time. From there it was on to lots of far more intersting bands: Immortal, Dark Throne, Burzum, Rotting Christ, Impaled Nazarene and so on. Lovely stuff!
So yes, I was introduced to satanic death metal music by the head teacher of a catholic school!
If only I'd kept that letter... it would be in a frame on my wall! Rock on!!
(These days I'm into electronica, reggae and funk... LOL!)
My dad, who used to work for a well-known UK building society, told me a story sometime in the early 1990s of how there had been some buggy code on all their ATMs. When making a withdrawl, the machine would issue the cash and wait around a minute. If you hadn't taken the cash by then, it assumed you were still waiting for the cash to be dispensed and would issue it again, possibly even several times over if you kept waiting and waiting. Apparently it took the company quite some time to discover this bug.
I'm reasonable sure the story is completely true, although since my dad isn't around anymore, I can't ask him about it.
Well, I didn't read their entire website. Basically, all I wanted to say is that their list of promises can be just as strong, if not stronger outside of the context of religion. Maybe they are a religious organisation with a family slant rather than vice-versa, in which case my comments don't particlarly make sense in reference to them changing their mission.
However, from a general point of view I don't see anything particularly bad in my altered version, and the fact that it could be applied as a list of promises "reaching beyond any racial and denominational barriers" (as their own promises profess to, as long as you accept their religion) makes it better, in my opinion. Add religion to the mix if it suits you and makes you a better person, on an individual basis.
As for "define morality" - take responsibility for your actions, never hurt, harm or exploit others in any way, spread peace, respect your fellow humans and your planet, grant everyone else the same freedoms. If in doubt, seek advice from those around you, but the buck always stops at you. Aside from that, do whatever you like in pursuit of inner happiness. No god required, but you can add one if you wish.
If everybody followed these guidelines, which are basically obvious human values for the preservation of our species and our environment, the world would be a much better place. Or we can have it how it is now, where people concentrate on picking out each other's differences and killing each other over them. To be honest, in an ideal world, we would abolish all countries, and all declare ourselves citizens of Earth. The less dividing lines between you and I, the better.
The trouble with anti-liberals is that they see everything in very black and white terms - they don't like having to make moral decisions for themselves, instead preferring to be dictated to by the state, or by their religion. The idea of personal responsibility almost doesn't exist, which is after all, what this entire story is about: removal of personal responsibility, by a nanny state that thinks it knows best.
Absolute terms like "good" and "evil" do indeed take some readjustment outside of a religious context, but they do make perfect sense when you consider them as relative terms regarding the way you as a person treat those around you. Still, if in doubt, reach concensus with your fellow humans about what constitutes good or evil behaviour. Can you think of a better way? Because to be honest, I don't see the current system working too perfectly.
When I make a mistake, I don't ask for "forgiveness" from some invisible metaphysical presence - I take responsibility, sort out the mess myself, and make very sure I don't make the same mistake again. If I were ever to make an error (whether accidental or deliberate) so bad I couldn't sort it out (for example, if I killed someone) then I would expect my fellow humans to decide my fate, and ensure an appropriate punishment.
I think for the large part, trusting people with more personal responsibility, and dealing appropriately with those who use it badly, is always preferable and will create a better society in the long run than applying a blanket diktat ever will. I guess we'll never really get to find out though.
Promise Keepers would be great if it wasn't for the incessently bible-bashing nature of it. You can do all these things that matter, and there need not be any religious angle on it at all. Which isn't to say that you can't add a religious side to it if you wish, but why exclude non-religious, moral people from it? (Do you perhaps see us as inferior humans?)
As a moral atheist, it really annoys me at times that we are automatically seen as somehow inferior and less moral than those who follow any particular religion. If anything, we are more moral, because our only reason for doing good is because we want to do it - why should we care otherwise, when there is no retribution to be feared? I do good because it is good, end of story.
So, I'm going to suggest a re-write of their list of seven promises, as follows:
Promise Keepers - Seven Promises For All Men:
There you go - just as much, if not more bite, with stronger commitment to all humans, and minus the religious bias. There is no reason you couldn't promise the above and apply whatever faith you have (or none whatsoever) to the way you carry out your promises in daily life. If the promises are worth making, they shouldn't deliberately exclude anyone.
So I ask you: who needs any kind of god to make them moral? Does not having a religion automatically make you a bad father? Do those who commit to each other and raise families, yet remain unmarried, automatically make worse parents?
Because I know a whole bunch of people who prove otherwise, and hope to be as strong, if not a stronger symbol of good human values (with no need whatsoever for religion) to my own kids one day.
Memorize this and make it your mantra:
"Security is a process, not a product."
So now that ReBirth is being given away for free, what are the chances of this guy being able to continue the ReBorn project? I want to email him and ask, but can't find an email address. Gonna try and track down the ReBorn sources anyway, so thanks for letting me know about a cool Open Source audio project I hadn't heard of before.
I have a similar way of thinking about this, but I don't think the solution is to eliminate copyrights. What is needed is to eliminate the major corporations who's business is to completely control the music industry.
We need to damage their bottom line enough by not buying their products, so that they get smaller and smaller and eventually become as insignificant as any other independent label, at which point independent music will be on an even footing, and therefore able to flourish in a marketplace that is currently totally dominated by the majors.
I am a musician and producer of sorts, and would probably have gone on to make a career from it if it wasn't for the completely undesirable market that is the modern music industry. I know a shitty job when I see one, thanks! To put it bluntly, musicians get anally raped by the industry - if you want to know how, read: The Problem With Music, by Steve Albini.
Copyright was actually intended as a good thing, but in order for it to be good, it needs to be limited in certain ways. For it to be any use, it requires a shelf-life and expiry date, which is what is being fucked at the moment.
I would suggest something like 10 years maximum before published copyrighted works become public domain, because it is absolutely not a god-given right to continue to profit forever from work one has done in the past! The benefits would be society-wide, since information and art enriches life for everyone, and should not be put aside at the whim of companies such as Disney that wish to reap massive profits by extending their copyrights forever.
Copyright is there to serve the people and protect their work, not to be abused by corporations. Of course, when you look at who has the money and the influence, it's no surprise the system is fucked and will possibly never be repaired... which is why we have what we have now, where most people just ignore an obvious load of crap, copy whatever the want, and get on with their lives. No time to waste messing around - who can blame them?
Still, in the last week alone, I have purchased through the Interweb: a CD direct from an independent artist (through his website), and have also bought a second-hand CD album that I use to love in about 1987. So it's not that CD sales are going down, it's just that they're changing because technology makes it easier to track down the more obscure stuff. Old stuff that was always cool, and new stuff that hasn't been turned into some crappy plastic product for the masses.
Get rid of the major labels, and that's when music will really start to get interesting and cool again. If anything, it will offer a viable career for millions of budding young musicians, who are currently kept locked out of the mainstream by the industry payola.
The death of the international megastar would herald the birth of a new type of musical star: musicians who have a smaller, more dedicated, more personal fanbase. Musicians who are able to earn a living wage (not a fortune) from being famous locally, and who can reach a wider audience directly via the Internet.
But I don't need to preach about this, because it's already happening. That's what's really going to derail the industry's gravy train - loss of the control of the market that they have dominated for so long through radio and TV payola. Well, now our voices can be just as loud as theirs, and their distribution problem (getting physical CDs to shops) is our distribution panacea (online sales).
The death of the giant that is the music industry will be when music really, really, really starts to get cool again. Mark my words.
How about the "iPad"...?
Ooops, sorry, wrong wording. Not really cryptographically stronger, just "harder to guess". Someone could use a dictionary based attack against it, but only if they knew what the schema was, and you didn't modify the method at all with the addition of numbers / symbols / non-dictionary words / different interleave patterns.
Basically, what I'm proposing is a simpler way of helping users think up and remember stronger passwords.
This method is pretty good - it's not one I use, but it's one I've heard other people mention elsewhere.
Say you like pizza and Pepsi. Take those two words and interleave them to get "pPiezpzsai". Adjust for something easy for you to remember (perhaps your dog's name and your car model, or whatever).
Using this method, you get cryptographically fairly strong passwords that are pretty easy to remember as long as you can remember the component parts. Of course, you can do the usual replacing letters with numbers ("S" becomes "5" and so on) and alter the method a bit to make it even stronger, but on the basic level this method still makes pretty strong passwords.
I guess you can't force users to use it (although checking password strength should enforce something) but you can suggest it to them as a good method of coming up with a strong password that is easier to remember than a totally random password - it's a nice tradeoff.
Just my 2p...
CleverNickedName: Does it have a shiny, metal ass?
mu-sly: Not any more... rather more a smoking, melted one... LOL!!
As in because of an extreme Slashdotting, the site was down before I could even click the link. Laugh, it's funny.
Not any more... rather more a smoking, melted one... LOL!!
drhamad: Sites cannot be run for free. Servers cost money. Bandwidth costs money. More importantly, quality content to fill the site with costs money.
True, but somehow still missing the point.
Server space and bandwidth costs are at an all time low, and if you're having to pay for quality content to fill your site, then perhaps you should just leave it to people who are perfectly capable of making interesting content-filled websites on their own. If you're having to pay people to make content for your personal site, then why do you have a site?
In the case of TV news companies with online news portals and so on, the revenue is already there from the other activities of the company. In fact, in the general case of a business website, the value it adds for customers and extra profit it brings to the company is worth the cost of the website many times over.
Business cards and custom stationary don't directly make money, but in the grand scheme of things they help improve the image of your company and bring customers your way. Same with a business website.
The web didn't start out as a commercial exercise, and to be quite honest, it doesn't need to be one. People will always want to generate content, and it doesn't have to be financially motivated. If we lose a few websites on the way, then so be it - there's too many crap-filled sites out there anyway.
Businesses who see it as worthwhile having a website will always pay for it, because it's an investment in terms of the exposure and added value to customers. Those that can't get the balance right and make their websites work for them really deserve little sympathy.
If your bandwidth costs are so high that your site can't afford to run, then it's time to adjust your business model and find a way of making your site pay (eg. subscription with bonus features, merchandise, ways of converting web visitors to customers and so on) because you blatantly already have enough visitors.
If you're starving yourself each month to keep your personal website running, then perhaps you need to re-examine your priorities in life.
One of the sites I run is pretty high bandwidth and I've been paying for it out of my own pocket for the last three or four years, because it's worthwhile and really not that expensive to do. If your website is worth running, you will find the funds to run it, and if not, there are plenty of other ways of making websites pay.
I like the fact that it costs money to run a website - that's exactly how it should be, because it's the shit filter that removes a lot of the crap from the net, either through lack of funding, or because those with worthy websites will stump up the cash to support them.
All you need is a realistic business model, of which intrusive adverts should form no part.
Quite frankly, I think you need to actually read what I wrote. I never said nanotechnology was bad, in fact, I actually stated that I wasn't going to comment on nanotechnology, as I'm undecided. Sure there are extremists who want to ban it outright, but I certainly don't agree with them. We need to study it, a hell of a lot, as I'm sure there are both good and bad uses, as with all technologies.
However, as has happened with GM crops, the commercialisation has taken place before the effects were properly studied. Maybe it is harmless, but maybe we won't really know until it's too late. We can't afford to go on making those kind of mistakes, because sooner or later we are going to screw up and wipe ourselves out.
What I'm advocating is neither left or right wing, it's a simple matter of the fact that we live here, and we should all be doing our utmost to ensure it stays that way, by protecting against damage to our environment.
So by all means study nanotechnology, just make sure it doesn't get out into the environment before it's long-term effects are properly known about.
I'd like to pick a bone with this labelling people with environmental concerns as some kind of wierdo hippy gang.
We live on a planet that is vital for our existence, yet we (as a species) seem to take every opportunity to destroy it or damage it, because each individual small piece of damage doesn't seem much on it's own. It seems that only once it's too late and we've poisoned the whole place will we think about changing our ways.
Quite frankly, if you aren't really, really concerned about protecting the environment that gives you and those you love the chance to live, then you don't deserve a life here at all.
When making money comes ahead of protecting our home, that's when you know we are fucked. But then, only a complete asshole would put profits ahead of planet anyway.
I'm not going to comment on the nanotechnology issue as I'm still undecided, but trying to label people who care about the environment as a minority freak group is just bullshit.
Everybody needs to care about the environment we live in, because if we don't, there will come a point where the environment we live in will be damaged beyond repair, and we will no longer be able to live in it.
Unlike nanotechnology, this isn't fiction. It's already happening, and will continue to get worse unless we act right now to improve our ways. No amount of technology can save us from the terminal stupidity of our species, and making fun of people for looking out for our home is about as low as you can go.
Sheesh... why not just study and actually earn the fscking grades!
Damn you, I was just about to post one! Oh well, back to the drawing board....
Assuming nothing, but knowing that I'm the only person admining that machine anyway, and would be there to step in in the event of that happening.
;-)
I guess I could get hit by a bus or something... that would screw my plans!
That's the exact approach I used on my girlfriend's parents (my willing guinea pigs), and on my mum too.
It worked pretty well, although I did tell them what I'd done, and that it was to help stop bad stuff happening to their computers.
Hide the IE icon, replace it everywhere with a shortcut to Firefox (using the IE icon), set Firefox as the default web browser, and as a final touch, deny Internet Explorer the right to connect to the 'net using Zone Alarm, so it can't be used by "accident".
As long as you remember to import their bookmarks, set up Flash and so on, it's pretty easy to make people switch. Once they've used Firefox a week or so, start showing them the cool extra features like tabbed browsing, adblocking and so on - it's a winning combination.
My mum complained a bit at first "what's this Firefox thing that keeps coming up?" but she soon got used to it. I also switched her over to Thunderbird without too much trouble - it really is getting easy to help average people switch to more secure internet tools.