Ratings are always censorship
on
Three on Munich
·
· Score: 5
It's a seductive argument they're putting forward: ratings aren't censorship! They put power back in the hands of parents! You can easily fall into the delusion that ratings enhance the choices, and thus the freedom, of consumers.
Not so for three reasons.
1) When a ratings system is in place, parents or others in positions of responsibility swiftly come to rely upon them. How many in the audience have had their parents at one time or another deny them permission to view a movie based solely on the rating given by the MPAA? My hand is raised. But consider: who judges what rating the movie should receive? The parent, or a pseudo-governmental body that may adhere to a moral code the parent does not share? Because the parent is endowing the oversight body with the right to judge what is violent content, what is obscene content, and what is sexual content, they are essentially replacing their morality with the morality of an unaccountable body. And you know the Christian Coalition would push extremely hard to ensure their members were on that board. They do something very similar with schoolboards and the MPAA right now.
2) This plan creates the framework for future censorship. You can just see it: 10 years down the line. Some moralist says to his/herself "Say, we have the ratings system, we have the oversight board, we have the browser modifications.... let's make it manditory." All they need to do is enact one little law, requiring children under the age of such-and-such cannot watch content above the rating such-and-such. Gone to the movies lately? How do you like that "voluntary" ratings system?
3) Economic favoritism. Companies with the bucks to lobby and/or work with the oversight agency can get lower ratings, thus increasing their audiences. Companies with smaller coffers are stuck with what they get. Hence the powerful few sites like Yahoo and AOL bubble to the top while the underclassed but virtuous sites like slashdot sink slowly downward and downward into ratings hell. Just look at Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. If that film had received an X, how many of you would have seen it? But because the producing company had the bucks to work in a feedback loop with the MPAA, they managed to censor Kubrick's work down to a level "acceptable for children".
I do not want my internet experience to be dictated by the capacities of "vulnerable kids".
But doesn't it seem as if Loki will be getting a lot more out of this than the cost of a "dual processor Linux box"?
I have a contest idea! If you are an 31337 h4x0r, I will allow you to write key modules of my software for me, which I will then sell at enormous profit to me! The winner will receive this attractive T-shirt!
I also have some fine swampland real estate to discuss with you...
Liquid deposits beneath the surface of Europa have been posited for a considerable number of years. Easily since I was in middle school. The Christian Science Monitor is not exactly breaking scientific ground here.
Here is a link to a 1996 conference on this subject.
A similar story is running in Scientific American. You can see the table of contents for this month's issue here.
Points to Remember: *it may not be water. Long-chain hydrocarbons have also been proposed. It could be from mineral oils to salt water, really. *the only "new news" here is the theory proposed by these guys from the U. of Arizona that the cracks are consistent with tidal patterns. This is cool, but it is only confirming evidence for what people believed in the first place. *Europa has strong volcanic activity, similar to its lava-covered sibling Io. This is due to Jupiter's insane gravitational pull. But Europa is colder than Io, because it's further out and has no atmosphere, so it has an icy crust. The idea is that (if it really is H20 ice) the volcanic activity has melted some of the ice. But, again, lots of stuff besides water freezes. All we know is that spectrogr aphically there is some kind of salt there.
I hope it does prove to be water, but let's not get carried away just yet.
I work in crypto QA for a major, evil software company. Guess which one. We've been crossing our fingers for legislation like this due to the extreme cost and instability of shipping both a 128 and a 40/56 bit version of every crypto product. Apart from the effort of testing everything four times (once for hi, once for low, once for interactions, once for upgrades) there is the simple fact that as test matrices grow, bugs proliferate. And some are not found.
We used to say, "If only some bolt of light would strike Clinton upside the head and get him to liberate export policies!" Our premise was that the cost and difficulty of testing would drop, and we would be better situated to promote our client overseas.
NOPE. Even if this law passes, the labor of testing may just go up. Implementing a "backdoor" or a key escrow mechanism necessitates cracking the CSP's (oops - gave away which company) and re-writing practically the entire code structure that selects and manages algorithms. Easy? No. In addition, what foreign company would be interested in purchasing a product they know the US Government can abuse like a bitch at its will? I certainly wouldn't tolerate it.
The upshot? My (uninformed) prediction is this: There will still be 40-bit non-escrowed versions of the product going out the door. These will be shipped primarily to other countries and to paranoid individuals like slashdotters. Everyone else will run 128, but it will be a compromised breed of 128.
In other words, this will accomplish nothing other than weakening crypto for US citizens.
This bill is bullshit! Call or email your congressional office today. I'm about to do that very thing. -konstant
in order to subvert it. If Torvald's hadn't held prior use for the name Linux, what chance would users in Germany now stand agains this assault on their freedoms? Similarly, if OSI didn't hold a pending patent on "open source" or the FSF hadn't produced their legal GPL license, how long would the meaning of open source survive without dilution, and how long would the concept of free software survive the merciless world of capitalism?
It seems frustrating at times that we have to work within the strictures of the very society we're basically trying to overthrow. Personally, I sometimes feel as if we're just being allowed to play our little games by The Man:) I know that's paranoid, of course.
Will there ever be a time when lawyers won't be necessary to fight for our freedoms online? At what point will the need for those freedoms become "just obvious" to the average citizen or trial judge?
No doubt we'll be seeing many people complain that "Red Hat is not Linux". But quite apart from that, there is a greater danger in these sorts of business alliances. If, to promote their name recognition, any distro endorses hardware that is not fully supplied with drivers, Linux will suffer in the long term.
What is the single most horrific event in the life of a Windows user? Hardware incompatibility. As everyone knows, each release of Windows is bedeviled by PR disasters when 2% of modems, ethernet cards, whatever, fail to work properly. These things harm Windows' image, cause stress, and reduce sales.
But consider how much worse it is with Linux. Newbies who already are nervous about command-line interfaces and only have hazy recollections of "dir" to help them navigate through the guts of the machine will have no chance - absolutely none - at understanding why their modem/ethernet/insert-noncompliant-hardware-here fails to work. Their obvious (although incorrect) answer will be.... are you ready...
"Linux sucks"
This is not what we want to hear from newbies. Yesterday there was a proposal posted about Linux Lite, and many of you agreed it was helpful to build a distribution that would "just work" out of the box. I consider hardware like the Thinkpad 600E the antithesis of that idea.
To go a little further offtopic, I have to wonder about the ramifications of that sort of worldview. The notion that mental disease is only a point on a continuum of personalities makes a certain amount of sense. Obviously these people wouldn't have written an entire book if they didn't feel it was convincing. And many people I know, including myself, betray traits that if observed in a clinically nutso individual would be considered only a normal "part of their psychosis".
OTOH, don't you think it's important to make a strong distinction between people who are a tad extreme but require no treatment to lead meaningful lives, and others who cannot function without intervention. To say that I or some other intellectual has "shadow" autism might deprecate the public impression of the severity of full autism, which AFAIK is currently untreatable and life-debilitating.
It's a bit like saying that a person with blond hair and pale skin has "shadow" albinism. Yes, maybe albinism is only an exagerrated version of the traits this other person possesses, but the albino is actually afflicted by their condition, whereas the white blond is not.
The disease occurs when those traits mar the life experience of the bearer. Until that point, they are not even a shadow of a disease, it seems to me.
What I'm seeing in the replies to this post is the assertion that I'm improperly condemning a good book and a decent scientist. Apologies if that's the impression I gave.
My concern isn't with Ratey, Johnson, Courchesne et. al., who I don't doubt are honest scientists only trying to discover the truth. The danger isn't with rational people like those, but with irrational people who will inevitably hold up their work as an illustration of what is "wrong" with geeks.
Sure, maybe Gates has a mental problem. But don't go extrapolating from him to geeks in general. For one thing, he's in a far more exclusive segment of the population: megalomaniac billionaires, and is arguably more representative of that clique than of nerds.
The very fact that this study was conducted but no such studies were conducted on jocks indicates to me there is a bias in operation.
The danger isn't the article itself, the danger is the interpretation placed on it by people who will use "science" to promote their private interpretations of the world. Consider how dyslexia and ADHD have both been used to explain why some children have difficulty in school. Yes, there are many people with ADHD and dyslexia. But are there as many as these casual diagnoses claim? How many students are being underserved because they are placed in a special education class for their dyslexia when they could easily maintain the pace of the other students if only they were encouraged in the right way?
Like most people, I know many very bright but awkward geeks, and equally many dull but charismatic socialites. There is also a vast spectrum of personalities between these poles.
The obvious question is: why characterize the jock extreme as genial and average, but depict the geek extreme as the early onset of a disease!?
Only social preference can explain it and until I hear that jocks are probably mildly afflicted by downs syndrome I'll be happy with that explanation. Naturally society prefers to deal with technical talent as an illness requiring a cure - socialites are so much easier to have around!
Let's face it. Intelligence has at least two components, the social and the logical. Mixtures of these produce everyone from the poet to the garbageman. And as with any bell curve, you will have some people at either extreme. This is not abnormal; it is inevitable. Norming out society (and, no doubt, prescribing drugs to quell the fears of jock mothers that their children may turn out "odd ducks" in the words of the article) is only going to change the definition of what is an extreme jock or geek. The social dynamics will still be present and they will still have an equally difficult time getting along.
I don't pretend to understand the relative merits of DSB and 8-VSB, but the fuss over selecting a standard reminds me of the difficulties people in the 19th century had with railroad gauges.
During the last century (well, I suppose it was nearly two centuries ago now...) when railroad was the primary means of transporting goods, Russia pulled a similar egotistical maneuver and selected a railroad "gauge" or width (12?) that was inconsistent with the gauge gaining acceptance in neigboring Europe (8?). As a consequence, when trains passed the Western Russian boarder, all the passengers and contents had to be humped out, placed in another train, and sent on their way. Needless to say this retarded commerce between Russia and Europe.
Now information, not gold or even dollars, is becoming the crucial international currency and nations are building their information infrastructure. If nationalism entices us or any other country down the same path as the Russians, they will quickly learn their mistake. Devices built in adherence to the de facto standard will suddenly cease to function the moment they enter the rogue country. This will be far more inconvenient - and costly - than converting between Standard and Metric.
Let's not forget when advocating standards that common usage is an important factor, and that the world isn't limited by the San Andreas and the Potomac!
By Paige Turner AP Technology Writer Friday, September 10, 1999; 2:20 p.m. EDT
SAN JOSE, Calif. - America Online Inc. announced a shakeup today in its management ranks, announcing its intention to move figurehead Marc Andreessen, its visionary technology totem, into a glass case in the lobby.
AOL said in a statement from its Dulles, Va., headquarters that Andreessen, who has been founding Netscape professionally since 1994, would be more comfortable in his new location.
"Marc has expressed dissatisfaction with his ceremonial perch over the entrance to our boardroom," said AOL chief executive Steve Case. "We expect with this move we will be able to better serve Marc's career needs, such food, defecation, and petting."
AOL executives insist things have not changed substantially and that morale remains high.
"Marc is much happier in his new felt-lined glass enclosure," stated one handler. He is also on more prominent display here on the lobby, so that he can continue to inspire us all. Regrettably, the construction of Marc's cage renders him unable to make statements of a public nature."
Andreeson was not immediately available for comment. However, he was observed to write with blood on the interior of his cage the words, "Steve Case agrees with me that technology should be free. As a first step, I have recommended eliminating AOL's monthly ISP fees on a trial basis." Handlers covered Andreeson's box with a blanket soon afterwards.
Netscape, best known for its logo, is a leading provider of software and services for online businesses and the operator of NetCenter, a popular entry point to the World Wide Web. AOL is the largest Internet access provider and online service.
Many of you apparently view this comment from Schneier as some sort of vindication of Microsoft. I see it in quite another light. Before I criticize the man, let me clarify that I have read his book and that I do greatly admire him.
Those who have observed that Schneier's press release adds little to the discussion are correct - nearly. True, he says nothing that has not already been said several times elsewhere, including a regurgitation of the Microsoft party line and some humorous commentary on the inappropriate name this key received in the debugger.
But he does add something. He adds a snide and technically unjustifiable comment about Microsoft cryptography, implying that it is deficient:
Microsoft has two keys, a primary and a spare. The Crypto-Gram article talked about attacks based on the fact that a crypto suite is considered signed if it is signed by EITHER key, and that there is no mechanism for transitioning from the primary key to the backup. It's stupid cryptography, but the sort of thing you'd expect out of Microsoft.
This is not the "sort of thing" I'd expect out of Schneier. He behaves as though he has never heard of a Certificate Revocation List. CRL's are fully implemented in Internet Exploder (although for sound connectivity reasons online checking is turned off by default. see Tools|Internet Options|Advanced) CRLs are not only an adequate means of revoking compromised public keys, they are an internet standard.
Schneier's article appears to contribute nothing to this discussion other than an unjustified punch below the belt. I admire the author of Applied Cryptography too much to let this attack pass without voicing my disapproval. Schneier has already made his name. He has nothing to gain from pinching the schoolyard bully and then running away.
As I understand the pitch, TiVo is entirely client-side unless you "give your consent". (Troubling question: how is this determined? Opt-out? Fine print bundled with some 'incentive'?) But assuming they keep that part above board, they really appear to understand the privacy concerns of savvy consumers. The best way to reassure me that my private habits won't be monitored is to store that information in my home where it is inaccessible to corporate tentacles.
I am concerned, though, that they'll seduce you into giving consent unwittingly one way or another. Lots of online companies already do this. With all the people who have access to your profile these days, it's tough to finger any one corporate entity as the one that's reneging on privacy aggreements. Something to be wary of while you're using your cool new TiVo:)
They ought to do well if they maintain this sort of respect for the citizen. I can just imagine how this could turn TV on its head. The networks and even cable have based their entire model on the premise that they can sell advertising all day long. But with the introduction of this sort of device, a consumer can watch TV at any time of the day and still only watch the handful of shows that really are worth watching. Result: advertising can really only be sold for quality shows, since nobody will be watching the crap that's on at 2:30am or 1 in the afternoon any longer.
This post is not a knock against Apple. Only an observation.
What I find most remarkable about the new genesis of Mac's is not the hardware, which is undeniably exciting, but the influence the color seems to have. The poster of this article is probably right - their silver/shimmery grey new color combo is almost certainly aimed towards people who want to believe they have "serious" work to do, much as the bubbly tangerine, etc. hues were directed toward people intimidated by beige. What PHB will feel quite confident in his image with a "lime" ball on his desktop?
Nearly 40 years along in the development of computer technology and we have arrived at a point where the most potent selling point of a new machine is the way it makes you feel psychologically to have it on your desk.
May marketing live forever!
Not that this is very different from what has driven computers in the past few years, namely geeks who believe that there is some sort of ratio between the MHz on their chip and the power in their pants...:) I fall prey to this myself.
The most peculiar thing about humans is the divergance between what they claim is important to them and what evidence demonstrates they actually care about.
Jesus. See the thread in the Alan Cox interview about people who automatically get moderated up. There is no way I would be reading this flame war if "SoftwareJanitor" weren't magically privileged.
Many AC posts are very worthwhile, and some of these are overlooked in moderation, so they never get seen. What keeps people from just logging in?
I've logged out to post as an AC at times. Most often I do it because I have something I need to say but I'm concerned about reprisals. I once made the mistake of posting a critical comment while still logged in. Somebody took great offense and chased me around/. for about a month, consistently moderating down my every remark.
On other occasions, I post as an AC because I want to criticize slashdot or one of its operators. Call me paranoid.
Sometimes it's just because I've forgotten to log in.
Regardless of the reason, I'm fully behind the statement of the initial poster. Look at yourself - I've noticed that your own comments are always scored at 2+. I won't suggest that you didn't earn that rating, but I do have to wonder whether I would have even seen your post had you not been given an automatic leg up. Persistent scores make sense, IMO, but only when limited by an expiration period.
See this article posted to slashdot for further discussion of AC's.
they're not changing existing licenses retroactively
That's a good point. However, note that the only people who would have an interest in enforcing this particular clause of the BSD license would be the University of Berkeley itself. Since they've basically declared that they do not care to police this issue any longer, it's safe to assume that license infractions of this kind are now acceptable.
I wish to study what happens when mice become smarter than their feline predators.
You know what? That isn't as stupid as it sounds. Remember that humans supposedly came to dominate their predators after developing elaborate social structure and the mental capacity for language and tools. What an interesting trial to set a developing colony of mice or some other species down the same path!
Obviously the Heinz ketchup analogy is pretty poor. Nobody is burning "hello world" or pr0n some such other random crap to a CD and attempting to pass it off as Red Hat. They are actually copying the binaries, which in my world translates to exact equivalence. A better analogy would be that of pouring the contents of a Heinz ketchup bottle into a second bottle, and then selling the product. The consumer would wind up with precisely the same ketchup.
But what they wouldn't get would be peace of mind. Do you really want to buy rebottled ketchup? What if it's been contaminated? Can you get a refund if it turns out to be red paint? Similarly people who buy RHAT spoofs aren't getting any assurance that their product will be high quality, and they will have no recourse when things get sticky.
But to quibble over the difference between "Red Hat Linux" and "Official Red Hat Linux" is not just petty, it's confusing. What RHAT should really do is claim the exclusive right to advertise "Official Red Hat Product Support". In this way, you could redistribute their distro, but you could not claim that your product was "Red Hat Linux with Official Red Hat Product Support". A little marketing down the road, and consumers would soon realize that these four words were just as crucial as "Intel inside" and demand that their copies be official.
It also avoids pissing off the Anonymous Cowards...:)
The poster of this article sounded pretty hopeful that this was an indication of vast initiatives to come. I don't believe it. This is little more than a public relations page - there is no obligation for any of your representatives or even their representatives to read the comment board. By posting this forum, they are allowing people like ourselves and also educational apologists to blow off steam and feel as though their government is participatory. That is all this page will probably accomplish.
I sound cynical, I know. But remember, with the way our democracy is currently structured, it is in the best interest of Congress is to make us feel as though problems are being addressed, not to actually address them. Without hot topics like education/affirmative action/taxes/etc., what grounds would most of those schmucks have for requesting reelection? They have to cover the influence of their corporate masters somehow...
If you really want to influence education in America, then fuck websites. Get off your ass and DO something in a poor community. Donate computers! More importantly, donate your time! There are many ways that educated individuals can improve local schools. And don't forget to vote.
They don't want to alienate us too much- it could cost them everything
I am not a Linux coder and I'm not into Linux politics. I don't know what I'm talking about. BUT...
Hasn't Red Hat recently been noted to be hiring the most prominent and prolific Linux coders? If I'm correct about that, then I'm not sure about your statement "it could cost them everything". I'm not suggesting that Red Hat is currently doing anything illicit or disreputable, but if it ever did do such a thing, I wonder how the community would respond. If the "Lieutenants" continued to code Offical Red Hat X, then almost certainly the best code would always be most current in that version. Of course, because of the GPL, most of that code would make it out, but the lag would mean that Red Hat would consistently be on top. Do you think that non-participatroy Linux users (people like myself who don't contribute code) would really voluntarily downgrade our Linux experience in order to punish RHAT for some ethical quibble? Particularly a small one like this? I'm not sure what my personal response would be, but I have a sinking feeling that I might go for convenience over principle.
I guess what I'm asking is, just how legitimate is the idea that Linux is a community effort? Is that really true in your experience, or is the code base mostly comprised of the work of a few key players, with tiny bug patches here and there from the rest of the world? If the latter, then a breach of ethics might cost Red Hat very little indeed. Please give me your thoughts.
If you really care, many BIOS's allow you to change the boot order of the drives. This would mean that the machine wouldn't boot from a floppy unless there was no bootable partition on the primary harddrive. I've done this a couple of times for various reasons on my Windows box.
Not that I'm an economist or anything, but how can you say they have stolen actual income? The original product was apparently not sold in Germany, so it cannot be said GT was competing with the legitimate owners of the product. Nor did anyone from GT intercept transmissions of money from customers to the legal owners of the copyright/patent.
This appears to be no different from the infrigement of Warez. If somebody cracks a piece of software, then sells it at a price of $0, I don't see how that is fundamentally different from reselling it at a price of say $1. Certainly not by a factor of "100". Really, I would think that it would be quite a bit worse to charge no money for stolen goods, for the reason that the customer is that much more likely to choose the illegal product over the honest one. (Infinitely more likely to use your "math").
Slashdot Mirror
It's a seductive argument they're putting forward: ratings aren't censorship! They put power back in the hands of parents! You can easily fall into the delusion that ratings enhance the choices, and thus the freedom, of consumers.
Not so for three reasons.
1) When a ratings system is in place, parents or others in positions of responsibility swiftly come to rely upon them. How many in the audience have had their parents at one time or another deny them permission to view a movie based solely on the rating given by the MPAA? My hand is raised. But consider: who judges what rating the movie should receive? The parent, or a pseudo-governmental body that may adhere to a moral code the parent does not share? Because the parent is endowing the oversight body with the right to judge what is violent content, what is obscene content, and what is sexual content, they are essentially replacing their morality with the morality of an unaccountable body. And you know the Christian Coalition would push extremely hard to ensure their members were on that board. They do something very similar with schoolboards and the MPAA right now.
2) This plan creates the framework for future censorship. You can just see it: 10 years down the line. Some moralist says to his/herself "Say, we have the ratings system, we have the oversight board, we have the browser modifications.... let's make it manditory." All they need to do is enact one little law, requiring children under the age of such-and-such cannot watch content above the rating such-and-such. Gone to the movies lately? How do you like that "voluntary" ratings system?
3) Economic favoritism. Companies with the bucks to lobby and/or work with the oversight agency can get lower ratings, thus increasing their audiences. Companies with smaller coffers are stuck with what they get. Hence the powerful few sites like Yahoo and AOL bubble to the top while the underclassed but virtuous sites like slashdot sink slowly downward and downward into ratings hell. Just look at Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. If that film had received an X, how many of you would have seen it? But because the producing company had the bucks to work in a feedback loop with the MPAA, they managed to censor Kubrick's work down to a level "acceptable for children".
I do not want my internet experience to be dictated by the capacities of "vulnerable kids".
-konstant
But doesn't it seem as if Loki will be getting a lot more out of this than the cost of a "dual processor Linux box"?
I have a contest idea! If you are an 31337 h4x0r, I will allow you to write key modules of my software for me, which I will then sell at enormous profit to me! The winner will receive this attractive T-shirt!
I also have some fine swampland real estate to discuss with you...
-konstant
Liquid deposits beneath the surface of Europa have been posited for a considerable number of years. Easily since I was in middle school. The Christian Science Monitor is not exactly breaking scientific ground here.
Here is a link to a 1996 conference on this subject.
A similar story is running in Scientific American. You can see the table of contents for this month's issue here.
Points to Remember:
*it may not be water. Long-chain hydrocarbons have also been proposed. It could be from mineral oils to salt water, really.
*the only "new news" here is the theory proposed by these guys from the U. of Arizona that the cracks are consistent with tidal patterns. This is cool, but it is only confirming evidence for what people believed in the first place.
*Europa has strong volcanic activity, similar to its lava-covered sibling Io. This is due to Jupiter's insane gravitational pull. But Europa is colder than Io, because it's further out and has no atmosphere, so it has an icy crust. The idea is that (if it really is H20 ice) the volcanic activity has melted some of the ice. But, again, lots of stuff besides water freezes. All we know is that spectrogr aphically there is some kind of salt there.
I hope it does prove to be water, but let's not get carried away just yet.
-konstant
I work in crypto QA for a major, evil software company. Guess which one. We've been crossing our fingers for legislation like this due to the extreme cost and instability of shipping both a 128 and a 40/56 bit version of every crypto product. Apart from the effort of testing everything four times (once for hi, once for low, once for interactions, once for upgrades) there is the simple fact that as test matrices grow, bugs proliferate. And some are not found.
We used to say, "If only some bolt of light would strike Clinton upside the head and get him to liberate export policies!" Our premise was that the cost and difficulty of testing would drop, and we would be better situated to promote our client overseas.
NOPE. Even if this law passes, the labor of testing may just go up. Implementing a "backdoor" or a key escrow mechanism necessitates cracking the CSP's (oops - gave away which company) and re-writing practically the entire code structure that selects and manages algorithms. Easy? No. In addition, what foreign company would be interested in purchasing a product they know the US Government can abuse like a bitch at its will? I certainly wouldn't tolerate it.
The upshot? My (uninformed) prediction is this: There will still be 40-bit non-escrowed versions of the product going out the door. These will be shipped primarily to other countries and to paranoid individuals like slashdotters. Everyone else will run 128, but it will be a compromised breed of 128.
In other words, this will accomplish nothing other than weakening crypto for US citizens.
This bill is bullshit! Call or email your congressional office today. I'm about to do that very thing.
-konstant
in order to subvert it. If Torvald's hadn't held prior use for the name Linux, what chance would users in Germany now stand agains this assault on their freedoms? Similarly, if OSI didn't hold a pending patent on "open source" or the FSF hadn't produced their legal GPL license, how long would the meaning of open source survive without dilution, and how long would the concept of free software survive the merciless world of capitalism?
:) I know that's paranoid, of course.
It seems frustrating at times that we have to work within the strictures of the very society we're basically trying to overthrow. Personally, I sometimes feel as if we're just being allowed to play our little games by The Man
Will there ever be a time when lawyers won't be necessary to fight for our freedoms online? At what point will the need for those freedoms become "just obvious" to the average citizen or trial judge?
In my lifetime, I hope.
-konstant
No doubt we'll be seeing many people complain that "Red Hat is not Linux". But quite apart from that, there is a greater danger in these sorts of business alliances. If, to promote their name recognition, any distro endorses hardware that is not fully supplied with drivers, Linux will suffer in the long term.
What is the single most horrific event in the life of a Windows user? Hardware incompatibility. As everyone knows, each release of Windows is bedeviled by PR disasters when 2% of modems, ethernet cards, whatever, fail to work properly. These things harm Windows' image, cause stress, and reduce sales.
But consider how much worse it is with Linux. Newbies who already are nervous about command-line interfaces and only have hazy recollections of "dir" to help them navigate through the guts of the machine will have no chance - absolutely none - at understanding why their modem/ethernet/insert-noncompliant-hardware-here fails to work. Their obvious (although incorrect) answer will be.... are you ready...
"Linux sucks"
This is not what we want to hear from newbies. Yesterday there was a proposal posted about Linux Lite, and many of you agreed it was helpful to build a distribution that would "just work" out of the box. I consider hardware like the Thinkpad 600E the antithesis of that idea.
-konstant
I see what you're saying.
To go a little further offtopic, I have to wonder about the ramifications of that sort of worldview. The notion that mental disease is only a point on a continuum of personalities makes a certain amount of sense. Obviously these people wouldn't have written an entire book if they didn't feel it was convincing. And many people I know, including myself, betray traits that if observed in a clinically nutso individual would be considered only a normal "part of their psychosis".
OTOH, don't you think it's important to make a strong distinction between people who are a tad extreme but require no treatment to lead meaningful lives, and others who cannot function without intervention. To say that I or some other intellectual has "shadow" autism might deprecate the public impression of the severity of full autism, which AFAIK is currently untreatable and life-debilitating.
It's a bit like saying that a person with blond hair and pale skin has "shadow" albinism. Yes, maybe albinism is only an exagerrated version of the traits this other person possesses, but the albino is actually afflicted by their condition, whereas the white blond is not.
The disease occurs when those traits mar the life experience of the bearer. Until that point, they are not even a shadow of a disease, it seems to me.
Maybe that is a somwhat abstruse point...
-konstant
What I'm seeing in the replies to this post is the assertion that I'm improperly condemning a good book and a decent scientist. Apologies if that's the impression I gave.
My concern isn't with Ratey, Johnson, Courchesne et. al., who I don't doubt are honest scientists only trying to discover the truth. The danger isn't with rational people like those, but with irrational people who will inevitably hold up their work as an illustration of what is "wrong" with geeks.
Sure, maybe Gates has a mental problem. But don't go extrapolating from him to geeks in general. For one thing, he's in a far more exclusive segment of the population: megalomaniac billionaires, and is arguably more representative of that clique than of nerds.
The very fact that this study was conducted but no such studies were conducted on jocks indicates to me there is a bias in operation.
-konstant
The danger isn't the article itself, the danger is the interpretation placed on it by people who will use "science" to promote their private interpretations of the world. Consider how dyslexia and ADHD have both been used to explain why some children have difficulty in school. Yes, there are many people with ADHD and dyslexia. But are there as many as these casual diagnoses claim? How many students are being underserved because they are placed in a special education class for their dyslexia when they could easily maintain the pace of the other students if only they were encouraged in the right way?
-konstant
Like most people, I know many very bright but awkward geeks, and equally many dull but charismatic socialites. There is also a vast spectrum of personalities between these poles.
The obvious question is: why characterize the jock extreme as genial and average, but depict the geek extreme as the early onset of a disease!?
Only social preference can explain it and until I hear that jocks are probably mildly afflicted by downs syndrome I'll be happy with that explanation. Naturally society prefers to deal with technical talent as an illness requiring a cure - socialites are so much easier to have around!
Let's face it. Intelligence has at least two components, the social and the logical. Mixtures of these produce everyone from the poet to the garbageman. And as with any bell curve, you will have some people at either extreme. This is not abnormal; it is inevitable. Norming out society (and, no doubt, prescribing drugs to quell the fears of jock mothers that their children may turn out "odd ducks" in the words of the article) is only going to change the definition of what is an extreme jock or geek. The social dynamics will still be present and they will still have an equally difficult time getting along.
Let's just allow people to be who they are, ok?
-konstant
I don't pretend to understand the relative merits of DSB and 8-VSB, but the fuss over selecting a standard reminds me of the difficulties people in the 19th century had with railroad gauges.
During the last century (well, I suppose it was nearly two centuries ago now...) when railroad was the primary means of transporting goods, Russia pulled a similar egotistical maneuver and selected a railroad "gauge" or width (12?) that was inconsistent with the gauge gaining acceptance in neigboring Europe (8?). As a consequence, when trains passed the Western Russian boarder, all the passengers and contents had to be humped out, placed in another train, and sent on their way. Needless to say this retarded commerce between Russia and Europe.
Now information, not gold or even dollars, is becoming the crucial international currency and nations are building their information infrastructure. If nationalism entices us or any other country down the same path as the Russians, they will quickly learn their mistake. Devices built in adherence to the de facto standard will suddenly cease to function the moment they enter the rogue country. This will be far more inconvenient - and costly - than converting between Standard and Metric.
Let's not forget when advocating standards that common usage is an important factor, and that the world isn't limited by the San Andreas and the Potomac!
-konstant
AOL Figurehead Moved to Lobby
By Paige Turner
AP Technology Writer
Friday, September 10, 1999; 2:20 p.m. EDT
SAN JOSE, Calif. - America Online Inc. announced a shakeup today in its management ranks, announcing its intention to move figurehead Marc Andreessen, its visionary technology totem, into a glass case in the lobby.
AOL said in a statement from its Dulles, Va., headquarters that Andreessen, who has been founding Netscape professionally since 1994, would be more comfortable in his new location.
"Marc has expressed dissatisfaction with his ceremonial perch over the entrance to our boardroom," said AOL chief executive Steve Case. "We expect with this move we will be able to better serve Marc's career needs, such food, defecation, and petting."
AOL executives insist things have not changed substantially and that morale remains high.
"Marc is much happier in his new felt-lined glass enclosure," stated one handler. He is also on more prominent display here on the lobby, so that he can continue to inspire us all. Regrettably, the construction of Marc's cage renders him unable to make statements of a public nature."
Andreeson was not immediately available for comment. However, he was observed to write with blood on the interior of his cage the words, "Steve Case agrees with me that technology should be free. As a first step, I have recommended eliminating AOL's monthly ISP fees on a trial basis." Handlers covered Andreeson's box with a blanket soon afterwards.
Netscape, best known for its logo, is a leading provider of software and services for online businesses and the operator of NetCenter, a popular entry point to the World Wide Web. AOL is the largest Internet access provider and online service.
-konstant
Many of you apparently view this comment from Schneier as some sort of vindication of Microsoft. I see it in quite another light. Before I criticize the man, let me clarify that I have read his book and that I do greatly admire him.
Those who have observed that Schneier's press release adds little to the discussion are correct - nearly. True, he says nothing that has not already been said several times elsewhere, including a regurgitation of the Microsoft party line and some humorous commentary on the inappropriate name this key received in the debugger.
But he does add something. He adds a snide and technically unjustifiable comment about Microsoft cryptography, implying that it is deficient:
Microsoft has two keys, a primary and a spare. The Crypto-Gram article talked about attacks based on the fact that a crypto suite is considered signed if it is signed by EITHER key, and that there is no mechanism for transitioning from the primary key to the backup. It's stupid cryptography, but the sort of thing you'd expect out of Microsoft.
This is not the "sort of thing" I'd expect out of Schneier. He behaves as though he has never heard of a Certificate Revocation List. CRL's are fully implemented in Internet Exploder (although for sound connectivity reasons online checking is turned off by default. see Tools|Internet Options|Advanced) CRLs are not only an adequate means of revoking compromised public keys, they are an internet standard.
Schneier's article appears to contribute nothing to this discussion other than an unjustified punch below the belt. I admire the author of Applied Cryptography too much to let this attack pass without voicing my disapproval. Schneier has already made his name. He has nothing to gain from pinching the schoolyard bully and then running away.
-konstant
A floating sphere! Wow, NASA has like, totally gone and invented levitation behind our backs!!!
I hope it doesn't get sucked down the special "astronaut toilet".
-konstant
-konstant
Here's their statement on privacy:
:)
http://www.tivo.com/care/privacy.html
As I understand the pitch, TiVo is entirely client-side unless you "give your consent". (Troubling question: how is this determined? Opt-out? Fine print bundled with some 'incentive'?) But assuming they keep that part above board, they really appear to understand the privacy concerns of savvy consumers. The best way to reassure me that my private habits won't be monitored is to store that information in my home where it is inaccessible to corporate tentacles.
I am concerned, though, that they'll seduce you into giving consent unwittingly one way or another. Lots of online companies already do this. With all the people who have access to your profile these days, it's tough to finger any one corporate entity as the one that's reneging on privacy aggreements. Something to be wary of while you're using your cool new TiVo
They ought to do well if they maintain this sort of respect for the citizen. I can just imagine how this could turn TV on its head. The networks and even cable have based their entire model on the premise that they can sell advertising all day long. But with the introduction of this sort of device, a consumer can watch TV at any time of the day and still only watch the handful of shows that really are worth watching. Result: advertising can really only be sold for quality shows, since nobody will be watching the crap that's on at 2:30am or 1 in the afternoon any longer.
-konstant
This post is not a knock against Apple. Only an observation.
:) I fall prey to this myself.
What I find most remarkable about the new genesis of Mac's is not the hardware, which is undeniably exciting, but the influence the color seems to have. The poster of this article is probably right - their silver/shimmery grey new color combo is almost certainly aimed towards people who want to believe they have "serious" work to do, much as the bubbly tangerine, etc. hues were directed toward people intimidated by beige. What PHB will feel quite confident in his image with a "lime" ball on his desktop?
Nearly 40 years along in the development of computer technology and we have arrived at a point where the most potent selling point of a new machine is the way it makes you feel psychologically to have it on your desk.
May marketing live forever!
Not that this is very different from what has driven computers in the past few years, namely geeks who believe that there is some sort of ratio between the MHz on their chip and the power in their pants...
The most peculiar thing about humans is the divergance between what they claim is important to them and what evidence demonstrates they actually care about.
-konstant
Jesus. See the thread in the Alan Cox interview about people who automatically get moderated up. There is no way I would be reading this flame war if "SoftwareJanitor" weren't magically privileged.
-konstant
Many AC posts are very worthwhile, and some of these are overlooked in moderation, so they never get seen. What keeps people from just logging in?
/. for about a month, consistently moderating down my every remark.
I've logged out to post as an AC at times. Most often I do it because I have something I need to say but I'm concerned about reprisals. I once made the mistake of posting a critical comment while still logged in. Somebody took great offense and chased me around
On other occasions, I post as an AC because I want to criticize slashdot or one of its operators. Call me paranoid.
Sometimes it's just because I've forgotten to log in.
Regardless of the reason, I'm fully behind the statement of the initial poster. Look at yourself - I've noticed that your own comments are always scored at 2+. I won't suggest that you didn't earn that rating, but I do have to wonder whether I would have even seen your post had you not been given an automatic leg up. Persistent scores make sense, IMO, but only when limited by an expiration period.
See this article posted to slashdot for further discussion of AC's.
-konstant
they're not changing existing licenses retroactively
That's a good point. However, note that the only people who would have an interest in enforcing this particular clause of the BSD license would be the University of Berkeley itself. Since they've basically declared that they do not care to police this issue any longer, it's safe to assume that license infractions of this kind are now acceptable.
-konstant
I wish to study what happens when mice become smarter than their feline predators.
You know what? That isn't as stupid as it sounds. Remember that humans supposedly came to dominate their predators after developing elaborate social structure and the mental capacity for language and tools. What an interesting trial to set a developing colony of mice or some other species down the same path!
-konstant
Obviously the Heinz ketchup analogy is pretty poor. Nobody is burning "hello world" or pr0n some such other random crap to a CD and attempting to pass it off as Red Hat. They are actually copying the binaries, which in my world translates to exact equivalence. A better analogy would be that of pouring the contents of a Heinz ketchup bottle into a second bottle, and then selling the product. The consumer would wind up with precisely the same ketchup.
:)
But what they wouldn't get would be peace of mind. Do you really want to buy rebottled ketchup? What if it's been contaminated? Can you get a refund if it turns out to be red paint? Similarly people who buy RHAT spoofs aren't getting any assurance that their product will be high quality, and they will have no recourse when things get sticky.
But to quibble over the difference between "Red Hat Linux" and "Official Red Hat Linux" is not just petty, it's confusing. What RHAT should really do is claim the exclusive right to advertise "Official Red Hat Product Support". In this way, you could redistribute their distro, but you could not claim that your product was "Red Hat Linux with Official Red Hat Product Support". A little marketing down the road, and consumers would soon realize that these four words were just as crucial as "Intel inside" and demand that their copies be official.
It also avoids pissing off the Anonymous Cowards...
-konstant
The poster of this article sounded pretty hopeful that this was an indication of vast initiatives to come. I don't believe it. This is little more than a public relations page - there is no obligation for any of your representatives or even their representatives to read the comment board. By posting this forum, they are allowing people like ourselves and also educational apologists to blow off steam and feel as though their government is participatory. That is all this page will probably accomplish.
I sound cynical, I know. But remember, with the way our democracy is currently structured, it is in the best interest of Congress is to make us feel as though problems are being addressed, not to actually address them. Without hot topics like education/affirmative action/taxes/etc., what grounds would most of those schmucks have for requesting reelection? They have to cover the influence of their corporate masters somehow...
If you really want to influence education in America, then fuck websites. Get off your ass and DO something in a poor community. Donate computers! More importantly, donate your time! There are many ways that educated individuals can improve local schools. And don't forget to vote.
-konstant
They don't want to alienate us too much- it could cost them everything
I am not a Linux coder and I'm not into Linux politics. I don't know what I'm talking about. BUT...
Hasn't Red Hat recently been noted to be hiring the most prominent and prolific Linux coders? If I'm correct about that, then I'm not sure about your statement "it could cost them everything". I'm not suggesting that Red Hat is currently doing anything illicit or disreputable, but if it ever did do such a thing, I wonder how the community would respond. If the "Lieutenants" continued to code Offical Red Hat X, then almost certainly the best code would always be most current in that version. Of course, because of the GPL, most of that code would make it out, but the lag would mean that Red Hat would consistently be on top. Do you think that non-participatroy Linux users (people like myself who don't contribute code) would really voluntarily downgrade our Linux experience in order to punish RHAT for some ethical quibble? Particularly a small one like this? I'm not sure what my personal response would be, but I have a sinking feeling that I might go for convenience over principle.
I guess what I'm asking is, just how legitimate is the idea that Linux is a community effort? Is that really true in your experience, or is the code base mostly comprised of the work of a few key players, with tiny bug patches here and there from the rest of the world? If the latter, then a breach of ethics might cost Red Hat very little indeed. Please give me your thoughts.
-konstant
If you really care, many BIOS's allow you to change the boot order of the drives. This would mean that the machine wouldn't boot from a floppy unless there was no bootable partition on the primary harddrive. I've done this a couple of times for various reasons on my Windows box.
-konstant
Not that I'm an economist or anything, but how can you say they have stolen actual income? The original product was apparently not sold in Germany, so it cannot be said GT was competing with the legitimate owners of the product. Nor did anyone from GT intercept transmissions of money from customers to the legal owners of the copyright/patent.
This appears to be no different from the infrigement of Warez. If somebody cracks a piece of software, then sells it at a price of $0, I don't see how that is fundamentally different from reselling it at a price of say $1. Certainly not by a factor of "100". Really, I would think that it would be quite a bit worse to charge no money for stolen goods, for the reason that the customer is that much more likely to choose the illegal product over the honest one. (Infinitely more likely to use your "math").
-konstant