On the contrary, I don't trust the gov't because they are responsible for setting their own salaries, and for raising the taxes that pay those salaries. It sounds basic, but the problem is that they have far too much personal interest in high taxes and lots of power (in order to be able to collect those taxes).
The salaries of the members of the government are a really minute part of what taxes are spent on (if you count everyone employed by the state, it's, of course, quite a significant amount, but the vast majority of them cannot influence their own salary, at all).
Furthermore, for the most influential members of the government, their salaries aren't usually their main source of income. Since most of them are rich before they get their office, they have properties that earn them more than their salaries, which are far lower than what someone in an influential position in a corporation would get, e.g. as far as I know, during his presidency Reagan had more income from his farm than from the salary for his office. That's the more harmless part.
Then, former politicians are often offered lucrative positions in companies. A good example are George Bush senior, James Baker, John Major etc. at the Carlyle group, but that's just an extreme case (there are also all kinds of adviser contracts, well-paid memberships in boards). Members of government know very well that after serving in office, they can get much more from corporations than from the state if they do what these corporations like - and they certainly prefer low taxes.
So, I agree that the personal interests of the members of the government are a problem. But their personal interest are not high, but low taxes (for corporation and rich people) and other business-friendly policies, while public services (health care, welfare, education,...), for which taxes are needed, are not really important to them personally.
I've always wondered what the advantage of paying for SUSE is? I mean from the user stand point, I understand the desire to support the "community", but when I can get all the same software from other distros for the cost of download time and a couple of blank CDs.
If you downloaded everything that is on a SuSE Professional DVD, that would certainly be quite a lengthy download. For many people, that's probably already enough for preferring to buy it. Then, you get printed books that are quite good.
Mandrake is easy to install and configure, Fedora is extremely powerful, Gentoo is geeky beyond belief and Debian is solid as a rock. It seems that all niches have been filled already.
Yes, I don't think SuSE tries to occupy one of these niches, according to these criteria, it in between as to most criteria you mentioned. But I think a distribution does not really have to fit into a niche. There are big geographical differences. As far as I know, SuSE is the most widespread Linux distribution in Germany (where it's based) and some other European countries. Then, people choose a different distribution if there is a particular reason, but if they just want a kind of "general-purpose" Linux, SuSE is probably the first choice. I suppose that they want to be one of the "mainstream" distributions rather than filling a particular niche.
One area where SuSE Professional really stands out is, in my view, the amount of software that is included. I find that a great advantage - when I read about a program I want to install, chances are good that it's already on the SuSE DVD, and then I don't have to download it and YaST takes care of all the dependencies etc.. It's much easier and quicker to install a working application and everything it needs with a few clicks in YaST than having to care about everything yourself. I find that very important. I haven't compared all recent distributions, but when I occasionally had to do with other distributions, I had the impression that they include much less software than SuSE Professional.
Neither country has a "right" to free speech (except for politicians protected by parliamentry privilige, who really don't want to share that privilige with their critics).
I wouldn't say that there is no right to free speech altogether - generally, in democratic countries outside the US, generally you can advocate any kind of political ideas, but there are limitations for factual claims about concrete people and companies. (In the US, you can sue for damage compensation afterwards, as well, but in many countries, you can ban claims to stop the damage).
I think it is difficult to say what is better, both kinds of regulations have their advantages and disadvantages. Of course, any limitation of freedom of speech is regrettable, but on the other hand, it can also be important to have the possibility to stop unfair practises that consist in spreading unsubstanciated claims to harm competitors. A good example is SCO: In Germany, they are not allowed to spread allegations about the alleged copyright and licence infringement of Linux because they could not show anything to substanciate them, they had to remove these claims from their German website.
The problem seems to be the choice of target for these laser-guided missile - e.g. the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, which had been used by the Yugoslav governments some years ago and was therefore destroyed by the US during the war against Yugoslavia. If that method for fighting spammers was used, you would have to make absolutely sure that you don't live in a house Ralsky used to live earlier, otherwise better abandon the house.
This seems like a near-perfect application for a one-way hash of the email address. Rather than publishing a list of do-not-spam email addresses, publish the SHA-1 and/or MD5 hashes of the email addresses. It's then possible to confirm that a given email address is on the list, but it's not possible to convert the list into a set of usable email addresses. Am I missing something obvious here?
Publishing such hashes would, of course, not be as irresponsible as publishing the addresses in clear text (provided the encryption is strong enough), but it would still benefit spammers: dictionary attacks would be quite easy to do: just try out common names at common domains. Spammers can, of course, do that now, but it would be more convenient with the hashes than actually sending mail and checking from a valid account whether an error messages comes back. Furthermore, spammers who use dictionary attacks would have better chances to send their spam to e-mail accounts that are actually used. When no error message comes back, it can still be an abandoned or throwaway account, but if it is actually on a do-not-spam list, it is most likely in use and therefore of more value for spammers.
And even if the e-mail addresses are encrypted, I wouldn't trust that the key isn't leaked somehow. Then, suddenly, spammers had their wonderful list of e-mail addresses. I would find adding my e-mail addresses to a list that would be so much scrutinized by spammers too risky in any case.
Indeed, "they should at least try" would be disastrous in this case. What would trying mean in this case? Starting a website where people can publish their e-mail in the hope not to receive e-mails. The worst thing would be if the list was made public - then it would be an ideal high quality e-mail list for spammers.
One alternative would be that the list wouldn't contain public lists, but one could submit e-mail addresses and be told whether they are on the list or not. That way, spammers at least couldn't harvest addresses from the list too easily. But it would still be quite convenient for dictionary attacks - probably more convenient than the methods spammers use currently.
It's really much better not to try such a bad idea. Instead, a do-spam list could be created, and the do-not-spam implicitly list contains all other addresses by default, that's still the best rule (opt-in). Enforcement is another problem, of course, but the misconception of a do-not-spam list wouldn't help enforcement, anyway.
Implementing a do-not-spam registry is only infeasible if you're a technical imbecile (it's trivial to do - even trivial to do right).
Yes, if you want to give spammers outside the reach of the law a very convenient large list of new spam victims and those within the reach of the law an excuse to send spam to everyone not on the list, it's trivial - and very stupid.
Spammers who "abide by the law" would spam everyone who is not on the list (whether in the US or not) and think they are entitled to it.
On the other hand, other spammers who don't care about the laws send spam to everyone on the list because that will be the best e-mail collection for spammers available.
If such a list was created it certainly shouldn't consist of large numbers of e-mail addresses that are publicly available and can easily be used by spammers. But since it is not acceptable to make all those e-mail addresses public, it is very difficult to find a practical solution (one might require that spammers send all their spam - with recipients' addresses - to some trusted central service, which then forwards all spam to those who are not on the list.
That wouldn't be so trivial. And it's not clear if it would make sense, either. Why forward the spam to those whose addresses aren't on the list? Most of them probably wouldn't really want spam, but just didn't know how to add their address to the do-not-spam list. So, I think it's much better and easier not to allow spam to anyone - who wants it can sign up for it.
It doesn't claim to be the first one. Before apple did it no one cared.
Well, I heard a lot about pocket-size MP3 players a few years ago, but only started hearing and reading consciously about iPod last year. Maybe, Apple's iPod used to be more popular in America while other MP3 players were more common in Europe (around 2000 there were many produced by small manufacturers that got quite lot of attention, but now iPod is probably one of the more widespread, as well, alongside some Japanese products).
Then we can all be individuals in the same way!
Why in the same way? I think convergency will gather pace rapidly, but I don't think it will lead to people having only one single device at home (and one single mobile one), there probably will still be about two to four. Partial convergience could lead to enormous diversity.
Some people will have
combined fax machine, toilet, gaming console and refrigerator
combined telephone, TV, refrigerator, dishwasher
combined dry cleaner, toaster, radio, mailbox
...
Buth that's just one of many possibilities. Others will have other converged devices a) fax, telephone, dry cleaner and toilet b) TV, toaster, game box, radio and toaster c) refrigerator, computer, music player, air conditioner...
The enormous amount of possibilities of combining some functions in one device and others in another can lead to such an amount of diversity that would not be possible if there was a separate device for every function.;-)
If I want a phone, I just want a phone that is reliable and easy to use. Not loaded with so many gadgets that I have trouble using it for the intended main function.
Well, I need a mobile phone, a calendar that can easily be backed up and synchronized and something to take notes that can be saved electronically. I also prefer being able to receive and send e-mails when I'm not near a computer with Internet access.
These are several basic functions, and I used to have both a palmtop and a mobile phone, but I found it rather unconvenient to have to take two gadgets with me (and to point them towards each other for accessing the Internet on the Palm). Now, I have a "converged" Treo 600, and I find that much more convenient. Before, I often didn't take the Palm with me, and then I used the very inconvenient calendar and e-mail functions on the phone (in that sense, already that old Ericsson phone was a "converged" device).
Furthermore, I used to have a MiniDisc player. I don't need it any more, I have an SD card with lots of my songs in OGG format in the Treo, so it also replaces a walkman. It's quite a difference whether you have to carry around a mobile phone, a palmtop, a walkman and (for those who need it) a camera or if it's all in one device.
I doubt that there are so many people who only need gadgets for very few things or that they all have so large pockets that they can put in dozens of devices.
Also, what's bad about having functions you don't really need? I don't really need the camera of the Treo, but maybe I'll be in a situation, in which I'm glad that I can take a picture (picture quality is not too impressive, but it's enough for many purposes).
More function doesn't mean that the other ("main") ones work less reliably. Maybe, it doesn't make sense to include functions hardly anyone uses, but then I think it is still a question of which set of functions to offer with one device. It would be extremely cumbersome to have to carry around a separate device for every "main" function - one for telephoning, one for sending and receiving SMSs, one for reading and writing e-mails, one for taking notes, an electronic calendar, an electronic camera, a walkman, one for logging in to servers with SSH (OK, maybe that's perhaps not necessary, but I appreciate having auch an application on my Treo), one for looking up train schedules etc.. - a nightmare!
What do they block? It would hardly be possible to block people using their own domains - there are so many different e-mail services that they cannot be sure whethere it is a domain of an e-mail service or someone's own domain, and they hardly want to lose customers who are not able to register.
Now, as soon as you can use your own domain, you can track them. Maybe they block amazon@..., but you can track them with any string. It would be much better to use a more complicated e-mail address, anyway, otherwise you never know if you get spam because Amazon sold your address or because of a dictionary attack - it could even be a joe job, an enemy of Amazon sends lots of spam to amazon@ at many domains, and many people who use that system for tracking will think it's Amazon's fault.
Of course, if you use something more complex than just the name of the company, you have to administrate a list of e-mail addresses with data about who you gave them. Therefore, I think it is easier to use services like Sneakemail or emailias, there you can create as many e-mail addresses as you want (at their domain, not your own), and there are easy web interfaces to administrate the aliases, the e-mails will be tagged when forwarded to your address and there are lots of options.
But if you don't want to use such a service and have domains of your own, I recommend to attach at least some random string to the addresses, e.g. to use guo89wz_amazon@..., guo89wz_companyx@, guo89wz_companyy@... (to make it easier to remember, it can always be the same string). That way, you can at least assume that something went wrong at the company in question (selling the address or they were hacked) and dictionary attacks are not likely (of course, those of companyx with which you registered could guess the alias you have for companyy - so, it's still a bit problematic, using real random strings would be better, and services like the ones mentioned above facilitate this).
As some others have pointed out, many newspapers do the opposite, they charge you for accessing older articles ("archive"), but let people access current news for free.
I think the comparison with movies doesn't hold - a movie from a few months ago (or even many years ago) does not loose much of its value, but yesterdays or last week's news aren't worth much any more (except if it's a large archive with good search facilities, but then it isn't used the same way as a newspaper).
There are many newspapers with a mixed model, they offer some, but not all content on the website for free (e.g. some Swiss newspapers I know do so). But I suppose this model can only work if the freely available content is still attractive enough to draw many visitors, and a newspaper website where only old news are free just wouldn't be attractive enough.
On the other hand, offering a large archive for free probably wouldn't make that much sense, either. As far as I know, most newspaper charge for archive access, and the readiness to pay for archive research - something the majority of people doesn't do on a daily basis - seems to be much higher than the readiness to pay for the everyday matter of reading current news.
from the inevitable spam people get when they like, actually use their real info when registering.
I don't think there are many newspapers that send spam to the addresses with which people register. Certainly, well-known newspapers, such as New York Times or Washington Post don't. I never use fake addresses, I always use emailias addresses, always a new one every time, so I would know who has abused the address. I have never received spam to such addresses used for registering at newspaper or other similar websites.
Look, the reason I'm gonna go with Google for my free webmail is that I actually have a chance of getting something decent as my name, instead of some misspelled-word+four-digit-number...
"Decent" e-mail addresses will probably soon be gone with G-mail. Furthermore, I don't think it is a good idea to have a decent e-mail address at a very common domain - that's an invitation for spammers using dictionary attacks (of course, it can be expected that GMail will have good filters, but it is much better if your address doesn't end up on spammers' lists, at all). I think it is much better to use decent e-mail addresses at less common domains (there are quite good smaller e-mail providers, and some offer choosing one of several domains) or - even better - to have your own domain, it's not that expensive any more.
I intend using GMail when it becomes available, but I'll just forward my mails to it so that they are easily accessible and retrieveable from any computer with web access, but I'm going to use a strange cryptic e-mail address I won't tell anyone.
The classic spatial example is driving. There are probably tons of places you go on a daily basis on which you have no idea what the road names are.
Certainly, but do you want to need as much time to access a file like you need to drive to some place in a town? When you drive or walk somewhere, what you perceive has a lot of redundancy, which cannot be avoided, and many things (how buildings look, the form of streets at crossroads, direction relative to prominent points etc.) can be used for remembering the way more easily than street names. But they take up space, if you were presented with all of that at once, it wouldn't work. When you drive, you need the time to see the landscapes and the directions of the path through them, anyway. But access to a file should be fast, and therefore the methods for efficient access are hardly the same.
There is no reason to assume that what is good for driving is also good for accessing files, unless we don't mind making file browsing as time-consuming as driving.
The wave of the future? Early versions of Windows (and as far as I know also Mac) OSs used this kind of file browsing with many windows opening. Later, the default was changed, certainly because most users didn't like it. Windows explorer can still be configured to behave that "spacial" way, and Konqueror offers this option as well (in some special cases it might make sense), but few people use it - that has been tried and failed many years ago. To dig out old Windows 95 behavior from the garbage heap of user interface history and proclaim it an "innovation" and "the wave of the future" is very odd.
I could perhaps understand such nonsense if GNOME was a proprietary dot-com adventure that spends millions on marketing...
I haven't used the new version of Nautilus and therefore can't say much about it, but the article on Osnews is one of the worst texts about user interface design I have ever read.
It seems the author has not understood, at all, what the sense of metaphors in user interface design is. For him, it is a question of finding "the right" metaphor, on the basis of abstract considerations that have nothing to do with how programs are actually used. Then, he brushes away all other aspects and advocates adopting the option that has been chosen as the best for such abstract considerations and condemning everything else as "bad habits".
There are quite a number of things that are, in my opinion, wrong with this approach:
For anything, there are different metaphors, and intuitive metaphors are only one aspect of good interface design, many other aspects (e.g. economy, visibility) have to be taken into account. It is nonsense to discuss the quality of a user interface on the basis of how much "sense" a metaphore makes alone.
As far as metaphors are concerned, the question should be how useful and how intuitive they are, not whether they are the "right", "correct" ones. When the question of metaphors is turned from a useful (and important) tool in interface design to a quasi-ideological debate, it completely misses the point (I can understand that ideological debates arise about licenses etc., and they are, in my view, necessary, but ideological debates about whether new windows should open for folders are absurd, that is a purely practical question which has to be decided on the basis of practical arguments).
Unless someone completely misunderstands what metaphors in interface design are, as the author of the article in Osnews obviously does, it should be clear that they cannot be taken too literally. Comparing windows and tabs with books and newspapers and contemplating what common interactions with programs would mean translated to the paper world (i.e. reversing the metaphor) may be an interesting game, but no serious argument can be based on this. Parallelism with things in the physical world are important for interface design, but when they are taken too far, it becomes odd (e.g. browsing the Internet is allegedly more like reading newspapers and browsing files more like using drawers). Anyway, the most important metaphors in that context, which, indeed, play an important role, are probably much more general ones (like "websites" or folders as different "locations", "going to" a certain website or directory, the metaphor of movement,...)
The argument about books, newspapers and drawers being different and that therefore file browsers should be different from web browsers is absurd, anyway, but it also completely disregards the important role of consistency.
What is at least as bad as the total misunderstanding about metaphors and user interface design in general is that the author buys this crap about "innovation", "reviving" and "spaciality". Whether a new window should be opened for a folder is an absolutely mundane, practical question that has nothing to do with "spaciality" and "innovations". Good browsers (like Konqueror, in my opinion) make it easy to change the default for this setting in the option dialog, and it is also very useful that different clicks have different effects, e.g. with a middle click something opens in a new tab in Konqueror.
So, what's this fuss about "spaciality" and "innovation" - other browsers like Konqueror have the exactly same possibility, the only difference is that with the "spatial" Nautilus this setting is the default and the way to change it is much more inconvenient with Nautilus and gnome. I only hope that not providing a more convenient way to change the setting is just due to negligence by the developers and that it does not mean that they have similar views like the author of the article and want to force users to do something they deem "better" for absurd quasi-ideological reasons. Nothing against new windows for folders, sometimes that's good, but often it is better not to have to use too many windows.
League president Kay Maxwell says paperless computers, which can be equipped with headsets and programmed in multiple languages, make voting easier for the blind and illiterate, and for people who don't speak English.
People who don't speak English: Where's the problem? Will the names of the candidates be translated? That will hardly be necessary, and if a written explanation about how to vote is needed, this can also be translated to several languages if it is delivered on paper.
Illiterate people: I have severe doubts whether completely illiterate people who cannot even recognize the names of candidates can have a sound basis for deciding for whom to vote. They should be offered courses for learning to read and write, otherwise they are excluded from too many things in society, not just elections. Is it planned to make a beauty contest out of elections - those who can't recognize the names of candidates (and have hardly been able to find out anything about them beforehand) are shown photographs and vote for the most beautiful candidate?
I understand that there is a problem for blind people, but it would probably be much easier to address this problem directly with solutions that are fitted to the needs of blind people (ballots with Braille or whatever is best, as it is probably already done in many places) than to give up the secure, easy and efficient paper voting system.
Apart from the need to provide a good way of voting for blind people, the arguments are so weak that they beg the question what the real motives are. In the case of these organizations for disabled people it's probably just the bribes from Diebold, but what are the motives of Diebold and similar companies? Is it just the commercial interest of the company - then it's bad, a system that is not very trustworthy is going to be introduced because of particular interests of a few companies -, or is it more than that and some people want to ensure that elections can be manipulated?
90% of Americans wouldn't vote for a Libertarian candidate even if they did know what they stood for. Plus, their candidate looks like a dork.
That would still leave 10%. That's too little for a presidential election, but if the US had a fair proportional system like most democratic countries, that would still be a significant amount in parliamentary elections. And it's not just the Libertarian party, e.g. I suppose also the Green party would have quite a number of seats in a parliament elected in a fair proportional way.
I don't think political views of Americans are so much more limited than those of people in other democracies and that therefore two parties alone, which aren't that distant from each other, anyway, can represent all Americans. Its rather the flawed majoritarian election system that gives people too few choices and leads to money and not democratic debates about ideas decide.
But it isn't as heavy if you don't run those Desktops and applications.
That is not a fair comparison. It is easy to be lighter weight when you don't do as much.
If you need to do everthing that you can do in windows, then Linux is signifcantly slower (mostly footprint and loading time) than windows.
It depends... Maybe, Linux with KDE or Gnome is slower than Windows 2000 or Windows XP (it seems to me it depends on many factors which is faster). But it is big advantage that with Linux I can just switch to a more lightweight window manager when I do something that uses a lot of resources. I can even shut the whole graphical system down and still do almost everything, e.g. browse the Internet with Lynx while complex calculations that need a lot of memory and processing time are processed. Of course, then, it is not a 'fair' comparison, but it is Windows' problem that it offers fewer and worse options for exchanging comfort for speed. With Linux, it is always possible to coose what is best for the given situation - more comfort or more speed.
Maybe this approach has its merits, but it would make entering passwords a bit complicated, strings are easier to handle.
I would find it much more important that knowledge about mnemonic techniques become more widespread. As far as I know, people who take part in memory contests, where they have to remember long numbers, use systems wehere each number stands for something (a letter in the alphabet, which in turn stands for certain words), and they quickly construct a kind of story around the numbers. Human beings are very bad at remembering raw data, but they are quite good at remembering semantically connected concept. As long as people conceive passwords as a kind of words, perhaps slightly altered and with numbers added, it will always be difficult - either it is still vulnerable (dictionary attacks or even if the word doesn't exist phonotactic attacks exploiting the rules sounds can combine in languages) or it is hard to remember, especially if the password has to change from time to time. It would be much easier of people conceived passwords as phrases or whole sentences and use the first, second, last or whatever letters that make up the words of these expressions (and still add numbers).
For instance, I think it would be relatively hard to remember a password like 'dl3w5pwthbtceth', but if it stands for 'During [the] last 3 weeks, 5 people went to [the] hairdresser because their cats eat their hair' (absurd, but not really devoid of semantic content and therefore possible to remember). Next time, the password might be '3ohtehfsocatioh2jgu' (3 of [the] hairdressers tried [to] extract [the] hair from [the] stomachs of [the] cats and to insert it on their heads, 2 just gave up). The style of the sentences that should not be too obvious can, of course, vary.
That is easier to remember than things conceived as nonsense-words and practically impossible to guess. The transition from one password to the next is easier - the next phrase or sentence can somehow be connected semantically or pragmatically to the previous in the mind of the owner of the password in a way that isn't accessible to anyone else.
With the ubiquity of passwords in today's everyday life, such methods deserve much more attention.
Indeed, I think web.de is one of the best free services. Most other free e-mail services I use (gmx.net, yandex.ru, orangemail.ch,...) don't offer IMAP, but they're still much better than Hotmail (they offer POP access, more storage, some of them forwarding, SMS notifications).
It's really strange that in discussions about GMail, it is mentioned, at all, that it will be better than Hotmail. Hotmail is one of the worst big free e-mail services. It doesn't mean much if an e-mail service is significantly better than Hotmail, there are plenty of better services already - who uses Hotmail obviously doesn't care or know about the alternatives. What is, indeed, significant is that GMail will probably be significantly better than web.de, GMX and the likes - in some respects (storage, but perhaps not only), it will beats the paid premium versions of these services, as well (probably, some of them will offer more with GMail as a competitor).
they simply could decide that since their search engine is so good, everybody needs to pay $25 a month to keep accessing it.
That is very unlikely. For many purposes, Google is the best search engine, but the difference between Google and other search engines like alltheweb.com or vivisimo is not that big that a large part of the population would pay $25 a month to keep accessing Google. Google has little means to lock people in, and changing the search engine is much easier than changing the operating system or even the office suite. The many millions of people who use Google certainly give it a certain power, but only as long as Google stays very good, and it would take much less than demanding money to make Google a much less frequented site. That Google "behaves relatively well" does not necessarily mean that they are inherently "good", they just don't have the means to lock people in the way e.g. Microsoft can.
I almost wish for a really serious crackdown on piracy by the major commercial software developers
I think they know why they don't target certain types of users of illegal copies seriously. Otherwise free alternatives would soon become a de facto standards. For instance, I don't think the students I know who use "pirated" versions of MS Office would rather pay than switch to OpenOffice.org. Just like attracting future users with cheaper educational licences, a certain "tolerance" for people using non-licenced copies is part of the strategy, otherwise it would hardly be possible to sell overpriced products that are still used everywhere.
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On the contrary, I don't trust the gov't because they are responsible for setting their own salaries, and for raising the taxes that pay those salaries. It sounds basic, but the problem is that they have far too much personal interest in high taxes and lots of power (in order to be able to collect those taxes).
...), for which taxes are needed, are not really important to them personally.
The salaries of the members of the government are a really minute part of what taxes are spent on (if you count everyone employed by the state, it's, of course, quite a significant amount, but the vast majority of them cannot influence their own salary, at all).
Furthermore, for the most influential members of the government, their salaries aren't usually their main source of income. Since most of them are rich before they get their office, they have properties that earn them more than their salaries, which are far lower than what someone in an influential position in a corporation would get, e.g. as far as I know, during his presidency Reagan had more income from his farm than from the salary for his office. That's the more harmless part.
Then, former politicians are often offered lucrative positions in companies. A good example are George Bush senior, James Baker, John Major etc. at the Carlyle group, but that's just an extreme case (there are also all kinds of adviser contracts, well-paid memberships in boards). Members of government know very well that after serving in office, they can get much more from corporations than from the state if they do what these corporations like - and they certainly prefer low taxes.
So, I agree that the personal interests of the members of the government are a problem. But their personal interest are not high, but low taxes (for corporation and rich people) and other business-friendly policies, while public services (health care, welfare, education,
I've always wondered what the advantage of paying for SUSE is? I mean from the user stand point, I understand the desire to support the "community", but when I can get all the same software from other distros for the cost of download time and a couple of blank CDs.
If you downloaded everything that is on a SuSE Professional DVD, that would certainly be quite a lengthy download. For many people, that's probably already enough for preferring to buy it. Then, you get printed books that are quite good.
Mandrake is easy to install and configure, Fedora is extremely powerful, Gentoo is geeky beyond belief and Debian is solid as a rock. It seems that all niches have been filled already.
Yes, I don't think SuSE tries to occupy one of these niches, according to these criteria, it in between as to most criteria you mentioned. But I think a distribution does not really have to fit into a niche. There are big geographical differences. As far as I know, SuSE is the most widespread Linux distribution in Germany (where it's based) and some other European countries. Then, people choose a different distribution if there is a particular reason, but if they just want a kind of "general-purpose" Linux, SuSE is probably the first choice. I suppose that they want to be one of the "mainstream" distributions rather than filling a particular niche.
One area where SuSE Professional really stands out is, in my view, the amount of software that is included. I find that a great advantage - when I read about a program I want to install, chances are good that it's already on the SuSE DVD, and then I don't have to download it and YaST takes care of all the dependencies etc.. It's much easier and quicker to install a working application and everything it needs with a few clicks in YaST than having to care about everything yourself. I find that very important. I haven't compared all recent distributions, but when I occasionally had to do with other distributions, I had the impression that they include much less software than SuSE Professional.
Neither country has a "right" to free speech (except for politicians protected by parliamentry privilige, who really don't want to share that privilige with their critics).
I wouldn't say that there is no right to free speech altogether - generally, in democratic countries outside the US, generally you can advocate any kind of political ideas, but there are limitations for factual claims about concrete people and companies. (In the US, you can sue for damage compensation afterwards, as well, but in many countries, you can ban claims to stop the damage).
I think it is difficult to say what is better, both kinds of regulations have their advantages and disadvantages. Of course, any limitation of freedom of speech is regrettable, but on the other hand, it can also be important to have the possibility to stop unfair practises that consist in spreading unsubstanciated claims to harm competitors. A good example is SCO: In Germany, they are not allowed to spread allegations about the alleged copyright and licence infringement of Linux because they could not show anything to substanciate them, they had to remove these claims from their German website.
The problem seems to be the choice of target for these laser-guided missile - e.g. the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, which had been used by the Yugoslav governments some years ago and was therefore destroyed by the US during the war against Yugoslavia. If that method for fighting spammers was used, you would have to make absolutely sure that you don't live in a house Ralsky used to live earlier, otherwise better abandon the house.
This seems like a near-perfect application for a one-way hash of the email address. Rather than publishing a list of do-not-spam email addresses, publish the SHA-1 and/or MD5 hashes of the email addresses. It's then possible to confirm that a given email address is on the list, but it's not possible to convert the list into a set of usable email addresses. Am I missing something obvious here?
Publishing such hashes would, of course, not be as irresponsible as publishing the addresses in clear text (provided the encryption is strong enough), but it would still benefit spammers: dictionary attacks would be quite easy to do: just try out common names at common domains. Spammers can, of course, do that now, but it would be more convenient with the hashes than actually sending mail and checking from a valid account whether an error messages comes back. Furthermore, spammers who use dictionary attacks would have better chances to send their spam to e-mail accounts that are actually used. When no error message comes back, it can still be an abandoned or throwaway account, but if it is actually on a do-not-spam list, it is most likely in use and therefore of more value for spammers.
And even if the e-mail addresses are encrypted, I wouldn't trust that the key isn't leaked somehow. Then, suddenly, spammers had their wonderful list of e-mail addresses. I would find adding my e-mail addresses to a list that would be so much scrutinized by spammers too risky in any case.
Indeed, "they should at least try" would be disastrous in this case. What would trying mean in this case? Starting a website where people can publish their e-mail in the hope not to receive e-mails. The worst thing would be if the list was made public - then it would be an ideal high quality e-mail list for spammers.
One alternative would be that the list wouldn't contain public lists, but one could submit e-mail addresses and be told whether they are on the list or not. That way, spammers at least couldn't harvest addresses from the list too easily. But it would still be quite convenient for dictionary attacks - probably more convenient than the methods spammers use currently.
It's really much better not to try such a bad idea. Instead, a do-spam list could be created, and the do-not-spam implicitly list contains all other addresses by default, that's still the best rule (opt-in). Enforcement is another problem, of course, but the misconception of a do-not-spam list wouldn't help enforcement, anyway.
Implementing a do-not-spam registry is only infeasible if you're a technical imbecile (it's trivial to do - even trivial to do right).
Yes, if you want to give spammers outside the reach of the law a very convenient large list of new spam victims and those within the reach of the law an excuse to send spam to everyone not on the list, it's trivial - and very stupid.
Spammers who "abide by the law" would spam everyone who is not on the list (whether in the US or not) and think they are entitled to it.
On the other hand, other spammers who don't care about the laws send spam to everyone on the list because that will be the best e-mail collection for spammers available.
If such a list was created it certainly shouldn't consist of large numbers of e-mail addresses that are publicly available and can easily be used by spammers. But since it is not acceptable to make all those e-mail addresses public, it is very difficult to find a practical solution (one might require that spammers send all their spam - with recipients' addresses - to some trusted central service, which then forwards all spam to those who are not on the list.
That wouldn't be so trivial. And it's not clear if it would make sense, either. Why forward the spam to those whose addresses aren't on the list? Most of them probably wouldn't really want spam, but just didn't know how to add their address to the do-not-spam list. So, I think it's much better and easier not to allow spam to anyone - who wants it can sign up for it.
It doesn't claim to be the first one. Before apple did it no one cared.
Well, I heard a lot about pocket-size MP3 players a few years ago, but only started hearing and reading consciously about iPod last year. Maybe, Apple's iPod used to be more popular in America while other MP3 players were more common in Europe (around 2000 there were many produced by small manufacturers that got quite lot of attention, but now iPod is probably one of the more widespread, as well, alongside some Japanese products).
Why in the same way? I think convergency will gather pace rapidly, but I don't think it will lead to people having only one single device at home (and one single mobile one), there probably will still be about two to four. Partial convergience could lead to enormous diversity.
Some people will have
- combined fax machine, toilet, gaming console and refrigerator
- combined telephone, TV, refrigerator, dishwasher
- combined dry cleaner, toaster, radio, mailbox
- ...
Buth that's just one of many possibilities. Others will have other converged devices a) fax, telephone, dry cleaner and toilet b) TV, toaster, game box, radio and toaster c) refrigerator, computer, music player, air conditionerThe enormous amount of possibilities of combining some functions in one device and others in another can lead to such an amount of diversity that would not be possible if there was a separate device for every function.
If I want a phone, I just want a phone that is reliable and easy to use. Not loaded with so many gadgets that I have trouble using it for the intended main function.
Well, I need a mobile phone, a calendar that can easily be backed up and synchronized and something to take notes that can be saved electronically. I also prefer being able to receive and send e-mails when I'm not near a computer with Internet access.
These are several basic functions, and I used to have both a palmtop and a mobile phone, but I found it rather unconvenient to have to take two gadgets with me (and to point them towards each other for accessing the Internet on the Palm). Now, I have a "converged" Treo 600, and I find that much more convenient. Before, I often didn't take the Palm with me, and then I used the very inconvenient calendar and e-mail functions on the phone (in that sense, already that old Ericsson phone was a "converged" device).
Furthermore, I used to have a MiniDisc player. I don't need it any more, I have an SD card with lots of my songs in OGG format in the Treo, so it also replaces a walkman. It's quite a difference whether you have to carry around a mobile phone, a palmtop, a walkman and (for those who need it) a camera or if it's all in one device.
I doubt that there are so many people who only need gadgets for very few things or that they all have so large pockets that they can put in dozens of devices.
Also, what's bad about having functions you don't really need? I don't really need the camera of the Treo, but maybe I'll be in a situation, in which I'm glad that I can take a picture (picture quality is not too impressive, but it's enough for many purposes).
More function doesn't mean that the other ("main") ones work less reliably. Maybe, it doesn't make sense to include functions hardly anyone uses, but then I think it is still a question of which set of functions to offer with one device. It would be extremely cumbersome to have to carry around a separate device for every "main" function - one for telephoning, one for sending and receiving SMSs, one for reading and writing e-mails, one for taking notes, an electronic calendar, an electronic camera, a walkman, one for logging in to servers with SSH (OK, maybe that's perhaps not necessary, but I appreciate having auch an application on my Treo), one for looking up train schedules etc.. - a nightmare!
What do they block? It would hardly be possible to block people using their own domains - there are so many different e-mail services that they cannot be sure whethere it is a domain of an e-mail service or someone's own domain, and they hardly want to lose customers who are not able to register.
Now, as soon as you can use your own domain, you can track them. Maybe they block amazon@..., but you can track them with any string. It would be much better to use a more complicated e-mail address, anyway, otherwise you never know if you get spam because Amazon sold your address or because of a dictionary attack - it could even be a joe job, an enemy of Amazon sends lots of spam to amazon@ at many domains, and many people who use that system for tracking will think it's Amazon's fault.
Of course, if you use something more complex than just the name of the company, you have to administrate a list of e-mail addresses with data about who you gave them. Therefore, I think it is easier to use services like Sneakemail or emailias, there you can create as many e-mail addresses as you want (at their domain, not your own), and there are easy web interfaces to administrate the aliases, the e-mails will be tagged when forwarded to your address and there are lots of options.
But if you don't want to use such a service and have domains of your own, I recommend to attach at least some random string to the addresses, e.g. to use guo89wz_amazon@..., guo89wz_companyx@, guo89wz_companyy@... (to make it easier to remember, it can always be the same string). That way, you can at least assume that something went wrong at the company in question (selling the address or they were hacked) and dictionary attacks are not likely (of course, those of companyx with which you registered could guess the alias you have for companyy - so, it's still a bit problematic, using real random strings would be better, and services like the ones mentioned above facilitate this).
As some others have pointed out, many newspapers do the opposite, they charge you for accessing older articles ("archive"), but let people access current news for free.
I think the comparison with movies doesn't hold - a movie from a few months ago (or even many years ago) does not loose much of its value, but yesterdays or last week's news aren't worth much any more (except if it's a large archive with good search facilities, but then it isn't used the same way as a newspaper).
There are many newspapers with a mixed model, they offer some, but not all content on the website for free (e.g. some Swiss newspapers I know do so). But I suppose this model can only work if the freely available content is still attractive enough to draw many visitors, and a newspaper website where only old news are free just wouldn't be attractive enough.
On the other hand, offering a large archive for free probably wouldn't make that much sense, either. As far as I know, most newspaper charge for archive access, and the readiness to pay for archive research - something the majority of people doesn't do on a daily basis - seems to be much higher than the readiness to pay for the everyday matter of reading current news.
from the inevitable spam people get when they like, actually use their real info when registering.
I don't think there are many newspapers that send spam to the addresses with which people register. Certainly, well-known newspapers, such as New York Times or Washington Post don't. I never use fake addresses, I always use emailias addresses, always a new one every time, so I would know who has abused the address. I have never received spam to such addresses used for registering at newspaper or other similar websites.
Look, the reason I'm gonna go with Google for my free webmail is that I actually have a chance of getting something decent as my name, instead of some misspelled-word+four-digit-number...
"Decent" e-mail addresses will probably soon be gone with G-mail. Furthermore, I don't think it is a good idea to have a decent e-mail address at a very common domain - that's an invitation for spammers using dictionary attacks (of course, it can be expected that GMail will have good filters, but it is much better if your address doesn't end up on spammers' lists, at all). I think it is much better to use decent e-mail addresses at less common domains (there are quite good smaller e-mail providers, and some offer choosing one of several domains) or - even better - to have your own domain, it's not that expensive any more.
I intend using GMail when it becomes available, but I'll just forward my mails to it so that they are easily accessible and retrieveable from any computer with web access, but I'm going to use a strange cryptic e-mail address I won't tell anyone.
The classic spatial example is driving. There are probably tons of places you go on a daily basis on which you have no idea what the road names are.
Certainly, but do you want to need as much time to access a file like you need to drive to some place in a town? When you drive or walk somewhere, what you perceive has a lot of redundancy, which cannot be avoided, and many things (how buildings look, the form of streets at crossroads, direction relative to prominent points etc.) can be used for remembering the way more easily than street names. But they take up space, if you were presented with all of that at once, it wouldn't work. When you drive, you need the time to see the landscapes and the directions of the path through them, anyway. But access to a file should be fast, and therefore the methods for efficient access are hardly the same.
There is no reason to assume that what is good for driving is also good for accessing files, unless we don't mind making file browsing as time-consuming as driving.
The wave of the future? Early versions of Windows (and as far as I know also Mac) OSs used this kind of file browsing with many windows opening. Later, the default was changed, certainly because most users didn't like it. Windows explorer can still be configured to behave that "spacial" way, and Konqueror offers this option as well (in some special cases it might make sense), but few people use it - that has been tried and failed many years ago. To dig out old Windows 95 behavior from the garbage heap of user interface history and proclaim it an "innovation" and "the wave of the future" is very odd.
I could perhaps understand such nonsense if GNOME was a proprietary dot-com adventure that spends millions on marketing...
I haven't used the new version of Nautilus and therefore can't say much about it, but the article on Osnews is one of the worst texts about user interface design I have ever read.
It seems the author has not understood, at all, what the sense of metaphors in user interface design is. For him, it is a question of finding "the right" metaphor, on the basis of abstract considerations that have nothing to do with how programs are actually used. Then, he brushes away all other aspects and advocates adopting the option that has been chosen as the best for such abstract considerations and condemning everything else as "bad habits".
There are quite a number of things that are, in my opinion, wrong with this approach:
What is at least as bad as the total misunderstanding about metaphors and user interface design in general is that the author buys this crap about "innovation", "reviving" and "spaciality". Whether a new window should be opened for a folder is an absolutely mundane, practical question that has nothing to do with "spaciality" and "innovations". Good browsers (like Konqueror, in my opinion) make it easy to change the default for this setting in the option dialog, and it is also very useful that different clicks have different effects, e.g. with a middle click something opens in a new tab in Konqueror.
So, what's this fuss about "spaciality" and "innovation" - other browsers like Konqueror have the exactly same possibility, the only difference is that with the "spatial" Nautilus this setting is the default and the way to change it is much more inconvenient with Nautilus and gnome. I only hope that not providing a more convenient way to change the setting is just due to negligence by the developers and that it does not mean that they have similar views like the author of the article and want to force users to do something they deem "better" for absurd quasi-ideological reasons. Nothing against new windows for folders, sometimes that's good, but often it is better not to have to use too many windows.
I understand that there is a problem for blind people, but it would probably be much easier to address this problem directly with solutions that are fitted to the needs of blind people (ballots with Braille or whatever is best, as it is probably already done in many places) than to give up the secure, easy and efficient paper voting system.
Apart from the need to provide a good way of voting for blind people, the arguments are so weak that they beg the question what the real motives are. In the case of these organizations for disabled people it's probably just the bribes from Diebold, but what are the motives of Diebold and similar companies? Is it just the commercial interest of the company - then it's bad, a system that is not very trustworthy is going to be introduced because of particular interests of a few companies -, or is it more than that and some people want to ensure that elections can be manipulated?
90% of Americans wouldn't vote for a Libertarian candidate even if they did know what they stood for. Plus, their candidate looks like a dork.
That would still leave 10%. That's too little for a presidential election, but if the US had a fair proportional system like most democratic countries, that would still be a significant amount in parliamentary elections. And it's not just the Libertarian party, e.g. I suppose also the Green party would have quite a number of seats in a parliament elected in a fair proportional way.
I don't think political views of Americans are so much more limited than those of people in other democracies and that therefore two parties alone, which aren't that distant from each other, anyway, can represent all Americans. Its rather the flawed majoritarian election system that gives people too few choices and leads to money and not democratic debates about ideas decide.
But it isn't as heavy if you don't run those Desktops and applications.
That is not a fair comparison. It is easy to be lighter weight when you don't do as much. If you need to do everthing that you can do in windows, then Linux is signifcantly slower (mostly footprint and loading time) than windows.
It depends... Maybe, Linux with KDE or Gnome is slower than Windows 2000 or Windows XP (it seems to me it depends on many factors which is faster). But it is big advantage that with Linux I can just switch to a more lightweight window manager when I do something that uses a lot of resources. I can even shut the whole graphical system down and still do almost everything, e.g. browse the Internet with Lynx while complex calculations that need a lot of memory and processing time are processed. Of course, then, it is not a 'fair' comparison, but it is Windows' problem that it offers fewer and worse options for exchanging comfort for speed. With Linux, it is always possible to coose what is best for the given situation - more comfort or more speed.
Maybe this approach has its merits, but it would make entering passwords a bit complicated, strings are easier to handle.
I would find it much more important that knowledge about mnemonic techniques become more widespread. As far as I know, people who take part in memory contests, where they have to remember long numbers, use systems wehere each number stands for something (a letter in the alphabet, which in turn stands for certain words), and they quickly construct a kind of story around the numbers. Human beings are very bad at remembering raw data, but they are quite good at remembering semantically connected concept. As long as people conceive passwords as a kind of words, perhaps slightly altered and with numbers added, it will always be difficult - either it is still vulnerable (dictionary attacks or even if the word doesn't exist phonotactic attacks exploiting the rules sounds can combine in languages) or it is hard to remember, especially if the password has to change from time to time. It would be much easier of people conceived passwords as phrases or whole sentences and use the first, second, last or whatever letters that make up the words of these expressions (and still add numbers).
For instance, I think it would be relatively hard to remember a password like 'dl3w5pwthbtceth', but if it stands for 'During [the] last 3 weeks, 5 people went to [the] hairdresser because their cats eat their hair' (absurd, but not really devoid of semantic content and therefore possible to remember). Next time, the password might be '3ohtehfsocatioh2jgu' (3 of [the] hairdressers tried [to] extract [the] hair from [the] stomachs of [the] cats and to insert it on their heads, 2 just gave up). The style of the sentences that should not be too obvious can, of course, vary.
That is easier to remember than things conceived as nonsense-words and practically impossible to guess. The transition from one password to the next is easier - the next phrase or sentence can somehow be connected semantically or pragmatically to the previous in the mind of the owner of the password in a way that isn't accessible to anyone else.
With the ubiquity of passwords in today's everyday life, such methods deserve much more attention.
Indeed, I think web.de is one of the best free services. Most other free e-mail services I use (gmx.net, yandex.ru, orangemail.ch, ...) don't offer IMAP, but they're still much better than Hotmail (they offer POP access, more storage, some of them forwarding, SMS notifications).
It's really strange that in discussions about GMail, it is mentioned, at all, that it will be better than Hotmail. Hotmail is one of the worst big free e-mail services. It doesn't mean much if an e-mail service is significantly better than Hotmail, there are plenty of better services already - who uses Hotmail obviously doesn't care or know about the alternatives. What is, indeed, significant is that GMail will probably be significantly better than web.de, GMX and the likes - in some respects (storage, but perhaps not only), it will beats the paid premium versions of these services, as well (probably, some of them will offer more with GMail as a competitor).
they simply could decide that since their search engine is so good, everybody needs to pay $25 a month to keep accessing it.
That is very unlikely. For many purposes, Google is the best search engine, but the difference between Google and other search engines like alltheweb.com or vivisimo is not that big that a large part of the population would pay $25 a month to keep accessing Google. Google has little means to lock people in, and changing the search engine is much easier than changing the operating system or even the office suite. The many millions of people who use Google certainly give it a certain power, but only as long as Google stays very good, and it would take much less than demanding money to make Google a much less frequented site. That Google "behaves relatively well" does not necessarily mean that they are inherently "good", they just don't have the means to lock people in the way e.g. Microsoft can.
I almost wish for a really serious crackdown on piracy by the major commercial software developers
I think they know why they don't target certain types of users of illegal copies seriously. Otherwise free alternatives would soon become a de facto standards. For instance, I don't think the students I know who use "pirated" versions of MS Office would rather pay than switch to OpenOffice.org. Just like attracting future users with cheaper educational licences, a certain "tolerance" for people using non-licenced copies is part of the strategy, otherwise it would hardly be possible to sell overpriced products that are still used everywhere.
I use both SuSE Linux and Windows XP on an IBM Thinkpad R32, and Linux supports everything I'm aware of.