Globalization has supported the plundering of all the 'developing countries' -- which if we were to be accurate would be called the 'never to be developed countries'.
Globalization is wrecking the native US economy, so that the people that the very top can become rich beyond even their wildest dreams of avarice.
Right now, the Euro is destroying European culture by turning Europe into one big homogeneous blob. Even the creator of the Euro has many regrets over its creation and wishes it had never been done.
When a country stands up and says "we're taking care of our oursleves", I can only stand up and applaud. Of course China is not a perfect country. Nor is the US.
The wisdom of history tells us all governments turn bad over time. So we have to look at the actions of the great states in this context -- they all have corrupt governments. In a very objective sense if a corrupt government leaves any crumbs for the people, one should simply be grateful. Thank goodness it is not the soldiers come to take you away and end your life before its natural time.
If you do the Google search, read the other link as well as the BBC link, you will learn that there is a real problem with information being put in Microsoft documents that doesn't show up easily. Some of that information in put in there by Microsoft (which we do not even fully understand yet) and some of it is put in by other apps/spyware on your system.
From the site on the hidden file scanner tool --
"There are no macros involved, just Word fields, and no antivirus software even looks at those.... Bill Coan has written a 'Hidden File Detector' applet that you can download from his wordsite.com website." -- Simon Jones, Real World Computing Applications
As you can see from this blurb (with more detail on the www.wordsite.com), there is no way of easily detecting whether or not your Word documents also contain files and information that they shouldn't. I've run the utility on some of my Word documents, but it will take me a long time to check all of my documents. And that still is no guarantee some new spyware doesn't come along and put something in after I've checked it.
One has to realize that Microsoft makes far more money off of having poor security than they would if they had rock solid security. For if every upgrade Microsoft claims to fix a few security problems, you pretty much have to upgrade. And as Microsoft bought an anti-virus company, you know they have a vested interest in keeping a lot of viruses around. Security has very high profit margins.
I am sure the Chinese paid very close attention to the the special forces that infiltrated Iraq and called in the cruise missiles that came hundreds of miles to visit Saddam's suspected hideout. While the USA would be foolish to use a cruise missile against China, you do know those "Al-Queda" are everywhere, don't you?
If you are a government leader, the last thing you want is for your personal information to be in the hands of some party who may want to kill you -- perhaps if you decide not to support the latest WTO trade agreement, oil treaty, or other economic pact that the USA or another country wants.
With Microsoft Word, you could think you've deleted the address of your "safe house", only to wake up dead one morning because someone extracted it from your document...
It is no great leap of imagination that when all code can contain spyware, spyholes, hidden data, etc., that "opening the source" is a big step towards trust.
In China, there are many factions to the power base. If the source code for software is not open, then even these factions cannot trust each other. Maybe a general put in special spy code. Maybe the information ministry put in special spy code. The possibilities are endless. The only solution is keeping the source open. A government that fights too much within itself will not stand strong for very long.
It is easy to see why China is going with open source. If a general or minister puts in spyware, it can be spotted. If China went with Microsoft, a general could bribe Microsoft to put in special spyware for the general's use that no one else could detect. It is obvious that a government that wants to minimize useless fighting within itself will go with open source. Using open source to foster internal trust may even end up being a survival trait.
As an aside, when it comes to the USA, why would people blindly accept the Microsoft Palladium/DRM/1984-ware OS that is going to be shoved down their throats -- with no source available? This system enables a single monopoly, obviously in cahoots with the government, to be far more oppressive than what China is doing, at least so far.
As Microsoft has been proven in US court to have ruthlessly predated on businesses and citizens of their own country, I would think the government of any nation would be wary of working with Microsoft. As has been shown in the USA, if you let Microsoft operate in your country, you are inviting a vampire into your house that will suck the life blood from you.
Thus in a very simple sense, China could be merely picking "something else" so they get the Microsoft vampire out of their country. It makes perfect sense to go with home-grown software as they'd know the companies, the products, and the people who work there. That's far more secure for national interests than having a foreign vampire roaming around, stealing your secrets and continually causing problems with their insistence on high prices and Western IP laws.
Do a Google search on "microsoft word hidden information" and it is plain as day why China, amongst many other governments and organizations, is switching off of Microsoft Office / Microsoft Windows.
From BBC News -- "Your Microsoft Word document can give readers more information about you than you might think. Even Alastair Campbell has fallen foul of the snippets of invisible data few of us realise our documents contain."
If you use Microsoft Word in a business environment -- or for anything where your information is valuable -- it is recommended that you look into what hidden files may be hiding in your Word documents.
It is becoming more clear that all of Windows and every Microsoft application is likely to be similar to Microsoft Word -- filled with hidden information and hidden functionality that has never been disclosed by Microsoft.
An aphorism of gambling says, "Only make a bet when you can afford to lose". In China's case, your entire nation's strength and health is at risk when they are using Microsoft software, so it simple to see that it is a bet that cannot be made.
Sun Tzu wrote "All war is deception." The big deception is Microsoft's "Source Code for Governments". What does that matter when you download binary "security" patches, "updates", "new drivers", "service packs", etc? What does that matter when you don't get to see the Microsoft Office source code? Microsoft's "Emperor's New Source Code" program is nothing but smoke and mirrors, deception at its finest. It looks like the Chinese have wised up to Microsoft's deception and given Microsoft the boot.
What will it take for the rest of the world to wake up and realize that the only software you can trust is open source?
The public is being prepped for all the Mars missions because there will be a time when great government spending is invested in getting a base on Mars. The various announcements by China, Russia, Europe, the US, are to put the ideas in place and get people ready for the new taxes.
The more intelligent people will wonder "Why all the focus on Mars?"
The educated people know that a single hour's flight of an airplane, much less all these rockets, kills as much ozone as a third world person does in a year. So the educated will know that the cost of all this rocketry will be immense when looking at global warming and human lives.
So we get to the crux of the matter. The real reason there is a giant focus on Mars (and the Moon) is that the Earth doesn't have much time left. With all the CFC's in the atmosphere, many of which last over 5,000 years, the Earth is going to be just as inhospitable as Mars, if not more so, considering that Earth is closer to the Sun.
Jacques Cousteau said it well --
"The road to the future leads us smack into the wall. We simply ricochet off the alternatives that destiny offers. Our survival is no more than a question of 25, 50 or perhaps 100 years."
We are in the end game. Man has taken this beautiful planet and destroyed it. All the Christian, Muslim, Jewish and other religions in the world and man still doesn't have a clue about how to take care of what God created. It goes to show how low a creature Man really is.
And to top it off, the hubris of the scientists tells us we understand everything in the universe now. From our little speck of dust in our brief existence, nonetheless. With little scientist brains that don't even understand a cup of earth, consciousness, or much of physics, math, and other basic sciences. It just makes one laugh at the sheer folly of it all.
With some luck, I will be here to see the final crash. It'll make the whole of human history look like a DOTCOM horror story -- an entire planet killed by GREED.
Re:iRealityDistortionStations ???
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Amen on the high prices! For my computers, I have a big brown folding table -- height adjustable -- $40 new. I also bought a used height-adjustable Haworth "workstation" system -- corner unit + two wings -- for $300. The corner unit height adjusts with a hand crank. Allegedly the dotcom company paid over $5000 for these three pieces of furniture. I needed a place for my five top-of-the-line Sony 21" monitors ($150 each). It has truly been amazing the prices you can get these days. A friend of mine grabbed a $6,000 projector for $400. And these are just the deals available via a liquidator or "off the street". There are many stories of rampant theft as the dotcoms were closing up shop.
For the people who want to pay the big bucks for their desk/workstation, my main point is that there are far better options than the iRDS. And if you could find something from Biomorph, Anthro, Ergotron, Steelcase, etc., at a post-dotcom discount, you'd get a good value that should last forever. This is all assuming you want to use it for work.
If it is just for image and you don't care about genuine functionality, then the iRDS may have more selling points... I believe one enterprising person has already put together their plans for an "iSeductionStation":-)
And... you can thank Microsoft's top notch security press release team for your Anthro experience. Many Microsoft sites I've tried today are either really slow or are buggy/unusable. Maybe if Microsoft invested in an engineering team to back up their press release team, things would work better.
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It's always interesting to see how Apple people create designs that contain severe ergonomic flaws, but because they are for Mac, they are hyped to be some sort of revolution.
For either of the linked iRealityDistortionStations, there is no place to put CD's, papers, a drawing pad, or any other tools. Much less a drink. Or for the Mac crowd, their reality distortion equipment.
If you want a good workstation desk, check out the following companies. They make excellent systems for a variety of uses, including video and music production.
Many of the big companies (such as Steelcase, Herman Miller, etc.) that make office furniture also make high quality workstation systems. With all the leftover dotcom equipment lingering about, you can often find tremendous discounts if you dig around at used office furniture and dotcom liquidation companies.
Microsoft is so 1984, it's impossible to tell the two apart anymore.
malreported - When the media reports a fact which Microsoft later deemed untrue. You see, Microsoft is never "wrong", the media merely reported the facts incorrectly. This term was often used in describing newspaper articles that contained references to unproducts, unfeatures, unbugs, unspyware, unfulfilled economic projections, or altered Microsoft policies.
You've lost perspective, especially when you bring your daughter into the picture. You are placing one life's importance above that of the planet and of all life. That is selfish and egotistical.
Sacrifice means "the making of the sacred". It may be that some lives have to be sacrificed to illness so that the overall biosphere is kept healthy.
What I am saying is not politically correct. But it is reality. If you cannot look out your window and see the immense toll on the planet from science and industrialization gone amok, then you are blind.
I am not saying "all learning is bad", but that science as an end unto itself, without thinking of what will happen to the world, is folly.
Wait another 10 or 20 years and revisit what I've said. Today over 500 million people do not have enough water to drink. The global temperature is skyrocketing. Biodiversity is falling like a stone.
And yet as your biosphere dies around you and you realize there is nothing but a miserable future for your daugther, you can still be proud in your foolish belief in science. 3 billion years of nature crippled and killed by three thousand years of human science.
I find the hyperbole of Charles Seife deeply disturbing. One only has to read the daily newspaper to see the vast ecological problems that the planet is struggling with. One has only to read the daily newspaper to see how much we don't know. It is an *estimate* that there are over 70 sextillion stars in the "known" universe. We have no idea whether or not physics, as it works on Earth, even works the same in more distant parts of the universe.
And then one has to look at the true cost of science. What human good do these big theories give us? Einstein's work gave us the nuclear weapon which then gave us the nuclear destruction of two human cities, the cold war, giant nuclear arsenals, and our current insane levels of military spending focusing on using science to come up with new super weapons, all capable of vast devastation.
In the words of Jacques Cousteau:
"The road to the future leads us smack into the wall. We simply ricochet off the alternatives that destiny offers. Our survival is no more than a question of 25, 50 or perhaps 100 years."
Science has given us global warming, global pollution, global eco-system destruction and global overpopulation, all reading to the death of our planet. 3 billion years of nature down the drain so we can feed the ego and arrogance of scientists who, as less then mere motes in the universe, claim to understand it. The hubris is stunning and overwhelming.
News at 11, "The whole universe revolves around human science". 70 sextillion stars, 10 times as many stars as grains of sand on our world, so *incredibly* much that is unknown, and yet scientific arrogance trumps it all.
It is so very clear that science will cause the human participation in the universe to come to an end. Which perhaps is a good thing. If we, as living creatures, cannot take care of our own home and planet, it is good we don't spread to other worlds, killing them as well.
Humanity was given a priceless gift, one of the most beautiful creations in all the universe, an entire planet with a diversity of live. Instead of taking care of this gift and cherishing it, we have trampled it, pissed on it, and squandered it.
Time enough for science and scientists. The planet needs a new type of scientist -- one with a wise and caring heart -- if we wish to even lay claim to the word 'hope'.
...you'd think all honest politicians would be working to make sure computerized voting systems are open source...
For a long time, "honest politician" has been an oxymoron, a laugh amongst the working class. Heavens, we all know there is no such thing. It was Simon Cameron in the 19th century who gave us the modern American definition of an "honest politician" -- "An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought."
The real truth is that most people don't vote because they know their vote doesn't matter. No matter who you vote for, unless you write them a big check, they aren't going to listen to you anyway. No matter how many emails you send in, how many phone calls, how many pickets, it doesn't matter. Unless you have money, you are just a noise that the politician tunes out.
Did the US people want the Patriot Act? A war against Iraq? How about a real 911 investigation? What about the banks selling all your personal data in California? The list is endless. The laws that are passed are not there "for the people".
An awake mind sees that the people get what the politicians give them. Which for well over a hundred years in America has been what the special interests, corporations, and other powers tell the politicians to do.
The big step forward for a better America would be to actively choose not to participate in the biggest lie of all -- that our country is a democracy run by the people and that voting matters.
The customer is sitting here in the middle of a great struggle. The music industry is trying their best to come up with a one-sided application of police technology, laws, and law enforcement to squeeze more money out people they think are cheating them by sharing music with others.
First of all, let us observe that it is very rare that hitting your customers with a massive hammer (filing lawsuits against them and treating them as criminals) ends up helping your business. And it's quite uncommon if you make someone's life a living hell (with Microsoft style Palladium DRM) that they are going to buy more product from you, much less have any positive opinion of you.
Secondly, let us look at what is really going on with music today, not what the music industry likes to say is going on.
1. Most people like music.
2. Most people buy music.
3. There is an amazing amout of music available on many labels from many geographic regions.
4. There is no easy way to a consumer to listen via radio to all the music that is available.
Today for radio we have:
- very little variety left in big radio
- in the US, big corporations dominate most of radio, further reducing choice and variety
- very hard to find little radio stations
- very few internet radio stations
- internet radio is hard to find
- internet radio is hard to use for many
- radio stations of any sort cost money to run
- commercial radio has many ads, reducing the desire of someone to listen for very long
5. Outside of radio, the ability to listen to music before purchase in a commercial environment is even more limited. Some few music stores offer listening stations, but many times the equipment is broken or dirty.
6. In reality, most people listen to much of the music they end up purchasing via their friends. In fact, many friendships are made because people have common tastes in music.
7. The music industry's method of retailing is incredibly anti-customer and does not respect local laws and customs (try before buy, returns).
Imagine you have a product that sells wrapped in a tough plastic wrapper with an additional sticky plastic security wrapper and often all that itself inside a hard plastic shell. This product obviously cannot be inspected. Whatever is inside the wrapper is unknown to the consumer.
Now let's say you want to come up with a successful way of selling your wrappy product in stores and you come up with the following strategy:
a. You don't sell your product uninformly in all stores so the consumer has to guess what store your product is available in.
b. You don't provide a way for consumers to check if your product is in a local store.
c. You always charge your customer full price, often over list price, if they buy it in a local store.
d. You don't let your customer have any way to try (or even inspect) their merchandise before purchase.
e. You don't allow your customer to return the merchandise if they don't like it. Or even if you do allow returns, it is for a fraction of the purchase price.
8. The music industry has made very little effort to revamp their sales system.
a. There are few record stores with vast libraries of music that you can listen to via your own headphones or speakers.
b. There is usually no volume discount.
c. There are almost never special deals on the music you want -- only the music the retailer wants to move/dump/promote.
d. Most music stores have hours that are incompatible with work. As more people have to work longer hours, music stores should take this into account.
e. Many music stores are hostile to customers that spend a long time there.
f. Most music stores do not offer comforts such as nice chairs, coffee, or things to eat.
9. The existing online music stores all require that you register to
More than likely Windows/Palladium will be the only way to vote online in the USA.
So it means you have to go down to Walmart and pick up your $200 Windows Voting Terminal.
You only turn it on when you want to vote or do some other government function.
Of course, you put it on its own isolated subnet when it comes time to vote. Don't want the latest Microsoft spyware/scanware/uploadware to be snooping on your home net, after all.
So the mandatory Windows Spyware Voting System effectively will be a VOTING TAX on the people who value their privacy and information security.
If your voting terminal lasts for 4 years, it's basically $50/yr to access online voting. Plus the labor costs and possible hardware costs of isolating the voting terminal from the rest of your system.
All in all, $50/yr to vote online is probably worth it. If only so you can use your digital camera to capture who you voted for. Or who you want people to think you voted for... Or who you think you voted for...
Yep, it's America. Pay money to vote online and you still have no certainty that you got a vote.
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH WAR IS PEACE (and of course) FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
"I don't mind being characterized as 'liberal' -- I just don't happen to think it's true." -- Howard Dean, in Salon.
If he is not a liberal, just who is he?
To find out, we have to move past his political machine. Like Bush, Dean is very adept at associating himself with issues and causes that are important for his campaign. Thus for Dean we see his association with Lessig and an apparent concern for "the commons". Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Complex 4-prong plan, extending multiple state and federal programs piecemeal, combined with tax credits and incentives, all of which Dean claims is more likely to become law, but still won't cover everyone
Death penalty
Favors for "extreme" crimes like terrorism or the killing of a police officer, although critical of Bush administration's "careless" approach to executions
Roe v. Wade
Pro-life until recently; now the only candidate pledging to make Roe v. Wade a "litmus test" for appointing federal judges.
Pro-choice, but refuses to make Roe v. Wade a litmus test for federal judges
Kyoto treaty
Says we must "take another look," but has "concerns" about some provisions
Patriot Act
Would repeal "parts," but also wants to expand intelligence agencies; praises Russ Feingold as only Senator who opposed the act, ignoring Kucinich's vocal House opposition, falsely implying no other candidate opposed the Patriot Act
NAFTA/WTO
Notes problems with "free" trade, suggesting the need for inclusion of human rights, environmental, and labor standards in trade agreements -- but still pro-NAFTA
"Star Wars" ballistic missile system
Would cut only 1/8 of the funding, transferring it to international threat-reduction programs
Pentagon waste
Disagrees with any proposed Pentagon cutbacks, and advocates aggressive expansion of intelligence, police, and special forces
Medical marijuana
Firmly opposed, although promises to abide by a proposed FDA evaluation
War on drugs
Has accepted National Governors Association position: more federal funding for all aspects of the drug war; however, also speaks of drug use as a medical problem, and has called the War on Drugs a failure; website and recent speeches simply do not clarify what policies he would pursue, as far as I can tell
We see that Dean is very much like a "lite" version of Bush. There is very little in Howard Dean that is liberal.
Bush would be delighted to run against Dean who is simply a watered down version of Bush. And Dean comes from Vermont, bringing only 3 electoral votes. Easy campaign, easy victory.
What Bush doesn't want to do is run against a real Democrat who actually represents the tough issues that this country is facing. Or have to deal with a candidate whose home state carries 21 electoral votes.
Howard Dean may look snazzy on paper and in the media, but in reality, he is merely the lite version of Bush and would do little or nothing to actually make America better for Americans. We'd have the same screwed up medical system, giant defense budgets, pollution, and corporatist America that we have with Bush. Voting for Kucinich or for the Greens is change. Dean is status quo, more of the same Bush Doctrine.
Because they copied Apple and the idiots at Apple thought that putting speakers on the sides was more important than having a full-size keyboard and numeric keypad.
Flash content is dead content as for the most part:
(1) You cannot print it. (2) You cannot bookmark it. (3) You cannot index it. (4) You cannot copy information out of it. (5) You cannot intuitively navigate it. Forward/back buttons do not work, for example.
Flash is a display-only format that:
(1) Takes a long time to download. (2) Plays obnoxious sounds on your computer without permission. (3) Is mostly devoid of useful information. (4) Is put on many sites only for marketing hype, without checking to see if people actually want it. (5) Puts your computer back one speed class, just like Java, and to some extent PDF.
Flash set the the usefulness of the web back 5 years easily.
Re:the focus on "support concerns" is rather ironi
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No, I am subtracting dollars/pounds/euros from dollars/pounds/euros, and getting a cost savings.
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If the initial software was free, you'd save about 20% of your total costs, thus saving money vs. closed source. You simply cannot look at a percentage alone but must look at the total cost itself.
I'm sure if you gave companies the option to save 20% of their software costs by simply switching to open source, they'd be interested.
However, the terms "open source" and "free software" are not synonymous. MySQL for example, is open source, but not strictly free software. Instead, MySQL supports dual licensing. Open source gets you the ability to see what is going on in the product you are using and communicate with others at a very detailed level, often getting right to the source of problems. And it gives you the ability to fix bugs on a timely basis at a more reasonable cost.
Many studies have shown that Linux is cheaper to support (and own) than Windows or proprietary UNIX. It won't be long before there is really good data showing all open source programs are cheaper to support than closed source.
The only reason that closed source advocates are so against open source is fear. They fear their code is going to get ripped off. And they fear the code they ripped off to build their product is going to get exposed.
The companies most dead set against open source are likely the ones who have the most ripped off code in their codebase.
As you know, the British government has a long tradition of spying on their citizens.
From a recent article
"A new British bill would enable law enforcement officials to watch every byte of e-mail as it passes through the country's networks, in real time. The government's Home Office says the new system is necessary to catch criminals who do their business online."
Unfortunately, the governmental monitoring dictates that Microsoft be the only available "option" for software. Britain's government has the same "monopoly for spyware" deal that the US government has.
the focus on "support concerns" is rather ironic
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Considering that with closed source software, over 80% of the total cost of "business software" today is essentially "support", it is ironic that this is the concern of those moving to open source.
According to the recently discussed Business Week article,
"Analysts estimate business-software customers spend $5 installing and fixing their software for every $1 they spend on software."
If anything, open source will lower support costs as you can get support from more sources at a wider range of price points.
With a global support base of people with the same software, open source will rapidly lower support costs. Today people get far more information and many times higher quality information on problems via the net than they do from a manufacturer.
And beyond support, you can now directly hire people to work on the software changes you need to make your business work. That means you don't have to wait years for your vendor to listen to you. In today's hyper-competitive global business market, the time you save may be the difference between your business succeeding or failing.
All in all, open source is a giant win for business. Hopefully we can soon move past the incredible amount of FUD the closed source vendors are promulgating in the market.
The poor bloke who decided to revolutionize satellite television could have easily seen with the 2003 updates (not yet available on PDA) that he was threatening the "economic security" of the nation and that he'd be in for some serious smackdown if he kept working on his project.
As the average citizen is beholden to well over 2,000,000 (that's right, two million) laws, the PDA of the future will need massive storage and Google for Legal Documents (too bad "law" is not yet supported as a foreign language).
With all sorts of levels and modifiers, it will become a new game just to figure out what kind of penalty you may be facing for a particular crime.
Future versions of the guidelines will be far more interactive, allowing you to choose the modifiers you want. In the current guidelines, "body armor" moves you way up in the points total.
And at long last, there will be a neutral arbitrator for gangs who are trying to determine the magnitude of a particular crime so that the pecking order in the gang can be set right. The new gold and ice "bling bling" version of the PocketPC (Microsoft is more compatible with gang violence than Palm) will be heavily marketed to gang leaders -- no more intra-gang fights... have the information to be the boss... keep your crew healthy and strong... the real fight is outside, not inside.
Finally, for all people, there it will be, in the palm of your hand, in black and white and living color, the word of The Man.
Actually, between the bugs in the system and the Federally manadated government controls of your sentient sensor network, things will begin to get very interesting.
Speech recognition has been a great hit. In a very backwards manner:
"IN A DRAMATIC demonstration of the power inherent in its latest Realspeak text to speech engine, Scansoft's Jan De Moortel gave a demo of former US President, Bill Clinton, giving an entire contrived speech.
The results were clearly recognisable as Bill Clinton and would have sounded entirely realistic save his pronunciation of Scansoft.
Spookily, De Moortel revealed that the results had been achieved by sampling a mere 15 minutes worth of a genuine Clinton speech downloaded from the Internet. The company now possesses the ability to automatically feed in a new voice - such as Clinton's and the whole process was less than a half day's work."
So your sentient system will have sampled your voice for far more than 15 minutes, giving it near perfect simulation abilities.
And so with governmental commands (or commands from someone who wants to get you fired, steal your girlfriend, whatever...) your system will impersonate you just about perfectly:
"Hello, boss. I just wanted to tell you how I hate working on your team. You don't know what you are doing and are such an asshole. But what I really wanted to say is that I've downloaded all our corporate IP onto my own system and if you don't give me a raise, I am going to release it to everyone on the Internet."
"Gee, Cindy. I find you really dull and stupid and I never want to see you again. You've been such a waste of my time."
"Hello, Mr. Hussein. Yes, I will give $100,000 to fund terrorist attacks in the USA."
You can imagine much worse I am sure.
Your sensors will confirm that you were in the office and that the communications system (which is VoIP of course) was accessed.
First of all, pardon my cynicism. I can't help but think that life is already so very much more complicated for folks with the computers we have today.
Just the upkeep on several PC's takes a lot of time. It doesn't matter what OS they run -- they are all quite complex to most people.
Adding all these new sorts of sensors and having to navigate the extra complexity is not going to make life easier for anyone, especially for those who don't easily comprehend invisible sensors, monitors, data networks, etc.
There is going to be bugs in the code that listens to the incoming data from these sensors and acts on it. And normal people won't have a chance, much less programmers. Who will be able to fix a sensor problem when the house lights don't go off? Or when the toilet keeps flushing even when no one is around?
I can't help but think that many of the new technologies today are nominated for the "Dotcom 2.0" presidency and we're just waiting for one to be accepted by the media and then overhyped and oversold to the public.
As an industry, are we really focusing on making life better for people? Or are we just off inventing stuff to market and make money?
In the Business Week article that was posted recently, it says that over 80% of the cost of "business software" today is spent on installation and maintenance. With more complexity, this figure is likely to skyrocket. We, the people, pay for these costs. They are passed onto us as consumers.
I sit and write this in a tiny little edit box. That's on a nice system with two LCD 1280x1024 monitors. Even though I have plenty of screen space to support a nice editor, I am confined to a little box. It makes me think that there is so much we can do to improve the 'fit and finish' of what we've built so far instead of madly pursuing more and more features.
If we don't slow down the pace of technology, we are just building a giant mountain of half-finished stuff. Sure, a lot of money is made along the way. But has that money been spent wisely? Considering the chilling aftermath of "Dotcom 1.0" in Silicon Valley, I would say not.
I would like to see the old fashioned values of quality, usability, and value return to technology, especially software. Networks of sensors doesn't inspire me with anything other than a sense of dread. Complex stuff that doesn't really make life any better for anyone.
And thank you for reading my somewhat rantish outburst.
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Globalization has supported the plundering of all the 'developing countries' -- which if we were to be accurate would be called the 'never to be developed countries'.
Globalization is wrecking the native US economy, so that the people that the very top can become rich beyond even their wildest dreams of avarice.
Right now, the Euro is destroying European culture by turning Europe into one big homogeneous blob. Even the creator of the Euro has many regrets over its creation and wishes it had never been done.
When a country stands up and says "we're taking care of our oursleves", I can only stand up and applaud. Of course China is not a perfect country. Nor is the US.
The wisdom of history tells us all governments turn bad over time. So we have to look at the actions of the great states in this context -- they all have corrupt governments. In a very objective sense if a corrupt government leaves any crumbs for the people, one should simply be grateful. Thank goodness it is not the soldiers come to take you away and end your life before its natural time.
From the site on the hidden file scanner tool --
As you can see from this blurb (with more detail on the www.wordsite.com), there is no way of easily detecting whether or not your Word documents also contain files and information that they shouldn't. I've run the utility on some of my Word documents, but it will take me a long time to check all of my documents. And that still is no guarantee some new spyware doesn't come along and put something in after I've checked it.
One has to realize that Microsoft makes far more money off of having poor security than they would if they had rock solid security. For if every upgrade Microsoft claims to fix a few security problems, you pretty much have to upgrade. And as Microsoft bought an anti-virus company, you know they have a vested interest in keeping a lot of viruses around. Security has very high profit margins.
I am sure the Chinese paid very close attention to the the special forces that infiltrated Iraq and called in the cruise missiles that came hundreds of miles to visit Saddam's suspected hideout. While the USA would be foolish to use a cruise missile against China, you do know those "Al-Queda" are everywhere, don't you?
If you are a government leader, the last thing you want is for your personal information to be in the hands of some party who may want to kill you -- perhaps if you decide not to support the latest WTO trade agreement, oil treaty, or other economic pact that the USA or another country wants.
With Microsoft Word, you could think you've deleted the address of your "safe house", only to wake up dead one morning because someone extracted it from your document...
It is no great leap of imagination that when all code can contain spyware, spyholes, hidden data, etc., that "opening the source" is a big step towards trust.
In China, there are many factions to the power base. If the source code for software is not open, then even these factions cannot trust each other. Maybe a general put in special spy code. Maybe the information ministry put in special spy code. The possibilities are endless. The only solution is keeping the source open. A government that fights too much within itself will not stand strong for very long.
It is easy to see why China is going with open source. If a general or minister puts in spyware, it can be spotted. If China went with Microsoft, a general could bribe Microsoft to put in special spyware for the general's use that no one else could detect. It is obvious that a government that wants to minimize useless fighting within itself will go with open source. Using open source to foster internal trust may even end up being a survival trait.
As an aside, when it comes to the USA, why would people blindly accept the Microsoft Palladium/DRM/1984-ware OS that is going to be shoved down their throats -- with no source available? This system enables a single monopoly, obviously in cahoots with the government, to be far more oppressive than what China is doing, at least so far.
As Microsoft has been proven in US court to have ruthlessly predated on businesses and citizens of their own country, I would think the government of any nation would be wary of working with Microsoft. As has been shown in the USA, if you let Microsoft operate in your country, you are inviting a vampire into your house that will suck the life blood from you.
Thus in a very simple sense, China could be merely picking "something else" so they get the Microsoft vampire out of their country. It makes perfect sense to go with home-grown software as they'd know the companies, the products, and the people who work there. That's far more secure for national interests than having a foreign vampire roaming around, stealing your secrets and continually causing problems with their insistence on high prices and Western IP laws.
From BBC News -- "Your Microsoft Word document can give readers more information about you than you might think. Even Alastair Campbell has fallen foul of the snippets of invisible data few of us realise our documents contain."
If you use Microsoft Word in a business environment -- or for anything where your information is valuable -- it is recommended that you look into what hidden files may be hiding in your Word documents.
It is becoming more clear that all of Windows and every Microsoft application is likely to be similar to Microsoft Word -- filled with hidden information and hidden functionality that has never been disclosed by Microsoft.
An aphorism of gambling says, "Only make a bet when you can afford to lose". In China's case, your entire nation's strength and health is at risk when they are using Microsoft software, so it simple to see that it is a bet that cannot be made.
Sun Tzu wrote "All war is deception." The big deception is Microsoft's "Source Code for Governments". What does that matter when you download binary "security" patches, "updates", "new drivers", "service packs", etc? What does that matter when you don't get to see the Microsoft Office source code? Microsoft's "Emperor's New Source Code" program is nothing but smoke and mirrors, deception at its finest. It looks like the Chinese have wised up to Microsoft's deception and given Microsoft the boot.
What will it take for the rest of the world to wake up and realize that the only software you can trust is open source?
The more intelligent people will wonder "Why all the focus on Mars?"
The educated people know that a single hour's flight of an airplane, much less all these rockets, kills as much ozone as a third world person does in a year. So the educated will know that the cost of all this rocketry will be immense when looking at global warming and human lives.
So we get to the crux of the matter. The real reason there is a giant focus on Mars (and the Moon) is that the Earth doesn't have much time left. With all the CFC's in the atmosphere, many of which last over 5,000 years, the Earth is going to be just as inhospitable as Mars, if not more so, considering that Earth is closer to the Sun.
Jacques Cousteau said it well --
We are in the end game. Man has taken this beautiful planet and destroyed it. All the Christian, Muslim, Jewish and other religions in the world and man still doesn't have a clue about how to take care of what God created. It goes to show how low a creature Man really is.
And to top it off, the hubris of the scientists tells us we understand everything in the universe now. From our little speck of dust in our brief existence, nonetheless. With little scientist brains that don't even understand a cup of earth, consciousness, or much of physics, math, and other basic sciences. It just makes one laugh at the sheer folly of it all.
With some luck, I will be here to see the final crash. It'll make the whole of human history look like a DOTCOM horror story -- an entire planet killed by GREED.
For the people who want to pay the big bucks for their desk/workstation, my main point is that there are far better options than the iRDS. And if you could find something from Biomorph, Anthro, Ergotron, Steelcase, etc., at a post-dotcom discount, you'd get a good value that should last forever. This is all assuming you want to use it for work.
If it is just for image and you don't care about genuine functionality, then the iRDS may have more selling points... I believe one enterprising person has already put together their plans for an "iSeductionStation" :-)
And... you can thank Microsoft's top notch security press release team for your Anthro experience. Many Microsoft sites I've tried today are either really slow or are buggy/unusable. Maybe if Microsoft invested in an engineering team to back up their press release team, things would work better.
For either of the linked iRealityDistortionStations, there is no place to put CD's, papers, a drawing pad, or any other tools. Much less a drink. Or for the Mac crowd, their reality distortion equipment.
If you want a good workstation desk, check out the following companies. They make excellent systems for a variety of uses, including video and music production.
Biomorph Interactive Desks
Anthro Workstations
Many of the big companies (such as Steelcase, Herman Miller, etc.) that make office furniture also make high quality workstation systems. With all the leftover dotcom equipment lingering about, you can often find tremendous discounts if you dig around at used office furniture and dotcom liquidation companies.
:-)
Microsoft is so 1984, it's impossible to tell the two apart anymore.
malreported - When the media reports a fact which Microsoft later deemed untrue. You see, Microsoft is never "wrong", the media merely reported the facts incorrectly. This term was often used in describing newspaper articles that contained references to unproducts, unfeatures, unbugs, unspyware, unfulfilled economic projections, or altered Microsoft policies.
malquoted - see malreported
You've lost perspective, especially when you bring your daughter into the picture. You are placing one life's importance above that of the planet and of all life. That is selfish and egotistical. Sacrifice means "the making of the sacred". It may be that some lives have to be sacrificed to illness so that the overall biosphere is kept healthy. What I am saying is not politically correct. But it is reality. If you cannot look out your window and see the immense toll on the planet from science and industrialization gone amok, then you are blind. I am not saying "all learning is bad", but that science as an end unto itself, without thinking of what will happen to the world, is folly. Wait another 10 or 20 years and revisit what I've said. Today over 500 million people do not have enough water to drink. The global temperature is skyrocketing. Biodiversity is falling like a stone. And yet as your biosphere dies around you and you realize there is nothing but a miserable future for your daugther, you can still be proud in your foolish belief in science. 3 billion years of nature crippled and killed by three thousand years of human science.
And then one has to look at the true cost of science. What human good do these big theories give us? Einstein's work gave us the nuclear weapon which then gave us the nuclear destruction of two human cities, the cold war, giant nuclear arsenals, and our current insane levels of military spending focusing on using science to come up with new super weapons, all capable of vast devastation.
In the words of Jacques Cousteau:
Science has given us global warming, global pollution, global eco-system destruction and global overpopulation, all reading to the death of our planet. 3 billion years of nature down the drain so we can feed the ego and arrogance of scientists who, as less then mere motes in the universe, claim to understand it. The hubris is stunning and overwhelming.
News at 11, "The whole universe revolves around human science". 70 sextillion stars, 10 times as many stars as grains of sand on our world, so *incredibly* much that is unknown, and yet scientific arrogance trumps it all.
It is so very clear that science will cause the human participation in the universe to come to an end. Which perhaps is a good thing. If we, as living creatures, cannot take care of our own home and planet, it is good we don't spread to other worlds, killing them as well.
Humanity was given a priceless gift, one of the most beautiful creations in all the universe, an entire planet with a diversity of live. Instead of taking care of this gift and cherishing it, we have trampled it, pissed on it, and squandered it.
Time enough for science and scientists. The planet needs a new type of scientist -- one with a wise and caring heart -- if we wish to even lay claim to the word 'hope'.
For a long time, "honest politician" has been an oxymoron, a laugh amongst the working class. Heavens, we all know there is no such thing. It was Simon Cameron in the 19th century who gave us the modern American definition of an "honest politician" --
"An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought."
The real truth is that most people don't vote because they know their vote doesn't matter. No matter who you vote for, unless you write them a big check, they aren't going to listen to you anyway. No matter how many emails you send in, how many phone calls, how many pickets, it doesn't matter. Unless you have money, you are just a noise that the politician tunes out.
Did the US people want the Patriot Act? A war against Iraq? How about a real 911 investigation? What about the banks selling all your personal data in California? The list is endless. The laws that are passed are not there "for the people".
An awake mind sees that the people get what the politicians give them. Which for well over a hundred years in America has been what the special interests, corporations, and other powers tell the politicians to do.
The big step forward for a better America would be to actively choose not to participate in the biggest lie of all -- that our country is a democracy run by the people and that voting matters.
Think what would happen --
PULLING THE LEGITIMACY PLUG
PULLING THE LEGITIMACY PLUG II
As Thomas Jefferson said long ago, "Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom".
Isn't it time that we, the people, started being honest with ourselves about the current state of our so-called "democracy"?
Dear Darl,
We've been over this many times. Just because something is working in your head, doesn't mean it's working in the real world.
If you want to be able to clearly see the consequences of your actions in the real world, you must take your medicine.
Please take your medicine, Darl! These crazy lawsuits and criminal charges are not a healthy way to ask for attention.
Sincerely,
Your Shrink
First of all, let us observe that it is very rare that hitting your customers with a massive hammer (filing lawsuits against them and treating them as criminals) ends up helping your business. And it's quite uncommon if you make someone's life a living hell (with Microsoft style Palladium DRM) that they are going to buy more product from you, much less have any positive opinion of you.
Secondly, let us look at what is really going on with music today, not what the music industry likes to say is going on.
1. Most people like music.
2. Most people buy music.
3. There is an amazing amout of music available on many labels from many geographic regions.
4. There is no easy way to a consumer to listen via radio to all the music that is available.
5. Outside of radio, the ability to listen to music before purchase in a commercial environment is even more limited. Some few music stores offer listening stations, but many times the equipment is broken or dirty.
6. In reality, most people listen to much of the music they end up purchasing via their friends. In fact, many friendships are made because people have common tastes in music.
7. The music industry's method of retailing is incredibly anti-customer and does not respect local laws and customs (try before buy, returns).
8. The music industry has made very little effort to revamp their sales system.
9. The existing online music stores all require that you register to
More than likely Windows/Palladium will be the only way to vote online in the USA.
So it means you have to go down to Walmart and pick up your $200 Windows Voting Terminal.
You only turn it on when you want to vote or do some other government function.
Of course, you put it on its own isolated subnet when it comes time to vote. Don't want the latest Microsoft spyware/scanware/uploadware to be snooping on your home net, after all.
So the mandatory Windows Spyware Voting System effectively will be a VOTING TAX on the people who value their privacy and information security.
If your voting terminal lasts for 4 years, it's basically $50/yr to access online voting. Plus the labor costs and possible hardware costs of isolating the voting terminal from the rest of your system.
All in all, $50/yr to vote online is probably worth it. If only so you can use your digital camera to capture who you voted for. Or who you want people to think you voted for... Or who you think you voted for...
Yep, it's America. Pay money to vote online and you still have no certainty that you got a vote.
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
WAR IS PEACE
(and of course)
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
WELCOME TO THE LAND OF THE FREE
If he is not a liberal, just who is he?
To find out, we have to move past his political machine. Like Bush, Dean is very adept at associating himself with issues and causes that are important for his campaign. Thus for Dean we see his association with Lessig and an apparent concern for "the commons". Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Let's take a look at how Dean compares to Kucinich, a long time liberal Democrat.
Howard Dean, a subset of the comparison points:
Health care plan
Death penalty
Roe v. Wade
Kyoto treaty
Patriot Act
NAFTA/WTO
"Star Wars" ballistic missile system
Pentagon waste
Medical marijuana
War on drugs
We see that Dean is very much like a "lite" version of Bush. There is very little in Howard Dean that is liberal.
Bush would be delighted to run against Dean who is simply a watered down version of Bush. And Dean comes from Vermont, bringing only 3 electoral votes. Easy campaign, easy victory.
What Bush doesn't want to do is run against a real Democrat who actually represents the tough issues that this country is facing. Or have to deal with a candidate whose home state carries 21 electoral votes.
Howard Dean may look snazzy on paper and in the media, but in reality, he is merely the lite version of Bush and would do little or nothing to actually make America better for Americans. We'd have the same screwed up medical system, giant defense budgets, pollution, and corporatist America that we have with Bush. Voting for Kucinich or for the Greens is change. Dean is status quo, more of the same Bush Doctrine.
Because they copied Apple and the idiots at Apple thought that putting speakers on the sides was more important than having a full-size keyboard and numeric keypad.
"pile of Flash" is correct.
Flash content is dead content as for the most part:
(1) You cannot print it.
(2) You cannot bookmark it.
(3) You cannot index it.
(4) You cannot copy information out of it.
(5) You cannot intuitively navigate it. Forward/back buttons do not work, for example.
Flash is a display-only format that:
(1) Takes a long time to download.
(2) Plays obnoxious sounds on your computer without permission.
(3) Is mostly devoid of useful information.
(4) Is put on many sites only for marketing hype, without checking to see if people actually want it.
(5) Puts your computer back one speed class, just like Java, and to some extent PDF.
Flash set the the usefulness of the web back 5 years easily.
No, I am subtracting dollars/pounds/euros from dollars/pounds/euros, and getting a cost savings.
I'm sure if you gave companies the option to save 20% of their software costs by simply switching to open source, they'd be interested.
However, the terms "open source" and "free software" are not synonymous. MySQL for example, is open source, but not strictly free software. Instead, MySQL supports dual licensing. Open source gets you the ability to see what is going on in the product you are using and communicate with others at a very detailed level, often getting right to the source of problems. And it gives you the ability to fix bugs on a timely basis at a more reasonable cost.
Many studies have shown that Linux is cheaper to support (and own) than Windows or proprietary UNIX. It won't be long before there is really good data showing all open source programs are cheaper to support than closed source.
The only reason that closed source advocates are so against open source is fear. They fear their code is going to get ripped off. And they fear the code they ripped off to build their product is going to get exposed.
The companies most dead set against open source are likely the ones who have the most ripped off code in their codebase.
According to the recently discussed Business Week article,
If anything, open source will lower support costs as you can get support from more sources at a wider range of price points.With a global support base of people with the same software, open source will rapidly lower support costs. Today people get far more information and many times higher quality information on problems via the net than they do from a manufacturer.
And beyond support, you can now directly hire people to work on the software changes you need to make your business work. That means you don't have to wait years for your vendor to listen to you. In today's hyper-competitive global business market, the time you save may be the difference between your business succeeding or failing.
All in all, open source is a giant win for business. Hopefully we can soon move past the incredible amount of FUD the closed source vendors are promulgating in the market.
The PDA version of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines.
Know the time before you do the crime!
Sentencing Guidelines
The poor bloke who decided to revolutionize satellite television could have easily seen with the 2003 updates (not yet available on PDA) that he was threatening the "economic security" of the nation and that he'd be in for some serious smackdown if he kept working on his project.
As the average citizen is beholden to well over 2,000,000 (that's right, two million) laws, the PDA of the future will need massive storage and Google for Legal Documents (too bad "law" is not yet supported as a foreign language).
With all sorts of levels and modifiers, it will become a new game just to figure out what kind of penalty you may be facing for a particular crime.
Future versions of the guidelines will be far more interactive, allowing you to choose the modifiers you want. In the current guidelines, "body armor" moves you way up in the points total.
And at long last, there will be a neutral arbitrator for gangs who are trying to determine the magnitude of a particular crime so that the pecking order in the gang can be set right. The new gold and ice "bling bling" version of the PocketPC (Microsoft is more compatible with gang violence than Palm) will be heavily marketed to gang leaders -- no more intra-gang fights... have the information to be the boss... keep your crew healthy and strong... the real fight is outside, not inside.
Finally, for all people, there it will be, in the palm of your hand, in black and white and living color, the word of The Man.
And so with governmental commands (or commands from someone who wants to get you fired, steal your girlfriend, whatever...) your system will impersonate you just about perfectly:
"Hello, boss. I just wanted to tell you how I hate working on your team. You don't know what you are doing and are such an asshole. But what I really wanted to say is that I've downloaded all our corporate IP onto my own system and if you don't give me a raise, I am going to release it to everyone on the Internet."
"Gee, Cindy. I find you really dull and stupid and I never want to see you again. You've been such a waste of my time."
"Hello, Mr. Hussein. Yes, I will give $100,000 to fund terrorist attacks in the USA."
You can imagine much worse I am sure. Your sensors will confirm that you were in the office and that the communications system (which is VoIP of course) was accessed.
As the line from "In-Formation" says:
"Every day, computers make people easier to use."
First of all, pardon my cynicism. I can't help but think that life is already so very much more complicated for folks with the computers we have today.
Just the upkeep on several PC's takes a lot of time. It doesn't matter what OS they run -- they are all quite complex to most people.
Adding all these new sorts of sensors and having to navigate the extra complexity is not going to make life easier for anyone, especially for those who don't easily comprehend invisible sensors, monitors, data networks, etc.
There is going to be bugs in the code that listens to the incoming data from these sensors and acts on it. And normal people won't have a chance, much less programmers. Who will be able to fix a sensor problem when the house lights don't go off? Or when the toilet keeps flushing even when no one is around?
I can't help but think that many of the new technologies today are nominated for the "Dotcom 2.0" presidency and we're just waiting for one to be accepted by the media and then overhyped and oversold to the public.
As an industry, are we really focusing on making life better for people? Or are we just off inventing stuff to market and make money?
In the Business Week article that was posted recently, it says that over 80% of the cost of "business software" today is spent on installation and maintenance. With more complexity, this figure is likely to skyrocket. We, the people, pay for these costs. They are passed onto us as consumers.
I sit and write this in a tiny little edit box. That's on a nice system with two LCD 1280x1024 monitors. Even though I have plenty of screen space to support a nice editor, I am confined to a little box. It makes me think that there is so much we can do to improve the 'fit and finish' of what we've built so far instead of madly pursuing more and more features.
If we don't slow down the pace of technology, we are just building a giant mountain of half-finished stuff. Sure, a lot of money is made along the way. But has that money been spent wisely? Considering the chilling aftermath of "Dotcom 1.0" in Silicon Valley, I would say not.
I would like to see the old fashioned values of quality, usability, and value return to technology, especially software. Networks of sensors doesn't inspire me with anything other than a sense of dread. Complex stuff that doesn't really make life any better for anyone.
And thank you for reading my somewhat rantish outburst.