FWIW, I don't use linux on my desktop for the following reason: KDE vs. Gnome.
Also, FWIW, I'm perfectly capable in every respect of using linux effectively (I'm a software engineer, I run FreeBSD and linux servers, I use lots of Open software).
So there's a real data point.
I don't want to accidentally choose the wrong desktop/application API because I rely completely on my personal workstation. I spend 12 hours/day in front of a computer programming, using email, writing, budgeting etc., and I want as close to zero risk in terms of my app choices as possible. KDE vs. Gnome is still a very risky choice for me to make.
I have recently moved off of MS Office since OpenOffice.org matured to 1.0. I recently moved away from JBuilder since Eclipse matured to 2.0. I am attempting to move away from other proprietary solutions. Unfortunately, my OS/Desktop is still Windows. That will change as soon as there is no choice left about a linux desktop _and_ the desktop is mature.
Actually, there are sort-of term extensions: you can add things to your application before it is granted and in the process almost indefinitely extend the duration that the application is in progress thereby shutting out competition without a fully granted patent that might last 30 years or longer. There was an article here on that a few months ago.
Actually, its just hard to work without pay. There's a real chicken and egg problem where if only one person starts to become more selfish, all the rest have to also become more selfish in order to "keep up". Similary, if one person tries to sacrifice for the greater good, that will only have lasting results if everyone else respects that sacrifice and does not exploit it. This is why businesses should not be considered persons, and why only a spiritual solution to economic problems will work in the long run. Check out The Prosperity of Humankind for some very insightful comments on this.
There will be a HUGE burden of patents which will need to be re-reviewed. It will be very difficult and I'm sure some people will advocate invalidating all patents from 1980-ish onwards. I would advocate such a process. Require all patents assigned to corporations to re-apply but waive the fees if the patent goes through the second time. For patents issued to individuals, the office could automatically review them. I personally think that corporate welfare should be kept to a minimum.
High dpi screen - maybe 400dpi would be acceptable - and a resolution upwards of 1600 x 900 with the ability to use portrait or landscape orientation.
Touch screen so that it can be a writing/drawing surface.
No more than 0.5 inches thick, but ideally 0.3 or less would be nice.
About the same density as paper - hefty but not heavy.
Good sound: do some magic with directional speakers so that the sound can be loud but relatively private without headphones. Obviously you would need a pretty intense intelligent sensor system to know where to point the speakers;-)
Extremely good voice and handwriting recognition.
High-speed wireless internet access anywhere in the world on a flat rate. This should be a minimum of 1Mbps, but 10Mbps would be better.
Strong! Should be able to withstand drops (while turned on) from about 6 feet up onto concrete without physically or logically breaking.
As fast as possible:-) Ideally I'd want at least a 16 way Athlon XP yada, yada, no wait! 64 way... you get the idea.
3" CD R/RW is there a 3" DVD format? there should be).
As fast as possible:-) (Again!) The graphics subsystem should be at least equivalent to the top of the line 3D NVIDIA card of 5 years in the future!
This is a really sad thing. Religion has a very bad name in Western civilization due to the many atrocities and lesser injustices committed in its name. Please people: don't confuse the religion of Islam (or Christianity or Buddhism or...) with these ridiculous petty power plays. If you are curious, look at any original religious texts and you will see a lot of reasonableness that just isn't reflected in the behavior of the clergy/priesthood/whatever. A really interesting statement about this problem is at: http://www.bahai.org/article-1-1-0-1.html - pick your language.
First of all: I bought it just because I wanted to support the "effort". I do want the music companies and musicians to think that this sort of distribution will work because this is how I would like to be able to buy music.
As for the song itself. I have never ever heard of Marshall Mdegeacella, but I have heard of Ben Watt of Everything But The Girl fame. I like EBTG's music generally, but I'm not a huge fan.
Earth, the tune in question, is good stuff. The mp3 is 8 minutes, 45 seconds long. The sound quality is good enough for my Altec Lansing ATP3 computer speakers. But for me, the tune is not compelling. It's a little funky, a little dancable, the vocals are nice, the music is fairly simple, and the rythm is groovy but basic. But I go for stuff that has a little more energy and this isn't it.
I'll put it in my playlist and see how it grows on me and I suspect that I will like it more with more listens. But for now? For the creativity and quality of the music: 6/10 and for my personal taste: 5/10. Worth $0.99? Not really, but not a big disappointment either.
Although I'm sure that donating to the EFF helps in some small way, doesn't it seem sad and pathetic that such a thing is necessary? If you can buy it, its not "Justice". For a really amazing description of Justice, check out: The Prosperity of Humankind. It's got a bit of a religious/spiritual perspective, but it actually goes through a very logical process and produces one of the best working definitions of Justice I have ever seen.
I admit it, I use windows. I have a couple legit copies of WinME. Every time I use media player (rarely), I have to refuse to upgrade... Which brings me to my real point: I will not upgrade past this point (WinME). WinME is it for me. It may not be great, but it runs what I need it to: lots of different sorts of development stuff (mostly java), CAD and 3D stuff, games, etc. I'm a serious software engineer and when I want to deploy I use either FreeBSD or RedHat Linux. And I always keep those up to date (relatively). But Winblows is stuck for me... and this is just another reason.
As I am sure you are aware: many people believe things should be different than they actually are. I am one of those people. I work to make a living and I have a mercenary attitude (currently). Nevertheless, I hold an ideal in my mind that someday I will be able to be less mercenary and more serving. I still try to choose the work I do to serve humanity to the degree that I am capable of within complex constraints including, of course, supporting my family.
But that pragmatism in no way invalidates the idealism. I think you would have a hard time showing me any progress made when people were completely satisfied with current conditions. Idealism is a necessary condition for any kind of progress: I dream of a different world and I will work towards it as best I can.
And no I don't mean "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need." My main problem with that is that "ability" and "need" are impossible to measure or even define precisely enough to base a working mechanistic social system or philosophy. Capitalism and socialism are mechanistic attempts at creating social order. They "allow" for human choice in only the most limited manner. Capitalism in particular is quite insidious in this regard: choice is limited to choice of purchases, or utility, and even then in the capitalistic ideal of perfect knowledge, choice actually disappears (think about that).
The alternatives aren't obvious, and I won't presume to know the answer, but the little thinking that I've done suggests that if we can educate people to have a view of humanity that is more inclusive, we will go a long way to fixing some of the problems in our economic sphere.
And I also strongly disagree that the current approach to formal education is about serving humanity. Far from it, it is much more about individuallism, fame, freedom etc. The reason _I_ believe in serving humanity has nothing to do with my formal education, but rather in my informal religious education in some obscure religion that my parents converted to shortly before they had me.
Oh, and one last thing: sure it's a socialist attitude, but its not communist which is what I mentioned. I didn't mention anything about socialism. And I'm not politically a sociallist since I have huge issues with the western worlds concept of "democracy".
Anyway... enough rambling.
I'm 30. I was one of the first people I know among my cohort to embrace the idea of becoming a mercenary for work. But over the last two years, more and more people my age, and younger are also taking that attitude: if the work doesn't suit me, I don't do it,... and... I decide the value of my work and my attitude and work ethic reflect that. Basically, salaried employees are slacking in response to perceived slights or injustices, or even based on what they think they are worth. Many of these things have existed among the "lazy" for many years, but they are becoming acceptable among the rank and file.
That said, I am very sad about this. To me, ideally work should be a way of serving humanity, not serving myself. I think that any job, position, industry, etc. can be looked at and done with an attitude of serving humanity. The problem seems to be that corporations are going in the exact opposite direction and the response is therefore mercenary. Corporations (stockholders) always, always end up winning as compared to their employees. The stockholders are perfect mercenaries of capital, and to me it was only a matter of time before that attitude was learned and reflected in the employees.
I haven't read this book, but I have read other similar works (e.g. Jeremy Rifkin has some stuff about this). It seems inevitable to me that in a capitalist environment this would happen. It also seems inevitable in a communist envionrment tho for different reasons. I personally think that we have to change the nature of our approach to education so that children grow up learning to serve humanity. Mind you, I'm sure lots of other people think that everyone becoming mercenary is a great thing...
Jobs seems to be aware of this issue at some level. His comments about the market share of BMW's as compared to Apple computers is actually quite revealing. Jobs is not just content with that market share, but actually actively working towards innovation and therefore expects to have a smaller market share. That's the positioning that Apple has taken.
And unfortunately right now, I am just not in the market segment that buys BMW's or for that matter Apple's computers. I would love to be, but so be it.
Katz seems to spin this all as a criticism of Jobs and Apple, but in fact Apple is financially just as successful as Microsoft or AOL, just on a smaller scale. Their huge cash reserves are proof of that. Watch out when they find the project on which to spend those reserves!!!
This sort of technology has both its bad aspects and its good aspects. In brief, the bad relates to possible privacy violations: your movement may not be so free as it once was.
That said, the good aspects really are significant. First of all, there is a good side to being able to track peoples locations. If you lose a child, you would be desperate for this sort of technology! Determining alibis would be easier, etc.
Another good side is a long-term effect. If this sort of device becomes more sophisticated, then it may eventually evolve into a ubiquitous computing environment. You bring your computing environment with you everywhere you go. I imagine this as being kind of like an implanted PDA. The technology for tying implants into the nervous system is developing and so like in many SciFi novels and movies, it is not unlikely that this could develop into extended memory and computation abilities that are indistinguishable from a persons normal thought processes.
In an ideal situation, these things are really really good development... But things aren't ideal right now. In fact, the reality is that at least for the foreseeable future, our rights and freedoms are going to decrease. And almost certainly, this sort of technology would be taken advantage of.
This is just another issue like immigration or "Homeland Security" which is a balancing act between trust and convenience. Whenever you are operating with a third party, you need to balance trust versus convenience. If you favor trust, you will take more time for your safety: background checks (of people or Paypal), getting legal advice, insurance, anonymity concerns, etc. If you favor convenience, you will worry about reducing processing time, reducing bad experiences, simplifying and generalizing requirements, etc. Occasionally, technology can help increase both trust and convenience. But ultimately, even then, you are balancing trust and convenience against the provider of the technology. For example, open source software can be more trusted than closed source, but only if you forego convenience by actually checking the source!
Barriers to Knowledge, and Business Models
on
The Future of Ideas
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Personally, I think that part of the problem is that in our capitalist based society, any change to support a commons must be based on a viable business model. Open source is struggling with this, but seems to be making its way alright. That's code. Knowledge, on the other hand, is still suffering. There is a long history of knowledge being locked up and accessible to only those few with enough power or money. Part of this (recent) history includes copyright and patents. Another more interesting part is the educational system! Particularly universities, but also other levels of education all have barriers to prevent just anyone accessing knowledge. There are tuition fees, entrance exams, location, funding methods etc. All of these act so as to make information unavailable. For example, if I get low grades in high school, I may find it impossible to get into university - even if my reasons for having low grades have nothing to do with my inherent capacity to understand and add value to university-level knowledge. The only reason these barriers to entry exist is because of the guarding of academic credit.
So. Many people here are familiar with the slogan information wants to be free. And some can even argue its validity based on economics. But the fact is that barriers to accessing information create wealth. So in order for those barriers to come down, alternative means to create wealth must be created.
You expect people to write articles for you for free? You've got to be kidding!
No I don't. You have the potential to earn money from them. It's just very unlikely right now. Basic chicken and egg problem.
Cheers.
I've been trying to promote my own community web site for about 8 months now. (For those who are interested, the link is in my sig.) I have some practical observations for promotion based on a _very_ small budget:
First: your two best hopes are word of mouth and being mentioned by a place that gets _lots_ of traffic.
Second: don't bother spending money on something like Google unless you can find a really good demographic to target. I tried this for quite some time and I think I maybe got 3 or 4 people joining for my efforts and dollars (about $300) - definitely not worth it!
Third: take advantage of sites like slashdot where you can use your sig, and from time to time post comments which actually are on-topic and attract people. I've done this relatively successfully and been modded up for my efforts because I was careful to post appropriately.
Fourth: find portal sites that are apropos to your community site that allow you to submit links. Submit your site. For the amount of effort, this really helps with search engine rankings and a little bit of traffic.
Fifth: email people who's personal sites indicate they might be interested in your site. This is unsolicited, but most people appreciate feedback on their own efforts and also are interested in opportunities to promote themselves. Community sites often offer this opportunity one way or another.
Six: well, my site isn't "successful" yet, but it's growing slowly but surely. To be frank, I don't really want a _huge_ surge in attention because I'm not sure yet about the scalability of my servers. Be careful what you ask for: I personally believe that slow but sure growth will be worth more in the long run. (And that isn't just sour grapes: I've learned a lot by having people provide feedback. If I had a huge surge, I probably would have ended up with a lot of dissappointed users.)
The people who came up with this idea deserve to be considered heros! This is one of the coolest uses of technology I have seen. (Not to be too gushing: SPAM is a rich mans problem - I hope someone comes up with some cool technological solutions to some of humanities more basic problems.)
I run a server which hosts mail for a number of domains. I haven't yet, cause I just heard of it, but this will be used!
There might be some interesting extensions based on possible problems: certain kinds of spam interest certain people. Perhaps a categorization system would be useful so that spam can be filtered based on these categories (for example, some people might like receiving 100 MLM spam messages a day:-P ). Also, there is an (extremely) slim chance that a legit mail might be blocked based on match hashes. Although this is extremely unlikely, could it be fixed somehow? Finally, some spam comes with very slight differences but is essentially the same spam instance. Chain letters are in a grey area. It would be good to have some heuristic methods of filtering based on content too. I don't know the characteristics of the hashing algorthm used, but perhaps by doing three hashes: start of message, middle of message, and end of message, it may be possible to identify spam even if a small part has been change.
Anyway, just some random thoughts.
Kudos again to those who have built this!
Any sort of editing (including no editing) is essentially arbitrary. I run an educational web site that allows anyone (registered) to post content. In my terms of use when people register, I basically say that the line between appropriate and inappropriate is arbitrary and determined on a case-by-case basis. This is the only true answer. Even slashdot has removed a small number of posts.
My system (Oomind) has a complex moderation mechanism and complex lameness filters. I use 10 dimensions of moderation so that people can filter based on a pretty sophisticated set of interests. The lameness filters include the usual "bad words" and "bad html" but also include post length, and a few other nifty things. So far the Oomind moderation system and lameness filters have not been pushed hard enough to really know if it "works", but hey, here's hoping:-)
Blatant plug: Oomind is to education as open source is to commercial software:
This thing would be excellent for a certain type of home office... if only it were about $70 instead. I have four computers at home: one for my fun, one for my work, one for my wife and kids, and a laptop. Honestly, I'd love the convenience of having the switch in the wall. Why is it convenience? Because then I can more easily hide all my wires. Its not a big deal, but still, it would be nice.
What would make it nicer is if you could have multiple of these talking to each other wirelessly (e.g. via 802.11b). Then just stick one in each room, and voila, no wiring hassel, just plug in and enjoy.
This isn't a big deal, but I've been very wary of J2EE app servers. I've been working with server-side Java for about 4 years now, and previously with EOF (Nextstep/Webobjects). EJB is incredibly broken compared to EOF/WebObjects. But my online educational system Oomind is running on Tomcat right now, and needs a more complete platform. So we are moving. And after some careful analysis and real world experience, we're choosing JBoss. Frankly, it being open-source is a very significant factor.
Kudos to JBoss and its developers!
Oomind Open Education Community
on
Design For Community
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
(I just posted a shorter version of this - this provides more info.)
I am trying to build a community educational web site. The idea is pretty basic: open up education so that people can participate fully as learners, educators and "accreditors". I've taken inspiration from slashdot as well as other community web sites. Problem is: it's not very "sticky" and this is because its kinda complicated and a tiny bit hard to use. I don't have the resources right now to totally fix that, although I have ideas. Please check it out: Oomind Open Education Community. I've even got an e-commerce aspect so that once it gets going a bit, people can actually earn money from their contributions. Check out The Philosophy of Oomind [oomind.com] for some background thoughts as well. This is a blatant plug: I would really love to get lots of people using it, and particularly contributing to it! Oomind Open Education Community
So basically it works like this: the units of educational material are called Courselets. Each courselet is like an article writen about a specific subject. There's lots of flexibility here so even a poem can be a courselet. A courselet has ratings in ten different attributes including Beauty, Creativity, Insightfulness, Theoretical, etc. Registered users can moderate these ratings on a courselet. The ratings change based on a weighted average taking into account a user's level of influence.
Courselets also have quiz questions. The questions can be written by anyone, not just the author of the courselet. The questions also have a score which is just a weight, and a price (!) which is in "oo-points". Oo-points are Oomind's internal unit of currency. They are purchased and redeemed for cash. When you answer a question and get it correct then the price of the question is taken from you and distributed three ways: 40% to the courselet author, 40% to the question author and 20% to the system. Oh: authors can use multiple aliases. When you answer the question correctly you also get "credit" - the 10 scores of the courselet are modified by the weight of the question and added to your "Portrait". Therefore your academic credit is cumulative rather than percentage based. It is also dynamic: as the scores of the courselets change, so do your learner scores. You also have educator scores which are the sum of the scores of all the courselets you have contributed (also dynamic).
Courselet are free to be read by anyone and can be linked too from external sites - "knowledge wants to be free".
In progress: group and messaging features.
I really hope that people check it out and sign up. Right now there are about 80 registered users. The next 20 get 1000 oo-points free, and after that it is just 100 oo-points free. Also there aren't that many courselets right now (maybe about 100) and not too many questions on courselets. Please contribute!
Thanks and please mod this up. I know this is blatant but I think it is of real interest for the Slashdot community.
I am trying to build a community educational web site. The idea is pretty basic: open up education so that people can participate fully as learners, educators and "accreditors". I've taken inspiration from slashdot as well as other community web sites. Problem is: it's not very "sticky" and this is because its kinda complicated and a tiny bit hard to use. I don't have the resources right now to totally fix that, although I have ideas. Please check it out: Oomind Open Education Community. I've even got an e-commerce aspect so that once it gets going a bit, people can actually earn money from their contributions. Check out The Philosophy of Oomind for some background thoughts as well. This is a blatant plug: I would really love to get lots of people using it, and particularly contributing to it!
There are some real serious underlying issues not mentioned. Basically, is the value of culture relative, or is there some absolute standard? The Saudi people (as mentioned by some other posters) are currently accepting the restrictions placed on them by their government. Theoretically, they could revolt over this issue or any of a number of others, and replace the government with one more appropriate to their desires. In practice this takes a long, long time. Globalization/Globalism (not the same things), may eventually be a force which "helps" this process of building a revolution. It is kinda like potential differences in electrical charge: if the potential gets large enough it breaks through the dialectric and zap - sparks fly!
Anyway, in the West, we put a very high value on freedoms. The fact is that I don't feel there is any conclusive evidence that these extreme freedoms are much different philosophically from extreme restrictions: both have some pretty harmful effects and both seem to be okay for the majority of people (note: by extreme restrictions I don't necessarily mean violent oppression).
As for the companies selling to the Saudis, if you really don't like it, start a revolution: that's exactly the sort of attitude we often have towards those who are somewhat restricted. Don't forget: you can't have it both ways. Either you have extensive freedom which means that people can support "immoral" goals, or you have restrictions which are going to bug some people.
I don't know any details about the Saudi firewall, but why doesn't someone set up a publicly accessible http tunelling system that gets around this? You could have a (moving?) node in the US which accepts http requests for 3rd party web pages and then "encrypts" (rot13?) them so that they aren't recognized in transit through the Saudi system. Then client software is accessed by the browser (at localhost) as a proxy and connects to the central node, doing the translation work and returning the page to the browser.
There is always a way, using technology.
Slashdot Mirror
FWIW, I don't use linux on my desktop for the following reason: KDE vs. Gnome.
Also, FWIW, I'm perfectly capable in every respect of using linux effectively (I'm a software engineer, I run FreeBSD and linux servers, I use lots of Open software).
So there's a real data point.
I don't want to accidentally choose the wrong desktop/application API because I rely completely on my personal workstation. I spend 12 hours/day in front of a computer programming, using email, writing, budgeting etc., and I want as close to zero risk in terms of my app choices as possible. KDE vs. Gnome is still a very risky choice for me to make.
I have recently moved off of MS Office since OpenOffice.org matured to 1.0. I recently moved away from JBuilder since Eclipse matured to 2.0. I am attempting to move away from other proprietary solutions. Unfortunately, my OS/Desktop is still Windows. That will change as soon as there is no choice left about a linux desktop _and_ the desktop is mature.
Actually, there are sort-of term extensions: you can add things to your application before it is granted and in the process almost indefinitely extend the duration that the application is in progress thereby shutting out competition without a fully granted patent that might last 30 years or longer. There was an article here on that a few months ago.
Actually, its just hard to work without pay. There's a real chicken and egg problem where if only one person starts to become more selfish, all the rest have to also become more selfish in order to "keep up". Similary, if one person tries to sacrifice for the greater good, that will only have lasting results if everyone else respects that sacrifice and does not exploit it. This is why businesses should not be considered persons, and why only a spiritual solution to economic problems will work in the long run. Check out The Prosperity of Humankind for some very insightful comments on this.
There will be a HUGE burden of patents which will need to be re-reviewed. It will be very difficult and I'm sure some people will advocate invalidating all patents from 1980-ish onwards. I would advocate such a process. Require all patents assigned to corporations to re-apply but waive the fees if the patent goes through the second time. For patents issued to individuals, the office could automatically review them. I personally think that corporate welfare should be kept to a minimum.
This is a really sad thing. Religion has a very bad name in Western civilization due to the many atrocities and lesser injustices committed in its name. Please people: don't confuse the religion of Islam (or Christianity or Buddhism or ...) with these ridiculous petty power plays. If you are curious, look at any original religious texts and you will see a lot of reasonableness that just isn't reflected in the behavior of the clergy/priesthood/whatever. A really interesting statement about this problem is at: http://www.bahai.org/article-1-1-0-1.html - pick your language.
First of all: I bought it just because I wanted to support the "effort". I do want the music companies and musicians to think that this sort of distribution will work because this is how I would like to be able to buy music. As for the song itself. I have never ever heard of Marshall Mdegeacella, but I have heard of Ben Watt of Everything But The Girl fame. I like EBTG's music generally, but I'm not a huge fan. Earth, the tune in question, is good stuff. The mp3 is 8 minutes, 45 seconds long. The sound quality is good enough for my Altec Lansing ATP3 computer speakers. But for me, the tune is not compelling. It's a little funky, a little dancable, the vocals are nice, the music is fairly simple, and the rythm is groovy but basic. But I go for stuff that has a little more energy and this isn't it. I'll put it in my playlist and see how it grows on me and I suspect that I will like it more with more listens. But for now? For the creativity and quality of the music: 6/10 and for my personal taste: 5/10. Worth $0.99? Not really, but not a big disappointment either.
Although I'm sure that donating to the EFF helps in some small way, doesn't it seem sad and pathetic that such a thing is necessary? If you can buy it, its not "Justice". For a really amazing description of Justice, check out: The Prosperity of Humankind. It's got a bit of a religious/spiritual perspective, but it actually goes through a very logical process and produces one of the best working definitions of Justice I have ever seen.
I admit it, I use windows. I have a couple legit copies of WinME. Every time I use media player (rarely), I have to refuse to upgrade... Which brings me to my real point: I will not upgrade past this point (WinME). WinME is it for me. It may not be great, but it runs what I need it to: lots of different sorts of development stuff (mostly java), CAD and 3D stuff, games, etc. I'm a serious software engineer and when I want to deploy I use either FreeBSD or RedHat Linux. And I always keep those up to date (relatively). But Winblows is stuck for me... and this is just another reason.
As I am sure you are aware: many people believe things should be different than they actually are. I am one of those people. I work to make a living and I have a mercenary attitude (currently). Nevertheless, I hold an ideal in my mind that someday I will be able to be less mercenary and more serving. I still try to choose the work I do to serve humanity to the degree that I am capable of within complex constraints including, of course, supporting my family. But that pragmatism in no way invalidates the idealism. I think you would have a hard time showing me any progress made when people were completely satisfied with current conditions. Idealism is a necessary condition for any kind of progress: I dream of a different world and I will work towards it as best I can. And no I don't mean "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need." My main problem with that is that "ability" and "need" are impossible to measure or even define precisely enough to base a working mechanistic social system or philosophy. Capitalism and socialism are mechanistic attempts at creating social order. They "allow" for human choice in only the most limited manner. Capitalism in particular is quite insidious in this regard: choice is limited to choice of purchases, or utility, and even then in the capitalistic ideal of perfect knowledge, choice actually disappears (think about that). The alternatives aren't obvious, and I won't presume to know the answer, but the little thinking that I've done suggests that if we can educate people to have a view of humanity that is more inclusive, we will go a long way to fixing some of the problems in our economic sphere. And I also strongly disagree that the current approach to formal education is about serving humanity. Far from it, it is much more about individuallism, fame, freedom etc. The reason _I_ believe in serving humanity has nothing to do with my formal education, but rather in my informal religious education in some obscure religion that my parents converted to shortly before they had me. Oh, and one last thing: sure it's a socialist attitude, but its not communist which is what I mentioned. I didn't mention anything about socialism. And I'm not politically a sociallist since I have huge issues with the western worlds concept of "democracy". Anyway... enough rambling.
I'm 30. I was one of the first people I know among my cohort to embrace the idea of becoming a mercenary for work. But over the last two years, more and more people my age, and younger are also taking that attitude: if the work doesn't suit me, I don't do it, ... and ... I decide the value of my work and my attitude and work ethic reflect that. Basically, salaried employees are slacking in response to perceived slights or injustices, or even based on what they think they are worth. Many of these things have existed among the "lazy" for many years, but they are becoming acceptable among the rank and file.
That said, I am very sad about this. To me, ideally work should be a way of serving humanity, not serving myself. I think that any job, position, industry, etc. can be looked at and done with an attitude of serving humanity. The problem seems to be that corporations are going in the exact opposite direction and the response is therefore mercenary. Corporations (stockholders) always, always end up winning as compared to their employees. The stockholders are perfect mercenaries of capital, and to me it was only a matter of time before that attitude was learned and reflected in the employees.
I haven't read this book, but I have read other similar works (e.g. Jeremy Rifkin has some stuff about this). It seems inevitable to me that in a capitalist environment this would happen. It also seems inevitable in a communist envionrment tho for different reasons. I personally think that we have to change the nature of our approach to education so that children grow up learning to serve humanity. Mind you, I'm sure lots of other people think that everyone becoming mercenary is a great thing...
Jobs seems to be aware of this issue at some level. His comments about the market share of BMW's as compared to Apple computers is actually quite revealing. Jobs is not just content with that market share, but actually actively working towards innovation and therefore expects to have a smaller market share. That's the positioning that Apple has taken. And unfortunately right now, I am just not in the market segment that buys BMW's or for that matter Apple's computers. I would love to be, but so be it. Katz seems to spin this all as a criticism of Jobs and Apple, but in fact Apple is financially just as successful as Microsoft or AOL, just on a smaller scale. Their huge cash reserves are proof of that. Watch out when they find the project on which to spend those reserves!!!
This sort of technology has both its bad aspects and its good aspects. In brief, the bad relates to possible privacy violations: your movement may not be so free as it once was. That said, the good aspects really are significant. First of all, there is a good side to being able to track peoples locations. If you lose a child, you would be desperate for this sort of technology! Determining alibis would be easier, etc. Another good side is a long-term effect. If this sort of device becomes more sophisticated, then it may eventually evolve into a ubiquitous computing environment. You bring your computing environment with you everywhere you go. I imagine this as being kind of like an implanted PDA. The technology for tying implants into the nervous system is developing and so like in many SciFi novels and movies, it is not unlikely that this could develop into extended memory and computation abilities that are indistinguishable from a persons normal thought processes. In an ideal situation, these things are really really good development... But things aren't ideal right now. In fact, the reality is that at least for the foreseeable future, our rights and freedoms are going to decrease. And almost certainly, this sort of technology would be taken advantage of.
This is just another issue like immigration or "Homeland Security" which is a balancing act between trust and convenience. Whenever you are operating with a third party, you need to balance trust versus convenience. If you favor trust, you will take more time for your safety: background checks (of people or Paypal), getting legal advice, insurance, anonymity concerns, etc. If you favor convenience, you will worry about reducing processing time, reducing bad experiences, simplifying and generalizing requirements, etc. Occasionally, technology can help increase both trust and convenience. But ultimately, even then, you are balancing trust and convenience against the provider of the technology. For example, open source software can be more trusted than closed source, but only if you forego convenience by actually checking the source!
Personally, I think that part of the problem is that in our capitalist based society, any change to support a commons must be based on a viable business model. Open source is struggling with this, but seems to be making its way alright. That's code. Knowledge, on the other hand, is still suffering. There is a long history of knowledge being locked up and accessible to only those few with enough power or money. Part of this (recent) history includes copyright and patents. Another more interesting part is the educational system! Particularly universities, but also other levels of education all have barriers to prevent just anyone accessing knowledge. There are tuition fees, entrance exams, location, funding methods etc. All of these act so as to make information unavailable. For example, if I get low grades in high school, I may find it impossible to get into university - even if my reasons for having low grades have nothing to do with my inherent capacity to understand and add value to university-level knowledge. The only reason these barriers to entry exist is because of the guarding of academic credit. So. Many people here are familiar with the slogan information wants to be free. And some can even argue its validity based on economics. But the fact is that barriers to accessing information create wealth. So in order for those barriers to come down, alternative means to create wealth must be created.
You expect people to write articles for you for free? You've got to be kidding! No I don't. You have the potential to earn money from them. It's just very unlikely right now. Basic chicken and egg problem. Cheers.
I've been trying to promote my own community web site for about 8 months now. (For those who are interested, the link is in my sig.) I have some practical observations for promotion based on a _very_ small budget: First: your two best hopes are word of mouth and being mentioned by a place that gets _lots_ of traffic. Second: don't bother spending money on something like Google unless you can find a really good demographic to target. I tried this for quite some time and I think I maybe got 3 or 4 people joining for my efforts and dollars (about $300) - definitely not worth it! Third: take advantage of sites like slashdot where you can use your sig, and from time to time post comments which actually are on-topic and attract people. I've done this relatively successfully and been modded up for my efforts because I was careful to post appropriately. Fourth: find portal sites that are apropos to your community site that allow you to submit links. Submit your site. For the amount of effort, this really helps with search engine rankings and a little bit of traffic. Fifth: email people who's personal sites indicate they might be interested in your site. This is unsolicited, but most people appreciate feedback on their own efforts and also are interested in opportunities to promote themselves. Community sites often offer this opportunity one way or another. Six: well, my site isn't "successful" yet, but it's growing slowly but surely. To be frank, I don't really want a _huge_ surge in attention because I'm not sure yet about the scalability of my servers. Be careful what you ask for: I personally believe that slow but sure growth will be worth more in the long run. (And that isn't just sour grapes: I've learned a lot by having people provide feedback. If I had a huge surge, I probably would have ended up with a lot of dissappointed users.)
The people who came up with this idea deserve to be considered heros! This is one of the coolest uses of technology I have seen. (Not to be too gushing: SPAM is a rich mans problem - I hope someone comes up with some cool technological solutions to some of humanities more basic problems.) I run a server which hosts mail for a number of domains. I haven't yet, cause I just heard of it, but this will be used! There might be some interesting extensions based on possible problems: certain kinds of spam interest certain people. Perhaps a categorization system would be useful so that spam can be filtered based on these categories (for example, some people might like receiving 100 MLM spam messages a day :-P ). Also, there is an (extremely) slim chance that a legit mail might be blocked based on match hashes. Although this is extremely unlikely, could it be fixed somehow? Finally, some spam comes with very slight differences but is essentially the same spam instance. Chain letters are in a grey area. It would be good to have some heuristic methods of filtering based on content too. I don't know the characteristics of the hashing algorthm used, but perhaps by doing three hashes: start of message, middle of message, and end of message, it may be possible to identify spam even if a small part has been change.
Anyway, just some random thoughts.
Kudos again to those who have built this!
Any sort of editing (including no editing) is essentially arbitrary. I run an educational web site that allows anyone (registered) to post content. In my terms of use when people register, I basically say that the line between appropriate and inappropriate is arbitrary and determined on a case-by-case basis. This is the only true answer. Even slashdot has removed a small number of posts. My system (Oomind) has a complex moderation mechanism and complex lameness filters. I use 10 dimensions of moderation so that people can filter based on a pretty sophisticated set of interests. The lameness filters include the usual "bad words" and "bad html" but also include post length, and a few other nifty things. So far the Oomind moderation system and lameness filters have not been pushed hard enough to really know if it "works", but hey, here's hoping :-)
Blatant plug: Oomind is to education as open source is to commercial software:
This thing would be excellent for a certain type of home office... if only it were about $70 instead. I have four computers at home: one for my fun, one for my work, one for my wife and kids, and a laptop. Honestly, I'd love the convenience of having the switch in the wall. Why is it convenience? Because then I can more easily hide all my wires. Its not a big deal, but still, it would be nice. What would make it nicer is if you could have multiple of these talking to each other wirelessly (e.g. via 802.11b). Then just stick one in each room, and voila, no wiring hassel, just plug in and enjoy.
This isn't a big deal, but I've been very wary of J2EE app servers. I've been working with server-side Java for about 4 years now, and previously with EOF (Nextstep/Webobjects). EJB is incredibly broken compared to EOF/WebObjects. But my online educational system Oomind is running on Tomcat right now, and needs a more complete platform. So we are moving. And after some careful analysis and real world experience, we're choosing JBoss. Frankly, it being open-source is a very significant factor. Kudos to JBoss and its developers!
(I just posted a shorter version of this - this provides more info.) I am trying to build a community educational web site. The idea is pretty basic: open up education so that people can participate fully as learners, educators and "accreditors". I've taken inspiration from slashdot as well as other community web sites. Problem is: it's not very "sticky" and this is because its kinda complicated and a tiny bit hard to use. I don't have the resources right now to totally fix that, although I have ideas. Please check it out: Oomind Open Education Community. I've even got an e-commerce aspect so that once it gets going a bit, people can actually earn money from their contributions. Check out The Philosophy of Oomind [oomind.com] for some background thoughts as well. This is a blatant plug: I would really love to get lots of people using it, and particularly contributing to it!
Oomind Open Education Community So basically it works like this: the units of educational material are called Courselets. Each courselet is like an article writen about a specific subject. There's lots of flexibility here so even a poem can be a courselet. A courselet has ratings in ten different attributes including Beauty, Creativity, Insightfulness, Theoretical, etc. Registered users can moderate these ratings on a courselet. The ratings change based on a weighted average taking into account a user's level of influence. Courselets also have quiz questions. The questions can be written by anyone, not just the author of the courselet. The questions also have a score which is just a weight, and a price (!) which is in "oo-points". Oo-points are Oomind's internal unit of currency. They are purchased and redeemed for cash. When you answer a question and get it correct then the price of the question is taken from you and distributed three ways: 40% to the courselet author, 40% to the question author and 20% to the system. Oh: authors can use multiple aliases. When you answer the question correctly you also get "credit" - the 10 scores of the courselet are modified by the weight of the question and added to your "Portrait". Therefore your academic credit is cumulative rather than percentage based. It is also dynamic: as the scores of the courselets change, so do your learner scores. You also have educator scores which are the sum of the scores of all the courselets you have contributed (also dynamic). Courselet are free to be read by anyone and can be linked too from external sites - "knowledge wants to be free". In progress: group and messaging features. I really hope that people check it out and sign up. Right now there are about 80 registered users. The next 20 get 1000 oo-points free, and after that it is just 100 oo-points free. Also there aren't that many courselets right now (maybe about 100) and not too many questions on courselets. Please contribute! Thanks and please mod this up. I know this is blatant but I think it is of real interest for the Slashdot community.
I am trying to build a community educational web site. The idea is pretty basic: open up education so that people can participate fully as learners, educators and "accreditors". I've taken inspiration from slashdot as well as other community web sites. Problem is: it's not very "sticky" and this is because its kinda complicated and a tiny bit hard to use. I don't have the resources right now to totally fix that, although I have ideas. Please check it out: Oomind Open Education Community. I've even got an e-commerce aspect so that once it gets going a bit, people can actually earn money from their contributions. Check out The Philosophy of Oomind for some background thoughts as well. This is a blatant plug: I would really love to get lots of people using it, and particularly contributing to it!
There are some real serious underlying issues not mentioned. Basically, is the value of culture relative, or is there some absolute standard? The Saudi people (as mentioned by some other posters) are currently accepting the restrictions placed on them by their government. Theoretically, they could revolt over this issue or any of a number of others, and replace the government with one more appropriate to their desires. In practice this takes a long, long time. Globalization/Globalism (not the same things), may eventually be a force which "helps" this process of building a revolution. It is kinda like potential differences in electrical charge: if the potential gets large enough it breaks through the dialectric and zap - sparks fly! Anyway, in the West, we put a very high value on freedoms. The fact is that I don't feel there is any conclusive evidence that these extreme freedoms are much different philosophically from extreme restrictions: both have some pretty harmful effects and both seem to be okay for the majority of people (note: by extreme restrictions I don't necessarily mean violent oppression). As for the companies selling to the Saudis, if you really don't like it, start a revolution: that's exactly the sort of attitude we often have towards those who are somewhat restricted. Don't forget: you can't have it both ways. Either you have extensive freedom which means that people can support "immoral" goals, or you have restrictions which are going to bug some people.
I don't know any details about the Saudi firewall, but why doesn't someone set up a publicly accessible http tunelling system that gets around this? You could have a (moving?) node in the US which accepts http requests for 3rd party web pages and then "encrypts" (rot13?) them so that they aren't recognized in transit through the Saudi system. Then client software is accessed by the browser (at localhost) as a proxy and connects to the central node, doing the translation work and returning the page to the browser. There is always a way, using technology.