I wouldn't want my personal information collected - period.
I think a foreign party having a small amount of information about you is usually not dangerous. However, collected, comprehensive, and/or easily acessible information about you is a risk. If the data is organized, someone can search it; if the data is in one place, someone can get all of it; etc. The barriers to these tasks, no matter how impossible at one time, will go down.
When that information can't be changed (like biometric data) or the barriers to changing it (like changing addresses, names, etc.) become too costly, your information is that much more valuable. If that data could be easily searchable by multiple parties (or one big, influential party - Walmart, the government, etc.), the information suddenly becomes more valuable. If enough good information is sitting around, someone will find a way to make money off it.
The real barrier is collecting information and then matching it to something significant and/or having it readily available. That is why some people simply do not like having to register to recieve a free newspaper article. Obviously, nothing is really free. Registering is doing something for the New York Times. It could be and probably is anonymous number crunching. But there seems something wrong (or maybe just scary) about a society where we give away information about ourselves for a small price. Information is freedom right? So how much is it worth to me? I don't want to find out.
Use Ace's Specmine to search Specint2000 and Specfp2000 data. This is the best frontend I have seen for the data. Keep in mind the details of a system before you start trolling chipA over chipB. Of course, you can also use this to feed such trolls.;)
Back in dial-up days, unlimited was magnitudes less than what your cable/DSL line can push through. The phone networks were pretty well developed and the load could be handled.
But now, unlimited bandwidth is not possible - you can't afford to pay for unlimited bandwidth (if you can, its probably not running to your house). More practically, I am not sure if the networks could actually sustain users with unlimited bandwidth out of their homes - at least not at acceptable levels. I am not privy to this kind of information, so its speculation. But unless ISP's are prepared for it, everyone's bandwidth (especially at popular Internet times) could go down because of a minority. And I don't pay so that a minority can slow down my Internet.
False advertising? - yes and pretty much outdated. You should be informed that your bandwidth is capped at reasonable levels based on some average use scale or something. This scale or metric should be available to you online, updated regularly and frozen at a certain time for billing the next month. A system like this would at least take into account the majority/minority of users in a hopefully objective way.
i.e. elitist Linux? Because I can't think of any practical use of the term (you only use the kernel?). I am convinced there are many users who want Linux to remain their little domain and keep great open source software from normal people - All so they can claim themselves purists.
I really enjoyed your post. It was intriguing, because it communicated a very complex idea that we simply do not have a name for. But I recognize it (perhaps in myself).
Perhaps the predominant trait of geeks (or whatever you call them) is that they really seek to understand and connect with things at a deeper level. For some this means obession, for others study of meaningless (?) details. Still for others it means taking time to do something which only has intrinsic value and maybe only you see it as such.
I think this desire to see things beyond their 15 minutes and to connect with ideas, over say people or society in general, is isolating and inspiring. And you have to wonder why? Why isolate yourself, even to a small degree for anything? Most people do something because someone else is doing it or it will connect them with other people. Why not conform? Isn't that what we are supposed to want - to be accepted because we are similar to other people or have/share something they want? I sometimes want that. But then I read things like your post, and feel that same way about all the things I know and understand - it's more than anyone wants to hear definitely. So why bother learning it? It's such a strange feeling - knowing and understanding things simply for knowing and understanding them. And what do we get for it - we become misunderstood, sometimes even by those who care about us. Still, I don't think I'll ever stop/change. You?
Anyway, that's how I felt about your post. Even though I am not the comic book person, your post really communicated to me. Again, thank you.
"Why not save everyone a lot of time and money and support Microsoft's version of DHTML?"
Which is harder? Designing web pages by a common standard or conforming to one application's twisted implementation of said standard? You don't necessarily save money by developing only for IE. You waste time trying to create interesting ways to mimick features that can be trivial to implement in any compliant browser or simply attempting to figure out what IE will let you do. Remember browser compatibility charts that used to tell you what browser's supported what features? These were nightmarish for a simple markup language and a few CSS features. And so the solution is to just give up on compatibility charts and let MS have its way?
"It is very expensive for companies to implement Mozzila compatible versions"
No, no, I think you have it backwards. You are familiar with web standards? IE does a half-baked job of implementing them, makes some mistakes, omits things, and then leaves most of these problems for long periods of time. Oh yes, and some features actually might crash the browser.
Mozilla doesn't try to make web pages conform to some twisted view of a standard. Rather, Mozilla takes said web standards and attempts to comply with them.
There is also a principle here which is very important and every one seems to give up on. Open standards are important because they accomplish several things at once:
1) They promote use of the medium - making a given medium more accessible and beneficial to all involve.
2) They limit unnecessary complexity/redundancy - this saves everyone time and money.
3) They keep control away from single-minded interest groups who wish to control users of the medium. In essence, they protect the medium and its users. In the best cases they represent the interests of users and those care most about the medium's community.
Some people refuse to allow IE to dominate the browsable Internet unchallenged because it will only hurt the community and all involved. IE's dominance has brought apathy to its lackings - everyone knows in many ways it sucks, but the majority of its users are either ignorant, don't care, or are (seemingly) powerless. This in turn has actually warped the perception of the Internet into many things it should not be (a circus for advertising, for one). But even worse, IE has forced many developers to forget web standards and focus on IE and its version of things. In effect, IE says what is standard and what is not and we all obey.
The name is incredibly misleading and I think will ultimately hurt the product. Consumers associate brand names, IMHO, as umbrella terms under which features (like language support and applications) fall. For example notice how Windows 2003 is not Windows.NET Server 2003. I suppose that name was a candidate, but it was decided to identify the product more uniquely, a simpler name was chosen. Because.NET can run on other Windows versions as well. This helps seperate the ideas of.NET with the single product Windows 2003. What seems to a technical person marketing-speak, is much more clear to a non-technical mind.
Not only that, the most important and effective name, Linux, seems to be left out. Just as Linux is gaining mindshare, Sun decides to confuse an OS with a language.
Maybe if Sun did something clever and made an appliance-like OS with Java or something, then this would be appropriate. As it stands, it seems stupid on/. and surely will confuse other crowds.
"1 - No individual anonymity" "2 - No free speech for individuals"
I am no political theorist, but I think that individual rights found a free society, physical or virtual. The very fact that there are no distinct laws on the Internet as a whole, anonymity is possible to an extent, free speech is rampant, etc. are all positive things (ultimately). I feel we have all benefited from this kind of freedom that really is not possible (currently) in the physical world.
Maybe we cannot have everything we want in a government or the UN, but the Internet seems a lot more ideal to myself as it is. Sure there are spammers, crackers, con-artists, and all sorts of bad things. But is regular society free of these? No, but on the Internet we can band together, share information, and fight these elements as a community. In our physical society, every one of our freedom's requires overhead to protect and is constantly threatened by the system itself. On the Internet, the system may not promote our freedom (I guess you could argue either way there), but it has few controls. What seems remarkable to me is that the Internet can still be friendly and even great - all without conventional government control.
I think the majority of people (anywhere in the world) have already made a lot compromises about their physical society and freedoms. I hate to think we ever really have to make similar ones in our virtual society. Its far from ideal, but its there and I think it has a lot to do with our future.
That is very true, and even though one has no reason to not trust Google (though some may have principle, which I respect), the business' power is increasing.
It is a curious realization that information is not as important as the ability to access that information. Information has a half-life, it has a limited use and reach, but the gateway to information is unlimited in these values. Google currently empowers the user by providing access to information, and I would like it to always be that way. But ultimately, trusting businesses is an economic fantasy.
Perhaps one day, there will be an open source network of computers brought forward by volunteers, spanning the globe, delivering search results with no hope of being controlled. Of course, that is mostly a dream. But, there is a principle behind that dream - information should be free: free to access and free of control.
Still, Google has done an excellent job and has brought the Internet and its imformation to billions of people (including myself). For that, it has my respect, but not my devotion.
I think this idea can be more simply understood by the fact that PC's are an open platform (not open like open source, no, but still open to developement). Consoles have large corporations working very hard to get their hardware into consumer hands. Therefore, with competition, these hardware companies demand an edge over the competition. They use mascots, innovation, killer games (often exclusive), and brand recognition to appeal to a mass market. The games sell the hardware, so obviously there is great focus on the games.
While Dell, HP, etc. may be advertising the PC, they are not really focusing on games. They are focusing on their hardware, and often use generic ideas of games and other applications to fill a commercial. So a market for PC games does exist and can be said to be strong, but it requires the game company to have its own mascot, killer game, brand recognition, etc. (a good example being Blizzard). The PC market does not have the same focus the console market has, which may (let me try a little economics here) mean the efficiency of the market is not as complete as the console market.
Really, PC manufacturers should be promoting games, because this can help push their new hardware sales. Bundling a new desktop with a killer game is not a bad idea. This type of thing is becoming far more common, but it takes time to develope the market like this and the console market has had more time anyway.
Frankly, the only thing more disturbing than the current situation with unchecked government power is that someone (maybe most everyone) needs a self-proclaimed prophet from the future to tell them they should be worried.
These kinds of articles (or documentaries, as the case may be) really beg the question "Why do people watch other people in activities?"
Now we have all been conditioned to answer because its entertaining to watch highly skilled professionals compete for the love of the game (stay with me), or something like that. But really, I would venture to guess that it has a lot to do with identity and community.
For example, if you watch sports, don't you sometimes or maybe even regularly mention events in the sports world to others who are interested (or maybe even not)? Do you ever consider yourself a fan, and attach it to your identity (like at a party you might say "yeah, I'm a such-and-such fan" or "I'm a big fan of sports X and Y")?
Likewise, how often do you watch events with other people? How often do you go with other people or meet them at an event? And don't you talk about it with certain groups of people? I am not a sports person, so please forgive me if you are a lone spectator. I am sure there are some.
This all revolves around what really drives masses to be spectators. I would venture to guess that their identity and the community (which are in some ways tied together for a lot people, maybe everyone) make them spectators. I would even go further to say that without these aspects, mass market spectator sports would not be quite so mass market. Sorry, I didn't watch the video - just some thoughts from a non-spectator.
In more wealthy counties in the US, the county executives can be very particular and unreasonable about their land for large retailers. There is questioning and ultimate delay to expand an existing building because of codes X and Z, or some other meaningless detail. Never mind there is a parking lot there that the business owns, remains empty 24/7, and this is a commerical area (so no homes or anything nearby). In the end, the county has to be haggled - literally the law is no measure. It all comes down to deal-making at the table. Public interest? One would like to think so, but if this were the case, the deal-making would probably be more transparent.
If you have read and heard about Walmart's efficiency and demands for lower prices from its vendors, I think Lindows is just a tool. Specifically, a tool to force, gradually, to get Windows-bundled PCs to drop in price for Walmart's stores.
I would imagine Walmart is simply waiting for Lindows to be a clear enough replacement for Windows, that they can afford to bargain much more effectively with lowering the price of the Wintel-PCs, and maybe ultimately Windows.
"Because they didn't want to cause brand confusion."
That would be what one shareholder would tell another shareholder.
It is all a mindshare game. What it amounts to is Redhat wants to be more seriously considered with its Enterprise line. Having only a paid line of Redhat-branded products means Redhat as name refers only to enterprise solutions, not a free/packaged desktop. The free/packaged desktop was becoming (or the leadership thought it would eventually become) more common than the Enterprise. So when clientA thinks of Redhat, he would think of a desktop, not an "Enterprise Solution." This is not so much confusion as the opposite of what the company wants the customer to think.
As has been mentioned before, Redhat probably was not making much (if any) money off their desktop line, but their brand was very strongly tied to that line. So the solution, from someone's perspective, was to tie the successfully marketed (and recognized) brand to the product which had the most returns or possible returns on profit. While you are doing that, get the desktop development out of house where some of the best software components are created anyway - in the open source community. The open source community gets a new distro and Redhat gets a more exclusive name focused on the market which they intend to grow in. Win-Win, according to the company.
"how are we supposed to support an entire economy with this?"
No, no - you don't get it. We only need to worry about supporting economists so they can tell us what we are supposed to do to support the economy, so the economy in turn can support. . . well never mind.
I'm sorry, it does work something like that, though.
"...that is a title of honor that generally has to be conferred by others rather than self-assumed."
Like that's gonna happen. If this does catch on, it will be plastered on every wannabe's website. It will be abused and misapplied, just as the name hacker is treated.
Perhaps hackers are unique, even among themselves? Perhaps a logo does not represent all (or most) hackers? Perhaps claiming to have a logo that represents all hackers (or hackers in general) is presumptuous?
"It's my job to think of these things."
Again, perhaps this is presumptuous? Historians (like say, of American history or what have you) don't tell us what our symbols should be. (Well, if they do no one is listening).
More importantly, hackers do not necessarily need a symbol. Hackers aren't all in the same group and they certainly are not out to advertise themselves and get people to associate an image or idea with them. I would say they probably don't care what the general populous thinks, let alone if they know what a hacker is.
"I am now going to Pirate VPC and do my best to make sure pirated copies of VPC show up on as many forums and distribution points as I can find."
That sounds like practical, ethical solution (or not). What was your problem with MS again? Ethics ("dishonest, FRAUDULENT...low moral...Microsoft")? Perhaps you should find a way to uphold ethics and legality if you are going to take higher ground and condemn corporations for their lack of ethics and law-abiding business practices.
"there is nothing that can save you during a witch hunt."
You are absolutely right. A witch hunt doesn't have too much to do with who is really the witch, but more to do with who can be pinned as one.
That said, it is a good habit to always keep track of things involving other people. This applies to all sorts of things aside from your job - Your finances, your other assets, your email correspondence, and even your relatives. When something does come up or somebody is raising hell or a pitchfork, at least you have records. I wouldn't always recommend arguing with the mob of pitchforks, but the mob doesn't last forever and sooner or later, it comes in handy to have good documentation.
"take as many others down with you as you can manage."
I think that is where this whole concept goes off the deep end. Play the game by some good rules that a few others can probably respect and break the rules every now and then so they don't get you in bigger trouble.
But remember that the world is not all a pit of mean dogs and some people may actually support you and help you. Still, those special individuals will only do so if they see you as more human than mean dog.
War is not a step forward, it is a step to the side. To think "space" and "war" is not pragmatism, but rather cynicism, at the very least. At the worst it is backwards thinking - looking at the world and trying to adapt it to the past.
Still, if the military becomes more heavily involved in space, it may be (in the short term) a good thing for new developments. In the long-term, no one can be sure. I don't like the idea.
There is one idea in this article that is redeeming: Perhaps war will be looked down upon where people live. If we have new turf to fight over, perhaps the old turf will be something everyone wants to keep around without obliterating (a cross between how we view historical things and heavily populated regions now). This is very hopeful, but if we as a world cannot make the step of stopping large scale conflict, maybe we can make the step of keeping it off our home planet. What if weapons of a certain destructive force were only allowed off the planet?
I find it very hard to not talk about space without mentioning the term "step," - I guess Armstrong said it best.
I won't blame developers, but there is a true lesson in this. I too always test in Mozilla, but many times I simply must concede that IE is the market.
I have read comments from individuals who prefer a one browser environment.
This quote makes a good argument against that kind of ignorance:
"I understand having one browser makes web development easier. But imagine being able to simply have a set of standards, which allow code to display on multiple browsers, perhaps of the user's choice? Ideal, yes. Impossible? Already has happened.
Still efficiency and operability are minor points.
A browser is not the end-all of the Internet. There are open standards that need to be followed in all network-related models to promote the medium, not to mention save everyone time and ensure that a common medium exists.
I am not advocating the death of IE. It is not a bad browser, but it breaks rules which it should be following (ie. standards which make everyone's lives better, including CSS). If IE wants to please developers, the first thing it should work at it is compliance to the standard. Deviation without strict design means that parts of the standard are not standard at all (everyone pays for the lack of standards-compliance).
"It would be great if I could force everyone to use the same browser"
A more important problem arises out of the dominance of IE. That is that standards are twisted to the browser's interpretation, therefore any error or change in the openly designed standard is accepted by the development and user community. This essentially means that implementation choices or (more commonly) errors are dictated by the browser. If we subscribe to the second law of thermodynamics, these changes (being mostly errors) are almost exclusively for the worse...
Everyone should be pushing for standards-compliance."
Firstly, software is your choice. Your complaints about MS software may be worthy of attention. However, you chose to use MS. And now that this is/., we all know there are alternatives. You can buy them on the Internet and even in some stores.
"The lawsuit, which was filed on Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, also claims that Microsoft's security warnings are too complex to be understood by the general public and serve instead to tip off "fast-moving" hackers on how to exploit flaws in its operating system."
If you cannot interpret the information MS provides you, there are thousands of web pages and forums to help you. These are free as well. There are services which you can contract to do the work for you. Using computers has a cost. Using machines connected to the Internet has a cost. It is not the fault of MS that someone exploited the OS. They were irresponsible for leaving the vulnerabilities there, but unless you want to make the claim that they intentionally attempted to provide you with an insecure OS, then I do not understand the argument. XP does not say on the box "hack-proof: Try It!".
I have a little idea:
Software that directly controls physical devices (automobiles for example) which are themselves regulated should be held accountable to similar standards as the device which the software controls. They should be legally linked.
Software that does word processing, serves web pages, browses the Internet, sends email, etc. would not fall into this trap. We have disclaimers on lots of things saying don't use x with y or p as a q. So mark your software accordingly.
This is purely bad principle. This is outsourcing voting. Elections should be handled as much as possible by regular people. Companies should provide paper, pencils, and maybe some refreshments.
Now I RTFA and I understand this is for military absentee ballots. But this will set precedence. Who will get the job next year? Don't you think the standards applied here will eventually be used for absentee ballots for State Department personnel? And then eventually the general public?
If the government is not capable on its own of running a fully electronic election, then they should not be doing it. Period. Forget the cost of alternative systems or even the impossibility. If the DOD cannot handle this internally (they should, they handle billions of dollars of secrets) then I think it is a step to far to outsource it.
"The sanctity of the vote can't be compromised nor can the integrity of the system be compromised"
Doesn't that line make you feel worried. At least they could say,"we have the best security and experience." But no, "the integrity of the system [can't] be compromised."
Slashdot Mirror
I wouldn't want my personal information collected - period.
I think a foreign party having a small amount of information about you is usually not dangerous. However, collected, comprehensive, and/or easily acessible information about you is a risk. If the data is organized, someone can search it; if the data is in one place, someone can get all of it; etc. The barriers to these tasks, no matter how impossible at one time, will go down.
When that information can't be changed (like biometric data) or the barriers to changing it (like changing addresses, names, etc.) become too costly, your information is that much more valuable. If that data could be easily searchable by multiple parties (or one big, influential party - Walmart, the government, etc.), the information suddenly becomes more valuable. If enough good information is sitting around, someone will find a way to make money off it.
The real barrier is collecting information and then matching it to something significant and/or having it readily available. That is why some people simply do not like having to register to recieve a free newspaper article. Obviously, nothing is really free. Registering is doing something for the New York Times. It could be and probably is anonymous number crunching. But there seems something wrong (or maybe just scary) about a society where we give away information about ourselves for a small price. Information is freedom right? So how much is it worth to me? I don't want to find out.
Use Ace's Specmine to search Specint2000 and Specfp2000 data. This is the best frontend I have seen for the data. Keep in mind the details of a system before you start trolling chipA over chipB. Of course, you can also use this to feed such trolls. ;)
Even on /., you can't escape ignorance. Age is not a cure.
Back in dial-up days, unlimited was magnitudes less than what your cable/DSL line can push through. The phone networks were pretty well developed and the load could be handled.
But now, unlimited bandwidth is not possible - you can't afford to pay for unlimited bandwidth (if you can, its probably not running to your house). More practically, I am not sure if the networks could actually sustain users with unlimited bandwidth out of their homes - at least not at acceptable levels. I am not privy to this kind of information, so its speculation. But unless ISP's are prepared for it, everyone's bandwidth (especially at popular Internet times) could go down because of a minority. And I don't pay so that a minority can slow down my Internet.
False advertising? - yes and pretty much outdated. You should be informed that your bandwidth is capped at reasonable levels based on some average use scale or something. This scale or metric should be available to you online, updated regularly and frozen at a certain time for billing the next month. A system like this would at least take into account the majority/minority of users in a hopefully objective way.
"purist Linux"
i.e. elitist Linux? Because I can't think of any practical use of the term (you only use the kernel?). I am convinced there are many users who want Linux to remain their little domain and keep great open source software from normal people - All so they can claim themselves purists.
I really enjoyed your post. It was intriguing, because it communicated a very complex idea that we simply do not have a name for. But I recognize it (perhaps in myself).
Perhaps the predominant trait of geeks (or whatever you call them) is that they really seek to understand and connect with things at a deeper level. For some this means obession, for others study of meaningless (?) details. Still for others it means taking time to do something which only has intrinsic value and maybe only you see it as such.
I think this desire to see things beyond their 15 minutes and to connect with ideas, over say people or society in general, is isolating and inspiring. And you have to wonder why? Why isolate yourself, even to a small degree for anything? Most people do something because someone else is doing it or it will connect them with other people. Why not conform? Isn't that what we are supposed to want - to be accepted because we are similar to other people or have/share something they want? I sometimes want that. But then I read things like your post, and feel that same way about all the things I know and understand - it's more than anyone wants to hear definitely. So why bother learning it? It's such a strange feeling - knowing and understanding things simply for knowing and understanding them. And what do we get for it - we become misunderstood, sometimes even by those who care about us. Still, I don't think I'll ever stop/change. You?
Anyway, that's how I felt about your post. Even though I am not the comic book person, your post really communicated to me. Again, thank you.
"Why not save everyone a lot of time and money and support Microsoft's version of DHTML?"
Which is harder? Designing web pages by a common standard or conforming to one application's twisted implementation of said standard? You don't necessarily save money by developing only for IE. You waste time trying to create interesting ways to mimick features that can be trivial to implement in any compliant browser or simply attempting to figure out what IE will let you do. Remember browser compatibility charts that used to tell you what browser's supported what features? These were nightmarish for a simple markup language and a few CSS features. And so the solution is to just give up on compatibility charts and let MS have its way?
"It is very expensive for companies to implement Mozzila compatible versions"
No, no, I think you have it backwards. You are familiar with web standards? IE does a half-baked job of implementing them, makes some mistakes, omits things, and then leaves most of these problems for long periods of time. Oh yes, and some features actually might crash the browser.
Mozilla doesn't try to make web pages conform to some twisted view of a standard. Rather, Mozilla takes said web standards and attempts to comply with them.
There is also a principle here which is very important and every one seems to give up on. Open standards are important because they accomplish several things at once:
1) They promote use of the medium - making a given medium more accessible and beneficial to all involve.
2) They limit unnecessary complexity/redundancy - this saves everyone time and money.
3) They keep control away from single-minded interest groups who wish to control users of the medium. In essence, they protect the medium and its users. In the best cases they represent the interests of users and those care most about the medium's community.
Some people refuse to allow IE to dominate the browsable Internet unchallenged because it will only hurt the community and all involved. IE's dominance has brought apathy to its lackings - everyone knows in many ways it sucks, but the majority of its users are either ignorant, don't care, or are (seemingly) powerless. This in turn has actually warped the perception of the Internet into many things it should not be (a circus for advertising, for one). But even worse, IE has forced many developers to forget web standards and focus on IE and its version of things. In effect, IE says what is standard and what is not and we all obey.
The name is incredibly misleading and I think will ultimately hurt the product. Consumers associate brand names, IMHO, as umbrella terms under which features (like language support and applications) fall. For example notice how Windows 2003 is not Windows .NET Server 2003. I suppose that name was a candidate, but it was decided to identify the product more uniquely, a simpler name was chosen. Because .NET can run on other Windows versions as well. This helps seperate the ideas of .NET with the single product Windows 2003. What seems to a technical person marketing-speak, is much more clear to a non-technical mind.
/. and surely will confuse other crowds.
Not only that, the most important and effective name, Linux, seems to be left out. Just as Linux is gaining mindshare, Sun decides to confuse an OS with a language.
Maybe if Sun did something clever and made an appliance-like OS with Java or something, then this would be appropriate. As it stands, it seems stupid on
"1 - No individual anonymity"
"2 - No free speech for individuals"
I am no political theorist, but I think that individual rights found a free society, physical or virtual. The very fact that there are no distinct laws on the Internet as a whole, anonymity is possible to an extent, free speech is rampant, etc. are all positive things (ultimately). I feel we have all benefited from this kind of freedom that really is not possible (currently) in the physical world.
Maybe we cannot have everything we want in a government or the UN, but the Internet seems a lot more ideal to myself as it is. Sure there are spammers, crackers, con-artists, and all sorts of bad things. But is regular society free of these? No, but on the Internet we can band together, share information, and fight these elements as a community. In our physical society, every one of our freedom's requires overhead to protect and is constantly threatened by the system itself. On the Internet, the system may not promote our freedom (I guess you could argue either way there), but it has few controls. What seems remarkable to me is that the Internet can still be friendly and even great - all without conventional government control.
I think the majority of people (anywhere in the world) have already made a lot compromises about their physical society and freedoms. I hate to think we ever really have to make similar ones in our virtual society. Its far from ideal, but its there and I think it has a lot to do with our future.
That is very true, and even though one has no reason to not trust Google (though some may have principle, which I respect), the business' power is increasing.
It is a curious realization that information is not as important as the ability to access that information. Information has a half-life, it has a limited use and reach, but the gateway to information is unlimited in these values. Google currently empowers the user by providing access to information, and I would like it to always be that way. But ultimately, trusting businesses is an economic fantasy.
Perhaps one day, there will be an open source network of computers brought forward by volunteers, spanning the globe, delivering search results with no hope of being controlled. Of course, that is mostly a dream. But, there is a principle behind that dream - information should be free: free to access and free of control.
Still, Google has done an excellent job and has brought the Internet and its imformation to billions of people (including myself). For that, it has my respect, but not my devotion.
I think this idea can be more simply understood by the fact that PC's are an open platform (not open like open source, no, but still open to developement). Consoles have large corporations working very hard to get their hardware into consumer hands. Therefore, with competition, these hardware companies demand an edge over the competition. They use mascots, innovation, killer games (often exclusive), and brand recognition to appeal to a mass market. The games sell the hardware, so obviously there is great focus on the games.
While Dell, HP, etc. may be advertising the PC, they are not really focusing on games. They are focusing on their hardware, and often use generic ideas of games and other applications to fill a commercial. So a market for PC games does exist and can be said to be strong, but it requires the game company to have its own mascot, killer game, brand recognition, etc. (a good example being Blizzard). The PC market does not have the same focus the console market has, which may (let me try a little economics here) mean the efficiency of the market is not as complete as the console market.
Really, PC manufacturers should be promoting games, because this can help push their new hardware sales. Bundling a new desktop with a killer game is not a bad idea. This type of thing is becoming far more common, but it takes time to develope the market like this and the console market has had more time anyway.
Frankly, the only thing more disturbing than the current situation with unchecked government power is that someone (maybe most everyone) needs a self-proclaimed prophet from the future to tell them they should be worried.
Isn't this why children are taught history?
These kinds of articles (or documentaries, as the case may be) really beg the question "Why do people watch other people in activities?"
Now we have all been conditioned to answer because its entertaining to watch highly skilled professionals compete for the love of the game (stay with me), or something like that. But really, I would venture to guess that it has a lot to do with identity and community.
For example, if you watch sports, don't you sometimes or maybe even regularly mention events in the sports world to others who are interested (or maybe even not)? Do you ever consider yourself a fan, and attach it to your identity (like at a party you might say "yeah, I'm a such-and-such fan" or "I'm a big fan of sports X and Y")?
Likewise, how often do you watch events with other people? How often do you go with other people or meet them at an event? And don't you talk about it with certain groups of people? I am not a sports person, so please forgive me if you are a lone spectator. I am sure there are some.
This all revolves around what really drives masses to be spectators. I would venture to guess that their identity and the community (which are in some ways tied together for a lot people, maybe everyone) make them spectators. I would even go further to say that without these aspects, mass market spectator sports would not be quite so mass market. Sorry, I didn't watch the video - just some thoughts from a non-spectator.
In more wealthy counties in the US, the county executives can be very particular and unreasonable about their land for large retailers. There is questioning and ultimate delay to expand an existing building because of codes X and Z, or some other meaningless detail. Never mind there is a parking lot there that the business owns, remains empty 24/7, and this is a commerical area (so no homes or anything nearby). In the end, the county has to be haggled - literally the law is no measure. It all comes down to deal-making at the table. Public interest? One would like to think so, but if this were the case, the deal-making would probably be more transparent.
If you have read and heard about Walmart's efficiency and demands for lower prices from its vendors, I think Lindows is just a tool. Specifically, a tool to force, gradually, to get Windows-bundled PCs to drop in price for Walmart's stores.
I would imagine Walmart is simply waiting for Lindows to be a clear enough replacement for Windows, that they can afford to bargain much more effectively with lowering the price of the Wintel-PCs, and maybe ultimately Windows.
"Because they didn't want to cause brand confusion."
That would be what one shareholder would tell another shareholder.
It is all a mindshare game. What it amounts to is Redhat wants to be more seriously considered with its Enterprise line. Having only a paid line of Redhat-branded products means Redhat as name refers only to enterprise solutions, not a free/packaged desktop. The free/packaged desktop was becoming (or the leadership thought it would eventually become) more common than the Enterprise. So when clientA thinks of Redhat, he would think of a desktop, not an "Enterprise Solution." This is not so much confusion as the opposite of what the company wants the customer to think.
As has been mentioned before, Redhat probably was not making much (if any) money off their desktop line, but their brand was very strongly tied to that line. So the solution, from someone's perspective, was to tie the successfully marketed (and recognized) brand to the product which had the most returns or possible returns on profit. While you are doing that, get the desktop development out of house where some of the best software components are created anyway - in the open source community. The open source community gets a new distro and Redhat gets a more exclusive name focused on the market which they intend to grow in. Win-Win, according to the company.
"how are we supposed to support an entire economy with this?"
No, no - you don't get it. We only need to worry about supporting economists so they can tell us what we are supposed to do to support the economy, so the economy in turn can support. . . well never mind.
I'm sorry, it does work something like that, though.
"...that is a title of honor that generally has to be conferred by others rather than self-assumed."
Like that's gonna happen. If this does catch on, it will be plastered on every wannabe's website. It will be abused and misapplied, just as the name hacker is treated.
Perhaps hackers are unique, even among themselves? Perhaps a logo does not represent all (or most) hackers? Perhaps claiming to have a logo that represents all hackers (or hackers in general) is presumptuous?
"It's my job to think of these things."
Again, perhaps this is presumptuous? Historians (like say, of American history or what have you) don't tell us what our symbols should be. (Well, if they do no one is listening).
More importantly, hackers do not necessarily need a symbol. Hackers aren't all in the same group and they certainly are not out to advertise themselves and get people to associate an image or idea with them. I would say they probably don't care what the general populous thinks, let alone if they know what a hacker is.
"I am now going to Pirate VPC and do my best to make sure pirated copies of VPC show up on as many forums and distribution points as I can find."
That sounds like practical, ethical solution (or not). What was your problem with MS again? Ethics ("dishonest, FRAUDULENT...low moral...Microsoft")? Perhaps you should find a way to uphold ethics and legality if you are going to take higher ground and condemn corporations for their lack of ethics and law-abiding business practices.
"there is nothing that can save you during a witch hunt."
You are absolutely right. A witch hunt doesn't have too much to do with who is really the witch, but more to do with who can be pinned as one.
That said, it is a good habit to always keep track of things involving other people. This applies to all sorts of things aside from your job - Your finances, your other assets, your email correspondence, and even your relatives. When something does come up or somebody is raising hell or a pitchfork, at least you have records. I wouldn't always recommend arguing with the mob of pitchforks, but the mob doesn't last forever and sooner or later, it comes in handy to have good documentation.
"take as many others down with you as you can manage."
I think that is where this whole concept goes off the deep end. Play the game by some good rules that a few others can probably respect and break the rules every now and then so they don't get you in bigger trouble.
But remember that the world is not all a pit of mean dogs and some people may actually support you and help you. Still, those special individuals will only do so if they see you as more human than mean dog.
War is not a step forward, it is a step to the side. To think "space" and "war" is not pragmatism, but rather cynicism, at the very least. At the worst it is backwards thinking - looking at the world and trying to adapt it to the past.
Still, if the military becomes more heavily involved in space, it may be (in the short term) a good thing for new developments. In the long-term, no one can be sure. I don't like the idea.
There is one idea in this article that is redeeming: Perhaps war will be looked down upon where people live. If we have new turf to fight over, perhaps the old turf will be something everyone wants to keep around without obliterating (a cross between how we view historical things and heavily populated regions now). This is very hopeful, but if we as a world cannot make the step of stopping large scale conflict, maybe we can make the step of keeping it off our home planet. What if weapons of a certain destructive force were only allowed off the planet?
I find it very hard to not talk about space without mentioning the term "step," - I guess Armstrong said it best.
I won't blame developers, but there is a true lesson in this. I too always test in Mozilla, but many times I simply must concede that IE is the market.
I have read comments from individuals who prefer a one browser environment.
This quote makes a good argument against that kind of ignorance:
"I understand having one browser makes web development easier. But imagine being able to simply have a set of standards, which allow code to display on multiple browsers, perhaps of the user's choice? Ideal, yes. Impossible? Already has happened.
Still efficiency and operability are minor points.
A browser is not the end-all of the Internet. There are open standards that need to be followed in all network-related models to promote the medium, not to mention save everyone time and ensure that a common medium exists.
I am not advocating the death of IE. It is not a bad browser, but it breaks rules which it should be following (ie. standards which make everyone's lives better, including CSS). If IE wants to please developers, the first thing it should work at it is compliance to the standard. Deviation without strict design means that parts of the standard are not standard at all (everyone pays for the lack of standards-compliance).
"It would be great if I could force everyone to use the same browser"
A more important problem arises out of the dominance of IE. That is that standards are twisted to the browser's interpretation, therefore any error or change in the openly designed standard is accepted by the development and user community. This essentially means that implementation choices or (more commonly) errors are dictated by the browser. If we subscribe to the second law of thermodynamics, these changes (being mostly errors) are almost exclusively for the worse...
Everyone should be pushing for standards-compliance."
quoted from computing.net forum.
Trust and responsibility is nothing new, he's right.
A quote from the article:
"That error page can lead to a dead end, with no options on how to get to where you tried to go."
Perhaps Mr. McLaughlin should try something like Google, where a service is performed at your request, not the advertiser's/coporations insistence.
Firstly, software is your choice. Your complaints about MS software may be worthy of attention. However, you chose to use MS. And now that this is /., we all know there are alternatives. You can buy them on the Internet and even in some stores.
"The lawsuit, which was filed on Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, also claims that Microsoft's security warnings are too complex to be understood by the general public and serve instead to tip off "fast-moving" hackers on how to exploit flaws in its operating system."
If you cannot interpret the information MS provides you, there are thousands of web pages and forums to help you. These are free as well. There are services which you can contract to do the work for you. Using computers has a cost. Using machines connected to the Internet has a cost. It is not the fault of MS that someone exploited the OS. They were irresponsible for leaving the vulnerabilities there, but unless you want to make the claim that they intentionally attempted to provide you with an insecure OS, then I do not understand the argument. XP does not say on the box "hack-proof: Try It!".
I have a little idea:
Software that directly controls physical devices (automobiles for example) which are themselves regulated should be held accountable to similar standards as the device which the software controls. They should be legally linked.
Software that does word processing, serves web pages, browses the Internet, sends email, etc. would not fall into this trap. We have disclaimers on lots of things saying don't use x with y or p as a q. So mark your software accordingly.
This is purely bad principle. This is outsourcing voting. Elections should be handled as much as possible by regular people. Companies should provide paper, pencils, and maybe some refreshments.
Now I RTFA and I understand this is for military absentee ballots. But this will set precedence. Who will get the job next year? Don't you think the standards applied here will eventually be used for absentee ballots for State Department personnel? And then eventually the general public?
If the government is not capable on its own of running a fully electronic election, then they should not be doing it. Period. Forget the cost of alternative systems or even the impossibility. If the DOD cannot handle this internally (they should, they handle billions of dollars of secrets) then I think it is a step to far to outsource it.
"The sanctity of the vote can't be compromised nor can the integrity of the system be compromised"
Doesn't that line make you feel worried. At least they could say,"we have the best security and experience." But no, "the integrity of the system [can't] be compromised."