err... sad to get into this debate, but yes there is Starbucks. i just passed by a huge one two days ago.
i would disagree that techies would find Singapore a better bet. like i said, net freedom is probably a high priority for a lot of techies and Singapore censors the net, not to mention print media and magazines like Time or newspapers like the WSJ when the government decides that their coverage is not positive of Singapore.
Dot com culture is everywhere here. It seems that every ad that I see has a url.
This place is a fascinating mix of east and west.
Net geeks lean heavily to the libertarian side and HK is definitely one of the freest countries in Asia.
No net censorship here a la Singapore and Australia. Free press, laissez-faire government. You're also free to chew gum.:) HK is consistently chosen as the freest economy in the world. Low flat tax. No sales tax.
For English speaking geeks, they should be able to fit right in as there is a sizable expatriate population and English and Chinese are the official languages.
Plenty of start-ups here. There's a culture of entrepreneurship born out of the place's immigrant roots. Some interesting sites: now.com comicinema
Lots of cutting edge tech. People are gadget crazy here just like in Japan. One of the highest rates of cell phone usage here, behind only Nokia-land, aka the Scandinavian countries. People change cell phones like clothes. WAP is already widespread here and i-mode is coming soon. Broadband is rapidly being adopted. Had the world's first interactive TV system.
Great food, HK movies, excellent public transportation system. Clean subways, trams, buses, ferries, even the world's longest escalator that cuts through the city up the hills!
Downer: pollution. That's the major complaint that people have but it's getting better. Also high cost of housing. Prices have dropped in the past few years but costs probably rival those of Tokyo and SF.
Oh yeah. And there's Starbucks, CNN and CNBC if you're into that sort of thing.
For those using windows, running "netstat -a 5" will show you all currently open connections. A nice program similar to windump is Z-monitor. Easy to use, logs all connections so you can see where info is being sent from your computer. Shareware though.
All the software has to do is look like a web browser or Telnet client and the firewall will probably let it through.
No, at least not for ZoneAlarm. It doesn't decide for you what it lets through. When a program tries to connect to the net, eg. your e-mail program or browser, it'll alert you and you can decide whether you want to allow it or disallow it. Programs are not allowed to access the net by default. However, there's no accounting for user stupidity and your idea holds that if they make it seem like a telnet client or browser, the user might be clueless enough to let it through. Not likely, but maybe.
They wouldn't need to. Anytime you feel that you no longer have confidence in them, you can start your own site. You can even use the slash code since it's GPL'ed.
What about a Slashdot for politics? Is there a space for something like this? Absolutely. In fact there is probably room for many Slashdots for politics
Indeed. Even on the net, most people still tend to rely on a few sources of information. Those sources of information will remain controlled by a few individuals or corporations. It used to be the newspapers, then the tv stations and now it's the web sites. We get complacent and turn to Slashdot for news but what happens when net censorship becomes something no longer interesting enough to cover and gets rejected as a story? We need to get our news from multiple sites and view our politics from multiple perspectives as well.
Now I find myself kicked off of Napster for downloading Metallica songs legally.
1. The person you downloaded the songs from is in effect distributing Metallica's music which is illegal whether or not you own the song yourself. See my.mp3.com lawsuit. Like it or not, that's the way the law is in this country.
2. Napster is the one that said, "if you can give us the list of names, we'll ban them." Lars just asked that Metallica have the freedom to not participate in napster and rather than providing a solution to that problem, napster chose to ban the users.
This was (I think) an interview conducted over the phone. The person who posed the question packed 2 questions into his post. It's easy to answer the second part and forget what the first part was. I would be more shocked if the interviewer asked the two parts separately, gave Lars a chance to answer one part first before asking the second and Lars responded with "no comment".
What difference does it make if you know exactly how small the sum he is making? How does it negate all the other points he made in the interview? He's still making something. He has to get the money to pay those lawyers from somewhere.:) Plus, 10 cents from every record sold times millions of records is still hundreds of thousands of dollars. Napster is giving him nothing. He earns nothing from what people are downloading off napster. You may argue that there is a side benefit in that people will sample his music, see if they like it and then make a purchase based on that download but there is no concrete proof that this is happening and there is a counterstudy that in the record stores closest to colleges, there's been a decline in record sales the past couple of years.
Give the guy a right to learn more about the issues and change his mind. Isn't that what we want? Aren't we trying to convince him that his actions are futile?
He said:
"Yeah, I would say that I have certainly through the course of this in the last month, absorbed what I've learned, and listened to other people and respected other people's opinons, and I have come to actually change my position from, I believe that if it's not Napster, then a type of service like Napster has the right to exist, on the condition that the only thing being traded through that service is music by people, artists and owners who have given that service permission. So that obviously changes the thrust of what he was saying."
Give him credit for having the guts to admit he thought something else and later changed his mind. Most people just stick stubbornly to whatever it is they initially believed even after they are given arguments to believe otherwise. And give credit to the people who calmly and respectfully explained a different perspective to Lars so that he could understand exactly what's going on.
Sure, Napster trading isn't causing our income to go down, but it's the principle of the thing --
They are doing this because of the potential in the future for it to become a huge financial problem if it isn't one already. Home tapers they feel will never hurt their sales as much because of the reduction in quality of their tapes and because you could only trade with a few people at a time. It's the potential of millions of perfect digital copies available to millions that scares them. He said:
"Understand one thing: this is not about a lot of money right now, because the money that's being lost right now is really pocket change, ok? It's about the priciple of the thing and it's about what could happen if this kind of thing is allowed to exist and run as rampant and out of control for the next 5 years as it has been for the last 6 months. Then it can become a money issue. Right now it's not a money issue."
You wrote: unless the trading is on a smaller scale, like the guy down the street with the Iron Maiden record; that's a different principle I guess.
Perhaps the "principle" Lars is talking about is the principle to be able to say "No, I don't want to be a part of it". He said,
"What it ultimately comes down to, and this is really the simplest way of saying it, is 'Who controls it?' And I want the right to control what is mine. And if I decide to give -- I respect the next guy, who wants to put his music on Napster, but I want him to respect the fact that maybe I don't. It's that simple. It's really the point. This is what the whole point of this country is, you have the right to make your own choices in this country, and we were not given that right. People take for granted that our music should be out there and be traded. What if we don't advocate that? They shouldn't argue with that. Napster has the right to exist. I support Napster's right to exist, OK? But I want them to support my right to not be part of it."
this is an agreement between the japanese government and sony to restrict distribution of the ps2 worldwide before sony are ready to do so, plain and simple. it has nothing to do with the potential weapons abuse.
the key is the last sentence in the telegraph article:
"Sony said it did not expect the restrictions to affect PlayStation 2's release in other countries."
So, the technology inside is the same, still could be misused as they claim but soon it will be legal to be exported for the sole reason that it will be distributed by sony and not some third party. if this were truly a weapons concern, wouldn't you think that they would restrict sony from releasing it in other countries as the US once did for crypto?
People, stop kidding yourself: The Internet is a tool that is used exclusively to steal from legitimate artists. Don't give me this crap about how you know "this guy who is a friend of a friend who has a garage band that uses the Internet to distribute his music." That sort of hand-waving is nothing more than cheap mental masturbation.
If you use the Internet, there is a greater than 99.9% chance that you are a thief.
That doesn't mean that I think the RIAA are the good guys here. They're not. They have consistently opposed reasonable, fair use of music that I bought and have a right to do with what I want. But the Internet is not reasonable or fair. They have a legitimate point, and I hope they stick it to the Internet and stick it good.
Now I don't know what the RIAA is going to do about all of these "open source" Internet clones like Freenet that have popped up, but the open source community would do well to get a life and realize that they're creating a public relations fiasco for everybody. If you aren't willing to pay for your music, you don't get to listen. Period. Don't like it? Deal with it.
This document is located at: http://www.bespoke.org/viridian/index.asp?t=140 Viridian Note 124:The Manifesto of January 3, 2000
Bruce Sterling bruces@well.com http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades/
IDEOLOGICAL FREEWARE: DISTRIBUTE AT WILL
The Manifesto of January 3, 2000
In 1914, the lamps went out all over Europe. Life during the rest of the twentieth century was like crouching under a rock.
But human life is not required to be like the twentieth century. That wasnt fate, it was merely a historical circumstance. In this new Belle Epoque, this delightful era, we are experiencing a prolonged break in the last centurys even tenor of mayhem. The time has come to step out of those shadows into a different cultural reality.
We need a sense of revived possibility, of genuine creative potential, of unfeigned joie de vivre. We have a new economy, but we have no new intelligentsia. We have massive flows of information and capital, but we have a grave scarcity of meaning. We know what we can buy, but we dont know what we want.
The twentieth century featured any number of -isms. They were fatally based on the delusion that philosophy trumps engineering. It doesnt. In a world fully competent to command its material basis, ideology is inherently flimsy. "Technology" in its broad sense: the ability to transform resources, the speed at which new possibilities can be opened and exploited, the multiple and various forms of command-and-control -- technology, not ideology, is the twentieth centurys lasting legacy. Technology broke the gridlock of the five-decade Cold War. It made a new era thinkable. And, finally, technology made a new era obvious.
But too many twentieth-century technologies are very like twentieth-century ideologies: rigid, monolithic, poisonous and non-sustainable.
We need clean, supple, healthy means of support for a crowded world. We need recyclable technologies, industries that dont take themselves with that Stalinesque seriousness that demands the brutal sacrifice of millions. In order to make flimsy, supple technologies thinkable, and then achievable, then finally obvious, we need an ideology that embraces its own obsolescence.
The immediate future wont be a period suitable for building monuments, establishing thousand-year regimes, creating new-model citizens, or asserting leaden certainties about anything whatsoever. The immediate future is about picking and choosing among previously unforeseen technical potentials.
Our time calls for intelligent fads. Our time calls for a self-aware, highly temporary array of broad social experiments, whose effects are localized, non-lethal and reversible -- yet transparent, and visible to all parties who might be persuaded to look.
The Internet is the natural test-bed for this fast-moving, fast-vanishing, start-up society. Because the native technology of the coming years is not the 19th century "machine" or the 20th century "product." It is the 21st century "gizmo."
A gizmo is a device with so many features and so many promises that it can never be mastered within its own useful lifetime. A gizmo is flimsy, cheap, colorful, friendly, intriguing, easily disposable, and unlikely to harm the user. The gizmos purpose is not to efficiently perform some function or effectively provide some service. A gizmo exists to snag the users attention, and to engage the user in a vast unfolding nexus of interlinked experience.
The gizmo in its manifold aspects is the beau ideal for contemporary design and engineering. Because that is what our culture will be like, at its heart, in its bones, in its organs. A gizmo culture. We will go in so many directions at once that most of them will never see fulfillment. And then they will be gone.
This is confusing and seems lacking in moral seriousness -- but only only by the rigid standards of the past century, bitterly obsessed with ultimate efficiencies and malignant final solutions. We need opportunities now, not efficiencies. We need inspired improvisation, not solutions. Technology can no longer bind us in a vast tonnage of iron, barbed wire and brick. We will stop heaving balky machines uphill. Instead, we begin judging entire techno-complexes as they virtually unfold, judging them by standards that are, in some very basic sense, aesthetic.
Henceforth, it is humans and human flesh that lasts out the years, not the mechanical infrastructure. Our bodies outlast our machines, and our bodies outlast our beliefs. People will outlive this "revolution" -- if spared an apocalypse, human individuals will outlive every "technology" that we are capable of deploying. Waves of techno-change will come faster and faster, and with less and less permanent consequence. Waves will be arriving with the somnolent regularity of Waikiki breakers. This "revolution" does not replace one social order with another. It replaces social order with an array of further possible transformations.
Since gizmos are easily outmoded and inherently impermanent, their most graceful form is as disposable consumer technology. We should embrace those gizmos that are pleasing, abject, humble, and closest to the human body. We should spurn those that are remote, difficult, threatening, poisonous and brittle.
Most of all, we must never, ever again feel awestruck wonder about any manufactured device. They dont last, and are not worthy of that form of respect.
We must engage with technology in a new way, from a fresh perspective. The arts traditionally hold this critical position. The arts are in a position today to inspire a burst of cultural vitality across the board. The times are very propitious for the arts. Theres a profound restlessness, theres money loose, there are new means of display and communication, and the nouveau riche have nothing to wear and nothing that suits their walls. Its a golden opportunity for techno-dandyism.
Artists, dont be afraid of commercialization. The sovereign remedy for commercialization is not for artists to hide from commerce. That cant be done any more, and in any case, hiding never wins and strong artists dont live in fear.
Instead, we have a new remedy available. The aggressive counter-action to commodity totalitarianism is to give things away. Not other peoples property -- that would be, sad to say, "piracy" -- but the products of your own imagination, your own creative effort.
This is the time to be thoughtful, be expressive, be generous. Be "taken advantage of." The channels exist now to give creativity away, at no cost, to millions. Never mind if you make large sums of money along the way. If you successfully seize attention, nothing is more likely. In a start-up society, huge sums can fall on innocent parties, almost by accident. That cannnot be helped, so dont worry about it any more. Henceforth, artistic integrity should be judged, not by ones classic bohemian seclusion from satanic mills and the grasping bourgeoisie, but by what one creates and gives away. That is the only scale of noncommercial integrity that makes any sense now.
Freedom has to be won, and, more importantly, the consequences of freedom have to be lived. You do not win freedom of information by filching data from a corporate warehouse, or begging the authorities to kindly abandon their monopolies, copyrights and patents. You have to create that freedom by a deliberate act of will, think it up, assemble it, sacrifice for it, make it free to others who have a similar will to live that freedom.
Ivory towers are no longer in order. We need ivory networks. Today, sitting quietly and thinking is the worlds greatest generator of wealth and prosperity. Moguls spend their lives sitting in chairs, staring into screens, and occasionally clicking a mouse. Though we didnt expect it, were all on the same net. We no longer need feudal shelters to protect us from the swords and torches of barbarian ignorance. So show them words and images: make it obvious, let them look. If theyre interested, fine; if not, go pick another website.
The structure of human intellectual achievement should be reformatted, so that any human being with a sincere interest can learn as much as possible, as rapidly as their abilities allow. The Internet is the greatest accomplishment of the twentieth centurys scientific community, and the Internet has made a new intelligentsia possible.
Like the scientific method, the Internet is a genuine, workable, verifiable means of intellectual liberation. Dont worry if its not universal. Awareness cant be doled out like soup, or sold like soap. Intellectual vitality is an inherently internal, self- actualizing process. The net must make this possible for people, not by blasting flags and gospel at the masses, but by opening doors for individual minds, who will then pursue their own interests.
This can be made to happen. It is quite near to us now, the trends favor it. The consequences of genuine intellectual freedom are literally and rightfully unimaginable. But the unimaginable is the right thing to do. The unimaginable is far better than perfection, because perfection can never be achieved, and it would kill us if it were. Whereas the "unimaginable" is, at its root, merely a healthy measure of our own limitations.
Human beings are imperfect and imperfectable, and their networks even more so. We should probably be happy for the noise and disruption in the channel, since so much of what we think we know, and love to teach, are mistakes and lies. But nevertheless, we can achieve progress here. We can remove some modicum of the fatal, choking constraints that throughout centuries have bent people double.
A human mind in pursuit of self-actualization should be allowed to go as far and as fast as our means allow. There is nothing utopian about this program; because there no timeless justice or perfect stability to be found in this vision. This practice will not lead us toward any dream, any City on a Hill, any phony form of static bliss. On the contrary, it will lead us into closer and closer, into more and more immediate contact, with the issues that really bedevil us.
Before many more decades pass, the human race will begin to obtain what it really wants. Then we will find ourselves confronted, in our bedrooms, streets, and breakfast tables, with real-world avatars of those Faustian visions of power and ability that have previously existed only in myth. Our aspirations will become consequences. Thats when our *real* trouble starts.
However, that is not a contemporary problem. The problems we face today are not those somber, long-term problems. On the contrary, we very clearly exist in a highly fortunate time with very minor problems.
The so-called human condition wont survive the next hundred years. That fate is written on the forehead of the 21st century in letters of fire. That fate can be wisely shaped, or somewhat postponed, or brutally annihilated, but it cannot be denied. It is coming because we want it. Its not an alien imposition; it is borne from the inchoate depths of our own desires. But were not beyond the limits of humanity, suffering that, exulting in that. Were just going there, visibly moving closer to it. Once we get there, well find no rest there. The appetite of divine discontent always grows by the feeding.
This dire knowledge makes todays scene seem quite playful and delightful by faux-retrospect. Our worst problems, which may seem so large, diffuse, and morbid, are mere teenage angst compared to the conundrums were busily preparing for some other generation.
Sober assessment of the contemporary scene makes it crystal-clear that a carnival atmosphere is in order. We exist in a highly disposable civilization that is hell- bent on outmoding itself. The pace of change is melting former physical restraints into a maelstrom of reformattable virtualities. Thats here, its real, it is truly our situation. We should live as if we know this is true. This is where our own sincerity and authenticity are to be found: in the strong conviction that the contemporary is temporary.
We need to live in these conditions in good faith. We need to re-imagine life and make the new implications clear. Its a murky situation, but we must not flinch from it; we must drench all of it in light. Because this is our home. We have no other. Our children live here. The mushroom clouds of the twentieth century have parted. We find ourselves on a beach, with wave after frothy wave of transformation. We have means, motive, and opportunity. Spread the light.
Henceforth, it will make more and more sense to base our deepest convictions around a hands-on confrontation with the consequences of technology. Thats where the action is. On January 3, 2000, thats what its about. The deepest resources of human creativity have a vital role there. Its where inspiration is most needed, its the place to make a difference. Come out. Stand up. Shine.
In case you were wondering, these are the other people that Fortune has picked besides Linus as people to watch in 2000:
Jeff Bezos- Amazon.com Mike Armstrong- AT&T Jill Barad- Mattel Jeffrey Immelt- General Electric Michael Eisner/Steve Jobs- as Disney/Pixar and not as Apple CEO David Komansky- Merrill Lynch John Reed / Robert Rubin / Sandy Weill- Citicorp Bill Ford Jr- Ford Motor Co. Mary Meeker- Morgan Stanley Dean Witter Chris Gent- Vodafone Nobuyuki Idei- Sony Bill Gates- Microsoft Lou Gerstner- IBM Peter Drucker- business management guru Carly Fiorina- HP
There's been a lot of talk recently about Mozilla reaching usable status and now Opera releasing a beta for Linux.
However, I would like to call attention to a truly free (beer and speech) browser that has been available for Linux (as well Windows, Solaris and AIX). This is the W3 consortium's Amaya browser.
Some features (adapted from the w3 page): 1. Is a browser as well as editor 2. Amaya maintains a consistent internal document model adhering to the DTD. 3. Amaya is easily extended. Several APIs and mechanisms are available to change and extend its functionality with the least modification to the source code. Amaya thus allows for easy customization by providing a means for extensions to access Amaya's internal procedures and functions. 4. Support of MathML protocol.
hello, i enjoyed reading your comments. very enlightening.
i too live in hk btw, but i do travel frequently between hk and the us so i can see the differences as well as the similarities.
my main point in the previous post was that the things were not worse now than they were before. without making a judgement on whether or not things are currently bad or good, simply that it is no worse than other british colonial rule.
Furthermore, any political activity is now being discouraged - on and off campus - in subtle ways.
this may indeed be true, but again, i would say that it is again no different than pre-1997. political activity was never encouraged in hk untilthe joint declaration in 1984(?). that is, until the brits realized that they would have to return hk to china. and why was political activity never encouraged? that would be because people would progress from demanding self-governance on campus to self-governance in government which would be impossible under a colonial system and would lead to possibly riots again (it happened in the 60s) or even the colonialists being booted out.
Unsually to a colonial power, the British did introduce democracy in Hongkong even though few Hongkongers were actively asking for it. The P.R.C. simply put the evil genie of democracy back in the bottle the minute they took over Hongkong.
it was not that unusual at all, given that the limited democracy that they did introduce was only after they realized they would be gone after 1997, as i mentioned above. if they had truly wanted to introduce democracy, they would have done so 30 or maybe even 50 years ago. also, let us remember that the legislative council under british rule was just as powerful/powerless/representative/unrepresentative as it is today (with the exception of patten's reforms) and no matter what happened, in the end, it was still the governor making all the decisions.
you call the current post-handover system as "HK people truly governing HK"? Where do you get your information? China Daily?;-) The power lies solely at the hands of the Beijing appointed governor, I mean Chief Executive.
you are right. the chief executive would never make a major decision without approval from beijing. i am not under any illusions that they are not influenced by the ccp. but again, this is no different than the british colonialists. would the governor ever make a major decision without consulting the british prime minister? the power lies solely at the hands of the beijing appointed chief executive but is this any different from the power being in the hands of the london appointed governor? if britain really wanted to introduce democracy to hk like you say, they would have allowed the hk people to actually elect their own leader instead of having a governor. if people had actually had that right, it would have been that much harder for beijing to take that right away.
If Hongkong is to remain an international city different from those in the mainland China, the ethnic background of its citizens or government employees should be of no relevance.
absolutely. i agree. people should be picked based solely on their compentency and ability. that is why i think it is good that there are still some brits in high posts, provided they are best suited for the job. but in the past, the policy was that it was selecting people for the top jobs, provided they are brits.
Interestingly, the P.R.C regularly, and without any explanation, refuses entry to the "motherland" to those belonging to the democratic camp or even unaffiliated legislators who've dared to criticize Beijing's decisions affecting Hongkong.
very true. it is wrong and despicable. but i suppose it could be argued that that is "one country two systems" in practice. they only prevent certain people from entering china (one system) but they do not arrest these people for protesting in hk (another system) and one could argue that were they in the first system, they would be arrested on the spot as people regularly are in mainland china for simply exercising their human rights.
anyway, thanks for a great reply. i'd love to hear even more on this issue. it's very interesting and we can only learn from each other.
thanks to babelfish: in french: écoute clandestine in german: Heimlich zuhören in italian: ascoltare di nascosto in spanish: el escuchar detras de las puertas in portuguese: eavesdropping (!?!)
Hello. Speaking as someone who has lived in both the US and HK and travels between the two frequently, I enjoyed reading your post but I would like to question a few of the points you made and clarify some misconceptions. This is offtopic from Linux in China but might be helpful in terms of forming a general picture of China and HK. Let me preface my comments by saying that i am talking about hk, which is distinct from the system in mainland china, with its own borders and set of laws and system of government.
I really do not want to stay in Hong Kong anymore. It's true that to a certain extent, university students in HK can do some protests.
Nothing has changed with regards to the protest law. People are allowed to protest (and have) just as they did prior to the return to China. The amount of protests has been the same. In fact, the biggest protest, the one held to be a litmus test by human rights activists of the freedom of hk is the protest against the June 4 Tiananmen massacre has been held every year since the handover, including a large 10th anniversary protest held just this year.
Nothing is stopping people from protesting or holding demonstrations and people regularly do outside the legislative council and court of final appeal.
If there are indeed restrictions, those are the same restrictions that the british colonial government placed in hk for all the years that they were in power.
But noticably after the handover, the government is biased to Beijing.
Who do you think the colonial governement was biased towards to pre-1997? The Hong Kong people? If so, you are sorely mistaken. The British HK government looked out for British interests. If you have any knowledge of HK history at all, please look at who was in government pre-1997. in particular, look at who were in the top government jobs. If you look, you will see that they were all British (caucasian) people. Not a single top post was filled by local Chinese people. Not to mention the post of governor of course. It was not until there was an agreement to return HK to China that local Chinese people were promoted to the top jobs in a process of localization. It has only been the last few years that it has truly been HK people governing HK.
As a further example of this, while anybody from Britain was allowed to come to HK, stay and work as long as they liked, people from HK were not afforded the same right to go to Britain.
Of course, this is what being a colony means. I know that. Just wanted to make sure that people were under no false impressions of the "great and good" times of HK pre-1997.
And if you're in the US, don't be under illusions that it is any freer than HK (not mainland China, which remains oppressive and an abuser of human rights). Who do you think has power over the congress critters? You? "the people"? Big business and lobbying groups are deciding the fate of this country. Why do you think gun control laws don't get passed even though polls show most people are in favor of it? If you don't have a lobbying group, you don't have power. And if you are under any illusions that the media is free and unbiased (forums like/. are changing that impression), i suggest you read herman and chomsky's manufacturing consent.
i'd love to hear more views on this issue, either agreeing or disagreeing.
Thought about trying WP2000. Saw the form. Thought better of it.
Note to Corel and all other companies:
Don't make these mandatory forms that people have to fill out before using your product. You will gain NOTHING from them. NOTHING! except a bunch of useless fake data.
There is no way for you to verify any of that information. Even if some people do fill in the correct information, the false data will simply screw up any analyses you plan to do on it.
If you're looking for the future of TV, wait until they are able to squeeze TV-quality video and audio (full screen) down a 56k line. Or else wait until everyone has broadband When they are able to achieve either one of these cases, accompanied by a set-top box, not only will everyone be able to surf the net from a TV, but they will also be able to watch every single television channel in the world, no longer hampered by local tv regulations, over-the-air and cable size limitations.
"This can take the form of pirating, industrial and governmental espionage (anyone who thinks the Chinese haven't been spying here is badly mistaken"
1. Are there no pirates in developed nations? 2. Do you think that we (the US) and Britain do not engage in "governmental espionage"? How do you think we found out about their alleged spying activities? Anyone who thinks that America haven't been spying on other countries is badly mistaken.
In this industry, any entrepreneur who goes public (and any entrepreneur who sells his or her business for several hundred million dollars) can only get to that point by spurning many overtures to be acquired along the way. A start-up that shows any inkling of success is immediately pinged with interest from established players trying to get the entrepreneurs to sell out. The pinging never stops. Often one must ignore the pinging, despite the clamor within the company to take the easy money and go live on a beach. One of the pains entrepreneurs suffer is that they can never disclose that these negotiations ever occurred, because both sides are sworn to secrecy by a nondisclosure agreement. The entrepreneur who looks, to the public, as if he or she "sold out" for an easy several hundred million can never mention the many times he or she refused to sell out for less.
I wonder if slashdot bit at the first offer or could have held out for hundreds of millions more?
Slashdot Mirror
i would disagree that techies would find Singapore a better bet. like i said, net freedom is probably a high priority for a lot of techies and Singapore censors the net, not to mention print media and magazines like Time or newspapers like the WSJ when the government decides that their coverage is not positive of Singapore.
This place is a fascinating mix of east and west.
Net geeks lean heavily to the libertarian side and HK is definitely one of the freest countries in Asia.
No net censorship here a la Singapore and Australia. Free press, laissez-faire government. You're also free to chew gum. :) HK is consistently chosen as the freest economy in the world. Low flat tax. No sales tax.
For English speaking geeks, they should be able to fit right in as there is a sizable expatriate population and English and Chinese are the official languages.
Plenty of start-ups here. There's a culture of entrepreneurship born out of the place's immigrant roots. Some interesting sites:
now.com
comicinema
Lots of cutting edge tech. People are gadget crazy here just like in Japan. One of the highest rates of cell phone usage here, behind only Nokia-land, aka the Scandinavian countries. People change cell phones like clothes. WAP is already widespread here and i-mode is coming soon. Broadband is rapidly being adopted. Had the world's first interactive TV system.
Great food, HK movies, excellent public transportation system. Clean subways, trams, buses, ferries, even the world's longest escalator that cuts through the city up the hills!
Downer: pollution. That's the major complaint that people have but it's getting better. Also high cost of housing. Prices have dropped in the past few years but costs probably rival those of Tokyo and SF.
Oh yeah. And there's Starbucks, CNN and CNBC if you're into that sort of thing.
thanks a lot.
now i can't get that tune out of my head.
go speed racer! go speed racer!
go speed racer, GO!
For those using windows, running "netstat -a 5" will show you all currently open connections. A nice program similar to windump is Z-monitor. Easy to use, logs all connections so you can see where info is being sent from your computer. Shareware though.
No, at least not for ZoneAlarm. It doesn't decide for you what it lets through. When a program tries to connect to the net, eg. your e-mail program or browser, it'll alert you and you can decide whether you want to allow it or disallow it. Programs are not allowed to access the net by default. However, there's no accounting for user stupidity and your idea holds that if they make it seem like a telnet client or browser, the user might be clueless enough to let it through. Not likely, but maybe.
They wouldn't need to. Anytime you feel that you no longer have confidence in them, you can start your own site. You can even use the slash code since it's GPL'ed.
Indeed. Even on the net, most people still tend to rely on a few sources of information. Those sources of information will remain controlled by a few individuals or corporations. It used to be the newspapers, then the tv stations and now it's the web sites. We get complacent and turn to Slashdot for news but what happens when net censorship becomes something no longer interesting enough to cover and gets rejected as a story? We need to get our news from multiple sites and view our politics from multiple perspectives as well.
1. The person you downloaded the songs from is in effect distributing Metallica's music which is illegal whether or not you own the song yourself. See my.mp3.com lawsuit. Like it or not, that's the way the law is in this country.
2. Napster is the one that said, "if you can give us the list of names, we'll ban them." Lars just asked that Metallica have the freedom to not participate in napster and rather than providing a solution to that problem, napster chose to ban the users.
What difference does it make if you know exactly how small the sum he is making? How does it negate all the other points he made in the interview? He's still making something. He has to get the money to pay those lawyers from somewhere.
He said:
"Yeah, I would say that I have certainly through the course of this in the last month, absorbed what I've learned, and listened to other people and respected other people's opinons, and I have come to actually change my position from, I believe that if it's not Napster, then a type of service like Napster has the right to exist, on the condition that the only thing being traded through that service is music by people, artists and owners who have given that service permission. So that obviously changes the thrust of what he was saying."
Give him credit for having the guts to admit he thought something else and later changed his mind. Most people just stick stubbornly to whatever it is they initially believed even after they are given arguments to believe otherwise. And give credit to the people who calmly and respectfully explained a different perspective to Lars so that he could understand exactly what's going on.
They are doing this because of the potential in the future for it to become a huge financial problem if it isn't one already. Home tapers they feel will never hurt their sales as much because of the reduction in quality of their tapes and because you could only trade with a few people at a time. It's the potential of millions of perfect digital copies available to millions that scares them. He said:
"Understand one thing: this is not about a lot of money right now, because the money that's being lost right now is really pocket change, ok? It's about the priciple of the thing and it's about what could happen if this kind of thing is allowed to exist and run as rampant and out of control for the next 5 years as it has been for the last 6 months. Then it can become a money issue. Right now it's not a money issue."
You wrote: unless the trading is on a smaller scale, like the guy down the street with the Iron Maiden record; that's a different principle I guess.
Perhaps the "principle" Lars is talking about is the principle to be able to say "No, I don't want to be a part of it". He said,
"What it ultimately comes down to, and this is really the simplest way of saying it, is 'Who controls it?' And I want the right to control what is mine. And if I decide to give -- I respect the next guy, who wants to put his music on Napster, but I want him to respect the fact that maybe I don't. It's that simple. It's really the point. This is what the whole point of this country is, you have the right to make your own choices in this country, and we were not given that right. People take for granted that our music should be out there and be traded. What if we don't advocate that? They shouldn't argue with that. Napster has the right to exist. I support Napster's right to exist, OK? But I want them to support my right to not be part of it."
this is an agreement between the japanese government and sony to restrict distribution of the ps2 worldwide before sony are ready to do so, plain and simple. it has nothing to do with the potential weapons abuse.
the key is the last sentence in the telegraph article:
"Sony said it did not expect the restrictions to affect PlayStation 2's release in other countries."
So, the technology inside is the same, still could be misused as they claim but soon it will be legal to be exported for the sole reason that it will be distributed by sony and not some third party. if this were truly a weapons concern, wouldn't you think that they would restrict sony from releasing it in other countries as the US once did for crypto?
I do. I really do.
People, stop kidding yourself: The Internet is a tool that is used exclusively to steal from legitimate artists. Don't give me this crap about how you know "this guy who is a friend of a friend who has a garage band that uses the Internet to distribute his music." That sort of hand-waving is nothing more than cheap mental masturbation.
If you use the Internet, there is a greater than 99.9% chance that you are a thief.
That doesn't mean that I think the RIAA are the good guys here. They're not. They have consistently opposed reasonable, fair use of music that I bought and have a right to do with what I want. But the Internet is not reasonable or fair. They have a legitimate point, and I hope they stick it to the Internet and stick it good.
Now I don't know what the RIAA is going to do about all of these "open source" Internet clones like Freenet that have popped up, but the open source community would do well to get a life and realize that they're creating a public relations fiasco for everybody. If you aren't willing to pay for your music, you don't get to listen. Period. Don't like it? Deal with it.
http://www.bespoke.org/viridian/index.asp?t=140
Viridian Note 124:The Manifesto of January 3, 2000
Bruce Sterling
bruces@well.com
http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades/
IDEOLOGICAL FREEWARE: DISTRIBUTE AT WILL
The Manifesto of January 3, 2000
In 1914, the lamps went out all over Europe.
Life during the rest of the twentieth century was
like crouching under a rock.
But human life is not required to be like the
twentieth century. That wasnt fate, it was merely
a historical circumstance. In this new Belle Epoque,
this delightful era, we are experiencing a prolonged break
in the last centurys even tenor of mayhem. The time has
come to step out of those shadows into a different
cultural reality.
We need a sense of revived possibility, of genuine
creative potential, of unfeigned joie de vivre. We have a
new economy, but we have no new intelligentsia. We have
massive flows of information and capital, but we have a
grave scarcity of meaning. We know what we can buy, but
we dont know what we want.
The twentieth century featured any number of -isms.
They were fatally based on the delusion that philosophy
trumps engineering. It doesnt. In a world fully
competent to command its material basis, ideology is
inherently flimsy. "Technology" in its broad sense:
the ability to transform resources, the speed at which new
possibilities can be opened and exploited, the multiple
and various forms of command-and-control -- technology,
not ideology, is the twentieth centurys lasting legacy.
Technology broke the gridlock of the five-decade Cold War.
It made a new era thinkable. And, finally, technology
made a new era obvious.
But too many twentieth-century technologies
are very like twentieth-century ideologies: rigid,
monolithic, poisonous and non-sustainable.
We need clean, supple, healthy means of support for
a crowded world. We need recyclable technologies,
industries that dont take themselves with that
Stalinesque seriousness that demands the brutal sacrifice
of millions. In order to make flimsy, supple technologies
thinkable, and then achievable, then finally obvious, we
need an ideology that embraces its own obsolescence.
The immediate future wont be a period suitable for
building monuments, establishing thousand-year regimes,
creating new-model citizens, or asserting leaden
certainties about anything whatsoever. The immediate
future is about picking and choosing among previously
unforeseen technical potentials.
Our time calls for intelligent fads. Our time calls
for a self-aware, highly temporary array of broad social
experiments, whose effects are localized, non-lethal and
reversible -- yet transparent, and visible to all parties
who might be persuaded to look.
The Internet is the natural test-bed for this
fast-moving, fast-vanishing, start-up society. Because
the native technology of the coming years is not the 19th
century "machine" or the 20th century "product." It is
the 21st century "gizmo."
A gizmo is a device with so many features and so
many promises that it can never be mastered within its
own useful lifetime. A gizmo is flimsy, cheap, colorful,
friendly, intriguing, easily disposable, and unlikely to
harm the user. The gizmos purpose is not to
efficiently perform some function or effectively provide
some service. A gizmo exists to snag the users
attention, and to engage the user in a vast
unfolding nexus of interlinked experience.
The gizmo in its manifold aspects is the beau ideal
for contemporary design and engineering. Because that is
what our culture will be like, at its heart, in its bones,
in its organs. A gizmo culture. We will go in so many
directions at once that most of them will never see
fulfillment. And then they will be gone.
This is confusing and seems lacking in moral
seriousness -- but only only by the rigid standards of
the past century, bitterly obsessed with ultimate
efficiencies and malignant final solutions. We need
opportunities now, not efficiencies. We need inspired
improvisation, not solutions. Technology can no longer
bind us in a vast tonnage of iron, barbed wire and brick.
We will stop heaving balky machines uphill. Instead, we
begin judging entire techno-complexes as they virtually
unfold, judging them by standards that are, in some very
basic sense, aesthetic.
Henceforth, it is humans and human flesh that lasts
out the years, not the mechanical infrastructure. Our
bodies outlast our machines, and our bodies outlast our
beliefs. People will outlive this "revolution" -- if
spared an apocalypse, human individuals will outlive every
"technology" that we are capable of deploying. Waves of
techno-change will come faster and faster, and with less
and less permanent consequence. Waves will be arriving
with the somnolent regularity of Waikiki breakers. This
"revolution" does not replace one social order with
another. It replaces social order with an array of further
possible transformations.
Since gizmos are easily outmoded and inherently
impermanent, their most graceful form is as disposable
consumer technology. We should embrace those gizmos that
are pleasing, abject, humble, and closest to the human
body. We should spurn those that are remote, difficult,
threatening, poisonous and brittle.
Most of all, we must never, ever again feel awestruck
wonder about any manufactured device. They dont last,
and are not worthy of that form of respect.
We must engage with technology in a new way, from a
fresh perspective. The arts traditionally hold this
critical position. The arts are in a position today to
inspire a burst of cultural vitality across the board.
The times are very propitious for the arts. Theres a
profound restlessness, theres money loose, there are new
means of display and communication, and the nouveau riche
have nothing to wear and nothing that suits their walls.
Its a golden opportunity for techno-dandyism.
Artists, dont be afraid of commercialization. The
sovereign remedy for commercialization is not for artists
to hide from commerce. That cant be done any more, and
in any case, hiding never wins and strong artists dont
live in fear.
Instead, we have a new remedy available. The
aggressive counter-action to commodity totalitarianism is
to give things away. Not other peoples property -- that
would be, sad to say, "piracy" -- but the products of your
own imagination, your own creative effort.
This is the time to be thoughtful, be expressive, be
generous. Be "taken advantage of." The channels exist
now to give creativity away, at no cost, to millions.
Never mind if you make large sums of money along the way.
If you successfully seize attention, nothing is more
likely. In a start-up society, huge sums can fall on
innocent parties, almost by accident. That cannnot be
helped, so dont worry about it any more. Henceforth,
artistic integrity should be judged, not by ones classic
bohemian seclusion from satanic mills and the grasping
bourgeoisie, but by what one creates and gives away.
That is the only scale of noncommercial integrity that
makes any sense now.
Freedom has to be won, and, more importantly, the
consequences of freedom have to be lived. You do not win
freedom of information by filching data from a corporate
warehouse, or begging the authorities to kindly abandon
their monopolies, copyrights and patents. You have to
create that freedom by a deliberate act of will, think it
up, assemble it, sacrifice for it, make it free to others
who have a similar will to live that freedom.
Ivory towers are no longer in order. We need ivory
networks. Today, sitting quietly and thinking is the
worlds greatest generator of wealth and prosperity.
Moguls spend their lives sitting in chairs, staring into
screens, and occasionally clicking a mouse. Though we
didnt expect it, were all on the same net. We no longer
need feudal shelters to protect us from the swords and
torches of barbarian ignorance. So show them words and
images: make it obvious, let them look. If theyre
interested, fine; if not, go pick another website.
The structure of human intellectual achievement
should be reformatted, so that any human being with a
sincere interest can learn as much as possible, as rapidly
as their abilities allow. The Internet is the greatest
accomplishment of the twentieth centurys scientific
community, and the Internet has made a new intelligentsia
possible.
Like the scientific method, the Internet is a
genuine, workable, verifiable means of intellectual
liberation. Dont worry if its not universal. Awareness
cant be doled out like soup, or sold like soap.
Intellectual vitality is an inherently internal, self-
actualizing process. The net must make this possible
for people, not by blasting flags and gospel at the
masses, but by opening doors for individual minds, who
will then pursue their own interests.
This can be made to happen. It is quite near to us
now, the trends favor it. The consequences of genuine
intellectual freedom are literally and rightfully
unimaginable. But the unimaginable is the right thing to
do. The unimaginable is far better than perfection,
because perfection can never be achieved, and it would
kill us if it were. Whereas the "unimaginable" is, at
its root, merely a healthy measure of our own limitations.
Human beings are imperfect and imperfectable, and
their networks even more so. We should probably be happy
for the noise and disruption in the channel, since so much
of what we think we know, and love to teach, are mistakes
and lies. But nevertheless, we can achieve progress
here. We can remove some modicum of the fatal, choking
constraints that throughout centuries have bent people
double.
A human mind in pursuit of self-actualization should
be allowed to go as far and as fast as our means allow.
There is nothing utopian about this program; because
there no timeless justice or perfect stability to be found
in this vision. This practice will not lead us toward
any dream, any City on a Hill, any phony form of static
bliss. On the contrary, it will lead us into closer and
closer, into more and more immediate contact, with the
issues that really bedevil us.
Before many more decades pass, the human race will
begin to obtain what it really wants. Then we will find
ourselves confronted, in our bedrooms, streets, and
breakfast tables, with real-world avatars of those
Faustian visions of power and ability that have previously
existed only in myth. Our aspirations will become
consequences. Thats when our *real* trouble starts.
However, that is not a contemporary problem. The
problems we face today are not those somber, long-term
problems. On the contrary, we very clearly exist in a
highly fortunate time with very minor problems.
The so-called human condition wont survive the
next hundred years. That fate is written on the forehead
of the 21st century in letters of fire. That fate can be
wisely shaped, or somewhat postponed, or brutally
annihilated, but it cannot be denied. It is coming
because we want it. Its not an alien imposition; it is
borne from the inchoate depths of our own desires.
But were not beyond the limits of humanity, suffering
that, exulting in that. Were just going there, visibly
moving closer to it. Once we get there, well find no
rest there. The appetite of divine discontent always
grows by the feeding.
This dire knowledge makes todays scene seem quite
playful and delightful by faux-retrospect. Our worst
problems, which may seem so large, diffuse, and morbid,
are mere teenage angst compared to the conundrums were
busily preparing for some other generation.
Sober assessment of the contemporary scene makes it
crystal-clear that a carnival atmosphere is in order. We
exist in a highly disposable civilization that is hell-
bent on outmoding itself. The pace of change is melting
former physical restraints into a maelstrom of
reformattable virtualities. Thats here, its real,
it is truly our situation. We should live as
if we know this is true. This is where our own sincerity
and authenticity are to be found: in the strong
conviction that the contemporary is temporary.
We need to live in these conditions in good faith.
We need to re-imagine life and make the new implications
clear. Its a murky situation, but we must not flinch
from it; we must drench all of it in light. Because this
is our home. We have no other. Our children live here.
The mushroom clouds of the twentieth century have parted.
We find ourselves on a beach, with wave after frothy
wave of transformation. We have means, motive, and
opportunity. Spread the light.
Henceforth, it will make more and more sense to
base our deepest convictions around a hands-on
confrontation with the consequences of technology.
Thats where the action is. On January 3, 2000, thats
what its about. The deepest resources of human
creativity have a vital role there. Its where
inspiration is most needed, its the place to make a
difference. Come out. Stand up. Shine.
Turn the lamps on all over the world.
In case you were wondering, these are the other people that Fortune has picked besides Linus as people to watch in 2000:
Jeff Bezos- Amazon.com
Mike Armstrong- AT&T
Jill Barad- Mattel
Jeffrey Immelt- General Electric
Michael Eisner/Steve Jobs- as Disney/Pixar and not as Apple CEO
David Komansky- Merrill Lynch
John Reed / Robert Rubin / Sandy Weill- Citicorp
Bill Ford Jr- Ford Motor Co.
Mary Meeker- Morgan Stanley Dean Witter
Chris Gent- Vodafone
Nobuyuki Idei- Sony
Bill Gates- Microsoft
Lou Gerstner- IBM
Peter Drucker- business management guru
Carly Fiorina- HP
Linus was listed last in this list.
However, I would like to call attention to a truly free (beer and speech) browser that has been available for Linux (as well Windows, Solaris and AIX). This is the W3 consortium's Amaya browser.
Some features (adapted from the w3 page):
1. Is a browser as well as editor
2. Amaya maintains a consistent internal document model adhering to the DTD.
3. Amaya is easily extended.
Several APIs and mechanisms are available to change and extend its functionality with the least modification to the source code. Amaya thus allows for easy customization by providing a means for extensions to access Amaya's internal procedures and functions.
4. Support of MathML protocol.
But best of all, it's released under the W3 Copyright which is fully compatible with the GPL
Why not give it a try?
Binary Distribution
Source Code
RPM distribution
Here's a few things you might be interested in:
Why Yahoo uses FreeBSD written by David Filo, co-founder of Yahoo
Booting Linux and FreeBSD using BootEasy
Booting Linux and FreeBSD using LILO
Linux+FreeBSD mini-HOWTO Excellent resource for installing and using FreeBSD and Linux on the same system
i too live in hk btw, but i do travel frequently between hk and the us so i can see the differences as well as the similarities.
my main point in the previous post was that the things were not worse now than they were before. without making a judgement on whether or not things are currently bad or good, simply that it is no worse than other british colonial rule.
Furthermore, any political activity is now being discouraged - on and off campus - in subtle ways.
this may indeed be true, but again, i would say that it is again no different than pre-1997. political activity was never encouraged in hk untilthe joint declaration in 1984(?). that is, until the brits realized that they would have to return hk to china. and why was political activity never encouraged? that would be because people would progress from demanding self-governance on campus to self-governance in government which would be impossible under a colonial system and would lead to possibly riots again (it happened in the 60s) or even the colonialists being booted out.
Unsually to a colonial power, the British did introduce democracy in Hongkong even though few Hongkongers were actively asking for it. The P.R.C. simply put the evil genie of democracy back in the bottle the minute they took over Hongkong.
it was not that unusual at all, given that the limited democracy that they did introduce was only after they realized they would be gone after 1997, as i mentioned above. if they had truly wanted to introduce democracy, they would have done so 30 or maybe even 50 years ago. also, let us remember that the legislative council under british rule was just as powerful/powerless/representative/unrepresentative as it is today (with the exception of patten's reforms) and no matter what happened, in the end, it was still the governor making all the decisions.
you call the current post-handover system as "HK people truly governing HK"? Where do you get your information? China Daily? ;-) The power lies solely at the hands of the Beijing appointed governor, I mean Chief Executive.
you are right. the chief executive would never make a major decision without approval from beijing. i am not under any illusions that they are not influenced by the ccp. but again, this is no different than the british colonialists. would the governor ever make a major decision without consulting the british prime minister? the power lies solely at the hands of the beijing appointed chief executive but is this any different from the power being in the hands of the london appointed governor? if britain really wanted to introduce democracy to hk like you say, they would have allowed the hk people to actually elect their own leader instead of having a governor. if people had actually had that right, it would have been that much harder for beijing to take that right away.
If Hongkong is to remain an international city different from those in the mainland China, the ethnic background of its citizens or government employees should be of no relevance.
absolutely. i agree. people should be picked based solely on their compentency and ability. that is why i think it is good that there are still some brits in high posts, provided they are best suited for the job. but in the past, the policy was that it was selecting people for the top jobs, provided they are brits.
Interestingly, the P.R.C regularly, and without any explanation, refuses entry to the "motherland" to those belonging to the democratic camp or even unaffiliated legislators who've dared to criticize Beijing's decisions affecting Hongkong.
very true. it is wrong and despicable. but i suppose it could be argued that that is "one country two systems" in practice. they only prevent certain people from entering china (one system) but they do not arrest these people for protesting in hk (another system) and one could argue that were they in the first system, they would be arrested on the spot as people regularly are in mainland china for simply exercising their human rights.
anyway, thanks for a great reply. i'd love to hear even more on this issue. it's very interesting and we can only learn from each other.
thanks to babelfish: in french: écoute clandestine
in german: Heimlich zuhören
in italian: ascoltare di nascosto
in spanish: el escuchar detras de las puertas
in portuguese: eavesdropping (!?!)
maybe the portuguese don't do such things. ;)
I really do not want to stay in Hong Kong anymore. It's true that to a certain extent, university students in HK can do some protests.
Nothing has changed with regards to the protest law. People are allowed to protest (and have) just as they did prior to the return to China. The amount of protests has been the same. In fact, the biggest protest, the one held to be a litmus test by human rights activists of the freedom of hk is the protest against the June 4 Tiananmen massacre has been held every year since the handover, including a large 10th anniversary protest held just this year.
Nothing is stopping people from protesting or holding demonstrations and people regularly do outside the legislative council and court of final appeal.
If there are indeed restrictions, those are the same restrictions that the british colonial government placed in hk for all the years that they were in power.
But noticably after the handover, the government is biased to Beijing.
Who do you think the colonial governement was biased towards to pre-1997? The Hong Kong people? If so, you are sorely mistaken. The British HK government looked out for British interests. If you have any knowledge of HK history at all, please look at who was in government pre-1997. in particular, look at who were in the top government jobs. If you look, you will see that they were all British (caucasian) people. Not a single top post was filled by local Chinese people. Not to mention the post of governor of course. It was not until there was an agreement to return HK to China that local Chinese people were promoted to the top jobs in a process of localization. It has only been the last few years that it has truly been HK people governing HK.
As a further example of this, while anybody from Britain was allowed to come to HK, stay and work as long as they liked, people from HK were not afforded the same right to go to Britain.
Of course, this is what being a colony means. I know that. Just wanted to make sure that people were under no false impressions of the "great and good" times of HK pre-1997.
And if you're in the US, don't be under illusions that it is any freer than HK (not mainland China, which remains oppressive and an abuser of human rights). Who do you think has power over the congress critters? You? "the people"? Big business and lobbying groups are deciding the fate of this country. Why do you think gun control laws don't get passed even though polls show most people are in favor of it? If you don't have a lobbying group, you don't have power. And if you are under any illusions that the media is free and unbiased (forums like /. are changing that impression), i suggest you read herman and chomsky's manufacturing consent.
i'd love to hear more views on this issue, either agreeing or disagreeing.
that's just my opinion. i could be wrong.
Thought about trying WP2000. Saw the form. Thought better of it.
Note to Corel and all other companies:
Don't make these mandatory forms that people have to fill out before using your product. You will gain NOTHING from them. NOTHING! except a bunch of useless fake data.
There is no way for you to verify any of that information. Even if some people do fill in the correct information, the false data will simply screw up any analyses you plan to do on it.
GIGO. Garbage In. Garbage Out.
If you're looking for the future of TV, wait until they are able to squeeze TV-quality video and audio (full screen) down a 56k line. Or else wait until everyone has broadband When they are able to achieve either one of these cases, accompanied by a set-top box, not only will everyone be able to surf the net from a TV, but they will also be able to watch every single television channel in the world, no longer hampered by local tv regulations, over-the-air and cable size limitations.
that is what i look forward to.
"This can take the form of pirating, industrial and governmental espionage (anyone who thinks the Chinese haven't been spying here is badly mistaken"
1. Are there no pirates in developed nations?
2. Do you think that we (the US) and Britain do not engage in "governmental espionage"? How do you think we found out about their alleged spying activities? Anyone who thinks that America haven't been spying on other countries is badly mistaken.
Very interesting from the Po Bronson article:
In this industry, any entrepreneur who goes public (and any entrepreneur who sells his or her business for several hundred million dollars) can only get to that point by spurning many overtures to be acquired along the way. A start-up that shows any inkling of success is immediately pinged with interest from established players trying to get the entrepreneurs to sell out. The pinging never stops. Often one must ignore the pinging, despite the clamor within the company to take the easy money and go live on a beach. One of the pains entrepreneurs suffer is that they can never disclose that these negotiations ever occurred, because both sides are sworn to secrecy by a nondisclosure agreement. The entrepreneur who looks, to the public, as if he or she "sold out" for an easy several hundred million can never mention the many times he or she refused to sell out for less.
I wonder if slashdot bit at the first offer or could have held out for hundreds of millions more?
Burger King is called Hungry Jacks (?) Jack's (?)
Something like that...