bhima, please give it a few years to settle. The emotions are still soaring high since 9/11. Unlike Europe, which has had its share of terrorist attacks in the past, this is still quite new and traumatizing in the minds of many Americans. Unfortunately, the administration is banking on a lot of irrational fears and phobia from a largely unpolitical and very ill informed population to push its own agenda. This is really sad actually. Compared to Europe, we react in a real hysterical way to a threat, which while being quite real and high, is still not so mindboggingly dangerous as the mass media are trying to suggest.
But I'm fairly confident that this is just a phase in our history. A sad phase, like McCarthy, but a phase nonetheless. Calling the majority of a largely scared population 'fascist' is IMHO quite gross and way over board. It is the people you're calling 'fascist' right now who will eventually change the direction of its government if it gets too bad, no matter how resentful you think of them at the moment being.
But it's still sad that you're thinking so harshly about Americans. I do hope that you'll reconsider and reevaluate your judgement in a few years from now.
At least you're free to speak up your mind; even if most of us (including me) strongly disagree with your opinions.
the only difference between al-Qaida and the americans is that the americans speak English.
Oh, al-Qaida guys don't speak English?
america is becoming exactly what they fight against.
If you're referring to the obsessive focussing on security measures: probably yes, in the long turn. There's a real danger that America may turn into a police state if she doesn't take care. But right now, it is still very^H^H^H^H far away.
Anyway, that was a very unfriendly rant! May I suggest that you cool down before writing down such inflammatory comments? I understand your anger, but, hey, overgeneralizations, esp. when they are plain wrong, are unfair to the huge majority of Americans who are very friendly, tolerant and and generous people!
It's nice to see American unilateralism is alive and well on Slashdot.
A lot of countries, not just the US, are against U.N. governence of the Internet. Most of (if not all) Western Europe, Japan, and countries with a high density of nodes are against the UN intervening here. It's the countries with extremely low IP density that are most vocal to put the U.N. in charge.
A lot of people are angry at the US and would prefer to put the control of the Internet (actually just the DNS) in the hands of the U.N. Fine. But the world is not unhappy at all that a US company named MSFT controls over 95% or more of their PCs. So what should happen now? Have the U.N. control Microsoft? And Intel? And AMD? Where do you want to draw the line?
The Internet is fine as it is now, thank you very much. The IETF, RFC, etc... are much more friendly than those unreadable ISO protocols! Please, dear U.N. burocrats: leave the Internet alone. There's no need to break a running system!
the rest of the world does take their toys and goes home, i.e. "invents" a new internet and leaves us out of it
There's no need to get hysterical about this. The only contentious point is who controls the DNS root servers, right? If the rest of the world doesn't like DoC keeping control over it; set up an alternate root and point your resolvers to it. That's all!
Anyway, the world has no problems giving Microsoft a de facto monopoly over their computers: controlling the DNS is their lesser problem!
The bad press generated by this alone would probably sink their company!
Fraunhofer Institut (FhG) is a research institution; not really a company in the commercial sense. They do want to recover money out of their patents; that's for sure, but they are not the RIAA!
Like most research institutions, FhG doesn't focus on small hobbyists, nor educational users, but (if at all) go after big commercial players. Everything else is just wasted money and a lot of bad press and ill will within the researcher community.
It's stupid shit like this that makes other nations despise you.
You must be new here...;-)
Now, seriously: please name just one nation in the world, that isn't run (at least occasionally) by stupid politicians. Please name one nation, where politicians don't bank on the dreams and ideals of its people to get (re-)elected.
And even then: what's wrong with competition? Without the run for space during the Cold War, we wouldn't have reached the technological level we're at right now; and the world wouldn't be using computers, there would be no slashdot...
[...] which will necessitate extending national power into outer space, in order to enforce any claims on territoriality.
It is also worth noting, that it is extremely hard to enforce anything in space. Any space station (at a Lagrange point or anywhere else) can be knocked off with a minimum amount of effort and energy by a determined nation anyway. Space is such a hard environment that everything but cooperation would result in inevitable casualties.
We didn't fight the sovjets in space (nor did they fight us there) even when the Cold War reached its hottest phase. A physical confrontation in space would be just plain ridiculous...
Root should get rid of TLDs and host every name directly: YES
Allow whitespace in names: HELL NO!
Allow non-ascii chars in names (IDN): NO
Why?
Since.com is capable of handling millions of names without problems, there's no reason root shouldn't be too. The earlier technical limitation is no longer the problem it used to be.
Spaces in file names and domain names are EVIL, for reasons too numerous to explain here.
Non-ASCII (>127) chars in domain names are evil too; because they are extremely hard to key in. Even if we adopted UTF-8 for domain names (so that chinese, cyrillic, arabic, and what not can be supported), it would be a huge pain in the ass to everyone not in the right locale to key them in (or to link to them!). Unfortunately, IDN has been adopted by ICANN anyway:-(
Any audio editing program will allow you to chop the commentary with ease.
Any recommendations for Linux, FreeBSD,...? I understand that MP3 files consist of frames, so chopping off the beginning (minus the header) won't be so difficult; but an audio editing program with GUI would be a nice thing to have.
Unlike C, and various other languages, English does not appear to be a syntax whore.
English is neither a compiled nor an interpreted language... If it were so, NLP (natural language processing) would've been a solved problem long time ago.
Actually, it's just the Java VM that will be included in the players. Which means that you could program in Java or Jython or any other programming language whose compiler outputs opcodes for the Java VM.
You could do this, but a simple *.doubleclick.net in Adblock would be easier in this case. Plus/etc/hosts is not the right place for URLS like [randomgeneratedhostname].advertiser.example.com where advertiser.example.com would use a custom DNS server. Here again, Adblock's *.advertiser.example.com is much more powerful.
We need a better way to recognize ads in webpages. Any ideas?
How about distributed fingerprinting? With the right extension, everyone could report an ad to a set of distributed servers which whould then fingerprint the files. Browsers would then fingerprint every image they get (perhaps just a part of it would suffice), check against the fingerprint database using URLS like http://fprint.example.com/4a2f134a234140fa and cache the result.
Yes, that should be it. According to Peter Norvig (of "Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming: Case Studies in Common Lisp" fame):
"Python has been an important part of Google since the beginning, and remains so as the system grows and evolves. Today dozens of Google engineers use Python, and we're looking for more people with skills in this language." said Peter Norvig, director of search quality at Google, Inc. (Source).
The GPL is already a "political" license (as opposed to BSD-style licensing), and this scares some governments away from using it in the public service. We don't like this, but sadly that's the way it is in some parts of the world.
If the GPL were amended in such a way as to fight patents, it would become even more political. IMHO, politics don't belong in licensing terms, but in the political debate.
Now that we've apparently lost the patents fight (or are on the way to losing it), we need to regroup and take political action more seriously than before. No more and no less. A change in GPL terms won't make a dent into the current state of affairs.
a way to help keep a society from stagnating technologically...
This discussion would be inexistent if we didn't live in a period of very fast paced technological development.
FWIW, technology didn't always evolve that fast; and there will probably come a time when the speed will decrease again. Then "planned obsolecense" would be moot because quality will matter again.
By reading the frantic comments here, it looks like we were on the verge of a split in the IT world: the DMCA-lobbied part consisting of the US, EU, Australia, etc..., and a DMCA-resistent part consisting of China, Russia and most of the remaining then-free world!
Now imagine a not so far future, where chinese/taiwanese chip manufacturers implemented two versions of their chips: one crippled with DRM for the DMCA-area, the another uncrippled one for the rest of the world and their domestic market. The uncrippled version would have a bit, where one can enable or disable that crap at will, (just like the region-less DVD players, remember that one?), while the DRM in the crippled version could not be turned off.
We'll get the crap, and the Chinese will still be free to get the best of both worlds. Wow! We're living in interesting times.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry for getting waaay off topic here guys...
bhima, please give it a few years to settle. The emotions are still soaring high since 9/11. Unlike Europe, which has had its share of terrorist attacks in the past, this is still quite new and traumatizing in the minds of many Americans. Unfortunately, the administration is banking on a lot of irrational fears and phobia from a largely unpolitical and very ill informed population to push its own agenda. This is really sad actually. Compared to Europe, we react in a real hysterical way to a threat, which while being quite real and high, is still not so mindboggingly dangerous as the mass media are trying to suggest.
But I'm fairly confident that this is just a phase in our history. A sad phase, like McCarthy, but a phase nonetheless. Calling the majority of a largely scared population 'fascist' is IMHO quite gross and way over board. It is the people you're calling 'fascist' right now who will eventually change the direction of its government if it gets too bad, no matter how resentful you think of them at the moment being.
But it's still sad that you're thinking so harshly about Americans. I do hope that you'll reconsider and reevaluate your judgement in a few years from now.
I thought the final phase of the UN sanctions process was a sternly written letter (on UN letterhead).
Yes, but it has to be ISO A4 paper, according to ISO 216 and related norms and regulations.
At least you're free to speak up your mind; even if most of us (including me) strongly disagree with your opinions.
the only difference between al-Qaida and the americans is that the americans speak English.
Oh, al-Qaida guys don't speak English?
america is becoming exactly what they fight against.
If you're referring to the obsessive focussing on security measures: probably yes, in the long turn. There's a real danger that America may turn into a police state if she doesn't take care. But right now, it is still very^H^H^H^H far away.
Anyway, that was a very unfriendly rant! May I suggest that you cool down before writing down such inflammatory comments? I understand your anger, but, hey, overgeneralizations, esp. when they are plain wrong, are unfair to the huge majority of Americans who are very friendly, tolerant and and generous people!
It's nice to see American unilateralism is alive and well on Slashdot.
A lot of countries, not just the US, are against U.N. governence of the Internet. Most of (if not all) Western Europe, Japan, and countries with a high density of nodes are against the UN intervening here. It's the countries with extremely low IP density that are most vocal to put the U.N. in charge.
A lot of people are angry at the US and would prefer to put the control of the Internet (actually just the DNS) in the hands of the U.N. Fine. But the world is not unhappy at all that a US company named MSFT controls over 95% or more of their PCs. So what should happen now? Have the U.N. control Microsoft? And Intel? And AMD? Where do you want to draw the line?
The Internet is fine as it is now, thank you very much. The IETF, RFC, etc... are much more friendly than those unreadable ISO protocols! Please, dear U.N. burocrats: leave the Internet alone. There's no need to break a running system!
the rest of the world does take their toys and goes home, i.e. "invents" a new internet and leaves us out of it
There's no need to get hysterical about this. The only contentious point is who controls the DNS root servers, right? If the rest of the world doesn't like DoC keeping control over it; set up an alternate root and point your resolvers to it. That's all!
Anyway, the world has no problems giving Microsoft a de facto monopoly over their computers: controlling the DNS is their lesser problem!
The bad press generated by this alone would probably sink their company!
Fraunhofer Institut (FhG) is a research institution; not really a company in the commercial sense. They do want to recover money out of their patents; that's for sure, but they are not the RIAA!
Like most research institutions, FhG doesn't focus on small hobbyists, nor educational users, but (if at all) go after big commercial players. Everything else is just wasted money and a lot of bad press and ill will within the researcher community.
Any FhG employee lurking here please comment.
It's stupid shit like this that makes other nations despise you.
You must be new here... ;-)
Now, seriously: please name just one nation in the world, that isn't run (at least occasionally) by stupid politicians. Please name one nation, where politicians don't bank on the dreams and ideals of its people to get (re-)elected.
And even then: what's wrong with competition? Without the run for space during the Cold War, we wouldn't have reached the technological level we're at right now; and the world wouldn't be using computers, there would be no slashdot...
[...] which will necessitate extending national power into outer space, in order to enforce any claims on territoriality.
It is also worth noting, that it is extremely hard to enforce anything in space. Any space station (at a Lagrange point or anywhere else) can be knocked off with a minimum amount of effort and energy by a determined nation anyway. Space is such a hard environment that everything but cooperation would result in inevitable casualties.
We didn't fight the sovjets in space (nor did they fight us there) even when the Cold War reached its hottest phase. A physical confrontation in space would be just plain ridiculous...
... though we can't ignore human nature either.
Let the voting begin!
Why?
Well, hmmm... yes. But www.allofmp3.com has a nice collection of classic music too (besides other things).
Any audio editing program will allow you to chop the commentary with ease.
Any recommendations for Linux, FreeBSD, ...? I understand that MP3 files consist of frames, so chopping off the beginning (minus the header) won't be so difficult; but an audio editing program with GUI would be a nice thing to have.
Unlike C, and various other languages, English does not appear to be a syntax whore.
English is neither a compiled nor an interpreted language... If it were so, NLP (natural language processing) would've been a solved problem long time ago.
so how many people are writing code that gets output as Java bytecode but is not written in Java?
How many people are using Jython?
Java is just a programming language
Actually, it's just the Java VM that will be included in the players. Which means that you could program in Java or Jython or any other programming language whose compiler outputs opcodes for the Java VM.
You could do this, but a simple *.doubleclick.net in Adblock would be easier in this case. Plus /etc/hosts is not the right place for URLS like [randomgeneratedhostname].advertiser.example.com where advertiser.example.com would use a custom DNS server. Here again, Adblock's *.advertiser.example.com is much more powerful.
We need a better way to recognize ads in webpages. Any ideas?
How about distributed fingerprinting? With the right extension, everyone could report an ad to a set of distributed servers which whould then fingerprint the files. Browsers would then fingerprint every image they get (perhaps just a part of it would suffice), check against the fingerprint database using URLS like http://fprint.example.com/4a2f134a234140fa and cache the result.
Something like razor?
Yes, that should be it. According to Peter Norvig (of "Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming: Case Studies in Common Lisp" fame):
"Python has been an important part of Google since the beginning, and remains so as the system grows and evolves. Today dozens of Google engineers use Python, and we're looking for more people with skills in this language." said Peter Norvig, director of search quality at Google, Inc. (Source).
The GPL is already a "political" license (as opposed to BSD-style licensing), and this scares some governments away from using it in the public service. We don't like this, but sadly that's the way it is in some parts of the world.
If the GPL were amended in such a way as to fight patents, it would become even more political. IMHO, politics don't belong in licensing terms, but in the political debate.
Now that we've apparently lost the patents fight (or are on the way to losing it), we need to regroup and take political action more seriously than before. No more and no less. A change in GPL terms won't make a dent into the current state of affairs.
If the domain name contains the (sub)string "Google", it will not be a problem to yank it away from the squatter following regular UDRP dispute.
It will be more difficult to "recover" domain names just starting with 'g' though like 'gwallet'...
Or you just go ask your "geek friend".
Geeks have friends?
That would be a Knowledgeable Klerk.
a way to help keep a society from stagnating technologically...
This discussion would be inexistent if we didn't live in a period of very fast paced technological development.
FWIW, technology didn't always evolve that fast; and there will probably come a time when the speed will decrease again. Then "planned obsolecense" would be moot because quality will matter again.
By reading the frantic comments here, it looks like we were on the verge of a split in the IT world: the DMCA-lobbied part consisting of the US, EU, Australia, etc..., and a DMCA-resistent part consisting of China, Russia and most of the remaining then-free world!
Now imagine a not so far future, where chinese/taiwanese chip manufacturers implemented two versions of their chips: one crippled with DRM for the DMCA-area, the another uncrippled one for the rest of the world and their domestic market. The uncrippled version would have a bit, where one can enable or disable that crap at will, (just like the region-less DVD players, remember that one?), while the DRM in the crippled version could not be turned off.
We'll get the crap, and the Chinese will still be free to get the best of both worlds. Wow! We're living in interesting times.
Do you think DMCA-like laws would deter determined Linux programmers from reverse-engineering this DRM stuff anyway? I don't.