Infinite monkeys, alternative translation method
on
80 Proof Quickies
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· Score: 1
From RFC 2795:
And what if the monkey has flawlessly translated Shakespeare's works into Esperanto?
The latest issue of Wired (on the newsstands but not yet on Hotwired) features the issue of machine translation. And they acknowledge that so far, it has proven to be hard. Although I haven't seen a mention of it in the articles (haven't finished yet), Esperanto was actually considered as a pivot language for a distributed translation system back in the 80's. From the descriptions I have read, it sounded like the system would have assisted human translators. But hey, with Infinite Monkeys, no problem is hard or takes too long.
I also live in an area where cable means Time Warner. When they first introduced cable modem service here, they made it clear that they would only install on Win 95, Win 98 and Mac OS. But if you talked to anyone behind the scenes there they made the full story clear. To cut down on service calls, they wanted to validate the installation while their installation people were on site. They had software for those OSs and only those OSs. Linux, FreeBSD, et al did not have sufficient market share to justify training their installers for it. But they didn't care if you wanted to use another OS after your machine was installed. In the past few months they have even introduced a discounted self-install option which would probably be ideal for the average Linux user.
Officially, Time Warner does not provide support for alternate OSs. Locally, they run a newsgroup specifically for the people who want to. Their web master, who uses BeOS himself, actively participates in it. In fact, I would guess that I know at least a third of the regular participants in the group personally. Unfortunately, that is an indication of the small size of the group and the relatively small number of people who are connecting to Time Warner from alternative OSs. I think given that, the level of informal support that they give is admirable. Even though we don't fit their business model, they haven't shut the door. That's really all I ask.
Re:Submit your negative book reviews ;)
on
Star Maker
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· Score: 1
a) send in your acerbic, laughter-inducing, wince-worthy book reviews, and they may run =) The problem is that sometimes folks who do negative reviews get a kick more out of playing the dozens then actually addressing the points in the books they pan, even if they really are genuinely bad.
Clearly, you mean like the review of the Star Wars Christmas Special that Kirby posted last December. Follow the link to the article and search for "I have seen this". Kirby's review had me gasping for air as it brought back memories of the very things he was reviewing. This is an excellent example of where bad art and a caustic review are far funnier than either one can be alone.
This kid isn't asking us to do his work, he's asking for our help in getting pointed the right direction.
The way I read the request was not for a summary that could be turned into a paper, but for a recommendation for sources. I know how much time it takes to be up on everything that is going on even in a very narrow subfield. I do that for a couple of specialities where my work and hobbies both supply the motivation. And the fields for which I do it are much narrower than this. The time it would take the kid to develop enough of a background in both the math behind cryptography (which is beyond most college undergrads), and the protocols necessary to avoid compromising your security, and the legal issues surrounding cryptography is daunting. Then he would have the background to judge what are the best sources.
With that said, I have a broad, but not deep knowledge of cryptography. I would second the recommendation of Applied Cryptography. It is a good overview of the field. In particular, it was the first source I read that gave adequate treatment to protocol issues. They are mundane, boring, and absolutely essential to maintaining security. For a historic perspective of wartime use of cryptography and cryptanalysis and their impact, I suggest David Kahn's book The Codebreakers. I believe it has been updated in recent years.
That perception is completely correct, but it must be understood as well. The consumer, from the point he recognizes the hype of marketting, is its enemy. He doesn't want to be targetted. But he is the enemy of the process that has been marketting in mass media. He is not necessarily the enemy of marketters or the companies they work for. The marketters don't have to continue to fight for that side. They have to option of working to transform their side into a participant in the conversation.
Fellow students are certainly going to see things that the teachers will miss. But are they more likely to turn in violent classmates who might turn on them, or harmless geeks? I know that my friends and I would have gotten targetted by some of our vindictive classmates at least once. Adults often forget what an emotionally charged time high school can be. Here are several hundred teenagers awash in hormones spending several hours every day with their closest friends, worst enemies and secret love interests. This program may catch a few dangerous kids. It will also provide yet another avenue for them to abuse each other, further fueling the fire.
Things that make you go hmmmm... Makes you wonder how many people will reply to this stupid post?
I realized that the possible number of responses was rather small. However, since it was clearly still on the site (via a Slashbox), I had some hope that I might get an answer from one of the Slashdot Ubergeeks.
The state of protection from viruses among Linux users is different from that in the Windows world in three important ways:
There are no widely used anti-virus programs in the Linux world right now. This is much the same as the state of the DOS world before viruses started propagating there.
We almost universally get our early versions of software as source. The people most inclined to play with new toys are getting it in the form that is hardest to infect.
We are much more heavily networked (in the human sense) than the Windows community ever has been. News about viruses is likely to propagate quickly.
These factors lead me to believe that we will see virus attacks. They can potentially be nasty, but they will be squashed rather quickly as well. I also have some theories about possible targets for the attacks that I don't want to publically discuss.
Please note, I am not posting this anonymously. I respect the need for Anonymous Coward posting, but there are times when there is also a need for people to post their thought and be willing to put a name behind them. This is such a case.
Anyone sane is concerned about negative things being said about them. It is part of how we function as human beings and an important part of what make it possible for us to build large, complex societies. We fear being cast into the outer darkness. That phrase itself echoes back to the fear of being driven from the warmth and safety of the tribal campfire into the predator-filled night.
For an individual, the lose of reputation can be devistating. Depending on the nature of the allegations, it can mean the loss of a career, a marriage, friends, a home. Yes, this web site has the potential to do that. And there is a fine line that it must walk to be effective. It must retain that power. Criticism, robbed of all power to harm has no teeth. On the other side, when it is wielded brutally, and manipulatively, it loses its credibility.
This is no different from the delicated editorial balance maintained in other media. The variety of sources for the information has increased. The immediacy of both submission and access is much greater. But this is not much different from other methods of criticism running a full spectrum from reasoned debate between public figures who both have reputations to defend to graffiti spray-painted on bridge abutments.
Without a means to criticize those elements of a society who have exceeded its limits in some way, we are forced to accept that those individuals will continue in their actions. We expand the scope of acceptible behaviour a little. Silencing dissent sanctions the behaviour it would criticize. Giving it free rein with no review allows it to be characterized as a personal vendetta without merit.
As society moves online, there is a need for institutions that meet its needs to move with it. It is wonderful to be able to shop online. It is wonderful to be able to communicate with my friends, family and colleagues. But if we abandon the means by which we obtain reliable information about the reputations of other members of society, or worse still outlaw those means, we will have reduced the capacity of our society to hold itself together.
You wouldn't have to worry about silly little grammar rules in the thought-language, because it would be IDEAS.
That was actually one of the design goals of some of the earliest attempts at creating planned languages. They were referred to as philosophical languages. Descartes and Leibniz were among the various people who devoted considerable thought and effort to such projects. They never attracted a wider audience for a number of reasons: they fit their creator's view of how to classify things at the time they were created, they did not lend themselves to easy learning, and they were not weel suited to conversation or correspondence.
Esperanto, which is today the most widely know and widely heard of artificial language, won out over a slightly earlier competitor, Volapük, largely by being easier to learn. And it remained more popular than later rivals because it attracted a sizable body of people who actually use it. It is a compromise between a more regular structure without exceptions to trip up new or occasional speakers, and familiar grammatical structures that make it comfortable for people learning it on their own.
Common context is the real issue here. One can easily pick up enough English (or another language for that matter) to read and speak fluently. However, this doesn't provide context, especially not if one never spent time in the region of the world where the language is spoken.
Much of that common context is the cultural background. It can be anything from children's stories that we all know to movies that nearly everyone of a certain age in the country has seen. As a greater portion of our culture transcends borders, there is also the possibility that some of it will cross the language barriers as well. This might reduce the problem.
These are vast barriers to unencumbered communication around the globe. I am afraid that this might create two classes of 'digital world citizens': Those who assimilate another language and culture well and hence can relate to the majority of fellow world citizens and thus are successful, and those who have difficulties for a variety of reasons and will loose out.
I think the ability to assimilate is a relative thing depending on the context. I am as much a foreigner among my parents' friends as a non-native English speaker my own age would probably be among my friends. And I think that those of us here on Slashdot share a huge amount of context, regardless of any other background differences. If anything, I am afraid that the net is going to make it possible for communities to form around common ideals without regard to geography. What worries me is that those communities may be even more xenophobic about outside ideas than geographically or racially based communities have traditionally been about "foreigners".
Or else the entire world can learn Esperanto and we can be one big happy community. But honestly it would be great for US citizens to finally realise the importance of knowing more than one language. Then after a while, all of the languages will merge into one.
Esperanto is no different from any other language in solving differences of opinion. So far, for the most part those differences have been peaceful between Esperantists at least. The major exception would be the Ido schism.
As for US citizens learning other languages, it is high time for that to happen. Of course, I know I'm unusual. I actually like learning foreign languages. Most people only do it if they need to. They do it if they move to another country. They do it out of business necessity. They do it to understand what the in-laws are saying.
As for languages merging, I don't know how long that will take. I suspect that world-wide communication has homogenized many language communities over the past couple of decades. For example, I am starting to see some British colloquialisms enter common use in the US. And it is easier for languages to borrow from each other as well. But they are remaining distinct.
Maybe this will provide the stimulis that the Europeans have on learning more than one language. With them is has always been the proximity of the different countries and lanquages. Now it is being brought right to our computer screen.
There's an old joke: "People who speak three languages are trilingual. People who speak two languages are bilingual. People who speak one language are Americans."
There are two reasons for this joke. First, there has been little need for the average American to become fluent in a second language. The closest place I can go from where I sit now that I would need to speak a second language is Montreal. And in spite of its reputation, I found it to be quite a friendly place for non-French-speaking tourists if you are polite.
The other reason is that in large parts of America it can be hard to find enough native speakers of a foreign language with whom to practice the skills you are building. And a second language isn't something you read a book about and then just do it.
With the net bringing down the barriers of geography, maybe I can expect my children to be able to regularly interact with native speakers of another language when they start to learn one. And in all likelihood, they will need to do business across language barriers.
Does anyone here have any guesses as to languages that will be gaining in importance for international commerce?
You've made some good points. I wasn't thinking in terms of fly-by-night operations. I was thinking about legitimate businesses operating from within countries with established legal systems for commerce that took place in person. I was trying to simply suggest a set of rules for how jurisdiction shopping could take place and how the tax consequences could be handled so as to limit the bookkeeping burdens. What I suggested is hardly the only possible solution.
Your comment is funny, but it illustrates a very real point. Language barriers are increasingly become a factor on the net because we are encountering people with whom we don't fluently share a common language more frequently. There are several consequence to this. The obvious one is the question of actually communicating with the people we do business with, or want to. Conveying our intentions clearly takes effort. The common vocabulary and context isn't reliably there.
But that leads to other, less obvious consequences. With large transactions, business to business, it is worthwhile to have lawyers on both sides review contracts. There will be an understanding. The contract will specify the remedies if there are disputes. Those will be spelled out in detail at least as great as the contracts for similar transactions that don't cross borders and mix languages.
For large numbers of smaller transactions, the cost of individually reviewing each contract in a number of languages would be prohibitive. That means that there will be some hassles when even well-meaning people have misunderstandings. Furthermore, the customer and the vendor aren't generally the only participants. There will be banks involved transferring funds and billing credit cards. The transaction has to pass muster in a language they can accept.
What about disputes? The merchandise I received wasn't what I expected, or it was damaged in shipping. That isn't a far-fetched scenario. I get things from Western Europe fairly regularly. Magazines get opened, boxes get crushed. So far nothing I've paid for has been damaged more severely than a crease. I've been lucky so far. But how are those disputes going to be handled? Will there be customer service reps available in a variety of languages?
Countries with stricter porn laws, for example, will need to code computers to recognize the naked human (animal?) form, and ban such images/sites.
Content filtering is hard. With text, how do you recognize the difference between the real thing and a discussion on filtering that contains the phrases used for filtering? With images, how do you tell the difference between naked people being pornographic and a medical site with pictures of various medical conditions. Articles on skin cancer will get filtered out.
Allow e-commerce web sites to select the jurisdiction in which their agreements will be enforced (possibly based on the location of their servers, but not necessarily so), with several restrictions:
They can't change jurisdiction without notice and any existing data or transactions continue to be governed under the customers' choice of the old and new jurisdictions.
The must post explicit statements about privacy, refunds, security, etc.
The jurisdiction they have chosen may collect a tax to cover the cost of this protection.
Any jurisdiction may refuse to allow hosting by specific e-commerce sites or all sites based upon its own laws.
No other taxation is permitted to be imposed through the site. Customers may be taxed based on where they purchase from or have merchandise shipped to. The business is not responsible for collecting information to aid in this effort.
Jurisdictions will then have to compete to provide the level of protection that consumers actually want for their transactions and that the businesses want from lawsuits. The jurisdictions that can come up with the right amount of protection for the right price will attract the businesses. And businesses can actually set up servers in multiple locations and allow customers to select the level of legal protection they want.
NPR's Morning Edition show has had a number of interesting stories recently that are relevant to various discussions here. Here are the links and some of the topics from last week:
I was tempted initially to flame you or ignore you, but you have a point, not about the Emacs interface, but about the fact that they are stuck with it. I like Emacs. I've been using it for well over a decade and it is comfortable and automatic for me. And I recognize that there are people who prefer other interfaces. As my boss put it, "Editing text is not my job. Writing code is." Emacs provides a lots of power, at the expense of a long (not necessarily steep) learning curve. I would rather not present it to anyone as their only choice. That is just a quick way to make enemies.
As for editor holy wars, part of what I love about free software is the number of good choices I have for various kinds of tools. They adhere to published standards and they interoperate. In order to use LaTeX or groff, I am not stuck with the editor that comes with either of them. I can use what I like. For that, I am thankful for the diversity, even the tools I would hate to use myself. They help to enforce open standards in free software by ensuring that they continue to be necessary.
As far as the piracy issue goes, the bottom line is that anywhere copyrights are acknowledged, pirated music is illegal. And in case anyone thinks I'm dancing around the issue, it is immoral as well. As far as I'm concerned, copyrighted performances of music are the intellectual property of the performer, to be sold or given away as the performer desires.
Napster is being used heavily, and probably primarily, as a tool to facilitate music piracy. And there are factions that want it banned. But it is the piracy that is wrong, not the tool. There are people using it legitimately, or who will soon. MP3's can serve as a promotional tool for new bands. They can be a way to put a recording of a school concert on the web for proud parents when pressing CDs would be too expensive. I could sit here dreaming up uses for them.
And if Napster is banned, if the MP3 format is banned, piracy will go deeper underground, but it will not go away. That bottle has spilled its genie. It will have two other effects. The people with legitimate uses for the technology will be denied access to it. And it will set another precedent of banning software, a worse one than DeCSS.
Richard Stallman wrote a cautionary story about some possible consequences of this road once we start down it entitled The Right to Read. I don't think it will get as bad as he described, but imagine the consequences of some of the measures that he mentioned. Imagine programmers only having access to debuggers and other programming tools if they are licensed and bonded. Free software would not be what it is today.
I have seen in various places comments that locks and contracts show us the history of the struggle between people trying to secure their property and thieves trying to take it. Rather than seeking a new technological advance or a new model for marketting music, the recording industry and many musicians are clinging to the model they have. The law is with them, and they are in the right (in general, I'm not discussing detailed cases here) morally. That won't save them without a draconian police state.
They do not have the right to impose additional obligations on me in situations that do not involve their intellectual property. Whether they like it or not the technological tide will roll in. Institutions that do not change become obsolete.
I have a blind friend using Emacspeak who absolutely loves it. I have heard it myself. It is not merely a screen-reader. And it doesn't require special hardware. She has an ordinary sound card. I think it's great that the free software community is giving attention to blind users. I can't say that I'm surprised. Free software as a development model is clearly superior in serving smaller niche markets.
Not to Microsoft bash, but IIS is extremely insecure. Due to fundemental problems with IIS, it really cannot be secured.
Lest any of us forget, while NT servers can be made reasonably stable and secure with work, MS software in its default configuration is generally not set up to be secure. It appears to be set up to provide easy access and a minimal level of security to keep users from walking right into each other's confidential data. There was a discussion of the consequences of the default MS configuration right here on Slashdot two months ago:
What it will really need is an excellent API so that you can extend it. The last thing I want to do is invest $300,000 in a really state of the art exoskeleton just to have it become completely obsolete when XO-Skeleton 2005 comes out.
Mandrake is also pushing internationalization and localization pretty hard. They have found translators to handle translation of the install instructions and messages for their install tools into quite an array of languages. This has the potential to get Linux into more non-English-speaking places.
Slashdot Mirror
The latest issue of Wired (on the newsstands but not yet on Hotwired) features the issue of machine translation. And they acknowledge that so far, it has proven to be hard. Although I haven't seen a mention of it in the articles (haven't finished yet), Esperanto was actually considered as a pivot language for a distributed translation system back in the 80's. From the descriptions I have read, it sounded like the system would have assisted human translators. But hey, with Infinite Monkeys, no problem is hard or takes too long.
I also live in an area where cable means Time Warner. When they first introduced cable modem service here, they made it clear that they would only install on Win 95, Win 98 and Mac OS. But if you talked to anyone behind the scenes there they made the full story clear. To cut down on service calls, they wanted to validate the installation while their installation people were on site. They had software for those OSs and only those OSs. Linux, FreeBSD, et al did not have sufficient market share to justify training their installers for it. But they didn't care if you wanted to use another OS after your machine was installed. In the past few months they have even introduced a discounted self-install option which would probably be ideal for the average Linux user.
Officially, Time Warner does not provide support for alternate OSs. Locally, they run a newsgroup specifically for the people who want to. Their web master, who uses BeOS himself, actively participates in it. In fact, I would guess that I know at least a third of the regular participants in the group personally. Unfortunately, that is an indication of the small size of the group and the relatively small number of people who are connecting to Time Warner from alternative OSs. I think given that, the level of informal support that they give is admirable. Even though we don't fit their business model, they haven't shut the door. That's really all I ask.
Clearly, you mean like the review of the Star Wars Christmas Special that Kirby posted last December. Follow the link to the article and search for "I have seen this". Kirby's review had me gasping for air as it brought back memories of the very things he was reviewing. This is an excellent example of where bad art and a caustic review are far funnier than either one can be alone.
This kid isn't asking us to do his work, he's asking for our help in getting pointed the right direction.
The way I read the request was not for a summary that could be turned into a paper, but for a recommendation for sources. I know how much time it takes to be up on everything that is going on even in a very narrow subfield. I do that for a couple of specialities where my work and hobbies both supply the motivation. And the fields for which I do it are much narrower than this. The time it would take the kid to develop enough of a background in both the math behind cryptography (which is beyond most college undergrads), and the protocols necessary to avoid compromising your security, and the legal issues surrounding cryptography is daunting. Then he would have the background to judge what are the best sources.
With that said, I have a broad, but not deep knowledge of cryptography. I would second the recommendation of Applied Cryptography. It is a good overview of the field. In particular, it was the first source I read that gave adequate treatment to protocol issues. They are mundane, boring, and absolutely essential to maintaining security. For a historic perspective of wartime use of cryptography and cryptanalysis and their impact, I suggest David Kahn's book The Codebreakers. I believe it has been updated in recent years.
Marketing sees the consumer as the enemy.
That perception is completely correct, but it must be understood as well. The consumer, from the point he recognizes the hype of marketting, is its enemy. He doesn't want to be targetted. But he is the enemy of the process that has been marketting in mass media. He is not necessarily the enemy of marketters or the companies they work for. The marketters don't have to continue to fight for that side. They have to option of working to transform their side into a participant in the conversation.
Fellow students are certainly going to see things that the teachers will miss. But are they more likely to turn in violent classmates who might turn on them, or harmless geeks? I know that my friends and I would have gotten targetted by some of our vindictive classmates at least once. Adults often forget what an emotionally charged time high school can be. Here are several hundred teenagers awash in hormones spending several hours every day with their closest friends, worst enemies and secret love interests. This program may catch a few dangerous kids. It will also provide yet another avenue for them to abuse each other, further fueling the fire.
I realized that the possible number of responses was rather small. However, since it was clearly still on the site (via a Slashbox), I had some hope that I might get an answer from one of the Slashdot Ubergeeks.
These factors lead me to believe that we will see virus attacks. They can potentially be nasty, but they will be squashed rather quickly as well. I also have some theories about possible targets for the attacks that I don't want to publically discuss.
Please note, I am not posting this anonymously. I respect the need for Anonymous Coward posting, but there are times when there is also a need for people to post their thought and be willing to put a name behind them. This is such a case.
Anyone sane is concerned about negative things being said about them. It is part of how we function as human beings and an important part of what make it possible for us to build large, complex societies. We fear being cast into the outer darkness. That phrase itself echoes back to the fear of being driven from the warmth and safety of the tribal campfire into the predator-filled night.
For an individual, the lose of reputation can be devistating. Depending on the nature of the allegations, it can mean the loss of a career, a marriage, friends, a home. Yes, this web site has the potential to do that. And there is a fine line that it must walk to be effective. It must retain that power. Criticism, robbed of all power to harm has no teeth. On the other side, when it is wielded brutally, and manipulatively, it loses its credibility.
This is no different from the delicated editorial balance maintained in other media. The variety of sources for the information has increased. The immediacy of both submission and access is much greater. But this is not much different from other methods of criticism running a full spectrum from reasoned debate between public figures who both have reputations to defend to graffiti spray-painted on bridge abutments.
Without a means to criticize those elements of a society who have exceeded its limits in some way, we are forced to accept that those individuals will continue in their actions. We expand the scope of acceptible behaviour a little. Silencing dissent sanctions the behaviour it would criticize. Giving it free rein with no review allows it to be characterized as a personal vendetta without merit.
As society moves online, there is a need for institutions that meet its needs to move with it. It is wonderful to be able to shop online. It is wonderful to be able to communicate with my friends, family and colleagues. But if we abandon the means by which we obtain reliable information about the reputations of other members of society, or worse still outlaw those means, we will have reduced the capacity of our society to hold itself together.
That was actually one of the design goals of some of the earliest attempts at creating planned languages. They were referred to as philosophical languages. Descartes and Leibniz were among the various people who devoted considerable thought and effort to such projects. They never attracted a wider audience for a number of reasons: they fit their creator's view of how to classify things at the time they were created, they did not lend themselves to easy learning, and they were not weel suited to conversation or correspondence.
Esperanto, which is today the most widely know and widely heard of artificial language, won out over a slightly earlier competitor, Volapük, largely by being easier to learn. And it remained more popular than later rivals because it attracted a sizable body of people who actually use it. It is a compromise between a more regular structure without exceptions to trip up new or occasional speakers, and familiar grammatical structures that make it comfortable for people learning it on their own.
Much of that common context is the cultural background. It can be anything from children's stories that we all know to movies that nearly everyone of a certain age in the country has seen. As a greater portion of our culture transcends borders, there is also the possibility that some of it will cross the language barriers as well. This might reduce the problem.
I think the ability to assimilate is a relative thing depending on the context. I am as much a foreigner among my parents' friends as a non-native English speaker my own age would probably be among my friends. And I think that those of us here on Slashdot share a huge amount of context, regardless of any other background differences. If anything, I am afraid that the net is going to make it possible for communities to form around common ideals without regard to geography. What worries me is that those communities may be even more xenophobic about outside ideas than geographically or racially based communities have traditionally been about "foreigners".
Esperanto is no different from any other language in solving differences of opinion. So far, for the most part those differences have been peaceful between Esperantists at least. The major exception would be the Ido schism.
As for US citizens learning other languages, it is high time for that to happen. Of course, I know I'm unusual. I actually like learning foreign languages. Most people only do it if they need to. They do it if they move to another country. They do it out of business necessity. They do it to understand what the in-laws are saying.
As for languages merging, I don't know how long that will take. I suspect that world-wide communication has homogenized many language communities over the past couple of decades. For example, I am starting to see some British colloquialisms enter common use in the US. And it is easier for languages to borrow from each other as well. But they are remaining distinct.
There's an old joke: "People who speak three languages are trilingual. People who speak two languages are bilingual. People who speak one language are Americans."
There are two reasons for this joke. First, there has been little need for the average American to become fluent in a second language. The closest place I can go from where I sit now that I would need to speak a second language is Montreal. And in spite of its reputation, I found it to be quite a friendly place for non-French-speaking tourists if you are polite.
The other reason is that in large parts of America it can be hard to find enough native speakers of a foreign language with whom to practice the skills you are building. And a second language isn't something you read a book about and then just do it.
With the net bringing down the barriers of geography, maybe I can expect my children to be able to regularly interact with native speakers of another language when they start to learn one. And in all likelihood, they will need to do business across language barriers.
Does anyone here have any guesses as to languages that will be gaining in importance for international commerce?
u vere? Vi povas instali Mandrejk-Linukson kun mesaoj en Esperanto ek de versio 7.0.
And finally, if you are going to borrow a joke from The Tick, please give credit where it is due.
You've made some good points. I wasn't thinking in terms of fly-by-night operations. I was thinking about legitimate businesses operating from within countries with established legal systems for commerce that took place in person. I was trying to simply suggest a set of rules for how jurisdiction shopping could take place and how the tax consequences could be handled so as to limit the bookkeeping burdens. What I suggested is hardly the only possible solution.
Your comment is funny, but it illustrates a very real point. Language barriers are increasingly become a factor on the net because we are encountering people with whom we don't fluently share a common language more frequently. There are several consequence to this. The obvious one is the question of actually communicating with the people we do business with, or want to. Conveying our intentions clearly takes effort. The common vocabulary and context isn't reliably there.
But that leads to other, less obvious consequences. With large transactions, business to business, it is worthwhile to have lawyers on both sides review contracts. There will be an understanding. The contract will specify the remedies if there are disputes. Those will be spelled out in detail at least as great as the contracts for similar transactions that don't cross borders and mix languages.
For large numbers of smaller transactions, the cost of individually reviewing each contract in a number of languages would be prohibitive. That means that there will be some hassles when even well-meaning people have misunderstandings. Furthermore, the customer and the vendor aren't generally the only participants. There will be banks involved transferring funds and billing credit cards. The transaction has to pass muster in a language they can accept.
What about disputes? The merchandise I received wasn't what I expected, or it was damaged in shipping. That isn't a far-fetched scenario. I get things from Western Europe fairly regularly. Magazines get opened, boxes get crushed. So far nothing I've paid for has been damaged more severely than a crease. I've been lucky so far. But how are those disputes going to be handled? Will there be customer service reps available in a variety of languages?
Content filtering is hard. With text, how do you recognize the difference between the real thing and a discussion on filtering that contains the phrases used for filtering? With images, how do you tell the difference between naked people being pornographic and a medical site with pictures of various medical conditions. Articles on skin cancer will get filtered out.
Jurisdictions will then have to compete to provide the level of protection that consumers actually want for their transactions and that the businesses want from lawsuits. The jurisdictions that can come up with the right amount of protection for the right price will attract the businesses. And businesses can actually set up servers in multiple locations and allow customers to select the level of legal protection they want.
I was tempted initially to flame you or ignore you, but you have a point, not about the Emacs interface, but about the fact that they are stuck with it. I like Emacs. I've been using it for well over a decade and it is comfortable and automatic for me. And I recognize that there are people who prefer other interfaces. As my boss put it, "Editing text is not my job. Writing code is." Emacs provides a lots of power, at the expense of a long (not necessarily steep) learning curve. I would rather not present it to anyone as their only choice. That is just a quick way to make enemies.
As for editor holy wars, part of what I love about free software is the number of good choices I have for various kinds of tools. They adhere to published standards and they interoperate. In order to use LaTeX or groff, I am not stuck with the editor that comes with either of them. I can use what I like. For that, I am thankful for the diversity, even the tools I would hate to use myself. They help to enforce open standards in free software by ensuring that they continue to be necessary.
As far as the piracy issue goes, the bottom line is that anywhere copyrights are acknowledged, pirated music is illegal. And in case anyone thinks I'm dancing around the issue, it is immoral as well. As far as I'm concerned, copyrighted performances of music are the intellectual property of the performer, to be sold or given away as the performer desires.
Napster is being used heavily, and probably primarily, as a tool to facilitate music piracy. And there are factions that want it banned. But it is the piracy that is wrong, not the tool. There are people using it legitimately, or who will soon. MP3's can serve as a promotional tool for new bands. They can be a way to put a recording of a school concert on the web for proud parents when pressing CDs would be too expensive. I could sit here dreaming up uses for them.
And if Napster is banned, if the MP3 format is banned, piracy will go deeper underground, but it will not go away. That bottle has spilled its genie. It will have two other effects. The people with legitimate uses for the technology will be denied access to it. And it will set another precedent of banning software, a worse one than DeCSS.
Richard Stallman wrote a cautionary story about some possible consequences of this road once we start down it entitled The Right to Read. I don't think it will get as bad as he described, but imagine the consequences of some of the measures that he mentioned. Imagine programmers only having access to debuggers and other programming tools if they are licensed and bonded. Free software would not be what it is today.
I have seen in various places comments that locks and contracts show us the history of the struggle between people trying to secure their property and thieves trying to take it. Rather than seeking a new technological advance or a new model for marketting music, the recording industry and many musicians are clinging to the model they have. The law is with them, and they are in the right (in general, I'm not discussing detailed cases here) morally. That won't save them without a draconian police state.
They do not have the right to impose additional obligations on me in situations that do not involve their intellectual property. Whether they like it or not the technological tide will roll in. Institutions that do not change become obsolete.
I have a blind friend using Emacspeak who absolutely loves it. I have heard it myself. It is not merely a screen-reader. And it doesn't require special hardware. She has an ordinary sound card. I think it's great that the free software community is giving attention to blind users. I can't say that I'm surprised. Free software as a development model is clearly superior in serving smaller niche markets.
Not to Microsoft bash, but IIS is extremely insecure. Due to fundemental problems with IIS, it really cannot be secured.
Lest any of us forget, while NT servers can be made reasonably stable and secure with work, MS software in its default configuration is generally not set up to be secure. It appears to be set up to provide easy access and a minimal level of security to keep users from walking right into each other's confidential data. There was a discussion of the consequences of the default MS configuration right here on Slashdot two months ago:
MSNBC: Stealing Credit Card Numbers Online is Easy
What it will really need is an excellent API so that you can extend it. The last thing I want to do is invest $300,000 in a really state of the art exoskeleton just to have it become completely obsolete when XO-Skeleton 2005 comes out.
Mandrake is also pushing internationalization and localization pretty hard. They have found translators to handle translation of the install instructions and messages for their install tools into quite an array of languages. This has the potential to get Linux into more non-English-speaking places.