Don't confuse QoS with net neutrality. As long as the QoS is applied equally, then it should be perfectly fine.
I fully agree with your first sentence. QoS is a necessary part of any network management plan, and it deserves to be seen as a tool like any other.
But it doesn't follow that QoS is always good if applied without prejudice. For example: A network that doesn't give adequate priority to anyone's VOIP is no more desirable than a network that gives priority to one VOIP supplier. (If you want VOIP services that is.)
QoS and Net Neutrality are two different things, but both affect consumers in a particular way. The nice thing is that, where available, market forces do a lot to mitigate against bad QoS policies. Net Neutrality, on the other hand, usually implies collusion between telcos and other industry allies.
This means that when someone creates an undesirable QoS scheme, we can (theoretically) vote with our wallets. But when Net Neutrality is challenged, we usually have no recourse but the force of law and regulation.
It's true that QoS can be used as the mechanism by which Net Neutrality is thwarted, but the problem is not the filtering per se; the problem is collusion between industry allies to limit choice and undermine the end-to-end network model.
We don't need to save every teenager's text message.
Don't be so sure. One of an archaeologist's favourite places to dig is in the village rubbish tip. It's important because it tells us more about day-to-day life in a society than what people wrote down on papyrus, carved into stone, or otherwise saved for posterity.
In virtually every case, the stuff that rulers deem important doesn't bear much relation to the way everyday people live. Often enough, it's an outright lie. So if we want to understand a society with any depth of detail, we need to know the trivial and mundane as well as the monumental.
I mean, did Victorian newspapers run stories about how people would send "Dear John" letters by their new, fancy, twice-a-day postal service?
Pretty much. A Novel in Nine Letters, one of Dostoyevski's famous shorter works, used the newly established postal service as a framing device.
Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy that hinges on the lack of reliable postal services. A courier is late arriving with a note for Romeo, so he never finds out that Juliet has merely faked her own death.
Some of the stock humour in the Italian Commedia dell'Arte hinges on letters getting mis-delivered.
In short: Yes, we are defined by our communications capacity, and that's been a subject of commentary for as long as we've been keeping records.
That more or less makes your point - but to conclude that it's no longer topical because we've been talking about it for a while... I can't agree with you there.
My company is starting to sponsor 1 to 6 months paid breaks to do your regular work for NGO non-profits. For me that would be IT work. Normally if I donate labor it would be habitat for humanity as a worker drone. But do they or others need volunteer IT support?
GeekCorps, my friend. See the world and make yourself useful. In fact, it would make sense to have your company talk to Geekcorps and to organise staff in groups to collaborate on a given project, in order to ensure continuity and ongoing support.
Impressive. I'm definately going to use this, as putting in a second disk is just way too much work.
Okay, you made a funny. But consider the implications of that single disk:
It's a simple, nicely pared-down server. Installs and configures in about 20 minutes.
It's a purpose-driven server whose entire architecture is aimed at solving the most common scenario in Small and Medium Enterprises (SME - get it?): The ability to run in a predictable, stable and usable way for years on end without requiring IT staff to support it - that's something whose value should never be underestimated.
These design principles extend throughout the server's architecture. It's got template-driven config file management, a really useful event model for automating complex tasks and a really elegant developer API. And it still fits on a single CD.
It's small and simple and yet still has what you want in a small office server. I've never seen the KISS principle more sanely applied than in the SME Server. Nothing gets added without a reason and most everything works the way a Lazy admin would want it to.
Full disclosure: I worked two years for the company that built SME Server. But I went to work for them because I liked the product. 6 years later, I'm still installing and using it on customer sites.
(See my other post below for a few caveats about AD. Briefly, LDAP is integrated, but not very tightly. You'll still need to install or build an actual AD solution on top of it to provide what the OP is looking for.)
I can second SME server. I've been using it for this role since it was E-Smith many years ago. It's a fantastic little distro for a lot of different reasons. Definitely good stuff.
I worked for e-smith inc. (later purchased by Mitel Networks) on the team that developed for the SME Server distro.
It's magic for small offices, no doubt. I work in developing countries now, and I find it especially useful in places with no in-house IT capacity. I can get file services, email, web and user management up and running in about 45 minutes.
(I'm not going to link to any particular installations, because, well, slashdot has the capacity to swamp our entire nation's bandwidth.)
BUT! SME Server doesn't have a built-in AD capability. It will act as an excellent small network domain controller. Its user and group management is simplicity done right. But that's not Active Directory per se.
If you want an actual AD roll-out, you'll have to layer it on top of the server's existing capabilities. Note that this is not at all impossible - SME Server can run just about everything CentOS runs with little or no fuss or bother.
To sum up - SME Server would be a great platform for schools to build on - it's low-maintenance, robust and simple enough that even a Windows admin can't complain. But you need to roll part of the solution on your own. Of course, you were going to do that anyway. So definitely look at SME Server. 8^)
Good article... shows the mentality of the Psychologists/Social workers though, something like this:
Two social workers were walking through a rough part of the city in the evening. They heard moans and muted cries for help from a back lane.
Upon investigation, they found a semi-conscious man in a pool of blood. "Help me, I've been mugged and viciously beaten" he pleaded.
The two social workers turned and walked away. One remarked to her colleague: "You know the person that did this really needs help."
Er, no. How about:
Two social workers see a semi-conscious man in a pool of blood. "Help me, I've been mugged and viciously beaten" he pleads.
"Tell you what," says one social worker to the other, "I'll take care of this guy. You go find the person who did it and make sure he never does it again."
because MS have more experience of wining and dining (and bribing) than generally less dishonest Linux companies?
I wouldn't impute any dishonesty to these sales people. Generally speaking, it's not necessary to be dishonest in order to win.
I suspect that most people's conception of the way things work in government (and education in particular) is altogether too jaded. Many people working in education policy do so out of interest and generally show a degree of commitment to the principles of learning and development.
That doesn't mean they're necessarily brilliant, insightful or even competent. Some are, some aren't. But the vast majority of them make decisions in what they consider to be the best interests of the young people under their care.
The folks at Microsoft are smart, organised and effective. The links in the summary documents show that they've got a clear game plan, and the tables attached indicate that they were executing well on it.
Compare that to the work done by FOSS organisations. With the exception of IBM, there's hardly anyone who has established contacts in Education. FOSS is typically touted by mid-level technical folks who have expertise in their field but little political experience. They almost certainly don't have the resources, the planning or the operational intelligence to keep pace with Microsoft.
Add to this the fact that Microsoft is the incumbent, and you'll see that they've got the advantage in almost every respect: resources, position, momentum and intelligence.
Microsoft's played dirty in the past, and they likely will again in the future. I'm only suggesting that it's not necessary to play that way every time.
The corrupt practice in this particular case is dumping, and that decision is being made at the corporate level. While corruption taints everyone who participates in it, that doesn't mean they are suddenly guilty of every manifestation of it all at once.
Microsoft needs to keep control over the file system used in consumer electronics. If they hadn't offered this up (for a small fee of course) vendors might have been forced to look elsewhere... at the many filesystems in Linux or BSD that easily scale to the sizes required and have free reference implementations available, although the GPL would preclude many embedded vendors from directly using many of the more popular ones's code.
I'm going to parade my ignorance for a moment. Hopefully it won't wilt under the baleful gaze of your 4-digit ID. 8^)
Okay, seriously: How would the GPL keep device manufacturers from integrating Open file systems into their hardware? Granted that they wouldn't be able to use any non-LGPL'ed libraries, but surely the existence of an open spec would be enough for them to build support for common file systems without their firmware or software code becoming tainted by the GPL?
It's always seemed to me that the big hurdle blocking movement from anything but FATxx or NTFS was Microsoft's unwillingness to support them on their OSes.
Hence of course the announcement of a New, Improved FAT that requires no further effort from the device manufacturers, something which bean counters in enterprises everywhere applaud.
I'm genuinely curious - exactly what other issues besides lack of Windows support could stop manufacturers from building different file systems into their storage devices?
You're giving Intel and Microsoft way too much credit. It was ASUS that destroyed the OLPC, by creating the netbook market when it released the first Eee PC.
I'm not so sure about that. I think the OLPC failed for political, not economic reasons. The lobbying efforts of both Microsoft and Intel did have some influence on the outcome, but more and more these days I get the feeling that the biggest reason was sheer ineptitude among the project's organisers.
Let's break these points out a little:
The OLPC pricing model was contingent on economies of scale, and the only parties with enough money to bring to the table were national governments. That logic is sound, as far as it goes. But Negroponte and co. completely ignored just how hard it is to build political will, especially where new, iconoclastic ideas are concerned.
Politicians, especially in developing countries, live from one day to the next. In many cases, their only mandate is to accumulate as much wealth as they can before their government falls, or they fall out of favour. OLPC holds no benefit for them whatsoever.
Those politicians who are competent (and who consider that governing is actually part of the job description) need to have some degree of confidence that what they're proposing isn't going to blow up in their face and leave them looking like fools. As far as I can tell, Negroponte's negotiators relied only on their own stature and authority within the geek world to reassure them. That was - how shall I say? - a little presumptuous.
One example: I have been working in the developing world for a while. In the course of it, I've developed a few very valuable contacts in certain countries in the region where I work. When I was informed that OLPC wanted to roll out in one of them, I was very enthusiastic. This particular country was perfectly suited for such a project: The population isn't too big, the current government is genuinely committed to development, and they've just come into a sizeable chunk of money from newly developed petroleum deposits.
I happened to have contacts at the very core of this particular government. It's not inconceivable that I could have arranged a few very useful conversations. So I wrote to the envoy OLPC had sent, and offered to help.
No reply.
I waited a few weeks more, and tried again. No reply.
After three separate tries, I worked the back channel and was informed by a rather embarrassed individual that the OLPC envoy thought I might cramp his style, so without even checking whether his fears were justified, he cut me cold.
In contrast to this amateurish approach, Microsoft and Intel spend a good deal of time and money building alliances within various governments. They come across as reasonable and fair, often negotiating steeply discounted licensing schemes, and bestowing a good deal of largesse while they're at it.
They're ruthless competitors, that's true, but they don't walk around with blood dripping from their fangs. When you meet with them, they're attentive, caring and sympathetic to your situation. Their job, after all, is to sell more product, and to ensure that nobody else's products look like a reasonable alternative.
Contrast that with some guy appearing from nowhere, expecting to be treated like someone important simply because the letters M-I-T follow their name, and who haven't really a clue about how to effectively navigate the corridors of power. Guess who wins?
Last point: Asus isn't competing with the OLPC. They're building a consumer device and using retail channels to deliver it. They'll sell them in numbers, I don't doubt, but the plain fact is that the devices are not nearly as appropriate for use in rural areas as the OLPC is.
In fairness to OLPC, they're victims as much of being original as anything else. But their strategy is failing because of implementation, not design.
Re:Microsoft is Still Evil! Hurray!
on
Browser Privacy Test
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Privacy issues aside, I've never had any trouble with Flash.
I like your logic: Aside from a single tile, Columbia's last mission went flawlessly.
Seriously, though: you've underlined the single greatest problem in computer security today - what we don't see can hurt us. I've written about this at greater length elsewhere, but to put it simply, privacy is the battleground of our decade.
The struggle to come to terms with privacy will manifest itself in the legal, moral and ethical arenas, but it arises now because of technology and the cavalier approach that the vast majority of people take to it.
The ramifications of our ability to transmit, access and synthesise vast amounts of data using technology are consistently underestimated by people because of the simple fact that, as far as they're concerned, they are sitting in the relative privacy of their own room with nothing but the computer screen as an intermediary.
On the consumer side of things, this creates what Schneier calls a Market for Lemons in which the substance of the product becomes less valuable than its appearance. As long as we have the illusion of security, we don't worry about the lack of real protection.
On the institutional side, we see countless petty abuses of people's privacy. There is nothing stopping a low-level employee from watching this data simply out of prurient interest. In fact, this kind of abuse happens almost every time comprehensive surveillance is conducted. In a famous example, low-level staffers in the US National Security Agency would regularly listen in on romantic conversations between soldiers serving in Iraq and their wives at home. The practice became so common that some even created 'Greatest Hits' compilations of their favourites and shared them with other staffers.
They would never have done so had the people in question been in the room, but because the experience is intermediated by an impersonal computer screen, which can inflict no retribution on them, their worst instincts get the better of them.
When discussing software in the 21st Century, we cannot ever treat privacy as just one incidental aspect of a greater system. Privacy defines the system. Starting an argument by throwing it aside in the first subordinate clause gives little weight to any argument that follows.
Pretty much business 201 there. If you're doing hardware repair then no, you probably can't start a company on your own that does just that. The margin is too small in most markets. However, if you choose a thing like security consulting the current margin is ridiculously huge enough to really get something viable going with one single person.
Good point. Another thing that matters a lot is where you are in terms of seniority, capability and expertise. There is no such thing, for example, as part-time programming. Except at the most menial level. But a really seasoned design/implementation consultant can usefully spend a few days helping a development
team find the track, or get back on it.
I work part-time to support my journalism habit (which barely gets me beer money) and my photography. The articles get me enough exposure that people know I'm not just a bullshit artist, and they call me in for all kinds of things, from setting a few servers to rights, to helping them dig their way out of a technological dead-end, to consulting on public telecoms policy.
It's nice work if you can get it, but it comes at a price. My life is much more uncertain now than it was. I live very simply, and can't afford to take on any kind of long-term commitments, because I'm never quite sure if the money's going to be there.
The only way I manage to do what I do is because I've been doing it since about 1992. I've been working on the Web for almost as long as it's existed, and I've invested a lot of unpaid time and effort establishing contacts and credentials. That said, I'm doing what I love. Part time.
It describes the ability to add metadata to web content (tags, etc), and you haven't heard of it because web 2.0 is the more popular term.;)
Wrong and wrong. Sort of. 8^)
The Semantic Web is the term coined by Tim Berners Lee, describing the ability to associate data using inference (rather than explicit reference). In his conception, it relies on XML data formats and the ability to use common elements to translate between one and the other.
It's not a terribly easy concept to grok at first, but the basic premise is that in data transformation, you only need to know the two steps closest to you in order to translate (and process) data from numerous other sources. As long as we know how to get from A to B and B to C, we can go straight from A to C.
The vision of the Semantic Web, therefore, is of a Web that is completely transparent, because XML data encapsulation and transformation is ultimately universal, albeit with the presence of an unknown number of intermediate steps.
We have been very charitable in the West in determining who, mentally and in body, is a "person" and who is not. Perhaps out of guilt from deciding that wrongly in the past?
Women were not 'persons' under the law until as late as the 1960s in some parts of Canada and the US. They only got universal suffrage at the federal level in the 20th Century.
That's not guilt. That's making right what was patently wrong before.
P.S. Mods, get a grip. Parent is not a troll, it's just plain old garden variety ignorance, which deserves to see the light of day - and then get smacked down by reality.
The W3C wasn't exactly voted into power by the people.
No, not exactly.
But as an industry consortium representing (and composed of) most of the major online companies and a number of other interested institutions, they have as democratic a mandate as any standards body I've seen.
We're starved enough for bandwidth here that I could push the whole country offline if the site got slashdotted. See my homepage and follow the OLPC tag if you want further details.
How many pads of paper, pencils and books does $199 get? Maybe be of more use than a computer?
False equivalency. You can't video conference with a pencil. Or make (decent) music with a piece of paper. The OLPC's capacity for re-use is also somewhat superior.
I live and work in the South Pacific. Let me assure you that, while paper and pencils are in short supply, it's mostly because paper doesn't last very long in any useful state in a tropical climate.
The OLPC, on the other hand, is standing up quite well to the elements in the pilot project we're running here.
I don't know that I've ever seen a more (inadvertantly) astute summary of the 'small government' argument. Using rm as a tool to remove the operating system that makes its own existence and purpose possible is directly analogous to the argument that we should use government to shrink itself.
Logically, it can only end in disaster. The moment government cedes its ability to operate in a particular area (and in this example, it's/bin), it ceases to be effective.
We all know that the libertarian approach wants simply to reduce waste and reduce the government 'footprint'. BUT... that's not practicable. As we've seen from all of the small-government proponents who took office, the effect is the inverse to what voters intended - deregulation becomes license for special interests (most often corporate leaders) to run rampant in pursuit of short-term interests. And that is precisely what regulation was supposed to avoid.
And still, government grows.
It grows because those very same interests who laud deregulation in some areas actually want and require regulation in others - again, to protect their own short-term interests.
The issue of what role government should play and the question of what constitutes (heh) an appropriate size are critically important to a healthy democracy, and in that sense, libertarianism provides a healthy, skeptical check on the desire of some to govern everything, all the time. But the discussion has to begin with the premise that some regulation and legislation must exist in order to protect the long-term health of the government and the people.
One issue troubles me: In this and other projects, no-one has solved the problem of supplying internet connectivity in remote areas. I know that Google is launching a constellation of Ka band satellites - but they will be commercial. One idea that I saw was to use a WiFi server on either buses or motorcycles. Local servers pump email etc. to the mobile servers which then dump the data when they get to a hot-spot - and visa-versa. Sort of a sneakernet for the back woods.
You've effectively answered your own question. Yes, it's early days yet where rural Internet access in concerned, and as you imply, there is no silver bullet. Just as it was in the early days of Internet in the developed world, it's a matter of choosing what's technologically appropriate for each particular case.
In my neck of the woods (South Pacific) we're taking advantage of a happy accident to get very low-cost VSAT access throughout the region. In other countries that I've spoken and/or worked with, the plan is generally to start with VSAT, then attack the necessary policy issues that need to be addressed in order to create a national ICT policy.
It's slow going, but the work seems to be paying off. Here in Vanuatu, we're already piloting the XO with a local NGO, and the Ministry of Education has indicated their intent to run a pilot of their own. We're explicitly linking the provision of Internet to the XO roll-out for obvious reasons.
In all, the process of liberalising the local telecoms market has taken about a decade, and we're not done yet. It's unfortunate for us geeks who always want tomorrow's toys today, but slow and steady really is the only way to go if you want things to be sustainable.
To be fair he could be in a third world nation where that is actually the top teir plan. For example a 1mbps "unlimited" connection in Vanuatu goes for the princly sum of $585 USD per month.
The figure is accurate (I'm posting from a Telecom Vanuatu 1Mbps link right now), but let's not conflate bandwidth with transfer caps.
Telecom Vanuatu relies exclusively on satellite for Internet connectivity, so no matter what happens, their Internet fees are going to be high. In fairness, though, even though they charge frightening fees, there's not a huge amount of contention (I am usually able to fill the pipe when I need to) and they offer unlimited downloads on all their packages.
A few years ago, they were offering only metred bandwidth, and prices were horrendous. In one or two egregious cases, careless or ignorant customers managed to ring up monthly fees in the USD 10,000 range.
We in the Vanuatu IT Users Society (no link - that site is on a TVL 1 Mbps link as well!) went to TVL and said, 'Charge as much as you feel you must, but make it unlimited.' Since that time, Internet use has increased by about two orders of magnitude. (Of course, that's not much, starting from close to zero.)
Vanuatu may be hobbled in many ways where IT is concerned, but we've learned to do a lot with what we've got. I've been writing for almost two years now about IT developments here. Read more here, if you like.
Slashdot Mirror
I fully agree with your first sentence. QoS is a necessary part of any network management plan, and it deserves to be seen as a tool like any other.
But it doesn't follow that QoS is always good if applied without prejudice. For example: A network that doesn't give adequate priority to anyone's VOIP is no more desirable than a network that gives priority to one VOIP supplier. (If you want VOIP services that is.)
QoS and Net Neutrality are two different things, but both affect consumers in a particular way. The nice thing is that, where available, market forces do a lot to mitigate against bad QoS policies. Net Neutrality, on the other hand, usually implies collusion between telcos and other industry allies.
This means that when someone creates an undesirable QoS scheme, we can (theoretically) vote with our wallets. But when Net Neutrality is challenged, we usually have no recourse but the force of law and regulation.
It's true that QoS can be used as the mechanism by which Net Neutrality is thwarted, but the problem is not the filtering per se; the problem is collusion between industry allies to limit choice and undermine the end-to-end network model.
Don't be so sure. One of an archaeologist's favourite places to dig is in the village rubbish tip. It's important because it tells us more about day-to-day life in a society than what people wrote down on papyrus, carved into stone, or otherwise saved for posterity.
In virtually every case, the stuff that rulers deem important doesn't bear much relation to the way everyday people live. Often enough, it's an outright lie. So if we want to understand a society with any depth of detail, we need to know the trivial and mundane as well as the monumental.
Pretty much. A Novel in Nine Letters, one of Dostoyevski's famous shorter works, used the newly established postal service as a framing device.
Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy that hinges on the lack of reliable postal services. A courier is late arriving with a note for Romeo, so he never finds out that Juliet has merely faked her own death.
Some of the stock humour in the Italian Commedia dell'Arte hinges on letters getting mis-delivered.
In short: Yes, we are defined by our communications capacity, and that's been a subject of commentary for as long as we've been keeping records.
That more or less makes your point - but to conclude that it's no longer topical because we've been talking about it for a while... I can't agree with you there.
Removing all of those will only make the computer run even slower, won't it?
(I kid, I kid.)
My company is starting to sponsor 1 to 6 months paid breaks to do your regular work for NGO non-profits. For me that would be IT work. Normally if I donate labor it would be habitat for humanity as a worker drone. But do they or others need volunteer IT support?
GeekCorps, my friend. See the world and make yourself useful. In fact, it would make sense to have your company talk to Geekcorps and to organise staff in groups to collaborate on a given project, in order to ensure continuity and ongoing support.
Anyway, they do good work.
And did I mention it installs from a single CD?
Impressive. I'm definately going to use this, as putting in a second disk is just way too much work.
Okay, you made a funny. But consider the implications of that single disk:
Full disclosure: I worked two years for the company that built SME Server. But I went to work for them because I liked the product. 6 years later, I'm still installing and using it on customer sites.
(See my other post below for a few caveats about AD. Briefly, LDAP is integrated, but not very tightly. You'll still need to install or build an actual AD solution on top of it to provide what the OP is looking for.)
I can second SME server. I've been using it for this role since it was E-Smith many years ago. It's a fantastic little distro for a lot of different reasons. Definitely good stuff.
I worked for e-smith inc. (later purchased by Mitel Networks) on the team that developed for the SME Server distro.
It's magic for small offices, no doubt. I work in developing countries now, and I find it especially useful in places with no in-house IT capacity. I can get file services, email, web and user management up and running in about 45 minutes.
(I'm not going to link to any particular installations, because, well, slashdot has the capacity to swamp our entire nation's bandwidth.)
BUT! SME Server doesn't have a built-in AD capability. It will act as an excellent small network domain controller. Its user and group management is simplicity done right. But that's not Active Directory per se.
If you want an actual AD roll-out, you'll have to layer it on top of the server's existing capabilities. Note that this is not at all impossible - SME Server can run just about everything CentOS runs with little or no fuss or bother.
To sum up - SME Server would be a great platform for schools to build on - it's low-maintenance, robust and simple enough that even a Windows admin can't complain. But you need to roll part of the solution on your own. Of course, you were going to do that anyway. So definitely look at SME Server. 8^)
Good article... shows the mentality of the Psychologists/Social workers though, something like this:
Two social workers were walking through a rough part of the city in the evening. They heard moans and muted cries for help from a back lane. Upon investigation, they found a semi-conscious man in a pool of blood. "Help me, I've been mugged and viciously beaten" he pleaded. The two social workers turned and walked away. One remarked to her colleague: "You know the person that did this really needs help."
Er, no. How about:
Two social workers see a semi-conscious man in a pool of blood. "Help me, I've been mugged and viciously beaten" he pleads.
"Tell you what," says one social worker to the other, "I'll take care of this guy. You go find the person who did it and make sure he never does it again."
because MS have more experience of wining and dining (and bribing) than generally less dishonest Linux companies?
I wouldn't impute any dishonesty to these sales people. Generally speaking, it's not necessary to be dishonest in order to win.
I suspect that most people's conception of the way things work in government (and education in particular) is altogether too jaded. Many people working in education policy do so out of interest and generally show a degree of commitment to the principles of learning and development.
That doesn't mean they're necessarily brilliant, insightful or even competent. Some are, some aren't. But the vast majority of them make decisions in what they consider to be the best interests of the young people under their care.
The folks at Microsoft are smart, organised and effective. The links in the summary documents show that they've got a clear game plan, and the tables attached indicate that they were executing well on it.
Compare that to the work done by FOSS organisations. With the exception of IBM, there's hardly anyone who has established contacts in Education. FOSS is typically touted by mid-level technical folks who have expertise in their field but little political experience. They almost certainly don't have the resources, the planning or the operational intelligence to keep pace with Microsoft.
Add to this the fact that Microsoft is the incumbent, and you'll see that they've got the advantage in almost every respect: resources, position, momentum and intelligence.
Microsoft's played dirty in the past, and they likely will again in the future. I'm only suggesting that it's not necessary to play that way every time.
The corrupt practice in this particular case is dumping, and that decision is being made at the corporate level. While corruption taints everyone who participates in it, that doesn't mean they are suddenly guilty of every manifestation of it all at once.
I'm going to parade my ignorance for a moment. Hopefully it won't wilt under the baleful gaze of your 4-digit ID. 8^)
Okay, seriously: How would the GPL keep device manufacturers from integrating Open file systems into their hardware? Granted that they wouldn't be able to use any non-LGPL'ed libraries, but surely the existence of an open spec would be enough for them to build support for common file systems without their firmware or software code becoming tainted by the GPL?
It's always seemed to me that the big hurdle blocking movement from anything but FATxx or NTFS was Microsoft's unwillingness to support them on their OSes.
Hence of course the announcement of a New, Improved FAT that requires no further effort from the device manufacturers, something which bean counters in enterprises everywhere applaud.
I'm genuinely curious - exactly what other issues besides lack of Windows support could stop manufacturers from building different file systems into their storage devices?
I'm not so sure about that. I think the OLPC failed for political, not economic reasons. The lobbying efforts of both Microsoft and Intel did have some influence on the outcome, but more and more these days I get the feeling that the biggest reason was sheer ineptitude among the project's organisers.
Let's break these points out a little:
The OLPC pricing model was contingent on economies of scale, and the only parties with enough money to bring to the table were national governments. That logic is sound, as far as it goes. But Negroponte and co. completely ignored just how hard it is to build political will, especially where new, iconoclastic ideas are concerned.
Politicians, especially in developing countries, live from one day to the next. In many cases, their only mandate is to accumulate as much wealth as they can before their government falls, or they fall out of favour. OLPC holds no benefit for them whatsoever.
Those politicians who are competent (and who consider that governing is actually part of the job description) need to have some degree of confidence that what they're proposing isn't going to blow up in their face and leave them looking like fools. As far as I can tell, Negroponte's negotiators relied only on their own stature and authority within the geek world to reassure them. That was - how shall I say? - a little presumptuous.
One example: I have been working in the developing world for a while. In the course of it, I've developed a few very valuable contacts in certain countries in the region where I work. When I was informed that OLPC wanted to roll out in one of them, I was very enthusiastic. This particular country was perfectly suited for such a project: The population isn't too big, the current government is genuinely committed to development, and they've just come into a sizeable chunk of money from newly developed petroleum deposits.
I happened to have contacts at the very core of this particular government. It's not inconceivable that I could have arranged a few very useful conversations. So I wrote to the envoy OLPC had sent, and offered to help.
No reply.
I waited a few weeks more, and tried again. No reply.
After three separate tries, I worked the back channel and was informed by a rather embarrassed individual that the OLPC envoy thought I might cramp his style, so without even checking whether his fears were justified, he cut me cold.
In contrast to this amateurish approach, Microsoft and Intel spend a good deal of time and money building alliances within various governments. They come across as reasonable and fair, often negotiating steeply discounted licensing schemes, and bestowing a good deal of largesse while they're at it.
They're ruthless competitors, that's true, but they don't walk around with blood dripping from their fangs. When you meet with them, they're attentive, caring and sympathetic to your situation. Their job, after all, is to sell more product, and to ensure that nobody else's products look like a reasonable alternative.
Contrast that with some guy appearing from nowhere, expecting to be treated like someone important simply because the letters M-I-T follow their name, and who haven't really a clue about how to effectively navigate the corridors of power. Guess who wins?
Last point: Asus isn't competing with the OLPC. They're building a consumer device and using retail channels to deliver it. They'll sell them in numbers, I don't doubt, but the plain fact is that the devices are not nearly as appropriate for use in rural areas as the OLPC is.
In fairness to OLPC, they're victims as much of being original as anything else. But their strategy is failing because of implementation, not design.
Yep. here's a better link: http://scriptorum.imagicity.com/2009/01/03/on-privacy/
I like your logic: Aside from a single tile, Columbia's last mission went flawlessly.
Seriously, though: you've underlined the single greatest problem in computer security today - what we don't see can hurt us. I've written about this at greater length elsewhere, but to put it simply, privacy is the battleground of our decade.
The struggle to come to terms with privacy will manifest itself in the legal, moral and ethical arenas, but it arises now because of technology and the cavalier approach that the vast majority of people take to it.
The ramifications of our ability to transmit, access and synthesise vast amounts of data using technology are consistently underestimated by people because of the simple fact that, as far as they're concerned, they are sitting in the relative privacy of their own room with nothing but the computer screen as an intermediary.
On the consumer side of things, this creates what Schneier calls a Market for Lemons in which the substance of the product becomes less valuable than its appearance. As long as we have the illusion of security, we don't worry about the lack of real protection.
On the institutional side, we see countless petty abuses of people's privacy. There is nothing stopping a low-level employee from watching this data simply out of prurient interest. In fact, this kind of abuse happens almost every time comprehensive surveillance is conducted. In a famous example, low-level staffers in the US National Security Agency would regularly listen in on romantic conversations between soldiers serving in Iraq and their wives at home. The practice became so common that some even created 'Greatest Hits' compilations of their favourites and shared them with other staffers.
They would never have done so had the people in question been in the room, but because the experience is intermediated by an impersonal computer screen, which can inflict no retribution on them, their worst instincts get the better of them.
When discussing software in the 21st Century, we cannot ever treat privacy as just one incidental aspect of a greater system. Privacy defines the system. Starting an argument by throwing it aside in the first subordinate clause gives little weight to any argument that follows.
I don't know, why you bothered, posting anonymously. We all, know it's you, Shatner.
8^)
Good point. Another thing that matters a lot is where you are in terms of seniority, capability and expertise. There is no such thing, for example, as part-time programming. Except at the most menial level. But a really seasoned design/implementation consultant can usefully spend a few days helping a development team find the track, or get back on it.
I work part-time to support my journalism habit (which barely gets me beer money) and my photography. The articles get me enough exposure that people know I'm not just a bullshit artist, and they call me in for all kinds of things, from setting a few servers to rights, to helping them dig their way out of a technological dead-end, to consulting on public telecoms policy.
It's nice work if you can get it, but it comes at a price. My life is much more uncertain now than it was. I live very simply, and can't afford to take on any kind of long-term commitments, because I'm never quite sure if the money's going to be there.
The only way I manage to do what I do is because I've been doing it since about 1992. I've been working on the Web for almost as long as it's existed, and I've invested a lot of unpaid time and effort establishing contacts and credentials. That said, I'm doing what I love. Part time.
It describes the ability to add metadata to web content (tags, etc), and you haven't heard of it because web 2.0 is the more popular term. ;)
Wrong and wrong. Sort of. 8^)
The Semantic Web is the term coined by Tim Berners Lee, describing the ability to associate data using inference (rather than explicit reference). In his conception, it relies on XML data formats and the ability to use common elements to translate between one and the other.
It's not a terribly easy concept to grok at first, but the basic premise is that in data transformation, you only need to know the two steps closest to you in order to translate (and process) data from numerous other sources. As long as we know how to get from A to B and B to C, we can go straight from A to C.
The vision of the Semantic Web, therefore, is of a Web that is completely transparent, because XML data encapsulation and transformation is ultimately universal, albeit with the presence of an unknown number of intermediate steps.
Women were not 'persons' under the law until as late as the 1960s in some parts of Canada and the US. They only got universal suffrage at the federal level in the 20th Century.
That's not guilt. That's making right what was patently wrong before.
P.S. Mods, get a grip. Parent is not a troll, it's just plain old garden variety ignorance, which deserves to see the light of day - and then get smacked down by reality.
And used clothing, used furniture, used power tools...
Not to mention houses and cars. Poor, starving architects and designers, working for nothing but commissions.
No, not exactly.
But as an industry consortium representing (and composed of) most of the major online companies and a number of other interested institutions, they have as democratic a mandate as any standards body I've seen.
Not to put on slashdot. 8^)
We're starved enough for bandwidth here that I could push the whole country offline if the site got slashdotted. See my homepage and follow the OLPC tag if you want further details.
How many pads of paper, pencils and books does $199 get? Maybe be of more use than a computer?
False equivalency. You can't video conference with a pencil. Or make (decent) music with a piece of paper. The OLPC's capacity for re-use is also somewhat superior.
I live and work in the South Pacific. Let me assure you that, while paper and pencils are in short supply, it's mostly because paper doesn't last very long in any useful state in a tropical climate.
The OLPC, on the other hand, is standing up quite well to the elements in the pilot project we're running here.
done.
Done like dinner, you mean.
I don't know that I've ever seen a more (inadvertantly) astute summary of the 'small government' argument. Using rm as a tool to remove the operating system that makes its own existence and purpose possible is directly analogous to the argument that we should use government to shrink itself.
Logically, it can only end in disaster. The moment government cedes its ability to operate in a particular area (and in this example, it's /bin), it ceases to be effective.
We all know that the libertarian approach wants simply to reduce waste and reduce the government 'footprint'. BUT... that's not practicable. As we've seen from all of the small-government proponents who took office, the effect is the inverse to what voters intended - deregulation becomes license for special interests (most often corporate leaders) to run rampant in pursuit of short-term interests. And that is precisely what regulation was supposed to avoid.
And still, government grows.
It grows because those very same interests who laud deregulation in some areas actually want and require regulation in others - again, to protect their own short-term interests.
The issue of what role government should play and the question of what constitutes (heh) an appropriate size are critically important to a healthy democracy, and in that sense, libertarianism provides a healthy, skeptical check on the desire of some to govern everything, all the time. But the discussion has to begin with the premise that some regulation and legislation must exist in order to protect the long-term health of the government and the people.
You've effectively answered your own question. Yes, it's early days yet where rural Internet access in concerned, and as you imply, there is no silver bullet. Just as it was in the early days of Internet in the developed world, it's a matter of choosing what's technologically appropriate for each particular case.
In my neck of the woods (South Pacific) we're taking advantage of a happy accident to get very low-cost VSAT access throughout the region. In other countries that I've spoken and/or worked with, the plan is generally to start with VSAT, then attack the necessary policy issues that need to be addressed in order to create a national ICT policy.
It's slow going, but the work seems to be paying off. Here in Vanuatu, we're already piloting the XO with a local NGO, and the Ministry of Education has indicated their intent to run a pilot of their own. We're explicitly linking the provision of Internet to the XO roll-out for obvious reasons.
In all, the process of liberalising the local telecoms market has taken about a decade, and we're not done yet. It's unfortunate for us geeks who always want tomorrow's toys today, but slow and steady really is the only way to go if you want things to be sustainable.
The scientific community will certainly not stay hindi-fferent to this expansion of India's science curry-culum!
That's sikh. Trying to curry favour with the mods using such blatant pun jabs. I hope they're having nan of that.
The figure is accurate (I'm posting from a Telecom Vanuatu 1Mbps link right now), but let's not conflate bandwidth with transfer caps.
Telecom Vanuatu relies exclusively on satellite for Internet connectivity, so no matter what happens, their Internet fees are going to be high. In fairness, though, even though they charge frightening fees, there's not a huge amount of contention (I am usually able to fill the pipe when I need to) and they offer unlimited downloads on all their packages.
A few years ago, they were offering only metred bandwidth, and prices were horrendous. In one or two egregious cases, careless or ignorant customers managed to ring up monthly fees in the USD 10,000 range.
We in the Vanuatu IT Users Society (no link - that site is on a TVL 1 Mbps link as well!) went to TVL and said, 'Charge as much as you feel you must, but make it unlimited.' Since that time, Internet use has increased by about two orders of magnitude. (Of course, that's not much, starting from close to zero.)
Vanuatu may be hobbled in many ways where IT is concerned, but we've learned to do a lot with what we've got. I've been writing for almost two years now about IT developments here. Read more here, if you like.