It's only the shows for huge bands, stupid.
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Pay Lars
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· Score: 1
This is untrue for all but the biggest bands. In fact, you essentially say that yourself: this is true only for bands which "do 250+ shows a year" and charge "$40+" for tickets. Very few bands can get away with this -- those that can already DO have album sales in "the millions and millions".
The vast majority of bands make little profit or even lose money on tour -- shows are done mostly to promote CD sales. (And, of course, because the band loves playing their music.) Most shows (at least those that I hear of) by acts which don't sell "millions and millions" of albums are in the $7 - $17 range. These prices do not result in large fortunes; they result in the tour van getting new tires. In fact, many great bands tour very rarely, either because they don't want to be on the road for most of the year or because it's simply too expensive. (Or for a variety of other reasons.)
And also: since when do all the big names own their own record labels? Relatively few do.
And yes, the record companies are evil, and yes, this is a valid reason to get MP3s, but you can't just pretend that not selling CDs won't hurt a band -- this is not true. It will hurt the band. On the other hand, many people (myself included) will, if they like the music they get in MP3 form, buy the CD. I know that since I started getting MP3s, I've started spending way too much money on CDs. And hopefully, eventually this will force record companies to change their distribution, and give small labels and acts more exposure and more of chance. This is true; saying that not buying a band's CD doesn't hurt them is false.
Because users who would check the downloaded files to see if they contain security holes will be experienced enough not to follow those instructions, and will know how to download the script and read it before running it. Users who don't see a security risk in those instructions will not have the experience necessary to see if the downloaded script does anything evil.
Call up support -- while Win2000 may be somewhat less stable than a Unix, I've used it, and it certainly doesn't crash that much. You probably have some kind of driver problem. Even Win98 usually doesn't crash that much.
In my personal experience (Win2k RTM on about 3 different machines, each fairly new & powerful) it's very stable for personal desktop use. I've used it on one machine for about 3 weeks so far, and have never had either a hang or a BSOD. I may get flamed for this, but from what I've seen I'd have to say that Win2000 is the best OS currently available for business & desktop use. (BeOS is very nice too, but lacks applications.) Developers & experts are probably better off with linux or BSD. From my experience, it IS way too unstable for server use.
What you're doing is known as arguing without an argument.
"You are a fool if you think you can cause more damage with a car than a computer". Why? Discuss. How, exactly, could you or your average home user (not some mythical supercracker) cause hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage in a day with a computer? My answer was, and remains, that you can't, otherwise people would do so on a regular basis. You haven't provided any evidence to back up your claim...
I never contested that some put a price on human life - I believe that that has nothing to do with what you're arguing, though.
US (I'm not a US citizen, by the way) export restrictions on supercomputers: first, this is a bit of an out-of-date policy. Even so, though, the purpose is mainly to prevent government intelligence from using sophisticated analysis & encryption software; it has nothing to do with cracking or DoS, as this can be done using a plain old computer.
"Did you know that dip shit". If you're going to propose major government changes, please learn basic social skills. And it's spelt "dipshit".
As to @Home and RR being a hazard: of course they are. Not a hazard on the level of 4-year-olds driving, though. And not a major, apocalyptic hazard either; millions of people already use these services. My head isn't in the sand, it just isn't on another planet.
A home computer is a powerful weapon, compared in danger to a car? Excuse me?
First, I'll take your wager any day. I'd say that a few hundred thousand dollars of damage could be caused in under an hour using a car -- just plow the car into a house and let it burn. Now, how exactly are you going to, in one day, cause hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage using your home computer? Answer: you can't, unless you're an incredibly skilled cracker. If it was this easy to cause damage using a computer, then people, who have a strange tendency to enjoy causing damage for no particular reason, would already have caused huge amounts of damage, and would do so on a regular basis.
Requiring a license to use a computer is simply laughable. Licenses are required to drive a car because if you don't know how to drive, chances are you are going to kill someone. I know many people who know next to nothing about computers. Incredibly enough, none have either killed someone with their computers or caused any damage of any kind! Requiring a license to use a computer makes about as much sense as requiring a license to use a telephone, i.e. absolutely none.
And by the way, all the conditions for the apocalypse you predict are in place. @Home has over a million subscribers - that's at least 500,000 relatively clueless Windows users with always-on connections. And what's the worst that has come of this? Probably the use of open Wingate proxies to post spam (a problem which has since been solved by scanning).
And by the way, please don't use the word "stupid" to refer to the computer illiterate; they're not. They just don't know how to use computers. "Stupid" could apply equally well to someone who regularly makes spelling & grammar mistakes. (Examples of these can be found in the post I'm replying to and 90% of Slashdot. And possibly this post too.)
If I remember correctly, that's because it was hosted by a university, and therefore publically funded. This was possible then because the traffic levels that Yahoo received were much, much lower.
There are many, many useful sites which do not advertise, for example www.gnu.org There are no banners there. And as for content, it's the top. Excellent tools.
I didn't say that there were no good sites without advertising... I said that you usually couldn't put up a good site without advertising and not lose money. And the only reason GNU does not lose large amounts of money is that they receive grants and donations. Grants and donations can't sustain more than a minuscule percentage of the Web... I assume you don't want search engines to have PBS-style pledge breaks. (We'll get back to your search in just a few minutes now, but wouldn't you love this novelty AltaVista heated blanket, available at the $85 level?)
It is sad to see the Internet gradually turn into a mindnumbing TV-like apparatus simply because "there can be no content unless you advertise". That is no free speech. It is free speech for those who have the money, because "you sing the songs of those whose bread you eat."
The cases in which advertising would limit free speech are very rare. But they certainly do exist. This is the case in many other media, though -- newspapers with, for instance, anti-capitalist views cannot be supported by advertising. So these newspapers either charge readers or operate at a loss (and solicit donations). The same is applicable to the Internet; nobody said that you can't put content up without advertising, only that you have to find an alternative revenue source or operate at a loss. And yes, as is the case with other media, this will make it more difficult to make anti-advertiser views heard. Capitalism inherently limits some forms of free speech, and this is one of them.
However, without advertising, speech would be much more limited: those without enough money couldn't operate a web page. A case of "you can only sing if you have bread". That, it seems to me, would damage free speech much more.
Your claim that it's fully possible for Internet content to exist without advertising just doesn't ring true. Certainly, small sites will work just fine without ads -- webmasters will happily pay 20 dollars a month to share something they created.
BUT this would rule out both larger sites and sites that need to be worked on full-time. It's essentially impossible to run a search engine without ads, for instance: the bandwidth and hardware requirements are so huge that engines would have to either be publically funded (publically funding the Internet is no longer feasible due to its size), display ads, or use micropayments. (Those search engine which operate without many ads today, i.e. Google, run based mainly on venture capital, which certainly is not permanent).
So the only remaining alternative is micropayments. I certainly wouldn't want to pay for every search, and I don't think most users would either. You need only look at the introduction of flat-fee, unlimited Internet access: users left per-minute-fee ISPs in huge numbers. These days, virtually all home ISPs offer unlimited access, even the broadband ones. In fact, free, ad-based ISPs are becoming more and more popular these days.
Because cookies are not evil by definition. Cookies are used to, among other things, track which ads you've seen and which ads you tend to click on. Calling this a privacy violation is going overboard -- what private information is revealed? Is the fact that the user at IP 112.43.82.48 has already seen the ad with the dancing penguin and tends to click on ads about food a serious violation of your self?
This discussion is about the privacy violations of DoubleClick. I agree that what they're doing is a violation of privacy and that they should certainly be boycotted because of it. But you certainly can't extend that argument to "block all advertising". Flycast, for example, has a privacy policy that explicitly forbids associating personal information with your website-viewing profile.
Advertising is increasingly unfashionable to defend, but if it weren't for advertising, much of the content on the Internet wouldn't exist. Without advertising, it is essentially impossible to put a useful page up on the web and not lose money. The only real alternative is paying for content... now which would you prefer?
If users start blocking ads, then sites which advertise will make less money. As it is now, ad-blocking is generally restricted to techies, people who use the Web a lot and know a lot about it too. And so if this demographic (or psychographic, I'm not sure which applies here) blocks ads, sites which appeal to this demographic (to use advertising terms) will receive less revenue per visitor. That is, tech sites will make less money. Or, in other words, there will be fewer tech sites.
In an Internet where content is almost universally supported by advertising, no advertising simply means no content. (And let me also point out that there's a banner at the top of this very page...)
Re:Some of these aren't so dumb!
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Dumb Laws
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· Score: 1
the worst law is no left turns on red
Yeah, I know - no left turns on red, imagine! They're taking away my god-given, constitutionally-guaranteed right to turn into a line of traffic!
Actually, the law is no right turns on red, and it ain't such a bad law either - I've seen quite a few accidents caused by this elsewhere. And Quebec drivers tend towards the reckless side, and this law could cause problems:) (Quebec drivers are, when limited by law, great - in Alberta, I was amazed at the huge numbers of people who go at the speed limit in the passing lane.)
The language laws are cultural warfare - I wouldn't call them "dumb", just awful, racist, and dictatorial.
The "Canadian Content" laws I agree with - the idea is to prevent Canada from being assimilated into the United States, which I fully agree with. There are no restrictions on what music is sold, only what's played on commercial radio, and I believe that any law which restricts the playing of Britney Spears is a good law. This law has also really helped the Canadian music industry, creating a lot of good Canadian bands which have actual popularity here, and would not have been played on radio if it weren't for those laws.
I am trying to decide whether this post is tongue-in-cheek or not, but as others seem to be taking it seriously, so will I.
I have no doubt that if all that was taught after, say, sixth grade was math and speed reading, then people would learn their computer programming much faster! This would be, however, of absolutely no use to those interested in, for instance, any arts, fine or liberal. It would also create a race of narrow-minded, incredibly highly specialized people who would be able to create extremely efficient algorithms but wouldn't know who their head of state was or how to make something creatively or how to play soccer or even how to have a relationship with another human.
You say that school did teach you to think and learn efficiently; exactly. However, thinking != math and learning != speed reading. (As to "efficiently", I'm reminded of a turn-of-the-century manager whose name I can't remember right now who believed in timing to the second all the actions of employees. While my history is very bad here, this generally resulted in, predictably, unhappy employees -- people are not very efficient devices.)
The most telling phrase is that "freedom is elitist because it hurts the stupid people"; in context, stupid would appear to be defined as "people who are not good at, or have no interest in, the sciences". The meaning of intelligence has been widely debated, but it certainly doesn't mean the ability to factor polynomials. "Freedom" as defined in the proposed plan certainly would hurt those who learn orally, or whose intelligence lies in areas where the dissemination of information is not important.
It is amazing how often I see on the Internet the view that science is the epitome of all knowledge. Of course, many artists will consider science boring, rule-based, and a job for automatons - equally as untrue. The difference, however, is that artists acknowledge that scientists exist and are necessary.
IM servers should be no different. However, getting to that point could be difficult.
It's true that good ISPs only allow their customers to use their SMTP/POP servers. (Ignore free e-mail services for now.) However, that doesn't stop anyone from sending an e-mail to someone at another ISP - Bob's ISP's SMTP server accepts his message and sends it to Jane's ISP's POP server, from which she picks it up. It also doesn't matter if one is using MS Outlook and the other is using elm.
With IM clients in their current state, it's different. To communicate, users have to be both on the same server and using the same client. Which is, of course, a problem. ICQ, by far the most popular IM client, is in its official incarnation an ugly-slow-huge-cumbersome-bloated program (the MS one is comparatively very nice. of course, just about anything would be comparatively very nice.)
There should also be no need for MS to negotiate a contract with AOL. if I want to send e-mail to slashdot, my ISP doesn't have to have a contract with andover.net. Shouldn't be any different for IM. Course, getting a current monopoly (AOL, with both AIM and ICQ) to form a pact in the best interests of the consumer is difficult. Especially if the pact is mainly with MS, a wannabe monopoly in this area.
This may be a law somewhere, I don't know - crazy laws exist everywhere. (There was, until recently, a law here that parrots could not be kept near windows or something to that effect. No idea why this ever existed, and people had completely forgotten about...) However, this sex law is certainly never enforced. Sex under 18 is perfectly allowed. There are laws against a major using their influence to have sex with a child, even if the child says it's consensual, which really does make sense. But the under-18 won't go to jail, the over-18 will. And, obviously, if you're under 18 and rape someone, you'll go to jail.
As to freedom: well, it's a difficult word to define. Complete freedom can be defined as anarchy. Of course there are civil rights violations in America (tons of 'em, actually), but I think it is fairly safe to say that, as a rule, the population of North America and Western Europe has more freedom across the board than the population of China.
Most of the negative comments here fall in one of three categories:
1) If you don't know what a (video card/modem/etc.) is, you have no business installing an OS.
2) Linux isn't much harder to install than Windows NT, so what are you complaining about?
3) If you don't know what a kernel is, what are you doing installing Linux?
Numbers one and two are pure crap. Number one is untrue and elitist; the vast majority of people don't know about all the components in their computers, but quite a few people could install, say, Win98. (A few people have talked about how hard the Win98 install is. They have either talked about difficulties like not finding the CD key - hmm, maybe the sticker on the CD marked CD Key? - or talked about how long it takes, which is irrelevant as ease of use is not a function of length.)
It is true that a Linux install (BTW, when I say Linux install, I mean "a recent version of RedHat". And no, I don't mean an ancient, pre-GUI-install version of OpenLinux.) is not much, if at all, harder than a WinNT one. This is because the WinNT install sucks. The first time I installed NT4, I encountered blue-screen STOPs at three different places. There are also some very stupid parts to its design... for instance, why does trying to install your hard drive and CD-ROM as separate devices cause problems during the install? And on that topic, since when is an IDE hard drive a SCSI device? This may be a reason why WinNT has had little success in non corporate/power-user areas. Another installer being bad is no excuse, though; I'm sure RedHat has HP/UX beat too.
The next point makes sense, though. This is all because there is a huge Linux-for-grandmas push on. Power users should have no problem installing Linux. The problem is that it is now being targeted to home users, and you simply can't expect home users to know all about their hardware and know some commandline Unix.
Anyway, the install front has been given too much attention lately. There are quite a few projects: Caldera's Lizard (already out, now open source), Mandrake's Panoramix (pretty bad interface and design, in my opinion), and whatever RedHat's is called (Lorax? Or is that the distribution?). This should soon be improved. And once it is, tech journalists will continue to use outdated version and talk about how hard they are - "Compared to Win98, Debian 0.9 is very difficult!".
It's while reading articles like this that I feel like I live on another planet. Most of the fuss here is about the use of a Social Security Number on the mandatory ID cards that must be worn. From what I gather, people consider forcing people to wear their SSN at all times a Deadly Sin, but forcing people to wear a "seven digit school-assigned number" at all times is a good idea. It appears that the view is that wearing one particular number (Social Security) is a huge privacy violation, but being forced to wear another barcoded number at all times is not.
By the way, can someone explain time exactly how these tags will stop school shootings? If I remember correctly, most of the recent high-profile school shootings were committed by students, who would have been given a nametag, right?
Anyway, what I find absolutely incredible is the fact the the badge has a Pepsi logo on it. Even more incredible is that that fact was just a parenthetical note in a page-long rant about how the barcode contained the feared Social Security Number. Even MORE incredible are the few posts about this here, which are just about all about boycotting Pepsi. I wouldn't say that Pepsi has done anything I wouldn't expect Pepsi (or Coke, or Philip Morris, or Microsoft, or Red Hat, or any other publically-traded company) to do. Corporations, in a capitalist society, exist to make money, and forcing your logo onto every schoolchild seems like a pretty damn good source of advertising.
But they shouldn't be ALLOWED to do this! Remember, this is the government that is forcing students to wear this. Education is mandatory; ID cards are mandatory; the ID cards (or lanyards, makes no difference) are emblazoned with Pepsi. Therefore, advertising Pepsi is required by law for people of a certain age.
This is a reduction to the insane of capitalism, the government mandating constant consumption by forcing people to advertise a product. It's a very, very short step to, say, the Fidelity Mutual Funds House of Representatives. Actually, mandatory advertising on your body is already considerably further along the very scary path of the commodification of life.
Someone made a point about mandatory media-literacy classes in school. This is certainly good, but this action already shows such insanity that I can see students being kicked out of media literacy class because they're not wearing their Pepsi ID card. Where I live (not in the US!) media lit is a relatively large part of the required English curriculum, and of course English is mandatory. And where I live, people are still sane. For now.
Anyone want to know what happens when you spend too much time at your computer? See the previous post. Slowly, you start using the words "dick" and "FUD" too much, and lose any sense of humour which isn't connect to somehow linking the words "crap" (or synonyms) and "Microsoft".
In case you still haven't realized it, sarcasm is a form of humour where someone says something that is obviously untrue and is realized to be so by the reader, but is also funny. Like the starting post.
Judging from these replies, Canadians (like me) don't seem to have a sense of humour. It was a JOKE, people! Notice the moderation of "Funny"!
Anyway, the only appropriate response, joke or not, is a flood of American jokes (up here in the frozen north, we pass our time by telling Newfie and Yankee jokes, named after a Canadian province and North American country, respectively, whose inhabitants' stupidity is very funny). And please forget about the how-dare-you, we-invented-the-phone, we-burnt-down-the-white-house reactions.
Has anyone looked at those screenshots? (http://www.linux-mandrake.com/cooker/)
My best guess is that the screenshots are from the "Pidgin English" translation. Either that or they've decided that ease of use depends only on purty graphics and little coloured balls, and not in giving instructions that users have the slighest chance of understanding.
They're only planning to advertise, via banner ads, on their whois web gateway.
I don't see anything wrong with that. Whois isn't a web service, it's a service that uses the whois protocol. NSI has a gateway to it up on their page, and seeing as NSI has a quasi-monopoly on domain registration, it's a very popular page. But anyone else can create a gateway to whois just as easily, and tons of people have - for instance just about every web hosting company which registers domain names. Many other whois gateways on the web already have ads, and there shouldn't be a different policy for NSI's.
Of course, if they start limiting direct whois access or placing text ads on results, that's another story. From everything I've read, though, they're not planning to do that.
The point is that AOL did NOT keep their protocol proprietary. They released specs to it. (Well, to a slightly simpler ascii version, but that makes little difference.) Now apparently they want to retract the ability to use their protocol - this is very obviously to the disadvantage of users. In response, Microsoft is simply emulating their client, which to the best of my knowledge is not illegal.
Slashdot Mirror
This is untrue for all but the biggest bands. In fact, you essentially say that yourself: this is true only for bands which "do 250+ shows a year" and charge "$40+" for tickets. Very few bands can get away with this -- those that can already DO have album sales in "the millions and millions".
The vast majority of bands make little profit or even lose money on tour -- shows are done mostly to promote CD sales. (And, of course, because the band loves playing their music.) Most shows (at least those that I hear of) by acts which don't sell "millions and millions" of albums are in the $7 - $17 range. These prices do not result in large fortunes; they result in the tour van getting new tires. In fact, many great bands tour very rarely, either because they don't want to be on the road for most of the year or because it's simply too expensive. (Or for a variety of other reasons.)
And also: since when do all the big names own their own record labels? Relatively few do.
And yes, the record companies are evil, and yes, this is a valid reason to get MP3s, but you can't just pretend that not selling CDs won't hurt a band -- this is not true. It will hurt the band. On the other hand, many people (myself included) will, if they like the music they get in MP3 form, buy the CD. I know that since I started getting MP3s, I've started spending way too much money on CDs. And hopefully, eventually this will force record companies to change their distribution, and give small labels and acts more exposure and more of chance. This is true; saying that not buying a band's CD doesn't hurt them is false.
No, they're using an SQL database server, most likely mySQL.
$ whois openssh.com@whois.corenic.net Record created: 1999-10-25 08:44:41 MET by CORE-80
---3) OpenSSH.COM a further 9 days later (25-11-1999)
---Doesn't the whois record say 25-10-1999, not 25-11-1999? Which would mean the .com was registered in October, before the .org.
Because users who would check the downloaded files to see if they contain security holes will be experienced enough not to follow those instructions, and will know how to download the script and read it before running it. Users who don't see a security risk in those instructions will not have the experience necessary to see if the downloaded script does anything evil.
Call up support -- while Win2000 may be somewhat less stable than a Unix, I've used it, and it certainly doesn't crash that much. You probably have some kind of driver problem. Even Win98 usually doesn't crash that much.
In my personal experience (Win2k RTM on about 3 different machines, each fairly new & powerful) it's very stable for personal desktop use. I've used it on one machine for about 3 weeks so far, and have never had either a hang or a BSOD. I may get flamed for this, but from what I've seen I'd have to say that Win2000 is the best OS currently available for business & desktop use. (BeOS is very nice too, but lacks applications.) Developers & experts are probably better off with linux or BSD. From my experience, it IS way too unstable for server use.
What you're doing is known as arguing without an argument.
"You are a fool if you think you can cause more damage with a car than a computer". Why? Discuss. How, exactly, could you or your average home user (not some mythical supercracker) cause hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage in a day with a computer? My answer was, and remains, that you can't, otherwise people would do so on a regular basis. You haven't provided any evidence to back up your claim...
I never contested that some put a price on human life - I believe that that has nothing to do with what you're arguing, though.
US (I'm not a US citizen, by the way) export restrictions on supercomputers: first, this is a bit of an out-of-date policy. Even so, though, the purpose is mainly to prevent government intelligence from using sophisticated analysis & encryption software; it has nothing to do with cracking or DoS, as this can be done using a plain old computer.
"Did you know that dip shit". If you're going to propose major government changes, please learn basic social skills. And it's spelt "dipshit".
As to @Home and RR being a hazard: of course they are. Not a hazard on the level of 4-year-olds driving, though. And not a major, apocalyptic hazard either; millions of people already use these services. My head isn't in the sand, it just isn't on another planet.
A home computer is a powerful weapon, compared in danger to a car? Excuse me?
First, I'll take your wager any day. I'd say that a few hundred thousand dollars of damage could be caused in under an hour using a car -- just plow the car into a house and let it burn. Now, how exactly are you going to, in one day, cause hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage using your home computer? Answer: you can't, unless you're an incredibly skilled cracker. If it was this easy to cause damage using a computer, then people, who have a strange tendency to enjoy causing damage for no particular reason, would already have caused huge amounts of damage, and would do so on a regular basis.
Requiring a license to use a computer is simply laughable. Licenses are required to drive a car because if you don't know how to drive, chances are you are going to kill someone. I know many people who know next to nothing about computers. Incredibly enough, none have either killed someone with their computers or caused any damage of any kind! Requiring a license to use a computer makes about as much sense as requiring a license to use a telephone, i.e. absolutely none.
And by the way, all the conditions for the apocalypse you predict are in place. @Home has over a million subscribers - that's at least 500,000 relatively clueless Windows users with always-on connections. And what's the worst that has come of this? Probably the use of open Wingate proxies to post spam (a problem which has since been solved by scanning).
And by the way, please don't use the word "stupid" to refer to the computer illiterate; they're not. They just don't know how to use computers. "Stupid" could apply equally well to someone who regularly makes spelling & grammar mistakes. (Examples of these can be found in the post I'm replying to and 90% of Slashdot. And possibly this post too.)
If I remember correctly, that's because it was hosted by a university, and therefore publically funded. This was possible then because the traffic levels that Yahoo received were much, much lower.
Oh no. Not paradox, please. I hate those.
There are many, many useful sites which do not advertise, for example www.gnu.org There are no banners there. And as for content, it's the top. Excellent tools.
I didn't say that there were no good sites without advertising... I said that you usually couldn't put up a good site without advertising and not lose money. And the only reason GNU does not lose large amounts of money is that they receive grants and donations. Grants and donations can't sustain more than a minuscule percentage of the Web... I assume you don't want search engines to have PBS-style pledge breaks. (We'll get back to your search in just a few minutes now, but wouldn't you love this novelty AltaVista heated blanket, available at the $85 level?)
It is sad to see the Internet gradually turn into a mindnumbing TV-like apparatus simply because "there can be no content unless you advertise". That is no free speech. It is free speech for those who have the money, because "you sing the songs of those whose bread you eat."
The cases in which advertising would limit free speech are very rare. But they certainly do exist. This is the case in many other media, though -- newspapers with, for instance, anti-capitalist views cannot be supported by advertising. So these newspapers either charge readers or operate at a loss (and solicit donations). The same is applicable to the Internet; nobody said that you can't put content up without advertising, only that you have to find an alternative revenue source or operate at a loss. And yes, as is the case with other media, this will make it more difficult to make anti-advertiser views heard. Capitalism inherently limits some forms of free speech, and this is one of them.
However, without advertising, speech would be much more limited: those without enough money couldn't operate a web page. A case of "you can only sing if you have bread". That, it seems to me, would damage free speech much more.
Thank you, Anonymous Coward, for your in-depth response.
Your claim that it's fully possible for Internet content to exist without advertising just doesn't ring true. Certainly, small sites will work just fine without ads -- webmasters will happily pay 20 dollars a month to share something they created.
BUT this would rule out both larger sites and sites that need to be worked on full-time. It's essentially impossible to run a search engine without ads, for instance: the bandwidth and hardware requirements are so huge that engines would have to either be publically funded (publically funding the Internet is no longer feasible due to its size), display ads, or use micropayments. (Those search engine which operate without many ads today, i.e. Google, run based mainly on venture capital, which certainly is not permanent).
So the only remaining alternative is micropayments. I certainly wouldn't want to pay for every search, and I don't think most users would either. You need only look at the introduction of flat-fee, unlimited Internet access: users left per-minute-fee ISPs in huge numbers. These days, virtually all home ISPs offer unlimited access, even the broadband ones. In fact, free, ad-based ISPs are becoming more and more popular these days.
Because cookies are not evil by definition. Cookies are used to, among other things, track which ads you've seen and which ads you tend to click on. Calling this a privacy violation is going overboard -- what private information is revealed? Is the fact that the user at IP 112.43.82.48 has already seen the ad with the dancing penguin and tends to click on ads about food a serious violation of your self?
No, don't add flycast to that restricted list.
This discussion is about the privacy violations of DoubleClick. I agree that what they're doing is a violation of privacy and that they should certainly be boycotted because of it. But you certainly can't extend that argument to "block all advertising". Flycast, for example, has a privacy policy that explicitly forbids associating personal information with your website-viewing profile.
Advertising is increasingly unfashionable to defend, but if it weren't for advertising, much of the content on the Internet wouldn't exist. Without advertising, it is essentially impossible to put a useful page up on the web and not lose money. The only real alternative is paying for content... now which would you prefer?
If users start blocking ads, then sites which advertise will make less money. As it is now, ad-blocking is generally restricted to techies, people who use the Web a lot and know a lot about it too. And so if this demographic (or psychographic, I'm not sure which applies here) blocks ads, sites which appeal to this demographic (to use advertising terms) will receive less revenue per visitor. That is, tech sites will make less money. Or, in other words, there will be fewer tech sites.
In an Internet where content is almost universally supported by advertising, no advertising simply means no content. (And let me also point out that there's a banner at the top of this very page...)
the worst law is no left turns on red
Yeah, I know - no left turns on red, imagine! They're taking away my god-given, constitutionally-guaranteed right to turn into a line of traffic!
Actually, the law is no right turns on red, and it ain't such a bad law either - I've seen quite a few accidents caused by this elsewhere. And Quebec drivers tend towards the reckless side, and this law could cause problems :) (Quebec drivers are, when limited by law, great - in Alberta, I was amazed at the huge numbers of people who go at the speed limit in the passing lane.)
The language laws are cultural warfare - I wouldn't call them "dumb", just awful, racist, and dictatorial.
The "Canadian Content" laws I agree with - the idea is to prevent Canada from being assimilated into the United States, which I fully agree with. There are no restrictions on what music is sold, only what's played on commercial radio, and I believe that any law which restricts the playing of Britney Spears is a good law. This law has also really helped the Canadian music industry, creating a lot of good Canadian bands which have actual popularity here, and would not have been played on radio if it weren't for those laws.
I am trying to decide whether this post is tongue-in-cheek or not, but as others seem to be taking it seriously, so will I.
I have no doubt that if all that was taught after, say, sixth grade was math and speed reading, then people would learn their computer programming much faster! This would be, however, of absolutely no use to those interested in, for instance, any arts, fine or liberal. It would also create a race of narrow-minded, incredibly highly specialized people who would be able to create extremely efficient algorithms but wouldn't know who their head of state was or how to make something creatively or how to play soccer or even how to have a relationship with another human.
You say that school did teach you to think and learn efficiently; exactly. However, thinking != math and learning != speed reading. (As to "efficiently", I'm reminded of a turn-of-the-century manager whose name I can't remember right now who believed in timing to the second all the actions of employees. While my history is very bad here, this generally resulted in, predictably, unhappy employees -- people are not very efficient devices.)
The most telling phrase is that "freedom is elitist because it hurts the stupid people"; in context, stupid would appear to be defined as "people who are not good at, or have no interest in, the sciences". The meaning of intelligence has been widely debated, but it certainly doesn't mean the ability to factor polynomials. "Freedom" as defined in the proposed plan certainly would hurt those who learn orally, or whose intelligence lies in areas where the dissemination of information is not important.
It is amazing how often I see on the Internet the view that science is the epitome of all knowledge. Of course, many artists will consider science boring, rule-based, and a job for automatons - equally as untrue. The difference, however, is that artists acknowledge that scientists exist and are necessary.
IM servers should be no different. However, getting to that point could be difficult.
It's true that good ISPs only allow their customers to use their SMTP/POP servers. (Ignore free e-mail services for now.) However, that doesn't stop anyone from sending an e-mail to someone at another ISP - Bob's ISP's SMTP server accepts his message and sends it to Jane's ISP's POP server, from which she picks it up. It also doesn't matter if one is using MS Outlook and the other is using elm.
With IM clients in their current state, it's different. To communicate, users have to be both on the same server and using the same client. Which is, of course, a problem. ICQ, by far the most popular IM client, is in its official incarnation an ugly-slow-huge-cumbersome-bloated program (the MS one is comparatively very nice. of course, just about anything would be comparatively very nice.)
There should also be no need for MS to negotiate a contract with AOL. if I want to send e-mail to slashdot, my ISP doesn't have to have a contract with andover.net. Shouldn't be any different for IM. Course, getting a current monopoly (AOL, with both AIM and ICQ) to form a pact in the best interests of the consumer is difficult. Especially if the pact is mainly with MS, a wannabe monopoly in this area.
Which America do you live in??
This may be a law somewhere, I don't know - crazy laws exist everywhere. (There was, until recently, a law here that parrots could not be kept near windows or something to that effect. No idea why this ever existed, and people had completely forgotten about...) However, this sex law is certainly never enforced. Sex under 18 is perfectly allowed. There are laws against a major using their influence to have sex with a child, even if the child says it's consensual, which really does make sense. But the under-18 won't go to jail, the over-18 will. And, obviously, if you're under 18 and rape someone, you'll go to jail.
As to freedom: well, it's a difficult word to define. Complete freedom can be defined as anarchy. Of course there are civil rights violations in America (tons of 'em, actually), but I think it is fairly safe to say that, as a rule, the population of North America and Western Europe has more freedom across the board than the population of China.
Most of the negative comments here fall in one of three categories:
1) If you don't know what a (video card/modem/etc.) is, you have no business installing an OS.
2) Linux isn't much harder to install than Windows NT, so what are you complaining about?
3) If you don't know what a kernel is, what are you doing installing Linux?
Numbers one and two are pure crap. Number one is untrue and elitist; the vast majority of people don't know about all the components in their computers, but quite a few people could install, say, Win98. (A few people have talked about how hard the Win98 install is. They have either talked about difficulties like not finding the CD key - hmm, maybe the sticker on the CD marked CD Key? - or talked about how long it takes, which is irrelevant as ease of use is not a function of length.)
It is true that a Linux install (BTW, when I say Linux install, I mean "a recent version of RedHat". And no, I don't mean an ancient, pre-GUI-install version of OpenLinux.) is not much, if at all, harder than a WinNT one. This is because the WinNT install sucks. The first time I installed NT4, I encountered blue-screen STOPs at three different places. There are also some very stupid parts to its design... for instance, why does trying to install your hard drive and CD-ROM as separate devices cause problems during the install? And on that topic, since when is an IDE hard drive a SCSI device? This may be a reason why WinNT has had little success in non corporate/power-user areas. Another installer being bad is no excuse, though; I'm sure RedHat has HP/UX beat too.
The next point makes sense, though. This is all because there is a huge Linux-for-grandmas push on. Power users should have no problem installing Linux. The problem is that it is now being targeted to home users, and you simply can't expect home users to know all about their hardware and know some commandline Unix.
Anyway, the install front has been given too much attention lately. There are quite a few projects: Caldera's Lizard (already out, now open source), Mandrake's Panoramix (pretty bad interface and design, in my opinion), and whatever RedHat's is called (Lorax? Or is that the distribution?). This should soon be improved. And once it is, tech journalists will continue to use outdated version and talk about how hard they are - "Compared to Win98, Debian 0.9 is very difficult!".
It's while reading articles like this that I feel like I live on another planet. Most of the fuss here is about the use of a Social Security Number on the mandatory ID cards that must be worn. From what I gather, people consider forcing people to wear their SSN at all times a Deadly Sin, but forcing people to wear a "seven digit school-assigned number" at all times is a good idea. It appears that the view is that wearing one particular number (Social Security) is a huge privacy violation, but being forced to wear another barcoded number at all times is not.
By the way, can someone explain time exactly how these tags will stop school shootings? If I remember correctly, most of the recent high-profile school shootings were committed by students, who would have been given a nametag, right?
Anyway, what I find absolutely incredible is the fact the the badge has a Pepsi logo on it. Even more incredible is that that fact was just a parenthetical note in a page-long rant about how the barcode contained the feared Social Security Number. Even MORE incredible are the few posts about this here, which are just about all about boycotting Pepsi. I wouldn't say that Pepsi has done anything I wouldn't expect Pepsi (or Coke, or Philip Morris, or Microsoft, or Red Hat, or any other publically-traded company) to do. Corporations, in a capitalist society, exist to make money, and forcing your logo onto every schoolchild seems like a pretty damn good source of advertising.
But they shouldn't be ALLOWED to do this! Remember, this is the government that is forcing students to wear this. Education is mandatory; ID cards are mandatory; the ID cards (or lanyards, makes no difference) are emblazoned with Pepsi. Therefore, advertising Pepsi is required by law for people of a certain age.
This is a reduction to the insane of capitalism, the government mandating constant consumption by forcing people to advertise a product. It's a very, very short step to, say, the Fidelity Mutual Funds House of Representatives. Actually, mandatory advertising on your body is already considerably further along the very scary path of the commodification of life.
Someone made a point about mandatory media-literacy classes in school. This is certainly good, but this action already shows such insanity that I can see students being kicked out of media literacy class because they're not wearing their Pepsi ID card. Where I live (not in the US!) media lit is a relatively large part of the required English curriculum, and of course English is mandatory. And where I live, people are still sane. For now.
Anyone want to know what happens when you spend too much time at your computer? See the previous post. Slowly, you start using the words "dick" and "FUD" too much, and lose any sense of humour which isn't connect to somehow linking the words "crap" (or synonyms) and "Microsoft".
In case you still haven't realized it, sarcasm is a form of humour where someone says something that is obviously untrue and is realized to be so by the reader, but is also funny. Like the starting post.
Are gov is... a lacky.
Are skool sistem, on the uthur hand, teeches speling verry wel.
Judging from these replies, Canadians (like me) don't seem to have a sense of humour. It was a JOKE, people! Notice the moderation of "Funny"!
Anyway, the only appropriate response, joke or not, is a flood of American jokes (up here in the frozen north, we pass our time by telling Newfie and Yankee jokes, named after a Canadian province and North American country, respectively, whose inhabitants' stupidity is very funny). And please forget about the how-dare-you, we-invented-the-phone, we-burnt-down-the-white-house reactions.
Has anyone looked at those screenshots? (http://www.linux-mandrake.com/cooker/)
My best guess is that the screenshots are from the "Pidgin English" translation. Either that or they've decided that ease of use depends only on purty graphics and little coloured balls, and not in giving instructions that users have the slighest chance of understanding.
They're only planning to advertise, via banner ads, on their whois web gateway.
I don't see anything wrong with that. Whois isn't a web service, it's a service that uses the whois protocol. NSI has a gateway to it up on their page, and seeing as NSI has a quasi-monopoly on domain registration, it's a very popular page. But anyone else can create a gateway to whois just as easily, and tons of people have - for instance just about every web hosting company which registers domain names. Many other whois gateways on the web already have ads, and there shouldn't be a different policy for NSI's.
Of course, if they start limiting direct whois access or placing text ads on results, that's another story. From everything I've read, though, they're not planning to do that.
The point is that AOL did NOT keep their protocol proprietary. They released specs to it. (Well, to a slightly simpler ascii version, but that makes little difference.) Now apparently they want to retract the ability to use their protocol - this is very obviously to the disadvantage of users. In response, Microsoft is simply emulating their client, which to the best of my knowledge is not illegal.