That also seems to be why Microsoft software is so... unfinished. If they ever finished the job, no one would need to buy another copy.
Mac OS X looks pretty "finished" (for people who like that sort of thing), but copies still get sold [at retail, to people who already have a copy] each time an new version comes out.
Admittedly it's not the same as people buying hundreds of copies of Windows XP Pro at retail prices because they're scared they'll become uninteroperable with other companies if they don't.
"Other than VCR/DVD/Internet (video in general), what other technologies has Porno driven?"
Internet commerce/B2C, micropayments, most online advertising technologies, video codecs as you mention, IP localisation and geotargeted advertising, webcam technology, instant-messaging AIs, e-commerce dispute resolution, fraud detection, internet security and detection of shared credentials such as insecure passwords, bandwidth optimisation techniques for website, etc.. but the main one is financial transactions over the internet (without which most online shops wouldn't be able to convince people to trust them).
"I was under the impression that preferences were exactly the answer to this issue [of designing a system that's suits both beginners and professionals]."
That would be true, if you used one computer, and one application, and never reinstalled everything.
But then you get a computer at work, and notice that the keyboard shortcuts you set-up on the word-processor are back to their defaults. Or use your second computer, and notice that Firefox on Mac OS doesn't support middle-click (so no point configuring it)
(p.s. no point learning ctrl-c to copy either -- you'll just end up wondering why apple-c doesn't work on a PC keyboard)
Then having used those preferences to set everything up perfectly, you try another linux distro on your home PC, and all the customisations are gone again.
Or get a new version of GNOME, where they've decided that you're unworthy to be trusted with customising anything, and they've hardcoded the desktop in The One True Style.
Or a new version of KDE, where a vital preference you used to know about is now hidden in some corner you have no idea how to change.
And every installation of firefox, on your work computers, on your family's computers, on your laptops, on random PCs, and you have to do the same sequence of fixing the keyword search, fixing the image animation mode, installing flashblocker, localising the headers, setting the minimum font size, blocking the same old advertisers, installing flashblock for the upteenth time, and wishing that it were installed with a decent set of defaults.
Preferences work very well when you only have one computer, and never change the software which runs on it.
"I wish Microsoft would fix their most fundamental user interface problem: Never, ever, ever, ever, ever steal my input directed to one window and start providing it to another. I don't care if the applications are not playing ball properly. Don't allow it. How many times have I hit "enter" while typing, say, in a word processor, but just before I hit "enter" a message box pops up and my enter key is swallowed by it, taking the default action,"
While I agree completely, I have to mention the guilty parties
I never had a problem with focus-stealing, until I started using KDE/Ubuntu with konversation (or whatever the KDE IRC program is). Within just a few days of having konversation open in the background, I'd accidentally revealed system passwords to open IRC channels, twice within a couple of days.
I don't know whether it's the focus-follows mouse, combined with KDE not knowing the size of the screen or how to maximise it. It didn't happen when I started using xchat again, and it didn't happen in Windowmaker.
The other problem with KDE was that pasting a piece of text that included a line-break was considered the same as pressing Enter in the input box.
That sounds okay, until you realise that no two X applications share the same clipboard. So when you think that you're pasting from Mozilla to konversation, actually the mozilla clipboard is completely different, and Konversation pastes the last thing you cut from KAte, and the newline character sends the IRC text without giving you a chance to check it. Well I'm sure the IRC channel appreciated a big section of the document I was working on.
At least in Windows when something wants focus, it flashes the taskbar (in an admittedly very annoying way) rather than just taking the text you happen to be typing and broadcasting it to the world...
Re:High Resolution Computer Graphics and Broadband
on
Pornified
·
· Score: 1
Interesting that this book and review would come out at exactly the same time that the UK government are vying for a ban on "violent images in pornography", apparently without any research to help their cause.
They release a leaflet with vague references to "child pornography", and "scientific studies" (noting later that no conclusions were found), and it's immediately reported in national newspapers as a fight against the murderers and rapists, who have only just got to the "viewing websites" stage in their horiffic careers
And then a few days later, this appears on slashdot. A book which nobody will read, but which summarises for us the results of scientific studies and tells us clearly, almost as clearly as the UK Home Office, why such material should be banned.
It would seem too much of a coincidence, if slashdot didn't have a habit of rejecting english stories...
"Sorry, I'm having a pissy day. But this is just the most absurd quote, particularly on Labor Day."
Ok, so some asshole is poking fun, and insulting american workers. Fair enough. They probably have some agenda which is helped by getting quotes like these into the newspapers at regular intervals.
Getting annoyed at how wrong they are is amusing but pointless. However...
Imagine if at some strategic moment every 2-3 months, a study came out estimating how many billions of dollars were wasted each year by management monitoring peoples' email?
Or calculated the cost to the american economy of unpaid overtime (spending = the economy, especially spending on labour), as a scientific study linked-to from major websites.
Perhaps a study which took a formerly-inconspicuous CEO's salary, and calculated that it wasted more company money than, say, 40 days' solid slacking by a typical employee. Released one week before his pay review, and pushed into a major newspaper.
Be imaginative with the response here -- the idea of playing such corporate trolls at their own game would be worth it just to see them needled by it
"The Europeans are kicking our asses on even the most basic technology, and they don't work nearly as much as we do."
Sounds reasonable. If I had to stay in the office for as long as americans do, then I'm sure I'd spend half of it asleep (especially if the company wasn't paying overtime, i.e. stealing from me). Ditto with the 4 weeks/year or less of holidays, so you can never take a decent break from an american job.
"Don't the Major players understand that they are creating a market for for the off-brand Korean/Chinese/Asian manufacturers to sell consumer electronics without all this crap?"
So you think U.S. Customs officials don't work for Sony, Philips, Hitachi, Apple and the rest?
(p.s. don't call them MPAA or RIAA, that's a distraction)
"Our population density is also quite a bit lower that makes pedestrian/bicycle travel impractical except in the most densely populated areas."
That's one of the weirdest things I found about the U.S. -- how city planning absolutely assumes that everyone has a car, and never travels more than 10 yards without their car.
It's just pervasive. Everwhere, the shops are 4 miles out of town, every block has a big parking lot, there are no sidewalks, in some places you can even get arrested for trying to cross the road without the permission of traffic lights. The residential areas don't have shops in them, they assume that people will drive to a mall, and there are thousands upon thousands of intersections where the planners never even considered that someone might be cycling across it.
Whether it's because of automobile advertising, or because congressmen are nice and rich and own lots of cars, or whether the americans value their personal space (both inside cars, and with large properties), or whether they still think they're living on a ranch in the wild west and need a 4WD pickup to visit the shops, nobody seems to know the reason that american cities are so badly planned.
But it does make them unbearable to live in if you don't want to drive. I stayed in one for just a couple of months, and developed an injury just from the distances that I had to walk around to buy bread or visit a post office. It's not like I'm unfit from living in england, it's just that the city-planners expect you to travel 2 miles to get a pint of milk.
"In the UK most buses run till 12 and 7 days a week."
lol. I wish it were true. In my UK town, the busses:
- run from about 7am to 7pm (so no working late)
- the rush-hour busses are for schoolkids, so don't expect a pleasant ride if you're getting in for 9am
- have about a 40% probability of arriving within 40 minutes of their published arrival time (based on observations)
- have about a 60-70% chance of the last two busses each evening (18:10 and 19:00) arriving at all
London is quite good though, but I think it's all local money from the congestion charging, and one particular person who's taken charge of organising it all.
I agree that the fuel tax is probably being spent on planting tulips in the roundabouts or something though...
"microsoft agrees that xml is a great idea but think the current standards are low and that they do not want to be forced into using them."
They support text files, don't they?
Microsoft is trying to force MA to use their own inferior software, just like any other pushy salesman. There's no point in analysing what they claim to be technical reasons for their lack of support for the standard document format.
"However, what's up with the format not even supporting embedding of images and charts?"
Isn't that just the same as HTML not supporting embedding of images and charts?
(i.e. I think the difference is between <img src="external link"> which is being referred to here as "not supporting embedded images", and <img data="331E802H52S85DGO..., which would represent an "embedded image")
All the browsers I have seem to manage perfectly well with externally-linked images and charts. Graphically-intensive websites don't seem to have a problem with creating such documents either.
Personally I think XML pages would be quite difficult to read if 200KB of raw data for each image were placed inside it, although that's for the file-format designers to decide.
How about from any of the other taxes? You make it sound like fuel tax is the only tax in the whole wide world.
Fuel tax is proportional to the efficiency of your vehicle, and the distance you drive. Both of those are proportional to the amount of damage your vehicle causes to roads (which requires money to regularly upgrade the road), and to the various pollutions (land space taken up by roads, noise pollution, gaseous pollution, etc.) which all need money either to mitigate, or they destroy money by reducing the value of property and land nearby.
Even if you don't agree with government accounting, which you obviously don't, then it should be clear that fuel tax provides a solution to all sorts of US problems stemming from the idea that motoring doesn't cost very much.
What scares me about this idea is the environmental impact.
Well you could calculate one of the impacts from those energy extraction figures - if this system were used, then national oil-burning would increase by 18%, to cover the additional energy required to extract the oil in this way.
As you mention, there are many other impacts, not least the physical waste-products, and the destruction of the areas in which this oil is located
"Maybe if your government didn't tax gasoline at a rate of over 100% it'd be cheaper?"
So who pays for roads, traffic police, pollution control, and other traffic-related costs in your country then, if it's not coming from fuel tax? Do you just share the cost between all motorists regardless of how far, how often, and what car they drive?
Heck, who pays for the stabilisation of the oil-producing middle-east countries, if it doesn't come from fuel tax? Does the government just assume that everyone is interested in funding that? Do they take taxes from cyclists and pedestrians to pay for the steady supply of oil?
We should all work together and develop open source collaboration software for disaster relief efforts.
Capabilties: * Supercharged task list. I need supply $X at location $Y using vehicle $Z. People should be able to do the reverse, say I have supply $X at location $B but need vehicle $C. Must be able to work with very large numbers of people using it. * Reporting connected to mapping. People should report on the ground what conditions are and report what is needed where * VOIP phone bank. People around the world can volunteer as telephone operators for a central hotline. Obviously it's going to be harder to get web access in some situations so these people can take phone reports help them use the site through that, or just help them with whatever else they need * Interlingual support. Language barriers are often a problem in disasters, especially those with international teams working together. This needs to be coordinated. * Lost and found. People can post stats and descriptions and photos into a database that can be searched easily. People should also be able to do the reverse and register "I'm OK". * Publicity effort: if this thing works then we need to publicize it so that people know to use it * Scalability: this needs to scale to meet high variable demand. People should be able to donate servers and bandwidth. Should be load-tested to meet what seems like unrealistic loads.
I just tried to convert that list into an approximate framework for an application, and came up with two things (a) Most of the communication aspects could be handled by a Wiki (assuming you're talking about a centralised system, where remote stations have some sort of network access) (b) The mapping/reporting aspect is actually just remote sensing (but with human sensors), so it would be worth finding out if suitable GIS software already exists.
The other option of course, is that you might be thinking of a civilian equivalent to "tactical datalink" systems (TADIL, JTIDS...), based around the realtime sharing of information over a radio network using the exchange of formatted messages. That is quite an interesting idea, although it would seem to involve quite a hardware component unless you want to layer it over wifi routers (in which case centralised options would work).
The multilingual capability would seem to suggest a list of possible messages (each of which could be pre-translated), so instead of saying "need water at superbowl" you could say "message 10, location D90", where message 10 is "Besoin d'eau" in the lookup table you're using
In the datalink system, that would be it's own mesage type, so "Message 20" is "need x at y", where x is a predefined enumeration, and y is a formatted location.
The compromise between those two systems, is something capable of coordinating data between multiple computers. For example, the computer operator in classrooms at Waterlogged High could enter all his requests for materials, requests for transport, reports of weather, reports of damage, and reports of people, put them all onto a USB disk for the guy with a motocross bike to take to disaster-control so that it can be easily integrated with the "currently known information" store. How would that compare to simple VHF radios though -- the only extra advantage over radio would seem to be binary data, (e.g. photos) but is that important enough to worry about, and is sending formatted data by voice-radio efficient enough already?
So what software might be useful? (*) A sourceforge project to coordinate Free Software technologies which would be useful in the event of natural disasters (*) A preformatted wiki for such events, and perhaps a copy of wiki software which contains everything needed including the webserver and can operate off a USB key? (*) A "simple" GIS system, basically capable of taking a map of any area and producing a coordinate system ("We're in square AB21") that can be published and distributed to help people report locations
More to the point, which book do you get when you want to know how fast each operation is, what optimisations are likely to affect each operation, and how that varies between different graphics-card technologies?
The red book is okay for getting the basic program up and running, but what then...?
"You couldn't email them to find out what was going on?"
If someone you don't like links to an image on your site, the easiest, fastest, and best way to get rid of them is to change the image to something offensive.
Your so-called "insightful" solutions of emailing, telephoning the other webmaster, arresting?!? and suing somebody for changing content on their own web page, are time-consuming and pointless.
Just change it to goatse. Job done, less than 5 minutes total.
"Copyleft licenses are far worse than the public domain."
Of course. Copyleft means that the author still retains some power to specify how it's used (although they have to declare such intentions upfront, typically that they don't want it incorporated into non-free projects)
Declaring something public-domain makes it "more free" than declaring it copyleft.
However, the big point of the public domain is that it applies to everything (after a certain grace period) even if the author or his publisher is a paraniod nasty bastard who wants to keep it.
Of course, if an author wants to be nice during that grace period when they're granted copyright, then they have the choice of copyleft, public domain, etc. that you refer to.
But as Lessig notes, all that is for nothing if the encryption won't let you copy, regardless of your legal rights. It's happening already -- I know a load of teachers who can't copy DVDs for use in class, even though they're specifically permitted to do so under copyright law.
"Man, being a Mexican stutent in UK, I find that license REALLY anoying... the government do not care if you actually see broadcasting channels, you have to pay..."
And if you don't pay the TV license, they follow you onto the underground and shoot you.
Just kidding.
But the TV licensing authority do have quite a reputation for nazism. If you don't have a TV for example, they will quite happily threaten to ruin your life, every month, forever.
"Unfortunately, most employers don't want to do any on-the-job training at all. They want people who will both work cheaply and already have the skillsets that they are looking for."
Slashdot Mirror
That also seems to be why Microsoft software is so... unfinished. If they ever finished the job, no one would need to buy another copy.
Mac OS X looks pretty "finished" (for people who like that sort of thing), but copies still get sold [at retail, to people who already have a copy] each time an new version comes out.
Admittedly it's not the same as people buying hundreds of copies of Windows XP Pro at retail prices because they're scared they'll become uninteroperable with other companies if they don't.
If the latter, it'd be interesting to hear by what mechanism the earth's oceans would be higher in some places, but lower in others.
Other than the obvious twice-daily one...
"Other than VCR/DVD/Internet (video in general), what other technologies has Porno driven?"
Internet commerce/B2C, micropayments, most online advertising technologies, video codecs as you mention, IP localisation and geotargeted advertising, webcam technology, instant-messaging AIs, e-commerce dispute resolution, fraud detection, internet security and detection of shared credentials such as insecure passwords, bandwidth optimisation techniques for website, etc.. but the main one is financial transactions over the internet (without which most online shops wouldn't be able to convince people to trust them).
"I was under the impression that preferences were exactly the answer to this issue [of designing a system that's suits both beginners and professionals]."
That would be true, if you used one computer, and one application, and never reinstalled everything.
But then you get a computer at work, and notice that the keyboard shortcuts you set-up on the word-processor are back to their defaults. Or use your second computer, and notice that Firefox on Mac OS doesn't support middle-click (so no point configuring it)
(p.s. no point learning ctrl-c to copy either -- you'll just end up wondering why apple-c doesn't work on a PC keyboard)
Then having used those preferences to set everything up perfectly, you try another linux distro on your home PC, and all the customisations are gone again.
Or get a new version of GNOME, where they've decided that you're unworthy to be trusted with customising anything, and they've hardcoded the desktop in The One True Style.
Or a new version of KDE, where a vital preference you used to know about is now hidden in some corner you have no idea how to change.
And every installation of firefox, on your work computers, on your family's computers, on your laptops, on random PCs, and you have to do the same sequence of fixing the keyword search, fixing the image animation mode, installing flashblocker, localising the headers, setting the minimum font size, blocking the same old advertisers, installing flashblock for the upteenth time, and wishing that it were installed with a decent set of defaults.
Preferences work very well when you only have one computer, and never change the software which runs on it.
"I wish Microsoft would fix their most fundamental user interface problem: Never, ever, ever, ever, ever steal my input directed to one window and start providing it to another. I don't care if the applications are not playing ball properly. Don't allow it. How many times have I hit "enter" while typing, say, in a word processor, but just before I hit "enter" a message box pops up and my enter key is swallowed by it, taking the default action,"
While I agree completely, I have to mention the guilty parties
I never had a problem with focus-stealing, until I started using KDE/Ubuntu with konversation (or whatever the KDE IRC program is). Within just a few days of having konversation open in the background, I'd accidentally revealed system passwords to open IRC channels, twice within a couple of days.
I don't know whether it's the focus-follows mouse, combined with KDE not knowing the size of the screen or how to maximise it. It didn't happen when I started using xchat again, and it didn't happen in Windowmaker.
The other problem with KDE was that pasting a piece of text that included a line-break was considered the same as pressing Enter in the input box.
That sounds okay, until you realise that no two X applications share the same clipboard. So when you think that you're pasting from Mozilla to konversation, actually the mozilla clipboard is completely different, and Konversation pastes the last thing you cut from KAte, and the newline character sends the IRC text without giving you a chance to check it. Well I'm sure the IRC channel appreciated a big section of the document I was working on.
At least in Windows when something wants focus, it flashes the taskbar (in an admittedly very annoying way) rather than just taking the text you happen to be typing and broadcasting it to the world...
Interesting that this book and review would come out at exactly the same time that the UK government are vying for a ban on "violent images in pornography", apparently without any research to help their cause.
They release a leaflet with vague references to "child pornography", and "scientific studies" (noting later that no conclusions were found), and it's immediately reported in national newspapers as a fight against the murderers and rapists, who have only just got to the "viewing websites" stage in their horiffic careers
And then a few days later, this appears on slashdot. A book which nobody will read, but which summarises for us the results of scientific studies and tells us clearly, almost as clearly as the UK Home Office, why such material should be banned.
It would seem too much of a coincidence, if slashdot didn't have a habit of rejecting english stories...
"Sorry, I'm having a pissy day. But this is just the most absurd quote, particularly on Labor Day."
Ok, so some asshole is poking fun, and insulting american workers. Fair enough. They probably have some agenda which is helped by getting quotes like these into the newspapers at regular intervals.
Getting annoyed at how wrong they are is amusing but pointless. However...
Imagine if at some strategic moment every 2-3 months, a study came out estimating how many billions of dollars were wasted each year by management monitoring peoples' email?
Or calculated the cost to the american economy of unpaid overtime (spending = the economy, especially spending on labour), as a scientific study linked-to from major websites.
Perhaps a study which took a formerly-inconspicuous CEO's salary, and calculated that it wasted more company money than, say, 40 days' solid slacking by a typical employee. Released one week before his pay review, and pushed into a major newspaper.
Be imaginative with the response here -- the idea of playing such corporate trolls at their own game would be worth it just to see them needled by it
"The Europeans are kicking our asses on even the most basic technology, and they don't work nearly as much as we do."
Sounds reasonable. If I had to stay in the office for as long as americans do, then I'm sure I'd spend half of it asleep (especially if the company wasn't paying overtime, i.e. stealing from me). Ditto with the 4 weeks/year or less of holidays, so you can never take a decent break from an american job.
"Don't the Major players understand that they are creating a market for for the off-brand Korean/Chinese/Asian manufacturers to sell consumer electronics without all this crap?"
So you think U.S. Customs officials don't work for Sony, Philips, Hitachi, Apple and the rest?
(p.s. don't call them MPAA or RIAA, that's a distraction)
"Our population density is also quite a bit lower that makes pedestrian/bicycle travel impractical except in the most densely populated areas."
That's one of the weirdest things I found about the U.S. -- how city planning absolutely assumes that everyone has a car, and never travels more than 10 yards without their car.
It's just pervasive. Everwhere, the shops are 4 miles out of town, every block has a big parking lot, there are no sidewalks, in some places you can even get arrested for trying to cross the road without the permission of traffic lights. The residential areas don't have shops in them, they assume that people will drive to a mall, and there are thousands upon thousands of intersections where the planners never even considered that someone might be cycling across it.
Whether it's because of automobile advertising, or because congressmen are nice and rich and own lots of cars, or whether the americans value their personal space (both inside cars, and with large properties), or whether they still think they're living on a ranch in the wild west and need a 4WD pickup to visit the shops, nobody seems to know the reason that american cities are so badly planned.
But it does make them unbearable to live in if you don't want to drive. I stayed in one for just a couple of months, and developed an injury just from the distances that I had to walk around to buy bread or visit a post office. It's not like I'm unfit from living in england, it's just that the city-planners expect you to travel 2 miles to get a pint of milk.
"In the UK most buses run till 12 and 7 days a week."
lol. I wish it were true. In my UK town, the busses:
- run from about 7am to 7pm (so no working late)
- the rush-hour busses are for schoolkids, so don't expect a pleasant ride if you're getting in for 9am
- have about a 40% probability of arriving within 40 minutes of their published arrival time (based on observations)
- have about a 60-70% chance of the last two busses each evening (18:10 and 19:00) arriving at all
London is quite good though, but I think it's all local money from the congestion charging, and one particular person who's taken charge of organising it all.
I agree that the fuel tax is probably being spent on planting tulips in the roundabouts or something though...
"microsoft agrees that xml is a great idea but think the current standards are low and that they do not want to be forced into using them."
They support text files, don't they?
Microsoft is trying to force MA to use their own inferior software, just like any other pushy salesman. There's no point in analysing what they claim to be technical reasons for their lack of support for the standard document format.
"However, what's up with the format not even supporting embedding of images and charts?"
Isn't that just the same as HTML not supporting embedding of images and charts?
(i.e. I think the difference is between <img src="external link"> which is being referred to here as "not supporting embedded images", and <img data="331E802H52S85DGO..., which would represent an "embedded image")
All the browsers I have seem to manage perfectly well with externally-linked images and charts. Graphically-intensive websites don't seem to have a problem with creating such documents either.
Personally I think XML pages would be quite difficult to read if 200KB of raw data for each image were placed inside it, although that's for the file-format designers to decide.
How about from any of the other taxes? You make it sound like fuel tax is the only tax in the whole wide world.
Fuel tax is proportional to the efficiency of your vehicle, and the distance you drive. Both of those are proportional to the amount of damage your vehicle causes to roads (which requires money to regularly upgrade the road), and to the various pollutions (land space taken up by roads, noise pollution, gaseous pollution, etc.) which all need money either to mitigate, or they destroy money by reducing the value of property and land nearby.
Even if you don't agree with government accounting, which you obviously don't, then it should be clear that fuel tax provides a solution to all sorts of US problems stemming from the idea that motoring doesn't cost very much.
What scares me about this idea is the environmental impact.
Well you could calculate one of the impacts from those energy extraction figures - if this system were used, then national oil-burning would increase by 18%, to cover the additional energy required to extract the oil in this way.
As you mention, there are many other impacts, not least the physical waste-products, and the destruction of the areas in which this oil is located
"Not really sure what my point is, really"
That those taxes pay for motoring-related costs to the country, which are being ignored or subsidised in the United States.
"Maybe if your government didn't tax gasoline at a rate of over 100% it'd be cheaper?"
So who pays for roads, traffic police, pollution control, and other traffic-related costs in your country then, if it's not coming from fuel tax? Do you just share the cost between all motorists regardless of how far, how often, and what car they drive?
Heck, who pays for the stabilisation of the oil-producing middle-east countries, if it doesn't come from fuel tax? Does the government just assume that everyone is interested in funding that? Do they take taxes from cyclists and pedestrians to pay for the steady supply of oil?
"You can only use a stupid name if you have a really big advertising budget."
Or thousands of users who explain it any any opportunity.
Their friends are just getting used to hearing about plone and zope...
We should all work together and develop open source collaboration software for disaster relief efforts.
Capabilties:
* Supercharged task list. I need supply $X at location $Y using vehicle $Z. People should be able to do the reverse, say I have supply $X at location $B but need vehicle $C. Must be able to work with very large numbers of people using it.
* Reporting connected to mapping. People should report on the ground what conditions are and report what is needed where
* VOIP phone bank. People around the world can volunteer as telephone operators for a central hotline. Obviously it's going to be harder to get web access in some situations so these people can take phone reports help them use the site through that, or just help them with whatever else they need
* Interlingual support. Language barriers are often a problem in disasters, especially those with international teams working together. This needs to be coordinated.
* Lost and found. People can post stats and descriptions and photos into a database that can be searched easily. People should also be able to do the reverse and register "I'm OK".
* Publicity effort: if this thing works then we need to publicize it so that people know to use it
* Scalability: this needs to scale to meet high variable demand. People should be able to donate servers and bandwidth. Should be load-tested to meet what seems like unrealistic loads.
I just tried to convert that list into an approximate framework for an application, and came up with two things
(a) Most of the communication aspects could be handled by a Wiki (assuming you're talking about a centralised system, where remote stations have some sort of network access)
(b) The mapping/reporting aspect is actually just remote sensing (but with human sensors), so it would be worth finding out if suitable GIS software already exists.
The other option of course, is that you might be thinking of a civilian equivalent to "tactical datalink" systems (TADIL, JTIDS...), based around the realtime sharing of information over a radio network using the exchange of formatted messages. That is quite an interesting idea, although it would seem to involve quite a hardware component unless you want to layer it over wifi routers (in which case centralised options would work).
The multilingual capability would seem to suggest a list of possible messages (each of which could be pre-translated), so instead of saying "need water at superbowl" you could say "message 10, location D90", where message 10 is "Besoin d'eau" in the lookup table you're using
In the datalink system, that would be it's own mesage type, so "Message 20" is "need x at y", where x is a predefined enumeration, and y is a formatted location.
The compromise between those two systems, is something capable of coordinating data between multiple computers. For example, the computer operator in classrooms at Waterlogged High could enter all his requests for materials, requests for transport, reports of weather, reports of damage, and reports of people, put them all onto a USB disk for the guy with a motocross bike to take to disaster-control so that it can be easily integrated with the "currently known information" store. How would that compare to simple VHF radios though -- the only extra advantage over radio would seem to be binary data, (e.g. photos) but is that important enough to worry about, and is sending formatted data by voice-radio efficient enough already?
So what software might be useful?
(*) A sourceforge project to coordinate Free Software technologies which would be useful in the event of natural disasters
(*) A preformatted wiki for such events, and perhaps a copy of wiki software which contains everything needed including the webserver and can operate off a USB key?
(*) A "simple" GIS system, basically capable of taking a map of any area and producing a coordinate system ("We're in square AB21") that can be published and distributed to help people report locations
More to the point, which book do you get when you want to know how fast each operation is, what optimisations are likely to affect each operation, and how that varies between different graphics-card technologies?
The red book is okay for getting the basic program up and running, but what then...?
"You couldn't email them to find out what was going on?"
If someone you don't like links to an image on your site, the easiest, fastest, and best way to get rid of them is to change the image to something offensive.
Your so-called "insightful" solutions of emailing, telephoning the other webmaster, arresting?!? and suing somebody for changing content on their own web page, are time-consuming and pointless.
Just change it to goatse. Job done, less than 5 minutes total.
"Copyleft licenses are far worse than the public domain."
Of course. Copyleft means that the author still retains some power to specify how it's used (although they have to declare such intentions upfront, typically that they don't want it incorporated into non-free projects)
Declaring something public-domain makes it "more free" than declaring it copyleft.
However, the big point of the public domain is that it applies to everything (after a certain grace period) even if the author or his publisher is a paraniod nasty bastard who wants to keep it.
Of course, if an author wants to be nice during that grace period when they're granted copyright, then they have the choice of copyleft, public domain, etc. that you refer to.
But as Lessig notes, all that is for nothing if the encryption won't let you copy, regardless of your legal rights. It's happening already -- I know a load of teachers who can't copy DVDs for use in class, even though they're specifically permitted to do so under copyright law.
"It's possible, in some cases, to dramatically increase the compression ratio ZIP achieves by ZIPing twice"
The added bonus being that with password-protected archives, zipping twice means that it doesn't store the list of filenames in plaintext.
"Man, being a Mexican stutent in UK, I find that license REALLY anoying... the government do not care if you actually see broadcasting channels, you have to pay..."
And if you don't pay the TV license, they follow you onto the underground and shoot you.
Just kidding.
But the TV licensing authority do have quite a reputation for nazism. If you don't have a TV for example, they will quite happily threaten to ruin your life, every month, forever.
"Unfortunately, most employers don't want to do any on-the-job training at all. They want people who will both work cheaply and already have the skillsets that they are looking for."
Then their mainframes will break.