There are as many different ways to sort data, encrypt data, compress data(lossy or lossless), or do any other task computationally as there are programmers. The problem is not code re-use, the problem is the inability to think outside the box, and develop a new way.
Sure, you can search for a revolutionary algorithm that is so good, that the rest of the world will abandon their existing methods and embrace yours. The problem is, you're not going to find much.
These sorting, searching, and compression algorithms you speak of are already close to the theoretically optimum performance possible. There are plenty of sound proofs available that demonstrate why this is the case. Look up the theory of computation if you're interested.
If we already have a library of good searching, sorting, compression and encryption algorithms available, why should I have to reinvent all of these, just so I can write a free web browser?
And even if I did use my own compression or encryption algorithms exclusively, how useful would my browser be, the moment somebody tried to use it to view an SSL-enabled site with GIF images? If you need to communicate with another system designed by a third party, the protocol and algorithms are already chosen for you.
OK, legacy data. I'll avoid patent problems the same way I avoid patent problems with LZW. If it truly is legacy, then any patents will have expired. Solving the problem.
Legacy doesn't always mean old or obsolete. Legacy means anything that already exists, which you will therefore need to work with.
Web pages are legacy data, even if they were made yesterday. If you want to write a web browser that can properly display frames, how long do you want to wait before SBC's patent on frames expires?
That is the most ridiculous statement I have ever read. There is no algorithm that cannot be replaced.
The problem isn't abstract algorithms. If somebody patented the quicksort, for example, you could switch to a different sorting method and move on. Similarly, you could use another compression technique in order to avoid the LZW patent if you like.
The problem is in interoperability with legacy data and systems having a significant installed base. Sometimes, the only way to work with another system is by implementing a protocol that's covered by a patent. The patent may not simply describe a possible approach to implementing the protocol--it could describe the specification of the protocol itself, which would therefore cover any implementation. How do you avoid these patents, if you need to communicate with such a device?
In the case of an already existing LZW-encoded GIF, how exactly are you going to avoid the Unisys LZW patent? When working with JPEG images, how are you going to avoid Forgent's patent portfolio?
Or are you just going to count on their corporate generosity? Will every patent holder be so generous?
I think this bill is probably not so much directed at us, IP geeks, as much as it is directed at people stealing sattelite TV, and people stealing cell phones
It may not be directed at IP geeks--maybe the spirit of the bill is that it's supposed to go after satellite TV pirates and cellular fraud.
The problem though is that once the law is in the books, it's the letter of the law that matters. And right now, the wording of the bill leaves it open to potential abuse.
The law may not target IP geeks, but if some ISP wanted to go after NAT users, they would now have a broken law on their side. As with the DMCA, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
You might want to take a look at the Darksite remote management card from Crystal Computing. I don't work for them, but I had the chance to try one out, and I liked what I saw.
Basically, it's a single-board computer that sits in a PCI slot in your server, and monitors its vitals (hardware / software). It runs completely independently of your server, except for an optional OS agent that can monitor things like memory utilization, CPU activity, etc. (Yes, there is an agent available for Linux).
It has a web-based administration interface, and can send you alerts and warnings via Email or pager, even if the main server locks up hard for some reason--in that case, you can perform a remote reset or even cycle the power, all from a web based interface.
Ack---accidentally moderated this as Flamebait, thanks to an over-zealous mouse wheel. I hereby post in order to nullify my errant moderation in this thread.
It's funny. I think a while back, there was an article posted about security through obsolescence.
Basically, the idea is that by running "ancient" versions of software products, the script kiddies are completely thrown for a loop--their collections of 'sploits only work on more recent versions of code.
Not that I advocate it, of course, but you made me think about it.
IBM included a basic web browser (Webexplorer), but they made no efforts to force you to use it.
The difference in OS/2 was that the WebExplorer browser was optional--you could remove it from OS/2 entirely, and the system would still be operational.
Also, IBM provided a very convenient icon to install Netscape Navigator, as part of the standard Warp 4 installation.
No problem:) I was being semantically anal, myself:).
C can get you into trouble because when it comes to referencing memory, even with seemingly innocent string copy function, the blade guards are removed.
I have no doubt that COBOL's string handling is much safer than C--it probably even does bounds checking. It's probably much slower too, but most mainframe shops would be happy to gain reliability and security at the expense of speed.
That could backfire though... The court system is clogged, so some judges take a dim view of lawsuits that are apparently filed based upon "the principle of the thing" rather than real actual damages.
Other judges take a dim view of those who would use the court system as a solution of first resort, rather than trying to resolve things out of court.
Your first step should be to figure out what the actual damages are If add/remove programs can do it in mere minutes, forget the court date and send a nasty letter. On the other hand, if the only way to remove the software is to nuke and reload your PC, wiping out all data in the process, you might have more of a case. Maybe...
And as a followup question, who do you sue if a bug in Internet Explorer causes you to lose some money? Take a closer look at that EULA, and good luck!
From my Estes rocket days, I remember the principle behind rocket stability was to have the center for force behind the center of mass.. That way, the rocket tends to 'weathervane' in the presence of a lateral force, such as a crosswind. The downside of course is that larger fins introduce drag, while extra mass reduces acceleration. However, the principle is simple, and fairly easy to simulate.
The more complex approach is to use a control system that aims the thruster to oppose any rotation that might occur in flight. This is much more difficult than using a heavy nose or large fins, because of the extra complexity involved in getting it to work right.
Looking at a rendering of his rocket, it looks like he's taking the simple approach of using large fins, combined with a fairly large/heavy nose section.
Keeping the operating system with the PC is not just a great benefit - it is a legal requirement.
I'm not sure where this 'legal requirement' is spelled out, but I would read this to mean that the OS need only be included with the machine--not necessarily pre-installed.
What if the machine had its original OS upgraded? For example, the original machine came with the OEM Win95, but then was upgraded to Win98? Can't you donate the Win98 license along with the machine and its original license?
Also, what if the machine is donated with a non-MS operating system, or for that matter, no operating system at all?
Why do they need to keep a seperate copy? All they need to keep is a list of who has/hasn't picked up the latest spam and that's it. They can all refer to the same physical copy.
You're right, but even if they do this, we're still all better off for it. If he finds an efficient mechanism that reduces *his* storage needs without increasing mine, I'm still happy.
This scheme shifts the storage and SMTP-processing burden back to the source of the spam. The burden isn't shifted entirely, of course, since if you decide to read the spam, you still have to use bandwidth to do so. Also, the notification message does take *some* bandwidth and storage. It's a good start though.
Finally, this would make it much easier to filter the Email, since you could easily filter by the source (e.g. don't connect to knownspammer.com in order to retrieve an Email he sent me).
It's easy to get Apache HTTP Server to lie about its identity. Just capture the II$ error page, save it as 404.html, and use the Apache ErrorDocument directive to serve that page as the HTTP error result. Repeat this for II$'s other error pages, and you perpetuate the lie.
What's the incentive for them to do this though?
I mean, they run their anti-Unix website on a FreeBSD box, and somebody at CNet calls shenanigans. In a panic to contain the PR damage, they hastily dump the site onto an IIS/Win2K box and point the DNS to the new site.
Remember, the whole goal here is to show how much superior Windows is to Unix, because it is more scalable, reliable, and so easy to run you don't even need to be an expert.
So...anyways, soon after the hosting change their site goes down (it is, after all, serving lots of static pages, which is very difficult for web servers to do).
But they had a plan all along...really, they just 'lied' about it being Win2K, when really it was a second FreeBSD box...when the site goes down, they configure it so that it gives you an IIS error message? That way, you'll end up thinking one of the following:
Boy...their site crashed as soon as it was put on IIS. IIS sure must suck.
Hmmm...they said they were going to put it on IIS, but they had to leave it on Apache because even *they* tacitly admit that IIS doesn't cut it.
Maybe they really *are* running IIS on Windows, but it crashed because it was misconfigured (look at all those open ports too!). Maybe Windows really *does* need to be administered expensive experts after all...
Interesting... Reportedly, they changed the DNS records for their web site to point it at a Win2K box instead of their FreeBSD box. Maybe DNS the change hasn't replicated itself yet, so if you got an error, maybe your DNS hasn't been updated yet?
I went to their site and I got the following standard IIS 404 error:
The page cannot be found
The page you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.
Please try the following:
If you typed the page address in the Address bar, make sure that it is spelled correctly.
Open the www.wehavethewayout.com home page, and then look for links to the information you want.
Click the Back button to try another link.
HTTP 404 - File not found
Internet Information Services
Even from the IIS site, I *can* download/bin/ls. It's about 285K, and is apparently an ELF binary from a FreeBSD box (based on a couple of strings I found in it).
I can't figure out why you'd want to have/bin/ls anywhere on your web site. Maybe some 31337 h4x0r cracked their site and tried to upload a trojaned 'ls' command?
My anecdote about our dog continues along the ultimate discussion board path until somebody finally finds reason to invoke the racist/homophobe card?
sigh... you're taking things FAR too seriously.
I got my engineering degree four years ago, and I fondly remember the artsie bashing. It went both ways...we got it back in spades from the arts types, and from the business major types. *ESPECIALLY* the business major types. Our engineering newsrag was in a major bash-fest with the commerce society newsrag. It was refreshing:)
A few people admittedly *did* go too far in our bashing (again, both ways). However, most of us understood the distinction between our engineering newsrag, and the real world. These arts and business students were also our friends, floormates, and roommates. What could be more fun than a good night of back and forth engineer and artsie bashing, shared over a pitcher of beer and a basket of wings?
P.S. I happen to be lousy at basketball. The +5 Funny is a nice bonus though:) I have accomplished my mission and can now go home.
In one passage, I believe Dirk is explaining that we don't give credit to dogs for their ability to perform complex calculus in realtime.
For example, when you play fetch, your dog is able to analyze the trajectory and velocity of a thrown ball. Based on his observation of the throw, he solves a complex three-dimensional physics problem involving a system of differential equations based upon the underlying physics. He does this fast enough that he is able to position himself to catch the ball.
Of course, that's *most* dogs...our dog wasn't so good at catching things. I think he was more of an "arts" dog.:)
To some extent, we probably welcome advertising. The problem with the incredible volume of unsolicited e-mail that we get today though is that, unlike junk mail that you receive in your snail mailbox, it's not immediately apparent that something is junk mail.
Ugh... this guy doesn't get it!
The REAL problem with unsolicited e-mail is that the cost of delivering it is ultimately borne by the carriers and the ultimate recipient, not the sender. The sender just has to pay $20 or so for a throwaway dialup account, and he can blast out thousands of emails before he gets shut down.
The recipient's ISP has to pay for extra storage capacity, bandwidth costs, and larger SMTP servers, so that his infrastructure doesn't collapse under the deluge of spam. The open relays between the spammer and ISP also incur significant bandwidth and processing costs, with no compensation.
At least with junk mail, the sender pays a bulk mailing rate and covers the costs of delivering it. He can send as much as he likes, but now there's an incentive to control his costs and make some attempt to target his mailings.
If there were a way of passing the true costs of spam back to the original sender, we would probably see a sharp reduction in volume.
Uhm, what? You are *against* religion being taught in schools. In this debate you are *opposed* *any* religions being taught in school. That does pretty much make it "anti".
There *IS* a difference.
An anti-religious position would hold that religion is actually "bad", and would require teachers to teach anti-religious lessons. A non-religious position is one that simply does not involve religion at all. The school simply takes no position at all about whether religion is good or bad, and makes no effort to promote any religious beliefs. No. Just to take the worse case scenario, if *all* of us are taught Judaism, we would still become better people because all of these religions are based on the Old Testament.
How does being taugh from the Old Testament make us better people? And how is teaching Judaism the "worst case" scenario anyway? The vote is 30% Catholic, 20% Baptist, and 20% Judaism... Why isn't 'Baptist' the worst case scenario? Remember, when local schools have control over ciriculum, then the local citizens also have control over the schools. When there is tax money from a wide variety of people, there will be compromises. The best compromise is to leave it in the hands of parents and the church to teach their religious beliefs to children. Schools teach reading, writing and arithmetic. I'm against schools teaching religious beliefs for the same reason I'm against churches teaching arithmetic. It's always better to have larger groups being served by a few. Please don't take that to extremes. What I'm trying to say is that when one person can specialize in teaching then we all profit, because other people can specialize at what they are good at. Are all people good teachers? No. They shouldn't be forced to become good teachers in order for them to pass on their beliefs and/or the truth.
I agree it's more *EFFICIENT* to teach larger groups, and to allow people to specialize. But to expect your school's teacher to teach religious views to your children? Even if they don't agree with *your* views? Would you be OK with teachers also teaching sexual education?
Honestly, even if you can't teach your religious beliefs to your children, they should still manage to pick them up as a result of your regular church attendance, and by emulating the way in which you live your life.
We don't need that. Web surfers already have something like that on a personal, local level. It's called web cache.
One of the benefits of going through a caching proxy is that the cache is centralized, and available to everybody. This can amount to a huge upstream bandwidth savings for an ISP.
If ten customers go directly to CNN.com, the ISP will download CNN.com from its upstream provider ten times--the fact that customer A visits the site doesn't help customer B, since their browser caches are private. For that matter, if customer A switches between Netscape and IE, he will have to download the page again, since each browser maintains its own independent cache.
With ten customers going through a transparent caching proxy, the ISP caches the page once, and serves it from the cache ten times. This is a huge savings on upstream bandwidth, and improves performance for everybody. CNN.com sees less load on their server, visitors load the CNN website faster, and customers visiting MSNBC.com have more upstream bandwidth available.
Slashdot Mirror
There are as many different ways to sort data, encrypt data, compress data(lossy or lossless), or do any other task computationally as there are programmers. The problem is not code re-use, the problem is the inability to think outside the box, and develop a new way.
Sure, you can search for a revolutionary algorithm that is so good, that the rest of the world will abandon their existing methods and embrace yours. The problem is, you're not going to find much.
These sorting, searching, and compression algorithms you speak of are already close to the theoretically optimum performance possible. There are plenty of sound proofs available that demonstrate why this is the case. Look up the theory of computation if you're interested.
If we already have a library of good searching, sorting, compression and encryption algorithms available, why should I have to reinvent all of these, just so I can write a free web browser?
And even if I did use my own compression or encryption algorithms exclusively, how useful would my browser be, the moment somebody tried to use it to view an SSL-enabled site with GIF images? If you need to communicate with another system designed by a third party, the protocol and algorithms are already chosen for you.
I'm beginning to think:
IHBT
IHL
HAND
OK, legacy data. I'll avoid patent problems the same way I avoid patent problems with LZW. If it truly is legacy, then any patents will have expired. Solving the problem.
Legacy doesn't always mean old or obsolete. Legacy means anything that already exists, which you will therefore need to work with.
Web pages are legacy data, even if they were made yesterday. If you want to write a web browser that can properly display frames, how long do you want to wait before SBC's patent on frames expires?
17 years is a L-O-N-G time.
That is the most ridiculous statement I have ever read. There is no algorithm that cannot be replaced.
The problem isn't abstract algorithms. If somebody patented the quicksort, for example, you could switch to a different sorting method and move on. Similarly, you could use another compression technique in order to avoid the LZW patent if you like.
The problem is in interoperability with legacy data and systems having a significant installed base. Sometimes, the only way to work with another system is by implementing a protocol that's covered by a patent. The patent may not simply describe a possible approach to implementing the protocol--it could describe the specification of the protocol itself, which would therefore cover any implementation. How do you avoid these patents, if you need to communicate with such a device?
In the case of an already existing LZW-encoded GIF, how exactly are you going to avoid the Unisys LZW patent? When working with JPEG images, how are you going to avoid Forgent's patent portfolio?
Or are you just going to count on their corporate generosity? Will every patent holder be so generous?
I think this bill is probably not so much directed at us, IP geeks, as much as it is directed at people stealing sattelite TV, and people stealing cell phones
It may not be directed at IP geeks--maybe the spirit of the bill is that it's supposed to go after satellite TV pirates and cellular fraud.
The problem though is that once the law is in the books, it's the letter of the law that matters. And right now, the wording of the bill leaves it open to potential abuse.
The law may not target IP geeks, but if some ISP wanted to go after NAT users, they would now have a broken law on their side. As with the DMCA, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
You might want to take a look at the Darksite remote management card from Crystal Computing. I don't work for them, but I had the chance to try one out, and I liked what I saw.
Basically, it's a single-board computer that sits in a PCI slot in your server, and monitors its vitals (hardware / software). It runs completely independently of your server, except for an optional OS agent that can monitor things like memory utilization, CPU activity, etc. (Yes, there is an agent available for Linux).
It has a web-based administration interface, and can send you alerts and warnings via Email or pager, even if the main server locks up hard for some reason--in that case, you can perform a remote reset or even cycle the power, all from a web based interface.
It's a pretty nifty card--you should take a look.
Ack---accidentally moderated this as Flamebait, thanks to an over-zealous mouse wheel. I hereby post in order to nullify my errant moderation in this thread.
The Afghan rebels found our Stinger missiles to be very effective against the Soviet helicopters.
It's funny. I think a while back, there was an article posted about security through obsolescence.
Basically, the idea is that by running "ancient" versions of software products, the script kiddies are completely thrown for a loop--their collections of 'sploits only work on more recent versions of code.
Not that I advocate it, of course, but you made me think about it.
IBM included a basic web browser (Webexplorer), but they made no efforts to force you to use it.
The difference in OS/2 was that the WebExplorer browser was optional--you could remove it from OS/2 entirely, and the system would still be operational.
Also, IBM provided a very convenient icon to install Netscape Navigator, as part of the standard Warp 4 installation.
No problem :) I was being semantically anal, myself :).
C can get you into trouble because when it comes to referencing memory, even with seemingly innocent string copy function, the blade guards are removed.
I have no doubt that COBOL's string handling is much safer than C--it probably even does bounds checking. It's probably much slower too, but most mainframe shops would be happy to gain reliability and security at the expense of speed.
Strings in C can be deadly things.
This should segfault nicely, without using any dynamic memory allocation (that I am aware of).
#include
#include
int main(void) {
char src[10];
char dest[5];
strcpy(src, "FooBar");
strcpy(dest,src);
printf("You'll never see this line.\n");
return 0;
}
That could backfire though... The court system is clogged, so some judges take a dim view of lawsuits that are apparently filed based upon "the principle of the thing" rather than real actual damages.
Other judges take a dim view of those who would use the court system as a solution of first resort, rather than trying to resolve things out of court.
Your first step should be to figure out what the actual damages are If add/remove programs can do it in mere minutes, forget the court date and send a nasty letter. On the other hand, if the only way to remove the software is to nuke and reload your PC, wiping out all data in the process, you might have more of a case. Maybe...
And as a followup question, who do you sue if a bug in Internet Explorer causes you to lose some money? Take a closer look at that EULA, and good luck!
From my Estes rocket days, I remember the principle behind rocket stability was to have the center for force behind the center of mass.. That way, the rocket tends to 'weathervane' in the presence of a lateral force, such as a crosswind. The downside of course is that larger fins introduce drag, while extra mass reduces acceleration. However, the principle is simple, and fairly easy to simulate.
The more complex approach is to use a control system that aims the thruster to oppose any rotation that might occur in flight. This is much more difficult than using a heavy nose or large fins, because of the extra complexity involved in getting it to work right.
Looking at a rendering of his rocket, it looks like he's taking the simple approach of using large fins, combined with a fairly large/heavy nose section.
...but then, Boeing jets don't have intrinsic flaws that make them likely to fly into tall buildings.
(BTW... Is there a version of Godwin's law for gratuitous references to terrorism or the WTC yet?)
Keeping the operating system with the PC is not just a great benefit - it is a legal requirement.
:)
I'm not sure where this 'legal requirement' is spelled out, but I would read this to mean that the OS need only be included with the machine--not necessarily pre-installed.
IANAL though
What if the machine had its original OS upgraded? For example, the original machine came with the OEM Win95, but then was upgraded to Win98? Can't you donate the Win98 license along with the machine and its original license?
Also, what if the machine is donated with a non-MS operating system, or for that matter, no operating system at all?
Why do they need to keep a seperate copy? All they need to keep is a list of who has/hasn't picked up the latest spam and that's it. They can all refer to the same physical copy.
You're right, but even if they do this, we're still all better off for it. If he finds an efficient mechanism that reduces *his* storage needs without increasing mine, I'm still happy.
This scheme shifts the storage and SMTP-processing burden back to the source of the spam. The burden isn't shifted entirely, of course, since if you decide to read the spam, you still have to use bandwidth to do so. Also, the notification message does take *some* bandwidth and storage. It's a good start though.
Finally, this would make it much easier to filter the Email, since you could easily filter by the source (e.g. don't connect to knownspammer.com in order to retrieve an Email he sent me).
What's the incentive for them to do this though?
I mean, they run their anti-Unix website on a FreeBSD box, and somebody at CNet calls shenanigans. In a panic to contain the PR damage, they hastily dump the site onto an IIS/Win2K box and point the DNS to the new site.
Remember, the whole goal here is to show how much superior Windows is to Unix, because it is more scalable, reliable, and so easy to run you don't even need to be an expert.
So...anyways, soon after the hosting change their site goes down (it is, after all, serving lots of static pages, which is very difficult for web servers to do).
But they had a plan all along...really, they just 'lied' about it being Win2K, when really it was a second FreeBSD box...when the site goes down, they configure it so that it gives you an IIS error message? That way, you'll end up thinking one of the following:
- Boy...their site crashed as soon as it was put on IIS. IIS sure must suck.
- Hmmm...they said they were going to put it on IIS, but they had to leave it on Apache because even *they* tacitly admit that IIS doesn't cut it.
- Maybe they really *are* running IIS on Windows, but it crashed because it was misconfigured (look at all those open ports too!). Maybe Windows really *does* need to be administered expensive experts after all...
So why would this be beneficial to them?I went to their site and I got the following standard IIS 404 error:
The page cannot be found The page you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.
Please try the following:
- If you typed the page address in the Address bar, make sure that it is spelled correctly.
- Open the www.wehavethewayout.com home page, and then look for links to the information you want.
- Click the Back button to try another link.
HTTP 404 - File not foundInternet Information Services
Even from the IIS site, I *can* download
I can't figure out why you'd want to have
????
:)
:) I have accomplished my mission and can now go home.
My anecdote about our dog continues along the ultimate discussion board path until somebody finally finds reason to invoke the racist/homophobe card?
sigh... you're taking things FAR too seriously.
I got my engineering degree four years ago, and I fondly remember the artsie bashing. It went both ways...we got it back in spades from the arts types, and from the business major types. *ESPECIALLY* the business major types. Our engineering newsrag was in a major bash-fest with the commerce society newsrag. It was refreshing
A few people admittedly *did* go too far in our bashing (again, both ways). However, most of us understood the distinction between our engineering newsrag, and the real world. These arts and business students were also our friends, floormates, and roommates. What could be more fun than a good night of back and forth engineer and artsie bashing, shared over a pitcher of beer and a basket of wings?
P.S. I happen to be lousy at basketball. The +5 Funny is a nice bonus though
Has anybody else read Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency? (Douglas Adams)
:)
In one passage, I believe Dirk is explaining that we don't give credit to dogs for their ability to perform complex calculus in realtime.
For example, when you play fetch, your dog is able to analyze the trajectory and velocity of a thrown ball. Based on his observation of the throw, he solves a complex three-dimensional physics problem involving a system of differential equations based upon the underlying physics. He does this fast enough that he is able to position himself to catch the ball.
Of course, that's *most* dogs...our dog wasn't so good at catching things. I think he was more of an "arts" dog.
To some extent, we probably welcome advertising. The problem with the incredible volume of unsolicited e-mail that we get today though is that, unlike junk mail that you receive in your snail mailbox, it's not immediately apparent that something is junk mail.
Ugh... this guy doesn't get it!
The REAL problem with unsolicited e-mail is that the cost of delivering it is ultimately borne by the carriers and the ultimate recipient, not the sender. The sender just has to pay $20 or so for a throwaway dialup account, and he can blast out thousands of emails before he gets shut down.
The recipient's ISP has to pay for extra storage capacity, bandwidth costs, and larger SMTP servers, so that his infrastructure doesn't collapse under the deluge of spam. The open relays between the spammer and ISP also incur significant bandwidth and processing costs, with no compensation.
At least with junk mail, the sender pays a bulk mailing rate and covers the costs of delivering it. He can send as much as he likes, but now there's an incentive to control his costs and make some attempt to target his mailings.
If there were a way of passing the true costs of spam back to the original sender, we would probably see a sharp reduction in volume.
Uhm, what? You are *against* religion being taught in schools. In this debate you are *opposed* *any* religions being taught in school. That does pretty much make it "anti".
There *IS* a difference.
An anti-religious position would hold that religion is actually "bad", and would require teachers to teach anti-religious lessons.
A non-religious position is one that simply does not involve religion at all. The school simply takes no position at all about whether religion is good or bad, and makes no effort to promote any religious beliefs.
No. Just to take the worse case scenario, if *all* of us are taught Judaism, we would still become better people because all of these religions are based on the Old Testament.
How does being taugh from the Old Testament make us better people? And how is teaching Judaism the "worst case" scenario anyway? The vote is 30% Catholic, 20% Baptist, and 20% Judaism... Why isn't 'Baptist' the worst case scenario?
Remember, when local schools have control over ciriculum, then the local citizens also have control over the schools. When there is tax money from a wide variety of people, there will be compromises.
The best compromise is to leave it in the hands of parents and the church to teach their religious beliefs to children. Schools teach reading, writing and arithmetic. I'm against schools teaching religious beliefs for the same reason I'm against churches teaching arithmetic.
It's always better to have larger groups being served by a few. Please don't take that to extremes. What I'm trying to say is that when one person can specialize in teaching then we all profit, because other people can specialize at what they are good at. Are all people good teachers? No. They shouldn't be forced to become good teachers in order for them to pass on their beliefs and/or the truth.
I agree it's more *EFFICIENT* to teach larger groups, and to allow people to specialize. But to expect your school's teacher to teach religious views to your children? Even if they don't agree with *your* views? Would you be OK with teachers also teaching sexual education?
Honestly, even if you can't teach your religious beliefs to your children, they should still manage to pick them up as a result of your regular church attendance, and by emulating the way in which you live your life.
We don't need that. Web surfers already have something like that on a personal, local level. It's called web cache.
One of the benefits of going through a caching proxy is that the cache is centralized, and available to everybody. This can amount to a huge upstream bandwidth savings for an ISP.
If ten customers go directly to CNN.com, the ISP will download CNN.com from its upstream provider ten times--the fact that customer A visits the site doesn't help customer B, since their browser caches are private. For that matter, if customer A switches between Netscape and IE, he will have to download the page again, since each browser maintains its own independent cache.
With ten customers going through a transparent caching proxy, the ISP caches the page once, and serves it from the cache ten times. This is a huge savings on upstream bandwidth, and improves performance for everybody. CNN.com sees less load on their server, visitors load the CNN website faster, and customers visiting MSNBC.com have more upstream bandwidth available.