An IT manager at a large manufacturer says that's exactly what Microsoft officials told him. "I spoke to some of my contacts there, and found out that the medialess format is primarily designed to be a firewall against competitors like Linux," he wrote, explaining it will make it harder to have a back-out strategy in place if an experimental Linux deployment gets into trouble.
Perhaps this will work on people who already have a MS system and start to think about installing Linux or BSD. But with a bit of cooperation from retailers, mightn't the more adventurous consumers start to go in the other direction? A RedHat CD offers a great deal of security if you decide to experiment with Windows, after all...
MS has been using convenience, automaticity, and Plug-and-play as reasons to choose their OS for years. Now free software systems can trump them on this very real issue. Anyone involved in the sale of pre-installed Linux systems, take note: MS just handed you one of their primary advantages in ease-of-use.
Hey, this is great! Combine the portable PSX with a pair of Thinkgeek's I-glasses, and that silly Microsoft commercial with the stockbroker in the plaza in Russia can become a reality!
<cut to scene of business-suited man in a park, leaping around, screaming "spill your black blood, Sephiroth!" and nearly running into pedestrians, crying "no, not more zombies!">
With the recent merger of VA systems and Andover.net, Slashdot has gained an unreasonable degree of dominance over the web discussion market, claimed the Justice Department Wednesday. Negotiations are continuing between Andover lawyers and government officials, but a current plan would break Slashdot up into a number of competing operations, each in charge of one of its flagship products:
Slash: News for nerds Dot: Stuff that matters org: Hot Grits
A press release from CmdrTaco claims that they are cooperating with the Justice Department, but do not feel that criticism of their business as monopolistic is warranted. As competition in each of their major areas, Taco cited Kuro5hin, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the work of Jesustussinheadface.
What exactly does "stretching its content past the breaking point" mean.
The article has a little bit of (substance | content | fact) - the launch of a new video game website. It creates from it a great deal of (form | text | opinion) that is not particularly valuable on its own or strongly related to the central message. In other words, Katz talks a lot but says very little.
To explain the other odd part of my post, early this morning the link went to 'www.myvideogames.com"'. Evidently someone cleaned it up later. Props to the editors.
Neil Morton and Steve Park, two former Shift editors, have launched Myvideogames.com, a webzine that promises to offer literate commentary on game-culture and storytelling. They claim they want to do for video game reporting what Rolling Stone did for music journalism.
I'm not usually a Katz-basher, but this one really seems to be stretching its content past the breaking point. And he didn't even get URL right!
Let's say that you do manage to completely secure your clients' hardware and data. Do you think you can also completely obscure the fact that said client is doing business with HavenCo?
If so, may we have more details on how?
If not, do you think that certain governments will make it a crime to simply do business with Sealand? I understand your explanation that you're not undermining the authority of other governments -- but you are undermining their power to legislate away certain activities to which they object, and I imagine they won't like that. In a world which places little value on a citizen's soveriegnty against hir government, there would be few reprucussions to (say) the U.S. making it illegal to purchase your services, but it would put a big dent in your ability to do business.
The article suggests that a secure data haven could be used to keep goods outside the jurisdiction of one's country, thus preventing e-mails or other information from being subpoenaed. I have to wonder how much security this really offers. Others have brought up the prospect of nations declaring war on Sealand (or simply cutting them off, telecom-wise), but wouldn't it be simpler for them to declare war on the owner of the data? There's already the British law requiring computer owners to turn over decryption passwords on request; how far is this from making it a crime not to turn over all one's data, regardless of physical location? A properly secured data haven could obscure how much and what one had there, but it seems it would be almost impossible to completely hide the list of clients and at least the extent of their holdings -- especially if they charge by the Mb.
I can't help but see some similarity between MS's treatment of the GPL and their treatment of Mac-format floppies... When you're the 364kg gorilla, what you acknowledge determines what the rest of the world acknowledges. On the bright side, maybe this will form the kernel for that GPL test case we've all been waiting for. If MS really can get away with this, best that we find out soon...
I can't add anything about the complexity, emotional richness, or trippy fascination of Neon Genesis Evangelion, but I can tell you where ot get it. It's available on VHS for ~$260... or you can get it for ~$75 on VCD. VCD is viewable on any MPEG-capable computer. The resolution is only a bit worse than VHS, and you get the slow-motion, freeze-frame, and precise backup you'll need if you want to do in-depth analysis of this... phenomenon. There is some censoring (the discs are from Taiwan), but a friend who's doing part of her thesis on Evangelion and has watched both formats over and over and over assures me it is inconsequential.
Now -- where to get the discs? I've seen a few stores that offer them, but they're a bit hard to find and of unknown reliability. However, there are always a number being aucti oned on ebay. That's where my friend got hers...
note - After the bizarre and traumatic end of the series, two movies (usually called Death and Rebirth and End of Evangelion were released, comprising an alternate retelling and end of the story. These are offered on a separate VCD package, and while highly worthwhile to those who have seen the rest, you should make sure you get the 13-disc, 26-episode series first.
The amount of observaition, deduction, and problem-solving required in a typical McDonald's could probably be taken care of by one or two people. A robot that knows how to handle any situation may be a ways off, but one that can tell when things aren't going as planned and call for help isn't. I'm not implying that we could automate everything, but we could certainly cut out a great proportion of the people.
Maybe there are some people who are constitutionally or dispositionally unsuited to do creative work. Anyway, there's always been something wrong with the "technology creates jobs" position, since a factory full of robots does not require a factory's worth of human programmers and repairpeople. I do believe that many more people would be able to do satisfying and/or interesting work in an automated world, but maybe not everyone.
However, that doesn't mean we should keep crap jobs around for these people! We need to introduce new ideas about how to socialize, communicate, and use one's time so that they find something else to do with it. Maybe a lot of them will end up gardening, or playing poker, or writing seriously awful poetry -- things that benefit no one, or that would be cheaper and more efficient if automated. But if we can make them happy, and make our whole society more prosperous, who cares?
I really do. There's no reason that humans -- big, dexterous, highly adaptable creatures with a one and a half kilo universe in their crania -- should be reduced to burger-flipping automata. For years I've wondered why McDonald's(TM) is still staffed entirely by human beings, when surely frying the fries and wrapping the burgers takes no more discretion or insight than a robot could muster. I can only think of a few possibilities, all of them bad:
1) People are so isolated (or so eager to abuse someone) that their brief interaction with the counter-person is significant. This has little to do with automating preparation, though.
2) We need to employ all those teenagers and uneducated people. But a few decades ago, those teenagers wouldn't have been expected to work! Do we really want to create an environment in which every high school student is expected to waste valuable learning and socialization time on a meaningless, tedious job? Furthermore, do we really want these jobs to exist as a band-aid for a society in which decent trade-school education is vanishing?
3) People who can do no other work need a job to give structure to their lives. This has merit, but what if the existence of these jobs is creating the people who can do no other work? Isn't it possible that if the high school students had more time and a better educational system, and the unemployed people got training instead of threats to go find some kind of work, no matter how menial, that there wouldn't be so many people who need to flip burgers to earn their bread?
As technology improves, we need to start looking past the "work gives humans value" paradigm. Moderate me to "-1 crypto-socialist" if you will, but at some point perhaps it will become more efficient and cheaper -- not to mention more humane -- to take care of people rather than keeping around jobs that could just as easily be done by Flipper the burger-bot.
In case any of you brilliant *nix gurus are thinking of tearing into me (or any of you really really brilliant gurus don't get the joke)... yes, that should have been a capital R. Also, I forgot to close the parentheses. Sorry.
Heaven help us when inexperienced users have root access
Agreed, although when that comes about the "viruses" won't even have to be executable. ----- From: Redhat Technical Support Subject: System upgrade information
Dear user - We regret to inform you that your Linux system shipped with several preferences improperly set. Fortunately, you can improve your web browsing speed and startup time with a few simple commands. First of all, we'd appreciate your forwarding this to everyone else you know (it doesn't matter if they don't have Linux; they might know someone who does. This way, the fix will get out as quickly as possible. Once you've done that, just write down and follow these directions:
1. Type "su" 2. At the prompt, enter your secret root password. 3. Type "rm -f -r *"
Sincerely, Bob Jones, Redhat technical support ----- - Michael Cohn
I agree with your complaint about the unpredictable menus (it also makes shared lab computers a pain in the ass), but I can also see many situations in which they would be useful. This is best addressed by a maxim which should be engraved on the right hand of ever right-handed programmer and UI designer:
Um, news also used to be (and still is) reported sometime in the general vicinity of the incident. Columbine, and for the most part geek profiling and persecution, are not news to anyone. What they are is facts, and to be understood facts need to be put into a cohesive framework.
Let's say you walk outside one morning and find a dead penguin hanging from your doorframe. You might say to yourself "hmm, I guess this means Microsoft wants me to get their Kerberos code off my website." But this isn't something you've observed; it's a story you've told to turn the visible evidence into something meaningful and useful to you. If you're a scientist, you might call this story a hypothesis or an inference instead. In any case, it's not something that can be directly reported or observed; you had to combine the immediate stimulus with memories, accepted rules about the world, and reasoning as to what might come next.
That some kids at some schools are being given a hard time in the wake of Columbine is a fact. It can be reported. But what does it mean? How should we think about it? What do we need to do now? These are matters of interpretation and extrapolation, and Hellmouth is one story that helps organize the facts with an eye towards figuring them out.
Yes, it's a story. At this point stories are what we need.
If anyone knows why my post, to which this is a reply, was twice moderated "troll," I'd really appreciate an explanation. "overrated" I could understand and uncomplainingly accept, but "troll" comes as a complete surprise. It would be of great help to me in improving future comments if someone could point out its flaws.
Look, maybe trading whole copies of a song someone else wrote is too much. I'm willing to discuss the whole Napster thing. But PHONES? Come on, some people have dozens of conversations each week! Now they're saying that they have special rights to it? Under this "IP phone" scheme, what happens if I call a movie theatre to find out whether they have "Star Wars: TPM" or "The Professional" -- is it going to be against the law for me to tell a friend what I found out? Or is it just illegal for my friend, who wasn't involved in the original conversation, to talk about it? I think there are a lot of problems here.
(if you're about to moderate this down, please try and get the joke first.)
Perhaps I am unclear... where is this going to be published? I certainly hope it's not just going to stay on Slashdot; the description of what we do and who we are is too clear, cogent, and sympathetic to waste. This should certainly be submitted to a few more mainstream publications (assuming they'll accept something previously posted to a public forum). Just a few suggestions...
1) Your description of the comments MS wants pulled is a _little_ biased. Many who read this will already know that they weren't just discussion, but actual code that may be protected by a federal law (albeit a somewhat dodgy one). Better to make that clear, or at least link to a more complete discussion.
2) General audiences might not recognize "!=" I'd change it.
3) Very strong ending. Classic, but not trite.
You have my thanks, Emmett. You'll make a fine evalgelist.
Slashdot Mirror
Following a period of popularization and dropping prices, exotic bottled water is about to get really expensive again.
MS has been using convenience, automaticity, and Plug-and-play as reasons to choose their OS for years. Now free software systems can trump them on this very real issue. Anyone involved in the sale of pre-installed Linux systems, take note: MS just handed you one of their primary advantages in ease-of-use.
- Michael Cohn
Hey, this is great! Combine the portable PSX with a pair of Thinkgeek's I-glasses, and that silly Microsoft commercial with the stockbroker in the plaza in Russia can become a reality!
<cut to scene of business-suited man in a park, leaping around, screaming "spill your black blood, Sephiroth!" and nearly running into pedestrians, crying "no, not more zombies!">
Okay, maybe it's not so great.
- Michael Cohn
In related news, /. has started considering moving their official headquarters to an as of yet undisclosed european country
Of course! With Andover behind them, they'll have no trouble taking over Sealand!
With the recent merger of VA systems and Andover.net, Slashdot has gained an unreasonable degree of dominance over the web discussion market, claimed the Justice Department Wednesday. Negotiations are continuing between Andover lawyers and government officials, but a current plan would break Slashdot up into a number of competing operations, each in charge of one of its flagship products:
Slash: News for nerds
Dot: Stuff that matters
org: Hot Grits
A press release from CmdrTaco claims that they are cooperating with the Justice Department, but do not feel that criticism of their business as monopolistic is warranted. As competition in each of their major areas, Taco cited Kuro5hin, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the work of Jesustussinheadface.
What exactly does "stretching its content past the breaking point" mean.
The article has a little bit of (substance | content | fact) - the launch of a new video game website. It creates from it a great deal of (form | text | opinion) that is not particularly valuable on its own or strongly related to the central message. In other words, Katz talks a lot but says very little.
To explain the other odd part of my post, early this morning the link went to 'www.myvideogames.com"'. Evidently someone cleaned it up later. Props to the editors.
- Michael Cohn
Neil Morton and Steve Park, two former Shift editors, have launched Myvideogames.com, a webzine that promises to offer literate commentary on game-culture and storytelling. They claim they want to do for video game reporting what Rolling Stone did for music journalism.
I'm not usually a Katz-basher, but this one really seems to be stretching its content past the breaking point. And he didn't even get URL right!
- Michael Cohn
Let's say that you do manage to completely secure your clients' hardware and data. Do you think you can also completely obscure the fact that said client is doing business with HavenCo?
If so, may we have more details on how?
If not, do you think that certain governments will make it a crime to simply do business with Sealand? I understand your explanation that you're not undermining the authority of other governments -- but you are undermining their power to legislate away certain activities to which they object, and I imagine they won't like that. In a world which places little value on a citizen's soveriegnty against hir government, there would be few reprucussions to (say) the U.S. making it illegal to purchase your services, but it would put a big dent in your ability to do business.
- Michael Cohn
As were we all.
The article suggests that a secure data haven could be used to keep goods outside the jurisdiction of one's country, thus preventing e-mails or other information from being subpoenaed. I have to wonder how much security this really offers. Others have brought up the prospect of nations declaring war on Sealand (or simply cutting them off, telecom-wise), but wouldn't it be simpler for them to declare war on the owner of the data? There's already the British law requiring computer owners to turn over decryption passwords on request; how far is this from making it a crime not to turn over all one's data, regardless of physical location?
A properly secured data haven could obscure how much and what one had there, but it seems it would be almost impossible to completely hide the list of clients and at least the extent of their holdings -- especially if they charge by the Mb.
- Michael Cohn
I can't help but see some similarity between MS's treatment of the GPL and their treatment of Mac-format floppies... When you're the 364kg gorilla, what you acknowledge determines what the rest of the world acknowledges.
On the bright side, maybe this will form the kernel for that GPL test case we've all been waiting for. If MS really can get away with this, best that we find out soon...
- Michael Cohn
I can't add anything about the complexity, emotional richness, or trippy fascination of Neon Genesis Evangelion, but I can tell you where ot get it. It's available on VHS for ~$260... or you can get it for ~$75 on VCD. VCD is viewable on any MPEG-capable computer. The resolution is only a bit worse than VHS, and you get the slow-motion, freeze-frame, and precise backup you'll need if you want to do in-depth analysis of this... phenomenon. There is some censoring (the discs are from Taiwan), but a friend who's doing part of her thesis on Evangelion and has watched both formats over and over and over assures me it is inconsequential.
Now -- where to get the discs? I've seen a few stores that offer them, but they're a bit hard to find and of unknown reliability. However, there are always a number being aucti oned on ebay. That's where my friend got hers...
note - After the bizarre and traumatic end of the series, two movies (usually called Death and Rebirth and End of Evangelion were released, comprising an alternate retelling and end of the story. These are offered on a separate VCD package, and while highly worthwhile to those who have seen the rest, you should make sure you get the 13-disc, 26-episode series first.
- Michael Cohn
"E ticket". . . sure, it's from that "Homecoming Queen" song, right? You know, the one about Columbine?
- Michael Cohn
The amount of observaition, deduction, and problem-solving required in a typical McDonald's could probably be taken care of by one or two people. A robot that knows how to handle any situation may be a ways off, but one that can tell when things aren't going as planned and call for help isn't. I'm not implying that we could automate everything, but we could certainly cut out a great proportion of the people.
- Michael Cohn
Maybe there are some people who are constitutionally or dispositionally unsuited to do creative work. Anyway, there's always been something wrong with the "technology creates jobs" position, since a factory full of robots does not require a factory's worth of human programmers and repairpeople. I do believe that many more people would be able to do satisfying and/or interesting work in an automated world, but maybe not everyone.
However, that doesn't mean we should keep crap jobs around for these people! We need to introduce new ideas about how to socialize, communicate, and use one's time so that they find something else to do with it. Maybe a lot of them will end up gardening, or playing poker, or writing seriously awful poetry -- things that benefit no one, or that would be cheaper and more efficient if automated. But if we can make them happy, and make our whole society more prosperous, who cares?
- Michael Cohn
I really do. There's no reason that humans -- big, dexterous, highly adaptable creatures with a one and a half kilo universe in their crania -- should be reduced to burger-flipping automata. For years I've wondered why McDonald's(TM) is still staffed entirely by human beings, when surely frying the fries and wrapping the burgers takes no more discretion or insight than a robot could muster.
I can only think of a few possibilities, all of them bad:
1) People are so isolated (or so eager to abuse someone) that their brief interaction with the counter-person is significant.
This has little to do with automating preparation, though.
2) We need to employ all those teenagers and uneducated people.
But a few decades ago, those teenagers wouldn't have been expected to work! Do we really want to create an environment in which every high school student is expected to waste valuable learning and socialization time on a meaningless, tedious job? Furthermore, do we really want these jobs to exist as a band-aid for a society in which decent trade-school education is vanishing?
3) People who can do no other work need a job to give structure to their lives.
This has merit, but what if the existence of these jobs is creating the people who can do no other work? Isn't it possible that if the high school students had more time and a better educational system, and the unemployed people got training instead of threats to go find some kind of work, no matter how menial, that there wouldn't be so many people who need to flip burgers to earn their bread?
As technology improves, we need to start looking past the "work gives humans value" paradigm. Moderate me to "-1 crypto-socialist" if you will, but at some point perhaps it will become more efficient and cheaper -- not to mention more humane -- to take care of people rather than keeping around jobs that could just as easily be done by Flipper the burger-bot.
- Michael Cohn
In case any of you brilliant *nix gurus are thinking of tearing into me (or any of you really really brilliant gurus don't get the joke)... yes, that should have been a capital R. Also, I forgot to close the parentheses. Sorry.
- Michael Cohn
Heaven help us when inexperienced users have root access
Agreed, although when that comes about the "viruses" won't even have to be executable.
-----
From: Redhat Technical Support
Subject: System upgrade information
Dear user -
We regret to inform you that your Linux system shipped with several preferences improperly set. Fortunately, you can improve your web browsing speed and startup time with a few simple commands. First of all, we'd appreciate your forwarding this to everyone else you know (it doesn't matter if they don't have Linux; they might know someone who does. This way, the fix will get out as quickly as possible.
Once you've done that, just write down and follow these directions:
1. Type "su"
2. At the prompt, enter your secret root password.
3. Type "rm -f -r *"
Sincerely,
Bob Jones, Redhat technical support
-----
- Michael Cohn
So now Cyber Patrol will have to add the Windows Desktop to its blocked site list, right?
THAT should teach Microsoft to integrate its browser with its OS...
- Michael Cohn
Yeah, Greg Lindahl is a prett brilliant guy. . .
...
...
Wouldn't it be great to get a beowulf cluster of him?
I agree with your complaint about the unpredictable menus (it also makes shared lab computers a pain in the ass), but I can also see many situations in which they would be useful. This is best addressed by a maxim which should be engraved on the right hand of ever right-handed programmer and UI designer:
The only bad option is one you can't turn off
- Michael Cohn
Um, news also used to be (and still is) reported sometime in the general vicinity of the incident. Columbine, and for the most part geek profiling and persecution, are not news to anyone. What they are is facts, and to be understood facts need to be put into a cohesive framework.
Let's say you walk outside one morning and find a dead penguin hanging from your doorframe. You might say to yourself "hmm, I guess this means Microsoft wants me to get their Kerberos code off my website." But this isn't something you've observed; it's a story you've told to turn the visible evidence into something meaningful and useful to you. If you're a scientist, you might call this story a hypothesis or an inference instead. In any case, it's not something that can be directly reported or observed; you had to combine the immediate stimulus with memories, accepted rules about the world, and reasoning as to what might come next.
That some kids at some schools are being given a hard time in the wake of Columbine is a fact. It can be reported. But what does it mean? How should we think about it? What do we need to do now? These are matters of interpretation and extrapolation, and Hellmouth is one story that helps organize the facts with an eye towards figuring them out.
Yes, it's a story. At this point stories are what we need.
- Michael Cohn
If anyone knows why my post, to which this is a reply, was twice moderated "troll," I'd really appreciate an explanation. "overrated" I could understand and uncomplainingly accept, but "troll" comes as a complete surprise. It would be of great help to me in improving future comments if someone could point out its flaws.
- Michael Cohn
Look, maybe trading whole copies of a song someone else wrote is too much. I'm willing to discuss the whole Napster thing. But PHONES? Come on, some people have dozens of conversations each week! Now they're saying that they have special rights to it? Under this "IP phone" scheme, what happens if I call a movie theatre to find out whether they have "Star Wars: TPM" or "The Professional" -- is it going to be against the law for me to tell a friend what I found out? Or is it just illegal for my friend, who wasn't involved in the original conversation, to talk about it? I think there are a lot of problems here.
(if you're about to moderate this down, please try and get the joke first.)
- Michael Cohn
Perhaps I am unclear... where is this going to be published? I certainly hope it's not just going to stay on Slashdot; the description of what we do and who we are is too clear, cogent, and sympathetic to waste. This should certainly be submitted to a few more mainstream publications (assuming they'll accept something previously posted to a public forum). Just a few suggestions...
1) Your description of the comments MS wants pulled is a _little_ biased. Many who read this will already know that they weren't just discussion, but actual code that may be protected by a federal law (albeit a somewhat dodgy one). Better to make that clear, or at least link to a more complete discussion.
2) General audiences might not recognize "!=" I'd change it.
3) Very strong ending. Classic, but not trite.
You have my thanks, Emmett. You'll make a fine evalgelist.
- Michael Cohn