Let the marketplace decide. People (and parents) are free to buy from
whatever merchant they want. There probably is a market for this,
since parents will support this philosophy.
There are parents who buy music from Wal-mart,
censored lyrics and all
If he has a committed group of parents/customers, that's enough to
set up his own shop. And I'll bet he's looking for investors
Owning a networked computer is like having a goat in your yard.
You know the goat is ignorant of property boundaries, just as you know the
PC can be infected by viruses and spyware.
As longs as it stays in my yard, and only eats my grass, that's fine.
Once is goes into my neighbor's yard, that's not fine.
Replace the goat with a network computer, and you see where the responsibility is the same.
Don't blame the goat, when the owner has some accountability here.
Actually, blaming the network doesn't help much.
In the early days of the internet, there were specifications and best practices
for host security.
And there were also stories about key administrators shutting down whole countries until they
dealt with 'inappropriate' network behavior:
Unless you have a way to impose social control on user behavior, you need both host security and powerful administrators to impose absolute security:
Read 'Goliath at Bay' from 1996 for a 'powerful user' story
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php? command=view&id=24&printerFriendly=true
I'm glad there are multiple GNU/Linux and *BSD-derived systems out there.
The real duopoly is in the philosphy: closed-source and open-source.
You have so many implementations that you have real choice where it counts,
in the implementation.
Real duopolies aren't that much better than monopolies, though.
It's more helpful to the applications, not the technology itself.
20 years ago, I worked in support of robotics projects, at Carnegie-Mellon - part of the
DARPA Strategic Computing initiative (a response to the Japanese Fifth-Generation Computing Project)
Some of my co-workers at MIT were concerned about military plans to use these vehicles, although the missions most often talked about were scout missions and smoke-laying (preparing the battlefield for attack by the humans, generally these scenarios were set in Germany)
The concerns about the military plans were premature then (it was a challenge to even drive reliably at 5 miles per hour). Recently, I have heard media coverage of plans to give weapons control to the software.
It is too easy, even given state of the art software, to subvert the sensors and other systems and fool software into shooting into something inappropriate, injuring civilians or non-combatants. Human have redundant sensors, working stereo vision, and common-sense reasoning capabilities.
Humans are fallible in different ways, but I don't support giving decisions on lethal force to software. Keeping a human in the loop is essential.
Charging people different premiums based on pre-existing conditions?
Oh, you're a guy - sorry, males are more prone to risky behaviors - $5 extra per month
Oh, you have the BRCA1 gene (beast cancer) - sorry about your luck - $20 more/month.
How far can that go? A better plan is just to pay skinny people more...
I think that plan has a name, too.
Once interest happens, time will follow.
Try robotics - it's a way to get into hardware with a purpose.
It is like it was with PCs in the late 1970s, there are hobbyists,
hackers, companies, and Microsoft too!
http//robotics.microsoft.com
Once you decide you want a robot, you'll need a board with a processor.
These are systems that have good documentation, and some even claim some
degree of "openness" in publishing schematics and encouraging you to build
your boards yourself.
(digilent has upgraded the S3 board with more features, including LCD)
You get approximately what you pay for, but you don't have to worry about DRM or
odd bootloaders with this hardware. In most cases you STILL need a traditional PC
to download software to these.
The gogoboard is a cousin to the MIT cricket - using a PIC microcontroller. It won't
run Linux as you think about Linux.
The complexity is wasted if you just want to clone a PC. Happily, the open source software
that would run on open hardware doesn't require a PC clone.
All you really need is:
standard board form factor
CPU (Arm9 or OpenSparc or anything would do here)
FPGA for emulation, graphics, and/or support functions (might need two)
Flash Memory to store Open Firmware and FPGA bitstream
RAM sockets (30-pin SIMM sockets are probably free of patent issues;-)
USB interface (for mass storage)
free FPGA development tools
Serial or PS/2 mouse/keybord port
Parallel port (seem retro now, but good for for external hardware hacking)
Internal Expansion bus standard (not aware of open designs for busses here)
All of the above has to be free of patent encumberance, so USB might be a problem.
The C-One reconfigurable computer is a good prototype of what's possible.
The biggest open source hardware contribution would be:
an open, peer2peer high-speed serial bus that can run up to 3-5 feet (Ethernet?)
a universally available connector for the above
FOSS EDA tools for electronics design, VHDL compiler, schematic capture, place-and-route, PC board design, etc.
jg says they were going to put the SD card slot on there anyway.
SD is pretty cheap to support; just a socket and a few I/O bits.
I support the goals of the project, and like the idea of the $100 laptop.
This is speculation, but it sounds like the project is going through a bit of an identity crisis or "second system" syndrome, since the $100 price was one of the key specs. Developing a new technology platform is hard work, because you have to get a critical mass of developers. Apple, Microsoft, and Linux have done this. BASIC and Java programming have, but Squeak/Smalltalk, Lisp, and LOGO haven't yet.
Adding features like the ability to run Windows isn't helpful here, although it does take
the political heat off the project from some quarters. The problem is, supporting Windows is seen as a sign of weakness by the FOSS, and it forks the developer base.
The issue isn't any specific feature, the issues are complexity, reliability,
availability of accessories, and purchasing. Where are you supposed to BUY those memory cards? It's not like there's a Fry's or Micro Center nearby.
The cost of adding SD isn't the electronics, it's the operational cost to the users.
Moving parts break, dropping a computer with gadgets sticking out breaks them.
Connectors increase RFI and design complexity, and decrease reliability (water and dust can get in, card guides can break, cards get stuck).
I'd go with an external "backup device/hub" that you can network to, which would look more like a traditional PC, with disk drives, CD/DVD-ROM, and would contain the SD card ports and Wifi, Wimax, or AMSAT satellite interfaces for good measure. You would back up your laptop over wireless to this backup device.
My technical specs for a low-cost laptop would be:
12V DC external power connector
solar cell battery recharge integrated into case
ARM processor
FPGA adjunct processor to handle other duties (wireless, graphics, USB, pwr mgmt)
greyscale LCD w/ LED backlight
USB ONLY as an interface over a specific memory card format.
Accepts 6 AA batteries (NiMH) or a AA battery pack (like the Lego NXT education model)
ARM helps avoid the temptations of Windows and closed-source or 'binary' drivers for Wintel. Windows Mobile is a better candidate OS for that processor. This would make it more like a PDA, and you might even produce a PDA version later on. Color is not necessary for a solid UI, although many expect it.
I'm not really a fan of USB, because it divides the world into "hosts" and "devices".
Things like firewire are more suitable for peer networking, and you could boot one device from another (in case of backing up a device with a broken screen).
You also have the variability of power drain from unknown devices, but USB's advantages outweigh the disadvantages, and enables much more than memory expansion, since you can add external disk or specialized wireless devices to support backup and the communications restrictions popular in many developing countries.
I'd also make two different models
one $200 model targeted at "IT professionals/developers"
and "teachers" with 1G of RAM, 4 USB ports, and 8G of flash memory.
It could hold twice as many AA batteries for longer runtime.
The "student" model would cost $100, maybe have 1 USB port, 256M-512M RAM and 4G of flash.
After the PS2 class action, the rootkit DRM fiasco, and now this DVD DRM fiasco,
how many more times will it take for the public to wake up and realize they have
ALL of the power in this situation?
Check out http://defectivebydesign.org/ for details on how DRM hurts consumers.
If you don't buy ANY of their stuff, including movies, you can't get hurt.
The last Sony product I purchased was a movie ticket to a showing of
Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.
As for Microsoft avoidance, that's what GNU/Linux systems are for.
The carriers don't realize how good they have it now.
If a user wants a new feature, they are not allowed to install a new app or upgraded OS on their phone to achieve it. I replace my PC every 5 years, but my cell phone is lucky to last two.
There should be a standard API for 'GSM voice calls', for example. That way, every user of
that technology can download a Java App that will work regardless of the phone. Screen resolutions vary, but variable size fonts and appropriate UI design can address that problem.
I'd gladly pay for a phone that I could install software on to do interesting things with certain phone calls, based on who's calling, or when they're calling. All the carriers should be permitted to do is update the software I purchased from them, nothing else
It's my computer/phone/PDA, so I should control what apps go on it.
[rant]
Oh, wait a minute I did pay for a phone with those features. I've got a broken Treo 180 in a drawer upstairs that did everything I wanted, except that it's in two pieces now, due to a defective flip lid design.
[/rant]
Don't laugh, this was a fear of the community in Cambridge, MA back in the 1970s.
I've heard anecdotally that MIT was working with some organization to deploy cable TV
boxes, with the unfortunate feature of microphones built into the boxes.
The citizens were concerned about who had control over those microphones, and the
political furor delayed deployment of other cable franchises for years. Remembering
the war protests and other abuses of power during that era, I'm not suprised that there
would have been some anxiety over this.
I've only heard this story from one other person, so a confirmation would be helpful here.
I've researched avionics software a bit. If testing and simulation was skipped, that is indeed inexcusable.
I feel like I'm not getting my $400 Billion worth.
One plane's INS and avionics, I could understand.
But the F20 and F16 should have been enough of a lesson.
(F20 link)http://www.f20a.com/f20ins.htm
Even the F-16 'flip over when crossing the equator' problem was noted
in simulation: (See below)
Once you come up with a simulator scenario, I think you should be required
to repeat that test in later generation products. For now, I'd keep my
F-22s in the Northern Hemisphere, just in case.
1980s:
[Jan86] Janssen, B.: "F-16 Problems - Contribution to the RISKS Digest", Volume 3, Issue 44, 1986
* Several problems were experienced with the software for the F-16 fighter plane. These had the potential to endanger the life of the pilot, as well as other people in the air and on the ground.
* During simulation of the aircraft, on crossing the equator, a fault in the software caused the plane to flip upside-down. In real life, this would result in the pilot's death.
It's not just google, every reputable search engine honors robots.txt, and it's just common sense for a webmaster to use that mechanism. Otherwise, it's death by a thousand cuts if every web site and every search engine used different
mechanisms for enforcing opting out. (I won't debate opt-in vs. opt-out here, that's a different issue)
The best analogy is not a fence, but a "no trespassing" sign. If you put up that "no trespassing" sign using the robots.txt file/Robot Exclusion Protocol, then you do expect people to honor that.
If you put a site up on the public internet, you would commonly expect people to
visit it and do search-engine-like things to it (including saving a copy to disk).
My US version of Google News does NOT offer links to cached articles, as Google's
traditional search engine does.
Simpson-Barr deprecation schedule I think you wanted to type "depreciation schedule" here, unless you're
talking about documenting the exotic livestock as no longer supported...
from Wikipedia:
In mainstream English, the verb "to deprecate" means, simply, "to disapprove of (something)". It derives from the Latin verb deprecare, meaning "to ward off (a disaster) by prayer." Thus, for a standards document to state that a feature is deprecated is merely a recommendation against using it. This can be contrasted with the word "obsolete", which means specifically that the feature has been superseded by a newer version (and in fact one could think of pedantic examples where the newer feature is actually the "deprecated" one).
"Deprecate" is sometimes confused with the word "depreciate". Using deprecated programming language features may cause the value of a program to depreciate: eventually, the features will be removed, or the program will no longer run. Nonetheless, "deprecate" and "depreciate" are not synonyms.
You forget that that would need informed, intelligent and concerned customers, instead of just "consumers".
As long as the informed customers are talking amongst themselves, the sheep... er.. other customers will follow.
Nobody blames a homeowner when a thief kicks down their flimsy door and robs them
Actually, that's what insurance companies are for. After one or two robberies due to inadequate security, you won't have a policy at a reasonable price anymore.
The guy is not an idiot, he is middle aged but has had virtually nill exposure to PC's, until he went out and bought one
That's the first mistake, if he would have consulted you before his purchase, you might have been able to steer him clear of something too complex for him. People who didn't get exposed to PCs in the 80s or 90s, before the inflection point, should be started out on 'appliances' with limited disk storage and 'extra' processing capacity, and no ability to install software. VMWare offers these kind of 'browser appliances' now, so you can run a browser separate from your Windoze box.
That would solve 90% percent of the zombie problem, leaving Windoze servers at companies left to mop up.
But until 'joe beer-can' starts buying appropriate technology that they can UNDERSTAND HOW TO USE SAFELY nothing will improve.
I have a mother and a mother in law. My mother asked me about safe computers, since she remembers paying part of my college tuition for a computer science education. I helped her select a Mac, which she runs Little Snitch and Firefox/noscript on. She visits a limited set of web sites and mail servers.
My mother-in-law took another approach, purchasing the lowest-priced system she could find at Best Buy, running Windows, with her other son-in-law (he's a typical PC consumer and a civil engineer). Anyway, since neither of them chose not to follow my advice, she gets no technical support from me. My brother-in-law pays $200/year in Microsoft Taxes for two PCs,
while I take the same $600 saved over 3 years and upgrade my systems.
She also pays $150/year in Microsoft taxes (virus-scan, anti-spyware, internet security, other update/license fees), and can be completely subverted by her other children or grandchildren installing a new game (Yes, she shared her administrator password with one of them already. Yes, I e-mailed her the 'security rules' telling her not to, and the advice to keep the 'game PC' separate from 'work PC' but she ignored them.)
Sudo is a solution?
sudo gets around any perceived security inconvenience.
No muss. No fuss.
Seriously, 2 levels of security (user and God) aren't enough.
Guys, if I can get my Airport Extreme (broadcom chipset) on a 2004-vintage
eMac working after 4 hours (including Google searches), then you must have
truly unsupported hardware. Try harder.
This includes time to recompile the firmware cutter 'fwcutter' to recognize
the checksum of the newer firmware file in MacOS X 10.4.7 and/or 10.4.8.
The eMac has a slight advantage is that there is only one choice for the hardware,
but it can't be that hard. Now if I could just get power mgmt to work.
I was once the proud owner of several Sony products.
The pain my daughter went through with the rootkit (on a CD
she received as a birthday present), convinced me the only
real solution was to boycott ALL sony products.
This includes movies (Columbia pictures), media (blank CD
and music CDs, and blue-ray DVD products), hardware (no PS3),
and software.
In a free market, once a participants loses its brand integrity,
there's really no point in dealing with them anymore.
Marketers are getting addicted to functional MRIs.
You can protect yourself by shielding yourself from functional MRI technology:-)
But that won't be effective forever.
Seriously, though, just comparison shop before you leave for the store.
Make a list of what you need (essentials), and a separate list of what you want (luxuries).
Good luck, and be careful out there.
You need someone to pay for your time, not just the first copy of your work. That's like playing the lottery with your time. Some companies are wildly successful at it, but most are not.
In Italy, Artists had patrons. In current economic systems, many "software artists" work for companies. Sometimes, the software you create while employed by a company has limited economic value to that firm, due to changes in the underlying business, or other changes in focus or management. But there's currently no reasonable way to liberate that software except through some well-known mechanims such as Open Sourcing it.
A similar issue exists in online gaming, where you can create really cool characters and capabilities, but they are only good inside the artificial world of the game.
Other companies are willing to allow you to market it outside of their corporate niche as a standalone commercial venture, as long as they get a cut of the revenue, or some other form of compensation. Perhaps they even have an internal venture arm that allows them to invest in your company. Such companies are extremely rare.
The risk is that all profit-motivated companies might enter into a mutual patent-licensing scheme, which would (arguably) have a tendency to displace out all other forms of open-source competition.
The alternative systems must be allowed to compete. Shouldn't they?
Slashdot Mirror
The ATX-style powersupply is a pain to add in.
I want an inexpensive board like this that takes a 12V supply, or
a PC hd connector like the FPGA boards out there from http://www.digilentinc.com/
It would be easier to put these in autos or stack them up for
robotics projects that way.
- Ralph
Let the marketplace decide. People (and parents) are free to buy from whatever merchant they want. There probably is a market for this, since parents will support this philosophy.
There are parents who buy music from Wal-mart, censored lyrics and all
If he has a committed group of parents/customers, that's enough to set up his own shop. And I'll bet he's looking for investors
Owning a networked computer is like having a goat in your yard. You know the goat is ignorant of property boundaries, just as you know the PC can be infected by viruses and spyware.
As longs as it stays in my yard, and only eats my grass, that's fine.
Once is goes into my neighbor's yard, that's not fine.
Replace the goat with a network computer, and you see where the responsibility is the same.
Don't blame the goat, when the owner has some accountability here.
Actually, blaming the network doesn't help much.? command=view&id=24&printerFriendly=true
In the early days of the internet, there were specifications and best practices for host security.
And there were also stories about key administrators shutting down whole countries until they dealt with 'inappropriate' network behavior:
Unless you have a way to impose social control on user behavior, you need both host security and powerful administrators to impose absolute security:
Read 'Goliath at Bay' from 1996 for a 'powerful user' story http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php
I'm glad there are multiple GNU/Linux and *BSD-derived systems out there.
The real duopoly is in the philosphy: closed-source and open-source.
You have so many implementations that you have real choice where it counts, in the implementation.
Real duopolies aren't that much better than monopolies, though.
It's more helpful to the applications, not the technology itself.
20 years ago, I worked in support of robotics projects, at Carnegie-Mellon - part of the DARPA Strategic Computing initiative (a response to the Japanese Fifth-Generation Computing Project)
Some of my co-workers at MIT were concerned about military plans to use these vehicles, although the missions most often talked about were scout missions and smoke-laying (preparing the battlefield for attack by the humans, generally these scenarios were set in Germany)
The concerns about the military plans were premature then (it was a challenge to even drive reliably at 5 miles per hour). Recently, I have heard media coverage of plans to give weapons control to the software.
It is too easy, even given state of the art software, to subvert the sensors and other systems and fool software into shooting into something inappropriate, injuring civilians or non-combatants. Human have redundant sensors, working stereo vision, and common-sense reasoning capabilities.
Humans are fallible in different ways, but I don't support giving decisions on lethal force to software. Keeping a human in the loop is essential.
Charging people different premiums based on pre-existing conditions? ...
I think that plan has a name, too.
Oh, you're a guy - sorry, males are more prone to risky behaviors - $5 extra per month
Oh, you have the BRCA1 gene (beast cancer) - sorry about your luck - $20 more/month.
How far can that go? A better plan is just to pay skinny people more
Once you decide you want a robot, you'll need a board with a processor. These are systems that have good documentation, and some even claim some degree of "openness" in publishing schematics and encouraging you to build your boards yourself.
- MIT's Gogoboard (PIC microcontroller based 30-40 to build plus PC board)
http://padthai.media.mit.edu:8080/cocoon/gogosite
/ home.xsp?lang=en
- CMU's $400 TerkBot (FPGA and ARM) http://www.terk.ri.cmu.edu/recipes/index.php
- (I'm sure Stanford has something here too - I just don't know what it is)
- ARM7 boards with Ethernet for around $100 - Aleph1 claims some openness, but their site is down
- FPGA 'education' boards for $100-$150 w/ VGA and PC features http://www.digilentinc.com/
(digilent has upgraded the S3 board with more features, including LCD) You get approximately what you pay for, but you don't have to worry about DRM or odd bootloaders with this hardware. In most cases you STILL need a traditional PC to download software to these. The gogoboard is a cousin to the MIT cricket - using a PIC microcontroller. It won't run Linux as you think about Linux.- standard board form factor
- CPU (Arm9 or OpenSparc or anything would do here)
- FPGA for emulation, graphics, and/or support functions (might need two)
- Flash Memory to store Open Firmware and FPGA bitstream
- RAM sockets (30-pin SIMM sockets are probably free of patent issues
;-)
- USB interface (for mass storage)
- free FPGA development tools
- Serial or PS/2 mouse/keybord port
- Parallel port (seem retro now, but good for for external hardware hacking)
- Internal Expansion bus standard (not aware of open designs for busses here)
All of the above has to be free of patent encumberance, so USB might be a problem.The C-One reconfigurable computer is a good prototype of what's possible.
The biggest open source hardware contribution would be:
I support the goals of the project, and like the idea of the $100 laptop.
This is speculation, but it sounds like the project is going through a bit of an identity crisis or "second system" syndrome, since the $100 price was one of the key specs. Developing a new technology platform is hard work, because you have to get a critical mass of developers. Apple, Microsoft, and Linux have done this. BASIC and Java programming have, but Squeak/Smalltalk, Lisp, and LOGO haven't yet.
Adding features like the ability to run Windows isn't helpful here, although it does take the political heat off the project from some quarters. The problem is, supporting Windows is seen as a sign of weakness by the FOSS, and it forks the developer base.
The issue isn't any specific feature, the issues are complexity, reliability, availability of accessories, and purchasing. Where are you supposed to BUY those memory cards? It's not like there's a Fry's or Micro Center nearby.
The cost of adding SD isn't the electronics, it's the operational cost to the users. Moving parts break, dropping a computer with gadgets sticking out breaks them. Connectors increase RFI and design complexity, and decrease reliability (water and dust can get in, card guides can break, cards get stuck).
I'd go with an external "backup device/hub" that you can network to, which would look more like a traditional PC, with disk drives, CD/DVD-ROM, and would contain the SD card ports and Wifi, Wimax, or AMSAT satellite interfaces for good measure. You would back up your laptop over wireless to this backup device.
My technical specs for a low-cost laptop would be:
- 12V DC external power connector
- solar cell battery recharge integrated into case
- ARM processor
- FPGA adjunct processor to handle other duties (wireless, graphics, USB, pwr mgmt)
- greyscale LCD w/ LED backlight
- USB ONLY as an interface over a specific memory card format.
- Accepts 6 AA batteries (NiMH) or a AA battery pack (like the Lego NXT education model)
ARM helps avoid the temptations of Windows and closed-source or 'binary' drivers for Wintel. Windows Mobile is a better candidate OS for that processor. This would make it more like a PDA, and you might even produce a PDA version later on. Color is not necessary for a solid UI, although many expect it.I'm not really a fan of USB, because it divides the world into "hosts" and "devices". Things like firewire are more suitable for peer networking, and you could boot one device from another (in case of backing up a device with a broken screen). You also have the variability of power drain from unknown devices, but USB's advantages outweigh the disadvantages, and enables much more than memory expansion, since you can add external disk or specialized wireless devices to support backup and the communications restrictions popular in many developing countries.
I'd also make two different models
After the PS2 class action, the rootkit DRM fiasco, and now this DVD DRM fiasco, how many more times will it take for the public to wake up and realize they have ALL of the power in this situation?
Check out http://defectivebydesign.org/ for details on how DRM hurts consumers.
If you don't buy ANY of their stuff, including movies, you can't get hurt. The last Sony product I purchased was a movie ticket to a showing of Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.
As for Microsoft avoidance, that's what GNU/Linux systems are for.
If a user wants a new feature, they are not allowed to install a new app or upgraded OS on their phone to achieve it. I replace my PC every 5 years, but my cell phone is lucky to last two.
There should be a standard API for 'GSM voice calls', for example. That way, every user of that technology can download a Java App that will work regardless of the phone. Screen resolutions vary, but variable size fonts and appropriate UI design can address that problem.
I'd gladly pay for a phone that I could install software on to do interesting things with certain phone calls, based on who's calling, or when they're calling. All the carriers should be permitted to do is update the software I purchased from them, nothing else
It's my computer/phone/PDA, so I should control what apps go on it.
[rant]
Oh, wait a minute I did pay for a phone with those features. I've got a broken Treo 180 in a drawer upstairs that did everything I wanted, except that it's in two pieces now, due to a defective flip lid design.
[/rant]
I've heard anecdotally that MIT was working with some organization to deploy cable TV boxes, with the unfortunate feature of microphones built into the boxes.
The citizens were concerned about who had control over those microphones, and the political furor delayed deployment of other cable franchises for years. Remembering the war protests and other abuses of power during that era, I'm not suprised that there would have been some anxiety over this.
I've only heard this story from one other person, so a confirmation would be helpful here.
I feel like I'm not getting my $400 Billion worth.
One plane's INS and avionics, I could understand. But the F20 and F16 should have been enough of a lesson. (F20 link) http://www.f20a.com/f20ins.htm
Even the F-16 'flip over when crossing the equator' problem was noted in simulation: (See below)
Once you come up with a simulator scenario, I think you should be required to repeat that test in later generation products. For now, I'd keep my F-22s in the Northern Hemisphere, just in case.
(F16 link) http://www.cis.strath.ac.uk/teaching/ug/classes/52 .422andrew/Introduction.safety.critical.systems.do c
1980s:[Jan86] Janssen, B.: "F-16 Problems - Contribution to the RISKS Digest", Volume 3, Issue 44, 1986
* Several problems were experienced with the software for the F-16 fighter plane. These had the potential to endanger the life of the pilot, as well as other people in the air and on the ground.
* During simulation of the aircraft, on crossing the equator, a fault in the software caused the plane to flip upside-down. In real life, this would result in the pilot's death.
Did they find the monolith?
--
Solve global warming: buy a shirt at http://cafepress.com/albedoproject
The best analogy is not a fence, but a "no trespassing" sign. If you put up that "no trespassing" sign using the robots.txt file/Robot Exclusion Protocol, then you do expect people to honor that.
If you put a site up on the public internet, you would commonly expect people to visit it and do search-engine-like things to it (including saving a copy to disk).
My US version of Google News does NOT offer links to cached articles, as Google's traditional search engine does.
http://www.out-law.com/page-7759 has a good summary
from Wikipedia:
In mainstream English, the verb "to deprecate" means, simply, "to disapprove of (something)". It derives from the Latin verb deprecare, meaning "to ward off (a disaster) by prayer." Thus, for a standards document to state that a feature is deprecated is merely a recommendation against using it. This can be contrasted with the word "obsolete", which means specifically that the feature has been superseded by a newer version (and in fact one could think of pedantic examples where the newer feature is actually the "deprecated" one).
"Deprecate" is sometimes confused with the word "depreciate". Using deprecated programming language features may cause the value of a program to depreciate: eventually, the features will be removed, or the program will no longer run. Nonetheless, "deprecate" and "depreciate" are not synonyms.
You forget that that would need informed, intelligent and concerned customers, instead of just "consumers". As long as the informed customers are talking amongst themselves, the sheep... er .. other customers will follow.
That would solve 90% percent of the zombie problem, leaving Windoze servers at companies left to mop up.
But until 'joe beer-can' starts buying appropriate technology that they can UNDERSTAND HOW TO USE SAFELY nothing will improve.
I have a mother and a mother in law. My mother asked me about safe computers, since she remembers paying part of my college tuition for a computer science education. I helped her select a Mac, which she runs Little Snitch and Firefox/noscript on. She visits a limited set of web sites and mail servers.
My mother-in-law took another approach, purchasing the lowest-priced system she could find at Best Buy, running Windows, with her other son-in-law (he's a typical PC consumer and a civil engineer). Anyway, since neither of them chose not to follow my advice, she gets no technical support from me. My brother-in-law pays $200/year in Microsoft Taxes for two PCs, while I take the same $600 saved over 3 years and upgrade my systems.
She also pays $150/year in Microsoft taxes (virus-scan, anti-spyware, internet security, other update/license fees), and can be completely subverted by her other children or grandchildren installing a new game (Yes, she shared her administrator password with one of them already. Yes, I e-mailed her the 'security rules' telling her not to, and the advice to keep the 'game PC' separate from 'work PC' but she ignored them.)
Sudo is a solution? sudo gets around any perceived security inconvenience. No muss. No fuss. Seriously, 2 levels of security (user and God) aren't enough.
Guys, if I can get my Airport Extreme (broadcom chipset) on a 2004-vintage eMac working after 4 hours (including Google searches), then you must have truly unsupported hardware. Try harder. This includes time to recompile the firmware cutter 'fwcutter' to recognize the checksum of the newer firmware file in MacOS X 10.4.7 and/or 10.4.8. The eMac has a slight advantage is that there is only one choice for the hardware, but it can't be that hard. Now if I could just get power mgmt to work.
I was once the proud owner of several Sony products. The pain my daughter went through with the rootkit (on a CD she received as a birthday present), convinced me the only real solution was to boycott ALL sony products. This includes movies (Columbia pictures), media (blank CD and music CDs, and blue-ray DVD products), hardware (no PS3), and software. In a free market, once a participants loses its brand integrity, there's really no point in dealing with them anymore.
Marketers are getting addicted to functional MRIs. You can protect yourself by shielding yourself from functional MRI technology :-)
But that won't be effective forever.
Seriously, though, just comparison shop before you leave for the store.
Make a list of what you need (essentials), and a separate list of what you want (luxuries).
Good luck, and be careful out there.
The hard work would appear to be done already:
OpenID http://openid.net/
FOAF http://www.foaf-project.org/
There are competing models.
You need someone to pay for your time, not just the first copy of your work.
That's like playing the lottery with your time. Some companies are wildly successful
at it, but most are not.
In Italy, Artists had patrons. In current economic systems, many "software artists" work
for companies. Sometimes, the software you create while employed by a company has limited
economic value to that firm, due to changes in the underlying business, or other changes in
focus or management. But there's currently no reasonable way to liberate that software
except through some well-known mechanims such as Open Sourcing it.
A similar issue exists in online gaming, where you can create really cool characters and capabilities, but
they are only good inside the artificial world of the game.
Other companies are willing to allow you to market it outside of their corporate niche
as a standalone commercial venture, as long as they get a cut of the revenue, or some other
form of compensation. Perhaps they even have an internal venture arm that allows them to invest
in your company. Such companies are extremely rare.
The risk is that all profit-motivated companies might enter into a mutual patent-licensing scheme,
which would (arguably) have a tendency to displace out all other forms of open-source competition.
The alternative systems must be allowed to compete. Shouldn't they?