Slashback: ICANN, OLPC, Agile, Yahoo, BayStar 84
Spamhaus case tests ICANN. narramissic writes, "The U.S. court decision against the anti-spam black-lister Spamhaus Project Ltd. may trigger a 'constitutional crisis' for the Internet, say Internet experts. At issue is whether the U.S. court has jurisdiction over the U.K.-based project. Observers worry that any attempt by U.S. courts to exert control over ICANN could be bad for the Internet. 'It's a delicate time for ICANN right now,' said David McGuire, director of communications with the Center for Democracy and Technology... 'If a court were to order ICANN to remove a domain name, we think that would be a bad precedent because making ICANN a tool of the U.S. legal system in matters such as these would sidetrack ICANN from its very important duties.'"
Time is running out for OLPC sign-up. smilindog2000 writes, "Mike Liveright made news when he pledged, 'I will purchase the $100 laptop at $300 but only if 100,000 others will too.' The deadline for his challenge is October 31, and so far, only 3,330 of us have signed up. Surely, thousands of us Slashdotters would contribute $300 out of generosity. However, I'll do it for the rare privilege of owning an original edition One Laptop Per Child machine. Do other Slashdotters want one of these beasties as badly as me? My inner child has fallen in love."
More Agile commentary from Yegge. tmortn writes, "A couple of weeks ago Steve Yegge posted a harsh critique of Agile Methodologies that enjoyed a pretty spirited debate here on Slashdot and a few other sites. Recently he posted a followup to the mounds of return fire to his rant against Agile methodologies."
Yahoo's time capsule permit revoked by Mexico. prostoalex writes, "Yahoo's time capsule project has been jeopardized by the Mexican government, who revoked the permit given to Yahoo! previously. 'We did have the permit, but Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) told us Monday night that it could not be done,' Manuel Mazzanti, head of marketing at Yahoo Mexico, said on Wednesday. An INAH spokesman said the Yahoo event posed technical and operational problems that might damage Teotihuacan. 'We are the guardians of the heritage of Mexico,' the spokesman said."
Microsoft denies BayStar connection. walterbyrd writes to point out an InfoWorld article reporting that Microsoft has denied any financial connection to BayStar, the company that bankrolled SCO's anti-open source lawsuit.
I'll buy a $100 laptop for $100 (Score:1)
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I wouldn't sell Saturn if I were you, I think it's going to become valuable real estate in the coming years.
Folks say a lot of things, times change. [youtube.com]
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That's what they said about Pluto.
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I'm not surprised (Score:3, Interesting)
Since OLPC is doing their best to prevent anyone from answering this question, it's up to the ~3000 'early adopters' to figure it out.
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Just find a Libyan kid and offer him twenty five bucks and a Coke.
KFG
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Besides, I do envision that these are going to show up on eBay very shortly anyway, likely to be offered by corrupt government officials realizing that people in the USA are willing to pay as much as $500 each for one of these things. Even $200 would be doubling their investment, assuming they didn't simp
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Give some trinket to a kid who needs food and if there's a rich guy around who wants the trinket, the rich guy is going to get it; at considerably less than market value.
The essential problem with this project is that it is not a technological one. Once these things hit the streets, well, they're on the streets and subject to the laws of the street.
Do the OLPC people have any idea what the laws of the street in Uganda or Mississippi
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Just find a Libyan government official and offer him twenty-five bucks and a Coke and you'll get a pallet-load of OLPCs.
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Apparently the OLPC folks aren't even interested, even if the supposed 100,000 people do sign up. Besides, there are legal restrictions based on the component contracts by the OLPC group that simply prohibit their sale to 1st world nations like the USA or EU countries. Stupid but true.
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That doesn't sound like a lot compared to world population, but it actually is in terms of niche: Consider that only 30,000 copies is considered good sales for a computer book. Consider that Starbucks are 'everywhere' with only 12,000 shops.
Yeah, only 30,000 for computer books; I was amazed when my publisher said that too. But consider the combined population of the US, UK, and Canada is 390,000,000 and divide by 30k - that's one book for every 13,000 peo
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Somehow I'd prefer to just give the starving children in Uganda food then a computer.
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Microsoft has no financial link with Baystar (Score:1)
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I think the real reason these machines aren't available in the developed world is Microsoft. They demand their $70 for each MACHINE sold, even if it ships Linux (at least the use to). Selling a $150 laptop for kids WITHOUT Windows is too t
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Or perhaps that is how Libya is going to be able to afford it in the first place?
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ICANN has "important duties"? No way. (Score:5, Informative)
That's not true. ICANN imposes business, economic, and legal policies (largely trademark friendly ones) onto the net, but ICANN does very little that has any contact with the actual ability of DNS servers to transform DNS query packets into DNS reply packets.
If ICANN were to vanish in a poof of green (money colored) smoke, it would be hard to say whether anybody except the trademark lawyers would notice.
On the other hand, a lot of people do believe that ICANN is some sort of FEMA protecting the upper tier of DNS from some kind of internet Katrina. ICANN has abrogated any such protective duties.
Come to think of it, yes, ICANN is the FEMA of the internet - and just like FEMA it will let us down when things technically wobble.
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Back in 1999 I spent quite some time doing work at ICANN's office in Marina Del Ray. At lunch, I'd sit next to the computer that hosted the Authoritative Root (A Root). At the time, it was the only one.
The A Root was where your DNS would go to find out where to get the listing for any other top level domains. I can't tell you how badly I wanted to stick one of my 0wned by CdC (Cult of Dead Cow) stickers on it. I figured that would get me kicked out, and in a lot of trouble, so I neve
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Re:ICANN has "important duties"? No way. (Score:4, Informative)
For one thing, the A root server isn't at ICANN, it's at Verisign, in Virginia.
Secondly, the L root server, which is claimined by ICANN is actually part of IANA and is one server out of about 130 root servers, so it's hardly singularly important.
And the L root server itself is not in Marina del Rey.
Attention, metamoderators (Score:2, Informative)
If you're looking at the "troll" moderation, please look up Mr. Auerbach and notice that he was on the board of ICANN. Definitely knows whereof he speaks.
It's Not a Bomb -- It's a Device That Explodes (Score:3, Insightful)
In some ways, I'd consider MS's actions WRT Baystar even worse than just bankrolling the investment -- They convinced Baystar that they'd be backing up the investment then, once baystar committed their money, MS goes -- Oops! just kidding you. We really can't cover your back for you!.
It should also be noted that the same consultant who charged SCO for arranging the Baystar 'investment' also took a similar cut for MS's supposed license buy and for the same reason -- that it was an infusion of cash (as oppopsed to a legitimate license upgrade).
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When this guy was funding SCO he/baystar were viewed in a horribly unfavorable light on this website. To say people here thought he was being dishonest would be an understatement. But now he makes a claim that he had a vague oral promise from someone at MS that can never be confirmed and all of a sudden its taken as u
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When listening to diplomats (and PR p
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Most people assume MS is lying because they have a long and storied history of lying.
Given that, who has more money on the line with everthing the do/say/plan/release than MS? Because this can, in theory, get them back on the hotseat with the anti-trust settlement overseers (Fat chance-no matter how guilty they might be
not much meat (Score:2)
When I read blog entries like Yegge's I keep hoping to find good, solid criticism instead of a bunch of disjointed fallacies. "Agile" wasn't even defined, and when he talked about processes that do work, he specifically mentioned "lightweight". Well, guess what the main point of so-called "Agile" methodologies is? Being lightweight.
This entry seems to boil down to "Agile hasn't been scientifically proven to be superior, so it's not." That's not very good reasoning; in the absence of any process being
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As others pointed out on his blog, Google is a compa
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There was an interesting reply from a fellow Googler on the latest blog. I wish I could link to it, but I don't see any way, so I'll just repost it here:
Patrick said...
I'm a tech lead on a project at Google. We very recently started using Scrum to see whether we could get better at producing more of what our customers wanted faster. I was the one who sold management on the idea; it didn't come from above, so don't blame them. So far this is working pretty well.
I understand that this is a
What better jurisdiction for ICANN? (Score:3, Insightful)
If an American one is "bad", can anyone name a better one?
A European country's? Where denying Holocaust and/or Turkey's genocide of Armenians is illegal? Chinese? Nigerian?
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Frankly, I'm much more scared about censorship of non-US based websites due to political and/or judicial pressure from the US on ICANN and its US-based registrars* than I am of some coali
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I haven't either, but then I don't pay much attention to those orgainizations.
WIPO is also part of the UN, and I *have* heard lots of complaints about them. I'd also think they'd be a
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Oh yeah? What do you know about telephony, exactly? How about:
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Just as frankly, you ar
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You really have to dig deeper into your ignorance, don't you? ITU [wikipedia.org], for your information, is the world's oldest international organization...
That's a different subjec
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I have heard of them... It is a place, where China and Russia each have powers equal to America's. It is not an organization, to which America (or, seriously, any other decent nation) should want the power to migrate from the USA.
Spin Doctors in action (Score:2)
Some might say that's what the adminstrative branch has done. According to the US Constitution, jurisdiction is an independent branch. True, but only to the extent that the president allows it. Guantanamo Deta
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That is not the subject here. The subject is America's jurisdiction over ICANN. "Perfection" was not the subject either. Nor was the "legal system", really, but rather the laws governing freedom of expressions and such.
Your self-declared "spin doctoring" did not work.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Did you actually read the entire statement that microsoft put out before accusing them of using "weasel words" or just that one quote from the article that was linked? (I suspect that you did not, but if you did I would be interested in seeing the full statement myself) If you only read that one quote and used it for the basis of your claim that they are sneaking away from saying somethin
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Yegge missed a critical strengthening point (Score:1, Insightful)
The bigger problem is the Hawthorne effect - if a group of people knows that their performance is being studied as part of an experiment, there is a temporary lift in performance. The result is that when you try any new methodology out, you're likely to have a success with your pilot group regardless of t
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The pilot project for XP (Chrysler's Comprehensive Compensation (C3) project) was not a success.
Yahoo! damage to Mexican relics (Score:3, Informative)
-l
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Saturday & Saturday: 9pm 10pm 11pm
Monday - Friday: 9pm
OLPC smells fishy to me (Score:3, Insightful)
Condescension sucks: Why does the OLPC need a special user interface ("Sugar")? Designing down to kids is a recipe for crap, as well as a refuge for the incompetent. Remember Logo? Well the guy behind Logo, Seymour Papert, is part of this project [laptop.org].
Dogfood gap:Torvalds uses Linux. Gates uses Windows. Jobs uses MacOS. Is Negroponte going to use the OLPC? Of course he'll play with one, but for real work - no way.
From the FAQ [laptop.org]:
Why? Why do they need "the newest technology"? And if they do, shouldn't we admit that the newest technology is a Windows PC, not some oddball "educational computer"? The 400MHz CPU and 128M RAM are not in line with the newest technology.
Again, from the FAQ: So you're going to manufacture and handle the OLPC in less than one hour? Or maybe 100 million is the wrong number to start with. The question should be, which is more expensive, making an OLPC or refurbishing a normal computer.
Looks like the tech version of "Live Aid".
I remember Logo (Score:3, Insightful)
I have no idea where you get the OLPC is "designing down to kids." Maybe it is for children who grow up with iPods, XBoxen, broadband Internet access and plasma TVs. Keep in mind who this product is being designed for though. (Hint: It isn't the kids at Beverly Hills High.) Most of the target audience doesn't even have reliable electrical utility service -- hence the hand-crank to generate power -- let alone access to all
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That's not it. Your Sesame Street quote is close, though. I never liked that show - I could sense its condescension even when I was in the age bracket. Want the best tool for word processing, spreadsheets, etc? It's a Windows laptop. Want the best tool for learning to program? It's a C64 or Apple IIe or any leading micro of the era. (I br
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He said refurbishmed PCs require, for the sake of argument, "one hour of human attention to refurbish, reload, and handle". A new PC may take more than an hour to manufacture in total, but component assembly on a production line is the true comparison. Dell, for example, make 650 PCs/hour per production line, which works out somewhere like 10-20 custom PCs per hour per worker. So yes, they're going to manufacture it in less than an hou
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What matters is overall cost. The math which Negroponte uses to dismiss recycled computers is clearly self-serving and fabricated. (I'm not saying recycled is the way to go.) Which points to my larger suspicion that this entire project is jus
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That said, I think the basic idea of trying to provide a very simple and common portable PC platform that embodies through hardware what the open source movement offers through software is an idea whose idea has come, and it will be an experiment repeated several times in several different manners. Most PC hardware is not near
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As for Libya, I think people in the third world are quite cynical, and in fact better equipped to size up this project than most slashdotters. They are used to seeing government fads come and go. When you live under a Quadaffi, the green computers are just one of his eccentricities
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I would argue that this is exactly the problem with the OLPC proposal. They ought to be taking advantage of the "mass market" and become a market unto themselves, where economies of scale coming straight from the sales of these computers to 1st world counties could be folded into purchasing components for these 3rd
Re: Baystar (Score:2)
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Microsoft's denial.. (Score:1)
Classic example of deniability... (Score:2)
As Mr. Goldfarb of Baystar has declared under oath [groklaw.net], Microsoft did encourage them to do this, and implied that they would cover the loss, if there was one, but would (of course) not sign a paper. Mr. Goldfarb, fairly reasonably, interpreted that as they didn't want a paper trail, but when the *** hi