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Domain: townonline.com

Stories and comments across the archive that link to townonline.com.

Comments · 7

  1. Re:Oh, the Abuses We'll See! by penguinbrat · · Score: 1 · on The NSA Knows Who You've Called

    Imagine a time and place where you have a security rating ... you approach an airport terminal and hand them your ID card (or scan your arm) but you can't board the plane because you've been making too many phone calls to your friends who happen to have a rap sheet.

    You don't have to imagine that hard, to a certain extent it's already happening - just not with airplanes, instead your banned from going to the senior prom. The officials apparenly have backed off due to preasure, but it's got to start somewhere...

  2. Re:Because, evidently, no one has read TFA. by 1u3hr · · Score: 1 · on Librarian Stands up to the Feds
    But if the standard is "clear and present danger" I am not sure I want my local librarian to make that determination. I think the FBI has a bit more qualification to make that call. They say there was clear and present danger, but then they chose not to do it anyway. Weird.

    Not weird, sounds very like the FBI were knowingly exaggerating the "threat". When they were called on it, they backed down. As TFA says, if they had really thought there was danger they would have gone in regardless and got the warrant post-facto.

    Also, the whole idea of a "credible threat" sent by email from a neighbouring public library is just, well, not very credible to me. They couldn't resist bringing 9/11 into it, as if Osama or any real terrorist would go for such a chicken-shit target, and if he did, he wouldn't give any warning; and with two braincells to rub together would do it untraceably. It's just some trouble-maker making an empty threat, and some bureaucrats covering their asses by going through the motions of responding. At the end of the day they'll probably throw the terrorism book at some student who was trying to cover up being overdue for an assignment.

    When I was in high school back in the 70s once or twice a year some idiot would phone in a bomb threat. Everyone knew it was bogus, still we trooped outside for an hour while the cops wandered about, though to do a real search of the buildings would have taken days.

    Googling for other articles I find a lunatic columnist the library is a hotbed of liberalism, and that thus a terrorist would have thouht he would have a "safe haven". Spare me.

  3. Re:Accuracy by furball · · Score: 1 · on U.S. Kids Don't Understand First Amendment
    Fundamentalist religious forces are demanding the weaking of science and math education in schools because these subjects don't coincide with their mythology. No wonder U.S. students are so weak in these subjects!

    You mean like this?

    From the article:

    In 2001 Mr. Young, Mrs. Wyatt and an assortment of other well-paid school administrators, defined the new number-one priority for teaching mathematics, as documented in the curriculum benchmarks, "Respect for Human Differences - students will live out the system wide core of 'Respect for Human Differences' by demonstrating anti-racist/anti-bias behaviors."


    That sounds pretty fundamentalist to me.
  4. In related news: Women don red hats and go wild by civilengineer · · Score: 3, Funny · on Historic Linux File Archive Created

    About redhatsociety.org

  5. Re:Video games saving lives... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0 · on Video Game Addiction Saves Lives
    Ummm,

    I ment the friend of the neostorm in the comment. Not the geezer from the article.



    WANTED \V/

    KARMA (0 0)

    --o0O--(_)--O0o--


    * Any Condition

    * Top Prices Paid

    * We can collect

  6. another for fans... _Star Wars: Musical Edition_ by xiphmont · · Score: 1 · on LOTR The Musical!
    For those who didn't know about it, the MIT Musical Theatre Guild staged an original musical version of the Star Wars trilogy. Well, IV through VI are written but we've only staged Episode IV at this point... we're hoping to do Empire in 2005 or 2006. Don't forget to put it on your calendars :-)

    There's not much about it on the main MTG page because it's a past show, but two good reviews appeared in the Cambridge Chronicle and the Boston Phoenix.

    [It was worth nearly all the work just to hear C3PO (Nori Pritchard) get into a rant and call R2D2 an "upstaging little bitch". That wasn't onstage, sadly, 'twas a 'family friendly' show, like the original movie]

    Monty

  7. Virtual communities != physical communities by tangram · · Score: 5 · on Is The Virtual Community A Myth?
    You can read Lockard's essay, or some earlier permutation of it, for yourself.

    Lockard addresses several ideals about online communities. Some of these pertain to whether the Internet will be the Great Leveler, producing a classless, commonly-owned, universally accessible forum for communication. Lockard says this is false.

    Fair enough. The Internet is not free. Getting connected requires owning or accessing a certain amount of equipment, having a certain amount of free time to spend online rather than working, a certain level of technical skill, and basic literacy. The same could be said for living in Wellesly, Andover, Concord, or any of the other upscale physical communities surrounding Boston. The median household yearly income in Massachusetts is about $29K; the average asessed tax value of houses in Concord is around $394K. This is not inclusive. I wouldn't call them diverse communities, either.

    "Cybericity does not replicate material communities in a parallel world where we can reformulate communality." I also agree with this. I don't use the Internet to get closer to my physical community. I use it to get information about it. For instance:


    The Internet does as much for physical community building as the phone book: I go there to find information, which might lead me to go out in my neighborhood. It doesn't create social relationships by itself. I have to go interact.

    Why should online communities mirror geographical ones? Yes, it's important to participate in my geographic community, and it would be swell if folks used the Internet to strengthen participation. This isn't the benchmark for whether something constitutes a community.

    Community is a social process. Lockard is correct that it is more than a mere "electronic affinity group". There are websites I check frequently, like Slashdot or the Boston Globe, and then there are communities I belong to. The distinction is whether one treats the site as a source of information or as a group of people whose input you want.

    For instance, I've run a mailing list for women martial artists for about four years. Some posts are for information, like "how do I train after knee surgery", and are posted because someone out there has that information. Others are for feedback ("I'm facing this situation, what's your take on it") or just social ("wish me luck on my belt test"), because the poster wants to talk about it with her peers. That transformation from information source to peer is what makes it a community.

    So, in summary, Lockard is right that the Internet is not a panacea to the inequities we see in society, nor is it revitalizing involvement in our neighborhoods, though it does contain some elements of that. He is incorrect that a community requires a physical presence.

    On a tangent, I've been pondering over what conditions foster community. Some factors are:
    • Participants building up individual identities. You know who you're talking to.
    • High signal to noise ratio.
    • A magic number of posts -- too many drives people away; too few is just an announcement list.
    • Enough of a focus that you have something to talk about. I've seen very general lists, like "This is a list for the town of X" on eGroups, that fizzle out for lack of something to say.
    • A few alpha-posters that invest time into high-quality posts.

    Any thoughts on this?

    --tangram