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No ID Cards in the Future
dmf writes "Throw away your identification cards! CNet is running a commentary piece on what the author perceives to be contradictions of privacy as technology continues to evolve our future. What boggles the mind is how social forecasters can so easily bypass longstanding privacy concerns by simply ignoring the horrific examples of abusive governments throughout history. How can a responsible thinker so easily shrug off the need to protect oneself from the unknown abuses of the future just because one may think things are relatively agreeable at present?"
I think michael has that little niche market sown up tight...at least regarding yro.
The only way we can really stop being forced to use half-assed converters is to actually boycott the dissemenation of proprietary software formats. No historical illegitmacy has just decided to stop functioning. It takes organized resistance and education. This is definitly a very important issue which warrents enough attention for us all to write a few lines and send to our local publications.
Allen Ginsberg once wrote, "Police agencies have become so vast that there is no turning back from computerized state control of America". Companies like Microsoft can no longer be allowed to maintain monopolies on something like, at the most basic level, how ideas are stored. Corporations do not make morality a very important factor in thier social function. This is stated very clearly in publicly acessible documents. It is known that Microsoft has incorporated security backdoors in several of its products at the request of governmental agencies (you can read abou this on the gnu philosophy website).
We are the only thing stopping the "computerized state control" of the world. Refuse to use windows and office file formats if you truely believe in free software. Sure this may constitute an explaination on your behalf; you may be kicked out of class, fired, marginalized or threatened. The truth is that this is the only way that things change. Stop letting microsoft run you school and community. You're worth more than that.
I'm still rethinking my beliefs on a lot of these things. I thought I had things sorted out. I had a set of beliefs which seemed to make sense, for instance, the idea that an armed populace is much less susceptible to oppression than an unarmed populace. But common sense in this case got blown out of the water by facts-on-the-ground when I became aware that guns and oppression are omnipresent in Saddam's Iraq, and almost nonexistent in Blair's UK.
Now I disagree with the NRA's support of the "war on drugs"
As do many of the (millions of) members. Unfortunately, the current NRA administration is from the laws-and-orders faction.
and their concept that we generally need more imprisonment of all sorts of criminals (as opposed to basic economic changes that reduce the incentives for criminal behavior)
Actually that got started as a response to the left-wingers running a revolving-door justice system (so the violent offenders were constantly being dumped back on the streets), then using the resulting mayhem to call for more gun laws (allegedly to disarm these violent criminals, thus making the streets safe again). Of course since the gun laws just disarm the victims this leads to still more mayhem, in never-ending positive feedback.
The NRA "winning team"'s response was to call for keeping the violent offenders in the clink, in order to help take the pressure off the gunnies.
Of course now that it has been thoroughly proven that relaxing the gun laws so a small fraction of the population is carrying concealed at any given time REDUCES both crime and violence, and this fact is beginning to penetrate the general awareness, such a program is counter-productive.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way