Slashdot Mirror
Feature:Distortions
"We all know the same truth. Our lives consist of how we choose to distort it." -- Woody Allen
A couple of weeks ago, it was reported by Reuters News Agency that hackers had taken control of a British military satellite and demonstrated control of the "bird" by changing its orbit. The report said the hackers were blackmailing the British government, and unless they received a ransom, they would take action. The demonstration was frightening for those who were just waiting for a blatant act of cyber-terror.
A few days later, the Hacker News Network , an underground alternative to CNN, reported that the hijacking was bogus.
The Hacker News Network got it right while Reuters got it wrong.
Just as business managers increasingly supervise IT workers who know more about networks than they do, traditional news sources often cover subjects they don't understand, and they often get it wrong.
A few weeks ago, I wrote an article for Forbes Digital on the unique culture of the professional Services Division of Secure Computing, where a number of former hackers help government agencies and large financial institutions secure their networks. Many articles have appeared recently about former hackers who have swapped underground lives for stock options, but that wasn't what my article was about. It was about the mindset that hackers bring to their work, a map or model of reality that is becoming the norm in a borderless world, where intelligence operatives are migrating into competitive intelligence in growing numbers. It's a mindset characterized, said one, by "paranoia appropriate to the real risks of open networks and a global economy."
Businesses used to decide on a course of action, then inform IT people so they could implement the plan. Now our thinking must move through the network that shapes it, not around it. The network itself - how it enables us to think, how it defines the questions that can be asked - determines the forms of possible strategies. So those who implement strategy must participate in setting strategy, not be added on after the fact, just as information security must be intrinsic to the architecture of an organizational structure, not added on as an afterthought.
The mind that designs the network designs the possibilities for human thinking and therefore for action.
Every single node in a network is a center from which both attack and defense can originate. The gray world in which hackers live has spilled over the edges which used to look more black and white. The skies of the digital world grow grayer day by day.
In that world, we are real birds fluttering about in digital cages. Images - icons, text, sound - define the "space" in which we move. If the cages are large enough, we have the illusion we are free and flying, when in fact we are moved in groups by the cages.
Example: to prevent insurrection during times of extreme civil unrest, government agencies created groups whose members were potentially dangerous, building a database of people they intended to collect if things fell apart. These days, many digital communities serve this purpose.
Example: Last week an FDIC spokesperson provided data on the readiness of American banks for Y2K. Tom Brokaw of NBC had recently announced, he said, that 33% of the banks weren't ready, but in fact, 96% of the banks are on schedule, 3 % are lagging a little, and only 1% are seriously behind. The biggest threat to the monetary system is a stampeding herd, spooked by the digital image of a talking head giving bogus information.
The digital world is a hall of mirrors, and the social construction of reality is big business, fueled by the explosion of the Internet, a marketplace where the buyer of ideas - as well as items at auction - had better beware.
This is not just about the distortion of facts by mainstream (or alternative) news media, nor the exploitation of fear because we know that fear sells. More and more, we are seeking and finding alternative sources of information from sources we believe we can trust. Believable truth must be linked to believable sources, or else we will make it up, pasting fears and hopes onto a blank screen or onto images built like bookshelves to receive our projections. Because we like to live on islands of agreement, receiving information that supports our current thinking, we live in thought worlds threaded on digital information that isolates and divides us. But the network is also the means of a larger communion and the discovery of a more unified, more comprehensive truth. We live on the edge of a digital blade, and the blade cuts both ways.
"We all know the same truth," said Woody Allen. "Our lives consist of how we choose to distort it."
Except Woody Allen didn't say it. Rather, he said it through the mouth of a character in "Deconstructing Harry" named Harry Block. Except Harry Block didn't say it either. He said it through the mouth of a character he created in the movie.
Hacking is a kind of deconstruction of the combinations and permutations available in a network. Deconstruction is essential in a digital world. The skills of critical thinking, the ability to integrate fragments and know how to build a Big Picture are more important than ever. Those skills are critical to hacking and securing networks and critical to understanding who is really who in a world in which people are not always what they seem.
Plato feared the emerging world of writing because anybody could say anything without accountability, but he did not foresee the emergence of tools to document and evaluate what was written. Our world may seem for the moment to be a-historical, fragmentary, multi-modal in relationship to the world of printed text, but something new is evolving - a matrix of understanding, a set of skills, a mindset that lets us sift through disinformation and use the same technology that lulls us to sleep to wake ourselves up.
Richard Thieme (www.thiemeworks.com) speaks, writes and consults on the human dimension of technology and the work place.
CT : So what do you think? Is he a keeper? Vote on the poll if you'd like to see this column each week on Slashdot. Of course, now that we have the customizable stuff, you'll be able to disable future Island's even if we do keep him.
awe man, why'd you have to associate him with jon katz in any way. now my subconscience is going to automatically not want to read his articles.
"This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important- you're insane."
Yup, with some ppls reactions against Katz,
it is insane to get a new writer AND have a
poll.
That MUST mean that piece of drivel is finished!
Please, please, give us more of the same! I have been having problems sleeping lately but more of this ought to solve any and all sleeping problems!
William S B
Tech is tech, we're all techies of one sort or another....
Undetstanding the human/computer interface and the impact of information tech on human life is (IMHO) a direction that deserves more of our interest
Take that entire article and do this
s/hack/crack/g;
GODAMNIT!!!!
One other possibility is to have a separate section for those pieces (since I believe there will be more and more of them), and have a limited number show up on the main slashdot page.
Keep them coming though!
and I liked many of the points he made
WTF ???
IMHO, he tends to meander around decent ideas, but the point is obscured.
Harmless enough; give 'im another chance, and a filter...
People like you spend more time about how to communicate than you actually spend communicating.
You probably are the type that spends more time discussing what a program should do than actually creating a program to do something (that is...if you even program).
Is that correct use of "obfuscates"?
You didn't read Nietzsche then.
Not that that's saying much.
He said 2 things.
1.)Misinformation from the media.
2.)Misinformation about hackers.
The rest was complete fluffy nonsense. I hate
fluffy nonsense.
I say we give this guy a chance, but I'm still trying to figure out if he actually said anything in this article! Sounds mostly like psuedo-intellectual tecno-babble to me...
Let's see... "Don't beleive everything you see in the news..." Already knew that. Not very profound. "Crackers can do good as well as evil" Already knew that. Not very profound. "The network changes the way people think..." Wrong. The network effects the way people interact, not how they think. The way people think has remained essentially unchanged for thousands of years; read some Shakespear or some Greek plays if you don't beleive this.
Number of useful ideas detected in this article by me: zero. Maybe I should read it again?
Congratulations... you make a lot more sense than Richard Thieme! Maybe YOU should be given a weekly /. column, then we can toss Thieme and Katz...
I hate to disagree with you, but manuals and source code are meant as an aid to get computers functioning, not to be a vehicle for communicating ideas betweens humans.
/. community try to get somebody GOOD like this? Are we stuck with only people who'll work for free?
As far as this guy goes, tortured prose and a paucity of ideas does not effective communication make.
Rather than just cast a negative vote against this guy, I want to cast a POSITIVE VOTE for somebody like Thomas Scoville, who writes lucid, concise prose. Why doesn't the
Thanks for your time and attention.
GSherman
I'm going to read it again and again.
I agree with you. Deconstruction is used too frequently as a synonym for analysis. I also agree that probably he should be kept, but if his next column is so long in relation to the ideas contained in it, then I think I'll be filtering him!
Blue and red rules, but together they ROCK!
I've been reading his Islands in the Clickstream for ages in CUD (Computer Underground Digest) and frequently it's the only thing in the zine that I actually read. His stuff ranges from okay to absolutely fantastic, but I suppose that everyone will find different things appealing at different times.
;-)
Definitely keep him. It's hard for people to vote after reading only one example.
This is one step closer to me never leaving Slashdot
- si1k
si1k@canada.com
www.coolsig.com
"And the blade cuts both ways".
Joe-bob says eat flaming death, poseur boy. And stop mentioning "here's who also employs me".
afarrell@maths.tcd.ie
The man can write. I would like to judge his work based on what he has to say over several articles.
If stopped listening to everyone who took
their college courses too seriously I'd be deaf to half the world.
ANY original content is needed in feature articles
at Slashdot. While I found the sample feature to
say nothing new and essentially to say nothing, it
was original writing - not second hand news from
ZDNet or CNet like Rob is all to fond of featuring
these days.
Rob, you should not merely be accepting, but soliciting original content from ANYONE until such feature articles predominate over second-hand news from the WinDoze aoplogists.
When you have enough original content at this site to warrant being more seletive, then be selective. In the meantime this author's work seems ok.
For the author - please consider the audience you're targeting (it knows everything you expounded on already) and take some of your arguments further than you did in this article. Be more risky. For example, why should we not trust reassuringly familiar talking heads and how can we make wise decisions about which sources of information to believe?
Thanks for your effort.
OK, is this original content which I can't get anywhere else or is it a copy of a 'weekly column' that is at other places? If it is the former then I'd prefer it for the weekend; if it's the latter then why not just reference it on a side bar - I don't see the point? As far as I know Katzs stuff is at least uniquely for /.
blah
We don't need another wired. Slashdot needs to focus on being more like it used to be, and lose the new age enlightenment bullshit media hype -- I'd read wired, and I think everyone else here knows where to find it.
The moment Katz started writing, I got worried that he felt Slashdot was the "next Wired," and that he would infest it with his hype.
Remember, there are a zillion zines out there full of new media philosophy trash. Don't forget that: WE DON'T CARE.
Someone needs to seriously think about his maintaining a loyal userbase, otherwise Slashdot will become Slashout, for Slashdot-Soldout.
sorta metaphysical and technological at the
same time... I say keep it...
peace. JOe...
I suggest this guy pick up a copy of elements of style. There was such a tangle of buzzwords that I don't think even HE knew what he was saying.
I believe I've seen a few of your posts here before and I don't think anyone really asks for your overly-pessimistic unsubstantiated opinions. Especially when you come across as being 'the voice of /.'
Maybe you should read what he is actually writing about, instead of barging in as the first poster with your 'glorified' opinion. Or maybe go outside and get some fresh air.
A local computer magazine here (South African Computer Magazine) used to have one of his articles every issue. (They recently dropped it, presumably because it isn't "mass-consumer-oriented" enough, the magazine has become steadily more consumer-oriented and less techie, which is why I dropped the magazine) But anyway, this article is fairly representative of Thieme's usual standard. In fact I usually found his stuff a bit more interesting than this article; the quality of the writing itself is about the same.
He sometimes does tend to get a bit pie-in-the-sky-ish, heading toward conspiracy theories, UFO theories etc. In spite of this I still enjoyed his articles. But I don't think it's for consumption by the masses. It gets fairly philosophical. If you don't like philosophy you probably won't like Thieme.
Since he knows slashdot is merely just a bunch of script kiddies, he's obviously appealing to them by calling them hackers instead of crackers.
I mean, come on? Crackers are not what falls into my definition of stuff that matters. They're the scum of the net, right below AOLers. This guy thinks they're great. How many times have we blasted other places for being stupid, and then we bring moron after moron into writing columns for slashdot. Next you know we'll have Microsoft's PR people submiting articles.
Is 'backing up your opinions' a new concept for you? You sounded like you were somewhat intelligent, so I thought maybe you'd clue in. I suppose your last post speaks for itself.
Go on .. /. it .. :)
If you want to read a bit more of his stuff before you send in your vote (what, read? reading articles is for wusses who don't know how to flame ... ) ..
http://www.thiemeworks.com/.
Calling the guy a "retard" won't win him/her over to your side. If you did't like the guy's article (and I agree with you), just list your reasons why you didn't like it. It wasn't "gut feelings," this is a cerebral, esoteric article. If you didn't like it, you had reasons that could be put into writing.
Flame wars start when people take offhand comments as being personal. The guy didn't mean anyting by it, s/he just wanted more explication.
for(;;); -- too lazy to log in.
You say you thought he was "somewhat intelligent," but your previous post is pretty inflammatory. Do you really give a shit about why he didn't like the article? No, you just like flaming people you don't agree with.
for(;;); -- too lazy to log in
Rarely do I see writing as insightful and capturing as this. Anyone who doesn't think Thieme is a genius is ignorant and doesn't deserve recognition. Brilliant work, keep him!
Here is what you said:
The sequel no one asked for.
Its not that they aren't good wirters, its just that they don't have anything interestin to write about.
This forum is turning into web show-and-tell for every amateur hack out there.
This is not just an opinion...it's empty diatribe. It says nothing. It's soooooo easy to criticize the work of others (and criticism is not a bad thing, necessarily) but how about some substance?
As long as he can tell the difference, keep him.
"As fun as I'm sure it would be, I can't let you space your Green comrades." --Garibaldi
HSJ$$*&#^!#+++ATH0
NO CARRIER
Don't devalue the worth of ancillary prose. Facts may have a higher intrinsic value, but the surrounding prose accentuates the intended context and connotations of the author.
Example: From a purely logical perspective, the words "and" and "but" are synonymous. But in the casual vernacular, their connotations are almost opposite.
HSJ$$*&#^!#+++ATH0
NO CARRIER
Well, I got dizzy trying to follow a couple of those metaphors, but he had a point and he made it. Katz, there might be a lesson here for you.
Yeah, Katz really needs some constructive criticism. Unfortunately, I don't think he actually reads the comments people post to his articles. I'm not sure I really blame him... he catches enough mindless flaming that it makes looking for the occasional bit of constructive criticism like looking for a screw you've dropped into a pile carpet.
I sent him an email one time (because he claims to read and reply to all his email), explaining to him, as calmly and rationally as I could, why it was that so many Slashdot readers have such a big problem with him - not flaming him (or trying not to), just saying, "Look, this is what you're doing that they don't like, and here are the cultural reasons why..." The response I got back indicated that he a) didn't understand any of the points I brought up, and b) didn't think the personal opinion of one Slashdot reader was relevant (and I'd tried to avoid inserting my personal opinion if at all possible, limiting myself to broad coverage of what I've seen dozens or hundreds of people saying). I started writing a response to clarify the points he missed, came to the realization that I was simply restating my previous email because he'd blatently missed _all_ of my points, and gave it up as a bad job.
All of which is to say: I think we might as well throw Katz back... he isn't learning anything. On the contrary, that bit about the sexbots was the most ridiculous piece of tripe I've seen make it to Slashdot's front page. I wouldn't even know where to *begin* to constructively criticize _that_ rot.
There- good summary? Hopefully it's a bit clearer than the actual article. It's a good article at bottom- that is why computer hackers can be more plugged in to reality than the mainstream media- and it also gives a bit of insight on why so many hackers are infuriated by vague ideamongering and confusion, as seen in some of the responses to Op/Ed pieces on slashdot itself. Hackers can react to muddying of their concept-spaces as if physically threatened- what they do requires that they understand how things work, and it's not an option for them to float merrily about in vague notions of philosophical meaninglessness.
I too feel that I could write essays for slashdot- however, I figure it's not slashdot's job to legitimise me, so I've put mine up elsewhere. My URL is the site where I keep my stuff, and if you go to the Essays section, that's where you'll find my essays. I try to have them present a coherent picture of reality- that's what they're for
I'm saying yes to this new writer- largely because he is writing about ideas in places where Katz basically wrote about himself. I figure I can get through the verbiage to the ideas, and there will actually be something there. I look forward to his next essay.
Cracking describes the act of removing copy protection, usually from shareware. Crackers are talented asm coders. Phrozen Crew and United Cracking Force would fall into this category.
Script kiddies are the talentless self-described "hackers" who use programs or scripts they downloaded to break into other computers, usually to cause damage. Also known as "hax0rs" or "hax0r d00ds," in an interesting case of using their own 3l33t-sp34k to mock them. The various web-page "hacker" groups would fall into this category.
Those who actually discover security holes in software are indeed "hackers," in their case, the term is applied correctly. L0pht Heavy Industries and the Cult of the Dead Cow would fall into this category.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Nice article. I hope the ones that follow are this good.
Posted by The ULTIMATE Crippler:
This guy at least on the surface sounds as if he possesses a clue.
Katz is one of the clueless talking heads mentioned in the article that often gets it wrong.
Posted by someone stole my nick:
/. is that we can keep him or lose him, and its's our choice.
"The skies of the digital world grow grayer day by day.
In that world, we are real birds fluttering about in digital cages.
The digital world is a hall of mirrors,
We live on the edge of a digital blade, and the blade cuts both ways. "
...Apart from an overuse of metaphor... And what seems to be a destinct desire to be unclear... He has some intersting ideas.... Unfortunately he obscured the synthesis of his disjoint points with an overbearing literary style. A philosphy major at some point, no doubt.
The greatest thing about the new customizable
Posted by FascDot Killed My Previous Use:
I went to my preferences page and found I had no option to kill him off. Please allow me to do this. I HATE pseudo-intellectual "techno"-journalists.
Posted by bSMfh (bastard ScoutMaster fro:
/. filters
I say sign him up!
If you don't like it,turn on your internal or
your
Posted by The Mongolian Barbecue:
In the first place it was kind of hard to figure out what he was trying to say. Did he have a point to make? There was some junk about the net becoming more important at the start, and techies getting increased power (which is not really true, imho) but then he just started- well- rambling. The last 5 paragraphs were painful.
Someone earlier mentioned something to the extent that he was spoiled on howto's and O'reily prose. Well, I think good writing should be a lot like that- something easy to read. I don't mean trite or illeterate, I mean Earnest Hemingway or O'Henry prose. When I read an essay or novel by a good and relatively contemporary (otherwise changes in language usage interfere) author there is no effort involved- I don't have to try and unravel convoluted sentances and paragraphs.
this was not the case here
Posted by Fimmtiu:
:-)
On one hand, I think one talking head was too many for Slashdot. This is a great news forum, but if every struggling semi-computer-literate journalist can post silly Katzian articles here, the signal-to-noise unbalance will start driving people off. As long as the editorial pieces stay reasonably rare, it should be OK. (And the customizable slashdot feature kicks major booty, if I do say so myself!)
On the other hand, this guy isn't as bad as Katz. (I know Jon means well, but he's still rather purple and content-free, IMHO.) Apart from a few laughably top-heavy metaphors ("digital blade?" whatever...), this is pretty lucid.
I propose a probationary period. We let him keep posting, for now... but if he ever again posts an article which confuses "hacker" and "cracker" as cluelessly as this one, we kick him out and mail a dead cat to his house.
All in favor?
Posted by Lord_Badass:
I have to agree, he had me interested at first, then started spewing the buzzword crap and I got bored.
Posted by Joseph Blowseph:
He only mentions himself in a Katzian self-aggrandizing
way once, so that's a good start.
Plus he uses the word "deconstruction" without
its constant companion, "overdetermination", which
is also good.
On the other hand, he gets to the end of the article
without actually saying anything.
So it's impossible to tell if he's going to start
adding content, or start adding Katzinan self-aggrandizement,
or what.
Let's see some more, without the annoying links
to his Terribly Important Other Stories in
Terribly Important mainstream magazines that
many of us don't give a hoot about.
-jqb
The more the merrier, fluff or not, hi-falutin crap or demented ravings...
:-()
Just be sure he's got his flame-proof suit on because all those flame-throwing ACs are just rarin' to go!!
Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools
of thought contend... -- MaoZeDong (just before he started purging all those "revisionists" who did'nt agree with him
but I still voted to ditch him.
--
Xenu loves you!
Look, no one is ever going to reverse the perpetuation of "hacker" as a synonym for "cracker". Accept it and work around it.
Better still, drill it into peoples' heads that there are two types of "hacker", not necessarily mutually exclusive. The illuminati of l0pht.com and similar, for example, are both, at least as far as Joe Sixpack can tell.
Revel in the idiosyncracies of human language.
Remember that what's inside of you doesn't matter because nobody can see it.
This makes a good point, and I have a suggestion to deal with the problem of what gets to take up valuable screen real-estate:
/. reading into three-minute breaks during the work week.
Put the op-ed pieces up on the weekends. Saturdays and Sundays tend to be very quiet, for the most part, and it's more likely that people would be receptive to lengthier, more reflective pieces when they aren't trying to squeeze their
Consider it like a "Sunday Edition" of Slashdot - more in-depth articles, op-ed, and now we have links to the Sunday funnies! Something you can enjoy with a cup of coffee without having to rush through it.
Thoughts?
"I'd like to make a promise and I'd like to make a vow, that when I've got something to say, sir, I'm gonna say it now
black-turtlenecked oedipal poseur ???
Come on, man, if you don't like what the guy has to say, address what he's saying, don't just rip into what you view as trite deconstructionist jargon .
I honestly didn't care much for the article, because it was poorly constructed (from an English-major standpoint) and tried to do too much , thereby losing its focus. But some of the ideas themselves were valid and well worth considering.
"I'd like to make a promise and I'd like to make a vow, that when I've got something to say, sir, I'm gonna say it now
It's always good to have more perspectives on technical stuff. God knows, those of us who watch tv get a lot of distortions. It'd be nice to have a clueful source of "bigger picture" essays here.
"shop smart:shop s-mart" ash
I am a long-time anti-Katz-er. I think this guy is better, both in terms of writing mechanics (if there were any dorky spelling errors, I missed them) and in terms of prose quality (shorter, creative without being tedious). I also think the bit about networks constraining/defining our possible modes of action was an insight beyond what Katz could come up with. But it wasn't exactly Claude Shannon or anything. :^P
Now that we have customizable front pages, I say keep him, and Katz too. I personally do not filter Katz, because I just have to read his articles every time (makes me feel better about myself), and I will not filter this column, either.
"The skies of the digital world grow grayer day by day."
/. We know the writers' names, we know their inclinations and agendas, and we know whether or not to trust them.
I like that line. The rest are so-so.
If he's a good journalist, he'll adapt to his audience. If he's not, we'll stop reading his stuff.
That's the best part about the new journalistic model that is being created here on
Don Negro
Don Negro
Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall
Simple, suits like decontructuralist bullshit. It makes them feel smart to understand all the words.
The more enlightened of the suits (or those freshly back from leadership-training seminars) read sites like this to try and get a clue what the employees think. If they read someone who's published [sounds of angelic choir] in Forbes Digital [86 heavenly host glee club] and he says that they should ask their IT employees about network strategy before dictating it, then there's a small chance that it actually might happen.
And that'd be a good thing for all of us.
Don Negro
Don Negro
Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall
Subject says it all.
Don Negro
Don Negro
Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall
I guess I'm too used to reading HOWTO's and O'Reilly manuals. Couldn't the article be summed up in a couple of paragraphs?
Just give me the information and let the newbies have the pretty prose.
Still though. He's a better writer than I am and I'm glad to see Slashdot getting some solid writers.
Keep him on. I'm fully capable of choosing what I read or don't read.
Just like companies are starting to "join" the Linux Movement, jornalists are starting to "join" slashdot.
/. is a great thing, 1000s of listeners with lots of spare time to hear whatever people say. How many books did Kats sold just to /. readers? I didnt buy it, but I believe many did.
Hey, the man cant distinguisg crackers from hackers, does he belong here?
Cmon, writing in
Reading this guy and Katz (both of whom I've voted to keep) has left me with one basic impression: I should become a writer.
See, before I read these guys, I thought that you actually had to be good at it to have anyone read what you wrote. Not so! Just throw out vaguely interesting concepts, sprinkle buzzwords on top, and then totally fail to develop the idea to anything meaningful.
I can do that. I can do that _better_ than these guys can. Look for my next book "Deconstructing Geek Hackers, on the Mountain" in fine bookstores everywhere.
Sheesh. I just want to make it clear that I'm only voting to keep these guys for two basic reasons. One, I think they really, really need criticism and practice to improve their writing; slashdot is good for that. Two, filtering them out has recently become real simple, so if I just get completely tired of reading stuff from this guy, I can remove him from what I see.
Extra choice is seldom a bad thing, and more than that, I think he belongs. For those who don't like it - Just ignore It (TM)
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
so long as it doesn't displace other stuff.
/., but there is not limitless room.
I think there is room for op-ed pieces on
So, go for it I say.
-----
:1,$s/hack/crack/g
- Randy
- Kate
"DNA is life. The rest is just translation."
I've been reading Thieme's stuff for...maybe two years? Probably longer for Katz (back in HotWired's heyday). I think it's a real coup getting Thieme in to slashdot, particularly since he managed to start making sense again about a month ago.
Keep him. Definitely.
impartial
ambivalent
purple?
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
I like his writing style better than Katz, but I didn't find this piece very interesting.
I do want to see more of his work in the future.
One misconception: there is any design whatsoever in the emerging Internet, or its society. And the idea that the government can easily get a list of "dangerous" elements by the newsgroups they keep is a bit of misdirection; the government could always get a list of usavories simply by the subscription lists of underground papers, for instance.
I'd like to believe that cluelessness is transient. The future I work for is a future filled with slightly-clueful people, people who know the difference between a hacker and a cracker. Maybe even Ted Koppel will one day understand the communications society we've evolved.
The article's paranoia of ignorance and government maliciousness is unseemly. The government is not clueful enough to use the digital realm against us-- even the groups savvy enough (NSA) to cull useful information from the 'net don't have the manpower to do anything with it. They barely have the power to take out people like Kevin Mitnick.
And ignorance is a passing fad. I hope.
-Tony
I don't particularly like this article, but its not like I'll be required to read future articles. I think we might as well keep him for the people who enjoy the articles, and the rest can screen him out.
-Chris Andreasen
... he will probably generate some entertaining flame wars.
Apart from that he seems to be ok. So keep him.
Katz can't get much more technical than Hackers: the movie.
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
Amen brother. I have a tendency to skim over the flowery parts of sentences to get to the real meat. Unfortunately i found myself skimming the whole thing.
Sunday's would be a GREAT time to put articles like this. I do like reading other views of people . Lets you know what the rest of the world is thinking. Maybe "Slashdot Sunday" could also have a few guest columnists.. Rob, maybe send out invitations to write a guest column to people inside and outside the industry! They will appreciate (if they have flame proof suits) the feedback that such a vocal audience could give! Hell wouldn't it be great to flame BillGatus of Borg. See what he has to say, if he can actually take off those rose coloured glasses, and drop all the marketing BS...
I think that Eric Raymond has always gotten this one wrong too. If you reverse engineer software for the purpose of making keygens or to find out where to change a JZ to a JNZ, you are a cracker. The name makes sense.
If, OTOH you try to break into systems where your grubby hands don't belong, you are, some what unfortunately, a hacker.
They are two different things that need different names. Until another name is invented for a hacker, you'll just have to live with it. Hell, just call yourself a programmer.
I like it. He flatters his readers just enough to get 'em to pay attention, then makes paying attention worth it.
Katz flatters poorly and too much, and doesn't make it worth it. He has potential, though.
Both of these guys need to test and refine their ideas, and this is a perfect place to do it.
With the advent of /.'s new customizability, if people don't care for it, they can choose not to see it. Personally, I thought it was well written. Even if I didn't agree with all of it, it was still enoyable to read. I voted to keep him.
** Black holes are where God divided by zero **
Lets try him out. One article is not good enuff to judge an author.Keep the poll after a month or so, let ppl get a good idea of what they are going to vote for before they are allowed to vote.
CP
I had a similar problem getting through the metaphors. The article wasn't bad, it's just that the author needs to be more conscise in getting his point across. I like EngrBohn's distilled summary. Maybe we can have him write for us instead -- it will save me a lot of time reading.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
Keep em.
I started with nothing and I still have most of it.
...I've occasionally seen this column before, and it's invariably unfocused and rambling. He doesn't seem to have gotten much bettern since I last saw him.
If you're interested - read it; if you're uninterested, repulsed, frightened, whatever - filter it.
Metaphors are supposed to make it easier to convey a concept, but this article has little but metaphors, making it difficult to follow. I think I can summarize this article: Only trust reliable sources; news media outlets need to keep their facts straight; decisions should be made holistically, based upon facts and not assumptions.
--I still say keep him.
Christopher A. Bohn
cb
Oooh! What does this button do!?
I used to read Freff Connor Cochrane's columns in Keyboard Magazine, and I think what I liked about his writing is reflected in this person's column as well. It is insightful without being overly subjective. Opinions based on observations are more valuable to me than opinions based on maintaining a comic-book anti-hero self-image.
This guy looks like a keeper. What's Stan Kelly-Bootle up to? Maybe add him too...
I thought the metaphor was about being carried around in the birdcage, i.e, about being the prisoner, not being the warden.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I don't think even Katz thinks that.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Same for this guy.
I like the Sunday Slashdot idea (or even Saturday).
I am curious as to whether this guy is here because he got run off from wherever he was writing before.
Perhaps we could keep him and Katz on condition that they edit each other. That should produce some interesting results.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I hereby declare that the best post ever!
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
You'd have thought after the number of rants posted on /. about the mix up between hacker and cracker, /. it's self would be able to get it right.
-- Hulver's site
It looks to me like the comments for the essay and the comments for the poll are the same. Was that intentional?
Yeah, sure, keep him. Believe it or not, after this first installment, I prefer Katz.
"It's OK, my sheet's got a hole in it!"
If he learns the difference between hacker and cracker.
-- Out of cheese error! Redo from start.
While I'd like to Thieme kept for a bit to find out how good/poor his material is, he (and Katz) should not have the ability to post at will. They should be read and edited by Rob (or someone). This way someone other than the readers, proofs and fact checks the article before its posted. Further one article is not enough on which to base a decission. Let me see three or four and I'll make one. As illustration: I initially voted to keep Katz (not to kick a dead one :), but have gotten to the point where only absolute boredom is the only reason I go near his work.
His style is smoother than Katz', and the unsupported claims that he puts out are at least wrapped in pretty language, rather than Katz' huffing, puffing rants.
Keep him.
"Even genius needs a competent technique."--Robert Fripp
I say keep him on, and then vote again after a couple more articles. I'm usually pretty good at slogging through this kind of writing, but the buzzword factor was so high I was having problems gleaning any real content. In the future though, if I decide he doesn't have anything interesting to say, I can just use the new nufty-difty filters and ignore his posts. Floats my boat.
Your Servant, B. Baggins
Gratuitous implementation of multi-syllabic verbiage obfuscates the impoverished, redundant contemplation of a deficient individual.
What I done wrote there was supposed to be a little iffy. It's like, self-referential and stuff. Uh huh huh. Uh huh huh huh huh.
Had he written the piece in the style of a philosophy text, he would have started with five pages of definitions nobody else in the field agrees with, followed by a ten-page rant about why his views of qualia are superior to everyone elses :-)
Disclaimer: CompSci major doing doctoral work at a philosophy department - any bias is my own fault.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
I like his comments. He, Katz and others are good at devising metaphors and explainations that other groups can use to better understand the world as the 'geeks' see it. That metaphor about carrying the birdcage around is a really powerful one. It could be useful to explain alot of things, technical or not.
Keep him.
Jim Wildman jim@rossberry.com
I guess you are referring to design vs. implementation in software development. Unfortunatly you generally need to know what the program needs to do before you start coding it.
So you generally do spend more time designing than actually implementing software.
> (that is...if you even program).
-==-
'Deconstruction' != 'taking apart'
But I read it again, and, although I suspect he doesn't even know it, he did sort of get the idea right. In the first two sentences at least. The method of deconstruction is indeed very much like a litererary version of an IP-spoofing attack. The idea is to take a central metaphor or comparison in the work in question, and see how it can become unstable, through different readings, different meanings of the words, etc. Much like a supposedly "priveleged" host can be taken over by a "trusted" subordinate machine (which is of course being spoofed by a totally different machine, the "supplement" in deconstructo-speak). So bravo for this point, which is a new one on me.
The next sentence, of course goes on to provide evidence that he has no idea what he just said, with all that blather about the big picture, which is pretty much the opposite of what deconstruction is about, and hacking, for that matter. PHB's are the people who see the "big picture". That's what they're there for. New-critics, Marxist critics, Feminists... in the world of words, these are the PHB's; the big-picture types. And thus, he snatches defeat from the jaws of victory.
I say keep, but then again, I don't feel like I have much right to tell Rob what to put here anyway. I just wanted to bitch about the world's lack of understanding of, and continuous perverse need to misuse, deconstruction.
P.S. Sorry about all the "quotes". It's hard to restrain myself when I get writing about deconstruction :-)
----------------------
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
Whilst I do enjoy articles on something other than kernel update 2.2.3ac93, Katz and this new guy don't seem to be able to apply this rule. In my experience, the hacker audience has the following characteristics:
So, IMHO, if the less-technical writers who want to write here would like a more friendly response, they should take steps to address these points. As a starting point and an excellent introduction to hacker culture (though not, of course, a be-all and end-all), why don't they have a look at The Jargon File??
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
:%s/hack/crack/g
Dump the IRS - http://www.fairtax.org
The sequel no one asked for.
Its not that they aren't good wirters, its just that they don't have anything interestin to write about.
This forum is turning into web show-and-tell for every amateur hack out there.
Look up ad hominem in the dictionary, or a philosophy book.
To say you can't critique someone's essay (even though Rob's post explicitly asked for comments) unless you post one yourself is moronic.
You've never run for President, so I guess you can't comment on Clinton.
unsubstantiated opinions
Well how would I go about "substantiating" the fact that I simply don't like his article? What do you want a reference to? Perhaps the IETF can cobble up some RFC for "Gut Feelings" that I can point to to make you feel better.
I can't say it any more elegantly than you are a retard.
I agree. The term he should be using is "cracker". Unless he can get this fundamental bit of info correct, he doesn't belong here.
damon
...It was better than Katz.
- Dan
I like the new guy. Indeed, apparently quite a few people like the new guy. I would assume the folks who are making snide comments voted in the poll along with everybody else. The overwhelming majority of the voters, so far, seem to want to keep him. The usual batch of flamers explains why this is a terrible idea. It's pretty funny.
An anonymous flamer wrote: Actually, to judge from the people who bothered to vote, you are in a minority position. Somebody does care. The overwhelming majority voted to keep the new writer.
It's funny how the people who are most willing to speak for everyone else are least equipped to do so.
Well, I for one am going to filter him out if he stays. I'm one of the apparent minority who actually likes Katz's stuff so it isn't animosity toward the topics. I just really didn't like this guy's writing style.
I feel like a voice in the wilderness here, but I find his prose style overbearing and pretentious. Let's not stroke the ego of another hacker wannabe.
The quality of his thesis is better than the quality of his prose. This man needs a tough, competent editor: with a little ego-deflation this article would be very good. But I don't see Slashdot as a literary forum and, no offense Rob, I am not sure any of "us geeks" are qualified to be that tough, competent editor.
Keep him on. We as a group tend to distort things to fit our own model of reality, and I think that the more writers who are around to step outside this view give us a chance to receive new perspective. While Katz tends to write so that his audience likes him (something he hasn't quite got the hang of considering the reply posts), this guy seems to just write out what he has found.
As far as the Katz haters, I understand that he is trying to evangelize his works and that he is in fact "preaching to the choir." I didn't get a sense of evangelism from this one, so time will only tell if he will demean himself to that level. The general sense though around here is that we're geeks and we don't need preachy effects in articles, just plain, hard facts and numbers. We like those.
That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it.
PsychoSpunk
ALL HAIL BRAK!!!
NEVER?????
If the contributions are so poor here on Slashdot, please...enlighten us. Show us the way.
What I want here is interesting "news for nerds". I don't want a bunch of op-ed stuff. If I wanted that, I'd read something else.
Yeah, the whole article was a little metaphor-heavy. But one can never have too much content, I suppose...
-lx
Down with Green! Purple rules!
. . . but I'm not sure that Slashdot ought to be in the business of allocating cosmic resources like space and time. There could be, like, billions and billions of problems.
-j
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
When he learns to piss people off the way Katz does, I'll reconsider, but right now I don't see him engendering enough mindless animosity to justify his presence.
With my threshold firmly at -9,
-j
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
From the polling blurb:
"This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important- you're insane."
So is the decision whether or not to add a new columnist an unimportant decision, or an insane one?
But the voting is loud and clear! Keep him.
/.
One really nice thing about that vote button is that lurkers count. I think there's a few people here who think that the loudest person should win, which is a problem common to all online discussion forums -- not just
lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
Until this guy gets a clue, please don't post anymore of his articles.
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
.. fix his terminology! Mis-using "hacker" the way he did in that article makes him look like an idiot.
TA
I'll bet you have no idea how ironic that comment is.
-k. ^-^ ^D
Did he say anything? I think the total information content of that article was about 0.5 bits. Katz at least makes an effort to have a point of some substance, even if he doesn't alway succeed.
Dump this guy.
A little fluffy, but not bad.
/./ ) is good enough for me.
/./ ?
Anything that raises the Slashdot Quotient (abbreviation:
What's the
Aggregate Content
-----------------
Annoying Drivel
-------
Bill Gates Is My Evil Twin.
Oh wow. I had to read this twice to get the jist of it. Usually as soon as I see the word "deconstruct", it's over. Deconstruction is a discredited form of critical analysis (lit-crit) and seemed badly out of place here. But when I re-read ...a world in which people are not always what they seem. I had to stop and think. And that was Thieme's intent. Wasn't it? Contrats. It worked. Keep him. But I warn you. As soon as I see the work "SubAltern" in one of his tomes, I'm outta here. Joe
Keep'm
-Master Switch, one more element in the machine
Where was the part about Porn and Sexbots??
-vE ten.xeh@dloc
I think having an op-ed area that /.ers can read about is a positive attribute, if for no other reason than that it will cause some interesting flames and thoughts to surface. However, I hate bloatware in both Microsoft and Op-ed pieces. Say what you have to say in the most compressed and eloquent way you can.
Why is it that there are 3 links to Richard Thieme (mailto:rthieme@thiemeworks.com) in the Related Links section? Isn't that redundant?
I like it. It appears to come from someone who knows a bit about technology and the mind of a hacker (using the proper connotation here). It's concise and not too fluffy like other features authors here who can now thankfully be removed with the check of a box. Keep him around, I say.
Jason Dufair
"Those who know don't have the words to tell
Jason Dufair
"Those who know don't have the words to tell
and the ones with the words don't know too w
I like Katz better. He talks about his own personal experiences which makes for a less dry article. This guy seems to rely too much on fancy metaphors and buzzwords. I also find it hard to follow his line thinking; his theme or purpose isn't clear from the beginning and seems jump around.
={-, A day without sunshine is like a like a day....in Seattle.
Sunday is about the only day of the week when I can handle long, metaphor-rich, rambling essays anyway. (I like them, but I have a short attention span)
I would guess the Katz-flamers are gonna toast this guy as well. Can CT find some way to group them together? throw them a side-box?
Hail to the Sun God! He is the Fun God! Ra! Ra! Ra!
This first article suffered from lack of brevity. Although it can be challenging to do so, with some reorganization and editing, my belief is that he probably could have made the same points with about 60% of the words.
In other words (lousy /. pun warning) SLASH out the fat, and keep the thoughts right on the "."
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Many of his points seem kind of obvious, though it's good to shine a little light on the obvious in case you've forgot.
I'll read him, but skim as I usually do. If I want good prose, I go sci-fi/fantasy/Frost; His seems a little heavy (like an ultra-rich fudge; good initially, sickening after a while).
Mike
--
Mike
--
"Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?"
hack
crack
Alt+A
Sorry...just spent an hour in this evil pre-req M$Office class.
Mike
--
Mike
--
"Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?"
I liked it. But then, I generally like Katz, too. My vote is to keep him, and let the people who don't like him filter him out.
I, for one, enjoyed this and have enjoyed most of Katz's work, unlike many it seems. These two should both be complimented, not just for writing well, or choosing good topics. It's because they provide something that many of us just-do-it hackers often miss: Perspective.
Many of us in general spend the majority of our time working on the technical side of anything we're involved in, worried about how this works, or if that has a bug. It's easy to get bogged down in the details.
But how many take the time to stop and look around at what's been accomplished, or where we're going? How often do you stop to get some perspective, whether about the world in general, where the net is going, what we'll be doing in the next year, or even where we've been?
Beyond that, even, Katz and co. provide a fresh perspective. A look through other eyes than our own. It is through these kinds of views that we can see the larger picture, and know our own place within it, rather than be caught in the dreary, crabby details.
IMO, It is a _lack_ of perspective, in general, that creates many of the disgruntled or just plain angry anti-author postings. People are caught unable to see past their own nose, and their ignorance and intolerance shows through. Complaining about what Rob posts on his own site is worse than the KDE/Gnome flame wars. At least there, there is (was?) a legal issue.
But of course, the old rule still applies, even to this posting.. If you don't want to see it, don't look!
"Not one shred of evidence points to the notion that life is serious" -- Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain
He knows the difference, the last time I met him was at a 2600 convention; where, if he didnt understand the difference, he'd have never been allowed to leave alive..
Id say his views into some of the concepts inherent to the whole culture are more congruent and more cutting than a lot of the offhand opinions that pass for 'journalism' these days..
Let't try him for a while. He seem to lack focus tho, unless he can write a more coherent, focused article, I'll probably start just skipping over his post. However, all he will take up is a spot on the posting list for a day, and some hard drive space on your server. Not a large cost, and who knows, perhaps the next article will be something I like.
Jim
It's bad luck to be superstitious
Apparently, he can't tell the difference between Hacker and Cracker. He used Hacker all the through, when he (to me at least) meant Cracker.
Secure Computing employs "former hackers"? He must mean Crackers who have gone straight. If he had meant Hackers, he should not have said "former". Presumably, working for a consulting firm, they are still hacking (in the jargon-1 sense).
Granted, the popular media still gets the distinction wrong, but this is not the popular media. Here, if you get the hacker/cracker distinction wrong, what else will you miss?
It was an interesting article that deserves to be published. But not at /.
I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning.
2) With preferences, people (other than ac's who will still write in and complain, annoying everybody) who don't like him can ignore him.
3) As long as he has something moderately interesting to write about, sure.
So I say yeah, keep him.
kmj
kmj
The only reason I keep my ms-dos partition is so I can mount it like the b*tch it is.
As subject says. Let him say his thing, if folks don't like it, it's trivial to screen him out.
./ poll... How many of you just created an account solely for the purpose of filtering Katz?
Here's a good idea for a
(raises hand)
Maybe too many metaphors and extra verbage, but the point is still valid and reading another style of prose is probably good for my brain.
"The skies of the digital world grow grayer day by day."
He is readable and has some interesting approaches. Really, that's all I need from this genre of writing: give me a different way to look at things and info. Doesn't mean that this way is the right one, just being different is enough.
;-)
OTOH, I am quite aware that one can produce a huge amount of impressive-sounding text around very little meat. That's one of the problems with Katz, IMHO -- too much fluff, too few ideas.
On the balance, I'd say keep him. If he turns out to be dull and losing, we can always dump him, can't we
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Agreed!
And actually, there's relatively little evidence in the deconstructing hackers piece that Thieme IS a good writer....
Why do you find any value whatsoever to this trite deconstructionist jargon? Thieme talks exactly like the black-turtlenecked oedipal poseur in the back of every college literature class. This sort of babble may intimidate a few of his fellow freshmen, but I don't see why it belongs on slashdot, let alone why it is deserving of any praise.
Or, to put it more simply,
What, of interest or value, does he actually say?
Hello?
"His ideas?"
The article reads like someone gave the staff of Wired a copy of Foucoult.
The only idea I see here is "hey - maybe I can bullshit these techies with a bunch of deconstructionist babble."
This isn't about flaming everything that isn't tech stuff. This is about flaming bad writing, and poor thinking.
Come on, man, and recognize understated parody next time it bites you in the ass.
Or, if that is asking to much, quit with the ad hominem attacks and answer my original question:
What, of interest or value, does he actually say?
People like you spend more time about how to communicate than you actually spend communicating.
Uh...perhaps you should spend more time "about how to communicate."
What the HELL are you talking about? And what does it have to do with the inital post?
Thanks...I realized now that Fouc'ed up.
I read a pretty good amount of philosophy on the way to my degree, and not one text had this sort of prose.
Let's be realistic - this is the work of an english major.
I liked his article until he started using terms like "social construction" and "deconstruction." I like Foucalt as much as the next guy, but why does EVERY SINGLE ACADEMIC SOCIAL COMMENTARY have to be a poststructuralist deconstruction? It's a useful discussion tool, but it's overused and cliche these days. At least it was in the sociology and anthropology courses I took in college.
I liked him at first, but now I say ditch him. He's dependant on buzz words.
"Whatever happened to fair use?"
-- Duff-Man
I'm a computer scientist, but went through a liberal arts college and thus got a lot of the social sciences mixed in with the algorithms.
Deconstruction (structuralism) was largely created by Michel Foucalt in the 60s as a reaction to people spewing out facts without critically analyzing them. One his best books, "Madness and Civilization," deconstructs the rather wishy-washy idea of "insanity," and how the idea that people are "insane" while others are "sane" has its roots in social factors as well as science.
The deconstruction works really well for social concepts which are widely believed but are really crap. Racist beliefs, sexist beliefs, these are all begging to be deconstructed.
But the problem, as Noam Chomsky said, is that social science has a lot of bredth but not much depth. So once someone comes up with a good idea, everyone hops on the bandwagon and uses that idea to analyze *everything.* This happened with Freudianism. After Freud's work came out, literary analysts would imagine that everything in, say, the "Iliad" or Kafka's "Metamorphosis" was all about sex. (Once you get a hammer, everything is a nail.) Deconstruction is useful in a lot of discussions, but social scientists are using it everywhere (i.e., to analyze computer hacking). It's like the social scientist in Don Delillo's "White Noise" who devotes his career to analyzing cereal boxes.
But if you're really interested, pick up "Madness and Civilization," or one like "Contested Lives" (deconstructing the abortion debate). [Vine Deloria's "Custer Died for your Sins" is good too, and reads like a deconstruction although Deloria probably didn't intend it to be so.]
"Whatever happened to fair use?"
-- Duff-Man
It's spelled "Foucault." (I misspelled it in an earlier post as well.)
I think this article is actually being flamed a lot less than it might in other circles. I've heard those from a literary / social science background really roast people who use terms like "commodification" and "social construction" to cover up a meaningless argument.
"Whatever happened to fair use?"
-- Duff-Man
Or as Orwell wrote, "Freedom is Slavery." To be free is to be a slave, there is no difference between the two. Larry Flynt is free to write what he wants but is a prisoner to his wheelchair as a result. Copylefted software remains free by forcing new contributions to also be GPLed. We send kids to fight in wars to protect "freedom."
As for whether deconstructions and the big picture are part of the same thing, I'm not sure I agree. Deconstructionism, like any metacognitive tool, has a tendancy to spin off to nowhere when people use it to analyze itself. (Like doublethink, or when the people in "White Noise" go to take pictures of the most-photographed barn in the world just because it is the most-photographed barn in the world.) The end result is that nothing is trusted, that there is no "fact." Which is okay philisophically, but in my experience lends itself to shallow social analysis. Deconstruction just seems overused in many academic discourses these days.
"Whatever happened to fair use?"
-- Duff-Man
Most of the time I read un-embellished 'information' on how to accomplish some task, or about some new software - but it's a pleasure to read something written in a less straight-forward style on a subject I care about. It leads to interesting, unexpected thoughts.
So I'd say keep this guy. Makes good leavening for the Slashdot bread.
-oo-
And keep Katz, too.
Information is not Knowledge
to understand the problem you need to analyze who you get your information from and what their interests ultimately are. i'm not talking about conspiracy theories, i'm talking about common sense. all major media outlets are corporations which have shareholders and thus a prime directive of their own: profit. the reason we see distortions is because they make the stories more interesting... at least to most of the people who never miss the 5 o'clock news.
it's more interesting to tell people that the banks will fall apart next year, that hackers have taken over a satellite, that dennis rodman's hair is green this week. none of it is news--it's pacification... and unfortunately most americans eat it up and love it.
journalism is dead in the mainstream... the public can't appreciate real journalism and would rather hear about kiko the whale's dramatic rescue by sea world. everything is human interest now and each night there's a story about the dangers of such-and-such product and "what you should do now to protect your kids". crap... complete crap.
did you know any author who appears on oprah to promote a book is instantly a bestseller?!? nobody reads the good ones anymore.
anyhow, i do have some hope that new information channels will be facilitated by the internet and people's ability to disseminate information easily without a super-watt antenna. slashdot is one example, even though it's not the traditional format. but you do need advertisers to pay for your existence... right now i'm looking at one for hermanmillerstore.com, will they some day convince slashdot to run a favorable article about their product? i doubt it. but read the latimes and you realize they have an agenda, just like the nytimes, cnn, abc, cbs, every one of them. it's subtle sometimes and overt at other times... but it's naive to think they don't pick and choose their stories and then distort the ones that could sell a few more papers or push up the ratings.
there seems to be a melding of the sitcoms and the newsshows lately--news anchors are celebrities for reading words off a screen and looking like plastic with makeup.
this just signals the end of the world to me. corporations play the public like pawns and unfortunalely most americans enjoy being played.
hernan@well.com
i am... therefore i think
Down with Green! Purple rules!
Die, infidel!
Green.
Every single node in a network is a center from which both attack and defense can originate.
Wow. Thanks for that keen insight.
Can I put this guy in the KatzFilter now? I've got pretty much the same criticisms for him: Too verbose, too repetititititive, seemingly written towards a layperson.
I'd like Katz if he paid attention to the audience; but do we really need a second featured columnist?
I vote "ditch" because I'm personally not interested in what this person has to say.
Come on people, stop flaming every writer they try to bring on board... It was a well written article, if a bit obtuse, and this guy would be a major addition to the /. stable. The more firepower that Rob adds to the page the more he is able to proselytize about Linux. I know that I started coming to the page because someone sent me an article that was just "fun" from here.
We need some variety, and his ideas are good. Give him a break. You can always get a personalized page that blocks his articles...
K
"If sharing a thing in no way diminishes it, it is not rightly owned if it is not shared." -St. Augustine
M-x replace-string (ret) hack (ret) crack
You're a suburbanite.
I like the style, and the fact that he doesn't reduce his writing to the syntactic minimum appeals. If I want to read raw data I'll plunge into an ORA book or some source code. If I want to read something for the sake of reading, I quite like it to look like this. It's information without the overload.
How about Richard's good articles get published here, his bad ones don't? It sounds crazy, I know, to suggest something other than never/always (like a slashdot poll) but I think it could work. In fact, during the "deciding whether this article stays or gets dumped" any spelling, wrong links, other errors or points of style could be addressed and then the articles that stay could be even better.
I think this is a good idea. We already have readers' comments for people to send their unedited ideas to the readers of slashdot. Maybe for the feature articles, we could up the quality a bit. Don't let Richard perform any crazy-journalism-social-experiments on the naive ./ readers by giving him the free-reign Katz got. Act like editors, editors. I know you can do it.
Peace.
re: "the audience you're targeting" and "be more risky." - the columns have been written for a much more general audience than slashdot. They have gone to a subscription list and to a number of republishers. If this conversation bends the focus
-which can't help happening, at least some, because the responses really clarify the issues - that will happen. But there are others out there for whom a broader context made sense.
The column was written for a broader audience for whom the cracker/hacker distinction is not a matter of religious orthodoxy, just a fuzzy area. I was aware of what I meant every time I used the word "hacker," and think I do think I know the difference, but the fact is, many ARE both hackers (in the true sense of the term) AND crackers. Last year's speech for the Black Hat Briefings was focused on the fact that in the past,people were given permission by the nation-state to be spies, but today, permission comes from the technology. Everybody lives in a world of fluid identities and strings together segments or modules of a self-invented life. That was not the case a generation ago.
... in the future I'll spell it out with greater clarity.
Networks designed to be open invited exploration, but that's exactly what some people mean by "cracker," i.e. people who explore in violation of laws that were invented for older technologies. The distinction is just not that black/white.
Anyway, if you want my take on hacking/cracking, there are several things at the web site www.thiemeworks.com under "writing" in "Hacker Culture and the Passion for Knowledge." "Hacking Chinatown," "Zen and the Art of Hacking," and the piece on Chris Lamprecht.
And
I think we're all both. Warden and prisoner. Like the great description of modern society in My Dinner With Andre, that New York city symbolizes the new concentration camp, where the guards and the prisoners are the same people. They're proud of this thing they've built so they won't let anyone escape. The irony in this particular column was intended to indicate that this is our inescapable condition, that these columns are no more trustworthy than anybody else's ... and yet, we can't help building a Big Picture when we write or read them. That's why deconstruction and Building the Big Picture - which seem mutually exclusive - are two sides of the same coin. That's what I meant by the double-edged blade.
I really understand this concern. My experience though is that nothing stays the same, and it always amazes me how fast things do change. Like Wired itself. Since being bought by Conde Nast (the magazine, anyway - the rest was sold elsewhere), the new mantra at Wired is, "we can't be revolutionaries forever." Each of the last 3 issues has had inserts from - Gentlemen's Quarterly, Vanity Fair, New Yorker, which says who they think their crossover market has become. The truth is, Wired is not interested (any more) in publishing visionary stuff. Take away the "bullshit" from "new age enlightenment bullshit" and you're left with what I think is a legitimate quest: how do we relate how we are being changed by our interaction with new technologies to authentic quests for real spirituality - not religion, but spirituality? The forums for really exploring that are few.
Richard Thieme, is an excellent writer and speaker at large. A recommended keeper. His creative nature is craftly honed with a factual background investigation of what he writes and or speaks about.
Stuff like this makes slashdot better. To pretend that technology has no social context is foolish. In many ways this is just as much "News for nerds." as is an article about Star Wars or RMS' latest wanderings.
/. option, where's the harm? If you don't want to read it you can just ignore posts from that author and let those who are interested (of which there are many) take a look.
The influence of Slashdot is expanding, and with that expanding influence comes a greater responsibility to keep people informed. Articles like this make you step back and look at technology from a different perspective. That can never be a bad thing.
Anyway, since author filtering is now a
Before I read this article and the commentary, I didn't know what "social [de]construction" was. I still don't understand it as deeply as you probably do, but three important things have happened today:
- I have seen an example of social [de]constructionist analysis.
- I have read an explanation of why, at least in some people's opinion, it is a clich in academic circles.
- I am motivated to go find out more about something I never heard of until now. I want to know what I'm missing by not knowing a post-structuralist from a structured poster.
In other words, my mind is expanding, just a little bit. There is more to this medium ofGospel or crap? Who can say? But I vote to keep it, at least for now, just because it makes for interesting discussions.
IDIC.
Before I read this article and the commentary, I didn't know what "social [de]construction" was. I still don't understand it as deeply as you probably do, but three important things have happened today:
- I have seen an example of social [de]constructionist analysis.
- I have read an explanation of why, at least in some people's opinion, it is a cliche' in academic circles.
- I am motivated to go find out more about something I never heard of until now. I want to know what I'm missing by not knowing a post-structuralist from a structured poster.
In other words, my mind is expanding, just a little bit. There is more to this medium ofHaving said that, I do think he needs to run the next one through compress or gzip. Every word is not a diamond, and I had to chip away too much slag here.
Gospel or crap? Who can say? But I vote to keep it, at least for now, just because it makes for interesting discussions. As for whether non-technical topics belong here, the slogan of /. is "News for nerds. Stuff that matters." Are people saying that only technical knowledge matters? If so, then maybe we tech-types really are as narrow-minded as the PHBs think we are. I hope not.
IDIC.
Thanks for the suggested readings. I'll check a couple of these out after I finish with Holographic Universe (an interesting read, though I don't agree with all the conclusions therein).
"I don't think anyone really asks for your overly-pessimistic unsubstantiated opinions."
Gee, I thought that was the whole pont of this poll. To get people's opinions.
Or did you miss that point?
"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men"
Hack!=Crack
dognamnit!
John.