3 articles by Jon Katz, just because he got a "Please Die" email?
Not just because he got that; it just makes a good symbol for the columns. Flaming, and its effects on the 'Net, is a legitimate topic of discussion in itself.
... well, having/. articles that state your view rather shoves it down a lot of people's throats now, doesn't it?
No, it just brings the topic up for discussion. Which is part of the point of making him a columnist here. (Making him a columnist in a traditional newspaper, where most responses to the author would go unread, might be just shoving his views down peoples' throats. But here, if he gets something wrong, all but the first few readers will see other readers calling him on it. Possibly with flames, if he's way off base. Which is part of the phenomenon he's talking about.)
Norton AntiVirus (Organic Edition) Peter Norton's guide to Home Health.
# shiver # - No thanks.:)
Why not? Instead of going to the doctor to get my immunizations ("SneakerNet", as it were), I can just download them automatically in my sleep. Or, for people who might forget/misapply their medications (which helps antibiotic-resistant diseases evolve in the first place), this could automatically apply disease resistance without burdening the patient. (Tones of Big Brother, perhaps, but so long as the only thing this does is eliminate disease, no problem. Just so long as an eye is kept on other applications of this technology...)
It would also require managers to give sufficient time to testing new releases. Forcing to market programs that crash computers is one thing. Forcing to market programs that crash human bodies would get PHBs thrown out by their stockholders, at a minimum.
Ah, but you forget the time scales that modern society is living on.
The Earth did not acquire its one billionth human until the 18th or 19th century. The second billion came in less than a century. There are many people alive today who were born well before the four billion mark - and now we're over six billion. Some estimates have ten million being reached by 2050. And that's just one of the more easily quanitfiable parameters - technology, science, and humanity's general ability to deal with reality on its own terms has improved at an accelerating rate since at least somewhere around the Industrial Revolution.
40 years today ain't 40 years in any prior era - and all signs are that 40 years out of some future century will have the same difference, only more so. It may well be that humanity makes the leap from colonizing the solar system to discovering FTL within one century, and that both leaps will be just in time to head off disaster. (Or it could be that we slow down population growth - which won't directly slow down tech progress, but will provide another route to easing overpopulation pressures.)
The game industry's been there, done that. Letting anyone code games without editorial review results in a lot of crap games: see what brought about Atari's demise. Nintendo would rather review all prospective GB games to make sure they meet at least a minimum standard of content. (For instance, why do you think there are no pr0n games for the GB?) End result: while there are still a fair amount of not-so-excellent games out there, the average quality of GB games goes up, the GB gets a reputation for having good games, more GBs are sold, resulting in a larger audience that draws more developers...
Disclaimer: the above is my understanding of Nintendo's position. Just because I understand something does not mean I support it, neither does it mean I am against it.
So? Do as the dotcoms did: use the hype to sell the dream. But make sure you do as the successful dotcoms still do: have a realistic plan to use that money to get stuff up there and start profiting before you burn through your funding.
It only takes one person to found a company. From there, that one person can gather the resources (including and especially people) to realize the dream. Heck, maybe I'll do it.
As society collapses due to Y2K panic, I will reside with my fellow endangered subspecies, homo commonsensus, and watch self-fulfilling prophecies of disaster play themselves out from a distance. We will maintain enough of a military and police capability to send rioters out into the wastelands that used to be large cities, where they can forage with less resistance.
Meanwhile, civilization will continue in our enclave (which will include enough defended farmland to feed us). With the future-fearing majority of humanity out of our hair, we will proceed unimpeded to develop nanotechnology, bioengineering, and other technologies to make our lives and ourselves better. (We would not be averse to a little organized raiding of our own if, as time goes on, it turns out that we forgot to claim some important resources. Indeed, we may even capture some of the more promising tribes to use as our own labor force, at least until we can start manufacturing truly intelligent robotic servants. We expect little resistance capable of withstanding us: an AK-47 doesn't do much against a tank.)
We expect to achieve spaceflight and move ourselves into colonies at the Earth-Moon Lagrange points before someone manages to figure out how to launch the nuclear missiles from their abandoned silos. The final extermination of all life on Earth is expected to be a pretty, if sad (in a nostalgic sense), sight from orbit. Won't you join us there to ring in 2001?
You would have to redo the whole thing though, since if there are two candidates, and one gets 60% no confidence, the guy who actually wins obviously wasn't running against a worthy opponent in the public's view. (i.e. it wasn't so much that he was good, but rather "The lesser of the two evils"
No, it just means the victor was, amongst the candidates that the public would accept, running unopposed. In the strictly hypothetical case that there was ever an election for U.S. President where only one person ran, that person would win, just like what happens if there is only one candidate for any other elected federal office.
I believe that the views expressed on Slashdot deserve more of a voice than the archives of a web site.
More of a voice? This is, technically, a news site (maybe more technical-interest than general-interest, but still a news site). Since the code is no longer a trade secret, this falls under a journalist including details (for interested readers) in their story that certain parties would rather not see distributed. Put another way, this is similar to someone suing to get a story removed from a newspaper because it contains public facts that they'd rather not be published. Might the judge be sympathetic to a freedom of the press argument?
If this is a breach of legal procedure, then even if the restratining order does get granted, would that mean those cited are free to ignore the order?
Granted, but the fact of the matter is, there are more 'Net businesses of almost all types in the USA than in any other country. The USA might not have the power to regulate the few (but growing) number of companies outside its borders, but it most certainly can put a block on the significant fraction inside. It might not get rid of all fraudsters, but it will make a significant dent in their numbers, and thus in the amount of damage they do...and that is still worthwhile, to the Feds that have thought about this.
I waited for others to post the solution, then posed the question to some chess buff (but not really 'Net aware) friends of mine. I'll be merciful and give them the solution...in a year or two, after obsessing about this problem has driven them insane, shattering their will and priming them for mind control.;)
No, I'm not serious. Except about taking the cheap (...er+faster=better) way out for getting the solution ('cause I already have enough problems to solve).
It's called a "helpmate". Basically, the losing side plays so poorly that it appears to be actively, deliberately helping its opponent to win. It's a bit of a psychological leap to tackle problems where you assume helpmates (basically, you control both sides to get the desired end) vs. handling "normal" play where you assume your opponent won't play to lose. (At least, it was a leap for me.)
Consider: the law is what some people have decided it should be. It is people that enforce and judge the law. Therefore, if you get enough of the right people on your side, the law will favor you.
Laws are supposed to substitute objective codes for individual preferences, and they do to some extent...but someone still has to decide what those codes are, and what they mean in your situation. To take just one example: Microsoft ticked off the judge in its antitrust case, so all of its arguments were ignored when it came time to decide the law.
Is this law, or is this marketing a point of view? The two do not appear to be as distinct as many would like.
"Loser pays" has problems of its own. Let's say Amalgamated Megacorp is screwing you over by dumping toxic waste in your swimming pool. You take them to court, but because they have millions to spend on O.J.'s legal team and the Chewbacca defense, you lose. You now have to pay their legal costs. You end up bankrupt, ruined, living on the street in a cardboard box.
Ah, but in cases like this, one can use the court of public opinion - with videos of the dumping - which doesn't have as much potential for backfire. (As for any potential lawsuits from AM about "slander" from these tactics: the law is the law. If you're just posting the facts that you have witnessed, it doesn't matter *how* much they pay, they have a much lesser chance of getting a judgement against you, especially if you demand a jury trial.)
Once the CoPO has run its way, then file a lawsuit, and you'll probably be able to attract enough donations to counter AM's monetary advantage.
Witness how long Nintendo's Game Boy system went without supporting color, and how many of its "applications" (games) even today don't care that much about color. Granted, a PDA has some differences from a portable game system, but the point is that it is the functionality of the device which drives market share. Bells and whistles like color only affect competitiveness by affecting functionality. Color, in and of itself, is not required to compete.
Things start off as cool, then you lose interest in them. The secret is to find new things that are cool to you. New things (of varying coolness) pop up all the time - there's no way you'll go through everything this world has to offer in a mere few decades.
Artemis Society International is a non-profit educational and scientific foundation incorporated in the State of Alabama, USA. The Society leads the non-profit element of The Artemis Project, and is staffed entirely with volunteer effort.
This does not sound like a for-profit corporation to me, and VCs exist for profit. Idealism only goes so far; profit is a much more efficient motivator of people (so much so that profit might suceed where pure idealism has, so far, failed).
I wonder...with all the problems w/government funded Big Space missions, why doesn't someone put together a business plan for near-term (first missions within 1 or 2 years, first profit within 3 or 4) space exploitation (say, lunar construction or something) and actually submit it to a VC?
The only ones I've seen have been academic pieces, or pleas for public and/or government donations. Start-ups work well for tech industry, might the same approach be tried here?
On the off chance that there is anyone reading this to whom those at the FBI who issue this profile will listen: can the mail and other communications informing schools about this profile also be tagged with the following?
If one of your students fits this profile, be advised that he or she is probably already living in a world of fear and anger. Suspension or other traditional punishments will not work in this case; they will only make the problem worse. What needs to happen instead is that this student needs to be cured of his or her emotional pain. The most effective way to do this is to ask the student to describe his or her problems to you, then say:
"What has been done to you is wrong. What is being done to you is wrong. It is wrong for anyone to hit you. It is wrong for you to have to live in fear of physical violence. It is wrong for you to feel hatred for yourself, and it is wrong for people to try to make you hate yourself. You are not crazy for being in pain. You do not deserve to be treated like this."
Just including this piece of advice could subvert this potential disaster into a way to clue schools in to how to handle geeks. (The problem is not that school officials can identify geeks. The problem is that they are casting around for a way to handle them - including widely varying reasons for the "need" to handle them - which results in all kinds of inappropriate "remedies" which, in the end, actually make things worse for everyone.)
I know some people think about putting this into normal people, non-patients, but I don't see that would be justified. Why would you possibly want to control computers directly from your brain if you can do it by moving your hand, your fingers?
Oh, maybe just...
A more intuitive, and thus easier to use/faster/more productive interface. (For instance, if an artist gets a mental image, and can just think it to an external display in minutes, including time for refinements, rather than spending hours sketching and painting it, how much more art - and thus, assuming the ratio of crap to quality remains constant, how much more good art by any measure - can be produced in a given amount of time?)
A more mobile and secure interface (a Palm Pilot can be stolen much more easily than the palm of my fist; I can therefore trust my personal information more easily to an embedded processor).
Medical technology that may require manual override in situations where one can not use one's hands (for instance, releasing anti-stroke medication in the middle of a stroke if the stroke detector is unreliable).
Some people don't have hands, and would really not mind controlling robot hands that are strapped to their arms. (Prosthetics is perhaps the most publically supported app that the above quote utterly denies.)
And other reasons which aren't off the top of my head.
I think some people use their imaginations a bit too much.
And I think some people misinterpret their own lack of imagination as evidence that certain things can and/or should never be done, when they could so easily instead just place their trust in other peoples' ability to find solutions where they themselves only see barriers and/or trouble.
However, the Nuremberg Defense does not work in the modern U.S. military, because we are told to follow the LAWFUL orders of those over us. So, we would not be following the "meta-orders" we swore to uphold (protect the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic) if we did anything which was illegal as we understand the laws of war and of international treaties.
I agree with you so far...
With all that said, I don't personally believe that the Echelon program is evil or illegal.
And here's the point of disagreement. Is the Echelon program illegal? There is much reason to suspect it may be.
I don't particularly like the idea that it exists and may be watching me, but that's for larger bodies to wrestle with. For example, the U.S. Congress called DIRNSA to testify recently (a couple months ago) on the Echelon program. He refused. Now, THAT, IMO, is illegal. I can't imagine that any appointed bureaucrat can say no to the U.S. Legislature.
It is behavior like this that is prompting suspicions of illegal behavior on the part of the NSA that runs Echelon. After all, if Echelon is merely a SIGINT program that we share with other countries, and is within the legal bounds of what a government agency may do, then why deny it exists when practically everyone you'd want to hide this from is already acting on the assumption that it exists, thanks to other governments and the press? If it is acting beyond what we may do, then orders to do the illegal parts of it are not to be followed. But, if the ones who push the buttons that make Echelon work never bother to think about whether their orders are legal or not, and just follow them...
Slashdot Mirror
You mean like this?
3 articles by Jon Katz, just because he got a "Please Die" email?
... well, having /. articles that state your view rather shoves it down a lot of people's throats now, doesn't it?
Not just because he got that; it just makes a good symbol for the columns. Flaming, and its effects on the 'Net, is a legitimate topic of discussion in itself.
No, it just brings the topic up for discussion. Which is part of the point of making him a columnist here. (Making him a columnist in a traditional newspaper, where most responses to the author would go unread, might be just shoving his views down peoples' throats. But here, if he gets something wrong, all but the first few readers will see other readers calling him on it. Possibly with flames, if he's way off base. Which is part of the phenomenon he's talking about.)
Weren't the choices open nomination? As in, they're basically *all* write-ins, if you'd written them in during the nomination period?
Norton AntiVirus (Organic Edition)
:)
Peter Norton's guide to Home Health.
# shiver # - No thanks.
Why not? Instead of going to the doctor to get my immunizations ("SneakerNet", as it were), I can just download them automatically in my sleep. Or, for people who might forget/misapply their medications (which helps antibiotic-resistant diseases evolve in the first place), this could automatically apply disease resistance without burdening the patient. (Tones of Big Brother, perhaps, but so long as the only thing this does is eliminate disease, no problem. Just so long as an eye is kept on other applications of this technology...)
It would also require managers to give sufficient time to testing new releases. Forcing to market programs that crash computers is one thing. Forcing to market programs that crash human bodies would get PHBs thrown out by their stockholders, at a minimum.
Ah, but you forget the time scales that modern society is living on.
The Earth did not acquire its one billionth human until the 18th or 19th century. The second billion came in less than a century. There are many people alive today who were born well before the four billion mark - and now we're over six billion. Some estimates have ten million being reached by 2050. And that's just one of the more easily quanitfiable parameters - technology, science, and humanity's general ability to deal with reality on its own terms has improved at an accelerating rate since at least somewhere around the Industrial Revolution.
40 years today ain't 40 years in any prior era - and all signs are that 40 years out of some future century will have the same difference, only more so. It may well be that humanity makes the leap from colonizing the solar system to discovering FTL within one century, and that both leaps will be just in time to head off disaster. (Or it could be that we slow down population growth - which won't directly slow down tech progress, but will provide another route to easing overpopulation pressures.)
Disclaimer: the above is my understanding of Nintendo's position. Just because I understand something does not mean I support it, neither does it mean I am against it.
So? Do as the dotcoms did: use the hype to sell the dream. But make sure you do as the successful dotcoms still do: have a realistic plan to use that money to get stuff up there and start profiting before you burn through your funding.
It only takes one person to found a company. From there, that one person can gather the resources (including and especially people) to realize the dream. Heck, maybe I'll do it.
"The fine is five pounds per kilometer per hour over the limit. That's twenty five billion pounds, sir."
"But that's faster than the speed of light! When was I going that fast?"
"Right now, in this courtroom, according to the satellites."
As society collapses due to Y2K panic, I will reside with my fellow endangered subspecies, homo commonsensus, and watch self-fulfilling prophecies of disaster play themselves out from a distance. We will maintain enough of a military and police capability to send rioters out into the wastelands that used to be large cities, where they can forage with less resistance.
Meanwhile, civilization will continue in our enclave (which will include enough defended farmland to feed us). With the future-fearing majority of humanity out of our hair, we will proceed unimpeded to develop nanotechnology, bioengineering, and other technologies to make our lives and ourselves better. (We would not be averse to a little organized raiding of our own if, as time goes on, it turns out that we forgot to claim some important resources. Indeed, we may even capture some of the more promising tribes to use as our own labor force, at least until we can start manufacturing truly intelligent robotic servants. We expect little resistance capable of withstanding us: an AK-47 doesn't do much against a tank.)
We expect to achieve spaceflight and move ourselves into colonies at the Earth-Moon Lagrange points before someone manages to figure out how to launch the nuclear missiles from their abandoned silos. The final extermination of all life on Earth is expected to be a pretty, if sad (in a nostalgic sense), sight from orbit. Won't you join us there to ring in 2001?
You would have to redo the whole thing though, since if there are two candidates, and one gets 60% no confidence, the guy who actually wins obviously wasn't running against a worthy opponent in the public's view. (i.e. it wasn't so much that he was good, but rather "The lesser of the two evils"
No, it just means the victor was, amongst the candidates that the public would accept, running unopposed. In the strictly hypothetical case that there was ever an election for U.S. President where only one person ran, that person would win, just like what happens if there is only one candidate for any other elected federal office.
I believe that the views expressed on Slashdot deserve more of a voice than the archives of a web site.
More of a voice? This is, technically, a news site (maybe more technical-interest than general-interest, but still a news site). Since the code is no longer a trade secret, this falls under a journalist including details (for interested readers) in their story that certain parties would rather not see distributed. Put another way, this is similar to someone suing to get a story removed from a newspaper because it contains public facts that they'd rather not be published. Might the judge be sympathetic to a freedom of the press argument?
If this is a breach of legal procedure, then even if the restratining order does get granted, would that mean those cited are free to ignore the order?
Granted, but the fact of the matter is, there are more 'Net businesses of almost all types in the USA than in any other country. The USA might not have the power to regulate the few (but growing) number of companies outside its borders, but it most certainly can put a block on the significant fraction inside. It might not get rid of all fraudsters, but it will make a significant dent in their numbers, and thus in the amount of damage they do...and that is still worthwhile, to the Feds that have thought about this.
I waited for others to post the solution, then posed the question to some chess buff (but not really 'Net aware) friends of mine. I'll be merciful and give them the solution...in a year or two, after obsessing about this problem has driven them insane, shattering their will and priming them for mind control. ;)
No, I'm not serious. Except about taking the cheap (...er+faster=better) way out for getting the solution ('cause I already have enough problems to solve).
It's called a "helpmate". Basically, the losing side plays so poorly that it appears to be actively, deliberately helping its opponent to win. It's a bit of a psychological leap to tackle problems where you assume helpmates (basically, you control both sides to get the desired end) vs. handling "normal" play where you assume your opponent won't play to lose. (At least, it was a leap for me.)
...or, at least, a bearable depressive episode.
;) )
(I think that covers everyone...
Consider: the law is what some people have decided it should be. It is people that enforce and judge the law. Therefore, if you get enough of the right people on your side, the law will favor you.
Laws are supposed to substitute objective codes for individual preferences, and they do to some extent...but someone still has to decide what those codes are, and what they mean in your situation. To take just one example: Microsoft ticked off the judge in its antitrust case, so all of its arguments were ignored when it came time to decide the law.
Is this law, or is this marketing a point of view? The two do not appear to be as distinct as many would like.
"Loser pays" has problems of its own. Let's say Amalgamated Megacorp is screwing you over by dumping toxic waste in your swimming pool. You take them to court, but because they have millions to spend on O.J.'s legal team and the Chewbacca defense, you lose. You now have to pay their legal costs. You end up bankrupt, ruined, living on the street in a cardboard box.
Ah, but in cases like this, one can use the court of public opinion - with videos of the dumping - which doesn't have as much potential for backfire. (As for any potential lawsuits from AM about "slander" from these tactics: the law is the law. If you're just posting the facts that you have witnessed, it doesn't matter *how* much they pay, they have a much lesser chance of getting a judgement against you, especially if you demand a jury trial.)
Once the CoPO has run its way, then file a lawsuit, and you'll probably be able to attract enough donations to counter AM's monetary advantage.
Witness how long Nintendo's Game Boy system went without supporting color, and how many of its "applications" (games) even today don't care that much about color. Granted, a PDA has some differences from a portable game system, but the point is that it is the functionality of the device which drives market share. Bells and whistles like color only affect competitiveness by affecting functionality. Color, in and of itself, is not required to compete.
Things start off as cool, then you lose interest in them. The secret is to find new things that are cool to you. New things (of varying coolness) pop up all the time - there's no way you'll go through everything this world has to offer in a mere few decades.
Uhh...no. From their pages:
Artemis Society International is a non-profit educational and scientific foundation incorporated in the State of Alabama, USA. The Society leads the non-profit element of The Artemis Project, and is staffed entirely with volunteer effort.
This does not sound like a for-profit corporation to me, and VCs exist for profit. Idealism only goes so far; profit is a much more efficient motivator of people (so much so that profit might suceed where pure idealism has, so far, failed).
I wonder...with all the problems w/government funded Big Space missions, why doesn't someone put together a business plan for near-term (first missions within 1 or 2 years, first profit within 3 or 4) space exploitation (say, lunar construction or something) and actually submit it to a VC?
The only ones I've seen have been academic pieces, or pleas for public and/or government donations. Start-ups work well for tech industry, might the same approach be tried here?
On the off chance that there is anyone reading this to whom those at the FBI who issue this profile will listen: can the mail and other communications informing schools about this profile also be tagged with the following?
If one of your students fits this profile, be advised that he or she is probably already living in a world of fear and anger. Suspension or other traditional punishments will not work in this case; they will only make the problem worse. What needs to happen instead is that this student needs to be cured of his or her emotional pain. The most effective way to do this is to ask the student to describe his or her problems to you, then say:
"What has been done to you is wrong. What is being done to you is wrong. It is wrong for anyone to hit you. It is wrong for you to have to live in fear of physical violence. It is wrong for you to feel hatred for yourself, and it is wrong for people to try to make you hate yourself. You are not crazy for being in pain. You do not deserve to be treated like this."
Just including this piece of advice could subvert this potential disaster into a way to clue schools in to how to handle geeks. (The problem is not that school officials can identify geeks. The problem is that they are casting around for a way to handle them - including widely varying reasons for the "need" to handle them - which results in all kinds of inappropriate "remedies" which, in the end, actually make things worse for everyone.)
Oh, maybe just...
I think some people use their imaginations a bit too much.
And I think some people misinterpret their own lack of imagination as evidence that certain things can and/or should never be done, when they could so easily instead just place their trust in other peoples' ability to find solutions where they themselves only see barriers and/or trouble.
However, the Nuremberg Defense does not work in the modern U.S. military, because we are told to follow the LAWFUL orders of those over us. So, we would not be following the "meta-orders" we swore to uphold (protect the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic) if we did anything which was illegal as we understand the laws of war and of international treaties.
I agree with you so far...
With all that said, I don't personally believe that the Echelon program is evil or illegal.
And here's the point of disagreement. Is the Echelon program illegal? There is much reason to suspect it may be.
I don't particularly like the idea that it exists and may be watching me, but that's for larger bodies to wrestle with. For example, the U.S. Congress called DIRNSA to testify recently (a couple months ago) on the Echelon program. He refused. Now, THAT, IMO, is illegal. I can't imagine that any appointed bureaucrat can say no to the U.S. Legislature.
It is behavior like this that is prompting suspicions of illegal behavior on the part of the NSA that runs Echelon. After all, if Echelon is merely a SIGINT program that we share with other countries, and is within the legal bounds of what a government agency may do, then why deny it exists when practically everyone you'd want to hide this from is already acting on the assumption that it exists, thanks to other governments and the press? If it is acting beyond what we may do, then orders to do the illegal parts of it are not to be followed. But, if the ones who push the buttons that make Echelon work never bother to think about whether their orders are legal or not, and just follow them...