>Here's a helpful metaphor, should you ever find >yourself in a fashion emergency. >Fashion is a line of sheep running in single >file. Each sheep is desperately trying to cram >its nose up the ass of the sheep in front. >Often, a sheep will stumble out of line, trip, >and end up inspecting its own colon at close >range. >Moral: Don't move too fast or too slow. Watch >where you put your feet. And for heaven's sake, >don't run with scissors. That's a good one. Some of us watch from the outside, and don't line up on the inside. >My, you are full of yourself, aren't you? Have you ever met me in person ? >You know what I hate about people who follow the >overpriced, overrated and overbearing trends of >so-called "Fashion"? It's that (A) they expect >everyone else to do the same, (B) they look down >on those who don't care that they're not wearing >this season's color and (C) they expect others >to treat them specially because the clothes >they're wearing cost more than their janitor's >monthly wage. Hopefully you are not implying that this is my mentality - because it isn't. AFAIK clothes are a personal expression. Some people don't care, but some do. Real fashion isn't about following trends, but about being stylish with 'things' even if they are not expensive. Go visit Holland or Italy, and watch the people that are not rich, nor fashion victims - but know how to dress well. >My opinion? You suck. My opinion? You make judgements without knowing anything about me. >Wow. So I'm to understand that big plastic pants >have nothing to do with aspiring to "class," and >that in reality it's, finally, a genuine and >sincere reflection of asthetics among our >generation? >Riiiight. I think "Urban Outfitters" has that in >its mission statement. Did I say that? Of course outfits are a bit part of aspiring to class, but at the same time they are a reflection other social trends as well. I'm no expert, and even an expert would probably need to write pages to describe the complexity of the situation.
Cool cats know that Armani is passe: it peaked in the meglamaniacal powerhungry statusdriven 80s, and is only now worn by people who know nothing about clothing and style, but know that the name 'armani' puts them into a social niche. Giorgio is a great designer, but the 80s were the peak for his 'style', and unfortunately his stuff now comes to represent 'clothing for the aspiring class - who quite often do not know anything about clothing asethetics', the same goes for Hugo Boss.
The 'real' next generation wears something funkier that reflects a creative, easy going, relaxed, but yet still stylish attitude. As yet this gap has not been filled: cargo pants, pantalones, and new plastique style the likes of trussadi are approaching the ideal look, but have not got there yet. I don't know of a designer that really has 'the look' at the moment, they're all trying to find it.
The 'real' new economy types are into taste and quality - they're web designers that care about what they create, know about structuralism and theory behind their work, and are thoughtful about what they do.
As most Australians know, the media moguls (in particular Kerry Packer and Rupert Murdoch, and to a lesser extent, Kerry Stokes) wield considerable power and few politicians dare to defy them. Possibly this "suggestion" has something to do with them trying to retain their power base. I agree that it's not a very sensible idea.
Actually, this is also the way you can allow for 'popular' music to really grow from the ground roots.
If you listen to a song you like, you could just - somewhere - sign a list to say so. When you are choosing songs, you could choose songs by people whose tastes you respect, or by sheer popularity, or whatever other criteria you choose. You could just look at this list to make your decisions.
Fresh artists could offer incentives to listen to their music, or even target people who they respect (and who they know other respect) for them to listen.
One way to solve the problem is to go with digital signatures. If a large number of people, or specifically trusted people, sign 'valid' content, then content problems of this sort will go away. That's exactly the same way to overcome the insertion of commercial and other content junk.
I see your point, and my flippant idea would need further thought if it were to be seriously considered as a viable option. Perhaps the primitives in the technology are suitable, but the architecture needs thought.
Electronic voting and elections have been a topic of research, and no doubt people have thought through these issues in considerable depth.
Actually - another thought, you could construct an interesting system, so that people could propose important issues as a proposal, and other citizens could sign that proposal - and having enough signatures means that the proposal is put up for popular referedum. The political system could become more democratic, something like Switzerland where periodic referendums occur all the time.
At the end of the day, the government is just a body of people wielding power to try and keep society stable (even if they have their vested interests, as does everyone). Legislation and laws are in some respect rules for how people and systems should interact and operate. I am sure you could codify some of these into provable cryptographic systems - the process of popular refendum and votes could become widespread with informational technology, and provide better feedback and input to the people that often 'think' that they know who they are representing, but are often out of touch with the people. That's my idealistic view - you don't want to hear my cynical perspective suggesting that the government is not their for the people, but just for itself (perhaps in United States, you call that the 'realist' perspective?).
David Chaum pioneered cryptographic blinding, the technology he implemented in DigiCash with its concept of double spending. It has application to anonymous systems.
You could plausibly design some kind of system where citizens are given identities that they can use to spend via. online voting systems - its just another form of payment system.
This could actually be quite neat: because individuals could even 'give away' their votes to a representative (i.e. they like the local transhumanist party member so much, they transfer their votes to him and say 'vote as you please, I trust you').
The blinding technology ensures that people do not double vote, and it ensures that the votes are from authentic people, and it also preserves anonymity.
We'll need to see how much walking there is based on this talking. Taking privacy -- and therefore -- rights more seriously is finally a positive success for the recognition of these concerns.
More than being a 'sexy' title (the article suggests that the old terms are 'passe'), let's see what kind of background CPOs come from, and how active and informed they are with in privacy and rights communities.
I'll provide another idea -- do what you do best: programming, writing code and making money - live and enjoy your lifestyle, but commit yourself to donating your money to an organisation that is doing worthwhile charity work. Allow them to aggregate the channel the resources of many alongside specialised skills and focused/trained people to achieve a more significant outcome than 'dabbling' individuals.
Half of all Americans now own a cell phone, and more than 46 per cent of pleasure travelers take their phones with them when they go away, reports the Travel Industry Association. More than 18 per cent take their pagers and 6 per cent their laptops, while 10 per cent check e-mail on vacation. Younger Americans are living in a hyperactive information culture.
I want to point out that these statistics could be misleading. You need consider what each persons concept of 'leisure' is, and how information technology helps their leisure experiences.
Perhaps I have a different concept of 'vacation', but when I go away on holiday, I take my PDA and my mobile phone, and I read email every couple of days. But I don't do "work" with them.
The phone gets used to make important calls (book a short trip, find out if a museum is open, organise an outing with a few new people, etc), and as an emergency back up (find a missing partner, call a taxi, check a timetable). The PDA is necessary to store personal information and phone numbers for the previous reason. My email I used to keep in contact with friends and family, and send/recieve electronic post cards, or write a letter from afar -- not very different to old world letter receive/send.
But then perhaps my concept of vacation is different, because I like to go off travelling for a couple of weeks or months at a time. If I go away for a weekend (which I don't call a vacation), then I don't check email, but I still take the phone/PDA. If my concept of a vacation was to 'sit on a beach and do nothing', then I'd take no information devices with me - but my vacations are more adventurous/expeditionary.
As has been discussed on cypherpunks, extropians and other forward looking technology groups - there is much more to come, and probably some of it is already here.
Things that I have written in the past (circa. 1993 even), are still in global internet archives, and accessible to future employers and other interested parties. Anything you say on the net now, you should presume will be available to anyone in the future.
Can someone do me a favour and tell me how the 'oil and gas' companies promised to make the developing world better, and whether those promises actually came to be ? And then tell me whether the same thing can happen with the information technology revolution ? So as the multinationals go hunting for new markets in the developing world (whether that world be in developing countries or in developed countries - think about one!), what kind of long term damage is being done.
For what it's worth : IT and the internet can do a lot to improve the situation in developing countries, there's no doubt about that. But at the same time, it's rife for being used as an exploitive mass medium. Can't you just hear the multinational telecommunications companies ready to pounce on new markets, in 20 years time, perhaps the exploitive communications revolution will look like the exploitive natural resources revolution, with all its claims to be for the benefit of the locals. I am too cynical.
Why should anybody try to speak intelligently to you, when you are so obviously full of both conceit and shit?
Because you are a gutless hypocrite - I might have some respect for you if you showed some kind of reasonable intelligence, but you attack me for something not related to the discussion at hand -- in doing so, you make a gross misinterpretation about me and my interests anyway -- and you don't even have the balls to come out from beyond your AC veil. We could keep going for hours, and you would keep losing. Have a nice life.
You're lucky I'm replying to this and enlightening that narrow minded brain of yours: bauhaus is more than an architecture, but an interesting design school for its ideology and place in the history of design (do you know anything about these things?). Come back when you have something intelligent to say.
You have a problem with cynicism do you ? Of course they may be better off in the long term, but that doesn't mean that they won't be exploited in the short term. Can you say 'Nike' and 'Third World Production'?
the net is already becoming multi-dimensional
on
Pirate DNS?
·
· Score: 1
The Internet has started to stratify into another dimension by adding logical networks. This was apparent when the Internet started: because there were communities of applications (i.e. FTP, FSP, gopher, etc), but is going occur even more. There are a) community rings, b) gnutella rings, c) napster rings, d) freed0m networks, e) real name spaces, f) portal spaces.
URL's already provide a discriminator for the different namespaces, e.g. ftp://, http://, gopher://; and what about even freed0m://, or gnutella://, or slashsite://, or realname:// ?
.com,.net,.org and other names of 'places' are a historical legacy from the old world. They do not have as much relevance as the internet becomes less about places, but more about spaces: content! Half the problem is that people are encoding everything and anything into DNS, when they should be using other name spaces (e.g. Realnames), and users should be accessing the net from other name spaces. This will happen as the net continues to mature.
Someone should sit down and think the problem through and come up with proposals. There are already multiple name spaces (e.g. 'RealNames', 'Yahoo') on the net apart from Nic.
The reality is that at the end of the day, you are going to have disputes, and you are going to need some way to resolve those disputes. That is an undeniable fact. Someone else is better placed to answer this one.
This will become difficult in the future as the web becomes a distributed dynamic infrastructure. It's easy to capture static pages, but not so easy to capture dynamic computing resources.
Slashdot Mirror
>Here's a helpful metaphor, should you ever find >yourself in a fashion emergency. >Fashion is a line of sheep running in single >file. Each sheep is desperately trying to cram >its nose up the ass of the sheep in front. >Often, a sheep will stumble out of line, trip, >and end up inspecting its own colon at close >range. >Moral: Don't move too fast or too slow. Watch >where you put your feet. And for heaven's sake, >don't run with scissors. That's a good one. Some of us watch from the outside, and don't line up on the inside. >My, you are full of yourself, aren't you? Have you ever met me in person ? >You know what I hate about people who follow the >overpriced, overrated and overbearing trends of >so-called "Fashion"? It's that (A) they expect >everyone else to do the same, (B) they look down >on those who don't care that they're not wearing >this season's color and (C) they expect others >to treat them specially because the clothes >they're wearing cost more than their janitor's >monthly wage. Hopefully you are not implying that this is my mentality - because it isn't. AFAIK clothes are a personal expression. Some people don't care, but some do. Real fashion isn't about following trends, but about being stylish with 'things' even if they are not expensive. Go visit Holland or Italy, and watch the people that are not rich, nor fashion victims - but know how to dress well. >My opinion? You suck. My opinion? You make judgements without knowing anything about me. >Wow. So I'm to understand that big plastic pants >have nothing to do with aspiring to "class," and >that in reality it's, finally, a genuine and >sincere reflection of asthetics among our >generation? >Riiiight. I think "Urban Outfitters" has that in >its mission statement. Did I say that? Of course outfits are a bit part of aspiring to class, but at the same time they are a reflection other social trends as well. I'm no expert, and even an expert would probably need to write pages to describe the complexity of the situation.
Gentleman, please allow me to reply.
>My understanding of fashion is nonexistent. I like it that way.
Good for you.
>Have you ever read American Psycho? Could you >identify, or were you too busy analysing Phil >Collins?
Have you seen the film American Psycho, it's great. As for Phil Collins, well, I really found his first collection
>At first I thought you were kidding, but now it >seems you are serious.
>My only question, then, is how did you get to be >such a colossal fag?
My only reply, then, is how did you get to be able to ask such silly questions ?
Armani-wearing "New Economy" type
Cool cats know that Armani is passe: it peaked in the meglamaniacal powerhungry statusdriven 80s, and is only now worn by people who know nothing about clothing and style, but know that the name 'armani' puts them into a social niche. Giorgio is a great designer, but the 80s were the peak for his 'style', and unfortunately his stuff now comes to represent 'clothing for the aspiring class - who quite often do not know anything about clothing asethetics', the same goes for Hugo Boss.
The 'real' next generation wears something funkier that reflects a creative, easy going, relaxed, but yet still stylish attitude. As yet this gap has not been filled: cargo pants, pantalones, and new plastique style the likes of trussadi are approaching the ideal look, but have not got there yet. I don't know of a designer that really has 'the look' at the moment, they're all trying to find it.
The 'real' new economy types are into taste and quality - they're web designers that care about what they create, know about structuralism and theory behind their work, and are thoughtful about what they do.
I'll remove my 'trend evangelist' hat.
As most Australians know, the media moguls (in particular Kerry Packer and Rupert Murdoch, and to a lesser extent, Kerry Stokes) wield considerable power and few politicians dare to defy them. Possibly this "suggestion" has something to do with them trying to retain their power base. I agree that it's not a very sensible idea.
Actually, this is also the way you can allow for 'popular' music to really grow from the ground roots.
If you listen to a song you like, you could just - somewhere - sign a list to say so. When you are choosing songs, you could choose songs by people whose tastes you respect, or by sheer popularity, or whatever other criteria you choose. You could just look at this list to make your decisions.
Fresh artists could offer incentives to listen to their music, or even target people who they respect (and who they know other respect) for them to listen.
etc etc
One way to solve the problem is to go with digital signatures. If a large number of people, or specifically trusted people, sign 'valid' content, then content problems of this sort will go away. That's exactly the same way to overcome the insertion of commercial and other content junk.
QED.
You need to deal with your anger.
I see your point, and my flippant idea would need further thought if it were to be seriously considered as a viable option. Perhaps the primitives in the technology are suitable, but the architecture needs thought.
Electronic voting and elections have been a topic of research, and no doubt people have thought through these issues in considerable depth.
Actually - another thought, you could construct an interesting system, so that people could propose important issues as a proposal, and other citizens could sign that proposal - and having enough signatures means that the proposal is put up for popular referedum. The political system could become more democratic, something like Switzerland where periodic referendums occur all the time.
At the end of the day, the government is just a body of people wielding power to try and keep society stable (even if they have their vested interests, as does everyone). Legislation and laws are in some respect rules for how people and systems should interact and operate. I am sure you could codify some of these into provable cryptographic systems - the process of popular refendum and votes could become widespread with informational technology, and provide better feedback and input to the people that often 'think' that they know who they are representing, but are often out of touch with the people. That's my idealistic view - you don't want to hear my cynical perspective suggesting that the government is not their for the people, but just for itself (perhaps in United States, you call that the 'realist' perspective?).
David Chaum pioneered cryptographic blinding, the technology he implemented in DigiCash with its concept of double spending. It has application to anonymous systems.
You could plausibly design some kind of system where citizens are given identities that they can use to spend via. online voting systems - its just another form of payment system.
This could actually be quite neat: because individuals could even 'give away' their votes to a representative (i.e. they like the local transhumanist party member so much, they transfer their votes to him and say 'vote as you please, I trust you').
The blinding technology ensures that people do not double vote, and it ensures that the votes are from authentic people, and it also preserves anonymity.
QED.
We'll need to see how much walking there is based on this talking. Taking privacy -- and therefore -- rights more seriously is finally a positive success for the recognition of these concerns.
More than being a 'sexy' title (the article suggests that the old terms are 'passe'), let's see what kind of background CPOs come from, and how active and informed they are with in privacy and rights communities.
I'll provide another idea -- do what you do best: programming, writing code and making money - live and enjoy your lifestyle, but commit yourself to donating your money to an organisation that is doing worthwhile charity work. Allow them to aggregate the channel the resources of many alongside specialised skills and focused/trained people to achieve a more significant outcome than 'dabbling' individuals.
Half of all Americans now own a cell phone, and more than 46 per cent of pleasure travelers take their phones with them when they go away, reports the Travel Industry Association. More than 18 per cent take their pagers and 6 per cent their laptops, while 10 per cent check e-mail on vacation. Younger Americans are living in a hyperactive information culture.
I want to point out that these statistics could be misleading. You need consider what each persons concept of 'leisure' is, and how information technology helps their leisure experiences.
Perhaps I have a different concept of 'vacation', but when I go away on holiday, I take my PDA and my mobile phone, and I read email every couple of days. But I don't do "work" with them.
The phone gets used to make important calls (book a short trip, find out if a museum is open, organise an outing with a few new people, etc), and as an emergency back up (find a missing partner, call a taxi, check a timetable). The PDA is necessary to store personal information and phone numbers for the previous reason. My email I used to keep in contact with friends and family, and send/recieve electronic post cards, or write a letter from afar -- not very different to old world letter receive/send.
But then perhaps my concept of vacation is different, because I like to go off travelling for a couple of weeks or months at a time. If I go away for a weekend (which I don't call a vacation), then I don't check email, but I still take the phone/PDA. If my concept of a vacation was to 'sit on a beach and do nothing', then I'd take no information devices with me - but my vacations are more adventurous/expeditionary.
Yes
As has been discussed on cypherpunks, extropians and other forward looking technology groups - there is much more to come, and probably some of it is already here.
Things that I have written in the past (circa. 1993 even), are still in global internet archives, and accessible to future employers and other interested parties. Anything you say on the net now, you should presume will be available to anyone in the future.
Yes, isn't it awful that those dirty poor brown people get access to phones and computers and televeision broadcasts, just like you?
No, but it's awful when technology is dumped people and is questionably not beneficial. Grow up.
Erm, coward, whether or not people prefer to live in well-developed first-world countries doesn't stop them exploiting the developing worlds. Grow up.
Can someone do me a favour and tell me how the 'oil and gas' companies promised to make the developing world better, and whether those promises actually came to be ? And then tell me whether the same thing can happen with the information technology revolution ? So as the multinationals go hunting for new markets in the developing world (whether that world be in developing countries or in developed countries - think about one!), what kind of long term damage is being done.
For what it's worth : IT and the internet can do a lot to improve the situation in developing countries, there's no doubt about that. But at the same time, it's rife for being used as an exploitive mass medium. Can't you just hear the multinational telecommunications companies ready to pounce on new markets, in 20 years time, perhaps the exploitive communications revolution will look like the exploitive natural resources revolution, with all its claims to be for the benefit of the locals. I am too cynical.
Why should anybody try to speak intelligently to you, when you are so obviously full of both conceit and shit?
Because you are a gutless hypocrite - I might have some respect for you if you showed some kind of reasonable intelligence, but you attack me for something not related to the discussion at hand -- in doing so, you make a gross misinterpretation about me and my interests anyway -- and you don't even have the balls to come out from beyond your AC veil. We could keep going for hours, and you would keep losing. Have a nice life.
You're lucky I'm replying to this and enlightening that narrow minded brain of yours: bauhaus is more than an architecture, but an interesting design school for its ideology and place in the history of design (do you know anything about these things?). Come back when you have something intelligent to say.
You have a problem with cynicism do you ? Of course they may be better off in the long term, but that doesn't mean that they won't be exploited in the short term. Can you say 'Nike' and 'Third World Production'?
The Internet has started to stratify into another dimension by adding logical networks. This was apparent when the Internet started: because there were communities of applications (i.e. FTP, FSP, gopher, etc), but is going occur even more. There are a) community rings, b) gnutella rings, c) napster rings, d) freed0m networks, e) real name spaces, f) portal spaces.
URL's already provide a discriminator for the different namespaces, e.g. ftp://, http://, gopher://; and what about even freed0m://, or gnutella://, or slashsite://, or realname:// ?
Someone should sit down and think the problem through and come up with proposals. There are already multiple name spaces (e.g. 'RealNames', 'Yahoo') on the net apart from Nic.
The reality is that at the end of the day, you are going to have disputes, and you are going to need some way to resolve those disputes. That is an undeniable fact. Someone else is better placed to answer this one.
This will become difficult in the future as the web becomes a distributed dynamic infrastructure. It's easy to capture static pages, but not so easy to capture dynamic computing resources.