You know why it's REALLY funny? Cause being online used to be about being silly and having fun, not about politics and money and stuff.
Years ago, I figured out how to spoof on an old BBS by putting a certain number of spaces, and then From UserName:
This one guy who used to login who took himself entirely too seriously, I used to "make" him ask to be forcibly cross-dressed and "confess" that he had just wet his pants. I can't tell you how long this went on before he figured out it was me.
Damn... that same old spirit... and who could be a more fitting target than Clinton.
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Usenet! A whole other category - mostly the alt groups, but some soc groups too.
I knew organizing my bookmarks this weekend would come in useful...
As for your example of sado-masochism, that is something I'd specifically think it would be up to the 16 year old to decide if they needed information on, not his parents. Very few 16 year olds are gonna tell their parents they're planning on tying up their girlfriends tonight. If they are planning on it, I'd rather they knew how to do it safely.
I had access to The Story of O, Justine and psychological works on SM at age 16 - from my local library (though I had to do an interlibrary loan for Justine). I don't see what the big deal is.
Oh, and a library doesn't have the right to decide what it wants to put on its shelves? If so, can't it decide what it wants to put on its computers?
Librarians as a whole OPPOSE censorship. It's not that they don't have the right to decide what to put on their shelves, but that laws are being debated that will take away that right.
The internet was never built for 6 year olds - and the notion that it should be made safe for them is abhorrent. 6 year olds ought not be online without an adult watching them - period.
Parents have the right to keep their kids off the net, keep them out of libraries, keep them out of movies, even keep them out of school. They do NOT have the right to insist that the world's first ammendment rights be curtailed to cater to 6 year olds.
I'm not claiming that *I* know better; I'm claiming that the 16 year old knows better.
IMNSHO, a parent has no right to deny access to sexual information for a child of that age, any more than they have the right to deny him/her the right to have learned how to read or do arithmetic.
As the parent of a 16 year old myself, I do not see myself as having RIGHTS with regards to her, but RESPONSIBILITIES.
Defining exactly where art or erotica crosses into pornography IS the issue precisely - whom will decide which is which?
I'm willing to agree that pornography must be kept from children if we all agree to use MY definition of what is obsence and pornographic.
Do you really wish all simulated deaths on television and movies to be outlawed - no westerns, no police shows, etc? And replaced with imagery of people fucking?
The problem is, not every parent is going to think like you. Demanding that they do is extremely intolerant. It may not bother you that your kids have access porn (or tobacco, alcohol, etc) but choose not to. But many parents don't want their children having that access.
And those parents ought watch their children on the internet, not prevent access to MY child.
I agree with this method - depending on the procedure for kids getting access to the non-children's section of the library.
At the library in my home town, you could use the grown ups section (I hesitate to call it "adult" in this context) of the library as soon as you were ten years old.
There was a second method as well - you could ASK and they'd let you at any age. I discovered this when I had finished all the Nancy Drew books in the children's section by age 8 - they let me go upstairs from then on without question.
I later discovered this was their policy, ANY child could have access to the "grown ups" library if they asked.
I've got no problems with you installing censorship software on your computer if you want to use it to babysit your kids.
But when you talk about installing it on a library computer, you're talking about computers that are woned by *ALL* of us.
Libraries have traditionally been anti-censorship about all things - as well they should be. IMHO, that absolutely extends to the internet.
I do NOT want my daughter blocked from viewing information on safe sex or breast cancer monthly tests or how to discover if her crush on her best friend means she's gay or whatever.
If that means she can look up "beastiality" - so be it; I looked it up in the library card catalog when I was her age and have somehow managed to avoid having sex outside of my species all this years in spite of that.
Small children (like elementary school age or such), ought not be allowed on the net unsupervised at all - none of the blocking software blocks well enough for them (as most of it blocks too well for older kids and adults).
However, our libraries are not built and maintained solely for the use of small children, but for all of us.
Yes libraries DO put this info on their shelves. When I was in tenth grade, I was writing a paper on the presidential election between Ford and Carter and needed access to the Playboy interview of Carter. Since I COULDN'T buy Playboy, I had no choice but to get it through my library - my library gave me Playboy when I was 14 years old.
Being a voracious and curious reader, I also found numerous books on many, many, many other topics... SM, beastiality, child pornography. I read De Sade and The Story of O and The Joy of Sex from my local library. The only real difference between the net today and the library when I was a kid is there's more pictures online.
I have never seen anything on the net today that wasn't available in libraries years ago. I suppose I'd feel differently if my daughter got porn off the net. Oh gosh, I forgot - she HAS got porn off the net. And the first time she did she was only 12 years old - it was a story... written by another kid!
As far as censorship goes, some of the right and some of the left are so in bed with one another that one can't really tell them apart - it becomes irrelevant which "side" they are when they are all opposed to my liberty.
Some groups on Usenet are moderated without every post needing eyeball approval. Basically, your first 2 or 3 posts are reviewed by moderators, and once they decide you are clueful, they set you as an approved poster and your posts automatically go through.
Usenet is dead. Unless you have a very specialist topic (and one not related to sex), the thread you're reading will now be so full of spam, it makes it unreadable.
Good newsgroups related to sex still exist - they've just taken the word "sex" out of the newsgroup name and moved them out of the alt hierarchy.
Re:Bring me the head of Kanter & Siegel.
on
Is Usenet Dying?
·
· Score: 1
IMNSHO, spamming Usenet ought to be a capital offense - death penalty for the first offense.
I'd be willing to accept life-in-prison for simple email spam though.
I can not even begin to tell you the amount of times I have shut my mouth rather than argue with a guy, because he obviously did not know what he was talking about, but felt that I couldn't possibly know because I was a girl...so how could I be technical.
This is not entirely the guy's fault for being an idjit, but your fault for not explaining it in such a manner that he could realize he was an idjit.
I have NEVER had any problem proving to a male that I had one hell of a brain. The difficulty lies in them still viewing you as female once they become aware of it. I happen to be lucky living in a large city where if I am not happy working one place, I can most likely get something else based on my knowledge and ability. Some women however don't have this ability, and the sexism is even more rampant I assume in larger cities.
This is nonsense. The IT field is booming - there's way damned too many computers and hardly anyone whom udnerstands them. If you know nothing but HMTL you can get a job at $40K, and nearly anyone whom can logon to a computer can get a Help Desk job. I don't see how anyone can claim that women have to put up with sexist treatment on the job because they can't get another job - not in THIS field.
It's all too often that I see girls that ARE geek chicks, but the guys just ignore them because they're not feminine enough.
I have seen this so many times, it's not even funny. The same guys who complain that all chicks only want guys whom are built only look at the pretty chicks themselves, etc.
I'm currently interested in a geeky guy - we were friends for a long time first. And I had to "check" with him first - like, can you really deal with me making more money, being better at many technical tasks, being geekier, and in some ways smarter?
I had to check as many ways as possible before I could even think about telling him I was interested. And yeah, I DID have to tell him - cause guys don't look at geeky girls that way by default.
I dunno what is up with that with all these guys who supposedly want more geek chicks.
I tend to agree for myself personally about your observation about women programmers. I view programming as problem-solving - which means what is the fastest wayto get from here to there. Rarely is the answer "sit down and learn a different platform and/or/languaage from scratch completly and thoroughly." It's more likely that I take this one thing I know a bit about, and this other thing I know a bit about, and a web search for this one program I know someone wrote and I read about once, and stick all this stuff together with some duct tape... and there, that's the fastest way to do this.
Sometimes that produces very good solutions. Other times it doesn't - sometimes I don't know until much later that there was a better way to solve that particular problem.
I think I have a much more "engineering" attitude towards computers than a "pure science" view... which is strange since I was into the research thing when I was a chemist.
The mere existence of forums like slashdot prove that usenet as it exists today, does not fullfil the requirements for such a forum.
The mere existence of forums like usenet prove that slashdot as it exists today, does not fullfil the requirements for such a forum.
What makes slashdot different: - topics vary widely and usually are alife for only a few hours or days at most
More wide variety than rec.arts.bodyarts, alt.psychology.nlp and alt.magick?
- the forum is moderated
Many Usenet newsgroups are moderated. I do agree that slashdot's moderation scheme is preferable to any I've seen instituded in newsgroups. Still, I tend to prefer an unmoderated newsgroup with a good killfile...
- each topic is linked to a news story
This is only a benefit if one wishes to exclusively discuss news. When one wishes to discuss parenting a teenager, or bondage techniques, links to news is not necessarily useful (though links to FAQs and such often is).
- treads of messages can be presented to users in arbitrary ways
There's many more choices in newsreaders than in HTML formats...
- it uses the http protocol and HTML for client server communication
This is a disadvantage - NNTP is much faster at moving text than HTTP. Also, most newsreaders are much easier for sending text than an HTML form.
Some stereotypes ARE true - this is why we laugh at sexist jokes, we recognize some truth about guys not asking for directions or women loving to shop. But even when stereotypes are true, they are true for populations, not for any individual people in those populations. When dealing with an individual man or an individual woman, it is preferable to deal with that person rather than with the ideas in your head about what "men" or "women" are like.
No - every (non-gay) guy wants Britney Spears. But having something in common with your girl, especially when it is something that consumes *so* much time, is a Good Thing.
So you want a girl that also wants Britney Spears?
But then again, I have seen *quite* a number of overtly homophobic comments on/. and elsewhere. Could it be that sexual orientation is the one area where geeks *don't* bring the same amount of automatic tolerance to the table? And if so, why? Surely no one would argue that choice of sleeping partner would impact upon ability to churn out code or skill at implementing a new hack.
Why? Schools.
The schools are still terrifically homophobic. Racial slurs are rarely tolerated, sexual harassment is stopped, but calling the other kid a "faggot" is still pretty much an acceptable thing on school playgrounds across this country.
Now, ask yourself which kids get called "faggot" most often? Is it the buff, closeted quarterback - whom discreetly checks out the other guys in the locker rooms? Naw... everyone is SHOCKED when he comes out - so he's never dealt with homophobia much. Sure, he ehars the disparging comments, he knows he has to face that crap if he decides to come out, but no one ever ATTAKCED him with the stuff personally for years and years.
But the skinny little straight kid who meets in his bedroom with 2 of his equally awkward friends for an afternoon of Quake, he damned well gets called "faggot" by the kids who take his lunch money.
It kind of makes sense to me that homophobia would be the last "ism" in geek circles - too many geeks have been taught by bullies to be defensive on the whole issue.
It is highly unlikely that you have only known 3 gay people in your life. It is much more likely that you have known many more and simply not known they were gay.
I think one reason is very simple- someone who's ended up 'unusual' in one way will be less prone to fall into usual patterns in other ways. In other words, if someone is straight because that's something one doesn't think about, they probably also (at this stage in history) use Windows exclusively on a PC, as that too is something one doesn't think about.
I think this is absolutely correct.
I have noticed a lot of overlap between geeks, those into BDSM and other alternative sexualities, magickians and other types of pagans, those whom study hypnosis and NLP, etc.
It seems to me that being a weirdo in one sense makes you much more likely to be a weirdo in other senses as well. People whom really think for themselves, whom are pioneers in solving problems, tend to question default assumptions in lots of different areas.
Slashdot Mirror
You know why it's REALLY funny? Cause being online used to be about being silly and having fun, not about politics and money and stuff.
Years ago, I figured out how to spoof on an old BBS by putting a certain number of spaces, and then From UserName:
This one guy who used to login who took himself entirely too seriously, I used to "make" him ask to be forcibly cross-dressed and "confess" that he had just wet his pants. I can't tell you how long this went on before he figured out it was me.
Damn... that same old spirit... and who could be a more fitting target than Clinton.
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Usenet! A whole other category - mostly the alt groups, but some soc groups too.
I knew organizing my bookmarks this weekend would come in useful...
I had access to The Story of O, Justine and psychological works on SM at age 16 - from my local library (though I had to do an interlibrary loan for Justine). I don't see what the big deal is.
Librarians as a whole OPPOSE censorship. It's not that they don't have the right to decide what to put on their shelves, but that laws are being debated that will take away that right.
The internet was never built for 6 year olds - and the notion that it should be made safe for them is abhorrent. 6 year olds ought not be online without an adult watching them - period.
Parents have the right to keep their kids off the net, keep them out of libraries, keep them out of movies, even keep them out of school. They do NOT have the right to insist that the world's first ammendment rights be curtailed to cater to 6 year olds.
IMNSHO, a parent has no right to deny access to sexual information for a child of that age, any more than they have the right to deny him/her the right to have learned how to read or do arithmetic.
As the parent of a 16 year old myself, I do not see myself as having RIGHTS with regards to her, but RESPONSIBILITIES.
But if we're talking a 16 year old, they ought to have access to any info they need, regardless of what their parents think.
I've written about this previously at length: Kids and Sexuality
But there is a huge downside to Deja - namely that they provide a portal to Usenet to the hordes of clueless.
I find it kidna preferable if they can't find Usenet - too many of them CAN.
I'm willing to agree that pornography must be kept from children if we all agree to use MY definition of what is obsence and pornographic.
Do you really wish all simulated deaths on television and movies to be outlawed - no westerns, no police shows, etc? And replaced with imagery of people fucking?
And those parents ought watch their children on the internet, not prevent access to MY child.
At the library in my home town, you could use the grown ups section (I hesitate to call it "adult" in this context) of the library as soon as you were ten years old.
There was a second method as well - you could ASK and they'd let you at any age. I discovered this when I had finished all the Nancy Drew books in the children's section by age 8 - they let me go upstairs from then on without question.
I later discovered this was their policy, ANY child could have access to the "grown ups" library if they asked.
But when you talk about installing it on a library computer, you're talking about computers that are woned by *ALL* of us.
Libraries have traditionally been anti-censorship about all things - as well they should be. IMHO, that absolutely extends to the internet.
I do NOT want my daughter blocked from viewing information on safe sex or breast cancer monthly tests or how to discover if her crush on her best friend means she's gay or whatever.
If that means she can look up "beastiality" - so be it; I looked it up in the library card catalog when I was her age and have somehow managed to avoid having sex outside of my species all this years in spite of that.
Small children (like elementary school age or such), ought not be allowed on the net unsupervised at all - none of the blocking software blocks well enough for them (as most of it blocks too well for older kids and adults).
However, our libraries are not built and maintained solely for the use of small children, but for all of us.
Being a voracious and curious reader, I also found numerous books on many, many, many other topics... SM, beastiality, child pornography. I read De Sade and The Story of O and The Joy of Sex from my local library. The only real difference between the net today and the library when I was a kid is there's more pictures online.
I have never seen anything on the net today that wasn't available in libraries years ago. I suppose I'd feel differently if my daughter got porn off the net. Oh gosh, I forgot - she HAS got porn off the net. And the first time she did she was only 12 years old - it was a story... written by another kid!
As far as censorship goes, some of the right and some of the left are so in bed with one another that one can't really tell them apart - it becomes irrelevant which "side" they are when they are all opposed to my liberty.
Some groups on Usenet are moderated without every post needing eyeball approval. Basically, your first 2 or 3 posts are reviewed by moderators, and once they decide you are clueful, they set you as an approved poster and your posts automatically go through.
Good newsgroups related to sex still exist - they've just taken the word "sex" out of the newsgroup name and moved them out of the alt hierarchy.
I'd be willing to accept life-in-prison for simple email spam though.
This is not entirely the guy's fault for being an idjit, but your fault for not explaining it in such a manner that he could realize he was an idjit.
I have NEVER had any problem proving to a male that I had one hell of a brain. The difficulty lies in them still viewing you as female once they become aware of it. I happen to be lucky living in a large city where if I am not happy working one place, I can most likely get something else based on my knowledge and ability. Some women however don't have this ability, and the sexism is even more rampant I assume in larger cities.
This is nonsense. The IT field is booming - there's way damned too many computers and hardly anyone whom udnerstands them. If you know nothing but HMTL you can get a job at $40K, and nearly anyone whom can logon to a computer can get a Help Desk job. I don't see how anyone can claim that women have to put up with sexist treatment on the job because they can't get another job - not in THIS field.
I have seen this so many times, it's not even funny. The same guys who complain that all chicks only want guys whom are built only look at the pretty chicks themselves, etc.
I'm currently interested in a geeky guy - we were friends for a long time first. And I had to "check" with him first - like, can you really deal with me making more money, being better at many technical tasks, being geekier, and in some ways smarter?
I had to check as many ways as possible before I could even think about telling him I was interested. And yeah, I DID have to tell him - cause guys don't look at geeky girls that way by default.
I dunno what is up with that with all these guys who supposedly want more geek chicks.
I tend to agree for myself personally about your observation about women programmers. I view programming as problem-solving - which means what is the fastest wayto get from here to there. Rarely is the answer "sit down and learn a different platform and/or/languaage from scratch completly and thoroughly." It's more likely that I take this one thing I know a bit about, and this other thing I know a bit about, and a web search for this one program I know someone wrote and I read about once, and stick all this stuff together with some duct tape... and there, that's the fastest way to do this.
Sometimes that produces very good solutions. Other times it doesn't - sometimes I don't know until much later that there was a better way to solve that particular problem.
I think I have a much more "engineering" attitude towards computers than a "pure science" view... which is strange since I was into the research thing when I was a chemist.
The mere existence of forums like usenet prove that slashdot as it exists today, does not fullfil the requirements for such a forum.
What makes slashdot different: - topics vary widely and usually are alife for only a few hours or days at most
More wide variety than rec.arts.bodyarts, alt.psychology.nlp and alt.magick?
- the forum is moderated
Many Usenet newsgroups are moderated. I do agree that slashdot's moderation scheme is preferable to any I've seen instituded in newsgroups. Still, I tend to prefer an unmoderated newsgroup with a good killfile...
- each topic is linked to a news story
This is only a benefit if one wishes to exclusively discuss news. When one wishes to discuss parenting a teenager, or bondage techniques, links to news is not necessarily useful (though links to FAQs and such often is).
- treads of messages can be presented to users in arbitrary ways
There's many more choices in newsreaders than in HTML formats...
- it uses the http protocol and HTML for client server communication
This is a disadvantage - NNTP is much faster at moving text than HTTP. Also, most newsreaders are much easier for sending text than an HTML form.
Some stereotypes ARE true - this is why we laugh at sexist jokes, we recognize some truth about guys not asking for directions or women loving to shop. But even when stereotypes are true, they are true for populations, not for any individual people in those populations. When dealing with an individual man or an individual woman, it is preferable to deal with that person rather than with the ideas in your head about what "men" or "women" are like.
So you want a girl that also wants Britney Spears?
Why? Schools.
The schools are still terrifically homophobic. Racial slurs are rarely tolerated, sexual harassment is stopped, but calling the other kid a "faggot" is still pretty much an acceptable thing on school playgrounds across this country.
Now, ask yourself which kids get called "faggot" most often? Is it the buff, closeted quarterback - whom discreetly checks out the other guys in the locker rooms? Naw... everyone is SHOCKED when he comes out - so he's never dealt with homophobia much. Sure, he ehars the disparging comments, he knows he has to face that crap if he decides to come out, but no one ever ATTAKCED him with the stuff personally for years and years.
But the skinny little straight kid who meets in his bedroom with 2 of his equally awkward friends for an afternoon of Quake, he damned well gets called "faggot" by the kids who take his lunch money.
It kind of makes sense to me that homophobia would be the last "ism" in geek circles - too many geeks have been taught by bullies to be defensive on the whole issue.
It is highly unlikely that you have only known 3 gay people in your life. It is much more likely that you have known many more and simply not known they were gay.
I think this is absolutely correct.
I have noticed a lot of overlap between geeks, those into BDSM and other alternative sexualities, magickians and other types of pagans, those whom study hypnosis and NLP, etc.
It seems to me that being a weirdo in one sense makes you much more likely to be a weirdo in other senses as well. People whom really think for themselves, whom are pioneers in solving problems, tend to question default assumptions in lots of different areas.