You actually start out suggesting something very different than you end up with. There are two kinds of boycotts - passive and advertised.
A passive boycott is really simple. Don't buy a company's products. Send email to your friends recommending same. When the world goes to hells, say "at least I didn't contribute." I practice this kind of passive boycott on a lot of different products/classes and depending on what you want to boycott its harder than it sounds to stick with it. It also rarely changes anything.
Then theres the advertised boycott, which is more of a media driven protest than an actual boycott. Thats where we make a web page all about the issue, get all the geeks to add a "boycott nasty new CDs! Click here for details" button to their web pages, hype it to a net presence that will sound impressive to non-techies, then write a press release about the "first international e-protest" and blast fax the major media (as well as semi-major media in the hometown areas of 5-10 major players with a press release emphasising how they got involved.)
Thats a lot harder, and requires a fair amount of cooperation. It's also a lot more likely to work, since the threat of a sales drop, even if you couldn't really get everyone who signs on to do it, will work a lot better than the tiny drop that comes from a few people sticking consitently to their guns. It also helps if you can get some public institutions involved ie "the massachusetts public library consortium has stated that they will not include XXX's CDs in their publicly avalible music collection because the company's policy conflicts with the library's mission of providing freely usable media."
Should we wait until this whole corporate problem grows to the point that it's every bit as big as our natural resource problem? Or should we do something about it now when at least we still have several options in front of us. I would much rather tackle this issue now and then move on to other, perhaps larger, issues than to wait until corporations have removed many of the freedoms that I enjoy now and have become even more entrenched behind laws, lawyers, and politicians and try to fight them then.
Another important thing to remember is that some of these "lesser" issues are tied to our ability to do anything about "what really matters". Did you know that there was a pretty good commercial made durring the first clinton term argument over health care that supported a national health care system? Many TV stations wouldn't air it because they had much bigger contracts with businesses which were threatened by the plan.
You can't seperate freedom of expresion and independant media from the causes that "matter" because when Nike ownes the media, they just aren't gonna run a PSA against buying things made with underpaid overworked labor.
(Random side note, I was watching a really old video tape (of the star wars holiday special actually) and there was an ad for the united garmet workers of america. Its weird to think - are the unions too stupid today to put together good touching ads about supporting American workers, or is there just "no market" for them?)
Anyway, thats why I worked on the Ckean Election Campaign in my state. Sure you could say "with all the problems in the world today, couldn't you have given your time and energy to something more worthwile?" but 1) People who say that sort of thing often don't give their time to anything and have to attack what I choose to make themselves feel superior, and more importantly 2) the real problems are going to be a lot easier to solve if we can decrease the influence of large corporate and special interest donations to legislaters. You can start running to your goal right now because its too important to waste time on anything else, or you can stop to pump up your bike tires and get there a lot faster in the end. (environmentally friendly analogy;-> )
This is not a defense of the extreme nature of these rules, but there do need to be guidelines on visiters for at least one class of students : Those with roommates.
In my school you were assigned a roommate freshman year and had to pick someone sophomore year (no singles, or living off campus till you were a junior). But there really weren't any restrictions on overnight guests (not even a sign-in). The result was that if you were stuck with an inconsiderate roommate who happened to hook up well, you were regularly "sexiled" to a friend's futon or the library while the room you paid just as much board on was used as a love nest.
yeah, there are ways of dealing with this, depending on how good your relationship is (or needs to be) with your roomie. But guidelines (not bans) on overnight guests of any gender make a little more sense when you consider that one invites, but two must deal.
You want your share back? I'm sure I have a buck or 20 around here... that's about all of YOUR dollars that go to the university. Me on the other hand.. I pay $20,000 a year to go to college so I think I have just a *little* more say about what should go on here then you do. I enjoy the bandwidth at my college because I PAID FOR IT.. a hell of a lot more than any one taxpayer.
Hey, guess what? When I was in college, I paid for it too. The problem was, I didn't have a computer! I was stuck with everyone else with an insanely high phone bill because we had to use the same company that provided the ethernet "for free". So I got my consumer choice taken away so that the guys who could aford $100 ethernet cards (a specific model you had to buy from the campus computer store) could play networked DOOM and use hard drive sharing to maximize their porn supply. (no lie, just the only things I ever saw the system used for). With these conservative students protesting maybe 50 cents of their student activities fee going to an organization they don't agree with, why was I paying 20 dollars extra a month for my already richer fellows to enjoy faster access to recreational computing? They can bloody well move off campus and pay for it themselves!
ehem. So there's the perspective of a (former) student, not a current taxpayer. Hope it helped.
BTW, I think the most effective way of fighting the dorm restrictions would be using the GLB discrimination route. THAT would put them in a quandry now, wouldn't it?:)
do you mean it discriminates against straight kids since you can have a same gender guest sleep over if if you're boinking them, but not an opposite gender one even if you're just friends? Interesting, but they'd peobably just ban any "morally suspect" visitations and give proctors a chance to harrass glb kids for having anyone in their room.
The other problem with this entire thread is that many freshmen hit college at 17 not 18 (its all about what your birthday is and where you went to kindergarden - leaving aside issues of skipped grades) and I shudder to call most of the kids I knew in college "adult" no matter what the age. Not an argument for the restrictions, just against the assertion that they can expect to be treated as full adults.
"Well gee, the virus "only" killed my last weeks worth of writing when I have a deadline tomorrow, wiped my address book, killed my palm backup and set it to wipe the palm when I try to hotsink and eliminated a day's worth of possibly important email before I got a chance to read it. Good thing it didn't actually hurt the underlying operating system!"
I know that for some people tweaking thier computer is practically the point of owning one. But I use mine as a freelance writer. The "root is safe so don't worry" attitude makes me think of a bank that has a super modern secure vault. But they know that everytime they open it to put something inside, someone could catch the combination or get a clue of how to break it open. So they keep all the money and valubles outside the vault and pride themselves on the fact that they have perfect vault security!
>... have successfully completed one such prototype: the result is a fully functional and potentially virile Linux virus.
i was more or less under the impression that "virile" (from latin "vir" meaning "man," i believe--akin to "puerile" from "puer" = "boy") referred to the sexual capability of a male, and that the correct word to describe a particularily nasty virus was "virulent." anyone want to correct me?
No agrument here, a natural virus would be virulent. But its kinda funny to think about a "virile" computer virus. I think it would be one that automatically redirected your web browser to porn sites and guns.com:-)
Or maybe popped up messages like "is my CD drive open or am I just happy to see you?" and "Are you implying I could ever have a soft drive?"
My final point is also, how will they be able to distinguish between people walking, on skates, cycling, on trains and on busses, It seems to me that there are too many variables for this to be taken too seriously!
In the US it is usually illegal to walk, skate or bike on a major highway. Definitely on the toll roads. And buses would react to a trafic jam the same as any other vehicle, so I don't see the problem there. For the purpose stated in the article.
The science research will only be about getting the company more money. So, would the company allow its data to be spread out in the world (open-source) or would they hoard it, making their competitors have to use money to find out the same info.
This point doesn't seem to mix well with a common/. mindset, unfortunately. Like in the discussion of the race to patent human genes there seemed to be little understanding that the Human Genome Project is funded by goverments specifically to "open source" the info and make the benifits of it avalible to all. If everyone gets a tax cut and a pharmacutical co uses their huge portion of it to produce a proprietary treatment that they can charge me whatever the market will bear on, my extra 100 bucks a year isn't gonna help me that much. On the other hand, if the government is making scientific advances avalible to all and the resulting treatments are widespread and less expensive, everyone benifits, including those who don't make enough money for tax cuts to mean anything to them.
While companies don't want to use so much money on studies that could be pointless.
In one of his books, Carl Sagen talks about the then current aversion to anything resembling "pure research" in government science funding. He made a fairly good argument that many of our greatest technological advancements were based on research that at its start would have been dismissed as non-technologically driven and practically useless.
Just don't buy DVDs. Tell your friends not to buy DVDs, and tell them why.
And what will this "vote" tell the Powers That Be (tm)?
That you don't have the money for a DVD player?
That you already have a VCR and don't flip around in your movies enough to make a DVD worth while?
That you are boycotting our decedant entertainment culture?
That you are a technology cynic and think DVDs will go the way of the laserdisc?
That you only watch porn and thats mostly on VHS or on-line?
OR...
That you are part of a tiny minority of americans who have any idea what this debate is about and how it pretains to *nix users.
Funny, I don't think the few people who undrstand this issue boycotting will cause enough of a blib in the market for anyone to even notice, much less consider the source. Sending in a letter, on the other hand makes your position exactingly clear and actually gets the message to the people that matter. Vote for yourself, don't expect some market analyst to imagine your motivation.
Kahuna Burger
Re:Big Brothers New Trick
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None of the real world examples given sounded terribly "big brother ish" to me, but I suppose one could envision various ways to use it for nefarious means. But most of the means I can think of sound pretty damn positive. Identifying anonymous harrassers, solving literary mysteries, even stopping terrorism as with the Unabomber. It doesn't scare me any more thatt he existance of fingerprints, or the fact that I don't wear a mask.
Its by no means a quick and easy way to link an anonymous message to one of a million people, and I can't help but think that anyone (for example) posting AC to/. about the real interpretation of the constitution who thinks that he's worth it is probably suffering from a touch of narcicism.
People talk alot about the importance of anonymous speech. It's certainly nice in some cases, but I think its importance has been overrated in this forum. If you want to make a difference out in the real world with something you're saying (without it being an anonymous threat of violence ala Teddy K.) you put your name on it. Just ask John Hancock.
Kahuna Burger
Re:I've used techniques like this on usenet.
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There's one trolling poster who posts using a number of different pseudonyms, ISPs and email addreses, yet it always possible to tell that it is him just by the style of his postings, the separation of the various message parts, and the fact that he is one of the few that top-posts in that group.
On alt atheism, we have a guy who goes one step further by faking posts from group regulars. They are the kind of vile racist and misogynistic crap we normally don't get arround there, with inocuos titles and the name of someone you usually respect. (my newsreader doesn't give enough info on the thread heading to tell the difference.) Its really obnoxious. its like someone spreading dog shit around your favorite park so you're too busy looking out not to step in it to enjoy what you came there for.
The funniest thing is that, like above, he has the most easily recognizable posting style on the planet, yet continuously claims that it is this other guy doing it. Then he fakes emails from the other guy, still using the same posting style. Its pathetic, and he's not fooling anyone, but that doesn't stop me from stepping in his little troll piles when I'm trying to relax with some usenet reading.
This all started out (on alt.atheism, at least) with him sending a death threat to one of our regulars because of her posting in another group. (which, of course, he claims was really sent by this other guy). real loser.
I think I see what you're saying, but you need to spell it out a little more. I think you are refering to the encoded information on the DVD itself as the software. While that may be accurate, most people are going to read "software" as the deincryption code and be very confused. I would refer to the DVD as an information medium, just like a book. If you own or rent a dvd, you own or rent the right to look at that information, just like if you buy a book. However, copyright prevents you from copying that information.
I think the example of your blind friend is great, but it also needs to be elaborated. The same scanner and OCR software that she uses to have the computer read to her (proper use of the information) could also be used to put the book up on a public webpage (illegal use of the info.) In the same way, the same code that they are saying can only be used to copy and sell pirate DVDs (illegal use) can be used to veiw the info you legally own (proper use.)
At my college I knew plenty of people who would have loved it if someone with a good scanner and ORC software had bought some of the $100 wafer thin comp sci textbooks and put them up on a public web page. Its an obvious and illegal use of the software. But people understand that that software (and scanners and photocopiers) have enough legitamate uses that you can't rule the device itself illegal. This point must be made about the DVD deencyption code as well.
I'm not saying that distinction will be easy to make. I had an incredibly unproductive conversation with the tech writer of my local paper on this issue after the first article on this subject and since I hadn't thought of any good analogies in advance, I couldn't get him to understand what I was saying. You need to be very coherent and simple in your retoric to get this to a non techie.
-Kahuna Burger
PS, I did know someone in college who had access to a department photocopier and just bought the book, copied it and returned it for a full refund. Illegal as hell, but if the bookstore found out they would have blamed him, not the existance of photocopiers.
This is way OT to the crime orriginally discussed, but sometimes it bothers me for people to draw such a sharp distinction between "white collar" and "violent" crime. Sometimes a "violent" crime involves no violence (burglering a house when no one is home is no more instrinsicly violent than embezzling their funds out of an account is it?) And sometimes Violence isn't even a crime at all when "white collars" do it. Example? In massachusetts, 2nd degree murder is defined as taking an action that a reasonable person believes would cause death. Except when the action is letting the turbine rooms in your fabric mill build up fiber dust to the point where they explode in flames, even though you had been warned about less dangerous fires from the same cause. Then at best you can be sued for money and if you're a "good neighborhood business" the people suing will get pilloried in the press.
OK, off topic and bitter. Slightly more on topic, I do believe that white collar crime is underpunished, but I don't believe that it is the equivelent of murder or rape in the abstract. (Some of the more shocking examples are another story.)
I seem to recal some cheesy 80's flick about a woman who advertised an "appology hotline" where people would call and make appologies to people they had wronged in their lives. She was going to use it as some sort of weird art exibit, but then a psycho started calling and appologising in advance for the people he was going to kill.
But anyway... I've never completely understood the Catholic modle of confession. Obviously confession is good for the mind as well as the theoretical soul, but why to a particular person? Well, if it works for them, so be it.
Wow, random memory association day. There was a short story I read back in high school about a town that had a tradition of confessing to the statue in the town square. People would wisper their confessions in the statue's ear. Then some society women got their deaf maid to read people's lips and tell them what people were confessing. Some sort of twilight zone creepy death ending, but I don't recal it.:)
Politeness is one of those things that every single generation thinks is "dying". Kinda like good taste.
A role-playing manual with different "honor codes" went through a typical description of chivalry and all the rules and responsibilities and then added something along the lines of - these codes were only meaningful amoung equals, of course. An insult from a peasant called for a whipping, not a duel.
Politeness lives as much as it ever has. we just glorify the good old days too much.
Fear of retribution. Duh. They did march. They were assaulted physically by an unmasked man who talked his way past the police barrier.
No offense, but people who believed in their rights have been standing up to retribution for some time now. And as you point out yourself, annonymity is no defense against certain kinds of retribution. The San Diego Pride Parade this year was the subject of an attack by a coward with a military issue tear gas container. Threw it right into the middle of a group of gay parents walkign with their kids. Asshole.
But anyway, another example from the gay community shows how annonymity can sometiems increase the fear of retribution. Gay soldiers who are being harrassed or endangered are often unable to get any relief, because that would involve admitting what they are being harrassed about. Under current practice, that constitutes "telling" and they can get kicked out. In a similar way, if someone is "in the closet" about his white supreamacist leanings they may fear being retaliated against by someone who figures it out, but is unable or unwilling to seek relief for fear of admitting what the retaliation is for.
I'd hate to think that we'd never get good tips or info here on./ because AC's were censored. I myself have given information that I could not safely give without the veil of anonymity.
Maybe we are coming at the issue of "annonymity" in different ways. I consider myself largely annonymous on this forum. I don't use my real name, I don't give any more info about me than is needed. I use the same "handle" as I do in other forums, so people recognise me occasionally, but I don't need it to be that way. If I wanted to, I could use the email address where my sys admin is my brother in law, and no-body has to be able to find out anything about me. In terms of my opinions being "tracked down" I have annonymity.
On the other hand, I do not have the kind of annonymity that prevents accountability. That is what I see "annonymous cowards" as having. No one can build up an opinion of them. No one can call them on a contridiction in their views or a change in their story. They have no accountability, not just in the "outside world" but here on this forum. In some ways I would be happier with a format where you had a name and password without any background info given then these AC posts.
It's sort of like Alcoholics Annonymous. Yeah, they are supposed to be annonymous in terms of the outside world, but they are known by name and sight, they have mentors within the group, they have the accountability for their actions which comes from just knowing its the same guy the next time.
I think this might be sarcasm, but I've dealt with so many real loonies its hard to be certain. but anyway.
You know FULL WELL that anyone posting to Slashdot who doesn't agree with the dominant atheistic paradigm will be mocked, excluded, and insulted.
Or we could look at the real examples of what happens. Some guy posted on the "top geeks of the minenuim" thread suggesting Jesus as a great geek. He said "I'll get flamed for this." He wasn't. People discussed and largely dismissed the suggestion on the basis of : too early, not really tech in any way, vapor-ware. No one said hey you dead jew worshipping, rosary twisting moron! get your Savior on a Stick off of our web page and stick that thorny crown up your ass until the f**ing in your butt is the same as the f**ness of your head! You death worshipping self hating hypocrits make me SICK!
Which I think we all can agree is a good thing, because who wants that kind of bile? But unfortunately, when a xtian brings up Jesus in a non-religious context, they then often get pissy when he is dealt with non-religiously. A lack of slavish agreement is then called persecution. Go figure.
Of course, that removes the ability to post annonymously, which is what freedom of speech is all about.
Err, I'd never considered annonymity to be what freedom of speech is "all about" myself. In fact, I generally assume that annonymous speech is less deserving of protection than a person standing behind their own words.
OT perhaps, but I believe the US high court agrees with me on this subject. New York (sucessfully I think) said that while the KKK must be allowed to hold their rally, they didn't have to let them do it if they wore masks meant to hide their identity. If you want to stand up and be counted, why hide yourself?
Bearing in mind that many people have choosen to tell their stories from annonymity, but this usually has required a outspoken channel to transmit their story to the rest of the world. There is a distinction there I think between letting the rest of the world know the facts of your life and shouting "hey look at me" but not wanting the attention to come with any responsibility.
It seems abusrd at first, but if you think about it, it does start to make sense. Maybe the moderation threshold would have to be increased... but the moderators would need not spend their points on taking out the kiddies. The kiddies would stay there - but the overall average score of the articles would rise, and the kiddies' posts would be left below it.
The probelm with this idea is that I could see it easily destroying the diversity of discussion. To explain : I notice on some of the more politically charged threads that there will often be a decidedly majority view and a well defended but less populous miority view. (not to imply that the majority view is badly defended, but I think when you are in the minority you are less likely to throw out an off the cuff comment, because there may not be anyone to fill out the details and do it better.) There's nothing wrong with this under the current moderation standard, because the unpopular opinions are not moderated down simply because the moderater doesn't agree with it. So cruising at 0 or even 1 will still give you an even view of the discussion while eliminating the worst of the trolls.
Now consider what happens if there is no moderating down. Moderaters on/. do sometimes moderate posts up based largely on agreement. (note, I'm not saying this is the only reason post gets moderated up, but it does happen.) The majority of the mods are likely to hold the same general opinion as the majority of the posters. So well written posts on the majority opinion are likely to be moderated up far more often than equally well written posts on the minority opinion. Its just the way human nature works. Moderation is bound to be part "that was very informative and helped define the discussion" and part "you said it man!"
Where does that leave us in a up only moderation? I suspect it would leave us with a largely homogeneous group of readable posts at the upper level, and a more full but also more troll infested debate at the bottom. I think the current system of up and down with the commonly accepted idea that you don't mod down on opinion gives us a much better discussion forum.
So... which is it? You think I have the right to be treated in a business-like manner, or not? Or do you consider hurling racist slurs, etc. to be business-like? I'm confused. Or maybe you are.
He probably thinks that sexual harrassment law is anything but a toothless beast writ large by conservatives so that they can attack equal protection in the workplace. Sexual harrassment suits can be pressed only in the workplace, and only under very strict guidelines. And in most cases, they can only be pressed against the company as a whole. The actual harrasser may get in trouble as a trickle-down or if he or she is a "valued employee", maybe not.
Hint : in dismissing Paula Jone's lawsuit against Clinton, the judge stated that even if ever word she said was true, she didn't have a case under current sexual harrassment law. What was that about being sued for a single off color joke?
Are flames really necessary? Wouldn't ignoring someone's pitiful requests for help with their programming homework be a better response? Then they would just give up and go away, no?
When I hung out on alt.atheism, we got tons of dumb comments and questions. Not just "I know this and you don't so I'll insult you" sort of dumb that some people apparently feel the need to flame for, but repeditive, unoriginal attacks on us as atheists. Some folks waited for them and tried to find creative ways of flaming them. Others of us didn't want to give them the satisfaction of no response, but didn't want to waste the energy explaining for the hundreth time why pascals wager doesn't work.
So one regular started a really simple and subtlely nasty way of dealing with the "not quite a trolls." She FAQed them. Just posted a response plus a message to their address with just the word "FAQed" and a url to the alt-atheism frequently asked questions. It got to be the expected response, to the point where people would just post replies saying "Where's Natelie, this guy needs FAQed." There were still people who would flame them, but overall it was nicer and helped give the feeling that we had better things to talk about than rehashing the same old trolls.
Now if something like that can happen in a group that attracts trolls like a magnet, I really find it hard to believe that the only way a mature programmer can deal with a newbie is by flaming.
heh heh, speaking of dweebs "wanting help with their homework" we had one guy asking us for a really specific discussion of one CS Lewis book. We started talking about other books we found more interesting by him, and the guy broke in again to say that he wanted to see discussion about this book. People made some jokes about when his paper was due, but it sparked an OK discussion in spite of himself.
We hold the power, my point was that we've just lost sight of it.
Somebody back me up here!:-)
Yes, you have the power!!!!!
Ehem. I'm an incredibly cynical person, but also an incredibly optimistic person. That means that I am fully, depressingly aware of how much life sucks right now, but I honestly believe that we can do something about it. I worked on the Clean Elections Campaign here in Massachusetts, and we have a public financing law on the books and funded now. It can be done, you just have to work like crazy and not take setbacks lying down.
Get involved. If you think the system sucks, do something about it. Yeah, there are a bunch of powerful slugs sitting in their ooze and ruining our lives, but everyone needs a hobby. They can be voted out, they can be forced to pay attention to their responsibilities.
Oh yeah, and we need real citizen education in schools. Did you know that public schooling in america was originally meant to produce an educated voter base so that democracy could work? Now we act like the schools are there to either produce propper worker drones for big business or corrall troublemakers till they turn 17.
Just about every school has a debate club. How many actualy teach people how to listen to a debate?
A white woman walking down the street with her Latino sweetie is exposed to narstiness. A straight white man walking down the street is equally exposed to narstiness. The point is, we have reached equality -- we are all equally likely to be harassed by idiots. It's one of the liberating aspects of freedom -- gayfolk are as able, and as likely, to straightbash as straightfolk to gaybash.
you know, you may want that to be true. You may wish it was true. It may even be that if everyone was just as cool as you it would be true. But here in the real world where I live, it just isn't true, and no amount of lying is gonna make it that way.
The scarey thing is that I can't just dismiss you as one random asshole. Somebody moderated the lie up. Someone was looking at that and said "word up, man! why I got "Straightbashed" just the other day for holding hands with my opposite sex partner on the escalater out of the subway. Buncha guys chased us three blocks shouting "breeder" and "hetero"! Happens every day." and gave you a moderation point for pure counter-factual bullshit.
Can't say my opinion of Slashdot goes up with that.
Here's a funny thing. I worked for several years low on the totem pole at a veterinary and grooming establishment. As a result, I have an incredible tolerance for "gross out" of the bodily fluid or blood nature. I can sit and eat shrimp curry while trading "worst diareah I ever had to clean up" stories with other vet techs. That sort of thing just doesn't bother me.
Now, here's the funny part. I was having that sort of conversation once, when someone else at the table mentioned that we seemed to be grossing out the people at a table near us. Now what do you suppose I did? Did I say "well if they're that easily bothered they should just stay home!"? Did I make stupid sarcatic remarks like "Oh no! the sound wave sounds like a doggie poop, I'm gonna ralf!"? Did I complain that I wouldn't mind if they talked about poop at dinner, so why should I alter my conversation habits?
Well, no. I said "oops." And we moved on to a conversation that wasn't imposing on other people in a public place. When adults find out that something they're doing is disturbing to others and making other less capable of enjoying a public resource (especially if you completely understand that its disturbing to them even though it isn't to you) then those adults adjust their behaviour to make the public resource more enjoyable to all. What mature adults don't do, is say "well it doesn't bother me, so you must be inferior to me and I'm glad you're driven away." You're like a smoker puffing away in the office and saying "Well, I don't have athsma, so you can just quit your job, give up your golden handcuffs, not pay the rent for a month or so, because if I'm not bothered by it, it can't be legitamate to control my actions.
[disclaimer: the following is written by an actual honest-to-god *female*. take it as you will.]
I already knew women could be just as childish and selfish as men, but thanks.
Slashdot Mirror
A passive boycott is really simple. Don't buy a company's products. Send email to your friends recommending same. When the world goes to hells, say "at least I didn't contribute." I practice this kind of passive boycott on a lot of different products/classes and depending on what you want to boycott its harder than it sounds to stick with it. It also rarely changes anything.
Then theres the advertised boycott, which is more of a media driven protest than an actual boycott. Thats where we make a web page all about the issue, get all the geeks to add a "boycott nasty new CDs! Click here for details" button to their web pages, hype it to a net presence that will sound impressive to non-techies, then write a press release about the "first international e-protest" and blast fax the major media (as well as semi-major media in the hometown areas of 5-10 major players with a press release emphasising how they got involved.)
Thats a lot harder, and requires a fair amount of cooperation. It's also a lot more likely to work, since the threat of a sales drop, even if you couldn't really get everyone who signs on to do it, will work a lot better than the tiny drop that comes from a few people sticking consitently to their guns. It also helps if you can get some public institutions involved ie "the massachusetts public library consortium has stated that they will not include XXX's CDs in their publicly avalible music collection because the company's policy conflicts with the library's mission of providing freely usable media."
Anyway, lunch break is over, gotta work.
Another important thing to remember is that some of these "lesser" issues are tied to our ability to do anything about "what really matters". Did you know that there was a pretty good commercial made durring the first clinton term argument over health care that supported a national health care system? Many TV stations wouldn't air it because they had much bigger contracts with businesses which were threatened by the plan.
You can't seperate freedom of expresion and independant media from the causes that "matter" because when Nike ownes the media, they just aren't gonna run a PSA against buying things made with underpaid overworked labor.
(Random side note, I was watching a really old video tape (of the star wars holiday special actually) and there was an ad for the united garmet workers of america. Its weird to think - are the unions too stupid today to put together good touching ads about supporting American workers, or is there just "no market" for them?)
Anyway, thats why I worked on the Ckean Election Campaign in my state. Sure you could say "with all the problems in the world today, couldn't you have given your time and energy to something more worthwile?" but 1) People who say that sort of thing often don't give their time to anything and have to attack what I choose to make themselves feel superior, and more importantly 2) the real problems are going to be a lot easier to solve if we can decrease the influence of large corporate and special interest donations to legislaters. You can start running to your goal right now because its too important to waste time on anything else, or you can stop to pump up your bike tires and get there a lot faster in the end. (environmentally friendly analogy ;-> )
In my school you were assigned a roommate freshman year and had to pick someone sophomore year (no singles, or living off campus till you were a junior). But there really weren't any restrictions on overnight guests (not even a sign-in). The result was that if you were stuck with an inconsiderate roommate who happened to hook up well, you were regularly "sexiled" to a friend's futon or the library while the room you paid just as much board on was used as a love nest.
yeah, there are ways of dealing with this, depending on how good your relationship is (or needs to be) with your roomie. But guidelines (not bans) on overnight guests of any gender make a little more sense when you consider that one invites, but two must deal.
-Kahuna Burger
Hey, guess what? When I was in college, I paid for it too. The problem was, I didn't have a computer! I was stuck with everyone else with an insanely high phone bill because we had to use the same company that provided the ethernet "for free". So I got my consumer choice taken away so that the guys who could aford $100 ethernet cards (a specific model you had to buy from the campus computer store) could play networked DOOM and use hard drive sharing to maximize their porn supply. (no lie, just the only things I ever saw the system used for). With these conservative students protesting maybe 50 cents of their student activities fee going to an organization they don't agree with, why was I paying 20 dollars extra a month for my already richer fellows to enjoy faster access to recreational computing? They can bloody well move off campus and pay for it themselves!
ehem. So there's the perspective of a (former) student, not a current taxpayer. Hope it helped.
do you mean it discriminates against straight kids since you can have a same gender guest sleep over if if you're boinking them, but not an opposite gender one even if you're just friends? Interesting, but they'd peobably just ban any "morally suspect" visitations and give proctors a chance to harrass glb kids for having anyone in their room.
The other problem with this entire thread is that many freshmen hit college at 17 not 18 (its all about what your birthday is and where you went to kindergarden - leaving aside issues of skipped grades) and I shudder to call most of the kids I knew in college "adult" no matter what the age. Not an argument for the restrictions, just against the assertion that they can expect to be treated as full adults.
I know that for some people tweaking thier computer is practically the point of owning one. But I use mine as a freelance writer. The "root is safe so don't worry" attitude makes me think of a bank that has a super modern secure vault. But they know that everytime they open it to put something inside, someone could catch the combination or get a clue of how to break it open. So they keep all the money and valubles outside the vault and pride themselves on the fact that they have perfect vault security!
i was more or less under the impression that "virile" (from latin "vir" meaning "man," i believe--akin to "puerile" from "puer" = "boy") referred to the sexual capability of a male, and that the correct word to describe a particularily nasty virus was "virulent." anyone want to correct me?
No agrument here, a natural virus would be virulent. But its kinda funny to think about a "virile" computer virus. I think it would be one that automatically redirected your web browser to porn sites and guns.com :-)
Or maybe popped up messages like "is my CD drive open or am I just happy to see you?" and "Are you implying I could ever have a soft drive?"
In the US it is usually illegal to walk, skate or bike on a major highway. Definitely on the toll roads. And buses would react to a trafic jam the same as any other vehicle, so I don't see the problem there. For the purpose stated in the article.
This point doesn't seem to mix well with a common /. mindset, unfortunately. Like in the discussion of the race to patent human genes there seemed to be little understanding that the Human Genome Project is funded by goverments specifically to "open source" the info and make the benifits of it avalible to all. If everyone gets a tax cut and a pharmacutical co uses their huge portion of it to produce a proprietary treatment that they can charge me whatever the market will bear on, my extra 100 bucks a year isn't gonna help me that much. On the other hand, if the government is making scientific advances avalible to all and the resulting treatments are widespread and less expensive, everyone benifits, including those who don't make enough money for tax cuts to mean anything to them.
While companies don't want to use so much money on studies that could be pointless.
In one of his books, Carl Sagen talks about the then current aversion to anything resembling "pure research" in government science funding. He made a fairly good argument that many of our greatest technological advancements were based on research that at its start would have been dismissed as non-technologically driven and practically useless.
And what will this "vote" tell the Powers That Be (tm)?
That you don't have the money for a DVD player?
That you already have a VCR and don't flip around in your movies enough to make a DVD worth while?
That you are boycotting our decedant entertainment culture?
That you are a technology cynic and think DVDs will go the way of the laserdisc?
That you only watch porn and thats mostly on VHS or on-line?
OR...
That you are part of a tiny minority of americans who have any idea what this debate is about and how it pretains to *nix users.
Funny, I don't think the few people who undrstand this issue boycotting will cause enough of a blib in the market for anyone to even notice, much less consider the source. Sending in a letter, on the other hand makes your position exactingly clear and actually gets the message to the people that matter. Vote for yourself, don't expect some market analyst to imagine your motivation.
Kahuna Burger
Its by no means a quick and easy way to link an anonymous message to one of a million people, and I can't help but think that anyone (for example) posting AC to /. about the real interpretation of the constitution who thinks that he's worth it is probably suffering from a touch of narcicism.
People talk alot about the importance of anonymous speech. It's certainly nice in some cases, but I think its importance has been overrated in this forum. If you want to make a difference out in the real world with something you're saying (without it being an anonymous threat of violence ala Teddy K.) you put your name on it. Just ask John Hancock.
Kahuna Burger
On alt atheism, we have a guy who goes one step further by faking posts from group regulars. They are the kind of vile racist and misogynistic crap we normally don't get arround there, with inocuos titles and the name of someone you usually respect. (my newsreader doesn't give enough info on the thread heading to tell the difference.) Its really obnoxious. its like someone spreading dog shit around your favorite park so you're too busy looking out not to step in it to enjoy what you came there for.
The funniest thing is that, like above, he has the most easily recognizable posting style on the planet, yet continuously claims that it is this other guy doing it. Then he fakes emails from the other guy, still using the same posting style. Its pathetic, and he's not fooling anyone, but that doesn't stop me from stepping in his little troll piles when I'm trying to relax with some usenet reading.
This all started out (on alt.atheism, at least) with him sending a death threat to one of our regulars because of her posting in another group. (which, of course, he claims was really sent by this other guy). real loser.
-Kahuna Burger
I think the example of your blind friend is great, but it also needs to be elaborated. The same scanner and OCR software that she uses to have the computer read to her (proper use of the information) could also be used to put the book up on a public webpage (illegal use of the info.) In the same way, the same code that they are saying can only be used to copy and sell pirate DVDs (illegal use) can be used to veiw the info you legally own (proper use.)
At my college I knew plenty of people who would have loved it if someone with a good scanner and ORC software had bought some of the $100 wafer thin comp sci textbooks and put them up on a public web page. Its an obvious and illegal use of the software. But people understand that that software (and scanners and photocopiers) have enough legitamate uses that you can't rule the device itself illegal. This point must be made about the DVD deencyption code as well.
I'm not saying that distinction will be easy to make. I had an incredibly unproductive conversation with the tech writer of my local paper on this issue after the first article on this subject and since I hadn't thought of any good analogies in advance, I couldn't get him to understand what I was saying. You need to be very coherent and simple in your retoric to get this to a non techie.
-Kahuna Burger
PS, I did know someone in college who had access to a department photocopier and just bought the book, copied it and returned it for a full refund. Illegal as hell, but if the bookstore found out they would have blamed him, not the existance of photocopiers.
OK, off topic and bitter. Slightly more on topic, I do believe that white collar crime is underpunished, but I don't believe that it is the equivelent of murder or rape in the abstract. (Some of the more shocking examples are another story.)
But anyway... I've never completely understood the Catholic modle of confession. Obviously confession is good for the mind as well as the theoretical soul, but why to a particular person? Well, if it works for them, so be it.
Wow, random memory association day. There was a short story I read back in high school about a town that had a tradition of confessing to the statue in the town square. People would wisper their confessions in the statue's ear. Then some society women got their deaf maid to read people's lips and tell them what people were confessing. Some sort of twilight zone creepy death ending, but I don't recal it. :)
A role-playing manual with different "honor codes" went through a typical description of chivalry and all the rules and responsibilities and then added something along the lines of - these codes were only meaningful amoung equals, of course. An insult from a peasant called for a whipping, not a duel.
Politeness lives as much as it ever has. we just glorify the good old days too much.
No offense, but people who believed in their rights have been standing up to retribution for some time now. And as you point out yourself, annonymity is no defense against certain kinds of retribution. The San Diego Pride Parade this year was the subject of an attack by a coward with a military issue tear gas container. Threw it right into the middle of a group of gay parents walkign with their kids. Asshole.
But anyway, another example from the gay community shows how annonymity can sometiems increase the fear of retribution. Gay soldiers who are being harrassed or endangered are often unable to get any relief, because that would involve admitting what they are being harrassed about. Under current practice, that constitutes "telling" and they can get kicked out. In a similar way, if someone is "in the closet" about his white supreamacist leanings they may fear being retaliated against by someone who figures it out, but is unable or unwilling to seek relief for fear of admitting what the retaliation is for.
I'd hate to think that we'd never get good tips or info here on ./ because AC's were censored. I myself have given information that I could not safely give without the veil of anonymity.
Maybe we are coming at the issue of "annonymity" in different ways. I consider myself largely annonymous on this forum. I don't use my real name, I don't give any more info about me than is needed. I use the same "handle" as I do in other forums, so people recognise me occasionally, but I don't need it to be that way. If I wanted to, I could use the email address where my sys admin is my brother in law, and no-body has to be able to find out anything about me. In terms of my opinions being "tracked down" I have annonymity.
On the other hand, I do not have the kind of annonymity that prevents accountability. That is what I see "annonymous cowards" as having. No one can build up an opinion of them. No one can call them on a contridiction in their views or a change in their story. They have no accountability, not just in the "outside world" but here on this forum. In some ways I would be happier with a format where you had a name and password without any background info given then these AC posts.
It's sort of like Alcoholics Annonymous. Yeah, they are supposed to be annonymous in terms of the outside world, but they are known by name and sight, they have mentors within the group, they have the accountability for their actions which comes from just knowing its the same guy the next time.
You know FULL WELL that anyone posting to Slashdot who doesn't agree with the dominant atheistic paradigm will be mocked, excluded, and insulted.
Or we could look at the real examples of what happens. Some guy posted on the "top geeks of the minenuim" thread suggesting Jesus as a great geek. He said "I'll get flamed for this." He wasn't. People discussed and largely dismissed the suggestion on the basis of : too early, not really tech in any way, vapor-ware. No one said hey you dead jew worshipping, rosary twisting moron! get your Savior on a Stick off of our web page and stick that thorny crown up your ass until the f**ing in your butt is the same as the f**ness of your head! You death worshipping self hating hypocrits make me SICK!
Which I think we all can agree is a good thing, because who wants that kind of bile? But unfortunately, when a xtian brings up Jesus in a non-religious context, they then often get pissy when he is dealt with non-religiously. A lack of slavish agreement is then called persecution. Go figure.
Err, I'd never considered annonymity to be what freedom of speech is "all about" myself. In fact, I generally assume that annonymous speech is less deserving of protection than a person standing behind their own words.
OT perhaps, but I believe the US high court agrees with me on this subject. New York (sucessfully I think) said that while the KKK must be allowed to hold their rally, they didn't have to let them do it if they wore masks meant to hide their identity. If you want to stand up and be counted, why hide yourself?
Bearing in mind that many people have choosen to tell their stories from annonymity, but this usually has required a outspoken channel to transmit their story to the rest of the world. There is a distinction there I think between letting the rest of the world know the facts of your life and shouting "hey look at me" but not wanting the attention to come with any responsibility.
The probelm with this idea is that I could see it easily destroying the diversity of discussion. To explain : I notice on some of the more politically charged threads that there will often be a decidedly majority view and a well defended but less populous miority view. (not to imply that the majority view is badly defended, but I think when you are in the minority you are less likely to throw out an off the cuff comment, because there may not be anyone to fill out the details and do it better.) There's nothing wrong with this under the current moderation standard, because the unpopular opinions are not moderated down simply because the moderater doesn't agree with it. So cruising at 0 or even 1 will still give you an even view of the discussion while eliminating the worst of the trolls.
Now consider what happens if there is no moderating down. Moderaters on /. do sometimes moderate posts up based largely on agreement. (note, I'm not saying this is the only reason post gets moderated up, but it does happen.) The majority of the mods are likely to hold the same general opinion as the majority of the posters. So well written posts on the majority opinion are likely to be moderated up far more often than equally well written posts on the minority opinion. Its just the way human nature works. Moderation is bound to be part "that was very informative and helped define the discussion" and part "you said it man!"
Where does that leave us in a up only moderation? I suspect it would leave us with a largely homogeneous group of readable posts at the upper level, and a more full but also more troll infested debate at the bottom. I think the current system of up and down with the commonly accepted idea that you don't mod down on opinion gives us a much better discussion forum.
He probably thinks that sexual harrassment law is anything but a toothless beast writ large by conservatives so that they can attack equal protection in the workplace. Sexual harrassment suits can be pressed only in the workplace, and only under very strict guidelines. And in most cases, they can only be pressed against the company as a whole. The actual harrasser may get in trouble as a trickle-down or if he or she is a "valued employee", maybe not.
Hint : in dismissing Paula Jone's lawsuit against Clinton, the judge stated that even if ever word she said was true, she didn't have a case under current sexual harrassment law. What was that about being sued for a single off color joke?
When I hung out on alt.atheism, we got tons of dumb comments and questions. Not just "I know this and you don't so I'll insult you" sort of dumb that some people apparently feel the need to flame for, but repeditive, unoriginal attacks on us as atheists. Some folks waited for them and tried to find creative ways of flaming them. Others of us didn't want to give them the satisfaction of no response, but didn't want to waste the energy explaining for the hundreth time why pascals wager doesn't work.
So one regular started a really simple and subtlely nasty way of dealing with the "not quite a trolls." She FAQed them. Just posted a response plus a message to their address with just the word "FAQed" and a url to the alt-atheism frequently asked questions. It got to be the expected response, to the point where people would just post replies saying "Where's Natelie, this guy needs FAQed." There were still people who would flame them, but overall it was nicer and helped give the feeling that we had better things to talk about than rehashing the same old trolls.
Now if something like that can happen in a group that attracts trolls like a magnet, I really find it hard to believe that the only way a mature programmer can deal with a newbie is by flaming.
heh heh, speaking of dweebs "wanting help with their homework" we had one guy asking us for a really specific discussion of one CS Lewis book. We started talking about other books we found more interesting by him, and the guy broke in again to say that he wanted to see discussion about this book. People made some jokes about when his paper was due, but it sparked an OK discussion in spite of himself.
Somebody back me up here! :-)
Yes, you have the power!!!!!
Ehem. I'm an incredibly cynical person, but also an incredibly optimistic person. That means that I am fully, depressingly aware of how much life sucks right now, but I honestly believe that we can do something about it. I worked on the Clean Elections Campaign here in Massachusetts, and we have a public financing law on the books and funded now. It can be done, you just have to work like crazy and not take setbacks lying down.
Get involved. If you think the system sucks, do something about it. Yeah, there are a bunch of powerful slugs sitting in their ooze and ruining our lives, but everyone needs a hobby. They can be voted out, they can be forced to pay attention to their responsibilities.
Oh yeah, and we need real citizen education in schools. Did you know that public schooling in america was originally meant to produce an educated voter base so that democracy could work? Now we act like the schools are there to either produce propper worker drones for big business or corrall troublemakers till they turn 17.
Just about every school has a debate club. How many actualy teach people how to listen to a debate?
you know, you may want that to be true. You may wish it was true. It may even be that if everyone was just as cool as you it would be true. But here in the real world where I live, it just isn't true, and no amount of lying is gonna make it that way.
The scarey thing is that I can't just dismiss you as one random asshole. Somebody moderated the lie up. Someone was looking at that and said "word up, man! why I got "Straightbashed" just the other day for holding hands with my opposite sex partner on the escalater out of the subway. Buncha guys chased us three blocks shouting "breeder" and "hetero"! Happens every day." and gave you a moderation point for pure counter-factual bullshit.
Can't say my opinion of Slashdot goes up with that.
Now, here's the funny part. I was having that sort of conversation once, when someone else at the table mentioned that we seemed to be grossing out the people at a table near us. Now what do you suppose I did? Did I say "well if they're that easily bothered they should just stay home!"? Did I make stupid sarcatic remarks like "Oh no! the sound wave sounds like a doggie poop, I'm gonna ralf!"? Did I complain that I wouldn't mind if they talked about poop at dinner, so why should I alter my conversation habits?
Well, no. I said "oops." And we moved on to a conversation that wasn't imposing on other people in a public place. When adults find out that something they're doing is disturbing to others and making other less capable of enjoying a public resource (especially if you completely understand that its disturbing to them even though it isn't to you) then those adults adjust their behaviour to make the public resource more enjoyable to all. What mature adults don't do, is say "well it doesn't bother me, so you must be inferior to me and I'm glad you're driven away." You're like a smoker puffing away in the office and saying "Well, I don't have athsma, so you can just quit your job, give up your golden handcuffs, not pay the rent for a month or so, because if I'm not bothered by it, it can't be legitamate to control my actions.
[disclaimer: the following is written by an actual honest-to-god *female*. take it as you will.]
I already knew women could be just as childish and selfish as men, but thanks.