The IETF full-well knows that IPv6 will make wiretapping of the internet a moot point. "Yeah Mr. NSA, you can listen to ciphertext zip by, be my guest"...
My suspicion is that this is a way of saying "Nice doggy" to the 'powers that be', because the 'powers that be' can fund backbone upgrades, provide research grants, and lobby in favor of certain protocols and technologies...
This support from the federal government would mean a lot to the members of the IETF, and if the price of the support is providing a back door that leads nowhere, so be it.
The people on the IETF are not as dumb as those twisting their arms are.
Besides, what better way to convince big business to lobby for strong encryption than to show that lack thereof is tapable?
Pokemon is a memetic contagion from Japan. Since virii are not necessarily biological or cybernetic, this perspective works.
We can even classify it. It's a derivative of the 'pet rock'meme-virus of the mid-70's, but in a much more aggressive form. This virus resembles the Beanie-baby and Furby virii except that it infects only young meme environments which have not yet been able to develop immunity to Fad-class virii..
This immunity requires that the marketing-service ports be shut down unless absolutely needed. The procedure for establishing such immunity is typically referred to as 'jading'. Once a potential host is adequately jaded, it is much less likely to be infected by this, and further mutations of the fad-class virii...
The only viruses we've heard about over the last two years or so, are ones that exploit Microsoft software. And not on the OS level either, these things just crawl in thru security holes in applications. Of course, saying this on slashdot is preaching to the converted, but...
Why is there not a public backlash? Why isn't the media down Gates' throat over this? Why is there no bad press? Is the FUD really that good? Has Microsoft brainwashed people to such an extent that only the people writing the virii are in the wrong?
Certainly, the thief in the night is to blame for the theft. But if the company that makes your windows doesn't provide a means of keeping them closed...
Ahh, I know it, you know it... Moderate down for Redundancy... It just frustrates me to no end that M$ is shirking its responsibility to make a secure product. Good thing I don't use IE... Heh!
After many unanswered phone calls and requests for an interview, the online celebrity Anonymous Coward was quoted as saying:
"First Post!!"
Industry pundits have not been able to agree on the meaning of this cryptic response to the Microsoft = Monopoly ruling. Though technology expert John C. Dvorak stated that this may be a comment of outrage directed at the President of the United States rather than Bill Gates. Mr. Coward could not be reached for further comment.
In other news, the online community is believed to be rediscovering their spiritual roots, as observed in the slashdot readerships frequent references to Karma. Church officials claim that this is probably brought on by the upcoming end of the millenium.
Ima Freud, a psychologist at Deutchmacher University, claims that references to Karma are an attempt at closure in the wake of the Columbine Masacre, which shook the close-knit geek community to it's core earlier this year.
Executives at Warner Brothers deny that the concern with one's Karma, as demonstrated by members of the Slashdot cult, is actually a clendestine publicity stunt to promote End of Days staring Arnold Shwarzenegger. Mr. Shwarzenegger did not return phone calls.
Katz is right, the 'off-line' people, who are not techies at heart, have admired Microsoft for a long time. They seem (those I know at least) stunned at the ruling that Microsoft has an OS monopoly.
But the vast majority of these people have never used, (and many have never even seen) a non-Microsoft OS. That just floors me.
Most people with computers (ahem, Windows) use their home PC for web browsing. True enough.
To compete in this area, Linux needs a stable, solid, full-featured browser. True as well.
But, IMHO, Linux isn't even ready to take up that challenge. A solid, stable, pretty, glitzy GUI is needed first.
The OS needs to be usable to a new user - on the same level as Windows.
Linux needs to be easy to install, easy to uninstall, able to sense hardware without the user needing to open the PC to read numbers off of chips.
Linux needs to support the latest and greatest hardware, like USB (USB2), firewire, parallel port scanners, WinModems...
Linux needs to have GAMES!
Linux needs all these things to displace Microsoft as the king of the desktop!
But is that what we want? Or do we want the best OS possible. A stable and robust system, architectured to be portable and extensible, to support new hardware easily as opposed to supporting it now. It's the fisherman maxim.
Write in cool hardware support and you play now, write in extensability for new hardware and you play for a lifetime.
Unless of course what we want to do is relegate Linux to the function of WebTV boxes, in which case all it needs to do is run a browser, a mail client, and that's about it.
Let's do this right folks. Let's design it for the future. Let's not get seduced by Microsoft's rapid upgrade cycle of feature glut.
Linux isn't there yet for the desktop. We have other, more important issues to worry about. 64bit is one. IPv6 is another. Parallel multiprocessing is another still...
Fsck conformity with M$! Let's beat them, not join them. Linux has always been about technical superiority and building knowledgable users. Dumbing Linux down will not serve it at all.
If Linux bends over for the lowest common denominator, I'm going FreeBSD, and so will all the people developing for Linux.
Yes, your experience with Netscape points out a shortcoming, but not in Linux. Those of use who want the functionality you are missing are free to code it.
Mozilla is a dog, but it's open, and the features are coming, I'm sure.
As for certain MS-Specific extensions that Linux doesn't run: Are you actually surprised? Linux also doesn't run VB. BeOS and AppleOS don't either.
It is not a fault of Linux or it's developers, it's a fault of Microsoft. They are 'embracing and extending, and innovating' wizz-bang toys that they keep closed. This is the crux of their monopolistic practises that the FTC is investigating.
I can easily put together a page that excludes all but IE using surfers. I can put together a website that REQUIRES a PIII processor... My doing so does not put the fault on my competition.
Solving these problems is the natural consequence of this man's research. These are still baby-steps we're taking. After he does a proof-of-concept, we'll try it with a larger group, to study how variable the signals are among different people.
I'm sure that if there is any similarity at all (and I'm sure there is, since we all use the same muscles) then a normalization can be performed on the signal. Hypothetically, we could sample signals from a large number of people, and use a consistent composite signal. Speculating further, over time, the person using the composite signal to move, could tweak it to account for height, weight and posture differences, agressiveness of their movements, precision vs speed... It's a wide open field.
I doubt that the strength of an impulse increases with proportion to physical strength. It's much like IP multicasting, I suspect. Stronger muscles means more muscle fibers, more fibers means more pathways onto which the packet | impulse is transmitted.
What would need to be done of course, is a mapping of junctions between the transmission nerves and the local nerve 'subnets' and injecting the signal there rather than to the muscle itself...
The first step is decoding the neural signal, and we're seeing that start now. Next is sensory stimuli. That should make things like Brainstorm and Wm. Gibsons sensorium concept possible.
Every time I hear news of this sort (or nontech or you name it) I'm reminded of the old Chinese blessing: "May you live in interesting times". We certainly do.
How about having me do the recording, and having someone's disabled legs doing the playback?
I know that there's a whole new pinoccio nightmare in there, with people becoming (potentially) one another's marionnettes (sp?), but...
With small enough samples of motion impulses recorded by 'surrogates' like pro-athletes, actors and dancers, the disabled could choose sample sequences that suit their mobility needs.
And the overly-rich could buy mobility-upgrades, to move like Baryshnikov or Tyson whenever they want to. Check out Jon Williams (?) Hardwired.
You all remember the article a while back, about Palm Pilot IR ports being used to intercept and play back car-lock codes, right?
The prospect of some phreak making me walk into traffic with his PDA is sure to give me nightmares tonight. That, coupled with having him make me HAPPY while I get personal with a speeding bus...
But that's ok, at the rate we're going, I'll just be cloned up from the molecules by nanites in time for lunch.
Alright, so if I understand correctly, he'll move his arm as the computer monitors the signals, and then he'll play the signal back to see if the arm moves without him willing it to...
Interesting. Certainly mobility facilitation for the disabled is a great idea. Christopher Reeves could walk again. Proper form instruction and monitoring in a variety of sports would probably be another interesting application. Then there's ergonomic studies.
Of course, being the technophile that I am, I'd wire up another species to see what it feels like to move like a cat or shark.
My initial post WAS overly reactionary, but at least I got second post. [slaps self with halibut]
It's too bad that AOL can most likely defend itself from the requirement of accessibility by claiming that there are alternatives. Bear with me, I've got a point...
Such a move on part of AOL would result in bad press, a call for boycott (which I would honor, if I were a subscriber) and a loss of revenue for presenting an insensitive/corporate image. They won't go to court over this for these reasons, more than for the potential loss of the fees that visually impaired subscribers are willing to pay. [ramble-ramble]
The worthwhile part is this: The money-driven initiative for making PDA and cell-phone accessible web-sites holds a lot of promise for those with visual disabilities. The technology is either existing, or in rapid development. And if AOL and other sites want the business of the movers and shakers who surf from their StarTacs, then there's absolutely no reason not to use that exact same technology to make the web more accessible to the blind (legally or otherwise).
Now, does any slashdot reader have the experience to comment on the applicability of mobile-enable web sites to such usage? How are sites modified for mini-lcd display? Sanity check, anyone?
Before the PC crowd gets on it's high-horse, I'd invite everyone to read "Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut. It's quite a commentary on Political Correctness as it is being more and more implemented in the US.
The short story can be found in the Vonnegut collection "Welcome to the Monkey House". I'm sure it's available in braille, large print and audio-book as well as the traditional paperback.
The research is sound and valid. It clearly shows that:
Yuppies who use cell-phones in their endless effort to win the rat-race while buoyed up by the milk of human kindness, tend to forget the ethical platform, their veritable solid ground in a shifting, fluid sea of corporate mentality, and become wife-beating dead-beat dads and absentee fathers who do not contribute to society in the slightest.
Actually, we need to remember (hard to do, since we use cell-phones) that dairy products are high in fat, which is bad for you.
If I was forced to swim around in a pool of milk, I'd have a hard time remembering things as well.
Reminds me of an old joke about a Russian scientist experimenting with flies.
1. Remove fly wings so it doesn't escape, and place fly on table. 2. Move hands towards fly: Observed that fly walks away. 3. Remove a leg from the fly. 4. Place fly on table. 5. repeat steps 2 thru 4 as needed.
Conclusion: After the removal of all legs, the fly becomes conditioned not to fear hands.
So I suppose that BJM is an out-of-the-question movie?
Beamon wrote for a small audience. Using real names just added to the realism of the plot. It made it more scarry. Had he been told that it was for a large-scale contest, he would have probably made up names. Heaven help him if one of the made up names was a real one though. Then he's a premeditated stalker, rather than a lucky guesser.
Than again, it's entirely possible that he's another Hinkel, headed off at the pass by vigilant administrators. Yeah! That's it, I'm sure.
As for setting policy, it's a real hard call. It's so subjective, that we'd be looking at law suits and expulsions for looking at someone funny. A grandmother of mine died of Emphysema. Your smoking, or faking a cough with your friends (even if completely unrelated to me) may be argued to be insensitive and a cause of emotional distress...
I realize that it's taking the point to an absurdity, but there's not a clear place to draw the magic line. "That's a very angry looking integral sign Little Johnny! Off to therapy with you!"
Overlooking the terrible grammar and poor spelling, the kid was pretty creative about doing his homework. He saw his cultural context clearly enough to write a scarry story about something not seen in a traditional 'horror' movie.
I just hope that the creators of Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, et al. do not decide to sue him for IP infringements. The kid wrote something that might serve as a back-plot for an NYPD Blue episode. He wrote a scary story, true to life as he sees it, and close enough to home to provoke an emotional response, not just from his audience but from the community. Good for him.
But, bad for the rest of us. He drew on what he saw for his inspiration. Everyone was enthralled by the Columbine tragedy. Cop shows like Homicide and NYPD Blue are and have been (Hill Street) very entertaining for a long time. We've come full circle folks. This is art imitating life that imitated art.
Should a scarry story, that is possible, be punished on the grounds that it may be a threat or that it may inspire someone to perform an IRL copy-cat killing? Should people who help to bring such a vision before the public eye be viewed as accomplices, since they serve as potential inspiration? Should Anthony Hopkins be jailed for his portrayal of Hannibal Lechter?
But why beat around the bush? Let's ban the Bible - it's full of sex and violence, and that's just not healthy. It sets a bad example for our children: Cain killing Abel (worse than Columbine) David sending his lovers husband off to war (on the next Ricci Lake) God testing Abrahams loyalty by telling him to kill his son (sounds gang related) Sodomy (not in MY backyard) Prostitution (that Jesus hung out with the WRONG element - see what happened to him?) Those Commandments (who does this Yahweh think he is, infringing on my inalienable human rights).
Ah well. Disasters come in threes. I think I'll complete the pattern and blow away a few co-workers.
If you had a super-computer the size of a mitochondria, where would you keep it?
"Nobody move, I dropped my Cray!"
Even if memory could be made on the molecular level, and processors could flip electrons instead of bits, do you all think we could afford the Scanning-Tunneling microscopes we'd need for I/O? I mean, hell! I like having a big monitor. There's no way to plug it into a sugar-cube computer..
Every time you sneeze, you'd have to get new hardware.
I won't be able to pick my nose, scratch my butt, or posture in front of the bathroom mirror without the fear of seeing myself on someone's website, or America's Most Candid Videos.
Anyne know of Kafka's Panopticon? That's where we're heading.
The Panopticon was a cylindrical prison, walled to the outside, but open/bar-doored to the inside. There was a watch tower in the center of the prison yard that shone bright light through the bars of all of the cells, lighting them up for the watchman to see.
There was a single watchman, with a sniper rifle, and the only punishment for misbehavior was execution. Prisoners sat in their cells, not able to see the tower or other cells well, due to the bright lights, and not aware of wether or not the watchman was looking at them or not.
The sense of potential observation, coupled with the occasional gunshot (for effect) eventually makes a watchman unnecessary, since the fear of being caught results in 'appropriate' behavior.
Once a society feels that it can at any moment be watched, it changes it's behavior patterns. We would become slaves, behaving in accordance with what is expected instead of what's natural and normal.
Slashdot Mirror
The IETF full-well knows that IPv6 will make wiretapping of the internet a moot point. "Yeah Mr. NSA, you can listen to ciphertext zip by, be my guest"...
My suspicion is that this is a way of saying "Nice doggy" to the 'powers that be', because the 'powers that be' can fund backbone upgrades, provide research grants, and lobby in favor of certain protocols and technologies...
This support from the federal government would mean a lot to the members of the IETF, and if the price of the support is providing a back door that leads nowhere, so be it.
The people on the IETF are not as dumb as those twisting their arms are.
Besides, what better way to convince big business to lobby for strong encryption than to show that lack thereof is tapable?
Slickness points to the IETF.
It's been said here already... Sheesh!
Unless of course eyeballs on adverts count for so much.
Already been done.
Pokemon is a memetic contagion from Japan. Since virii are not necessarily biological or cybernetic, this perspective works.
We can even classify it. It's a derivative of the 'pet rock'meme-virus of the mid-70's, but in a much more aggressive form. This virus resembles the Beanie-baby and Furby virii except that it infects only young meme environments which have not yet been able to develop immunity to Fad-class virii..
This immunity requires that the marketing-service ports be shut down unless absolutely needed. The procedure for establishing such immunity is typically referred to as 'jading'. Once a potential host is adequately jaded, it is much less likely to be infected by this, and further mutations of the fad-class virii...
Disillusionment is good.
The only viruses we've heard about over the last two years or so, are ones that exploit Microsoft software. And not on the OS level either, these things just crawl in thru security holes in applications. Of course, saying this on slashdot is preaching to the converted, but...
Why is there not a public backlash? Why isn't the media down Gates' throat over this? Why is there no bad press? Is the FUD really that good? Has Microsoft brainwashed people to such an extent that only the people writing the virii are in the wrong?
Certainly, the thief in the night is to blame for the theft. But if the company that makes your windows doesn't provide a means of keeping them closed...
Ahh, I know it, you know it... Moderate down for Redundancy... It just frustrates me to no end that M$ is shirking its responsibility to make a secure product. Good thing I don't use IE... Heh!
If so, it's pretty apropos.
/. is color coding stories from now on, we need a poll!! :)
But if
After many unanswered phone calls and requests for an interview, the online celebrity Anonymous Coward was quoted as saying:
"First Post!!"
Industry pundits have not been able to agree on the meaning of this cryptic response to the Microsoft = Monopoly ruling. Though technology expert John C. Dvorak stated that this may be a comment of outrage directed at the President of the United States rather than Bill Gates. Mr. Coward could not be reached for further comment.
In other news, the online community is believed to be rediscovering their spiritual roots, as observed in the slashdot readerships frequent references to Karma. Church officials claim that this is probably brought on by the upcoming end of the millenium.
Ima Freud, a psychologist at Deutchmacher University, claims that references to Karma are an attempt at closure in the wake of the Columbine Masacre, which shook the close-knit geek community to it's core earlier this year.
Executives at Warner Brothers deny that the concern with one's Karma, as demonstrated by members of the Slashdot cult, is actually a clendestine publicity stunt to promote End of Days staring Arnold Shwarzenegger. Mr. Shwarzenegger did not return phone calls.
Katz is right, the 'off-line' people, who are not techies at heart, have admired Microsoft for a long time. They seem (those I know at least) stunned at the ruling that Microsoft has an OS monopoly.
But the vast majority of these people have never used, (and many have never even seen) a non-Microsoft OS. That just floors me.
Most people with computers (ahem, Windows) use their home PC for web browsing. True enough.
To compete in this area, Linux needs a stable, solid, full-featured browser. True as well.
But, IMHO, Linux isn't even ready to take up that challenge. A solid, stable, pretty, glitzy GUI is needed first.
The OS needs to be usable to a new user - on the same level as Windows.
Linux needs to be easy to install, easy to uninstall, able to sense hardware without the user needing to open the PC to read numbers off of chips.
Linux needs to support the latest and greatest hardware, like USB (USB2), firewire, parallel port scanners, WinModems...
Linux needs to have GAMES!
Linux needs all these things to displace Microsoft as the king of the desktop!
But is that what we want? Or do we want the best OS possible. A stable and robust system, architectured to be portable and extensible, to support new hardware easily as opposed to supporting it now. It's the fisherman maxim.
Write in cool hardware support and you play now, write in extensability for new hardware and you play for a lifetime.
Unless of course what we want to do is relegate Linux to the function of WebTV boxes, in which case all it needs to do is run a browser, a mail client, and that's about it.
Let's do this right folks. Let's design it for the future. Let's not get seduced by Microsoft's rapid upgrade cycle of feature glut.
Linux isn't there yet for the desktop. We have other, more important issues to worry about. 64bit is one. IPv6 is another. Parallel multiprocessing is another still...
Fsck conformity with M$! Let's beat them, not join them. Linux has always been about technical superiority and building knowledgable users. Dumbing Linux down will not serve it at all.
If Linux bends over for the lowest common denominator, I'm going FreeBSD, and so will all the people developing for Linux.
Yes, your experience with Netscape points out a shortcoming, but not in Linux. Those of use who want the functionality you are missing are free to code it.
Mozilla is a dog, but it's open, and the features are coming, I'm sure.
As for certain MS-Specific extensions that Linux doesn't run: Are you actually surprised? Linux also doesn't run VB. BeOS and AppleOS don't either.
It is not a fault of Linux or it's developers, it's a fault of Microsoft. They are 'embracing and extending, and innovating' wizz-bang toys that they keep closed. This is the crux of their monopolistic practises that the FTC is investigating.
I can easily put together a page that excludes all but IE using surfers. I can put together a website that REQUIRES a PIII processor... My doing so does not put the fault on my competition.
I thought the curse was: "May you get all that you deserve".
;)
Now THAT is a creepy proposition.
Solving these problems is the natural consequence of this man's research. These are still baby-steps we're taking. After he does a proof-of-concept, we'll try it with a larger group, to study how variable the signals are among different people.
I'm sure that if there is any similarity at all (and I'm sure there is, since we all use the same muscles) then a normalization can be performed on the signal. Hypothetically, we could sample signals from a large number of people, and use a consistent composite signal. Speculating further, over time, the person using the composite signal to move, could tweak it to account for height, weight and posture differences, agressiveness of their movements, precision vs speed... It's a wide open field.
I doubt that the strength of an impulse increases with proportion to physical strength. It's much like IP multicasting, I suspect. Stronger muscles means more muscle fibers, more fibers means more pathways onto which the packet | impulse is transmitted.
What would need to be done of course, is a mapping of junctions between the transmission nerves and the local nerve 'subnets' and injecting the signal there rather than to the muscle itself...
The first step is decoding the neural signal, and we're seeing that start now. Next is sensory stimuli. That should make things like Brainstorm and Wm. Gibsons sensorium concept possible.
Every time I hear news of this sort (or nontech or you name it) I'm reminded of the old Chinese blessing: "May you live in interesting times". We certainly do.
How about having me do the recording, and having someone's disabled legs doing the playback?
I know that there's a whole new pinoccio nightmare in there, with people becoming (potentially) one another's marionnettes (sp?), but...
With small enough samples of motion impulses recorded by 'surrogates' like pro-athletes, actors and dancers, the disabled could choose sample sequences that suit their mobility needs.
And the overly-rich could buy mobility-upgrades, to move like Baryshnikov or Tyson whenever they want to. Check out Jon Williams (?) Hardwired.
You all remember the article a while back, about Palm Pilot IR ports being used to intercept and play back car-lock codes, right?
The prospect of some phreak making me walk into traffic with his PDA is sure to give me nightmares tonight. That, coupled with having him make me HAPPY while I get personal with a speeding bus...
But that's ok, at the rate we're going, I'll just be cloned up from the molecules by nanites in time for lunch.
Alright, who here DIDN'T think about Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" when you read that??
Just set your mood for the day, and 'have a nice day' will become a thing of the past. Creepy.
Alright, so if I understand correctly, he'll move his arm as the computer monitors the signals, and then he'll play the signal back to see if the arm moves without him willing it to...
Interesting. Certainly mobility facilitation for the disabled is a great idea. Christopher Reeves could walk again. Proper form instruction and monitoring in a variety of sports would probably be another interesting application. Then there's ergonomic studies.
Of course, being the technophile that I am, I'd wire up another species to see what it feels like to move like a cat or shark.
Good point, and sensibly presented.
My initial post WAS overly reactionary, but at least I got second post. [slaps self with halibut]
It's too bad that AOL can most likely defend itself from the requirement of accessibility by claiming that there are alternatives. Bear with me, I've got a point...
Such a move on part of AOL would result in bad press, a call for boycott (which I would honor, if I were a subscriber) and a loss of revenue for presenting an insensitive/corporate image. They won't go to court over this for these reasons, more than for the potential loss of the fees that visually impaired subscribers are willing to pay. [ramble-ramble]
The worthwhile part is this: The money-driven initiative for making PDA and cell-phone accessible web-sites holds a lot of promise for those with visual disabilities. The technology is either existing, or in rapid development. And if AOL and other sites want the business of the movers and shakers who surf from their StarTacs, then there's absolutely no reason not to use that exact same technology to make the web more accessible to the blind (legally or otherwise).
Now, does any slashdot reader have the experience to comment on the applicability of mobile-enable web sites to such usage? How are sites modified for mini-lcd display? Sanity check, anyone?
Before the PC crowd gets on it's high-horse, I'd invite everyone to read "Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut. It's quite a commentary on Political Correctness as it is being more and more implemented in the US.
The short story can be found in the Vonnegut collection "Welcome to the Monkey House". I'm sure it's available in braille, large print and audio-book as well as the traditional paperback.
(first post)
- Apologies to all sight-impaired readers
They don't have a braille version of every book they publish. It's blatant discrimination.
The research is sound and valid. It clearly shows that:
Yuppies who use cell-phones in their endless effort to win the rat-race while buoyed up by the milk of human kindness, tend to forget the ethical platform, their veritable solid ground in a shifting, fluid sea of corporate mentality, and become wife-beating dead-beat dads and absentee fathers who do not contribute to society in the slightest.
Actually, we need to remember (hard to do, since we use cell-phones) that dairy products are high in fat, which is bad for you.
If I was forced to swim around in a pool of milk, I'd have a hard time remembering things as well.
Reminds me of an old joke about a Russian scientist experimenting with flies.
1. Remove fly wings so it doesn't escape, and place fly on table.
2. Move hands towards fly: Observed that fly walks away.
3. Remove a leg from the fly.
4. Place fly on table.
5. repeat steps 2 thru 4 as needed.
Conclusion: After the removal of all legs, the fly becomes conditioned not to fear hands.
So I suppose that BJM is an out-of-the-question movie?
Beamon wrote for a small audience. Using real names just added to the realism of the plot. It made it more scarry. Had he been told that it was for a large-scale contest, he would have probably made up names. Heaven help him if one of the made up names was a real one though. Then he's a premeditated stalker, rather than a lucky guesser.
Than again, it's entirely possible that he's another Hinkel, headed off at the pass by vigilant administrators. Yeah! That's it, I'm sure.
As for setting policy, it's a real hard call. It's so subjective, that we'd be looking at law suits and expulsions for looking at someone funny. A grandmother of mine died of Emphysema. Your smoking, or faking a cough with your friends (even if completely unrelated to me) may be argued to be insensitive and a cause of emotional distress...
I realize that it's taking the point to an absurdity, but there's not a clear place to draw the magic line. "That's a very angry looking integral sign Little Johnny! Off to therapy with you!"
Sarcasm and humour not withstanding..
Overlooking the terrible grammar and poor spelling, the kid was pretty creative about doing his homework. He saw his cultural context clearly enough to write a scarry story about something not seen in a traditional 'horror' movie.
I just hope that the creators of Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, et al. do not decide to sue him for IP infringements. The kid wrote something that might serve as a back-plot for an NYPD Blue episode. He wrote a scary story, true to life as he sees it, and close enough to home to provoke an emotional response, not just from his audience but from the community. Good for him.
But, bad for the rest of us. He drew on what he saw for his inspiration. Everyone was enthralled by the Columbine tragedy. Cop shows like Homicide and NYPD Blue are and have been (Hill Street) very entertaining for a long time. We've come full circle folks. This is art imitating life that imitated art.
Should a scarry story, that is possible, be punished on the grounds that it may be a threat or that it may inspire someone to perform an IRL copy-cat killing? Should people who help to bring such a vision before the public eye be viewed as accomplices, since they serve as potential inspiration? Should Anthony Hopkins be jailed for his portrayal of Hannibal Lechter?
But why beat around the bush? Let's ban the Bible - it's full of sex and violence, and that's just not healthy. It sets a bad example for our children:
Cain killing Abel (worse than Columbine)
David sending his lovers husband off to war (on the next Ricci Lake)
God testing Abrahams loyalty by telling him to kill his son (sounds gang related)
Sodomy (not in MY backyard)
Prostitution (that Jesus hung out with the WRONG element - see what happened to him?)
Those Commandments (who does this Yahweh think he is, infringing on my inalienable human rights).
Ah well. Disasters come in threes. I think I'll complete the pattern and blow away a few co-workers.
If you had a super-computer the size of a mitochondria, where would you keep it?
"Nobody move, I dropped my Cray!"
Even if memory could be made on the molecular level, and processors could flip electrons instead of bits, do you all think we could afford the Scanning-Tunneling microscopes we'd need for I/O? I mean, hell! I like having a big monitor. There's no way to plug it into a sugar-cube computer..
Every time you sneeze, you'd have to get new hardware.
1) Moderating the offending post up to #5.
2) Rob getting a few messages bringing this post to his attention.
3) A Perl script or the Apache server 'crashing' for a few minutes, during which some posts would be inexplicably LOST from the system.
4) Posters outrage that the offending post just happened to be one of the ones 'lost'.
5) Rob adding meta-meta-moderation to keep it from happening again.
6) JonKatz posting an article about civil rights in cyberspace.
I don't like this one bit, no sir, I don't.
I won't be able to pick my nose, scratch my butt, or posture in front of the bathroom mirror without the fear of seeing myself on someone's website, or America's Most Candid Videos.
Anyne know of Kafka's Panopticon? That's where we're heading.
The Panopticon was a cylindrical prison, walled to the outside, but open/bar-doored to the inside. There was a watch tower in the center of the prison yard that shone bright light through the bars of all of the cells, lighting them up for the watchman to see.
There was a single watchman, with a sniper rifle, and the only punishment for misbehavior was execution. Prisoners sat in their cells, not able to see the tower or other cells well, due to the bright lights, and not aware of wether or not the watchman was looking at them or not.
The sense of potential observation, coupled with the occasional gunshot (for effect) eventually makes a watchman unnecessary, since the fear of being caught results in 'appropriate' behavior.
Once a society feels that it can at any moment be watched, it changes it's behavior patterns. We would become slaves, behaving in accordance with what is expected instead of what's natural and normal.
Spy-flies are a very bad, BAD, thing.