I love all these ads I get these days. Gone are the days when most crap on the net was genuine non-profit-motivated information. Now my attention is for sale all day long, and thirst for consumer goods is only limited by how fast I can click and my Visa card limit! Screw that operation my Mom needs--I want new Khakies(tm) from the Gap(tm)!!!
Another thing I love is how DoubleClick will soon be able to sell me the spending habits of just about anyone I want!!! Hiring a Sierra Club treehugger--forget about it!
Sorry, but the reason the FEC exists is that elections are bought and sold in this country--a candidate with little money stands little chance against a well-monied one. Not that I think the FEC has fixed a darn thing. The problem is much deeper.
I think it's time we reexamined "Freedom of Speech" as presently interpreted in the USA. Take local elections for example--most candidates and races are so forgettable FOR MOST FOLKS (generalization) that elections are won by BRAND RECOGNITION--by littering our roadsides with those stupid little signs. Yes, maybe you are a good citizen and you know who stands where on what issues. But a HUGE block of voters will remember only the name that they've been spammed with the most. "Oh, I recognize this guy!" But the real issue is, what kind of TRUTH do WE THE PEOPLE get from a message delivered only for selfish purposes?
Another example: sporting events. As an avid hockey fan, I've watched with horror as Corporate America continues to increase it's consciousness-spamming assault on me. Stadiums are no longer named for anything of cultural value. Sports broadcasting has increased its average Consumer-Product-Message-Per-Minute rate a hundred-fold in the last 15 years. And where has it gotten us? Ungrateful jocks throwing childish tantrums while raking in my life's earnings. Yet even with such extravagant salaries, the advertisers profit by spamming (brainwashing) American consumeroids into purchasing their products.
As you may have guessed, I'm fairly hostile towards advertising. That's because it's mostly BS. Yet, even though VISA is NOT everywhere I want to be, and does not in fact have a damn thing to do with where I want to be (at home, eating dinner), they cite the First Amendment as their right to tell me otherwise.
The First Amendment was authored in order to enable PEOPLE to present and discuss ideas. But should it protect disingenous messages, packaged with today's most fantastic technology? Should it protect spam? Should it protect consciousness-spamming?
My point about the elders, though stated for dramatic effect, is related to the experiences I'm having with my Grandmother. She's been placed in a nursing home, about a year after losing her husband, and is deteriorating. She wants to join Grandpa. I can't blame her. She can't see. She can't walk. She has no teeth. She has bedsores that won't heal because she spends so much time in bed. She says things like, "I want to go see Grandpa...I wish this could be over with." I play good guy, tell her I love her, tell her we need her to be our Grandma. But in her shoes I'd feel the same.
And we call ourselves civilized.
As for your environmental comments, see Adbusters.
Let me get this off my chest right now: Slashdot is my favorite page in all WWW land, and the moderation system is fantastic.
But I think it could do more.
There already exists in the User Preferences section the ability to filter out articles by topic. I'd like to see Slashdot GREATLY expand the topic choices to include things not generally associated with "nerds." By default, topics like mountainbiking and canoeing and libertarian politics and metro Detroit local news/weather/traffic could be turned off, but I'd love to turn them on and get them here.
Yes--because Bill Klinton will sign the following Executive Orders on 11/30/99:
- all firearms sales will be banned (to save the children!) - all portly brunettes will be interned (pun intended) at a Washington D.C. education center - he will cancel all elections and declare himself King of the World!!!
This is very interesting. It is somewhat supported by the results of Project Excile in Richmond VA.
In Project Excile the NRA ran a public awareness campaign (ie, ADVERTISING or CONSCIOUSNESS SPAMMING) to remind people of the harsher penalties for committing crimes with firearms. Billboards, etc. Guess what--crime is down in Richmond. George W. Bush has reportedly gotten behind this effort in Texas.
There's a problem in this country because Profit obfuscates Truth.
Visa is NOT everywhere you want to be. WWF is not real. Elections are bought with commercial time and image consultants.
We have, a long time ago, created a world so full of complexity, that we have become reliant on our technology.
But it is not only technical complexity we are dealing with--law schools are churning out new "complicators" (ie, lawyers) at an ever-more alarming rate.
We're already two species. There's the homo informaticus to which all reading this belong, and the old homo sapiens that isn't at all sapient to how we are changing it's world.
I find this remark a bit elitist. All persons have embraced some technology. Slashdotters simply do so to a greater degree than (most) ditchdiggers (my apologies to any ditchdiggers in the audience).
The fact that we have embraced technology, and evolved thereby, was a willful, convenience driven event.
This suggests some sort of social Darwinism which is definitely not happening. Yet.
But I wonder how we will ever deal with all the complication a technical society burdens us with. Do you know all the terms of the EULA for the commercial software you are running? Are you sure you're not liable for the questionable use of your computer by all members of your household? Have any of the municipalities you commute through outlawed the use of a cell phone while driving?
This increasing complexity is the only common thread I see for the recent increases in random, inexplicable violence in American society. Yet the value of SIMPLICITY in matters of everyday life is never mentioned by anyone--politicians, corporations, or otherwise. Any programmer knows the value of simplicity--we write functions and objects and class libraries to create "black boxes" which easily perform complex behavior, but other technology and the rules governing us become increasingly more complex.
I bet a person could win the presidency by making an issue out of this.
I also played in a band for several years and know all about getting shafted by club owners. We even played one club that was a front for a coke dealer and luckily weren't playing the night everything hit the fan. Ahh, but I digress...
I believe the disempowerment of record companies will ultimately be a good thing for music in general. Through my rose-colored glasses I see a day when it is SOP for artists to release their music freely on the internet, simply because it is impractical to attempt any secure online for-profit distribution. Instead, artists PERFORM for their bread and butter (and beer). This is the best thing, because much of what is marketed today is Milli-Vanilliesque garbage. So we have a musical environment where the cream rises to the top, the flash-in-the-pans get reduced notoriety, naive young artists learn the value of performing thereby giving consistenly better live concerts (which we WILL pay for BTW), and musician self-destruction is reduced because the Big5 no longer smother them with huge amounts of money.
It's about efficiency when you come right down to it. Is it really practical and efficient to expect $xx for each utterance of your song, for each ounce of enjoyment it produces? The per-copy fee is just a convenient way to extract the fee. Any real artist with music in their heart will write the song for free and profit by seeing people enjoy it. Corporations have no part in this equation.
'...it is the technology that gives them the ability to cover their tracks enough that you can have a hard time making a criminal case against them," said a senior federal investigator.'
Here we go--blame the technology. There is no personal responsibility anymore, is there? Pretty soon we'll have another 20,000 laws limiting access to technology. Start sending in your donations to the NTA.
I can hear the soccermoms of the world now:
"It's this, easy access to technology, that causes this kind of tragedy..."
"We must put a stop to those evil computer shows!"
"You don't need a computer with 700 mhz!"
"Our children are raised in a culture of technology."
Of course you could replace "technology" with whatever software this punk was using and these quotes might be more plausible. Replace "technology" with "guns" and you see how stupid our government and Sarah Brady really are.
Follow them if something strikes you as interesting, but if familiar with the underlined text it's nice not to have to scan through a laborious explanation.
Sorry people, but given the litigious nature of business these days, I only see things like this getting much worse before they get any better.
Is it a reasonable to expect simpler agreements concerning the use of technology as technology gets more and more advanced? If not, I'm half-tempted "jump out of my BMW and run off into the hills somewhere" (stolen from old Phil Hartman SNL skit "Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer").
Seriously though, I'm feeling a bit overburdened these days by legal mumbo-jumbo. Are you conscious of ALL the regulations regarding usage of your telephone? Your credit card? Car insurance? Rent? Mortage? Employment? Or do you think you know the important points and just dismiss the rest as trivial details?
What happens if/when "ubiquitous computing" actually becomes commonplace--when we are wearing computers or when we are as dependant on them as our eyeglasses? How much legal BS will that involve?
Like wrapping up methods and data inside of an object, I've recently begun looking for ways to encapsulate complex things. Like my phone--I recently found a local carrier that advertises 7.5 cents/minute 24/7. No fooling around with attempting to call grandma only after a certain time of day. I hope other businesses catch onto this--packaging technology with simplicity.
>>> I guess this might be scary to the "You can have my kid's gun, when you pry it out of his cold dead fingers" crowd.
What a stupid thing to say. It is nearly impossible to purchase a gun illegally over the internet. Most transactions require the gun to be shipped to a licensed dealer who then runs background checks, etc.
I say nearly impossible because just like there will always be 3% of people incapable of playing by the laws the rest of us do, there are bad gun dealers also. Yes, you may buy 1 or 2 guns illegally with the help of the internet if you work at for the next 12 months. You could also get one illegally (in several days at most) in any large American city.
Here's a thought: THIS IS AMERICA--A FREE COUNTRY. Accept the risk that a certain percentage of people will feel free to not obey the law.
>>> What is the purpose of creating more laws when we are doing an inadequate job of enforcing the existing ones?
It lets them say that they did something in front of a camera.
It provides more legislation to be enforced and prosecuted, requiring more cops and lawyers.
It makes it easier for the govt. to lock you away. If some bureaucrat or agency wants your ass, he doesn't need you to do anything illegal; you only need illegal data.
Just like the ludricrous settlements awarded in personal injury cases, this court should have decided that Pepsi is responsible for their BS advertising propaganda. It would rein in much of the consciousness-spamming drivel that advertisers are spewing. We NEED a decision like this to tell advertisers that they are RESPONSIBLE for what they say. Without truth in advertising, we get what we have today: half-truths and deception that lead non-advertising-aware folks like me to believe their lies.
VISA is NOT everywhere you want to be. EVERYTHING else is NOT covered by Mastercard. A Coke won't make you smile. 80 dollar Nike shoes won't make you DO anything.
I'm sickened by the advertising in this country (USA). So much wasted effort, wasted lies, wasted man-hours, while we suffer a shortage of intelligent people for programming positions and teaching and countless other professions.
I gladly fork over $10 under the Street Performer Protocol to the first functional SDMI converter/stripper which successfully (and reliably) output MP3 files. I wish I had the technical know-how to make it happen myself, but... Anyone with me?
Advertising has become so conspicuous and advertisers so desperate to pack one additional message into our brains that I'm convinced there will eventually be a popular backlash against it. Notice the negativity associated with spam, telemarketing, and comments related to Phoenix's plans to embed advertising into their BIOS.
You suppose to mix art with advertising? That is disgusting.
The idea that crypto is munitions is ridiculous. Crypto is information--no matter how much info I spout at you it won't do anything compared to a hammer, sword, musket, AK-47, or ICBM.
As for the 2nd Amendment, it guarantees the right to keep and bear arms, which keeps getting reinterpreted according to the politics of the day...
I'm no expert on this, but I've read that this kind of policy has already had an effect on the firearms industry. According to what I read, the M-60 machine gun used by the armed forces is relatively problematic because of the lack of competition/vendors in this country due to the ridiculous number of regulations.
Yes, Slashdot is cool. But I have other interests too that have nothing to do with computers. I've considered setting up a "Weblog" related to various interests, but I need a job. Is running a weblog profitable? Or is it something that you sell everything you own to get started and then hope for additional investments and/or IPO?
The 'Hellmouth' article may be one of the defining moments in the history of this website. I've seen it referenced on a 2nd-Amendment-related mailing list I'm on and also sent to me (pirated) by a coworker. If the media are really trolling in here for material, it may not be long before Slashdot is a household word.
Whether this is a good thing or not is entirely another debate.
I work for one of those big huge commercial shops and many of the people moving up are the super-ambitious types--got their CIS degrees and are completing MBAs in nightschool (courtesy of the company).
The real reason there is a shortage of technical people is that the preppie/jock crowd (the same one that's more responsible for those shootings than any computer game) are too lazy to suck it up and choose a difficult college major like CIS--so they opt for business instead. Or their parents steer them into law school.
The result is that we have a glut of professionals involved in "BS Generation" jobs like Law, Advertising, Marketing, Public Relations, etc. while the real work (the work that in the end will define this as the Information Age) is starving for qualified workers and subsequently bloating our salaries.
People are scared of math and the stereotypes of computer geeks. But I'm loving the hell out of my career choice, and unlike lawyers or salespersons I don't have to lie to do my job.
Slashdot Mirror
Golly Gee, you're right!!!!
I love all these ads I get these days. Gone are the days when most crap on the net was genuine non-profit-motivated information. Now my attention is for sale all day long, and thirst for consumer goods is only limited by how fast I can click and my Visa card limit! Screw that operation my Mom needs--I want new Khakies(tm) from the Gap(tm)!!!
Another thing I love is how DoubleClick will soon be able to sell me the spending habits of just about anyone I want!!! Hiring a Sierra Club treehugger--forget about it!
Sorry, but the reason the FEC exists is that elections are bought and sold in this country--a candidate with little money stands little chance against a well-monied one. Not that I think the FEC has fixed a darn thing. The problem is much deeper.
I think it's time we reexamined "Freedom of Speech" as presently interpreted in the USA. Take local elections for example--most candidates and races are so forgettable FOR MOST FOLKS (generalization) that elections are won by BRAND RECOGNITION--by littering our roadsides with those stupid little signs. Yes, maybe you are a good citizen and you know who stands where on what issues. But a HUGE block of voters will remember only the name that they've been spammed with the most. "Oh, I recognize this guy!" But the real issue is, what kind of TRUTH do WE THE PEOPLE get from a message delivered only for selfish purposes?
Another example: sporting events. As an avid hockey fan, I've watched with horror as Corporate America continues to increase it's consciousness-spamming assault on me. Stadiums are no longer named for anything of cultural value. Sports broadcasting has increased its average Consumer-Product-Message-Per-Minute rate a hundred-fold in the last 15 years. And where has it gotten us? Ungrateful jocks throwing childish tantrums while raking in my life's earnings. Yet even with such extravagant salaries, the advertisers profit by spamming (brainwashing) American consumeroids into purchasing their products.
As you may have guessed, I'm fairly hostile towards advertising. That's because it's mostly BS. Yet, even though VISA is NOT everywhere I want to be, and does not in fact have a damn thing to do with where I want to be (at home, eating dinner), they cite the First Amendment as their right to tell me otherwise.
The First Amendment was authored in order to enable PEOPLE to present and discuss ideas. But should it protect disingenous messages, packaged with today's most fantastic technology? Should it protect spam? Should it protect consciousness-spamming?
And we call ourselves civilized.
As for your environmental comments, see Adbusters.
Remember, Practicality always takes a backseat to the illusion that we are "civilized" and "moral".
Even as we exploit powerful political offices for sexual favors...
Even as we condemn our elders to corrupt modern-day death camps known as nursing homes...
Even as we toxify our planet in the name of economic progress...
Even as we strip away freedoms such as the right to defend oneself while outlaws lick their chops...
Religion is to blame. Elitist liberals are to blame.
Ventura for President
Let me get this off my chest right now: Slashdot is my favorite page in all WWW land, and the moderation system is fantastic.
But I think it could do more.
There already exists in the User Preferences section the ability to filter out articles by topic. I'd like to see Slashdot GREATLY expand the topic choices to include things not generally associated with "nerds." By default, topics like mountainbiking and canoeing and libertarian politics and metro Detroit local news/weather/traffic could be turned off, but I'd love to turn them on and get them here.
Yes--because Bill Klinton will sign the following Executive Orders on 11/30/99:
- all firearms sales will be banned (to save the children!)
- all portly brunettes will be interned (pun intended) at a Washington D.C. education center
- he will cancel all elections and declare himself King of the World!!!
This is very interesting. It is somewhat supported by the results of Project Excile in Richmond VA.
In Project Excile the NRA ran a public awareness campaign (ie, ADVERTISING or CONSCIOUSNESS SPAMMING) to remind people of the harsher penalties for committing crimes with firearms. Billboards, etc. Guess what--crime is down in Richmond. George W. Bush has reportedly gotten behind this effort in Texas.
There's a problem in this country because Profit obfuscates Truth.
Visa is NOT everywhere you want to be.
WWF is not real.
Elections are bought with commercial time and image consultants.
How do we keep profiteers from obscuring Truth?
I believe random, inexplicable violence is on the rise. Though the "research" you cite suggests crime is down on average.
But it is not only technical complexity we are dealing with--law schools are churning out new "complicators" (ie, lawyers) at an ever-more alarming rate.
We're already two species. There's the homo informaticus to which all reading this belong, and the old homo sapiens that isn't at all sapient to how we are changing it's world.
I find this remark a bit elitist. All persons have embraced some technology. Slashdotters simply do so to a greater degree than (most) ditchdiggers (my apologies to any ditchdiggers in the audience).
The fact that we have embraced technology, and evolved thereby, was a willful, convenience driven event.
This suggests some sort of social Darwinism which is definitely not happening. Yet.
But I wonder how we will ever deal with all the complication a technical society burdens us with. Do you know all the terms of the EULA for the commercial software you are running? Are you sure you're not liable for the questionable use of your computer by all members of your household? Have any of the municipalities you commute through outlawed the use of a cell phone while driving?
This increasing complexity is the only common thread I see for the recent increases in random, inexplicable violence in American society. Yet the value of SIMPLICITY in matters of everyday life is never mentioned by anyone--politicians, corporations, or otherwise. Any programmer knows the value of simplicity--we write functions and objects and class libraries to create "black boxes" which easily perform complex behavior, but other technology and the rules governing us become increasingly more complex.
I bet a person could win the presidency by making an issue out of this.
Dude, I'm pickin up what yer throwin down...
I also played in a band for several years and know all about getting shafted by club owners. We even played one club that was a front for a coke dealer and luckily weren't playing the night everything hit the fan. Ahh, but I digress...
I believe the disempowerment of record companies will ultimately be a good thing for music in general. Through my rose-colored glasses I see a day when it is SOP for artists to release their music freely on the internet, simply because it is impractical to attempt any secure online for-profit distribution. Instead, artists PERFORM for their bread and butter (and beer). This is the best thing, because much of what is marketed today is Milli-Vanilliesque garbage. So we have a musical environment where the cream rises to the top, the flash-in-the-pans get reduced notoriety, naive young artists learn the value of performing thereby giving consistenly better live concerts (which we WILL pay for BTW), and musician self-destruction is reduced because the Big5 no longer smother them with huge amounts of money.
It's about efficiency when you come right down to it. Is it really practical and efficient to expect $xx for each utterance of your song, for each ounce of enjoyment it produces? The per-copy fee is just a convenient way to extract the fee. Any real artist with music in their heart will write the song for free and profit by seeing people enjoy it. Corporations have no part in this equation.
'...it is the technology that gives them the ability to cover their tracks enough that you can have a hard time making a criminal case against them," said a senior federal investigator.'
Here we go--blame the technology. There is no personal responsibility anymore, is there? Pretty soon we'll have another 20,000 laws limiting access to technology. Start sending in your donations to the NTA.
I can hear the soccermoms of the world now:
"It's this, easy access to technology, that causes this kind of tragedy..."
"We must put a stop to those evil computer shows!"
"You don't need a computer with 700 mhz!"
"Our children are raised in a culture of technology."
Of course you could replace "technology" with whatever software this punk was using and these quotes might be more plausible. Replace "technology" with "guns" and you see how stupid our government and Sarah Brady really are.
Bring on the bans!
I thought the use of links was, well...ART!
Follow them if something strikes you as interesting, but if familiar with the underlined text it's nice not to have to scan through a laborious explanation.
Efficiency--I love it.
Sorry people, but given the litigious nature of business these days, I only see things like this getting much worse before they get any better.
Is it a reasonable to expect simpler agreements concerning the use of technology as technology gets more and more advanced? If not, I'm half-tempted "jump out of my BMW and run off into the hills somewhere" (stolen from old Phil Hartman SNL skit "Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer").
Seriously though, I'm feeling a bit overburdened these days by legal mumbo-jumbo. Are you conscious of ALL the regulations regarding usage of your telephone? Your credit card? Car insurance? Rent? Mortage? Employment? Or do you think you know the important points and just dismiss the rest as trivial details?
What happens if/when "ubiquitous computing" actually becomes commonplace--when we are wearing computers or when we are as dependant on them as our eyeglasses? How much legal BS will that involve?
Like wrapping up methods and data inside of an object, I've recently begun looking for ways to encapsulate complex things. Like my phone--I recently found a local carrier that advertises 7.5 cents/minute 24/7. No fooling around with attempting to call grandma only after a certain time of day. I hope other businesses catch onto this--packaging technology with simplicity.
Here's a couple sites that you might find interesting:
Project Vote Smart
Democracy Network
I believe Project Vote Smart lets you review your legislators by issue if they've answered a survey.
>>> I guess this might be scary to the "You can have my kid's gun, when you pry it out of his cold dead fingers" crowd.
What a stupid thing to say. It is nearly impossible to purchase a gun illegally over the internet. Most transactions require the gun to be shipped to a licensed dealer who then runs background checks, etc.
I say nearly impossible because just like there will always be 3% of people incapable of playing by the laws the rest of us do, there are bad gun dealers also. Yes, you may buy 1 or 2 guns illegally with the help of the internet if you work at for the next 12 months. You could also get one illegally (in several days at most) in any large American city.
Here's a thought: THIS IS AMERICA--A FREE COUNTRY. Accept the risk that a certain percentage of people will feel free to not obey the law.
>>> What is the purpose of creating more laws when we are doing an inadequate job of enforcing the existing ones?
It lets them say that they did something in front of a camera.
It provides more legislation to be enforced and prosecuted, requiring more cops and lawyers.
It makes it easier for the govt. to lock you away. If some bureaucrat or agency wants your ass, he doesn't need you to do anything illegal; you only need illegal data.
Just like the ludricrous settlements awarded in personal injury cases, this court should have decided that Pepsi is responsible for their BS advertising propaganda. It would rein in much of the consciousness-spamming drivel that advertisers are spewing. We NEED a decision like this to tell advertisers that they are RESPONSIBLE for what they say. Without truth in advertising, we get what we have today: half-truths and deception that lead non-advertising-aware folks like me to believe their lies.
VISA is NOT everywhere you want to be.
EVERYTHING else is NOT covered by Mastercard.
A Coke won't make you smile.
80 dollar Nike shoes won't make you DO anything.
I'm sickened by the advertising in this country (USA). So much wasted effort, wasted lies, wasted man-hours, while we suffer a shortage of intelligent people for programming positions and teaching and countless other professions.
Advertisers are worse than lawyers.
Didn't you hear that Barry Sanders is retiring from the Detroit Lions???
I gladly fork over $10 under the Street Performer Protocol to the first functional SDMI converter/stripper which successfully (and reliably) output MP3 files. I wish I had the technical know-how to make it happen myself, but... Anyone with me?
You suppose to mix art with advertising? That is disgusting.
The idea that crypto is munitions is ridiculous. Crypto is information--no matter how much info I spout at you it won't do anything compared to a hammer, sword, musket, AK-47, or ICBM.
As for the 2nd Amendment, it guarantees the right to keep and bear arms, which keeps getting reinterpreted according to the politics of the day...
I'm no expert on this, but I've read that this kind of policy has already had an effect on the firearms industry. According to what I read, the M-60 machine gun used by the armed forces is relatively problematic because of the lack of competition/vendors in this country due to the ridiculous number of regulations.
A free country? Not really...
Yes, Slashdot is cool. But I have other interests too that have nothing to do with computers. I've considered setting up a "Weblog" related to various interests, but I need a job. Is running a weblog profitable? Or is it something that you sell everything you own to get started and then hope for additional investments and/or IPO?
The 'Hellmouth' article may be one of the defining moments in the history of this website. I've seen it referenced on a 2nd-Amendment-related mailing list I'm on and also sent to me (pirated) by a coworker. If the media are really trolling in here for material, it may not be long before Slashdot is a household word.
Whether this is a good thing or not is entirely another debate.
I work for one of those big huge commercial shops and many of the people moving up are the super-ambitious types--got their CIS degrees and are completing MBAs in nightschool (courtesy of the company).
The real reason there is a shortage of technical people is that the preppie/jock crowd (the same one that's more responsible for those shootings than any computer game) are too lazy to suck it up and choose a difficult college major like CIS--so they opt for business instead. Or their parents steer them into law school.
The result is that we have a glut of professionals involved in "BS Generation" jobs like Law, Advertising, Marketing, Public Relations, etc. while the real work (the work that in the end will define this as the Information Age) is starving for qualified workers and subsequently bloating our salaries.
People are scared of math and the stereotypes of computer geeks. But I'm loving the hell out of my career choice, and unlike lawyers or salespersons I don't have to lie to do my job.