After reading this article and the accompanying PDFs I'm experiencing what I've come to call Slashdot Angst: an intense feeling of frustration and disempowerment in response to ignorance, malfeasance and just plain skullduggery.
OK, so the author asserts ICANN is on shaky ground legally. What can we do about it? Who do we sue? Who do we lean upon?
I'd be thrilled if there were something I could be doing about this, but what?
Remember that this debate was begun by someone going to Red Hat's public site and trying to add up all the registered bugs in Red Hat 7. When was the last time Microsoft (or any other legacy software vendor for that matter) gave you access to their complete bug registration system? Which software model do you really want to see succeed?
So, let me see if I have this straight--
A company publishes a software product riddled with bugs. Customers complain. The company's response is, "Well, look how much worse the other guy is! At least we let you see the source code!"
What compelling defense of RedHat 7.0 am I missing here?
In designing the Samurai, Micron noticed that 40% of its die was unused white space.
Heh. They "noticed" that 40% of the die space was unused?
ENGINEER BOB: Hey Steve, I just noticed that we're only using 60% of the die space on the Samurai.
ENGINEER STEVE: Hmm.... Damned if you're not right! How did that slip past us in the months we spent designing it? Good thing you're on the job, Bob!
Great. Mothers spend years of their lives teaching their kids to keep their fingers out of their bodily orifices, and now there's an invention that encourages it.
"Take your finger out of your ear this instant!"
"But Mooooom! I'm talking to Shannon!"
Even worse...what happens when someone answers the phone and says, "Wait, he's right here...it's for you"?
Doubtless this topic will draw dozens of comments from people comparing the wearable PC to a cell phone, and lamenting the problems it will cause on the highway.
Not from me, though. Imagine the fun of going through life with a real heads-up display mounted on your head, especially once it becomes socially acceptible to keep it on all the time.
You could:
Draw a moustache and devil horns on your boss while he's yelling at you;
Display bullet lists of smart stuff you always mean to say at the appropriate times, but can never remember ("Fsck you, asshole.");
Replay MPEGs of sexual relations with your significant other during arguments, so you can remember why you're together;
Post to Slashdot during business meetings. (Be sure your boss doesn't know your ID, in case he's doing the same thing.)
"Agents, of a variety of types, use their strategies, in patterned interaction, with each other and with artifacts. Performance measures on the resulting events drive the selection of agents and/or strategies through processes of error-prone copying and recombination, thus changing the frequencies of the types within the system."
If this is the article author's idea of "accessible" and "lucid," I'd hate to see what he'd consider obtuse.
The author's right about the prose not being either academic or Bizspeak. It's a hybrid of both, as unintelligible as either but without the former's precision or the latter's accessibility.
Ohhh, no. The prevalance of flaming on the 'net isn't an indication of the rise of anything. There are flamers wherever, and to the same extent, content can be divorced from consequence.
Bathroom grafitti. Prank phone calls. Letters to the editor under ficticious names. Anonymous hate (surface) mail. Big-mouthed media celebrities who'll never meet the people they slander.
All the 'net has done is lift up the rock and show you the bugs that were already there.
If I were to write, " We feel that this change will be sufficient to discourage murderers, although it is obviously insufficient to protect people against a determined and malicious attack," would you conclude that I was talking about two different kinds of attackers: murderers and 'people who kill in a determined and malicious way, but who aren't murderers'?
The sense of the comment is clearly that hackers are people who make illicit entry into systems. Modern-day computer hobbyists may redefine the term hacker if they want, but the reference cited above makes it apparent that the word's original use was synonymous with 'cracker.'
A little-known fact of the telephone business is that the telemarketers are authorized to offer lower rates than the ones they initially present to you when you when they call. You may have to speak to a supervisor, but you can almost always get them to extend a lower rate. Then, wait for your original provider to call, and do it again. A little dishonesty on your part goes a long way.
ME: Hello.
ANNOYING AT&T ASSHOLE: Hello, I'm Cindy, and I'm calling from AT&T to save you some money on your long distance bill.
ME: How much money?
AAA: [trying to stay on-script] Well, sir, we have an offer this month only...
ME: [interrupting] I already pay [AT&T best rate minus the change in my pocket at the time]. Can you beat that?
AAA: [annoyed] We have an offer this month only...
ME: [interrupting] I'm not going to switch unless you offer me [previous lie minus 5%] or less. Are you or your supervisor prepared to do that?
AAA: [flustered] Sir, we have the best rates available right now...
ME: [interrupting]... except for the one I'm already getting. I'm looking at my MCI bill right now, and they're beating the pants off your rate. Really. It's embarassing.
AAA: Let me connect you to my supervisor.
ME: Exxxx-ellent.
When MCI called me the next month, I repeated the above process. They get hip to it after a while, but I got my rates down about 10% overall, and scored several coupons for free long distance minutes, all for the cost of harrassing a telemarketer.
Like most of what Penn and Teller do, the Lemon Angels joke is more significant than it seems on the surface. P & T love to play with people's assumptions, telling them up-front that what they're about to see is a scam, then fooling them anyway.
Why do we assume that software we download from the 'net is safe, or that recipes we got from God-knows-where won't turn into foaming horrors? People who know anything at all about cooking shouldn't be fooled by the Lemon Angels trick...but they are.
The Slashdot story soliciting the questions you're now answering indicates that you're responsible for overseeing the "legal end" of the Carnivore review.
Would you please clarify what this entails? What legal issues are involved in performing a technology review?
No kidding, it's so incredibly difficult to press the "record" button if I'm going to walk away from the TV for any more than a few minutes during a show.
... and in so doing, you dump the current contents of the buffer. Have you actually used a TiVo?
I really like that this model allows the use of all available drive space for the "live" buffer.
I have the original TiVO, and one of its annoying limitations is the arbitrary 30 minute live buffer. C'mon, I have space to burn on this thing; let me pause live TV for more than a lousy half-hour!
Most of the PTV recorders on the market have similar problems with customizability. I understand the manufacturers want Joe Sixpack to be able to use the device quickly, but for heaven't sake, why don't they provide an advanced features menu?
I though patents were only supposed to be granted on specific methodologies, not general practices. The system they're describing is one means to an end, and it should be patentable, but it's not the only means to that end.
To use the archetypal example, can the first person who imagined using a computer to move bits of text around receive a patent on the concept of "word processing"?
Hash's Animation Master is a full-featured 3-D modeling, animation and rendering package with an available render farm option for only $700. You might want to check it out.
The problem with so-called "communities" on the Internet is that they're really just associations. Clubs. Chowder societies. Nothing passes between the members but talk, and while talk is an important part of community it's not the end. The ends of community are responsibility, stewardship, and protection of shared resources.
Look at any active web board, mailing list or other online "community" and you'll see many participants trying desperately to create something for which they'll have joint responsibility. They'll want an "official" webpage, an archive, an award: anything to give them a sense that they're doing more than talking.
So, are there real online communities? Sure. Look at the Open Source movement, a community of people who talk a lot, but who also build things for which they're jointly responsible: code bases, archive sites, indexes, FAQs, etc.
Why do you consider yourself part of a community in the neighborhood where you live? Is it because you talk to the people there and share the same hobbies with them? Hell, no. If you met most of these people anywhere else you might not give them the time of day. It's because you have a common interest in protecting what's yours: your houses, your kids, your streets, your peace and quiet.
Here for your amusement is Babelfish's translation of the article. It starts out pretty good and then takes a turn for the surreal.
The British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking fears that mankind will not survive a " further millenium ". In a lecture in Edinburgh explained Hawking, either a " accident or the ground electrode warming " would extinguish the life on earth. Mankind can outlive only if it settles on another planet, let the almost completely gelaehmte scientist its listeners with the conception of its new book " The of university verses in a groove-brightly " know. The scientist suffers from the paralysis illness Amyotrophe Lateralsklerose (WHEN) and can inform itself only by language computers. " I fear that the atmosphere becomes ever hotter, and that it becomes, meant like Venus bubbling sulfuric acid " Hawking. " I make myself concerns around the greenhouse effect. " Mankind can survive a further millenium only if it spreads into " space. " Without the " Kolonialisierung " of other planets mankind of becoming extinct is threatened. Major task of the theoretical physics 21. Century is it to offer to mankind a continuous theory about the happening in the universe. " we believe, we the end pieces of a complete and uniform theory found, but in the center is still much to fill out ",
I'm surprised to hear space colonization cheerleading from Hawking, who's not otherwise given to impractical ramblings.
Whatever problems we're having with climate here on Earth, they pale before the challenge of terraforming even the relatively habitable planet Mars. All the other planets in our solar system are gaseous horrors or barren rocks.
Surely any technology that could make Mars livable for humans could be adapted to reverse environmental castastrophe here on Earth.
Just becuase a product MIGHT be abused doesn't mean that it will.
No, and just because it MIGHT serve a good purpose doesn't guarantee it won't be put to bad ends.
No one's arguing this device shouldn't exist. People are just concerned about its implications, given the uses to which comparable technology has been put in the past. That's not paranoid; it's just good sense.
What is worse, having your civil liberities being violated or being critically injured?
False dilemma. Those aren't our only choices.
Are you going to let the police search your house, car, clothing, body cavities, etc. because you MIGHT be a criminal?
Insurance companies installing them? My guess is running an illegal scan of your body without written concent would probably subject them to being sued.
Your guess would be wrong. All the company has to do is refuse to sell a policy to anyone who doesn't consent to be scanned. If every insurance company does it, what's your recourse?
The lack of empathy for human beings. Like duh. You have missed the point totally here. The tech culture doesn't care about human beings, they care about the ideas of human beings.
Game, set and match, Katz.
Substitute a different set of skills...
on
Selfish Society
·
· Score: 1
... and you'll see what Katz and Borsook are talking about.
I'm distantly related to a family of hunters and woodsmen whose entire concept of human worth is built upon outdoor survival skills. They won't waste a minute of their time conversing with anyone who can't kill and dress game, find shelter in the woods, reload rifle cartridges, or identify which of hundreds of species of plants are safe to eat.
I used to know an auto mechanic who lives in total contempt of people who can't rebuild an engine. Honestly. He sneers at his customers as "stupid," mocks anyone with less knowledge of automobiles than he possesses, and generally carries on like automotive knowledge is the end-all, be-all measure of intelligence.
A buddy of mine introduced me to his Marine Corps drill sergeant, a gung-ho bull of a fellow who can barely conceal his disdain for "civilians." He'll use any excuse to steer a conversation toward his military experiences, at which point he'll hold forth for hours on how only military service teaches the perspective necessary to make adult decisions. Anyone who disagrees with his views on this or any other subject is "soft" and needs "discipline."
Notice a pattern forming here?
What Borsook is commenting upon in her book is not the entirely appropriate pride technical people take in their skills, but the tendency we all have to exaggerate the importance and applicability of what we know. She's not busting on techies for valuing what they know, but for the naked contempt some members of the fraternity show towards those with less (or no) technical expertise, and for the arrogant assumption that technical knowledge grants superior moral authority to comment on how technology should be used.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, so the author asserts ICANN is on shaky ground legally. What can we do about it? Who do we sue? Who do we lean upon?
I'd be thrilled if there were something I could be doing about this, but what?
So, let me see if I have this straight--
A company publishes a software product riddled with bugs. Customers complain. The company's response is, "Well, look how much worse the other guy is! At least we let you see the source code!"
What compelling defense of RedHat 7.0 am I missing here?
Heh. They "noticed" that 40% of the die space was unused?
ENGINEER BOB: Hey Steve, I just noticed that we're only using 60% of the die space on the Samurai.
ENGINEER STEVE: Hmm.... Damned if you're not right! How did that slip past us in the months we spent designing it? Good thing you're on the job, Bob!
"Take your finger out of your ear this instant!"
"But Mooooom! I'm talking to Shannon!"
Even worse...what happens when someone answers the phone and says, "Wait, he's right here...it's for you"?
Not from me, though. Imagine the fun of going through life with a real heads-up display mounted on your head, especially once it becomes socially acceptible to keep it on all the time.
You could:
If this is the article author's idea of "accessible" and "lucid," I'd hate to see what he'd consider obtuse.
The author's right about the prose not being either academic or Bizspeak. It's a hybrid of both, as unintelligible as either but without the former's precision or the latter's accessibility.
Ohhh, no. The prevalance of flaming on the 'net isn't an indication of the rise of anything. There are flamers wherever, and to the same extent, content can be divorced from consequence.
Bathroom grafitti. Prank phone calls. Letters to the editor under ficticious names. Anonymous hate (surface) mail. Big-mouthed media celebrities who'll never meet the people they slander.
All the 'net has done is lift up the rock and show you the bugs that were already there.
If I were to write, " We feel that this change will be sufficient to discourage murderers, although it is obviously insufficient to protect people against a determined and malicious attack," would you conclude that I was talking about two different kinds of attackers: murderers and 'people who kill in a determined and malicious way, but who aren't murderers'?
The sense of the comment is clearly that hackers are people who make illicit entry into systems. Modern-day computer hobbyists may redefine the term hacker if they want, but the reference cited above makes it apparent that the word's original use was synonymous with 'cracker.'
ME: Hello. ANNOYING AT&T ASSHOLE: Hello, I'm Cindy, and I'm calling from AT&T to save you some money on your long distance bill. ... except for the one I'm already getting. I'm looking at my MCI bill right now, and they're beating the pants off your rate. Really. It's embarassing.
ME: How much money?
AAA: [trying to stay on-script] Well, sir, we have an offer this month only...
ME: [interrupting] I already pay [AT&T best rate minus the change in my pocket at the time]. Can you beat that?
AAA: [annoyed] We have an offer this month only... ME: [interrupting] I'm not going to switch unless you offer me [previous lie minus 5%] or less. Are you or your supervisor prepared to do that?
AAA: [flustered] Sir, we have the best rates available right now...
ME: [interrupting]
AAA: Let me connect you to my supervisor.
ME: Exxxx-ellent.
When MCI called me the next month, I repeated the above process. They get hip to it after a while, but I got my rates down about 10% overall, and scored several coupons for free long distance minutes, all for the cost of harrassing a telemarketer.
I love this country.
Yes, I'd mind, but I wouldn't advocate spending a fortune to stop you.
Like most of what Penn and Teller do, the Lemon Angels joke is more significant than it seems on the surface. P & T love to play with people's assumptions, telling them up-front that what they're about to see is a scam, then fooling them anyway.
Why do we assume that software we download from the 'net is safe, or that recipes we got from God-knows-where won't turn into foaming horrors? People who know anything at all about cooking shouldn't be fooled by the Lemon Angels trick...but they are.
Do you have Lemon Angels on your computer?
Dean Perrit,
The Slashdot story soliciting the questions you're now answering indicates that you're responsible for overseeing the "legal end" of the Carnivore review.
Would you please clarify what this entails? What legal issues are involved in performing a technology review?
I really like that this model allows the use of all available drive space for the "live" buffer.
I have the original TiVO, and one of its annoying limitations is the arbitrary 30 minute live buffer. C'mon, I have space to burn on this thing; let me pause live TV for more than a lousy half-hour!
Most of the PTV recorders on the market have similar problems with customizability. I understand the manufacturers want Joe Sixpack to be able to use the device quickly, but for heaven't sake, why don't they provide an advanced features menu?
I hope the new station is immune to space fungus.
I though patents were only supposed to be granted on specific methodologies, not general practices. The system they're describing is one means to an end, and it should be patentable, but it's not the only means to that end.
To use the archetypal example, can the first person who imagined using a computer to move bits of text around receive a patent on the concept of "word processing"?
Hash's Animation Master is a full-featured 3-D modeling, animation and rendering package with an available render farm option for only $700. You might want to check it out.
Look at any active web board, mailing list or other online "community" and you'll see many participants trying desperately to create something for which they'll have joint responsibility. They'll want an "official" webpage, an archive, an award: anything to give them a sense that they're doing more than talking.
So, are there real online communities? Sure. Look at the Open Source movement, a community of people who talk a lot, but who also build things for which they're jointly responsible: code bases, archive sites, indexes, FAQs, etc.
Why do you consider yourself part of a community in the neighborhood where you live? Is it because you talk to the people there and share the same hobbies with them? Hell, no. If you met most of these people anywhere else you might not give them the time of day. It's because you have a common interest in protecting what's yours: your houses, your kids, your streets, your peace and quiet.
Whatever problems we're having with climate here on Earth, they pale before the challenge of terraforming even the relatively habitable planet Mars. All the other planets in our solar system are gaseous horrors or barren rocks.
Surely any technology that could make Mars livable for humans could be adapted to reverse environmental castastrophe here on Earth.
Whoa! "This sucka's mine!"
Ain't that the shiznitz? The sequel will no doubt be based on Miller's seminal "Batman: Word!" or the less well-received "Batman: Keepin' it Real."
No one's arguing this device shouldn't exist. People are just concerned about its implications, given the uses to which comparable technology has been put in the past. That's not paranoid; it's just good sense.
False dilemma. Those aren't our only choices.Are you going to let the police search your house, car, clothing, body cavities, etc. because you MIGHT be a criminal?
Your guess would be wrong. All the company has to do is refuse to sell a policy to anyone who doesn't consent to be scanned. If every insurance company does it, what's your recourse?Game, set and match, Katz.
I'm distantly related to a family of hunters and woodsmen whose entire concept of human worth is built upon outdoor survival skills. They won't waste a minute of their time conversing with anyone who can't kill and dress game, find shelter in the woods, reload rifle cartridges, or identify which of hundreds of species of plants are safe to eat.
I used to know an auto mechanic who lives in total contempt of people who can't rebuild an engine. Honestly. He sneers at his customers as "stupid," mocks anyone with less knowledge of automobiles than he possesses, and generally carries on like automotive knowledge is the end-all, be-all measure of intelligence.
A buddy of mine introduced me to his Marine Corps drill sergeant, a gung-ho bull of a fellow who can barely conceal his disdain for "civilians." He'll use any excuse to steer a conversation toward his military experiences, at which point he'll hold forth for hours on how only military service teaches the perspective necessary to make adult decisions. Anyone who disagrees with his views on this or any other subject is "soft" and needs "discipline."
Notice a pattern forming here?
What Borsook is commenting upon in her book is not the entirely appropriate pride technical people take in their skills, but the tendency we all have to exaggerate the importance and applicability of what we know. She's not busting on techies for valuing what they know, but for the naked contempt some members of the fraternity show towards those with less (or no) technical expertise, and for the arrogant assumption that technical knowledge grants superior moral authority to comment on how technology should be used.