Even without using sourcecode just describing how it works is illegal, you'll be sued and fined
I wear a T-Shirt with the DeCSS source code about once a month; no one has either sued or fined me.
And that's not the government doing the suing (governments tend to stick to criminal cases); it's a corporation, and they -- being smarter than most governments -- have chosen targets to sue who are likely to lose. Being an asshole makes it hard to win in civil suits.
yes this is not as bad as China but you dont have any more freedom than China the only difference is their punishments are more harsh.
I personally have a great deal more freedom than the average Chinese citizen (according to my old college roommates; they did come from the PRC back in the Tian An Men days). I can call up my local talk radio and rant (for as long as the host lets me) about the crimes of George Bush, and guess what? I don't end up jailed, making cheap shoes for Nike. I can post criticism of the US, buy Unamerican, play European DVDs, and drive my classic car, and not get any "governmental" interference.
You seem to be confusing the stupid laws with the companies that paid for them to be passed. I may get sued by Disney, but the U.S. Federal Government couldn't care less what I do, so long as I continue paying my protection money (read: income taxes).
I see people bash China left and right, constantly, but I never see anyone of these people Bash the USA.
Selective reading, my friend? There's plenty of US, DMCA, Congress-bashing all of the time. Look at nearly every Slashback in recent memory...
Actually, the only reason that China gets so much bashing is that, well, inside of China you don't get to bash them. In America (and Europe, and many if not most other places), we get to bash our government in every medium, as often as we're willing to bother. Granted, it gets old eventually, so we tend to concentrate on something more important to us personally. Like which Willow is better:)
We all know the USA is not perfect so what gives us the right to Bash China as if we are better or something?
Our government doesn't do what China's does. It doesn't censor directly; it doesn't ban religions (even pseudo-religions); it does allow criticism and free political speech.
And when someone criticises the US, our government doesn't throw a hissy fit. You haven't noticed us breaking diplomatic relations or trade ties with Germany, now, have you? And you won't; our goverment disagrees with Germany's government (hell, it disagrees with me too!), but that isn't going to interfere with business as usual. And note, the US criticizes Germany's stance on declaring Scientology a cult rather than a religion, so such disagreements are certainly not new nor interesting...
As citizens and residents in the US, we have the right (check the First Amendment here) to whinge about not only our government, but our neighbors and city councilmen and international conglomerates and the French... and yes, the government of the PRC. Get used to it, bucko, it's a big world out here:)
Ok I understand us Bashing the taliban, but China?
China does some very nasty things; to wit:
imprison people without allowing them to defend themselves (i.e., presumption of guilt)
censor political speech
declares activities that the rest of the planet considers to be individual rights to be crimes (e.g., practice of religion such as Falung Gong, viewing of websites that criticize the policies of the Chinese Government, interactions with countries like Taiwan, immigration, yadda, yadda, yadda)
Throws a fit whenever someone calls them to task for their activies, be it a government or a lowly foreign individual.
So, my lad, if you can't take the heat, you'd best get out of the kitchen!
Okay, basic constitutional division-of-powers time (and were were you in ninth grade, buddy?):
In the Commonwealth, the Governor, Attorney General, Treasurer, Secretary, etc. are all elected by direct suffrage from the entire electorate. They can't give each other orders. There's no mechanism for them to even transmit the order (legally); the most effective thing they can do is sound-bite one another to death on 4,5,9,25, and 56...
Mitt is the only Republican who made it to state-wide office. Every single other office mentioned above is held by a Demo; if Mitt says something to Natalie Jacobsen, Tom Reilly (AG) will just go talk to Andy Hiller.
And heaven help us all if Bill Galvin (Secretary of the Commonwealth, AKA the Prince of Darkness) gets involved:)
Tom Reilly's staff in the anti-trust division are all salaried; and a potential Microsoft case "win" (by the Commonwealth) is probably more useful than going after Target and K-Mart for price-errors on toilet paper, or Fleet and Sovereign for bank fees.
Unfortunately, we (the SO and I) managed to watch maybe two episodes.
IMHO, Firefly's dreadful. Not, mind you, the writing or the acting -- but the concept is ludicrous. The original "old West" settlers didn't leave current technology behind (trust me, they're my effing ancestors)... it's not credible that off-world colonists would "revert" to the American West technologically or culturally. And it's a darn sight cheaper to transport frozen embryos than it will ever be to transport livestock or meat:)
It's pretty clear that there's been some additional Fox fingers-in-the-pot messing with Joss Whedon's stuff. Which just makes it worse.
(note, I have only voted in Somerville, at least until next Tuesday...)
Since the late 80's at least, we've been using machine-scanned paper ballots. Nearly impossible to screw up -- except for the machine that collects and scans the ballots. I remember one of my ballots being shredded on being put into the feeder. They gave me another ballot on the spot:)
This gives you the best of all possible worlds -- user-friendliness (even great-grandmothers know how to use a felt-tip) and machine speed. And a tangible thing for humans to recount...
Some will say - "just don't go to those sites" but the fact is that I receive dozens of SPAM messages with pornographic images each week. These are unsolicited, and unwelcome. They appear in all of the mailboxes that I have, whether or not I use those addresses to post to usenet groups or websites.
Fair enough. This one at least has a fix: use a different mailer. I switched to software that does POP-polling (grabs at least "from" and "subject") for my mail, and lets me delete it from the server without ever having seen it.
The big problem is the false-positive filters. I'll give you a cogent example.
Let's say you're a 5th grader (age 10-11) and you're doing a research project in 2000 on New Media. But your school filters out one of the most prominent new media commentary sites (Suck.com) in a mistaken belief that it's porn.
Let's say you're a 5th grader now and you want to understand what's going on with Enron -- you can't go to Enronsucks.com (or whatever) because of the same mistaken filter.
And of course the whole AOL breast cancer nonsense, and NetNanny filtering the National Organization of Women... well, you see the trouble.
I don't mind school filtering for *little* kids -- sub 10 years old, in general -- but once a kid is old enough to start wanting to gather information independently, the school's filtered computers become useless.
I encountered the first example myself attempting to show a niece some new media journalism at the SJ Tech. Suck was filtered; fortunately, I could still get through to Salon as a poor substitute:-(
Filters aren't a panacea. While I applaud the filtering of the more mature sexual and violence sites, the actual filters I've encountered in.edu type sites are pitiful.
I hope your experience in.nl is better than mine here in the us.
Seriously, the one thing I hated when Suck went from several small ads to one big ad was that the big ad was always from NextCard or Toyota or some POS that I would never in a million years buy.
At Slashdot you have ThinkGeek, SourceForge, various linux-related ads -- never once a stupid credit card or auto ad. I *do* clickthrough on occasion (I even shop at ThinkGeek); so long as the banner ads remain relevant I wouldn't *want to do without.
And given the nature of the audience, many who don't want ads already block them, or know how to. So a pay service may end up costing more to administer than it makes in collections.
As a fellow mediaone soon-to-be victim (though I use my ancient-as-dirt TIAC account for most mail), I just checked on RCN, which both my neighbors have.
http://www.rcn.com/massachusetts/
There's a popup with a list of towns supported; while not a *huge* area, it's better than being fscked over yet again by what happens to mediaone -- service went downhill when ATT acquired them, then again with the @home nonsense; I can't imagine the Comcast will be any *better*.
Medford and Cambridge city councils ought to get off their duffs and get RCN in to compete with the ATT megalith. Just *my* opinion.
I find it hard to imagine what you can't do with free, legal open source software.... The latest Debian CD provides all the software anyone could ever conceive of needing.
Um, no, Debian's CD has many, many holes in it, along with every other Linux distro. Which I see no fault with, personally. But Linux as a dev environment in *my* field isn't terribly useful...
I produce multimedia programs for my so-called living. Much as I like Linux, the programs I *need* run ~$1K USD/per, are and will likely forever be closed-source, and don't yet have Linux versions (except maybe DeBab).
Which software and upgrades I have to pay for myself.
So, before blowing a grand or more on a program, I do my damnedest to check it out. I've only had to resort to a warez thang once (Thank you ADOBE -- though once I checked it was clear that what I bought instead from Terran works about a gazillion times better); most companies a la Macromedia have 30-day killware that you can download and do the feature check before putting money into it.
The programs I need for compositing or editing material don't currently exist on Linux; many are in their first or second actual version on Windows (rather than version 7 on the Mac;-) ).
I'd be happy to use open-source sw if any existed that compared favorably to my current dev suite (Authorware/Director/Flash/SuperCard; SoundForge; Debabelizer; Cleaner5; TextEdit/BBEdit). But at this time the demand simply ain't there.
Last month I had the same experience, without the slamming -- I'm a Verizon customer (boo, hiss) with MCI Worldcom toll and long distance service.
Note: I have an unlisted number, and filled out the paperwork 9 years ago per the CPNI below, so telemarketers who use automatic dialers must get the "forced exclude list" from Verizon. Otherwise, they're up for the willful disregard penalty of $1500/call.
AT&T called me (third time in 3 years), and asked for me by name. I asked the dude calling how he'd gotten my #. He refused to answer. I demanded to be added to the "Do Not Call" list, which I was supposed to be on already. He said, "You have to do that with your local phone company." "I did that 9 years ago; you're the only ones repeatedly violating it. Please connect me to your supervisor." "No." We went a couple more rounds, and I finished off with, "I hope this call is being recorded; you and AT&T are in *BIG* trouble, man!"
I immediately dialed up Verizon and was on nearly-infinite hold (during the strike). The rep confirmed that I was on the list, noted the two companies who I'd complained about in the past (Boston Globe and AT&T), and said, "Well, whenever the strike is over, we'll get on their cases about it." I reported to her the time of the call; Verizon can pull the logs and see who exactly called me.
I did try calling the FCC, but they don't take phone call complaints (try it yourself, it's an adventure!).
Unfortunately, Hemos is an AT&T local customer. So believe it or not, that's who his first line of defense is. Oops.
Second is MA Department of Telecommunications and Energy, Telecommunications Division (in the blue pages of the Boston phone book). They hate these guys too.
Lastly is in writing to the FCC. Good luck.
The regs read (courtesy of Bell Atlantic-that-was):
Customer Proprietary Network Information (CPNI)
Customer Proprietary Network Information (CPNI) consists of details of your telephone service and billing information. Under Federal Communications Commission rules, Bell Atlantic, its affiliates, and its agents must obtain your approval to use your CPNI for marketing purposes. You can let us know of your approval or disapproval by calling your business office, or by signing and returning an authorization form we will send to you. Your decision will have no effect on the service you receive from us.
from Rosen, via JonKatz: Invasions of privacy were a hallmark of the Monica Lewinsky scandal,
Actually, what Kenneth Starr did with Ms. Lewinsky is what prosecutors -- federal, state and local -- do all the time. It's just in this case, it seems to have come about as part of a civil trial (the Paula Jones fiasco), which Mr. Starr used to attempt to fabricate a criminal issue.
It's not gender discrimination, per se; it's prosecutoral misconduct highlighted by a consensual relationship (leaving out whether or not it was sexual) that got invaded.
more JonKatz: In l890, Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis wrote that "the common law secures to each individual the right of determining, ordinarily, to what extent his thoughts, sentiments, and emotions shall be communicated to others." That legal principle once prevented prosecutors from seizing and studying diaries, letters, and private papers.
However, once a person's activities, including speech, take place in the public domain, they are free for scrutiny. So buying books online at Amazon means that those records can be supoena'ed. Buying books with cash at your local bookstore doesn't leave that kind of trail. The nature of various online transactions destroys anonymity unless specific -- and perhaps unfortunately, legislative -- prohibitions are put in place. I begin to appreciate the German constitution more and more -- they wrote into their Grundstutz, back in '48 and '49, that there were limits on what data could be collected by governmental and private entities. We need to do that here as well, as the EU has pointed out to the US government repeatedly;-)
Further: Thus many Americans were flabbergasted by the degree to which prosecutors could vacuum up the most intimate details of Monica Lewinsky's life, from her bookstore purchases to her private letters and e-mail. Whatever people thought of her relationship with this dunder-headed president, many were uncomfortable not only with the prosecutor's zeal but with the wide public dissemination her private life and records received in media and court documents.
I take it that people don't keep tabs on local trials, eh? Granted, living near particularly litigious Boston has some perks, but the behavior of Starr and his staff is no different from the behavior of the various Middlesex County DA's for the past 13 years. The only difference is that, if possible, the prosecutor's victims, in this instance, were even dumber than the usual ones up here in MA. Most of us would take the dress for drycleaning the next day, believe me. And, if asked a question on the stand that our lawyers couldn't successfully object to, most of the men I know would rather just say, "No, I didn't screw her. She blew me. Ask her."
more Rosen and JonKatz: Rosen convincingly assigns a lot of the blame to recently-enacted harassment laws, which made the Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky dramas possible. As sexual harassment law expands, writes Rosen, people can be interrogated about their consensual relationships on the flimsiest of allegations. During the l980's and 90's, he writes, the Supreme Court recognized sexually explict speech and conduct that created a "hostile or offensive working environment" as a form of gender discrimination, a legal evolution that made it difficult for lower courts and employers to distinguish consensual affairs from illegal sexual coercion.
I think that you only accept Mr. Rosen's conclusion -- that harassment laws are nearly exclusively gender-based -- if you accept his premise of same.
The Paula Jones suit was a civil suit. There was no legislation involved there. Like most civil suits, the lawyers presented whatever they could dig up -- and the fact that the president has round heels was what they dug up.
[I would not have imagined describing a man like that 20 years ago, would you?]
I feel that the judge allowed the plaintiff's lawyers too much leeway to invade the president's privacy. And her decision stated that basically, Ms. Jones had no standing to sue Mr. Clinton -- he wasn't the one who'd caused the uproar, the magazine that was paying for her lawyers had. Remember, the settlement came after Clinton had won the case, in order to forestall any appeal.
more JonKatz: The threat of harassment suits has prompted companies to wantonly invade their workers' private e-mail and personal correspondence -- even to rifle their desks -- almost at will.
Perhaps the publishing industry is different from others, but I've *never* had a job -- and I've been in the workforce since 1977 -- where my employer didn't explicitly have (and abuse) that right. So, I don't see where harassment suits changed anything, except for premise that the company uses.
That's one reason I'm now a contract programmer -- they can't invade my desk here without a search warrant;-)
I think you should try doing a reality check before accepting premises such as these -- it's just the same old story, with more explicit sex added...
Which is about the only way I see to deal with Mr. Billington. Though it'd be nice if we could replace the old reptile with at least a mammal.
I wrote my undergrad thesis on the impact of the development of the printing press on German Literature and the Reformation. So, to me, Billington's comments seem more than a little familiar. Though it's nice that it's not a member of the Inquisition, this time...
While I don't disagree with the importance -- and possible priority -- of digitizing the "special materials", it *is* imperative that books get digitized as well. Not necessarily put online for open access -- especially those with copyright issues -- but digitized both for preservation purposes and for research purposes.
I was taught about original sources as a child. And it would be *far* more useful -- and perhaps *enhance* the LoC's annual funding arguments -- if they had a plethora of original material digitized for schoolchildren and university students to search on and use -- or at least *know about* so that they can request the item through interlibrary loan. The LoC is *not* going to be less of a research-friendly institution by digitizing books.
It was difficult for me to obtain the facsimiles of a court process -- handwritten -- in 1439 in Strasbourg (Gutenberg was sued by one of his VCs, whattaya know?) while I was in college. It was an original source that was recommended to me by my prof; otherwise, I'd never have found it. I eventually got the book -- well out of copyright even then -- through interlibrary loan. This is a typical problem -- research materials that cannot be easily obtained should be available online. Traveling to the LoC in Washington would have been *vastly* prohibitive for an *undergrad* thesis.
The LoC is supposed to be an "open" repository of knowledge. Mr. Billington is making sure that it's only open to *his* type of scholar. At least for his tenure.
Yeah, we oughtta send Jon Katz, just for laughs. And I'll add this to my list to send to Congressman Mike.
I code educational software as about 50% of my living. Granted, it's aimed at HS and above, but I *do* work directly in this industry.
Most.edu software in the K-12 realm is pretty poor. A huge number of "click next to continue" linear crap that was better in the original book. This is one case where Sturgeon's Law applies;-) So, for a teacher to have a prayer of having any "good" stuff on their student's machines, they have to learn a *lot* about what's out there -- and not just what the district curriculuum committee gives them on the PO sheet.
Most teachers don't have time, expertise, or inclination to bother. Those who do are the ones who've been writing their own Hypercard stacks or VB stuff for the past years already. Putting state or city money into laptops without a concommitant investment in relevant teacher training is *insane*. And about as useful as a fish with a bicycle.
If the districts are going to hire dedicated computer instructors (the way that we had the traveling music and art teachers in my KCMO grade school back in the '60s), there is at least a chance that a "laptop for every child" strategy could be successful. That would give the classroom "primary instructor" time to learn what the hell this computer is *for*, because there is someone there they can *ask* periodically. The Maine example could allow that, iff the districts hired them. Though $500/box is not going to meet any performance bar for the "good" software, in my experience.
The NYC option is far uglier. I wouldn't allow advertising in a school setting -- if I wanted a kid to learn jingles I'd let them watch TV at home;-) And the likelihood of any.edu software with embedded advertising meeting even a minimum bar of instructional robustness approaches 0.
I just hope the parents and voters in these jurisdictions are whinging loudly about the proposals.
Or, specifically, with the daily paper? At least here in Boston, they still use the ink-comes-off-on-your-hands printing, and they still don't cover my suburb (Somerville) except when something dreadful happens. Any of the stories I have an intrest in turn up online (the Boston Globe puts today's and yesterday's stories up). And the Boston Herald is published by Rupert Murdoch -- the spin there is only good for laughs.
I stopped subscribing to the Boston Globe about 10 years ago -- besides the ink problem, and the difficulties in reading it on the subway, I found that most of the news fell into: a) national/international blurbs not enough information -- no transcripts or full text of anything b) Local disasters c) Grief often rehashed months after the fact like the Worcester firefighters d) local politics only for Mass state and Boston City. So while I'm vitally interested in the State House, the MWRA (water) and the MBTA (T) and the Big Dig, the papers do a piss-poor job of doing more than tabloid summaries of the content I'd like to see.
And I won't even touch the so-called "women's" sections. My life is a *lot* more complicated than recipes and cellulite, trust me.
I *do* occasionally buy a NYTimes on Tuesdays for the Science section. And I often buy the local weekly Somerville Journal, or the city-wide weekly Boston Phoenix. But otherwise I rely on online sources for news (boston.com, mercury, theguardian, slashdot, etc.), or print magazines like the Economist.
The chances of my ever subscribing or reading a daily paper again are close to nil. The audience they're currently aiming at is a technophobic, shallow individual who is willing to let *them* choose which subjects I should be interested in. I just *don't* fit their target demographic -- and given the news culture (Cokie & Steven Roberts' article against net news back in the distant past, for instance), I don't imagine that I ever will.
You Seam to have forgotten the joys of estrogen, for IMHO that nasty hormone can be worse than testosterone.
Worse? Compared to what?
Estrogen doesn't seem to fuel anger nearly as well -- at least in the cultures I'm familiar with in North America and Europe -- as does testosterone. Look at any age-similar studies of comparisons in violent behavior between men and women.
If there's a difference, it's likely to be both biological and cultural. Either one could point to why fewer women bother with flaming.
Also, do the letters PMS bring anything close to flaming to mind???
Nope. Most women can play brass-titted bitch regardless of which week of the month it is.
And, honestly, bad behavior is *not* due to PMS when it's going on 28 days out of 30...
Women online: As a woman (yes, one of the few, the proud, the mighty), I have to corroborate Katz's note that I'm more likely to post to women-only or moderated groups and lists than to flame-fora.
That said, it's not because I can't flame; I once told a.ru programmer to stop wagging his penis on news:comp.multimedia, and had an *interesting* 24-hours of follow-ups. However, there are only so many hours in a day, and most women, like myself, do actually have *lives* off-net. I'm highly unlikely to spend hours flaming or responding to flames when what I need to do online is find an internal SCSI Zip drive or an Open GL driver for the new board going into my Linux box.
Angry young men: Who, if you could run a demographic study on repeat flamers, would constitute nearly the entirety of the flaming population. Remember that these guys are victims of the same schooling as the rest of us. Plus testosterone;-)
Flaming is a relatively harmless outlet for their aggravation; I'd vastly prefer that they post flames than actively try to avenge themselves upon the wider society, don't you?
Katz may not have noticed that flamers aren't rewarded as well as they'd like to be; but I doubt that Jon is used to the phrase, "Welcome to my killfile, sucker!" On/., we have the luxury of setting our level to 2 and leaving at least the unskilled flamers in the dust.
I rather doubt that your garden-variety flamer finds being ignored "rewarding".
I'm surprised at the premise that flamers somehow "inhibit" free speech. While that may be true in fora where the signal-to-noise ratio makes finding useful material impossible (many news:alt.* groups, for instance), in subject-matter areas like moderated groups, mailing lists and weblogs, flamers have a tendency to be treated like spam -- deleted or skipped past without further ado. They may take up *physical* space on screen and HD, but if you don't click on them or read them, they can't possibly waste your time.
Which is why many flames seem harmless to their creators -- they know that the only people who could possibly be affected by their posts are precisely the audience they'd like to aggravate. It's going to be rather difficult to remediate bad behavior when the only people who notice or care are the ones the perpetrator already detests;-)
Katz and Technology: Well, I first read [about] JonKatz at Suck, and then read his work at Netizen. So I have *some* sense of history, which I suspect that many of his more virulent flamers lack.
Katz is not a Linux programmer. Neither am I (there being less $ interest in multimedia under the various Unices than under Windows or MacOS). He's a journalist and commentator *and* technophile -- while he may not be as technically adept as most of his/. audience, he is a reasonable interface between our geek heaven and the real world of technophobic politicans, media outlets, and parental units {like my mom who still can't comprehend the metric system). I expect to disagree with him -- but I can't see the point in condemning him for expressing what he sees.
If you want to rag on him for occasionally leaving in weird artifact characters courtesy of MS Word for Windoze, well, I'm totally with you there;-)
[postscript] My website is out-of-date, and the drive where I edit it from is currently toast (Mac OS 4G multi-partition whose partition block bit the dust while I was playing CivII). So I am no longer in need of a personal slave, the one I obtained takes up all of my free time already.
Then again, I'm the one who bitches and whines every GDC about the decreasing number of technical women in attendance.
Mind you, I don't claim to be *good* at games, unlike those of my compatriots who beat the pants off of the guys at ID... But I certainly do game, as well as write code and run a heterogenous LAN.
Slashdot Mirror
I wear a T-Shirt with the DeCSS source code about once a month; no one has either sued or fined me.
And that's not the government doing the suing (governments tend to stick to criminal cases); it's a corporation, and they -- being smarter than most governments -- have chosen targets to sue who are likely to lose. Being an asshole makes it hard to win in civil suits.
yes this is not as bad as China but you dont have any more freedom than China the only difference is their punishments are more harsh.
I personally have a great deal more freedom than the average Chinese citizen (according to my old college roommates; they did come from the PRC back in the Tian An Men days). I can call up my local talk radio and rant (for as long as the host lets me) about the crimes of George Bush, and guess what? I don't end up jailed, making cheap shoes for Nike. I can post criticism of the US, buy Unamerican, play European DVDs, and drive my classic car, and not get any "governmental" interference.
You seem to be confusing the stupid laws with the companies that paid for them to be passed. I may get sued by Disney, but the U.S. Federal Government couldn't care less what I do, so long as I continue paying my protection money (read: income taxes).
Selective reading, my friend? There's plenty of US, DMCA, Congress-bashing all of the time. Look at nearly every Slashback in recent memory...
Actually, the only reason that China gets so much bashing is that, well, inside of China you don't get to bash them. In America (and Europe, and many if not most other places), we get to bash our government in every medium, as often as we're willing to bother. Granted, it gets old eventually, so we tend to concentrate on something more important to us personally. Like which Willow is better
We all know the USA is not perfect so what gives us the right to Bash China as if we are better or something?
Our government doesn't do what China's does. It doesn't censor directly; it doesn't ban religions (even pseudo-religions); it does allow criticism and free political speech.
And when someone criticises the US, our government doesn't throw a hissy fit. You haven't noticed us breaking diplomatic relations or trade ties with Germany, now, have you? And you won't; our goverment disagrees with Germany's government (hell, it disagrees with me too!), but that isn't going to interfere with business as usual. And note, the US criticizes Germany's stance on declaring Scientology a cult rather than a religion, so such disagreements are certainly not new nor interesting...
As citizens and residents in the US, we have the right (check the First Amendment here) to whinge about not only our government, but our neighbors and city councilmen and international conglomerates and the French... and yes, the government of the PRC. Get used to it, bucko, it's a big world out here
Ok I understand us Bashing the taliban, but China?
China does some very nasty things; to wit:
So, my lad, if you can't take the heat, you'd best get out of the kitchen!
I've done both the bridge walk and the tunnel crawl (twice for the tunnel), and I have to admit that it's just about the coolest damn thing :)
And I'm going to get to drive on it in a month. ENVY ME!
Okay, basic constitutional division-of-powers time (and were were you in ninth grade, buddy?):
:)
In the Commonwealth, the Governor, Attorney General, Treasurer, Secretary, etc. are all elected by direct suffrage from the entire electorate. They can't give each other orders. There's no mechanism for them to even transmit the order (legally); the most effective thing they can do is sound-bite one another to death on 4,5,9,25, and 56...
Mitt is the only Republican who made it to state-wide office. Every single other office mentioned above is held by a Demo; if Mitt says something to Natalie Jacobsen, Tom Reilly (AG) will just go talk to Andy Hiller.
And heaven help us all if Bill Galvin (Secretary of the Commonwealth, AKA the Prince of Darkness) gets involved
Tom Reilly's staff in the anti-trust division are all salaried; and a potential Microsoft case "win" (by the Commonwealth) is probably more useful than going after Target and K-Mart for price-errors on toilet paper, or Fleet and Sovereign for bank fees.
Think about it.
IMHO, Firefly's dreadful. Not, mind you, the writing or the acting -- but the concept is ludicrous. The original "old West" settlers didn't leave current technology behind (trust me, they're my effing ancestors)... it's not credible that off-world colonists would "revert" to the American West technologically or culturally. And it's a darn sight cheaper to transport frozen embryos than it will ever be to transport livestock or meat :)
It's pretty clear that there's been some additional Fox fingers-in-the-pot messing with Joss Whedon's stuff. Which just makes it worse.
Kill Firefly, bring back Dark Angel. Pinheads!
(note, I have only voted in Somerville, at least until next Tuesday...)
:)
Since the late 80's at least, we've been using machine-scanned paper ballots. Nearly impossible to screw up -- except for the machine that collects and scans the ballots. I remember one of my ballots being shredded on being put into the feeder. They gave me another ballot on the spot
This gives you the best of all possible worlds -- user-friendliness (even great-grandmothers know how to use a felt-tip) and machine speed. And a tangible thing for humans to recount...
I switched to The Bat in '99, and I swear it's the best mailer I've got. I wish Mailsmith (Mac-only, from BareBones) had all of its features :)
http://www.ritlabs.com/
Then, of course, spend several hours removing all references to "outlook" and "exchange" from RegEdit...
Fair enough. This one at least has a fix: use a different mailer. I switched to software that does POP-polling (grabs at least "from" and "subject") for my mail, and lets me delete it from the server without ever having seen it.
Windows:TheBat![RitLabs]
Macintosh:MailSmith[BareBonesSW]
Any Linux suggestions?
HTH, --jas
The big problem is the false-positive filters. I'll give you a cogent example.
:-(
.edu type sites are pitiful.
.nl is better than mine here in the us.
Let's say you're a 5th grader (age 10-11) and you're doing a research project in 2000 on New Media. But your school filters out one of the most prominent new media commentary sites (Suck.com) in a mistaken belief that it's porn.
Let's say you're a 5th grader now and you want to understand what's going on with Enron -- you can't go to Enronsucks.com (or whatever) because of the same mistaken filter.
And of course the whole AOL breast cancer nonsense, and NetNanny filtering the National Organization of Women... well, you see the trouble.
I don't mind school filtering for *little* kids -- sub 10 years old, in general -- but once a kid is old enough to start wanting to gather information independently, the school's filtered computers become useless.
I encountered the first example myself attempting to show a niece some new media journalism at the SJ Tech. Suck was filtered; fortunately, I could still get through to Salon as a poor substitute
Filters aren't a panacea. While I applaud the filtering of the more mature sexual and violence sites, the actual filters I've encountered in
I hope your experience in
Seriously, the one thing I hated when Suck went from several small ads to one big ad was that the big ad was always from NextCard or Toyota or some POS that I would never in a million years buy.
At Slashdot you have ThinkGeek, SourceForge, various linux-related ads -- never once a stupid credit card or auto ad. I *do* clickthrough on occasion (I even shop at ThinkGeek); so long as the banner ads remain relevant I wouldn't *want to do without.
And given the nature of the audience, many who don't want ads already block them, or know how to. So a pay service may end up costing more to administer than it makes in collections.
As a fellow mediaone soon-to-be victim (though I use my ancient-as-dirt TIAC account for most mail), I just checked on RCN, which both my neighbors have.
http://www.rcn.com/massachusetts/
There's a popup with a list of towns supported; while not a *huge* area, it's better than being fscked over yet again by what happens to mediaone -- service went downhill when ATT acquired them, then again with the @home nonsense; I can't imagine the Comcast will be any *better*.
Medford and Cambridge city councils ought to get off their duffs and get RCN in to compete with the ATT megalith. Just *my* opinion.
Toodles,
--domsol
Um, no, Debian's CD has many, many holes in it, along with every other Linux distro. Which I see no fault with, personally. But Linux as a dev environment in *my* field isn't terribly useful...
I produce multimedia programs for my so-called living. Much as I like Linux, the programs I *need* run ~$1K USD/per, are and will likely forever be closed-source, and don't yet have Linux versions (except maybe DeBab).
Which software and upgrades I have to pay for myself.
So, before blowing a grand or more on a program, I do my damnedest to check it out. I've only had to resort to a warez thang once (Thank you ADOBE -- though once I checked it was clear that what I bought instead from Terran works about a gazillion times better); most companies a la Macromedia have 30-day killware that you can download and do the feature check before putting money into it.
The programs I need for compositing or editing material don't currently exist on Linux; many are in their first or second actual version on Windows (rather than version 7 on the Mac ;-) ).
I'd be happy to use open-source sw if any existed that compared favorably to my current dev suite (Authorware/Director/Flash/SuperCard; SoundForge; Debabelizer; Cleaner5; TextEdit/BBEdit). But at this time the demand simply ain't there.
Now back to my ditch...
--domsol
Last month I had the same experience, without the slamming -- I'm a Verizon customer (boo, hiss) with MCI Worldcom toll and long distance service.
Note: I have an unlisted number, and filled out the paperwork 9 years ago per the CPNI below, so telemarketers who use automatic dialers must get the "forced exclude list" from Verizon. Otherwise, they're up for the willful disregard penalty of $1500/call.
AT&T called me (third time in 3 years), and asked for me by name. I asked the dude calling how he'd gotten my #. He refused to answer. I demanded to be added to the "Do Not Call" list, which I was supposed to be on already. He said, "You have to do that with your local phone company." "I did that 9 years ago; you're the only ones repeatedly violating it. Please connect me to your supervisor." "No." We went a couple more rounds, and I finished off with, "I hope this call is being recorded; you and AT&T are in *BIG* trouble, man!"
I immediately dialed up Verizon and was on nearly-infinite hold (during the strike). The rep confirmed that I was on the list, noted the two companies who I'd complained about in the past (Boston Globe and AT&T), and said, "Well, whenever the strike is over, we'll get on their cases about it." I reported to her the time of the call; Verizon can pull the logs and see who exactly called me.
I did try calling the FCC, but they don't take phone call complaints (try it yourself, it's an adventure!).
Unfortunately, Hemos is an AT&T local customer. So believe it or not, that's who his first line of defense is. Oops.
Second is MA Department of Telecommunications and Energy, Telecommunications Division (in the blue pages of the Boston phone book). They hate these guys too.
Lastly is in writing to the FCC. Good luck.
The regs read (courtesy of Bell Atlantic-that-was):
Customer Proprietary Network Information (CPNI)
Customer Proprietary Network Information (CPNI) consists of details of your telephone service and billing information. Under Federal Communications Commission rules, Bell Atlantic, its affiliates, and its agents must obtain your approval to use your CPNI for marketing purposes. You can let us know of your approval or disapproval by calling your business office, or by signing and returning an authorization form we will send to you. Your decision will have no effect on the service you receive from us.
HtH,
--jas
from Rosen, via JonKatz:
Invasions of privacy were a hallmark of the Monica Lewinsky scandal,
Actually, what Kenneth Starr did with Ms. Lewinsky is what prosecutors -- federal, state and local -- do all the time. It's just in this case, it seems to have come about as part of a civil trial (the Paula Jones fiasco), which Mr. Starr used to attempt to fabricate a criminal issue.
It's not gender discrimination, per se; it's prosecutoral misconduct highlighted by a consensual relationship (leaving out whether or not it was sexual) that got invaded.
more JonKatz:
In l890, Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis wrote that "the common law secures to each individual the right of determining, ordinarily, to what extent his thoughts, sentiments, and emotions shall be communicated to others." That legal principle once prevented prosecutors from seizing and studying diaries, letters, and private papers.
However, once a person's activities, including speech, take place in the public domain, they are free for scrutiny. So buying books online at Amazon means that those records can be supoena'ed. Buying books with cash at your local bookstore doesn't leave that kind of trail. The nature of various online transactions destroys anonymity unless specific -- and perhaps unfortunately, legislative -- prohibitions are put in place. I begin to appreciate the German constitution more and more -- they wrote into their Grundstutz, back in '48 and '49, that there were limits on what data could be collected by governmental and private entities. We need to do that here as well, as the EU has pointed out to the US government repeatedly ;-)
Further:
Thus many Americans were flabbergasted by the degree to which prosecutors could vacuum up the most intimate details of Monica Lewinsky's life, from her bookstore purchases to her private letters and e-mail. Whatever people thought of her relationship with this dunder-headed president, many were uncomfortable not only with the prosecutor's zeal but with the wide public dissemination her private life and records received in media and court documents.
I take it that people don't keep tabs on local trials, eh? Granted, living near particularly litigious Boston has some perks, but the behavior of Starr and his staff is no different from the behavior of the various Middlesex County DA's for the past 13 years. The only difference is that, if possible, the prosecutor's victims, in this instance, were even dumber than the usual ones up here in MA. Most of us would take the dress for drycleaning the next day, believe me. And, if asked a question on the stand that our lawyers couldn't successfully object to, most of the men I know would rather just say, "No, I didn't screw her. She blew me. Ask her."
more Rosen and JonKatz:
Rosen convincingly assigns a lot of the blame to recently-enacted harassment laws, which made the Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky dramas possible. As sexual harassment law expands, writes Rosen, people can be interrogated about their consensual relationships on the flimsiest of allegations. During the l980's and 90's, he writes, the Supreme Court recognized sexually explict speech and conduct that created a "hostile or offensive working environment" as a form of gender discrimination, a legal evolution that made it difficult for lower courts and employers to distinguish consensual affairs from illegal sexual coercion.
I think that you only accept Mr. Rosen's conclusion -- that harassment laws are nearly exclusively gender-based -- if you accept his premise of same.
The Paula Jones suit was a civil suit. There was no legislation involved there. Like most civil suits, the lawyers presented whatever they could dig up -- and the fact that the president has round heels was what they dug up.
[I would not have imagined describing a man like that 20 years ago, would you?]
I feel that the judge allowed the plaintiff's lawyers too much leeway to invade the president's privacy. And her decision stated that basically, Ms. Jones had no standing to sue Mr. Clinton -- he wasn't the one who'd caused the uproar, the magazine that was paying for her lawyers had. Remember, the settlement came after Clinton had won the case, in order to forestall any appeal.
more JonKatz:
The threat of harassment suits has prompted companies to wantonly invade their workers' private e-mail and personal correspondence -- even to rifle their desks -- almost at will.
Perhaps the publishing industry is different from others, but I've *never* had a job -- and I've been in the workforce since 1977 -- where my employer didn't explicitly have (and abuse) that right. So, I don't see where harassment suits changed anything, except for premise that the company uses.
That's one reason I'm now a contract programmer -- they can't invade my desk here without a search warrant ;-)
I think you should try doing a reality check before accepting premises such as these -- it's just the same old story, with more explicit sex added...
--jas
Which is about the only way I see to deal with Mr. Billington. Though it'd be nice if we could replace the old reptile with at least a mammal.
I wrote my undergrad thesis on the impact of the development of the printing press on German Literature and the Reformation. So, to me, Billington's comments seem more than a little familiar. Though it's nice that it's not a member of the Inquisition, this time...
While I don't disagree with the importance -- and possible priority -- of digitizing the "special materials", it *is* imperative that books get digitized as well. Not necessarily put online for open access -- especially those with copyright issues -- but digitized both for preservation purposes and for research purposes.
I was taught about original sources as a child. And it would be *far* more useful -- and perhaps *enhance* the LoC's annual funding arguments -- if they had a plethora of original material digitized for schoolchildren and university students to search on and use -- or at least *know about* so that they can request the item through interlibrary loan. The LoC is *not* going to be less of a research-friendly institution by digitizing books.
It was difficult for me to obtain the facsimiles of a court process -- handwritten -- in 1439 in Strasbourg (Gutenberg was sued by one of his VCs, whattaya know?) while I was in college. It was an original source that was recommended to me by my prof; otherwise, I'd never have found it. I eventually got the book -- well out of copyright even then -- through interlibrary loan. This is a typical problem -- research materials that cannot be easily obtained should be available online. Traveling to the LoC in Washington would have been *vastly* prohibitive for an *undergrad* thesis.
The LoC is supposed to be an "open" repository of knowledge. Mr. Billington is making sure that it's only open to *his* type of scholar. At least for his tenure.
Yeah, we oughtta send Jon Katz, just for laughs. And I'll add this to my list to send to Congressman Mike.
--jas
I code educational software as about 50% of my living. Granted, it's aimed at HS and above, but I *do* work directly in this industry.
Most
Most teachers don't have time, expertise, or inclination to bother. Those who do are the ones who've been writing their own Hypercard stacks or VB stuff for the past years already. Putting state or city money into laptops without a concommitant investment in relevant teacher training is *insane*. And about as useful as a fish with a bicycle.
If the districts are going to hire dedicated computer instructors (the way that we had the traveling music and art teachers in my KCMO grade school back in the '60s), there is at least a chance that a "laptop for every child" strategy could be successful. That would give the classroom "primary instructor" time to learn what the hell this computer is *for*, because there is someone there they can *ask* periodically. The Maine example could allow that, iff the districts hired them. Though $500/box is not going to meet any performance bar for the "good" software, in my experience.
The NYC option is far uglier. I wouldn't allow advertising in a school setting -- if I wanted a kid to learn jingles I'd let them watch TV at home
I just hope the parents and voters in these jurisdictions are whinging loudly about the proposals.
--jas
Or, specifically, with the daily paper? At least here in Boston, they still use the ink-comes-off-on-your-hands printing, and they still don't cover my suburb (Somerville) except when something dreadful happens. Any of the stories I have an intrest in turn up online (the Boston Globe puts today's and yesterday's stories up). And the Boston Herald is published by Rupert Murdoch -- the spin there is only good for laughs.
I stopped subscribing to the Boston Globe about 10 years ago -- besides the ink problem, and the difficulties in reading it on the subway, I found that most of the news fell into:
a) national/international blurbs
not enough information -- no transcripts or full text of anything
b) Local disasters
c) Grief
often rehashed months after the fact like the Worcester firefighters
d) local politics
only for Mass state and Boston City. So while I'm vitally interested in the State House, the MWRA (water) and the MBTA (T) and the Big Dig, the papers do a piss-poor job of doing more than tabloid summaries of the content I'd like to see.
And I won't even touch the so-called "women's" sections. My life is a *lot* more complicated than recipes and cellulite, trust me.
I *do* occasionally buy a NYTimes on Tuesdays for the Science section. And I often buy the local weekly Somerville Journal, or the city-wide weekly Boston Phoenix. But otherwise I rely on online sources for news (boston.com, mercury, theguardian, slashdot, etc.), or print magazines like the Economist.
The chances of my ever subscribing or reading a daily paper again are close to nil. The audience they're currently aiming at is a technophobic, shallow individual who is willing to let *them* choose which subjects I should be interested in. I just *don't* fit their target demographic -- and given the news culture (Cokie & Steven Roberts' article against net news back in the distant past, for instance), I don't imagine that I ever will.
You Seam to have forgotten the joys of estrogen, for IMHO that nasty hormone can be worse than testosterone.
Worse? Compared to what?
Estrogen doesn't seem to fuel anger nearly as well -- at least in the cultures I'm familiar with in North America and Europe -- as does testosterone. Look at any age-similar studies of comparisons in violent behavior between men and women.
If there's a difference, it's likely to be both biological and cultural. Either one could point to why fewer women bother with flaming.
Also, do the letters PMS bring anything close to flaming to mind???
Nope. Most women can play brass-titted bitch regardless of which week of the month it is.
And, honestly, bad behavior is *not* due to PMS when it's going on 28 days out of 30...
back to lurking
Women online:
.ru programmer to stop wagging his penis on news:comp.multimedia, and had an *interesting* 24-hours of follow-ups. However, there are only so many hours in a day, and most women, like myself, do actually have *lives* off-net. I'm highly unlikely to spend hours flaming or responding to flames when what I need to do online is find an internal SCSI Zip drive or an Open GL driver for the new board going into my Linux box.
;-)
/., we have the luxury of setting our level to 2 and leaving at least the unskilled flamers in the dust.
;-)
/. audience, he is a reasonable interface between our geek heaven and the real world of technophobic politicans, media outlets, and parental units {like my mom who still can't comprehend the metric system). I expect to disagree with him -- but I can't see the point in condemning him for expressing what he sees.
;-)
As a woman (yes, one of the few, the proud, the mighty), I have to corroborate Katz's note that I'm more likely to post to women-only or moderated groups and lists than to flame-fora.
That said, it's not because I can't flame; I once told a
Angry young men:
Who, if you could run a demographic study on repeat flamers, would constitute nearly the entirety of the flaming population. Remember that these guys are victims of the same schooling as the rest of us. Plus testosterone
Flaming is a relatively harmless outlet for their aggravation; I'd vastly prefer that they post flames than actively try to avenge themselves upon the wider society, don't you?
Katz may not have noticed that flamers aren't rewarded as well as they'd like to be; but I doubt that Jon is used to the phrase, "Welcome to my killfile, sucker!" On
I rather doubt that your garden-variety flamer finds being ignored "rewarding".
I'm surprised at the premise that flamers somehow "inhibit" free speech. While that may be true in fora where the signal-to-noise ratio makes finding useful material impossible (many news:alt.* groups, for instance), in subject-matter areas like moderated groups, mailing lists and weblogs, flamers have a tendency to be treated like spam -- deleted or skipped past without further ado. They may take up *physical* space on screen and HD, but if you don't click on them or read them, they can't possibly waste your time.
Which is why many flames seem harmless to their creators -- they know that the only people who could possibly be affected by their posts are precisely the audience they'd like to aggravate. It's going to be rather difficult to remediate bad behavior when the only people who notice or care are the ones the perpetrator already detests
Katz and Technology:
Well, I first read [about] JonKatz at Suck, and then read his work at Netizen. So I have *some* sense of history, which I suspect that many of his more virulent flamers lack.
Katz is not a Linux programmer. Neither am I (there being less $ interest in multimedia under the various Unices than under Windows or MacOS). He's a journalist and commentator *and* technophile -- while he may not be as technically adept as most of his
If you want to rag on him for occasionally leaving in weird artifact characters courtesy of MS Word for Windoze, well, I'm totally with you there
[postscript]
My website is out-of-date, and the drive where I edit it from is currently toast (Mac OS 4G multi-partition whose partition block bit the dust while I was playing CivII). So I am no longer in need of a personal slave, the one I obtained takes up all of my free time already.
Then again, I'm the one who bitches and whines every GDC about the decreasing number of technical women in attendance.
Mind you, I don't claim to be *good* at games, unlike those of my compatriots who beat the pants off of the guys at ID... But I certainly do game, as well as write code and run a heterogenous LAN.
I'd *love* to see the raw data on *this* study...
--jas