actually, that was the most pertinent flame i've read in quite some time.
you see, the grammar issues here are EXACTLY the same as the interoperability issues for email. it would be nice to have a clear, exact standard for everyone because that assures 100% delivery of content (whether that content is considered substantive or not). however, if someone sends me an OL2000 email saying, "yo, you're hows is about too be bomed by terrists, and i no its more important for you two get out alive then to stay and fite them", i assure you im naught going two worry to much about there grammer.
neither would i automatically say, "sorry, i refuse to read non-plaintext messages, please resend" and then wait around for an acceptable ASCII version.
after i was safely several miles away i might duck into a wired cafe and drop them a line saying, "Greetings. Thanks so much for your thoughtful warning. It's nice to know that there are people who care enough to assist their friends in times of need. I noticed that you're using Outlook2000, and I just wanted to let you know that you should consider disabling its special formatting (called TNEF) so that you can really maximize your electronic communications with a majority of other persons. Your devoted friend, Drew."
the attempt to pin down communication to one exact, unchanging form really flies in the face of the quite naturally spontaneous nature of human interaction.
as has been said elsewhere in this forum: if you feel you receive benefit from Outlook2000 formatting, then go for it. if you'd rather use words alone, then go for that.
if you are mailing people who are annoyed by your choice, be assured they will inform you. and thus, as your priorities shift because of this feedback, so, perhaps, will your choice. but don't let the nazis on either side of the issue get to you. think of their protests and gloomy forecasts of degenerating social fabric as information that "is for informational purposes only".
human speech is *much* more robust than you think
--- the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties
I have to ask though... anyone know how much of a hard drive hog this thing is going to be? If it follows any other MS product, it's bound to take more space then needed, but some program stats, even at this stage, would help.
from what we've seen of MS's long-term direction (digital age lorentz transformation-> long-term=5 years) this problem, if you still consider it a problem in view of the growth rate of affordable, high-capacity drives, will be solved by net-delivered applications. if you're running usage-only-on-demand pay-per-click software, they may not even need your hard drive to store all those program files [of course, widespread broadband is a necessity, but it's coming].
Also, is this a new overall OS or just for certain products? (In other words, is it a PC OS, yet another NT upgrade, or what?)
given the MS.net vision, it would seem that after a few years of operation there need not be any further distinction between relatively configurable consumer Windows9x and the more restricted lock-down-everything-they-don't-need-to-mess-with business NT system.
--- the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties
right now my @Home cable connection is as fast as the LAN at work (of course, @Home is a kind of WAN, since i'm always on and can access information inside or outside, "installation" just means adding my computer to their network).
but every time i read an article talking about the higher demand for broadband i get nervous about ATT screwing up their growth projections and getting clogged like AOL a couple years ago. and what about these other ISPs? how much will the overall speed of the eventual infrastructure be limited by the aggregate of podunk operations' crappy hardware all accessing the lines simultaneously?
whenever anyone asks me if they should go with dsl or cable, i tell them, "definitely dsl. i have cable and the um, service is, er.. terrible, yeah. don't sign up for cable or you'll regret it -- and tell all your friends to tell all their friends not to sign up for cable either." (short-sighted i know, but i'll just jump ship in a few years if cable gets displaced anyway -- kinda like the internet analogue of Suburban Sprawl)
If, now, other ISPs are signing up users on the exact same infrastructure as my ATT service -- will they be required to report usage numbers to ATT? Since it is ATT that owns/manages the cables, won't they need to know this information in order to keep the architecture ahead of the population? Maybe it won't matter. Since, unlike a dial-up which is a direct connection between your pc and the ISP, everyone will be on the same physical network -- what are the security issues as far as how ISPs might be able to track each others' traffic?
New.sig??
Slashdot Mantra: "Information wants to be Free"
FBI Mantra: "Information wants to be Freeh's"
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the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties
You have the right to feel or not feel anyway that you want to about any issue, but please don't try to hang it on being a single male. I too am a single male, and I care deeply about the issue.
You're quite correct. I glossed over quite a bit of my background thoughts to keep the post relatively brief.
What I didn't say is that:
because i am a single white male who chooses not to reproduce, the issue of abortion has less of a direct affect on me. some people believe in an abstracted universal Lady Justice who is watching to make sure the right thing is done by every entity, and is offended if the right thing is not done by any entity. these people tend to feel that it is important for them to keep Lady Justice from ever being offended, whether through action or inaction.
however, i don't subscribe to this notion. My Lady Justice is not abstract -- *I* am she. i have a rather strong need to satisfy my inner concepts of what is (un)acceptable, and if i transgress nobody castigates me more than I do. but fortunately the universe is not my responsibility, so once the act in question leaves my personal sphere, it is not subject to the laws i hold for myself (this is the very essence of sovereignty, personal or patriotic). since i will never be in the position of deciding whether or not i should have an abortion, i choose not to have a strongly-formed opinion because:
1)it's too easy for people to make judgements about how others should/did act in a given situation, and not so easy to truly sympathize with the agonies behind those decisions. i try not to be one of those people. if the decision is not mine to make, nor does it affect me (leaving aside our offense to Abstract Lady Justice), i will keep my goddamn mouth shut. if i (as do we all) can still maintain a very pleasurable life in the face of the thousands of real, everyday people that are being murdered as i type and you read, then surely i can get over the fact that someone, somewhere might be deciding whether or not to have an abortion WITHOUT MY INPUT. [and i'll be honest, when i was younger i did spend a lot of late unrestful nights worrying about the proverbial starving children in Africa. The lyrics to "We are the World" are forever burned into my mind". But after several years i reached a point at which i had to let it go -- to help myself and as many people as seemed possible, but leave the universe to figure Itself out].
2)unless i am facing the situation myself, my opinion of what is right or wrong is stillborn and of little value other than as stimulus for an entertaining debate.
you're right that i have a right to my feelings and can inform others of my opinions. but, thank god, i also have the right to not exercise that right, which is something i rather wish more people would do these days -- everyone thinks that reading a book or watching a "20/20" feature makes them "an informed and empowered member of society". it is my perception that people have confused information with understanding.
Information may want to be free, but Understanding must be paid for through patience, reticence, experience, and empathy.
Several points here. Point #1. Not all of us are christians in the anti-abortion movement. I'm a neo-pagan.
good point. let me restate that as, "Even if some people who are opposed to abortion believe that abortionists should die..." the rest of my thoughts still hold -- i.e. that if person L believes that person C has committed an act that deserves death, i support person L's right to pronounce person C worthy of death both publicly and frequently.
Point #2 Those who advocate violence are not doing so to be punitive, if they were Norma McCorvey (Jane Roe) would be dead, they believe that violence is justified when one is defending the life of a child. I don't think that anyone would dispute that deadly force would have been justified to take out the guy who was shooting kids in that school yard in Stockton CA. They abortion the same way.
this is exactly the issue upon which i based my post.
i wasn't making any statements about the validity of the defense-of-self or defense-of-others line of reasoning. i do find it interesting that our society seems very confused about whether involuntary death is a Good or Bad thing. e.g. those in america who are politically against abortion are usually (not always, but there is a statistical correlation) for the death penalty. Conversely, those who don't feel abortion should be regulated also tend to be against the death penalty. One also used to be able to separate people by their support/opposition of war, but these days conservatives distrust the military as much as liberals despise it.
But why the seeming contradictions? In all cases (Donne's "All whom the flood did, and fire shall o'erthrow / All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies, / Despair, law, chance hath slain...") the processes of organic matter have been interrupted to the point of termination. In all cases, death has occurred. Yet very, very few people think of themselves as pro-death, whether the justification be "Protection of Society" or "Planned Parenthood".
This is a 'slippery slope' issue, and once you say, "involuntary death is permissible, sometimes even desirable" you lose any credible authority to suggest, "we cannot permit the taking of human life". Otherwise you have to do a lot of ethical gymnastics to qualify why killing is okay. Unfortunately, this is where everything breaks down because, of course, each of us believes that she has the only right set of justifications.
Death and Life are hardly seperable phenomena; one really requires the other, at least in our existence, and it's difficult to take seriously anyone who claims the inviolability of human life while promoting it under a different name.
i think with these clarifications we may agree more than was originally evident.
thanks for responding to my post.
--- the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.
[odds are low that anyone will actually read this, since the slashdot thread attention-span is no longer than a few hours -- it's a good thing i enjoy speaking to myself]
i don't care much about abortion, as a single male it's not currently an issue i have any vested interest in one way or another.
I find the ruling at hand to display a dramatic two-facedeness on the part of our governmental bodies considering that many states have now mandated that all local PDs publish names, photos, addresses, and rap sheets for convicted sex offenders.
Legislators believe that these people are so great a danger that we must publicly track their every move.
Living in Texas, I frequently hear people say things like, "Yeah, we otta dew whut th' dee-id in th' ol' wess an' jis shoot th' feelthy basterds..." concerning every class of criminal from murderers down to litterbugs.
So I wonder, if I made a page advocating the death penalty for sex offenders and then linked to the GOVERNMENT-REQUIRED city police websites showing their addresses, names, ages, rap sheets, and photos.... would I be making censorable speech??
Even if fanatical anti-abortion xtians think abortionists should die, and they say, "Ah shur wish somun wud kee-yul them ayborshiniss" -- is it not their inalienable right to support the murder of abortionists, and to publicly say so? There are some days I get so sick of hearing xtians go on and on about their irrelevant dead jewish guy, that if I had a button that would kill everyone with a fish or Jesus Is LORD! sticker on their car, I would sit on the goddamn thing for hours just to make sure I'd gotten them all.
Like the man's tagline says: "Intolerant people should be shot!"
--- the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.
oops, sorry. i missed the albini-nirvana connection; since i only liked nirvana for about four months back in '93 i don't really know all the "six degrees of kurt cobain" info. (now tori amos OTOH...):->
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the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties
for the same reason Magic Johnson was an HIV-spokesperson,
which is the same reason Michael J. Fox promotes Parkinson's Disease issues,
which is the same reason Lance Armstrong and Bob Dole speak about cancer...
let's suppose Courtney Love read slashdot, saw the original posting about Steve's article, went and read it, agreed with its position, and now repeats the ideas to the press who lap up her every word.
What's the problem??
Joe America doesn't give a shit about Steve Albini's opinion because he doesn't know who Albini is. And he doesn't care to know. All he cares about is Must See TV and I Want My MTV and which superstar is making the rounds of the magazine covers this month.
If Courtney Love regurgitating someone else's good ideas is the only way to get those ideas across to Joe Sixpack America, then I'm all for it. I've never listened to her music, and still think of her as "that media-created persona who was lucky enough to have her husband blow his brains out, thus assuring her an eternal place in our pop culture pantheon" -- but even if I don't care about her one way or another, I'm more than happy to accept anything she may do that advances causes I support.
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the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties
...or should that subject be "trapped, in america, in a Suburban"?
While I'd like to pretend I'm willing to support policies that are financially generous, ecologically healthy, and conducive to general liberty -- all great things in their own right -- today i need to get to the grocery store for food, the hardware store to buy parts to fix a faulty tub drain, the bank to discuss taking out a lower-interest loan to funnel into paying my high-interest student-loan, the elementary school to pick up my kids, the post office to ship a care package to out-of-state sick gramma, to the dentist to have an old bridge replaced, plus, of course i need to get to work so i can afford all of the above...
and this is only tuesday.
I don't think sillysally is referring to emotional "happiness", but rather a concept of relative advantage that both buyers and sellers can sometimes experience in a free market.
While you are correct that we would all like to pay less for our dirty-burning, lung-tumoring, military/religious dictatorship-supporting petroproducts, there is no evidence to show that people are, in fact, consuming less gas due to price increases.
The Suburban Sprawl of the last few decades = necessity of cars = necessity for fuel = generally guaranteed constant demand for gasoline regardless of price fluctuations.
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the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.
i agree with you that the end result is similar.
power wants to accumulate. this is why all systems, despite egalitarian aspirations, become oligarchies within a few generations.
the difference i was highlighting was that there are no large-scale communist systems that work without the aid of a strong military -- because the attempt to equitably distribute resources is resisted by persons, acting upon their selfish nature, who try to accumulate goods not as they NEED them but as they WANT them. Such countries are then trapped into spending huge amounts of resources on maintaining an unnatural equality -- which invariably is accomplished by the threat of militarism. "This is how much you're getting and no more." Some insane ideologues are fully behind this idea. Others just use the system to get whatever petty power they can. And the large majority just try to get by without incurring the wrath of the State while secretly hating its attempts to thwart their consumption. This is a pretty unstable situation.
Capitalism, on the other hand, dangles the carrot in front of everyone's nose. The goal is to accumulate goods as fast as you possibly can. Of course, the first generations to accumulate large amounts of wealth then capitalize on that wealth by using some of it to get more of it while preventing others from getting any of it. However, regardless of the actual fluidity between classes (or lack thereof), most people still operate under the basic assumption that if they are just good, diligent, sexy or smart enough, that they too can pull some of the wealth in their direction. People then want to protect the system because its survival is the guarantor of their promised happiness -- which promotes the long-term stability of that system. It's a kinder, gentler opression.
I mean really, as long as the lady-mantis is getting you off, who cares if she's eating your brains out, right?
--- the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.
Who's there?
Asshole.
Asshole Who?
Asshole my soul to the MPAA.
Are they going to check my systems to make sure that I am running Windows[TM] in order to watch the movie that I bought?
um, they don't have to. that's the whole point of the case -- now the very existence of DeCSS is illegal, regardless of whether you use it or it just sits on your hard drive.
As far as them checking your system, I hope you're not using a school, work, or broadband connection, since all of these make your system contents relatively transparent to the folks running the network.
Even if you're not, when you are identified through your activities/associations as a probable criminal, the po-lease will batter-ram your door down and confiscate your computer.
_/\!/\_
you can have my DeCSS when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.
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the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.
[Last year we received a technology grant and "up"graded everything to brand-new HP Vectras running NT4; before that the workstations were W95 and the staff machines were Macs].
Well, it's mostly the fact that Mac users are already pretty close to doing it the MS way (for obvious historical reasons). It's the little GUI differences. People who don't have any computer experience won't even get the connection between the mouse and the on-screen pointer, whereas Mac users are GUI experts, they just don't know the MS analogues for Mac objects.
For example, Mac users:
-are slightly more confused by a spare desktop; a good many of them are used to working from Launchers or other pull-out tray-like objects (where MS got the idea for the Office Toolbar). windows users either do everything from the Start Button or have 30 shortcuts on their desktop.
-don't know to use the Windows Taskbar (or Alt-Tab) to switch between maximized windows -- though for the same reason they are better at switching between two active documents in the same app. by using the pull-down menu.
-when i say "now click here" their hands don't assume a left-click vs right-click position. they need to be informed that windows boxen have two buttons (and with the wheels, we have three).
-they try to drag the drive A: shortcut to the Recycle Bin. [grin]
-they ask, "where's the video-editing software?" [double grin]
really, it's a whole-picture -- there isn't any one thing that makes it glaringly obvious (other than the left/right mouse issue), but after helping a sufficiently large amount of people they begin to differentiate themselves in your mind in much the same gestalt-intuitive way that Sherlock Holmes deduced occupation, dietary habits, and musical talents from the rest-position of the subject's hands or small discolorations on a coat.
It's very important for me to be this observant because everyone is at a different level skillwise, and most of my job centers around the accuracy of this estimate.
We won't be able to do intensive database queries if the patron doesn't know the difference between "any of these words" and "all these words"; or, if someone tells me they want to find data on the web, it is essential that I determine whether or not they recognize a link as an actionable object before I say, "let's go to hotbot".
If I misjudge them, I will seem either unhelpful or condescending, both of which are service failures. Being able to quickly assess their experience and respond with targeted assistance saves a lot of time and headache as the research process continues, both from their perspective of obtaining information (often under deadline) and from my perspective of providing quality, professional service.
--- the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.
Smart menus only hide functions which have not been used - for most users this is a good thing as it makes the program seem simpler (less options to get confused by).....It's a love it or hate it feature. The more experienced the user, the more likely they are to hate it.
Agreed. The first thing I do when sitting down to any machine is to disable as many of the "Helping" features as possible. Word probably has the most cluttered feature-list of any common app., and I spend more time trying to get it to do what I WANT [eg type a simple non-formatted list] and not what it has been programmed to *guess* that I want to do [automagically insert bullets, tabs, paragraphing, character spacing, underlining main points....]. I actually prefer Notepad or Wordpad, since I can insert mark-up tags - either HTML or just notes to myself on formatting - and then import to Word for final printing.
But I believe this is one of the main points of Dilger's article:
Demystify everything. In the case of computing, explain the technologies students are using, and tell what's "under the hood" -- show students the server room, or open up a computer and identify the various parts. Use programs that give students direct control over work, instead of displacing control to "wizards" or "helpful" agents.
In the essay, the "Ideology of Ease" can be compared to the politically-charged idea of "The Welfare Effect", whereby systems (designed ostensibly to help people) become systems which cripple the Helped and foster dependence on further help.
I work in a college library helping students do both print and computer-based research, and after two minutes working with a particular patron I can tell if her/his computer experience began with a CLI, a Mac, or Windows95. [digression: this is similar to how someone with a linguistic education can pick out non-native speakers of a language by noticing very subtle clues invisible to the untrained ear. there should be some special category of occupational psych. to investigate just how important is the connection between exposure to early "non-user-friendly" computers and later skill proficiency.]
The big Flaw in the Ideology of Ease is that for computer systems it must be all or nothing. That is, since ease fosters an ignorant user-base which clicks buttons without real understanding, the system MUST be designed to NEVER deviate from the Wizard path, for, if it does stray, the dependent user has no knowledge from which to build an alternative, and then all the postulated productivity of the Digitised Workplace is eaten by befuddled downtime while waiting for the IT department to "fix my broken machine".
Somebody had to put all that Chaos there! Yeah, and it was MS-Office.
--- the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.
Which at the most fundamental level is impossible. Even in communist countries people have secret papers and there is always the concept of whispers and looks. Human communications will flourish even with the gestapo at the door.
whah??
this is technically true, but the educated classes in USSR and 1930s Deutschland were firmly in favor of the contemporary political rhetoric.
Remember that USSR disbanded for essentially economic reasons (humans are by nature selfish and any system which rewards selfishness will thrive while systems that concentrate selfishness in the hands of a few are instable -- so capitalism works, communism doesn't), and that Deutschland was defeated militarily.
In orwellian states it is only the educated classes that matter, and they are usually well-vested in the political mainstream. There will be no revolution from the proles, because they are philosophically ignorant and politically unorganized.
Yes, secret communications will always exist, but as Chinese students found out in Tiananmen Square, knowing glances and covert solidarity do not easily translate into freedom. The government crushed them, literally, and the world looked on -- there is little doubt that the incident would play similarly today.
If 100,000 open protesters could not even create a dent in their system, from where do you obtain this optimism that people are smarter than propaganda and will rise up and smite the evil empire? Nothing could be farther from the truth -- people are simple, ignorant and easily manipulated, as demonstrated by the prevalence of $2 bottled water, $120 blue jeans, everything antibacterial, and censorlegislation.
Every time i go grocery shopping i see products labelled "New Look! Same Great TASTE!!" "Smaller Size for Your CONVENIENCE" and the absolute winner, i kid you not ---- "Now! Made with REAL Ingredients!!!"
and it is this shit that i see flying off the shelves; people just can't get enough of bold fonts, starburst patterns, gratuitous! punctuation!!!, and compelling but semantically vacuous claims.
i salute you for your optimism. and i feel it is totally unfounded.;-P
--- the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.
That's only because you haven't bothered to read it, it would seem, or else you'd know about large portions devoted to ritual impurity caused by contact with corpses. As a starting point, consider Lev. 12:1 - 15:33.
ahh, good ol' Leviticus. always a great place to go for spiritual guidance. together with the other four mosaic books, it manages to list what's right and what's wrong for just about every situation conceivably experienced in the daily life of the time.
this code was so important that later god sent his son, jesus, who said, "yea, verily, you guys aren't following the law good enough. you should strive to be more like the pharisees, who are very careful to follow the correct interpretations of the laws. blessed are the steadfastly moral, for only they are good enough to deserve my love."
you are very correct that the bible does provide rules for disposing of bodies, though the original point can still be made that on the list of things god may be concerned about, i would guess the treatment of our earthly vehicles, once empty, could be thought of as a pretty low priority -- that is, if a limitless, omniscient being could be said to prioritize anything (consider the sparrows and lilies).
--- the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.
i agree -- everytime i pass a graveyard i think of all the wasted energy lying there under the ground, and i try to come up with a more fitting way to ritualize death. i'd rather be mulched to nourish someone's garden, but you'll find that in nearly all modern societies there are pages of legal code prohibiting these types of actions. it's telling that although we consider ourselves free creatures, even our very bodies are bound from birth to death and beyond by others' opinions of what is right.
--- the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.
Tyrannosaurus said: I love the fact that 2600 can legally print the URL, they just can't embed it within a link anchor.
Does this mean that your telemarketer could use your phone number as long as a computer didn't dial the number for him?
Actually, I've been thinking about this a lot recently. What with more and more states using cameras on the highways to monitor my speed, cameras on signal lights to make sure I don't go through on yellow, microphone-networks in public neighborhoods to locate illegal activity, code enforcers fining me for not getting a city permit (with, of course, a clerical fee; ie more taxes) to have a garage sale on my "own" property.... I really see no important difference between my life and that of, say, Winston Smith.
It's taken two hundred years, but bureacracy has finally made the Bill of Rights (the only part of the constitution that really does much for We, The People -- though it was wrong not to have included universal sufferage and equal protection from the beginning) completely irrelevant. The river of human authoritarian bullshit flows ever on, finding new ways to bypass the temporary barriers we place in its path.
I think we should add another rights-of-the-accused amendment in between IV and V with provisions that roughly say:
"Although the course of recent history has shown that systems of power use technology to obliterate the People's Rights, direct judgement by one's peers is essential to the survival of freedom -- because while keeping the citizens honest it also, by providing personal accountability to the prosecutor, helps keep the State honest as well. It is self-evident that as social complexity increases the distance between free men and their governments, those governments use their bureacracy as foils for increasingly heinous violations of Liberty. Therefore, let it be decreed that no federal, state, or municipal agency shall directly infringe upon the People's right to be caught and prosecuted by another human being."
I mean it. I think speed limits are ridiculous (forethought and consideration are far more important to safe driving), but if I'm going to be caught, have Smokey pull me over. It is immoral to have a camera capture my license, collude with a computer for my radar-ed speed and then automagically generate a ticket mailed to my house in five working days without any human involvement other than maybe the Data Processing geek who runs the daily batches.
Our current problems will be as specks of dust next to the injustices that will be dished out if we allow our criminal justice system to become automated.
I am intelligent. I've always loved science, both as fictional entertainment and factual enlightenment. I generally support scientific research and the gadgets that result therefrom. However, if modern geeks: researchers, doctors, hackers, physicists, statisticians, programmers and the like continue to aid and abet the full merger of the Manipulative Technocracy with the Inhibitive Bureaucracy, you can bet grandma's sweet-tater pie that I'll be right at the forefront of the angry, uneducated mob that destroys all technology a laPlayer Piano and Canticle For Leibowitz
(oh, and please note that we are talking regulations on governments, not people -- private citizens may still automatically videotape their private property and ask to enter such recordings as evidence should their homes/service stations be burgled. yes, it would need some tweaking, but i think the basic idea is valid)
the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.
for more on how even librarians (who might be expected to have more archival appreciation) are "throwing away our history as we generate it", check this excerpt from Nicholson Baker's well-researched and insightful "Discards":
And abruptly you realize, looking at these expressive dirt bands [caused by patron handling of cards], that even the libraries, like Harvard and the New York Public Library and Cornell, who microfilmed or digitized some of their cards prior to destroying them, have - by failing to capture any information at all about the relative reflectivity of the edge of each card - lost something of real interest, something eminently studiable. Who knows what a diligent researcher who photographed (from above, on a tripod) each close-packed drawer of Harvard's Widener catalog with a high-contrast camera might find out, were he to correlate his spectrographic dirt-band records with the authors that, as distinct clumps, exhibited some darkening? Of course the "Kinsey" cards would be thoroughly dirt-banded - but which others? This is, or was, a cumulative set of scholarly Nielsen ratings for topics at twentieth-century Harvard that is perhaps more representative than any other means of surveying we have. Instead of tossing its catalog out, Harvard ought to have persuaded a rich alumnus to endow a chair for dirt-banded studies.
it's an excellent read for anyone interested in the "books meet bytes" situation.
--- the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.
I hate movie cynics who can't find anything good in anything. You're the same people who will see the Simpsons movie and parade around bitching about how the lines were stupid or "It wasn't really Simpsons" or something like that.
I overanalyze movies to a fare-thee-well, but I still know how to enjoy them. You cynics might want to learn to do the same.
bullseye. you're absolutely right, i do express my opinions on a movie ---- IF ...it is filled with trailer-ready oneliners instead of characteristic dialogue. ...it allows large, yet elementary concept errors that no serious SpecFic writer has gotten away with since the 1950s. ...it completely discards the previous character development arcs in favor of pasteboard-cliche marketable Action Figures.
sometimes a sequel or book-into-film adaptation can, by virtue of its overall cinematographic effect, overcome these difficulties and still be quite good. Example: i actually like Alien3 BETTER than Aliens (but not, of course, more than Alien) despite the fact that it was a large departure from the first two stories. the music, the sets, the emotional content -- i found myself very moved by the climax, which i thought was perhaps the best possible end to the srtuggle of Lt. Ripley to eradicate her demons.
Anyway, I guess if you're saying that I'm overly cynical for not checking my brain at the box office so i can "learn to [enjoy a bad story]", then I am indeed guilty as charged, and shamelessly so.
--- the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.
i disagree.
the simpsons' success is due to one thing only: incisive WIT and tons of it.
the modern simpsons look stunning compared to the drawing of the really early episodes and shorts -- and many of those episodes are waaay funnier than some of their newer, crisper descendants.
i've never found south park even slightly entertaining, but i think its popularity signifies that high production values aren't necessary for a cartoon to be successful.
--- the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.
[adopting Simpsons Comic Book Guy persona]
I hope this movie isn't a let down like most movies "ported" over from TV. I was slightly dissapointed with the ST:TNG movies.
only *slightly*??
with a lame-o Kirk revivification, really lame-o Action Movie One Liners, and desperately lame-o plot holes large enough to float a dyson sphere through, the NextGen movies were more than disappointing -- they sucked ass.
Although nothing can match the heartbreaking crapola of forced-deadpan "She'll Breed You'll Die" Alien4 : Resurrection.
hmmm... that almost sounds like "Star Trek : Insurrection", with similar promo posters, and similarly terrible stories. coincidence? i think not.....[/CBG persona]
*** the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.
the verdict seems to say that the owner/author of something has total control over how you can view information -- that if the owner/author has encrypted something, you CANNOT decrypt it without her permission (via the "license").
Turning this idea upon itself, let's just encrypt the DeCSS code and then distribute it with a license saying "this file is offered as is and cannot be decrypted under any circumstances which lead to its use for purposes which break the law".
Then those who distribute DeCSS would be no more responsible for its use in piracy than Oneida is responsible for knifing deaths.
Or better yet, have the license say, "this file may not be decrypted at all". Then nobody can accuse anybody of violating Kaplan's order by possessing or distributing DeCSS -- since you would have to break the law to know that it contains DeCSS.
--- the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.
the email-initiated laptop destruct portion of the article reminds me of the public outcry surrounding the evil dangerous Kevin Mitnick, who was described BY THE US COURTS as being "capable of launching nuclear missles by whistling into a telephone".
so next time some big tech. corporation pisses me off i'll go on the subway and "accidentally" leave my laptop to be stolen, then after reporting it stolen send an e-command which will send out pre-scripted command to my legion of secretly hacked boxes to initiate a DoS against the hated corp.
And since I reported it stolen, I have a flawless alibi!
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the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.
[-1, Offtopic]
Hemos posted an article about the law before it was signed; that article is unfortunately no longer available, but the comments are.
this is an isolated example of what i dislike most strongly in/. -- lack of durability.
a story hits the homepage, everyone gets very worked up, 680 messages are posted, and then in eight hours the discussion is dead as everyone rushes to be outraged by the latest violation of our online rights or stupid implementation by a software company.
i do think these are very important issues we're dealing with, but the reason the corporate-govt marriage so often steamrolls over us is that they know how to work their power by focusing on an issue and lobbying relentlessly until passage of legislation -- often saturating the big-market print and visual media outlets with their rhetoric until the public begs them to PLEASE DO SOMETHING. And of course, a la "Trouble in River City", they happen to have a solution to all our [newly created ex-nihilo] problems waiting right there.
conversely, it seems that the majority of slashdotters are politically ADHD, which may be great for slamming out late night code but is not necessarily the best way to fight for a cause (except perhaps programs that make "civil disobedience" statements, which still should be backed up by other action in order to be effective).
This is, in fact, why SPAM and other advertisements are so pervasive -- when your general population doesn't have any social/cultural memory, the only way to persuade them to buy into your product (tangible or philosophical) is to constantly bombard them with high-intensity ads designed to push you to the front of their mind, ahead of the hundreds of other special interests all doing the same.
the next time i hear someone shriek, "please, won't someone think of the children's online rights!!!" i believe i will calmly add, "yes, and please think about them for longer than eight hours."
--- the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.
Slashdot Mirror
actually, that was the most pertinent flame i've read in quite some time.
you see, the grammar issues here are EXACTLY the same as the interoperability issues for email.
it would be nice to have a clear, exact standard for everyone because that assures 100% delivery of content (whether that content is considered substantive or not). however, if someone sends me an OL2000 email saying, "yo, you're hows is about too be bomed by terrists, and i no its more important for you two get out alive then to stay and fite them", i assure you im naught going two worry to much about there grammer.
neither would i automatically say, "sorry, i refuse to read non-plaintext messages, please resend" and then wait around for an acceptable ASCII version.
after i was safely several miles away i might duck into a wired cafe and drop them a line saying, "Greetings. Thanks so much for your thoughtful warning. It's nice to know that there are people who care enough to assist their friends in times of need. I noticed that you're using Outlook2000, and I just wanted to let you know that you should consider disabling its special formatting (called TNEF) so that you can really maximize your electronic communications with a majority of other persons. Your devoted friend, Drew."
the attempt to pin down communication to one exact, unchanging form really flies in the face of the quite naturally spontaneous nature of human interaction.
as has been said elsewhere in this forum: if you feel you receive benefit from Outlook2000 formatting, then go for it. if you'd rather use words alone, then go for that.
if you are mailing people who are annoyed by your choice, be assured they will inform you. and thus, as your priorities shift because of this feedback, so, perhaps, will your choice. but don't let the nazis on either side of the issue get to you. think of their protests and gloomy forecasts of degenerating social fabric as information that "is for informational purposes only".
human speech is *much* more robust than you think
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the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties
I have to ask though... anyone know how much of a hard drive hog this thing is going to be? If it follows any other MS product, it's bound to take more space then needed, but some program stats, even at this stage, would help.
from what we've seen of MS's long-term direction (digital age lorentz transformation-> long-term=5 years) this problem, if you still consider it a problem in view of the growth rate of affordable, high-capacity drives, will be solved by net-delivered applications. if you're running usage-only-on-demand pay-per-click software, they may not even need your hard drive to store all those program files [of course, widespread broadband is a necessity, but it's coming].
Also, is this a new overall OS or just for certain products? (In other words, is it a PC OS, yet another NT upgrade, or what?)
given the MS.net vision, it would seem that after a few years of operation there need not be any further distinction between relatively configurable consumer Windows9x and the more restricted lock-down-everything-they-don't-need-to-mess-with business NT system.
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the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties
This is a huge benefit.
.sig??
Slashdot Mantra: "Information wants to be Free"
open access will increase service?
i wonder.
right now my @Home cable connection is as fast as the LAN at work (of course, @Home is a kind of WAN, since i'm always on and can access information inside or outside, "installation" just means adding my computer to their network).
but every time i read an article talking about the higher demand for broadband i get nervous about ATT screwing up their growth projections and getting clogged like AOL a couple years ago. and what about these other ISPs? how much will the overall speed of the eventual infrastructure be limited by the aggregate of podunk operations' crappy hardware all accessing the lines simultaneously?
whenever anyone asks me if they should go with dsl or cable, i tell them, "definitely dsl. i have cable and the um, service is, er.. terrible, yeah. don't sign up for cable or you'll regret it -- and tell all your friends to tell all their friends not to sign up for cable either." (short-sighted i know, but i'll just jump ship in a few years if cable gets displaced anyway -- kinda like the internet analogue of Suburban Sprawl)
If, now, other ISPs are signing up users on the exact same infrastructure as my ATT service -- will they be required to report usage numbers to ATT? Since it is ATT that owns/manages the cables, won't they need to know this information in order to keep the architecture ahead of the population?
Maybe it won't matter. Since, unlike a dial-up which is a direct connection between your pc and the ISP, everyone will be on the same physical network -- what are the security issues as far as how ISPs might be able to track each others' traffic?
New
FBI Mantra: "Information wants to be Freeh's"
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the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties
Why is Netscape going to be version 6.0, but Mozilla is 1.0? Shouldn't Netscape start from 1.0 also?
two words (and a number): Internet Exploiter 5.5
the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties
You have the right to feel or not feel anyway that you want to about any issue, but please don't try to hang it on being a single male. I too am a single male, and I care deeply about the issue.
You're quite correct. I glossed over quite a bit of my background thoughts to keep the post relatively brief.
What I didn't say is that:
because i am a single white male who chooses not to reproduce, the issue of abortion has less of a direct affect on me. some people believe in an abstracted universal Lady Justice who is watching to make sure the right thing is done by every entity, and is offended if the right thing is not done by any entity. these people tend to feel that it is important for them to keep Lady Justice from ever being offended, whether through action or inaction.
however, i don't subscribe to this notion. My Lady Justice is not abstract -- *I* am she. i have a rather strong need to satisfy my inner concepts of what is (un)acceptable, and if i transgress nobody castigates me more than I do. but fortunately the universe is not my responsibility, so once the act in question leaves my personal sphere, it is not subject to the laws i hold for myself (this is the very essence of sovereignty, personal or patriotic). since i will never be in the position of deciding whether or not i should have an abortion, i choose not to have a strongly-formed opinion because:
1)it's too easy for people to make judgements about how others should/did act in a given situation, and not so easy to truly sympathize with the agonies behind those decisions. i try not to be one of those people. if the decision is not mine to make, nor does it affect me (leaving aside our offense to Abstract Lady Justice), i will keep my goddamn mouth shut. if i (as do we all) can still maintain a very pleasurable life in the face of the thousands of real, everyday people that are being murdered as i type and you read, then surely i can get over the fact that someone, somewhere might be deciding whether or not to have an abortion WITHOUT MY INPUT. [and i'll be honest, when i was younger i did spend a lot of late unrestful nights worrying about the proverbial starving children in Africa. The lyrics to "We are the World" are forever burned into my mind". But after several years i reached a point at which i had to let it go -- to help myself and as many people as seemed possible, but leave the universe to figure Itself out].
2)unless i am facing the situation myself, my opinion of what is right or wrong is stillborn and of little value other than as stimulus for an entertaining debate.
you're right that i have a right to my feelings and can inform others of my opinions. but, thank god, i also have the right to not exercise that right, which is something i rather wish more people would do these days -- everyone thinks that reading a book or watching a "20/20" feature makes them "an informed and empowered member of society". it is my perception that people have confused information with understanding.
Information may want to be free, but Understanding must be paid for through patience, reticence, experience, and empathy.
Several points here. Point #1. Not all of us are christians in the anti-abortion movement. I'm a neo-pagan.
good point. let me restate that as, "Even if some people who are opposed to abortion believe that abortionists should die..." the rest of my thoughts still hold -- i.e. that if person L believes that person C has committed an act that deserves death, i support person L's right to pronounce person C worthy of death both publicly and frequently.
Point #2 Those who advocate violence are not doing so to be punitive, if they were Norma McCorvey (Jane Roe) would be dead, they believe that violence is justified when one is defending the life of a child. I don't think that anyone would dispute that deadly force would have been justified to take out the guy who was shooting kids in that school yard in Stockton CA. They abortion the same way.
this is exactly the issue upon which i based my post.
i wasn't making any statements about the validity of the defense-of-self or defense-of-others line of reasoning. i do find it interesting that our society seems very confused about whether involuntary death is a Good or Bad thing. e.g. those in america who are politically against abortion are usually (not always, but there is a statistical correlation) for the death penalty. Conversely, those who don't feel abortion should be regulated also tend to be against the death penalty. One also used to be able to separate people by their support/opposition of war, but these days conservatives distrust the military as much as liberals despise it.
But why the seeming contradictions? In all cases (Donne's "All whom the flood did, and fire shall o'erthrow / All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies, / Despair, law, chance hath slain...") the processes of organic matter have been interrupted to the point of termination. In all cases, death has occurred. Yet very, very few people think of themselves as pro-death, whether the justification be "Protection of Society" or "Planned Parenthood".
This is a 'slippery slope' issue, and once you say, "involuntary death is permissible, sometimes even desirable" you lose any credible authority to suggest, "we cannot permit the taking of human life". Otherwise you have to do a lot of ethical gymnastics to qualify why killing is okay. Unfortunately, this is where everything breaks down because, of course, each of us believes that she has the only right set of justifications.
Death and Life are hardly seperable phenomena; one really requires the other, at least in our existence, and it's difficult to take seriously anyone who claims the inviolability of human life while promoting it under a different name.
i think with these clarifications we may agree more than was originally evident.
thanks for responding to my post.
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the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.
[odds are low that anyone will actually read this, since the slashdot thread attention-span is no longer than a few hours -- it's a good thing i enjoy speaking to myself]
i don't care much about abortion, as a single male it's not currently an issue i have any vested interest in one way or another.
I find the ruling at hand to display a dramatic two-facedeness on the part of our governmental bodies considering that many states have now mandated that all local PDs publish names, photos, addresses, and rap sheets for convicted sex offenders.
Legislators believe that these people are so great a danger that we must publicly track their every move.
Living in Texas, I frequently hear people say things like, "Yeah, we otta dew whut th' dee-id in th' ol' wess an' jis shoot th' feelthy basterds..." concerning every class of criminal from murderers down to litterbugs.
So I wonder, if I made a page advocating the death penalty for sex offenders and then linked to the GOVERNMENT-REQUIRED city police websites showing their addresses, names, ages, rap sheets, and photos.... would I be making censorable speech??
Even if fanatical anti-abortion xtians think abortionists should die, and they say, "Ah shur wish somun wud kee-yul them ayborshiniss" -- is it not their inalienable right to support the murder of abortionists, and to publicly say so?
There are some days I get so sick of hearing xtians go on and on about their irrelevant dead jewish guy, that if I had a button that would kill everyone with a fish or Jesus Is LORD! sticker on their car, I would sit on the goddamn thing for hours just to make sure I'd gotten them all.
Like the man's tagline says: "Intolerant people should be shot!"
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the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.
oops, sorry. i missed the albini-nirvana connection; since i only liked nirvana for about four months back in '93 i don't really know all the "six degrees of kurt cobain" info. (now tori amos OTOH...) :->
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the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties
for the same reason Magic Johnson was an HIV-spokesperson,
which is the same reason Michael J. Fox promotes Parkinson's Disease issues,
which is the same reason Lance Armstrong and Bob Dole speak about cancer...
let's suppose Courtney Love read slashdot, saw the original posting about Steve's article, went and read it, agreed with its position, and now repeats the ideas to the press who lap up her every word.
What's the problem??
Joe America doesn't give a shit about Steve Albini's opinion because he doesn't know who Albini is. And he doesn't care to know. All he cares about is Must See TV and I Want My MTV and which superstar is making the rounds of the magazine covers this month.
If Courtney Love regurgitating someone else's good ideas is the only way to get those ideas across to Joe Sixpack America, then I'm all for it.
I've never listened to her music, and still think of her as "that media-created persona who was lucky enough to have her husband blow his brains out, thus assuring her an eternal place in our pop culture pantheon" -- but even if I don't care about her one way or another, I'm more than happy to accept anything she may do that advances causes I support.
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the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties
...or should that subject be "trapped, in america, in a Suburban"?
While I'd like to pretend I'm willing to support policies that are financially generous, ecologically healthy, and conducive to general liberty -- all great things in their own right -- today i need to get to the grocery store for food, the hardware store to buy parts to fix a faulty tub drain, the bank to discuss taking out a lower-interest loan to funnel into paying my high-interest student-loan, the elementary school to pick up my kids, the post office to ship a care package to out-of-state sick gramma, to the dentist to have an old bridge replaced, plus, of course i need to get to work so i can afford all of the above...
and this is only tuesday.
I don't think sillysally is referring to emotional "happiness", but rather a concept of relative advantage that both buyers and sellers can sometimes experience in a free market.
While you are correct that we would all like to pay less for our dirty-burning, lung-tumoring, military/religious dictatorship-supporting petroproducts, there is no evidence to show that people are, in fact, consuming less gas due to price increases.
The Suburban Sprawl of the last few decades = necessity of cars = necessity for fuel = generally guaranteed constant demand for gasoline regardless of price fluctuations.
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the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.
i agree with you that the end result is similar.
power wants to accumulate. this is why all systems, despite egalitarian aspirations, become oligarchies within a few generations.
the difference i was highlighting was that there are no large-scale communist systems that work without the aid of a strong military -- because the attempt to equitably distribute resources is resisted by persons, acting upon their selfish nature, who try to accumulate goods not as they NEED them but as they WANT them. Such countries are then trapped into spending huge amounts of resources on maintaining an unnatural equality -- which invariably is accomplished by the threat of militarism. "This is how much you're getting and no more." Some insane ideologues are fully behind this idea. Others just use the system to get whatever petty power they can. And the large majority just try to get by without incurring the wrath of the State while secretly hating its attempts to thwart their consumption. This is a pretty unstable situation.
Capitalism, on the other hand, dangles the carrot in front of everyone's nose. The goal is to accumulate goods as fast as you possibly can. Of course, the first generations to accumulate large amounts of wealth then capitalize on that wealth by using some of it to get more of it while preventing others from getting any of it. However, regardless of the actual fluidity between classes (or lack thereof), most people still operate under the basic assumption that if they are just good, diligent, sexy or smart enough, that they too can pull some of the wealth in their direction. People then want to protect the system because its survival is the guarantor of their promised happiness -- which promotes the long-term stability of that system. It's a kinder, gentler opression.
I mean really, as long as the lady-mantis is getting you off, who cares if she's eating your brains out, right?
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the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.
Who's there?
Asshole.
Asshole Who?
Asshole my soul to the MPAA.
Are they going to check my systems to make sure that I am running Windows[TM] in order to watch the movie that I bought?
um, they don't have to. that's the whole point of the case -- now the very existence of DeCSS is illegal, regardless of whether you use it or it just sits on your hard drive.
As far as them checking your system, I hope you're not using a school, work, or broadband connection, since all of these make your system contents relatively transparent to the folks running the network.
Even if you're not, when you are identified through your activities/associations as a probable criminal, the po-lease will batter-ram your door down and confiscate your computer.
_/\!/\_
you can have my DeCSS when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.
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the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.
[Last year we received a technology grant and "up"graded everything to brand-new HP Vectras running NT4; before that the workstations were W95 and the staff machines were Macs].
Well, it's mostly the fact that Mac users are already pretty close to doing it the MS way (for obvious historical reasons). It's the little GUI differences. People who don't have any computer experience won't even get the connection between the mouse and the on-screen pointer, whereas Mac users are GUI experts, they just don't know the MS analogues for Mac objects.
For example, Mac users:
-are slightly more confused by a spare desktop; a good many of them are used to working from Launchers or other pull-out tray-like objects (where MS got the idea for the Office Toolbar). windows users either do everything from the Start Button or have 30 shortcuts on their desktop.
-don't know to use the Windows Taskbar (or Alt-Tab) to switch between maximized windows -- though for the same reason they are better at switching between two active documents in the same app. by using the pull-down menu.
-when i say "now click here" their hands don't assume a left-click vs right-click position. they need to be informed that windows boxen have two buttons (and with the wheels, we have three).
-they try to drag the drive A: shortcut to the Recycle Bin. [grin]
-they ask, "where's the video-editing software?" [double grin]
really, it's a whole-picture -- there isn't any one thing that makes it glaringly obvious (other than the left/right mouse issue), but after helping a sufficiently large amount of people they begin to differentiate themselves in your mind in much the same gestalt-intuitive way that Sherlock Holmes deduced occupation, dietary habits, and musical talents from the rest-position of the subject's hands or small discolorations on a coat.
It's very important for me to be this observant because everyone is at a different level skillwise, and most of my job centers around the accuracy of this estimate.
We won't be able to do intensive database queries if the patron doesn't know the difference between "any of these words" and "all these words"; or, if someone tells me they want to find data on the web, it is essential that I determine whether or not they recognize a link as an actionable object before I say, "let's go to hotbot".
If I misjudge them, I will seem either unhelpful or condescending, both of which are service failures. Being able to quickly assess their experience and respond with targeted assistance saves a lot of time and headache as the research process continues, both from their perspective of obtaining information (often under deadline) and from my perspective of providing quality, professional service.
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the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.
Agreed. The first thing I do when sitting down to any machine is to disable as many of the "Helping" features as possible. Word probably has the most cluttered feature-list of any common app., and I spend more time trying to get it to do what I WANT [eg type a simple non-formatted list] and not what it has been programmed to *guess* that I want to do [automagically insert bullets, tabs, paragraphing, character spacing, underlining main points....]. I actually prefer Notepad or Wordpad, since I can insert mark-up tags - either HTML or just notes to myself on formatting - and then import to Word for final printing.
But I believe this is one of the main points of Dilger's article:
- Demystify everything. In the case of computing, explain the technologies students are using, and tell what's "under the hood" -- show students the server room, or open up a computer and identify the various parts. Use programs that give students direct control over work, instead of displacing control to "wizards" or "helpful" agents.
In the essay, the "Ideology of Ease" can be compared to the politically-charged idea of "The Welfare Effect", whereby systems (designed ostensibly to help people) become systems which cripple the Helped and foster dependence on further help.I work in a college library helping students do both print and computer-based research, and after two minutes working with a particular patron I can tell if her/his computer experience began with a CLI, a Mac, or Windows95.
[digression: this is similar to how someone with a linguistic education can pick out non-native speakers of a language by noticing very subtle clues invisible to the untrained ear. there should be some special category of occupational psych. to investigate just how important is the connection between exposure to early "non-user-friendly" computers and later skill proficiency.]
The big Flaw in the Ideology of Ease is that for computer systems it must be all or nothing. That is, since ease fosters an ignorant user-base which clicks buttons without real understanding, the system MUST be designed to NEVER deviate from the Wizard path, for, if it does stray, the dependent user has no knowledge from which to build an alternative, and then all the postulated productivity of the Digitised Workplace is eaten by befuddled downtime while waiting for the IT department to "fix my broken machine".
Somebody had to put all that Chaos there!
Yeah, and it was MS-Office.
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the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.
Which at the most fundamental level is impossible. Even in communist countries people have secret papers and there is always the concept of whispers and looks. Human communications will flourish even with the gestapo at the door.
;-P
whah?? this is technically true, but the educated classes in USSR and 1930s Deutschland were firmly in favor of the contemporary political rhetoric. Remember that USSR disbanded for essentially economic reasons (humans are by nature selfish and any system which rewards selfishness will thrive while systems that concentrate selfishness in the hands of a few are instable -- so capitalism works, communism doesn't), and that Deutschland was defeated militarily. In orwellian states it is only the educated classes that matter, and they are usually well-vested in the political mainstream. There will be no revolution from the proles, because they are philosophically ignorant and politically unorganized.
Yes, secret communications will always exist, but as Chinese students found out in Tiananmen Square, knowing glances and covert solidarity do not easily translate into freedom. The government crushed them, literally, and the world looked on -- there is little doubt that the incident would play similarly today.
If 100,000 open protesters could not even create a dent in their system, from where do you obtain this optimism that people are smarter than propaganda and will rise up and smite the evil empire? Nothing could be farther from the truth -- people are simple, ignorant and easily manipulated, as demonstrated by the prevalence of $2 bottled water, $120 blue jeans, everything antibacterial, and censorlegislation.
Every time i go grocery shopping i see products labelled "New Look! Same Great TASTE!!" "Smaller Size for Your CONVENIENCE" and the absolute winner, i kid you not ---- "Now! Made with REAL Ingredients!!!"
and it is this shit that i see flying off the shelves; people just can't get enough of bold fonts, starburst patterns, gratuitous! punctuation!!!, and compelling but semantically vacuous claims.
i salute you for your optimism. and i feel it is totally unfounded.
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the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.
That's only because you haven't bothered to read it, it would seem, or else you'd know about large portions devoted to ritual impurity caused by contact with corpses. As a starting point, consider Lev. 12:1 - 15:33.
ahh, good ol' Leviticus. always a great place to go for spiritual guidance. together with the other four mosaic books, it manages to list what's right and what's wrong for just about every situation conceivably experienced in the daily life of the time.
this code was so important that later god sent his son, jesus, who said, "yea, verily, you guys aren't following the law good enough. you should strive to be more like the pharisees, who are very careful to follow the correct interpretations of the laws. blessed are the steadfastly moral, for only they are good enough to deserve my love."
you are very correct that the bible does provide rules for disposing of bodies, though the original point can still be made that on the list of things god may be concerned about, i would guess the treatment of our earthly vehicles, once empty, could be thought of as a pretty low priority -- that is, if a limitless, omniscient being could be said to prioritize anything (consider the sparrows and lilies).
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the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.
i agree -- everytime i pass a graveyard i think of all the wasted energy lying there under the ground, and i try to come up with a more fitting way to ritualize death. i'd rather be mulched to nourish someone's garden, but you'll find that in nearly all modern societies there are pages of legal code prohibiting these types of actions. it's telling that although we consider ourselves free creatures, even our very bodies are bound from birth to death and beyond by others' opinions of what is right.
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the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.
...then something or someone with an equal grasp of humor.
Data walks into a bar and asks, "Do you serve penguins here?" and Guinan replies, "that depends on how many bars of gold-pressed latinum you have."
see what i mean? computers have no concept of what's funny.
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the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.
Tyrannosaurus said:
I love the fact that 2600 can legally print the URL, they just can't embed it within a link anchor. Does this mean that your telemarketer could use your phone number as long as a computer didn't dial the number for him?
Actually, I've been thinking about this a lot recently. What with more and more states using cameras on the highways to monitor my speed, cameras on signal lights to make sure I don't go through on yellow, microphone-networks in public neighborhoods to locate illegal activity, code enforcers fining me for not getting a city permit (with, of course, a clerical fee; ie more taxes) to have a garage sale on my "own" property.... I really see no important difference between my life and that of, say, Winston Smith.
It's taken two hundred years, but bureacracy has finally made the Bill of Rights (the only part of the constitution that really does much for We, The People -- though it was wrong not to have included universal sufferage and equal protection from the beginning) completely irrelevant. The river of human authoritarian bullshit flows ever on, finding new ways to bypass the temporary barriers we place in its path.
I think we should add another rights-of-the-accused amendment in between IV and V with provisions that roughly say:
"Although the course of recent history has shown that systems of power use technology to obliterate the People's Rights, direct judgement by one's peers is essential to the survival of freedom -- because while keeping the citizens honest it also, by providing personal accountability to the prosecutor, helps keep the State honest as well. It is self-evident that as social complexity increases the distance between free men and their governments, those governments use their bureacracy as foils for increasingly heinous violations of Liberty. Therefore, let it be decreed that no federal, state, or municipal agency shall directly infringe upon the People's right to be caught and prosecuted by another human being."
I mean it. I think speed limits are ridiculous (forethought and consideration are far more important to safe driving), but if I'm going to be caught, have Smokey pull me over. It is immoral to have a camera capture my license, collude with a computer for my radar-ed speed and then automagically generate a ticket mailed to my house in five working days without any human involvement other than maybe the Data Processing geek who runs the daily batches.
Our current problems will be as specks of dust next to the injustices that will be dished out if we allow our criminal justice system to become automated.
I am intelligent. I've always loved science, both as fictional entertainment and factual enlightenment. I generally support scientific research and the gadgets that result therefrom. However, if modern geeks: researchers, doctors, hackers, physicists, statisticians, programmers and the like continue to aid and abet the full merger of the Manipulative Technocracy with the Inhibitive Bureaucracy, you can bet grandma's sweet-tater pie that I'll be right at the forefront of the angry, uneducated mob that destroys all technology a la Player Piano and Canticle For Leibowitz
(oh, and please note that we are talking regulations on governments, not people -- private citizens may still automatically videotape their private property and ask to enter such recordings as evidence should their homes/service stations be burgled. yes, it would need some tweaking, but i think the basic idea is valid)
the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.
for more on how even librarians (who might be expected to have more archival appreciation) are "throwing away our history as we generate it", check this excerpt from Nicholson Baker's well-researched and insightful "Discards":
- And abruptly you realize, looking at these expressive dirt bands [caused by patron handling of cards], that even the libraries, like Harvard and the New York Public Library and Cornell, who microfilmed or digitized some of their cards prior to destroying them, have - by failing to capture any information at all about the relative reflectivity of the edge of each card - lost something of real interest, something eminently studiable. Who knows what a diligent researcher who photographed (from above, on a tripod) each close-packed drawer of Harvard's Widener catalog with a high-contrast camera might find out, were he to correlate his spectrographic dirt-band records with the authors that, as distinct clumps, exhibited some darkening? Of course the "Kinsey" cards would be thoroughly dirt-banded - but which others? This is, or was, a cumulative set of scholarly Nielsen ratings for topics at twentieth-century Harvard that is perhaps more representative than any other means of surveying we have. Instead of tossing its catalog out, Harvard ought to have persuaded a rich alumnus to endow a chair for dirt-banded studies.
it's an excellent read for anyone interested in the "books meet bytes" situation.---
the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.
I hate movie cynics who can't find anything good in anything. You're the same people who will see the Simpsons movie and parade around bitching about how the lines were stupid or "It wasn't really Simpsons" or something like that. I overanalyze movies to a fare-thee-well, but I still know how to enjoy them. You cynics might want to learn to do the same.
...it is filled with trailer-ready oneliners instead of characteristic dialogue.
...it allows large, yet elementary concept errors that no serious SpecFic writer has gotten away with since the 1950s.
...it completely discards the previous character development arcs in favor of pasteboard-cliche marketable Action Figures.
bullseye. you're absolutely right, i do express my opinions on a movie ---- IF
sometimes a sequel or book-into-film adaptation can, by virtue of its overall cinematographic effect, overcome these difficulties and still be quite good. Example: i actually like Alien3 BETTER than Aliens (but not, of course, more than Alien) despite the fact that it was a large departure from the first two stories. the music, the sets, the emotional content -- i found myself very moved by the climax, which i thought was perhaps the best possible end to the srtuggle of Lt. Ripley to eradicate her demons.
Anyway, I guess if you're saying that I'm overly cynical for not checking my brain at the box office so i can "learn to [enjoy a bad story]", then I am indeed guilty as charged, and shamelessly so.
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the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.
i disagree.
the simpsons' success is due to one thing only: incisive WIT and tons of it.
the modern simpsons look stunning compared to the drawing of the really early episodes and shorts -- and many of those episodes are waaay funnier than some of their newer, crisper descendants.
i've never found south park even slightly entertaining, but i think its popularity signifies that high production values aren't necessary for a cartoon to be successful.
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the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.
[adopting Simpsons Comic Book Guy persona] I hope this movie isn't a let down like most movies "ported" over from TV. I was slightly dissapointed with the ST:TNG movies.
only *slightly*??
with a lame-o Kirk revivification, really lame-o Action Movie One Liners, and desperately lame-o plot holes large enough to float a dyson sphere through, the NextGen movies were more than disappointing -- they sucked ass.
Although nothing can match the heartbreaking crapola of forced-deadpan "She'll Breed You'll Die" Alien4 : Resurrection.
hmmm... that almost sounds like "Star Trek : Insurrection", with similar promo posters, and similarly terrible stories. coincidence? i think not.....[/CBG persona]
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the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.
the verdict seems to say that the owner/author of something has total control over how you can view information -- that if the owner/author has encrypted something, you CANNOT decrypt it without her permission (via the "license").
Turning this idea upon itself, let's just encrypt the DeCSS code and then distribute it with a license saying "this file is offered as is and cannot be decrypted under any circumstances which lead to its use for purposes which break the law".
Then those who distribute DeCSS would be no more responsible for its use in piracy than Oneida is responsible for knifing deaths.
Or better yet, have the license say, "this file may not be decrypted at all". Then nobody can accuse anybody of violating Kaplan's order by possessing or distributing DeCSS -- since you would have to break the law to know that it contains DeCSS.
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the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.
the email-initiated laptop destruct portion of the article reminds me of the public outcry surrounding the evil dangerous Kevin Mitnick, who was described BY THE US COURTS as being "capable of launching nuclear missles by whistling into a telephone".
so next time some big tech. corporation pisses me off i'll go on the subway and "accidentally" leave my laptop to be stolen, then after reporting it stolen send an e-command which will send out pre-scripted command to my legion of secretly hacked boxes to initiate a DoS against the hated corp.
And since I reported it stolen, I have a flawless alibi!
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the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.
[-1, Offtopic] Hemos posted an article about the law before it was signed; that article is unfortunately no longer available, but the comments are.
/. -- lack of durability.
this is an isolated example of what i dislike most strongly in
a story hits the homepage, everyone gets very worked up, 680 messages are posted, and then in eight hours the discussion is dead as everyone rushes to be outraged by the latest violation of our online rights or stupid implementation by a software company.
i do think these are very important issues we're dealing with, but the reason the corporate-govt marriage so often steamrolls over us is that they know how to work their power by focusing on an issue and lobbying relentlessly until passage of legislation -- often saturating the big-market print and visual media outlets with their rhetoric until the public begs them to PLEASE DO SOMETHING. And of course, a la "Trouble in River City", they happen to have a solution to all our [newly created ex-nihilo] problems waiting right there.
conversely, it seems that the majority of slashdotters are politically ADHD, which may be great for slamming out late night code but is not necessarily the best way to fight for a cause (except perhaps programs that make "civil disobedience" statements, which still should be backed up by other action in order to be effective).
This is, in fact, why SPAM and other advertisements are so pervasive -- when your general population doesn't have any social/cultural memory, the only way to persuade them to buy into your product (tangible or philosophical) is to constantly bombard them with high-intensity ads designed to push you to the front of their mind, ahead of the hundreds of other special interests all doing the same.
the next time i hear someone shriek, "please, won't someone think of the children's online rights!!!" i believe i will calmly add, "yes, and please think about them for longer than eight hours."
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the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.