Re:would you be aware if they were dissuaded?
on
Underground Surfaces
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· Score: 1
And for the record, I don't consider myself a feminist.
Now there's a baffling statement... or maybe just an indication of how the power of a word can transcend its actual meaning. If feminism is the radical idea that women are people and should be as free to realize their potential as anyone else - as good a definition as I can think of - then it looks to me that you are one, babe. Regardless of whether you like being addressed that way!
Of course, eventually the truth of an idea becomes so self-evident that we don't need an "ism" word to describe it anymore. Maybe that's why the word "feminism" seems increasingly outdated. Let's see if a few years of Republican-dominated government doesn't bring it back...
I see this attitude a lot, and it deserves some examination. It's remarkable how many "ordinary" people in this country have been sold on the idea that they shouldn't expect the same sort of representation from government that is routinely demanded by the same elites that peddle this nonsense. They'll line up to vote Republican, because, gosh-darn it, they don't want no guv'mint bureaucracy interfering with (e.g.) the right of well-meaning HMO bureaucrats to determine what kind of medical care they'll receive, or telling the local copper smelter what it can and can't spew into their breathin' air and drinkin' water. No siree, we just want the guv'mint to go 'bout its rightful business of helpin' the rich folks and keepin' the rest of us in our place. They end up getting screwed because they f*cking demand to be screwed.
If you're an economic elite that comprises a small fraction of the population but needs to get a majority (well, except for this year, maybe!) of the vote to rule, then selling an idea like this to the humble folk is a pretty nifty thing to be able to do. The day the unwashed masses start demanding the same consideration from government that you do, well...
Commercial vs. Political Speech
on
Norway Bans Spam
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· Score: 1
If this happens here, the pretext will be to limit commercial spam, but the real usefulness of it (to government) will be the limitation of political speech. Suppose you send out email to a lot of people announcing a protest demonstration (if, that is, there were actually going to be anything to protest in the next few years). Suppose further that someone on your list were to be "annoyed" by your mailing, and complain about it. Six months in the spammer slammer? That's enough to incent just about any reactionary police agency to make damn sure that they get some highly annoyable people on your mailing list.
I'm as annoyed by spam as anyone, but it's nothing compared to driving all the way to the P.O. and finding my box full of nothing but junk...
Well, I think most of us who don't have drool hanging from our chins understand these points pretty well...
...but it's not our responsibility as web users to ensure a return for advertisers as some kind of quid pro quo for otherwise free content. If people are ignoring banner ads, it's precisely because they're not interested in seeing them, period. They are not going to be customers, and attempting to force them to view material they find irritating or distracting is not going to make them so.
We're getting to the point where the real bottleneck for advertisers isn't the availability of appropriate media, but limits on our attention bandwidth. We're bombarded by exhortations to consume more or less constantly through most of our waking hours; we learn to filter this deluge simply to keep our fscking sanity.
I stopped listening to commercial radio long ago (except in the car where my hand is always inches from the tuner) because it got too annoying (and because where I live there are tons of good non-commercial stations playing what I like to listen to). The thought that I should listen to radio ads and patronize the advertisers as a means of supporting a station has never occurred to me, and it won't with a website, either.
The thing is, evolution doesn't "want" us to live any longer. In fact, just about every species that exists today has evolved with genes that limit lifespan. We don't grow old and die because our bodies "wear out" in the sense that a machine does; we grow old and die because we're programmed to by our genes. Why? Because evolution isn't very efficient if previous generations hang around too long competing with newer generations for resources and mating opportunities. An immortal species would have trouble maintaining its average fitness in competion with other species that have a higher turnover rate.
Nobody's ever shown this as far as I know, but I'll bet that even the fact that we get uglier as we age is genetically programmed; it keeps the level of intergenerational mating under control (unless you're rich, but that's another subject).
It may well be that science will find a solution to the aging "problem", but we should realize that we're screwing with something very fundamental here, and the long-term consequences could be pretty nasty.
Another good read in this regard is Lisa Jardine's Worldly Goods - A New History of the Renaissance (1996). She traces the origins of the renaissance not to any single technological development (like the printing press), but to the spread of commerce and the resulting rise of a mercantile class. The new demand for works of art - and, to a large extent, books - was driven by the need to gain social status by exhibiting one's wealth. Much like today!
You're disgusted by people who block ads, but you say it's become "second nature" for you to ignore them? What sense does that make? The revenue stream produced by these ads ultimately depends on their performance, and not on how many people allow them to be displayed on their screens. You're just blocking the ads one paddle further downstream, with your brain instead of your browser. If you don't buy, the ad revenue won't continue.
To really support this kind of free software, we should not only look at the ads, but (at least occasionally) buy whatever they're selling, whether we really want it or not! Maybe they could charge for the browser, and refund the price with your first purchase.
The French have been in denial of their own history during WWII since their liberation by the (despised?) Brits and Yanks. While I'd never deny the heroism of the Resistance and the role of the Free French forces under DeGaulle, for the most part this was a country that failed to put up much of a fight against the Nazis but then - under the Vichy occupation government - fought against the Allies with more determination than they ever mustered against Hitler.
This is a comment on their leadership of the time, of course, and not on the French people either then or now; certainly there was a great deal of suffering under the occupation, and not all frenchmen were collaborators. The ambiguous history with regard to the Nazis does, however, help to explain French attitudes and sensitivities in the 45 years since their independence was restored.
So, if France as a nation has a need to be a little more stubborn and vociferous than most in asserting its sovereignty and independence against the rest of the world, maybe it's understandable even if a bit silly at times...
Yeah,.biz has a schlocky feel to it... I'm surprised that we're not seeing something like ".corp" or ".inc" instead.
But here's a stupid question:
Why do we need TLDs at all? Do they serve any real purpose in routing? Certainly they no longer specify the type of entity that they address (hmm... maybe we need ".squat"). Why can't www.sun.com just be www.sun? Is it because they're the dot in dot-com? Jeez... just define a valid character set and a maximum length, and go nuts!
...is a preferential voting scheme like (I've been told) they use in Australia, and like ICANN used in its recent election. I.e.: You vote for a first and second choice if there are more than 2 candidates. If no candidate achieves a majority, the last place candidate is chucked, and the 2nd-choice votes on those ballots are credited to the remaining ones. This process repeats until someone exceeds the magic 50% of votes cast.
The beauty of this is that you never have to avoid supporting the candidate you really like in order to avoid helping the one you like the least. I.e., you could vote for Nader (or Buchanan) without having to worry about tipping a close election to Bush (or Gore). Of course, this is exactly why it will probably never happen here - neither of the two major parties wants to make it easier to support third parties.
All I know about this is what I've read here, but...
I wonder if Mr. Weisstein is really the hapless victim of corporate greed that everyone seems to be assuming. Surely he must have known the implications of selling the copyright to CRC, and must have been financially motivated to do so. According to one post by a contributor to his site, he actively solicited contributors to assign their rights to CRC as well, in return for a print copy of the book. I.e., he seems to have been very well aware of what he was doing.
I have no quarrel at all with anyone who seeks to benefit tangibly from their labor, but it seems that Mr. Weisstein himself is responsible for privatizing this resource, and that CRC is being villified mainly because they are the instrument of the privatization. If this is the case, then CRC is doing him quite a favor by serving as a lightning rod for the wrath of the user community.
This is in no way a criticism of Eric, BTW. He was presented with an opportunity to reap reward from what had been a labor of love, and he took it just like many of us would have done. I'm just not sure that martyrdom should be part of the bargain.
The way I see it, if Bush wins the election we'll no longer have to worry about reducing emissions. We'll just filter the crud with our lungs, like God intended.
How many of us work in organizations that are meritocracies in any real sense at the management level? In how many businesses are the "best and brightest" found at the executive management level? I'd say relatively few, and there may be good reasons for this.
In many, if not most companies, executive management is much like a social club (usually a Boys' Club). Ability and intelligence is not irrelevant, but the selection of executives may have more to do with the personal comfort of peers than anything else. Will you be politically reliable? Will you identify completely with "the club" and not your own subordinates? Are you good company on the golf course? Are you someone who the other execs will enjoy hanging with? Are you likely to represent a threat to them or their status in some way?
Back in the 80s I was the software VP for a small company that developed scientific software and systems, mostly because I was the technical cofounder. After a while I found myself in the position of being the only one in management with any computer or science background whatsoever, and believe me, it was no picnic. I was sensitive to the situation at the time, but in retrospect there's probably nothing I could have done about it; I was identified more as "one of them" than "one of us", and it was only a matter of time before I was forced out, to be eventually replaced by a manager who had no sci/tech background and therefore would not be a threat to management cohesiveness. I could get all self-righteous about it, but to be honest I don't remember hiring many people either with whom I felt threatened or uncomfortable. That's how you end up with technology companies run by managers who are clueless about what they are managing.
BTW, after that I was completely disillusioned with corporate politics and started my own company. Things went well for a while but it ultimately failed, largely because I spent nearly all my time on technology matters and gave short shrift to things like raising capital and building a sales and marketing apparatus. But just wait 'till next time...
This is (I think) called preferential voting, and I've always thought it should be used in governmental elections. In a contest with more than 2 candidates, voters select a first and second choice. Then if no one gets a majority, candidates are eliminated one-by-one and their votes are credited to the second choices until someone gets a majority.
The result is that the winner is at least the most tolerable to the majority of voters. You never have to vote for someone you don't like to prevent someone you like even less from winning. E.g., you can vote for Nader without hurting Gore, or for Buchanan without hurting Bush, etc...
Where we're at now is very much like the advent of book publishing during the Renaissance. Printed books were expensive, collected as status symbols by the rich and socially ambitious, and useful only to a small educational elite who could read them. Yet no one would deny the cultural, intellectual, and political impact that the rise of the mass production of printed books had on society then and since.
IMHO, we are living in a period right now that closely resembles the 14th and 15th centuries in many ways (but on an accelerated time scale), and it will be remembered as such 500 years from now.
I doubt that this law would pass judicial scrutiny if it's applied to forms of political expression. In that case, e-mail is the equivalent of the "soap box", and the law essentially says that you can be held liable for expression that might annoy someone passing by who didn't agree to hear it.
Anyway, I'm even more annoyed by junk snail-mail, since it requires me to dispose of the trash. And don't get me started on animated and blinking banner ads on websites...
Hmmm... I wonder how much of this technophobic hysteria could have played out with respect to earlier scientific and technological advances. Imagine all of the horrors we could have quite reasonably anticipated from: antibiotics (overuse, with the rise of resistant organisms), computers and the Internet (name your poison!), broadcasting (massive mind control and cultural homogenization), electric power (dangerous and controlled by monopolistic corporations), the wheel... And don't even get me started about the evils of FIRE!
Craig Venter and Celera aside, I don't think there has ever been a major scientific advance conducted in a more open and democratic manner, or with greater ethical consciousness and concern for social consequences, than this one. Katz's beef seems to more with change generally (especially in technologies he understands poorly) and with the economic systems that mediate how benefits will be distributed. I hear him on the latter point, though; much of Africa is on the verge of an almost unimaginable holocaust because it wasn't sufficiently profitable for western pharmcos to allow anything to be done about it...
Kids are pawns in an ongoing cultural war. Unfortunately, no one is asking them whether they'd like to give up their (future) liberties so that they might now be protected from, say, seeing an exposed nipple here or there. The culture-warriors that are using them to promote censorship are never the ones that are out front on issues that really make a difference to children, like nutrition, educational opportunity, child care, etc. Their real concern is about the open discussion of subjects that make them personally uncomfortable, or that might subvert the existing social hierarchy. Why does sex remain such a taboo subject? Why is it so important to conservatives that open discussion of sex and eroticism be suppressed? I think that the social function of this attitude is exactly this: In an open society, sexual pleasure is not allocated strictly according to wealth and social status. What good is wealth and status if mating decisions are made primarily on the basis of physical attraction and "animal magnetism"? So, we've built a tradition that suppresses overt eroticism and confines it to a framework (marriage) that is foremost an economic relationship. In a conservative's "perfect world", women choose their husbands - if they choose at all - primarily out of economic dependancy, and offer sex and household services in return. Talking openly about the erotic aspects of sex upsets the whole applecart.
I'm not sure that everyone understands this, and I'm not sure that I do either. If my ISP charges more for a faster connection, then that's to be expected. But if my ISP interferes with my access to external sites that aren't paying tribute, then that's an outrage and I'll find another ISP. It would be like the phone company giving me busy signals because the person I'm calling is a low-priority customer.
Well, here's something to consider: How long before these records start getting subpoenaed by law enforcement agencies? Suppose that in a few years the government is run by the "religious right", and it dawns on these people that there's a "one-stop shopping" kind of place to get a list of everyone who's been downloading sexually-oriented material or other files of questionable moral or political virtue. I don't like being targeted by people selling things, but I'm far more concerned that once these databases exist they can be used for purposes (and by people) that we can't yet forsee...
Slashdot Mirror
Now there's a baffling statement... or maybe just an indication of how the power of a word can transcend its actual meaning. If feminism is the radical idea that women are people and should be as free to realize their potential as anyone else - as good a definition as I can think of - then it looks to me that you are one, babe. Regardless of whether you like being addressed that way!
Of course, eventually the truth of an idea becomes so self-evident that we don't need an "ism" word to describe it anymore. Maybe that's why the word "feminism" seems increasingly outdated. Let's see if a few years of Republican-dominated government doesn't bring it back...
Make that a strident non-comment!
If you're an economic elite that comprises a small fraction of the population but needs to get a majority (well, except for this year, maybe!) of the vote to rule, then selling an idea like this to the humble folk is a pretty nifty thing to be able to do. The day the unwashed masses start demanding the same consideration from government that you do, well...
I'm as annoyed by spam as anyone, but it's nothing compared to driving all the way to the P.O. and finding my box full of nothing but junk...
...but it's not our responsibility as web users to ensure a return for advertisers as some kind of quid pro quo for otherwise free content. If people are ignoring banner ads, it's precisely because they're not interested in seeing them, period. They are not going to be customers, and attempting to force them to view material they find irritating or distracting is not going to make them so.
We're getting to the point where the real bottleneck for advertisers isn't the availability of appropriate media, but limits on our attention bandwidth. We're bombarded by exhortations to consume more or less constantly through most of our waking hours; we learn to filter this deluge simply to keep our fscking sanity.
I stopped listening to commercial radio long ago (except in the car where my hand is always inches from the tuner) because it got too annoying (and because where I live there are tons of good non-commercial stations playing what I like to listen to). The thought that I should listen to radio ads and patronize the advertisers as a means of supporting a station has never occurred to me, and it won't with a website, either.
Nobody's ever shown this as far as I know, but I'll bet that even the fact that we get uglier as we age is genetically programmed; it keeps the level of intergenerational mating under control (unless you're rich, but that's another subject).
It may well be that science will find a solution to the aging "problem", but we should realize that we're screwing with something very fundamental here, and the long-term consequences could be pretty nasty.
...it's actually frequent masturbation that does all these things. What a wonderful world this would be if we all just did it for 45 minutes a day.
Another good read in this regard is Lisa Jardine's Worldly Goods - A New History of the Renaissance (1996). She traces the origins of the renaissance not to any single technological development (like the printing press), but to the spread of commerce and the resulting rise of a mercantile class. The new demand for works of art - and, to a large extent, books - was driven by the need to gain social status by exhibiting one's wealth. Much like today!
Carrier pigeons.
To really support this kind of free software, we should not only look at the ads, but (at least occasionally) buy whatever they're selling, whether we really want it or not! Maybe they could charge for the browser, and refund the price with your first purchase.
This is a comment on their leadership of the time, of course, and not on the French people either then or now; certainly there was a great deal of suffering under the occupation, and not all frenchmen were collaborators. The ambiguous history with regard to the Nazis does, however, help to explain French attitudes and sensitivities in the 45 years since their independence was restored.
So, if France as a nation has a need to be a little more stubborn and vociferous than most in asserting its sovereignty and independence against the rest of the world, maybe it's understandable even if a bit silly at times...
But here's a stupid question:
Why do we need TLDs at all? Do they serve any real purpose in routing? Certainly they no longer specify the type of entity that they address (hmm... maybe we need ".squat"). Why can't www.sun.com just be www.sun? Is it because they're the dot in dot-com? Jeez... just define a valid character set and a maximum length, and go nuts!
The beauty of this is that you never have to avoid supporting the candidate you really like in order to avoid helping the one you like the least. I.e., you could vote for Nader (or Buchanan) without having to worry about tipping a close election to Bush (or Gore). Of course, this is exactly why it will probably never happen here - neither of the two major parties wants to make it easier to support third parties.
I wonder if Mr. Weisstein is really the hapless victim of corporate greed that everyone seems to be assuming. Surely he must have known the implications of selling the copyright to CRC, and must have been financially motivated to do so. According to one post by a contributor to his site, he actively solicited contributors to assign their rights to CRC as well, in return for a print copy of the book. I.e., he seems to have been very well aware of what he was doing.
I have no quarrel at all with anyone who seeks to benefit tangibly from their labor, but it seems that Mr. Weisstein himself is responsible for privatizing this resource, and that CRC is being villified mainly because they are the instrument of the privatization. If this is the case, then CRC is doing him quite a favor by serving as a lightning rod for the wrath of the user community.
This is in no way a criticism of Eric, BTW. He was presented with an opportunity to reap reward from what had been a labor of love, and he took it just like many of us would have done. I'm just not sure that martyrdom should be part of the bargain.
The way I see it, if Bush wins the election we'll no longer have to worry about reducing emissions. We'll just filter the crud with our lungs, like God intended.
In many, if not most companies, executive management is much like a social club (usually a Boys' Club). Ability and intelligence is not irrelevant, but the selection of executives may have more to do with the personal comfort of peers than anything else. Will you be politically reliable? Will you identify completely with "the club" and not your own subordinates? Are you good company on the golf course? Are you someone who the other execs will enjoy hanging with? Are you likely to represent a threat to them or their status in some way?
Back in the 80s I was the software VP for a small company that developed scientific software and systems, mostly because I was the technical cofounder. After a while I found myself in the position of being the only one in management with any computer or science background whatsoever, and believe me, it was no picnic. I was sensitive to the situation at the time, but in retrospect there's probably nothing I could have done about it; I was identified more as "one of them" than "one of us", and it was only a matter of time before I was forced out, to be eventually replaced by a manager who had no sci/tech background and therefore would not be a threat to management cohesiveness. I could get all self-righteous about it, but to be honest I don't remember hiring many people either with whom I felt threatened or uncomfortable. That's how you end up with technology companies run by managers who are clueless about what they are managing.
BTW, after that I was completely disillusioned with corporate politics and started my own company. Things went well for a while but it ultimately failed, largely because I spent nearly all my time on technology matters and gave short shrift to things like raising capital and building a sales and marketing apparatus. But just wait 'till next time...
The result is that the winner is at least the most tolerable to the majority of voters. You never have to vote for someone you don't like to prevent someone you like even less from winning. E.g., you can vote for Nader without hurting Gore, or for Buchanan without hurting Bush, etc...
IMHO, we are living in a period right now that closely resembles the 14th and 15th centuries in many ways (but on an accelerated time scale), and it will be remembered as such 500 years from now.
Anyway, I'm even more annoyed by junk snail-mail, since it requires me to dispose of the trash. And don't get me started on animated and blinking banner ads on websites...
Hmmm... I wonder how much of this technophobic hysteria could have played out with respect to earlier scientific and technological advances. Imagine all of the horrors we could have quite reasonably anticipated from: antibiotics (overuse, with the rise of resistant organisms), computers and the Internet (name your poison!), broadcasting (massive mind control and cultural homogenization), electric power (dangerous and controlled by monopolistic corporations), the wheel... And don't even get me started about the evils of FIRE!
Craig Venter and Celera aside, I don't think there has ever been a major scientific advance conducted in a more open and democratic manner, or with greater ethical consciousness and concern for social consequences, than this one. Katz's beef seems to more with change generally (especially in technologies he understands poorly) and with the economic systems that mediate how benefits will be distributed. I hear him on the latter point, though; much of Africa is on the verge of an almost unimaginable holocaust because it wasn't sufficiently profitable for western pharmcos to allow anything to be done about it...
Kids are pawns in an ongoing cultural war. Unfortunately, no one is asking them whether they'd like to give up their (future) liberties so that they might now be protected from, say, seeing an exposed nipple here or there. The culture-warriors that are using them to promote censorship are never the ones that are out front on issues that really make a difference to children, like nutrition, educational opportunity, child care, etc. Their real concern is about the open discussion of subjects that make them personally uncomfortable, or that might subvert the existing social hierarchy. Why does sex remain such a taboo subject? Why is it so important to conservatives that open discussion of sex and eroticism be suppressed? I think that the social function of this attitude is exactly this: In an open society, sexual pleasure is not allocated strictly according to wealth and social status. What good is wealth and status if mating decisions are made primarily on the basis of physical attraction and "animal magnetism"? So, we've built a tradition that suppresses overt eroticism and confines it to a framework (marriage) that is foremost an economic relationship. In a conservative's "perfect world", women choose their husbands - if they choose at all - primarily out of economic dependancy, and offer sex and household services in return. Talking openly about the erotic aspects of sex upsets the whole applecart.
I'm not sure that everyone understands this, and I'm not sure that I do either. If my ISP charges more for a faster connection, then that's to be expected. But if my ISP interferes with my access to external sites that aren't paying tribute, then that's an outrage and I'll find another ISP. It would be like the phone company giving me busy signals because the person I'm calling is a low-priority customer.
Well, here's something to consider: How long before these records start getting subpoenaed by law enforcement agencies? Suppose that in a few years the government is run by the "religious right", and it dawns on these people that there's a "one-stop shopping" kind of place to get a list of everyone who's been downloading sexually-oriented material or other files of questionable moral or political virtue. I don't like being targeted by people selling things, but I'm far more concerned that once these databases exist they can be used for purposes (and by people) that we can't yet forsee...