Yup, and if you look at the post again I did say "odds are". I'm aware it's a statistical measure. Again, you can say anything you want, but since there's no uncut, unaltered video of the event we're going by the accounts of biased eyewitnesses, written down a long long time ago, which is inherently an unreliable source of information. Thus the need for faith.
divining rod pointing to their half baked ideas
You say my story is half-baked compared to yours? I'll grant you I only took 10 seconds to make it up, but "a prophet gets the full Roman crucifixion treatment, survives and disappears" is half-baked compared to "a man born to a virgin by an invisible all-powerful being died and came back"? Come on, logically speaking, which is more likely?
The odds between someone dying and coming back to life vs. being wounded and making a smart retreat from public life are astoundingly on the latter, I would say. Considering JC was supposedly the only one who ever did it, we're talking about 1 out of the entire number of humans who ever lived on the planet. That's some slim odds partner. Doesn't make it impossible, but it is quite improbable.
None of this is a comment on Christ himself by the way. Personally I think the stories of his behavior on the planet are enough to help people live a good life. You don't need to hinge it all on the actual "back from the dead" thing, because unless he drops into Central Park in full glory you can never prove that.
WE WERE ALL BORN IN SIN I think the key here is "born in". I don't accept that I did anything wrong in the womb (Mom never complained to me, anyway:-)), or *could* do anything "wrong" until somebody told me what "wrong" is, and that would depend very much on where, how, and when you lived.
Can you name one person (other than Christ) who never did anything wrong?
I wouldn't name Christ either. Are you absolutely sure he didn't pull a cat's tail at 3 yrs old? Or would that have been in the Bible if it happened?! We certainly have reasonable historic proof that certain individuals existed, but to make statements about what they did and didn't do ever... that's not gonna fly. You believe he died and rose from the grave - as Devil's Advocate (sorry folks, how often do you get to use that in proper context?) I'm thinking maybe the wounds were not as bad as they looked, a few people snuck into the tomb and bandaged him (insert UFO's here if you're into that) and they pushed the rock out of the way so he could beat feet to a quiet life of monk-ness in the hills. After all, if you're dead the authorities will leave you alone, right? Ever hear of a faked death? Ascended in a ballon, walked uphill, whatever. There are plenty of eyewitnesses who see and remember different things - check court records from anywhere. Maybe they were suffering ergot poisoning from bad bread!
Can you prove my version is wrong? Occam's Razor - given two possibilities, one far-fetched in the extreme, the other simple, odds are on the simpler one every time.
It's that whole inherent badness of humanity thing again. We're not nice unless something outside of us compels us to be nice.
As a (modified) Buddhist I would say that we're inherently good until something outside (or not) compels us to be bad, but maybe I'm just not into good/bad as much in general.
Well, there seem to be more religious nuts than any other kind. And frankly as a former Catholic (escaped after 5th grade) I'd rather confess to my TV than somebody's stupid web site. At least the TV talks back...
You seem woefully ignorant of history, or perhaps just joined the Microsoft PR department recently.
What did they use? OS/2. We all know how well OS/2 fared! Why? Because it was not even close to the quality of Microsoft's product: Windows 3.1. The first versions of OS/2 was written by MS AND IBM. The IBM-only version was V1.2, which was quite stable, thank you. I was controlling power plants with it 24x7 when Win 3.1 wouldn't run Word all day. 50 threads, multiple processes, shared memory, named pipes, etc,etc. It's failing was it was difficult to install. It had pre-emptive multitasking and virtual memory 3 years BEFORE NT.
Where do you think those early versions of IBM's product (OS/2) got their interface ideas?
They got them from IBM's OWN CUA guidelines, which specified the whole drop-down menu and windowing interface which worked for dumb display terminals as well as PCs running OS/2.
Portability to other processor families
Yeah, not like Unix wasn't running on everything but a C64 by then.
implied, over and over, that he doesn't think Christians and members of other religions are welcome on Slashdot
No you misunderstand, it's just you he doesn't like.
young rich white technically-saavy (cough) atheist
Um, fyi I think Jon's a bit north of 50 (editors?), not exactly one of your younger SlashDot guys. And I'm not saying about me.:-)
What are you afraid of, Jon Katz? I'm calling you out. Are you a coward, or aren't you?
You want to meet him at the water tower or something? Please tell us where, I'd love to see you and Katz in a real duel. You could hit him with a Bible and he could counter with Ayn Rand.
Actually the crazy AC Natalie Portman and other assorted weirdness is some of the best stuff I've seen on SlashDot. Most of the time this place is as serious as a heart attack, arguing over licenses and IP. By comparison some of those crazy AC posts are real poetry.
Well then you're gonna be upset - they took 250 domains away from the guys who were auctioning them. They lost $17,500 on their gamble. How it works is you can't use someone else's mark as part of yours. CompaqService.com will get you sued by Compaq. So he has to police "LinuxHelp.com" etc.
Apparently Linux is a little more practical than some of the "all IP is immoral" crowd.
I've been hosting my own and client sites since 1995. You can do it without paying a ton of money, although some start-up costs are inevitable. Here are a few suggestions.
1) Bandwidth is expensive. Be realistic. You can get an ISDN Centrex installation with 32 or more IP addresses for $300/mo. An ISDN router like an Ascend Pipeline is probably less than $600. It's not a T1, but chances are your site is NOT going to get 600K hits per day. If it's just you or you and a few friends, you'll find the bandwidth quite adequate for the majority of users which are still hitting with 33 or 56k modems. Of course if your 5 friends all want to run streaming video, forget it.
2) You don't need the fastest machine in the world as a server. You will want a lot of memory, but a 200 or 300 Mhz PC is fine for many situations. For heavy database use you'll want faster.
3) Backup to tape, backup to CD-RW, and backup to another hard drive if you can. A typical PC may run for a couple or three years w/o a hardware failure, but you'll be happy to have backups when it happens. If possible have a second machine with the same server s/w. You can swap them over anywhere between a few minutes and an hour depending on your prep work, and it makes a $20k high-availability system unnecessary.
3) Setup a firewall. Setup a firewall. Setup a firewall. Look into one of the new "firewall appliances" if it intimidates you. A Sonic Wall with 10 IPs is about $400. You will be amazed at the number of idiots that will try to hack your little web site. I've been able to use the logs to get 2 French, 2 Germans, and 2 Californians warned or suspended by their ISPs. If they're coming in via cable modem, they know one more complaint and their nice fast line gets turned off and they're back to a lousy dial-up. Also, I blocked their IPs specifically. This is the best money I've ever spent on a pice of equipment.
4) One of the major points of having your own domain is having me@mydomain.com on the website. I disagree with the article about this. Where you might want to have a different address is on the Internic admin record for the site. You want to make sure you can always update the DNS servers to a new ISP if your current one goes bad. If possible run the mail server on a different machine than the web server. That way if the web server goes down you still have email, and people can notify you there's a problem. Also, you can still get to tech support, usenet, friends, whatever to get help.
5) Don't bother to do your own DNS unless you have a T1. The ISP will do it for you, often for free. DNS is critical. This removes the requirement for another machine, more backup, etc.
There's nothing like being in control of your own universe. You're free to use whatever OS, database, and hardware you like. Have fun.
I think you're being much too hard on FascDot; his comments are in no way "out of line". So, you have a nice conversation with Katz and he won you over; good for you. If other people choose to see him as a self-promoting hypocritical one-note-johnny media whore using a parasitical relationship with some young impressionable guys to grab the brass ring of big media recognition (whew) you should consider that possibly there's a good reason for it. Because that's just what he's doing. If he thought pets were in the desirable teen-twentysomething demographic necessary to get big media exposure he'd be writing about poodle culture, not geek culture.
And for your information, I haven't been an angry adolescent in decades. Or maybe I'm not a geek at all. Hell, when I was a tech at your lovely university's Plasma Physics Labs we programmed micro-sequencers, ran fiber optics and built trackballs from scratch so we could instrument the reactor. Geeky enough? But then we all took off Fridays during the summer, loaded up the gun club with beer and visiting co-eds and got laid once in awhile. As Zappa once said: It's fucking great to be alive. So you'll pardon me if I don't buy into Jon's gloomy navel-gazing vision of the "geek" world he can never really know.
Wasn't one of the complaints about the AOL/TW merger the issue of a media company reporting on itself? And now we have SlashDot reporting on... "our Jon Katz"? Can't wait for the movie review. Or the SlashDot product placement in the movie. It'll be great for corporate branding. Oops... I said a baaaad word.... Yes kids, the revolutionaries become the establishment, every time. Same as it ever was, same as it ever was....
Yeah, happens to me all the time. Try disagreeing with RMS sometime. Try telling SlashDot editors that > 2 spelling errors per sentence on your front page is embarrassing, considering all the "old" media people lurking here for ideas. Try telling anyone the proper meanings of loose and lose. They look like idiots - I get moderated and karma removed. I guess it's the downside of a true democracy.
Actually soda is a very regional thing. I did Gallup pools when I was in school and there are tons of local sodas in the heartland that we never hear of on the coasts. I don't know about you, but I'm 40, and I don't EVER remember much other than Coke and Pepsi. RC maybe, which is still on my local shelves, thank you.
And I see you can't argue the point about ISPs, which is the topic.
First - welcome! And thanks for the clarification.
But I don't agree with your reasoning about newspaper trucks not carrying the news. Of course they are. The paper owns the presses, and the trucks, and pays the delivery guys, and the consumers get the news delivered. They own that distribution mechanism. NBC has the reporters, owns broadcast studios and transmitters so I can pull it off the air without cable or anything else. They own that distribution system. There's no realistic chance your broadcast license will be sold to me. You effectively own it, and unless you start showing teen rape at noon there's little chance you'll lose it.
That said, I agree with your overall feelings about this merger, and more seriously the potential whoring of Bugs Bunny and gang! Let's keep perspective here - I don't believe a lot of what I read or see in the news anyway, but Looney Tunes are sacred ground!
Oh yeah, we all have to buy our jeans from one place, and there's only one ISP, and one kind of car... get real. There's more real choice now than ever, AOL/TW or not. Perhaps you don't remember when TV consisted entirely of ABC/NBC/CBS and a couple of UHF channels?
You are guilty of high treason. I assume that you are aware of the penalties.
Now you're guilty of a terrorstic threat. I assume you're aware of the penalties. I'd hate to see Rob served with a subpoena to give up any evidence possible on identifying you, but one of these days (today?) you'll cross the line and someone will respond. Then you go to jail, which should be a really interesting experience for you, especially when they decide who's bitch you're gonna be.
Listen, in all seriousness have you considered getting professional psychiatric help for your condition? Larry Flynt said he used to hear voices too, but with a little lithium it all went away.
You see a reasoned argument is one thing, but when you say:
The American Library Association is the most monstrously conceived and diabological organization active in the United States today.They demand that we devote public funds to help them force children to read pornography!
it appears your reason hast slipped the bounds o'er earth. You've been watching too many Bond movies on TBS. Really, go talk to a counselor about your hatred and homophobia. You might feel better, and then maybe you'll enjoy your time here on this planet instead of telling the rest of us where we're going later.
Really? So all that stuff about Christ we learned in religion class, they were all lying about that? It has nothing to do with that Christ guy? His name sure came up a lot.
Hmm, well according to the Catholics, there is no Hell. Go ahead, feel superior now... feel the smugness.... point your finger... feel it... FEEL IT....
unless you just happen to be researching porn or hate groups
Not many people advocate a porn room at the library. The problem is when a woman can't research "breast cancer" because it's being blocked. There are many topics of legitimate (non-porn) interest that are blocked by these systems.
Just like that whole fiasco in New York with the elephant feces or whatever... Just because it's art doesn't mean the government has to give you a grant.
FYI that art wasn't produced with a govt grant, it was merely being shown in a public building.
...then I'm all ears. Or is that just scratching from his coffin? I just wished I was there when they auctioned off his humidor. Evil racist bastard or not, I bet he had some great cigars!
p.s. For those of you who might not know, Frank Rizzo was the mayor of Philadelphia for many years, and not exactly a civil rights advocate.
These guys are a huge scam. It's a ton of money for sending you a computed string. What they're supposed to do for server certs is actually check you out enough to know you are who you say you are. When I got my first server certificate I had to send all manner of info; tax stuff, corp. papers, etc. When I went to renew they asked me to send it all again! I said "Wait a minute, you know you I am and should have that already." She said "well no we don't." To which I said "Well, if you don't know who I am then by continuing to authorize the cert for the last year you were representing to the public that you Ok'd somebody you know nothing about, and your service is worthless at best and possibly fraudulent."
And guess what? I didn't need to send all that info after all, as long as I paid the $725.
I wouldn't claim to speak for all Libertarians, but it doesn't bother me much. It certainly won't affect MY Internet connection.:) Of course we'll have to see if it affects CNN.COM and whatnot, but I have much more of an issue with the Mobil/Exxon merger, if anything. I'm still kinda wondering about that one.
Re. deregulation of the telecom industry, I think they're in a black hole or something entirely outside our known laws of physics. At least Bell Atlantic is. The physical reality of all that damn wiring makes it really hard to get any relief.
In general I find it interesting how many people here espouse govt restrictions on corporations while at the same time saying govt should get off our backs on everything else.
In the long run I don't think you can do anything about ultra-rich people or corps except vote with your dollars. AOL caters to a particular group of 20M people and has apparently given them what they want enough to make $760M last year. I'm sure THAT group of people would think "hell yes, let them buy anything they please, it'll benefit me". And they might be right.
There hardly exists a free and independent journalistic culture off-line anymore.
I don't recall seeing TOO many small newsletters doing well EVER. Small guys didn't get too far in meatspace; publishing and distributing tons of paper is expensive. The net empowers the little guy in a lot of ways, which this merger will not change. To say the little guy was more likely to be heard 20 or 80 years ago is bull. Remember the Hearst empire? Katz would have us believe it's all gone to hell just recently. Really it had always been owned by big guys.
Considering Katz has a place here to spout his particular brand of logic-free daily doom I shouldn't think he should worry much. You don't see him saying "Stay away from this SlashDot corporate ad-banner grab-fest; I'm only going to post articles at my GeoCities page for no money." He doesn't rail against the "SlashDot monopoly" for political tech news! He worked for ABC, wasn't it? Some small startup, that. And I'd like to see the difference in his bank account once he's been on a couple of know-nothing news shows telling the world his opinion this merger. Mo money mo money mo money. Just like any corporation. Hmmmm.
Slashdot Mirror
Occam's Razor
Yup, and if you look at the post again I did say "odds are". I'm aware it's a statistical measure. Again, you can say anything you want, but since there's no uncut, unaltered video of the event we're going by the accounts of biased eyewitnesses, written down a long long time ago, which is inherently an unreliable source of information. Thus the need for faith.
divining rod pointing to their half baked ideas
You say my story is half-baked compared to yours? I'll grant you I only took 10 seconds to make it up, but "a prophet gets the full Roman crucifixion treatment, survives and disappears" is half-baked compared to "a man born to a virgin by an invisible all-powerful being died and came back"? Come on, logically speaking, which is more likely?
The odds between someone dying and coming back to life vs. being wounded and making a smart retreat from public life are astoundingly on the latter, I would say. Considering JC was supposedly the only one who ever did it, we're talking about 1 out of the entire number of humans who ever lived on the planet. That's some slim odds partner. Doesn't make it impossible, but it is quite improbable.
None of this is a comment on Christ himself by the way. Personally I think the stories of his behavior on the planet are enough to help people live a good life. You don't need to hinge it all on the actual "back from the dead" thing, because unless he drops into Central Park in full glory you can never prove that.
Do you have an agent, son?
Have your people call my people.
WE WERE ALL BORN IN SIN :-)), or *could* do anything "wrong" until somebody told me what "wrong" is, and that would depend very much on where, how, and when you lived.
I think the key here is "born in". I don't accept that I did anything wrong in the womb (Mom never complained to me, anyway
Can you name one person (other than Christ) who never did anything wrong?
I wouldn't name Christ either. Are you absolutely sure he didn't pull a cat's tail at 3 yrs old? Or would that have been in the Bible if it happened?! We certainly have reasonable historic proof that certain individuals existed, but to make statements about what they did and didn't do ever... that's not gonna fly. You believe he died and rose from the grave - as Devil's Advocate (sorry folks, how often do you get to use that in proper context?) I'm thinking maybe the wounds were not as bad as they looked, a few people snuck into the tomb and bandaged him (insert UFO's here if you're into that) and they pushed the rock out of the way so he could beat feet to a quiet life of monk-ness in the hills. After all, if you're dead the authorities will leave you alone, right? Ever hear of a faked death? Ascended in a ballon, walked uphill, whatever. There are plenty of eyewitnesses who see and remember different things - check court records from anywhere. Maybe they were suffering ergot poisoning from bad bread!
Can you prove my version is wrong? Occam's Razor - given two possibilities, one far-fetched in the extreme, the other simple, odds are on the simpler one every time.
It's that whole inherent badness of humanity thing again. We're not nice unless something outside of us compels us to be nice.
As a (modified) Buddhist I would say that we're inherently good until something outside (or not) compels us to be bad, but maybe I'm just not into good/bad as much in general.
Well, there seem to be more religious nuts than any other kind. And frankly as a former Catholic (escaped after 5th grade) I'd rather confess to my TV than somebody's stupid web site. At least the TV talks back...
You seem woefully ignorant of history, or perhaps just joined the Microsoft PR department recently.
What did they use? OS/2. We all know how well OS/2 fared! Why? Because it was not even close to the quality of Microsoft's product: Windows 3.1.
The first versions of OS/2 was written by MS AND IBM. The IBM-only version was V1.2, which was quite stable, thank you. I was controlling power plants with it 24x7 when Win 3.1 wouldn't run Word all day. 50 threads, multiple processes, shared memory, named pipes, etc,etc. It's failing was it was difficult to install. It had pre-emptive multitasking and virtual memory 3 years BEFORE NT.
Where do you think those early versions of IBM's product (OS/2) got their interface ideas?
They got them from IBM's OWN CUA guidelines, which specified the whole drop-down menu and windowing interface which worked for dumb display terminals as well as PCs running OS/2.
Portability to other processor families
Yeah, not like Unix wasn't running on everything but a C64 by then.
Hey, here's a fiver kid, go buy a clue.
implied, over and over, that he doesn't think Christians and members of other religions are welcome on Slashdot
:-)
No you misunderstand, it's just you he doesn't like.
young rich white technically-saavy (cough) atheist
Um, fyi I think Jon's a bit north of 50 (editors?), not exactly one of your younger SlashDot guys. And I'm not saying about me.
What are you afraid of, Jon Katz? I'm calling you out. Are you a coward, or aren't you?
You want to meet him at the water tower or something? Please tell us where, I'd love to see you and Katz in a real duel. You could hit him with a Bible and he could counter with Ayn Rand.
All that Christian love just warms my heart.
Actually the crazy AC Natalie Portman and other assorted weirdness is some of the best stuff I've seen on SlashDot. Most of the time this place is as serious as a heart attack, arguing over licenses and IP. By comparison some of those crazy AC posts are real poetry.
Well then you're gonna be upset - they took 250 domains away from the guys who were auctioning them. They lost $17,500 on their gamble. How it works is you can't use someone else's mark as part of yours. CompaqService.com will get you sued by Compaq. So he has to police "LinuxHelp.com" etc.
Apparently Linux is a little more practical than some of the "all IP is immoral" crowd.
Guess they must've been in a real hurry to post this one....
I've been hosting my own and client sites since 1995. You can do it without paying a ton of money, although some start-up costs are inevitable. Here are a few suggestions.
1) Bandwidth is expensive. Be realistic. You can get an ISDN Centrex installation with 32 or more IP addresses for $300/mo. An ISDN router like an Ascend Pipeline is probably less than $600. It's not a T1, but chances are your site is NOT going to get 600K hits per day. If it's just you or you and a few friends, you'll find the bandwidth quite adequate for the majority of users which are still hitting with 33 or 56k modems. Of course if your 5 friends all want to run streaming video, forget it.
2) You don't need the fastest machine in the world as a server. You will want a lot of memory, but a 200 or 300 Mhz PC is fine for many situations. For heavy database use you'll want faster.
3) Backup to tape, backup to CD-RW, and backup to another hard drive if you can. A typical PC may run for a couple or three years w/o a hardware failure, but you'll be happy to have backups when it happens. If possible have a second machine with the same server s/w. You can swap them over anywhere between a few minutes and an hour depending on your prep work, and it makes a $20k high-availability system unnecessary.
3) Setup a firewall. Setup a firewall. Setup a firewall. Look into one of the new "firewall appliances" if it intimidates you. A Sonic Wall with 10 IPs is about $400. You will be amazed at the number of idiots that will try to hack your little web site. I've been able to use the logs to get 2 French, 2 Germans, and 2 Californians warned or suspended by their ISPs. If they're coming in via cable modem, they know one more complaint and their nice fast line gets turned off and they're back to a lousy dial-up. Also, I blocked their IPs specifically. This is the best money I've ever spent on a pice of equipment.
4) One of the major points of having your own domain is having me@mydomain.com on the website. I disagree with the article about this. Where you might want to have a different address is on the Internic admin record for the site. You want to make sure you can always update the DNS servers to a new ISP if your current one goes bad. If possible run the mail server on a different machine than the web server. That way if the web server goes down you still have email, and people can notify you there's a problem. Also, you can still get to tech support, usenet, friends, whatever to get help.
5) Don't bother to do your own DNS unless you have a T1. The ISP will do it for you, often for free. DNS is critical. This removes the requirement for another machine, more backup, etc.
There's nothing like being in control of your own universe. You're free to use whatever OS, database, and hardware you like. Have fun.
I think you're being much too hard on FascDot; his comments are in no way "out of line". So, you have a nice conversation with Katz and he won you over; good for you. If other people choose to see him as a self-promoting hypocritical one-note-johnny media whore using a parasitical relationship with some young impressionable guys to grab the brass ring of big media recognition (whew) you should consider that possibly there's a good reason for it. Because that's just what he's doing. If he thought pets were in the desirable teen-twentysomething demographic necessary to get big media exposure he'd be writing about poodle culture, not geek culture.
And for your information, I haven't been an angry adolescent in decades. Or maybe I'm not a geek at all. Hell, when I was a tech at your lovely university's Plasma Physics Labs we programmed micro-sequencers, ran fiber optics and built trackballs from scratch so we could instrument the reactor. Geeky enough? But then we all took off Fridays during the summer, loaded up the gun club with beer and visiting co-eds and got laid once in awhile. As Zappa once said: It's fucking great to be alive. So you'll pardon me if I don't buy into Jon's gloomy navel-gazing vision of the "geek" world he can never really know.
Is that a bad enough attitude for you?
Wasn't one of the complaints about the AOL/TW merger the issue of a media company reporting on itself? And now we have SlashDot reporting on... "our Jon Katz"? Can't wait for the movie review. Or the SlashDot product placement in the movie. It'll be great for corporate branding. Oops... I said a baaaad word.... Yes kids, the revolutionaries become the establishment, every time. Same as it ever was, same as it ever was....
Yeah, happens to me all the time. Try disagreeing with RMS sometime. Try telling SlashDot editors that > 2 spelling errors per sentence on your front page is embarrassing, considering all the "old" media people lurking here for ideas. Try telling anyone the proper meanings of loose and lose. They look like idiots - I get moderated and karma removed. I guess it's the downside of a true democracy.
Actually soda is a very regional thing. I did Gallup pools when I was in school and there are tons of local sodas in the heartland that we never hear of on the coasts. I don't know about you, but I'm 40, and I don't EVER remember much other than Coke and Pepsi. RC maybe, which is still on my local shelves, thank you.
And I see you can't argue the point about ISPs, which is the topic.
Nah, The Onion hs it right here:
h tml
http://www.theonion.com/onion3547/seven_headed.
First - welcome! And thanks for the clarification.
But I don't agree with your reasoning about newspaper trucks not carrying the news. Of course they are. The paper owns the presses, and the trucks, and pays the delivery guys, and the consumers get the news delivered. They own that distribution mechanism. NBC has the reporters, owns broadcast studios and transmitters so I can pull it off the air without cable or anything else. They own that distribution system. There's no realistic chance your broadcast license will be sold to me. You effectively own it, and unless you start showing teen rape at noon there's little chance you'll lose it.
That said, I agree with your overall feelings about this merger, and more seriously the potential whoring of Bugs Bunny and gang! Let's keep perspective here - I don't believe a lot of what I read or see in the news anyway, but Looney Tunes are sacred ground!
Oh yeah, we all have to buy our jeans from one place, and there's only one ISP, and one kind of car... get real. There's more real choice now than ever, AOL/TW or not. Perhaps you don't remember when TV consisted entirely of ABC/NBC/CBS and a couple of UHF channels?
You are guilty of high treason. I assume that you are aware of the penalties.
Now you're guilty of a terrorstic threat. I assume you're aware of the penalties. I'd hate to see Rob served with a subpoena to give up any evidence possible on identifying you, but one of these days (today?) you'll cross the line and someone will respond. Then you go to jail, which should be a really interesting experience for you, especially when they decide who's bitch you're gonna be.
Listen, in all seriousness have you considered getting professional psychiatric help for your condition? Larry Flynt said he used to hear voices too, but with a little lithium it all went away.
You see a reasoned argument is one thing, but when you say:
The American Library Association is the most monstrously conceived and diabological organization active in the United States today.They demand that we devote public funds to help them force children to read pornography!
it appears your reason hast slipped the bounds o'er earth. You've been watching too many Bond movies on TBS. Really, go talk to a counselor about your hatred and homophobia. You might feel better, and then maybe you'll enjoy your time here on this planet instead of telling the rest of us where we're going later.
Really? So all that stuff about Christ we learned in religion class, they were all lying about that? It has nothing to do with that Christ guy? His name sure came up a lot.
Oh wait, I see - only YOU have RIGHT Christ.
Hmm, well according to the Catholics, there is no Hell. Go ahead, feel superior now... feel the smugness.... point your finger... feel it... FEEL IT....
There now. All better. Have a nice afterlife.
unless you just happen to be researching porn or hate groups
Not many people advocate a porn room at the library. The problem is when a woman can't research "breast cancer" because it's being blocked. There are many topics of legitimate (non-porn) interest that are blocked by these systems.
Just like that whole fiasco in New York with the elephant feces or whatever... Just because it's art doesn't mean the government has to give you a grant.
FYI that art wasn't produced with a govt grant, it was merely being shown in a public building.
...then I'm all ears. Or is that just scratching from his coffin? I just wished I was there when they auctioned off his humidor. Evil racist bastard or not, I bet he had some great cigars!
p.s. For those of you who might not know, Frank Rizzo was the mayor of Philadelphia for many years, and not exactly a civil rights advocate.
These guys are a huge scam. It's a ton of money for sending you a computed string. What they're supposed to do for server certs is actually check you out enough to know you are who you say you are. When I got my first server certificate I had to send all manner of info; tax stuff, corp. papers, etc. When I went to renew they asked me to send it all again! I said "Wait a minute, you know you I am and should have that already." She said "well no we don't." To which I said "Well, if you don't know who I am then by continuing to authorize the cert for the last year you were representing to the public that you Ok'd somebody you know nothing about, and your service is worthless at best and possibly fraudulent."
And guess what? I didn't need to send all that info after all, as long as I paid the $725.
What a great business!
I wouldn't claim to speak for all Libertarians, but it doesn't bother me much. It certainly won't affect MY Internet connection. :) Of course we'll have to see if it affects CNN.COM and whatnot, but I have much more of an issue with the Mobil/Exxon merger, if anything. I'm still kinda wondering about that one.
Re. deregulation of the telecom industry, I think they're in a black hole or something entirely outside our known laws of physics. At least Bell Atlantic is. The physical reality of all that damn wiring makes it really hard to get any relief.
In general I find it interesting how many people here espouse govt restrictions on corporations while at the same time saying govt should get off our backs on everything else.
In the long run I don't think you can do anything about ultra-rich people or corps except vote with your dollars. AOL caters to a particular group of 20M people and has apparently given them what they want enough to make $760M last year. I'm sure THAT group of people would think "hell yes, let them buy anything they please, it'll benefit me". And they might be right.
There hardly exists a free and independent journalistic culture off-line anymore.
I don't recall seeing TOO many small newsletters doing well EVER. Small guys didn't get too far in meatspace; publishing and distributing tons of paper is expensive. The net empowers the little guy in a lot of ways, which this merger will not change. To say the little guy was more likely to be heard 20 or 80 years ago is bull. Remember the Hearst empire? Katz would have us believe it's all gone to hell just recently. Really it had always been owned by big guys.
Considering Katz has a place here to spout his particular brand of logic-free daily doom I shouldn't think he should worry much. You don't see him saying "Stay away from this SlashDot corporate ad-banner grab-fest; I'm only going to post articles at my GeoCities page for no money." He doesn't rail against the "SlashDot monopoly" for political tech news! He worked for ABC, wasn't it? Some small startup, that. And I'd like to see the difference in his bank account once he's been on a couple of know-nothing news shows telling the world his opinion this merger. Mo money mo money mo money. Just like any corporation. Hmmmm.