I've known a couple people without college educations (at least not in law) who have taken the bar, and are now lawyers in some specific area. I've considered doing that myself.
AFAIK, a long time ago it was possible for people to become lawyers just by passing the bar exam (that is, without going to law school). That is not possible now. You will not be allowed to take a bar exam unless you show a law degree. Law school takes three years, not speaking of money.
>> Nononono, everyone knows that it stands for Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister:-)
> Just be careful which circles you swim in when you say things like that. I'm sure a lot of zealots would refer to such a thing as blasphemy.
Er... Direct quote:
"To those who merely like it, Perl is the Practical Extraction and Report Language. To those who love it, Perl is the Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister".
When the first TV sets came out (back in the 30s I think) their screens were really really small. To compensate for this, some TVs came with special lens which were like 15 inches in diameter and had to be filled with water (solid glass lens this size weights and costs too much). These lens were suspended in front of the TV screen and that's how you watched TV.
What happens if you boost the electrical charge, just a little bit mind you. Would you be able to theoretically 'overlock' your brain?
Well, first, overclocking has to do with increasing the frequency of the basic 'pulse' of the chip, thus making all operations a bit faster. There is no direct connection with increasing the voltage supplied to the chip. If you just increase the voltage supplied to the CPU, it will not run faster.
Second, if you stick electrodes into a human brain and send appropriate current through appropriate parts, you can get strange and interesting results. A typical effect is being able to remember with perfect clarity a scene that you thought you forgot completely. A Spanish researcher named Delgado (?) did a fair amount of experimentation around 20 years ago. I don't think a lot of people work on it now, mostly for ethical reasons. Most of the work is being done with people who are heavily mentally ill.
That's a massive cop-out. Katz thinks that he himself cannot make hard choices about technology, life, and himself, so he wants some software to make the hard choices for him. I'm amazed.
More, this software will function as a reality filter, letting only "approved" information through. I can write pages about the consequences of this, but other people, notably George Orwell, already did it much better than me. And who controls this Clotho?
No, really, I never expected to see such a horrible idea to be put forward on Slashdot. Ugh.
By creating cities that demanded car ownership, consumer culture has made a large number of people indentured servants to their car loans -- at extrememly high interest rates
First, I don't see any indentured servants around. Second, nobody forces people to buy new cars. I drove a $500 car for two years and managed quite well with it, thank you very much. If people would treat the cars as means of transportation, not as status symbols, they would not take out high-interest loans to buy shiny new toys^H^H^H^Hcars.
people _do_ get left behind
I still don't see anybody left behind with a horse-drawn carriage. Amish, maybe?
I can hardly believe that you believe that most poor people are poor simply because they can't learn how to program in perl. Being poor means not having resources, not being lazy or stupid. Without resources, how do you expect to fairly apply your "tough luck" plan
Don't put words in my mouth. I never said anything about why people are poor. I said that one way you can be left behind by technology was for your job skills to become obsolete (type setters, anyone?). This is one, *not* the typical or the usual way of happening to be poor. And it has nothing to do with writing perl scripts.
And being poor does not mean being lazy or stupid, but being lazy or stupid often means being poor. The theory about the poor not having the resources to climb out of poverty has been disproved numerous times in numerous studies. Throwing money (=resources) at the problem has been tried -- it does not work.
Three banks in my town charge for teller access. Still.
So don't use them. Do you have to buy any technology in order to use an ATM?
Monthly payments are lower for those who use direct deposit.
So do it. Do you have to buy any technology in order to use direct deposit?
If you have a credit card, video rental account charges are waived
That's because you are a lower security risk. Do you have to buy any technology in order to get a credit card?
You are arguing that the poor are getting the short end of the stick. Maybe. But the original subject of the discussion was whether technology makes some people left out and alientated. Your examples have nothing to do with this.
Imagine only being able to access your welfare check via ATM, and having no ATMs in your neighborhood.
I don't need to imagine that -- for some time I lived without any welfare checks and any job, too. How did I survive? Odd jobs pay cash.
Imagine _having_ to live in that neighborhood because you don't have a car.
Been there, done that. People live in such neighborhoods not because they don't have the car, but because they cannot affort the rent anywhere else.
Imagine having to take a bus accross town just to get your welfare money and being charged a $1.50 surchage on an ATM transaction
Been there, done that (only it wasn't a welfare check, but WIC coupons).
And your point is?
Are you going to teach them?
No, they'll learn themselves. Those that are incapable of learning how to pay bills electronically have much larger problems than these.
The message touted across magazines, newspapers, and television is -- buy a computer or YOU WILL BE LEFT BEHIND. Maybe they can pay bills electronically, but they no longer have a _choice_.
Sure they have. I have a lot of friends without computers. They do perfectly fine -- they do have a choice and they made it.
I happen to think that learning to work with computers will enhance your life and your value in the jobs marketplace. Soon enough a person who cannot work with computers will be at serious disadvantage when it comes to choosing careers or looking for a job. That's perfectly fine by me. Choices have consequences. If you have the opportunity to learn computers and don't, then you've made a choice and will have to live with consequences. That's normal and that's how life works.
Several centuries ago reading was a valued and rare skill. Today (in the US) if you can't read, your life is much harder than necessary. So? Are you going to argue that people should be given a choice of not learning to read?
I'm sick of the labelling. I'm sick of saying that geeks are autistic, that we're super-intelligent but socially inept. I'm sick of having the legions of psychologists say that we all have ADD or ADHD
Well, haven't you started the labeling by labeling yourself as a geek? People who program/admin/read Slashdot/etc. are not all geeky and are not all perceived as geeks. And don't get sick that easily -- it's just labels, nothing more. People who say that all geeks are socially inept generally have in mind a population of smart but socially inept people that they define as geeks. In that case of course all geeks are socially inept -- by definition!
All of it is a coverup - the truth is we think. It's that simple! Because we think, we are different, and because we are different we are ejected from society.
Well, yes and no. People who think are different (see.sig) and are not well tolerated by the unwashed masses. However you are making a logical error here: just because all geeks think, not everybody who thinks is a geek. I personally know a lot of very smart people who are not good with computers. Some of them are quite geeky (as in having deep knowledge of some esoteric subject and not caring much about social conventions), and some are not, but clearly just being able to think does not necessarily make you a 'geek' in the Slashdot sense.
Yes, smart people and smart kids especially are under a lot of pressure to conform and "be just like the rest". But that has always been so and is not limited to computer people. A kid who has a passion for Sumerian linguistics is going to be treated worse, if anything, than a kid who spends his time programming in assembly. And we don't burn weird people at stake any more, which is a bid advancement from my personal point of view.
That's exactly the point -- you either pay for the technology or pay not to have it.
TANSTAAFL. Would you rather have us travel in horse-drawn carriages because not everyone could (and can) afford a car? Or do you want to build a horse path by every highway so that people who don't like the car technology can travel without feeling disadvantaged?
What the people who are being completely alienated from society because they can't keep up?
If their skills are no longer needed and they cannot learn new skills, tough luck. I may feel sorry for them, but I would strongly object to stucturing the society and infrastructure on the lowest common denominator principle. Other than that (inability to find a job) I don't see what you are talking about. If you don't know how to get to a chat room, are you alientated? If you don't have a computer to use email, are you alienated? Note that people like you, people to whom you presumably want to talk the most, also don't have email...
Those who can't pay their bills electronically will just have to pay a surcharge for "paper" transactions -- and hence will be financially subjugated by a technology they not only don't understand, but one that they can't even afford to buy
This is complete bullshit. Give me an example where the poor people have to pay a significant surcharge for not doing things electronically. All this is pure hysterics. What happened was that some banks had an idea to charge people who withdraw money from a teller instead of using an ATM (notice the need to buy technology anywhere here?). AFAIK, these banks were quickly buried under the deluge of negative publicity -- you know, the widows and the orphans stuff -- and dropped this charge very very quickly.
And who in the technoplutocracy will teach them?
Don't be an idiot. You can argue that it's unfair for people who don't own computers (although now with 3-year net access committments you can get a computer very very cheap), but if they have a computer, they can fucking well learn how to pay bills electronically themselves. It's not rocket sience and doesn't require writing device drivers, either.
I don't like this idea at all and if one of my future computers will have such a chip inside, I'll take major measures (soldering iron included) to make it not perform as intended. However, I'm not blind and can see the writing on the wall. Hardware authentication makes too much sense to be ignored. Given all the security scares (real and imagined), the government and corporations will want reassurances of security and a hardware solution will appeal (with reason) to them. Besides, I don't really object to hardware authentication on, say, my office box. Not that it can successfully pretend it is something else anyway...:> But as to my home machine: not bloody likely I'll install this thing willingly.
For my fellow paranoids (we know who you are!): keep in mind that all ethernet devices, including the NIC in your machine, already have a global unique identifier -- MAC.
That's true. However I feel that they disappear very slowly and that doesn't tend to be much of a problem.
Today (at least here in sweden) it is gettaing clear that soon you will need to do it via a computer; paying bills over the counter is already more expensive than doing it over the net, and banks are closing their offices as fast as they are able to.
I don't think so. Sure, doing stuff electronically is going to be cheaper, but until every grandma is as comfortable with her PC, as she is with her phone, non-computer banking is not going to disappear. You may have to pay for it, but paying to have your idiosyncrasies catered to is not anything new. I am quite sure that in ten years I'll still be able to pay my bills and cash my checks without touching a computer.
Katz is getting more and more into tabloid-type rants these days... But that aside, there is a key word that this, err, I don't really want to call it an essay, let's say a piece of text, ignores. That key word is 'choice'.
One of the good things about technology is that most often it gives you more choices. Think your cordless phone is too fragile? Don't use it! Your beeper is driving you crazy? Chuck it out of the window! Overwhelmed by 500 TV channels? Don't switch the TV on!
I am not going to make wild predictions about the future, but currently people (that is, more or less affluent people in the US) can pick and choose whatever level of technology they feel most comfortable with. Nobody is forcing anybody to use the latest gizmos -- if you think so, you are watching way too much advertising.
As to being overstressed, perhaps those that are need to re-evaluate their priorities. Almost in every situation there is a trade-off of stress against money (usually) or fame (more rarely). Just because a rat-race exists, you don't have to participate in it. Besides, what Katz describes is a US phenomenon. European people take a much more relaxed view of the their workload.
And, by the way, capitalism doesn't work by selling all that is produced. Capitalism works by producting only that which has a chance of being sold (but see the.sig).
...but I wish we could just protect humanity in general.
Ah, yes. I also wish that we all lived lived to at least a thousand years, had a nifty nanoreplicator each, could fly, and take vacations on Sirius. Strange, I am wishing all these things and nothing happened yet...
If only the US can afford these things it will be unjust that others should die.
First, you probably mean "equality", not "justice". I don't see what justice has to do with having an equivalent number of people die in each country. Second, are you saying that I cannot have anything that everybody else doesn't have as well? Enforce a lowest common denominator on everybody? When out of "justice" you reduce your lifestyle to that of Indian beggars, I'll listen.
Or do you advocate that every time a Chinese guy dies because there were no, say, coronary bypass operations available near his village, we kill off a patient in a US hospital just to keep things even?
I imagine the Indians and Pakistanis will be the ones most in need of these kind of defense systems,
No. They need defence against theatre-range systems (medium-range missiles, fighter-bombers, etc), not against ICBMs which, as it was pointed out, stand for InterContinental Ballistic Missiles.
but somehow I doubt they'll be able to afford them,
Didn't stop before, I don't see why it should stop them now...
You know, in all seriousness, remote learning won't achieve widespread acceptance within the next 30 years for one simple reason: you can't flirt with somebody who's in another state.
Ain't true. What do you think all these people in AOL chat rooms are doing? Yeah, I know, it's a big stretch to call that flirting, but it is generally the same idea.
Seriously.. human interaction is a key component to learning.
Not for all people. Most of what I know I taught myself either by reading books or by tinkering around. There wasn't much human interaction in that. OTOH, my wife, for example, cannot just learn stuff by herself. She needs it to be *taught* to her. That doesn't mean that I am smarter than her or vice versa -- we just learn in different ways.
However, I still don't think online learning will take off in a big way. People who need interaction will hate it and people who don't need interaction (like me) will not need it. I'd rather teach myself than be taught online. For me its faster, cheaper, more convenient, and I actually learn more by having to fix my own mistakes.
Many worldwide banks offer NetBanking as a way of allowing customers access to their account, bill payments, loan payments, etc over the net. The way this is done is not through a browser, but through a secure on-line client terminal, developed by the bank (which is not open source;-) ).
Used to be that way. Not any more. Look at Citibank -- they used to have a special-purpose client with, basically, an ATM interface. Now it's gone and to access your account electronically all you need is a plain-vanilla browser.
Besides don't forget that the security of individual accounts depends on a four-digit PIN number -- this is by far the weakest link. Of course, if you are talking about corporate accounts and wire transfers, things do get more interesting...
The problem with buying a computer as a general purpose tool is that sooner or later this stuff is all going to morph into a few appliances to make it easy for the masses to do things.
I am not sure about this. I've heard predictions about this coming for a looong time, but I still see no signs of this happening. One exception, though -- there are and will be "appliances" for browsing the Web and email (WebTV, etc.)
Computers are complicated. People like you and me can use them just fine, but there's a lot of dough to be made in taking spreadhseets and wordprocessors and applying them to lo-tech solutions with simple consistent UIs.
First, it has been tried. Remember the electronic typewriters (take an electric typewriter, add a small LCD screen and some memory...)? This is exactly your lo-tech wordprocessor appliance with simple, known and consistent UI. They failed utterly.
Second, computers are complicated for a reason. When you have a sophisticated task to do, it is the complexity of the task that determines how easy it is to use to appropriate tools. Programs like, say, PhotoShop or PageMaker are complicated because they have to do complicated things and a simple UI isn't going to help much. Tasks that you can do with a couple of clicks (again, rowsing, email) can be turned into an appliance with a couple of buttons. I doubt that this is true for a general-purpose word processing program or financial software (major applications for home users).
And yes, I agree that PCs will be used for serious gaming, while consoles will be for the unwashed masses. But then again, that is very similar to the situation we have currently, no?
Banking records are owned by the bank, as are medical records by the doctor, etc - The 5th Circuit court (about 4 years ago..I don't have the citation handy) ruled that, since you can be compelled to produce copies of these records, and not the bank, that the records are yours and the persons who hold them are "custodians" of those records. They must follow your directives within the extent of the law. The fact that the law gives them certain, automatic, priviliges with relation to these records does not surrender your ownership.
It'll be interesting to look up this 5th Circuit case -- does it mean that people have copyright over their banking/medical records? Besides, I still don't see what rights do I have as the owner of these records. I cannot tell the bank to destroy them, I have no control over what the bank does with the information, etc.
In addition to that, my major point stays valid. If the bank misuses the information you do not sue it for theft or for copyright infringement -- you sue it under tort law which has nothing to do with propery.
"Control presumes possession" NOT! - If this were not true, then the entire ability to arrest suspects based upon their possession of an illegal substance would be moot.
Not true. The law specifies that the possession of illegal substance is a misdemeanor/felony -- it makes no difference who actually owns the drugs. In this case ownership is irrelevant.
When you steal a car, you now control and possess that car, however illegally, until it is returned to the original owner.
Exactly my point. You control and possess this car, but you do not own it. Thank you for a good example.
Use of a mail address - I don't think I was clear: When I say that an address is mine, I mean it is mine to do with what I like, including sending and receiving mail with that address on it.
You are still not clear. I can perfectly well send mail with your address on it -- I don't need your permission for that. As to receiving mail, again, you receive mail because you own/rent the physical location to which mail is being delivered, not because you have intellectual property over the address.
The fact that the address is my property precludes others from receiving mail at my address without my consent.
No. You are confused. Others cannot receive mail at your address because you own the *property* at that address, not because you own the address itself. Consider dynamic IP addressing. You receive packets at your assigned IP because you own the machine which receives the packets, not because you own a (temporary) IP address as intellectual property.
Placing transactions on bank records - Since they are my records, they will have only my transactions.
That's a tautology. Your records are those with your transactions. Not your transactions are by definition not part of your records. Again, this has nothing to do with property.
Hey, fewer and fewer people are going to be willing to spend $2000 for a computer, $150 for a joystick, $200 for a new graphics card, $150 for decent speakers *JUST* to *PLAY*GAMES*.
First, I am spending money for the computer so that I can do word processing, spreadsheeting, email, etc, etc. and play games. You argue that I should buy another machine for that -- why? I'd rather have one machine that does it all.
Besides, your prices look funny. To buy a new system today I would probably spend ~$1000 for a computer, $40 for a joystick, $80 for a graphics card. And it's not like all games demand the latest hardware. If your life is Quake and you crave that teeny edge that the extra 5 fps give you, maybe. I don't play Quake and I find that my very very old [cringes in shame] 200Mhz Pentium system plays all I want (including System Shock 2) perfectly well.
One other thing that is pretty obvious -- TVs as computer displays suck. Really, really suck. I am not interested in fuzzy low-res graphics that make my eyes tired after an hour or so.
Plus, the selection of PC games (specifically, good sophisticated games for adults) is much better than for consoles. Consoles cater to the teenager crowd and it shows.
My name is my own, and I have every right, through possession and grant, to restrict how it is used: Why do you think that companies who give out prizes require you to sign a release so they can use your name? If my name was not owned by me, where's the hang-up?
Such companies want releases mostly to avoid being sued under tort law. Tort law and property law are very different approaches as you probably know. Whether your name is your own (in the property sense) is rather doubtful. You cannot destroy it or change it without the consent of the government. You do not get to pick it (again, without govt consent). Your rights to restrict its use are rather limited, and they disappear if you are a public figure. The phone company includes it in white pages by default, unless you specifically instruct it (and pay it!) not to.
To reiterate, your control over your name's use is accomplished through tort law, not through property law.
Banking and medical records are, again, owned by me (and restrictable: See the FCRA and privacy conventions) as they were created by a direct result of my actions and my doing...
That may depend on a state, but I don't believe you own your banking and medical records. Try instructing your bank or your physician to destroy them -- see if they comply. Try telling the bank not to use your records for e.g. marketing by its insurance arm -- the bank may agree, but out of politeness, not because they have a legal obligation to do so.
Besides, the bank records are not created by you. You make actions, which are then recorded by your bank. Granted, you are the cause, but it is the bank that actually creates the records. The records reside on bank's computers and are its intellectual property. If you are believe they have been misused, you will sue the bank under the tort law and not under property law.
Also, my address is mine, simply because I can control its use.... Possession is 9/10ths of the law, and control presumes possession
Come on! Go back to your first year of law school and re-read the Property textbook. Just because you happen to control something does not mean you own it.
I may keep my address private, if I choose. "But, wait Mr. Lawyer, can't someone look up your address at least in the county's Hall of Records?" Yes, they can. However, that does not give them permission to use my address for their purposes.
And, pray tell me, why not? Or rather, why do they need your permission? If your name is Guppenblinken and I happen to collect the addresses of all Guppenblinkens in the world, I can perfectly well get your address, store it in my database, post it on the web, send you mail, etc. If you don't like it, you can sue me under torts, but for the n-th time, there are no property issues here. You cannot sue me for theft.
If what you say were true, then my address would be available for others to use for the same purposes I do, such as receipt of mail.f my banking records were not mine, then others could use them to place transactions against.
Nonsense. Receipt of mail is a function of the physical location of your house/apartment and the matching of that physical location to the Post Office database. The banking transactions involve actual assets in your account, which you definitely own, not *records* of past transactions.
I am sorry, you have to come up with better arguments.
It might be a funny idea to force, say, my local phone company to drop my address information, which I trivially own, from _all_ their databases (phone book, billing databases, etc).
Welcome to the real world, pal. You do NOT own your address information. You do not own (in the intellectual property sense) your name, your address, your banking records, your medical records, your phone call logs, etc. etc. They are owned by whoever collected them. You have no say in how they are used (with exceptions provided by specific laws, e.g. video rental information).
Agreed, but you manage to provide some competition.
You know something, not everyone wants to be open source. Some people actually want to create something and own the intellectual rights to it.
Yep, and there is a mechanism for that called copyright.
I more informed post would be "could someone please fix the US Patent Office" because it's becoming apparent that they have no clue what they're allowing to become copyrighted.
First, I don't see why that would be a more informed post. Second, you yourself are in dire need of a clue regarding the differences between patents and copyright. Yes, Virginia, these are completely different things.
Another question, how are they damaging the community?
By not allowing you to use the most efficient way to solve a problem? By forcing you to pay a small fortune to lawyers for patent-compliance check before releasing the software? By making you vulnerable to bogus patent-infringement lawsuits that could easily kill the company before it could show the bogosity of the suit?
Ability to claim ownership of information just because you organized it into a database is a dangerous thing. The danger is that information that used to free will find itself in "owned" databases and so will stop being free. That is not a good thing.
Besides, the laws regarding it will necessarily be either very vague or quite arbitrary. Let's say I compiled a list of all cow manure suppliers in my area and put it on the web. This is now a database, worthy of protection. Can other people copy the whole database? Not under the proposed law. What about one address? two addresses? five addresses? What if another guy goes to yellow pages and compiles his own list? Will he be required to prove "clean-room" conditions? What if he compiles his own and then cross-checks it against mine?
There's been a huge amount of hype around neural nets (NNs) some time ago, thankfully most of it has died down.
Basically, NNs are highly tunable and very flexible nonlinear statistical models. That's it. Once you understand that you are dealing with statistical modeling and not bionic miracles, a lot of things fall into place and life generally becomes much easier. Note that many popular NN types are mathematically equivalent to well-known statistical models -- only the names are different. For example, projection pursuit regression is basically a direct match for a three-layer feed-forward neural net.
Because NNs are statistical models, you have to deal with all the classic statistical problems. You still have the problems of input selection, of overfitting, of regime switches in the process that you are trying to model, etc. etc. Basically, NNs are very useful and quite complicated statistical tools. To use them correctly demands considerable sophistication and more than a passing acquaintance with statistics.
For the interested, there is a very good FAQ on neural nets maintained by Warren Searle. It is technically the FAQ of alt.ai.neural-nets (I am not sure about the name of the newsgroup) and can be found in the usual places.
No cable modem I've ever used has been keyed to a MAC address.
You are lucky. Here is a quote from a cable modem FAQ:
"Second, many cable ISPs use Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) to assign a unique IP number to your computer's NIC. They also often bind or lock your connection to the MAC address that is hard-coded into the NIC that was present when they installed your service."
From the point of view of the soviet union things only got worse since the end of the cold war
You probably mean 'since the collapse of the socialist system'. But, in any case, that statement is quite doubtful.
10 years ago all soviet citizens had jobs
Well, not having a job used to be illegal and punished by imprisonment in the USSR. There always were jobs in the labor camps...
You also forgot to mention KGB, party line, mandatory work in agriculture, etc., etc.
Then capitalism was introduced and the whole country collapsed
You've got both the temporal and the causal sequence wrong. Actually, first (the cause) the socialist system collapsed, and then (the consequence) on its ruins a very strange mixture of robber-baron capitalism and a corrupt third-world statism developed.
Corruption has entered all layers of power
Yep, but what does this have to do with capitalism? Corruption is basically a consequence of Russia being a third-world country without any checks and balances on huge and powerful government bureacracy.
Many people in the former soviet union haven't got enough money each month to buy even the most basic stuff to stay alive
That means that they all die each month, right? Your statement makes no sense.
Alcoholism is a major problem and the average life expectance is about 20 years lower than in the western world.
That was the case under socialism, too. Life expectancy did decrease after the collapse, but again, the cause for that was not introduction of capitalism, but rather the collapse of the socialist system.
Slashdot Mirror
I've known a couple people without college educations (at least not in law) who have taken the bar, and are now lawyers in some specific area. I've considered doing that myself.
AFAIK, a long time ago it was possible for people to become lawyers just by passing the bar exam (that is, without going to law school). That is not possible now. You will not be allowed to take a bar exam unless you show a law degree. Law school takes three years, not speaking of money.
Kaa
As has been pointed out, 0380973464 is the ISDN for Cryptonomicon, so
- 415-426
038-097-34-64-242-335-51-377-183-168
---ISDN------ C R Y P T O
038-097-34-64-380-330-115-289-273-189-56
---ISDN------ N O M I C O N
and further on,
068-486-42-23-87-434-10-468-151-345-150-494-376
---ISDN------ T H E C O D E B O O K
Kaa
>> Nononono, everyone knows that it stands for Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister :-)
> Just be careful which circles you swim in when you say things like that. I'm sure a lot of zealots would refer to such a thing as blasphemy.
Er... Direct quote:
"To those who merely like it, Perl is the Practical Extraction and Report Language. To those who love it, Perl is the Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister".
Camel book, p. xi
Kaa
When the first TV sets came out (back in the 30s I think) their screens were really really small. To compensate for this, some TVs came with special lens which were like 15 inches in diameter and had to be filled with water (solid glass lens this size weights and costs too much). These lens were suspended in front of the TV screen and that's how you watched TV.
Kaa
What happens if you boost the electrical charge, just a little bit mind you. Would you be able to theoretically 'overlock' your brain?
Well, first, overclocking has to do with increasing the frequency of the basic 'pulse' of the chip, thus making all operations a bit faster. There is no direct connection with increasing the voltage supplied to the chip. If you just increase the voltage supplied to the CPU, it will not run faster.
Second, if you stick electrodes into a human brain and send appropriate current through appropriate parts, you can get strange and interesting results. A typical effect is being able to remember with perfect clarity a scene that you thought you forgot completely. A Spanish researcher named Delgado (?) did a fair amount of experimentation around 20 years ago. I don't think a lot of people work on it now, mostly for ethical reasons. Most of the work is being done with people who are heavily mentally ill.
Kaa
That's a massive cop-out. Katz thinks that he himself cannot make hard choices about technology, life, and himself, so he wants some software to make the hard choices for him. I'm amazed.
More, this software will function as a reality filter, letting only "approved" information through. I can write pages about the consequences of this, but other people, notably George Orwell, already did it much better than me. And who controls this Clotho?
No, really, I never expected to see such a horrible idea to be put forward on Slashdot. Ugh.
Kaa
By creating cities that demanded car ownership, consumer culture has made a large number of people indentured servants to their car loans -- at extrememly high interest rates
First, I don't see any indentured servants around. Second, nobody forces people to buy new cars. I drove a $500 car for two years and managed quite well with it, thank you very much. If people would treat the cars as means of transportation, not as status symbols, they would not take out high-interest loans to buy shiny new toys^H^H^H^Hcars.
people _do_ get left behind
I still don't see anybody left behind with a horse-drawn carriage. Amish, maybe?
I can hardly believe that you believe that most poor people are poor simply because they can't learn how to program in perl. Being poor means not having resources, not being lazy or stupid. Without resources, how do you expect to fairly apply your "tough luck" plan
Don't put words in my mouth. I never said anything about why people are poor. I said that one way you can be left behind by technology was for your job skills to become obsolete (type setters, anyone?). This is one, *not* the typical or the usual way of happening to be poor. And it has nothing to do with writing perl scripts.
And being poor does not mean being lazy or stupid, but being lazy or stupid often means being poor. The theory about the poor not having the resources to climb out of poverty has been disproved numerous times in numerous studies. Throwing money (=resources) at the problem has been tried -- it does not work.
Three banks in my town charge for teller access. Still.
So don't use them. Do you have to buy any technology in order to use an ATM?
Monthly payments are lower for those who use direct deposit.
So do it. Do you have to buy any technology in order to use direct deposit?
If you have a credit card, video rental account charges are waived
That's because you are a lower security risk. Do you have to buy any technology in order to get a credit card?
You are arguing that the poor are getting the short end of the stick. Maybe. But the original subject of the discussion was whether technology makes some people left out and alientated. Your examples have nothing to do with this.
Imagine only being able to access your welfare check via ATM, and having no ATMs in your neighborhood.
I don't need to imagine that -- for some time I lived without any welfare checks and any job, too. How did I survive? Odd jobs pay cash.
Imagine _having_ to live in that neighborhood because you don't have a car.
Been there, done that. People live in such neighborhoods not because they don't have the car, but because they cannot affort the rent anywhere else.
Imagine having to take a bus accross town just to get your welfare money and being charged a $1.50 surchage on an ATM transaction
Been there, done that (only it wasn't a welfare check, but WIC coupons).
And your point is?
Are you going to teach them?
No, they'll learn themselves. Those that are incapable of learning how to pay bills electronically have much larger problems than these.
The message touted across magazines, newspapers, and television is -- buy a computer or YOU WILL BE LEFT BEHIND. Maybe they can pay bills electronically, but they no longer have a _choice_.
Sure they have. I have a lot of friends without computers. They do perfectly fine -- they do have a choice and they made it.
I happen to think that learning to work with computers will enhance your life and your value in the jobs marketplace. Soon enough a person who cannot work with computers will be at serious disadvantage when it comes to choosing careers or looking for a job. That's perfectly fine by me. Choices have consequences. If you have the opportunity to learn computers and don't, then you've made a choice and will have to live with consequences. That's normal and that's how life works.
Several centuries ago reading was a valued and rare skill. Today (in the US) if you can't read, your life is much harder than necessary. So? Are you going to argue that people should be given a choice of not learning to read?
Kaa
I'm sick of the labelling. I'm sick of saying that geeks are autistic, that we're super-intelligent but socially inept. I'm sick of having the legions of psychologists say that we all have ADD or ADHD
.sig) and are not well tolerated by the unwashed masses. However you are making a logical error here: just because all geeks think, not everybody who thinks is a geek. I personally know a lot of very smart people who are not good with computers. Some of them are quite geeky (as in having deep knowledge of some esoteric subject and not caring much about social conventions), and some are not, but clearly just being able to think does not necessarily make you a 'geek' in the Slashdot sense.
Well, haven't you started the labeling by labeling yourself as a geek? People who program/admin/read Slashdot/etc. are not all geeky and are not all perceived as geeks. And don't get sick that easily -- it's just labels, nothing more. People who say that all geeks are socially inept generally have in mind a population of smart but socially inept people that they define as geeks. In that case of course all geeks are socially inept -- by definition!
All of it is a coverup - the truth is we think. It's that simple! Because we think, we are different, and because we are different we are ejected from society.
Well, yes and no. People who think are different (see
Yes, smart people and smart kids especially are under a lot of pressure to conform and "be just like the rest". But that has always been so and is not limited to computer people. A kid who has a passion for Sumerian linguistics is going to be treated worse, if anything, than a kid who spends his time programming in assembly. And we don't burn weird people at stake any more, which is a bid advancement from my personal point of view.
Kaa
That's exactly the point -- you either pay for the technology or pay not to have it.
TANSTAAFL. Would you rather have us travel in horse-drawn carriages because not everyone could (and can) afford a car? Or do you want to build a horse path by every highway so that people who don't like the car technology can travel without feeling disadvantaged?
What the people who are being completely alienated from society because they can't keep up?
If their skills are no longer needed and they cannot learn new skills, tough luck. I may feel sorry for them, but I would strongly object to stucturing the society and infrastructure on the lowest common denominator principle. Other than that (inability to find a job) I don't see what you are talking about. If you don't know how to get to a chat room, are you alientated? If you don't have a computer to use email, are you alienated? Note that people like you, people to whom you presumably want to talk the most, also don't have email...
Those who can't pay their bills electronically will just have to pay a surcharge for "paper" transactions -- and hence will be financially subjugated by a technology they not only don't understand, but one that they can't even afford to buy
This is complete bullshit. Give me an example where the poor people have to pay a significant surcharge for not doing things electronically. All this is pure hysterics. What happened was that some banks had an idea to charge people who withdraw money from a teller instead of using an ATM (notice the need to buy technology anywhere here?). AFAIK, these banks were quickly buried under the deluge of negative publicity -- you know, the widows and the orphans stuff -- and dropped this charge very very quickly.
And who in the technoplutocracy will teach them?
Don't be an idiot. You can argue that it's unfair for people who don't own computers (although now with 3-year net access committments you can get a computer very very cheap), but if they have a computer, they can fucking well learn how to pay bills electronically themselves. It's not rocket sience and doesn't require writing device drivers, either.
Kaa
I don't like this idea at all and if one of my future computers will have such a chip inside, I'll take major measures (soldering iron included) to make it not perform as intended. However, I'm not blind and can see the writing on the wall. Hardware authentication makes too much sense to be ignored. Given all the security scares (real and imagined), the government and corporations will want reassurances of security and a hardware solution will appeal (with reason) to them. Besides, I don't really object to hardware authentication on, say, my office box. Not that it can successfully pretend it is something else anyway... :> But as to my home machine: not bloody likely I'll install this thing willingly.
For my fellow paranoids (we know who you are!): keep in mind that all ethernet devices, including the NIC in your machine, already have a global unique identifier -- MAC.
Kaa
The problem is, choices tend to disappear.
That's true. However I feel that they disappear very slowly and that doesn't tend to be much of a problem.
Today (at least here in sweden) it is gettaing clear that soon you will need to do it via a computer; paying bills over the counter is already more expensive than doing it over the net, and banks are closing their offices as fast as they are able to.
I don't think so. Sure, doing stuff electronically is going to be cheaper, but until every grandma is as comfortable with her PC, as she is with her phone, non-computer banking is not going to disappear. You may have to pay for it, but paying to have your idiosyncrasies catered to is not anything new. I am quite sure that in ten years I'll still be able to pay my bills and cash my checks without touching a computer.
Kaa
Katz is getting more and more into tabloid-type rants these days... But that aside, there is a key word that this, err, I don't really want to call it an essay, let's say a piece of text, ignores. That key word is 'choice'.
.sig).
One of the good things about technology is that most often it gives you more choices. Think your cordless phone is too fragile? Don't use it! Your beeper is driving you crazy? Chuck it out of the window! Overwhelmed by 500 TV channels? Don't switch the TV on!
I am not going to make wild predictions about the future, but currently people (that is, more or less affluent people in the US) can pick and choose whatever level of technology they feel most comfortable with. Nobody is forcing anybody to use the latest gizmos -- if you think so, you are watching way too much advertising.
As to being overstressed, perhaps those that are need to re-evaluate their priorities. Almost in every situation there is a trade-off of stress against money (usually) or fame (more rarely). Just because a rat-race exists, you don't have to participate in it. Besides, what Katz describes is a US phenomenon. European people take a much more relaxed view of the their workload.
And, by the way, capitalism doesn't work by selling all that is produced. Capitalism works by producting only that which has a chance of being sold (but see the
Kaa
...but I wish we could just protect humanity in general.
Ah, yes. I also wish that we all lived lived to at least a thousand years, had a nifty nanoreplicator each, could fly, and take vacations on Sirius. Strange, I am wishing all these things and nothing happened yet...
If only the US can afford these things it will be unjust that others should die.
First, you probably mean "equality", not "justice". I don't see what justice has to do with having an equivalent number of people die in each country. Second, are you saying that I cannot have anything that everybody else doesn't have as well? Enforce a lowest common denominator on everybody? When out of "justice" you reduce your lifestyle to that of Indian beggars, I'll listen.
Or do you advocate that every time a Chinese guy dies because there were no, say, coronary bypass operations available near his village, we kill off a patient in a US hospital just to keep things even?
I imagine the Indians and Pakistanis will be the ones most in need of these kind of defense systems,
No. They need defence against theatre-range systems (medium-range missiles, fighter-bombers, etc), not against ICBMs which, as it was pointed out, stand for InterContinental Ballistic Missiles.
but somehow I doubt they'll be able to afford them,
Didn't stop before, I don't see why it should stop them now...
Kaa
You know, in all seriousness, remote learning won't achieve widespread acceptance within the next 30 years for one simple reason: you can't flirt with somebody who's in another state.
Ain't true. What do you think all these people in AOL chat rooms are doing? Yeah, I know, it's a big stretch to call that flirting, but it is generally the same idea.
Seriously.. human interaction is a key component to learning.
Not for all people. Most of what I know I taught myself either by reading books or by tinkering around. There wasn't much human interaction in that. OTOH, my wife, for example, cannot just learn stuff by herself. She needs it to be *taught* to her. That doesn't mean that I am smarter than her or vice versa -- we just learn in different ways.
However, I still don't think online learning will take off in a big way. People who need interaction will hate it and people who don't need interaction (like me) will not need it. I'd rather teach myself than be taught online. For me its faster, cheaper, more convenient, and I actually learn more by having to fix my own mistakes.
Kaa
Many worldwide banks offer NetBanking as a way of allowing customers access to their account, bill payments, loan payments, etc over the net. The way this is done is not through a browser, but through a secure on-line client terminal, developed by the bank (which is not open source ;-) ).
Used to be that way. Not any more. Look at Citibank -- they used to have a special-purpose client with, basically, an ATM interface. Now it's gone and to access your account electronically all you need is a plain-vanilla browser.
Besides don't forget that the security of individual accounts depends on a four-digit PIN number -- this is by far the weakest link. Of course, if you are talking about corporate accounts and wire transfers, things do get more interesting...
Kaa
The problem with buying a computer as a general purpose tool is that sooner or later this stuff is all going to morph into a few appliances to make it easy for the masses to do things.
I am not sure about this. I've heard predictions about this coming for a looong time, but I still see no signs of this happening. One exception, though -- there are and will be "appliances" for browsing the Web and email (WebTV, etc.)
Computers are complicated. People like you and me can use them just fine, but there's a lot of dough to be made in taking spreadhseets and wordprocessors and applying them to lo-tech solutions with simple consistent UIs.
First, it has been tried. Remember the electronic typewriters (take an electric typewriter, add a small LCD screen and some memory...)? This is exactly your lo-tech wordprocessor appliance with simple, known and consistent UI. They failed utterly.
Second, computers are complicated for a reason. When you have a sophisticated task to do, it is the complexity of the task that determines how easy it is to use to appropriate tools. Programs like, say, PhotoShop or PageMaker are complicated because they have to do complicated things and a simple UI isn't going to help much. Tasks that you can do with a couple of clicks (again, rowsing, email) can be turned into an appliance with a couple of buttons. I doubt that this is true for a general-purpose word processing program or financial software (major applications for home users).
And yes, I agree that PCs will be used for serious gaming, while consoles will be for the unwashed masses. But then again, that is very similar to the situation we have currently, no?
Kaa
Banking records are owned by the bank, as are medical records by the doctor, etc - The 5th Circuit court (about 4 years ago..I don't have the citation handy) ruled that, since you can be compelled to produce copies of these records, and not the bank, that the records are yours and the persons who hold them are "custodians" of those records. They must follow your directives within the extent of the law. The fact that the law gives them certain, automatic, priviliges with relation to these records does not surrender your ownership.
It'll be interesting to look up this 5th Circuit case -- does it mean that people have copyright over their banking/medical records? Besides, I still don't see what rights do I have as the owner of these records. I cannot tell the bank to destroy them, I have no control over what the bank does with the information, etc.
In addition to that, my major point stays valid. If the bank misuses the information you do not sue it for theft or for copyright infringement -- you sue it under tort law which has nothing to do with propery.
"Control presumes possession" NOT! - If this were not true, then the entire ability to arrest suspects based upon their possession of an illegal substance would be moot.
Not true. The law specifies that the possession of illegal substance is a misdemeanor/felony -- it makes no difference who actually owns the drugs. In this case ownership is irrelevant.
When you steal a car, you now control and possess that car, however illegally, until it is returned to the original owner.
Exactly my point. You control and possess this car, but you do not own it. Thank you for a good example.
Use of a mail address - I don't think I was clear: When I say that an address is mine, I mean it is mine to do with what I like, including sending and receiving mail with that address on it.
You are still not clear. I can perfectly well send mail with your address on it -- I don't need your permission for that. As to receiving mail, again, you receive mail because you own/rent the physical location to which mail is being delivered, not because you have intellectual property over the address.
The fact that the address is my property precludes others from receiving mail at my address without my consent.
No. You are confused. Others cannot receive mail at your address because you own the *property* at that address, not because you own the address itself. Consider dynamic IP addressing. You receive packets at your assigned IP because you own the machine which receives the packets, not because you own a (temporary) IP address as intellectual property.
Placing transactions on bank records - Since they are my records, they will have only my transactions.
That's a tautology. Your records are those with your transactions. Not your transactions are by definition not part of your records. Again, this has nothing to do with property.
Kaa
Hey, fewer and fewer people are going to be willing to spend $2000 for a computer, $150 for a joystick, $200 for a new graphics card, $150 for decent speakers *JUST* to *PLAY*GAMES*.
First, I am spending money for the computer so that I can do word processing, spreadsheeting, email, etc, etc. and play games. You argue that I should buy another machine for that -- why? I'd rather have one machine that does it all.
Besides, your prices look funny. To buy a new system today I would probably spend ~$1000 for a computer, $40 for a joystick, $80 for a graphics card. And it's not like all games demand the latest hardware. If your life is Quake and you crave that teeny edge that the extra 5 fps give you, maybe. I don't play Quake and I find that my very very old [cringes in shame] 200Mhz Pentium system plays all I want (including System Shock 2) perfectly well.
One other thing that is pretty obvious -- TVs as computer displays suck. Really, really suck. I am not interested in fuzzy low-res graphics that make my eyes tired after an hour or so.
Plus, the selection of PC games (specifically, good sophisticated games for adults) is much better than for consoles. Consoles cater to the teenager crowd and it shows.
Kaa
I am a lawyer...
...
... Possession is 9/10ths of the law, and control presumes possession
IANAL, but I can still argue with one, cannot I?
My name is my own, and I have every right, through possession and grant, to restrict how it is used: Why do you think that companies who give out prizes require you to sign a release so they can use your name? If my name was not owned by me, where's the hang-up?
Such companies want releases mostly to avoid being sued under tort law. Tort law and property law are very different approaches as you probably know. Whether your name is your own (in the property sense) is rather doubtful. You cannot destroy it or change it without the consent of the government. You do not get to pick it (again, without govt consent). Your rights to restrict its use are rather limited, and they disappear if you are a public figure. The phone company includes it in white pages by default, unless you specifically instruct it (and pay it!) not to.
To reiterate, your control over your name's use is accomplished through tort law, not through property law.
Banking and medical records are, again, owned by me (and restrictable: See the FCRA and privacy conventions) as they were created by a direct result of my actions and my doing
That may depend on a state, but I don't believe you own your banking and medical records. Try instructing your bank or your physician to destroy them -- see if they comply. Try telling the bank not to use your records for e.g. marketing by its insurance arm -- the bank may agree, but out of politeness, not because they have a legal obligation to do so.
Besides, the bank records are not created by you. You make actions, which are then recorded by your bank. Granted, you are the cause, but it is the bank that actually creates the records. The records reside on bank's computers and are its intellectual property. If you are believe they have been misused, you will sue the bank under the tort law and not under property law.
Also, my address is mine, simply because I can control its use.
Come on! Go back to your first year of law school and re-read the Property textbook. Just because you happen to control something does not mean you own it.
I may keep my address private, if I choose. "But, wait Mr. Lawyer, can't someone look up your address at least in the county's Hall of Records?" Yes, they can. However, that does not give them permission to use my address for their purposes.
And, pray tell me, why not? Or rather, why do they need your permission? If your name is Guppenblinken and I happen to collect the addresses of all Guppenblinkens in the world, I can perfectly well get your address, store it in my database, post it on the web, send you mail, etc. If you don't like it, you can sue me under torts, but for the n-th time, there are no property issues here. You cannot sue me for theft.
If what you say were true, then my address would be available for others to use for the same purposes I do, such as receipt of mail.f my banking records were not mine, then others could use them to place transactions against.
Nonsense. Receipt of mail is a function of the physical location of your house/apartment and the matching of that physical location to the Post Office database. The banking transactions involve actual assets in your account, which you definitely own, not *records* of past transactions.
I am sorry, you have to come up with better arguments.
Kaa
It might be a funny idea to force, say, my local phone company to drop my address information, which I trivially own, from _all_ their databases (phone book, billing databases, etc).
Welcome to the real world, pal. You do NOT own your address information. You do not own (in the intellectual property sense) your name, your address, your banking records, your medical records, your phone call logs, etc. etc. They are owned by whoever collected them. You have no say in how they are used (with exceptions provided by specific laws, e.g. video rental information).
Kaa
This is a truly brilliant post
Agreed, but you manage to provide some competition.
You know something, not everyone wants to be open source. Some people actually want to create something and own the intellectual rights to it.
Yep, and there is a mechanism for that called copyright.
I more informed post would be "could someone please fix the US Patent Office" because it's becoming apparent that they have no clue what they're allowing to become copyrighted.
First, I don't see why that would be a more informed post. Second, you yourself are in dire need of a clue regarding the differences between patents and copyright. Yes, Virginia, these are completely different things.
Another question, how are they damaging the community?
By not allowing you to use the most efficient way to solve a problem? By forcing you to pay a small fortune to lawyers for patent-compliance check before releasing the software? By making you vulnerable to bogus patent-infringement lawsuits that could easily kill the company before it could show the bogosity of the suit?
Kaa
Ability to claim ownership of information just because you organized it into a database is a dangerous thing. The danger is that information that used to free will find itself in "owned" databases and so will stop being free. That is not a good thing.
Besides, the laws regarding it will necessarily be either very vague or quite arbitrary. Let's say I compiled a list of all cow manure suppliers in my area and put it on the web. This is now a database, worthy of protection. Can other people copy the whole database? Not under the proposed law. What about one address? two addresses? five addresses? What if another guy goes to yellow pages and compiles his own list? Will he be required to prove "clean-room" conditions? What if he compiles his own and then cross-checks it against mine?
Lawyers will be very happy.
Kaa
There's been a huge amount of hype around neural nets (NNs) some time ago, thankfully most of it has died down.
Basically, NNs are highly tunable and very flexible nonlinear statistical models. That's it. Once you understand that you are dealing with statistical modeling and not bionic miracles, a lot of things fall into place and life generally becomes much easier. Note that many popular NN types are mathematically equivalent to well-known statistical models -- only the names are different. For example, projection pursuit regression is basically a direct match for a three-layer feed-forward neural net.
Because NNs are statistical models, you have to deal with all the classic statistical problems. You still have the problems of input selection, of overfitting, of regime switches in the process that you are trying to model, etc. etc. Basically, NNs are very useful and quite complicated statistical tools. To use them correctly demands considerable sophistication and more than a passing acquaintance with statistics.
For the interested, there is a very good FAQ on neural nets maintained by Warren Searle. It is technically the FAQ of alt.ai.neural-nets (I am not sure about the name of the newsgroup) and can be found in the usual places.
Kaa
No cable modem I've ever used has been keyed to a MAC address.
You are lucky. Here is a quote from a cable modem FAQ:
"Second, many cable ISPs use Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) to assign a unique IP number to your computer's NIC. They also often bind or lock your connection to the MAC address that is hard-coded into the NIC that was present when they installed your service."
Kaa
From the point of view of the soviet union things only got worse since the end of the cold war
You probably mean 'since the collapse of the socialist system'. But, in any case, that statement is quite doubtful.
10 years ago all soviet citizens had jobs
Well, not having a job used to be illegal and punished by imprisonment in the USSR. There always were jobs in the labor camps...
You also forgot to mention KGB, party line, mandatory work in agriculture, etc., etc.
Then capitalism was introduced and the whole country collapsed
You've got both the temporal and the causal sequence wrong. Actually, first (the cause) the socialist system collapsed, and then (the consequence) on its ruins a very strange mixture of robber-baron capitalism and a corrupt third-world statism developed.
Corruption has entered all layers of power
Yep, but what does this have to do with capitalism? Corruption is basically a consequence of Russia being a third-world country without any checks and balances on huge and powerful government bureacracy.
Many people in the former soviet union haven't got enough money each month to buy even the most basic stuff to stay alive
That means that they all die each month, right? Your statement makes no sense.
Alcoholism is a major problem and the average life expectance is about 20 years lower than in the western world.
That was the case under socialism, too. Life expectancy did decrease after the collapse, but again, the cause for that was not introduction of capitalism, but rather the collapse of the socialist system.
Kaa