Because it was designed (and paid for for many years) under the aegis of a US Government Agency, DARPA (actually ARPA at the time.)
No one made the rest of the world adopt the protocols and RFCs of ARPAnet/Internet; you could have all standardized on JANET's wierd reverse protocol, or stuck with UUCP, or made up something new. But Internet was the biggest and best, and so with that came the inheritance of.gov and.mil as privileged US domains. Ya move into someone else's house, it's rude to lecture them about the layout.
I'll note that no one is stopping other countries from setting up their own nameservers that don't pay attention to.mil and instead only take requests for *.mil.us to reach those sites, if dealing with the heritage really gets up your nose.
Of course, you could also argue anything larger than size X is a planet (in which case the four Gallileians, Luna, Titan, and Triton are planets if Pluto is...), or any of a dozen other criteria.
Yeah, but 'moon' is really a status, not a description. Titan would certainly have no disputers as to being a planet if its primary was the sun rather than Saturn. Triton probably *was* a planet -- the current theory runs that Pluto and Triton are the last survivors of a group of small icy/rocky planets outside Neptune's orbit, but that a single or multiple disasters led to Pluto being knocked into its elongated orbit, Charon possibly being formed from an impact with Pluto a la Luna, Triton being captured by Neptune, and possibly even Uranus' sideways tilt.
The outer system looks like the remains of a driveby shooting... something big came by, but we don't know what or when!
Pluto is much larger than Ceres, the largest asteroid; 2274 km to 933 km. Even Pluto's moon is larger than Ceres (Charon is 1172 km), though Pluto is considerably smaller than Mercury (4,880 km) and both Pluto and Mercury are smaller than the moons Triton and Ganymede. But it's vastly bigger than any of the other trans-neptunian (Kuiper Belt) objects, or the Centaurs (TNO refugees between Jupiter and Neptune); Chiron is the largest Centaur and it's barely over 200km; the biggest known TNO is around 400km.
Arguing that Pluto is merely the largest of a class of similiar objects doesn't seem to wash for me; you could say that the inner planets are merely the largest examples of a class of rocky objects inside Jupiter's orbit. The line between minor and major planet is essentially arbitrary, setting it in between Ceres and Pluto makes as much sense as setting it in between Mercury and Pluto. Since the former has been the standard for 70 years, seems no reason to change it. If a bunch of 2000km Kuiper Belt objects start turning up, they'll probably rethink.
A more interesting question is whether Pluto should be considered a double planet -- the 2:1 ratio between it and Charon is by far the smallest in the solar system, and if I recall correctly the mutual point they both orbit around is actually *above* Pluto's surface, unlike any other satellite relationship known.
Was chatting about nuclear plant accidents with a nuclear engineer a few years back, and his phrasing was 'if you see a blue flash, you are dead.' Because the flash means that it's gone critical, and the fact that you see it means it wasn't shielded (enough.) I wouldn't count on any of the workers surviving.
They say that Gates is famously negligent about his personal appearance and schedule and that he has the autistic behavior of compulsively rocking in his chair, which reportedly began early in his childhood.
I've got to point out that these symptoms aren't necessarily linked to autism. I should know -- I've got all three of the physical tics commonly associated with autism: rocking in your chair, shaking your head violently, and bouncing from wall to wall. And I do mean bouncing from wall to wall, not pacing or the like, I knocked myself silly more than a few times when my hand slipped and I hit the wall with my head instead.
But while I had a few traits you might call autistic -- being a quiet and self sufficient 'good' baby and toddler, not being particularly socially apt -- you couldn't call me autistic or even shadow autistic without distorting the term beyond all meaning. I didn't have trouble reading people, I was in fact very good. I was just sucked at manipulating them with that knowledge.
It completely freaked me out the first time I saw film of autistic kids in a college psychology course. Had me slumping down in my chair thinking 'I do that.' I did manage to supress them to some degree as I got older, but one or the other of the three is still my unconscious reaction when I'm on a intense thinking or daydreaming jag, so you could call it 'compulsive.' I can stop once I've started, but not without losing some edge to my thinking.
The problem is not a 9999 date rolling, the problem is that the specific *date* 9/9/99 was used to indicate a null date in a lot of old databases. Stupid, yes, but it happened.
Rob, how about blocking ACs and new-account postings by thread? So that normally ACs can post, but certain threads are protected.
This takes into account the fact that there's a huge difference between the annoying ('MS/Linux/Apple sux/rools' posts) and the utterly vile (saying someone deserved to die in a memorial thread that their children are reading.)
So that blocked ACs just didn't create new accounts, you'd want to block new accounts as well, perhaps ones 24 hours and less old. This isn't a completely great solution, as there were some excellent AC posts in the Stevens thread along with those two horrible trolls, but the idea that Stevens' son might have come across some of that stuff just by innocently reading at 0... shudder.
I'd also like this. I've twice had moderation points time out because I didn't see five posts that really screamed out 'moderate me up.' Since I generally only check Slashdot once a day, it's easy to lose nearly half the time before even seeing I'm a moderator.
I think the article is criticizing some things that were never really said -- Katz was comparing the email he was getting to the *tone and format* of holocaust testimonies, not so much the crimes committed against the kids to death camps.
As for the criticism of "The idea that this group could move into the slot of the oppressed, as well as occupying the traditional role of the oppressor...." I don't know of many geeks who end up 'the oppressor'. It's true that if geeks survive high school, many of them will end up successful, but that doesn't make them the 'oppressor'; and I'm offended by the implication that later success obviates horrendous early abuse. Did her escape from slavery invalidate Sojourner Truth's rage at bondage?
There was also a trick pulled that even people on slashdot have done -- amalagating different levels of abuse to say 'hey, everyone is miserable in high school, stop being such a martyr.' Under this technique, unhappiness at not making the cheerleader squad is cheerfully is treated as indistinguishable from rape and attempted murder.
In elementary school, for example, I was definitely the wierd kid and abused, but I didn't suffer *daily* abuse. Some of the individual incidents were pretty bad, but while they may have led to longterm scarring, they didn't cause the sheer irrationality that daily abuse did -- as I discovered when I got to junior high, and got to be the (fairly randomly picked) scapegoat. If you haven't experienced the terror of going to class *knowing* you will be tripped and spat at and verbally torn down *with the passive, or even active approval of teachers and adminstrators*, it's almost impossible to understand the insanity it causes -- you stop being able to judge whether a bump in the hall was an accident or another attack, you can't tell if an overture of friendship is real or a trap, you are in a constant state of fear and tension... there were times when I *wanted* to kill, when if I had had a weapon in my hand people would have been dead. I didn't, thank god, but I can't help but understand the rage utterly.
Then I got to high school, where I was a pretty normal kid (the adminstration didn't tolerate bullying, and the geek clan was large enough that we had our own gravity and protection from abuse.) Had occasional unhappy times, just like anyone else, and I think a lot of people who weren't abused but also weren't in the top cliques look back at their sometimes-unhappy times and think it's the same as the worst abuse.
Laura
PS: If you want a lovely look at the attitude at Columbine high, take a look at Chuck Green's Sunday column. The captain of the Columbine football team is under a restraining order to stay away from his ex-girlfriend; he's facing a criminal charge for threatening her; he was picked up by sheriff's deputies prowling outside her house; he was caught by a teacher intimidating her in school; he threw himself in front of her car. Dear Principal DeAngelis's reaction? Suspend a *jock*? The captain of their precious football team, the one they have a sports medicine doctor for? Oh, forfend, no! Instead, he told the girl's parents that she should leave school.
The irony of some of the geek profiling has been enough to make you retch at times. The NYT did a piece on an Arizona high school, outlining the cliques and in particular where they sat at lunch. The jocks and cheerleaders outside at the prime tables, and god help you if you tried to sit there if you weren't of the approved. The regular students inside the cafeteria. And off in the drama building, the drama geeks as well as various other oddballs who had taken refuge with them, because anyone from special ed students to geniuses could hang out there without fear. So let's guess which group was being harrassed last week: the gentle tolerant ones or the assholes who had driven them out.
Yes! Got it in one. They wear *black*, after all, and therefore must be EVIL.
I've got a suggestion for a constructive bit to go with our venting, though: there were two superb replies on one of the earlier Hellmouth threads outlining exactly what rights students had (they can't just suspend you without a hearing, for example) and how to work the rules if they start making arbitrary dress code changes and the like (they ban black? make them specify exactly how much black you can wear. Helpfully report popular students who violate the rules.)
It would be an awfully good idea to put up those sort of useful messages in a permanent, easily accessible area/webpage (Geek Defense, perhaps.)
That in the midst of all the kids being stripsearched for wearing black and expelled for not parroting back group think, concerts being cancelled and movies being blamed, not ONE, not ONE case of a school instituting an zero tolerance for bullying. Not even a prominent voice. Just our scream of anguish -- and for all it is loud to us, it is barely heard in the wider society, which sees only flowers, sorrow and comprehension of thirteen and not of two.
Oh, there's the occasional article discussing cliques, but they are almost invariably wrapped up by quotes from smug little experts going 'oh, it's all a part of growing up, it's *good* for them'. Here, shall I show you the scar on my head from the time (one among hundreds) that someone tripped me on the way to my seat and I smashed my head against the corner of the desk? Go on, tell me how good it was for me. Or perhaps we'll seat you, Mr. Expert, in a room with 25 other people and have them whisper abuse and throw things at you for an hour a day. Oh, and you can't skip, or we'll arrest you. Go on, tell me how it improves your self esteem.
Fuckers. And they wonder why we feel alienated from the majority.
Panic gives them something to fill up the airtime. Sense does not. Panic gives them frightened people to watch TV and buy magazines. Whether you think it's good -- no more secrets -- or bad -- no more judgement, the media these days is just the same as the internet, passing on every rumor or gory photo. When they start canting about 'public good' it's an excuse for why they put someone's sex life or a kid's shot up body on the cover or the promo, because they still like to pretend they are different and better than the 'net.
What do you think sells a broadcast, a newspaper? Quiet little editorials on tolerance, or jittery/darkened shots of people in noserings with 'More Littletons?' blazoned above?
I suspect that if you walk into your control room and ask, you'll find some purebred geeks with horror stories of their own. Just a thought.
NPR can get pretty off base, but it's the outlet where slashdot folks are most likely to get an interviewer with some native understanding. TV's pretty hopeless -- nearly all of them were alphas in high school and will regard any empathy with the shooters as evidence of perversion. Newspapers are random, you can find some geeks and insightful and fair folks, and a lot of jerks.
Except that the people that must be made to understand mostly rely on TV news for their information. Catch-22.
And what the hell does that have to do with kids getting abused because they look or dress or act different? I'm real sorry about what happened in your town, but my friends shouldn't be being harassed for wearing the same damn clothes they've worn for years.
I don't excuse those two kids; stop using them as an excuse for the bullies and abusers who are currently loose in the school system (and beyond -- people are getting beaten up for wearing black!)
I suspect that if the abusive school alphas knew just how many of their whipping boys and scapegoat girls fantasized about killing them, they'd be a teensy bit scared. I know that if the thought was the deed, there'd have been a bunch of dead kids at my junior high. So why don't we have more? And why are we having a sudden spree of them? I think there's three things that have to break before fantasy turns to reality -- and I'll speculate that this famous year-long plan started as not so much a plan but a comforting fantasy of a plan to warm the heart every time a football player body checked the guy across the hall between classes and sauntered off with a smirking apology. But most kids:
1) Don't lose sight of the fact that this, too, shall pass. That you've got a future somewhere beyond this hell, and if you can hold on and survive things will be much better. I think this is the easiest thing to break, but most kids who snap like that don't kill others, they kill themselves, because...
2)... you have to lose sight of the fact that other students are human too. Assholes and vicious in a lot of cases, but being an asshole isn't supposed to be a death-penalty offense. Especially when you are a teenager.
And even most of the kids that have those two check-dams break still don't go postal, because...
3)... there's a really huge psychological step between daydreaming, and planning, and even sneaking a gun into school, and actually taking it out of the locker and pulling that trigger on real live people. In fact, I suspect that what's driven the series of shootings over the last two years is not that schools are more terrible to endure, or kids are crazier, or more guns available: it's just that a bunch of kids on the border have had it demonstrated that they can successfully (within their definition of success) make their daydream reality. And thus is born a fad, if a series of nightmares can be called such a thing.
...is in making the subject suspicious, yet presenting it so convincingly that the target believes or half believes, until they belatedly realize the date. The same sort of material done on any other date, as in the assertions last week that userfriendly/segfault had gotten registered letters from lawyers, would come under the much less attractive name of 'lies'. There's no art to that, just abusing the goodwill of your supporters.
That's why I had been presuming that while the shutdowns were potentially a joke, the legal stuff wasn't. If I'm wrong, and the Register article implies I am, then I think the guys are going to end up apologizing, not laughing; given that public pressure is the net community's only real weapon when Big Companies with Many Lawyers go after small websites or individuals like Theo de Raadt, it's a real bad idea to cry wolf.
>As to moving the "closed research oriented internet" somewhere, there never was any such thing. Almost from the >very beginning Internet was open to anybody who had a computer and a connection. I still remember my dial-up >account on a BBS...
Um. No. If you are going to criticize stupid statements by politicians, it's best not to do it by making stupid statements yourself. Either your 'dial-up account on a BBS' was very late in Internet history (or more precisely, Arpanet-Internet history) or you were accessing something else, not the Internet. When I worked at DARPA, one of my jobs was maintaining the lists of what sites were authorized. It's only in the late 80s that you even got widescale student access and any commercial access at all, and not until the early nineties that you got widescale commercial access.
Almost from the very beginning. Ha.
That's almost as good as all the ISPs that were claiming 10 or 15 years experience in the 1997 Washington Post survey of local net access. As someone who knew very well that Grebyn was the sole entity that had existed more than five years ago.
Slashdot Mirror
Because it was designed (and paid for for many years) under the aegis of a US Government Agency, DARPA (actually ARPA at the time.)
.gov and .mil as privileged US domains. Ya move into someone else's house, it's rude to lecture them about the layout.
.mil and instead only take requests for *.mil.us to reach those sites, if dealing with the heritage really gets up your nose.
No one made the rest of the world adopt the protocols and RFCs of ARPAnet/Internet; you could have all standardized on JANET's wierd reverse protocol, or stuck with UUCP, or made up something new. But Internet was the biggest and best, and so with that came the inheritance of
I'll note that no one is stopping other countries from setting up their own nameservers that don't pay attention to
Laura
Yeah, but 'moon' is really a status, not a description. Titan would certainly have no disputers as to being a planet if its primary was the sun rather than Saturn. Triton probably *was* a planet -- the current theory runs that Pluto and Triton are the last survivors of a group of small icy/rocky planets outside Neptune's orbit, but that a single or multiple disasters led to Pluto being knocked into its elongated orbit, Charon possibly being formed from an impact with Pluto a la Luna, Triton being captured by Neptune, and possibly even Uranus' sideways tilt.
The outer system looks like the remains of a driveby shooting... something big came by, but we don't know what or when!
Pluto is much larger than Ceres, the largest asteroid; 2274 km to 933 km. Even Pluto's moon is larger than Ceres (Charon is 1172 km), though Pluto is considerably smaller than Mercury (4,880 km) and both Pluto and Mercury are smaller than the moons Triton and Ganymede. But it's vastly bigger than any of the other trans-neptunian (Kuiper Belt) objects, or the Centaurs (TNO refugees between Jupiter and Neptune); Chiron is the largest Centaur and it's barely over 200km; the biggest known TNO is around 400km.
Arguing that Pluto is merely the largest of a class of similiar objects doesn't seem to wash for me; you could say that the inner planets are merely the largest examples of a class of rocky objects inside Jupiter's orbit. The line between minor and major planet is essentially arbitrary, setting it in between Ceres and Pluto makes as much sense as setting it in between Mercury and Pluto. Since the former has been the standard for 70 years, seems no reason to change it. If a bunch of 2000km Kuiper Belt objects start turning up, they'll probably rethink.
A more interesting question is whether Pluto should be considered a double planet -- the 2:1 ratio between it and Charon is by far the smallest in the solar system, and if I recall correctly the mutual point they both orbit around is actually *above* Pluto's surface, unlike any other satellite relationship known.
Was chatting about nuclear plant accidents with a nuclear engineer a few years back, and his phrasing was 'if you see a blue flash, you are dead.' Because the flash means that it's gone critical, and the fact that you see it means it wasn't shielded (enough.) I wouldn't count on any of the workers surviving.
...who finds it amusing that you can electronically order from IBM a copy of the patent claiming invention of the idea of electronic ordering?
Laura
I've got to point out that these symptoms aren't necessarily linked to autism. I should know -- I've got all three of the physical tics commonly associated with autism: rocking in your chair, shaking your head violently, and bouncing from wall to wall. And I do mean bouncing from wall to wall, not pacing or the like, I knocked myself silly more than a few times when my hand slipped and I hit the wall with my head instead.
But while I had a few traits you might call autistic -- being a quiet and self sufficient 'good' baby and toddler, not being particularly socially apt -- you couldn't call me autistic or even shadow autistic without distorting the term beyond all meaning. I didn't have trouble reading people, I was in fact very good. I was just sucked at manipulating them with that knowledge.
It completely freaked me out the first time I saw film of autistic kids in a college psychology course. Had me slumping down in my chair thinking 'I do that.' I did manage to supress them to some degree as I got older, but one or the other of the three is still my unconscious reaction when I'm on a intense thinking or daydreaming jag, so you could call it 'compulsive.' I can stop once I've started, but not without losing some edge to my thinking.
Humans are wierd stuff.
The problem is not a 9999 date rolling, the problem is that the specific *date* 9/9/99 was used to indicate a null date in a lot of old databases. Stupid, yes, but it happened.
Laura
Rob, how about blocking ACs and new-account postings by thread? So that normally ACs can post, but certain threads are protected.
This takes into account the fact that there's a huge difference between the annoying ('MS/Linux/Apple sux/rools' posts) and the utterly vile (saying someone deserved to die in a memorial thread that their children are reading.)
So that blocked ACs just didn't create new accounts, you'd want to block new accounts as well, perhaps ones 24 hours and less old. This isn't a completely great solution, as there were some excellent AC posts in the Stevens thread along with those two horrible trolls, but the idea that Stevens' son might have come across some of that stuff just by innocently reading at 0... shudder.
I'd also like this. I've twice had moderation points time out because I didn't see five posts that really screamed out 'moderate me up.' Since I generally only check Slashdot once a day, it's easy to lose nearly half the time before even seeing I'm a moderator.
I think the article is criticizing some things that were never really said -- Katz was comparing the email he was getting to the *tone and format* of holocaust testimonies, not so much the crimes committed against the kids to death camps.
As for the criticism of "The idea that this group could move into the slot of the oppressed, as well as occupying the traditional role of the oppressor...." I don't know of many geeks who end up 'the oppressor'. It's true that if geeks survive high school, many of them will end up successful, but that doesn't make them the 'oppressor'; and I'm offended by the implication that later success obviates horrendous early abuse. Did her escape from slavery invalidate Sojourner Truth's rage at bondage?
There was also a trick pulled that even people on slashdot have done -- amalagating different levels of abuse to say 'hey, everyone is miserable in high school, stop being such a martyr.' Under this technique, unhappiness at not making the cheerleader squad is cheerfully is treated as indistinguishable from rape and attempted murder.
In elementary school, for example, I was definitely the wierd kid and abused, but I didn't suffer *daily* abuse. Some of the individual incidents were pretty bad, but while they may have led to longterm scarring, they didn't cause the sheer irrationality that daily abuse did -- as I discovered when I got to junior high, and got to be the (fairly randomly picked) scapegoat. If you haven't experienced the terror of going to class *knowing* you will be tripped and spat at and verbally torn down *with the passive, or even active approval of teachers and adminstrators*, it's almost impossible to understand the insanity it causes -- you stop being able to judge whether a bump in the hall was an accident or another attack, you can't tell if an overture of friendship is real or a trap, you are in a constant state of fear and tension... there were times when I *wanted* to kill, when if I had had a weapon in my hand people would have been dead. I didn't, thank god, but I can't help but understand the rage utterly.
Then I got to high school, where I was a pretty normal kid (the adminstration didn't tolerate bullying, and the geek clan was large enough that we had our own gravity and protection from abuse.) Had occasional unhappy times, just like anyone else, and I think a lot of people who weren't abused but also weren't in the top cliques look back at their sometimes-unhappy times and think it's the same as the worst abuse.
Laura
PS: If you want a lovely look at the attitude at Columbine high, take a look at Chuck Green's Sunday column. The captain of the Columbine football team is under a restraining order to stay away from his ex-girlfriend; he's facing a criminal charge for threatening her; he was picked up by sheriff's deputies prowling outside her house; he was caught by a teacher intimidating her in school; he threw himself in front of her car. Dear Principal DeAngelis's reaction? Suspend a *jock*? The captain of their precious football team, the one they have a sports medicine doctor for? Oh, forfend, no! Instead, he told the girl's parents that she should leave school.
I never got around to checking the stats when slashdot was getting slashdotted over the Hellmouth threads. Have you had a million-hit day yet?
Laura
Wow. Riveting prose :)
One of my friends suggested shortening it to THE MAN.
"In the Matter of THE MAN vs. JOE PUBLIC"
Laura
The irony of some of the geek profiling has been enough to make you retch at times. The NYT did a piece on an Arizona high school, outlining the cliques and in particular where they sat at lunch. The jocks and cheerleaders outside at the prime tables, and god help you if you tried to sit there if you weren't of the approved. The regular students inside the cafeteria. And off in the drama building, the drama geeks as well as various other oddballs who had taken refuge with them, because anyone from special ed students to geniuses could hang out there without fear. So let's guess which group was being harrassed last week: the gentle tolerant ones or the assholes who had driven them out.
Yes! Got it in one. They wear *black*, after all, and therefore must be EVIL.
I've got a suggestion for a constructive bit to go with our venting, though: there were two superb replies on one of the earlier Hellmouth threads outlining exactly what rights students had (they can't just suspend you without a hearing, for example) and how to work the rules if they start making arbitrary dress code changes and the like (they ban black? make them specify exactly how much black you can wear. Helpfully report popular students who violate the rules.)
It would be an awfully good idea to put up those sort of useful messages in a permanent, easily accessible area/webpage (Geek Defense, perhaps.)
Laura
That in the midst of all the kids being stripsearched for wearing black and expelled for not parroting back group think, concerts being cancelled and movies being blamed, not ONE, not ONE case of a school instituting an zero tolerance for bullying. Not even a prominent voice. Just our scream of anguish -- and for all it is loud to us, it is barely heard in the wider society, which sees only flowers, sorrow and comprehension of thirteen and not of two.
Oh, there's the occasional article discussing cliques, but they are almost invariably wrapped up by quotes from smug little experts going 'oh, it's all a part of growing up, it's *good* for them'. Here, shall I show you the scar on my head from the time (one among hundreds) that someone tripped me on the way to my seat and I smashed my head against the corner of the desk? Go on, tell me how good it was for me. Or perhaps we'll seat you, Mr. Expert, in a room with 25 other people and have them whisper abuse and throw things at you for an hour a day. Oh, and you can't skip, or we'll arrest you. Go on, tell me how it improves your self esteem.
Fuckers. And they wonder why we feel alienated from the majority.
Laura
Panic gives them something to fill up the airtime. Sense does not. Panic gives them frightened people to watch TV and buy magazines. Whether you think it's good -- no more secrets -- or bad -- no more judgement, the media these days is just the same as the internet, passing on every rumor or gory photo. When they start canting about 'public good' it's an excuse for why they put someone's sex life or a kid's shot up body on the cover or the promo, because they still like to pretend they are different and better than the 'net.
What do you think sells a broadcast, a newspaper? Quiet little editorials on tolerance, or jittery/darkened shots of people in noserings with 'More Littletons?' blazoned above?
Laura
I suspect that if you walk into your control room and ask, you'll find some purebred geeks with horror stories of their own. Just a thought.
NPR can get pretty off base, but it's the outlet where slashdot folks are most likely to get an interviewer with some native understanding. TV's pretty hopeless -- nearly all of them were alphas in high school and will regard any empathy with the shooters as evidence of perversion. Newspapers are random, you can find some geeks and insightful and fair folks, and a lot of jerks.
Except that the people that must be made to understand mostly rely on TV news for their information. Catch-22.
Laura
Oh man. This makes me being slammed into lockers look like nothing. I'm so sorry. And good for you for fighting so hard to get over it.
Laura
And what the hell does that have to do with kids getting abused because they look or dress or act different? I'm real sorry about what happened in your town, but my friends shouldn't be being harassed for wearing the same damn clothes they've worn for years.
I don't excuse those two kids; stop using them as an excuse for the bullies and abusers who are currently loose in the school system (and beyond -- people are getting beaten up for wearing black!)
Laura
I suspect that if the abusive school alphas knew just how many of their whipping boys and scapegoat girls fantasized about killing them, they'd be a teensy bit scared. I know that if the thought was the deed, there'd have been a bunch of dead kids at my junior high. So why don't we have more? And why are we having a sudden spree of them? I think there's three things that have to break before fantasy turns to reality -- and I'll speculate that this famous year-long plan started as not so much a plan but a comforting fantasy of a plan to warm the heart every time a football player body checked the guy across the hall between classes and sauntered off with a smirking apology. But most kids:
1) Don't lose sight of the fact that this, too, shall pass. That you've got a future somewhere beyond this hell, and if you can hold on and survive things will be much better. I think this is the easiest thing to break, but most kids who snap like that don't kill others, they kill themselves, because...
2)... you have to lose sight of the fact that other students are human too. Assholes and vicious in a lot of cases, but being an asshole isn't supposed to be a death-penalty offense. Especially when you are a teenager.
And even most of the kids that have those two check-dams break still don't go postal, because...
3)... there's a really huge psychological step between daydreaming, and planning, and even sneaking a gun into school, and actually taking it out of the locker and pulling that trigger on real live people. In fact, I suspect that what's driven the series of shootings over the last two years is not that schools are more terrible to endure, or kids are crazier, or more guns available: it's just that a bunch of kids on the border have had it demonstrated that they can successfully (within their definition of success) make their daydream reality. And thus is born a fad, if a series of nightmares can be called such a thing.
Laura
...is in making the subject suspicious, yet presenting it so convincingly that the target believes or half believes, until they belatedly realize the date. The same sort of material done on any other date, as in the assertions last week that userfriendly/segfault had gotten registered letters from lawyers, would come under the much less attractive name of 'lies'. There's no art to that, just abusing the goodwill of your supporters.
That's why I had been presuming that while the shutdowns were potentially a joke, the legal stuff wasn't. If I'm wrong, and the Register article implies I am, then I think the guys are going to end up apologizing, not laughing; given that public pressure is the net community's only real weapon when Big Companies with Many Lawyers go after small websites or individuals like Theo de Raadt, it's a real bad idea to cry wolf.
Laura
>As to moving the "closed research oriented internet" somewhere, there never was any such thing. Almost from the
>very beginning Internet was open to anybody who had a computer and a connection. I still remember my dial-up
>account on a BBS...
Um. No. If you are going to criticize stupid statements by politicians, it's best not to do it by making stupid statements yourself. Either your 'dial-up account on a BBS' was very late in Internet history (or more precisely, Arpanet-Internet history) or you were accessing something else, not the Internet. When I worked at DARPA, one of my jobs was maintaining the lists of what sites were authorized. It's only in the late 80s that you even got widescale student access and any commercial access at all, and not until the early nineties that you got widescale commercial access.
Almost from the very beginning. Ha.
That's almost as good as all the ISPs that were claiming 10 or 15 years experience in the 1997 Washington Post survey of local net access. As someone who knew very well that Grebyn was the sole entity that had existed more than five years ago.
Laura