An interesting bit on why we are dumbing down our society. This includes the aformentioned football team issue.
Locally for me, the Repubs have been telling our teachers to go screw themselves, that I601 was passed for a reason, and that they want to cut the budget even more. Meanwhile, the football team gets uniforms and paid transit to and from games, while our chess team has to pay for all their own equipment+transportation. Our football team places dead last every year, our Chess team has placed first in state several years in a row, and took 9th in the Nationals once.
Actually, 1984 was supposed to be an allegory for 1948, which was the year the book came out. It had a lot to do with the nationalist attitudes, "My Country, right or wrong" that were prevalent at that time.
The fact that a lot of it is still relevant is what scares me...
David Brin had a snippet about this in Earth...
on
ShutUp Software
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· Score: 1
Basically, people had filtering software so powerful, that they could filter out anything they didn't want to see - bad news, people they didn't agree with, etc. By doing this, they warped their worldview to the extent that they were no longer capable of understanding what was going on out there. Some hacker wrote a virii (I use hacker on purpose on here - this I consider a cool hack, not a crack) which randomized people's settings, forcing them to be aware of other things that were going on. He was put in jail for it.
Note, I said I WORK at MS, not I work FOR MS. There's a difference. I'm a Peon, pronounced "pee on." I also post to slashdot. I also don't agree with a lot of the stuff that goes on at MS. OTOH, I'm probably not high enough on the totem pole to hear stuff like this, so it's quite possible.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm too lazy to htmlize it, so you'll have to cut 'n paste...
l _evo2.html
http://www.tessier.com/Life/Theory/intro_ashpoo
An interesting bit on why we are dumbing down our society. This includes the aformentioned football team issue.
Locally for me, the Repubs have been telling our teachers to go screw themselves, that I601 was passed for a reason, and that they want to cut the budget even more. Meanwhile, the football team gets uniforms and paid transit to and from games, while our chess team has to pay for all their own equipment+transportation. Our football team places dead last every year, our Chess team has placed first in state several years in a row, and took 9th in the Nationals once.
Actually, 1984 was supposed to be an allegory for 1948, which was the year the book came out. It had a lot to do with the nationalist attitudes, "My Country, right or wrong" that were prevalent at that time.
The fact that a lot of it is still relevant is what scares me...
You said what I was going to say!
Basically, people had filtering software so powerful, that they could filter out anything they didn't want to see - bad news, people they didn't agree with, etc. By doing this, they warped their worldview to the extent that they were no longer capable of understanding what was going on out there. Some hacker wrote a virii (I use hacker on purpose on here - this I consider a cool hack, not a crack) which randomized people's settings, forcing them to be aware of other things that were going on. He was put in jail for it.
I say we honor the truly great of our community:
Linus Torvalds
Commander Taco (Man, I would love a planet named that...)
and Meept.
Yes, but how do you get the antimatter in the first place? Pull it out of Bill Gates' brain?
Microsoft could get some bright idea for IE, and "integrate" the DNS into IE...
Note, I said I WORK at MS, not I work FOR MS. There's a difference. I'm a Peon, pronounced "pee on." I also post to slashdot. I also don't agree with a lot of the stuff that goes on at MS. OTOH, I'm probably not high enough on the totem pole to hear stuff like this, so it's quite possible.