I caught the end of it. They kept referring to this group of script kiddies as a "virtual gang", I guess in effort to conjure up images of drugs and violence and organized crime. Which is of course what the script kiddies want, right, it makes them look dangrous and powerful. They really drove it home at the end of the segment, when they mentioned that one of the kids might go to jail for a time, and questioning "is the right thing to do?" They then got some human prop to say just how dangerous and pissed-off this kid is going to be after serving time. Give me a break!
Oh, and that's not the best part. The very next story was about a poor little sick dog who goes around the hospital giving sympathy to the poor little sick children.
This is blatant propoganda. Meaningless emotional arguments designed to focus our hate and fear. Those kids are so dangerous. And the puppies are so cute! What if those dangerous kids hurts one of the puppies! Heavens no! I hate those dangerous kids!
So let's recap. Kids with computers: BAD! Puppies in hospitals: GOOD! Now take your soma and let's all sing "I love Big Brother!"
Why does someone invariably bring up this lame excuse? "I waz juzt vollowing orderz! The shareholders made me do it!" Bull! They would never consider it if that schmuck at Amazon hadn't tried it and gotten away with it. Besides, what about their duty to protect the company from expensive litigation? Or the bad publicity this has caused?
Until they cut off your kid's arm to get rid of the transmitter...
Or implant a bomb in him, and using the same technology, explode the bomb if he is removed from a certain area...
Or the police track Johnny's movements, wait for him to be alone (all from the comfort of a squad car across town), and then beat the crap out of him for associating with some group of "radicals" (like people who oppose the use of this technology without strong citizen oversight).
And you know, there are alt.binaries groups that used for things other than warez or pr0n. You sound like a politician.
Someone should print up stickers with whatever logo they used to denote "Windows Powered". Then we can stick them on all manner of underpowered and broken devices.
Meaningless, kind of like "water wants to run downhill" or "genes want to reproduce"?
It's not to be taken literally. If you want to get anal about it, the correct phrase would be "in any given information network, where there are few or no barriers to information flow, information will tend to distribute to the greatest possible extent until demand for that information is satisfied.
Anyways, I much prefer Bruce Sterling's rebuttal: "Information wants you to give me a dollar".
I question the veracity of the above comment. It sounds like a testimonial, and the author's home page link is to a church home page. Plus there is the comment about prefering chaplains to guidance counselers. All together, it seems to forward the agenda characterized by these cartoons.
If Amphigory really did experience the so-called "hellmouth", I apologize, but please remember that religious intolerance was a pretty big part of it for most of us. I would consider being forced to see a chaplain much more insulting than any sort of geek profiling test.
A lot of this stuff has already been done by the quake mod scene. I remember one project that would link servers together in a web. Enter certain teleporters, and you connect to a different server. Another project would autodownload maps that the client didn't have (didn't quakeworld do that too?). That's two thirds off what you need right there. Add persistent objects, and a global database to keep track of them, and you've got a crude Metaverse.
I think you misunderstand me. I don't advocate taking offense at the label, what I object to is giving the label a ridgid definition, and worse, a definition heavily influenced by people who only see themselves and others in catagories.
Why do you think that article was written? It wasn't about geeks finding acceptance, but more about "hey look, these people who originally outcasts have now established their own locus of power. Let's establish which is the term of derision so we may decide who we accept and who we will continue to scorn." Which is very convienent, because it creates some sort of nerd/geek dichotmaty which allows them to appeal to a demographic (whether be marketing products, democratic elections, or the simple high school popularity contest) while at the same time leaving the negative label to punish people who are socially unnacceptable.
Why do feel like that in a year or two they'll be GAP commercials where iterchangeable people will be running around in jeans and untucked t-shirts, Palm IX's in hand, to the tune of bland industrial music?
Come on people. These identity debates are fun, but realize this is nothing but marketting. The same people who scorned us because we don't give a flying fuck about their social games and status symbols are now trying to cash in on our new-found power in the current economy.
If you think it's now cool to be a geek, you don't get it. You're letting other people have power in how you define yourself.
The planet was discovered a few years ago. What is important about this is that they were able to determine some of the elements on the planet (by analysing the spectral lines of the reflected light). The technique they used to isolate the reflected light from the glare of the star is the real advancement.
I wouldn't call that racism, but its pretty damn arrogant. I guess that makes it all the more realisitic, considering how the American military of that era is (accurately?) stereotyped.
It's this kind of shit that makes we want to write my own tactical simulations, designed to piss off the militant patriotic yahoos for which these things seem to be marketted. My favorite idea is a slave uprising in the American South, in an alternate history were the South won the Civil War, played in a sort of resource management/tactical simulation engine.
Another is a first person shooter where the player is a leftist guerilla, and the goal is to depose the CIA-backed dictator of a banana republic.
Take your case to the alumni. You're offering free services to students, right, better than the equivalents offered by the administration? The alumni are bound to take your side. Once that happens the administration will fold faster than you can say "donation money".
If you do have to give it up, try to assign ownership to a student-run organization that is not under university control, or at least with a great deal of autonomy, that can raise a big stink if the administration gets coercive in how the domain is used.
Listen, society is not some distinct entity lives off on its own. It is enabled by technology. Rhetoric alone can't change society. Rather, it is the new perspective and new powers offered by technology that give people the ability to instill change.
Remember, without a medium, there is no society, there is no rhetoric, there is no people, only animals shuffling around looking for food.
Actually, go to his site and click around for a while.. You'll find a funny article about how M$ wanted to charge him for tech support on bugs listed in their tech base.
I called them once to confirm that a bug existed in Internet Information Server (the key word is *confirm*, it was plainly obvious there was a problem, and I already had my own work-around). Because they gave me some stupid-ass workaround (that was unacceptable), they claimed to have solved my problem and wanted to charge my company. I argued about it until the phone lackey gave up by leaving the decision to his superiors. As far as I know we never got a bill.
The most infuriating thing was that the very next day, the bug, and their lame work-around, showed up in the knowledge base, when it was not there before. Apparently, they don't admit to bugs until they can charge someone for "discovering" them.
Re:Hard science fiction is soft
on
Darwin's Radio
·
· Score: 1
Yes, and as we all know, none of these "works of fiction" have come to predict actual technological advances, or the social changes they cause. \end{sarcasm}
Anything that is plausible is hard sf. Are you claiming that nanotechnology, space colonies, biological / mechanical enhancement of humans, etc., will never come to pass?
Bill Joy wrote "scsl gives people the right to fork: they are allowed to reverse engineer from the APIs."
Thankfully he has clarified the whole mess for me. If that's his definition of code forking, then I will never, ever, touch anything under the SCSL.
Now, what I'm wondering, is it even possible to copyright an API in the first place? Wouldn't things like WINE get into trouble if that were so? Or is Sun trying to get kudos for giving us something we already have?
Stephenson vs. Sterling
on
Snow Crash
·
· Score: 1
I find it interesting that Sterling doesn't seem to have much of a following on Slashdot. His interview can be partially blamed on the lack of good questions.
I've read Stephenson's Zodiac, SnowCrash, and The Diamond Age, and they were all great fun, but I don't think any of them have the kind of insight that Sterling's work has.
Is the interest in Stephenson because he has a background in programming? Or has Sterling turned people off with his recent focus on environmental issues?
How lame, it's nothing but a popularity contest, but with a sort of political backstabbing twist because there can only be one winner in the end. Like Highlander meets 90210.
Of course, if you rework their premise, it makes perfect sense. Assume the castaways don't have enough food (and assume they're helpless morons, because they're on a tropical island). Each vote is to determine who is sacrificed to be eaten. Now that would be a show worth watching!
What we need is a society that values pleasure, and places less emphasis on paid work. Sadly I suspect that's some distance away.
My thoughts exactly. Technology is not the culprit, but an accelerated demand for it is. We've been duped into believing that high-tech toys are necessary for work and fun, so we work more to afford them. The growth created by all this working just makes it easier to make more expensive high-tech toys, which of course we are all duped into believing we need. Normally, this wouldn't be a problem, but it seems to me like our demand is outpacing the natural drop in prices as technologies mature. Sure, some stuff is cheap now, but that just makes us buy more in addition to the costlier stuff. To justify the expense, we try to integerate the crap we buy into every facet of our work and lives. So up goes the demand again.
Yes it will. When we perfect cloning technology, and learn how to mix and match genetic traits in the loboratory, the male will become obsolete. Tornado by the tail indeed.:P
So how do you know it isn't the "statement" itself and not the presentation that sways that catageory of voters?
It's the same old excuse. When the vote goes my way, it's due to enlightened leadership and an educated citizenry. When goes the other way, it's because politicians are manipulative and the masses are dolts.
In reality, both situations are somewhat true. No one is an expert on everything and no one is the definative expert on anything. But everyone has the capacity to think critically, and learn, and to judge the credibility of those who claim to be experts.
Slashdot Mirror
I caught the end of it. They kept referring to this group of script kiddies as a "virtual gang", I guess in effort to conjure up images of drugs and violence and organized crime. Which is of course what the script kiddies want, right, it makes them look dangrous and powerful. They really drove it home at the end of the segment, when they mentioned that one of the kids might go to jail for a time, and questioning "is the right thing to do?" They then got some human prop to say just how dangerous and pissed-off this kid is going to be after serving time. Give me a break!
Oh, and that's not the best part. The very next story was about a poor little sick dog who goes around the hospital giving sympathy to the poor little sick children.
This is blatant propoganda. Meaningless emotional arguments designed to focus our hate and fear. Those kids are so dangerous. And the puppies are so cute! What if those dangerous kids hurts one of the puppies! Heavens no! I hate those dangerous kids!
So let's recap. Kids with computers: BAD! Puppies in hospitals: GOOD! Now take your soma and let's all sing "I love Big Brother!"
Why does someone invariably bring up this lame excuse? "I waz juzt vollowing orderz! The shareholders made me do it!" Bull! They would never consider it if that schmuck at Amazon hadn't tried it and gotten away with it. Besides, what about their duty to protect the company from expensive litigation? Or the bad publicity this has caused?
Until they cut off your kid's arm to get rid of the transmitter...
Or implant a bomb in him, and using the same technology, explode the bomb if he is removed from a certain area...
Or the police track Johnny's movements, wait for him to be alone (all from the comfort of a squad car across town), and then beat the crap out of him for associating with some group of "radicals" (like people who oppose the use of this technology without strong citizen oversight).
And you know, there are alt.binaries groups that used for things other than warez or pr0n. You sound like a politician.
When people commit murder do you blame the shoddy legal system?
It doesn't matter what the patent system says they can do, we are perfectly justified to hold Amazon accountable for their own behavoir.
So they follow their profit motive, so what. I do too, but I don't abuse the patent system in doing it.
Someone should print up stickers with whatever logo they used to denote "Windows Powered". Then we can stick them on all manner of underpowered and broken devices.
Meaningless, kind of like "water wants to run downhill" or "genes want to reproduce"?
It's not to be taken literally. If you want to get anal about it, the correct phrase would be "in any given information network, where there are few or no barriers to information flow, information will tend to distribute to the greatest possible extent until demand for that information is satisfied.
Anyways, I much prefer Bruce Sterling's rebuttal: "Information wants you to give me a dollar".
I question the veracity of the above comment. It sounds like a testimonial, and the author's home page link is to a church home page. Plus there is the comment about prefering chaplains to guidance counselers. All together, it seems to forward the agenda characterized by these cartoons.
If Amphigory really did experience the so-called "hellmouth", I apologize, but please remember that religious intolerance was a pretty big part of it for most of us. I would consider being forced to see a chaplain much more insulting than any sort of geek profiling test.
A lot of this stuff has already been done by the quake mod scene. I remember one project that would link servers together in a web. Enter certain teleporters, and you connect to a different server. Another project would autodownload maps that the client didn't have (didn't quakeworld do that too?). That's two thirds off what you need right there. Add persistent objects, and a global database to keep track of them, and you've got a crude Metaverse.
I think you misunderstand me. I don't advocate taking offense at the label, what I object to is giving the label a ridgid definition, and worse, a definition heavily influenced by people who only see themselves and others in catagories.
Why do you think that article was written? It wasn't about geeks finding acceptance, but more about "hey look, these people who originally outcasts have now established their own locus of power. Let's establish which is the term of derision so we may decide who we accept and who we will continue to scorn." Which is very convienent, because it creates some sort of nerd/geek dichotmaty which allows them to appeal to a demographic (whether be marketing products, democratic elections, or the simple high school popularity contest) while at the same time leaving the negative label to punish people who are socially unnacceptable.
Why do feel like that in a year or two they'll be GAP commercials where iterchangeable people will be running around in jeans and untucked t-shirts, Palm IX's in hand, to the tune of bland industrial music?
Come on people. These identity debates are fun, but realize this is nothing but marketting. The same people who scorned us because we don't give a flying fuck about their social games and status symbols are now trying to cash in on our new-found power in the current economy.
If you think it's now cool to be a geek, you don't get it. You're letting other people have power in how you define yourself.
The planet was discovered a few years ago. What is important about this is that they were able to determine some of the elements on the planet (by analysing the spectral lines of the reflected light). The technique they used to isolate the reflected light from the glare of the star is the real advancement.
I wouldn't call that racism, but its pretty damn arrogant. I guess that makes it all the more realisitic, considering how the American military of that era is (accurately?) stereotyped.
It's this kind of shit that makes we want to write my own tactical simulations, designed to piss off the militant patriotic yahoos for which these things seem to be marketted. My favorite idea is a slave uprising in the American South, in an alternate history were the South won the Civil War, played in a sort of resource management/tactical simulation engine.
Another is a first person shooter where the player is a leftist guerilla, and the goal is to depose the CIA-backed dictator of a banana republic.
Take your case to the alumni. You're offering free services to students, right, better than the equivalents offered by the administration? The alumni are bound to take your side. Once that happens the administration will fold faster than you can say "donation money".
If you do have to give it up, try to assign ownership to a student-run organization that is not under university control, or at least with a great deal of autonomy, that can raise a big stink if the administration gets coercive in how the domain is used.
So might does make right, but only when the majority doesn't agree with you?
(Great example, using lynch mobs to futher the notion of "mob rule", as if a lynch mob constitutes a majority in a democratic election.)
And where do you think your rights come from? From popular consensus, or the barrel of a gun?
Listen, society is not some distinct entity lives off on its own. It is enabled by technology. Rhetoric alone can't change society. Rather, it is the new perspective and new powers offered by technology that give people the ability to instill change.
Remember, without a medium, there is no society, there is no rhetoric, there is no people, only animals shuffling around looking for food.
Actually, go to his site and click around for a while.. You'll find a funny article about how M$ wanted to charge him for tech support on bugs listed in their tech base.
I called them once to confirm that a bug existed in Internet Information Server (the key word is *confirm*, it was plainly obvious there was a problem, and I already had my own work-around). Because they gave me some stupid-ass workaround (that was unacceptable), they claimed to have solved my problem and wanted to charge my company. I argued about it until the phone lackey gave up by leaving the decision to his superiors. As far as I know we never got a bill.
The most infuriating thing was that the very next day, the bug, and their lame work-around, showed up in the knowledge base, when it was not there before. Apparently, they don't admit to bugs until they can charge someone for "discovering" them.
For the curious, here's the bug.
Yes, and as we all know, none of these "works of fiction" have come to predict actual technological advances, or the social changes they cause.
\end{sarcasm}
Anything that is plausible is hard sf. Are you claiming that nanotechnology, space colonies, biological / mechanical enhancement of humans, etc., will never come to pass?
Bill Joy wrote "scsl gives people the right to fork: they are allowed to reverse engineer from the APIs."
Thankfully he has clarified the whole mess for me. If that's his definition of code forking, then I will never, ever, touch anything under the SCSL.
Now, what I'm wondering, is it even possible to copyright an API in the first place? Wouldn't things like WINE get into trouble if that were so? Or is Sun trying to get kudos for giving us something we already have?
I find it interesting that Sterling doesn't seem to have much of a following on Slashdot. His interview can be partially blamed on the lack of good questions.
I've read Stephenson's Zodiac, SnowCrash, and The Diamond Age, and they were all great fun, but I don't think any of them have the kind of insight that Sterling's work has.
Is the interest in Stephenson because he has a background in programming? Or has Sterling turned people off with his recent focus on environmental issues?
How lame, it's nothing but a popularity contest, but with a sort of political backstabbing twist because there can only be one winner in the end. Like Highlander meets 90210.
Of course, if you rework their premise, it makes perfect sense. Assume the castaways don't have enough food (and assume they're helpless morons, because they're on a tropical island). Each vote is to determine who is sacrificed to be eaten. Now that would be a show worth watching!
What we need is a society that values pleasure, and places less emphasis on paid work. Sadly I suspect that's some distance away.
:)
My thoughts exactly. Technology is not the culprit, but an accelerated demand for it is. We've been duped into believing that high-tech toys are necessary for work and fun, so we work more to afford them. The growth created by all this working just makes it easier to make more expensive high-tech toys, which of course we are all duped into believing we need. Normally, this wouldn't be a problem, but it seems to me like our demand is outpacing the natural drop in prices as technologies mature. Sure, some stuff is cheap now, but that just makes us buy more in addition to the costlier stuff. To justify the expense, we try to integerate the crap we buy into every facet of our work and lives. So up goes the demand again.
Aarghhh! I'm turning into a neo-luddite!
Slashdot timed out when I submitted the parent to this comment, but proceeded to post it anonymously! Kind of ironic, considering the subject matter.
Yes it will. When we perfect cloning technology, and learn how to mix and match genetic traits in the loboratory, the male will become obsolete. Tornado by the tail indeed. :P
So how do you know it isn't the "statement" itself and not the presentation that sways that catageory of voters?
It's the same old excuse. When the vote goes my way, it's due to enlightened leadership and an educated citizenry. When goes the other way, it's because politicians are manipulative and the masses are dolts.
In reality, both situations are somewhat true. No one is an expert on everything and no one is the definative expert on anything. But everyone has the capacity to think critically, and learn, and to judge the credibility of those who claim to be experts.