The motivation for searches like this is initially honest enough: 5,000 people were killed and the administrators and executives don't want it to happen again.
The problem is that they can't keep it up: searching everybody all the time becomes a serious drain on resources (financial, emotional, and otherwise). So eventually the searches have to be more selective... and how do you think those selections are made? First, the higher-ups will opt themselves out of searches. Oh, they won't write out a memo declaring themselves unsearchable, but security will know who butters their bread and won't choose to search the big guys. Ask any corporate security guard: everybody thinks security shouldn't apply to them, and the higher up the stronger the perception.
Then searches become based on random quirks. That guy acts looks weitrd, that woman's carrying unusually bulky bags. Sometimes the quirks may be valid red flags... I'd be suspicious of unusually bulky bags myself. But many of them will be based on random and unbased imaginings.
Eventually the searches are punishment. They become an overwhelming temptation when the powers-that-be realize that searches are not only demeaning but accusatory: "John gets searched a lot, they must suspect him".
The public has the perception that searches are only used to search for the bad guys. This is a dangerous perception. Left unchecked, searches are used for harrassment, fishing trips, and general amateur spying.
Freedom is our Strength. We need to protect freedom and the strength of America.
Here's a concept: mod the ads
on
Slashdot Updates
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
There are several threads here pointing out that ads aren't necessarily all bad, and that if they're on topic they might be even less bad.
So here's an idea: mod the ads. Users may voluntarily mod the ads based on how much they think the ads provide any value-add to life.
We can and should individually contact our legislators about issues we feel are important. However, if we don't organize and address problems with the strength of numbers, we're wasting our efforts. Whatever you feel is the issue that must be addressed, join! Join the
Electronic Frontier Foundation, the
American Civil
Liberties Union, or the
Open Source Lobby.
Now we're Slashdotting Google
on
Bert Is Evil
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
When I did the search it appeared on the first page of pictures. I bet Google rankings for images are partly based on click-throughs. So, thousands of readers form Slashdot and elsewhere search Google for the now-famous picture of Bert and Bin and its rankings go up.
Hi Morgan!
OpenSourceLobby.org is just getting off the ground as a grass-roots lobbying organization. Our goal is to promote the use and support of open source software within the government(s).
What advice would you give us to help us in our goal?
I agree. An aspect of this series I like is that they are "out there" exploring strange new worlds (and new civilisations, etc). My biggest complaint about ST:TNG was that they seemed to be flying a shopping mall around the neighborhood, not roughing it out there in unexplored space. Even Voyager, which should have been "out there" spent a huge part of the series in their own little world dealing with computer glitches taking over the ship.
As for the soft porn, the original show wasn't exactly lacking that either. What straight male over thirty hasn't had fond thoughts of the green chick in The Menagerie? That was racy stuff back then. The difference is that Menagerie and the rest of the original series had some class. They didn't just say "OK, how are we gonna get them naked? How about a disinfectant scene where they 'have' to rub each other down?"
Enterprise seems to have recaptured the spirit of the original show, if not the intelligence and class.
I had been admiring how nice looking the ship is, but now that you mention it, it might be a bit too pretty. It might have been more effective to have a spacecraft that seems ugly at first but we grow to love, like the
The Millenium Falcon
the Apollo LEM. That would have been more in keeping with the spirit of just getting going.
The relationship between Humans and Vulcans in the new show is totally different from the rest of trek, and I find it effective and interesting.
In the shows thus far, Vulcans have been friends of Earth, respected, and mostly liked.
As Data said in ST:TNG "Vulcans are a highly respect race." The tension between Humans and Vulcans were the differences between two friends who respect each other but go about things in a very different way. Kirk and Spock were of significantly different temperaments, but they were brothers-in-arms.
In Enterprise the relationship is quite different. Vulcans consider themselves superior. Humans, while resenting it, have unfortunately allowed themselves to slip into that role for several generations. Now the Human race is emerging from adolescence into adulthood and the Vulcans are having a hard time dealing with that.
Overall, I thought that element of the story worked quite well.
W/o implying that the Linux folks had any innappropriate intentions, stripping off copyright notices is sadly common.
I write and run the
Idocs Guide to HTML which contains a lot of JavaScript. I give away the JavaScripts for free, asking only that the copyright notice be kept in place. The copyright notices are in the JavaScript comments, so there's no effect on the user-interface. Nevertheless, I have seen many places where my scripts are used but the copyright gone.
One person even asked for help on using a script while blatantly refering me to a page where the copyright was gone. Sheesh.
That's not the fighting spirit that will make our world a better place. As Edmund Burke said, The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. (I'd add good women to that concept.)
The open source movement has already achieved so mch that was once thought impossible. Now, with lobbying, we only need to achieve the very difficult: getting congress to listen and care. Enough persistent voices can accomplish this.
Re:Start with OpenSourceLobby.org
on
Slashdot in Politics?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I'd like to respond to that with two points:
It's all important. We need to build a better world in many different ways, including the abovementioned issues, and including the furtherance of open source. No fewer than three volunteers of OpenSourceLobby personally witnessed the tragic events of Sep 11, and they're still on board with our efforts.
Open source is one of the ways of addressing those issues. Open source software strongly promotes a more free world.
At OpenSourceLobby.org we are working to educate the government about the value of open source. We are a grass roots movement: each member of OpenSourceLobby "owns" his or her congressional representative and is in charge of establishing a relationship with that legislator and educating him or her about open source. We are also writing up fact sheets and talking points to assist lobbyists and other open sourcies in making their case.
We're just getting started, so it's a great time to join in.
It will take a patchwork of techniques to reach a cashless society, and not all the techniques are particularly high-tech.
E.g., every workday I walk down to the
cafe on the first floor where the staff and I greet each other by name. I order my food, they give it to me, and I walk out. Money is never mentioned. At the end of each month, they snail-mail me a bill and I pay it.
Obviously this won't work for every cafe in the world, but the point is that no PDA's, debit cards, or passwords are involved. It's an old-fashioned tab and sometimes those old-fashioned things work quite well.
You seem to contradict yourself within a single sentence:
Everybody was so terrified by the all-powerful police that crime was almost non-existent.
Are you saying the police never engaged in a little recreational brutality, rape, bribery, thievery, knowing that nobody would dare call them up on it? I don't mean to disregard your feelings on what must have been a terrible situation many times, but if you were safe, why were you terrified? Somehow that just doesn't sound "safe" to me.
Certainly, we would all be physically safer if we lived in a totalitarian regime with no privacy protection.
One of the great misconceptions about life in a police state is that it is somehow "safer". Was Nazi Germany safe to live in? You could be arrested and killed just for angering the wrong person. Was Stalinist Russia safe? You could be sent to a concentration camp just for being the first person to stop clapping.
When we give up our rights, we're far less safe, because all we're doing is legalizing violence.
We need to all remember this cornerstone of liberty: Freedom is our strength.
I doubt that. Here's the text of the fax before the grep:
Dear Representative Boucher:
Another virus is making the rounds of the web via Microsoft technology.
It is probably trying to infect your web server right now.
This virus, dubbed Nimda, effects Microsoft IIS web
servers and Microsoft Internet Explorer. However, the Apache web server, an open source project that has not had a major security issue
in four years, has not been effected in any way.
Nimda spreads itself by contacting other web servers and sending special commands that infiltrate the
security of the computer. Nimda attempted to contact our server over 900 times just yesterday, but
those attempts have been futile: the virus writers have found it easier to write viruses for Microsoft
IIS than for Apache. The code that follows are just a few of the attempts made. Many more will follow
on our server and your server.
These security breaches (Microsoft IIS averages more than two a year) cost the taxpayer, the military, and American businesses billions of dollars a year. See http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html for more details on why open source is more secure and more cost-effective than the closed-source software used by so many government and private organizations.
sincerely,
Miko O'Sullivan
A concerned constituent
miko@opensourcelobby.org
I'm going to fax a grep of this virus' attempts to my congressman with a brief mention that this only effects Microsoft servers... Apache servers are again not effected.
Slashdot Mirror
How terrified would advertisers be by the possibility of public criticism
The good ones might welcome it.
The problem is that they can't keep it up: searching everybody all the time becomes a serious drain on resources (financial, emotional, and otherwise). So eventually the searches have to be more selective... and how do you think those selections are made? First, the higher-ups will opt themselves out of searches. Oh, they won't write out a memo declaring themselves unsearchable, but security will know who butters their bread and won't choose to search the big guys. Ask any corporate security guard: everybody thinks security shouldn't apply to them, and the higher up the stronger the perception.
Then searches become based on random quirks. That guy acts looks weitrd, that woman's carrying unusually bulky bags. Sometimes the quirks may be valid red flags... I'd be suspicious of unusually bulky bags myself. But many of them will be based on random and unbased imaginings.
Eventually the searches are punishment. They become an overwhelming temptation when the powers-that-be realize that searches are not only demeaning but accusatory: "John gets searched a lot, they must suspect him".
The public has the perception that searches are only used to search for the bad guys. This is a dangerous perception. Left unchecked, searches are used for harrassment, fishing trips, and general amateur spying.
Freedom is our Strength. We need to protect freedom and the strength of America.
So here's an idea: mod the ads. Users may voluntarily mod the ads based on how much they think the ads provide any value-add to life.
Well, IHOP Corp. comes to mind. Their symbol is IHP.
We can and should individually contact our legislators about issues we feel are important. However, if we don't organize and address problems with the strength of numbers, we're wasting our efforts. Whatever you feel is the issue that must be addressed, join! Join the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union, or the Open Source Lobby.
Folks, we live in a really weird world.
What advice would you give us to help us in our goal?
I've wondered about this for years.
As for the soft porn, the original show wasn't exactly lacking that either. What straight male over thirty hasn't had fond thoughts of the green chick in The Menagerie? That was racy stuff back then. The difference is that Menagerie and the rest of the original series had some class. They didn't just say "OK, how are we gonna get them naked? How about a disinfectant scene where they 'have' to rub each other down?"
Enterprise seems to have recaptured the spirit of the original show, if not the intelligence and class.
Shatner would probably disagree. Nichelle Nichols and Jimmy Doohan would probably agree that he would disagree.
It was refreshing to hear Archer do the captain's log using a real date. I've never been a fan of the stardate thing.
I had been admiring how nice looking the ship is, but now that you mention it, it might be a bit too pretty. It might have been more effective to have a spacecraft that seems ugly at first but we grow to love, like the The Millenium Falcon the Apollo LEM. That would have been more in keeping with the spirit of just getting going.
In the shows thus far, Vulcans have been friends of Earth, respected, and mostly liked. As Data said in ST:TNG "Vulcans are a highly respect race." The tension between Humans and Vulcans were the differences between two friends who respect each other but go about things in a very different way. Kirk and Spock were of significantly different temperaments, but they were brothers-in-arms.
In Enterprise the relationship is quite different. Vulcans consider themselves superior. Humans, while resenting it, have unfortunately allowed themselves to slip into that role for several generations. Now the Human race is emerging from adolescence into adulthood and the Vulcans are having a hard time dealing with that.
Overall, I thought that element of the story worked quite well.
... was one of the Three Musketeers.
You're absolutely right, of course. Thanks for the reminder that most people are ok.
I write and run the Idocs Guide to HTML which contains a lot of JavaScript. I give away the JavaScripts for free, asking only that the copyright notice be kept in place. The copyright notices are in the JavaScript comments, so there's no effect on the user-interface. Nevertheless, I have seen many places where my scripts are used but the copyright gone.
One person even asked for help on using a script while blatantly refering me to a page where the copyright was gone. Sheesh.
The open source movement has already achieved so mch that was once thought impossible. Now, with lobbying, we only need to achieve the very difficult: getting congress to listen and care. Enough persistent voices can accomplish this.
We're just getting started, so it's a great time to join in.
chachka:
A stapler is showy?
E.g., every workday I walk down to the cafe on the first floor where the staff and I greet each other by name. I order my food, they give it to me, and I walk out. Money is never mentioned. At the end of each month, they snail-mail me a bill and I pay it.
Obviously this won't work for every cafe in the world, but the point is that no PDA's, debit cards, or passwords are involved. It's an old-fashioned tab and sometimes those old-fashioned things work quite well.
You seem to contradict yourself within a single sentence:
Everybody was so terrified by the all-powerful police that crime was almost non-existent.
Are you saying the police never engaged in a little recreational brutality, rape, bribery, thievery, knowing that nobody would dare call them up on it? I don't mean to disregard your feelings on what must have been a terrible situation many times, but if you were safe, why were you terrified? Somehow that just doesn't sound "safe" to me.
Miko
One of the great misconceptions about life in a police state is that it is somehow "safer". Was Nazi Germany safe to live in? You could be arrested and killed just for angering the wrong person. Was Stalinist Russia safe? You could be sent to a concentration camp just for being the first person to stop clapping.
When we give up our rights, we're far less safe, because all we're doing is legalizing violence.
We need to all remember this cornerstone of liberty: Freedom is our strength.
I doubt that. Here's the text of the fax before the grep:
Miko O'Sullivan
OpenSourceLobby.org