Wow. This is perfect. Perfectly Orwellian, that is:
"[...]a Microsoft public relations representative agreed that the law is designed to protect customers."
That quote is in reference to the "self help" provision of the proposed law. That provision is the one that will allow software licensors to remotely disable licensee's software. Allowing this has the exact opposite effect of protecting consumers; it exposes them to greater risk!
So, when using newspeak, remember: "protect" means "threaten."
In my junior year of high school (1985-86), my school offered two computer courses: a one-hour-per-day course in Pascal (taught on original IBM PCs), and a two-hour-per-day course in BASIC (taught on a mix of Apple ][+'s and ][e's). I chose BASIC, because I'd been using it for years already and, frankly, I wanted to have an easy double A to balance out the low grade I always got in PE (due to having many 'non-suit' days since I hated sports). Boy, was I mistaken in thinking that it would be simple!
That course turned out to be one of the best I've ever taken. Yeah, it was on already-ancient Apple ]['s. Yeah, it was in BASIC. But the instructor actually knew what the heck he was doing, and he taught us Structured BASIC. GOTO's were not allowed. We had to learn to use WHILE loops. We had to put colons in as whitespace to make the stuff prettyprint. And he was a pretty darned good software tester, and wouldn't let you move on until your program was bulletproof.
All of that came in very handy when I later moved on to C. I would have been lost, otherwise. So I'm still benefitting from the things I learned in that course, even though I took it 13 years ago, even though we were using Apple ]['s, and even though we were using a form of BASIC.
Contrast that with the university I attended, which had modern (for the time) 386's. I took the required introduction to computers course, and learned such 'useful' things as what a CPU is, what the difference between RAM, ROM, and disk space is, and how to flowchart a program (although we never actually typed in a program in that class). The bulk of the time was spent on learning how to use Lotus 1-2-3 for DOS, WordPerfect for DOS, and DBase for DOS.
Of course, I already knew all that stuff, so I was bored out of my mind. Yet the course was required, even though the information was fairly useless.
The point of my stories is that the equipment and software doesn't matter as much as what the instructors/do/ with what they have. Teach people the general skills and they'll be OK. But, of course, that gets into the whole problem of educational institutions teaching their students how to memorize useless facts instead of teaching them how to/learn/.
So, yes, it would be nice if every school, college, and university had a computer with a full range of programs and a fast connection to the internet on every desk. But the likelihood of that is miniscule, so it'd be nice if more attention was paid to what is taught than what sort of equipment is used.
Yes, let's put a stop to cyber-squatting. By golly, it's high time someone did something about this.
Oh, but wait. That list they're putting together probably isn't going to have the name of MY company on it, will it? It's going to have Coca-Cola, Pepsi, KFC, and all the other huge multinationals, plus whichever companies are most favored in the various nations sponsoring this initiative.
But, hey, those big, favored companies need protection from the little guy, by golly! McDonalds and Microsoft are in real danger from the little guys. Let's expend more resources on helping them out.
Gosh, I love how things always work out in the best interests of the most vulnerable of the world's constituencies.
Licenses and review boards, while sometimes providing necessary checks and balances, most often serve simply as 1) good old boy networks, and 2) barriers to entry. I don't believe we need either of those things in the world of software creation.
We already have certification in the "IT" industry. That's one barrier to entry, and I for one feel it has done us absolutely no good and may have even done some harm. Would things be better if coders had to pass some sort of exam to show that they knew what recusion is, how to make a flowchart, when to use global vs. local variables, and so forth before they could legally practice their craft?
How many free software projects would suffer if only licensed coders could produce publicly available software?
How many great home-brewed programs would never come to be if the people who wrote them had to first go pass the coding bar exam?
We don't need licensing in our industry. It will only serve to focus more power into the hands of large corporations, and shut down the two-guys-in-a-garage type of operations that have been pushing the frontiers for the last twenty-five years.
Of course, now that these company's are seeeing some of their other favorite vendors getting squeezed by illegal monopolistic tactics from Microsoft, maybe there not so sure anymore about a monopoly desktop supplier.
Right!
The company I work for has always been a WordPerfect and Lotus shop, as well as a Microsoft OS supporter (much to my chagrin). Our main function involves accounting and finance (we're a holding company), so our most important application is a finance package that's been built on top of Lotus by a third-party vendor. We've been religiously upgrading that package over the years. But a few months ago, we got a letter from them telling us that they would no longer be producing a Lotus version of their product. In the future, their sole platform will be Microsoft Excel. Thus, we have the choice of either finding a new finance package or switching from Lotus to Excel and retraining all our employees - not only at the home office, but at all of our subsidiaries.
The good thing about this is that it's finally convinced management that there's something wrong with Microsoft owning every market they enter. They're Lotus experts, and are well aware that there's nothing about Excel that makes it worthy of being the dominant force in the market...except that it's made by Microsoft.
So finally, I'm getting comments from the CFO and the General Counsel like, "Justice has to do something about Microsoft; this is getting out of hand."
But the fact remains that the most important customer base (corporations) intentionally chose to make Microsoft what they are - a desktop monopoly.
In a way, yes. But perhaps it is more proper to say that corporations chose IBM. It was the IBM PC they chose, and that set the whole thing in motion. That gave Microsoft a steady stream of revenue and a great deal of brand recognition, both of which they parleyed into the current monopoly. IBM could have chosen some other company when they went shopping for an OS, and that would have changed history completely. If IBM had done that, would Microsoft still be the choice of businesses everywhere? I doubt it.
I used JBuilder 2 for about six months, up until the end of last year. It was, in the end, one of the reasons I switched to Linux. JBuilder 2 crashes, it doesn't refresh the display properly, it uses funky, non-standard Java classes like "GridBagConstraints2", and it's got a lousy deployment wizard.
Even so, it's probably the best commercial Java IDE available for Win 9x/NT. And, hey, it's no worse than any of the other commercial, shrink-wrapped programs I've used on the Windows paltform. But, then, that's why I'm using Linux now.
If folks really want a Java IDE for Linux, I recommend going with one of the pure Java solutions such as NetBeans or Simplicity. There are plenty of them out there. Yup, they all have problems. NetBeans frequently crashes when you load the help facility, for example. But, hey, that's just as good as the JBuilder program has ever been, and NetBeans is free for non-commercial use. At least you're not paying for the privilege of being crapped upon.
Okay, okay, JBuilder for Linux is good because the PHB's think commercial, shrinkwrapped software is all that matters. And, unfortunately, we live in a world where the opinions of morons are increasingly the only opinions that matter. But I think the rest of us are better off using the Development Tool of the New Millennium(DTNM):
DTNM Features: - Cross-Platform - Works with C, C++, Java, Lisp, Perl, BASIC, Pascal, Ada, and just about any other language you care to name! - Quick to load; memory-efficient - Available in more styles than you can count - Available for *NO COST* on every platform; sometimes it's even *free*!
That's right: DTNM is none other than the good ol' text editor. The tried and true solution used by professionals for decades. Although some of us were temporarily led astray by flashy GUI RAD tools, most of us very quickly realized that the cost of those tools is greater than their benefit.
You not only have to buy and learn them, you have to learn to work around them, learn to get past their quirks, learn to undo the things they do automatically which you don't want them to . . . Eventually, you realize that you're saving maybe 15 minutes of work by using them, then spending the rest of your coding time fighting against 'em.
They can have their JBuilders and their other visually oriented, rapid-application-prototyping, integrated development platforming, developer-stupifying, coder-hobbling, hacker-hating tools. I'll stick with my trusty text editor, thanks.
And guess what? Text editor users will code circles around those "RAD" dudes and dudettes every day of the week.
So thanks, Inprise/Borland, but no thanks. This is one coder who, regardless of the flashy coding tools paraded in front of him, is going to stick with the tool that works.
Young girls are told via advertising, "In a world where you can be anything, be yourself," yet the ad to which that phrase is attached is encouraging them to "be themselves" by buying a specific brand of clothing. Microsoft asks, "Where do you want to go today?" implying that their software somehow frees its users from their shackles. Or, take the soft drink ad that says, "Image is nothing. Thirst is everything. Obey your thirst." Yet they are very carefully projecting an image, and are inviting prospective customers to buy into that image. In all these cases, the companies are mouthing the words of freedom, yet seeking to subsume those words into the strictures of America's crazy brand of capitalism. At the best, they're being misleading. At worst, they're twisting our language.
The same type of thing is being done to the web. You can visit any number of sites that speak of empowerment, yet most of them have as their sole goal the selling of eyeballs to advertisers. The stories that are written, and the forums that are provided, are dictated by what will serve the advertisers the best, not what will serve the users the best. Yet again, the look and feel of freedom is used to coat a loss of freedom.
We're all being given freedom in many areas, but only within strict limits set down by who profit from our behavior. We can indeed get around that through the online medium, but we still have to be careful. We still have to keep on our toes, and always ask ourselves what the forum we're participating in is really about.
Perhaps there's nothing he can say to stop us, but there is something he can/do/ to stop us. He can get laws passed that restrict our ability to create and/or distribute free software. As mentioned in an article in the current issue of Business week, "The High-Tech Lobby is Learning Fast." Their stated agenda includes such things as electronic signature verification, protection from Y2K lawsuits, and relaxations of curbs on high-tech exports. But, with Gates (among others) "giving big" to lawmakers, there's no reason he couldn't get a little rider about free software slipped into some spending bill.
I can see it now: "For the good of The People, we've decided to restrict the distribution of free software. You never know what could be in that stuff - viruses, bugs, and all sorts of garbage that could ruin an unsuspecting person's computer. And with free software, no one is accountable. It's best that we nip this in the bud now."
Or, more likely, "We've added a law which will hold so-called open source developers accountable for their programs' behavior. If their programs do not perform as expected, users will now be able to bring the developers to court. After all, commercial companies are accountable for their software products. These open source people should be, too."
Oooh. I like that idea. If it could be implemented as a separate user-selectable setting, then it shouldn't upset any of those who don't want to see ANY posts below a given threshold. But I, like you, would enjoy reading a small sampling of the posts below my threshold.
As an aside, the only complaint I have about the current system is that, sometimes, a well-rated post will be in response to a less-well-rated post, so I don't see what they're responding to. I don't know if there's an elegant fix for that, though.
Nonetheless, I think the current system is great, overall. I certainly do spend a lot more time here now. I had sampled Slashdot long ago, but had found it too much trouble to wade through. I'd vgrep'd for post size, but that's not a reliable indicator of quality, as we all know. Heck, just look at this rambling post!:)
Great article! Like many others, I've worried about the issues raised therein. But, more recently, I've become preoccupied by a related malady: the rewriting of history.
I read computer history books. I love it. I like reading about the stuff I was there for, but it's also great to read about the true pioneers from the 19th century, the WWII years, and so on. I read a lot of those books, so I have at least some idea of what happened and when it happened, especially when it comes to who invented/discovered X, who first put it into production, and when it first became widely accepted.
Time after time, though, I'll read an article in a popular magazine or newspaper, or see a segment on a news show, and I'll see that Microsoft, the IBM PC, or some other relative latecomer to the game has been given credit for something developed long before by someone else. It drives me nuts.
And when I try to correct these folks, I rarely get anywhere. As far as they're concerned, their sources are gospel. If the sources say that Microsoft or Apple invented the GUI, then that's what must have happened. If they say that high-res graphics started with the first VGA card, then that must be right.
Which isn't too bad, until you start thinking about all the people who read those articles or watch those shows. Those people don't know any better, so they believe what they're told. And eventually it becomes a form of truth, because it's generally accepted as such.
And it gets worse. How many articles on other subjects about which I am less knowledgeable have I read and believed, when in fact they are grossly inaccurate? I must end up believing dozens of inaccuracies a day because I simply don't know any better than what the 'journalists' tell me. And you do, too. We all do it. There's just not enough time to learn enough to make sure that you're not being mislead. That's why journalists are supposed to do fact-checking.
I don't know what the solution is to this problem, but I thought I'd bring it up, since it's at least tangentially related to the concerns raised in the article.
True, it is mostly a good thing that it is so much easier to get online these days. And, you're right that parents need to take responsibility for making sure their kids aren't likely to be victims of 'net-enabled stalkers/rapists/etc.
Like everything else of any worth, the Internet's a two-edged sword, and learning to use the good side without being cut by the other is as important as always.
Still, a part of me longs for the days when I could feel a bit more secure about meeting online acquaintances IRL...
Very true. That was another barrier to entry, when it comes to BBS's. So with CI$, you had the cost barrier, and with BBSes you had the location barrier. With both, there was the technical skills barrier.
Now, although it's not quite as easy to get online as Apple and AOL would have us think, it is remarkably cheap and easy to get on the 'net. The true masses aren't yet online, but we're getting there. If only one person in a million is likely to use the online medium to set up the opportunity to physically attack someone, that means that at best for each million new subscribers, there's one more predator out there (if not more, since such people may very well be more predisposed to coming online than the average person).
About ten years ago, when I was on Compuserve and frequented their CB Simulator, I met a lot of people FTF whom I had first "met" online. I even met my wife that way. During the same period, I was running a popular BBS, and set up a twice monthly meeting at a local pizza place, and anyone who used the BBS was invited. Sometimes we had upwards of 30 people showing up and having a good time.
Back then, I didn't worry about such meetings too much. But these days, I'd be more reluctant to meet with someone IRL, simply because so many more people are online now. It used to be that you had to have at least some minimal technical skills (and, let's face it, money to blow, at $12/hr for CI$ access). Now, just about anyone can get online.
I worry that I'm being paranoid, and I know I'm being just a wee bit elitist. But there ya go. The only online acquaintance I've met IRL in the last five years or so is someone with whom I corresponded for more than a year, and with whom I worked on several published books, beforehand. I felt like I knew him well enough by that time.
Am I going overboard on this? How do the other relative old-timers feel about this stuff?
Slashdot Mirror
Wow. This is perfect. Perfectly Orwellian, that is:
"[...]a Microsoft public relations representative agreed that the law is designed to protect customers."
That quote is in reference to the "self help" provision of the proposed law. That provision is the one that will allow software licensors to remotely disable licensee's software. Allowing this has the exact opposite effect of protecting consumers; it exposes them to greater risk!
So, when using newspeak, remember: "protect" means "threaten."
The world is getting more Orwellian by the day.
-Joe
In my junior year of high school (1985-86), my school offered two computer courses: a one-hour-per-day course in Pascal (taught on original IBM PCs), and a two-hour-per-day course in BASIC (taught on a mix of Apple ][+'s and ][e's). I chose BASIC, because I'd been using it for years already and, frankly, I wanted to have an easy double A to balance out the low grade I always got in PE (due to having many 'non-suit' days since I hated sports). Boy, was I mistaken in thinking that it would be simple!
/do/ with what they have. Teach people the general skills and they'll be OK. But, of course, that gets into the whole problem of educational institutions teaching their students how to memorize useless facts instead of teaching them how to /learn/.
That course turned out to be one of the best I've ever taken. Yeah, it was on already-ancient Apple ]['s. Yeah, it was in BASIC. But the instructor actually knew what the heck he was doing, and he taught us Structured BASIC. GOTO's were not allowed. We had to learn to use WHILE loops. We had to put colons in as whitespace to make the stuff prettyprint. And he was a pretty darned good software tester, and wouldn't let you move on until your program was bulletproof.
All of that came in very handy when I later moved on to C. I would have been lost, otherwise. So I'm still benefitting from the things I learned in that course, even though I took it 13 years ago, even though we were using Apple ]['s, and even though we were using a form of BASIC.
Contrast that with the university I attended, which had modern (for the time) 386's. I took the required introduction to computers course, and learned such 'useful' things as what a CPU is, what the difference between RAM, ROM, and disk space is, and how to flowchart a program (although we never actually typed in a program in that class). The bulk of the time was spent on learning how to use Lotus 1-2-3 for DOS, WordPerfect for DOS, and DBase for DOS.
Of course, I already knew all that stuff, so I was bored out of my mind. Yet the course was required, even though the information was fairly useless.
The point of my stories is that the equipment and software doesn't matter as much as what the instructors
So, yes, it would be nice if every school, college, and university had a computer with a full range of programs and a fast connection to the internet on every desk. But the likelihood of that is miniscule, so it'd be nice if more attention was paid to what is taught than what sort of equipment is used.
-Joe
Yes, let's put a stop to cyber-squatting. By golly, it's high time someone did something about this.
Oh, but wait. That list they're putting together probably isn't going to have the name of MY company on it, will it? It's going to have Coca-Cola, Pepsi, KFC, and all the other huge multinationals, plus whichever companies are most favored in the various nations sponsoring this initiative.
But, hey, those big, favored companies need protection from the little guy, by golly! McDonalds and Microsoft are in real danger from the little guys. Let's expend more resources on helping them out.
Gosh, I love how things always work out in the best interests of the most vulnerable of the world's constituencies.
-Joe
Licenses and review boards, while sometimes providing necessary checks and balances, most often serve simply as 1) good old boy networks, and 2) barriers to entry. I don't believe we need either of those things in the world of software creation.
We already have certification in the "IT" industry. That's one barrier to entry, and I for one feel it has done us absolutely no good and may have even done some harm. Would things be better if coders had to pass some sort of exam to show that they knew what recusion is, how to make a flowchart, when to use global vs. local variables, and so forth before they could legally practice their craft?
How many free software projects would suffer if only licensed coders could produce publicly available software?
How many great home-brewed programs would never come to be if the people who wrote them had to first go pass the coding bar exam?
We don't need licensing in our industry. It will only serve to focus more power into the hands of large corporations, and shut down the two-guys-in-a-garage type of operations that have been pushing the frontiers for the last twenty-five years.
-Joe
Of course, now that these company's are seeeing some of their other favorite vendors getting squeezed by illegal monopolistic tactics from Microsoft, maybe there not so sure anymore about a monopoly desktop supplier.
Right!
The company I work for has always been a WordPerfect and Lotus shop, as well as a Microsoft OS supporter (much to my chagrin). Our main function involves accounting and finance (we're a holding company), so our most important application is a finance package that's been built on top of Lotus by a third-party vendor. We've been religiously upgrading that package over the years. But a few months ago, we got a letter from them telling us that they would no longer be producing a Lotus version of their product. In the future, their sole platform will be Microsoft Excel. Thus, we have the choice of either finding a new finance package or switching from Lotus to Excel and retraining all our employees - not only at the home office, but at all of our subsidiaries.
The good thing about this is that it's finally convinced management that there's something wrong with Microsoft owning every market they enter. They're Lotus experts, and are well aware that there's nothing about Excel that makes it worthy of being the dominant force in the market...except that it's made by Microsoft.
So finally, I'm getting comments from the CFO and the General Counsel like, "Justice has to do something about Microsoft; this is getting out of hand."
But the fact remains that the most important customer base (corporations) intentionally chose to make Microsoft what they are - a desktop monopoly.
In a way, yes. But perhaps it is more proper to say that corporations chose IBM. It was the IBM PC they chose, and that set the whole thing in motion. That gave Microsoft a steady stream of revenue and a great deal of brand recognition, both of which they parleyed into the current monopoly. IBM could have chosen some other company when they went shopping for an OS, and that would have changed history completely. If IBM had done that, would Microsoft still be the choice of businesses everywhere? I doubt it.
-Joe
I used JBuilder 2 for about six months, up until the end of last year. It was, in the end, one of the reasons I switched to Linux. JBuilder 2 crashes, it doesn't refresh the display properly, it uses funky, non-standard Java classes like "GridBagConstraints2", and it's got a lousy deployment wizard.
Even so, it's probably the best commercial Java IDE available for Win 9x/NT. And, hey, it's no worse than any of the other commercial, shrink-wrapped programs I've used on the Windows paltform. But, then, that's why I'm using Linux now.
If folks really want a Java IDE for Linux, I recommend going with one of the pure Java solutions such as NetBeans or Simplicity. There are plenty of them out there. Yup, they all have problems. NetBeans frequently crashes when you load the help facility, for example. But, hey, that's just as good as the JBuilder program has ever been, and NetBeans is free for non-commercial use. At least you're not paying for the privilege of being crapped upon.
Okay, okay, JBuilder for Linux is good because the PHB's think commercial, shrinkwrapped software is all that matters. And, unfortunately, we live in a world where the opinions of morons are increasingly the only opinions that matter. But I think the rest of us are better off using the Development Tool of the New Millennium(DTNM):
DTNM Features:
- Cross-Platform
- Works with C, C++, Java, Lisp, Perl, BASIC, Pascal, Ada, and just about any other language you care to name!
- Quick to load; memory-efficient
- Available in more styles than you can count
- Available for *NO COST* on every platform; sometimes it's even *free*!
That's right: DTNM is none other than the good ol' text editor. The tried and true solution used by professionals for decades. Although some of us were temporarily led astray by flashy GUI RAD tools, most of us very quickly realized that the cost of those tools is greater than their benefit.
You not only have to buy and learn them, you have to learn to work around them, learn to get past their quirks, learn to undo the things they do automatically which you don't want them to . . . Eventually, you realize that you're saving maybe 15 minutes of work by using them, then spending the rest of your coding time fighting against 'em.
They can have their JBuilders and their other visually oriented, rapid-application-prototyping, integrated development platforming, developer-stupifying, coder-hobbling, hacker-hating tools. I'll stick with my trusty text editor, thanks.
And guess what? Text editor users will code circles around those "RAD" dudes and dudettes every day of the week.
So thanks, Inprise/Borland, but no thanks. This is one coder who, regardless of the flashy coding tools paraded in front of him, is going to stick with the tool that works.
-Joe
Young girls are told via advertising, "In a world where you can be anything, be yourself," yet the ad to which that phrase is attached is encouraging them to "be themselves" by buying a specific brand of clothing. Microsoft asks, "Where do you want to go today?" implying that their software somehow frees its users from their shackles. Or, take the soft drink ad that says, "Image is nothing. Thirst is everything. Obey your thirst." Yet they are very carefully projecting an image, and are inviting prospective customers to buy into that image. In all these cases, the companies are mouthing the words of freedom, yet seeking to subsume those words into the strictures of America's crazy brand of capitalism. At the best, they're being misleading. At worst, they're twisting our language.
The same type of thing is being done to the web. You can visit any number of sites that speak of empowerment, yet most of them have as their sole goal the selling of eyeballs to advertisers. The stories that are written, and the forums that are provided, are dictated by what will serve the advertisers the best, not what will serve the users the best. Yet again, the look and feel of freedom is used to coat a loss of freedom.
We're all being given freedom in many areas, but only within strict limits set down by who profit from our behavior. We can indeed get around that through the online medium, but we still have to be careful. We still have to keep on our toes, and always ask ourselves what the forum we're participating in is really about.
-Joe
Nothing Gates can say or do can stop this.
/do/ to stop us. He can get laws passed that restrict our ability to create and/or distribute free software. As mentioned in an article in the current issue of Business week, "The High-Tech Lobby is Learning Fast." Their stated agenda includes such things as electronic signature verification, protection from Y2K lawsuits, and relaxations of curbs on high-tech exports. But, with Gates (among others) "giving big" to lawmakers, there's no reason he couldn't get a little rider about free software slipped into some spending bill.
Perhaps there's nothing he can say to stop us, but there is something he can
I can see it now: "For the good of The People, we've decided to restrict the distribution of free software. You never know what could be in that stuff - viruses, bugs, and all sorts of garbage that could ruin an unsuspecting person's computer. And with free software, no one is accountable. It's best that we nip this in the bud now."
Or, more likely, "We've added a law which will hold so-called open source developers accountable for their programs' behavior. If their programs do not perform as expected, users will now be able to bring the developers to court. After all, commercial companies are accountable for their software products. These open source people should be, too."
Okay, I'm being paranoid. But it could happen.
-Joe
Oooh. I like that idea. If it could be implemented as a separate user-selectable setting, then it shouldn't upset any of those who don't want to see ANY posts below a given threshold. But I, like you, would enjoy reading a small sampling of the posts below my threshold.
:)
As an aside, the only complaint I have about the current system is that, sometimes, a well-rated post will be in response to a less-well-rated post, so I don't see what they're responding to. I don't know if there's an elegant fix for that, though.
Nonetheless, I think the current system is great, overall. I certainly do spend a lot more time here now. I had sampled Slashdot long ago, but had found it too much trouble to wade through. I'd vgrep'd for post size, but that's not a reliable indicator of quality, as we all know. Heck, just look at this rambling post!
-Joe
Great article! Like many others, I've worried about the issues raised therein. But, more recently, I've become preoccupied by a related malady: the rewriting of history.
I read computer history books. I love it. I like reading about the stuff I was there for, but it's also great to read about the true pioneers from the 19th century, the WWII years, and so on. I read a lot of those books, so I have at least some idea of what happened and when it happened, especially when it comes to who invented/discovered X, who first put it into production, and when it first became widely accepted.
Time after time, though, I'll read an article in a popular magazine or newspaper, or see a segment on a news show, and I'll see that Microsoft, the IBM PC, or some other relative latecomer to the game has been given credit for something developed long before by someone else. It drives me nuts.
And when I try to correct these folks, I rarely get anywhere. As far as they're concerned, their sources are gospel. If the sources say that Microsoft or Apple invented the GUI, then that's what must have happened. If they say that high-res graphics started with the first VGA card, then that must be right.
Which isn't too bad, until you start thinking about all the people who read those articles or watch those shows. Those people don't know any better, so they believe what they're told. And eventually it becomes a form of truth, because it's generally accepted as such.
And it gets worse. How many articles on other subjects about which I am less knowledgeable have I read and believed, when in fact they are grossly inaccurate? I must end up believing dozens of inaccuracies a day because I simply don't know any better than what the 'journalists' tell me. And you do, too. We all do it. There's just not enough time to learn enough to make sure that you're not being mislead. That's why journalists are supposed to do fact-checking.
I don't know what the solution is to this problem, but I thought I'd bring it up, since it's at least tangentially related to the concerns raised in the article.
-Joe
True, it is mostly a good thing that it is so much easier to get online these days. And, you're right that parents need to take responsibility for making sure their kids aren't likely to be victims of 'net-enabled stalkers/rapists/etc.
Like everything else of any worth, the Internet's a two-edged sword, and learning to use the good side without being cut by the other is as important as always.
Still, a part of me longs for the days when I could feel a bit more secure about meeting online acquaintances IRL...
-Joe
Very true. That was another barrier to entry, when it comes to BBS's. So with CI$, you had the cost barrier, and with BBSes you had the location barrier. With both, there was the technical skills barrier.
Now, although it's not quite as easy to get online as Apple and AOL would have us think, it is remarkably cheap and easy to get on the 'net. The true masses aren't yet online, but we're getting there. If only one person in a million is likely to use the online medium to set up the opportunity to physically attack someone, that means that at best for each million new subscribers, there's one more predator out there (if not more, since such people may very well be more predisposed to coming online than the average person).
That tends to make me nervous...
-Joe
About ten years ago, when I was on Compuserve and frequented their CB Simulator, I met a lot of people FTF whom I had first "met" online. I even met my wife that way. During the same period, I was running a popular BBS, and set up a twice monthly meeting at a local pizza place, and anyone who used the BBS was invited. Sometimes we had upwards of 30 people showing up and having a good time.
Back then, I didn't worry about such meetings too much. But these days, I'd be more reluctant to meet with someone IRL, simply because so many more people are online now. It used to be that you had to have at least some minimal technical skills (and, let's face it, money to blow, at $12/hr for CI$ access). Now, just about anyone can get online.
I worry that I'm being paranoid, and I know I'm being just a wee bit elitist. But there ya go. The only online acquaintance I've met IRL in the last five years or so is someone with whom I corresponded for more than a year, and with whom I worked on several published books, beforehand. I felt like I knew him well enough by that time.
Am I going overboard on this? How do the other relative old-timers feel about this stuff?
-Joe