I agree entirely. My last roommate had a television and I accidentally slipped into the mode of watching TV. I have since moved about 4 months ago and don't own a catatonic box and I am much happier for it. Now and then I like to rent a DVD and watch it on my laptop, but beyond this I feel liberated with more time on my hands.
As for the people who choose to have TV, if they are going to target you with ads, you should demand that the service become cheaper or free. If you are still paying $30-$40 a month for cable, and the cable company is selling ads for more money then you are being used.
I would need to research it a little more, but my solution to this will be to try to detect if the browser is using smart tags and to deny access for said browser. It shouldn't be too hard to do, and a nice denial page which kindly informs the user about the reason should make the point clear. Mind you, this might mean that I lose some readership on my site, but that is preferable to allowing Microsoft to dictate content matters. The ability to turn off the feature with a meta tag isn't enough to satisfy me. I would prefer to "educate" the web user as to why I don't permit M$ tags.
I actually live in DC and I was told by Verizon that they couldn't give DSL service in my area. I went to DSL.net and they were able to set me up via Covad. It is more expensive, but in the end I do have DSL service.
You bring up some good points, however if the speculation of the article is anywhere near close to reality then I doubt if the subtle communication issues will come through. I'm probably a little pessimistic about these things. Thanks for the grammar correction.:)
I unfortunately wasted a good deal of time trying to make sense of "2001" and eventually stopped puring time into extracting some meaning out of the story. Rebuttals like this demonstrate to me that some people are still hot in pursuit of making sense of the movie, by any means necessary. I understand that some people like and even revere this movie, but it really escapes me. I fancy myself a pretty sharp person, learned in the ways of symbolism and metaphore, but the movie was simply tearfully boring and seemed to repeat itself. The whole story seemed to be told in the first 30 minutes and then I was subjected to a longer 2 hour version afterward. Gag.
On the topic of symbolism, I'm reminded of something. Herman Melville, the author of Moby Dick, was asked by a group of critics what the whale symbolized. He simply answered, "A whale." Sometimes I think we try to dig too deep for meaning in what others do. The counter point given by the author I think is such a case.
It seems to me that a better solution would be to call upon volunteers to maintain and edit this section of the site. Heck, I didn't even know attrition.org did other stuff. They have a significant namesake in archiving the underbelly of the web and I'm sure there are plenty of people who would contribute to the archive if they develop a decent interface for it. We have very little history on the Internet.
I think this simply reflects something about the American value system. Some Americans will regard other nations as being lazy, but it really just comes down to how you define personal accomplishment. In America one of the early questions people ask is "what do you do", and invariable the answer beings with "I'm a [insert profession here]" instead of "I do [insert profession here]" In America, you are what you do professionally, and it is natural to have some pressure to do it well.
I have lots of issues with this, and the 40 hour workweek is simply a mental trap for making good students into good consumers. Consider this for a moment... if there was some device that you could use at work that would increase your productivity by 20%, why do you still work 5 days a week. Why not be happy and work 4 days, assuming that the cost of the device were recovered.
My take on this is that the length of the workweek has nothing to do with the work that has to be done. There is always more work that can be done, and there are always ways of shirking off the task of getting stuff done. I know both from experience.;)
My point here (and I do have one) is that this is a reflection of American values to work and consume. It is a value system I don't like very well, but I'll confess that I buy into it implicitely. This is an interesting topic though.
Logitech, who purchased the QuickCam from Connectix, packages some software called Digital Radar which will record when the view changes signficantly. This can be somewhat useful as long as the motion of waves & such doesn't set it off. I believe you can set the threshold for triggering the recording. Of course, this doesn't do anything to really enable you to prevent the theft.
I'm a little surprised that no one else has brought up this smart alec issue, so I'll do it. Why are you storing valuable stuff in a boat? Boats really aren't a bastion of security. Surely there ought to be a better place to put these things.
Thank you for standing up to say it. For one reason or another, every techno-geek seems to fawn over this movie. I watched it with my then-girlfriend and I only finished watching it out of politeness, but that is 2 hours of my life I'll never have back. The whole plot was revealed in the first 20 minutes and then it proceeded to spend the next 100 minutes repeating itself... slowly. What a yawn fest.
I shouldn't be surprised, but hardly anyone I know watches much TV these days. I thought it was going out of style. Personally, I'm just into film and haven't been very impressed by television for a long time. I'm pretty selective about the media that I patronize, and it ends up being mostly live entertainment.
I'm also surprised to see this kind of thing shocking anyone. Yeah, it is really underhanded, but everyone saw it coming. Every person who used Tivo or ReplyTV had to think to themselves, "wow... this is great, but if everyone did this it wouldn't fly." There are some good and legitimate uses of these devices, but the commercial skipping feature was bound to cause problems. Inherently everyone who used the feature knew that it was a time bomb and wouldn't last. The bottom line is this: If you are doing something that undermines the system, and your only way of continuing to do it is the expectation that the vast majority will "play by the rules" then this is crossing the line into thievery.
I know that a bunch of people will chime in about JunkBuster and various other tactics, but this seems to be a good approach. All that is required is a simple flag for a user login to view the page without banners. I can envision some potential abuse, but this can be mitigated easily enough by imposing some upper limit (say 50 pages) that can be viewed banner-free per day. The abuse I'm thinking of is sharing a login with others.
I don't read Salon that often, but I might do this for slashdot. As I see it, this is one of the better solutions I have seen as it gives the end user more choices than to simply live with (or block) banner ads. I can see myself offering this sort of option with my site.
Believe me, I have been looking for alternatives for my site for some time. I already trade banners with other similiar sites as a means of cross promotion and I try very much to keep the site "old school" and refuse to litter the page with endorsements or turn it into a commercial mouthpiece.
So, what can you do? It isn't like the site is paying my bills or anything. The banner revenue just gives me a little extra money to blow on my expensive road cycling hobby. My real problem is that I'm having trouble to find advertisers these days. You would think a site geared toward Solaris admins would be pretty good demographics, but I don't get that many bites even though the click through rate is over 1% for the banners I host.
The moral of the story in my opinion is that it doesn't matter what value your particular banners are, the whole notion of banner advertising is in the toilet. I need a new way of doing things, but I haven't come up with anything that doesn't involve selling out majorly. I'm lucky though. This is just my hobby and it really doesn't cost much. If push comes to shove I can remove the banners entirely, but if I do I won't get cool bike stuff.;)
I respect your viewpoint, but I think you missed what the original poster was saying. Much of the purpose of PDF files is to distribute electonic documents and reduce paper. If I am an administrator who wants to save trees and business resources, the "no print" feature is great. Maybe it is a little controlling, but no more so than having rules against running the halls or any number of other issues that people deal with. PDF documents give the user lots of control in my opinion, moreso than a printed page gives.
You comparison to Sun's Network Computer, otherwise known as the Sun Ray 100, isn't quite accurate in my opinion. This machine is basically a glorified video card with a network connection and runs software from the server. The device itself really operates like a PC. So what if your hard drive is elsewhere on the network? As I was reading the article I was at least reassured that workstation and server companies, like Sun, would not buy into copy protection hard drives. I don't think the Network Computer is a threat to the PC... it just dictates that the hard drive should be in a centralized area.
I found it refreshing to read his reflections on DC and working here. As a resident of Washington DC it is nice to see someone who recognizes that there are very hard working people here, like many cities. This city takes a lot of flak, but I love this place.
He is right that people in the technology industry don't have the ears of the policy makers though. I think it is getting better, and it helps to have a healthy technology culture very close in Fairfax County.
Although you generalize on many points, I think your statements are a well intentioned reminder about the downside to the Linux culture. I'm all for free software and I use a lot of it, but I can't imagine taking the position that all software should be free (as in beer).
Many people in seasoned jobs also have this problem, but I too did some internships and I also had this problem. It didn't bother me too much because I used the idle time to work on my business, which at the time was a side project or hobby with college buddies. One of the most important things I learned was that the business world is typically happy if you are product 5 out of 8 hours of the day. I'm pretty self motivated, but if someone only expects 5/8ths from you, you might as well use the 3/8ths for yourself in a good way.
This advice may not apply for your situation, but in reality everyone needs things to fill the gap. The workplace tends not to keep you engaged fully or utilize your skills well, so having some personal goals and projects is helpful. You might want to pick things that emphasize your core skills in case a conflict of interest is ever brought up.
Plenty of people will tell you ways to be assertive or this and that, but I say make good personal use of the time. Build a side business, hobby or some kind of thing with the spare time.
If they keep your day completely filled with mundane tasks and you don't have much in the way of spare time then I would politely approach them with suggestions and a gameplan. Don't go to them and just tell them your vision, be prepared to say how you could put it in action, but by the same token if they aren't interested don't stress it because it is their loss to not utilize you. At least this way you can list on your resume that you "recommended innovated ways of improving productivity.":-)
I think it would be very cool if all slashdot submissions went into a queue where the community could decide what news should be posted. The community ownership of the news that already exist would only improve in my opinion if you did this, and your moderation/meta-moderation system already seem adequate to accomplish the task. Would you consider opening up/. further with this sort of change?
This trend can also be seen in Internet Presence Providers, otherwise known as the people who host your site. Companies like Verio are gobbling up all sorts of small IPPs and integrating them into a worldwide hosting company. In most cases this equates to no change in cost but a decrease in service for the customer. It isn't easy to switch hosting providers if you have a lot of customization to your site, so many times a customer is pretty locked in.
My company is a small IPP and my partners and I have bemoaned the way our industry is getting tacky. We do what we do because we enjoy it. Fortunately we can also make a living doing it, so we feel blessed, however much of our competition tries to stuff as many users on a box as possible and provide a meager FAQ as support. I'll admit up front that less interaction with clients usually results in better margins, but that seems to be a really shallow business model.
So, what do we do about this? Aside from everyone hosting with my company (just kidding), I think that we should support local and small businesses of all sorts. If personal service matters to you, be willing to pay a 10-15% premium for it. Someone out there is willing to sacrifice your peace of mind for a buck, but in my opinion it is a poor trade. Of course, when doing business with smaller organizations you should be prepared to ask plenty of questions to make sure their service is right for you, but then this is what I would recommend for doing business with any sized organization.
While on this topic, if you are shopping around for an ISP or IPP the best way to judge their level of service is to send a sales question to their support email. If you don't get a response then you can assume their support people are understaffed and didn't want to pass along the request to sales, thereby increasing their load. If you get a reply, and better yet a prompt one, you can assume that support is well staffed and cared for.
In related news, K00L ACiD, a 13 year old l33t hacker, has announced a patent for his Virus Deployment Apparatus (TM). The system uses an uncanny technique of replicating itself, most often done by the transposing of zeroes and ones from one media to another. When asked how he'll defend the patent, Mr. ACiD explained, "I'll DoS yer sorry ass."
Instead of jointly agreeing that this sucks, or bantering back and forth about the issues we already know (information should be free & people need to make a buck), why not take a moment and write an email message to Patricia Schroeder about the matter? Her eamil address is pschroeder@publishers.org.
Now folks, please be respectful and treat her as the distinguised person she is. A considerate and well thought message will make more of an impact than a flame. Don't write anything you wouldn't say in person, and if you say foul things in person, please do the cause of liberty a favor and let other cool-minded person's do the writing. Okay, I'm stepping off the soap box.
I think most of what you say is hogwash, but the concept of the end of scarcity illuminates our real nature as humans. These problems you mention are much more sophisticated than you make them out to be. Historically we have rarely been in times of need where the earth wasn't able to sustain our food or energy needs.
The limiting factor has always been personal. Inneficient government structures, like monarchy, were preferred because it edified the ego of a small group at the cost of society at large. Government structures have relunctantly changed, but fundamentally everyone would like to be "more equal than others" or get a break that their peers don't have. We want someone below and we'll tolerate someone above as long as we feel we are in the "better half". There are exceptions, but this is the norm.
We have rarely had scarcity, but we have always had the irrational desire to hold onto something and believe it is scarce, whether or not it really is. You can see business scrambling to patent information. We know it is absurd, but they can't bear to think of letting it go. They must quantify it and make sure their gain is someone else's loss. Sad, but true.
Your post made me think of something that I have considered for years. Let me give an example:
Lets say you work at a company and you use some form of machine to do your job. Now assume that a new machine comes along that helps you to do your job twice as fast. Barring some time to recouperate the cost of the machines, why are you still working 8 hours a day if you are producing twice as much?
In a zero sum game there is no reason to not slip into a 4 hour workday. Really, our purpose life isn't to be a wage slave, but for the large majority of the population they are locked into a work week regardless of what they produce. As a business owner (and geek at heart) I'm looking at ways that I can answer this question in my own business, but I'll confess that I haven't yet come up with a solution.
The only real scarcity is our humbleness to live without reference to heirarchy.
Slashdot Mirror
As for the people who choose to have TV, if they are going to target you with ads, you should demand that the service become cheaper or free. If you are still paying $30-$40 a month for cable, and the cable company is selling ads for more money then you are being used.
I would need to research it a little more, but my solution to this will be to try to detect if the browser is using smart tags and to deny access for said browser. It shouldn't be too hard to do, and a nice denial page which kindly informs the user about the reason should make the point clear. Mind you, this might mean that I lose some readership on my site, but that is preferable to allowing Microsoft to dictate content matters. The ability to turn off the feature with a meta tag isn't enough to satisfy me. I would prefer to "educate" the web user as to why I don't permit M$ tags.
I actually live in DC and I was told by Verizon that they couldn't give DSL service in my area. I went to DSL.net and they were able to set me up via Covad. It is more expensive, but in the end I do have DSL service.
You bring up some good points, however if the speculation of the article is anywhere near close to reality then I doubt if the subtle communication issues will come through. I'm probably a little pessimistic about these things. Thanks for the grammar correction. :)
On the topic of symbolism, I'm reminded of something. Herman Melville, the author of Moby Dick, was asked by a group of critics what the whale symbolized. He simply answered, "A whale." Sometimes I think we try to dig too deep for meaning in what others do. The counter point given by the author I think is such a case.
It seems to me that a better solution would be to call upon volunteers to maintain and edit this section of the site. Heck, I didn't even know attrition.org did other stuff. They have a significant namesake in archiving the underbelly of the web and I'm sure there are plenty of people who would contribute to the archive if they develop a decent interface for it. We have very little history on the Internet.
I have lots of issues with this, and the 40 hour workweek is simply a mental trap for making good students into good consumers. Consider this for a moment... if there was some device that you could use at work that would increase your productivity by 20%, why do you still work 5 days a week. Why not be happy and work 4 days, assuming that the cost of the device were recovered.
My take on this is that the length of the workweek has nothing to do with the work that has to be done. There is always more work that can be done, and there are always ways of shirking off the task of getting stuff done. I know both from experience. ;)
My point here (and I do have one) is that this is a reflection of American values to work and consume. It is a value system I don't like very well, but I'll confess that I buy into it implicitely. This is an interesting topic though.
Rock on, man. Good retort. In addition, the guy wrote the vi editor. C'mon... that makes him cool enough right there.
I'm a little surprised that no one else has brought up this smart alec issue, so I'll do it. Why are you storing valuable stuff in a boat? Boats really aren't a bastion of security. Surely there ought to be a better place to put these things.
Thank you for standing up to say it. For one reason or another, every techno-geek seems to fawn over this movie. I watched it with my then-girlfriend and I only finished watching it out of politeness, but that is 2 hours of my life I'll never have back. The whole plot was revealed in the first 20 minutes and then it proceeded to spend the next 100 minutes repeating itself... slowly. What a yawn fest.
I'm also surprised to see this kind of thing shocking anyone. Yeah, it is really underhanded, but everyone saw it coming. Every person who used Tivo or ReplyTV had to think to themselves, "wow... this is great, but if everyone did this it wouldn't fly." There are some good and legitimate uses of these devices, but the commercial skipping feature was bound to cause problems. Inherently everyone who used the feature knew that it was a time bomb and wouldn't last. The bottom line is this: If you are doing something that undermines the system, and your only way of continuing to do it is the expectation that the vast majority will "play by the rules" then this is crossing the line into thievery.
I don't read Salon that often, but I might do this for slashdot. As I see it, this is one of the better solutions I have seen as it gives the end user more choices than to simply live with (or block) banner ads. I can see myself offering this sort of option with my site.
So, what can you do? It isn't like the site is paying my bills or anything. The banner revenue just gives me a little extra money to blow on my expensive road cycling hobby. My real problem is that I'm having trouble to find advertisers these days. You would think a site geared toward Solaris admins would be pretty good demographics, but I don't get that many bites even though the click through rate is over 1% for the banners I host.
The moral of the story in my opinion is that it doesn't matter what value your particular banners are, the whole notion of banner advertising is in the toilet. I need a new way of doing things, but I haven't come up with anything that doesn't involve selling out majorly. I'm lucky though. This is just my hobby and it really doesn't cost much. If push comes to shove I can remove the banners entirely, but if I do I won't get cool bike stuff. ;)
I respect your viewpoint, but I think you missed what the original poster was saying. Much of the purpose of PDF files is to distribute electonic documents and reduce paper. If I am an administrator who wants to save trees and business resources, the "no print" feature is great. Maybe it is a little controlling, but no more so than having rules against running the halls or any number of other issues that people deal with. PDF documents give the user lots of control in my opinion, moreso than a printed page gives.
You comparison to Sun's Network Computer, otherwise known as the Sun Ray 100, isn't quite accurate in my opinion. This machine is basically a glorified video card with a network connection and runs software from the server. The device itself really operates like a PC. So what if your hard drive is elsewhere on the network? As I was reading the article I was at least reassured that workstation and server companies, like Sun, would not buy into copy protection hard drives. I don't think the Network Computer is a threat to the PC... it just dictates that the hard drive should be in a centralized area.
He is right that people in the technology industry don't have the ears of the policy makers though. I think it is getting better, and it helps to have a healthy technology culture very close in Fairfax County.
Although you generalize on many points, I think your statements are a well intentioned reminder about the downside to the Linux culture. I'm all for free software and I use a lot of it, but I can't imagine taking the position that all software should be free (as in beer).
This advice may not apply for your situation, but in reality everyone needs things to fill the gap. The workplace tends not to keep you engaged fully or utilize your skills well, so having some personal goals and projects is helpful. You might want to pick things that emphasize your core skills in case a conflict of interest is ever brought up.
Plenty of people will tell you ways to be assertive or this and that, but I say make good personal use of the time. Build a side business, hobby or some kind of thing with the spare time.
If they keep your day completely filled with mundane tasks and you don't have much in the way of spare time then I would politely approach them with suggestions and a gameplan. Don't go to them and just tell them your vision, be prepared to say how you could put it in action, but by the same token if they aren't interested don't stress it because it is their loss to not utilize you. At least this way you can list on your resume that you "recommended innovated ways of improving productivity." :-)
It doesn't cost my company anything because we don't use Windows. Simple. Problem solved.
I think it would be very cool if all slashdot submissions went into a queue where the community could decide what news should be posted. The community ownership of the news that already exist would only improve in my opinion if you did this, and your moderation/meta-moderation system already seem adequate to accomplish the task. Would you consider opening up /. further with this sort of change?
I actually did send her email, however I haven't heard anything back. One can only hope...
My company is a small IPP and my partners and I have bemoaned the way our industry is getting tacky. We do what we do because we enjoy it. Fortunately we can also make a living doing it, so we feel blessed, however much of our competition tries to stuff as many users on a box as possible and provide a meager FAQ as support. I'll admit up front that less interaction with clients usually results in better margins, but that seems to be a really shallow business model.
So, what do we do about this? Aside from everyone hosting with my company (just kidding), I think that we should support local and small businesses of all sorts. If personal service matters to you, be willing to pay a 10-15% premium for it. Someone out there is willing to sacrifice your peace of mind for a buck, but in my opinion it is a poor trade. Of course, when doing business with smaller organizations you should be prepared to ask plenty of questions to make sure their service is right for you, but then this is what I would recommend for doing business with any sized organization.
While on this topic, if you are shopping around for an ISP or IPP the best way to judge their level of service is to send a sales question to their support email. If you don't get a response then you can assume their support people are understaffed and didn't want to pass along the request to sales, thereby increasing their load. If you get a reply, and better yet a prompt one, you can assume that support is well staffed and cared for.
In related news, K00L ACiD, a 13 year old l33t hacker, has announced a patent for his Virus Deployment Apparatus (TM). The system uses an uncanny technique of replicating itself, most often done by the transposing of zeroes and ones from one media to another. When asked how he'll defend the patent, Mr. ACiD explained, "I'll DoS yer sorry ass."
Now folks, please be respectful and treat her as the distinguised person she is. A considerate and well thought message will make more of an impact than a flame. Don't write anything you wouldn't say in person, and if you say foul things in person, please do the cause of liberty a favor and let other cool-minded person's do the writing. Okay, I'm stepping off the soap box.
The limiting factor has always been personal. Inneficient government structures, like monarchy, were preferred because it edified the ego of a small group at the cost of society at large. Government structures have relunctantly changed, but fundamentally everyone would like to be "more equal than others" or get a break that their peers don't have. We want someone below and we'll tolerate someone above as long as we feel we are in the "better half". There are exceptions, but this is the norm.
We have rarely had scarcity, but we have always had the irrational desire to hold onto something and believe it is scarce, whether or not it really is. You can see business scrambling to patent information. We know it is absurd, but they can't bear to think of letting it go. They must quantify it and make sure their gain is someone else's loss. Sad, but true.
Your post made me think of something that I have considered for years. Let me give an example:
Lets say you work at a company and you use some form of machine to do your job. Now assume that a new machine comes along that helps you to do your job twice as fast. Barring some time to recouperate the cost of the machines, why are you still working 8 hours a day if you are producing twice as much?
In a zero sum game there is no reason to not slip into a 4 hour workday. Really, our purpose life isn't to be a wage slave, but for the large majority of the population they are locked into a work week regardless of what they produce. As a business owner (and geek at heart) I'm looking at ways that I can answer this question in my own business, but I'll confess that I haven't yet come up with a solution.
The only real scarcity is our humbleness to live without reference to heirarchy.