That would break the way images are served right now in Slashdot (from images.slashdot.org), for example.
Personally, I think that it would be too inconvenient for those of us who make a living designing and mantaining websites; OTOH, I can't help but be appalled by most people's "why worry?? Direct marketers are your friends!!!" attitude in this thread... Okay, so "they" can already violate our privacy in a number of ways; does that make it *right*? If that is true, it's actually a much better reason to not allow the Powers That Be to come up with Yet Another Way to break your privacy.
The main problem is that movies are a *visual* medium, and as such, can only represent things that can actually be seen.
What happens inside computers, on the other hand (programs, viruses, networking, port scanning, hacking), is essentially abstract and lives only in the programmer/hacker's mind, so it's quite difficult to represent it visually.
I don't remember exactly that quote from "The mythical man-month" about the programmer working from thin air with invisible things", but I think it's the most appropiate one here.
This is more Katz nonsense. Economics doesn't work that way. For starters, no one is going to be "deprived of technology." Computer prices are dropping so fast that pretty soon literally anyone will be able to afford one every couple of years. That might be true for the U.S. or the rest of the developed world, but you'll notice that the original article also mentioned "Third World countries", where things are not that easy. Before buying computers, they will have to solve the slightly-more-important problem of feeding themselves... Furthermore, the vision of being "increasingly condemned to poorly-paying menial jobs" is exactly wrong. The trend of the last hundred years has been liberating people from that kind of job. Really? Ask anyone working as a data operator. Or any sysadmin having to install Office 97 in a corporate network.
Don't get me wrong, I agree with you that things are undoubtedly better than 100 years ago, but I think that your vision of the benefits of technology in society is a bit naive. Don't forget that technology, as its name implies, is a medium, and is under control of the Powers That Be.
You're mixing up your analogies. Knowing that you need a steering wheel to drive a car is completely reasonable, and analogous to knowing that you need to run a program to do stuff on a computer, and you use the keyboard and mouse to enter data (and view it on the monitor). All this is reasonable, and most users know it.
Oh really? You clearly have never worked on tech support:
-"What email program are you using?"
-"Uuuhhh... Windows 95". -"No, that's your operating system. What email program do you use to send mail?" -"Look, don't confuse me with all those technical terms, okay? I'm just an user!!"
I don't think I'm mixing up my analogies. Rather, I think that you are underestimating human stupidity.
I don't CARE what the difference is between 10W30 and 10W40 motor oil is. I don't care what my "CV joint" is. I don't have to know the difference between shocks and struts to drive my car. I never want to have to do more than put gas and windshield wiper fluid in my car in order to drive it. When I use my car, I want to get in, turn the key and go somewhere. Yes, I *do* have to know about the steering wheel, turn signal, gas and break pedals, but I don't have to know anything technical about the vehicle to use it properly
That's the fucking point. There are people out there for whom even having to know about the steering wheel is "too technical". And their number will only grow if this "dumbing down" philosophy goes on.
Maybe we should remember the old adage that "there's not such a thing as a free lunch"? If you want to enjoy all the wonderful things that a computer can do for you, you'll have to make a little effort to learn about it. I'm not talking about writing your own device drivers; I'm just talking about knowing that you cannot drive your car telepathically.
First of all, as somebody already pointed out, we nerds / geeks are usually mocked by the "normal" people, so it's perfectly legitimate to take revenge in the field we're experts in. But I'll leave that subject to Jon Katz. As for tech. support stories, people who are ignorant are not the problem; the problem are the people who are ignorant, arrogant and plainly abusive. Have you read the story of the girl who tried to install Word when she didn't have one of the disks and, when told so, started insulting the tech? Or the person who calls threatening lawsuit because he had to throw out a "broken" computer, when in fact it had a "Non system disk error"? As someone working in the field, I don't have a problem if a customer calls me asking for our DNS servers. But if someone calls me telling me that I don't know what I'm doing when it's actually their fault, fuck them, I say.
> Outside of Hubble and John Glenn, NASA has done >little to forward the exploration of space in the >last ten years anyway.
Funny you say that. Just the other day I was browsing through the JPL webpage (http://www.jpl.nasa.gov); do the words "Galileo", "Magellan", "Mars Pathfinder" and "Cassini-Huygens" sound familiar to you? Of course, robot probes are less flashy than sending a 70-something guy to space, but they are what bring us the real knowledge. And those missions aren't going to be funded by short-sighted private investors ("landing in Titan? Why? Are there oil reserves there?"). As for the budget cut itself, I personally find it disgusting, but I also think that NASA could be doing much more with their money if they decided to spend it in things that are actually useful, rather than PR stunts. After all, the Magellan spaceship was built with spare parts from other missions...
Add the DNS servers in the ***Properties*** dialog in Dial-Up Networking, NOT in Control Panel-Network-TCP/IP. The way we do it, the DNS servers for the LAN go in the Control Panel, while the DNS for the dial-up connections go in Dial-Up Networking (duh).
>Maybe some countries don't have The Constitution >like us... look at the shape Europe is in! Asia, >Africa... come on! They are falling apart and >have not ever been even partially as successful >as the US.
Why, thank you very much for your patronizing comments. Just FYI, most Western Europe countries are as much a democracy as the USA, as well as many South American countries before the CIA started to invest massive amounts of money there to promote dictatorships to protect "american interests". Oh, and just to mention one example of "free speech": which countries will be able to see the full, *uncensored* version of Stanley Kubrick's latest film?
>White middle American class kids do one thing >well - complain. Katz provided what > appeared to be a legitimate >opportunity for them to claim victimhood
I see that you're making exactly the same mistake that the author of the article did; classify opression as "more or less important" using shallow political factors, instead of looking at the real issue -people being physically/psichologically abused (not just bullied). "Middle-class white male" isn't an monolithic group, despite what some people might think.
>Note to future teenagers - you're going to be >bullied, you're going to be hard-pressed for a > sexual outlet, no one is going to like your >clothes, and you've got horrible zits. Welcome to >planet earth. Kids in Kosovo would kill to have >problems as trite as yours.
"Note to gay kids: you are going to be discriminated, beaten up, harassed and killed just because you're different. That's okay because that's how it's always been in the real world, and if you don't like it, go to Sudan/Ethiopia/India and face the real problems". Is that okay with you?
(As for whining, many of the responses to Katz's article weren't so much accounts of personal experiences as calls for action and practical advice to deal with harassement, so I wonder how much of them did you really read).
...well, how interesting. So you are dissing an OS used in major websites around the world (Slashdot, Dejanews, Salon, etc.), based on your experience as a sysadmin with... Win98 and Personal Web server??? Or you do have any more real world experience to back up your statements? This might sound as a mere flame or a personal attack, but from a strictly rational point of view, I find hard to take seriously anyone who praises M$ for vaporware ("Linux 4.6 will have though recognition devices!!! Tell me what M$ product can be *that* intuitive!!!!")
403.9 Access Forbidden: Too many users are connected
This is what I got when I tried to connect to your site, a NT box apparently running ASP. So, is that what you mean when you talk about the quality of M$'s latest products?:-) Oh, what the hell, let me congratulate you for one of the best trolls I've ever read on Slashdot. Well done. Really.
...I think that the article is more about *lusers* (and not support people) venting their frustration against the machines, instead of admitting the real reason of the problem, which is their own stupidity. (Sheesh, lusers are being allow to *vent*? What will be next? Demand to be treated like human beings?)
Well, I don't know about you, but I have *definitely* heard the word "modern" applied to the system of ideas and beliefs that have ruled the Western world since the Renaissanse to our days (which would be, more or less, what you call rationalism). The difference is that "this" modernism I'm talking about had a broader ambit of influence; that is, it wasn't simply a literary or artistic movement, but a whole... mmm, how to call it... philosophy? Ideology? (Whatever; it's late and I'm going to bed...)
Remember that piece of FUD that appeard months ago (which apparently was spreaded by the RIAA) about MP3 containing viruses? Well, it seems that MP4 can *only* be used as a single EXE file. Connect the dots by yourself...
Slashdot Mirror
Per processor OEM licenses, anyone?
That would break the way images are served right now in Slashdot (from images.slashdot.org), for example.
Personally, I think that it would be too inconvenient for those of us who make a living designing and mantaining websites; OTOH, I can't help but be appalled by most people's "why worry?? Direct marketers are your friends!!!" attitude in this thread... Okay, so "they" can already violate our privacy in a number of ways; does that make it *right*? If that is true, it's actually a much better reason to not allow the Powers That Be to come up with Yet Another Way to break your privacy.
The main problem is that movies are a *visual* medium, and as such, can only represent things that can actually be seen.
What happens inside computers, on the other hand (programs, viruses, networking, port scanning, hacking), is essentially abstract and lives only in the programmer/hacker's mind, so it's quite difficult to represent it visually.
I don't remember exactly that quote from "The mythical man-month" about the programmer working from thin air with invisible things", but I think it's the most appropiate one here.
This is more Katz nonsense. Economics doesn't work that way. For starters, no one is going to be "deprived of technology." Computer prices are dropping so fast that pretty soon literally anyone will be able to afford one every couple of years. That might be true for the U.S. or the rest of the developed world, but you'll notice that the original article also mentioned "Third World countries", where things are not that easy. Before buying computers, they will have to solve the slightly-more-important problem of feeding themselves... Furthermore, the vision of being "increasingly condemned to poorly-paying menial jobs" is exactly wrong. The trend of the last hundred years has been liberating people from that kind of job. Really? Ask anyone working as a data operator. Or any sysadmin having to install Office 97 in a corporate network.
Don't get me wrong, I agree with you that things are undoubtedly better than 100 years ago, but I think that your vision of the benefits of technology in society is a bit naive. Don't forget that technology, as its name implies, is a medium, and is under control of the Powers That Be.
Oh really? You clearly have never worked on tech support:
I don't think I'm mixing up my analogies. Rather, I think that you are underestimating human stupidity.
That's the fucking point. There are people out there for whom even having to know about the steering wheel is "too technical". And their number will only grow if this "dumbing down" philosophy goes on.
Maybe we should remember the old adage that "there's not such a thing as a free lunch"? If you want to enjoy all the wonderful things that a computer can do for you, you'll have to make a little effort to learn about it. I'm not talking about writing your own device drivers; I'm just talking about knowing that you cannot drive your car telepathically.
Wasn't that story about the Paris Meridian finally uncovered as a hoax?
It's not just another one who says that "The phantom menace" was worse; he is saying that the original one was also crap to begin with.
First of all, as somebody already pointed out, we nerds / geeks are usually mocked by the "normal" people, so it's perfectly legitimate to take revenge in the field we're experts in. But I'll leave that subject to Jon Katz.
As for tech. support stories, people who are ignorant are not the problem; the problem are the people who are ignorant, arrogant and plainly abusive. Have you read the story of the girl who tried to install Word when she didn't have one of the disks and, when told so, started insulting the tech? Or the person who calls threatening lawsuit because he had to throw out a "broken" computer, when in fact it had a "Non system disk error"?
As someone working in the field, I don't have a problem if a customer calls me asking for our DNS servers. But if someone calls me telling me that I don't know what I'm doing when it's actually their fault, fuck them, I say.
> Outside of Hubble and John Glenn, NASA has done >little to forward the exploration of space in the >last ten years anyway.
Funny you say that. Just the other day I was browsing through the JPL webpage (http://www.jpl.nasa.gov); do the words "Galileo", "Magellan", "Mars Pathfinder" and "Cassini-Huygens" sound familiar to you?
Of course, robot probes are less flashy than sending a 70-something guy to space, but they are what bring us the real knowledge. And those missions aren't going to be funded by short-sighted private investors ("landing in Titan? Why? Are there oil reserves there?").
As for the budget cut itself, I personally find it disgusting, but I also think that NASA could be doing much more with their money if they decided to spend it in things that are actually useful, rather than PR stunts. After all, the Magellan spaceship was built with spare parts from other missions...
Add the DNS servers in the ***Properties*** dialog in Dial-Up Networking, NOT in Control Panel-Network-TCP/IP.
The way we do it, the DNS servers for the LAN go in the Control Panel, while the DNS for the dial-up connections go in Dial-Up Networking (duh).
>Maybe some countries don't have The Constitution >like us... look at the shape Europe is in! Asia, >Africa... come on! They are falling apart and >have not ever been even partially as successful >as the US.
Why, thank you very much for your patronizing comments. Just FYI, most Western Europe countries are as much a democracy as the USA, as well as many South American countries before the CIA started to invest massive amounts of money there to promote dictatorships to protect "american interests".
Oh, and just to mention one example of "free speech": which countries will be able to see the full, *uncensored* version of Stanley Kubrick's latest film?
>White middle American class kids do one thing >well - complain. Katz provided what
> appeared to be a legitimate >opportunity for them to claim victimhood
I see that you're making exactly the same mistake that the author of the article did; classify opression as "more or less important" using shallow political factors, instead of looking at the real issue -people being physically/psichologically abused (not just bullied). "Middle-class white male" isn't an monolithic group, despite what some people might think.
>Note to future teenagers - you're going to be >bullied, you're going to be hard-pressed for a
> sexual outlet, no one is going to like your >clothes, and you've got horrible zits. Welcome to
>planet earth. Kids in Kosovo would kill to have >problems as trite as yours.
"Note to gay kids: you are going to be discriminated, beaten up, harassed and killed just because you're different. That's okay because that's how it's always been in the real world, and if you don't like it, go to Sudan/Ethiopia/India and face the real problems".
Is that okay with you?
(As for whining, many of the responses to Katz's article weren't so much accounts of personal experiences as calls for action and practical advice to deal with harassement, so I wonder how much of them did you really read).
This might sound as a mere flame or a personal attack, but from a strictly rational point of view, I find hard to take seriously anyone who praises M$ for vaporware ("Linux 4.6 will have though recognition devices!!! Tell me what M$ product can be *that* intuitive!!!!")
HTTP Error 403
:-)
403.9 Access Forbidden: Too many users are connected
This is what I got when I tried to connect to your site, a NT box apparently running ASP.
So, is that what you mean when you talk about the quality of M$'s latest products?
Oh, what the hell, let me congratulate you for one of the best trolls I've ever read on Slashdot. Well done. Really.
(Sheesh, lusers are being allow to *vent*? What will be next? Demand to be treated like human beings?)
Well, I don't know about you, but I have *definitely* heard the word "modern" applied to the system of ideas and beliefs that have ruled the Western world since the Renaissanse to our days (which would be, more or less, what you call rationalism). The difference is that "this" modernism I'm talking about had a broader ambit of influence; that is, it wasn't simply a literary or artistic movement, but a whole... mmm, how to call it... philosophy? Ideology?
(Whatever; it's late and I'm going to bed...)
Remember that piece of FUD that appeard months ago (which apparently was spreaded by the RIAA) about MP3 containing viruses?
Well, it seems that MP4 can *only* be used as a single EXE file. Connect the dots by yourself...