Blocking sites that suck would simplify the design of the browser somewhat. No need for a render engine, obviously, if you're never going to visit any Web sites.:-)
I don't think there's a meaningful way to simply "divide" the company. I think if they want to do it right, they have to DISMANTLE the company. Like so:
- Marketing in one company, engineering in another. Each half must independently regrow the other half and thus cannot simply repackage the same old crap with brand new FUD and claim it as 'innovative', MS Engineering will have to EARN its respect and I can't imagine many engineers wanting to work for MS Marketing. - Hold a public auction to sell off each and every one of Microsoft's products. The only stipulation is that no company gets more than one product. I can see logistical problems trying to make sure there's no collusion or secretly connected "subsidiaries" involved trying to accumulate a whole other Microsoft, but this WOULD END THE MONOPOLY. The two Microsoft companies described above would be allowed to bid, but each gets only one product. (Plus it would flush out the back catalog of stuff MS just sits on; anything not purchased goes GPL, which means freeware ROMs for lots of emulators and fully commented source code for old goodies like EDTASM.)
This won't happen, because I can't imagine the DOJ having the cojones to attempt such a radical solution. I figure they'd be afraid MS would win the appeal. But even THAT might not be so bad. Ponder this sentence:
The Microsoft of 1995 would never have allowed Linux to get where it is today.
In other words, Microsoft behaves itself when it's under the spotlight. Simply keeping the light in the giant's eyes for a few years has been enough to allow alternative OSes to capture the MAINSTREAM's eye for probably the first time since the late 1980s. If Microsoft appeals, it's likely that the spotlight could remain on them for years to come - hopefully long enough that their 90% market share in multiple markets will erode to something more surmountable, that well-equipped competitors can climb.
"depends on whether the people doing the implementation are closet Nazis or not"
One look around these United States should tell you, with no uncertainty, that the hatred, paranoia, and desire for an "orderly" society at all costs, all the things which made Nazi Germany possible, are very much NOT confined to the closet.
How many potential abuses can you think of for a system like this? How many wrong ways can it be implemented? Think schools will keep protect the privacy of the "troubled" kids? Fuck NO, the gossip alone will serve to make things worse. Think geeks will be able to report that jocks are abusing them? No, of course not, many schools ignore complaints against their star athletes. What do you think happens to the kids who get reported anyway? At best, a demoralizing talk with the principal; at worst, a student's bookbag or locker would be opened and searched, and any and all forms of creative expression (like the Grim Reapers I used to draw, or sci-fi battle scenes and violent stories, or the weird music I used to listen to) would be used as evidence against them. Does this system help the school identify REAL problem kids - the ones who genuinely do have suicidal tendencies, kids from problem homes, kids with well-concealed problems? Does this system deal with the deep social problems in any school - the cliques, the popularity wars, the structured environment that makes it difficult to make REAL friends - or would it simply contribute to the problem, and push unpopular kids even more to the fringes?
The "right way" to run such a system, if there is one, isn't obvious, and I doubt any schools will implement it. Instead they'll implement it the obvious way, which will SEEM to get the results they want - since the visibly weird kids, whom THEY have suspected are just Uzi-toting criminals anyway, will be the first ones the students report as dangerous, thus confirming what they already believed. Top that off with the "treatment" that will be given to the students caught in this net, especially with the usual patronizing tone and clueless pseudopsychiatry used by many school officials at most schools, you could end up TURNING students into a problem.
And my objection to all forms of student profiling still stands: how many rights and how much dignity was it worth it to sacrifice when the kid who finally pulls the trigger ISN'T on the list? This is precisely the reason this shit doesn't work in real life. But then, I guess so long as high school can convince itself that it need not reflect real life, that doesn't matter.
The school wouldn't take the hint. They'd find ways to hunt down and severely punish those who made a mockery of their precious system, and then ignore the lesson they've just been taught - or worse, hold up the perpetrators as examples of the kind of kids they're hoping to flush out with such a system.
Most schools would never figure it out. It depends on pattern recognition and a good deal of common sense, to say "there's something wrong with this list" - and since most school administrations can't be bothered to learn something about most of their students, we can guarantee it would go over their heads. They might try to modify the program a little when they notice 99% of the students are being turned in, but they'll still think the premise is valid, and absolutely NOTHING about the collected data would serve to convince them otherwise.
I mean, these are schools we're talking about here. If they're not smart enough to see what's wrong with the concept in the first place, they're sure not gonna be swayed by statistically weird results. Schools are too proud of their "systems" anyway - the system is sacred, the system is God, and if the system doesn't work, it's the students' fault. Thus we'd be right back where we started.
Are you actually convinced the absolute worst thing about student profiling is the fact that Katz writes about it? Or that the blatantly obvious danger to our society - and perhaps the world, if a generation of Americans grows up thinking this shit is normal - is overshadowed by the fact that someone dared compare this to Hitler Youth?
Quantum effects are the very phenomenon that stand the greatest chance of STOPPING Moore's Law in its tracks - and yet it is these same effects quantum computers use to do their work. Which means two things: eventually conventional computing must hit a quantum wall, and on the other side of that wall, quantum computing takes over.
That said, I still have some doubts about quantum technology - it sounds to me too much like nondeterminism, and I can't help but wonder where you're going to find people who understand it well enough to develop the technology without doing it "by cookbook" as many COBOL programmers do today. But the technology is there, it seems to work, so what the hey.
What remains, you ask? What remains is a spirit and a memory of how, briefly, someone Did It Right.
The Amiga circa 1985-1991 represented power and flexibility and ease of use that did NOT compromise each other - sort of like a nonpatronizing Macintosh with a command line. It also represented (at least in the early days) a price/performance curve totally unconnected to the rest of the industry, perhaps more accurately reflecting what silicon could do at a given price point than the overpriced PCs and Macs of the day might suggest.
What about today? Linux can be made easy to use, but it'll be all too easy for a casual user to "fall into the basement" and end up dealing with the Linux underneath. The rest of us are fine with Linux as it is, not because it's intuitive, but because we've memorized it. The Macintosh has a lot of the usability issues solved, but at the expense of coming across with a patronizing attitude - Steve Jobs has encoded too much of his personality into the OS, and it speaks to you with his voice. Windows has the worst of all worlds - it lacks power, it lacks ease of use, but still speaks to you in Bill Gates' patronizing voice.
Hardware-wise: wouldn't it be nice to see hardware revolutions coming from somewhere besides Apple?
Community-wise: What, fundamentally, is the difference between an Amiga fan and a Linux fan? That Linux runs on newer hardware, that's about it - each platform has its failings. And indeed, for many people, Linux has BECOME their Amiga - insofar as it does all they feel they needed from an Amiga.
I'm not defending Amiga Inc, I'm gonna wait for kickable hardware just like the last 107 times. All I'm saying is that maybe there's something the Amiga had, that could be useful again - and the Amiga "faithful" (the level-headed ones anyway, not the goobers who think Q3A should run on a stock A500) are just the people who agree with this statement.
Re:Strange things before you fall asleep
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X-Files FPS Episode
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Same thing happens to me. It's really rare, but once in awhile I'll be drifting off, and suddenly, SNAP!
You describe it like someone screaming at you through heavy distortion. I'd describe it more like your head has been instantly stretched to the diameter of the universe and snapped back into shape suddenly. Neither really fully describes the sensation. It doesn't really hurt, it's just very intense and very sudden.
Picture having a Learjet fly six inches over your head, while you sit in the front row (far left side, next to the amp stacks) of the 1976 concert where The Who got the world's record for the loudest concert ever, while having your ears wired up to a high-voltage line to put 30,000 volts through your skull at the exact moment someone pumps 100 gallons of liquid nitrogen directly into your brain via your eye sockets, while someone fires off six battleship cannons right behind you while Roger Daltrey screams so loud the amps begin to catch fire.
Now imagine you're drifting off to sleep, and just about the moment you lose all perception of the world, SNAP! for no reason you suddenly experience the least comfortable 1/2 second of the above.
Needless to say you wake up and find it difficult to go back to sleep.
If it has a 19" screen, chances are it's not a PC, it's a workstation.
It's the middle-of-the-road, consumer PCs you find at Best Buy that we should be ushering out. These are the equivalent of a 1979 Malibu six-cylinder, too underpowered for its size, too big and gas-guzzling to be a daily driving car, but since it was the smallest and cheapest thing on the showroom floor, you drove it home. Consumers buy these midgrade or lowgrade $1000 machines basically because that's all Best Buy has.
Average users don't really like PCs (or Macs). They're big and bulky, they are FURNITURE (they take up a whole desk), they're slow (no other appliance in the house takes 2 minutes to start up), and they never really quite do what they want. They'd rather play video games and watch movies on the TV, do their checkbook at the kitchen table or on the desk in the bedroom (using some smaller portable unit), and sit in the easy chair to surf the Web.
The modern PC isn't that far removed from an old room-sized mainframe - the PC often expands to fill the room it's in. You can't bring it to you, you must go to it, which means it, its data, and all the media you see or hear on it must remain forever trapped in whichever room you put it - which in most households, is never the same room as the entertainment center. You pay the price for its flexibility by concentrating much of your activities in that room, at that desk.
Laptops aren't the answer for this - they're downscaled PCs, saddled with the additional limitations of battery life, tiny screens, sick keyboards, and high price tags. And they're the solution to the wrong problem - they take the PC on the road. I don't want to take a PC on the road, I want to take it to my easy chair.
Cell phones and PDAs aren't the answer either - they're small devices designed to do specific things, which by itself isn't the problem until you overdrive them by making them do too many things. Let them do what they are designed to do and do it well, and let larger devices - say, a 9x12 or 11x14 LCD "sketchpad" - start to absorb the role of the consumer PC (finances, Web surfing, etc).
Workstations are another matter entirely. Artists, programmers, and writers (and Slashdot readers) - and in general, people who focus on the COMPUTER (not merely the applications thereof, as in the consumer who buys a computer for what it will do for THEM) - are fine with a tower under a desk and a 21" piece of glass in front of their faces. And even then, what writer or artist wouldn't desperately love to practice their craft under a shade tree? Bjork composes most of her music these days walking the beach with a tiny (CD-player-sized) handheld sequencer and a pair of headphones. I'd trade the 21-inch monitor for the ability to code Perl on the beach, wouldn't you? Especially if I'm saving and testing my code via wireless on the tower at home.
The car analogy continues: use a truck (workstation) for big work, small efficient Hondas (wireless 11x14 pen-driven digital notepads) for day-to-day stuff (surfing the Web, doing the books sitting on the sofa), and motorcycles (handhelds) for when you want to feel the wind in your hair (writing Perl on the beach). The alternative is to continue as we have done, letting PC vendors do like Detroit auto makers and continue to build dinosaurs just because that's all they know how to make.
The Bill of Rights exists because they knew, even back then, that such guarantees would NOT remain "unspoken rules" for long - they would be stomped on. They were ten SPECIFIC guarantees requested by the states before they'd sign the Constitution - specific guarantees of specific things they considered common sense but which a lawyer or corrupt politician 20 years later might not. You say you don't need a piece of paper to give you rights - but not everyone sees it that way, especially "unpopular" rights like freedom to say unpopular things, or for criminals to get due process.
I agree the Bill of Rights should be vestigial, that notions of free speech or due process or whatever should be "inherent" and not need to be written down. But we ain't there yet.
It doesn't help that the parents got exactly the same talk from *their* parents, and thus have absolutely NO CLUE how to approach the situation. Kids reaching puberty are not exactly big on symbolic logic, so for parents to pull the "birds and the bees" crap (designed to cover the fact that the adult really hasn't grown up) only confuses them more.
640x200 was the official limit and I've seen icons use a BIG chunk of that. I once had an old AmigaWorld Disk whose icon was larger onscreen than the disk itself, and I've seen games where the icon occupied more bytes than the executable AND more pixels onscreen than the game.
It really does no harm to have an OS lift all size and shape restrictions on its icons.
Just what made you think that the Linux Community was going to implement YOUR IDEA of "the one true interface" anyways?
I'd vote for Linux just DECIDING on a user interface instead of the current disjointed mishmash. Doesn't anyone think it's odd that a well-populated Linux screenshot looks like a composite? You may be comfortable looking all day at a screen that looks like it's made from six different OSes, but it drives me nuts that I have to spend all weekend just CHASING DOWN all the different places I have to edit just to change color! (Minus three or four apps where you CAN'T change colors.) This is a feature in your book, yes?
Many of us use Linux to begin with because we would rather not be subjected to such fascist notions. (one true UI)
Fascist notions like, oh, a STYLE GUIDE? One UI instead of fifty? You sound to me like you use Linux because it's just as scrambled and disjoint as you are. Or else you consider a convoluted and inconsistent interface a form of security, or at least a rite of manhood.
I don't want to force user interface ideas on anyone. But to even use the term "human interface" in a sentence with Linux, or X Window in general, is a punch line. And you are precisely what I'm ranting about, Mister Anonymous - you defend the lack of a consistent package by trying to tell me I shouldn't WANT one, that it's WRONG to want one. As for starting my own, I've considered it, though even if I did have the time to work on such a thing, or the people-power to do it, the end result would be totally unpalatable to you because it would not resemble X Window at all. And are you one of those who think Linux deserves to be the One True OS? Or that it should only be used by those Worthy of its Power and the rest deserve Microsoft? Which goal is served by your stance?
Are we up to the one with the silly clothes going around strangling people yet? Or have we passed that and reached the guy falling off his exercise bike, hanging from his umbrella, and chasing cats?
Maybe it's because the Amiga does certain things "right" that no one has gotten right since?
Yeah, that's it: the total package. It's not stapled together. No disconcerting shifts between text and graphics screens, no 50-foot barrier wall between apps with a GUI and apps without. The GUI is integrated, but lightweight enough that it isn't at all like having a 12MB X server running all the time. The interface looks and works consistent, MENUS ARE ALL GENERATED IN THE SAME PLACE, there's drag-n-drop, the system is configurable, and so on. There's cross-application scripting. There's interrupt trickery and display hacks to make things FEEL faster than they are (hence the illusion so many Amiga lunatics quote as gospel, that an A500 is faster than a Pentium). It boots QUICKLY; indeed, loading applications, opening and closing windows, and switching workspaces are all trivial and don't involve lots of swapping to disk.
It seems like nostalgia, even to us. But it's actually a thinly disguised disappointment that we are, in 2000, NOT fifteen years more advanced than what the Amiga was in 1985. In an age with machines with 10 times the pixels, 100 times the memory, 1000 times the MIPs, and 10000 times the disk space, to the Amiga user's eye, modern software has yet to CATCH UP with the combination of integration, simplicity, power, and efficiency we had two decades back. Therein lies the nostalgia: they literally don't make 'em like they used to.
Rant: we continue to look to Amiga-derived startups for The Way Forward, because no one else particularly cares. The Linux crowd is SUPPOSED (according to the hype) to be providing some grand unified theory of computing, but for every Linux shortcoming someone points out, we get either "write it yourself" or an explanation of why we don't want it. I thought it was the Microsoft way to give excuses instead of Products People Want.
Granted EVERYONE in Dilbert is a complete dolt at one level or other. I "switched" to User Friendly because it's a bit more positive, at least there are some actual "heroes" in that strip, unlike Dilbert where no one but Dogbert actually has enough marbles to control the situation. Dilbert is a strip that's about conflict - but who are we supposed to root for?
I worked in tech support off and on for a couple years. I learned a lot about user interface design (a million and one things wrong with the Start menu, for example), a lot about patience, and a lot about how other companies conduct THEIR tech support. But I also learned the difference between the "good" caller and the "bad" one.
Good callers may not be easy to solve, but by the time they're off the phone, your headache is caused by their PROBLEM, not THEM. Good callers are calling you because they know it's your job to help them; they understand their place on the scale, they're a little intimidated by the computer but will actually absorb information if you explain things on their level. The best ones are the ones where you say "exactly!" after they finish your sentence for you. We may joke about the technical problem they have, or the description they give of the problem if it's particularly amusing, but it's hard to joke about the person.
Bad callers are the ones you'd probably hate if you met them in ANY situation. You know - the people who tear down "out of order" signs because they block the pop machine's coin slot, then complain that it ate their money. The people you'd expect to find stranded on the roadside, on the cellphone demanding that Chrysler replace their car because it ran out of gas. The people for whom the "do not submerge hair dryer" warnings were written.
Who WOULDN'T satirize the following true events: - people who call because they're lonely? - people who call and open up with a stream of profanities so you can't even get a word in edgewise? (We hung up on him after 30 seconds.) - people who are clicking a dozen steps ahead of you while you're trying to walk them through something? - people who INSIST that this Mac disk must work in their PC or vice versa, and fifty explanations later simply refuse to believe you? - LAN administrators who don't know how to create new users? (this guy wasn't supposed to be calling us anyway, we didn't offer support for Windows NT at the time) - people who spend half an hour ignoring all your subtle and unsubtle hints to get to the point, while they tell you the long and detailed story of WHY they bought the computer in the first place? - people who are on free accounts (we used to donate accounts to the schools) and abuse the account somehow? like take a school account home, camp out on a modem, or call tech support constantly with obnoxious demands? - people who refuse to admit a mistake? "that says winsock dot D I L L" "no, that's D L L" "no, it says D I L L, it says it right here!" - people who just flat out LIE? "is your username entered correctly?" "of course it is! you think i'm stupid or something?" - and then get mad when you can't solve their problem? - and when complaining to your boss about your inability to figure out their lie, REVEAL that they lied? - people with no memory? - people who honestly believe "it doesn't work" is as much problem report as you deserve? - people who, despite having teenagers, don't understand that they can't use the modem and the phone at the same time? I don't care if they know the WHY, I'd just be happy if they'd notice the *click* *click* *click* and GUESS the rest. - people who GET ANGRY if you walk them through a control panel because they think you shouldn't make them do technical stuff? (for some reason we got a lot of Mac calls of the form "dammit, I bought this Mac so I wouldn't HAVE to mess around in thuh System Folder!" I'm a Mac owner too, which makes it that much worse to see someone making the right purchase for the wrong reasons.) - people with Amigas calling, for any reason, period? (as soon as they say "Amiga" expect to be on the phone two hours minimum) - people on their second or third Packard Bell? - people who cannot comprehend that a cheap-brand PC makes a difference? - people who refuse to believe there might be trouble with the phone lines? (which was a problem for us since Ameritech was the local carrier...) - people who call you for tech support on things you don't support (general Windows support, other programs, hardware issues unrelated to Internet access) and REFUSE to take no for an answer? - people who blame you for EVERYTHING that goes wrong after they install your product? ("why doesn't my MIDI sequencer work anymore since I installed Netscape?") - people who throw rank at you? ("Do you know who you're talking to? I happen to be the executive adviser to the Mayor! Now FIX THIS!" Every case so far has been user error.) - people who verbally abuse you? ("You stupid catraping sack of shit! Why the fuck can't you get your head outa your dickhole long enough to understand what the hell I'm trying to tell you, you heaping mound of semen?" solution: hang up. No job could pay me enough to take that.) - people who wreck their system by sheer arrogance? - people who aren't observant enough to realize an onscreen message is meant for THEM?
Don't you think it's a mite bit suspicious that they just happen to put a new, state-of-the-art observation satellite in orbit just before January 1? In case you've been living in a liberal delusional dreamworld or under a rock, there is overwhelming evidence that martial law will be declared in the USA on January 1, 2000,
I hear this a lot, though not always January 1, 2000; several such dates have come and gone.
And though I probably don't do as much research as some, I have seen NO evidence that martial law will be declared in the USA on Jan 1. Certainly not "overwhelming". Yes, the religious fundamentalists and conspiracy theorists have been saying similar things for years, but what basis is provided for me to believe or even attempt to verify these claims? Obviously not everyone believes every word of the Bible, which eliminates one source of your authority on this subject.
As to the satellite, no, it's not suspicious, any more than the 7500-odd satellites already up there and already mapping the entire planet in real time.
with a permanent suspension of the Constitution. King Klinton isn't letting go of power that easily. His worshippers (what else can you call mindless slaves who think that an admitted sodomist belongs in the White House?)
"Worshippers"? Don't know which rock YOU'VE been living under, but they've already tried to impeach the jerk. It lost public support because America got tired of hearing about blowjobs and vaginally inserted cigars on the evening news. It lost public support because Americans found it just as hard to support Republicans who were behaving just as despicably during the whole deal. It lost public support because the catfights have gone on in Washington for SO LONG, with no discernable result (i.e. no discernable difference between a Republican and a Democrat, except maybe who they blame for the ills of the world right before proposing the same old solutions: ban everything and raise taxes) that most Americans have stopped caring. Does your post here go a long way toward fixing that apathy? I doubt it, it'll get ignored along with all the other Y2K conspiracy theories this time of year anyway. Are you working to reverse that apathy? Not really.
don't care about the law, they just want to keep him in power at any cost. They won't complain about losing their rights. Neither will the media, who for seven long years have steadfastly refused to cover any story that reflects badly on King Bill.
Then what the HELL was that whole Monica Lewinsky thing about? Certainly didn't reflect GOOD on old Bill, and I don't think you can make a case that the media has "refused to cover it".
This is all very convenient for King Klinton, of course, because it fits into his plans perfectly.
So here we have it. For the last nine months, a gaggle of laughably implausible agents provocateurs have committed high-profile violent crimes -- but not one of them has come to trial.
The conspiracy widens.
Think about that. Where is Buford Furrow now? There's a total news blackout, isn't there? That's because he's back home in Langley, Virginia, with his feet up, enjoying the rewards of a job well done.
The media has been too busy watching airplanes and space probes fall out of the sky, and too busy blaming Quake and Rammstein for that little thing in Colorado. I grant you that the media, in its rush to blame violent games for youth violence, suddenly grows lax when day traders and middle-aged white supremacists take up arms. But I don't think there is evidence of a conspiracy, unless you count the racist undercurrent America publicly tries to forget it has.
Klebold and Harris were dupes, drugged to the gills and brainwashed by members of the psychiatric profession. They did their job too, although they probably never even understood what was happening. And what exactly was the job? The "job" was to scare the tender, bedwetting liberals into banning guns. And it worked. This year, we've witnessed an historically unprecedented (with the exception of Nazi Germany) crackdown on the fundamental human right to self-defense. Nice going, guys. A perfect plan, perfectly executed.
Oh boy, you just HAD to fold Harris and Klebold into your conspiracy theory, didn't you? Our credulity is stretched beyond the snapping point already, so I guess you didn't have much to lose.
Anyway. Harris and Klebold are exactly what the American people have constructed: an image of ourselves, pompous bigoted violent creatures whose only hope in life is that Hollywood will fight for the movie rights. They did what they did because we let them, and the "crackdown" on the fundamental right to self defense is NOTHING more sinister than an attempt to avoid blaming ourselves. Sinister, yes, but not quite what you're trying to say here either. And again, do you provide a solution? Yes: blame the government for what we have allowed to happen.
No one is taking away our "fundamental right to self defense". If you still want guns, you can still buy them - at a big discount if they've been used in a murder, too, since that seems to be the REAL use for guns around here. And for that matter, you can STILL buy mace, pepper spray, tasers, knives, etc. And if you want to take up a martial art, go right ahead.
But it takes a lot of explaining to convince me we have a "fundamental right" to fully automatic weaponry. Even if you expect us to "defend" ourselves against a government takeover, remember the US government still has enough nuclear devices on hand to destroy the surface of this planet 12 times over, and if they're as maniacally power-greedy as you say, they would probably use THOSE and I don't think Charlton Heston can sell you anything to defend against a tactical nuke. Be realistic here.
We're not up against amateurs here, are we?
Assuming we're "up against" anything more real than phantom conspiracies only you can see?
Seems to me we're "up against" a government full of bungling greedy bureaucrats who are 100x more interested in keeping the lobbyists and their business buddies happy than actually DOING anything. Yes, we're also up against a CIA and an NSA who have nothing important to do now that the cold war is over, so they've chosen to spy on us - but if you think Clinton has anything to do with that you're REALLY delusional.
No, we're not. But you know what? They're not up against amateurs either. And their propaganda is pathetically flimsy, because they've gotten lazy from all these years of directing it at half-witted East Coast Liberals who believe anything they're told. It doesn't wash with real Americans. It never did and it never will.
I think this whole paragraph's coherence entirely depends on your definition of "real Americans". And something tells me your idea of a "real American" is the kind of person who convinced me to stop going to church. (Quoth a sunday school teacher, circa 1992: "Lincoln wanted to free the slaves, so he was assassinated. Maybe he should have taken the hint.")
We're well-informed, and we know what they've got in store for us.
Of COURSE you do. I'd REALLY be worried if you didn't know what the shadow governments in your mind had planned for you.
When they declare martial law they may have a brand new "eye in the sky" to help track us, but they can't just scan the whole country at once. At that resolution they'll learn nothing.
Um... I just realized something. They've had this kind of ground-watching surveillance technology for years now anyway. They can read the license plate of my car from orbit. This launch adds NOTHING to their capabilities - it is what it claims to be, a scientific instrument.
Be more worried about big cities where you're always on a camera somewhere.
They'll have to find us before they can track us, and it won't be easy. They'll block the roads and punish motor travel with a summary death sentence
Interesting idea. Wonder if your theory has accounted for all the consequences of the US government trying something so far off the map. Usually these conspiracy theories involve concentration camps for nonChristians. Summary death sentence for starting a car? Does your conspiracy include every other nation on Earth, who would take SOME kind of action in the face of such a bizarre law? We stepped in on Kuwait, think if our own country was stopped in its tracks by these outlandish things you describe, that England, Japan, Canada, and so on wouldn't at least complain loudly? Or is it all One World Order like all the other conspiracy theories?
(according to the documents I've seen, the pretext will be an attempt to cut down on "pollution" -- a phenomenon for which no credible evidence exists,
Remind me next time I'm in a big city and my eyes water for no discernable reason. Remind me the next time it's mid-December before the first snowflake touches my front yard. Remind me the next time the rivers are clogged with dead fish.
And come to think of it, you have it all backwards anyway. Pollution is a documentable and measurable phenomenon, yet you don't believe it exists. Instead you have massive conspiracies and police states operating in your head, for which no credible evidence exists out here in the real world. Oh-kay...
but never mind that, it's the least of our worries). They can do that, but so what? We just won't use the public roads. The public roads are, in any case, the greatest known symbol of the enslavement of this once-great nation: A public works project worthy of the Pharoahs, paid for by a Pharaonic system of confiscatory taxation[1] and slave labor. (If you pay taxes, you are a SLAVE because you do not own the products of your labor. Period. End of story.)
I'm a slave anyway, because if I tell Howard W. Sams Inc. to stick it, I don't get to keep the source code I wrote. SO? You can make such everyday stuff sound so evil by way of semantics, one thinks your whole message depends entirely in the notion that the reader will fall for the sensationalism without trying to THINK about it. But you'd never do a thing like that, right?
I do not care to benefit from such a system. God created the Earth, not the Federal Government.
Someone needs to remind the Federal Government of this. But I digress.
It is blasphemy, a personal offense against God Almighty, for them to attempt to limit or direct my movements on God's Earth.
So do I commit blasphemy by denying you access to my living room should you come knocking? But I guess since you seem to be defining the rules here, you can apply the word blasphemy to anything you want.
Against any attempt to deny me this greatest of God's gifts, I am authorized by Natural Law to defend myself, with deadly force if need be.
The greatest of God's gifts is a soul, which you have ruined by filling yours to the core with fear, hatred, paranoia, dogma, and delusions. No soul OR mind could operate properly under those conditions.
You say you plan to defend yourself with deadly force. Against who? United States citizens, probably men aged 18-25 who probably signed up for guard duty to help pay for college. If the US DOES become Nazi Germany, it's not exactly going to repopulate its armed forces with clones or robots, these are ordinary recruits, people like ME, who are just as alive as you, who would be in basically the same predicament you are. But you know what? That won't matter to you, because the fundamental right to defend yourself against the United States takes predecence in your mind over the right to try to win those soldiers over to your cause. If it goes the way you say it will, they'll be as pissed about the totalitarian government as you are (what soldier wants to go home to a world where cars are outlawed?) - but you'll never know, because you will shoot first and ask questions later. Am I right?
[1] Confiscatory Taxation: At the end of the day, when all Federal, State, and Local taxes are added up, including sales tax, property tax, automobile tax (which is an interference with travel, and therefore blasphemous)
Oh good! That means when people cut me off in traffic, and I shout "go to Hell" I'm not really cursing, just stating fact! After all, they're interfering with my travel.
While we're at it, stoplights, poorly written directions, nails, and fallen trees are also blasphemies.
, and all of the other nickle'n'dime taxes you are forced to pay every day of your life -- at the end of the day, when you add them all up, it comes to just about exactly 70% of your income. Seventy percent. Think about that. Taxes in the old Soviet Union were less than that. The taxes levied by the Pharoahs of old were only 25%.
Therein lies the paradox. You're right about the taxes. But the solution to the tax problem is NOT to take up arms - otherwise that little armed revolution 220 years ago might have accomplished some more long-term results.
There is freedom worth dying for, and freedom worth killing for. But until we get the future you prophesy, and we won't, all this talk of "deadly force" is woefully out of place. At any rate, America has not even BEGUN to voice its displeasure with the tax rates, so I'd think we have a lot of unexplored avenues well in advance of "shoot the bastards".
What's scariest is that you yourself cannot hear how you sound. One imagines you hiding in a bunker, dressed in camo, surrounded by stockpiles of guns "awaiting the inevitable". All because what? The Bible says so? What the Bible says is so lost in translation and so symbolically worded (in Revelation) it can say anything you want it to say. (That's why it sells so well.) What other evidence do you have, that wasn't forwarded it to you in a nice long linear chain with no outside supporting evidence? Above all, what do you expect all of US to believe, when you post unverifiable paranoid rantings (which are so common on the Internet they're now just boring) anonymously on Slashdot? To say that few Slashdot readers follow your politics is an understatement; indeed, most of them think any such Government Takeover will be religious conservatives declaring martial law, banning the Internet, and hoarding all the money on behalf of their corporate friends. How many people do you expect to convert with this, out of the hundreds (debatable, since you posted anonymous and got a 0 score) who will read it? Five? Three? Fewer? What salesman tries to sell Lego sets at a nursing home, or Rogaine to a roomful of pregnant women? Yet you want to sell a conspiracy theory here? You're yelling into the wind.
I see a lot of "trophy kids" - yuppies having designer-brand kids just because it makes them look community-oriented or some such.
I see a lot of parents who think, despite what they see and hear, that beating a crying child will eventually shut them up. (My original mother was in this category.)
And I see a lot of parents who seem to be performing a child psychology experiment on their children - things like "let's see what happens if you never tell a child 'no'."
None of them seem to have the time or energy to devote to the actual PERSON who is the child, whether the child is age 0 or age 18. Kids are just like property to way too many people.
Slashdot Mirror
Blocking sites that suck would simplify the design of the browser somewhat. No need for a render engine, obviously, if you're never going to visit any Web sites. :-)
I don't think there's a meaningful way to simply "divide" the company. I think if they want to do it right, they have to DISMANTLE the company. Like so:
- Marketing in one company, engineering in another. Each half must independently regrow the other half and thus cannot simply repackage the same old crap with brand new FUD and claim it as 'innovative', MS Engineering will have to EARN its respect and I can't imagine many engineers wanting to work for MS Marketing.
- Hold a public auction to sell off each and every one of Microsoft's products. The only stipulation is that no company gets more than one product. I can see logistical problems trying to make sure there's no collusion or secretly connected "subsidiaries" involved trying to accumulate a whole other Microsoft, but this WOULD END THE MONOPOLY. The two Microsoft companies described above would be allowed to bid, but each gets only one product. (Plus it would flush out the back catalog of stuff MS just sits on; anything not purchased goes GPL, which means freeware ROMs for lots of emulators and fully commented source code for old goodies like EDTASM.)
This won't happen, because I can't imagine the DOJ having the cojones to attempt such a radical solution. I figure they'd be afraid MS would win the appeal. But even THAT might not be so bad. Ponder this sentence:
The Microsoft of 1995 would never have allowed Linux to get where it is today.
In other words, Microsoft behaves itself when it's under the spotlight. Simply keeping the light in the giant's eyes for a few years has been enough to allow alternative OSes to capture the MAINSTREAM's eye for probably the first time since the late 1980s. If Microsoft appeals, it's likely that the spotlight could remain on them for years to come - hopefully long enough that their 90% market share in multiple markets will erode to something more surmountable, that well-equipped competitors can climb.
Marketing in one company, engineering in another.
Yes, and they (and other reptiles) have to basically sun themselves all day to prepare for such bursts of activity.
Oh the humanity. mozilla.org is down, the nightly builds have stopped, the source tree has been closed, and M15 is right out.
I am, of course, being sarcastic. mozilla shows no signs of going away just because a commercial distro happens to be on the release schedule.
Unless someone knows otherwise.
"depends on whether the people doing the implementation are closet Nazis or not"
One look around these United States should tell you, with no uncertainty, that the hatred, paranoia, and desire for an "orderly" society at all costs, all the things which made Nazi Germany possible, are very much NOT confined to the closet.
How many potential abuses can you think of for a system like this? How many wrong ways can it be implemented? Think schools will keep protect the privacy of the "troubled" kids? Fuck NO, the gossip alone will serve to make things worse. Think geeks will be able to report that jocks are abusing them? No, of course not, many schools ignore complaints against their star athletes. What do you think happens to the kids who get reported anyway? At best, a demoralizing talk with the principal; at worst, a student's bookbag or locker would be opened and searched, and any and all forms of creative expression (like the Grim Reapers I used to draw, or sci-fi battle scenes and violent stories, or the weird music I used to listen to) would be used as evidence against them. Does this system help the school identify REAL problem kids - the ones who genuinely do have suicidal tendencies, kids from problem homes, kids with well-concealed problems? Does this system deal with the deep social problems in any school - the cliques, the popularity wars, the structured environment that makes it difficult to make REAL friends - or would it simply contribute to the problem, and push unpopular kids even more to the fringes?
The "right way" to run such a system, if there is one, isn't obvious, and I doubt any schools will implement it. Instead they'll implement it the obvious way, which will SEEM to get the results they want - since the visibly weird kids, whom THEY have suspected are just Uzi-toting criminals anyway, will be the first ones the students report as dangerous, thus confirming what they already believed. Top that off with the "treatment" that will be given to the students caught in this net, especially with the usual patronizing tone and clueless pseudopsychiatry used by many school officials at most schools, you could end up TURNING students into a problem.
And my objection to all forms of student profiling still stands: how many rights and how much dignity was it worth it to sacrifice when the kid who finally pulls the trigger ISN'T on the list? This is precisely the reason this shit doesn't work in real life. But then, I guess so long as high school can convince itself that it need not reflect real life, that doesn't matter.
The school wouldn't take the hint. They'd find ways to hunt down and severely punish those who made a mockery of their precious system, and then ignore the lesson they've just been taught - or worse, hold up the perpetrators as examples of the kind of kids they're hoping to flush out with such a system.
Most schools would never figure it out. It depends on pattern recognition and a good deal of common sense, to say "there's something wrong with this list" - and since most school administrations can't be bothered to learn something about most of their students, we can guarantee it would go over their heads. They might try to modify the program a little when they notice 99% of the students are being turned in, but they'll still think the premise is valid, and absolutely NOTHING about the collected data would serve to convince them otherwise.
I mean, these are schools we're talking about here. If they're not smart enough to see what's wrong with the concept in the first place, they're sure not gonna be swayed by statistically weird results. Schools are too proud of their "systems" anyway - the system is sacred, the system is God, and if the system doesn't work, it's the students' fault. Thus we'd be right back where we started.
Are you actually convinced the absolute worst thing about student profiling is the fact that Katz writes about it? Or that the blatantly obvious danger to our society - and perhaps the world, if a generation of Americans grows up thinking this shit is normal - is overshadowed by the fact that someone dared compare this to Hitler Youth?
I'm SO glad you have your priorities straight.
Quantum effects are the very phenomenon that stand the greatest chance of STOPPING Moore's Law in its tracks - and yet it is these same effects quantum computers use to do their work. Which means two things: eventually conventional computing must hit a quantum wall, and on the other side of that wall, quantum computing takes over.
That said, I still have some doubts about quantum technology - it sounds to me too much like nondeterminism, and I can't help but wonder where you're going to find people who understand it well enough to develop the technology without doing it "by cookbook" as many COBOL programmers do today. But the technology is there, it seems to work, so what the hey.
What remains, you ask? What remains is a spirit and a memory of how, briefly, someone Did It Right.
The Amiga circa 1985-1991 represented power and flexibility and ease of use that did NOT compromise each other - sort of like a nonpatronizing Macintosh with a command line. It also represented (at least in the early days) a price/performance curve totally unconnected to the rest of the industry, perhaps more accurately reflecting what silicon could do at a given price point than the overpriced PCs and Macs of the day might suggest.
What about today? Linux can be made easy to use, but it'll be all too easy for a casual user to "fall into the basement" and end up dealing with the Linux underneath. The rest of us are fine with Linux as it is, not because it's intuitive, but because we've memorized it. The Macintosh has a lot of the usability issues solved, but at the expense of coming across with a patronizing attitude - Steve Jobs has encoded too much of his personality into the OS, and it speaks to you with his voice. Windows has the worst of all worlds - it lacks power, it lacks ease of use, but still speaks to you in Bill Gates' patronizing voice.
Hardware-wise: wouldn't it be nice to see hardware revolutions coming from somewhere besides Apple?
Community-wise: What, fundamentally, is the difference between an Amiga fan and a Linux fan? That Linux runs on newer hardware, that's about it - each platform has its failings. And indeed, for many people, Linux has BECOME their Amiga - insofar as it does all they feel they needed from an Amiga.
I'm not defending Amiga Inc, I'm gonna wait for kickable hardware just like the last 107 times. All I'm saying is that maybe there's something the Amiga had, that could be useful again - and the Amiga "faithful" (the level-headed ones anyway, not the goobers who think Q3A should run on a stock A500) are just the people who agree with this statement.
Same thing happens to me. It's really rare, but once in awhile I'll be drifting off, and suddenly, SNAP!
You describe it like someone screaming at you through heavy distortion. I'd describe it more like your head has been instantly stretched to the diameter of the universe and snapped back into shape suddenly. Neither really fully describes the sensation. It doesn't really hurt, it's just very intense and very sudden.
Picture having a Learjet fly six inches over your head, while you sit in the front row (far left side, next to the amp stacks) of the 1976 concert where The Who got the world's record for the loudest concert ever, while having your ears wired up to a high-voltage line to put 30,000 volts through your skull at the exact moment someone pumps 100 gallons of liquid nitrogen directly into your brain via your eye sockets, while someone fires off six battleship cannons right behind you while Roger Daltrey screams so loud the amps begin to catch fire.
Now imagine you're drifting off to sleep, and just about the moment you lose all perception of the world, SNAP! for no reason you suddenly experience the least comfortable 1/2 second of the above.
Needless to say you wake up and find it difficult to go back to sleep.
If it has a 19" screen, chances are it's not a PC, it's a workstation.
It's the middle-of-the-road, consumer PCs you find at Best Buy that we should be ushering out. These are the equivalent of a 1979 Malibu six-cylinder, too underpowered for its size, too big and gas-guzzling to be a daily driving car, but since it was the smallest and cheapest thing on the showroom floor, you drove it home. Consumers buy these midgrade or lowgrade $1000 machines basically because that's all Best Buy has.
Average users don't really like PCs (or Macs). They're big and bulky, they are FURNITURE (they take up a whole desk), they're slow (no other appliance in the house takes 2 minutes to start up), and they never really quite do what they want. They'd rather play video games and watch movies on the TV, do their checkbook at the kitchen table or on the desk in the bedroom (using some smaller portable unit), and sit in the easy chair to surf the Web.
The modern PC isn't that far removed from an old room-sized mainframe - the PC often expands to fill the room it's in. You can't bring it to you, you must go to it, which means it, its data, and all the media you see or hear on it must remain forever trapped in whichever room you put it - which in most households, is never the same room as the entertainment center. You pay the price for its flexibility by concentrating much of your activities in that room, at that desk.
Laptops aren't the answer for this - they're downscaled PCs, saddled with the additional limitations of battery life, tiny screens, sick keyboards, and high price tags. And they're the solution to the wrong problem - they take the PC on the road. I don't want to take a PC on the road, I want to take it to my easy chair.
Cell phones and PDAs aren't the answer either - they're small devices designed to do specific things, which by itself isn't the problem until you overdrive them by making them do too many things. Let them do what they are designed to do and do it well, and let larger devices - say, a 9x12 or 11x14 LCD "sketchpad" - start to absorb the role of the consumer PC (finances, Web surfing, etc).
Workstations are another matter entirely. Artists, programmers, and writers (and Slashdot readers) - and in general, people who focus on the COMPUTER (not merely the applications thereof, as in the consumer who buys a computer for what it will do for THEM) - are fine with a tower under a desk and a 21" piece of glass in front of their faces. And even then, what writer or artist wouldn't desperately love to practice their craft under a shade tree? Bjork composes most of her music these days walking the beach with a tiny (CD-player-sized) handheld sequencer and a pair of headphones. I'd trade the 21-inch monitor for the ability to code Perl on the beach, wouldn't you? Especially if I'm saving and testing my code via wireless on the tower at home.
The car analogy continues: use a truck (workstation) for big work, small efficient Hondas (wireless 11x14 pen-driven digital notepads) for day-to-day stuff (surfing the Web, doing the books sitting on the sofa), and motorcycles (handhelds) for when you want to feel the wind in your hair (writing Perl on the beach). The alternative is to continue as we have done, letting PC vendors do like Detroit auto makers and continue to build dinosaurs just because that's all they know how to make.
Therein lies the revolution.
The Bill of Rights exists because they knew, even back then, that such guarantees would NOT remain "unspoken rules" for long - they would be stomped on. They were ten SPECIFIC guarantees requested by the states before they'd sign the Constitution - specific guarantees of specific things they considered common sense but which a lawyer or corrupt politician 20 years later might not. You say you don't need a piece of paper to give you rights - but not everyone sees it that way, especially "unpopular" rights like freedom to say unpopular things, or for criminals to get due process.
I agree the Bill of Rights should be vestigial, that notions of free speech or due process or whatever should be "inherent" and not need to be written down. But we ain't there yet.
It doesn't help that the parents got exactly the same talk from *their* parents, and thus have absolutely NO CLUE how to approach the situation. Kids reaching puberty are not exactly big on symbolic logic, so for parents to pull the "birds and the bees" crap (designed to cover the fact that the adult really hasn't grown up) only confuses them more.
640x200 was the official limit and I've seen icons use a BIG chunk of that. I once had an old AmigaWorld Disk whose icon was larger onscreen than the disk itself, and I've seen games where the icon occupied more bytes than the executable AND more pixels onscreen than the game.
It really does no harm to have an OS lift all size and shape restrictions on its icons.
Just what made you think that the Linux Community was going to implement YOUR IDEA of "the one true interface" anyways?
I'd vote for Linux just DECIDING on a user interface instead of the current disjointed mishmash. Doesn't anyone think it's odd that a well-populated Linux screenshot looks like a composite? You may be comfortable looking all day at a screen that looks like it's made from six different OSes, but it drives me nuts that I have to spend all weekend just CHASING DOWN all the different places I have to edit just to change color! (Minus three or four apps where you CAN'T change colors.) This is a feature in your book, yes?
Many of us use Linux to begin with because we would rather not be subjected to such fascist notions. (one true UI)
Fascist notions like, oh, a STYLE GUIDE? One UI instead of fifty? You sound to me like you use Linux because it's just as scrambled and disjoint as you are. Or else you consider a convoluted and inconsistent interface a form of security, or at least a rite of manhood.
I don't want to force user interface ideas on anyone. But to even use the term "human interface" in a sentence with Linux, or X Window in general, is a punch line. And you are precisely what I'm ranting about, Mister Anonymous - you defend the lack of a consistent package by trying to tell me I shouldn't WANT one, that it's WRONG to want one. As for starting my own, I've considered it, though even if I did have the time to work on such a thing, or the people-power to do it, the end result would be totally unpalatable to you because it would not resemble X Window at all. And are you one of those who think Linux deserves to be the One True OS? Or that it should only be used by those Worthy of its Power and the rest deserve Microsoft? Which goal is served by your stance?
Are we up to the one with the silly clothes going around strangling people yet? Or have we passed that and reached the guy falling off his exercise bike, hanging from his umbrella, and chasing cats?
Maybe it's because the Amiga does certain things "right" that no one has gotten right since?
Yeah, that's it: the total package. It's not stapled together. No disconcerting shifts between text and graphics screens, no 50-foot barrier wall between apps with a GUI and apps without. The GUI is integrated, but lightweight enough that it isn't at all like having a 12MB X server running all the time. The interface looks and works consistent, MENUS ARE ALL GENERATED IN THE SAME PLACE, there's drag-n-drop, the system is configurable, and so on. There's cross-application scripting. There's interrupt trickery and display hacks to make things FEEL faster than they are (hence the illusion so many Amiga lunatics quote as gospel, that an A500 is faster than a Pentium). It boots QUICKLY; indeed, loading applications, opening and closing windows, and switching workspaces are all trivial and don't involve lots of swapping to disk.
It seems like nostalgia, even to us. But it's actually a thinly disguised disappointment that we are, in 2000, NOT fifteen years more advanced than what the Amiga was in 1985. In an age with machines with 10 times the pixels, 100 times the memory, 1000 times the MIPs, and 10000 times the disk space, to the Amiga user's eye, modern software has yet to CATCH UP with the combination of integration, simplicity, power, and efficiency we had two decades back. Therein lies the nostalgia: they literally don't make 'em like they used to.
Rant: we continue to look to Amiga-derived startups for The Way Forward, because no one else particularly cares. The Linux crowd is SUPPOSED (according to the hype) to be providing some grand unified theory of computing, but for every Linux shortcoming someone points out, we get either "write it yourself" or an explanation of why we don't want it. I thought it was the Microsoft way to give excuses instead of Products People Want.
Granted EVERYONE in Dilbert is a complete dolt at one level or other. I "switched" to User Friendly because it's a bit more positive, at least there are some actual "heroes" in that strip, unlike Dilbert where no one but Dogbert actually has enough marbles to control the situation. Dilbert is a strip that's about conflict - but who are we supposed to root for?
I worked in tech support off and on for a couple years. I learned a lot about user interface design (a million and one things wrong with the Start menu, for example), a lot about patience, and a lot about how other companies conduct THEIR tech support. But I also learned the difference between the "good" caller and the "bad" one.
Good callers may not be easy to solve, but by the time they're off the phone, your headache is caused by their PROBLEM, not THEM. Good callers are calling you because they know it's your job to help them; they understand their place on the scale, they're a little intimidated by the computer but will actually absorb information if you explain things on their level. The best ones are the ones where you say "exactly!" after they finish your sentence for you. We may joke about the technical problem they have, or the description they give of the problem if it's particularly amusing, but it's hard to joke about the person.
Bad callers are the ones you'd probably hate if you met them in ANY situation. You know - the people who tear down "out of order" signs because they block the pop machine's coin slot, then complain that it ate their money. The people you'd expect to find stranded on the roadside, on the cellphone demanding that Chrysler replace their car because it ran out of gas. The people for whom the "do not submerge hair dryer" warnings were written.
Who WOULDN'T satirize the following true events:
- people who call because they're lonely?
- people who call and open up with a stream of profanities so you can't even get a word in edgewise? (We hung up on him after 30 seconds.)
- people who are clicking a dozen steps ahead of you while you're trying to walk them through something?
- people who INSIST that this Mac disk must work in their PC or vice versa, and fifty explanations later simply refuse to believe you?
- LAN administrators who don't know how to create new users? (this guy wasn't supposed to be calling us anyway, we didn't offer support for Windows NT at the time)
- people who spend half an hour ignoring all your subtle and unsubtle hints to get to the point, while they tell you the long and detailed story of WHY they bought the computer in the first place?
- people who are on free accounts (we used to donate accounts to the schools) and abuse the account somehow? like take a school account home, camp out on a modem, or call tech support constantly with obnoxious demands?
- people who refuse to admit a mistake? "that says winsock dot D I L L" "no, that's D L L" "no, it says D I L L, it says it right here!"
- people who just flat out LIE? "is your username entered correctly?" "of course it is! you think i'm stupid or something?"
- and then get mad when you can't solve their problem?
- and when complaining to your boss about your inability to figure out their lie, REVEAL that they lied?
- people with no memory?
- people who honestly believe "it doesn't work" is as much problem report as you deserve?
- people who, despite having teenagers, don't understand that they can't use the modem and the phone at the same time? I don't care if they know the WHY, I'd just be happy if they'd notice the *click* *click* *click* and GUESS the rest.
- people who GET ANGRY if you walk them through a control panel because they think you shouldn't make them do technical stuff? (for some reason we got a lot of Mac calls of the form "dammit, I bought this Mac so I wouldn't HAVE to mess around in thuh System Folder!" I'm a Mac owner too, which makes it that much worse to see someone making the right purchase for the wrong reasons.)
- people with Amigas calling, for any reason, period? (as soon as they say "Amiga" expect to be on the phone two hours minimum)
- people on their second or third Packard Bell?
- people who cannot comprehend that a cheap-brand PC makes a difference?
- people who refuse to believe there might be trouble with the phone lines? (which was a problem for us since Ameritech was the local carrier...)
- people who call you for tech support on things you don't support (general Windows support, other programs, hardware issues unrelated to Internet access) and REFUSE to take no for an answer?
- people who blame you for EVERYTHING that goes wrong after they install your product? ("why doesn't my MIDI sequencer work anymore since I installed Netscape?")
- people who throw rank at you? ("Do you know who you're talking to? I happen to be the executive adviser to the Mayor! Now FIX THIS!" Every case so far has been user error.)
- people who verbally abuse you? ("You stupid catraping sack of shit! Why the fuck can't you get your head outa your dickhole long enough to understand what the hell I'm trying to tell you, you heaping mound of semen?" solution: hang up. No job could pay me enough to take that.)
- people who wreck their system by sheer arrogance?
- people who aren't observant enough to realize an onscreen message is meant for THEM?
And I could go on and on.
They want computers to be as easy to use as a pen and paper
And then they'd complain because they have to learn how to write.
This has nothing to do with science.
Right. Paranoia, then?
Don't you think it's a mite bit suspicious that they just happen to put a new, state-of-the-art observation satellite in orbit just before January 1? In case you've been living in a liberal delusional dreamworld or under a rock, there is overwhelming evidence that martial law will be declared in the USA on January 1, 2000,
I hear this a lot, though not always January 1, 2000; several such dates have come and gone.
And though I probably don't do as much research as some, I have seen NO evidence that martial law will be declared in the USA on Jan 1. Certainly not "overwhelming". Yes, the religious fundamentalists and conspiracy theorists have been saying similar things for years, but what basis is provided for me to believe or even attempt to verify these claims? Obviously not everyone believes every word of the Bible, which eliminates one source of your authority on this subject.
As to the satellite, no, it's not suspicious, any more than the 7500-odd satellites already up there and already mapping the entire planet in real time.
with a permanent suspension of the Constitution. King Klinton isn't letting go of power that easily. His worshippers (what else can you call mindless slaves who think that an admitted sodomist belongs in the White House?)
"Worshippers"? Don't know which rock YOU'VE been living under, but they've already tried to impeach the jerk. It lost public support because America got tired of hearing about blowjobs and vaginally inserted cigars on the evening news. It lost public support because Americans found it just as hard to support Republicans who were behaving just as despicably during the whole deal. It lost public support because the catfights have gone on in Washington for SO LONG, with no discernable result (i.e. no discernable difference between a Republican and a Democrat, except maybe who they blame for the ills of the world right before proposing the same old solutions: ban everything and raise taxes) that most Americans have stopped caring. Does your post here go a long way toward fixing that apathy? I doubt it, it'll get ignored along with all the other Y2K conspiracy theories this time of year anyway. Are you working to reverse that apathy? Not really.
don't care about the law, they just want to keep him in power at any cost. They won't complain about losing their rights. Neither will the media, who for seven long years have steadfastly refused to cover any story that reflects badly on King Bill.
Then what the HELL was that whole Monica Lewinsky thing about? Certainly didn't reflect GOOD on old Bill, and I don't think you can make a case that the media has "refused to cover it".
This is all very convenient for King Klinton, of course, because it fits into his plans perfectly.
So here we have it. For the last nine months, a gaggle of laughably implausible agents provocateurs have committed high-profile violent crimes -- but not one of them has come to trial.
The conspiracy widens.
Think about that. Where is Buford Furrow now? There's a total news blackout, isn't there? That's because he's back home in Langley, Virginia, with his feet up, enjoying the rewards of a job well done.
The media has been too busy watching airplanes and space probes fall out of the sky, and too busy blaming Quake and Rammstein for that little thing in Colorado. I grant you that the media, in its rush to blame violent games for youth violence, suddenly grows lax when day traders and middle-aged white supremacists take up arms. But I don't think there is evidence of a conspiracy, unless you count the racist undercurrent America publicly tries to forget it has.
Klebold and Harris were dupes, drugged to the gills and brainwashed by members of the psychiatric profession. They did their job too, although they probably never even understood what was happening. And what exactly was the job? The "job" was to scare the tender, bedwetting liberals into banning guns. And it worked. This year, we've witnessed an historically unprecedented (with the exception of Nazi Germany) crackdown on the fundamental human right to self-defense. Nice going, guys. A perfect plan, perfectly executed.
Oh boy, you just HAD to fold Harris and Klebold into your conspiracy theory, didn't you? Our credulity is stretched beyond the snapping point already, so I guess you didn't have much to lose.
Anyway. Harris and Klebold are exactly what the American people have constructed: an image of ourselves, pompous bigoted violent creatures whose only hope in life is that Hollywood will fight for the movie rights. They did what they did because we let them, and the "crackdown" on the fundamental right to self defense is NOTHING more sinister than an attempt to avoid blaming ourselves. Sinister, yes, but not quite what you're trying to say here either. And again, do you provide a solution? Yes: blame the government for what we have allowed to happen.
No one is taking away our "fundamental right to self defense". If you still want guns, you can still buy them - at a big discount if they've been used in a murder, too, since that seems to be the REAL use for guns around here. And for that matter, you can STILL buy mace, pepper spray, tasers, knives, etc. And if you want to take up a martial art, go right ahead.
But it takes a lot of explaining to convince me we have a "fundamental right" to fully automatic weaponry. Even if you expect us to "defend" ourselves against a government takeover, remember the US government still has enough nuclear devices on hand to destroy the surface of this planet 12 times over, and if they're as maniacally power-greedy as you say, they would probably use THOSE and I don't think Charlton Heston can sell you anything to defend against a tactical nuke. Be realistic here.
We're not up against amateurs here, are we?
Assuming we're "up against" anything more real than phantom conspiracies only you can see?
Seems to me we're "up against" a government full of bungling greedy bureaucrats who are 100x more interested in keeping the lobbyists and their business buddies happy than actually DOING anything. Yes, we're also up against a CIA and an NSA who have nothing important to do now that the cold war is over, so they've chosen to spy on us - but if you think Clinton has anything to do with that you're REALLY delusional.
No, we're not. But you know what? They're not up against amateurs either. And their propaganda is pathetically flimsy, because they've gotten lazy from all these years of directing it at half-witted East Coast Liberals who believe anything they're told. It doesn't wash with real Americans. It never did and it never will.
I think this whole paragraph's coherence entirely depends on your definition of "real Americans". And something tells me your idea of a "real American" is the kind of person who convinced me to stop going to church. (Quoth a sunday school teacher, circa 1992: "Lincoln wanted to free the slaves, so he was assassinated. Maybe he should have taken the hint.")
We're well-informed, and we know what they've got in store for us.
Of COURSE you do. I'd REALLY be worried if you didn't know what the shadow governments in your mind had planned for you.
When they declare martial law they may have a brand new "eye in the sky" to help track us, but they can't just scan the whole country at once. At that resolution they'll learn nothing.
Um... I just realized something. They've had this kind of ground-watching surveillance technology for years now anyway. They can read the license plate of my car from orbit. This launch adds NOTHING to their capabilities - it is what it claims to be, a scientific instrument.
Be more worried about big cities where you're always on a camera somewhere.
They'll have to find us before they can track us, and it won't be easy. They'll block the roads and punish motor travel with a summary death sentence
Interesting idea. Wonder if your theory has accounted for all the consequences of the US government trying something so far off the map. Usually these conspiracy theories involve concentration camps for nonChristians. Summary death sentence for starting a car? Does your conspiracy include every other nation on Earth, who would take SOME kind of action in the face of such a bizarre law? We stepped in on Kuwait, think if our own country was stopped in its tracks by these outlandish things you describe, that England, Japan, Canada, and so on wouldn't at least complain loudly? Or is it all One World Order like all the other conspiracy theories?
(according to the documents I've seen, the pretext will be an attempt to cut down on "pollution" -- a phenomenon for which no credible evidence exists,
Remind me next time I'm in a big city and my eyes water for no discernable reason. Remind me the next time it's mid-December before the first snowflake touches my front yard. Remind me the next time the rivers are clogged with dead fish.
And come to think of it, you have it all backwards anyway. Pollution is a documentable and measurable phenomenon, yet you don't believe it exists. Instead you have massive conspiracies and police states operating in your head, for which no credible evidence exists out here in the real world. Oh-kay...
but never mind that, it's the least of our worries). They can do that, but so what? We just won't use the public roads. The public roads are, in any case, the greatest known symbol of the enslavement of this once-great nation: A public works project worthy of the Pharoahs, paid for by a Pharaonic system of confiscatory taxation[1] and slave labor. (If you pay taxes, you are a SLAVE because you do not own the products of your labor. Period. End of story.)
I'm a slave anyway, because if I tell Howard W. Sams Inc. to stick it, I don't get to keep the source code I wrote. SO? You can make such everyday stuff sound so evil by way of semantics, one thinks your whole message depends entirely in the notion that the reader will fall for the sensationalism without trying to THINK about it. But you'd never do a thing like that, right?
I do not care to benefit from such a system. God created the Earth, not the Federal Government.
Someone needs to remind the Federal Government of this. But I digress.
It is blasphemy, a personal offense against God Almighty, for them to attempt to limit or direct my movements on God's Earth.
So do I commit blasphemy by denying you access to my living room should you come knocking? But I guess since you seem to be defining the rules here, you can apply the word blasphemy to anything you want.
Against any attempt to deny me this greatest of God's gifts, I am authorized by Natural Law to defend myself, with deadly force if need be.
The greatest of God's gifts is a soul, which you have ruined by filling yours to the core with fear, hatred, paranoia, dogma, and delusions. No soul OR mind could operate properly under those conditions.
You say you plan to defend yourself with deadly force. Against who? United States citizens, probably men aged 18-25 who probably signed up for guard duty to help pay for college. If the US DOES become Nazi Germany, it's not exactly going to repopulate its armed forces with clones or robots, these are ordinary recruits, people like ME, who are just as alive as you, who would be in basically the same predicament you are. But you know what? That won't matter to you, because the fundamental right to defend yourself against the United States takes predecence in your mind over the right to try to win those soldiers over to your cause. If it goes the way you say it will, they'll be as pissed about the totalitarian government as you are (what soldier wants to go home to a world where cars are outlawed?) - but you'll never know, because you will shoot first and ask questions later. Am I right?
[1] Confiscatory Taxation: At the end of the day, when all Federal, State, and Local taxes are added up, including sales tax, property tax, automobile tax (which is an interference with travel, and therefore blasphemous)
Oh good! That means when people cut me off in traffic, and I shout "go to Hell" I'm not really cursing, just stating fact! After all, they're interfering with my travel.
While we're at it, stoplights, poorly written directions, nails, and fallen trees are also blasphemies.
, and all of the other nickle'n'dime taxes you are forced to pay every day of your life -- at the end of the day, when you add them all up, it comes to just about exactly 70% of your income. Seventy percent. Think about that. Taxes in the old Soviet Union were less than that. The taxes levied by the Pharoahs of old were only 25%.
Therein lies the paradox. You're right about the taxes. But the solution to the tax problem is NOT to take up arms - otherwise that little armed revolution 220 years ago might have accomplished some more long-term results.
There is freedom worth dying for, and freedom worth killing for. But until we get the future you prophesy, and we won't, all this talk of "deadly force" is woefully out of place. At any rate, America has not even BEGUN to voice its displeasure with the tax rates, so I'd think we have a lot of unexplored avenues well in advance of "shoot the bastards".
What's scariest is that you yourself cannot hear how you sound. One imagines you hiding in a bunker, dressed in camo, surrounded by stockpiles of guns "awaiting the inevitable". All because what? The Bible says so? What the Bible says is so lost in translation and so symbolically worded (in Revelation) it can say anything you want it to say. (That's why it sells so well.) What other evidence do you have, that wasn't forwarded it to you in a nice long linear chain with no outside supporting evidence? Above all, what do you expect all of US to believe, when you post unverifiable paranoid rantings (which are so common on the Internet they're now just boring) anonymously on Slashdot? To say that few Slashdot readers follow your politics is an understatement; indeed, most of them think any such Government Takeover will be religious conservatives declaring martial law, banning the Internet, and hoarding all the money on behalf of their corporate friends. How many people do you expect to convert with this, out of the hundreds (debatable, since you posted anonymous and got a 0 score) who will read it? Five? Three? Fewer? What salesman tries to sell Lego sets at a nursing home, or Rogaine to a roomful of pregnant women? Yet you want to sell a conspiracy theory here? You're yelling into the wind.
Agreed.
I see a lot of "trophy kids" - yuppies having designer-brand kids just because it makes them look community-oriented or some such.
I see a lot of parents who think, despite what they see and hear, that beating a crying child will eventually shut them up. (My original mother was in this category.)
And I see a lot of parents who seem to be performing a child psychology experiment on their children - things like "let's see what happens if you never tell a child 'no'."
None of them seem to have the time or energy to devote to the actual PERSON who is the child, whether the child is age 0 or age 18. Kids are just like property to way too many people.
What would happen to the public school system if all the brains just left?
I always figured the administration and the bullies WANTED the oddballs to leave. It makes more sense to think of it that way.
Now, the crimes are just receiving a lot more attention and sensationalism.
Only because now it's suburban white kids being shot.