Well, the idea here is that many humans today are not doing such advanced skilled programming work to begin with. Programming is fairly difficult and most people have a hard time understanding it (and those are the smart ones). However, I believe that programming is the type of difficult thinking task that powerful computers would be better suited to do rather than humans. Humans will be still programming, but it won't be necessary for corporations to hire a whole floor of programmers sitting in cubicles figuring every little piece of every small program they need. Today, you don't even have that when a corporation needs only simple programs... in that case, they need 5 VB programmers, not a whole floor of COBOL programmers. I'm saying that in 10 years, where you need a whole floor full of C++ programmers today, you'll have 5 HTML coders (or something like that).
Well, the reason that I present it as a new idea is because: 1. I never heard it before and I thought of it myself, I guess no one's been talking much about it lately (due to the fact that since it's an old idea that never happened, no one thinks it will). 2. You've been reading Byte longer than I've been alive... I do think you're correct, but you happen to prove my point. Humans will find new fields to conquer. That's why I said that there will be a shortage of programmers BEFORE the "programming programs". One of the consistent themes of the tech industry is abstraction... that one should be able to think and work at a higher level if they can, rather than think of electrical pulses and high/low clock edges. Programmers will need to know the input strings to make the programs... but the programs will do most of the work. Sadly, today's boom is in doing a lot of that work, and a lot of people won't be prepared for the switchover. Lemme give you a real example that exists TODAY with "programming programs": HTML. You write tags and text and send it along to a browser, which makes a screen display based on the given text and tags. That's a fairly advanced concept: making a navigable system of menus, displays, images, and information from formatted text files. The HTML document would be your "couple of strings" and the browser would be your "programming program". The only thing is that HTML is a rather primitive and limited version of this right now. I believe that many of the concepts used in HTML will be used to make complex programs REAL SOON.
...but in a slightly different manner. I believe that in ten years, everything that programmers do now will be done by programs. That is, programs will write programs. A lot of people will be out of jobs... not because of the programs that write programs, but because of some unforseen breakdown of the current high-demand for programmers. Those "programming programs" will be an eventual replacement for the millions that are out of work, as it would be much cheaper to have than hiring a 40-year old who needs to support a family. This will be possible because of Open Source, believe it or not - functional code will become a commodity, no longer being something that has to be researched, planned, and written in bits and pieces, line by line. Instead, massive code-generating AI-based assemblers will take a couple of strings from the user and use codebases on the net plus its own AI code-generation routines to make a whole program, bug free, with an appropriate and user-friendly GUI, database driven, QA testing as part of the program generation, and acceptably optimized. (after all, on your Pentium-XXV 6000Mhz your business apps are going to FLY so there's no need for real optimization work to be done)
Sounds farfetched, doesn't it? I estimate ten years, maybe up to twenty. Whoever invents it will be the toast of the academic world but will be lynched by all the out-of-work techies. Once it's done, you can get the damn thing to write a bigger badass version of itself every now and then. (not really necessary if every program written is Open Sourced and placed on one of the aformentioned net codebases)
If you've ever felt that your current programming job is monkey work, there's some infinite monkeys on the way...
Unfortunately, this is one of those situations where someone can see trees but doesn't realize that there's a forest...
The internet/Internet (the first being a network of computers, the second being a society) has unleashed upon us a billion new ideas and things that have been unimagined in real life. Such as profitable porn banners. Or, the idea that you must respond to an advertisement so that the person displaying the advertisement gets the money for displaying it. (Hey, imagine that you leased out a billboard on Highway X to you local ABC affiliate but that you got paid only when people who drove on Highway X actually tuned into ABC later that night). Or, that the porn industry would blindly provide funding for any legal or illegal activity, as if what they already did wasn't seen as the devil's work by half this country...
Anyway, as it works out it's true that many mp3 distributors make you hit some porn banners in order to get access to the files. It's highly annoying anyway, since it doesn't work all the time and since you have to work hard to get rid of all the residual pop-ups. This is true of any warez, and the deal works out quite nicely for many people especially since mp3's and porn are both friends of many here on the 'net.
However, some things that are failed to be recognized by the "mp3's-cause-porn" concept: - the connection is merely a coincidence. If cigarette vendors had pay-per-click banners on the net, we'd be saying that mp3's cause smoking too. - there are also ways to get mp3's without any one-handed typing. Napster, for instance. - Porn is extremely popular and profitable. Mp3's are also extremely poplular and profitable. The record companies don't like mp3s because they think that even if they used them, they couldn't make any money off of them. Hence, the record companies are figting a silly losing battle. - People are willing to go through a lot of trouble with the porn banners to get to mp3's. Any company not jumping on this bandwagon is extremely stupid. The potential for both advertisers and mp3's are extraordinary. It should be grasping the attention of both Motown and Madison Ave. - Law enforcement is too slow and two disinterested to stop this. This is what Al Capone would be doing today if he were alive. - People today are totally disinterested in ethics and justice. They don't care who's getting ripped off, they don't care how young the girls or boys are, and they don't care that society doesn't approve. People are used to getting ripped off, fucked early, and being hated by society. Nothing to lose, folks, just like those kids in Colorado (Or those gunmen in Armenia, or that guy in Atlanta, or those guys at the post office, or whoever's on the news tonight)... - The media will gladly repeat any juicy lie or idiot opinion that they are handed. Mp3's encourage porn. Coppermine's better than Athlon. Windows NT is a much better choice than Linux/Unix. Britney Spears has breast implants. Lauryn Hill said she doesn't want white people buying her albums. Harvey Keitel did a bad thing in Nicole Kidman's hair. - Oh, finally, maybe it's a good new portal strategy. I like having my porn and mp3's in the same place...
I was surfing around and since I ususally hit Blue's - Ars - ABCNEWS - Slashdot in the morning, I saw the link on Blue's and looked forward to reading the article. Then I started waiting for Ars to load. In the meantime I opened another browser and hit ABCNEWS and then Slashdot. I saw the article on here and I thought, "Hey, that's great, they'll get a lot of visitors now". Ars still wasn't loading.
Then the lightbulb came on... goddammmit, I wanted to read Ars today! I thought their servers could handle a lot, but apparently they went from "Apache on a 200-node Beowulf" to "Win98 running PWS while someone's playing Q3Test" performance. Hopefully the article gets mirrored so that I can get my lovin spoonful of Ars sometime today... at least the forums still work...
Well, I DO THAT. I have tracked down apps, I have used the web/search engines to get help. It's been sucessful so far, but the majority of what I need to do on a computer is still impossible for me right now under Linux. It'll take TIME. Most people don't have the time, and I don't right now either. But I WILL get it figured out eventually because I WANT to. My point is, it's way too hard to LEARN. It's like the difference between having a good calculus textbook and a bad one. Windows is like a good one that doesn't go very far into the material. You learn what's there. Linux is like a bad one that is the most COMPLETE calculus reference ever, but it's written in broken english and there's not one single graph or diagram or picture in the whole book... as a matter of fact, it's all ONE CHAPTER run on into each other for 1,000 pages. And the text is small. But if someone could rewrite the textbook and add graphs and diagrams, then it would be universally enjoyable. (Which is why we have Open Source. I'm sure many of the OS programs out there could use a UI overhaul that would make them twice as good) But most people think that all you need to do is add more stuff to learn at the end (and have that written in broken english too). And although some people have had sucess learning calculus from that textbook, that doesn't make me STUPID for getting frustrated with not being able to learn from it easily (or quickly).
I'll admit that I don't have a lot of time to spend on becoming a Linux guru. That said, the time I've spent with it (and I do have a big book too) has yielded very little in progress. Basically, if I see something cool or some blazing tip that helps me on the 'net, then that's how I figure something out. Like the RPM stuff. I tried man RPM but for some reason I gave up when it was 20 screens long (I was tired, I wanted to go to bed for other reasons). So later that week I was browsing, saw an "rpm (options) file" command line for ANOTHER program on the net, and then applied the command to my own file and voila! it worked. Still wouldn't know how to get the programs installed in the directory of MY CHOOSING, but that's a reasonable compromise.
Why does IRC seem to want to be helpful but really isn't... for EVERYTHING?
Bookstore - visited. Freshmeat - Red. (bad pun)
Initially installed Linux to expand horizons. But real world constraints (I needed to burn a CD. I needed to encode an mp3. I needed to do both within the next hour, not a month of relearing everything under linux) prevented me from putting more effort into that.
Finally, there IS a sense of adventure in getting around. But when you're looking for something specific that you need NOW and you're looking at HUNDREDS of directories to see if you can find what you need, then after an HOUR it gets to be tedious and frustrating. If I have a day to do man commands, then I WOULD because that would be very useful and effective for me. But I don't have a day. I usually have fifteen seconds, and by the time I reach this dot . there were only five left. What pains me is that this is all OBVIOUS and certainly understandable, but somehow there's a lot of linux cultists out there that somehow would conclude that I STILL must be either really lazy or really stupid.
You know, if they WERE to make an RTFM command, the program should be useful, but it should also be in the style of DOS programs where a lot of them were ridiculously obvious and overbearingly assistive and instructional. While it sounds like a recipie for an annoying and unusable disaster, it would probably be the most popular program since Myst.
This guy tried to install Linux. So did I, about 2 months ago. He knew very little about his computer equipment and was somewhat unprepared. I, on the other hand, was intimately familiar with everything in my system and was extremely prepared. At the end of the day, both of us were in the same place... at the ugly prompt. Sure, being ugly isn't a sin, but being useless IS. At that particular junction, I was forced to boot back into Win98 to read e-mail/burn CDs/web surf/type documents/play games. I can do all of those in Windows, but after 2 months I still cannot do all of those things in Linux. (the read email and web surf things were solved when I got PPP to work in Linux - but I just never knew where to look for getting anything else to happen)
Linux is not hard to install. It's actually quite simple if you're well prepared. But it's not nice to learn how to be a Linux power user.
Here's why: In the computer world, there's two kinds of software/UI design: software that's designed by programmers, and software that's designed by professional designers. Linux is the former, Windows is the latter. Windows is much better to look at and deal with, which makes it SEEM easier. Also, everything's easy to find if you know how to look, and in Windows since looking is universally better, finding is also universally better. Finally, there's better tools in Windows for that kind of stuff, tools which are easy and obvious to find. Even though the tools are there in Linux and they are comprehendable, they are damn hard to find and still not entirely as easy to use as their Windows counterparts. Although intelligent programmers who spend hours and hours learning (no one learns how to be a Linux guru in 60 min or even 60 days) are able to get around, most of the humans on the planet don't have the willpower, patience, time, blood, sweat, and tears to put into Linux like the real wizards do. And that's assuming that all humans are as highly intelligent as those big programming brains, which they're unfortunately not. Oh, and anywhere from 5-50 years of intense experience with computers does give some of the linux guys an edge over others.
Naturally, I knew how to change directories, run certain programs, get around X-Windows, etc. But that was all. God knows I had thousands of programs before me in myriad subdirectories, but as I was walking through the directories I felt like a lost child in a store who kept walking into rooms I wasn't supposed to be in. My biggest problem, however, was the lack of a nice centralized place to go to when I needed to do something and wanted to look through the available programs for something to help me.
For example: I had to set up PPP. Didn't know how. Read the HOWTO, but it confused the hell out of me (and I have an exteral modem, so configuring it SHOULD have been trivial). Finally a week later, I heard someone mention linuxconf. Then I used that to get PPP to work, so I downloaded Seti@Home. Didn't know how to unzip/untar/un-rpm it.(I didn't know the specific command, and didn't know where I could find it) That took a week to find out too. Then I did, and couldn't figure out how to run it properly. Another two weeks to figure out it needed a chmod. This is for an easily configured program that runs from the prompt! Imagine what it would be like to try and write CDs? Or if I downloaded source that needed compiling or a kernel patch?
My point? If you show me how to do it, I can figure it out easily. If you don't show me, then I'm not dumb for not knowing. There's too many of you elitist swine out there who think everyone who says they are having a hard time with Linux are against Linux and are the "enemy". I nor the author of the article are the "enemy", yet you damn well treat us like it just because we don't have 50 years to scour our hard drives and man entries for simple commands. Yes, I still want to know how to use it. No, I don't want 50 replies with "go to freshmeat and there's cd writing programs there". Yea there are programs like that on freashmeat. I just don't know which one is best for me. Until I can figure out this stuff easier (not easily, cause a lot of it is a bitch in Windows too) I won't use Linux until I feel comfortable using everything that I need to use that works fine for me in Windows.
This guy who tried to install Linux is ultimately on our side. He wants to learn. You think that he's dumb because he needs help to learn. But he's not. In the end, if he can never get Linux to work like you can, then he at least can probably write better news articles than you can. But I digress... he represents the next big wave of Linux users. They are going to be OKAY installing it (not without pain, but neither is Windows) but clueless on how to get around in it. RTFM is a useless strategy here because: 1. It's the system that's hard to use and understand (and it does have SERIOUS room for improvement), and RTFM just helps you learn specific things. It doesn't let you "poke around". Well designed tools and tips will help the situation, but it's Unix. It's hard to begin with. Even for geniuses, it takes a while to sink in. 2. How can you RTFM if you can't FTFM? (Find The Fucking Manual) So, a better way of helping people explore will need to be created. That way, people can look around and figure out what they want (or need) to use rather than need help every time a different situation comes up. Until then, if you want Linux to grow past being a tech fad, then you'll cut out the shitty attitude toward anyone who's not the level of Linux Guru that you are.
If you harbor no malcontent toward those who are seemingly clueless about computers, my apologies for this article... it doesn't apply to you.
You know, I was really looking forward to the 820 chipset. It was supposed to be the heart of my next system. However, Intel took a product that could have been a dominating force in the market (like the BX chipset) and killed it with their corporate marketing pedagogal greedy design decisions for the final product. Rambus was always questionable from day 1, and although it looks to be a viable technology in the long run, I think Intel stuck with it a little too stubbornly even as it faltered. I mean, it's kinda ridiculous for a consumer to pay a $200-$300 premium for new technologies that may not work so well in the short term due to bugs, or that are so far incompatible with anything else, or even that don't possess the performance to justify the cost. This wouldn't be true, though, if Rambus didn't have so many problems and wasn't so expensive. I even figure that with SDRAM prices where they are today, which are extremely high, that perhaps the separation of cost between the RAM technologies would shrink enough for Rambus to be considered a justified investment for a new system. I guess not. This is Intel's bad for holding back on the computer industry with a great chipset just so it can push one friggen product that's late out 'the gate and not so great. And they also failed to push down the price of Rambus too, which is the fatal factor. Alas, no new system for me right now...
If you noticed, there was a quick poll question as to whether or not people should be allowed to overclock their own computers. The results are undoubtedly weighed heavily toward "Yes" because of all the/. traffic.
I looked at the results myself just now, and it was 96% "Yes". Not surprising, although it is surprising that there are 4% who said "No". Apparently these people feel that you should not be able to do things with your own property that are undoubtedly legal and safe (well not for the processor, but has anyone died in a house fire that was started by a P200MMX clocked at 1466 Mhz?) as well as possibly beneficial, just because it voids the warranty and possibly shortens the processor's life about 5 years. Not that anyone with the brains to overclock would be caught dead using 400mhz Celerons in 6 months, overclocked or not. At the time I looked, there were 130+ who voted "No". Those are probably people who were lucky to find the power switch, there's probably 300 more people who are still looking... (scary)
First, how do we know you're not a punk kid as well? I can't imagine that any 40-year old sysadmins with a wife, 2.3 kids, and half a brain cell worth of maturity would watch any MTV at all. There's a ton of 14-21-year olds who watch MTV, though, and if they know anything about Abe then they're probably no better than he is. (not to say that "Abe" who was on MTV correlates at all with an individual named Abe who toured Mexico in a Winnebago)
Second, MTV does us a favor by putting kids like him on TV. He's as normal as you can get today, because there's nothing whimisical and charmed about him like most celebrities. You think Britney Spears is normal? Freddie Prinze Jr.? Brandy? Ricky Martin? Hell no. On the flipside, you've got someone totally unworthy of attention like Jesse Camp. Be glad they put Abe on there for 1/2 hour instead of Jesse.
Finally, you're trolling. If you're gonna say something like this, have something to back it up. He didn't cause that much trouble on Road Rules anyway - it was that other idiot who started throwing punches. Then the other brainless females got bitchy at him for the rest of the trip (and beyond). Abe seemed kinda annoying, granted, but the whole trip could have been handled much differently if the women would have gotten a friggen grip on reality. None of the guys hated him - he tapped the one guy's phone call, and he initially wanted to kill Abe! But then they talked it out and settled it, since no harm was really done. That's how you deal with someone like Abe, not with yelling and fists...
If they're good for anything at all, I think that one of the better aspects of "The Real World" and "Road Rules" is that they are about watching and helping young people improve and mature into adults. It seemed that at the beginning you were immature, abrasive, and somewhat anti-social, and that's just about the nicest way for me to say it. Not to say that you were the Antichrist, but some people have a knack for rubbing people the wrong way and they suffer unfair social consequences because of it. It also seemed that one of your personal goals for the experience was to try to become mature and learn how to interact with people better, which I felt was very respectable of you. Did you feel that you achieved any maturity from your Road Rules trip? Do you feel that the Road Rules trip helped you move beyond some of your difficulties with your personal interactions, or was the whole thing such a terrible mess that you went home without any positive social improvement whatsoever? Do you feel today that you still need to work on improving your social interactions with others?
Also, you're a person who had a rough childhood who happens to be good at computers. What are your thoughts on making computers and the Internet accessible to the "financially challenged?" What can people do to make sure that no one misses out on the computer age, including those who are poor and/or homeless?
Finally, do you think that Bunim-Murray purposely casts volatile, disruptive, and downright dangerous people in its shows? Or do you think that they're totally oblivious to any clues that someone might be violent, dirty, offensive, an alcoholic/drug addict, sick, anti-social, destructive, irresponsible, dishonest, highly immature, mentally ill, etc. Seems to me that making normal people live with the worst-of-the-worst is no more like the REAL world than living in an absurdly beautiful and expensive house for free.
Oh and to all you/. people who can't stand this topic - grow up. So what it has nothing to do with REAL computers, it's interesting nonetheless. If you don't like him, or you don't like this interview, then don't write about it. Jesus said it best when he said "You who have done no wrong cast the first stone." (who cares if I mangled the quote, it's cause I don't go to church anymore) Also, don't be as stupid as MTV would want you to be and realize the fact that any of the stuff on that show should be taken with a grain of salt. I hope the moderators come back with a vengeance and deduct points from all these "MTV sux" posts.
I guess that all the mp3 and vcd pirates out there on the net don't feel so invincible anymore. From the way I interpreted the story, this guy who was caught was just a regular guy like everyone else doing what a lot of us... ahem, YOU... do regularly. It seems harmless to host an ftp server with a couple hundred mp3's on it until someone gets fleeced for doing it. The worst part is that many of us justify such behavior by saying that the corporations are ripping us off and that the artists benefit rather than lose out. But none of those excuses are going to save this guy from what looks like a hefty fine and possibly jail time. What's this guy gonna tell job interviewers in the future... "it was just an mp3 server?"
I guess that all the mp3 and vcd pirates out there on the net don't feel so invincible anymore. From the way I interpreted the story, this guy who was caught was just a regular guy like everyone else doing what a lot of us... ahem, YOU... do regularly. It seems harmless to host an ftp server with a couple hundred mp3's on it until someone gets fleeced for doing it. The worst part is that many of us justify such behavior by saying that the corporations are ripping us off and that the artists benefit rather than lose out. But none of those excuses are going to save this guy from what looks like a hefty fine and possibly jail time. What's this guy gonna tell job interviewers in the future... "it was just an mp3 server?"
I used to subscribe to the "Berst Alerts" newsletter a little over a year ago. It ended with me posting a very nasty message to his messageboard and removing myself from the list in disgust.
Here's what I can't stand about Jesse: - He has a lot of hate for MS, and he's constantly bashing them. It's not like the MS bashing that goes on in geek circles (everything that MS does wrong, everyone's got a slick comment and an open source answer for it). Instead, he just RIPS into them and attacks as if it's a horrendous mud-slinging bout between two incompetent politicians in a local election (well, MS has never said anything about Jesse, which means that they're at least above him). He usually keeps rambling on about it too, forseeing their demise and using opinions and unfounded facts to back up his own ill predictions. He really treats MS as if they were Antichrist Inc. and after a while it gets so grating and ridiculous that it's a subtle form of torture to keep reading his vile spewing columns.
- He's a hypocrite too. He'll bash MS but then write something (grudgingly) about something they're doing good right now. He'll talk about Linux as the MS-killer (that and the DOJ case) but then say "You can get fired for using Linux". Basically he maintains no consistency in his opinions. He's like a little kid who hears something and shouts it out to the schoolyard. Two weeks later he'll hear something totally contradictory and shout that out too (as if it were his own research-based scholarly opinion that he just constructed five minutes ago...)
- He's a moron. Another journalist in the Wide World of Computer Journalists (Who Got Their Jobs Cause They Know How To Get Into MS-Word And Don't Have To Use Manual Typewriters). He's another typical journalist who writes articles that are heavily swayed by personal opinion, who writes what's better to read rather than what's truthful or useful, who will stoop to any level to get the (wrong) scoop or the extra hits on the site, who basically doesn't know what the hell he's talking about half the time.
This guy should be doing the poultry reports for the Iowa Gazette. He's like an anti-Dvorak (and I'll admit that Dvorak is only more intelligent and happens to write things that I agree with more). ZD-Net does have some crap, but they could get rid of a lot of it by dumping this guy.
Hahahah high school. One of the many utter failures of American society. You think that after all those friggen movies about how high school is hell for ANYONE, the media wouldn't dare take the position that outcasts are to blame (everyone is an outcast, by the way... I truly feel sorry for non-heinous athletes who have to be lashed at and called idiots because some of the other ones beat a few kids up).
I was afraid of getting stabbed to death on the first day of freshman year. It was a valid concern considering that I had already been in struggles with public school kids, and a potato-shaped kid from Catholic elementary school usually doesn't get a warm reception in a public high school on "Freshman Friday". I'm exaggerating on the "potato-shaped" description, since I've always been never more than vaguely "not-skinny", but it STILL gets me hell even though I'm rather normal-shaped now! But I digress... I got in a fight almost every other day of high school, which was something I grew accustomed to after a while. Sad, but true. Oh, did I mention I played football in high school and people STILL picked fights? I was blindsided at times, and I had to have the "real" football players cover my ass even though I would have rather handled things on my own and earned some pride. Also, I once had someone call me a nickname that includes the word "urine" right in front of my mother! I got my fair share of victories, but I would have preferred to have not been screwed with at all. That is always unavoidable though.
One victory that felt really good? My underground newspaper. I wrote some very good articles and always bested out the real school newspaper. The principal asked me to start writing articles for the real school newspaper, too bad that the clique club that does the newspaper and yearbook told me to take a hike! I would usually make a very good and relevant point while giving props to the people who were on my side and telling everyone else where to kiss. Of course, I got ROYALLY ABUSED by the immature blabbermouth teachers who didn't like it when I opened my mouth about their contract negotiations and their boycott of all extra help and school activities - "The teachers have let us know that if it's between us and the money, it's the money" Let's see, my part-time guidance counselor destroyed my college applications by being a complete twit, I was one of the top students in my class and was strictly denied all and any scholarships after having won many academic awards and medals for the school, I was falsely accused of cheating(with concrete proof in my favor) MULTIPLE TIMES by the vengeful faculty, I was banned from the library computers less than a month after they were opened just because the librarian FEARED ME (never EVER talked about or did anything CLOSE to hacking or illegal activities), I broke my back for that school doing extracirricular activities without any appreciation whatsoever, I was constantly in the vice principal's office having him apologize to me for having to fight with whichever thug decided to come after me on that particular day, I was publicly ridculed by teachers in front of other students BEHIND MY BACK at times in classes that I wasn't even in, and of course I had to deal with the lovely social system of high school and having to be ostracized as all "from the lowlife town" (two different towns went to my high school, and both are the exact same except mine is looked down upon by the other as scummy) "short", "fat", "geek", "annoying", "troublemaker", "violent", "jock", "fag", (I'm not even close to gay, but as Seinfeld said, "... not that there's anything wrong with that") "chump", "wiseass", "potentially dangerous", "weasel", and last but not least "waterboy". Truth is, none of it made sense because half of them contradict each other and most of them aren't true anyway unless 5'4" is considered "short". So I did what I wanted to do and made the most of the situation. And I had a lot of fun and good memories, even though I also had to deal with the above crap.
Best part? Last day of school, I published a "last edition" of my newspaper that thanked everyone, but gave a special highlighted sincere thanks to everyone who screwed me over! Then, at the end of the day, in a flurry of photocopies, I handed out the REAL last edition. I told the school that I was going to become very rich and successful, come back and buy my hometown, and burn everything to the ground in a fit of hysterical laughter - and then erect a thirty-story statue of myself on the barren landscape. (You know, because we were only a mile from NYC, it would be a rather obvious addition to the NJ skyline as viewed from NYC if I did it) The final words, in big bold letters filling the bottom half of the page? "I'll buy this town, and I'll burn it down!" Of course I wasn't serious (well, at worst metaphorical, considering that I could always try to come back and promote positive change through rebuilding without venagence) but it was satisfying to get it off my chest.
Now they're probably expecting for me to come back with a gun, ESPECIALLY since they're putting my brother through the same bull right now because he's graduating this year. I'm not like that though, and I would rather have all of them see me to become the well-adjusted, successful, happy kind of person that they wish they had all been. That's the best revenge.
Unfortunately, most people aren't like me. If I suddenly cracked one day and lost my aversion to homicide, then I'd be off to a good start by trying to do what those two nutjobs did out in Colorado. Teenagers are put through the same terroristic routine day after day, and they are also very capable of being effective mass murderers, so perhaps we shouldn't try to push them over the edge like that. Perhaps we should try to give some more personal and emotional attention to all the kids out there so that we don't have this problem again. Then again, I said that for the last 5 school shootings too. So, one day my kids will die at school because no one else wanted to listen to me.
Reality check people: today's teenagers and young adults are going to be seriously screwed up when they're running the world. This is as irresponsible to the future as having a nuclear war would be. If you don't start to change things now, there will be no one to help you when some 8-year old kid comes in the nursing home 30 years from now with an automatic rifle and takes you out execution style. I am AFRAID because we are leading the way for this type of violence to become COMMON in this country. You will make people snap, you will all be shocked when all of the taunting and hate and attacks and derision suddenly becomes enough to make people forget about not wanting to murder. Kids are expecially susceptible to making such ill-guided decisions, and yet we treat them the worst! The thing is, it's caused by our society, not by specific people, not by movies or music or video games. We must change society and fix a lot of other problems too... I'm sure that if we do, then this one won't haunt us anymore. But we still run like lemmings toward the cliff. We let the media create a state of panic and fear of computers and rock music, we allow kids to see inappropriate things WITHOUT ANY EXPLANATION OR DISCUSSION (which is the solution, not total censorship), we glamourize drug use, we romanticize violence and evil, we irresponsibly allow the unwatched distribution of powerful deadly weapons, we treat each other very badly, and we can't go more than 10 years without going to war with another country. Among other things. You know what needs to be fixed, stop rationalizing that taking away computers and banning black trenchcoats (I could have wept myself for that girl who cried in the principal's office) is gonna solve the problem. I could hate this country for what people are doing to each other BECAUSE of this tragedy. Like I could expect people to be motivated by this terrible massacre to stop being selfish and start being friendly and trustworthy for a change. Nope, and you will pay for it with the blood of our children. My children. You assholes.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, the idea here is that many humans today are not doing such advanced skilled programming work to begin with. Programming is fairly difficult and most people have a hard time understanding it (and those are the smart ones). However, I believe that programming is the type of difficult thinking task that powerful computers would be better suited to do rather than humans. Humans will be still programming, but it won't be necessary for corporations to hire a whole floor of programmers sitting in cubicles figuring every little piece of every small program they need. Today, you don't even have that when a corporation needs only simple programs... in that case, they need 5 VB programmers, not a whole floor of COBOL programmers. I'm saying that in 10 years, where you need a whole floor full of C++ programmers today, you'll have 5 HTML coders (or something like that).
Well, the reason that I present it as a new idea is because: 1. I never heard it before and I thought of it myself, I guess no one's been talking much about it lately (due to the fact that since it's an old idea that never happened, no one thinks it will). 2. You've been reading Byte longer than I've been alive... I do think you're correct, but you happen to prove my point. Humans will find new fields to conquer. That's why I said that there will be a shortage of programmers BEFORE the "programming programs". One of the consistent themes of the tech industry is abstraction... that one should be able to think and work at a higher level if they can, rather than think of electrical pulses and high/low clock edges. Programmers will need to know the input strings to make the programs... but the programs will do most of the work. Sadly, today's boom is in doing a lot of that work, and a lot of people won't be prepared for the switchover. Lemme give you a real example that exists TODAY with "programming programs": HTML. You write tags and text and send it along to a browser, which makes a screen display based on the given text and tags. That's a fairly advanced concept: making a navigable system of menus, displays, images, and information from formatted text files. The HTML document would be your "couple of strings" and the browser would be your "programming program". The only thing is that HTML is a rather primitive and limited version of this right now. I believe that many of the concepts used in HTML will be used to make complex programs REAL SOON.
...but in a slightly different manner. I believe that in ten years, everything that programmers do now will be done by programs. That is, programs will write programs. A lot of people will be out of jobs... not because of the programs that write programs, but because of some unforseen breakdown of the current high-demand for programmers. Those "programming programs" will be an eventual replacement for the millions that are out of work, as it would be much cheaper to have than hiring a 40-year old who needs to support a family. This will be possible because of Open Source, believe it or not - functional code will become a commodity, no longer being something that has to be researched, planned, and written in bits and pieces, line by line. Instead, massive code-generating AI-based assemblers will take a couple of strings from the user and use codebases on the net plus its own AI code-generation routines to make a whole program, bug free, with an appropriate and user-friendly GUI, database driven, QA testing as part of the program generation, and acceptably optimized. (after all, on your Pentium-XXV 6000Mhz your business apps are going to FLY so there's no need for real optimization work to be done)
Sounds farfetched, doesn't it? I estimate ten years, maybe up to twenty. Whoever invents it will be the toast of the academic world but will be lynched by all the out-of-work techies. Once it's done, you can get the damn thing to write a bigger badass version of itself every now and then. (not really necessary if every program written is Open Sourced and placed on one of the aformentioned net codebases)
If you've ever felt that your current programming job is monkey work, there's some infinite monkeys on the way...
Unfortunately, this is one of those situations where someone can see trees but doesn't realize that there's a forest...
The internet/Internet (the first being a network of computers, the second being a society) has unleashed upon us a billion new ideas and things that have been unimagined in real life. Such as profitable porn banners. Or, the idea that you must respond to an advertisement so that the person displaying the advertisement gets the money for displaying it. (Hey, imagine that you leased out a billboard on Highway X to you local ABC affiliate but that you got paid only when people who drove on Highway X actually tuned into ABC later that night). Or, that the porn industry would blindly provide funding for any legal or illegal activity, as if what they already did wasn't seen as the devil's work by half this country...
Anyway, as it works out it's true that many mp3 distributors make you hit some porn banners in order to get access to the files. It's highly annoying anyway, since it doesn't work all the time and since you have to work hard to get rid of all the residual pop-ups. This is true of any warez, and the deal works out quite nicely for many people especially since mp3's and porn are both friends of many here on the 'net.
However, some things that are failed to be recognized by the "mp3's-cause-porn" concept:
- the connection is merely a coincidence. If cigarette vendors had pay-per-click banners on the net, we'd be saying that mp3's cause smoking too.
- there are also ways to get mp3's without any one-handed typing. Napster, for instance.
- Porn is extremely popular and profitable. Mp3's are also extremely poplular and profitable. The record companies don't like mp3s because they think that even if they used them, they couldn't make any money off of them. Hence, the record companies are figting a silly losing battle.
- People are willing to go through a lot of trouble with the porn banners to get to mp3's. Any company not jumping on this bandwagon is extremely stupid. The potential for both advertisers and mp3's are extraordinary. It should be grasping the attention of both Motown and Madison Ave.
- Law enforcement is too slow and two disinterested to stop this. This is what Al Capone would be doing today if he were alive.
- People today are totally disinterested in ethics and justice. They don't care who's getting ripped off, they don't care how young the girls or boys are, and they don't care that society doesn't approve. People are used to getting ripped off, fucked early, and being hated by society. Nothing to lose, folks, just like those kids in Colorado (Or those gunmen in Armenia, or that guy in Atlanta, or those guys at the post office, or whoever's on the news tonight)...
- The media will gladly repeat any juicy lie or idiot opinion that they are handed. Mp3's encourage porn. Coppermine's better than Athlon. Windows NT is a much better choice than Linux/Unix. Britney Spears has breast implants. Lauryn Hill said she doesn't want white people buying her albums. Harvey Keitel did a bad thing in Nicole Kidman's hair.
- Oh, finally, maybe it's a good new portal strategy. I like having my porn and mp3's in the same place...
I was surfing around and since I ususally hit Blue's - Ars - ABCNEWS - Slashdot in the morning, I saw the link on Blue's and looked forward to reading the article. Then I started waiting for Ars to load. In the meantime I opened another browser and hit ABCNEWS and then Slashdot. I saw the article on here and I thought, "Hey, that's great, they'll get a lot of visitors now". Ars still wasn't loading.
Then the lightbulb came on... goddammmit, I wanted to read Ars today! I thought their servers could handle a lot, but apparently they went from "Apache on a 200-node Beowulf" to "Win98 running PWS while someone's playing Q3Test" performance. Hopefully the article gets mirrored so that I can get my lovin spoonful of Ars sometime today... at least the forums still work...
Well, I DO THAT. I have tracked down apps, I have used the web/search engines to get help. It's been sucessful so far, but the majority of what I need to do on a computer is still impossible for me right now under Linux. It'll take TIME. Most people don't have the time, and I don't right now either. But I WILL get it figured out eventually because I WANT to. My point is, it's way too hard to LEARN. It's like the difference between having a good calculus textbook and a bad one. Windows is like a good one that doesn't go very far into the material. You learn what's there. Linux is like a bad one that is the most COMPLETE calculus reference ever, but it's written in broken english and there's not one single graph or diagram or picture in the whole book... as a matter of fact, it's all ONE CHAPTER run on into each other for 1,000 pages. And the text is small. But if someone could rewrite the textbook and add graphs and diagrams, then it would be universally enjoyable. (Which is why we have Open Source. I'm sure many of the OS programs out there could use a UI overhaul that would make them twice as good) But most people think that all you need to do is add more stuff to learn at the end (and have that written in broken english too). And although some people have had sucess learning calculus from that textbook, that doesn't make me STUPID for getting frustrated with not being able to learn from it easily (or quickly).
I'll admit that I don't have a lot of time to spend on becoming a Linux guru. That said, the time I've spent with it (and I do have a big book too) has yielded very little in progress. Basically, if I see something cool or some blazing tip that helps me on the 'net, then that's how I figure something out. Like the RPM stuff. I tried man RPM but for some reason I gave up when it was 20 screens long (I was tired, I wanted to go to bed for other reasons). So later that week I was browsing, saw an "rpm (options) file" command line for ANOTHER program on the net, and then applied the command to my own file and voila! it worked. Still wouldn't know how to get the programs installed in the directory of MY CHOOSING, but that's a reasonable compromise.
Why does IRC seem to want to be helpful but really isn't... for EVERYTHING?
Bookstore - visited. Freshmeat - Red. (bad pun)
Initially installed Linux to expand horizons. But real world constraints (I needed to burn a CD. I needed to encode an mp3. I needed to do both within the next hour, not a month of relearing everything under linux) prevented me from putting more effort into that.
Finally, there IS a sense of adventure in getting around. But when you're looking for something specific that you need NOW and you're looking at HUNDREDS of directories to see if you can find what you need, then after an HOUR it gets to be tedious and frustrating. If I have a day to do man commands, then I WOULD because that would be very useful and effective for me. But I don't have a day. I usually have fifteen seconds, and by the time I reach this dot . there were only five left. What pains me is that this is all OBVIOUS and certainly understandable, but somehow there's a lot of linux cultists out there that somehow would conclude that I STILL must be either really lazy or really stupid.
Wow. That's how ideas are started...
You know, if they WERE to make an RTFM command, the program should be useful, but it should also be in the style of DOS programs where a lot of them were ridiculously obvious and overbearingly assistive and instructional. While it sounds like a recipie for an annoying and unusable disaster, it would probably be the most popular program since Myst.
Ok, this isn't directly on topic. So sue me.
This guy tried to install Linux. So did I, about 2 months ago. He knew very little about his computer equipment and was somewhat unprepared. I, on the other hand, was intimately familiar with everything in my system and was extremely prepared. At the end of the day, both of us were in the same place... at the ugly prompt. Sure, being ugly isn't a sin, but being useless IS. At that particular junction, I was forced to boot back into Win98 to read e-mail/burn CDs/web surf/type documents/play games. I can do all of those in Windows, but after 2 months I still cannot do all of those things in Linux. (the read email and web surf things were solved when I got PPP to work in Linux - but I just never knew where to look for getting anything else to happen)
Linux is not hard to install. It's actually quite simple if you're well prepared. But it's not nice to learn how to be a Linux power user.
Here's why: In the computer world, there's two kinds of software/UI design: software that's designed by programmers, and software that's designed by professional designers. Linux is the former, Windows is the latter. Windows is much better to look at and deal with, which makes it SEEM easier. Also, everything's easy to find if you know how to look, and in Windows since looking is universally better, finding is also universally better. Finally, there's better tools in Windows for that kind of stuff, tools which are easy and obvious to find. Even though the tools are there in Linux and they are comprehendable, they are damn hard to find and still not entirely as easy to use as their Windows counterparts. Although intelligent programmers who spend hours and hours learning (no one learns how to be a Linux guru in 60 min or even 60 days) are able to get around, most of the humans on the planet don't have the willpower, patience, time, blood, sweat, and tears to put into Linux like the real wizards do. And that's assuming that all humans are as highly intelligent as those big programming brains, which they're unfortunately not. Oh, and anywhere from 5-50 years of intense experience with computers does give some of the linux guys an edge over others.
Naturally, I knew how to change directories, run certain programs, get around X-Windows, etc. But that was all. God knows I had thousands of programs before me in myriad subdirectories, but as I was walking through the directories I felt like a lost child in a store who kept walking into rooms I wasn't supposed to be in. My biggest problem, however, was the lack of a nice centralized place to go to when I needed to do something and wanted to look through the available programs for something to help me.
For example: I had to set up PPP. Didn't know how. Read the HOWTO, but it confused the hell out of me (and I have an exteral modem, so configuring it SHOULD have been trivial). Finally a week later, I heard someone mention linuxconf. Then I used that to get PPP to work, so I downloaded Seti@Home. Didn't know how to unzip/untar/un-rpm it.(I didn't know the specific command, and didn't know where I could find it) That took a week to find out too. Then I did, and couldn't figure out how to run it properly. Another two weeks to figure out it needed a chmod. This is for an easily configured program that runs from the prompt! Imagine what it would be like to try and write CDs? Or if I downloaded source that needed compiling or a kernel patch?
My point? If you show me how to do it, I can figure it out easily. If you don't show me, then I'm not dumb for not knowing. There's too many of you elitist swine out there who think everyone who says they are having a hard time with Linux are against Linux and are the "enemy". I nor the author of the article are the "enemy", yet you damn well treat us like it just because we don't have 50 years to scour our hard drives and man entries for simple commands. Yes, I still want to know how to use it. No, I don't want 50 replies with "go to freshmeat and there's cd writing programs there". Yea there are programs like that on freashmeat. I just don't know which one is best for me. Until I can figure out this stuff easier (not easily, cause a lot of it is a bitch in Windows too) I won't use Linux until I feel comfortable using everything that I need to use that works fine for me in Windows.
This guy who tried to install Linux is ultimately on our side. He wants to learn. You think that he's dumb because he needs help to learn. But he's not. In the end, if he can never get Linux to work like you can, then he at least can probably write better news articles than you can.
But I digress... he represents the next big wave of Linux users. They are going to be OKAY installing it (not without pain, but neither is Windows) but clueless on how to get around in it. RTFM is a useless strategy here because:
1. It's the system that's hard to use and understand (and it does have SERIOUS room for improvement), and RTFM just helps you learn specific things. It doesn't let you "poke around". Well designed tools and tips will help the situation, but it's Unix. It's hard to begin with. Even for geniuses, it takes a while to sink in.
2. How can you RTFM if you can't FTFM? (Find The Fucking Manual)
So, a better way of helping people explore will need to be created. That way, people can look around and figure out what they want (or need) to use rather than need help every time a different situation comes up. Until then, if you want Linux to grow past being a tech fad, then you'll cut out the shitty attitude toward anyone who's not the level of Linux Guru that you are.
If you harbor no malcontent toward those who are seemingly clueless about computers, my apologies for this article... it doesn't apply to you.
You know, I was really looking forward to the 820 chipset. It was supposed to be the heart of my next system. However, Intel took a product that could have been a dominating force in the market (like the BX chipset) and killed it with their corporate marketing pedagogal greedy design decisions for the final product. Rambus was always questionable from day 1, and although it looks to be a viable technology in the long run, I think Intel stuck with it a little too stubbornly even as it faltered. I mean, it's kinda ridiculous for a consumer to pay a $200-$300 premium for new technologies that may not work so well in the short term due to bugs, or that are so far incompatible with anything else, or even that don't possess the performance to justify the cost. This wouldn't be true, though, if Rambus didn't have so many problems and wasn't so expensive. I even figure that with SDRAM prices where they are today, which are extremely high, that perhaps the separation of cost between the RAM technologies would shrink enough for Rambus to be considered a justified investment for a new system. I guess not. This is Intel's bad for holding back on the computer industry with a great chipset just so it can push one friggen product that's late out 'the gate and not so great. And they also failed to push down the price of Rambus too, which is the fatal factor. Alas, no new system for me right now...
If you noticed, there was a quick poll question as to whether or not people should be allowed to overclock their own computers. The results are undoubtedly weighed heavily toward "Yes" because of all the /. traffic.
I looked at the results myself just now, and it was 96% "Yes". Not surprising, although it is surprising that there are 4% who said "No". Apparently these people feel that you should not be able to do things with your own property that are undoubtedly legal and safe (well not for the processor, but has anyone died in a house fire that was started by a P200MMX clocked at 1466 Mhz?) as well as possibly beneficial, just because it voids the warranty and possibly shortens the processor's life about 5 years. Not that anyone with the brains to overclock would be caught dead using 400mhz Celerons in 6 months, overclocked or not. At the time I looked, there were 130+ who voted "No". Those are probably people who were lucky to find the power switch, there's probably 300 more people who are still looking... (scary)
First, how do we know you're not a punk kid as well? I can't imagine that any 40-year old sysadmins with a wife, 2.3 kids, and half a brain cell worth of maturity would watch any MTV at all. There's a ton of 14-21-year olds who watch MTV, though, and if they know anything about Abe then they're probably no better than he is. (not to say that "Abe" who was on MTV correlates at all with an individual named Abe who toured Mexico in a Winnebago)
Second, MTV does us a favor by putting kids like him on TV. He's as normal as you can get today, because there's nothing whimisical and charmed about him like most celebrities. You think Britney Spears is normal? Freddie Prinze Jr.? Brandy? Ricky Martin? Hell no. On the flipside, you've got someone totally unworthy of attention like Jesse Camp. Be glad they put Abe on there for 1/2 hour instead of Jesse.
Finally, you're trolling. If you're gonna say something like this, have something to back it up. He didn't cause that much trouble on Road Rules anyway - it was that other idiot who started throwing punches. Then the other brainless females got bitchy at him for the rest of the trip (and beyond). Abe seemed kinda annoying, granted, but the whole trip could have been handled much differently if the women would have gotten a friggen grip on reality. None of the guys hated him - he tapped the one guy's phone call, and he initially wanted to kill Abe! But then they talked it out and settled it, since no harm was really done. That's how you deal with someone like Abe, not with yelling and fists...
Questions for Abe:
/. people who can't stand this topic - grow up. So what it has nothing to do with REAL computers, it's interesting nonetheless. If you don't like him, or you don't like this interview, then don't write about it. Jesus said it best when he said "You who have done no wrong cast the first stone." (who cares if I mangled the quote, it's cause I don't go to church anymore) Also, don't be as stupid as MTV would want you to be and realize the fact that any of the stuff on that show should be taken with a grain of salt. I hope the moderators come back with a vengeance and deduct points from all these "MTV sux" posts.
If they're good for anything at all, I think that one of the better aspects of "The Real World" and "Road Rules" is that they are about watching and helping young people improve and mature into adults. It seemed that at the beginning you were immature, abrasive, and somewhat anti-social, and that's just about the nicest way for me to say it. Not to say that you were the Antichrist, but some people have a knack for rubbing people the wrong way and they suffer unfair social consequences because of it. It also seemed that one of your personal goals for the experience was to try to become mature and learn how to interact with people better, which I felt was very respectable of you. Did you feel that you achieved any maturity from your Road Rules trip? Do you feel that the Road Rules trip helped you move beyond some of your difficulties with your personal interactions, or was the whole thing such a terrible mess that you went home without any positive social improvement whatsoever? Do you feel today that you still need to work on improving your social interactions with others?
Also, you're a person who had a rough childhood who happens to be good at computers. What are your thoughts on making computers and the Internet accessible to the "financially challenged?" What can people do to make sure that no one misses out on the computer age, including those who are poor and/or homeless?
Finally, do you think that Bunim-Murray purposely casts volatile, disruptive, and downright dangerous people in its shows? Or do you think that they're totally oblivious to any clues that someone might be violent, dirty, offensive, an alcoholic/drug addict, sick, anti-social, destructive, irresponsible, dishonest, highly immature, mentally ill, etc. Seems to me that making normal people live with the worst-of-the-worst is no more like the REAL world than living in an absurdly beautiful and expensive house for free.
Oh and to all you
I guess that all the mp3 and vcd pirates out there on the net don't feel so invincible anymore. From the way I interpreted the story, this guy who was caught was just a regular guy like everyone else doing what a lot of us... ahem, YOU... do regularly. It seems harmless to host an ftp server with a couple hundred mp3's on it until someone gets fleeced for doing it. The worst part is that many of us justify such behavior by saying that the corporations are ripping us off and that the artists benefit rather than lose out. But none of those excuses are going to save this guy from what looks like a hefty fine and possibly jail time. What's this guy gonna tell job interviewers in the future... "it was just an mp3 server?"
please delete the previous post... attached to wrong article
I guess that all the mp3 and vcd pirates out there on the net don't feel so invincible anymore. From the way I interpreted the story, this guy who was caught was just a regular guy like everyone else doing what a lot of us... ahem, YOU... do regularly. It seems harmless to host an ftp server with a couple hundred mp3's on it until someone gets fleeced for doing it. The worst part is that many of us justify such behavior by saying that the corporations are ripping us off and that the artists benefit rather than lose out. But none of those excuses are going to save this guy from what looks like a hefty fine and possibly jail time. What's this guy gonna tell job interviewers in the future... "it was just an mp3 server?"
I used to subscribe to the "Berst Alerts" newsletter a little over a year ago. It ended with me posting a very nasty message to his messageboard and removing myself from the list in disgust.
Here's what I can't stand about Jesse:
- He has a lot of hate for MS, and he's constantly bashing them. It's not like the MS bashing that goes on in geek circles (everything that MS does wrong, everyone's got a slick comment and an open source answer for it). Instead, he just RIPS into them and attacks as if it's a horrendous mud-slinging bout between two incompetent politicians in a local election (well, MS has never said anything about Jesse, which means that they're at least above him). He usually keeps rambling on about it too, forseeing their demise and using opinions and unfounded facts to back up his own ill predictions. He really treats MS as if they were Antichrist Inc. and after a while it gets so grating and ridiculous that it's a subtle form of torture to keep reading his vile spewing columns.
- He's a hypocrite too. He'll bash MS but then write something (grudgingly) about something they're doing good right now. He'll talk about Linux as the MS-killer (that and the DOJ case) but then say "You can get fired for using Linux". Basically he maintains no consistency in his opinions. He's like a little kid who hears something and shouts it out to the schoolyard. Two weeks later he'll hear something totally contradictory and shout that out too (as if it were his own research-based scholarly opinion that he just constructed five minutes ago...)
- He's a moron. Another journalist in the Wide World of Computer Journalists (Who Got Their Jobs Cause They Know How To Get Into MS-Word And Don't Have To Use Manual Typewriters). He's another typical journalist who writes articles that are heavily swayed by personal opinion, who writes what's better to read rather than what's truthful or useful, who will stoop to any level to get the (wrong) scoop or the extra hits on the site, who basically doesn't know what the hell he's talking about half the time.
This guy should be doing the poultry reports for the Iowa Gazette. He's like an anti-Dvorak (and I'll admit that Dvorak is only more intelligent and happens to write things that I agree with more). ZD-Net does have some crap, but they could get rid of a lot of it by dumping this guy.
Hahahah high school. One of the many utter failures of American society. You think that after all those friggen movies about how high school is hell for ANYONE, the media wouldn't dare take the position that outcasts are to blame (everyone is an outcast, by the way... I truly feel sorry for non-heinous athletes who have to be lashed at and called idiots because some of the other ones beat a few kids up).
I was afraid of getting stabbed to death on the first day of freshman year. It was a valid concern considering that I had already been in struggles with public school kids, and a potato-shaped kid from Catholic elementary school usually doesn't get a warm reception in a public high school on "Freshman Friday". I'm exaggerating on the "potato-shaped" description, since I've always been never more than vaguely "not-skinny", but it STILL gets me hell even though I'm rather normal-shaped now! But I digress... I got in a fight almost every other day of high school, which was something I grew accustomed to after a while. Sad, but true. Oh, did I mention I played football in high school and people STILL picked fights? I was blindsided at times, and I had to have the "real" football players cover my ass even though I would have rather handled things on my own and earned some pride. Also, I once had someone call me a nickname that includes the word "urine" right in front of my mother! I got my fair share of victories, but I would have preferred to have not been screwed with at all. That is always unavoidable though.
One victory that felt really good? My underground newspaper. I wrote some very good articles and always bested out the real school newspaper. The principal asked me to start writing articles for the real school newspaper, too bad that the clique club that does the newspaper and yearbook told me to take a hike! I would usually make a very good and relevant point while giving props to the people who were on my side and telling everyone else where to kiss. Of course, I got ROYALLY ABUSED by the immature blabbermouth teachers who didn't like it when I opened my mouth about their contract negotiations and their boycott of all extra help and school activities - "The teachers have let us know that if it's between us and the money, it's the money" Let's see, my part-time guidance counselor destroyed my college applications by being a complete twit, I was one of the top students in my class and was strictly denied all and any scholarships after having won many academic awards and medals for the school, I was falsely accused of cheating(with concrete proof in my favor) MULTIPLE TIMES by the vengeful faculty, I was banned from the library computers less than a month after they were opened just because the librarian FEARED ME (never EVER talked about or did anything CLOSE to hacking or illegal activities), I broke my back for that school doing extracirricular activities without any appreciation whatsoever, I was constantly in the vice principal's office having him apologize to me for having to fight with whichever thug decided to come after me on that particular day, I was publicly ridculed by teachers in front of other students BEHIND MY BACK at times in classes that I wasn't even in, and of course I had to deal with the lovely social system of high school and having to be ostracized as all "from the lowlife town" (two different towns went to my high school, and both are the exact same except mine is looked down upon by the other as scummy) "short", "fat", "geek", "annoying", "troublemaker", "violent", "jock", "fag", (I'm not even close to gay, but as Seinfeld said, "... not that there's anything wrong with that") "chump", "wiseass", "potentially dangerous", "weasel", and last but not least "waterboy". Truth is, none of it made sense because half of them contradict each other and most of them aren't true anyway unless 5'4" is considered "short". So I did what I wanted to do and made the most of the situation. And I had a lot of fun and good memories, even though I also had to deal with the above crap.
Best part? Last day of school, I published a "last edition" of my newspaper that thanked everyone, but gave a special highlighted sincere thanks to everyone who screwed me over! Then, at the end of the day, in a flurry of photocopies, I handed out the REAL last edition. I told the school that I was going to become very rich and successful, come back and buy my hometown, and burn everything to the ground in a fit of hysterical laughter - and then erect a thirty-story statue of myself on the barren landscape. (You know, because we were only a mile from NYC, it would be a rather obvious addition to the NJ skyline as viewed from NYC if I did it) The final words, in big bold letters filling the bottom half of the page? "I'll buy this town, and I'll burn it down!" Of course I wasn't serious (well, at worst metaphorical, considering that I could always try to come back and promote positive change through rebuilding without venagence) but it was satisfying to get it off my chest.
Now they're probably expecting for me to come back with a gun, ESPECIALLY since they're putting my brother through the same bull right now because he's graduating this year. I'm not like that though, and I would rather have all of them see me to become the well-adjusted, successful, happy kind of person that they wish they had all been. That's the best revenge.
Unfortunately, most people aren't like me. If I suddenly cracked one day and lost my aversion to homicide, then I'd be off to a good start by trying to do what those two nutjobs did out in Colorado. Teenagers are put through the same terroristic routine day after day, and they are also very capable of being effective mass murderers, so perhaps we shouldn't try to push them over the edge like that. Perhaps we should try to give some more personal and emotional attention to all the kids out there so that we don't have this problem again. Then again, I said that for the last 5 school shootings too. So, one day my kids will die at school because no one else wanted to listen to me.
Reality check people: today's teenagers and young adults are going to be seriously screwed up when they're running the world. This is as irresponsible to the future as having a nuclear war would be. If you don't start to change things now, there will be no one to help you when some 8-year old kid comes in the nursing home 30 years from now with an automatic rifle and takes you out execution style. I am AFRAID because we are leading the way for this type of violence to become COMMON in this country. You will make people snap, you will all be shocked when all of the taunting and hate and attacks and derision suddenly becomes enough to make people forget about not wanting to murder. Kids are expecially susceptible to making such ill-guided decisions, and yet we treat them the worst! The thing is, it's caused by our society, not by specific people, not by movies or music or video games. We must change society and fix a lot of other problems too... I'm sure that if we do, then this one won't haunt us anymore. But we still run like lemmings toward the cliff. We let the media create a state of panic and fear of computers and rock music, we allow kids to see inappropriate things WITHOUT ANY EXPLANATION OR DISCUSSION (which is the solution, not total censorship), we glamourize drug use, we romanticize violence and evil, we irresponsibly allow the unwatched distribution of powerful deadly weapons, we treat each other very badly, and we can't go more than 10 years without going to war with another country. Among other things. You know what needs to be fixed, stop rationalizing that taking away computers and banning black trenchcoats (I could have wept myself for that girl who cried in the principal's office) is gonna solve the problem. I could hate this country for what people are doing to each other BECAUSE of this tragedy. Like I could expect people to be motivated by this terrible massacre to stop being selfish and start being friendly and trustworthy for a change. Nope, and you will pay for it with the blood of our children. My children. You assholes.