Oh, that's easy. That is so easy.:) Let me break it down nice and simple-like:
I am not a Christian. I am also not Jewish. I follow different Holy Days from "the Sabbath." Therefore, the first four commandments (as posted elsewhere in this thread) are offensive to me when they are portrayed as rules that I, a NON-Christian, am expected to live by.
They've also been used as an excuse to legislate against things that some Christians feel are "sinful" (gambling, consensual sodomy, mind-altering substances, even teaching evolution in schools). I don't like that. It is destructive to the separation of church and state.
So Jon generously stepped in. While his story was a bit far fetched (A priest? Clearly Jon needs more practice with lies.:-), he did a good thing. He didn't teach the kids that you should lie to get what you want. He taught them that their mother's decision was better than the theatres. He taught them a bit of sacrifice (he missed portions of Eyes Wide Shut to help a woman he didn't know). He taught them that a persons moral choices can be independant of society, business, and law.
Exactly. And the whole incident was a wonderful object lesson in why one-size-fits-all morality is so patently silly.
How many of us read Harriet the Spy growing up and/or saw the movie recently? Remember when Ole Golly explains to Harriet that even though you might not want to, sometimes you have to lie? And that certain kinds of lies are worse than others?
Personally, I didn't ask to go to anything R-rated prior to my parents' first offers to take me (to The Last Temptation of Christ, of all things -- IIRC, I was 9 at the time, and we didn't end up going because I didn't want to see it). I started watching R-rated movies on a semi-regular basis when I was 15 or so and in my second year of college. The first R-rated movie I went to see in a theater was The Crying Game. I didn't go to see it because it was rated R and I wanted to be rebellious. I went to see it because I had heard it was a good movie. And it was, though I figured out the "big secret" 20 minutes into the film.
My parents never told me I couldn't read something. Occasionally, one would say "I think you're a bit young to be reading that; why don't you wait a few years?" I only recall this with two books: Cynthia Voigt's Tell Me If the Lovers are Losers (wanted to read it at 11, read it at 14 and am glad I waited -- it would have gone right over my head), and Fahrenheit 451 (asked about it at 10, read it when I was 15).
The best present Dad ever got me (the Christmas I was 15) was the "Celebrate Freedom: Read a Banned Book" shirt, and every single book on the shirt.:)
A more recent example of one-size-fits-all morality falling apart in my life: My boyfriend once overheard his mom having a conversation about "permissive parents" with some of her friends, and saying that she wouldn't let boyfriends/girlfriends stay over at her house even though she didn't care if her kids stayed out all night once they turned 18. Then along comes her college-student son's well-mannered (in her eyes), slightly older, college graduate girlfriend with a semi-professional job and her own apartment. Six months after we started dating, my boyfriend's mother deliberately set up a situation of "oops, looks like AJ's snowed in, we're going to have to let her stay," and didn't blink an eye about us sharing the same bed for the weekend. Apparently, I'm a sufficiently good influence in other ways that us sleeping together has become less relevant. *grin* But so much for that little bit of moral high-ground on her part.
I do find a certain amount of humor in the fact that a movie which satirizes censorship is drawing such ire from would-be censors.
It's sort of like Ray Bradbury's essay at the end of the new version of Fahrenheit 451. Some young readers of his wrote in to comment on the irony of the "bad words" being cut out of a book about censorship! Apparently, this prompted RB to look into the matter, find out the kids were right, and order them to put all the "damns" and "hells" back where he wrote them.:)
I made no such assumption, other than possibly that you were a parent, due to your comment about Katz "losing the respect of all parents who read/."
That said, I don't care HOW old you are. It doesn't change my impression that you seem to be quite firm in the belief that, if left to their own devices, the average 15-year-old (or at least the average 15-year-old male/. reader) would be holding Satanic rituals that contained all Seven Dirty Words and required participants to drink the blood of aborted fetuses from their sexual orgies.
OK, maybe not quite that extreme. But pretty damn close.
The other thing you are ignoring is that not all R-rated movies are created equal. I might or might not let my hypothetical someday-child see the South Park movie at a given age. However, have you noticed that many movies that received R ratings are based on books that are taught in high school or even junior high?
Off the top of my head: Romeo + Juliet, Lord of the Flies, Apocalypse Now, and plenty of others that I just can't remember right now. There are also movies-based-on-books that deliberately toned down aspects of their storyline to avoid an R rating: The Color Purple and Fried Green Tomatoes both immediately come to mind.
I still think that the reasonable compromise to all this is to have signed parental consent on file for minors who wish to see R rated movies: blanket consent and/or consent for specific movies. Wasn't the rating supposed to be "Under 17 not admitted without permission of parent or guardian" originally? *shrug*
Good. Employers like you are exactly the sort I wouldn't want to work for anyhow.
Ah, how quickly you assume what I left off of my resume. One item was work with the campus GLB group, yes. But the other two were a more generalized student-activist group (working out of a state university in NY, which had a wonderful system that could very well get killed by Pataki and co.) and the newly-started-up gaming club.
Ever had to explain to a potential employer that no, you're really not a satanist even though you play AD&D?:P
First of all, the ratings system is FUBAR to begin with. As I recently posted on another thread, Dharma and Greg can roll around making out on the couch before heading off to their bedroom and only get a TVPG rating, but if Ellen merely kisses her girlfriend, it's an automatic TV14. One use of the "F-word," one glimpse of a joint, and a movie becomes PG-13, minimum. One look at a naked female breast (BTW, in my state it's legal for women to go topless, so this is really silly), and the movie gets rated R. Meanwhile, SW:TPM can have all sorts of stuff get blown up and not only stay a PG movie but also be thought of as a perfectly lovely move for kids. BWAH?!
Secondly, any number of serious movies out there get rated R at least; some are NC-17. And some of those movies are ones that my mom would have been perfectly happy to take me to if I had asked, and would have had no problem leaving me off at the theater to see.
My CTY class, full of 13ish-year-olds, needed to see Apocalypse Now for a reason: we were comparing it with the book it was based on, Heart of Darkness. Still, on at least one other campus, someone's parents complained because it was an R-rated movie. As my teacher said, "It's a WAR movie. People are getting injured and killed, and they aren't going to say 'oh golly gee' about it." Ironically, the movie probably got its R rating due to language and not violence.:P
I started college when I was 14. I had to watch R-rated movies for a class on more than one occasion before I turned 17. Fortunately, I was 18 by the time I encountered the NC-17 movie, Wide Sargasso Sea, (wonderful movie BTW), that I had to watch for an English course I was in because we were reading the book as well as Jane Eyre, which it is somewhat based on. Then again, it wouldn't have irrevocably harmed my brain if I had been *gasp* 16 when I saw it. While in college, and still 15, I also went to the $2 theater to see The Crying Game and Three of Hearts, both R-rated movies. Nobody gave me any trouble about getting in.:)
Most kids who have not been extremely sheltered have heard all of the seven dirty words by the time they're 10 or so, and are probably using them at least occasionally shortly thereafter. Even if they don't quite understand the meaning. A family friend's then-9 year old son was suspended for telling his teacher "I want a blow job out of town," when he didn't understand what it meant, but had seen "blow job" written on the bathroom wall and thought it sounded cool. Sheesh.
Which reminds me, again we have a certain play by a certain William Shakespeare that is taught in high schools around the country. BTW, it happens to be chock-full of gang violence, kids disrespecting their elders, the occasional bit of dirty humor, kids (we assume) having sex, and teenage suicide. But It's a Classic, so there's nothing wrong with that. And look at the Bible. It's got every bit of nastiness I can think of in it other than actually using the Seven Dirty Words. But most censorship advocates see NOTHING wrong with the Bible; so what if there's sex and violence, it's the Word of God and must be treated as such. Logic, anyone????
Locally, the silliness started with RHPS, which now won't let kids under 17 in even if they have parental consent, and probably even if they have a parent with them. There go a lot of people's Saturday night fun. *sigh* I know my parents would much rather that I was at RHPS and then the diner afterwards than out partying who-knows-where and ingesting who-knows-what substance.
The rating rules were set in place to keep underage children from seeing things that they probably aren't developed enough to see.
Ahem. By whose standards, exactly?
Kids are allways going to tell the parents it's not that bad. If the parent is in the theater with them, they see just how bad it really is.
My, my. You certainly have a low opinion of teenagers. I'm glad I'm not your daughter. (Then again, since I'm 21, it's a moot point by now.)
Ok, so you just gained the respect of every 15year old male that reads slashdot. You just lost the respect of most of the parents that read/.
I like Katz anyhow, but this made me like him more. And I'm a 21-year-old FEMALE, thank you very much. Again, your low opinion of young people is showing.
And that's actually one of the biggest parts of the problem here. Treat kids like they are jerks, or like they are delicate flowers in need of "protection" from the big bad world (R-rated movies, dirty pictures, books that contain "bad language," availability of condoms, or what have you), and they will consistently live down to your expectations.
Yep, all of us on/. have our "can you BELIEVE this?" stories when it comes to computers. Gods know I've got mine. (The aforementioned co-worker who fell for the BudFrogs hoax and said she'd trust a corporate VP over a bunch of snotty college kids being my favorite example.)
And yes, some people just can't be bothered to think, and they do stupid things. My gripe here is with the "experts" who can't seem to distinguish between someone who is just new to computers and needs to be taught basic concepts (even those which seem ridiculously basic) and flat out can't-be-bothered-to-think stupidity.
For instance, I can understand why someone who has been using the 'net from work and wants to get connected at home doesn't understand about the need for a modem. You don't have to "dial in" at work, generally speaking, after all. It's just there for most of us. I can understand why someone whose main method of net-socialization was (pick one) MUDs, Citadel-based BBSes, or IRC would have trouble transferring command knowledge to the other two; they have very little in common. (Even typing "help" is no help when what you needed to type is "H" or "/help." *grin*) Other people I've talked to sit back and say "how stupid can you be to not understand how that works?" *sigh*
Sure, that's the most publicized thing that some unions can do. But believe it or not, strikes (and lockouts for that matter) are rare and are used as a last resort in a contract dispute.
For that matter, many unions (the one my father was president of, and the unions associated with the university I used to work for are two examples) specifically do not allow their employees to strike. It is part of their contract.
In the case of my father's union, one of the major things they had to do was take the cluebat to management on various technological subjects. The people who were actually having to work with the stuff were in a position to make the decisions, or at least to point out when something made no logical sense.
Case in point: management was trying to get away with not paying extra for a course that is simultaneously taught in a classroom and broadcast via distance-learning technology. Um, right. Never mind that you'll have double the tests to give, papers to grade, etc; you're only teaching the course once, ergo you should only get paid for it once. Nice logic, that.
I do understand that unionizing programmers will be akin to trying to herd cats, and I do understand that there can be severe problems with union management. However, whether or not what gets together is a union per se, these unwilling-to-be-herded cats are going to have to learn to work together eventually, or employers' expectations are going to get less and less realistic.
Erm, not exactly. You see, there are those pesky job applications that you have to fill out that ask what your last 3-4 jobs were and where you went to school. You also have to sign the bottom and certify that "everything is true and complete." This is pretty much what they want in retail, rather than a resume.
They can fire you if they later find out you lied. No joke.
And yes, I am fully aware of how to "tailor" a resume based on what kind of job I am trying to get. Generally, in my case, this is the "censored" vs. "uncensored" versions of my resume -- the "censored" one leaves off the experience I have in leadership roles of various campus groups that "suits" might consider questionable.
I got my current job with the uncensored version. *grin* Note to self: Burn the censored resume and never re-make it.
You're expected to keep the network running, regardless of the changes that are thrown your way or the IEU (Idiot End User, pronounced "eeww") that can't send email.
Classic example of what bothers me about a lot of computer experts, right there. Admittedly, it is irritating to deal with folks who don't understand computers when they just won't listen to you.
However, scattered through this and other/. threads is the implication of "anyone who isn't a [sysadmin/Linux expert/programmer/insert category of your choice here] is an idiot and not worthy of my respect."
Here's a clue, folks. I used to work for an orthodontic school. The department chair is 77 years old, and one of the foremost experts in his particular field (treatment of facial birth defects, especially cleft lip and palate). He's been teaching since the 1950s, written books and journal articles galore, and knows less about computers than I did at the age of five.
Is this man an "idiot"? I hardly think so. People who don't have a high level of proficiency with computers are not stupid, generally speaking. They are either: (a) sufficiently old to have been using typewriters or pen-and-ink for most of their lives, and thus a bit set in their ways; (b) experts in other fields (dentistry, music, early childhood education, what-have-you) who devote a lot of time to their area of expertise and don't have enough left over to become computer gurus; or (c) honestly trying to learn and frustrated by arrogant "experts" who focus on what they are doing wrong and act as if the end-user is wasting the expert's time, not to mention by technology that becomes obsolete practically before it hits the market.
I know it gets frustrating to keep explaining "simple" concepts to someone who doesn't have the same intuitive understanding of computers that most/.ers have. But that doesn't mean it's acceptable to treat them like "idiots."
Hell, by some people's standards, I'm an "idiot." I'm a technical writer, not a programmer.:)
I'm sorry. I don't mean to be rude, but this is the same as every other labor-related story thats cropped up in the last few weeks on here. I bet we see the same B.S. about unions and the same arguments for and against that.
As opposed to the same B.S. about "if you don't like it, leave?";) (Not meant to be a flame, but I do see a lot of those posts.)
In the end though, it boils down to one thing. If you don't like it, quit. As you said, you're making multiples of the national average income for someone your age. You could always go sell clothes at The Gap or something.
False. When I recently found myself unemployed, I applied for that sort of job. Mostly because I just needed to be making money. And never got any calls back. I'm overqualified to be a sales-floor person since I've worked various data-entry-with-some-thought and secretarial jobs, not to mention have a college degree, and I have no supervisory experience so they won't hire me as a manager.
And depending on what sort of market you're in, there may or may not be one of those "other" types of jobs. Admittedly, this kind of treating employees like they have no lives is why I left the bank. (The worst example: 60-hour workweek between Christmas and New Year's, while my then-girlfriend was visiting from out of state, which contributed quite a bit to our breaking up. I know it doesn't sound that bad, but we were very much not getting paid enough, anywhere NEAR enough, to justify this. Try $8.50/hour or so. This was back in 1997; I knew that the closer we got to Y2K the worse it would get. I quit that job as of Christmas Eve 1998, thankfully.)
But as I was saying, depending on where you are and how free you are to move elsewhere, sometimes the "just leave"option is just not viable. Being overqualified for "lesser" jobs can be a serious problem if you try to go that route. Even if the job is only one step down from whatever you're doing at the moment.
Also, changing careers is difficult. When I went to the Job Service office while I was unemployed, they basically started trying to convince me to go back to the bank, when I left the bank at least in part because I don't want to work in the financial industry. (Fortunately, I got this job right before that would've happened.)
Otherwise, words can be defined however someone feels like.
In this particular instance, it matters because a lot of young idealistic folks get attracted to the principles contained in the Communist Manifesto, sign on with some radical organization or another (been there, done that -- the FBI probably has a massive file on me by now), and are told that what they read doesn't matter, it's only the bastardization that occurred thanks to Stalin that has any relevance.
"Communist" becomes a synonym for "opinion that WE the American People disagree with." And then it gets completely meaningless.
No matter what their actual job description is, the person who knows how to fix things when they break will be continually called upon to do so. By everyone. And I do mean continually.
My work-study job was predominantly secretarial/admin. assistant type stuff for a woman who does teacher in-service programs. She's quite intelligent, but knows very little about computers. As part of my "job" on a few different occasions, I got to go to her house and fix her personal computer. Generally, what turned out to be wrong was something fairly simple that was obvious to me, but not to her. (Her idiot ISP had misled her into thinking that 9600 baud was an appropriate speed to attempt to run Netscape on. OOOOOOOPS! Other similar problems had occurred as well.)
There were also the calls from my mother about "how do you get this to work?" She didn't want to ask my father, who knows more about computers than I do, because she didn't want the long technical explanation that she wouldn't understand anyhow, she just wanted it to WORK. I still get those calls.
Even at the other jobs I've held prior to this one, I've been the computer-savvy one and on several occasions had to spend a good piece of my day: explaining that the Budweiser Frogs virus is a hoax (and putting up with a very rude co-worker who said she'd "trust a company vice-president over a bunch of snotty college kids any day." Um, maybe the college kids actually understand computers? No, never! *sigh*), teaching people how to send e-mail, "fixing" various "bugs" directly trace-able to misunderstandings of how the program works, and answering various "how'd you do that?" questions when I had done something like change the type size on icons or the background colors in the CICS screen.
Way to keep me from getting my work done. *grin* And this is 99% end-user stuff. My father, who knows a great deal about how to set up networks, etc. (all self-taught) was really not allowed to have a life. Still isn't, sometimes.
Sometimes I'd go with him. He'd set me up to play games (when I was younger) or get into my Internet account (when I was older), and he'd work on fixing whatever the latest thing to break was. Invariably, we were there for at least an hour later than we were supposed to be. Either the problem would be more complex than he had thought, or someone would see him in the building and start hitting him with questions because they (with good reason) did not trust the actual computer services folks.
But, as far as the "real" tech folk (who have been marginal at best, dangerously incompetent at worst) go at the community college he is a professor at, he's quite unpopular. Things like stumbling across a gaping security hole in the system, pointing it out, and getting reprimanded for trying to poke holes in security. What fun.
The problem is that the faster computers and information get, the more demanding people will become that they STAY that way. And until the industry as a whole has the sense to scream "STOP IT!" in some form or another, this is going to continue. And it is going to continue to get worse. Mad as Mom and I used to get at Dad about this, and much as the stress started to take a toll on his health, I don't think that he was regularly getting only four hours of sleep and/or working 100-hour weeks. (60-80, probably, but not 100.)
I keep hoping that this problem will fade once more people get at least a basic understanding of how systems work, but we have a long way to go before that happens.:(
There's also the small matter of MT going in to help the poor in areas where "population explosion" is a meaningful phrase, while steadfastly maintaining that birth control Is A Sin.
Things like that. I can understand why it would be "controversial" to continue to apply what is essentially a band-aid solution to the problem, even if it is at great personal cost.
*shrug*
For that matter, some of the Catholic saints are not-so-saintly when you THINK about what they did. And the whole "virgin martyr" thing is ridiculous -- if a girl jumped out of a window to avoid being raped today, and died, we'd have sympathy but we wouldn't call her a martyr.:P
This is a mini-How-to for how to flame a/. article:
It helps if the subject line doesn't contain the actual flame. That way, you're less likely to be noticed and marked down by the moderators. Be subtle about this (but ONLY this) part of the flame.
Suggested titles include:
1. If I remember right: 2. Go ahead and flame me, but 3. I disagree, and this is why... 4. No! 5. I don't get it.
Once you're in the body of the message, tell everyone why the article sucks.
"I can't believe you posted this. It sucks, because (use one or more):
1. It's NOT news for nerds! 2. It confuses hackers with crackers. 3. It glorifies cracking/cracking tools. 4. It's a childish attempt at humor. 5. It makes fun of something that is Sacred to Geeks (Star Wars, etc.) 6. It is actively critical of something that is Sacred to Geeks. 7. We've heard way too much about this topic as is; can't you talk about something else? 8. It's knee-jerk liberalism. 9. It's knee-jerk libertarianism. 10. It's full of typos. 11. Andover.net obviously made you post it. 12. You just want to see your name in print! 13. No one CARES. So shut up."
Rant and rave a bit more, and then conclude with:
1. Slashdot is really starting to suck. Remember the good old days? 2. Now I remember why I hate the media. ALL of the media. 3. Fire Jon Katz! 4. I can't believe you people are so clueless.
*grin* (Not that I'm advocating any of the above, mind you...)
Trust me, I was fully aware of the focus of the article. However, the underlying problem here is that until the sensationalized faction war goes away, the REAL problems aren't going to be covered, or will, at best, be buried in articles about Intrusive Government vs. Child Molesters.
If this makes any sense, the real issue here is that the real issues are not being focused on.
... you consider "computer" to be a necessary and therefore unstated modifier of "nerd."
There's a fair amount of "English nerds" (like me) on/. as well. And while JFK Jr may not "matter" to us, the media oversaturation sure as hell does.
The point Katz is trying to make, as I see it, is that over time, technology has made it increasingly easier to saturate the media with non-stories. Meanwhile, "stuff that matters" is getting ignored. THAT matters, in and of itself.
[Disclaimer: I've got my own problems with the Columbine coverage, as those who read my earlier post on the thread are probably aware.]
First, in defense of JonKatz, he was covering an angle of the Columbine tragedy that a lot of people were trying very very hard to ignore.
Secondly, a hell of a lot more than three people died. Third, the perpetrators weren't already celebrities. Fourth, people like Diana Spencer and John F. Kennedy Jr. were only celebrities by marriage and birth respectively.
Over-reported stories about JFK Jr, Princess Di, JonBenet Ramsey, etc. are pure celebrity gossip disguised as news. Over-reported stories about Columbine, about cases like Matthew Shephard's murder, even about something like PanAm 103, are over-reported to draw attention to possible underlying causes of the specific over-reported tragedy.
It does get tiring, yes, and I do get sick of the "How could this have happened HERE?" but there is an underlying nobility of purpose that is just not present in reports of most celebrity deaths. Now, if something useful like MADD and SADD drumming up a lot of publicity after Princess Di's death had happened, that could have crossed the line back over. And there are cases that are a mixture of the two -- deaths of popular entertainers, especially musicians, due to drugs, DWI, or more recently, AIDS, sometimes are symbolized as an awareness of the problem. And this is a good thing.
The coverage of Columbine, especially with all the angles it eventually took, blew the lid off of a lot of problems. Endless coverage of celebrity deaths without much about the underlying cause is just a lot of mental masturbation.
This reminds me of Kurt Cobain's death. A group of students in my Mass Media and Popular Culture class were discussing it (this is right after it happened), and in comes our professor announcing to all and sundry that John Lennon's death was much more meaningful and that how sorry she felt for our generation because we didn't have that kind of hero.
Um, pardon me, but I like Lennon's music much better than Cobain's, anyhow. And Kurt Cobain ain't no cultural icon, folks -- he was arguably a talented musician (though not my style), but he was no hero of mine.
Freddie Mercury's death affected me much more, though he doesn't belong to "my" generation. Queen wasn't exactly popular here post-1981 except among Highlander fans, but because suddenly AIDS is this big trendy thing and is how Mercury died, we get silliness in the same music press that used to hate Queen about how they were kind of cool after all for inspiring Guns N Roses.
That was annoying, sure, but to have the same press (and this time, with the addition of non-music folks) falling all over itself praising Kurt Cobain, who if nothing else hadn't lived long enough to create as extensive a collection of music as Freddie Mercury had, was just ridiculous.
I don't see why it's so necessary to take snapshot "icons" of a generation, anyhow. It's not like they prove anything. Lucille Ball didn't represent my mother's family growing up.
And it's all very sweet to go on and on about Camelot and the end of the era of innocence, but what this ignores is that for many if not most people, the "innocence" had been lost long ago. My parents have stories from their days growing up about mentally ill family members that they had to "hide" from their friends, hard times due to strikes, being told "your parents don't love you because they won't send you to Catholic school," putting up with "dumb Polak" slurs despite being the class valedictorian, etc.
Camelot? Yeah, sure. But what about the masses outside the gates?:P
It's the same thing that (for me) made the Littleton coverage so damned annoying -- "How could this happen here, in our nice white upper-middle-class suburb? We're Nice People! We are the American Dream!"
Feh. America needs to stop dreaming and wake up. The "American Dream" has never once included everyone. At best, it creates isolated pockets of "haves" that promote the illusion that everyone's got it that good. *sigh*
... you see, that wasn't the focus of the article.
I did read the Raytheon part. And I certainly don't like the implications of that.
However, is that where the article was focused? No, it is not. The article was focused on murder threats and kiddieporn on the one hand, and "loss of privacy" on the other hand.
That's what JoeAOL-UsingReader is going to come away with. And that's why I've got a problem with the article. Had it been focused on the Raytheon incident, that would have been another matter. THAT is actually worth focusing on.
Perhaps a compromise solution would be to disallow accessing ISP records for a civil suit?
Of course, and here is where it gets sad, there's another problem:
It's not the "government" that doesn't want us to have any rights, it's the majority of the American population. You think there's any way in this universe that the First Amendment would pass if it were being proposed as law today? "What Communist drivel!" would be the likely response to it.
I'm fully aware that for various reasons the FBI's probably got a file on me (due to my connection with organizations that are "subversive" or perceivable-as-such, and possibly my ex-boyfriend who has ties to the IRA and probably has an even-more-interesting file on HIM lying around in some corner of the FBI).
I'm also fully aware that I held a job in a secured area of a bank, a job that required me to be bonded, with no problem.
I'm not paranoid about the "government" or "law enforcement." Not yet. I AM "paranoid" about the grassroots conspiracy in this country to take away our rights. It's much more of a threat to the not-so-average American, which probably includes most if not all/. readers.
That would be my guess. Especially in an "ISP" full of net-newbies, said net-newbies probably crash their e-mail on a regular basis.
Hell, I've done it on my college account and had to get the sysadmin to do some really weirdoid stuff to get my unread mail back. (Learned some interesting lessons about VMS along the way, but that's another story.)
Personally, I think domains should be more expensive, not less; I like to think about trademark applications, which cost $250 to apply for (and is not refunded if your application is denied). I think it should all be a monopoly and cost about $1000 per.com/.net domain, that would really put an end to cybersquatting.
Ack. That would kind of have sucked back when my local SCA group decided to register a name. Oh wait, it's a.org name. I guess exceptions get somewhat made for those (though it still cost us a pretty chunk of change, we could afford it and decided it was worth doing).
Still, for the small business that has enough expenses, or for the local club that someone doesn't want to register as a non-profit for whatever reason but that still wants its own domain name, it sucks.:)
It won't stop cybersquatting -- it'll merely reduce further the number and type of folks who can afford to do it.
And what of the people who registered trenchcoatmafia.com post-Littleton to make sure that nobody did so for unscrupulous purposes? I don't think they could have afforded the $2000 it would have taken to register trenchcoatmafia.com AND thetrenchcoatmafia.com if things were done your way.:P
Well, you see, there's this other problem with scientific research. It has this interesting tendency to reinforce any bias that might already exist on the part of the scientist or the society that reads (and frequently misinterprets) the scientific research. Phrenology, anyone? Penis envy, how's that for a TRULY inane concept? And more recently, the psychiatry-created epidemic of MPD and "recovered memories" (don't have the link in front of me; go hang out at www.religioustolerance.org if you're interested).
And YES, it is absolutely the best idea to deal with ethical issues head-on. I would certainly not say anything to the contrary. But this is NOT being done, in most cases. You either get one extreme (the inane hoops that have to be jumped through to prove that certain medications are safe, for instance, when it's pretty darn obvious that they are), or you get the other (raising endangered species in captivity and then wondering why there is a problem when reintroducing them to the wild).
One of the biggest problems is that to a lot of people, Science is God. And to a lot of other people, God is Science. Pretty much precludes ANY discussion on moral issues between the two extremes. "All scientific advances are progress and must be encouraged at all costs" vs. "I don't see that in the Bible, so it must be evil."
The chances of a rational ethical debate in this society at large are almost nil, I fear. [And going with the off-topic bit: Yes, I agree that the gay community segment that is supporting genetic research is shooting itself in the proverbial foot. However, given that some people will Only Listen To Science, it's all that segment thinks it has to go on.]
I suppose this is one issue where the questions are more valuable than the answers, but do you really believe that the majority of the population is going to bother to think this through rather than knee-jerking one way or another? *wry smile*
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, that's easy. That is so easy. :) Let me break it down nice and simple-like:
I am not a Christian. I am also not Jewish. I follow different Holy Days from "the Sabbath." Therefore, the first four commandments (as posted elsewhere in this thread) are offensive to me when they are portrayed as rules that I, a NON-Christian, am expected to live by.
They've also been used as an excuse to legislate against things that some Christians feel are "sinful" (gambling, consensual sodomy, mind-altering substances, even teaching evolution in schools). I don't like that. It is destructive to the separation of church and state.
Is everyone clear on this now?
So Jon generously stepped in. While his story was a bit far fetched (A priest? Clearly Jon needs more practice with lies. :-), he did a good thing. He didn't teach the kids that you should lie to get what you want. He taught them that their mother's decision was better than the theatres. He taught them a bit of sacrifice (he missed portions of Eyes Wide Shut to help a woman he didn't know). He taught them that a persons moral choices can be independant of society, business, and law.
:)
Exactly. And the whole incident was a wonderful object lesson in why one-size-fits-all morality is so patently silly.
How many of us read Harriet the Spy growing up and/or saw the movie recently? Remember when Ole Golly explains to Harriet that even though you might not want to, sometimes you have to lie? And that certain kinds of lies are worse than others?
Personally, I didn't ask to go to anything R-rated prior to my parents' first offers to take me (to The Last Temptation of Christ, of all things -- IIRC, I was 9 at the time, and we didn't end up going because I didn't want to see it). I started watching R-rated movies on a semi-regular basis when I was 15 or so and in my second year of college. The first R-rated movie I went to see in a theater was The Crying Game. I didn't go to see it because it was rated R and I wanted to be rebellious. I went to see it because I had heard it was a good movie. And it was, though I figured out the "big secret" 20 minutes into the film.
My parents never told me I couldn't read something. Occasionally, one would say "I think you're a bit young to be reading that; why don't you wait a few years?" I only recall this with two books: Cynthia Voigt's Tell Me If the Lovers are Losers (wanted to read it at 11, read it at 14 and am glad I waited -- it would have gone right over my head), and Fahrenheit 451 (asked about it at 10, read it when I was 15).
The best present Dad ever got me (the Christmas I was 15) was the "Celebrate Freedom: Read a Banned Book" shirt, and every single book on the shirt.
A more recent example of one-size-fits-all morality falling apart in my life: My boyfriend once overheard his mom having a conversation about "permissive parents" with some of her friends, and saying that she wouldn't let boyfriends/girlfriends stay over at her house even though she didn't care if her kids stayed out all night once they turned 18. Then along comes her college-student son's well-mannered (in her eyes), slightly older, college graduate girlfriend with a semi-professional job and her own apartment. Six months after we started dating, my boyfriend's mother deliberately set up a situation of "oops, looks like AJ's snowed in, we're going to have to let her stay," and didn't blink an eye about us sharing the same bed for the weekend. Apparently, I'm a sufficiently good influence in other ways that us sleeping together has become less relevant. *grin* But so much for that little bit of moral high-ground on her part.
I do find a certain amount of humor in the fact that a movie which satirizes censorship is drawing such ire from would-be censors.
It's sort of like Ray Bradbury's essay at the end of the new version of Fahrenheit 451. Some young readers of his wrote in to comment on the irony of the "bad words" being cut out of a book about censorship! Apparently, this prompted RB to look into the matter, find out the kids were right, and order them to put all the "damns" and "hells" back where he wrote them.
I made no such assumption, other than possibly that you were a parent, due to your comment about Katz "losing the respect of all parents who read
That said, I don't care HOW old you are. It doesn't change my impression that you seem to be quite firm in the belief that, if left to their own devices, the average 15-year-old (or at least the average 15-year-old male
OK, maybe not quite that extreme. But pretty damn close.
The other thing you are ignoring is that not all R-rated movies are created equal. I might or might not let my hypothetical someday-child see the South Park movie at a given age. However, have you noticed that many movies that received R ratings are based on books that are taught in high school or even junior high?
Off the top of my head: Romeo + Juliet, Lord of the Flies, Apocalypse Now, and plenty of others that I just can't remember right now. There are also movies-based-on-books that deliberately toned down aspects of their storyline to avoid an R rating: The Color Purple and Fried Green Tomatoes both immediately come to mind.
I still think that the reasonable compromise to all this is to have signed parental consent on file for minors who wish to see R rated movies: blanket consent and/or consent for specific movies. Wasn't the rating supposed to be "Under 17 not admitted without permission of parent or guardian" originally? *shrug*
Good. Employers like you are exactly the sort I wouldn't want to work for anyhow.
Ah, how quickly you assume what I left off of my resume. One item was work with the campus GLB group, yes. But the other two were a more generalized student-activist group (working out of a state university in NY, which had a wonderful system that could very well get killed by Pataki and co.) and the newly-started-up gaming club.
Ever had to explain to a potential employer that no, you're really not a satanist even though you play AD&D?
*siiiiiiiiiiigh*
OK, here goes:
[WARNING: this post is written in Rant Mode.]
First of all, the ratings system is FUBAR to begin with. As I recently posted on another thread, Dharma and Greg can roll around making out on the couch before heading off to their bedroom and only get a TVPG rating, but if Ellen merely kisses her girlfriend, it's an automatic TV14. One use of the "F-word," one glimpse of a joint, and a movie becomes PG-13, minimum. One look at a naked female breast (BTW, in my state it's legal for women to go topless, so this is really silly), and the movie gets rated R. Meanwhile, SW:TPM can have all sorts of stuff get blown up and not only stay a PG movie but also be thought of as a perfectly lovely move for kids. BWAH?!
Secondly, any number of serious movies out there get rated R at least; some are NC-17. And some of those movies are ones that my mom would have been perfectly happy to take me to if I had asked, and would have had no problem leaving me off at the theater to see.
My CTY class, full of 13ish-year-olds, needed to see Apocalypse Now for a reason: we were comparing it with the book it was based on, Heart of Darkness. Still, on at least one other campus, someone's parents complained because it was an R-rated movie. As my teacher said, "It's a WAR movie. People are getting injured and killed, and they aren't going to say 'oh golly gee' about it." Ironically, the movie probably got its R rating due to language and not violence.
I started college when I was 14. I had to watch R-rated movies for a class on more than one occasion before I turned 17. Fortunately, I was 18 by the time I encountered the NC-17 movie, Wide Sargasso Sea, (wonderful movie BTW), that I had to watch for an English course I was in because we were reading the book as well as Jane Eyre, which it is somewhat based on. Then again, it wouldn't have irrevocably harmed my brain if I had been *gasp* 16 when I saw it. While in college, and still 15, I also went to the $2 theater to see The Crying Game and Three of Hearts, both R-rated movies. Nobody gave me any trouble about getting in.
Most kids who have not been extremely sheltered have heard all of the seven dirty words by the time they're 10 or so, and are probably using them at least occasionally shortly thereafter. Even if they don't quite understand the meaning. A family friend's then-9 year old son was suspended for telling his teacher "I want a blow job out of town," when he didn't understand what it meant, but had seen "blow job" written on the bathroom wall and thought it sounded cool. Sheesh.
Which reminds me, again we have a certain play by a certain William Shakespeare that is taught in high schools around the country. BTW, it happens to be chock-full of gang violence, kids disrespecting their elders, the occasional bit of dirty humor, kids (we assume) having sex, and teenage suicide. But It's a Classic, so there's nothing wrong with that. And look at the Bible. It's got every bit of nastiness I can think of in it other than actually using the Seven Dirty Words. But most censorship advocates see NOTHING wrong with the Bible; so what if there's sex and violence, it's the Word of God and must be treated as such. Logic, anyone????
Locally, the silliness started with RHPS, which now won't let kids under 17 in even if they have parental consent, and probably even if they have a parent with them. There go a lot of people's Saturday night fun. *sigh* I know my parents would much rather that I was at RHPS and then the diner afterwards than out partying who-knows-where and ingesting who-knows-what substance.
Stupid. VERY stupid.
The rating rules were set in place to keep underage children from seeing things that they probably aren't developed enough to see.
Ahem. By whose standards, exactly?
Kids are allways going to tell the parents it's not that bad. If the parent is in the theater with them, they see just how bad it really is.
My, my. You certainly have a low opinion of teenagers. I'm glad I'm not your daughter. (Then again, since I'm 21, it's a moot point by now.)
Ok, so you just gained the respect of every 15year old male that reads slashdot. You just lost the respect of most of the parents that read
I like Katz anyhow, but this made me like him more. And I'm a 21-year-old FEMALE, thank you very much. Again, your low opinion of young people is showing.
And that's actually one of the biggest parts of the problem here. Treat kids like they are jerks, or like they are delicate flowers in need of "protection" from the big bad world (R-rated movies, dirty pictures, books that contain "bad language," availability of condoms, or what have you), and they will consistently live down to your expectations.
Yep, all of us on
And yes, some people just can't be bothered to think, and they do stupid things. My gripe here is with the "experts" who can't seem to distinguish between someone who is just new to computers and needs to be taught basic concepts (even those which seem ridiculously basic) and flat out can't-be-bothered-to-think stupidity.
For instance, I can understand why someone who has been using the 'net from work and wants to get connected at home doesn't understand about the need for a modem. You don't have to "dial in" at work, generally speaking, after all. It's just there for most of us. I can understand why someone whose main method of net-socialization was (pick one) MUDs, Citadel-based BBSes, or IRC would have trouble transferring command knowledge to the other two; they have very little in common. (Even typing "help" is no help when what you needed to type is "H" or "/help." *grin*) Other people I've talked to sit back and say "how stupid can you be to not understand how that works?" *sigh*
Sure, that's the most publicized thing that some unions can do. But believe it or not, strikes (and lockouts for that matter) are rare and are used as a last resort in a contract dispute.
For that matter, many unions (the one my father was president of, and the unions associated with the university I used to work for are two examples) specifically do not allow their employees to strike. It is part of their contract.
In the case of my father's union, one of the major things they had to do was take the cluebat to management on various technological subjects. The people who were actually having to work with the stuff were in a position to make the decisions, or at least to point out when something made no logical sense.
Case in point: management was trying to get away with not paying extra for a course that is simultaneously taught in a classroom and broadcast via distance-learning technology. Um, right. Never mind that you'll have double the tests to give, papers to grade, etc; you're only teaching the course once, ergo you should only get paid for it once. Nice logic, that.
I do understand that unionizing programmers will be akin to trying to herd cats, and I do understand that there can be severe problems with union management. However, whether or not what gets together is a union per se, these unwilling-to-be-herded cats are going to have to learn to work together eventually, or employers' expectations are going to get less and less realistic.
Erm, not exactly. You see, there are those pesky job applications that you have to fill out that ask what your last 3-4 jobs were and where you went to school. You also have to sign the bottom and certify that "everything is true and complete." This is pretty much what they want in retail, rather than a resume.
They can fire you if they later find out you lied. No joke.
And yes, I am fully aware of how to "tailor" a resume based on what kind of job I am trying to get. Generally, in my case, this is the "censored" vs. "uncensored" versions of my resume -- the "censored" one leaves off the experience I have in leadership roles of various campus groups that "suits" might consider questionable.
I got my current job with the uncensored version. *grin* Note to self: Burn the censored resume and never re-make it.
You're expected to keep the network running, regardless of the changes that are thrown your way or the IEU (Idiot End User, pronounced "eeww") that can't send email.
/. threads is the implication of "anyone who isn't a [sysadmin/Linux expert/programmer/insert category of your choice here] is an idiot and not worthy of my respect."
/.ers have. But that doesn't mean it's acceptable to treat them like "idiots."
:)
Classic example of what bothers me about a lot of computer experts, right there. Admittedly, it is irritating to deal with folks who don't understand computers when they just won't listen to you.
However, scattered through this and other
Here's a clue, folks. I used to work for an orthodontic school. The department chair is 77 years old, and one of the foremost experts in his particular field (treatment of facial birth defects, especially cleft lip and palate). He's been teaching since the 1950s, written books and journal articles galore, and knows less about computers than I did at the age of five.
Is this man an "idiot"? I hardly think so. People who don't have a high level of proficiency with computers are not stupid, generally speaking. They are either: (a) sufficiently old to have been using typewriters or pen-and-ink for most of their lives, and thus a bit set in their ways; (b) experts in other fields (dentistry, music, early childhood education, what-have-you) who devote a lot of time to their area of expertise and don't have enough left over to become computer gurus; or (c) honestly trying to learn and frustrated by arrogant "experts" who focus on what they are doing wrong and act as if the end-user is wasting the expert's time, not to mention by technology that becomes obsolete practically before it hits the market.
I know it gets frustrating to keep explaining "simple" concepts to someone who doesn't have the same intuitive understanding of computers that most
Hell, by some people's standards, I'm an "idiot." I'm a technical writer, not a programmer.
*steps off soapbox*
I'm sorry. I don't mean to be rude, but this is the same as every other labor-related story thats cropped up in the last few weeks on here. I bet we see the same B.S. about unions and the same arguments for and against that.
;) (Not meant to be a flame, but I do see a lot of those posts.)
As opposed to the same B.S. about "if you don't like it, leave?"
In the end though, it boils down to one thing. If you don't like it, quit. As you said, you're making multiples of the national average income for someone your age. You could always go sell clothes at The Gap or something.
False. When I recently found myself unemployed, I applied for that sort of job. Mostly because I just needed to be making money. And never got any calls back. I'm overqualified to be a sales-floor person since I've worked various data-entry-with-some-thought and secretarial jobs, not to mention have a college degree, and I have no supervisory experience so they won't hire me as a manager.
And depending on what sort of market you're in, there may or may not be one of those "other" types of jobs. Admittedly, this kind of treating employees like they have no lives is why I left the bank. (The worst example: 60-hour workweek between Christmas and New Year's, while my then-girlfriend was visiting from out of state, which contributed quite a bit to our breaking up. I know it doesn't sound that bad, but we were very much not getting paid enough, anywhere NEAR enough, to justify this. Try $8.50/hour or so. This was back in 1997; I knew that the closer we got to Y2K the worse it would get. I quit that job as of Christmas Eve 1998, thankfully.)
But as I was saying, depending on where you are and how free you are to move elsewhere, sometimes the "just leave"option is just not viable. Being overqualified for "lesser" jobs can be a serious problem if you try to go that route. Even if the job is only one step down from whatever you're doing at the moment.
Also, changing careers is difficult. When I went to the Job Service office while I was unemployed, they basically started trying to convince me to go back to the bank, when I left the bank at least in part because I don't want to work in the financial industry. (Fortunately, I got this job right before that would've happened.)
Like I said, it's just not that simple.
Otherwise, words can be defined however someone feels like.
In this particular instance, it matters because a lot of young idealistic folks get attracted to the principles contained in the Communist Manifesto, sign on with some radical organization or another (been there, done that -- the FBI probably has a massive file on me by now), and are told that what they read doesn't matter, it's only the bastardization that occurred thanks to Stalin that has any relevance.
"Communist" becomes a synonym for "opinion that WE the American People disagree with." And then it gets completely meaningless.
No matter what their actual job description is, the person who knows how to fix things when they break will be continually called upon to do so. By everyone. And I do mean continually.
My work-study job was predominantly secretarial/admin. assistant type stuff for a woman who does teacher in-service programs. She's quite intelligent, but knows very little about computers. As part of my "job" on a few different occasions, I got to go to her house and fix her personal computer. Generally, what turned out to be wrong was something fairly simple that was obvious to me, but not to her. (Her idiot ISP had misled her into thinking that 9600 baud was an appropriate speed to attempt to run Netscape on. OOOOOOOPS! Other similar problems had occurred as well.)
There were also the calls from my mother about "how do you get this to work?" She didn't want to ask my father, who knows more about computers than I do, because she didn't want the long technical explanation that she wouldn't understand anyhow, she just wanted it to WORK. I still get those calls.
Even at the other jobs I've held prior to this one, I've been the computer-savvy one and on several occasions had to spend a good piece of my day: explaining that the Budweiser Frogs virus is a hoax (and putting up with a very rude co-worker who said she'd "trust a company vice-president over a bunch of snotty college kids any day." Um, maybe the college kids actually understand computers? No, never! *sigh*), teaching people how to send e-mail, "fixing" various "bugs" directly trace-able to misunderstandings of how the program works, and answering various "how'd you do that?" questions when I had done something like change the type size on icons or the background colors in the CICS screen.
Way to keep me from getting my work done. *grin* And this is 99% end-user stuff. My father, who knows a great deal about how to set up networks, etc. (all self-taught) was really not allowed to have a life. Still isn't, sometimes.
Sometimes I'd go with him. He'd set me up to play games (when I was younger) or get into my Internet account (when I was older), and he'd work on fixing whatever the latest thing to break was. Invariably, we were there for at least an hour later than we were supposed to be. Either the problem would be more complex than he had thought, or someone would see him in the building and start hitting him with questions because they (with good reason) did not trust the actual computer services folks.
But, as far as the "real" tech folk (who have been marginal at best, dangerously incompetent at worst) go at the community college he is a professor at, he's quite unpopular. Things like stumbling across a gaping security hole in the system, pointing it out, and getting reprimanded for trying to poke holes in security. What fun.
The problem is that the faster computers and information get, the more demanding people will become that they STAY that way. And until the industry as a whole has the sense to scream "STOP IT!" in some form or another, this is going to continue. And it is going to continue to get worse. Mad as Mom and I used to get at Dad about this, and much as the stress started to take a toll on his health, I don't think that he was regularly getting only four hours of sleep and/or working 100-hour weeks. (60-80, probably, but not 100.)
I keep hoping that this problem will fade once more people get at least a basic understanding of how systems work, but we have a long way to go before that happens.
There's also the small matter of MT going in to help the poor in areas where "population explosion" is a meaningful phrase, while steadfastly maintaining that birth control Is A Sin.
Things like that. I can understand why it would be "controversial" to continue to apply what is essentially a band-aid solution to the problem, even if it is at great personal cost.
*shrug*
For that matter, some of the Catholic saints are not-so-saintly when you THINK about what they did. And the whole "virgin martyr" thing is ridiculous -- if a girl jumped out of a window to avoid being raped today, and died, we'd have sympathy but we wouldn't call her a martyr.
This is a mini-How-to for how to flame a
It helps if the subject line doesn't contain the actual flame. That way, you're less likely to be noticed and marked down by the moderators. Be subtle about this (but ONLY this) part of the flame.
Suggested titles include:
1. If I remember right:
2. Go ahead and flame me, but
3. I disagree, and this is why...
4. No!
5. I don't get it.
Once you're in the body of the message, tell everyone why the article sucks.
"I can't believe you posted this. It sucks, because (use one or more):
1. It's NOT news for nerds!
2. It confuses hackers with crackers.
3. It glorifies cracking/cracking tools.
4. It's a childish attempt at humor.
5. It makes fun of something that is Sacred to Geeks (Star Wars, etc.)
6. It is actively critical of something that is Sacred to Geeks.
7. We've heard way too much about this topic as is; can't you talk about something else?
8. It's knee-jerk liberalism.
9. It's knee-jerk libertarianism.
10. It's full of typos.
11. Andover.net obviously made you post it.
12. You just want to see your name in print!
13. No one CARES. So shut up."
Rant and rave a bit more, and then conclude with:
1. Slashdot is really starting to suck. Remember the good old days?
2. Now I remember why I hate the media. ALL of the media.
3. Fire Jon Katz!
4. I can't believe you people are so clueless.
*grin* (Not that I'm advocating any of the above, mind you
Trust me, I was fully aware of the focus of the article. However, the underlying problem here is that until the sensationalized faction war goes away, the REAL problems aren't going to be covered, or will, at best, be buried in articles about Intrusive Government vs. Child Molesters.
If this makes any sense, the real issue here is that the real issues are not being focused on.
:)
... you consider "computer" to be a necessary and therefore unstated modifier of "nerd."
There's a fair amount of "English nerds" (like me) on
The point Katz is trying to make, as I see it, is that over time, technology has made it increasingly easier to saturate the media with non-stories. Meanwhile, "stuff that matters" is getting ignored. THAT matters, in and of itself.
[Disclaimer: I've got my own problems with the Columbine coverage, as those who read my earlier post on the thread are probably aware.]
First, in defense of JonKatz, he was covering an angle of the Columbine tragedy that a lot of people were trying very very hard to ignore.
Secondly, a hell of a lot more than three people died. Third, the perpetrators weren't already celebrities. Fourth, people like Diana Spencer and John F. Kennedy Jr. were only celebrities by marriage and birth respectively.
Over-reported stories about JFK Jr, Princess Di, JonBenet Ramsey, etc. are pure celebrity gossip disguised as news. Over-reported stories about Columbine, about cases like Matthew Shephard's murder, even about something like PanAm 103, are over-reported to draw attention to possible underlying causes of the specific over-reported tragedy.
It does get tiring, yes, and I do get sick of the "How could this have happened HERE?" but there is an underlying nobility of purpose that is just not present in reports of most celebrity deaths. Now, if something useful like MADD and SADD drumming up a lot of publicity after Princess Di's death had happened, that could have crossed the line back over. And there are cases that are a mixture of the two -- deaths of popular entertainers, especially musicians, due to drugs, DWI, or more recently, AIDS, sometimes are symbolized as an awareness of the problem. And this is a good thing.
The coverage of Columbine, especially with all the angles it eventually took, blew the lid off of a lot of problems. Endless coverage of celebrity deaths without much about the underlying cause is just a lot of mental masturbation.
This reminds me of Kurt Cobain's death. A group of students in my Mass Media and Popular Culture class were discussing it (this is right after it happened), and in comes our professor announcing to all and sundry that John Lennon's death was much more meaningful and that how sorry she felt for our generation because we didn't have that kind of hero.
Um, pardon me, but I like Lennon's music much better than Cobain's, anyhow. And Kurt Cobain ain't no cultural icon, folks -- he was arguably a talented musician (though not my style), but he was no hero of mine.
Freddie Mercury's death affected me much more, though he doesn't belong to "my" generation. Queen wasn't exactly popular here post-1981 except among Highlander fans, but because suddenly AIDS is this big trendy thing and is how Mercury died, we get silliness in the same music press that used to hate Queen about how they were kind of cool after all for inspiring Guns N Roses.
That was annoying, sure, but to have the same press (and this time, with the addition of non-music folks) falling all over itself praising Kurt Cobain, who if nothing else hadn't lived long enough to create as extensive a collection of music as Freddie Mercury had, was just ridiculous.
I don't see why it's so necessary to take snapshot "icons" of a generation, anyhow. It's not like they prove anything. Lucille Ball didn't represent my mother's family growing up.
And it's all very sweet to go on and on about Camelot and the end of the era of innocence, but what this ignores is that for many if not most people, the "innocence" had been lost long ago. My parents have stories from their days growing up about mentally ill family members that they had to "hide" from their friends, hard times due to strikes, being told "your parents don't love you because they won't send you to Catholic school," putting up with "dumb Polak" slurs despite being the class valedictorian, etc.
Camelot? Yeah, sure. But what about the masses outside the gates?
It's the same thing that (for me) made the Littleton coverage so damned annoying -- "How could this happen here, in our nice white upper-middle-class suburb? We're Nice People! We are the American Dream!"
Feh. America needs to stop dreaming and wake up. The "American Dream" has never once included everyone. At best, it creates isolated pockets of "haves" that promote the illusion that everyone's got it that good. *sigh*
... you see, that wasn't the focus of the article.
I did read the Raytheon part. And I certainly don't like the implications of that.
However, is that where the article was focused? No, it is not. The article was focused on murder threats and kiddieporn on the one hand, and "loss of privacy" on the other hand.
That's what JoeAOL-UsingReader is going to come away with. And that's why I've got a problem with the article. Had it been focused on the Raytheon incident, that would have been another matter. THAT is actually worth focusing on.
Perhaps a compromise solution would be to disallow accessing ISP records for a civil suit?
*shrug*
Of course, and here is where it gets sad, there's another problem:
It's not the "government" that doesn't want us to have any rights, it's the majority of the American population. You think there's any way in this universe that the First Amendment would pass if it were being proposed as law today? "What Communist drivel!" would be the likely response to it.
I'm fully aware that for various reasons the FBI's probably got a file on me (due to my connection with organizations that are "subversive" or perceivable-as-such, and possibly my ex-boyfriend who has ties to the IRA and probably has an even-more-interesting file on HIM lying around in some corner of the FBI).
I'm also fully aware that I held a job in a secured area of a bank, a job that required me to be bonded, with no problem.
I'm not paranoid about the "government" or "law enforcement." Not yet. I AM "paranoid" about the grassroots conspiracy in this country to take away our rights. It's much more of a threat to the not-so-average American, which probably includes most if not all
That would be my guess. Especially in an "ISP" full of net-newbies, said net-newbies probably crash their e-mail on a regular basis.
Hell, I've done it on my college account and had to get the sysadmin to do some really weirdoid stuff to get my unread mail back. (Learned some interesting lessons about VMS along the way, but that's another story.)
Personally, I think domains should be more expensive, not less; I like to think about trademark applications, which cost $250 to apply for (and is not refunded if your application is denied). I think it should all be a monopoly and cost about $1000 per .com/.net domain, that would really put an end to cybersquatting.
.org name. I guess exceptions get somewhat made for those (though it still cost us a pretty chunk of change, we could afford it and decided it was worth doing).
:)
:P
Ack. That would kind of have sucked back when my local SCA group decided to register a name. Oh wait, it's a
Still, for the small business that has enough expenses, or for the local club that someone doesn't want to register as a non-profit for whatever reason but that still wants its own domain name, it sucks.
It won't stop cybersquatting -- it'll merely reduce further the number and type of folks who can afford to do it.
And what of the people who registered trenchcoatmafia.com post-Littleton to make sure that nobody did so for unscrupulous purposes? I don't think they could have afforded the $2000 it would have taken to register trenchcoatmafia.com AND thetrenchcoatmafia.com if things were done your way.
Well, you see, there's this other problem with scientific research. It has this interesting tendency to reinforce any bias that might already exist on the part of the scientist or the society that reads (and frequently misinterprets) the scientific research. Phrenology, anyone? Penis envy, how's that for a TRULY inane concept? And more recently, the psychiatry-created epidemic of MPD and "recovered memories" (don't have the link in front of me; go hang out at www.religioustolerance.org if you're interested).
And YES, it is absolutely the best idea to deal with ethical issues head-on. I would certainly not say anything to the contrary. But this is NOT being done, in most cases. You either get one extreme (the inane hoops that have to be jumped through to prove that certain medications are safe, for instance, when it's pretty darn obvious that they are), or you get the other (raising endangered species in captivity and then wondering why there is a problem when reintroducing them to the wild).
One of the biggest problems is that to a lot of people, Science is God. And to a lot of other people, God is Science. Pretty much precludes ANY discussion on moral issues between the two extremes. "All scientific advances are progress and must be encouraged at all costs" vs. "I don't see that in the Bible, so it must be evil."
The chances of a rational ethical debate in this society at large are almost nil, I fear. [And going with the off-topic bit: Yes, I agree that the gay community segment that is supporting genetic research is shooting itself in the proverbial foot. However, given that some people will Only Listen To Science, it's all that segment thinks it has to go on.]
I suppose this is one issue where the questions are more valuable than the answers, but do you really believe that the majority of the population is going to bother to think this through rather than knee-jerking one way or another? *wry smile*