This is a bunch of marketing hype. The Pistols have reunited and performed together several times in the last 10 or 11 years. In fact, they are about to have another reunion tour this fall. In '96 it was the Filthy Lucre tour or some such thing and sometime in 2002 or 2003 they had some other tour - the Piss Off tour, I think it was called. In addition, it's just re-recording a track they already originally recorded. It's not like they are about to release an actual new song. Nothing to see here, move along
Aren't people more interested in a candidate who appreciates intellectualism and reasoning? After the last 8 years, I'd be ecstatic with a person from either party who actually values reason and reasoning rather than empty ideological-driven solutions that have almost nothing to do with the overwhelmingly accepted perception of truth.
I'm surprised how many people here have such a narrow scope of reference and even more-so by those who start rushing toward candidates, without a shred of recognition for the inconsistency and incompatibility of their various postions, who represent an ideological mishmash of populism, xenophobia, anti-government, and pro-statist positions.
Here's another way to think about it - the government wants to auction the broadcasters' old analog TV spectrum. The government is composed of politicians. Politicians need large donations which come from owners and executives of large businesses as well as PACs/lobbyists who represent the interests of these same owners and executives but in collective form. The politicians use this money to buy TV ads (as well as assorted other activities) to get elected/re-elected. The people and PACs who gave the candidate money expect the candidate to support their political and business interests. The politicians want to keep their donors happy, they will need more money one day, but sometimes the donors' interests conflict. Even worse for the politicians, sometimes the interests of their constituency also conflict with those of their donors. Politicians hate this. Politicians have a pathological need to be liked, get deferential treatment, go on junkets, hang out at cocktail parties, and sleep with women (or sometimes men) other than their wives. Choosing between donors or choosing between donors and voters is invariably going to cost money or votes. So, what's a politician to do? Spend some government money and make everyone happy. They provide a subsidy so the voters can buy a tuner converter, which will also put some money into the hands of the electronic manufacturers and electronic stores. The broadcasters are happy because they don't have to worry about losing ratings and they can shut down their analog transmitters. The politicians are happy because they made everyone happy and they can point to the money made from reclaiming and auctioning off the old analog broadcasting spectrum. Any criticism about the vouchers will be answered with all the money made from the auction. Everyone's happy
1. go to college and spend as many spare moments ingratiating yourself to the faculty that manage the computer labs and servers. volunteer to help with everything, including wiring. get into a position where your one of the student administrators of the campus network - the best experience you could possibly get. chances are you'll be involved in administering a network larger in size or scope than almost anything you'll come across in the "real" world. this is the best route for more reasons than I care to explain
2. Interview at every possible opening and hope you get that one lucky shot. improve your odds by building up your skills and familiarity with network set-ups and issues by creating a complex home network complete with a network firewall; dns, mail servers, mixed environment of linux, freebsd, solaris, windows, etc. Spend free hours mastering your shell and the command line, compiling software, getting familiar with scripting languages such as Perl, experimenting with goofy set-ups, and writing shell scripts, etc. It's no where near running an advanced network but it will familiarize you with terminology, techniques, jargon, etc. Sounding like you know what your talking about is an early part of the interview process. Later one or some of the engineers may talk to you. When you move from HR people to real engineers, don't lie or try to bullshit your way your way through the interview - they'll know immediately and your done. They know they are going to have to train a new guy, to some extent, anyway since every network is unique. They will be impressed if you've developed a bedrock of basic network knowledge especially on your own time in your own place. They probably did the same thing when they were teenagers and/or in college and will relate. The odds of this are low except at low paying jobs, places with poor working conditions (whatever constitutes poor working conditions), or places that have bad managers who purposely hire people the manager isn't worried about showing him/her up on the job. Good places to work will fill these jobs internally or with a person vouched for by a current employee.
3. Excel at your current tech support job and look for opportunities to move up inside the organization. be prepared to take small steps such as a position like team leader. Even though you don't want to make a career out of tech support, promotions raise your profile, increase your attractiveness as a candidate for further internal promotions, and will lead to less time on the phone. Promotion/s makes it easier for others to take a chance on you - inside or outside of the company. A strong work history with promotions will rate as high or higher than someone with academic knowledge but no work experience.
Things not to do:
1. When you interview out of the company, don't act like your better than your current job. No one likes the phones but it is the job, it is essential, and a fair number of non-degreed IT people paid their dues in support. If you give off an "I'm too good for the phones" vibe, your going to piss those people off even though most of them all thought they were too good for the phones, too. In any case, the biggest concern when hiring new people isn't so much finding the most skilled. There are all sorts of skilled people looking for jobs out there. The biggest concern is finding responsive employes focused on completing priority tasks within pressing timelines and are unafraid of responsibility or accountability. Those qualities are much harder to find than network administrators.
2. Don't let internal advancement opportunities get away because your not taking your tech support job seriously. As I previously mentioned, no one likes being on the phones. Nevertheless, you performance and successes in your current position can be your greatest ally in advancement or conversely your greatest hinderance. If your supervisors and team leaders are impressed with your performance, new jobs and greater responsibility will
This is exactly the type of problem I have with Wikipedia and the community that supports the current Wikipedia standards - there is no editorial control or standard of any substance. None. Zero. Every entry is free game for someone with a crackpot theory, hidden agenda, or just plain lack of knowledge, to make a modification and have questionable, if not downright wrong, information published without any oversight. Here in this thread everyone is saying, "this is just some old bitter man" or "I bet this guy ought to be looked at." But what if someone put up a web site, or maybe just a Wikipedia article, called, oh let's say - The Iamtherealmikeisarapistandpedophile.com and then made completely unfounded accusations all based on unfounded supposition and unfounded conjectures. Oh, I'll claim I've talked to several 8-12 year old children that will confirm that Iamtherealmike molested them and include quotes and maybe even include some names for these people. That wouldn't make any of it true though. What is "Truth", afterall? It's just a relative thing, right? As soon as Iamtherealmike found this information, I have a feeling that his idea of the relativity of truth would disappear and he would be outraged, as anyone accused falsely of heinous criminal acts would be. What is his relief from the lies I wrote and Wikipedia printed? Should he just take it? I don't think so, and if it was any of you that discovered an article out of the blue accusing you of a crime wouldn't think so, and fortunately enough 500 plus years of law concerning slander back this up. I would have committed slander and I should face trail and be judged and if found guilty I should be punished for my crime. If Wikipedia was my publisher, they should be tried, judged, and if found guilty punished as well. Otherwise, there is no relief for Iamtherealmike. The article can stay up forever and he has no chance to show it is untrue.
Reading these responses, I hear that there is nothing wrong with what was published. It's ok to say anything you want to say about any public person. Even more troubling is that underneath it all, there is this message inherent in that attitude that all opinions are somehow inherently equal and equally valid topics for public discourse. That's just not right - not ethically, not morally, and not legally. There is a reason why there are standards for research, citation, documentation, facts, etc. Those standards not only protect people from slander, those standards protect the very ideal of truth. Thinking all opinions are equal not only leads to ridiculous accusations about some old time democratic pol being involved in the Kennedy assassination showing up in a highly used public web space but, extrapolated, lead to the idea that Intelligent Design is just another equally valid idea about the science of the creation of the universe and deserves equal space with evolutionary theory. Sorry, but I don't think that Truth is quite so relative that any idea or opinion is of equal value and worthy for public discussion with complete legal protection.
I'm not saying people can't say what they want - the first amendment grants the right to say what you want without PRIOR interference of the government. However, the first amendment doesn't grant absolution from facing the consequences for libelous or slanderous remarks. Wikipedia, for some time now, has needed an editorial board and publication procedure that stops ridiculous and slanderous articles from being published. Through Wikipedia, I've "learned" that Eisenhower was a war criminal who committed atrocities on the German public on par with Nazi atrocities committed on Jews and other minorities. I've "learned" that Akira Kurosawa "stole" the entire novel of Red Dawn as the basis for Yojimbo. I've seen articles about health subjects hijacked by "entrepreneurs" who inserted information about their "amazing" substance that could cure or prevent a condition. These ridiculous things should not be making it past some sort of review board before they are allowed to be printed. I believe t
Hey, I was thinking the same thing....his whole ST club was based on the idea of a space station called Nemesis and he did have a script and some cgi stuff he had done on computer. He even designed a special uniform.
That movie was great. I don't know who was the most twisted person in that movie - the woman who wore her Star Trek uniform while she served on the Whitewater jury or the guy who built the "working" version of Pike's wheelchair.
Some other things of note -
1. Nothing is more indicative to me of the end of the Dot.com era that many comments in this venue, supposedly composed of serious internet nerds, support the idea of Wesley Crusher being written INTO a Star Trek movie. Today, for me, the Internet as we once new it finally died.
2. While the 3rd movie generally sucked, it does contain what I think is William Shatner's greatest moment of over acting. When Kirk's son is killed, Kirk's reaction is greater than the actually struggle in which his son was killed. It's very funny and worth checking out again if you get a chance. Watch it and you'll see how the opening scene, when the mother is informed of her son's death, in Saving Private Ryan should have been played.
3. I'm all for other Star Trek characters from the other show's getting into the movies - particularly if it's 7 of 9. Boston Public is ok but school teachers just don't wear enough skin-tight lycra with 5 inch heels to satisfy me.
4. Wouldn't you hate to be the guy that has to clean up Quark's fantasy holo-suites?
5 When are we going to learn about the 24 century technology which most intrigues me - toilets? Just how does that work? You think about the stuff the Japeneese have today and when you extrapolate that into the 24 century it's just mind-boggling. Personally, I think there ought to be some transporter type of device that let's you just do it in your pants and then the transporter is activated and takes it all away and wipes you clean. Hell, go a step farther and have a device that actually removes the waste in your colon and bladder without ever having to actually relieve yourself - how cool would that be. It could be just like a transporter, you step in, get zapped in place by the transporter but special filters kick in and you rematarialize sans waste products. It wouldn't be all that different from the other biological filters the transporter has.
6. Actually, the "Further Adventures of Grand Negas Rom" sounds kinda a cool to me.
Name one fundemental civil liberty or right - either explicitely or implicitely expressed in the Constitution - that has been infringed upon or even been advocated to be suspended by a senior government official since Tuesday. Someone please just name one instance with an appropriate citation. One might as well read the Weekly World News as read a slashdot message board when it comes to getting concrete, factual, or informed opinion on political issues. Let the WTC get destroyed and everyone is upset but let the government work together with AOL to read a dead hijacker's email and the netgeeks of the world are up in arms and posting lengthy diatribes against those bastards in the government who are stealing our freedoms or, even more humorously, assessing the reasons why anything the government is going to do will result in failure. I don't know if you guys are the prime example of the need to legalize marijuana in this country - because most of you need to chill out very badly - or whether your the prime example of how drugs destroy your mind and make you paranoid. Not that anyone has asked for my advice or wants to take it but I think these alarmist and hysterical pronouncements on the impending loss of our freedom, especially in the absence of any concrete actions to such end, is just scare-mongering. There is a lot of quotation citing going on in this thread and I think I'll join in - "The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself"
I find the responses in this particular thread to be very interesting. For the last thirty years, I've heard this assertion that our (USA citizens) constitutional rights have been consistently eroded during the last century and the rate of that erosion grows faster and faster each new year. I think that is a completely unfounded assertion. With the exception of wartime restrictions, can someone explain to me, specifically, what personal civil liberties have been restricted? Aside from the fact that we are compelled to pay income tax, be involved in the Social Security and associated programs, and have to wait three days to buy a gun, I can't think of no such restriction - and in those cases I don't think of it as a restriction so much as an evolution of the social compact. I don't know if it's lack of education or some sort of particular politial complaint that drives this myth but I find it constantly referenced and never supported.
Maybe this needs to be another thread but I read and hear these statements, sometimes near hysterical prophecies of doom, but I never see them supported in any depth and rarely see them challenged. "Scary how fast privacy is comprimised when the bulk of a country's email services are centralized" What privacy has been comprimised? The privacy of a dead criminal suspect? I'm not a constitutional law expert ( I just play one on slashdot) but I don't think there can be a great expectation of privacy if your dead - especially when the manner in which you died involved crashing your stolen jetliner into the WTC or the Pentagon. If stealing a jet and crashing it into the WTC or the Pentagon isn't enough cause to allow law enforcement officers to look over your "private" email, just what would one have to do to face more stringent restrictions of civil liberties like actually being arrested or jailed?
There is nothing unreasonable about this act - and unreasonable search and seizure is what the Fourth Amendment is all about. The hysteria created in the slashdot community whenever an Internet privacy issue arises is about as uninformed and ingnorent as TV news reports about the Internet child porn. Reasonableness is not the same thing as Utilitarianism, to touch on another of the associated threads within this thread, but it does presupose that there is a sort of mental calculation or measurement of situation and circumstance to produce a fair and just result. Just because those results may be different given different situations or circumstances does not mean that we are unprincipled. It just means that we aren't idealogues that can only view and react to the world through the prism of their ideology. The right to privacy is important but no more important than any other right - including the right to life.
I'm an sbc internet subscriber and for the most part very happy with my DSL line. I was shocked, though, when I switched to the new news server and saw that almost all the alt.binaries groups were gone. The email was very misleading about just how extensive this was going to be. I'm not really angry about the situation - once upon a time I worked in a small ISP that became part of a large ISP and then got bought out by an even larger Japanese Telecom giant. I fully understand the decision from an operations standpoint -providing full access USENET service is expensive, time consuming, and hard, from a legal standpoint - you can claim common carrier all you want but the DMCA opens the door to all sorts of problems from Entertainment industry lawyers, and from a business standpoint - hardly any of your customers care about news groups, much less binary groups so why bother to offer an expensive service when your customers will be just as happy with a cheap one. Hey, if your an SBC customer and not interested in binary groups you ought to be happy that they made this choice. By all rights, the news service should be better now than ever before. The only thing that really bothers me is the censorship angle because despite all of my business experience and appreciation for anyone, including mega corporations, wanting to make a buck, I still think there are some things more important than money. Or maybe I just want my porn, who knows. In any event, I'll by subscribing to a dedicated USENET provider not only because I want my porn, because I do want my porn, but because it's important to support companies who provide full access to all Internet resources.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a bunch of marketing hype. The Pistols have reunited and performed together several times in the last 10 or 11 years. In fact, they are about to have another reunion tour this fall. In '96 it was the Filthy Lucre tour or some such thing and sometime in 2002 or 2003 they had some other tour - the Piss Off tour, I think it was called. In addition, it's just re-recording a track they already originally recorded. It's not like they are about to release an actual new song. Nothing to see here, move along
Aren't people more interested in a candidate who appreciates intellectualism and reasoning? After the last 8 years, I'd be ecstatic with a person from either party who actually values reason and reasoning rather than empty ideological-driven solutions that have almost nothing to do with the overwhelmingly accepted perception of truth. I'm surprised how many people here have such a narrow scope of reference and even more-so by those who start rushing toward candidates, without a shred of recognition for the inconsistency and incompatibility of their various postions, who represent an ideological mishmash of populism, xenophobia, anti-government, and pro-statist positions.
Here's another way to think about it - the government wants to auction the broadcasters' old analog TV spectrum. The government is composed of politicians. Politicians need large donations which come from owners and executives of large businesses as well as PACs/lobbyists who represent the interests of these same owners and executives but in collective form. The politicians use this money to buy TV ads (as well as assorted other activities) to get elected/re-elected. The people and PACs who gave the candidate money expect the candidate to support their political and business interests. The politicians want to keep their donors happy, they will need more money one day, but sometimes the donors' interests conflict. Even worse for the politicians, sometimes the interests of their constituency also conflict with those of their donors. Politicians hate this. Politicians have a pathological need to be liked, get deferential treatment, go on junkets, hang out at cocktail parties, and sleep with women (or sometimes men) other than their wives. Choosing between donors or choosing between donors and voters is invariably going to cost money or votes. So, what's a politician to do? Spend some government money and make everyone happy. They provide a subsidy so the voters can buy a tuner converter, which will also put some money into the hands of the electronic manufacturers and electronic stores. The broadcasters are happy because they don't have to worry about losing ratings and they can shut down their analog transmitters. The politicians are happy because they made everyone happy and they can point to the money made from reclaiming and auctioning off the old analog broadcasting spectrum. Any criticism about the vouchers will be answered with all the money made from the auction. Everyone's happy
1. go to college and spend as many spare moments ingratiating yourself to the faculty that manage the computer labs and servers. volunteer to help with everything, including wiring. get into a position where your one of the student administrators of the campus network - the best experience you could possibly get. chances are you'll be involved in administering a network larger in size or scope than almost anything you'll come across in the "real" world. this is the best route for more reasons than I care to explain
2. Interview at every possible opening and hope you get that one lucky shot. improve your odds by building up your skills and familiarity with network set-ups and issues by creating a complex home network complete with a network firewall; dns, mail servers, mixed environment of linux, freebsd, solaris, windows, etc. Spend free hours mastering your shell and the command line, compiling software, getting familiar with scripting languages such as Perl, experimenting with goofy set-ups, and writing shell scripts, etc. It's no where near running an advanced network but it will familiarize you with terminology, techniques, jargon, etc. Sounding like you know what your talking about is an early part of the interview process. Later one or some of the engineers may talk to you. When you move from HR people to real engineers, don't lie or try to bullshit your way your way through the interview - they'll know immediately and your done. They know they are going to have to train a new guy, to some extent, anyway since every network is unique. They will be impressed if you've developed a bedrock of basic network knowledge especially on your own time in your own place. They probably did the same thing when they were teenagers and/or in college and will relate. The odds of this are low except at low paying jobs, places with poor working conditions (whatever constitutes poor working conditions), or places that have bad managers who purposely hire people the manager isn't worried about showing him/her up on the job. Good places to work will fill these jobs internally or with a person vouched for by a current employee.
3. Excel at your current tech support job and look for opportunities to move up inside the organization. be prepared to take small steps such as a position like team leader. Even though you don't want to make a career out of tech support, promotions raise your profile, increase your attractiveness as a candidate for further internal promotions, and will lead to less time on the phone. Promotion/s makes it easier for others to take a chance on you - inside or outside of the company. A strong work history with promotions will rate as high or higher than someone with academic knowledge but no work experience.
Things not to do:
1. When you interview out of the company, don't act like your better than your current job. No one likes the phones but it is the job, it is essential, and a fair number of non-degreed IT people paid their dues in support. If you give off an "I'm too good for the phones" vibe, your going to piss those people off even though most of them all thought they were too good for the phones, too. In any case, the biggest concern when hiring new people isn't so much finding the most skilled. There are all sorts of skilled people looking for jobs out there. The biggest concern is finding responsive employes focused on completing priority tasks within pressing timelines and are unafraid of responsibility or accountability. Those qualities are much harder to find than network administrators.
2. Don't let internal advancement opportunities get away because your not taking your tech support job seriously. As I previously mentioned, no one likes being on the phones. Nevertheless, you performance and successes in your current position can be your greatest ally in advancement or conversely your greatest hinderance. If your supervisors and team leaders are impressed with your performance, new jobs and greater responsibility will
This is exactly the type of problem I have with Wikipedia and the community that supports the current Wikipedia standards - there is no editorial control or standard of any substance. None. Zero. Every entry is free game for someone with a crackpot theory, hidden agenda, or just plain lack of knowledge, to make a modification and have questionable, if not downright wrong, information published without any oversight. Here in this thread everyone is saying, "this is just some old bitter man" or "I bet this guy ought to be looked at." But what if someone put up a web site, or maybe just a Wikipedia article, called, oh let's say - The Iamtherealmikeisarapistandpedophile.com and then made completely unfounded accusations all based on unfounded supposition and unfounded conjectures. Oh, I'll claim I've talked to several 8-12 year old children that will confirm that Iamtherealmike molested them and include quotes and maybe even include some names for these people. That wouldn't make any of it true though. What is "Truth", afterall? It's just a relative thing, right? As soon as Iamtherealmike found this information, I have a feeling that his idea of the relativity of truth would disappear and he would be outraged, as anyone accused falsely of heinous criminal acts would be. What is his relief from the lies I wrote and Wikipedia printed? Should he just take it? I don't think so, and if it was any of you that discovered an article out of the blue accusing you of a crime wouldn't think so, and fortunately enough 500 plus years of law concerning slander back this up. I would have committed slander and I should face trail and be judged and if found guilty I should be punished for my crime. If Wikipedia was my publisher, they should be tried, judged, and if found guilty punished as well. Otherwise, there is no relief for Iamtherealmike. The article can stay up forever and he has no chance to show it is untrue. Reading these responses, I hear that there is nothing wrong with what was published. It's ok to say anything you want to say about any public person. Even more troubling is that underneath it all, there is this message inherent in that attitude that all opinions are somehow inherently equal and equally valid topics for public discourse. That's just not right - not ethically, not morally, and not legally. There is a reason why there are standards for research, citation, documentation, facts, etc. Those standards not only protect people from slander, those standards protect the very ideal of truth. Thinking all opinions are equal not only leads to ridiculous accusations about some old time democratic pol being involved in the Kennedy assassination showing up in a highly used public web space but, extrapolated, lead to the idea that Intelligent Design is just another equally valid idea about the science of the creation of the universe and deserves equal space with evolutionary theory. Sorry, but I don't think that Truth is quite so relative that any idea or opinion is of equal value and worthy for public discussion with complete legal protection. I'm not saying people can't say what they want - the first amendment grants the right to say what you want without PRIOR interference of the government. However, the first amendment doesn't grant absolution from facing the consequences for libelous or slanderous remarks. Wikipedia, for some time now, has needed an editorial board and publication procedure that stops ridiculous and slanderous articles from being published. Through Wikipedia, I've "learned" that Eisenhower was a war criminal who committed atrocities on the German public on par with Nazi atrocities committed on Jews and other minorities. I've "learned" that Akira Kurosawa "stole" the entire novel of Red Dawn as the basis for Yojimbo. I've seen articles about health subjects hijacked by "entrepreneurs" who inserted information about their "amazing" substance that could cure or prevent a condition. These ridiculous things should not be making it past some sort of review board before they are allowed to be printed. I believe t
Hey, I was thinking the same thing....his whole ST club was based on the idea of a space station called Nemesis and he did have a script and some cgi stuff he had done on computer. He even designed a special uniform.
That movie was great. I don't know who was the most twisted person in that movie - the woman who wore her Star Trek uniform while she served on the Whitewater jury or the guy who built the "working" version of Pike's wheelchair.
Some other things of note -
1. Nothing is more indicative to me of the end of the Dot.com era that many comments in this venue, supposedly composed of serious internet nerds, support the idea of Wesley Crusher being written INTO a Star Trek movie. Today, for me, the Internet as we once new it finally died.
2. While the 3rd movie generally sucked, it does contain what I think is William Shatner's greatest moment of over acting. When Kirk's son is killed, Kirk's reaction is greater than the actually struggle in which his son was killed. It's very funny and worth checking out again if you get a chance. Watch it and you'll see how the opening scene, when the mother is informed of her son's death, in Saving Private Ryan should have been played.
3. I'm all for other Star Trek characters from the other show's getting into the movies - particularly if it's 7 of 9. Boston Public is ok but school teachers just don't wear enough skin-tight lycra with 5 inch heels to satisfy me.
4. Wouldn't you hate to be the guy that has to clean up Quark's fantasy holo-suites?
5 When are we going to learn about the 24 century technology which most intrigues me - toilets? Just how does that work? You think about the stuff the Japeneese have today and when you extrapolate that into the 24 century it's just mind-boggling. Personally, I think there ought to be some transporter type of device that let's you just do it in your pants and then the transporter is activated and takes it all away and wipes you clean. Hell, go a step farther and have a device that actually removes the waste in your colon and bladder without ever having to actually relieve yourself - how cool would that be. It could be just like a transporter, you step in, get zapped in place by the transporter but special filters kick in and you rematarialize sans waste products. It wouldn't be all that different from the other biological filters the transporter has.
6. Actually, the "Further Adventures of Grand Negas Rom" sounds kinda a cool to me.
Name one fundemental civil liberty or right - either explicitely or implicitely expressed in the Constitution - that has been infringed upon or even been advocated to be suspended by a senior government official since Tuesday. Someone please just name one instance with an appropriate citation. One might as well read the Weekly World News as read a slashdot message board when it comes to getting concrete, factual, or informed opinion on political issues. Let the WTC get destroyed and everyone is upset but let the government work together with AOL to read a dead hijacker's email and the netgeeks of the world are up in arms and posting lengthy diatribes against those bastards in the government who are stealing our freedoms or, even more humorously, assessing the reasons why anything the government is going to do will result in failure. I don't know if you guys are the prime example of the need to legalize marijuana in this country - because most of you need to chill out very badly - or whether your the prime example of how drugs destroy your mind and make you paranoid. Not that anyone has asked for my advice or wants to take it but I think these alarmist and hysterical pronouncements on the impending loss of our freedom, especially in the absence of any concrete actions to such end, is just scare-mongering. There is a lot of quotation citing going on in this thread and I think I'll join in - "The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself"
I find the responses in this particular thread to be very interesting. For the last thirty years, I've heard this assertion that our (USA citizens) constitutional rights have been consistently eroded during the last century and the rate of that erosion grows faster and faster each new year. I think that is a completely unfounded assertion. With the exception of wartime restrictions, can someone explain to me, specifically, what personal civil liberties have been restricted? Aside from the fact that we are compelled to pay income tax, be involved in the Social Security and associated programs, and have to wait three days to buy a gun, I can't think of no such restriction - and in those cases I don't think of it as a restriction so much as an evolution of the social compact. I don't know if it's lack of education or some sort of particular politial complaint that drives this myth but I find it constantly referenced and never supported. Maybe this needs to be another thread but I read and hear these statements, sometimes near hysterical prophecies of doom, but I never see them supported in any depth and rarely see them challenged. "Scary how fast privacy is comprimised when the bulk of a country's email services are centralized" What privacy has been comprimised? The privacy of a dead criminal suspect? I'm not a constitutional law expert ( I just play one on slashdot) but I don't think there can be a great expectation of privacy if your dead - especially when the manner in which you died involved crashing your stolen jetliner into the WTC or the Pentagon. If stealing a jet and crashing it into the WTC or the Pentagon isn't enough cause to allow law enforcement officers to look over your "private" email, just what would one have to do to face more stringent restrictions of civil liberties like actually being arrested or jailed? There is nothing unreasonable about this act - and unreasonable search and seizure is what the Fourth Amendment is all about. The hysteria created in the slashdot community whenever an Internet privacy issue arises is about as uninformed and ingnorent as TV news reports about the Internet child porn. Reasonableness is not the same thing as Utilitarianism, to touch on another of the associated threads within this thread, but it does presupose that there is a sort of mental calculation or measurement of situation and circumstance to produce a fair and just result. Just because those results may be different given different situations or circumstances does not mean that we are unprincipled. It just means that we aren't idealogues that can only view and react to the world through the prism of their ideology. The right to privacy is important but no more important than any other right - including the right to life.
I'm an sbc internet subscriber and for the most part very happy with my DSL line. I was shocked, though, when I switched to the new news server and saw that almost all the alt.binaries groups were gone. The email was very misleading about just how extensive this was going to be. I'm not really angry about the situation - once upon a time I worked in a small ISP that became part of a large ISP and then got bought out by an even larger Japanese Telecom giant. I fully understand the decision from an operations standpoint -providing full access USENET service is expensive, time consuming, and hard, from a legal standpoint - you can claim common carrier all you want but the DMCA opens the door to all sorts of problems from Entertainment industry lawyers, and from a business standpoint - hardly any of your customers care about news groups, much less binary groups so why bother to offer an expensive service when your customers will be just as happy with a cheap one. Hey, if your an SBC customer and not interested in binary groups you ought to be happy that they made this choice. By all rights, the news service should be better now than ever before. The only thing that really bothers me is the censorship angle because despite all of my business experience and appreciation for anyone, including mega corporations, wanting to make a buck, I still think there are some things more important than money. Or maybe I just want my porn, who knows. In any event, I'll by subscribing to a dedicated USENET provider not only because I want my porn, because I do want my porn, but because it's important to support companies who provide full access to all Internet resources.