Well, the part that is most interesting to me in this Bill is the penalties section. If this bill had passed, a person running a ticket booth who sold a ticket to South Park to a 17 year old could get five years in prison. That's right five years in prison The big question is, what do you think of a country that would do that? Does that sound like America? For those of you who go "Right on, we need this law," might I suggest moving to sunny Iran? It will require a conversion to Islam, but you aren't really a Christian if you want to expose someone to the horrors of the US prison system for selling a South Park ticket to a 17 year old, are you? I certainly know my New Testament, and violence and imprisonment were always opposed by Jesus, even when Peter picked up a sword to save Him from the cross. There's also that whole "Let he who is without sin among you, cast the first stone bit," that a lot of people who call themselves Christians seem to want to either edit out of the Bible or just doublethink their way around. Remember, Iran has a dry climate which is good for the sinuses and a violent, oppressive government that always claims to be acting for God and against Satan, and you won't have to deal with any of that new agey stuff that Jesus was talking about, like non-violence and tolerance that must be really awkward to reconcile with your pro-political oppression views.
Er, how is being a Puritan fanatic having a Christian viewpoint? Jesus Christ did not go around trying to use force to try to get people to what he thought was right, as many of you so-called Christians do. Why don't you quit trying to turn this country into Iran, and start looking at your own soul. Quit casting stones when people calling themselves Christians are murdering people for no other reason that they don't happen to like them, and then saying the Bible said it was OK. (Ever heard of "Christian Identity?" Nazi's in this country have figured out that religion has become a cover for all sorts of moral abominations.) You people are "like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward but are within full of dead men's bones and all uncleaness." That was something another anti-establishment type was saying in Judea a couple of thousand years ago.
I listen to you people lie, to use your ends-justify-the-means methods every chance you get, I see you assault people at my school, calling any woman not covered from head to toe a slut and then you expect people to remain silent as you try to turn this country into something like England after the Puritan Rebellion (a.k.a. the Engliush Civil War). Should we make Bill Bennet "Witchfinder General?" How long before we're back in Salem with people being burned for witchcraft? This is America! If you try to take my rights from me, I will fight you! And don't cry to God, He's on my side!
Private businesses aren't setting these standards. Private businesses are making these rule because people in the government have said, over and over again repeatedly, "Clean up your act or we'll clean it up for you."
When the government _asks_ you to do something voluntarily, remember that they do it while holding a gun. See the following article:
I realize it isn't pleasant or happy document, but it was the basis of at least one legislative attempt (the Hyde Amendment to H.R. 1501) and basically sums up the absolute worst and most ignorant facet of the people governing us and how they view computing technology. Try not to read it on a full stomach.
Lamar Smith also voted for the Hyde Amendment to the recent Juvenile Crime Bill. This bill amendment, if passed, would mean five years in jail for selling Doom to a 15 year old.
Thank you, for a very well written response to this troubling social trend. I have nothing to add, I'm just glad that there are people like you serving in our armed forces because it gives me hope for the future.
An extrapolation of the effects of a bunch of new laws, new technology, currect media attitudes linked together:
"We found this copy of Doom," says Federal Agent #1 "Check it for DNA, the Hyde law makes it illegal to sell that stuff now" Federal Agent #2 runs the game through his portable DNA scanner, skin flakes on the box provide the names of several people who handled the game including a kid named Sam. On Sam's profile is alert, "Currently on probation for distributing copies of the obscene video game Doom. His ID card is currently located in Blockbuster Video 54321 North Fud Street..." "Let's roll, he's facing five years in prison for this," the agents go to the video store. The Federal Agents spot Sam, "Halt, you are wanted for distributing obscene video games," one shouts, weapon drawn. "I can't go to prison," Sam yells, he runs, the cops gun him down. "Lousy #$@!#, got what was coming to him," says Fed2. Video cameras in the store capture the whole thing on video, including Sam's bullet ridden corpse. In millions of living rooms across the nation, TV's blacked out by V-chips come on for a moment. "This just in," says a newsreader, "Sam Blank, a local man, was shot while fleeing arrest. Mr. Blank was facing prison for a second offense in purveying violence to our children," the news shows pictures of Sam's bullet-ridden body, which isn't blocked by the V-chip because it is a news story. Then the TV goes black again as the V-chip reactivates. Welcome to the future.
Seems that many people aren't interested in limiting "illegal" immigration, because then we wouldn't have a workforce of sub-minimum wage laborers with no constitutional rights to pick vegetables, oranges, etc. (It seems that the government thinks certain types of "illegal" immigration are fine and dandy, as long as the people are kept at sub-citizen status and the pockets of these politicians are kept well lined with political contributions.) The purpose of these cards is to make sure that these people never get the right to vote, free speech or anything else to complain about their situation. Since they're "illegal" (with the tacit consent of the government, as long as they are exploited in the right way) they don't have any rights, and can be deported at will. These new ID cards make it easier to control whether or not an "illegal" immigrant is able to take advantage of the laws which protect other Americans but which don't protect them from unmitigated exploitation because of their non-citizen status. It is possible to forge other documentation (remember the episode of "The Simpsons" where Apu was trying to get citizenship?) but this kind of high-tech control will further reduce the ability of "illegal" immigrants to get around the law (and to become enough of an embarrassment to the government that another amnesty is declared, or something.). Of course, a nice side effect is that they'll also make it easier to control the population of formerly free citizens of the US as our rights get reduced and the government is better able to track everything we do.
Do people here who believe "we need to help out the government, if you have nothing to hide you shouldn't be worried" at least believe that law enforcement ought to at least need the same amount of legal cover to read Email as they'd need to read regular old US mail? Maybe the people who think AOL's actions are no problem will like this proposal: Should the government be allowed to open every letter, read it, reseal it before sending it out again for the public good? It goes through the post office after all. What if the government made consent to having your mail read a requirement to use the post office? Would all the crimes that could be stopped if the government were allowed to read everyones paper mail with the same ease that they can read their Email justify this?
Of course, I think it's insane to trust AOL, period. I imagine that if someone who ever used their service were to be sued by them (say they started their own, more successful AOL type service) AOL would probably make sure anything uncomfortable or embarrassing to them that they sent through Email on their service would be released to the media. I distrust the government, but I distrust AOL even more.
When I write an letter to a congressman, TV News program, or some other political entity I _always_ use snail mail, especially if it's part of a letter writing campaign. People can just turn off their computers or pretend that some automatic spam mail thing is sending out all the Email. It is harder to ignore real, "legitimate" mail. Besides, most of the politicians I write to are not tech-savvy enough to read Email by themselves anyway... so I'd just be writing to one of their interns.
Whether or not you've broken the law can be a matter of "is this person politically inconvenient for us at this time?" Yes, even in the US, trumped up charges can be brought against people who need to be discredited or destroyed because a powerful corporation, government entity, or member of a rich political family thinks the person needs to be silenced. So the big question is, have you ever, under any circumstances or for any reason said anything that can ever be taken out of context and used in a trumped up case against you? Heck, politicians in this country will make stuff up about what exists or doesn't exist in this world, just read this thing written by Dick Armey. Are you absolutely sure that you want people working for him (or someone on the left, if you are a Republican, like bill Clinton) reading an Email you wrote at 3 AM when you had been up for two days straight and were blowing off some steam?
Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics will not take an interest in you -- Pericles (430 BC)
When reading this article, I thought it was exciting. To me, cloning an extinct animal is pretty big news. (The other thing that's got me as excited as this lately is Sony's robot dog, Aibo. Imagine, a robot dog anyone with 2 grand can own... it's just so neat.) However, when I mentioned it to my co-workers they had the same reaction people I know had to the robot dog, they said things like "So what?" "Ho-Hum" and "I don't care." Which brings me back to the subject of this post, blind cave fish on Mars. There are some plants and animals living deep in our ocean that don't need the sun at all, but thrive in an ecosystem in which volcanic activity seems to provide a substitute for the sun. I asked myself, "Supposing on Mars they found some blind cave fish (and algae for them to live on) who survived in the cold martian climate due to underground and underwater volcanic activity. How would people react?" My theory is a lot of people would think "So what?"
Why? Because I think science fiction has people convinced that everything written about in science fiction novels, etc, will be proved true. So, while I hope people would be pretty excited at intelligent life on Mars (or, horrified if they looked like those things in Mars Attacks!) they'd be pretty bored by the concept of blind Martian cave-fish. Or cloning extinct birds as opposed to say, velociraptors or Tyrannosaurus Rex, which would probably be page one news (I hope).
Hmm... but a cabbit that can turn into a space battlecruiser would be the most fun, and I think that would require really advance nano-tech, not cloning... I guess I'd have to ask Washu how she did it...
Hmm, well, my Dad was also a computer technician in his youth and he never played computer games at a young age because that was before computers had monitors... besides I bet the Air Force frowned on that sort of thing. It is true that he loved computers before they had games.
However, I did love (as a kid) watching his face light up with joy when he was playing "7 Cities of Gold" on my Atari 800.(After we finally got a floppy drive for it.) It was less fun when he would tie up the computer for days hand typing in programs from Compute magazine... I remember evilly turning the thing off one day before he finished one so I could play Temple of Apshi or Crush, Crumble and Chop! or something and he hadn't saved the program he was typing to the cassette tape drive... in those days that was all we had. That caused a little fight... but the program he was typing required a floppy drive to work, we both had a good laugh over it when we figured that out a few years later.
Besides, in order to get really into something, it has to be _fun_. The main thing that games teach kids is, "Look, computer's are fun!" It's the same as cars really, many of the best auto mechanics are people who love to drive. And I'm sorry, it's a lot easier to get excited over, say, Resident Evil than the latest incarnation of Quicken.
How many older people do you know who are bitter and resentful at having to learn computers? How many have you seen who actually seem to be in physical pain as they try to learn how to use a mouse? I've seen this, and I feel sorry for people (like my Mom, who works in a library. She's finally to the point where she doesn't need two hands to control the mouse, but it was painful watching her learn. And hard for me to teach her without seeming to be patronizing.) Computers have been held back for years in terms of things like graphics because narrow-minded business people didn't want a "game machine." Else how do you explain the hideos 8088 Vendex computer my Dad bought... it had no graphics capability at all, and my cousin's Amiga made it look like a joke! Heck even the Atari 800 computer I had previous to it was easier to use for things like Word Processing (not to mention games!)... God, I hated that Vendex! The only thing I could play on it were Infocom games and that was about the time the all-text adventure was, sadly, on its way out. With the Atari I could mess around with Player-Missile graphics (Atari's version of Sprites) with that Hell-spawned Vendex only Adventure Game Toolkit (for making Infocom type games) was any fun!
You know what (to the original poster) join the 90's! No one thinks that computers are unimportant these days except for ignorant people and people who are sadly incapable of dealing with this huge technological change in the new age (I feel sorry for them.) Kids who don't have some kind of computer access are going to be left behind. It isn't good for them and it isn't good for the country (keeping people in ignorance and poverty helps no one.)
Hey, a while ago there were reports about very proffessional looking Divx fansites over on Geocites. I actually went to look at one of them, and I was impressed with some of the DHTML stuff that was on it.( Absolute Divx, if I remember correctly. Oh, by the way, I just rechecked the Divx site, and apparently, Divx is dead! Hooray! I think I'll get up and dance a jig.;-) Do I think it was a "real Divx fansite?" Um, no... unless the creator of the site's real name is Lucifer Beelzebub Satanus and he's just praising Divx because it is, you know, the evilest idea he heard of in a long time. On the other hand, I could probably create a pretty proffessional looking fansite if I had the time and motivation. Sometimes I fool around with cool Javascript or HTML effects on some of my sites, and owing to being a geeky comic book/ anime mega-fan (think about the proprietor of "The Androids Dungeon" to get an idea about what I'm like... but not what I look like;-) I might even have obscure, hard to come by info that people with lives don't have the time to hunt out in obscure corners of the world. So.... I guess I just want to point out that some of the fansites out there are really fansites. Maybe even some of the Blair Witch fansites. I do get suspicious of fansites about things that haven't stood the test of time. Well, just some thoughts I was having while downloading ColdFusion Express (tm) from the good folks at Allaire (publishers of Cold Fusion(tm) and Allaire Homesite(tm);) "You fool, Beckman is dead!" --A Mysterious Voice at the End of H.P. Lovecraft's Statement of Randolph Carter
Look, neither major party is going to be pro-crypto because crypto reduces the power of the government to control people's lives. Neither the Republican or Democratic Party wants this. If you are sick of this Hobson's choice (between Republicans and Democrats), vote Libertarian. I'm going to vote Libertarian for the first time this year. Even if you aren't 100% pro-Libertarian ideas... think how much a significant Libertarian victory would shake up the oligarchs in DC.
Satellite Dishes, Wild Feeds, People who live near
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Bootlegging Buffy
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This is not bootlegging the way that, say, copying The Phantom Menace is bootlegging. Television works according to a paradigm, you show commercials during a TV show because you have no way to charge for it. Once home VCRs came out, anyone can tape any show on TV and loan it to their friends, and no network has tried to come up with a way to stop them. What networks do is put those annoying little brands in the corners of the screen, to identify the network and so that people who really love a show will want to buy a clean copy when it comes out on tape... if it does. My parents have had a satellite dish for years, you can watch shows from other countries with it (yes, including Canada) and wild feeds (when shows are broadcast to network affiliate for rebroadcast in a local area.) Arthur C. Clarke actually prophesied that satellites would put an end to censorship... he was almost right, the Internet has just become a very powerful antenna allowing the rebroadcast of a show over long distances. (And before you say, "But... what about the commercials" remember that many of the wild feeds that get intercepted don't have commercials.)
Remember, intercepting wild feeds is not illegal, Orbit (a satellite dish enthusiasts magazine) even publishes them. And this is a magazine thats widely distributed and gets lots of advertising, not some little underground magazine.
All the Internet is doing, in this case, is giving the power of the dish to those who don't have one.
In fact, one of the things that has been a great concern to me is "regional coding" which is going to eventually change the nature of information itself. No longer will you be able to buy a movie legitimately that comes from someplace else in the world and watch it in your own country. Look at the way DVDs, even open DVDs, have chips to make sure that you can't watch, say, the European version of Scream (the violent version) in the US on a US DVD player. Not so much because I want to see Scream (I haven't seen it at all, yet) but because I may want to see some obscure little art film or anime I might want to see that will never make it stateside. And this is corporate censorship of disks that you legitimately bought and paid for... a little off topic, so I'll end here.
Your right, please see my reply to "If so, where's Earshot." I tried to explain that when the government makes threats to censor, that is censorship because we all know they have the power to back it up... if we let them get away with it. Sort of like when a gang offers you protection.
Re:I think the point he was trying to make was...
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Bootlegging Buffy
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Hmm, question, what about people with satellite dishes or near the border who can and do get wild feeds and Canadian programming? Um, should we send the police to their houses so they can't get the show? What about all the people who watch the X-files, Buffy, etc. ahead of time because they get the wild feed (and before the local commercials have been put in, I might add) what should we do about them? The fact is the only reason that the WB is upset about this (considering that almost anyone would rather watch the actual show than a fuzzy RealVideo version) is because they weren't able to control whether we could see this episode or not. Really, I don't know why they don't just show it already.... Or maybe they weren't planning to show it at all?
It is censorship, because it was prompted by fear. Fear of the government, fear of government retaliation. The fact is, the only power that any government really has is to make people afraid. If people just did whatever they wanted, without fear of authority, then governments wouldn't have power. The WB was afraid of many things, but among them was government censorship. In this situation, the government can be thought of as similar to organized crime, "Ok, WB you don't have to pay your protection money... shame if the FCC decided they had to shut down your network, though." The government wants to have "self-censorship," through intimidation, so their hands are clean and they won't have to defend their unconstitutional power grab in court. In many countries, secret police or government commandos operate in ways that contradict the written law, because they are able to get away with it.
I'm not tricked by this stealth campaign against the Bill of Rights, or for statements by government/corporate shills on slashdot defending it.
Did you ever see the IBM commercial with two college age people sitting at a computer breaking into some companies database? Well, one of the characters says, "Look this Vice-President makes twice as much as this Vice-President, I bet he doesn't know that." Second character taps on the keyboard, "Sure he does, I just E-mailed everyone in the company." Well, when my Mom and sister saw that commercial, they expressed admiration for the two (hackers? crackers?) in the commercial. Now, my Mom and sister try to think about as little as possible, and I thought their reaction was interesting. I think people are aware of "Don Quixote" (hackers? crackers?) just as they are aware of the more maliscious kind. I also think that to the average person if someone is referred to as a hacker in, say, a company they work in, they don't neccessarily think he's some evil renegade just someone with a lot of power where computers are concerned. To put it another way, I'd say that the Lone Gunman on the X-Files (a popular TV show, remember) are heroic-type hackers and that most people who watch the show would a)refer to them as hackers and b) think of them as the good guys. Don't think just because we have a monolithic media cabal who's goal is to destroy anybody who they see as going against the establishment that the general public doesn't know the score. Popular culture should be in the mix in this discussion, too.
Everything happens over time. It builds up, little by little, until it explodes into unreasoning violence. At one time, I'm sure the people of Europe really didn't think about the Jews that much. They didn't say, "Oh, those strange people poisoned the well, that's why I'm sick." After a while someone really evil suggested it was true, and some people thought it might be. And after a while certain things came to be accepted about the "strange people" as fact. It was thought, "they are the evil ones, they are the cause of suffering." Later it was turned into pseudo-science, "they are born evil, that's why they poison wells, and why they made us [Germany] lose World War One."
And then, after this philosophy had existed for many years, one horrible, sadistic monster said, "Let's get rid of those people, then our society will have no more problems." This is why the Holocaust happened, this is why intellectuals were murdered in Cambodia, and this is why when we notice certain attitudes about certain "undesirable" we must speak up! If not, in a hundred years, or maybe only fifty, who knows what could happen? Things will not always be nice and pleasant in this country, probably... right now things are. But if the supply of fossil fuel runs out before we're ready, or a new disease wipes out crops world wide, or we have a terrible depression, people might turn violent if they stay ignorant and are allowed to blame innocent people for tragedies like Littleton.
Slashdot Mirror
Children's Defense Act of 1999 (Introduced in the House)
Well, the part that is most interesting to me in this Bill is the penalties section. If this bill had passed, a person running a ticket booth who sold a ticket to South Park to a 17 year old could get five years in prison. That's right five years in prison The big question is, what do you think of a country that would do that? Does that sound like America?
For those of you who go "Right on, we need this law," might I suggest moving to sunny Iran? It will require a conversion to Islam, but you aren't really a Christian if you want to expose someone to the horrors of the US prison system for selling a South Park ticket to a 17 year old, are you? I certainly know my New Testament, and violence and imprisonment were always opposed by Jesus, even when Peter picked up a sword to save Him from the cross. There's also that whole "Let he who is without sin among you, cast the first stone bit," that a lot of people who call themselves Christians seem to want to either edit out of the Bible or just doublethink their way around.
Remember, Iran has a dry climate which is good for the sinuses and a violent, oppressive government that always claims to be acting for God and against Satan, and you won't have to deal with any of that new agey stuff that Jesus was talking about, like non-violence and tolerance that must be really awkward to reconcile with your pro-political oppression views.
I listen to you people lie, to use your ends-justify-the-means methods every chance you get, I see you assault people at my school, calling any woman not covered from head to toe a slut and then you expect people to remain silent as you try to turn this country into something like England after the Puritan Rebellion (a.k.a. the Engliush Civil War). Should we make Bill Bennet "Witchfinder General?" How long before we're back in Salem with people being burned for witchcraft? This is America! If you try to take my rights from me, I will fight you! And don't cry to God, He's on my side!
When the government _asks_ you to do something voluntarily, remember that they do it while holding a gun.
See the following article:
Hollywood: the power and the evil
Grossman's Statement
I realize it isn't pleasant or happy document, but it was the basis of at least one legislative attempt (the Hyde Amendment to H.R. 1501) and basically sums up the absolute worst and most ignorant facet of the people governing us and how they view computing technology. Try not to read it on a full stomach.
Lamar Smith also voted for the Hyde Amendment to the recent Juvenile Crime Bill. This bill amendment, if passed, would mean five years in jail for selling Doom to a 15 year old.
Here's his Web site: http://www.house.gov/lamarsmith/
What a god-damned fascist.
Thank you, for a very well written response to this troubling social trend. I have nothing to add, I'm just glad that there are people like you serving in our armed forces because it gives me hope for the future.
"We found this copy of Doom," says Federal Agent #1
"Check it for DNA, the Hyde law makes it illegal to sell that stuff now"
Federal Agent #2 runs the game through his portable DNA scanner, skin flakes on the box provide the names of several people who handled the game including a kid named Sam. On Sam's profile is alert, "Currently on probation for distributing copies of the obscene video game Doom. His ID card is currently located in Blockbuster Video 54321 North Fud Street..."
"Let's roll, he's facing five years in prison for this," the agents go to the video store.
The Federal Agents spot Sam, "Halt, you are wanted for distributing obscene video games," one shouts, weapon drawn. "I can't go to prison," Sam yells, he runs, the cops gun him down.
"Lousy #$@!#, got what was coming to him," says Fed2.
Video cameras in the store capture the whole thing on video, including Sam's bullet ridden corpse. In millions of living rooms across the nation, TV's blacked out by V-chips come on for a moment. "This just in," says a newsreader, "Sam Blank, a local man, was shot while fleeing arrest. Mr. Blank was facing prison for a second offense in purveying violence to our children," the news shows pictures of Sam's bullet-ridden body, which isn't blocked by the V-chip because it is a news story. Then the TV goes black again as the V-chip reactivates.
Welcome to the future.
Seems that many people aren't interested in limiting "illegal" immigration, because then we wouldn't have a workforce of sub-minimum wage laborers with no constitutional rights to pick vegetables, oranges, etc. (It seems that the government thinks certain types of "illegal" immigration are fine and dandy, as long as the people are kept at sub-citizen status and the pockets of these politicians are kept well lined with political contributions.)
The purpose of these cards is to make sure that these people never get the right to vote, free speech or anything else to complain about their situation. Since they're "illegal" (with the tacit consent of the government, as long as they are exploited in the right way) they don't have any rights, and can be deported at will.
These new ID cards make it easier to control whether or not an "illegal" immigrant is able to take advantage of the laws which protect other Americans but which don't protect them from unmitigated exploitation because of their non-citizen status. It is possible to forge other documentation (remember the episode of "The Simpsons" where Apu was trying to get citizenship?) but this kind of high-tech control will further reduce the ability of "illegal" immigrants to get around the law (and to become enough of an embarrassment to the government that another amnesty is declared, or something.).
Of course, a nice side effect is that they'll also make it easier to control the population of formerly free citizens of the US as our rights get reduced and the government is better able to track everything we do.
Do people here who believe "we need to help out the government, if you have nothing to hide you shouldn't be worried" at least believe that law enforcement ought to at least need the same amount of legal cover to read Email as they'd need to read regular old US mail? Maybe the people who think AOL's actions are no problem will like this proposal: Should the government be allowed to open every letter, read it, reseal it before sending it out again for the public good? It goes through the post office after all. What if the government made consent to having your mail read a requirement to use the post office? Would all the crimes that could be stopped if the government were allowed to read everyones paper mail with the same ease that they can read their Email justify this?
Of course, I think it's insane to trust AOL, period. I imagine that if someone who ever used their service were to be sued by them (say they started their own, more successful AOL type service) AOL would probably make sure anything uncomfortable or embarrassing to them that they sent through Email on their service would be released to the media. I distrust the government, but I distrust AOL even more.
When I write an letter to a congressman, TV News program, or some other political entity I _always_ use snail mail, especially if it's part of a letter writing campaign. People can just turn off their computers or pretend that some automatic spam mail thing is sending out all the Email. It is harder to ignore real, "legitimate" mail.
Besides, most of the politicians I write to are not tech-savvy enough to read Email by themselves anyway... so I'd just be writing to one of their interns.
Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics will not take an interest in you -- Pericles (430 BC)
Sega and Microsoft Collaberate on Dreamcast
I would hate to have to leave a garrison behind... -- Darth Vader, Empire Strikes Back
Why? Because I think science fiction has people convinced that everything written about in science fiction novels, etc, will be proved true. So, while I hope people would be pretty excited at intelligent life on Mars (or, horrified if they looked like those things in Mars Attacks!) they'd be pretty bored by the concept of blind Martian cave-fish. Or cloning extinct birds as opposed to say, velociraptors or Tyrannosaurus Rex, which would probably be page one news (I hope).
Hope I'm not too off topic here. Any thoughts?
Hmm... but a cabbit that can turn into a space battlecruiser would be the most fun, and I think that would require really advance nano-tech, not cloning... I guess I'd have to ask Washu how she did it...
However, I did love (as a kid) watching his face light up with joy when he was playing "7 Cities of Gold" on my Atari 800.(After we finally got a floppy drive for it.) It was less fun when he would tie up the computer for days hand typing in programs from Compute magazine... I remember evilly turning the thing off one day before he finished one so I could play Temple of Apshi or Crush, Crumble and Chop! or something and he hadn't saved the program he was typing to the cassette tape drive... in those days that was all we had. That caused a little fight... but the program he was typing required a floppy drive to work, we both had a good laugh over it when we figured that out a few years later.
How many older people do you know who are bitter and resentful at having to learn computers? How many have you seen who actually seem to be in physical pain as they try to learn how to use a mouse? I've seen this, and I feel sorry for people (like my Mom, who works in a library. She's finally to the point where she doesn't need two hands to control the mouse, but it was painful watching her learn. And hard for me to teach her without seeming to be patronizing.) Computers have been held back for years in terms of things like graphics because narrow-minded business people didn't want a "game machine." Else how do you explain the hideos 8088 Vendex computer my Dad bought... it had no graphics capability at all, and my cousin's Amiga made it look like a joke! Heck even the Atari 800 computer I had previous to it was easier to use for things like Word Processing (not to mention games!)... God, I hated that Vendex! The only thing I could play on it were Infocom games and that was about the time the all-text adventure was, sadly, on its way out. With the Atari I could mess around with Player-Missile graphics (Atari's version of Sprites) with that Hell-spawned Vendex only Adventure Game Toolkit (for making Infocom type games) was any fun!
You know what (to the original poster) join the 90's! No one thinks that computers are unimportant these days except for ignorant people and people who are sadly incapable of dealing with this huge technological change in the new age (I feel sorry for them.) Kids who don't have some kind of computer access are going to be left behind. It isn't good for them and it isn't good for the country (keeping people in ignorance and poverty helps no one.)
Hey, a while ago there were reports about very proffessional looking Divx fansites over on Geocites. I actually went to look at one of them, and I was impressed with some of the DHTML stuff that was on it.( Absolute Divx, if I remember correctly. Oh, by the way, I just rechecked the Divx site, and apparently, Divx is dead! Hooray! I think I'll get up and dance a jig. ;-) Do I think it was a "real Divx fansite?" Um, no... unless the creator of the site's real name is Lucifer Beelzebub Satanus and he's just praising Divx because it is, you know, the evilest idea he heard of in a long time. ;-) I might even have obscure, hard to come by info that people with lives don't have the time to hunt out in obscure corners of the world. So.... I guess I just want to point out that some of the fansites out there are really fansites. ;)
On the other hand, I could probably create a pretty proffessional looking fansite if I had the time and motivation. Sometimes I fool around with cool Javascript or HTML effects on some of my sites, and owing to being a geeky comic book/ anime mega-fan (think about the proprietor of "The Androids Dungeon" to get an idea about what I'm like... but not what I look like
Maybe even some of the Blair Witch fansites. I do get suspicious of fansites about things that haven't stood the test of time. Well, just some thoughts I was having while downloading ColdFusion Express (tm) from the good folks at Allaire (publishers of Cold Fusion(tm) and Allaire Homesite(tm)
"You fool, Beckman is dead!" --A Mysterious Voice at the End of H.P. Lovecraft's Statement of Randolph Carter
quote from Libertarian.org
Look, neither major party is going to be pro-crypto because crypto reduces the power of the government to control people's lives. Neither the Republican or Democratic Party wants this. If you are sick of this Hobson's choice (between Republicans and Democrats), vote Libertarian. I'm going to vote Libertarian for the first time this year. Even if you aren't 100% pro-Libertarian ideas... think how much a significant Libertarian victory would shake up the oligarchs in DC.Remember, intercepting wild feeds is not illegal, Orbit (a satellite dish enthusiasts magazine) even publishes them. And this is a magazine thats widely distributed and gets lots of advertising, not some little underground magazine.
All the Internet is doing, in this case, is giving the power of the dish to those who don't have one.
In fact, one of the things that has been a great concern to me is "regional coding" which is going to eventually change the nature of information itself. No longer will you be able to buy a movie legitimately that comes from someplace else in the world and watch it in your own country. Look at the way DVDs, even open DVDs, have chips to make sure that you can't watch, say, the European version of Scream (the violent version) in the US on a US DVD player. Not so much because I want to see Scream (I haven't seen it at all, yet) but because I may want to see some obscure little art film or anime I might want to see that will never make it stateside. And this is corporate censorship of disks that you legitimately bought and paid for... a little off topic, so I'll end here.
Your right, please see my reply to "If so, where's Earshot." I tried to explain that when the government makes threats to censor, that is censorship because we all know they have the power to back it up... if we let them get away with it. Sort of like when a gang offers you protection.
Hmm, question, what about people with satellite dishes or near the border who can and do get wild feeds and Canadian programming? Um, should we send the police to their houses so they can't get the show? What about all the people who watch the X-files, Buffy, etc. ahead of time because they get the wild feed (and before the local commercials have been put in, I might add) what should we do about them?
The fact is the only reason that the WB is upset about this (considering that almost anyone would rather watch the actual show than a fuzzy RealVideo version) is because they weren't able to control whether we could see this episode or not. Really, I don't know why they don't just show it already....
Or maybe they weren't planning to show it at all?
I'm not tricked by this stealth campaign against the Bill of Rights, or for statements by government/corporate shills on slashdot defending it.
Now, my Mom and sister try to think about as little as possible, and I thought their reaction was interesting.
To this line:
Now, my Mom and sister try to think about computers as little as possible, and I thought their reaction was interesting. *^^*
Did you ever see the IBM commercial with two college age people sitting at a computer breaking into some companies database? Well, one of the characters says, "Look this Vice-President makes twice as much as this Vice-President, I bet he doesn't know that."
Second character taps on the keyboard, "Sure he does, I just E-mailed everyone in the company."
Well, when my Mom and sister saw that commercial, they expressed admiration for the two (hackers? crackers?) in the commercial. Now, my Mom and sister try to think about as little as possible, and I thought their reaction was interesting. I think people are aware of "Don Quixote" (hackers? crackers?) just as they are aware of the more maliscious kind. I also think that to the average person if someone is referred to as a hacker in, say, a company they work in, they don't neccessarily think he's some evil renegade just someone with a lot of power where computers are concerned.
To put it another way, I'd say that the Lone Gunman on the X-Files (a popular TV show, remember) are heroic-type hackers and that most people who watch the show would a)refer to them as hackers and b) think of them as the good guys. Don't think just because we have a monolithic media cabal who's goal is to destroy anybody who they see as going against the establishment that the general public doesn't know the score. Popular culture should be in the mix in this discussion, too.
And then, after this philosophy had existed for many years, one horrible, sadistic monster said, "Let's get rid of those people, then our society will have no more problems." This is why the Holocaust happened, this is why intellectuals were murdered in Cambodia, and this is why when we notice certain attitudes about certain "undesirable" we must speak up! If not, in a hundred years, or maybe only fifty, who knows what could happen? Things will not always be nice and pleasant in this country, probably... right now things are. But if the supply of fossil fuel runs out before we're ready, or a new disease wipes out crops world wide, or we have a terrible depression, people might turn violent if they stay ignorant and are allowed to blame innocent people for tragedies like Littleton.