Just on a purely practical level, how do you expect to communicate anything with that code? It takes more than one person to communicate, and the parties must share a common language.
Your code means nothing to everybody, and you fail to sucessfully communicate, unless someone has the key to the code. You are forced to reveal the key to someone, somehow.
That revelation will give you away.
So unless you have come up with a way to create a keyless or transparent-key code (which I'm not denying is possible, but I would suggest is fallible), you'll never be heard but in your head.
They're singing "Uncle Fucker!" Dearie me! Certainly they're going to smash in the Quickie Mart window and loot and riot now! What hath Hollywood wrought!
What are you afraid of? My girlfriend and I are 21 and we *still sing Uncle Fucker. We saw the movie 3 weeks ago. Yes, we're pathetic, but I don't think that we're anything to be afraid of.
That 15 year olds sing a song is only an indication that it is catchy. I get more angry when I hear kids singing Brittany Spears and Will Smith. That stuff's catchy, too, and it's just as insipid. At lease Uncle Fucker has social value as a satire.
After watching south park, the "information must be free" part of my brain started to glow.
I watched the movie in a theatre half-filled with people deemed too-young to let the movie have a chance to "warp their fragile little minds."
The movie's most dangerous message to those kids, though, was not "uncle-fucker" or "floppy donkey dick," but "Sometimes your parents are fallible, and even when you are right and they are wrong, they don't listen to you, do they?"
The scariest element of the movie is not that little Timmy will start spewing profanities, but that Timmy might learn to think for himself and start contradicting his parents!
I see this same message in Katz's article. Teenagers, by the time they are old enough to get to a movie theatre, are old enough to decide whether or not they want to get into a movie theatre. Your job as a parent--teaching the fundamental moral lessons of life--should be long done by then. After they're in high school, they're already on their course, and you can only hope to guide them. You cannot assume a dictatorship at that point: you're too late.
I would encourage my teenager to see South Park (I would really like to go with them, to share in the intellectual benefits of the social satire). On the other hand, I would hope that by the time my kids are teenagers, they will have the same critical thinking skills that I value in myself which tell me that "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer," "American Pie," are the real evil movies. Not because they are violent or crude, but because they perpetuate American Culture through the mindless sponges (their peers) that eat that material up.
I think Katz is right. Take a youth to a youth-restricted movie. It shows far more respect to a budding intellectual and human being than restricting the information does.
Well, well, another Citadel Sysop. I ran The Chalet in St. Paul, Minnesota for four years or more on my XT. There was a tremendous glut of Citadels here in the twin cities (home of Hue Jr!) back in the early ninetys.
There are still quite a few of them up, but it is very hard to fire up the modem anymore. But whenever I get the urge, there are telnet versions of the software now (with Web front-ends!).
Elsewise, if I ever happen upon a second phone line, I've still got all my Cit86 software and door games biding time on my hard drive.
Hopefully you realize that Pascal's wager is based on the vindictive human-nature atribted to the Christian God. Not all religions attribute eternal damnation to failing to heed the word of some messiah.
Moreover, I question that Pascal would be able to "choose to believe in" every god whose religion threatened post-mortem doom. Remember, just because Chrisitanity calls their god "God" doesn't make him some sort of meta-deity over all other religious entities.
To bring the conversation back on-topic: The ten commandments are primary texts used by a dominant religion. I am far more afraid of the use of this document as a form of oppression than I am some third-hand mythology that is taught jokingly in English class.
Consider how you were taught greek and norse mythology: "What a bunch of wacky people! Man-boy love, Gods on Mount Olympus... Crazy neanderthals--though the Greeks were on to something with that democracy stuff."
I just read the first amendment last night. It's short--45 words covering 5 topics. It is tough to ascribe the 16 words concerning religion their broad public impact. However, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..." certainly applies in the case of this particiular amendment.
Finally, I hardly disagree with some of the 10 commandments as text, indeed, Jesus had some good things to say about the meek and respecting others. However, these moral lessons can be taught independent of religion. Not everyone needs the fear of eternal damnation to behave in a civil and respectful manner to their fellow humans.
I suppose that leaving the room or changing the channel when TV commercials come on is theft, too.
Or taking the dealership logo off your car. Because, gosh, without all that free advertising, how'd they ever be able to sell cars so cheap?!
On the other hand, I'd be happy to apply your logic when it comes to taking my own personal data in the form of cookies and log entries when it is sold for profit. Pure theft.
It's just a matter of the lowest-common- denominator. They know that they are going to have to answer some very under-researched questions from users, and want to limit the knowledge base of their tech people to keep costs down.
Why "support" all OSes with techs that cost $20/hr when you can hire some youthful "windows experts" for $9/hr?
The solution for the end user is simple, don't tell them which OS you use if at all possible. If they insist on installing it for you (shudder), give 'em a ringer computer.
For the record, USWest let me install it on my own, and install it I did.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll bite:
Just on a purely practical level, how do you expect to communicate anything with that code? It takes more than one person to communicate, and the parties must share a common language.
Your code means nothing to everybody, and you fail to sucessfully communicate, unless someone has the key to the code. You are forced to reveal the key to someone, somehow.
That revelation will give you away.
So unless you have come up with a way to create a keyless or transparent-key code (which I'm not denying is possible, but I would suggest is fallible), you'll never be heard but in your head.
They're singing "Uncle Fucker!" Dearie me! Certainly they're going to smash in the Quickie Mart window and loot and riot now! What hath Hollywood wrought!
What are you afraid of? My girlfriend and I are 21 and we *still sing Uncle Fucker. We saw the movie 3 weeks ago. Yes, we're pathetic, but I don't think that we're anything to be afraid of.
That 15 year olds sing a song is only an indication that it is catchy. I get more angry when I hear kids singing Brittany Spears and Will Smith. That stuff's catchy, too, and it's just as insipid. At lease Uncle Fucker has social value as a satire.
After watching south park, the "information must be free" part of my brain started to glow.
I watched the movie in a theatre half-filled with people deemed too-young to let the movie have a chance to "warp their fragile little minds."
The movie's most dangerous message to those kids, though, was not "uncle-fucker" or "floppy donkey dick," but "Sometimes your parents are fallible, and even when you are right and they are wrong, they don't listen to you, do they?"
The scariest element of the movie is not that little Timmy will start spewing profanities, but that Timmy might learn to think for himself and start contradicting his parents!
I see this same message in Katz's article. Teenagers, by the time they are old enough to get to a movie theatre, are old enough to decide whether or not they want to get into a movie theatre. Your job as a parent--teaching the fundamental moral lessons of life--should be long done by then. After they're in high school, they're already on their course, and you can only hope to guide them. You cannot assume a dictatorship at that point: you're too late.
I would encourage my teenager to see South Park (I would really like to go with them, to share in the intellectual benefits of the social satire). On the other hand, I would hope that by the time my kids are teenagers, they will have the same critical thinking skills that I value in myself which tell me that "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer," "American Pie," are the real evil movies. Not because they are violent or crude, but because they perpetuate American Culture through the mindless sponges (their peers) that eat that material up.
I think Katz is right. Take a youth to a youth-restricted movie. It shows far more respect to a budding intellectual and human being than restricting the information does.
Well, well, another Citadel Sysop. I ran The Chalet in St. Paul, Minnesota for four years or more on my XT. There was a tremendous glut of Citadels here in the twin cities (home of Hue Jr!) back in the early ninetys.
There are still quite a few of them up, but it is very hard to fire up the modem anymore. But whenever I get the urge, there are telnet versions of the software now (with Web front-ends!).
Elsewise, if I ever happen upon a second phone line, I've still got all my Cit86 software and door games biding time on my hard drive.
There's always Bill Bradley.
"Where do most of the child molestors come from ?"- --
-----------------------------------------------
Where?
Hopefully you realize that Pascal's wager is based on the vindictive human-nature atribted to the Christian God. Not all religions attribute eternal damnation to failing to heed the word of some messiah.
Moreover, I question that Pascal would be able to "choose to believe in" every god whose religion threatened post-mortem doom. Remember, just because Chrisitanity calls their god "God" doesn't make him some sort of meta-deity over all other religious entities.
To bring the conversation back on-topic: The ten commandments are primary texts used by a dominant religion. I am far more afraid of the use of this document as a form of oppression than I am some third-hand mythology that is taught jokingly in English class.
Consider how you were taught greek and norse mythology: "What a bunch of wacky people! Man-boy love, Gods on Mount Olympus... Crazy neanderthals--though the Greeks were on to something with that democracy stuff."
I just read the first amendment last night. It's short--45 words covering 5 topics. It is tough to ascribe the 16 words concerning religion their broad public impact. However, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..." certainly applies in the case of this particiular amendment.
Finally, I hardly disagree with some of the 10 commandments as text, indeed, Jesus had some good things to say about the meek and respecting others. However, these moral lessons can be taught independent of religion. Not everyone needs the fear of eternal damnation to behave in a civil and respectful manner to their fellow humans.
The constitutional amendment.
The unconstitutional amendment.
Good joke.
I suppose that leaving the room or changing the channel when TV commercials come on is theft, too.
Or taking the dealership logo off your car. Because, gosh, without all that free advertising, how'd they ever be able to sell cars so cheap?!
On the other hand, I'd be happy to apply your logic when it comes to taking my own personal data in the form of cookies and log entries when it is sold for profit. Pure theft.
It's just a matter of the lowest-common- denominator. They know that they are going to have to answer some very under-researched questions from users, and want to limit the knowledge base of their tech people to keep costs down.
Why "support" all OSes with techs that cost $20/hr when you can hire some youthful "windows experts" for $9/hr?
The solution for the end user is simple, don't tell them which OS you use if at all possible. If they insist on installing it for you (shudder), give 'em a ringer computer.
For the record, USWest let me install it on my own, and install it I did.