We ALL know everybody's view of censorware, can we stop reporting EVERYTHING that can result in 300 censorware sucks posts?
I disagree. This article told me a new argument against censorware that I had suspected, but didn't have hard evidence of.
You seem to accept that censorship is a serious danger facing us today. If so, we need to do more than just sit around Slashdot and tell each other what we already know. We need to go out and change other people's minds, people who still think censorware is an imperfect but acceptable way to "protect children". We need to (diplomatically!) open the discussion with our family, friends, and coworkers. It helps to present outrageous examples to support our argument. Maybe then our family and friends will understand where we're coming from.
This article presents one really good example, which would offend most moderate-leaning people who still believe in a free exchange of ideas. It clearly and undeniably shows how the censorware "solution" goes way beyond "protecting children". Restricting political speech strikes much closer to the heart of the (US) first amendment than restricting porn, and is a much more serious threat. I'm glad this article was posted.
This happened in FrontPage 98. Maybe there are some plaintext backdoors in FrontPage 2000. Does anyone with that product wanna run "strings" on a few of the.dll's?
From the article, it makes me wonder whether police are purposely overreacting to the new guidelines, as a form of protest, because they don't like them-- they remove an unfair advantage the police are used to having.
The way it usually is, police and prosecutors have the overwhelming upper hand when it comes to news coverage of a case. As soon as they label someone a "suspect" and "charge" them with something, that defendant becomes less credible in the public's perception. Almost all of us tend to believe what "authorities say" in police statements to the media. (If you think you're immune to such manipulation, watch yourself more closely.) Once that happens, we are less prone to believe the defendant because "they'll say anything to get out of a conviction", or "why would police lie?". Not many people consider the self-interest at stake for police officers, police departments, and prosecutors, to get a conviction, even if the defendant is innocent. But there are plenty of reasons why convictions benefits those parties, for money, power, and ego.
Anyway, police and presecutors are used to creating an impression of guilt in the public's perception. Take that power away from them, and they get upset, and try to make the media blame the big bad judge for it. They do this by clamming up, even though they know they're perfectly safe if they stick to facts. They're not willing to act like the defendant is innocent until proven guilty.
Major problem with split along product lines
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Microsoft Loses
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· Score: 2
I see your point about dividing up into development teams (though read about the maximum effective team size in "The Mythical Man-Month"). However, there's a serious problem with merely splitting along product lines.
Splitting along product lines would merely create several smaller monopolies in smaller niches. It would be the equivalent of splitting Ma Bell into Baby Bells, which as we know did NOT result in more competition. Ma Bell should have been split into several national competitors, each with access to the whole network and all consumers. Regarding Microsoft, leaving Windows in the hands of a single company would hardly leave us any better than before. A little better, but I'm not convinced it's much.
Perhaps a split-up remedy could state that different Windows teams could share code, but any shared code must be made openly available to anyone.;)
No shit. Actually, what they need, and agree upon, is a better database. They don't do, and don't have time to, do full searches on all teh potential journals. Get them a better database, and more time to sort through it. I think they need 20-60 hours per patent, not 8.
No, what I'm saying is that even IF they had more time and money to build a better database, it could never be definitive. Probably useful, but they would still need to look outside of it, because many of the important ideas simply aren't, and won't be, in ANY journals. Journals are NOT the entire sum of human knowledge. (The USPTO already searches literally hundreds of thousands of publications.)
And anyway, whats your better idea?
I never said I had one, but since you asked: There needs to be an open review period before any patent is granted. The combined knowledge of everyone in the field is far greater than what's written down. Other countries do this. I remember hearing there are drawbacks, but I forget what those are. However, without a review period, I don't see how any patent examiner can take into account all relevant technical history.
I also think patents should be easier to overturn if prior art or other info is discovered later. The PTO agent's ego shouldn't be involved-- an overturned patent shouldn't be seen as a sign of his/her incompetence that must be battled in court.
I've heard patent lawyers brag about the hundreds of thousands of publications in all languages that USPTO agents search on before granting a patent. The USPTO and its agents are very proud of this fact, and they rest on it as solid proof that they know what they're doing, and that all of us critics are a bunch of irrational kooks.
That's right, they assume that anything worth knowing about any field has been published in some journal somewhere. Anything not published is beneath consideration for any true expert in the field. Anyone who thinks otherwise is not a true expert. The USPTO and patent attornies are firmly entrenched in the academic world of several decades ago. Take a minute to let this sink in.
They don't realize that "prior art" exists in everything from source code, to round-table discussions, to personal conversations. In fact, some of the most important prior art exists in these forms, which cannot be indexed, cataloged, and numbered in their database.
It is impossible to have a complete prior-art database, and they should not pretend that it's possible!
Really, for being such a generally smart bunch of people, the lawyers I've known have been clueless about technology. One didn't even use a computer. Another has trouble using AOL. Another takes pride in the fact that he doesn't know computers, because that's not his field and he shouldn't have to know all those details (interestingly, he's a patent lawyer). This last attitude seems comicly prevalent. Does anyone know why lawyers seem so technology-inept? Does anyone else have this experience?
The incredibly arrogant William T. Ellis (in Washington, DC) dismisses Bezos as a "bookseller" that should not express his opinion on patent law. I'd say it's even more "somewhat incongruous" for a lawyer to think they know the best way to foster technology.
Another lawyer dismisses this as "Pamela Samuelson revisited." Yes, we do need to revisit it if they didn't get a clue the first time around.
If this is the best thing lawyers can do for technology, then lawyers should stay out of technology.
We all know patent lawyers are saying this because they want to keep their jobs, no better reason. Don't forget that.
Not to discount anything else you said, but it is possible to send multiple cookies with a response. According to Netscape's spec, "Multiple Set-Cookie headers can be issued in a single server response."
Now, whether that runs into problems with HTTP header restrictions (section 4.2 of either HTTP spec), that's another question. Multiple Set-Cookie: headers *may* be collapsed into one header with comma-separated cookies, which is a problem if any cookie field has a comma in it (expires, path). But such an event is unlikely, so you're probably safe to send multiple Set-Cookie: headers.
If you have a place to put it, here's a stable and simple-to-install CGI-based proxy. It supports HTTP, FTP, cookies, and a bunch of configurable features.
I'm almost done with a new release, which will support streaming media, HTTP Basic authentication (hopefully!), and much better anonymity (the current 1.2 release has many JavaScript holes). I'll also have an HTTPS-supporting version, but you'll need OpenSSL on your server. If you get a copy of 1.2 now, check back in a couple of weeks.
Looking for testers! In fact, I'm testing it right now by posting this.
Re:Who controls the media? *We* control the media.
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Master Of Your Domain
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· Score: 2
"Cross-cultural 'communication'", eh? You have absolutely no idea what that really means, my friend. Absolutely no idea.
Since you didn't clarify, I'll assume this is part of the alien joke.
[Me:] If people want to create and read Web pages, the system would adjust to accommodate them, distributing its load as needed.
[You:] That sounds like a free market to me. But who pays for it? The taxpayers, I suppose. If these services you so much enjoy were really worth having, wouldn't people have paid for them willingly? Of course they would. But they didn't. Government picked up the tab. Had they not, the Internet never would have been born because it offered nothing of value to anybody capable of paying his own way.
You're trying to predict a priori what the Internet was like from a set of theories, but your conclusions don't match the reality of what it was. Therefore, either your theories or your logical framework is flawed.
In this case, you're relying on a basic flaw of many free market arguments-- the notion that if a product is worth something, people will pay money for it. However, there are many counterexamples. Are you saying that food is worthless to a starving man if he can't pay for it? You allude to this with your phrase "to anybody capable of paying his own way". But the repugnant conclusion is the idea that only the well-being of moneyed people matters. Few people truly consciously believe this; do you?
Regarding the Internet then, it was worth a great deal to students, but how many students could have afforded to pay for the infrastructure? There's such a thing as investment in a society's future. Many of the "no tax" crowd don't seem to realize this. (They also don't seem to notice the benefits they themselves have reaped from various tax-funded projects, but that's a bigger topic.)
Another totally different counterexample: Loving physical intimacy (including sex) is worth a lot, but how can you pay money for it? Some things by their nature can't be bought and don't fit into the free market framework.
Another flaw in your argument is that people would have paid for all this, except the framework was already in place so they didn't have to. And in fact, they pay today with their ISP bill. And they were doing so for years before the Net was overrun with businesses.
Note that there was a huge active network of BBS's for years, complete with image-oriented pages, that had functions similar to the Internet. It was operated and funded entirely by the individuals involved.
The business world has a severely bloated sense of its own importance, and how much everyone needs them; they make big rationalizations to support this claim. In their ego, they like to take credit for everything. Your post is a classic example of all of this.
The idea that the Internet needs businesses is bullshit, totally unfounded. Businesses need the Internet, the Internet doesn't need businesses. The Internet exploded of its own accord, but the US economy is only exploding because of the Internet (thank you very much).
The Internet was just fine before businesses got involved. It was already exploding. The business world took years to figure out how to take advantage of it, or even whether "this Internet thing is here to stay"! Most had no clue. We have little if anything to "thank" them for. The Internet, and maybe everything else, would do just fine without them.
Your comments show you have no idea what was going on with the Internet before e-commerce. Well, lots of things were. For one, the very technology for the current Internet was developed on the Internet itself, back when it was what you call "a useless boondoggle". For another, it offered great academic and research benefit (but maybe you consider those useless, too). A lot of cross-cultural communication, more than ever before in history. The Internet was transforming the world long before the first banner ad appeared.
OK, so you say "we wouldn't all those high-speed lines and powerful servers if it weren't for banner ads." But this is wrong too. If people want to create and read Web pages, the system would adjust to accommodate them, distributing its load as needed. Instead of having one Yahoo, there would be a directory site, a news site, an email site, a map site.... If you know anything about Web technology, you know it would be very easy to do. The simple fact is, we don't need businesses, and that makes them very uncomfortable. They're used to pushing everyone around, and any situation where they can't is threatening to them.
I could go on. Perhaps you should question your own compulsion to kneel unquestioningly at the altar of business. Where did you get the impression they're doing everyone such favors? From reading and watching the news, maybe? Who controls the news media, hmm?
I do like how the truth sounds, but your post is nothing close to the truth. It's definitely not "common sense". It's revisionist history and pro-corporate propaganda.
I've noticed that many people who are accustomed to traditional one-way media such as radio or TV are slow to understand the two-way dialogue nature of Internet culture. By one-way, I mean that broadcasters (including me for a while) send their messages out to the "masses" and don't interact much with their audience. In contrast, one of the first things I noticed about the Internet was that you could send emails to famous people and they'd write you back! People are more down-to-earth and treat each other as peers, as opposed to the (perhaps inevitable) heirarchy between a broadcaster and her/his audience. It's worth noting that "heroes" among the online community are chosen for their accessibility and involvement in the community, and that they quickly lose their status if their ego takes over in a way that makes them less accessible. Ego generally gets razzed at, as does abuse of power. People forgive your flaws here if you're honest and open and well-intentioned, but if you're not, the Internet is an unnervingly good BS detector. This becomes clear to anyone who pays attention to their feedback.
My point is, I've seen very few politicians (one or two on the local level) that understand this and can use it to their advantage. As one poster above mentioned, most campaign sites are like mere brochures. If a candidate is to gain respect online, s/he needs to respond to the audience. This could be as simple as maintaining a real FAQ, or it could take the form of an online forum for discussion of issues, perhaps using a format like Slashdot. Al Gore would have suffered much less online damage if, after his "Internet" statement, he'd posted an online apology explaining what on earth he'd been thinking, and acknowledging the people who really deserve credit for the Internet.
So... my questions are: Have you thought about this? If so, what are your thoughts? What are your plans in this area? How long will it take before politicians use the Internet to become more in touch with their constituency?
Here's another filter-bypassing CGI-based proxy that you can install yourself. It supports HTTP, FTP, cookies, etc., written in Perl. Here's a patch that supports SSL (i.e. https:)-- it's not documented yet, but the configuration is almost the same (just enter two additional URLs near the start of each script).
Actually, that's an interesting idea to substitute "sh!t" for "shit" etc. You could also run the proxy on an SSL server, but that takes more computing resources.
If installing a CGI script somewhere is easier than installing the Junkbuster, then see my CGIProxy. Along with proxying pages, it can filter ads with either your own blocklist or a default one.
This may be what the protesters were talking about when they said the WTO could supercede national sovereignty.
Does anyone know how exactly how these events could have transpired, i.e. how law enforcement agents could have been wielded against Jon based on what he did? What did he do that was illegal, or what are the police claiming? Are they answering to a higher power, that is in turn answering to corporate interests, through the WTO or something similar? (I mean officially, we all know they do it under the table anyway....) What is the power/legal structure invoked here?
That's an easy one: Are you saying that your being hetero is a choice, and that you could choose to be gay if you wanted to? I know for me, it ain't gonna happen... sorry, I'm just not wired that way. I assume it's no more of a choice for gay people. Besides, in most parts of the US, gay people live in fear of physical violence, or losing their job, or whatever. Who on earth would CHOOSE to be gay in this culture?
Last I checked homosexuality wasn't a political platform.
Yes. Thank you.
There was an email going around last fall that was absolutely hysterical, called "The Homosexual Agenda". It was a takeoff on the (unjustified) fears of the religious right. I was rolling.
Zealots are more likely to do what it takes achieve their goals, and voting is the way that's done in this country (for political matters anyway).
And they're well organized. They do things like set up 800- numbers to Congress, so the flock can call all the time without worrying about cost. They do the whole "stealth candidate" thing, so that today they're in many school boards. They successfully apply pressure on Big Media. They seem to have a few well-defined spokesmen.
What rights of assembly and speech are the Republicans at odds with?
Again, everything that the religious right is at odds with. You can't say "bullshit" on the air, or display nudity, or even talk about sex, and it's even hard to talk about breast cancer, pregnancy, or STD's (ignorance of which leads to serious problems for kids). Many fiction and nonfiction books are banned in schools by so-called "Christian" groups for even alluding to these topics.
As far as assembly goes, the Arizona politician in question thought about prohibiting different-sex association. In Tennessee, I know people who are harrassed because they're not Christian, and their children are harrassed at school.
I sincerely disagree. They are no more likely to vote than radical homosexuals or Pro-abortion types.
Actually, I've seen studies that indicate members of the religious right are something like twice as likely to vote as others. Unfortunately I don't have any links to those studies, but I've seen more than one.
I'm still wondering what a "radical homosexual" is. "Radical activist" maybe, but a person has no choice over whether or not they're gay.
I'm a libertarian Republican and as far as I am concerned, ASU students can fuck their brains out if they wish.
Great! But then it becomes a matter of priorities: Would you rather vote for someone who didn't censor but (let's say) raised taxes to pay for schools, or someone who did censor but would cut your taxes?
From your post, I'd call you more of a Libertarian than a Republican. Republican politicians support the religious right's agenda and stronger police powers, which Libertarians are against. I don't think Republican politicians vote very Libertarian at all, unless it happens to help large corporations who are their campaign contributors. Orrin Hatch himself said that if soft money were banned, it would be the end of the Republican party.
This doesn't have anything to do with Republicans, and you know it.... Stupid politicians are the norm in state politics, no matter the party.
Weeeeelllllll... more accurately, it has to do with the pressure from the religious right, who are about twice (?) as likely to vote as everyone else. The religious right is quite strong in Tennessee, so politicians of all parties will court them. However, Republicans are historically much more likely to pander to them than Democrats. If you doubt this, then try to find a Republican politician in Tennessee who is willing to take a stand against the religious right there. Good luck.
I've also known some pretty conservative "Democrat" politicians in southern states.
I am neither Democrat nor Republican. It's true there are idiots in both parties, but as a whole, based on their national voting record, the Democrats have been much more concerned with civil liberties such as freedom of speech and assembly. Gun control is the only issue where this is reversed.
Be loud about this issue in the upcoming Presidential and Congressional races. Find out what your candidates' stands are on censorware (such as in schools and libraries), and make sure all your friends and family know their positions too.
If you can attend any public debates or other candidate appearances, ask the candidates as visibly as possible what they think about censorship and the right of adults to read whatever they want. If they say "not if the government's paying for it", have a response ready, perhaps "I'm the one paying taxes for it and I don't want the government to censor me or my children", or another response of your choosing.
Republican's are getting so bad these days I'm saddened to call myself one. I remember when republicans used to run their campaigns on the simple fact that democrats always screw up the economy, now they're just getting all uber-moral.
Unfortunately, Republicans have been this way a long time, and their "less government" campaign promise has almost nothing to do with their actual voting record. I can relate to your position-- I sympathized with Republicans until I was about 20, when Reagan was in office and I saw some of the tremendous damage being done to civil liberties. He promoted a religious state, a police state, and a corporate state, and conservative politicians have unfortunately carried those banners ever since. The War on Drugs, a major Reagan legacy, is a good example of this, and it's also a good tool to harass political opponents. It was like the USA threw civil liberties by the wayside. I felt like I could be thrown in jail for opening my mouth about it. It was scary.
I'm not trying to start flame wars or troll or anything, I'm just trying to relate a little history to people who have become adults in the 90's, who may not remember what it was like. Trust me, the 80's were a harsh time for little things like freedom of speech and freedom from police abuse. We have big and different problems now, but in many ways it's not as bad as it was then.
I encourage you to explore third-party options. There are many out there, and surely some that match your values better than either of the big two. It's not a wasted vote-- if enough people vote third-party, they can become a voting block that big candidates pursue. Also, they get allowed into debates, which can ultimately mean they get elected.
The more proxies there are available, the less effective any kind of censorship can be. Here's one easy-to-install CGI-based proxy. OK, it's a shameless plug, but there are other proxy programs available, both CGI-based and "true" port-based proxies (which are harder to conceal). But stash away copies in case you need them in the future, or to send to others who need them.
Slashdot Mirror
I disagree. This article told me a new argument against censorware that I had suspected, but didn't have hard evidence of.
You seem to accept that censorship is a serious danger facing us today. If so, we need to do more than just sit around Slashdot and tell each other what we already know. We need to go out and change other people's minds, people who still think censorware is an imperfect but acceptable way to "protect children". We need to (diplomatically!) open the discussion with our family, friends, and coworkers. It helps to present outrageous examples to support our argument. Maybe then our family and friends will understand where we're coming from.
This article presents one really good example, which would offend most moderate-leaning people who still believe in a free exchange of ideas. It clearly and undeniably shows how the censorware "solution" goes way beyond "protecting children". Restricting political speech strikes much closer to the heart of the (US) first amendment than restricting porn, and is a much more serious threat. I'm glad this article was posted.
This happened in FrontPage 98. Maybe there are some plaintext backdoors in FrontPage 2000. Does anyone with that product wanna run "strings" on a few of the .dll's?
The way it usually is, police and prosecutors have the overwhelming upper hand when it comes to news coverage of a case. As soon as they label someone a "suspect" and "charge" them with something, that defendant becomes less credible in the public's perception. Almost all of us tend to believe what "authorities say" in police statements to the media. (If you think you're immune to such manipulation, watch yourself more closely.) Once that happens, we are less prone to believe the defendant because "they'll say anything to get out of a conviction", or "why would police lie?". Not many people consider the self-interest at stake for police officers, police departments, and prosecutors, to get a conviction, even if the defendant is innocent. But there are plenty of reasons why convictions benefits those parties, for money, power, and ego.
Anyway, police and presecutors are used to creating an impression of guilt in the public's perception. Take that power away from them, and they get upset, and try to make the media blame the big bad judge for it. They do this by clamming up, even though they know they're perfectly safe if they stick to facts. They're not willing to act like the defendant is innocent until proven guilty.
Splitting along product lines would merely create several smaller monopolies in smaller niches. It would be the equivalent of splitting Ma Bell into Baby Bells, which as we know did NOT result in more competition. Ma Bell should have been split into several national competitors, each with access to the whole network and all consumers. Regarding Microsoft, leaving Windows in the hands of a single company would hardly leave us any better than before. A little better, but I'm not convinced it's much.
Perhaps a split-up remedy could state that different Windows teams could share code, but any shared code must be made openly available to anyone. ;)
Exactly! Thank you for pointing this out! I meant to say it in my last note but I forgot. That's exactly the parallel I was trying to draw.
No, what I'm saying is that even IF they had more time and money to build a better database, it could never be definitive. Probably useful, but they would still need to look outside of it, because many of the important ideas simply aren't, and won't be, in ANY journals. Journals are NOT the entire sum of human knowledge. (The USPTO already searches literally hundreds of thousands of publications.)
And anyway, whats your better idea?
I never said I had one, but since you asked: There needs to be an open review period before any patent is granted. The combined knowledge of everyone in the field is far greater than what's written down. Other countries do this. I remember hearing there are drawbacks, but I forget what those are. However, without a review period, I don't see how any patent examiner can take into account all relevant technical history.
I also think patents should be easier to overturn if prior art or other info is discovered later. The PTO agent's ego shouldn't be involved-- an overturned patent shouldn't be seen as a sign of his/her incompetence that must be battled in court.
That's right, they assume that anything worth knowing about any field has been published in some journal somewhere. Anything not published is beneath consideration for any true expert in the field. Anyone who thinks otherwise is not a true expert. The USPTO and patent attornies are firmly entrenched in the academic world of several decades ago. Take a minute to let this sink in.
They don't realize that "prior art" exists in everything from source code, to round-table discussions, to personal conversations. In fact, some of the most important prior art exists in these forms, which cannot be indexed, cataloged, and numbered in their database.
It is impossible to have a complete prior-art database, and they should not pretend that it's possible!
The incredibly arrogant William T. Ellis (in Washington, DC) dismisses Bezos as a "bookseller" that should not express his opinion on patent law. I'd say it's even more "somewhat incongruous" for a lawyer to think they know the best way to foster technology.
Another lawyer dismisses this as "Pamela Samuelson revisited." Yes, we do need to revisit it if they didn't get a clue the first time around.
If this is the best thing lawyers can do for technology, then lawyers should stay out of technology.
We all know patent lawyers are saying this because they want to keep their jobs, no better reason. Don't forget that.
Now, whether that runs into problems with HTTP header restrictions (section 4.2 of either HTTP spec), that's another question. Multiple Set-Cookie: headers *may* be collapsed into one header with comma-separated cookies, which is a problem if any cookie field has a comma in it (expires, path). But such an event is unlikely, so you're probably safe to send multiple Set-Cookie: headers.
I'm almost done with a new release, which will support streaming media, HTTP Basic authentication (hopefully!), and much better anonymity (the current 1.2 release has many JavaScript holes). I'll also have an HTTPS-supporting version, but you'll need OpenSSL on your server. If you get a copy of 1.2 now, check back in a couple of weeks.
Looking for testers! In fact, I'm testing it right now by posting this.
Since you didn't clarify, I'll assume this is part of the alien joke.
[Me:] If people want to create and read Web pages, the system would adjust to accommodate them, distributing its load as needed.
[You:] That sounds like a free market to me. But who pays for it? The taxpayers, I suppose. If these services you so much enjoy were really worth having, wouldn't people have paid for them willingly? Of course they would. But they didn't. Government picked up the tab. Had they not, the Internet never would have been born because it offered nothing of value to anybody capable of paying his own way.
You're trying to predict a priori what the Internet was like from a set of theories, but your conclusions don't match the reality of what it was. Therefore, either your theories or your logical framework is flawed.
In this case, you're relying on a basic flaw of many free market arguments-- the notion that if a product is worth something, people will pay money for it. However, there are many counterexamples. Are you saying that food is worthless to a starving man if he can't pay for it? You allude to this with your phrase "to anybody capable of paying his own way". But the repugnant conclusion is the idea that only the well-being of moneyed people matters. Few people truly consciously believe this; do you?
Regarding the Internet then, it was worth a great deal to students, but how many students could have afforded to pay for the infrastructure? There's such a thing as investment in a society's future. Many of the "no tax" crowd don't seem to realize this. (They also don't seem to notice the benefits they themselves have reaped from various tax-funded projects, but that's a bigger topic.)
Another totally different counterexample: Loving physical intimacy (including sex) is worth a lot, but how can you pay money for it? Some things by their nature can't be bought and don't fit into the free market framework.
Another flaw in your argument is that people would have paid for all this, except the framework was already in place so they didn't have to. And in fact, they pay today with their ISP bill. And they were doing so for years before the Net was overrun with businesses.
Note that there was a huge active network of BBS's for years, complete with image-oriented pages, that had functions similar to the Internet. It was operated and funded entirely by the individuals involved.
The business world has a severely bloated sense of its own importance, and how much everyone needs them; they make big rationalizations to support this claim. In their ego, they like to take credit for everything. Your post is a classic example of all of this.
The idea that the Internet needs businesses is bullshit, totally unfounded. Businesses need the Internet, the Internet doesn't need businesses. The Internet exploded of its own accord, but the US economy is only exploding because of the Internet (thank you very much).
The Internet was just fine before businesses got involved. It was already exploding. The business world took years to figure out how to take advantage of it, or even whether "this Internet thing is here to stay"! Most had no clue. We have little if anything to "thank" them for. The Internet, and maybe everything else, would do just fine without them.
Your comments show you have no idea what was going on with the Internet before e-commerce. Well, lots of things were. For one, the very technology for the current Internet was developed on the Internet itself, back when it was what you call "a useless boondoggle". For another, it offered great academic and research benefit (but maybe you consider those useless, too). A lot of cross-cultural communication, more than ever before in history. The Internet was transforming the world long before the first banner ad appeared.
OK, so you say "we wouldn't all those high-speed lines and powerful servers if it weren't for banner ads." But this is wrong too. If people want to create and read Web pages, the system would adjust to accommodate them, distributing its load as needed. Instead of having one Yahoo, there would be a directory site, a news site, an email site, a map site.... If you know anything about Web technology, you know it would be very easy to do. The simple fact is, we don't need businesses, and that makes them very uncomfortable. They're used to pushing everyone around, and any situation where they can't is threatening to them.
I could go on. Perhaps you should question your own compulsion to kneel unquestioningly at the altar of business. Where did you get the impression they're doing everyone such favors? From reading and watching the news, maybe? Who controls the news media, hmm?
I do like how the truth sounds, but your post is nothing close to the truth. It's definitely not "common sense". It's revisionist history and pro-corporate propaganda.
Thanks! Though I really wish it would get moderated up, since I really wanna know the answers. (You have a good question too.)
My point is, I've seen very few politicians (one or two on the local level) that understand this and can use it to their advantage. As one poster above mentioned, most campaign sites are like mere brochures. If a candidate is to gain respect online, s/he needs to respond to the audience. This could be as simple as maintaining a real FAQ, or it could take the form of an online forum for discussion of issues, perhaps using a format like Slashdot. Al Gore would have suffered much less online damage if, after his "Internet" statement, he'd posted an online apology explaining what on earth he'd been thinking, and acknowledging the people who really deserve credit for the Internet.
So... my questions are: Have you thought about this? If so, what are your thoughts? What are your plans in this area? How long will it take before politicians use the Internet to become more in touch with their constituency?
Actually, that's an interesting idea to substitute "sh!t" for "shit" etc. You could also run the proxy on an SSL server, but that takes more computing resources.
If installing a CGI script somewhere is easier than installing the Junkbuster, then see my CGIProxy. Along with proxying pages, it can filter ads with either your own blocklist or a default one.
I know that I have no choice in whether or not I'm heterosexual. I assume it's the same for gay people.
Does anyone know how exactly how these events could have transpired, i.e. how law enforcement agents could have been wielded against Jon based on what he did? What did he do that was illegal, or what are the police claiming? Are they answering to a higher power, that is in turn answering to corporate interests, through the WTO or something similar? (I mean officially, we all know they do it under the table anyway....) What is the power/legal structure invoked here?
That's an easy one: Are you saying that your being hetero is a choice, and that you could choose to be gay if you wanted to? I know for me, it ain't gonna happen... sorry, I'm just not wired that way. I assume it's no more of a choice for gay people. Besides, in most parts of the US, gay people live in fear of physical violence, or losing their job, or whatever. Who on earth would CHOOSE to be gay in this culture?
Last I checked homosexuality wasn't a political platform.
Yes. Thank you.
There was an email going around last fall that was absolutely hysterical, called "The Homosexual Agenda". It was a takeoff on the (unjustified) fears of the religious right. I was rolling.
Zealots are more likely to do what it takes achieve their goals, and voting is the way that's done in this country (for political matters anyway).
And they're well organized. They do things like set up 800- numbers to Congress, so the flock can call all the time without worrying about cost. They do the whole "stealth candidate" thing, so that today they're in many school boards. They successfully apply pressure on Big Media. They seem to have a few well-defined spokesmen.
Again, everything that the religious right is at odds with. You can't say "bullshit" on the air, or display nudity, or even talk about sex, and it's even hard to talk about breast cancer, pregnancy, or STD's (ignorance of which leads to serious problems for kids). Many fiction and nonfiction books are banned in schools by so-called "Christian" groups for even alluding to these topics.
As far as assembly goes, the Arizona politician in question thought about prohibiting different-sex association. In Tennessee, I know people who are harrassed because they're not Christian, and their children are harrassed at school.
I sincerely disagree. They are no more likely to vote than radical homosexuals or Pro-abortion types.
Actually, I've seen studies that indicate members of the religious right are something like twice as likely to vote as others. Unfortunately I don't have any links to those studies, but I've seen more than one.
I'm still wondering what a "radical homosexual" is. "Radical activist" maybe, but a person has no choice over whether or not they're gay.
Great! But then it becomes a matter of priorities: Would you rather vote for someone who didn't censor but (let's say) raised taxes to pay for schools, or someone who did censor but would cut your taxes?
From your post, I'd call you more of a Libertarian than a Republican. Republican politicians support the religious right's agenda and stronger police powers, which Libertarians are against. I don't think Republican politicians vote very Libertarian at all, unless it happens to help large corporations who are their campaign contributors. Orrin Hatch himself said that if soft money were banned, it would be the end of the Republican party.
Weeeeelllllll... more accurately, it has to do with the pressure from the religious right, who are about twice (?) as likely to vote as everyone else. The religious right is quite strong in Tennessee, so politicians of all parties will court them. However, Republicans are historically much more likely to pander to them than Democrats. If you doubt this, then try to find a Republican politician in Tennessee who is willing to take a stand against the religious right there. Good luck.
I've also known some pretty conservative "Democrat" politicians in southern states.
I am neither Democrat nor Republican. It's true there are idiots in both parties, but as a whole, based on their national voting record, the Democrats have been much more concerned with civil liberties such as freedom of speech and assembly. Gun control is the only issue where this is reversed.
If you can attend any public debates or other candidate appearances, ask the candidates as visibly as possible what they think about censorship and the right of adults to read whatever they want. If they say "not if the government's paying for it", have a response ready, perhaps "I'm the one paying taxes for it and I don't want the government to censor me or my children", or another response of your choosing.
Unfortunately, Republicans have been this way a long time, and their "less government" campaign promise has almost nothing to do with their actual voting record. I can relate to your position-- I sympathized with Republicans until I was about 20, when Reagan was in office and I saw some of the tremendous damage being done to civil liberties. He promoted a religious state, a police state, and a corporate state, and conservative politicians have unfortunately carried those banners ever since. The War on Drugs, a major Reagan legacy, is a good example of this, and it's also a good tool to harass political opponents. It was like the USA threw civil liberties by the wayside. I felt like I could be thrown in jail for opening my mouth about it. It was scary.
I'm not trying to start flame wars or troll or anything, I'm just trying to relate a little history to people who have become adults in the 90's, who may not remember what it was like. Trust me, the 80's were a harsh time for little things like freedom of speech and freedom from police abuse. We have big and different problems now, but in many ways it's not as bad as it was then.
I encourage you to explore third-party options. There are many out there, and surely some that match your values better than either of the big two. It's not a wasted vote-- if enough people vote third-party, they can become a voting block that big candidates pursue. Also, they get allowed into debates, which can ultimately mean they get elected.
The more proxies there are available, the less effective any kind of censorship can be. Here's one easy-to-install CGI-based proxy. OK, it's a shameless plug, but there are other proxy programs available, both CGI-based and "true" port-based proxies (which are harder to conceal). But stash away copies in case you need them in the future, or to send to others who need them.