"Naomi"? "NAOMI"? Do I look like a "Naomi" to you, sugar?
Hey, listen, brainiac, here's a free tip: Before you can effectively mock someone in a public forum you have to be able to *write*, and upstream of that you need to be able to *read.*
We really do want your input, so do please try and follow along better, 'kay?
So how long have you been an un-thinking knee-jerk Anti-Microsoft Zombie?
It's all about the competition, puppy, and nobody needs a good hard competitive slap more than Apple's Music-Related business. These boutique MP3-Player and Online Music Download outfits whose marketing budgets wouldn't be more than a rounding error in a MS campaign have barely been yapping at Jobs' ankle in any meaningfully annoying way. Let the Big Dog enter the ring, let Jobs start having to look over his shoulder a bit, and it's nothing but good for the consumer.
Note: I have been using Linux for over a decade, and love both my iPods, so I'm certainly no Redmond apologist. But I relish their climbing into this space. Let the Innovation and Price Wars Begin!
I'm in those walls and I couldn't say this is a civilized country without laughing or giving it a very snide tone.
All you're really telling us is that you have not travelled much. Before you can tell whether your glass is half full or half empty you need to know the size of your glass, and, no, you can't find that out by looking something up in "wikipedia."
From the more cryptic than usual subtitle up through the ambiguous main title (I thought at first glance this was going to be one of those PC vs. Console flamewar threads), right down into the body of the summary, this whole thing is incomprehensible.
Ever since that whole "Carnival of Games" debacle I have upheld that Zonk posts certain stories because he's either lost a bet or is banging the submitter. Even the blatant slashvertisements manage to slide through here with a lower WTF-quotient then some of these in-bred gamer-blog linkages.
Sure, I'm off-topic and I should be modded as such, but please, guys, take a little bit of this to heart and start taking the time to re-read these game section submissions not as professional game reviewers who are "in the club" but as a human might read them.
Because you can't manufacture and sell "common sense."
Seriously: take any application or tool that you manufacture or market, re-paint it (or re-style the GUI) in red, white, and shades of chrome, stick a friggin' caduceus in the upper right hand corner, then sell it into the Medical Industry as being "expressly configured for Doctors," jack up the price by a factor of SEVEN, and watch 'em fly outta your warehouse.
Look, I was a nerd in high school and got shoved into my share of lockers. I suppose I could have gone all goth-and-trenchcoat, or retreated into a bitter, brittle shell, but at the end of the day I was driven to *succeed*, and that meant more than merely getting A's in my classes. I learned that I could always accomplish more as an inspiration to a group than I could by myself; learning how to draw together disparate personalities into something greater than the sum of their wacky parts was wa-a-a-ay more of a challenge to me than Trig or English Lit. I would have gotten the same straight A's online those many years ago as I did offline, and been far, far worse for it.
Geeks who view non-geeks as "jocks" or "sheeple" or "joe sixpacks" or any other term that linguistically elevates themselves above "the masses" are doomed to fail, simply by virtue of the numbers. Even the Ur-Geek Lex Luthor had his corn-fed, middle-America-valued, high-school-quarterbacking Clark Kent, and we all know how well that worked out for the Geek Side.
I feel I should respond to you (and, by extension, the others here who have touted Baen Books) that I'm already a big fan of Jim Baen (RIP) and his stable of fine authors. I've read just about every word written in the Honor Harrington and Hammer's Slammers sagas, and have sampled many of the others. Great stuff. Unpretentious science fiction the way the penny-a-word progenitors of the genre meant it to be.
But I thought the place to be if you wanted to make a difference in Internet legislation was out in San Francisco?
That's what the EFF told me...
Hey, wait a minute! Didn't the EFF *used* to be based in DC, but then moved to the west coast? That can't be right, makes no sense, I must be confused...
Anways, I guess we're all lucky these guys stayed behind.
Why can't more rich, self-absorbed and childless yuppies want to go to Mars? Then maybe our space program would get that much needed shot in the arm...
Why should communications in wartime be any different than communications in peacetime?
Uhh, because "loose lips sink ships?"
For that matter, do you really think the "war on terror" is any more winnable than the "war on drugs"?
C'mon, you seem bright enough to know that "war on terror" is the PC euphemism for "War Against Islamic Fundamentalists," and in its proper context, it is winnable (ask the Ottoman Empire). To do so requires the toppling of Iran, however, and the West does not have the stones to do that so quickly after Iraq. But I continue to hold out hope.
And what's with your fixation on the "wiretapping?" Someone tap your phone at a very early age or something?
I know at my university, professors frown on (and sometimes penalize) the use of wikipedia because of its less-than-authoritative nature
You will find this perspective outside your university in real life as well, so long as you don't spend too much of your real life on slashdot, where the opinions on wikipedia are rather skewed.
Lookit, no denying, it's a great place to start a query on a topic, and if you're looking to get up-to-date info on compression codecs or an overview of season five for "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," it's as good as it gets. But University-level research? Even non-public high school level research? Hardly. And the teachers and professors not only *know* this, they are being schooled themselves regularly about it in the various educational seminars that keep them updated on what they need to know about "cyberspace."
Here's when Wikipedia will be comparable to Britannica: when someone loses their primary source of income for writing incorrect information in an article. Until things get that serious, it's not serious enough for any professional research.
Britannica also provides the name of the person(s) who contributed to the article. Go Figure!!
Listen to yourself! Who said anything about wiretapping? This is not about wiretapping, nor is it about *coming into my house* and seizing my computer. None of my e-mail or my web surfing move along telecomm wires inside my home.
It doesn't take much training to get around wiretapping with encryption and coded messages
And it doesn't take a heck of a lot of effort to not use the Internet or e-mail in any way that might incriminate yourself. And I would prefer that people rely upon their own discipline and common sense than call upon a nanny-state government to "protect" them in the name of their "rights."
The SCOTUS extrapolated a constitutional right to privacy -- extrapolated, mind you; no where is it mentioned in the document -- as relates to the stuff that goes on *inside* your home. That's it! And your average middle-of-the-road consitutional scholar will still tell you even that's a stretch. Seriously, now: where do you come up with this "every form of communication?" As best as I can deduce -- and IANAL -- the only form of communication whose privacy is protected is the note you might slip to your spouse at the dinner table.
So let me spell it out: I don't want someone putting a camera in my house, and I have a right to that privacy. But the government has a right to put a camera on my street corner, and it has a right to look at my e-mail. Clinton kicked that off with ECHELON, and now Bush is just adding some buzzers and whistles (and bad press) to the process. Doesn't affect the way I live my life at all. Hopefully, the next ultra right-wing religious extremist looking to slam a plane into a building or collapse a tunnel on top of my commute will use the Internet to plot some of his shenanigans and get nailed.
We have a very reasonable expectation to privacy in any form of communication
What's this "we" stuff? That's my point. *I* never had any preconceptions regarding privacy as relates to my e-mail or web browsing, and I live my life (quite well, thanks for asking) without them. The conversation is not about phonecalls or semaphore or morse code or microphones in my house or any crazy stuff like that. It's about the Internet.
I've no need of the government to create any new laws to protect my "Internet privacy," especially if these laws are going to tie their hands later on when they are trying to do the job that I do need them to do, namely protect me against religious fundamentalists intent upon blowing up large sections of my neighborhood.
And puh-leeze don't give me any of that tired Ben Franklin crap about how I'm giving up my rights. It's about the Internet. The IN*TER*NET. Never had any rights of privacy regarding it, never expected any.
Sorry, but your citation is meaningless in the context of this discussion. You seek to extend the "constitutional privacy rights" which the USSC extrapolated existed for marriage to today's Internet, which is to say, communications in a time of war. Bit of a stretch, doncha think?
So, you run your own business, eh? Do you expect that your business will never be robbed? If you expect to be robbed, then why do we need any laws protecting your property rights?
Huh? I thought you were a member of the generation that believes you can't steal that which is not physical, that we should not confuse real property with intellectual property. Of course I want my physical assets protected. Duh. What could that possibly have to do with having the discipline to be discreet in what one says in an e-mail?
You might want to look up "fraud" and "identity theft".
I don't have to look it up, Ace, I've had my identity "stolen." Affected credit, I dealt with it, and survived. But all that happened before I even had an e-mail address. Stay on topic, we're talking about the Internet here.
You're using a 'nym and you've chosen to not reveal you email address. Why is that?
Because lunatics like you who disagree with my well-thought out and cogent arguments would take out your frustration by signing me up for penis-enlargement spam. Duh, again.
People expect their information to be private unless the government meets certain legal standards
I've never expected privacy on the Internet, either from the peering eyes of the government or my neighbors. Maybe because I was in business long before e-mail and instant messaging and the Web became "standard" and still view them as something about which to be wary.
My advice to clients and employees for 15 years has been: Never put something into an e-mail, or download something from a website, that you wouldn't want your mother, your spouse, your boss, George Bush or Hilary Clinton to have access to. You'd be surprised: That little bit of discipline and discretion really doesn't impact one's quality of life all that much.
*Should* I be expecting privacy? As a point of law? As a courtesy? [shrug] Never much thought about it. There's always *somebody* on top of a raised floor somewhere in the organization who is going to have access to my stuff, and it never fails that he's the shiftiest/scariest guy in the building, so I've just never got into the habit of growing any low-hanging fruit worth plucking.
Frankly, I really don't want any new laws "protecting my privacy," at least so far as this interwebs thing goes; I can protect myself just fine, thanks for asking...
So why would we ever seriously consider an article by a new organization owned by Microsoft about the EFF anything less than horribly biased?
Because:
(1) *I* have more editorial control over what happens at MSNBC than Microsoft does, and I don't even work there, and
(2) The EFF is vastly over-rated on slashdot, the result of their fete'ing the editors early on and keeping those wheels greased. Their periodic well-promoted 'crises,' timed to coincide with their fund-raising drives, make them the cyber version of PETA, which I guess makes the Real Players -- The Center for Democracy and Technology -- the Humane Society.
Takes intellect to lay out the case the way you've done it, and guts to do that *here*.
If you want to change US foreign policy in order to stop muslim terrorism, why not make abortions illegal in order to stop christian terrorism? After all, they're targeting abortion clinics and shooting abortion doctors, so it's pretty clear what they want, right?
Slashdot Mirror
I live in Helsinki. Visual Radio has been available here about one year.
Well, based upon the story submitter's logic, that must make Finland an economic and IT superpower.
How's that working out for you guys?
"Naomi"? "NAOMI"? Do I look like a "Naomi" to you, sugar?
Hey, listen, brainiac, here's a free tip: Before you can effectively mock someone in a public forum you have to be able to *write*, and upstream of that you need to be able to *read.*
We really do want your input, so do please try and follow along better, 'kay?
So . . . how long you been working for Microsoft?
Oh, Please.
So how long have you been an un-thinking knee-jerk Anti-Microsoft Zombie?
It's all about the competition, puppy, and nobody needs a good hard competitive slap more than Apple's Music-Related business. These boutique MP3-Player and Online Music Download outfits whose marketing budgets wouldn't be more than a rounding error in a MS campaign have barely been yapping at Jobs' ankle in any meaningfully annoying way. Let the Big Dog enter the ring, let Jobs start having to look over his shoulder a bit, and it's nothing but good for the consumer.
Note: I have been using Linux for over a decade, and love both my iPods, so I'm certainly no Redmond apologist. But I relish their climbing into this space. Let the Innovation and Price Wars Begin!
I'm in those walls and I couldn't say this is a civilized country without laughing or giving it a very snide tone.
All you're really telling us is that you have not travelled much. Before you can tell whether your glass is half full or half empty you need to know the size of your glass, and, no, you can't find that out by looking something up in "wikipedia."
...and why should she get a Dreamcast?
From the more cryptic than usual subtitle up through the ambiguous main title (I thought at first glance this was going to be one of those PC vs. Console flamewar threads), right down into the body of the summary, this whole thing is incomprehensible.
Ever since that whole "Carnival of Games" debacle I have upheld that Zonk posts certain stories because he's either lost a bet or is banging the submitter. Even the blatant slashvertisements manage to slide through here with a lower WTF-quotient then some of these in-bred gamer-blog linkages.
Sure, I'm off-topic and I should be modded as such, but please, guys, take a little bit of this to heart and start taking the time to re-read these game section submissions not as professional game reviewers who are "in the club" but as a human might read them.
Because you can't manufacture and sell "common sense."
Seriously: take any application or tool that you manufacture or market, re-paint it (or re-style the GUI) in red, white, and shades of chrome, stick a friggin' caduceus in the upper right hand corner, then sell it into the Medical Industry as being "expressly configured for Doctors," jack up the price by a factor of SEVEN, and watch 'em fly outta your warehouse.
...if you'd like to be a Qunu expert
Actually I'd like to be just a plain ol' legitimate "expert." The bar to being a "Qunu expert" seems rather low...
Damn. Lost the link in all the /. server screwiness this morning: Here ya go, as originally written circa 3am:
Worse still, it will likely put this guy out of business, and that would be a cryin' shame.
When all lyrics are downloaded, and none have to be interpreted, something very important but likewise intangible about rock-n-roll is lost.
Tom Waits, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
Woo Woo Woo.
Now, that's a stupid statement, even for someone in Marketing.
INDIVIDUALS are wise.
CROWDS are homicidal. Occasionally suicidal. But they are never 'wise.'
Worse still, it will likely put this guy out of business, and that would be a cryin' shame.
When all lyrics are downloaded, and none have to be interpreted, something very important but likewise intangible about rock-n-roll is lost.
Tom Waits, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
Woo Woo Woo.
You want a geek version of this?
Look, I was a nerd in high school and got shoved into my share of lockers. I suppose I could have gone all goth-and-trenchcoat, or retreated into a bitter, brittle shell, but at the end of the day I was driven to *succeed*, and that meant more than merely getting A's in my classes. I learned that I could always accomplish more as an inspiration to a group than I could by myself; learning how to draw together disparate personalities into something greater than the sum of their wacky parts was wa-a-a-ay more of a challenge to me than Trig or English Lit. I would have gotten the same straight A's online those many years ago as I did offline, and been far, far worse for it.
Geeks who view non-geeks as "jocks" or "sheeple" or "joe sixpacks" or any other term that linguistically elevates themselves above "the masses" are doomed to fail, simply by virtue of the numbers. Even the Ur-Geek Lex Luthor had his corn-fed, middle-America-valued, high-school-quarterbacking Clark Kent, and we all know how well that worked out for the Geek Side.
Thanks.
I feel I should respond to you (and, by extension, the others here who have touted Baen Books) that I'm already a big fan of Jim Baen (RIP) and his stable of fine authors. I've read just about every word written in the Honor Harrington and Hammer's Slammers sagas, and have sampled many of the others. Great stuff. Unpretentious science fiction the way the penny-a-word progenitors of the genre meant it to be.
But I thought the place to be if you wanted to make a difference in Internet legislation was out in San Francisco?
That's what the EFF told me...
Hey, wait a minute! Didn't the EFF *used* to be based in DC, but then moved to the west coast? That can't be right, makes no sense, I must be confused...
Anways, I guess we're all lucky these guys stayed behind.
Why can't more rich, self-absorbed and childless yuppies want to go to Mars? Then maybe our space program would get that much needed shot in the arm...
Damn.
Why should communications in wartime be any different than communications in peacetime?
Uhh, because "loose lips sink ships?"
For that matter, do you really think the "war on terror" is any more winnable than the "war on drugs"?
C'mon, you seem bright enough to know that "war on terror" is the PC euphemism for "War Against Islamic Fundamentalists," and in its proper context, it is winnable (ask the Ottoman Empire). To do so requires the toppling of Iran, however, and the West does not have the stones to do that so quickly after Iraq. But I continue to hold out hope.
And what's with your fixation on the "wiretapping?" Someone tap your phone at a very early age or something?
I know at my university, professors frown on (and sometimes penalize) the use of wikipedia because of its less-than-authoritative nature
You will find this perspective outside your university in real life as well, so long as you don't spend too much of your real life on slashdot, where the opinions on wikipedia are rather skewed.
Lookit, no denying, it's a great place to start a query on a topic, and if you're looking to get up-to-date info on compression codecs or an overview of season five for "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," it's as good as it gets. But University-level research? Even non-public high school level research? Hardly. And the teachers and professors not only *know* this, they are being schooled themselves regularly about it in the various educational seminars that keep them updated on what they need to know about "cyberspace."
Here's when Wikipedia will be comparable to Britannica: when someone loses their primary source of income for writing incorrect information in an article. Until things get that serious, it's not serious enough for any professional research.
Britannica also provides the name of the person(s) who contributed to the article. Go Figure!!
Wiretapping... Wiretapping... Wiretapping
Listen to yourself! Who said anything about wiretapping? This is not about wiretapping, nor is it about *coming into my house* and seizing my computer. None of my e-mail or my web surfing move along telecomm wires inside my home.
It doesn't take much training to get around wiretapping with encryption and coded messages
And it doesn't take a heck of a lot of effort to not use the Internet or e-mail in any way that might incriminate yourself. And I would prefer that people rely upon their own discipline and common sense than call upon a nanny-state government to "protect" them in the name of their "rights."
The same privacy should apply to all of them.
It shouldn't and it doesn't.
The SCOTUS extrapolated a constitutional right to privacy -- extrapolated, mind you; no where is it mentioned in the document -- as relates to the stuff that goes on *inside* your home. That's it! And your average middle-of-the-road consitutional scholar will still tell you even that's a stretch. Seriously, now: where do you come up with this "every form of communication?" As best as I can deduce -- and IANAL -- the only form of communication whose privacy is protected is the note you might slip to your spouse at the dinner table.
So let me spell it out: I don't want someone putting a camera in my house, and I have a right to that privacy. But the government has a right to put a camera on my street corner, and it has a right to look at my e-mail. Clinton kicked that off with ECHELON, and now Bush is just adding some buzzers and whistles (and bad press) to the process. Doesn't affect the way I live my life at all. Hopefully, the next ultra right-wing religious extremist looking to slam a plane into a building or collapse a tunnel on top of my commute will use the Internet to plot some of his shenanigans and get nailed.
Oh, wait: Didn't that just happen?
We have a very reasonable expectation to privacy in any form of communication
What's this "we" stuff? That's my point. *I* never had any preconceptions regarding privacy as relates to my e-mail or web browsing, and I live my life (quite well, thanks for asking) without them. The conversation is not about phonecalls or semaphore or morse code or microphones in my house or any crazy stuff like that. It's about the Internet.
I've no need of the government to create any new laws to protect my "Internet privacy," especially if these laws are going to tie their hands later on when they are trying to do the job that I do need them to do, namely protect me against religious fundamentalists intent upon blowing up large sections of my neighborhood.
And puh-leeze don't give me any of that tired Ben Franklin crap about how I'm giving up my rights. It's about the Internet. The IN*TER*NET. Never had any rights of privacy regarding it, never expected any.
Sorry, but your citation is meaningless in the context of this discussion. You seek to extend the "constitutional privacy rights" which the USSC extrapolated existed for marriage to today's Internet, which is to say, communications in a time of war. Bit of a stretch, doncha think?
So, you run your own business, eh? Do you expect that your business will never be robbed?
If you expect to be robbed, then why do we need any laws protecting your property rights?
Huh? I thought you were a member of the generation that believes you can't steal that which is not physical, that we should not confuse real property with intellectual property. Of course I want my physical assets protected. Duh. What could that possibly have to do with having the discipline to be discreet in what one says in an e-mail?
You might want to look up "fraud" and "identity theft".
I don't have to look it up, Ace, I've had my identity "stolen." Affected credit, I dealt with it, and survived. But all that happened before I even had an e-mail address. Stay on topic, we're talking about the Internet here.
You're using a 'nym and you've chosen to not reveal you email address. Why is that?
Because lunatics like you who disagree with my well-thought out and cogent arguments would take out your frustration by signing me up for penis-enlargement spam. Duh, again.
People expect their information to be private unless the government meets certain legal standards
I've never expected privacy on the Internet, either from the peering eyes of the government or my neighbors. Maybe because I was in business long before e-mail and instant messaging and the Web became "standard" and still view them as something about which to be wary.
My advice to clients and employees for 15 years has been: Never put something into an e-mail, or download something from a website, that you wouldn't want your mother, your spouse, your boss, George Bush or Hilary Clinton to have access to. You'd be surprised: That little bit of discipline and discretion really doesn't impact one's quality of life all that much.
*Should* I be expecting privacy? As a point of law? As a courtesy? [shrug] Never much thought about it. There's always *somebody* on top of a raised floor somewhere in the organization who is going to have access to my stuff, and it never fails that he's the shiftiest/scariest guy in the building, so I've just never got into the habit of growing any low-hanging fruit worth plucking.
Frankly, I really don't want any new laws "protecting my privacy," at least so far as this interwebs thing goes; I can protect myself just fine, thanks for asking...
But I do enjoy the ramblings of insane people who know nothing about which they speak.
Well, that would explain why you read Chomsky.
So why would we ever seriously consider an article by a new organization owned by Microsoft about the EFF anything less than horribly biased?
Because:
(1) *I* have more editorial control over what happens at MSNBC than Microsoft does, and I don't even work there, and
(2) The EFF is vastly over-rated on slashdot, the result of their fete'ing the editors early on and keeping those wheels greased. Their periodic well-promoted 'crises,' timed to coincide with their fund-raising drives, make them the cyber version of PETA, which I guess makes the Real Players -- The Center for Democracy and Technology -- the Humane Society.
Bravo, brother.
Takes intellect to lay out the case the way you've done it, and guts to do that *here*.
If you want to change US foreign policy in order to stop muslim terrorism, why not make abortions illegal in order to stop christian terrorism? After all, they're targeting abortion clinics and shooting abortion doctors, so it's pretty clear what they want, right?
I'm writing that one down.
Thanks for the lift.