I had no TV or video. I hired a video machine for a club function, then returned it to the hire shop.
I then started receiving letters from the TV Licensing people saying I hadn't paid my TV licence (although I had never owned a TV).
So I sent the hire shop a letter asking them to update their database with my change of address (to some bogus address). And I never heard from the TV Licensing people again.
They sure don't ask who they can share your personal information with.
"If I choose to give my personal information away (or walk in public where cameras are present), that is OK."
So if I'm unhappy about the loss of privacy, I can stay inside - only I can't get a house, because I can't get a bank account, so I can't get a job... it becomes a little impractical. Why should I have to exclude myself from all the resources of our modern society. These resources are meant to serve us, not the other way around. When we are being tracked and monitored, not by our own choosing, then the resources of our society are not serving us.
Those who monitor us might pretend that it is for our benefit. There might even be some very real benefits. But that is the bait on the hook.
I believe that people need to fight back. The reason for most breech privacy is to exploit people. (Notice that we are not trying to track the old guy with a heart condition in Chad or Sudan. They've got no money, so we don't give a damn about them.)
If we don't care enough about our freedom, we will lose it. Part of freedom (in my humble opinion) is that a person is of value as a human being, not to be used as a means to another's end. Therein is slavery.
Generally, I enjoy Paul Graham's techno-philosophy. But I think he's gone off the rails a bit here.
First of all, his word 'hacker' seems to imply something that excludes application programming. Most of my job is application programming. Second, a 'great hacker' seems like a rare breed. It's like talking about the great legendary firefighters, when in reality, many good hard working fire fighers could put out regular fires just as well.
I am not a 'great' programmer. But I write good, stable, maintainable, software. If I may be so bold, I think some of my work is artful, functional and bloody good.
I enjoy perl and I enjoy Java. The scripts that personalise my linux box are perl. The scripts that shoehorn my customers' data into various systems are perl. The cgi's that give an interface to email and admin utilities are perl. But If I need a gui (other than http - and yes, I've used Tk before) or if I'm starting a new large scale project that will be coded and administered by a team, I would choose java. Why, because we have a large scale server app entirely in perl, and many of the routines are so stylised to the person how wrote it, that nobody else can figure out what's going on without hours of head scratching.
So each tool has its merits. It may be that some of the Mozarts of computer software prefer various languages. And these guys may be Paul Graham's buddies. But the rest of us are programmers of varying experience, many very good. And we can write elegent code in Java just as we can pen poetry in perl. Some of us can even pick the right tool for the task without imagining that the choice says something about our personal greatness.
Slashdot folk ought to understand easily. Fruit and Vegetable are not mutually exclusive terms. Fruit is a scientific term (also used at breakfast). It has seeds, etc. Tomato, cucumber, zuccini, pumpkin are fruits.
Vegetable is a term relating to how we prepare food. (Vegetation has a much broader meaning.) Some, fruits, roots, and leaves are called vegetables in the kitchen.
Actually, the distinction of the two main types of plants comes from Genesis in the Bible.
1 - Herbs (that cast their seed)
2 - Trees (that drop fruit with seed in the fruit)
One of the reasons this Hot Coffee legend is difficult for people outside the USA to understand is that we actually drink hot coffee. Americans (and I do like the USA and the people...) drink luke warm coffee.
I am not anti-American. I studied there and I love the place. But they have the worst food and the worst coffee in the world. They think that luke warm, over sweetened, preservative loaded, sugar coated, cellophane wrapped crap... is good food?!?!?!
As a New Zealander, I can report that in New Zealand, this fact is widely known. We assume that history is often written by those with the power to make it stick.
But as this is not a recently discovered achievement, the history books are unlikely to be re-written now.
I'm really not worried about who gets the recognition for this. We just need to focus on rebuilding our rugby squad for the next World Cup.
The author of the article says he is not a techie. Does that make him clueless? No. He says in the article that he would welcome response from the technical community. Too bad that a certain vocal percentage of techies are so egotistically arrogant that they insult anyone who is less technical than themselves.
So if a non-techie says he is willing to learn, he correctly evaluates the economic reasons that spam continues, he suggests something quite sensible about graphical email addresses on web sites, and asks for further technical input... then why not give him the benefit of your technical knowledge? Or on the other hand, if you have no ideas of your own, you could just insult him.
The thrust of his argument is understanding why spam exists. Until this is understood, the psuedo solutions will fail, because they miss the mark. I thought the article had a valuable point to make. Good on you, Ari.
Its obvious that Microsoft make decisions for no other reason than to make more money. The subscription chat services make more money than unsubscribed.
The real reason for this is that the lawyers are screaming to cut the unmonitored service before they get sued.
Nevertheless, that kind of chat is among the most banal and crappy of all internet applications. If every provider stopped supporting it, it would be no great loss.
You're right about the flying car. What we need are little airships. If they go fairly slowly and not too high, and they bounce off each other nicely, many of the most glaring dangers of fight will be minimised.
Then I'd be happy to get up and travel to work. I'd be there on time, all refreshed.... ahhhhhh - sigh.
It's not the amount of the fine that's important. (Who gets the money anyway.) It's the 'official' trashing of SCO's accusations which is important. It will restore confidence in business considering Linux systems.
I love the way the BBC says:
The only stumbling block is how to deliver ready-made building blocks to a construction site 300 million kilometres (186.4 million miles) away from Earth.
This really would be a wonderful project, but you have to doubt that the Russians are in any position to take this one on.
The reality is that we know so little about the universe that we can't even account for 90% of the gravity in our own galaxy. We call it dark matter because we can't see it anywhere but we need it to balance the visible mass against the visible size and rotation of the Milky Way. We have only just begun to think about the shape of the universe. As in... What is at the edge, and what is beyond that? Or does it curl around in a sort of 11 dimentional sphery type thing. Figuring out the total heat or mass in the universe is still way beyond us. We don't yet have a theory of gravity that works for the galaxy, or fits with electromagnetic and nuclear forces.
Ether was added to the list after Earth, Wind, Water and Fire. No joke - this is old Greek stuff. Someone said ether had circular properties, explaining the moon and cycles in nature...
3) Is it inconceivable that our "new" elements could also be produced under similar conditions in nature?
If you are brave enough to go to a very extreme natural environment (like the centre of a black hole), you may find that matter exists in a quite different form. The periodic table has a sequence, so we know there are no gaps up to the 92nd element we have found naturally and the 110th someone says they have produced. But there may be places in the universe where conditions are sufficiently different that a different sequence of 'elements' is natural.
It may also be possible to consider the substance of the universe on a quite different scale - either very big or very small - which leads us to think about the basic elements in quite a different way.
There is a whole lot we just don't know. The periodic table of elements does a pretty good job of describing a lot of the matter we see and experience in the suburbs.
America uses pounds and ounces because they are free and they use what they want. In Britain, our tradition and heritage is being thrown away because the European Union tells us what weights and measures we are allowed to use.
Slashdot Mirror
I had no TV or video. I hired a video machine for a club function, then returned it to the hire shop.
I then started receiving letters from the TV Licensing people saying I hadn't paid my TV licence (although I had never owned a TV).
So I sent the hire shop a letter asking them to update their database with my change of address (to some bogus address). And I never heard from the TV Licensing people again.
They sure don't ask who they can share your personal information with.
So if I'm unhappy about the loss of privacy, I can stay inside - only I can't get a house, because I can't get a bank account, so I can't get a job... it becomes a little impractical. Why should I have to exclude myself from all the resources of our modern society. These resources are meant to serve us, not the other way around. When we are being tracked and monitored, not by our own choosing, then the resources of our society are not serving us.
Those who monitor us might pretend that it is for our benefit. There might even be some very real benefits. But that is the bait on the hook.
I believe that people need to fight back. The reason for most breech privacy is to exploit people. (Notice that we are not trying to track the old guy with a heart condition in Chad or Sudan. They've got no money, so we don't give a damn about them.)
If we don't care enough about our freedom, we will lose it. Part of freedom (in my humble opinion) is that a person is of value as a human being, not to be used as a means to another's end. Therein is slavery.
Generally, I enjoy Paul Graham's techno-philosophy. But I think he's gone off the rails a bit here.
First of all, his word 'hacker' seems to imply something that excludes application programming. Most of my job is application programming. Second, a 'great hacker' seems like a rare breed. It's like talking about the great legendary firefighters, when in reality, many good hard working fire fighers could put out regular fires just as well.
I am not a 'great' programmer. But I write good, stable, maintainable, software. If I may be so bold, I think some of my work is artful, functional and bloody good.
I enjoy perl and I enjoy Java. The scripts that personalise my linux box are perl. The scripts that shoehorn my customers' data into various systems are perl. The cgi's that give an interface to email and admin utilities are perl. But If I need a gui (other than http - and yes, I've used Tk before) or if I'm starting a new large scale project that will be coded and administered by a team, I would choose java. Why, because we have a large scale server app entirely in perl, and many of the routines are so stylised to the person how wrote it, that nobody else can figure out what's going on without hours of head scratching.
So each tool has its merits. It may be that some of the Mozarts of computer software prefer various languages. And these guys may be Paul Graham's buddies. But the rest of us are programmers of varying experience, many very good. And we can write elegent code in Java just as we can pen poetry in perl. Some of us can even pick the right tool for the task without imagining that the choice says something about our personal greatness.
The difference between using a CLI and a GUI is like the difference between being able to talk or having to communciate just by pointing.
So what are the favourite terra-forming sci-fi novels?
Slashdot folk ought to understand easily. Fruit and Vegetable are not mutually exclusive terms. Fruit is a scientific term (also used at breakfast). It has seeds, etc. Tomato, cucumber, zuccini, pumpkin are fruits.
Vegetable is a term relating to how we prepare food. (Vegetation has a much broader meaning.) Some, fruits, roots, and leaves are called vegetables in the kitchen.
Actually, the distinction of the two main types of plants comes from Genesis in the Bible.
1 - Herbs (that cast their seed)
2 - Trees (that drop fruit with seed in the fruit)
Go on, mod me down, I mentioned the Bible
One of the reasons this Hot Coffee legend is difficult for people outside the USA to understand is that we actually drink hot coffee. Americans (and I do like the USA and the people...) drink luke warm coffee.
I am not anti-American. I studied there and I love the place. But they have the worst food and the worst coffee in the world. They think that luke warm, over sweetened, preservative loaded, sugar coated, cellophane wrapped crap... is good food?!?!?!
As a New Zealander, I can report that in New Zealand, this fact is widely known. We assume that history is often written by those with the power to make it stick.
But as this is not a recently discovered achievement, the history books are unlikely to be re-written now.
I'm really not worried about who gets the recognition for this. We just need to focus on rebuilding our rugby squad for the next World Cup.
The author of the article says he is not a techie. Does that make him clueless? No. He says in the article that he would welcome response from the technical community. Too bad that a certain vocal percentage of techies are so egotistically arrogant that they insult anyone who is less technical than themselves.
So if a non-techie says he is willing to learn, he correctly evaluates the economic reasons that spam continues, he suggests something quite sensible about graphical email addresses on web sites, and asks for further technical input... then why not give him the benefit of your technical knowledge? Or on the other hand, if you have no ideas of your own, you could just insult him.
The thrust of his argument is understanding why spam exists. Until this is understood, the psuedo solutions will fail, because they miss the mark. I thought the article had a valuable point to make. Good on you, Ari.
Its obvious that Microsoft make decisions for no other reason than to make more money. The subscription chat services make more money than unsubscribed.
The real reason for this is that the lawyers are screaming to cut the unmonitored service before they get sued.
Nevertheless, that kind of chat is among the most banal and crappy of all internet applications. If every provider stopped supporting it, it would be no great loss.
You're right about the flying car. What we need are little airships. If they go fairly slowly and not too high, and they bounce off each other nicely, many of the most glaring dangers of fight will be minimised. Then I'd be happy to get up and travel to work. I'd be there on time, all refreshed.... ahhhhhh - sigh.
And here is the link in html .
You're quite right. My German isn't what it isn't.
It's not the amount of the fine that's important. (Who gets the money anyway.) It's the 'official' trashing of SCO's accusations which is important. It will restore confidence in business considering Linux systems.
I love the way the BBC says:
The only stumbling block is how to deliver ready-made building blocks to a construction site 300 million kilometres (186.4 million miles) away from Earth.
This really would be a wonderful project, but you have to doubt that the Russians are in any position to take this one on.
The reality is that we know so little about the universe that we can't even account for 90% of the gravity in our own galaxy. We call it dark matter because we can't see it anywhere but we need it to balance the visible mass against the visible size and rotation of the Milky Way.
We have only just begun to think about the shape of the universe. As in... What is at the edge, and what is beyond that? Or does it curl around in a sort of 11 dimentional sphery type thing. Figuring out the total heat or mass in the universe is still way beyond us.
We don't yet have a theory of gravity that works for the galaxy, or fits with electromagnetic and nuclear forces.
Aristotle and his ether
Ether was added to the list after Earth, Wind, Water and Fire. No joke - this is old Greek stuff. Someone said ether had circular properties, explaining the moon and cycles in nature...
3) Is it inconceivable that our "new" elements could also be produced under similar conditions in nature? If you are brave enough to go to a very extreme natural environment (like the centre of a black hole), you may find that matter exists in a quite different form. The periodic table has a sequence, so we know there are no gaps up to the 92nd element we have found naturally and the 110th someone says they have produced. But there may be places in the universe where conditions are sufficiently different that a different sequence of 'elements' is natural. It may also be possible to consider the substance of the universe on a quite different scale - either very big or very small - which leads us to think about the basic elements in quite a different way. There is a whole lot we just don't know. The periodic table of elements does a pretty good job of describing a lot of the matter we see and experience in the suburbs.
America uses pounds and ounces because they are free and they use what they want. In Britain, our tradition and heritage is being thrown away because the European Union tells us what weights and measures we are allowed to use.