You exposed nothing of the sort. I'm not impressed with MLKs achievements because I don't find them impressive achievements, and said so.
You think your country represents freedom, and that he was a great man.
I think your country represents tyranny, inequality, exploitation and war, and that MLK was an insignificant man who has been put on a pedestal because it is politically correct to do so.
He didn't make a better way of life possible, all he did was ranted about what his brothers and sisters ought to do, and then he died, and they don't do it, because they're trapped in an exploitative system that is beyond their capacities to escape, and he didn't change that fact in the slightest.
He's a sorry excuse for a hero who achieved not very much at all.
I'm not impressed with the results. I'm not impressed with your country, I'm not impressed with your political-economic systems, I'm not impressed with your empty claims to equality. Your country pays lip service to the idea of equality, it doesn't deliver it. The nation of Cuba has more equality than the USA does.
Yeah, I've heard of Martin Luther King. I don't have a whole lot of regard for him though. He didn't really change anything. RMS created real infrastructure to make it easy for people to live within his ideals, and the changes he made possible will live past his death and despite his permanent personal obscurity. MLK made a spectacle of himself, roused the rabble until he got shot, then they all dispersed and went back to business as usual. He was a loud mouthed punk.
You're mistaken. This is more like politics. When two politicians argue, they're not arguing because they expect to convert the other, they're arguing for the sake of the audience.
In similar vein, this isn't about converting Apple employees. It's about making a spectacle in front of a bunch of third parties who are demonstratively willing to buck the Microsoft monopoly in the hopes that they might be nosy and learn about these FSF guys who they've never heard of before and hear what they have to say.
Personally, I think protesters are categorically useless individuals who should focus on creating infrastructure to replace what they dislike instead of demanding that other people do it for them. But this isn't any less effective a plan than any other protests I've seen.
The subject of the article is about one central admin having too much control over too many machines, and the risks that entails when they go bad.
Which makes a person wonder... how much worse when billions of consumers are giving total control over all their machines to a centralized authority through Trusted Computing and Vista?
Show me men who are just as good at pushing out babies to grow up and wipe my ass for me when I get old, and I'll throw my support behind getting women into Math and Science. Until then, we've got more important things for women to be doing than sitting behind a desk pushing pencils, and they should be damned well doing the things they're needed for. As it stands, their competence or lack thereof is irrelevant.
The people at Craigslist thought "What a bunch of fucking tools. I'm not interested in their 'authority', and I'm not going to take time out of my busy life to dignify them by coming and humbling myself before them."
Which is a perfectly appropriate response. When the rule are corrupt, ethical men do not allow themselves to be bound by them. If they are consistent about applying this policy, the seller won't be worse off.
Personally, I think the whole thing stinks. Who goes to all the trouble to escape jail so they can kill themselves when they succeed? It's not like there isn't a long list of people with motive to kill him and tidy up the witnesses. If the teenage girl was shot but escaped and is coherent enough to talk, why do the authorities talk about the "apparent" gunman? That seems to me the sort of language you use when all you have is circumstantial evidence.
"Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence."
Malice maybe, maybe not. We will probably never know for sure. In any case, both sides could have handled the incident better.
This can't be explained by incompetence. If it just threw warnings that hang Linux but MS products ignore, that might fly. They've got conditional statements to act in a specific fashion with Linux, which they do not support. Magic fairy's didn't put those conditions in, and there's no ethical reason for investing time to create such conditions for an OS you don't support. This is clearly malice. And considering that this was reported to the FTC and the truth of the matter has become common industry knowledge because of this guys actions, I would say he handled it perfectly.
I could cite my brother, who is studying medicine and genetic engineering, but this being the web, I'll just grab a few headlines from Google, post them, and get back to work.
We've found life in the freezing cold depths of the ocean where light doesn't penetrate. We've found life on the edges of volcanos. We've mixed together chemical soups and watched life erupt out of it.
Obviously, life isn't a unique and special thing, but something that naturally erupts into existence all over the place. Therefore, there must be life all over the universe, and not just here on Earth.
Which is, of course, consistent with major religions. 'God', aka 'The Universe', creates life 'in his image', aka 'of the universe'.
The universe doesn't tend towards entropy. It tends towards life. We are walking, talking evidence of this fact.
Is this related to the media project you were talking about last year?
I have two media projects on the go, one related to bands and one related to artists, but they're on the back burner a.t.m.... client defaulted on us and I'm still dealing with the fallout from that. Hoping to get the one related to artists finalized and start actively promoting it by the end of the year though. It's got different goals though... more of a way to fund the creators of original works that doesn't rely on copyright to generate revenue, paired with tools that allow those creators to release digital copies under Creative Commons and generate personal fame, thus driving up the value of the original works and giving the artist an indirect return on their decision to share.
In that sense, advertising isn't quite the worthlessness you make it out to be. It's just communication, which is useful and which the internet a good start at an infrastructure for.
Communication is two way. The word you were looking for was Propaganda.
If I was absolute ruler? Well, off the cuff... I'd marshal the worlds might to create a political system resembling freegovernment.org. I'd create infrastructure to support a massive surveillance state, and make every scrap of surveillance, current and historical, available for viewing by the public. I'd push for the creation of cheap devices enabling pervasive mesh networks to ensure that communications doesn't rely on central infrastructure. I'd rally the tech giants around a project resembling the Reprap, and get devices out into peoples hands that will automatically share all design patterns loaded into them across the mesh network P2P style. That would drive manufacturing capacity to the citizenry in the same way the internet has been driving communications capacity to the citizenry, and ensure that progress automatically propagated. Once I'd achieved these goals, I'd create a model for government based strictly around providing critical infrastructure, things like power, transportation, food. Rather than a system of taxation, I'd require each citizen to participate in each industrial sector.
At the end of the day, I'd expect to see an informed citizenry, connected to the means by which their livelihood was assured, empowered to make and share anything they wished, empowered to elect or fire the administrators of the system at any time, and liberated to pursue whatever intellectual, creative or recreational pursuits they wished. Then I'd step down from office, work my share and spend my spare time jamming with my friends and making fireworks as a hobby.
But then, I'm never going to be absolute ruler, so it's kind of a moot point.
Yeah, you're right. The monetary based economy is going to have to be discarded before we're really going to fix these problems. I'm in favour of a democratically managed economy with all taxes to be paid exclusively in labour, personally.
Here's my guess: the web, TV, movies, games, and other forms of "entertainment" will be riddled with product placements, product storylines, and an overall commercialized experience. The line between "feature" and "commercial" will blur and blur until it ceases to exist. Sometimes this will be well done and the entertainment value will be preserved. Sometimes it will come off as transparent shit, exposing both the "feature" and the advertised product(s) to public ridicule or boycott.
The premise of this collapse is that advertising is overvalued, and not worth the money being paid for it. You think the answer is more advertising? Call me crazy, but I'm thinking something more along the original vision of the BBC and the CBC, where they are socialized and exist for the purpose of promoting creativity, culture and the arts. That's a lot more realistic. A lot of the objections to these structures is that they are elitist, and it's generally been a valid point. But if the administration were done using a democratic process, like the Free Government project, well, that could overcome those objections for the most part.
Oh, look, I built something wonderful that makes peoples lives better. Everyone wants to participate. How will I ever get the support I need to keep this thing that everyone wants to succeed functional?
I'll stuff it full of crap that they don't like, and the people who own the big factory peddling the crap can support me. That's a great model, right?
Wrong.
I don't know what the exact shape of the web will be when we find the right answer. But it sure as hell isn't this.
The modern web is like going to watch a show while two dozen ugly people with screeching voices walk the aisles constantly screaming at you to pay attention to them instead. It's shameful to see something with such potential perverted in such a fashion, and if we need another collapse before we get our heads out of our collective asses and fix things, well, it can't come soon enough for my liking...
Re:What no discussion of the Bambi movie?
on
Batman Discussion
·
· Score: 1
Cutting yourself off from a world who relies on advertisements for getting new ideas and thoughts out there seems...well...I don't have a nice word for it. But, heck...do you stop talking to your friends if they make a recommendation about a product?
Having had friends get involved with Amway and other MLM schemes, I can assure you, the answer to that question is yes. If my friends treat me as a captive audience and try to sell me their patrons products, I stop talking to them.
Would seem to me that both camps can be made happy by allowing the developers to indicate that "THIS" page should not be added to the browser history.
So, if the user goes to the home page, then goes to a "view product" page, then goes through a purchasing process, you could suppress the pages involved in the purchasing process from being added to the history. If the user hits the back button half way through making a purchase, it would take them back to the "view product" page. If they then hit "forward", it would do nothing, because the "view product" page is the most recent entry.
We tried that one too, and LOGO as well. I liked Squeak better actually, but my daughter preferred Scratch. Incidentally, Scratch runs well under WINE.
I can't comment to a teenager, but I've been having success getting my 7 year old daughter interested in programming with Scratch. She's been using it to make movies and games. The thing that really captured her attention was that she could publish her work through Scratch and get positive feedback from the community on the Scratch website. The idea of building a fan base really appeals to her. I've also told her that if she develops the skills, when she's ready for her first job, we will give her part time work instead of her having to get a job in some fast food joint or convenience store, and that seems to have made an impression on her.
Seems to me the best thing you can do to get your teenager involved in *nix programming is to get them involved in an online community that will give them some positive feedback and the possibility of celebrity, then show them some of the success stories out there that started in just that way. And, of course, let them know you're genuinely proud of them when they create something.
Re:What no discussion of the Bambi movie?
on
Batman Discussion
·
· Score: 1
What you believe and what is actually true are not necessarily the same thing.
You can believe all you want that there are no more filmmakers who value their work above "big profits," but that doesn't make it true.
As for product placement...I see products all the time in real life, so I don't even notice it when its in movies unless it is blatantly obvious. In fact, the world can seem very weird without products all around us.
What is actually true is, I don't watch voluntarily expose myself to commercials at any time, I don't trust American publishers, I don't make compromises unless the life and safety of my loved ones are in danger, and I'm not giving them any of my money ever again. Beyond that, I really don't give a rats ass.
This isn't a debate. This is me, making my intentions known. I cut my cable because of commercials, I stopped going to theaters because of them, I stopped listening to the radio because of them, and now I'm going to stop watching films entirely, in any format, if they are produced in the USA. If I see a similar pattern emerge in films made outside the USA, which I haven't yet, I'll cut them out of my life as well.
My brain is not for sale. Nor is that of my family. I play music, my girlfriend plays music and paints, my daughter is getting into making movies and I'm teaching her how to use the software. We release our stuff for free, we share it with our friends, we share it with each other. We watch Canadian, British, Australian and non-english foreign films because we haven't seen this trend penetrate those markets yet. If we do, we will boycott them as well.
Just as well in the end. American culture is grotesque anyways, and not really something I ought to be exposing myself and my family to...
Slashdot Mirror
You're right. I am your foe. Bury me if you can, because I'd do the same to you.
You exposed nothing of the sort. I'm not impressed with MLKs achievements because I don't find them impressive achievements, and said so.
You think your country represents freedom, and that he was a great man.
I think your country represents tyranny, inequality, exploitation and war, and that MLK was an insignificant man who has been put on a pedestal because it is politically correct to do so.
He didn't make a better way of life possible, all he did was ranted about what his brothers and sisters ought to do, and then he died, and they don't do it, because they're trapped in an exploitative system that is beyond their capacities to escape, and he didn't change that fact in the slightest.
He's a sorry excuse for a hero who achieved not very much at all.
I'm not impressed with the results. I'm not impressed with your country, I'm not impressed with your political-economic systems, I'm not impressed with your empty claims to equality. Your country pays lip service to the idea of equality, it doesn't deliver it. The nation of Cuba has more equality than the USA does.
Vista is like Chili and Whiskey. It might seem good when it's on the tongue, but your ass will be sore in the morning.
Yeah, I've heard of Martin Luther King. I don't have a whole lot of regard for him though. He didn't really change anything. RMS created real infrastructure to make it easy for people to live within his ideals, and the changes he made possible will live past his death and despite his permanent personal obscurity. MLK made a spectacle of himself, roused the rabble until he got shot, then they all dispersed and went back to business as usual. He was a loud mouthed punk.
You're mistaken. This is more like politics. When two politicians argue, they're not arguing because they expect to convert the other, they're arguing for the sake of the audience.
In similar vein, this isn't about converting Apple employees. It's about making a spectacle in front of a bunch of third parties who are demonstratively willing to buck the Microsoft monopoly in the hopes that they might be nosy and learn about these FSF guys who they've never heard of before and hear what they have to say.
Personally, I think protesters are categorically useless individuals who should focus on creating infrastructure to replace what they dislike instead of demanding that other people do it for them. But this isn't any less effective a plan than any other protests I've seen.
The subject of the article is about one central admin having too much control over too many machines, and the risks that entails when they go bad.
Which makes a person wonder... how much worse when billions of consumers are giving total control over all their machines to a centralized authority through Trusted Computing and Vista?
I mean, what happens when Microsoft goes bad?
Whatever you say, Doctor Who. Took a peek into the future, did you?
Show me men who are just as good at pushing out babies to grow up and wipe my ass for me when I get old, and I'll throw my support behind getting women into Math and Science. Until then, we've got more important things for women to be doing than sitting behind a desk pushing pencils, and they should be damned well doing the things they're needed for. As it stands, their competence or lack thereof is irrelevant.
The people at Craigslist thought "What a bunch of fucking tools. I'm not interested in their 'authority', and I'm not going to take time out of my busy life to dignify them by coming and humbling myself before them."
Which is a perfectly appropriate response. When the rule are corrupt, ethical men do not allow themselves to be bound by them. If they are consistent about applying this policy, the seller won't be worse off.
Personally, I think the whole thing stinks. Who goes to all the trouble to escape jail so they can kill themselves when they succeed? It's not like there isn't a long list of people with motive to kill him and tidy up the witnesses. If the teenage girl was shot but escaped and is coherent enough to talk, why do the authorities talk about the "apparent" gunman? That seems to me the sort of language you use when all you have is circumstantial evidence.
"Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence." Malice maybe, maybe not. We will probably never know for sure. In any case, both sides could have handled the incident better.
This can't be explained by incompetence. If it just threw warnings that hang Linux but MS products ignore, that might fly. They've got conditional statements to act in a specific fashion with Linux, which they do not support. Magic fairy's didn't put those conditions in, and there's no ethical reason for investing time to create such conditions for an OS you don't support. This is clearly malice. And considering that this was reported to the FTC and the truth of the matter has become common industry knowledge because of this guys actions, I would say he handled it perfectly.
I could cite my brother, who is studying medicine and genetic engineering, but this being the web, I'll just grab a few headlines from Google, post them, and get back to work.
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/01/synthetic_genome
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/science/05angi.html
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/06/29/news/genome.php
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6733797.stm
We've found life in the freezing cold depths of the ocean where light doesn't penetrate. We've found life on the edges of volcanos. We've mixed together chemical soups and watched life erupt out of it.
Obviously, life isn't a unique and special thing, but something that naturally erupts into existence all over the place. Therefore, there must be life all over the universe, and not just here on Earth.
Which is, of course, consistent with major religions. 'God', aka 'The Universe', creates life 'in his image', aka 'of the universe'.
The universe doesn't tend towards entropy. It tends towards life. We are walking, talking evidence of this fact.
Is this related to the media project you were talking about last year?
I have two media projects on the go, one related to bands and one related to artists, but they're on the back burner a.t.m.... client defaulted on us and I'm still dealing with the fallout from that. Hoping to get the one related to artists finalized and start actively promoting it by the end of the year though. It's got different goals though... more of a way to fund the creators of original works that doesn't rely on copyright to generate revenue, paired with tools that allow those creators to release digital copies under Creative Commons and generate personal fame, thus driving up the value of the original works and giving the artist an indirect return on their decision to share.
In that sense, advertising isn't quite the worthlessness you make it out to be. It's just communication, which is useful and which the internet a good start at an infrastructure for.
Communication is two way. The word you were looking for was Propaganda.
If I was absolute ruler? Well, off the cuff... I'd marshal the worlds might to create a political system resembling freegovernment.org. I'd create infrastructure to support a massive surveillance state, and make every scrap of surveillance, current and historical, available for viewing by the public. I'd push for the creation of cheap devices enabling pervasive mesh networks to ensure that communications doesn't rely on central infrastructure. I'd rally the tech giants around a project resembling the Reprap, and get devices out into peoples hands that will automatically share all design patterns loaded into them across the mesh network P2P style. That would drive manufacturing capacity to the citizenry in the same way the internet has been driving communications capacity to the citizenry, and ensure that progress automatically propagated. Once I'd achieved these goals, I'd create a model for government based strictly around providing critical infrastructure, things like power, transportation, food. Rather than a system of taxation, I'd require each citizen to participate in each industrial sector.
At the end of the day, I'd expect to see an informed citizenry, connected to the means by which their livelihood was assured, empowered to make and share anything they wished, empowered to elect or fire the administrators of the system at any time, and liberated to pursue whatever intellectual, creative or recreational pursuits they wished. Then I'd step down from office, work my share and spend my spare time jamming with my friends and making fireworks as a hobby.
But then, I'm never going to be absolute ruler, so it's kind of a moot point.
Yeah, you're right. The monetary based economy is going to have to be discarded before we're really going to fix these problems. I'm in favour of a democratically managed economy with all taxes to be paid exclusively in labour, personally.
Here's my guess: the web, TV, movies, games, and other forms of "entertainment" will be riddled with product placements, product storylines, and an overall commercialized experience. The line between "feature" and "commercial" will blur and blur until it ceases to exist. Sometimes this will be well done and the entertainment value will be preserved. Sometimes it will come off as transparent shit, exposing both the "feature" and the advertised product(s) to public ridicule or boycott.
The premise of this collapse is that advertising is overvalued, and not worth the money being paid for it. You think the answer is more advertising? Call me crazy, but I'm thinking something more along the original vision of the BBC and the CBC, where they are socialized and exist for the purpose of promoting creativity, culture and the arts. That's a lot more realistic. A lot of the objections to these structures is that they are elitist, and it's generally been a valid point. But if the administration were done using a democratic process, like the Free Government project, well, that could overcome those objections for the most part.
Personally, I hope it does collapse.
Advertising is a ridiculous basis for an economy.
Oh, look, I built something wonderful that makes peoples lives better. Everyone wants to participate. How will I ever get the support I need to keep this thing that everyone wants to succeed functional?
I'll stuff it full of crap that they don't like, and the people who own the big factory peddling the crap can support me. That's a great model, right?
Wrong.
I don't know what the exact shape of the web will be when we find the right answer. But it sure as hell isn't this.
The modern web is like going to watch a show while two dozen ugly people with screeching voices walk the aisles constantly screaming at you to pay attention to them instead. It's shameful to see something with such potential perverted in such a fashion, and if we need another collapse before we get our heads out of our collective asses and fix things, well, it can't come soon enough for my liking...
Cutting yourself off from a world who relies on advertisements for getting new ideas and thoughts out there seems...well...I don't have a nice word for it. But, heck...do you stop talking to your friends if they make a recommendation about a product?
Having had friends get involved with Amway and other MLM schemes, I can assure you, the answer to that question is yes. If my friends treat me as a captive audience and try to sell me their patrons products, I stop talking to them.
Would seem to me that both camps can be made happy by allowing the developers to indicate that "THIS" page should not be added to the browser history.
So, if the user goes to the home page, then goes to a "view product" page, then goes through a purchasing process, you could suppress the pages involved in the purchasing process from being added to the history. If the user hits the back button half way through making a purchase, it would take them back to the "view product" page. If they then hit "forward", it would do nothing, because the "view product" page is the most recent entry.
We tried that one too, and LOGO as well. I liked Squeak better actually, but my daughter preferred Scratch. Incidentally, Scratch runs well under WINE.
I can't comment to a teenager, but I've been having success getting my 7 year old daughter interested in programming with Scratch. She's been using it to make movies and games. The thing that really captured her attention was that she could publish her work through Scratch and get positive feedback from the community on the Scratch website. The idea of building a fan base really appeals to her. I've also told her that if she develops the skills, when she's ready for her first job, we will give her part time work instead of her having to get a job in some fast food joint or convenience store, and that seems to have made an impression on her.
Seems to me the best thing you can do to get your teenager involved in *nix programming is to get them involved in an online community that will give them some positive feedback and the possibility of celebrity, then show them some of the success stories out there that started in just that way. And, of course, let them know you're genuinely proud of them when they create something.
What you believe and what is actually true are not necessarily the same thing.
You can believe all you want that there are no more filmmakers who value their work above "big profits," but that doesn't make it true.
As for product placement...I see products all the time in real life, so I don't even notice it when its in movies unless it is blatantly obvious. In fact, the world can seem very weird without products all around us.
What is actually true is, I don't watch voluntarily expose myself to commercials at any time, I don't trust American publishers, I don't make compromises unless the life and safety of my loved ones are in danger, and I'm not giving them any of my money ever again. Beyond that, I really don't give a rats ass.
This isn't a debate. This is me, making my intentions known. I cut my cable because of commercials, I stopped going to theaters because of them, I stopped listening to the radio because of them, and now I'm going to stop watching films entirely, in any format, if they are produced in the USA. If I see a similar pattern emerge in films made outside the USA, which I haven't yet, I'll cut them out of my life as well.
My brain is not for sale. Nor is that of my family. I play music, my girlfriend plays music and paints, my daughter is getting into making movies and I'm teaching her how to use the software. We release our stuff for free, we share it with our friends, we share it with each other. We watch Canadian, British, Australian and non-english foreign films because we haven't seen this trend penetrate those markets yet. If we do, we will boycott them as well.
Just as well in the end. American culture is grotesque anyways, and not really something I ought to be exposing myself and my family to...