Good post; reminds me of an article I saw once, which said that an interesting way of dealing with speed-trap radar was to embed a 1-10Watt microwave transmitter in the grill of your car, pointing forward. When you think there might be radar, you start transmitting... The article said that the *least* that would happen is you'd pop the circuit breaker on the radar gun. guns that weren't fuse or breaker protected would short out; radar guns operate at less than a half or a quarter watt. I found it an interesting read, not that I would personally *DO* that, of course. (looks down, winks).
IBM, Red Hat, and SuSE are bikers hanging out at a seedy bar in Southern California, by the shore. Their harleys are parked out front, all choppers, gleaming and evil looking. Currently, IBM and Red Hat are playing a traditional game: each holds a lit cigar to his forearm while SuSE counts the seconds, with two twenty dollar bills at stake. A few feet away, the BSD brothers are playing cards at an outside table, a quart of Mexican tequila and a bunch of shotglasses next to the deck. Periodically, they throw back a shot. Their rusty Jeep Renegade sits nearby. Suddenly, there's a little lawnmower sound. A go-kart with a broken muffler pulls up, bumping into the Harleys and knocking them down. IBM, Red Hat, and Suse ferociously stride over and bellow.
"HEY, MAN! THOSE ARE OUR BIKES!"
A fat little kid wearing a shirt with wide horizontal stripes and a pair of bermuda shorts held up by orange suspenders jumps out of the go-kart and saunters over to the bikes. He's got freckles, bright red hair, and triple-thick glasses. He's obviously not "all there".
Fat kid: "Hi. I'm SCO. Motorbikes suck; I drive a go-kart." (kicks the nearest bike, breaking the headlight). If it wasn't for my Go-Kart technology, you wouldn't even HAVE these bikes. You should buy me some beers in appreciation."
IBM: (seething). "That was my bike. Kid, you really shouldn't have done that." Red Hat: (shakes head). SuSE: (muttering) "Gott in Himmel" (laughs)
IBM walks over, grabs the kid by the suspenders, and lifts him clear off the ground, bouncing him up and down while looking him over. Then, he tosses the kid way up in the air, catching him on the way down by his underwear waistband and yanking upwards with both hands. With a great stretching sound, the drawers pull all the way over the kid's head. IBM lets go, and they snap into place.
Everyone: MUHAHAHAHAHAHAH! Red Hat: "Hey, IBM, do that shit again!" SuSE: "Funny!" The BSD brothers: "huh huh huh huh -- HE said SHIT!"
SCO (through his underwear): "You buncha creeps! My grandfather used to own this land. I'll tear down this bar and make you take your alky bullshit somewhere else! And, what's up with that biker gay-chic thing?"
IBM: "Oh, my lawd, he went there." Red Hat: "Oh, you didn't..." SuSE: "Uh oh..." BSD Brother number 1: "Oh, boy, here we go."
IBM leans over, grabs the kid by the ankles, and heads to the outhouse. He kicks the door open, goes in, and the door slams.
IBM comes walking back out, without SCO. He takes a long pull from the tequila bottle.
IBM: "Damn." BSD Brothers, in unison: "What, what happened, man?" IBM: "Damn..." Red Hat: "Hey, where'd the brat go?" SuSE: "Yeah, you gave him the swirly, right?" IBM: "Yep." Red Hat: "So... ?" IBM: "He's a slippery little bastard when he gets wet. Popped right out of my hands and went down into the latrine!"
Everyone: "NO WAY!"
IBM: "Yeah... Poor little bastard. Ah, well. What can you do? Maybe he'll swim back up outta it."
(about a minute later)
SCO flops out of the toilet seat, landing on the ground in front of the toilet, covered in green goo.
SCO: "URH! URG! CTHULU FLAGNTH!" Red Hat: "Hey, boys, somethin' ain't right about that kid, man. It looks like he's growin' fins."
Everyone looks. SCO has turned into a weirdo fish-man.
When I was in school, I was the "bright kid" in my class, and as a result, I was picked on endlessly by the other kids. This was sanctioned by the teachers. Once, I had mentioned that there were more than one ice age, because for show and tell I'd brought in some fossils from different periods. I'd gotten them from my father's cousin, who was a geolgist at a university in Virginia. The teacher called me a liar, and brought the science teacher over to explain to the class that "there was only one great ice age, everyone knows that". Then the kids picked on me for hours, as always.
Elementary and middle school teachers seem to *always* be clueless, and not just about computers. You seem pretty sharp, like the exception that proves the rule, so don't think I'm targeting you here. I'm saying, in general they seem to be on the dumb side (at least mine were). One, Mr. Gilbert, once failed me for using the word "alas"! He screamed at me, "A sixth grader does NOT use the word ALAS!!!" I had to spend a half hour explaining it to the principal, for cryin' out loud. Ridiculous.
The state of "education" doesn't matter, though. My kids are going to learn the way I did: my father used to bring me physics and science books that he got cheaply at work. I did the schoolwork I had to, to get through elementary and middle school, and I learned everything important on my own, by reading. I understood electromagnetism, geology, biology... All before I was in high school. I didn't need a teacher to tell me about it. Luckily, in high school I had some good teachers, and I learned a lot more.
The thing to do is make sure you spend time with your kids, teaching them what you want them to know -- personally. Don't depend on some stranger to show them the light. Remember, "if you want it done right, do it yourself"...
Sigh. Another dot-bomb drone, ignorantly soldiering on and trying to pass off his weak business plans as the next big thing. Christ... I thought this kind of crap was dead and buried.
Don't give me that dot-com babble-speak "you just don't get it" bullshit because I don't agree with your lame, sad, poorly-thought-through ideas. It's insulting and presumptious, and makes YOU look like a horse's ass. You're as weak as a kitten and as dumb as a sack of hammers; I'm thoroughly unimpressed.
I'm not wasting any more breath on you. Feh. Begone.
It's a deep, cultural problem, which goes far beyond people having trouble with jargon. Here in the US, people are conditioned away from being intelligent, sensitive, and inquisitive. This happens in school, where interesting, inquisitive kids are picked on mercilessly until they withdraw into themselves and become loners, or they suppress their desire to learn and join the herd. Conformity is treated as the highest good, and emphasis is placed on mindless activities and the denial of any deep interests (this began in earnest, I think, as a cold war phenomenon, but it goes back throughout our history). Look at the people who are considered popular or interesting in American culture: movie stars, musicians, athletes, talk show hosts... They are often referred to as geniuses by the members of the media, who I suspect are so stupid themselves that a 300 pound man who makes his living slamming into other 300 pound men actually looks SMART in comparison.
Most people in this country think of reading books as a chore. They think of learning as something they "had to put up with" while they were in school. They're not interested in going to the library, or of picking up a novel, or of spending even five minutes reading a technical manual so they can actually DO something with the flashy PC the UPS guy just delivered. They go to work, they come home, they sit down on the couch with a vast quantity of junk food, and they watch TV, turning their minds off for the four or five hours it takes them to get sleepy. Then, they go to bed, unless it's "sex night" (they say the average couple does it twice or three times a week). On "Sex night" they grind their flabby, sweaty bodies together for five minutes, smoke a cancer-stick, and pass out. And, it's terrible and pathetic -- think of how much MORE they could have done with their lives. Think of how they're allowing themselves to be LIMITED, just letting the system turn them into fat losers. It's fucking tragic.
I'm not saying EVERYONE is like this. College grads are a lot less likely to fall into this trap. Technical types are pretty unlikely to suffer from it; they tend to spend their time doing technical things, studying, and keeping themselves sharp. But, the majority of the people out there are *exactly* like this. And, it's a serious problem.
Anyone who's read the story "Harrison Bergeron" will know where I'm going. Think about this: instead of giving you an electrical jolt every time you have a deep thought, or weighing you down with iron, or constricting you to force everyone to be equally talentless, instead, society just uses peer pressure and distraction. Throughout a child's youth, he's pressured to be mediocre. He's taught to consume third-rate crap and junk food, turn off his mind, and allow himself to be arbitrarily limited. By the time that child is an adult, it is no longer possible for him to turn it around on his own! Because he will simply not have the desire to make an effort. It isn't even necessary to force people to do it -- most do this on their own, freely!
This is our reality. And, the authors of the major works touching this issue, Kurt Vonnegut and Aldous Huxeley specifically, were talking about exactly this.
Those of us who don't fall for it, who one way or another end up becoming techies and intelligent despite society's best efforts, well... If we make it to adulthood without being turned into sheep, society will give us a job and make us useful (if, that is, we're not outsourced and starved out of existence, ha ha).
If you squint your eyes and look at it from the corner of your eye, it almost looks as though society wants to test our resolve. "So you want to be smart, eh? Well, first you have to get through twelve years of bullshit in school, THEN we'll see how you do". Not that many make it. What are there, ten million technical professionals in the entire U.S? Out of 257 million people? That's only 4 percent of the population.
I agree. Where I work, we're switching over to.Net this year, although we're not migrating our legacy apps just yet (we have a LOT of legacy apps; we're a state agency, we still have mainframes running old COBOL apps around here somewhere). All new development is going to be.Net. It's a godsend for people who've been suffering under VB6 -- finally, some OOP! Now, if I could only get my boss to admit that C# is better than VB.Net... Sigh...
I think you have to keep.Net in perspective. As long as you only expect it to be a solid development environment that makes certain useful things easy to implement (web services, etc), you won't be disappointed by it. If you try and frame it as some kind of super-technology that'll cure all the ills of IT, well, you'll be disappointed. It's all about perspective.
With.Net, Microsoft has given applications developers the tools they need -- finally. Java got there a couple of years ahead of Microsoft, of course, but what can you do? Better late than never, right?
I take it from your post that you can't run the.Net framework on NT. But that's only one of the problems you're going to run into with NT4. For example, I don't think Microsoft is providing any more patches for NT4, is it? So no new security holes are going to be patched. This would even be bad in a *nix, but on a Windows box it's horrendous.
You're going to have to come up with some kind of solution for those boxen. You aren't going to be able to hang onto NT4 forever...
My humble suggestion:
Get ahold of a copy of a Linux, burn a bunch of CDs, and install it on all the boxen. Then, install your Java apps temporarily, while you recode them in C++ or C (for speed). That'll be far faster than.Net OR Java.
NO, you CAN'T just drive over to a state forest and steal dirt. That dirt belongs to the state, to whatever environmental agency runs the park system. If they catch you digging up their topsoil, the least that'll happen to you is that you'll get slapped with a misdemeanor and a fine, and probably banned for life from the park system. If you want to know WHY this is illegal, consider what would happen if everyone got the same idea and started digging up dirt. So, this is a really bad example. Home Depot sells dirt and rocks PRECISELY BECAUSE you can't just go out and dig up your own.
So, moving right along. Yes, it is true people will pay for skills they don't have. Which is why I said that installing Linux projects and such for people is like "PC tutor to the rescue" because that's one of the things freelance PC-Tutors do: they help people with their software. But you're selling assistance, not software. Understand this: this is NOT a software market. This is a "tutor/assistance" market. And, getting twenty bucks an hour for helping some noob set up a database isn't quite the same as selling thousands of units of software, ok? THINK.
I don't have any issues with most of your post. You were doing fine up to your last paragraph. You must be new to Slashdot; here, in the land of Moderator Madness(TM) anything even remotely controversial or contrary could be randomly marked as a troll. So, since my post was bound to draw a little fire, I made sure to clarify that I was not trolling. And, I am NOT trollish -- there is no need to "rethink" my post. It was my opinion; it IS my opinion; and it will remain my opinion until someone convinces me it is incorrect.
I dunno about your central argument; it seems to be "if people are too stupid to know you're selling them something free, they'll pay you for it". I have a funny feeling that business model is going to break down at some point... And, anyway, who wants to gyp people? That's bad karma, man. Even if you're, say, Catholic, and you know you'll be forgiven if you can make it to confession, what happens if you get hit by a bus on your way to church?
Well, TSO is basically just high school all over again, with everyone competing to be popular and mean kids teaming up to pick on the kids they perceive as weak. Look at the whole model they chose for the game: the whole thing is just a big popularity contest. I don't know about you guys, but I was one of the biggest geeks in MY high school. I didn't belong, I was picked on continuously, and I hated just about every minute of it. I wouldn't repeat high school for love or money, and I sure as HELL wouldn't PAY to do it.
Whoever designed this game enjoyed high school. He must have been one of the popular kids, otherwise he wouldn't be trying to replicate the experience.
I saw this coming a long time ago. OBVIOUSLY people are going to pick on each other. As soon as you create a clique system like this, it's bound to happen. I'll stick to first person shooters, myself; at least then you can stick a Flak Cannon up the local bully's ass when he gets on your nerves. Ludicrous gibs!!!;)
Check out gcj combined with GNU Classpath. They're creating a completely open source Java-compatible development toolkit which will eventually be fully compatible with Java but is currently only partway there (although, they've got the whole base language, most of the classes, and most of AWT already). Very interesting stuff.
Well, all they'd have to do is have two (index.html and metaIndex.html) pages on their site. The main page doesn't trigger a proxy block, because it doesn't have any meta tags. The second page is loaded down with a big fat meta tag, and that one is the one that is submitted to all the search engines. The second page, of course, redirects to the first page.
Yeah -- I agree. He seems to be saying that C++ and Java are bad because they're too hard to learn and take too long to write code in. So he's not choosing a language based on which one will produce the best program, but rather on which one will be the easiest to code in (and require the least amount of work). Maybe it's me, but if an open source developer is supposed to be in it for the joy of programming, wouldn't he be more interested in the coolness and quality of his project, rather than on how fast he can wrap it up?
Also, why do you say that there are only thirty major application types that have been developed? There are thousands of projects on Sourceforge. Go take a look. And, tons of new stuff comes out all the time.
Just because you're not aware of it doesn't mean it isn't there.:)
Which is why I said that most companies will probably be acquiring a graphics engine first, so that they have the capability to create a game (without that, it doesn't matter HOW good your storyline is). What you're describing is an already-existing gaming company, in which someone cool has come up with a cool idea. But, you're leaving out the part where, independently, their developers have mastered the use of whatever tools they have licensed. I think it's probably set up like separate groups, you know? You've got your technical staff, who have, say, three or four different graphics engines for different purposes, and people who know how to use them. And, you've got your creative staff who actually come up with the games. When a new game idea comes about, someone makes the determination of the best way to implement it, what engine to use, etc. And, they pull resources from the pool of available resources to do the work.
But, overall, still -- it's the process I was talking about. Someone has to learn how the graphics engine works before anything can be coded. Someone else has to come up with the storyline before anything can be coded. And, so on. You can't say that they just figure out how to code it when they're done designing it, because I doubt anyone works that way. I think they start getting their ducks in a row as soon as a basic idea is suggested: acquiring resources, assigning people, etc. It's like engineering, in a way.
I'm not a game developer, either -- I'm in applications programming hell. But, I can't complain; it's a living. I might get into trying to put together a shareware game at some point, I dunno. It might be fun, and there are some really good open-source engines available.
Yeah, but, see, here you're painting yourself into a corner. You admit that my point about open source has validity. And, you admit that just about anything anyone might want to do is probably available open-source. But then, you assert that there's still a need to market these open source projects to small businesses, even though you've already admitted they could just go download the stuff -- so where's the market? IN reality, it's like, "Here's the website, here's an FTP client". Where's the sale? Where's the money you're talking about?
It isn't there.
About the only way you could make a buck, and it wouldn't be a very BIG buck, would be to contract to set up the software for the small business in question. They might be aware of the software, they might want to use it, but they might not be capable enough to install it for themselves. Still, this isn't "software marketing". This is "PC Tutor to the rescue". It's not the same. Again, the book isn't going to provide any value here.
Also, please remember that anyone who downloads an OSS program to "customize it for a few businesses and market it to them" is violating the GPL unless he resubmits his changes back to the community. So he'll be selling what is essentially a free product -- how happy will his customers be when they find out they could have just waited a little longer and downloaded it for free? See? It doesn't work.
I disagree partially. What I said could be held true for FPS, third-person fantasy, space games, basically anything which involves the simulation of some 3-D space. First, before anything else gets done, a group must have graphics and sound engines. Maybe they design their own or maybe they buy someone else's. It makes no difference. If they design their own, they're still producing an API, which a subset of their developers must learn to use. If they design their own, you just add one additional pre-step to my sequence. See what I mean? The overall process is going to be the same, whether they build their API from scratch or buy one.
Overall, how would any game be produced differently? And, I'm not going to get into a discussion of games like Snood, which are generally produced by one or two people and "marketed" over the web anyway. I'm talking about good-sized projects, here, stuff that requires more than one person.
Wait -- didn't the Second Renaissance end with the defeat of humanity?;)
You're barking up the wrong tree. I'm not saying there won't be any new apps, or that everything has been invented already. I'm saying that all new truly innovative things tend to be created by interested individuals, who tend to release them open-source or freeware.
Corporate development is ponderous, slow, and expensive. Individual programmers are fast on their feet, completely free (they're only spending their time), and able to turn on a dime if an assumption turns out to be false. THIS is why I say the market is dead.
Your "new renaissance" is already happening, all around you.
BUT, is what you're describing a marketing issue? Or is it a usability issue? I see it as a usability issue -- there are many more directed books about that topic. It may be true that your engineers need a book, but I don't think it's THIS book.:)
But I was talking about applications software, which I got the impression the article was about.
It's true, games are a huge market, and there's a lot of money to be made in producing them. Granted. However, games are developed in a completely different way from applications software, and the marketing and distribution work differently too.
My understanding of game development is:
1) A game development team selects a graphics engine and probably a sound engine. Then they learn the API.
2) While they're learning the API, the writers and artists start designing the game itself. They sketch all the monsters, they set up all the maps, they figure out what puzzles the user is going to have to solve, and so on. Basically, they write a sort of screenplay for the game.
3) Once the techies have the API figured out, and also maybe have figured out how to use tools to build CGI cut scenes, they start working from the designer's blueprint to build the game itself. Then the two teams basically work together to assemble the game from its logical parts. Voice actors are hired, recording facilities are leased, etc, etc.
4) The semi-finished game starts going through QA, and final tweaking. Maybe a demo gets played at a convention, everybody oohs and aahs, and they start doing commercials (a recent development). The commercials follow the pattern for movies, not app software.
5) The legal folks start setting up distribution deals with Comp USA, Staples, etc, and they set up CD-Printing services, box-packing services, and on and on. Finally, the game starts to ship.
6) The tech team starts working on patches as soon as the script kiddies start to hack the game. Repeat (6) indefinitely, as long as the game is in use.
Since this process is pretty much de-rigeur, do we really need a book by a marketing droid to discuss some other, not directly applicable process with us? If we've got seed money to issue a game, wouldn't we be hiring our OWN marketing droids to do this for us?
(replying to AC): Ah, and there's the rub. Because the people who come up with the next amazing thing are probably going to be hobbyists, people who love computing for its own sake. And, they're probably going to be into open source, so it'll end up being their gift to the world -- immediately improved upon, expanded, and taken to all the amazing lengths the community has proven itself capable of.
On the one hand, it'll be really amazing. We'll have some really, really cool software. But on the other hand, there still won't be a market; it'll still be downloadable and free.
Of course, I think this is a Good Thing. Really good.;)
For starters, the home-user market is dead (or, more accurately, about to give its death rattle). Anyone who wants to engage in some activity A has only to go online and download any of a number of open-source or freeware systems for doing A. Oh, there are still a few holdouts; you still see some off-the-shelf software for sale in Comp USA, and I suppose there are some naiive users who are willing to buy them. But, it's definitely going away, and fast.
Organizations still buy software, but they generally contact the vendor directly, and secure site licenses. An example would be software development tools used by a government agency. In this case, there's very little marketing involved; a vendor submits a bid, competes with other vendors, and if successful, gets a contract. Any marketing that is done is done in a trade show, and the vendor generally understands the target market fairly well. Often, the vendor has a long relationship with their clients.
Then, there's highly specialized niche tools, like maybe high-end animation software, or music software. But those markets are tiny, sometimes maybe only a few hundred clients in total.
It seems to me that software is one of the few things with no mass market left. There are only specialized niches that still want to pay for software, and business categories where software has always been paid for in the same way. This is a book whose point I cannot fathom.
THIS IS NOT A TROLL. I'm serious. What's the point of programmers and techies getting all worked up over some marketing blather? It's just not central to the business anymore.
Ah, you're missing so many evil little subtleties of the problem.
First of all, let's say you succeed, and push this "transparent society" idea. Let's say that although a business can check you out, you can check them out as well. So what? What are you going to find out, that they threw out their kitchen cappucino machine to save money in '02? That's still not going to get you a job there, if Joe HR Drone the Baptist Fundamentalist finds out you like to go to strip clubs on Saturday nights. Consider people of a liberal persuasion living in the bible belt; I've tried this and it isn't a picnic today, even without the surveillance society you're talking about. God, If anyone could just look you up, and find out everything about you, what would stop them from just deciding you're "not their kind of people" and cutting you off from whatever they provide? It would be just like being ridden out of town on a rail. With no apartment manager willing to take your application, and no job, you're homeless, buddy. And, once you're homeless, your chances of turning your life around are slim to none. You could be destroyed just like that (snaps fingers for effect).
But, I'm sure you'll say, people are much more mature than that and they won't do any of this. Bullshit. Consider the "coffee klatch" phenomenon in the suburbs, where a bunch of housewives get together to gossip daily over coffee. How easy is it for someone to pass a rumor about another member of the community, who now finds him/herself completely shunned by everyone else in the development? They start getting dirty looks from people, but don't know why. No one talks to them, and they don't know why. Maybe they move away or maybe they tough it out; but either way, it isn't fair. And, that's just a bunch of women flapping their gums about things that may or may not even be true! Consider the ramifications of your transparent society again -- everything you do, placed under the scrutiny of the same exact sort of people. Are you still comfortable with this? And, if so, why? Perhaps you think you won't be on the receiving end.
Moving right along, you speak as though you think the only danger of someone finding out your private activities in their blackmailing you with the information. If everyone already knows it, you claim, this isn't a problem anymore. Sure, but NOW, you have a whole NEW problem: anyone who doesn't approve of your secret activity now has an excuse to shun you. If they didn't know about it, maybe they might have even considered you a friend; but now, you're "that freak" as far as they're concerned. You kinda missed this point, I think. You haven't thought through all the ramifications of this concept. You really have to dig a lot deeper.
Here's another point: even now, without a surveillance society, you're not free to say whatever you want. Say the wrong thing to the wrong person, and you'll find yourself shunned (perhaps via the coffee klatch). But you have the option of doing your strange things secretly, without letting anyone know. What people don't know, doesn't hurt them. And, by the way, it's none of their business -- did you forget that part? If, for example, I like to go down to the waterfront and fuck loose women every friday or saturday night, I sure as hell don't want my BOSS knowing about it. It's none of his business. I don't want my apartment manager knowing about it either. In fact, the ONLY people I want to know about it is the loose women themselves, and maybe the bartender who hooks me up. Get the point? Now, in YOUR fantasy society, everyone will know I fuck loose women and they'll have the opportunity to judge me, despite the fact that they have no moral right whatsoever to do so. And, I could find myself being shunned at work, on the street -- I could have total strangers coming up to me to tell me off. THIS is the result of your idea. So, instead of being able to do what I want behind closed doors, now I'm being actively censored -- not by the government, but by society.
I think you missed a subtlety of my approach. The point is, to recognize and understand the parameters of the system, to understand fully how it is watching you, and then, craft a public persona that will ensure that you are not persecuted. Given that to all outside appearances, you're too boring to pay attention to, you'll have the freedom to live whatever life you want behind closed doors, where it actually *matters*. What I'm suggesting is that you actively USE the system to protect yourself from persecution.
One factor you're not considering is this: as more and more data is collected about a person, say, "Joe X", the interperetation of that data begins to gather a sort of momentum. If Joe is popping up red flags all over the place, by buying reactionary literature, by involving himself openly with groups the Herd(tm) doesn't approve of, and so on, the interperetation of who Joe is will favor a negative, "Joe is a troublemaker" judgement. Over time, every time something happens that matches Joe's profile, Joe's going to be harassed (or at least, more thoroughly surveilled). And, if Joe ever so much as jaywalks, people are going to throw the book at him and assume he "had it coming". Basically, Joe's life is going to be shit. And, as is inevitable, once businesses start taking peeks at Joe's profile (you KNOW that's going to happen, don't you?) Joe's going to find himself getting stuck with "Joe Jobs" at low wages. And, this has been happening since the late nineties, as companies' HR droids have been doing web and usenet searches on applicants to see what they're saying and whether the HR Droids approve. Poor Joe! If only he had a little common sense.
You should think about the issue, not from an "I'm outraged" point of view, but from a "There's a workaround, let's find it" POV. How can you ensure your personal liberty and happiness while the surveillance culture is being assembled around you? How can you ensure that your daily activities don't end up branding you with the electronic equivalent of a scarlet letter, without you ever even knowing about it? How can you ensure that you have at least *some* privacy to live as you choose? My approach is an answer to these questions, one which if followed, would be very efficient.
I'm looking at this from a "I can't change it, I can't stop it, so I'm getting out of its way and preventing myself from getting squashed" point of view. Consider my suggestions in this light.
It's not about self-censorship. It's about spin management.
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Good post; reminds me of an article I saw once, which said that an interesting way of dealing with speed-trap radar was to embed a 1-10Watt microwave transmitter in the grill of your car, pointing forward. When you think there might be radar, you start transmitting... The article said that the *least* that would happen is you'd pop the circuit breaker on the radar gun. guns that weren't fuse or breaker protected would short out; radar guns operate at less than a half or a quarter watt. I found it an interesting read, not that I would personally *DO* that, of course. (looks down, winks).
Actually, it's more like this:
IBM, Red Hat, and SuSE are bikers hanging out at a seedy bar in Southern California, by the shore. Their harleys are parked out front, all choppers, gleaming and evil looking. Currently, IBM and Red Hat are playing a traditional game: each holds a lit cigar to his forearm while SuSE counts the seconds, with two twenty dollar bills at stake. A few feet away, the BSD brothers are playing cards at an outside table, a quart of Mexican tequila and a bunch of shotglasses next to the deck. Periodically, they throw back a shot. Their rusty Jeep Renegade sits nearby. Suddenly, there's a little lawnmower sound. A go-kart with a broken muffler pulls up, bumping into the Harleys and knocking them down. IBM, Red Hat, and Suse ferociously stride over and bellow.
"HEY, MAN! THOSE ARE OUR BIKES!"
A fat little kid wearing a shirt with wide horizontal stripes and a pair of bermuda shorts held up by orange suspenders jumps out of the go-kart and saunters over to the bikes. He's got freckles, bright red hair, and triple-thick glasses. He's obviously not "all there".
Fat kid: "Hi. I'm SCO. Motorbikes suck; I drive a go-kart." (kicks the nearest bike, breaking the headlight). If it wasn't for my Go-Kart technology, you wouldn't even HAVE these bikes. You should buy me some beers in appreciation."
IBM: (seething). "That was my bike. Kid, you really shouldn't have done that." Red Hat: (shakes head). SuSE: (muttering) "Gott in Himmel" (laughs)
IBM walks over, grabs the kid by the suspenders, and lifts him clear off the ground, bouncing him up and down while looking him over. Then, he tosses the kid way up in the air, catching him on the way down by his underwear waistband and yanking upwards with both hands. With a great stretching sound, the drawers pull all the way over the kid's head. IBM lets go, and they snap into place.
Everyone: MUHAHAHAHAHAHAH! Red Hat: "Hey, IBM, do that shit again!" SuSE: "Funny!" The BSD brothers: "huh huh huh huh -- HE said SHIT!"
SCO (through his underwear): "You buncha creeps! My grandfather used to own this land. I'll tear down this bar and make you take your alky bullshit somewhere else! And, what's up with that biker gay-chic thing?"
IBM: "Oh, my lawd, he went there." Red Hat: "Oh, you didn't..." SuSE: "Uh oh..." BSD Brother number 1: "Oh, boy, here we go."
IBM leans over, grabs the kid by the ankles, and heads to the outhouse. He kicks the door open, goes in, and the door slams.
(from inside)
SCO: Noooooooooo!
(SPLASH, SPLASH, SPLASH).
IBM comes walking back out, without SCO. He takes a long pull from the tequila bottle.
IBM: "Damn." BSD Brothers, in unison: "What, what happened, man?" IBM: "Damn..." Red Hat: "Hey, where'd the brat go?" SuSE: "Yeah, you gave him the swirly, right?" IBM: "Yep." Red Hat: "So... ?" IBM: "He's a slippery little bastard when he gets wet. Popped right out of my hands and went down into the latrine!"
Everyone: "NO WAY!"
IBM: "Yeah... Poor little bastard. Ah, well. What can you do? Maybe he'll swim back up outta it."
(about a minute later)
SCO flops out of the toilet seat, landing on the ground in front of the toilet, covered in green goo.
SCO: "URH! URG! CTHULU FLAGNTH!" Red Hat: "Hey, boys, somethin' ain't right about that kid, man. It looks like he's growin' fins."
Everyone looks. SCO has turned into a weirdo fish-man.
SCO: "CTHULU FLAGNTH!" IBM: "Well, whaddaya know?"
SCO runs across the parking lot, and leaps off the cliff into the sea.
SCO: "CTHULU FLAAAAAAAAAAAGNTH!" (SPLASH)
IBM, looking over the edge. "Well, I guess that's about that." Red Hat: "You don't see THAT every day." SuSE: "Pass me that there tequila bottle, ok?"
(fade to black)
You all thought I was going to get into the Microsoft/Cthulu thing, didn'tcha? Ha! Fooled ya!
When I was in school, I was the "bright kid" in my class, and as a result, I was picked on endlessly by the other kids. This was sanctioned by the teachers. Once, I had mentioned that there were more than one ice age, because for show and tell I'd brought in some fossils from different periods. I'd gotten them from my father's cousin, who was a geolgist at a university in Virginia. The teacher called me a liar, and brought the science teacher over to explain to the class that "there was only one great ice age, everyone knows that". Then the kids picked on me for hours, as always.
Elementary and middle school teachers seem to *always* be clueless, and not just about computers. You seem pretty sharp, like the exception that proves the rule, so don't think I'm targeting you here. I'm saying, in general they seem to be on the dumb side (at least mine were). One, Mr. Gilbert, once failed me for using the word "alas"! He screamed at me, "A sixth grader does NOT use the word ALAS!!!" I had to spend a half hour explaining it to the principal, for cryin' out loud. Ridiculous.
The state of "education" doesn't matter, though. My kids are going to learn the way I did: my father used to bring me physics and science books that he got cheaply at work. I did the schoolwork I had to, to get through elementary and middle school, and I learned everything important on my own, by reading. I understood electromagnetism, geology, biology... All before I was in high school. I didn't need a teacher to tell me about it. Luckily, in high school I had some good teachers, and I learned a lot more.
The thing to do is make sure you spend time with your kids, teaching them what you want them to know -- personally. Don't depend on some stranger to show them the light. Remember, "if you want it done right, do it yourself"...
Sigh. Another dot-bomb drone, ignorantly soldiering on and trying to pass off his weak business plans as the next big thing. Christ... I thought this kind of crap was dead and buried.
Don't give me that dot-com babble-speak "you just don't get it" bullshit because I don't agree with your lame, sad, poorly-thought-through ideas. It's insulting and presumptious, and makes YOU look like a horse's ass. You're as weak as a kitten and as dumb as a sack of hammers; I'm thoroughly unimpressed.
I'm not wasting any more breath on you. Feh. Begone.
It's a deep, cultural problem, which goes far beyond people having trouble with jargon. Here in the US, people are conditioned away from being intelligent, sensitive, and inquisitive. This happens in school, where interesting, inquisitive kids are picked on mercilessly until they withdraw into themselves and become loners, or they suppress their desire to learn and join the herd. Conformity is treated as the highest good, and emphasis is placed on mindless activities and the denial of any deep interests (this began in earnest, I think, as a cold war phenomenon, but it goes back throughout our history). Look at the people who are considered popular or interesting in American culture: movie stars, musicians, athletes, talk show hosts... They are often referred to as geniuses by the members of the media, who I suspect are so stupid themselves that a 300 pound man who makes his living slamming into other 300 pound men actually looks SMART in comparison.
Most people in this country think of reading books as a chore. They think of learning as something they "had to put up with" while they were in school. They're not interested in going to the library, or of picking up a novel, or of spending even five minutes reading a technical manual so they can actually DO something with the flashy PC the UPS guy just delivered. They go to work, they come home, they sit down on the couch with a vast quantity of junk food, and they watch TV, turning their minds off for the four or five hours it takes them to get sleepy. Then, they go to bed, unless it's "sex night" (they say the average couple does it twice or three times a week). On "Sex night" they grind their flabby, sweaty bodies together for five minutes, smoke a cancer-stick, and pass out. And, it's terrible and pathetic -- think of how much MORE they could have done with their lives. Think of how they're allowing themselves to be LIMITED, just letting the system turn them into fat losers. It's fucking tragic.
I'm not saying EVERYONE is like this. College grads are a lot less likely to fall into this trap. Technical types are pretty unlikely to suffer from it; they tend to spend their time doing technical things, studying, and keeping themselves sharp. But, the majority of the people out there are *exactly* like this. And, it's a serious problem.
Anyone who's read the story "Harrison Bergeron" will know where I'm going. Think about this: instead of giving you an electrical jolt every time you have a deep thought, or weighing you down with iron, or constricting you to force everyone to be equally talentless, instead, society just uses peer pressure and distraction. Throughout a child's youth, he's pressured to be mediocre. He's taught to consume third-rate crap and junk food, turn off his mind, and allow himself to be arbitrarily limited. By the time that child is an adult, it is no longer possible for him to turn it around on his own! Because he will simply not have the desire to make an effort. It isn't even necessary to force people to do it -- most do this on their own, freely!
This is our reality. And, the authors of the major works touching this issue, Kurt Vonnegut and Aldous Huxeley specifically, were talking about exactly this.
Those of us who don't fall for it, who one way or another end up becoming techies and intelligent despite society's best efforts, well... If we make it to adulthood without being turned into sheep, society will give us a job and make us useful (if, that is, we're not outsourced and starved out of existence, ha ha).
If you squint your eyes and look at it from the corner of your eye, it almost looks as though society wants to test our resolve. "So you want to be smart, eh? Well, first you have to get through twelve years of bullshit in school, THEN we'll see how you do". Not that many make it. What are there, ten million technical professionals in the entire U.S? Out of 257 million people? That's only 4 percent of the population.
Think about it. Creepy, huh?
I agree. Where I work, we're switching over to .Net this year, although we're not migrating our legacy apps just yet (we have a LOT of legacy apps; we're a state agency, we still have mainframes running old COBOL apps around here somewhere). All new development is going to be .Net. It's a godsend for people who've been suffering under VB6 -- finally, some OOP! Now, if I could only get my boss to admit that C# is better than VB.Net... Sigh...
.Net in perspective. As long as you only expect it to be a solid development environment that makes certain useful things easy to implement (web services, etc), you won't be disappointed by it. If you try and frame it as some kind of super-technology that'll cure all the ills of IT, well, you'll be disappointed. It's all about perspective.
.Net, Microsoft has given applications developers the tools they need -- finally. Java got there a couple of years ahead of Microsoft, of course, but what can you do? Better late than never, right?
I think you have to keep
With
I take it from your post that you can't run the .Net framework on NT. But that's only one of the problems you're going to run into with NT4. For example, I don't think Microsoft is providing any more patches for NT4, is it? So no new security holes are going to be patched. This would even be bad in a *nix, but on a Windows box it's horrendous.
.Net OR Java.
.02...
You're going to have to come up with some kind of solution for those boxen. You aren't going to be able to hang onto NT4 forever...
My humble suggestion:
Get ahold of a copy of a Linux, burn a bunch of CDs, and install it on all the boxen. Then, install your Java apps temporarily, while you recode them in C++ or C (for speed). That'll be far faster than
Just my
Taking your points one at a time:
NO, you CAN'T just drive over to a state forest and steal dirt. That dirt belongs to the state, to whatever environmental agency runs the park system. If they catch you digging up their topsoil, the least that'll happen to you is that you'll get slapped with a misdemeanor and a fine, and probably banned for life from the park system. If you want to know WHY this is illegal, consider what would happen if everyone got the same idea and started digging up dirt. So, this is a really bad example. Home Depot sells dirt and rocks PRECISELY BECAUSE you can't just go out and dig up your own.
So, moving right along. Yes, it is true people will pay for skills they don't have. Which is why I said that installing Linux projects and such for people is like "PC tutor to the rescue" because that's one of the things freelance PC-Tutors do: they help people with their software. But you're selling assistance, not software. Understand this: this is NOT a software market. This is a "tutor/assistance" market. And, getting twenty bucks an hour for helping some noob set up a database isn't quite the same as selling thousands of units of software, ok? THINK.
I don't have any issues with most of your post. You were doing fine up to your last paragraph. You must be new to Slashdot; here, in the land of Moderator Madness(TM) anything even remotely controversial or contrary could be randomly marked as a troll. So, since my post was bound to draw a little fire, I made sure to clarify that I was not trolling. And, I am NOT trollish -- there is no need to "rethink" my post. It was my opinion; it IS my opinion; and it will remain my opinion until someone convinces me it is incorrect.
;)
You didn't manage to do that.
I dunno about your central argument; it seems to be "if people are too stupid to know you're selling them something free, they'll pay you for it". I have a funny feeling that business model is going to break down at some point... And, anyway, who wants to gyp people? That's bad karma, man. Even if you're, say, Catholic, and you know you'll be forgiven if you can make it to confession, what happens if you get hit by a bus on your way to church?
;)
God is watching.
Well, TSO is basically just high school all over again, with everyone competing to be popular and mean kids teaming up to pick on the kids they perceive as weak. Look at the whole model they chose for the game: the whole thing is just a big popularity contest. I don't know about you guys, but I was one of the biggest geeks in MY high school. I didn't belong, I was picked on continuously, and I hated just about every minute of it. I wouldn't repeat high school for love or money, and I sure as HELL wouldn't PAY to do it.
;)
Whoever designed this game enjoyed high school. He must have been one of the popular kids, otherwise he wouldn't be trying to replicate the experience.
I saw this coming a long time ago. OBVIOUSLY people are going to pick on each other. As soon as you create a clique system like this, it's bound to happen. I'll stick to first person shooters, myself; at least then you can stick a Flak Cannon up the local bully's ass when he gets on your nerves. Ludicrous gibs!!!
Check out gcj combined with GNU Classpath. They're creating a completely open source Java-compatible development toolkit which will eventually be fully compatible with Java but is currently only partway there (although, they've got the whole base language, most of the classes, and most of AWT already). Very interesting stuff.
Well, all they'd have to do is have two (index.html and metaIndex.html) pages on their site. The main page doesn't trigger a proxy block, because it doesn't have any meta tags. The second page is loaded down with a big fat meta tag, and that one is the one that is submitted to all the search engines. The second page, of course, redirects to the first page.
QED.
Yeah -- I agree. He seems to be saying that C++ and Java are bad because they're too hard to learn and take too long to write code in. So he's not choosing a language based on which one will produce the best program, but rather on which one will be the easiest to code in (and require the least amount of work). Maybe it's me, but if an open source developer is supposed to be in it for the joy of programming, wouldn't he be more interested in the coolness and quality of his project, rather than on how fast he can wrap it up?
Hidden from view? Or beneath your radar?
:)
Also, why do you say that there are only thirty major application types that have been developed? There are thousands of projects on Sourceforge. Go take a look. And, tons of new stuff comes out all the time.
Just because you're not aware of it doesn't mean it isn't there.
Which is why I said that most companies will probably be acquiring a graphics engine first, so that they have the capability to create a game (without that, it doesn't matter HOW good your storyline is). What you're describing is an already-existing gaming company, in which someone cool has come up with a cool idea. But, you're leaving out the part where, independently, their developers have mastered the use of whatever tools they have licensed. I think it's probably set up like separate groups, you know? You've got your technical staff, who have, say, three or four different graphics engines for different purposes, and people who know how to use them. And, you've got your creative staff who actually come up with the games. When a new game idea comes about, someone makes the determination of the best way to implement it, what engine to use, etc. And, they pull resources from the pool of available resources to do the work.
But, overall, still -- it's the process I was talking about. Someone has to learn how the graphics engine works before anything can be coded. Someone else has to come up with the storyline before anything can be coded. And, so on. You can't say that they just figure out how to code it when they're done designing it, because I doubt anyone works that way. I think they start getting their ducks in a row as soon as a basic idea is suggested: acquiring resources, assigning people, etc. It's like engineering, in a way.
I'm not a game developer, either -- I'm in applications programming hell. But, I can't complain; it's a living. I might get into trying to put together a shareware game at some point, I dunno. It might be fun, and there are some really good open-source engines available.
Yeah, but, see, here you're painting yourself into a corner. You admit that my point about open source has validity. And, you admit that just about anything anyone might want to do is probably available open-source. But then, you assert that there's still a need to market these open source projects to small businesses, even though you've already admitted they could just go download the stuff -- so where's the market? IN reality, it's like, "Here's the website, here's an FTP client". Where's the sale? Where's the money you're talking about?
It isn't there.
About the only way you could make a buck, and it wouldn't be a very BIG buck, would be to contract to set up the software for the small business in question. They might be aware of the software, they might want to use it, but they might not be capable enough to install it for themselves. Still, this isn't "software marketing". This is "PC Tutor to the rescue". It's not the same. Again, the book isn't going to provide any value here.
Also, please remember that anyone who downloads an OSS program to "customize it for a few businesses and market it to them" is violating the GPL unless he resubmits his changes back to the community. So he'll be selling what is essentially a free product -- how happy will his customers be when they find out they could have just waited a little longer and downloaded it for free? See? It doesn't work.
I disagree partially. What I said could be held true for FPS, third-person fantasy, space games, basically anything which involves the simulation of some 3-D space. First, before anything else gets done, a group must have graphics and sound engines. Maybe they design their own or maybe they buy someone else's. It makes no difference. If they design their own, they're still producing an API, which a subset of their developers must learn to use. If they design their own, you just add one additional pre-step to my sequence. See what I mean? The overall process is going to be the same, whether they build their API from scratch or buy one.
Overall, how would any game be produced differently? And, I'm not going to get into a discussion of games like Snood, which are generally produced by one or two people and "marketed" over the web anyway. I'm talking about good-sized projects, here, stuff that requires more than one person.
Wait -- didn't the Second Renaissance end with the defeat of humanity? ;)
You're barking up the wrong tree. I'm not saying there won't be any new apps, or that everything has been invented already. I'm saying that all new truly innovative things tend to be created by interested individuals, who tend to release them open-source or freeware.
Corporate development is ponderous, slow, and expensive. Individual programmers are fast on their feet, completely free (they're only spending their time), and able to turn on a dime if an assumption turns out to be false. THIS is why I say the market is dead.
Your "new renaissance" is already happening, all around you.
BUT, is what you're describing a marketing issue? Or is it a usability issue? I see it as a usability issue -- there are many more directed books about that topic. It may be true that your engineers need a book, but I don't think it's THIS book. :)
But I was talking about applications software, which I got the impression the article was about.
It's true, games are a huge market, and there's a lot of money to be made in producing them. Granted. However, games are developed in a completely different way from applications software, and the marketing and distribution work differently too.
My understanding of game development is:
1) A game development team selects a graphics engine and probably a sound engine. Then they learn the API.
2) While they're learning the API, the writers and artists start designing the game itself. They sketch all the monsters, they set up all the maps, they figure out what puzzles the user is going to have to solve, and so on. Basically, they write a sort of screenplay for the game.
3) Once the techies have the API figured out, and also maybe have figured out how to use tools to build CGI cut scenes, they start working from the designer's blueprint to build the game itself. Then the two teams basically work together to assemble the game from its logical parts. Voice actors are hired, recording facilities are leased, etc, etc.
4) The semi-finished game starts going through QA, and final tweaking. Maybe a demo gets played at a convention, everybody oohs and aahs, and they start doing commercials (a recent development). The commercials follow the pattern for movies, not app software.
5) The legal folks start setting up distribution deals with Comp USA, Staples, etc, and they set up CD-Printing services, box-packing services, and on and on. Finally, the game starts to ship.
6) The tech team starts working on patches as soon as the script kiddies start to hack the game. Repeat (6) indefinitely, as long as the game is in use.
Since this process is pretty much de-rigeur, do we really need a book by a marketing droid to discuss some other, not directly applicable process with us? If we've got seed money to issue a game, wouldn't we be hiring our OWN marketing droids to do this for us?
See what I mean? Kind of a pointless book.
(replying to AC): Ah, and there's the rub. Because the people who come up with the next amazing thing are probably going to be hobbyists, people who love computing for its own sake. And, they're probably going to be into open source, so it'll end up being their gift to the world -- immediately improved upon, expanded, and taken to all the amazing lengths the community has proven itself capable of.
;)
On the one hand, it'll be really amazing. We'll have some really, really cool software. But on the other hand, there still won't be a market; it'll still be downloadable and free.
Of course, I think this is a Good Thing. Really good.
For starters, the home-user market is dead (or, more accurately, about to give its death rattle). Anyone who wants to engage in some activity A has only to go online and download any of a number of open-source or freeware systems for doing A. Oh, there are still a few holdouts; you still see some off-the-shelf software for sale in Comp USA, and I suppose there are some naiive users who are willing to buy them. But, it's definitely going away, and fast.
Organizations still buy software, but they generally contact the vendor directly, and secure site licenses. An example would be software development tools used by a government agency. In this case, there's very little marketing involved; a vendor submits a bid, competes with other vendors, and if successful, gets a contract. Any marketing that is done is done in a trade show, and the vendor generally understands the target market fairly well. Often, the vendor has a long relationship with their clients.
Then, there's highly specialized niche tools, like maybe high-end animation software, or music software. But those markets are tiny, sometimes maybe only a few hundred clients in total.
It seems to me that software is one of the few things with no mass market left. There are only specialized niches that still want to pay for software, and business categories where software has always been paid for in the same way. This is a book whose point I cannot fathom.
THIS IS NOT A TROLL. I'm serious. What's the point of programmers and techies getting all worked up over some marketing blather? It's just not central to the business anymore.
Ah, you're missing so many evil little subtleties of the problem.
First of all, let's say you succeed, and push this "transparent society" idea. Let's say that although a business can check you out, you can check them out as well. So what? What are you going to find out, that they threw out their kitchen cappucino machine to save money in '02? That's still not going to get you a job there, if Joe HR Drone the Baptist Fundamentalist finds out you like to go to strip clubs on Saturday nights. Consider people of a liberal persuasion living in the bible belt; I've tried this and it isn't a picnic today, even without the surveillance society you're talking about. God, If anyone could just look you up, and find out everything about you, what would stop them from just deciding you're "not their kind of people" and cutting you off from whatever they provide? It would be just like being ridden out of town on a rail. With no apartment manager willing to take your application, and no job, you're homeless, buddy. And, once you're homeless, your chances of turning your life around are slim to none. You could be destroyed just like that (snaps fingers for effect).
But, I'm sure you'll say, people are much more mature than that and they won't do any of this. Bullshit. Consider the "coffee klatch" phenomenon in the suburbs, where a bunch of housewives get together to gossip daily over coffee. How easy is it for someone to pass a rumor about another member of the community, who now finds him/herself completely shunned by everyone else in the development? They start getting dirty looks from people, but don't know why. No one talks to them, and they don't know why. Maybe they move away or maybe they tough it out; but either way, it isn't fair. And, that's just a bunch of women flapping their gums about things that may or may not even be true! Consider the ramifications of your transparent society again -- everything you do, placed under the scrutiny of the same exact sort of people. Are you still comfortable with this? And, if so, why? Perhaps you think you won't be on the receiving end.
Moving right along, you speak as though you think the only danger of someone finding out your private activities in their blackmailing you with the information. If everyone already knows it, you claim, this isn't a problem anymore. Sure, but NOW, you have a whole NEW problem: anyone who doesn't approve of your secret activity now has an excuse to shun you. If they didn't know about it, maybe they might have even considered you a friend; but now, you're "that freak" as far as they're concerned. You kinda missed this point, I think. You haven't thought through all the ramifications of this concept. You really have to dig a lot deeper.
Here's another point: even now, without a surveillance society, you're not free to say whatever you want. Say the wrong thing to the wrong person, and you'll find yourself shunned (perhaps via the coffee klatch). But you have the option of doing your strange things secretly, without letting anyone know. What people don't know, doesn't hurt them. And, by the way, it's none of their business -- did you forget that part? If, for example, I like to go down to the waterfront and fuck loose women every friday or saturday night, I sure as hell don't want my BOSS knowing about it. It's none of his business. I don't want my apartment manager knowing about it either. In fact, the ONLY people I want to know about it is the loose women themselves, and maybe the bartender who hooks me up. Get the point? Now, in YOUR fantasy society, everyone will know I fuck loose women and they'll have the opportunity to judge me, despite the fact that they have no moral right whatsoever to do so. And, I could find myself being shunned at work, on the street -- I could have total strangers coming up to me to tell me off. THIS is the result of your idea. So, instead of being able to do what I want behind closed doors, now I'm being actively censored -- not by the government, but by society.
I find this much more hosti
I think you missed a subtlety of my approach. The point is, to recognize and understand the parameters of the system, to understand fully how it is watching you, and then, craft a public persona that will ensure that you are not persecuted. Given that to all outside appearances, you're too boring to pay attention to, you'll have the freedom to live whatever life you want behind closed doors, where it actually *matters*. What I'm suggesting is that you actively USE the system to protect yourself from persecution.
One factor you're not considering is this: as more and more data is collected about a person, say, "Joe X", the interperetation of that data begins to gather a sort of momentum. If Joe is popping up red flags all over the place, by buying reactionary literature, by involving himself openly with groups the Herd(tm) doesn't approve of, and so on, the interperetation of who Joe is will favor a negative, "Joe is a troublemaker" judgement. Over time, every time something happens that matches Joe's profile, Joe's going to be harassed (or at least, more thoroughly surveilled). And, if Joe ever so much as jaywalks, people are going to throw the book at him and assume he "had it coming". Basically, Joe's life is going to be shit. And, as is inevitable, once businesses start taking peeks at Joe's profile (you KNOW that's going to happen, don't you?) Joe's going to find himself getting stuck with "Joe Jobs" at low wages. And, this has been happening since the late nineties, as companies' HR droids have been doing web and usenet searches on applicants to see what they're saying and whether the HR Droids approve. Poor Joe! If only he had a little common sense.
You should think about the issue, not from an "I'm outraged" point of view, but from a "There's a workaround, let's find it" POV. How can you ensure your personal liberty and happiness while the surveillance culture is being assembled around you? How can you ensure that your daily activities don't end up branding you with the electronic equivalent of a scarlet letter, without you ever even knowing about it? How can you ensure that you have at least *some* privacy to live as you choose? My approach is an answer to these questions, one which if followed, would be very efficient.
I'm looking at this from a "I can't change it, I can't stop it, so I'm getting out of its way and preventing myself from getting squashed" point of view. Consider my suggestions in this light.
It's not about self-censorship. It's about spin management.