On a PRIVATE network???
on
Pirate DNS?
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· Score: 4
IANAL... are you?
But I can't help but think that this is more a matter of typical micro$oft "we're gonna sue you into oblivion if you don't follow the word of bill" than actual law.
For instance... an example from real life...
When I was still in school I was on the admin team for the UNIX network. Now, at one point while I worked there, some drone from one of the pedantic majors (future marketdroid or mba type I think) went looking for information on the US goverment, and surfed over to... you guessed it: whitehouse.com. Well, little miss anal-retentive promptly threw a fit and complained to everyone who would listen... including a nasty letter to the school president. Eventually the order came down from somewhere above: We were to redirect whitehouse.com to whitehouse.gov in our DNS. We did, leaving a easy to exploit way to get to the real whitehouse.gov if anyone cared... as the OFFICIAL policy was not to censor net access (this was well BEFORE the RIAA began harassing schools to block napster).
So, were we, therefore, in violation of the law, for changing DNS on our own PRIVATE network (at a private school, not a state one)? Could whitehouse.com, had they gotten word of it, sued us over the remapping AND WON????
At home, I have microsoft.com remapped to www.kmfms.com so if any of the two other people who have access to these boxen suddenly become drones, they will be sent to a place they can get help. It is ILLEGAL, to change DNS???? On my own PRIVATE network???
>I think there's a good future in a device, that >kills all stereo's and cellhpones in a, let's make >is 500 meters or yards cubic, area. I promiss I'll >stop smoking then, even if it's allowed, provided >I find a cure for my need to.
Well, I can't help ya with the stereos... but as for the cellphones, check out this article in this week's SF Weekly:
>He was not a great Apple CEO, but far >from the worst.
Are you SURE about he's held in higher regard than spindler?
It may have been just another legend to spawn from Silicon Valley, as so many are wont to do (especially legends regarding Apple), but...
I'm almost SURE that I have read SOMEWHERE, that amelio is held in such low regard, after having so totally proven his blundering incompetence at Apple, that his name has been adopted as the unit of measure on a "stupidity scale"... as in a person/thing/project is as stupid as a certian multiple of amelio's own stupidity...
for example...
"m$ bob? now that product is at LEAST two gils stupid"
or
"You actually BOUGHT bob??? jeeze, you are four gils stupid!!!"
(using bob as an example that even the most rabid microdrone can agree was a DUMB idea)
>apparently you've never owned a 1997-98 >vintage PowerMac
No I haven't. I've only returned to Apple hardware since '99 (Yosimite G3). But pc's (that hp I had, and the Thinkpad I still have), of that vintage are equally difficult as you describe. And they haven't gotten much better since (this dell I use at work took 'bout 20 min for the IT guy to add ram).
I simply don't hold Steve Jobs, and the current Apple administration, responsible for the idiotic blunderings of gil amelio.
>No really--the hood is almost literally welded >shut on every Mac.
Surely you don't mean that it's PHYSICALLY harder to get into a Mac than a pc?
I'm on about my fiftenth computer now, everything from a couple Apple II series boxen to C64 to Sinclair ZX81 to a number of wintel boxen to an IBM Thinkpad.
I'm back to Apple now. And my Mac is the EASIEST thing to get into since the Apple II+ ! Just lift the latch, and the whole side of the case becomes a door which folds down, giving freakishly easy access to the inside of the thing. Upgrading the RAM (first thing I did when I got it) took all of two minutes.
Compare that to the HP tower I had before... I needed two different screwdrivers to get into the sucker. Just to get to the motherboard for a ram upgrade, I had to unscrew practically the whole back of the machine, pop off two side panels and the front panel, unscrew and remove the power supply with a DIFFERENT screw driver. dig through the nest of wires to get to the simms sockets, hold them out of the way with one hand, FINALLY add the memory (one handed) with the other, then reverse the entire disassembley procedure to get the thing back together. Total time was just over half an hour.
My next purchase will be a Powerbook. It's not quite so simple as a Powermac to get into, but, from playing with the demo units in the store (pop keyboard up, remove RF shield, pop ram into socket), it sure seems like it'll be a fair sight easier than it was to add ram to the Thinkpad I have now (another half hour long procedure involving a number of tiny (but, of course, different sized) screws).
A dedicated pirate will ALWAYS break copy protection. The only person inconvinenced by it is the casual user.
For an example, take the MPAA vs DeCSS.
We ALL know how unfeasable DVD piracy would be for joe consumer. But the MPAA has all their DMCA-enforced "access control" causing all inconvinence. Whilst REAL piracy rings are ignored...
For instance... in Hong Kong, Taipai, or even on the streets of San Francisco, Boston, or New York, if you know where to look, you can get substancially cheaper, PIRATED, DVD copies of just about every movie released on the format... and quite a few that haven't. Those that you can't get on DVD, you can get on VCD with little trouble. Hell, you can get a DVD of Episode I if you really want (it was released on Laserdisc in Japan... and promptly converted to DVD by enterprising pirates. Not as good as a REAL DVD, but better than VHS). These are professional piracy rings, who lay out the capital to produce these copies on a massive (economic) scale...
However, all of this is ignored by the MPAA. Instead we get crap like:
Regional encoding Macrovision Contractual ban on firewire output Legal harassment of DeCSS authors/distributors No japanese track on anime DVDs!!! etc.
None of which combats REAL piracy rings.... But all of which are a hassle and inconvinence to *ME*, the average consumer, who just wants to view the DVDs that I bought LEGALLY; whenever, wherever, and on whatever hardware I like.
And you can bet your sweet ass that the RIAA regrets the existance of the red book standard which makes it impossible for them to pull that crap... unless they force some propietary format like DVD-Audio on us...
>(San Jose), declares cars owned by the poorest >people who can LEAST afford to replace their >cars to be "gross polluters"
So it's the *POOR* people who own those 12mpg Excursions and Surburbans and Land Rovers that out weigh/size my own car by a factor of at least three!!! Silly me; I thought it was rich yuppies buying those monsterocities.
Funny thing... I happen to *LIKE* having clean, breathable air...
I wouldn't mind at all having <20mpg vehicles off the road. Or at least get rid of the "gas guzzler" tax exemption for them, and make them submit to all the safety and efficency requirements of normal cars. And bump the threshold for a *car* to be considered a "gas guzzler" up to 20mpg as well.
Come on people... we all knew beforehand that California has some of the toughest emissions laws around. Yet we choose to live here anyway. If you want to drive a beat up old junker that spews tons of smog every time you start it up, well, you knew beforehand that that's frowned upon in this state. (seems like there's a cultural exemption for old Volkswagons tho)
>the FSF tried to boycott Apple for their "Look >and feel is copyrigted"-approach.
.... that I'm not too fond of RMS's fork of the open source (or in his case, free software) philosophy.
Not that he doesn't mesn well, I'm sure that he does. But it seems like RMS gets so wraped up in the "all software must be free" aspect of his philosophy that he ignores the "big picture".
Remember who Apple was struggleing against in that suit? If Apple had won, it's quite possible that windows would have been stillborn. Think about it... a world with no "gates in a sweater" commercials, no win95/98/2000 hype, no outlook viruses, no explorer integrated into windows, no ability to "embrace, extend, and extinguish", no halloween papers, no ability to steal the work of any potential competitor and call it his own, and possibly, even no microsoft at all!!!
Imagine where the computer world would be, were gates not holding us back. Where would we be if he did not have the monopoly power to supress any superior technology that might compete with one of his own offerings?
There's and old saying that RMS might want to look up... "The enemy of the enemy is your friend".
Seriously... as a Mac fan and LinuxPPC user myself, I've noticed that Apple, these last couple of years is getting more respect... especially from the part of the geek community who usually would have, a few years ago, dismissed Macs as toys.
And I think that OS X is a big part of this. Aqua "gooiness" (all defined in editable XML files... first thing I'll do is put the widgets back where they're supposed to be... to hell with the "traffic light" model) aside... OS X really IS the first attempt to market a Unix OS to mass consumers. And I, for one, am definately fascinated to see how it turns out... if it will REALLY be so easy to use that you'll NEVER have to see the command line if you don't WANT to. I'm doublely impressed that the command line WILL be available when I WANT it...
Choice, as they say, is good.
And we'll have perl, gcc, java and all the other "traditional" development tools, PLUS some pretty nifty stuff from NeXT... projectbuilder and the "bundle" application model!!! Cool stuff, I would say... it sure looks like OS X is gonna be very "hackable".
Add to that the fact that, with the rise of Linux, and the forituitous actions of the DOJ, microsoft is rapidly losing its credibility in the "windows r00l3zzz apple dr001ez unix bl0wz" FUD department. And, as such, gates is losing it's ability to propagate his ever-so-popular "anyone who has ever used a Mac is an idiot" propaganda.
It's also worth noting that Apple is becoming (albiet, slowly) more and more "open"... Darwin is open, Quicktime server is open, OS X reportedly does not require the infamous boot ROM.... (tho I don't know if the Darwin liscense meets RMS's strict standards... but then who appointed him open source God? I like ESR's fork of open source philosophy better myself).
Indeed, when Apple was "Steve and Steve", they were "open source" fifteen years BEFORE Linux and the popularity of open source Unix-like OSs. The Apple II used to come with complete schematics (good enough that you could use them to build your own Apple II from parts), commented assembly for the ROMs and a disassembler in case there were undocumented changes!!! And Woz freely gave out schematics to all of his designs to anyone who asked. But then came the suits...
(I find it particular ironic that Be whines about Apple not giving them the G* specs (FUD anyway, they're available from Motorola (enjoying that intel money jean?)), when it was jean louis gassee who, after being insturmental in the expulsion of the Steves, was the biggest OPPONENT of Apple licensing its technology)
john Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku: I am not a drone. Remove the collective if
Correlate to Clarke's Law...
on
Calculating God
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>the alien one knows facts that prove a >transcendentally powerful being exists
Which wouldn't proove the existance of God in any event.
It's a simple correlation of Clarke's Law, which states:
"Any sufficently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"
to apply it to read:
"Any being wielding sufficently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a god"
We've all seen that episode where the crew of the Enterprise meets "Apollo". yes?
Or perhaps the episode of TNG where Picard foils "The Devil"?
But, okay, let's get away from science fiction. There *ARE* examples from "real life".
Wasn't it Columbus who claimed to some of the carribe islanders that he could talk to God? I read a story somewhere where Columbus was trying to bully the natives into giving up supplies for the trip home. They, of course, told him to get stuffed. Well, Chris just went back to his ship and found that there would just HAPPEN to be a solar eclipse the next day. So he went back to the natives and told him that if they didn't cough up the supplies, he'd have God take away the sun. They laughed. Along came the moon, blocking the sun, which convinced the locals to give in to Columbus' demands. And he promptly went back to the ship, told "God" to bring back the sun, and lo and behold.... here comes the sun, in it's full former glory.
Cortez, too, posed as a God. This time, when he contacted the Aztecs. Seems that they had a ledgend about an albino, four-legged god. Well, Cortez, by lucky coincidence, just HAPPENED to have horses (which were not native (and thus, unknown) to the americas) back on the ship... Couple that with European armour, and gunpowder "lightning sticks" and Cortez made a pretty good four legged albino god... long enough to concur the Aztecs anyway.
Or how about the south pacific "Cargo Cults" of post-WWII fame?
Those are just from the yop of my head. Anyone know more?
Pretty much anything that adds to the knowledge base is ultimately a GOOD THING(tm). For starters, when you fund a project like this, techies learn HOW to build faster, better, more powerful supercomputers. And it's a research project that'll add to our understanding of atomic physics...
You know, more goes on in a nuclear weapon than fission. If we can properly simulate the beginnings of FUSION, that could be an important step towards commercially viable fusion power plants! Cheap, clean, unlimited energy... worthy goal, I would think.
Additionally, even if the data from this box *IS* indeed ONLY ever applied towards nuclear weapons, that's still MUCH better than the alternative: which is to withdrawl from the Test-Ban Treaty, and start setting the things off for real again.
SIMULATING something is NOT morally equivelent to DOING that very thing. Otherwise, quite a lot of Quake, Carmagaddeon, and GTA players would be sitting in jail right now.
And, hell, even nuclear bombs, as they exist now, and as they could be refined, have potentially non-military uses. No, I'm NOT talking about Teller's harbor in Alaska; or the ridiculous scenarios in Deep Impact or Armagaddeon... Although nukes COULD be used for the noble purpose of deflecting incoming Comets/Asteroids. The implimentation, as presented, just sucked.
Actually, what I'm talking about *WAS* mentioned in Deep Impact. I'm talking about the Orion drive. If we are ever smart enough to withdraw from the ridiculous treaties which prevent it's deployment, Orion could be the answer to all of our short term space exploration problems! Until we perfect fusion, it IS the most powerful drive system proposed for deployment. Imagine how FAST we could get to Mars, and how much equipment we could take along if we used Orion, rathar than ridiculously inefficent chemical rockets!
Or, for the peaceniks out there... Wouldn't that be the ULTIMATE "swords into plowshares" situation? Imagine... the nuclear stockpiles of the world, ultimately directed not towards mutual annihilation, but towards the exploration of the final frontier!
Didn't you see me say good nite to the martinez troll? I don't particularly see debunking the rantings of ACs as a very high proprity.
As for the $400 price tag... if you'd rathar buy $200 nikes, $80 fubu jackets, another $120 worth of gap crap, and all the other usual accessories you see the average person decked out in when walking down Market Street...
That's YOUR choice.... I've no sympathy. The $400 computer is not too expensive for you, your priorities are just wrong.
Oh, and if you'd REALLY rather have all the trendite gear than pay $400 to build a computer, you can STILL, get a somewhat lesser box in one of those eMachines jobs, and take the Compuserve $400 rebate. Voila... problem solved.
It's been obvious for quite a while that *you* are nothng more than a troll, but I never knew you guys were running an ORGANISED campaign to attack & disrupt slashdot like that.
My thanks to the AC, later in this thread, who so thoughtfully provided the inchfan link.
>I have *taught* logic. I have studied First Order >Logic, Dynamic Logic, Modal Logic, Hybrid Logic, >Type Theory, Model Theoretic Semantics, >Substructural Logics, Feature Logics, and some >more. At grad level. I'd advise you to not take >my knowledge here for granted.
Wow... where have I heard *that* line before. You wouldn't happen to also be "Steve Woston" of "jjjjulius games", would you?
Sure, NASA's budget may look massive by the standards of ONE INDIVIDUAL. But try comparing it to any of the MANY money pits the US dumps dollars into... and it's a (tiny) drop in the bucket.
Compare it to the money dumped into social security every year (thanks HEAPS.. F-ing FDR)
Compare it to the money dumped into national debt intrest every year (thanks HEAPS.. F-ing congress)
Sorry, but If *I* were appointed "budget root" and tasked with cutting wasteful government fat, NASA'd be nowhere NEAR the top of the list. In fact, it'd prolly get a budget INCREASE, even AFTER a tax cut, AND a faster repayment schedule for the national debt.
Want all of the gory details of where money is wasted? Go to:
Again, IANAL... not here in California, and not in Arizona, so I don't know...
but...
>he guy in Arizona who organizes this >group is leasing
Which is irrelevant... I, for instance, lease my apartment here in San Francisco... but I have the same right to be "secure in my domacile" as I would were I a homeowner. My landlord can NOT give strangers permission to stroll on in and make themselves at home in my apt... not till the lease is over, and I move out. And if he WERE to do such a thing, I could sue the hell out of him. And there are PLENTY of tenant advocacy groups here that would help me.
>Where did I call anyone a murderer?
Direcet quote from your website:
"There are now recorded incidents of murder of harmless Mexican workers along the Sonora/Arizona border including a critical shooting of aMexican youth by two Arizona ranchers on horseback."
>>But that's all irrelevant. The link *IS* very >>biased and one-sided. The tone *IS* inflamatory, >>deliberately written to incite emotional, >>rathar than intellectual response.
>Bullshit. You don't like neither what they are >saying, or what I'm saying, or the way it is said, >that's all.
Nope. As I said, US/Mexico border politics don't particularly intrest me. I was using the writing style of your site demonstrate your trollish nature. You are right about ONE thing tho, it IS "the way it is said" that is what makes your site biased and invalid.
I'll put it another way. Doubtless that when David Duke was running for political office, the New York Times, a reputable and responsible, jornalistic institution, discovered, and reported on, Duke's history as a klansman.
Do you think for a second that The New York Times called Duke a "white racist bigot", despite the fact that that is what his clan membership implies?
Of course they didn't. That would be biased and inflamatory editorialising in a news story. It would be irresponsible journalism that would damage their reputation. No responsible editor would ever allow it.
To call Duke a "white racist bigot" would be a foolish exercise in inflamatory yellow journalism; an invalid approach that seeks to incite emotion.
To objectively report on his history as a klansman, not editorialise, and allow the reader to draw his own conclusion is the proper thing to do; you appeal to intellect in that case.
>Actually, I'll be a good logic teacher (a job I've >had in real life) and give you two exercises:
That's funny, because in virturally all of your postings, you attempt to appeal to emotion, and frequently you resort to ad hominum; both of which are logical fallacies...
... which immediately invalidate your arguement and cause you to lose... if you WERE a logic teacher or a debate coach, you'd know that. It's certianly a point MY coach reiterated with annoying regularity.
Oh... and I *DO* know what a tautology is... CompSci majors ARE required to take BOTH Digital Logic AND Discrete Structures, last I checked. I got A's in both...
A tautology is any expression which will ALWAYS evaluate to 1... such as...
Granted, an actual proof is much more complex than above, but that IS just sophomore level DigiLogic/DiscStructures to know that a single exception DOES disproove a tautology. If you know of a grad level DiscStructures or DigiLogic class that can demonstrate an instance where a tautology holds even when it evaluates to 0 in ANY case, I'd like to hear about it.... School AND professor, if you please, and the CS text that would print such a thing. Every prof at MY school said such a thing was impossible, that if you could proove an instance where it resolves to 0, it is NOT a tautology.
>Google results 1-10 of about 81,799 for kkk . >Search took 0.06 seconds.
(I love it when it's this easy)
Look further. Did you actually check out any of the sites that it returned? Did it ever occur to you that kkk might stand for something other than "ku klux klan" in other languages? Now who's being "US-centric"?
From the top ten you have:
1) the ku klux klan's homepage
3) A trilogy of news articles relating to the kkk: One, an editorial about how important it is to keep an eye on them, lest they get too powerful; another an item about protests that kkk merchandise was being auctioned on eBay; and the third, about a court ruleing AGAINST the kkk.
1) An entry in the online catalogue of exhibits at the Vermont Historical Society... who's collection also includes a life-mask of Abraham Lincoln!
1) What appears to be a networking FAQ in a language which, I beleive, is one of the Scandanavian tongues.
1) What looks to be an Italian architecture or interior design company.
1) A page whose purpose I can't tell, but looks to be in Norwegian.
1) A flash-based page in the.hu TLD, who description is not klan related (and in a language I don't recognise) that won't load.
1) ONE page which appears to sympathise with the ku klux klan
So... 8/10 of THE MOST POPULAR "kkk" matches have nothing to do with Nathan Forrest's little hate group. Care to place a wager on how a statistical analasys of that whole 80K would turn out? I think I'd win.
Oh, and needless to say... any doofus with m$ frontpage can slap together a semi-functional web site... it doesn't take a geek to have a web presence anymore.
My original point stands just fine.
>You are judged if you fit into the "technological >elite". Come in here and say you are a newbie, you >will get flamed not helped to realize your >potential *cough* RTFM *cough*.
And???? What... You expect everyone else to do your work for you if you ask a stupid question that *IS* addressed in the "FM", and you are too damn lazy to crack open the book, type man, or read a FAQ? There's a REASON that manuals, man pages, and FAQ's exist... it kinda falls into the "willingness to improve yourself" catagory.
>>I have visited five countries outside the US,
>I addressed that earlier
Well, you tried.... and I found it especially amusing when you claimed that Japan, in particular, is so similar to the US that it can be thrown out in the "well traveled" competition.
Have you ever BEEN to ANY of the those countries? I doubt it. If you had, you'd know that they ARE vastly different than the US, with (perhaps) the exception of English speaking Canada (but get into Qubec...).
I can understand, and almost forgive, your thinking that Canada, The UK, and Australia, are "too similar to the US". After all, you've probably been raised on the same mass media as I, and think that Canada, The UK, and Australia are the exact same as the US (because they all speak english I guess) except that they have different fameous landmarks and speak with funny accents. I can assure you, though, from having been to each, that that is NOT the case. I really don't know how to convince you of such. But f you think I'm lieing, and that they are all part of some American "monoculture", you *ARE* gravely mistaken. And I can only recomend that you visit each yourself and see the differences. Or at the VERY LEAST camp out in the travel section of a bookstore sometime and READ about each.
Glad that you admitted that Jamacia, at least, is significantly different from the US. The DO speak english there tho... shouldn't that place them in your "too similar" monoculture? And to answer your question, I never set foot in Kingston. I flew into Montego, and then took the bus to Negril. And I didn't meet anyone online there. The point of a vacation is to get AWAY from the computer. But contrary to your beleif, they DO have them there. I just didn't touch one the entire time. Bur it *IS* possible to exchange email addresses on paper, you know?
But Japan?!?!?!? To think that Japan is "too similar to the US"??? I don't know weather to laugh or pity you if you really beleive that. Japan was the most radical departure from American culture that I expierenced... EVER!!! And it was pretty damn cool... if a bit overwhealming... I'm really gunning for that assignment when we open the Japan CoLo tho. But NOTHING like the US... and if you really don't beleive that... you DESPRATELY need to get out more.
>So now, a site denouncing paramilitary vigilantes >in the US-Mexico border who hunt down Mexican >peasants in the border, and have been responsible >for deaths, is "insulting and offensive"?
Granted, it's not legal to hunt down and shoot criminals yourself, hell, I don't think it's legal to even detain them yourself until the authorities arrive... here. OTOH, I don't know what the law regarding the topic is in Arizona. But then again, Texas has some very... shall we say: unrestrictive... laws considering what actions you may take to defend your homestead against tresspassing criminals. Perhaps Arizona law is similar. I don't know. Point is, you call these people murders, and, as far as I can tell, they haven't even been to trial, much less convicted. Guilty till prooven innocent, eh?
But that's all irrelevant. The link *IS* very biased and one-sided. The tone *IS* inflamatory, deliberately written to incite emotional, rathar than intellectual response.
>Anyway, I don't see you scanning/. for all >heated discussions, and making similar >accusations. Why do you pick on me? Could it have >something to do with what I argue and defend?
Actually yes, that's what message boards are for, yes?. I couldn't care less about the politics of mexican immigration, that's not particularly relevant on/. What bugs me is your frequent neo-luddite-esque condemnation of technology. This time of the internet as a home of free speech, and last time, of digital signatures and electronic voting. I've never bought the "technology is the tool of the oppressor to subjigate the masses" line. Quite the contrary, I find technology, and computers and the internet in particular to be liberating and enlightening tools. The net has allowed for an unprecidented free exchange of information, the likes of which has never been seen before. I think that is a GOOD THING(tm).
>Well, how do you suggest I translate >"estadounidense"
Others have explained to you why "unitedstatesian" is incorrect. I don't see the need to repeat the effort.
>And how frequently can I expect you to >come to my defense when I get called a >"wetback" or a "spik",
Can you supply links to posts where Slashdotters have called you a "wetback" or "spick"? And I don't recall ANY referance to your wife before this post, much less one calling her a "chink". It appears that you are applying meatspace prejudices to a realm where they do not apply.
I've found that in the geek community, you are rarely, if ever, judged by race, sex, nationality, sexuality, religion, etc. More than any other culture, it is a meritocracy. You are judged on your accomplishments, abilities, and your willingness to improve yourself.
At least that's MY expierence. If your employer is one of those stodgy, obsolete "good old boy network" places, I suggest you change jobs. YOU have the power, not the suits. You just have to realise it. And if enough of a company's geeks quit, they will have to become more geek friendly, or die. So by changing jobs (if your current employer is geek-unfriendly), you not only help yourself, but your coworkers as well.
>I'm just speaking from my experience. If you have >some reason for believing that I've had to deal >with an unrepresentative sample, please say so.
I can't speak for EVERYONE, but in my own case, I have visited five countries outside the US, and two US terratories that are so different they may as well be other countries. And a number of my coworkers are MUCH more travelled than me. As a matter of face, one on the enginners just left for a six-month leave of absence to travel throughout Asia. Hell, several of the geeks (or their parents) here actually moved to the US from other countries withing the last generation (several from China, two from Japan, Korea: 1, Russia: 2, Australia: 1, Iran (pre-ahitolla): 1).
In the next two years, we'll be setting up CoLos (and therefore sending people (possibly me) to) in Japan, one other Asian country (Australia most likely), The UK, and one other European country (France, most likely).
Sure seems like an easy to learn about other cultures to me.
I've gotten off on a tangent here, but the people *I* know certianly do not thing that "the US is the whole world".
>And if your idea of "easily disproven" is to give >a personal anecdote, you need to review logic, >argumentation and standards of evidence.
It takes only *ONE* exception (myself, in this case, but I could easily use any number of my friends or coworkers) to disprove a tautology. So, no, actually, I don't.
... or do they just disqualify themselves with ad hominum all the time?
I dunno why I bother but...
>It's not even available in most of industrialized >europe. Have you even been outside the unites >states?
As a matter of fact, yeah. Just how do you think I've met friends from other countries in the first place? I've visited Canada, The UK, Jamaica, and Australia on various vacations, and once visited Japan on business. And if you want to count places that aren't *technically* foreign countries, you can throw in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands too.
Sure, I'm no Hillary or Drake, but I've been around, probably a little more than average. And in no case was internet access overly difficuly to get. Hell... it can't be TOO hard... my overseas friends *DO* seem to be able to mail me back when I write.
Odd that Estanislao accuses Americans of being US-centric, while he and you try to propagate the view that the rest of the world is a degenerate wasteland.
>you claim to have checked irs.gov (which I'm sure >you didn't actually do)
Actually, yes I did. The IRS takes away about 23% in income tax, plus social secruity and medicare tax. Then California takes another 5% or so. And I AM not anywhere near the top 1% elite. Altoghether it's a despicable proportion to confiscate. But I DO have some pretty sweet deductions and write-offs coming up this year, so I should make do.
>shows just how clueless you are. He is talking >about people in other countries.
Well, lessee... I've been to FIVE countries outside the US, and two US terratories that are different enough that they may as well be seperate countries. In not one of them was it overly expensive to get on the net.
As for the rest of your trite ACtroll ad hominum rantings, I won't denign to bother replying.
A simple check of you posting history reveals that your posts match definition 1, and you match difinition 2.
Your posts are deliberately inflamatory, and obviously calculated to be as insulting and offensive as possible. The same can be also said for the site (aztlan.net) that you link to.
A proper troll, if such a thing really exists, should be subtle and non-obvious. You lack any degree of subtlety. And your deliberately inflamatory, and in at least one case totally invented and patently incorrect ("unitedstatesian"), and blantantly raceist ("gringo") tone and word choice belies your nature, as does your complete unwillingness to brook any arguement.
You ARE a troll. And not only that, you are a poor one at that.
And now, just for fun, I'll use counterarguements to dubunk two of the myths you are fond of propagating.
1) The internet is a "exclusive forum for a prvileged socioeconomic minority that enjoys enormous wealth" (sic)
Well, lessee... checking my tax bracket @ irs.gov... nope. I'm nowhere NEAR the top 1%'s income. No enormous wealth here. But I still have net access. As for the hardware, I can put together a perfectly internet capable box for under $400... not a ton of money there... and you can get net access for FREE if you care to put up with a few ads... or ISPs are available for as little as $10/month without the ads. $400 initial + 0-10 per month... seems pretty cheap to me.
And if you want to get REALLY pedantic, I COULD just take MUNI to the SF library where they have public internet terminals I could access for *FREE*.
As for people online being a tiny minority, that seems pretty unlikely to me, considering the vast numbers of people online, ESPECIALLY after the september that never ended: (http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/jargon.html#S eptember%20that%20never%20ended)
2) Americans "must believe the US is the world."
Easily disproven. Almost laughably so. I, personaly, use the net to keep in touch, via email, with friends I have in in a number of other countries, one of which is New Zealand. I mention New Zealand in particular because, excepting Australia, it is just about as far from America as you can get, without actually leaving the planet.
>I mean, when you allow technology like this, >which the public does not understand, to become >central to the democratic process, you empower a >small technological elite who understands the >technology and its limitations.
No one's talking about REPLACING the old dead tree system and saying "in order to vote or sign a petition you MUST use a computer". They are simply adding an alternative for people who would like the convinence of voting at the terminal without running down to the pools.
Choice, as they say, is good.
If they ever take away the meatspace, "dead tree" option, there MIGHT be some concern, but with the increasing pervasiveness of computers, I don't think access is too much of a problem...
... "techno-elite"... "cost of computers"? I recommend you walk down Market Street sometime. You will see plenty of people dressed in clothes with a value well over that of a computer you could use for internet access...
$200 nike shoes $80 Fubu jacket $90-tommy hillfugger jeans $50 gap shirt $20 dkny ball-cap Add in any jewelry... add in the likelyhood of designer underwear...
I can (and have) built complete systems for less than that. It's just a matter of where you place your priorities. Would you perfer to be a trendite? Or would you perfer a computer to get on the net.
If people choose the "in" fashion styles over educating themselves, I have no sympathy.
>I say all voting processes should stay on paper. >Everyone can understand marking papers and >counting them,
And you think this is less suceptible to fraud than digital means? I got news for you. The weak link isn't the computer. It's not the paper. It's the people. Governments have been rigging elections LONG before anyone proposed digital signatures or on-line balloting.
>most can't understand cryptography and >digital signatures.
Bullshit...
Correction: most *DON'T* understand cryptography and digital signatures.
Anyone *CAN* understand any damn thing they want.
Suppose I wanted to know more about crypto and digital signatures. Well, I could take MUNI to Market and Powell, walk up the street to Borders (thus avoiding the capitalistic *evils* of private autos)...
(also avoiding the "technoelite" amazon.com in this case, because it's SOOOO unreasonable to expect people to know how to doubliclick on that Netscape icon)
... and buy a copy of "Applied Cryptography"; an excellent crypto reference complete with algorythms and source code. And, as another poster pointed out, "Applied Cryptography", contains an excellent proposal for a secure e-voting system that does NOT allow for forged votes, tracing votes to the voter, or tampering after the fact.
People can be unwilling to understand People can to too lazy to understand No one can't understand.
Hell, popular fiction these days revolves around crypto! "Cryptomonicon" not only includes the perl algorythm for a nifty scheme, but a simple explanition of that same algorythm based on playing cards!
It's all just a matter of how willing you are to educate and improve yourself. It's a little idea called a meritocracy... you are judged not on nationality, race, gender, religion, etc... but simply on merit; how much you're willing to accomplish.
And you know? If someone is too lazy, stupid, or just plain unwilling to learn and improve themselves, I have a really hard time feeling bad for him when he gets left behind. If judgeing someone by their merit, rathar than stupid crap like race or religion, == eliteism, then count me in.
>but if you are in the business of directing >people to where they can find drug dealers, and >make a profit by giving out that information, you >are crossing the line.
The phone company and the newspapers do it all the time. Not drug dealers actually, but will prostitution do? It's pretty much common knowledge that "escort services", "massage parlors", and "modelling agencies", are thinly veiled fronts for prostitution...
... But open up the PacBell yellow pages to the "E" section... Or check out the back few pages of SF Weekly or the Guardian. I'm pretty sure that all three make a profit.
Or lets go back to drugs...
Not too long ago there was a big flap about a bill in congress called the "Methamphetimine Antiproliferation Act" or somesuch. This bill, if passed, would have made it illegal to link to, or post on the web, information on how to make your own amphetemine; and, rightfully so, there was an outroar about the unconstitutional restrictions on free speech.
To be opposed to the "Methamphetimine Antiproliferation Act"'s restrictions on linking, but be in favor of restricting links to MP3 sites is nonsenceically hipocritical... and just plain silly. It's okay to allow one kind of free speech to be outlawed, but not another???
That's BS. Once you start down the path of giving up your freedoms, where does it stop?
And I hardly see where it is relevant if the site makes a profit or not. The logic of "it's wrong to make a profit" would seem to imply that it's perfectly okat to post all the drug manuefacturing info, warez, copyrighted MP3s, and kiddie porn I want, so long as *I* pay for the hosting myself. But if I set up ONE little banner ad, suddenly I'm an evil, preditory, inhuman monster; commiting crimes against humanity.
I'll set aside, for the moment, that most of the people *I* know who have banner ads on their sites barely bring in enough to pay for their hosting service, if that much.
Slashdot Mirror
But I can't help but think that this is more a matter of typical micro$oft "we're gonna sue you into oblivion if you don't follow the word of bill" than actual law.
For instance... an example from real life...
When I was still in school I was on the admin team for the UNIX network. Now, at one point while I worked there, some drone from one of the pedantic majors (future marketdroid or mba type I think) went looking for information on the US goverment, and surfed over to... you guessed it: whitehouse.com. Well, little miss anal-retentive promptly threw a fit and complained to everyone who would listen... including a nasty letter to the school president. Eventually the order came down from somewhere above: We were to redirect whitehouse.com to whitehouse.gov in our DNS. We did, leaving a easy to exploit way to get to the real whitehouse.gov if anyone cared... as the OFFICIAL policy was not to censor net access (this was well BEFORE the RIAA began harassing schools to block napster).
So, were we, therefore, in violation of the law, for changing DNS on our own PRIVATE network (at a private school, not a state one)? Could whitehouse.com, had they gotten word of it, sued us over the remapping AND WON????
At home, I have microsoft.com remapped to www.kmfms.com so if any of the two other people who have access to these boxen suddenly become drones, they will be sent to a place they can get help. It is ILLEGAL, to change DNS???? On my own PRIVATE network???
That seeme totally idiotic to me, if it is true.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
>I think there's a good future in a device, that
>kills all stereo's and cellhpones in a, let's make
>is 500 meters or yards cubic, area. I promiss I'll
>stop smoking then, even if it's allowed, provided
>I find a cure for my need to.
Well, I can't help ya with the stereos... but as for the cellphones, check out this article in this week's SF Weekly:
http://www.sfweekly.com/issues/2000-07-05/bayvi
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
>from the worst.
Are you SURE about he's held in higher regard than spindler?
It may have been just another legend to spawn from Silicon Valley, as so many are wont to do (especially legends regarding Apple), but...
I'm almost SURE that I have read SOMEWHERE, that amelio is held in such low regard, after having so totally proven his blundering incompetence at Apple, that his name has been adopted as the unit of measure on a "stupidity scale"... as in a person/thing/project is as stupid as a certian multiple of amelio's own stupidity...
for example...
"m$ bob? now that product is at LEAST two gils stupid"
or
"You actually BOUGHT bob??? jeeze, you are four gils stupid!!!"
(using bob as an example that even the most rabid microdrone can agree was a DUMB idea)
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
>vintage PowerMac
No I haven't. I've only returned to Apple hardware since '99 (Yosimite G3). But pc's (that hp I had, and the Thinkpad I still have), of that vintage are equally difficult as you describe. And they haven't gotten much better since (this dell I use at work took 'bout 20 min for the IT guy to add ram).
I simply don't hold Steve Jobs, and the current Apple administration, responsible for the idiotic blunderings of gil amelio.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
>shut on every Mac.
Surely you don't mean that it's PHYSICALLY harder to get into a Mac than a pc?
I'm on about my fiftenth computer now, everything from a couple Apple II series boxen to C64 to Sinclair ZX81 to a number of wintel boxen to an IBM Thinkpad.
I'm back to Apple now. And my Mac is the EASIEST thing to get into since the Apple II+ ! Just lift the latch, and the whole side of the case becomes a door which folds down, giving freakishly easy access to the inside of the thing. Upgrading the RAM (first thing I did when I got it) took all of two minutes.
Compare that to the HP tower I had before... I needed two different screwdrivers to get into the sucker. Just to get to the motherboard for a ram upgrade, I had to unscrew practically the whole back of the machine, pop off two side panels and the front panel, unscrew and remove the power supply with a DIFFERENT screw driver. dig through the nest of wires to get to the simms sockets, hold them out of the way with one hand, FINALLY add the memory (one handed) with the other, then reverse the entire disassembley procedure to get the thing back together. Total time was just over half an hour.
My next purchase will be a Powerbook. It's not quite so simple as a Powermac to get into, but, from playing with the demo units in the store (pop keyboard up, remove RF shield, pop ram into socket), it sure seems like it'll be a fair sight easier than it was to add ram to the Thinkpad I have now (another half hour long procedure involving a number of tiny (but, of course, different sized) screws).
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
For an example, take the MPAA vs DeCSS.
We ALL know how unfeasable DVD piracy would be for joe consumer. But the MPAA has all their DMCA-enforced "access control" causing all inconvinence. Whilst REAL piracy rings are ignored...
For instance... in Hong Kong, Taipai, or even on the streets of San Francisco, Boston, or New York, if you know where to look, you can get substancially cheaper, PIRATED, DVD copies of just about every movie released on the format... and quite a few that haven't. Those that you can't get on DVD, you can get on VCD with little trouble. Hell, you can get a DVD of Episode I if you really want (it was released on Laserdisc in Japan... and promptly converted to DVD by enterprising pirates. Not as good as a REAL DVD, but better than VHS). These are professional piracy rings, who lay out the capital to produce these copies on a massive (economic) scale...
However, all of this is ignored by the MPAA. Instead we get crap like:
Regional encoding
Macrovision
Contractual ban on firewire output
Legal harassment of DeCSS authors/distributors
No japanese track on anime DVDs!!!
etc.
None of which combats REAL piracy rings.... But all of which are a hassle and inconvinence to *ME*, the average consumer, who just wants to view the DVDs that I bought LEGALLY; whenever, wherever, and on whatever hardware I like.
And you can bet your sweet ass that the RIAA regrets the existance of the red book standard which makes it impossible for them to pull that crap... unless they force some propietary format like DVD-Audio on us...
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
If you're too damn lazy to cut and paste, just who the hell are you to critisize him for being to damn lazy to use "a href" tags?
In conclusion... hate yourself.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
>people who can LEAST afford to replace their
>cars to be "gross polluters"
So it's the *POOR* people who own those 12mpg Excursions and Surburbans and Land Rovers that out weigh/size my own car by a factor of at least three!!! Silly me; I thought it was rich yuppies buying those monsterocities.
Funny thing... I happen to *LIKE* having clean, breathable air...
I wouldn't mind at all having <20mpg vehicles off the road. Or at least get rid of the "gas guzzler" tax exemption for them, and make them submit to all the safety and efficency requirements of normal cars. And bump the threshold for a *car* to be considered a "gas guzzler" up to 20mpg as well.
Come on people... we all knew beforehand that California has some of the toughest emissions laws around. Yet we choose to live here anyway. If you want to drive a beat up old junker that spews tons of smog every time you start it up, well, you knew beforehand that that's frowned upon in this state. (seems like there's a cultural exemption for old Volkswagons tho)
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
>and feel is copyrigted"-approach.
Not that he doesn't mesn well, I'm sure that he does. But it seems like RMS gets so wraped up in the "all software must be free" aspect of his philosophy that he ignores the "big picture".
Remember who Apple was struggleing against in that suit? If Apple had won, it's quite possible that windows would have been stillborn. Think about it... a world with no "gates in a sweater" commercials, no win95/98/2000 hype, no outlook viruses, no explorer integrated into windows, no ability to "embrace, extend, and extinguish", no halloween papers, no ability to steal the work of any potential competitor and call it his own, and possibly, even no microsoft at all!!!
Imagine where the computer world would be, were gates not holding us back. Where would we be if he did not have the monopoly power to supress any superior technology that might compete with one of his own offerings?
There's and old saying that RMS might want to look up... "The enemy of the enemy is your friend".
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Seriously... as a Mac fan and LinuxPPC user myself, I've noticed that Apple, these last couple of years is getting more respect... especially from the part of the geek community who usually would have, a few years ago, dismissed Macs as toys.
And I think that OS X is a big part of this. Aqua "gooiness" (all defined in editable XML files... first thing I'll do is put the widgets back where they're supposed to be... to hell with the "traffic light" model) aside... OS X really IS the first attempt to market a Unix OS to mass consumers. And I, for one, am definately fascinated to see how it turns out... if it will REALLY be so easy to use that you'll NEVER have to see the command line if you don't WANT to. I'm doublely impressed that the command line WILL be available when I WANT it...
Choice, as they say, is good.
And we'll have perl, gcc, java and all the other "traditional" development tools, PLUS some pretty nifty stuff from NeXT... projectbuilder and the "bundle" application model!!! Cool stuff, I would say... it sure looks like OS X is gonna be very "hackable".
Add to that the fact that, with the rise of Linux, and the forituitous actions of the DOJ, microsoft is rapidly losing its credibility in the "windows r00l3zzz apple dr001ez unix bl0wz" FUD department. And, as such, gates is losing it's ability to propagate his ever-so-popular "anyone who has ever used a Mac is an idiot" propaganda.
It's also worth noting that Apple is becoming (albiet, slowly) more and more "open"... Darwin is open, Quicktime server is open, OS X reportedly does not require the infamous boot ROM.... (tho I don't know if the Darwin liscense meets RMS's strict standards... but then who appointed him open source God? I like ESR's fork of open source philosophy better myself).
Indeed, when Apple was "Steve and Steve", they were "open source" fifteen years BEFORE Linux and the popularity of open source Unix-like OSs. The Apple II used to come with complete schematics (good enough that you could use them to build your own Apple II from parts), commented assembly for the ROMs and a disassembler in case there were undocumented changes!!! And Woz freely gave out schematics to all of his designs to anyone who asked. But then came the suits...
(I find it particular ironic that Be whines about Apple not giving them the G* specs (FUD anyway, they're available from Motorola (enjoying that intel money jean?)), when it was jean louis gassee who, after being insturmental in the expulsion of the Steves, was the biggest OPPONENT of Apple licensing its technology)
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
>transcendentally powerful being exists
Which wouldn't proove the existance of God in any event.
It's a simple correlation of Clarke's Law, which states:
"Any sufficently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"
to apply it to read:
"Any being wielding sufficently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a god"
We've all seen that episode where the crew of the Enterprise meets "Apollo". yes?
Or perhaps the episode of TNG where Picard foils "The Devil"?
But, okay, let's get away from science fiction. There *ARE* examples from "real life".
Wasn't it Columbus who claimed to some of the carribe islanders that he could talk to God? I read a story somewhere where Columbus was trying to bully the natives into giving up supplies for the trip home. They, of course, told him to get stuffed. Well, Chris just went back to his ship and found that there would just HAPPEN to be a solar eclipse the next day. So he went back to the natives and told him that if they didn't cough up the supplies, he'd have God take away the sun. They laughed. Along came the moon, blocking the sun, which convinced the locals to give in to Columbus' demands. And he promptly went back to the ship, told "God" to bring back the sun, and lo and behold.... here comes the sun, in it's full former glory.
Cortez, too, posed as a God. This time, when he contacted the Aztecs. Seems that they had a ledgend about an albino, four-legged god. Well, Cortez, by lucky coincidence, just HAPPENED to have horses (which were not native (and thus, unknown) to the americas) back on the ship... Couple that with European armour, and gunpowder "lightning sticks" and Cortez made a pretty good four legged albino god... long enough to concur the Aztecs anyway.
Or how about the south pacific "Cargo Cults" of post-WWII fame?
Those are just from the yop of my head. Anyone know more?
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
You know, more goes on in a nuclear weapon than fission. If we can properly simulate the beginnings of FUSION, that could be an important step towards commercially viable fusion power plants! Cheap, clean, unlimited energy... worthy goal, I would think.
Additionally, even if the data from this box *IS* indeed ONLY ever applied towards nuclear weapons, that's still MUCH better than the alternative: which is to withdrawl from the Test-Ban Treaty, and start setting the things off for real again.
SIMULATING something is NOT morally equivelent to DOING that very thing. Otherwise, quite a lot of Quake, Carmagaddeon, and GTA players would be sitting in jail right now.
And, hell, even nuclear bombs, as they exist now, and as they could be refined, have potentially non-military uses. No, I'm NOT talking about Teller's harbor in Alaska; or the ridiculous scenarios in Deep Impact or Armagaddeon... Although nukes COULD be used for the noble purpose of deflecting incoming Comets/Asteroids. The implimentation, as presented, just sucked.
Actually, what I'm talking about *WAS* mentioned in Deep Impact. I'm talking about the Orion drive. If we are ever smart enough to withdraw from the ridiculous treaties which prevent it's deployment, Orion could be the answer to all of our short term space exploration problems! Until we perfect fusion, it IS the most powerful drive system proposed for deployment. Imagine how FAST we could get to Mars, and how much equipment we could take along if we used Orion, rathar than ridiculously inefficent chemical rockets!
Or, for the peaceniks out there... Wouldn't that be the ULTIMATE "swords into plowshares" situation? Imagine... the nuclear stockpiles of the world, ultimately directed not towards mutual annihilation, but towards the exploration of the final frontier!
We HAVE the way, all we need is the will.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
As for the $400 price tag... if you'd rathar buy $200 nikes, $80 fubu jackets, another $120 worth of gap crap, and all the other usual accessories you see the average person decked out in when walking down Market Street...
That's YOUR choice.... I've no sympathy. The $400 computer is not too expensive for you, your priorities are just wrong.
Oh, and if you'd REALLY rather have all the trendite gear than pay $400 to build a computer, you can STILL, get a somewhat lesser box in one of those eMachines jobs, and take the Compuserve $400 rebate. Voila... problem solved.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
My thanks to the AC, later in this thread, who so thoughtfully provided the inchfan link.
>I have *taught* logic. I have studied First Order
>Logic, Dynamic Logic, Modal Logic, Hybrid Logic,
>Type Theory, Model Theoretic Semantics,
>Substructural Logics, Feature Logics, and some
>more. At grad level. I'd advise you to not take
>my knowledge here for granted.
Wow... where have I heard *that* line before. You wouldn't happen to also be "Steve Woston" of "jjjjulius games", would you?
You're *SOOOO* busted!
'nite
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Sure, NASA's budget may look massive by the standards of ONE INDIVIDUAL. But try comparing it to any of the MANY money pits the US dumps dollars into... and it's a (tiny) drop in the bucket.
Compare it to the money dumped into social security every year (thanks HEAPS.. F-ing FDR)
Compare it to the money dumped into national debt intrest every year (thanks HEAPS.. F-ing congress)
Sorry, but If *I* were appointed "budget root" and tasked with cutting wasteful government fat, NASA'd be nowhere NEAR the top of the list. In fact, it'd prolly get a budget INCREASE, even AFTER a tax cut, AND a faster repayment schedule for the national debt.
Want all of the gory details of where money is wasted? Go to:
http://w3.access.gpo.gov/usbudget/
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Ah, the Fisher Space Pen. $1 million white elephant, or...
Last time I visited KSC, those suchers went for about $5 at the gift shop. How many do you suppose they've sold over the years?
Having liven in Orlando, FL, and knowing firsthand how tourists'll buy damn near any little trinket...
I wouldn't be at all supprised if thet sell 200,000 a YEAR, much less TOTAL.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Again, IANAL... not here in California, and not in Arizona, so I don't know...
but...
>he guy in Arizona who organizes this
>group is leasing
Which is irrelevant... I, for instance, lease my apartment here in San Francisco... but I have the same right to be "secure in my domacile" as I would were I a homeowner. My landlord can NOT give strangers permission to stroll on in and make themselves at home in my apt... not till the lease is over, and I move out. And if he WERE to do such a thing, I could sue the hell out of him. And there are PLENTY of tenant advocacy groups here that would help me.
>Where did I call anyone a murderer?
Direcet quote from your website:
"There are now recorded incidents of murder of harmless Mexican workers along the Sonora/Arizona border including a critical shooting of aMexican youth by two Arizona ranchers on horseback."
>>But that's all irrelevant. The link *IS* very
>>biased and one-sided. The tone *IS* inflamatory,
>>deliberately written to incite emotional,
>>rathar than intellectual response.
>Bullshit. You don't like neither what they are
>saying, or what I'm saying, or the way it is said,
>that's all.
Nope. As I said, US/Mexico border politics don't particularly intrest me. I was using the writing style of your site demonstrate your trollish nature. You are right about ONE thing tho, it IS "the way it is said" that is what makes your site biased and invalid.
I'll put it another way. Doubtless that when David Duke was running for political office, the New York Times, a reputable and responsible, jornalistic institution, discovered, and reported on, Duke's history as a klansman.
Do you think for a second that The New York Times called Duke a "white racist bigot", despite the fact that that is what his clan membership implies?
Of course they didn't. That would be biased and inflamatory editorialising in a news story. It would be irresponsible journalism that would damage their reputation. No responsible editor would ever allow it.
To call Duke a "white racist bigot" would be a foolish exercise in inflamatory yellow journalism; an invalid approach that seeks to incite emotion.
To objectively report on his history as a klansman, not editorialise, and allow the reader to draw his own conclusion is the proper thing to do; you appeal to intellect in that case.
>Actually, I'll be a good logic teacher (a job I've
>had in real life) and give you two exercises:
That's funny, because in virturally all of your postings, you attempt to appeal to emotion, and frequently you resort to ad hominum; both of which are logical fallacies...
(http://www.intrepidsoftware.com/fallacy/toc.ht
... which immediately invalidate your arguement and cause you to lose... if you WERE a logic teacher or a debate coach, you'd know that. It's certianly a point MY coach reiterated with annoying regularity.
Oh... and I *DO* know what a tautology is... CompSci majors ARE required to take BOTH Digital Logic AND Discrete Structures, last I checked. I got A's in both...
A tautology is any expression which will ALWAYS evaluate to 1... such as...
#if
$x=1; #then
($x==1); #is a tautology
or
#if
@y= 'foo','bar'; #then
($y==2); #or
(@y[0]=='foo') #or
(@y[0]!=@y[1]) #is a tautology
Granted, an actual proof is much more complex than above, but that IS just sophomore level DigiLogic/DiscStructures to know that a single exception DOES disproove a tautology. If you know of a grad level DiscStructures or DigiLogic class that can demonstrate an instance where a tautology holds even when it evaluates to 0 in ANY case, I'd like to hear about it.... School AND professor, if you please, and the CS text that would print such a thing. Every prof at MY school said such a thing was impossible, that if you could proove an instance where it resolves to 0, it is NOT a tautology.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
>Search took 0.06 seconds.
(I love it when it's this easy)
Look further. Did you actually check out any of the sites that it returned? Did it ever occur to you that kkk might stand for something other than "ku klux klan" in other languages? Now who's being "US-centric"?
From the top ten you have:
1) the ku klux klan's homepage
3) A trilogy of news articles relating to the kkk: One, an editorial about how important it is to keep an eye on them, lest they get too powerful; another an item about protests that kkk merchandise was being auctioned on eBay; and the third, about a court ruleing AGAINST the kkk.
1) An entry in the online catalogue of exhibits at the Vermont Historical Society... who's collection also includes a life-mask of Abraham Lincoln!
1) What appears to be a networking FAQ in a language which, I beleive, is one of the Scandanavian tongues.
1) What looks to be an Italian architecture or interior design company.
1) A page whose purpose I can't tell, but looks to be in Norwegian.
1) A flash-based page in the
1) ONE page which appears to sympathise with the ku klux klan
So... 8/10 of THE MOST POPULAR "kkk" matches have nothing to do with Nathan Forrest's little hate group. Care to place a wager on how a statistical analasys of that whole 80K would turn out? I think I'd win.
Oh, and needless to say... any doofus with m$ frontpage can slap together a semi-functional web site... it doesn't take a geek to have a web presence anymore.
My original point stands just fine.
>You are judged if you fit into the "technological
>elite". Come in here and say you are a newbie, you
>will get flamed not helped to realize your
>potential *cough* RTFM *cough*.
And???? What... You expect everyone else to do your work for you if you ask a stupid question that *IS* addressed in the "FM", and you are too damn lazy to crack open the book, type man, or read a FAQ? There's a REASON that manuals, man pages, and FAQ's exist... it kinda falls into the "willingness to improve yourself" catagory.
>>I have visited five countries outside the US,
>I addressed that earlier
Well, you tried.... and I found it especially amusing when you claimed that Japan, in particular, is so similar to the US that it can be thrown out in the "well traveled" competition.
Have you ever BEEN to ANY of the those countries? I doubt it. If you had, you'd know that they ARE vastly different than the US, with (perhaps) the exception of English speaking Canada (but get into Qubec...).
I can understand, and almost forgive, your thinking that Canada, The UK, and Australia, are "too similar to the US". After all, you've probably been raised on the same mass media as I, and think that Canada, The UK, and Australia are the exact same as the US (because they all speak english I guess) except that they have different fameous landmarks and speak with funny accents. I can assure you, though, from having been to each, that that is NOT the case. I really don't know how to convince you of such. But f you think I'm lieing, and that they are all part of some American "monoculture", you *ARE* gravely mistaken. And I can only recomend that you visit each yourself and see the differences. Or at the VERY LEAST camp out in the travel section of a bookstore sometime and READ about each.
Glad that you admitted that Jamacia, at least, is significantly different from the US. The DO speak english there tho... shouldn't that place them in your "too similar" monoculture? And to answer your question, I never set foot in Kingston. I flew into Montego, and then took the bus to Negril. And I didn't meet anyone online there. The point of a vacation is to get AWAY from the computer. But contrary to your beleif, they DO have them there. I just didn't touch one the entire time. Bur it *IS* possible to exchange email addresses on paper, you know?
But Japan?!?!?!? To think that Japan is "too similar to the US"??? I don't know weather to laugh or pity you if you really beleive that. Japan was the most radical departure from American culture that I expierenced... EVER!!! And it was pretty damn cool... if a bit overwhealming... I'm really gunning for that assignment when we open the Japan CoLo tho. But NOTHING like the US... and if you really don't beleive that... you DESPRATELY need to get out more.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
>Who are you, Jon Katz?
No, but just because he can't write*, that doesn't mean that he's never *right*.
*Or, more properly, he's badly in need of a good editor.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
>in the US-Mexico border who hunt down Mexican
>peasants in the border, and have been responsible
>for deaths, is "insulting and offensive"?
Granted, it's not legal to hunt down and shoot criminals yourself, hell, I don't think it's legal to even detain them yourself until the authorities arrive... here. OTOH, I don't know what the law regarding the topic is in Arizona. But then again, Texas has some very... shall we say: unrestrictive... laws considering what actions you may take to defend your homestead against tresspassing criminals. Perhaps Arizona law is similar. I don't know. Point is, you call these people murders, and, as far as I can tell, they haven't even been to trial, much less convicted. Guilty till prooven innocent, eh?
But that's all irrelevant. The link *IS* very biased and one-sided. The tone *IS* inflamatory, deliberately written to incite emotional, rathar than intellectual response.
>Anyway, I don't see you scanning
>heated discussions, and making similar
>accusations. Why do you pick on me? Could it have
>something to do with what I argue and defend?
Actually yes, that's what message boards are for, yes?. I couldn't care less about the politics of mexican immigration, that's not particularly relevant on
>Well, how do you suggest I translate
>"estadounidense"
Others have explained to you why "unitedstatesian" is incorrect. I don't see the need to repeat the effort.
>And how frequently can I expect you to
>come to my defense when I get called a
>"wetback" or a "spik",
Can you supply links to posts where Slashdotters have called you a "wetback" or "spick"? And I don't recall ANY referance to your wife before this post, much less one calling her a "chink". It appears that you are applying meatspace prejudices to a realm where they do not apply.
I've found that in the geek community, you are rarely, if ever, judged by race, sex, nationality, sexuality, religion, etc. More than any other culture, it is a meritocracy. You are judged on your accomplishments, abilities, and your willingness to improve yourself.
At least that's MY expierence. If your employer is one of those stodgy, obsolete "good old boy network" places, I suggest you change jobs. YOU have the power, not the suits. You just have to realise it. And if enough of a company's geeks quit, they will have to become more geek friendly, or die. So by changing jobs (if your current employer is geek-unfriendly), you not only help yourself, but your coworkers as well.
>I'm just speaking from my experience. If you have
>some reason for believing that I've had to deal
>with an unrepresentative sample, please say so.
I can't speak for EVERYONE, but in my own case, I have visited five countries outside the US, and two US terratories that are so different they may as well be other countries. And a number of my coworkers are MUCH more travelled than me. As a matter of face, one on the enginners just left for a six-month leave of absence to travel throughout Asia. Hell, several of the geeks (or their parents) here actually moved to the US from other countries withing the last generation (several from China, two from Japan, Korea: 1, Russia: 2, Australia: 1, Iran (pre-ahitolla): 1).
In the next two years, we'll be setting up CoLos (and therefore sending people (possibly me) to) in Japan, one other Asian country (Australia most likely), The UK, and one other European country (France, most likely).
Sure seems like an easy to learn about other cultures to me.
I've gotten off on a tangent here, but the people *I* know certianly do not thing that "the US is the whole world".
>And if your idea of "easily disproven" is to give
>a personal anecdote, you need to review logic,
>argumentation and standards of evidence.
It takes only *ONE* exception (myself, in this case, but I could easily use any number of my friends or coworkers) to disprove a tautology. So, no, actually, I don't.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
I dunno why I bother but...
>It's not even available in most of industrialized
>europe. Have you even been outside the unites >states?
As a matter of fact, yeah. Just how do you think I've met friends from other countries in the first place? I've visited Canada, The UK, Jamaica, and Australia on various vacations, and once visited Japan on business. And if you want to count places that aren't *technically* foreign countries, you can throw in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands too.
Sure, I'm no Hillary or Drake, but I've been around, probably a little more than average. And in no case was internet access overly difficuly to get. Hell... it can't be TOO hard... my overseas friends *DO* seem to be able to mail me back when I write.
Odd that Estanislao accuses Americans of being US-centric, while he and you try to propagate the view that the rest of the world is a degenerate wasteland.
>you claim to have checked irs.gov (which I'm sure
>you didn't actually do)
Actually, yes I did. The IRS takes away about 23% in income tax, plus social secruity and medicare tax. Then California takes another 5% or so. And I AM not anywhere near the top 1% elite. Altoghether it's a despicable proportion to confiscate. But I DO have some pretty sweet deductions and write-offs coming up this year, so I should make do.
>shows just how clueless you are. He is talking
>about people in other countries.
Well, lessee... I've been to FIVE countries outside the US, and two US terratories that are different enough that they may as well be seperate countries. In not one of them was it overly expensive to get on the net.
As for the rest of your trite ACtroll ad hominum rantings, I won't denign to bother replying.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
>you, but I don't have any counterarguments or
>moderator points". Ignorant coward.
Wrong.
The proper definition of a "troll" can be found in the jargon file @:
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/jargon.html#t
A simple check of you posting history reveals that your posts match definition 1, and you match difinition 2.
Your posts are deliberately inflamatory, and obviously calculated to be as insulting and offensive as possible. The same can be also said for the site (aztlan.net) that you link to.
A proper troll, if such a thing really exists, should be subtle and non-obvious. You lack any degree of subtlety. And your deliberately inflamatory, and in at least one case totally invented and patently incorrect ("unitedstatesian"), and blantantly raceist ("gringo") tone and word choice belies your nature, as does your complete unwillingness to brook any arguement.
You ARE a troll. And not only that, you are a poor one at that.
And now, just for fun, I'll use counterarguements to dubunk two of the myths you are fond of propagating.
1)
The internet is a "exclusive forum for a prvileged socioeconomic minority that enjoys enormous wealth" (sic)
Well, lessee... checking my tax bracket @ irs.gov... nope. I'm nowhere NEAR the top 1%'s income. No enormous wealth here. But I still have net access. As for the hardware, I can put together a perfectly internet capable box for under $400... not a ton of money there... and you can get net access for FREE if you care to put up with a few ads... or ISPs are available for as little as $10/month without the ads. $400 initial + 0-10 per month... seems pretty cheap to me.
And if you want to get REALLY pedantic, I COULD just take MUNI to the SF library where they have public internet terminals I could access for *FREE*.
As for people online being a tiny minority, that seems pretty unlikely to me, considering the vast numbers of people online, ESPECIALLY after the september that never ended:
(http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/jargon.html#
2)
Americans "must believe the US is the world."
Easily disproven. Almost laughably so. I, personaly, use the net to keep in touch, via email, with friends I have in in a number of other countries, one of which is New Zealand. I mention New Zealand in particular because, excepting Australia, it is just about as far from America as you can get, without actually leaving the planet.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Being the spawn of a lawyer just makes him that much MORE contemptable.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
>which the public does not understand, to become
>central to the democratic process, you empower a
>small technological elite who understands the
>technology and its limitations.
No one's talking about REPLACING the old dead tree system and saying "in order to vote or sign a petition you MUST use a computer". They are simply adding an alternative for people who would like the convinence of voting at the terminal without running down to the pools.
Choice, as they say, is good.
If they ever take away the meatspace, "dead tree" option, there MIGHT be some concern, but with the increasing pervasiveness of computers, I don't think access is too much of a problem...
... "techno-elite"... "cost of computers"?
I recommend you walk down Market Street sometime. You will see plenty of people dressed in clothes with a value well over that of a computer you could use for internet access...
$200 nike shoes
$80 Fubu jacket
$90-tommy hillfugger jeans
$50 gap shirt
$20 dkny ball-cap
Add in any jewelry...
add in the likelyhood of designer underwear...
I can (and have) built complete systems for less than that. It's just a matter of where you place your priorities. Would you perfer to be a trendite? Or would you perfer a computer to get on the net.
If people choose the "in" fashion styles over educating themselves, I have no sympathy.
>I say all voting processes should stay on paper.
>Everyone can understand marking papers and
>counting them,
And you think this is less suceptible to fraud than digital means? I got news for you. The weak link isn't the computer. It's not the paper. It's the people. Governments have been rigging elections LONG before anyone proposed digital signatures or on-line balloting.
>most can't understand cryptography and
>digital signatures.
Bullshit...
Correction: most *DON'T* understand cryptography and digital signatures.
Anyone *CAN* understand any damn thing they want.
Suppose I wanted to know more about crypto and digital signatures. Well, I could take MUNI to Market and Powell, walk up the street to Borders (thus avoiding the capitalistic *evils* of private autos)...
(also avoiding the "technoelite" amazon.com in this case, because it's SOOOO unreasonable to expect people to know how to doubliclick on that Netscape icon)
... and buy a copy of "Applied Cryptography"; an excellent crypto reference complete with algorythms and source code. And, as another poster pointed out, "Applied Cryptography", contains an excellent proposal for a secure e-voting system that does NOT allow for forged votes, tracing votes to the voter, or tampering after the fact.
People can be unwilling to understand
People can to too lazy to understand
No one can't understand.
Hell, popular fiction these days revolves around crypto! "Cryptomonicon" not only includes the perl algorythm for a nifty scheme, but a simple explanition of that same algorythm based on playing cards!
It's all just a matter of how willing you are to educate and improve yourself. It's a little idea called a meritocracy... you are judged not on nationality, race, gender, religion, etc... but simply on merit; how much you're willing to accomplish.
And you know? If someone is too lazy, stupid, or just plain unwilling to learn and improve themselves, I have a really hard time feeling bad for him when he gets left behind. If judgeing someone by their merit, rathar than stupid crap like race or religion, == eliteism, then count me in.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
>people to where they can find drug dealers, and
>make a profit by giving out that information, you
>are crossing the line.
The phone company and the newspapers do it all the time. Not drug dealers actually, but will prostitution do? It's pretty much common knowledge that "escort services", "massage parlors", and "modelling agencies", are thinly veiled fronts for prostitution...
... But open up the PacBell yellow pages to the "E" section... Or check out the back few pages of SF Weekly or the Guardian. I'm pretty sure that all three make a profit.
Or lets go back to drugs...
Not too long ago there was a big flap about a bill in congress called the "Methamphetimine Antiproliferation Act" or somesuch. This bill, if passed, would have made it illegal to link to, or post on the web, information on how to make your own amphetemine; and, rightfully so, there was an outroar about the unconstitutional restrictions on free speech.
To be opposed to the "Methamphetimine Antiproliferation Act"'s restrictions on linking, but be in favor of restricting links to MP3 sites is nonsenceically hipocritical... and just plain silly. It's okay to allow one kind of free speech to be outlawed, but not another???
That's BS. Once you start down the path of giving up your freedoms, where does it stop?
And I hardly see where it is relevant if the site makes a profit or not. The logic of "it's wrong to make a profit" would seem to imply that it's perfectly okat to post all the drug manuefacturing info, warez, copyrighted MP3s, and kiddie porn I want, so long as *I* pay for the hosting myself. But if I set up ONE little banner ad, suddenly I'm an evil, preditory, inhuman monster; commiting crimes against humanity.
I'll set aside, for the moment, that most of the people *I* know who have banner ads on their sites barely bring in enough to pay for their hosting service, if that much.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if