Couldn't give you one, anyway: it was strictly old school, on printed-and-stapled paper and shared via snail mail with a stamp. This was only a few years ago, though, not pre-Internet.
He was an RF Vigilante, in response to the Sonic Terrorists. Since he published his design to a select group, he was actually trying to form an RF Posse. I thought about jumping on my high horse and riding out with him, but then I recalled the gonad pain of a saddle and thought better of it. It didn't bother him because he was armored with the tomato paste can, apparently.
Which was my point exactly, as well, with added perspective: if THAT would have been fine, WHY should the use of technology to make the process less time-consuming and disruptive suddenly make what she did "not fine"?
The answer to that "why" is that an entire culture has been spoiled and perverted to a degree that shared values and perceptions are skewed. E-mail is treated as "different", just as the Internet as a whole is treated as different and not part of Real Life (which of course it is). The words in an e-mail are no less tangible than the words in a printed letter, and neither warrant nor deserve special protections nor treatment; what is fine for the goose shouls also be fine for the gander.
Think of this in terms of patents, where her actions were a "method": would her mere use of technology make her method any more worthy of a patent than the "obvious" process upon which her method was based? No. In the same fashion, the mere fact that she used e-mail to accomplish this task does not significantly differentiate her action from what her counterpart would have done sixty years ago.
The fact that the university administration so completely lacked the perspective to comprehend this lack of differentiation, and as a consequence established a pejorative rule prohibiting one but not the other, is the actual problem here.
It's not so much aimed, in this case. If you want some serious directional juice, I have here somewhere plans for a microwave cannon using a cast-off transducer from a microwave oven. The original designer was waging a war against boom box cars and other sonic terrorists, and he built one of these things to fry equipment in passing cars and stereos on the other side of apartment walls. Even with the best focusing he could manage, though, there was enough scatter that he was forced to wear "Faraday cages" around his face and balls; he wore a hockey mask with some sort of mesh over his face and actually stuffed his balls into a tomato paste can to keep them from cooking.
It wasn't "her" cause: did you not get that there were numerous other people involved? Further, you might label it as a "political maneuver" to try and misframe the issue, but the politics involved were CAMPUS policies and she was involved in student government. How much more license would she need to take the action she did? Again, there were also other people involved and this was not a unilaterally conceived "political maneuver".
Considering your talent for using semantics to misframe issues, I think you missed your own calling in politics.
I think you're forgetting what role she played on campus, as the elected/appointed director of the associated students' union. It was her duty to bring this matter to others' attention. It was relevant for her to do this, by your criteria, because the matter was related specifically to campus business and activities and not politics nor personal agendas. The fact that she didn't abuse her title in the e-mail to potentially influence the professors is a mark in her favor; instead she let the information itself be the only potential influence.
Says the anonymous-coward expert linguist? I think you're wrong. What the fuck was the important point that drove you to spew forth in the first place? Can you even remember? What, an entire holier-than-thou paragraph merely to criticize my alleged misuse of a SINGLE word?
Dude, I sympathize with people who suffer from the perseverations of Asperger's Syndrome, but your behavior is enough to make even me want to snicker.
Find somewhere else and some thing else over which to perseverate, will ya? Perhaps you might perseverate over something at which you can actually be an expert and correct, unlike here tonight? K Thnx
deteriorate v. deteriorated, deteriorating, deteriorates v.tr.
To diminish or impair in quality, character, or value: Time and neglect had deteriorated the property. v.intr. 1. To grow worse; degenerate: The weather deteriorated overnight. His health had deteriorated while he was in prison. 2. To weaken or disintegrate; decay: The nation's highways are deteriorating at a rapid pace.
[Late Latin dterirre, dterirt-, from Latin dterior, worse; see de- in Indo-European roots.]
deterioration n.
deteriorative adj.
----------
Idiot. You might consider learning English vocabulary before attempting to criticize others' use of it.
"Spamming", as the term is often abused in this context, is hardly new or unique to the Internet, though prior to the Internet it was never considered so offensive or objectionable, to the point of it being a legal or criminal matter. Here's a thought experiment: if Kara Spencer had been going to MSU sixty years ago and this same set of cicumstances had arisen, how would she have gone about the process? I suspect you already know the answer:
Compile a handwritten paper list of all the relevant university profs and their physical office locations;
draft the letter in handwriting, proofread it, type it on a typewriter, and Xerox or mimeograph(!) the resulting "proof" to make enough copies for each professor;
enlist the help of a few other students to distribute the letters, and schlep around to each one of the professors' offices and drop a copy of the letter into the "in" boxes on their doors; or alternatively
drop them off at the university mail room to be placed in each prof's mailbox.
Would that have been considered "spamming" sixty years ago and resulted in a threat of discipline against the perpetrator? I rather suspect not. It seems to me that in fact what she did was legitimate and warranted, and HOW she did it was highly efficient, with even less disruption of the larger academic process than her sixty-years-prior counterpart would have caused. And for that the university wants to punish her?
Isn't it funny how the same traditional behavior enacted in the Digital Age, with new tools that actually make the process more efficient and less disruptive, suddenly becomes unthinkable? We certainly are spoiled rotten, aren't we?
You apparently intended to be funny, I presume? That was unintentionally much more insightful than you realized, if so. Anonymity actually is contributory to many disruptions and deteriorations in an ethical society. Ethics and anonymity are not synergistic bedfellows.
Indeed... he apparently intended to be funny but was unintentionally much more insightful than he realized. Anonymity actually is contributory to many disruptions and deteriorations in an ethical society. Ethics and anonymity are not synergistic bedfellows.
"Offtopic"? Riiiight... because a question or comment about one of the researchers isn't at all relevant! Genius tends to run in families, so if he is in fact closely related to that other Wozniak, might that not be a minor detail worth knowing? (Which I now figure is less likely, given that I learned he's in the U.K., but nevertheless.)
The people who voluntarily moderate Slashdot have lost some credibility with me lately; we ought to have some special test to exclude the irrational ones from the privilege. I have seen repeated abuse of "offtopic", "overrated", and especially "troll"; just because you have a violent emotional reaction to someone's comment is NOT a legitimate justification for moderating the comment as "troll". How about we have some sort of collective review of negative moderation, or perhaps a karma penalty for repeated abuse of it?
If you can't keep your personal emotions out of your supposedly rational decision-making process, then for the sake of the rest of us please keep your grubby hands off the moderating process. Moderating is NOT a tool to make yourself feel better or someone else feel worse.
Mother Nature will yet have her revenge for the insult and injury of gross overpopulation, eh? The World Wars Project didn't pan out as well as expected, but maybe this one will.
You haven't been paying attention to the larger economic picture, have you? You're right: I'm not living in the same world as you. A self-imposed opaque bubble is no better a living arrangement than a dank dark cave when it comes to opportunities to observe and learn. Might I suggest using the letter opener for an unintended purpose? A three-foot gash ought to be big enough.
I can't cite some dubiously funded study to prove it to you, but my intuition screams that this is not a wise arrangement long-term and that in the end we all lose a little bit more ground to a controlling minority.
What good does all this mass-produced stuff do us if we're increasingly unable to afford to possess it because the predominant flow of money and resources is IN TOWARD that wealthy controlling minority and not OUT FROM them? The majority is slowly but increasingly disadvantaged to their benefit; though it's happening so slowly that many people are oblivious to the effect, it's significant and detrimental and something Hari Seldon would recognize. It's what causes exoduses and revolutions.
Maybe you should ask Woz himself if he agrees with your sentiments.
Since he clearly pays attention, I expect that if he disagrees strongly and thinks it's worth the time to set me straight, then he'll do so. I didn't mean to imply that Wozniak was oblivious to the manipulation; he was no doubt aware of it and tolerated it when it suited his goals. Nevertheless, the conclusion I draw from Jobs' behavior over the last four decades is that he takes more from the world than he contributes to it personally; that is quite the reverse of Steve Wozniak, who you might say lives by the "backpackers' ethic" (as I try to do). Even though I'm pretty damned certain I understand the neurology of a Steve Jobs well enough, I'm not immune to being mistaken from time to time.
Those industries exist to concentrate wealth into the hands of people like Jobs. The fact that we get new toys to play with is almost incidental... witnessed by the fact that CEOs routinely jump ship from one corporation and even one industry to another! The primary purpose of "industry" is to concentrate wealth for those who control and operate it; the product is merely the vehicle that enables the concentration to proceed. Captains of industry don't care what product or service "their" companies offer, as long as it makes them tons of money. Don't they teach you kids anything about capitalism in school these days?:-)
I doubt that Jobs is actually any different; the only reason he wound up in a business making and selling computers as opposed to something else is because of his leech-like attachment to Wozniak and his ability to manipulate him. Had Woz been focused on inventing the next great television, say, then that's what Jobs would be selling today.
Wozniak just wanted to innovate and see how he could push the technological envelope. Jobs just wanted to see how far he could push his financial envelope... at the expense of the Woz and anyone else he could manipulate.
The glaring contrast between Wozniak and Jobs was one of the earliest influences that led me to despise manipulators of all varieties. I admired Woz and hated Jobs.
That would be almost as obvious as the time a homeless twit smashed a window in my car in broad daylight and stole a 24-pack of toilet paper, a six-pack of Dr. Pepper, and my nylon company (Quarterdeck) windbreaker! Can you picture a homeless guy running down the street with 24 rolls of toilet paper under one arm, the soda in the other, and wearing a Quarterdeck jacket? Yeah, some of the tech support people were casual, but....
(He probably did it because that Dr. Pepper was 24 cans in a cardboard flat in the back of my Plymouth Turismo and barely visible; he probably thought it was beer.)
Wait... have I forgotten basic chemistry? I thought nitrogen was heavier than air?
[Checks old CRC Handbook, Googles....]
Ooops! I must have confused it with CO2, shame on me. Okay, so my second scenario isn't gonna happen, but I think the first one is still possible. I wouldn't wanna mess with it, and I'm no stranger to chem hacking and modding and overclocking. The consequence-benefit ratio just doesn't promote it very well.
Slashdot Mirror
Couldn't give you one, anyway: it was strictly old school, on printed-and-stapled paper and shared via snail mail with a stamp. This was only a few years ago, though, not pre-Internet.
He was an RF Vigilante, in response to the Sonic Terrorists. Since he published his design to a select group, he was actually trying to form an RF Posse. I thought about jumping on my high horse and riding out with him, but then I recalled the gonad pain of a saddle and thought better of it. It didn't bother him because he was armored with the tomato paste can, apparently.
Which was my point exactly, as well, with added perspective: if THAT would have been fine, WHY should the use of technology to make the process less time-consuming and disruptive suddenly make what she did "not fine"?
The answer to that "why" is that an entire culture has been spoiled and perverted to a degree that shared values and perceptions are skewed. E-mail is treated as "different", just as the Internet as a whole is treated as different and not part of Real Life (which of course it is). The words in an e-mail are no less tangible than the words in a printed letter, and neither warrant nor deserve special protections nor treatment; what is fine for the goose shouls also be fine for the gander.
Think of this in terms of patents, where her actions were a "method": would her mere use of technology make her method any more worthy of a patent than the "obvious" process upon which her method was based? No. In the same fashion, the mere fact that she used e-mail to accomplish this task does not significantly differentiate her action from what her counterpart would have done sixty years ago.
The fact that the university administration so completely lacked the perspective to comprehend this lack of differentiation, and as a consequence established a pejorative rule prohibiting one but not the other, is the actual problem here.
Apparently you didn't even read my original comment. Perhaps you should.
It's not so much aimed, in this case. If you want some serious directional juice, I have here somewhere plans for a microwave cannon using a cast-off transducer from a microwave oven. The original designer was waging a war against boom box cars and other sonic terrorists, and he built one of these things to fry equipment in passing cars and stereos on the other side of apartment walls. Even with the best focusing he could manage, though, there was enough scatter that he was forced to wear "Faraday cages" around his face and balls; he wore a hockey mask with some sort of mesh over his face and actually stuffed his balls into a tomato paste can to keep them from cooking.
It wasn't "her" cause: did you not get that there were numerous other people involved? Further, you might label it as a "political maneuver" to try and misframe the issue, but the politics involved were CAMPUS policies and she was involved in student government. How much more license would she need to take the action she did? Again, there were also other people involved and this was not a unilaterally conceived "political maneuver".
Considering your talent for using semantics to misframe issues, I think you missed your own calling in politics.
I think you're forgetting what role she played on campus, as the elected/appointed director of the associated students' union. It was her duty to bring this matter to others' attention. It was relevant for her to do this, by your criteria, because the matter was related specifically to campus business and activities and not politics nor personal agendas. The fact that she didn't abuse her title in the e-mail to potentially influence the professors is a mark in her favor; instead she let the information itself be the only potential influence.
Perhaps FCC Commissioner Taylor Tate will make it her personal project to ban his DRM-free album as unfair competition?
Says the anonymous-coward expert linguist? I think you're wrong. What the fuck was the important point that drove you to spew forth in the first place? Can you even remember? What, an entire holier-than-thou paragraph merely to criticize my alleged misuse of a SINGLE word?
Dude, I sympathize with people who suffer from the perseverations of Asperger's Syndrome, but your behavior is enough to make even me want to snicker.
Find somewhere else and some thing else over which to perseverate, will ya? Perhaps you might perseverate over something at which you can actually be an expert and correct, unlike here tonight? K Thnx
deteriorate
v. deteriorated, deteriorating, deteriorates
v.tr.
To diminish or impair in quality, character, or value: Time and neglect had deteriorated the property.
v.intr.
1. To grow worse; degenerate: The weather deteriorated overnight. His health had deteriorated while he was in prison.
2. To weaken or disintegrate; decay: The nation's highways are deteriorating at a rapid pace.
[Late Latin dterirre, dterirt-, from Latin dterior, worse; see de- in Indo-European roots.]
deterioration n.
deteriorative adj.
----------
Idiot. You might consider learning English vocabulary before attempting to criticize others' use of it.
"Spamming", as the term is often abused in this context, is hardly new or unique to the Internet, though prior to the Internet it was never considered so offensive or objectionable, to the point of it being a legal or criminal matter. Here's a thought experiment: if Kara Spencer had been going to MSU sixty years ago and this same set of cicumstances had arisen, how would she have gone about the process? I suspect you already know the answer:
Would that have been considered "spamming" sixty years ago and resulted in a threat of discipline against the perpetrator? I rather suspect not. It seems to me that in fact what she did was legitimate and warranted, and HOW she did it was highly efficient, with even less disruption of the larger academic process than her sixty-years-prior counterpart would have caused. And for that the university wants to punish her?
Isn't it funny how the same traditional behavior enacted in the Digital Age, with new tools that actually make the process more efficient and less disruptive, suddenly becomes unthinkable? We certainly are spoiled rotten, aren't we?
You apparently intended to be funny, I presume? That was unintentionally much more insightful than you realized, if so. Anonymity actually is contributory to many disruptions and deteriorations in an ethical society. Ethics and anonymity are not synergistic bedfellows.
Indeed... he apparently intended to be funny but was unintentionally much more insightful than he realized. Anonymity actually is contributory to many disruptions and deteriorations in an ethical society. Ethics and anonymity are not synergistic bedfellows.
"Offtopic"? Riiiight... because a question or comment about one of the researchers isn't at all relevant! Genius tends to run in families, so if he is in fact closely related to that other Wozniak, might that not be a minor detail worth knowing? (Which I now figure is less likely, given that I learned he's in the U.K., but nevertheless.)
The people who voluntarily moderate Slashdot have lost some credibility with me lately; we ought to have some special test to exclude the irrational ones from the privilege. I have seen repeated abuse of "offtopic", "overrated", and especially "troll"; just because you have a violent emotional reaction to someone's comment is NOT a legitimate justification for moderating the comment as "troll". How about we have some sort of collective review of negative moderation, or perhaps a karma penalty for repeated abuse of it?
If you can't keep your personal emotions out of your supposedly rational decision-making process, then for the sake of the rest of us please keep your grubby hands off the moderating process. Moderating is NOT a tool to make yourself feel better or someone else feel worse.
And we trust Adobe to implement this in a non-threatening for-the-greater-good socialistic sorta way?
I don't think so....
Mother Nature will yet have her revenge for the insult and injury of gross overpopulation, eh? The World Wars Project didn't pan out as well as expected, but maybe this one will.
You haven't been paying attention to the larger economic picture, have you? You're right: I'm not living in the same world as you. A self-imposed opaque bubble is no better a living arrangement than a dank dark cave when it comes to opportunities to observe and learn. Might I suggest using the letter opener for an unintended purpose? A three-foot gash ought to be big enough.
I can't cite some dubiously funded study to prove it to you, but my intuition screams that this is not a wise arrangement long-term and that in the end we all lose a little bit more ground to a controlling minority.
What good does all this mass-produced stuff do us if we're increasingly unable to afford to possess it because the predominant flow of money and resources is IN TOWARD that wealthy controlling minority and not OUT FROM them? The majority is slowly but increasingly disadvantaged to their benefit; though it's happening so slowly that many people are oblivious to the effect, it's significant and detrimental and something Hari Seldon would recognize. It's what causes exoduses and revolutions.
If you read TFA, one of this study's researchers is a fellow named Matthew Wozniak. Mere coincidence, or relation to Steve?
Since he clearly pays attention, I expect that if he disagrees strongly and thinks it's worth the time to set me straight, then he'll do so. I didn't mean to imply that Wozniak was oblivious to the manipulation; he was no doubt aware of it and tolerated it when it suited his goals. Nevertheless, the conclusion I draw from Jobs' behavior over the last four decades is that he takes more from the world than he contributes to it personally; that is quite the reverse of Steve Wozniak, who you might say lives by the "backpackers' ethic" (as I try to do). Even though I'm pretty damned certain I understand the neurology of a Steve Jobs well enough, I'm not immune to being mistaken from time to time.
No:
Those industries exist to concentrate wealth into the hands of people like Jobs. The fact that we get new toys to play with is almost incidental... witnessed by the fact that CEOs routinely jump ship from one corporation and even one industry to another! The primary purpose of "industry" is to concentrate wealth for those who control and operate it; the product is merely the vehicle that enables the concentration to proceed. Captains of industry don't care what product or service "their" companies offer, as long as it makes them tons of money. Don't they teach you kids anything about capitalism in school these days? :-)
I doubt that Jobs is actually any different; the only reason he wound up in a business making and selling computers as opposed to something else is because of his leech-like attachment to Wozniak and his ability to manipulate him. Had Woz been focused on inventing the next great television, say, then that's what Jobs would be selling today.
Wozniak just wanted to innovate and see how he could push the technological envelope. Jobs just wanted to see how far he could push his financial envelope... at the expense of the Woz and anyone else he could manipulate.
The glaring contrast between Wozniak and Jobs was one of the earliest influences that led me to despise manipulators of all varieties. I admired Woz and hated Jobs.
That would be almost as obvious as the time a homeless twit smashed a window in my car in broad daylight and stole a 24-pack of toilet paper, a six-pack of Dr. Pepper, and my nylon company (Quarterdeck) windbreaker! Can you picture a homeless guy running down the street with 24 rolls of toilet paper under one arm, the soda in the other, and wearing a Quarterdeck jacket? Yeah, some of the tech support people were casual, but....
(He probably did it because that Dr. Pepper was 24 cans in a cardboard flat in the back of my Plymouth Turismo and barely visible; he probably thought it was beer.)
Wait... have I forgotten basic chemistry? I thought nitrogen was heavier than air?
[Checks old CRC Handbook, Googles....]
Ooops! I must have confused it with CO2, shame on me. Okay, so my second scenario isn't gonna happen, but I think the first one is still possible. I wouldn't wanna mess with it, and I'm no stranger to chem hacking and modding and overclocking. The consequence-benefit ratio just doesn't promote it very well.
Trust me, the trauma wasn't watching Palin, it was the daily gymnastics required to avoid watching Palin that were traumatic!
(I thought your quip was funny and worth a mod, but what do I know.)