I think there are really only 3 pivotal factors for any P2P. 1)Speed: If you have a gazillion files but it take 4 hours to get an mp3, no one will use it. 2)Content: I can go to kazaa and find music, software, video's, pictures, basically, everything. If a user has to use 3 different P2P engines to get what they want, it wont last. 3)Searchable: If it's a pain to find the files you are looking for then you wont use it, and so fewer files will be available, and more people will end up dropping it due to content.
Speeds seem to be terrible on all of the services I've used. Kazaa (Kazaalite) has the ability to download from multiple users, making up for that a little bit. I'm curious what speeds freenet can pull down from individual users. I've been thinking that those terrible speeds might just be from restrictive caps that ISP's might be placing on the P2P popular ports.
Because I know if there was a murdering rapist in my house, I'd want my gun to have all kinds of things that could go wrong with it, rather than a time tested design proven gun, to defend myself and my family with.
What the hell, a baby is not a hammer, a screwdriver, some sort of tool. "Mommy, why was I born." "Well, you were created and allowed to live to term in order to save Billy's life. Lucky for you you happened to be the most compatible candidate, or off to the garbage disposal with the rest of the embryo's."
Not only, "how could this not screw up both of these kids" but also do you think we could debase human life any further? Maybe they could grow a couple ears on the kids back for "just in case" scenarios.
Other than as presents, I haven't bought a CD in years. I'm sick of overpriced price fixed garbage. There are only a few people out there that I want to hear whatever they've got out. I had enough money scammed out of me by these corps who knowingly betrayed their customers and broke the laws of their country. I'll be spending mine on blank CD's.
Well, as though MLB isn't turning to total crap fast enough, now they've found a new way to alienate potential fans. I have decided from now on the only sport I'm watching is Women's Volleyball....well, or anything else with women in a bikini...sport or not.
Breaking news now says that Windows is no longer "worth shit". This story proves that Windows is now worth considerably less than shit. (Retail price does not reflect worth)
"This is another 'tax' that, like duty on cigarettes and alcohol, doesn't affect me at all.. so I'm all for it." ----------- Yes, why should you be affected if millions to billions of dollars go to some sort of Nigerian Mafia that probably supports some terrorist group? Why should you care that those suckers cash doesn't stay in your country and make it a better place. Why not make Nigeria a better place for organized crime?
Every Geek's dream, at with the intention of semi-revenge against a cheerleader no less!!! WOO HOO! Xander rocks, he's banged a Slayer, a demon, been caged up by his hot teacher for sexually deviant reasons (she was hot while not being a bug). I wish I was Xander.... Or even one of the Split Xanders.
I love Buffy the show, although I've never been crazy about SMG. My wife introduced me to the show when we were dating. We watch it every week since, and we've been married almost 5 years now. I'll miss it very, very much. Maybe it's sad that a tv show can be such a big part of your life, but it's a tradition, and it's something that my wife and I loved watching together, gave us things to laugh about together, and talk about together. It's been more than a show to me, it's been special time with the woman I love and I'll always think of those early days dating my wife, watching the 1st season episodes she taped while sitting in her tiny apartment, whenever I think of Buffy.
That said....No one wants to see a show that runs out of fuel. I also used to watch X-Files with my wife, but I hate that show, that never gave me any good answers despite dozens of promises, that gave forth a bunch of weak plots that didn't go anywhere, why oh why could they not have said, let's go out with a bang instead of slowly bleeding to death in the gutter.
Buffy could probably pull off another season, but they've already had to import some big new characters, mainly a sister. This just barely skirts around the Jump the Shark law that states that adding a kid kills a show or at least indicates the show is dying. She was kind of a teenager, so they could get away with it, but still...
So I say, Joss has killed major loved characters before (jonathon, tara, gyspy teacher). I say, Joss, kill the entire cast and keep them dead, just to show you have the balls to do it.
Firefly, the 2nd best show on TV is already cancelled from what I understand, why oh why can't we get good Sci-Fi on TV at a decent time and keep it on.
I always thought that the guy who plays Xander was the best. He's great at the comedy, great at the sympathy, and he's pretty much an archtype for a lot of the geeks in here who weren't cool, but didn't really have a lot to share with the even para-cool kids that they hung out with. He's not the big star of the show, but every show that focus's on him have been some of the very best of the series. Xander gets laid was great, and it's hard to beat two xanders episode.
The cast is incredible all the way around, but the material is great. Lots of comedy, action, drama. Although I think it's the complex and really well thought out plots that really make the show so incredible. It's the best show on TV.
That's not a very useful comment. How about if you use the phone at work? That's their equipment too. DO they have the right to listen in on your phone calls? Track who you speak to and make lists to determine what you are speaking about? I'm pretty sure that would not hold up in any court. However communication over a computer should be treatedly differently than communication over a phone? That's the kind of thinking that leads to the total decay of privacy rights. That's the kind of reasoning that has contributed to the decay of fair use and has helped corps take away the public domain.
Technology allows many new things, it also allows a lot of the same old things, just a little bit different. How abou this scenario to make it a little more obvious where that road leads. When the telephone is replaced by telephony, should the computer laws apply? or should the old telephone communication laws apply? And when you reach that point, you know the laws are not going to be the same, even though you do the exact same thing, just with different equipment.
To be declared intelligent the AI has to convince you through a conversation. However, in the lesser known Turing Intelligence Test Supplemental Nuances Applied Sexual Soliloquy (TITSNASS) or Blond AI test, all that is required is that the bot carry on a cybersex conversation. The number of tissues used determines how high the TITSNASS rating of the "Blond AI".
TITSNASS is currently looking for a test group of real blond sex chatters to compare against the bots. Please email me your applications.
I hate this kind of lame ass comparison. The TV has few problems because it does one thing and you don't tamper with it.
A TV that had to be changed every couple of months to handle a different signal from each station would not be "trustworthy".
A phone that had to do 15 things, such as playing games, doing calculations, and decoding text messages would not be as "trustworthy".
The computer must do all these things. But the most untrustworthy part of the computer lies in it's necessity to contact other computers. You have to allow your computer to "trust" some information coming in. Without accepting outside data as good, you could never allow your machine to decode anything. And it just so happens that not everything out there is good. I want my computer to stop crashing. I want decent drivers. But I don't want my computer to be a telephone. I don't want to give up all it's features just so it wont break.
I want to be able to run games from people that MS doesnt like. And I think that MS's version of Trustworthy basically means stopping your computer from running any code they don't approve first and not allowing reputable users from knowing of vulnerabilities.
What a total piece of crap! They do not go public with every vulnerability, they do not go public with every "feature" where feature is a terrible hole in the system that they try conning people into believing is a useful tool (to who? russian mafia and script kiddies?). If they went public with every vulnerability, why do hackers have to post vulnerabilities on mailing lists before MS will even acknowledge them and call them features?
And since they don't patch every vulnerability, who cares if they admit to them. They don't admit to them in mainstream media where they lay down the Spin better than a politician. The average user isn't going to be aware of most of the vulnerabilities in MS and are not going to bother anyway, as MS wont patch them, or those patches will crash their system.
This guy is insulting. I am offended because he insults me by pretty much lying to me about the efforts of MS. Not that I don't know what MS is up to, but it's insulting for him to try pulling it anyway.
MS is always mean. I don't think much of anyone would deny that the #1, top, only significant goal of MS has only been to be the dominating, primary, controlling, only figure on the scene, from OS to Office Apps, to Media playback, to DRM, to even the Console Gaming System now.
Hoever, you have a very good point regarding staying with only the OS development. By developing the OS only, they would not have forced competitors in browsers and office apps out of the market. They would not have been an enemy of EVERY business. They would have let other companies design good apps for their product instead of designing it to crash running anything other than their own software applications. In all, Windows would have run better and the programs you run under Windows would have performed better.
He was speaking about speeds 100-150 miles per hour per his previous post. I'm wondering if he's European, I don't really see those kind of speeds in my area, especially from truckers. I mostly get trucks going 55-65 miles per hour. Usually right next to each other on a two lane highway (bastards). Of course, it doesn't help that I drive a car the same model that was used for police cars. That might explain why I keep getting stuck behind everyone.
Of course he's looking into Windows Media Center, Tablet PC, PocketPC, X-box,etc. They ran the windows desktop market into the ground. People use Windows because their company uses Windows and because their school uses Windows. So that's what they want to see when they buy a PC. The buy wants what he already knows, and that doesn't have to be Windows, just whatever is at work and school. Now that they have successfully gouged businesses into a revolt, and those businesses now have a cost effective alternative (gnu-linux), they need to seriously be concerned about losing the Work and School market. And if they lose that, they also lose the desktop home PC.
Not to mention the 25% of people that don't want or need a PC at home that Microsoft can't get their hooks into.
quote from poster... "I find it quite heartbreaking that they have to stay after, day after day, just to type a paper, or finish a presentation, or work on their personal web project, when others have access willy-nilly and get to do what they please." ------- That's heartbreaking? That student's have access to maybe $1,000 computers to use for free at school to check email, instant message, and do school work?
While I applaud the effort to bring technology use and understanding to others, I condemn the ludricrous belief, that giving someone a computer, internet access, etc, will allow him somehow make him technically proficient or better his life.
Perhaps we should give away free hammers? Then the poor could build their own houses. Or we could give away airplanes, and then the poor can all become airline pilots. The tools are worthless without understanding.
I can see this benefitting a small group of people however. 1)Poor families with an older child. The child likely has some technical instruction at school and can bring his knowledge of the computer home to benefit his parents. 2)Someone who has completed some vocational training and who can legimately justify the cost of computer equipment as a business expense to further their knowledge of office applications. 3)The home-bounds that due to injuries are unable to work, or unable to leave home, yet still had knowledge of how to operate a computer, or had someone to help them along. THis would enable them to interact with the outside world, keep up on current events.
And I'm glad to see that part of this includes the party having to buy equipment. We've all seen someone grab something for free (to them) that they couldn't use, just to have it. People who invest in something have some motivation to use it, benefit from it, and keep it working.
Still, the biggest drawback to a program that gives away technical this or that is always that the people targeted to benefit from it are untrained to use it.
I had a neighbor who's "cousin" reportedly would get him "good deals". He'd always come home with faxes and 10 year old useless computers and ask me if they were any good, or if he could do this or that on them. They were junk and useless to him. A skilled computer operator could have put them to some use, but it was useless to his needs, and he wouldn't have had any idea how to run the software, even if it had worked on the machine. If he had this offered to him, he would have signed up, bought himself a WiFi card, and then the thing would have sit there when it broke and he couldn't afford to fix it, and didn't know how. Then he'd also be out the $100 that he could have used for a new winter coat, or a decent suit for a job interview.
Plans like this are neat, interesting, and a great way to look for grants to let you play with tech. However, it's probably not the most efficient way to better the situation of people living at poverty levels.
When you consider that public libraries, schools, often community centers, provide free computer and internet access to the public, it is almost a vanity to assume that a new plan to give internet access to the poor, as long as they buy a computer, and wifi card.
And I agree with some other posters, that considering these other options already being available, that public internet access via a WiFi point and targetted towards the poor, might innappropriate use of tax dollars that might be spent on better programs. These funds could be put into more community computer classes at libraries. Funds could be used to provide more training for teachers at school, so that those teachers could provide more technical training.
And I am involved in technical training at a school in a "poor" neighborhood, so i have given this type of thing quite a bit of thought.
The snipets state that the machine must be capable of bla bla bla bla. As long as you have a fax modem in your computer, it doesn't matter if you received the transmission through the cable line.
I think this may have been touched upon here, but the college owns the phone lines going in, they can't arbitrarily listen in on that mode of communication, or even arbitrarily start sorting through who calls who. At my college they had mailboxes set up in the student center. The college owned the property, but that doesn't give them the right to read my mail.
I am a convert. I used to believe even a company should be able to monitor all traffic, emails and files. Then I realized, just because you wrote a note down on a notebook the company gave you, that doesn't give them rights to read through your notes. Just because you take a call at work doesn't give the company the right to listen in. And if all these modes of communications and data storage are protected under privacy and speech rights, then there is no reason that speech rights should be completely ignored simply because you use a different medium to converse or share and store data.
Bully is a cheap word to keep school officials from having to deal with violent criminals in their school. Why is a person who extorts money, hits adults, threatens people, etc. and considered a criminal treated better than someone who does all those things to children? Because if school officials treated them like the violent criminals they are, they would lose the cash they make by allowing him to stay by simply saying "kids will be kids, stick up for yourself, that's just how boys are".
You mention anti-technology, but this is really a theme that goes back to biblical times. Frankenstein is often cited as a case of anti-technology fears, but it is more than a fear of technology. There is this overpowering drive in man to conquer all he sees, not just nations, but nature itself. To do this we use "technology". We invent engines to conquer space. We invent refrigeratures to conquer hunger. We invent medicines to conquer illness, and one day, we hope, death. Look at the sensation of the Titanic. It wasn't significant that it was a big boat, it was significant that we had conquered nature and space. The ocean and weather couldn't restrain us. We were unsinkable and had conquered the ocean. When the Titanic sunk, headlines read of the trajedy of lives, but what disheartened people was that we had got it thrown in our faces that we had not conquered nature and were still at the mercy of forces we could not control. This same analogy could be made to recent losses in our space program. For a similar story, just look at the people of Babel and the disasterous consequences of their attempt to be gods. So rather than an being anti-technology, I think all of those type of stories and movies are really more about our desire to conquer nature and our underlying fear that we will not only fail, but overstep our bounds and harm ourselves drastically in the process. There's a new movie coming out with the same theme about some guys that damage the earth's insides with some big weapon.
All this discussion reminds me of that episode where the crew of the Enterprise gets in trouble with those, you know,... aliens, and then they have to figure out some way to fix things without getting into a big fight, and without messing up the alien's culture.
I think it might have even had the doctor struggling to find out the cause behind a mysterious ailment that made the crew sick/behave strangely that turned out to be caused by aliens/time loops.
And if I remember right, they were trying to do this while suffering some sort of problem with their engines/computer.
I just can't remember which of the series this was from. Can anyone help me out here? (insert other sarcastic references to every freaking star trek episode here)
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I think there are really only 3 pivotal factors for any P2P.
1)Speed: If you have a gazillion files but it take 4 hours to get an mp3, no one will use it.
2)Content: I can go to kazaa and find music, software, video's, pictures, basically, everything. If a user has to use 3 different P2P engines to get what they want, it wont last.
3)Searchable: If it's a pain to find the files you are looking for then you wont use it, and so fewer files will be available, and more people will end up dropping it due to content.
Speeds seem to be terrible on all of the services I've used. Kazaa (Kazaalite) has the ability to download from multiple users, making up for that a little bit. I'm curious what speeds freenet can pull down from individual users. I've been thinking that those terrible speeds might just be from restrictive caps that ISP's might be placing on the P2P popular ports.
Because I know if there was a murdering rapist in my house, I'd want my gun to have all kinds of things that could go wrong with it, rather than a time tested design proven gun, to defend myself and my family with.
I can't wait until my gun will run Windows CE.
What the hell, a baby is not a hammer, a screwdriver, some sort of tool.
"Mommy, why was I born."
"Well, you were created and allowed to live to term in order to save Billy's life. Lucky for you you happened to be the most compatible candidate, or off to the garbage disposal with the rest of the embryo's."
Not only, "how could this not screw up both of these kids" but also do you think we could debase human life any further? Maybe they could grow a couple ears on the kids back for "just in case" scenarios.
Other than as presents, I haven't bought a CD in years. I'm sick of overpriced price fixed garbage. There are only a few people out there that I want to hear whatever they've got out. I had enough money scammed out of me by these corps who knowingly betrayed their customers and broke the laws of their country. I'll be spending mine on blank CD's.
Well, as though MLB isn't turning to total crap fast enough, now they've found a new way to alienate potential fans.
I have decided from now on the only sport I'm watching is Women's Volleyball....well, or anything else with women in a bikini...sport or not.
".....At last, an opportunity to see my hometown Detroit Tigers more than once a year!"
I hope this wont interfere with my efforts to view the Tigers LESS than once per year.
Geekbot...Flint, MI
Breaking news now says that Windows is no longer "worth shit". This story proves that Windows is now worth considerably less than shit. (Retail price does not reflect worth)
"This is another 'tax' that, like duty on cigarettes and alcohol, doesn't affect me at all.. so I'm all for it."
-----------
Yes, why should you be affected if millions to billions of dollars go to some sort of Nigerian Mafia that probably supports some terrorist group? Why should you care that those suckers cash doesn't stay in your country and make it a better place. Why not make Nigeria a better place for organized crime?
I guess it doesn't affect you at all.
YES!!!!
Every Geek's dream, at with the intention of semi-revenge against a cheerleader no less!!! WOO HOO! Xander rocks, he's banged a Slayer, a demon, been caged up by his hot teacher for sexually deviant reasons (she was hot while not being a bug). I wish I was Xander.... Or even one of the Split Xanders.
I love Buffy the show, although I've never been crazy about SMG. My wife introduced me to the show when we were dating. We watch it every week since, and we've been married almost 5 years now. I'll miss it very, very much. Maybe it's sad that a tv show can be such a big part of your life, but it's a tradition, and it's something that my wife and I loved watching together, gave us things to laugh about together, and talk about together. It's been more than a show to me, it's been special time with the woman I love and I'll always think of those early days dating my wife, watching the 1st season episodes she taped while sitting in her tiny apartment, whenever I think of Buffy.
That said....No one wants to see a show that runs out of fuel. I also used to watch X-Files with my wife, but I hate that show, that never gave me any good answers despite dozens of promises, that gave forth a bunch of weak plots that didn't go anywhere, why oh why could they not have said, let's go out with a bang instead of slowly bleeding to death in the gutter.
Buffy could probably pull off another season, but they've already had to import some big new characters, mainly a sister. This just barely skirts around the Jump the Shark law that states that adding a kid kills a show or at least indicates the show is dying. She was kind of a teenager, so they could get away with it, but still...
So I say, Joss has killed major loved characters before (jonathon, tara, gyspy teacher). I say, Joss, kill the entire cast and keep them dead, just to show you have the balls to do it.
Firefly, the 2nd best show on TV is already cancelled from what I understand, why oh why can't we get good Sci-Fi on TV at a decent time and keep it on.
I always thought that the guy who plays Xander was the best. He's great at the comedy, great at the sympathy, and he's pretty much an archtype for a lot of the geeks in here who weren't cool, but didn't really have a lot to share with the even para-cool kids that they hung out with. He's not the big star of the show, but every show that focus's on him have been some of the very best of the series. Xander gets laid was great, and it's hard to beat two xanders episode.
The cast is incredible all the way around, but the material is great. Lots of comedy, action, drama. Although I think it's the complex and really well thought out plots that really make the show so incredible. It's the best show on TV.
That's not a very useful comment. How about if you use the phone at work? That's their equipment too. DO they have the right to listen in on your phone calls? Track who you speak to and make lists to determine what you are speaking about? I'm pretty sure that would not hold up in any court. However communication over a computer should be treatedly differently than communication over a phone? That's the kind of thinking that leads to the total decay of privacy rights. That's the kind of reasoning that has contributed to the decay of fair use and has helped corps take away the public domain.
Technology allows many new things, it also allows a lot of the same old things, just a little bit different. How abou this scenario to make it a little more obvious where that road leads. When the telephone is replaced by telephony, should the computer laws apply? or should the old telephone communication laws apply? And when you reach that point, you know the laws are not going to be the same, even though you do the exact same thing, just with different equipment.
To be declared intelligent the AI has to convince you through a conversation. However, in the lesser known Turing Intelligence Test Supplemental Nuances Applied Sexual Soliloquy (TITSNASS) or Blond AI test, all that is required is that the bot carry on a cybersex conversation. The number of tissues used determines how high the TITSNASS rating of the "Blond AI".
TITSNASS is currently looking for a test group of real blond sex chatters to compare against the bots. Please email me your applications.
I hate this kind of lame ass comparison. The TV has few problems because it does one thing and you don't tamper with it.
A TV that had to be changed every couple of months to handle a different signal from each station would not be "trustworthy".
A phone that had to do 15 things, such as playing games, doing calculations, and decoding text messages would not be as "trustworthy".
The computer must do all these things. But the most untrustworthy part of the computer lies in it's necessity to contact other computers. You have to allow your computer to "trust" some information coming in. Without accepting outside data as good, you could never allow your machine to decode anything. And it just so happens that not everything out there is good. I want my computer to stop crashing. I want decent drivers. But I don't want my computer to be a telephone. I don't want to give up all it's features just so it wont break.
I want to be able to run games from people that MS doesnt like. And I think that MS's version of Trustworthy basically means stopping your computer from running any code they don't approve first and not allowing reputable users from knowing of vulnerabilities.
"we go very, very public with any vulnerability"
What a total piece of crap! They do not go public with every vulnerability, they do not go public with every "feature" where feature is a terrible hole in the system that they try conning people into believing is a useful tool (to who? russian mafia and script kiddies?). If they went public with every vulnerability, why do hackers have to post vulnerabilities on mailing lists before MS will even acknowledge them and call them features?
And since they don't patch every vulnerability, who cares if they admit to them. They don't admit to them in mainstream media where they lay down the Spin better than a politician. The average user isn't going to be aware of most of the vulnerabilities in MS and are not going to bother anyway, as MS wont patch them, or those patches will crash their system.
This guy is insulting. I am offended because he insults me by pretty much lying to me about the efforts of MS. Not that I don't know what MS is up to, but it's insulting for him to try pulling it anyway.
MS is always mean. I don't think much of anyone would deny that the #1, top, only significant goal of MS has only been to be the dominating, primary, controlling, only figure on the scene, from OS to Office Apps, to Media playback, to DRM, to even the Console Gaming System now.
Hoever, you have a very good point regarding staying with only the OS development. By developing the OS only, they would not have forced competitors in browsers and office apps out of the market. They would not have been an enemy of EVERY business. They would have let other companies design good apps for their product instead of designing it to crash running anything other than their own software applications. In all, Windows would have run better and the programs you run under Windows would have performed better.
He was speaking about speeds 100-150 miles per hour per his previous post. I'm wondering if he's European, I don't really see those kind of speeds in my area, especially from truckers. I mostly get trucks going 55-65 miles per hour. Usually right next to each other on a two lane highway (bastards). Of course, it doesn't help that I drive a car the same model that was used for police cars. That might explain why I keep getting stuck behind everyone.
Of course he's looking into Windows Media Center, Tablet PC, PocketPC, X-box,etc. They ran the windows desktop market into the ground. People use Windows because their company uses Windows and because their school uses Windows. So that's what they want to see when they buy a PC. The buy wants what he already knows, and that doesn't have to be Windows, just whatever is at work and school. Now that they have successfully gouged businesses into a revolt, and those businesses now have a cost effective alternative (gnu-linux), they need to seriously be concerned about losing the Work and School market. And if they lose that, they also lose the desktop home PC.
Not to mention the 25% of people that don't want or need a PC at home that Microsoft can't get their hooks into.
quote from poster...
"I find it quite heartbreaking that they have to stay after, day after day, just to type a paper, or finish a presentation, or work on their personal web project, when others have access willy-nilly and get to do what they please."
-------
That's heartbreaking? That student's have access to maybe $1,000 computers to use for free at school to check email, instant message, and do school work?
While I applaud the effort to bring technology use and understanding to others, I condemn the ludricrous belief, that giving someone a computer, internet access, etc, will allow him somehow make him technically proficient or better his life.
Perhaps we should give away free hammers? Then the poor could build their own houses. Or we could give away airplanes, and then the poor can all become airline pilots. The tools are worthless without understanding.
I can see this benefitting a small group of people however.
1)Poor families with an older child. The child likely has some technical instruction at school and can bring his knowledge of the computer home to benefit his parents.
2)Someone who has completed some vocational training and who can legimately justify the cost of computer equipment as a business expense to further their knowledge of office applications.
3)The home-bounds that due to injuries are unable to work, or unable to leave home, yet still had knowledge of how to operate a computer, or had someone to help them along. THis would enable them to interact with the outside world, keep up on current events.
And I'm glad to see that part of this includes the party having to buy equipment. We've all seen someone grab something for free (to them) that they couldn't use, just to have it. People who invest in something have some motivation to use it, benefit from it, and keep it working.
Still, the biggest drawback to a program that gives away technical this or that is always that the people targeted to benefit from it are untrained to use it.
I had a neighbor who's "cousin" reportedly would get him "good deals". He'd always come home with faxes and 10 year old useless computers and ask me if they were any good, or if he could do this or that on them. They were junk and useless to him. A skilled computer operator could have put them to some use, but it was useless to his needs, and he wouldn't have had any idea how to run the software, even if it had worked on the machine. If he had this offered to him, he would have signed up, bought himself a WiFi card, and then the thing would have sit there when it broke and he couldn't afford to fix it, and didn't know how. Then he'd also be out the $100 that he could have used for a new winter coat, or a decent suit for a job interview.
Plans like this are neat, interesting, and a great way to look for grants to let you play with tech. However, it's probably not the most efficient way to better the situation of people living at poverty levels.
When you consider that public libraries, schools, often community centers, provide free computer and internet access to the public, it is almost a vanity to assume that a new plan to give internet access to the poor, as long as they buy a computer, and wifi card.
And I agree with some other posters, that considering these other options already being available, that public internet access via a WiFi point and targetted towards the poor, might innappropriate use of tax dollars that might be spent on better programs. These funds could be put into more community computer classes at libraries. Funds could be used to provide more training for teachers at school, so that those teachers could provide more technical training.
And I am involved in technical training at a school in a "poor" neighborhood, so i have given this type of thing quite a bit of thought.
The snipets state that the machine must be capable of bla bla bla bla. As long as you have a fax modem in your computer, it doesn't matter if you received the transmission through the cable line.
I think this may have been touched upon here, but the college owns the phone lines going in, they can't arbitrarily listen in on that mode of communication, or even arbitrarily start sorting through who calls who.
At my college they had mailboxes set up in the student center. The college owned the property, but that doesn't give them the right to read my mail.
I am a convert. I used to believe even a company should be able to monitor all traffic, emails and files. Then I realized, just because you wrote a note down on a notebook the company gave you, that doesn't give them rights to read through your notes. Just because you take a call at work doesn't give the company the right to listen in. And if all these modes of communications and data storage are protected under privacy and speech rights, then there is no reason that speech rights should be completely ignored simply because you use a different medium to converse or share and store data.
Bully is a cheap word to keep school officials from having to deal with violent criminals in their school. Why is a person who extorts money, hits adults, threatens people, etc. and considered a criminal treated better than someone who does all those things to children? Because if school officials treated them like the violent criminals they are, they would lose the cash they make by allowing him to stay by simply saying "kids will be kids, stick up for yourself, that's just how boys are".
Yes, that's the one!
You mention anti-technology, but this is really a theme that goes back to biblical times. Frankenstein is often cited as a case of anti-technology fears, but it is more than a fear of technology. There is this overpowering drive in man to conquer all he sees, not just nations, but nature itself. To do this we use "technology". We invent engines to conquer space. We invent refrigeratures to conquer hunger. We invent medicines to conquer illness, and one day, we hope, death. Look at the sensation of the Titanic. It wasn't significant that it was a big boat, it was significant that we had conquered nature and space. The ocean and weather couldn't restrain us. We were unsinkable and had conquered the ocean. When the Titanic sunk, headlines read of the trajedy of lives, but what disheartened people was that we had got it thrown in our faces that we had not conquered nature and were still at the mercy of forces we could not control. This same analogy could be made to recent losses in our space program.
For a similar story, just look at the people of Babel and the disasterous consequences of their attempt to be gods.
So rather than an being anti-technology, I think all of those type of stories and movies are really more about our desire to conquer nature and our underlying fear that we will not only fail, but overstep our bounds and harm ourselves drastically in the process. There's a new movie coming out with the same theme about some guys that damage the earth's insides with some big weapon.
All this discussion reminds me of that episode where the crew of the Enterprise gets in trouble with those, you know,... aliens, and then they have to figure out some way to fix things without getting into a big fight, and without messing up the alien's culture.
I think it might have even had the doctor struggling to find out the cause behind a mysterious ailment that made the crew sick/behave strangely that turned out to be caused by aliens/time loops.
And if I remember right, they were trying to do this while suffering some sort of problem with their engines/computer.
I just can't remember which of the series this was from. Can anyone help me out here?
(insert other sarcastic references to every freaking star trek episode here)