More accessible? I'm not so sure. More plentiful, sure. But, where there's a will, there's a way. Kids are curious. They'll talk about sex when the adults aren't around, and SOMEBODY will have access to the goods.
And then the kids will do what I did as a young teen -- dig through dad's sock drawer, or a friend's dad's sock drawer, or an older brother's closet, for the pornographic magazine cache. Hate to break the news to the saviours of decency, but porn has been around far longer than the internet.
And let's not forget other intrusions. Back in the 80's it wasn't terrorists, but DRUGS! Everyone whip out your wee-wee and fill your cup. If I recall, many people thought it was a small price to pay to keep those damned "druggies" out of our workforce. So, they pissed away their privacy. I'm fairly certain that many a company screens our lemonade for many things besides illegal substances -- medication for instance.
So being poor means that the risks don't apply to you? Get stuffed.
In the first place, many people simply do not know what the risks are. Why? They are not technically literate. Why? Because (at least in the U.S.) our public school systems (and even community colleges and some Universities) turn out legions of people with diplomas and degrees who cannot write a cogent and grammatically correct essay, or add two fractions, or tell you the names of all the states in the union -- much less make informed decisions about what security measures to take when using computers and which software to use. (I don't need a reference for this fact: I've seen it first hand from teaching within all three types of learning instituion for many years.)
Now, I'm not saying that the companies offering free services are bound to secure them. But "Get stuffed" sounds a little condescending. Of course risks apply to poor people. But they aren't really the same risks, are they? An affluent computer user can afford the time spend on learning how to avoid these risks, or pay someone to install firewalls, perform backups, and take other protective measures. Therefore, that person doesn't assume the same risk as the poor person using a public terminal.
If you push forward all you can do is go up.
Yeah, whatever. I've heard this one all my life. It doesn't mesh with reality by ignoring some basic facts. Let us suppose (by some miracle) that everyone on the planet adopts your stance and "pushes forward" unhindered by poor social skills, a defeatest attitude, a lousy education, bad health, or low intellect. Just exactly how much pie is there to go around? How many people can realistically make it to the top? Here's the bad news: Without a bottom, there is no top! The success of a few absolutely and unconditionally depends upon the failure and poverty of the many -- this is inescapable in an economic system such as ours. So, don't try to sell me this b.s. song I've heard so many times about "If you're honest, put in a hard day's work, get an education, keep your nose clean and to the grindstone, ad nauseum, then YOU TOO can SUCCEED!"
The deck is stacked against the little guy. If you make a few financial mistakes early in life, or are stricken with some medical calamity, you take a serious economic hit. And then it begins to spiral out of control. You can't pay your debts and so you get a bad credit rating. Then, you miss out on many good job opportunities because you have bad credit. To make matters worse, banks and credit card companies lobby to make it nearly impossible to declare bankruptcy, and the government tells us to live within our means. Meanwhile, we (the U.S.) are collectivly saddled with $7 trillion in debt -- that's nearly $25,000 owed by every man, woman, and child in the country.
"Oh look, it's a bouncing baby boy! Welcome to the wide wonderful world. It is your oyster! By the way, here is a bill for $25,000. Collection proceedings will begin tomorrow!"
..., there is no reason that you can't use a floppy or flash drive to keep data from a public computer.
Sure there is.
Reason why owners of the public computer don't want you to use floppies/flash cards: So patrons can't boot the system off of their disk, or inject viruses/worms/etc.
Reason why patrons might not be able to save data: Because the owner of the system has no usb ports, floppy drives, etc.
For the most part you can have my "right to receive". When I tune across the spectrum, >95% of what's playing I don't like to hear. Ergo, I don't listen to the radio ror more than 40 minutes a week in toto -- well, with one important exception: I gotta have my "Off the Hook" which is available at 2600.com. You see, they are supported by the listeners, and not corporate interests. (I really need to send some money to those guys.)
I'd totally be willing to listen to some pirate radio if they played the music I like to listen to.
The paper isn't optimized for area of printing (obviously). IIRC it is optimal to have about 70 characters per line. Thus, with a fixed text width (due to font size and width of paper) it is optimal to have the height of the paper larger than the width in order to put as much information on the page while maximizing readability.
You're missing the point. The ratio of sides of the smaller sheet is the same as the larger sheet. Cut the smaller sheet in half, and you get two sheets with the same proportions again. Ad infinitum.
I didn't even need to have a receipt. I had purchased a used cd, which subsequently bronzed. Furthermore, the disc was out of print. Arrgghh!! One of my favorites!
Nevertheless, the manufacturer was aware of a bad batch of discs, and replaced it with a brand new shiny one. Now THAT's customer service. It's great that some companies back up their product!
Let me clarify. There are millions of people around the world who cannot afford a $3500 personal computer with a $500 operating system running on it -- in addition to whatever applications they need. They are swarming to Linux in droves -- from China & India, as well as other places. Linux is rising in the corporate sector: Novell, IBM, HP, and others. Unix/Linux forms the networking back-bone for many universities.
I think all this "Whoooo... DRM is coming! Microsoft is gonna make it where nothing works without it!" is a load of horse-apples. There are simply too many individuals and institutions that use and need alternatives for Microsoft to pull a Borg(TM)(C)(R) on the whole hardware/software industry. There will ALWAYS be alternatives.
Now MIGHT be a good time to gently prod your friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, and Joe 6-packs of the world in the direction of Linux, BSD,... ANYTHING but Microsoft. Explain why the alternatives are better, from the standpoints of security, cost, upgrade-cycles, compatibility, etc. Maybe, just maybe, by the time this behemoth rolls out, nobody will want any of it.
Kids do not understand that they have to take responsibility for thier own education. If they don't understand something they blame the teacher,...
Indeed. Now, where would they get the idea that the world owes them something, that the teachers are to blame, that they should not be held responsible or accountable for anything? The ubiquitous example for this mode of thinking is set by the "adults" they see around them and on television.
Little Johnny falls off a 6-wheeler and breaks his leg. Honda is to blame! So, Little Johnny's dad sues Honda, makes $100,000,000, and retires to the Bahamas. Johnny learns the lesson: it is easier to take money from others by manipulating a broken legal system than it is to earn your pay. Why work? Why study? Just loaf around and await the opportunity to slip in a puddle of mop-water at Macy's -- your ticket to that magic lawsuit.
Every day the masses are bombarded with messages whose real content is not lost on the younger generation:
The President is getting his dick sucked in the oval office. Hooray! Cool! -- message: it is okay to cheat on your wife and lie under oath.
Enron cheated their employees and stockholders out of millions! -- message: it is okay to steal.
A different President leads our nation to war on the premise that "the bad guys are harboring WMD's. After many casualties on both sides, no such weapons are ever found. Yippee! We Won! -- message: It's okay to slaughter innocents and build a national web of deception.
Ad nauseum... No wonder the kids are so screwed up!
Crummy textbooks and the prima donnas in charge of education. I teach beginning and intermediate algebra at a community college. The (terrible) books we use do not have the old four-place tables of square and cube roots. It is the policy of the math department (over which I have zero influence) that the students are not allowed to use calculators. So, they are confused about these mysterious numbers, and rightly so. Just how big is sqrt(1359) anyway? They had no idea. I taught them how to extract a square root the long way, using pencil and paper. Some of them appreciated it and told me it made sense. They now had a way to concretize these symbols into decimal form. I mentioned this to my supervisor. She said that it was a waste of our valuable class time to teach the method. They didn't need to know it.
So, to summarize, the books are liberally sprinkled with radicals, but the students are not given tables of the values, nor are they to be shown the method to compute them, nor are they allowed to use calculators to compute them. But they are expected to formally manipulate them. What a wonderful state of affairs.
Alas, my favorite subject gets watered down some more.
Basic math and basic english should be the primary goals of school. The other classes are simply a complete waste of time and only harm a person by preventing them from doing as well as they would have done if they focused on the basics.
So history, civics, foreign languages, art, science, computer science, literature (as separate from grammar and composition - which is what I assume you mean by English), typing, and geography are "a complete waste of time"? That's quite a troll you have going there. I suspect many people feel the same way you do. Maybe that's why the masses are so easily swayed by the demagogues on television. They aren't aware of the actual political, historical, and economic ramifications of our current policies or agendas.
Just because you can read doesn't mean you can read for comprehension.
I disagree. It is not practical to teach a subject with method 1 that reaches 50% of the class, then present the material again with method 2 that reaches 25% of the class, then method 3... etc. The onus should be on the student to use the best method. Now, they could be given guidance. Maybe there should be a dedicated group of people who determine the best learning strategy for a given student. Then, they could show the student how to adapt the method to the class, rather than each instructor adapting the class to the (multiple) methods.
This idea that its your right to do whatever the hell you want, and when a mega corporation tries to stop you they are suddenly infringing on your god given rights is ridiculous.
Transpose "you" and "mega corporation" and we get a little closer to reality.
Witness such nonsense as "We have the constitutionally protected right to advertise."
Here we go again. STEAL??? For the N-thousandth time, copyright infringement is not STEALING. If it were, then we wouldn't need extra laws and extra terminology. It would just be called stealing, for which there is extant laws, terminology, and punishment.
I don't see what the big deal is, personally. These copies aren't high quality. A year in jail is outrageous. Just throw the bum out of the theatre and ban him. Why does the United States have this OBSESSION with punishment. It is not sufficient to slap someone with a little fine; we have to bankrupt them, throw them in jail, ruin their lives, all for a trivial little offense. What the fuck!!! Show some goddamned common sense. After all, there are so many laws on the books, I feel I can safely say that 100% of the people in the U.S. are in violation of at least one of them at least once per year. It could be your turn next.
To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed,
law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at,
controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by
creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do
so.
To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction
noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered,
assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed,
corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the
name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled,
fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed,
robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint,
to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused,
clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned,
shot, deported,sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked,
ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is
its justice; that is its morality.
Wouldn't it be great if you could sit out on the porch, look up into the night sky while sipping your beer, and see an ad for...
Microsoft? Little red, yellow, green, and blue patches. Aaahh! Maybe the Man in the Moon could even wink at it! I know, put some Bill Gates eyeglasses on him. Yeah! Oh wait! Then, we could pay $6,000,000 to launch a cream pie at the moon to hit him in the face!
Appliances... We don't cook our food in a refrigerator, nor talk to grandma on the microwave.
The right tool for the job:
Maybe there is a market for inexpensive P.C.'s as appliances. We could have the internet/e-mail only P.C. with a built in firewall & no server daemons running. Then there is the video game model, the office P.C., etc. You could sell them bundled. Give people exactly what they want and nothing more. You could bundle different packages together. Come up with an online service that could add functionality to the computer in case people want an upgrade. Just a thought.
I've read some from the "Book of the Damned". Fun stuff. You should check out the non-fictional works of Robert Anton Wilson. I particularly recommend The New Inquisition. He discusses Fortean pheonomena, but includes some references. Apparently there are some credible sources that report rains of fish and frogs. I've never believed in the "segregating whirlwind" explanation. I recall discussing this crazy stuff with some friends a few years ago. They didn't believe in amphibianic precipitation;) and laughed at me... all in fun, of course. Then a few weeks later, one of them phoned me and said "I just saw a news report. A rain of fish in Kentucky." I laughed right back!
Wilson is simply amazing, IMNSHO. Of course his fiction is fnord great too.
Slashdot Mirror
Bravo sir, bravo. Couldn't have said it better myself.
More accessible? I'm not so sure. More plentiful, sure. But, where there's a will, there's a way. Kids are curious. They'll talk about sex when the adults aren't around, and SOMEBODY will have access to the goods.
And then the kids will do what I did as a young teen -- dig through dad's sock drawer, or a friend's dad's sock drawer, or an older brother's closet, for the pornographic magazine cache. Hate to break the news to the saviours of decency, but porn has been around far longer than the internet.
And let's not forget other intrusions. Back in the 80's it wasn't terrorists, but DRUGS! Everyone whip out your wee-wee and fill your cup. If I recall, many people thought it was a small price to pay to keep those damned "druggies" out of our workforce. So, they pissed away their privacy. I'm fairly certain that many a company screens our lemonade for many things besides illegal substances -- medication for instance.
Absolutely. I use LaTeX almost daily ... even for something as simple as writing a letter.
So being poor means that the risks don't apply to you? Get stuffed.
... MOMMA!!! Waaah!"
In the first place, many people simply do not know what the risks are. Why? They are not technically literate. Why? Because (at least in the U.S.) our public school systems (and even community colleges and some Universities) turn out legions of people with diplomas and degrees who cannot write a cogent and grammatically correct essay, or add two fractions, or tell you the names of all the states in the union -- much less make informed decisions about what security measures to take when using computers and which software to use. (I don't need a reference for this fact: I've seen it first hand from teaching within all three types of learning instituion for many years.)
Now, I'm not saying that the companies offering free services are bound to secure them. But "Get stuffed" sounds a little condescending. Of course risks apply to poor people. But they aren't really the same risks, are they? An affluent computer user can afford the time spend on learning how to avoid these risks, or pay someone to install firewalls, perform backups, and take other protective measures. Therefore, that person doesn't assume the same risk as the poor person using a public terminal.
If you push forward all you can do is go up.
Yeah, whatever. I've heard this one all my life. It doesn't mesh with reality by ignoring some basic facts. Let us suppose (by some miracle) that everyone on the planet adopts your stance and "pushes forward" unhindered by poor social skills, a defeatest attitude, a lousy education, bad health, or low intellect. Just exactly how much pie is there to go around? How many people can realistically make it to the top? Here's the bad news: Without a bottom, there is no top! The success of a few absolutely and unconditionally depends upon the failure and poverty of the many -- this is inescapable in an economic system such as ours. So, don't try to sell me this b.s. song I've heard so many times about "If you're honest, put in a hard day's work, get an education, keep your nose clean and to the grindstone, ad nauseum, then YOU TOO can SUCCEED!"
The deck is stacked against the little guy. If you make a few financial mistakes early in life, or are stricken with some medical calamity, you take a serious economic hit. And then it begins to spiral out of control. You can't pay your debts and so you get a bad credit rating. Then, you miss out on many good job opportunities because you have bad credit. To make matters worse, banks and credit card companies lobby to make it nearly impossible to declare bankruptcy, and the government tells us to live within our means. Meanwhile, we (the U.S.) are collectivly saddled with $7 trillion in debt -- that's nearly $25,000 owed by every man, woman, and child in the country.
"Oh look, it's a bouncing baby boy! Welcome to the wide wonderful world. It is your oyster! By the way, here is a bill for $25,000. Collection proceedings will begin tomorrow!"
"Waaaaahhh! Momma
..., there is no reason that you can't use a floppy or flash drive to keep data from a public computer.
Sure there is.
Reason why owners of the public computer don't want you to use floppies/flash cards: So patrons can't boot the system off of their disk, or inject viruses/worms/etc.
Reason why patrons might not be able to save data: Because the owner of the system has no usb ports, floppy drives, etc.
For the most part you can have my "right to receive". When I tune across the spectrum, >95% of what's playing I don't like to hear. Ergo, I don't listen to the radio ror more than 40 minutes a week in toto -- well, with one important exception: I gotta have my "Off the Hook" which is available at 2600.com. You see, they are supported by the listeners, and not corporate interests. (I really need to send some money to those guys.)
I'd totally be willing to listen to some pirate radio if they played the music I like to listen to.
The paper isn't optimized for area of printing (obviously). IIRC it is optimal to have about 70 characters per line. Thus, with a fixed text width (due to font size and width of paper) it is optimal to have the height of the paper larger than the width in order to put as much information on the page while maximizing readability.
You're missing the point. The ratio of sides of the smaller sheet is the same as the larger sheet. Cut the smaller sheet in half, and you get two sheets with the same proportions again. Ad infinitum.
I didn't even need to have a receipt. I had purchased a used cd, which subsequently bronzed. Furthermore, the disc was out of print. Arrgghh!! One of my favorites!
Nevertheless, the manufacturer was aware of a bad batch of discs, and replaced it with a brand new shiny one. Now THAT's customer service. It's great that some companies back up their product!
My response is: Who cares?
... ANYTHING but Microsoft. Explain why the alternatives are better, from the standpoints of security, cost, upgrade-cycles, compatibility, etc. Maybe, just maybe, by the time this behemoth rolls out, nobody will want any of it.
Let me clarify. There are millions of people around the world who cannot afford a $3500 personal computer with a $500 operating system running on it -- in addition to whatever applications they need. They are swarming to Linux in droves -- from China & India, as well as other places. Linux is rising in the corporate sector: Novell, IBM, HP, and others. Unix/Linux forms the networking back-bone for many universities.
I think all this "Whoooo... DRM is coming! Microsoft is gonna make it where nothing works without it!" is a load of horse-apples. There are simply too many individuals and institutions that use and need alternatives for Microsoft to pull a Borg(TM)(C)(R) on the whole hardware/software industry. There will ALWAYS be alternatives.
Now MIGHT be a good time to gently prod your friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, and Joe 6-packs of the world in the direction of Linux, BSD,
Heh, heh. I guess that would be the "Schrodinger's Messiah" thought experiment.
It is the student's responsibility to learn.
Kids do not understand that they have to take responsibility for thier own education. If they don't understand something they blame the teacher,...
Indeed. Now, where would they get the idea that the world owes them something, that the teachers are to blame, that they should not be held responsible or accountable for anything? The ubiquitous example for this mode of thinking is set by the "adults" they see around them and on television.
Little Johnny falls off a 6-wheeler and breaks his leg. Honda is to blame! So, Little Johnny's dad sues Honda, makes $100,000,000, and retires to the Bahamas. Johnny learns the lesson: it is easier to take money from others by manipulating a broken legal system than it is to earn your pay. Why work? Why study? Just loaf around and await the opportunity to slip in a puddle of mop-water at Macy's -- your ticket to that magic lawsuit.
Every day the masses are bombarded with messages whose real content is not lost on the younger generation:
The President is getting his dick sucked in the oval office. Hooray! Cool! -- message: it is okay to cheat on your wife and lie under oath.
Enron cheated their employees and stockholders out of millions! -- message: it is okay to steal.
A different President leads our nation to war on the premise that "the bad guys are harboring WMD's. After many casualties on both sides, no such weapons are ever found. Yippee! We Won! -- message: It's okay to slaughter innocents and build a national web of deception.
Ad nauseum... No wonder the kids are so screwed up!
Crummy textbooks and the prima donnas in charge of education. I teach beginning and intermediate algebra at a community college. The (terrible) books we use do not have the old four-place tables of square and cube roots. It is the policy of the math department (over which I have zero influence) that the students are not allowed to use calculators. So, they are confused about these mysterious numbers, and rightly so. Just how big is sqrt(1359) anyway? They had no idea. I taught them how to extract a square root the long way, using pencil and paper. Some of them appreciated it and told me it made sense. They now had a way to concretize these symbols into decimal form. I mentioned this to my supervisor. She said that it was a waste of our valuable class time to teach the method. They didn't need to know it.
So, to summarize, the books are liberally sprinkled with radicals, but the students are not given tables of the values, nor are they to be shown the method to compute them, nor are they allowed to use calculators to compute them. But they are expected to formally manipulate them. What a wonderful state of affairs.
Alas, my favorite subject gets watered down some more.
Basic math and basic english should be the primary goals of school. The other classes are simply a complete waste of time and only harm a person by preventing them from doing as well as they would have done if they focused on the basics.
So history, civics, foreign languages, art, science, computer science, literature (as separate from grammar and composition - which is what I assume you mean by English), typing, and geography are "a complete waste of time"? That's quite a troll you have going there. I suspect many people feel the same way you do. Maybe that's why the masses are so easily swayed by the demagogues on television. They aren't aware of the actual political, historical, and economic ramifications of our current policies or agendas.
Just because you can read doesn't mean you can read for comprehension.
I disagree. It is not practical to teach a subject with method 1 that reaches 50% of the class, then present the material again with method 2 that reaches 25% of the class, then method 3 ... etc. The onus should be on the student to use the best method. Now, they could be given guidance. Maybe there should be a dedicated group of people who determine the best learning strategy for a given student. Then, they could show the student how to adapt the method to the class, rather than each instructor adapting the class to the (multiple) methods.
When I was in college, I could cram 50GB of information on a 3x5 crib sheet by writing really really small.
This idea that its your right to do whatever the hell you want, and when a mega corporation tries to stop you they are suddenly infringing on your god given rights is ridiculous.
Transpose "you" and "mega corporation" and we get a little closer to reality.
Witness such nonsense as "We have the constitutionally protected right to advertise."
Here we go again. STEAL??? For the N-thousandth time, copyright infringement is not STEALING. If it were, then we wouldn't need extra laws and extra terminology. It would just be called stealing, for which there is extant laws, terminology, and punishment.
I don't see what the big deal is, personally. These copies aren't high quality. A year in jail is outrageous. Just throw the bum out of the theatre and ban him. Why does the United States have this OBSESSION with punishment. It is not sufficient to slap someone with a little fine; we have to bankrupt them, throw them in jail, ruin their lives, all for a trivial little offense. What the fuck!!! Show some goddamned common sense. After all, there are so many laws on the books, I feel I can safely say that 100% of the people in the U.S. are in violation of at least one of them at least once per year. It could be your turn next.
To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so.
To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported,sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.
People somehow manage to do it.
Jello Biafra & Alternative Tentacles.
Wouldn't it be great if you could sit out on the porch, look up into the night sky while sipping your beer, and see an ad for ...
Microsoft? Little red, yellow, green, and blue patches. Aaahh! Maybe the Man in the Moon could even wink at it! I know, put some Bill Gates eyeglasses on him. Yeah! Oh wait! Then, we could pay $6,000,000 to launch a cream pie at the moon to hit him in the face!
Appliances... We don't cook our food in a refrigerator, nor talk to grandma on the microwave.
The right tool for the job:
Maybe there is a market for inexpensive P.C.'s as appliances. We could have the internet/e-mail only P.C. with a built in firewall & no server daemons running. Then there is the video game model, the office P.C., etc. You could sell them bundled. Give people exactly what they want and nothing more. You could bundle different packages together. Come up with an online service that could add functionality to the computer in case people want an upgrade. Just a thought.
I've read some from the "Book of the Damned". Fun stuff. You should check out the non-fictional works of Robert Anton Wilson. I particularly recommend The New Inquisition. He discusses Fortean pheonomena, but includes some references. Apparently there are some credible sources that report rains of fish and frogs. I've never believed in the "segregating whirlwind" explanation. I recall discussing this crazy stuff with some friends a few years ago. They didn't believe in amphibianic precipitation ;) and laughed at me ... all in fun, of course. Then a few weeks later, one of them phoned me and said "I just saw a news report. A rain of fish in Kentucky." I laughed right back!
Wilson is simply amazing, IMNSHO. Of course his fiction is fnord great too.