Technology is just the newest in a long line of excuses people use to explain away their own shortcomings. If your overstressed, underpaid, overworked etc its up to you to do something about it. Turn off the pager, drive over your cellphone, improve your education, whatever you need to do to make yourself happier. Just stop blaming your employer, your computer, your cellphone, whatever because your life isn't working the way you want.
Computers are an incredibly valuable resource in education- however since most schools do a miserable job at educating it follows that the computers are of little benefit in a school doing a lousy job at educating the kids in the first place. I'll bet the computers are a great benefit at the schools already doing a good job...
Computers are just a tool. They will not fix what is wrong with the education system.
FWIW - we homeschool our kids and the computers in my house (one running Win98, one running RH6.2)are an invaluable part of the kids education process.
For a great Sci-Fi read about an earth completely taken over by advertising, read "The Space Merchants" by Fredrick Pohl. It was written way back in the 50's and like a lot of great sci-fi written back then - is right on target with reality circa year 2000.
Amazon shows it being out of print so you might have to worka bit to find a copy...
I wouldn't be so sure of that. The major party candidates are falling over themselves to appear tech friendly. They aren't stupid - they know where all the money in our country is! Also, I think it would be a good idea to get the Libertarian Party, the Green Party, etc on a Slashdot interview. If they got any major press for being here you can be sure Gore and Bush would be volunteering to appear also...
The union wanted it - and in the big picture, its a relatively cheap benefit. People PC normally charges $25 a month - you've got to figure Ford negotiated that down quite a bit. So for say, $18 a month per person (tax deductable for ford), they buy union goodwill, a boatload of good press, and the undying devotion of Jon Katz, who I'm sure will be rushing out to buy a Ford vehicle now:)
Also- remember that most major benefits (paid for by somebody else) that are now increasingly viewed as rights (ie. health care, retirement benefits, and now computers) started as union negotiated benefits. Its only a matter of time before somebody is pushing a bill through congress mandating that all employers buy computers for their employees.
As somebody on Slashdot's sig says..."In any sufficiently large group of people, the vast majority of idiots."
Slashdot is a sufficently large group, as is Yahoo, Excite, and just about any other discussion site on the Web. It's human nature and its not going to change no matter how much Jon whines about it.
I think Rob and company are doing a good job of keeping/. manageable. Any lage group is going to be a pain - get used to it.r
FWIW - I run a very small listserv for about 12 friends - by far the most interesting drbates I get involved with are in the very small group setting...
Geez, Jon sounds just like one of those Y2K extremeists that were just SURE that the world as we know it was about to end...now AOL and Time are a big threat to our freedom? Please...
This is all much ado about nothing. AOL has been acting like a media company for years - now they really are a media company. So what - there are still thousands of non-AOL ISP's out there. Time doesn't have a monopoly on anything that I can think of. Look at the bright side - at least pathfinder.com will FINALLY be put out of its misery.
I think some of the dissapointment related to virtual communities comes from people who thought that they would somehow replace or improve upon real world communities. Its just not going to happen. Communities, whether it be tthe local tavern, your college frat, or a MUD, are still composed of people, with all the frailities, egos'and problems associated with any group of people.
FWIW, I've been part of a virtual commuity for about 7 years. Its a listserv - plain ole ASCII text, with probably a few hundred subscribers. Many members of the list have been there as long or longer than me, and many of the group have met in person when they were in town on business or vacation, etc.
I don't think there can be an ideal geek ticket. We are all way too different. The Internet "elite" often gets sterotyped into a conservative, quasi-Libertarian type of group - but in the first 4 posts in this subject I saw a socialist and somebody supporting Ralph"corporations are evil" Nader. We all have different beliefs, different backgrounds, and ultimately we all want different things from government. Personally, I want government to leave me alone - to stop regulating every aspect of my behavior and to stop using the police power of government to take about 40% of my gross earnings to redistribute to other parties who have absolutely no claim on my personal output.
I'll be voting Libertaian - probably Harry Browne as he seems to be the leading candidate to win the nomination. You can learn more about Harry at http://www.browne2000.org
This may all be vaporware - but even the threat of competition is good. More high speed access options should mean lower prices on ALL high speed access options. That is a good thing!
I registered purdueatl.org a couple of years ago when I was involved with the Atlanta Purdue Alumni club. I know DC owns purduedc.org - or maybe its dot com - I don't remember. Are they going to start thretening legal action against the Universities most active alumni??? It sounds like some career academic type at Purude hasn't thought this through very well.
And exactly which Microsoft employee was it that held a gun to your head and forced you to buy Microsoft software to run your company??? You followed the herd and bought MS software. You made a bad decision. Get over it. I'm tired of the damn lottery generation - every chance possible somebody is sueing just because they can in the hopes of getting a jury full of sympathetic, unemployed idiots who will find in your favor for no other reason than you are the little guy.
They have all the damn market share!!!! If your going to stay up all night designing a worm/virus/whatever/ - you will focus on the market leader. Yes - MS leaves gaping security holes in the name of user friendliness all the time - but I believe Netscape and most other commerical applications have just as many holes. Its just that nobody cares enough about Netscape to bother trying to exploit their applications.
I use IE5 on my windows box because it is a far better browser than the current rev of Netscape. I use OE5 because it came with the browser and my wife likes it... But I turned off Java, turned off ActiveX and am slowly building my listed of trusted sites so I can run the Internet Zone is high security all the time. Part of this is the users - read the damn manual and look at the option for God's sake! I'll bet 1/2 of all IE users have NEVER even looked at the user options on brower or email. As somebody's sig says - in any large group of people, most of them are idiots. Guess what - IE users are a large group of people. I count myself in that minority group of non-idiots though:)
Assuming the toll free numbers are legit - why don't we just set our modems to autodial the voice number all night long - every connect will add to their phone bill - we could bankrupt somebody in a hurry!
I have no personal knowledge of these people - I met a patent attorney at a netwoking event this summer and ended up on his mailing list. It looks like this would be helpful if your close enough to take advantage.
---Begin quoted text---
Wednesday, Nov. 17--Washington Inventors Network for IT Entrepreneurs. A FREE, casual networking event for start-ups to connect with strategic partners and experts in law, marketing and venture capital. The featured speaker is Andrew J. Sherman, an international authority on legal and strategic issues affecting growing companies, and Chairman of the Franchising, Licensing and Distribution Department, and the Washington, D.C. Corporate Practice Group of Katten, Muchin & Zavis. He will talk about "Strategies for Protecting & Leveraging Intellectual Property."
6:00 to 7:30 p.m., Patent Law Building, 3717 Columbia Pike, Arlington. Sponsor: Great Ideas! radio host and patent attorney Richard C. Litman. Free parking and light refreshments. Advance registration required. Contact: Lorelei Topp, 1-800-4-PATENT, litman@4patent.com
I haven't read the book - and probably won't- but I did see Ravi give a presentation a few months ago that essentially was this book on Powerpoint slides.
I doubt the average/. reader will gain much from this book. His entire presentation struck me as "Ecommerce for Dummies." If your trying to convince a clueless upper management to move forward with an ecommerce initative then this book would help you frame your case in a way that the non-technical management types would understand. Also - like any book trying to explain technology that is Internet related - parts are bound be out of date before the ink dries on the paper. Now, if put the book at pulpless.com and updated every couple of months so that it was always current - that would be cool.
I agree completely. I wasn't suggesting that yet another MS monopoly was a good thing - only that it is likely. They are very good at embracing new technolgy and extending their products to incorporate the new technology? Is it fair...probably not. Is it legal....I think it probably is. Maybe we all should have bought more Macs back in the 80's:)
I'm sorry if this seems like Microsoft bashing, but it is a ridiculous that a single corporation can "invent" currency on the internet and then lobally tax all expenditure on it, which is what this amounts to.
And this is diferent than Visa, Microsoft, and AMEX how?? Its ECON 101 - if MS can establish their "currency" as the dominant form for Internet transactions they have every right to charge as much as they want for the product. Its not a tax - its the free market. If the 99% of the Internet population that is obviously not as bright as the average/.'er jumps on the bandwagon and makes this a standard - and they probably will - we'll be stuck with it - just like Windows, just like Office...
Am I going to trust me private data to MS? No way - I'll happily manually type in my credit card number every time. What we really need is an anonymous payment system so we can buy stuff online without the trail of personally identitfying credit card numbers...
Very few people in high power high profile positions today have a background that includes online time. However, think about how bad this will be in 20 years? What if Rob goes onto to a respectable life in corporate America, or God forbid, politics;) Can you imagine the furor that could erupt over things he may have said on Slashdot 20 years previous? I hope that by then this technology is so pervasive that it won't be that big a deal. However, I suspect our societies values and attitudes will change much slower than the technolgy and resulting lifestyle. I can see it now...I'm running for President in 2030 and my opponent digs up an archived copy of my Pamela Anderson in the nude home page from college:)
Note - that was just an example - I never posted a Pamela Anderson page of any kind....as far as you know:)
What is the expected life of data on a floppy? Of data on a CD? How do we know that even if the data still exists in 500 years that we will have the technology to read it? BAckwards compatibility for centuries old technolgy certainly isn't a given.
Now, think about paper. The dead sea scrolls are what, about 2000 years old and still very readable. The language may change, but the transer medium, paper (or stone) to the human eye, is backwards compatible to at least 10,000 years or so if start counting with the various prehistoric man cave drawings that have been found...
I just got a free Earthlink coaster, er I mean CD in the mail this week. I guess they don't cleanse their mail lists against their customer base since I've had an earthlink account for about 2 years. The CD had Netscape 4.04 and IE 5 - but they encourage you to install IE at every opportunity.
BTW - I examine the headers of every SPAM I get - I can only remember seeing one that originated from Earthlink. I sent it to them and they responded that his account had been shut down.
Also, their mail servers automatically ignore all BCC's after the 15th address, which is a pain when I need to blast something out to 30 odd friends, but does make it damn hard to use their servers to relay SPAM.
Interesting how NCR decided now would be a good time to pursue this now that Netscape is owned by AOL and has scads of cash. Hopefully, AOL will fight to the death on principle. But that is probably too much to expect from Steve Case. Instead, we'll probably see lots of huffing and pufing in the press for a few months, then a quiet settlement in which nobody admits to anything.
My wife has had great success selling used kids clothes on Ebay for 2 and 3 times what we bought it for (often used) several years ago. I've noticed a definite competitive effect. People just don't like to lose an action - and they bid stuff up for way more than its really worth for no other reason than to make sure somebody else doesn't get the junk.
I have no problem taking there money though. If I can help somebody's self esteem and make a few bucks in the process what the hell. Its probably still cheaper than therapy!
Katz has jumped on the bandwagon big time with this one. The whole fabric of society will unravel because the less productive elements of society don't have 500 MHZ PIII systems in their apartments.
Give me a break. There is no right to computer ownership, no right to Internet Access, and certaintly no right to expect those of us that can afford this stuff to pay for those who can't. The vast majority of people who can't afford a computer are in that position because of choices they've made in life. They chose to get pregnant at 16 and drop out of school, they chose to waste away on drugs,etc. in short they chose to be poor.
People that can't even feed their families without using the police power of government to force those of us that can to pay for their food have no business worrying about a damn computer. Its a tool, nothing more, and it isn't going to change the fact that they are continuing to make bad decisions in their life - thus they are poor.
Following the free cell phone and free PC trend, maybe they will start offering up free televisions if you subscribe. (only half kidding here...)
AOL's core strategy is AOL anywhere. They are a media company for all practical purposes- and the fact is that way more people have TV's than have computers. I've been expectin this anouncement for quite a while. Add a set top box and a keyboard, and your mother will be able to IM you while your watching a pay per view porno. Gee, isn't technology grand!
Slashdot Mirror
Technology is just the newest in a long line of excuses people use to explain away their own shortcomings. If your overstressed, underpaid, overworked etc its up to you to do something about it. Turn off the pager, drive over your cellphone, improve your education, whatever you need to do to make yourself happier. Just stop blaming your employer, your computer, your cellphone, whatever because your life isn't working the way you want.
Computers are an incredibly valuable resource in education- however since most schools do a miserable job at educating it follows that the computers are of little benefit in a school doing a lousy job at educating the kids in the first place. I'll bet the computers are a great benefit at the schools already doing a good job...
Computers are just a tool. They will not fix what is wrong with the education system.
FWIW - we homeschool our kids and the computers in my house (one running Win98, one running RH6.2)are an invaluable part of the kids education process.
For a great Sci-Fi read about an earth completely taken over by advertising, read "The Space Merchants" by Fredrick Pohl. It was written way back in the 50's and like a lot of great sci-fi written back then - is right on target with reality circa year 2000.
Amazon shows it being out of print so you might have to worka bit to find a copy...
I wouldn't be so sure of that. The major party candidates are falling over themselves to appear tech friendly. They aren't stupid - they know where all the money in our country is! Also, I think it would be a good idea to get the Libertarian Party, the Green Party, etc on a Slashdot interview. If they got any major press for being here you can be sure Gore and Bush would be volunteering to appear also...
The union wanted it - and in the big picture, its a relatively cheap benefit. People PC normally charges $25 a month - you've got to figure Ford negotiated that down quite a bit. So for say, $18 a month per person (tax deductable for ford), they buy union goodwill, a boatload of good press, and the undying devotion of Jon Katz, who I'm sure will be rushing out to buy a Ford vehicle now :)
Also- remember that most major benefits (paid for by somebody else) that are now increasingly viewed as rights (ie. health care, retirement benefits, and now computers) started as union negotiated benefits. Its only a matter of time before somebody is pushing a bill through congress mandating that all employers buy computers for their employees.
As somebody on Slashdot's sig says..."In any sufficiently large group of people, the vast majority of idiots."
/. manageable. Any lage group is going to be a pain - get used to it.r
Slashdot is a sufficently large group, as is Yahoo, Excite, and just about any other discussion site on the Web. It's human nature and its not going to change no matter how much Jon whines about it.
I think Rob and company are doing a good job of keeping
FWIW - I run a very small listserv for about 12 friends - by far the most interesting drbates I get involved with are in the very small group setting...
Geez, Jon sounds just like one of those Y2K extremeists that were just SURE that the world as we know it was about to end...now AOL and Time are a big threat to our freedom? Please...
This is all much ado about nothing. AOL has been acting like a media company for years - now they really are a media company. So what - there are still thousands of non-AOL ISP's out there. Time doesn't have a monopoly on anything that I can think of. Look at the bright side - at least pathfinder.com will FINALLY be put out of its misery.
I think some of the dissapointment related to virtual communities comes from people who thought that they would somehow replace or improve upon real world communities. Its just not going to happen. Communities, whether it be tthe local tavern, your college frat, or a MUD, are still composed of people, with all the frailities, egos'and problems associated with any group of people.
FWIW, I've been part of a virtual commuity for about 7 years. Its a listserv - plain ole ASCII text, with probably a few hundred subscribers. Many members of the list have been there as long or longer than me, and many of the group have met in person when they were in town on business or vacation, etc.
I don't think there can be an ideal geek ticket. We are all way too different. The Internet "elite" often gets sterotyped into a conservative, quasi-Libertarian type of group - but in the first 4 posts in this subject I saw a socialist and somebody supporting Ralph"corporations are evil" Nader. We all have different beliefs, different backgrounds, and ultimately we all want different things from government. Personally, I want government to leave me alone - to stop regulating every aspect of my behavior and to stop using the police power of government to take about 40% of my gross earnings to redistribute to other parties who have absolutely no claim on my personal output.
I'll be voting Libertaian - probably Harry Browne as he seems to be the leading candidate to win the nomination. You can learn more about Harry at http://www.browne2000.org
This may all be vaporware - but even the threat of competition is good. More high speed access options should mean lower prices on ALL high speed access options. That is a good thing!
I registered purdueatl.org a couple of years ago when I was involved with the Atlanta Purdue Alumni club. I know DC owns purduedc.org - or maybe its dot com - I don't remember. Are they going to start thretening legal action against the Universities most active alumni??? It sounds like some career academic type at Purude hasn't thought this through very well.
And exactly which Microsoft employee was it that held a gun to your head and forced you to buy Microsoft software to run your company??? You followed the herd and bought MS software. You made a bad decision. Get over it. I'm tired of the damn lottery generation - every chance possible somebody is sueing just because they can in the hopes of getting a jury full of sympathetic, unemployed idiots who will find in your favor for no other reason than you are the little guy.
They have all the damn market share!!!! If your going to stay up all night designing a worm/virus/whatever/ - you will focus on the market leader. Yes - MS leaves gaping security holes in the name of user friendliness all the time - but I believe Netscape and most other commerical applications have just as many holes. Its just that nobody cares enough about Netscape to bother trying to exploit their applications.
:)
I use IE5 on my windows box because it is a far better browser than the current rev of Netscape. I use OE5 because it came with the browser and my wife likes it... But I turned off Java, turned off ActiveX and am slowly building my listed of trusted sites so I can run the Internet Zone is high security all the time. Part of this is the users - read the damn manual and look at the option for God's sake! I'll bet 1/2 of all IE users have NEVER even looked at the user options on brower or email. As somebody's sig says - in any large group of people, most of them are idiots. Guess what - IE users are a large group of people. I count myself in that minority group of non-idiots though
Chris
Assuming the toll free numbers are legit - why don't we just set our modems to autodial the voice number all night long - every connect will add to their phone bill - we could bankrupt somebody in a hurry!
Seriously - why would this not be a good idea?
I have no personal knowledge of these people - I met a patent attorney at a netwoking event this summer and ended up on his mailing list. It looks like this would be helpful if your close enough to take advantage.
---Begin quoted text---
Wednesday, Nov. 17--Washington Inventors Network for IT Entrepreneurs. A FREE, casual networking event for start-ups to connect with strategic partners and experts in law, marketing and venture capital. The featured speaker is Andrew J. Sherman, an international authority on legal and strategic issues affecting growing companies, and Chairman of the Franchising, Licensing and Distribution Department, and the Washington, D.C. Corporate Practice Group of Katten, Muchin & Zavis. He will talk about "Strategies for
Protecting & Leveraging Intellectual Property."
6:00 to 7:30 p.m., Patent Law Building, 3717 Columbia Pike, Arlington. Sponsor: Great Ideas! radio host and patent attorney Richard C. Litman. Free parking and light refreshments. Advance registration required.
Contact: Lorelei Topp, 1-800-4-PATENT,
litman@4patent.com
I haven't read the book - and probably won't- but I did see Ravi give a presentation a few months ago that essentially was this book on Powerpoint slides.
/. reader will gain much from this book. His entire presentation struck me as "Ecommerce for Dummies." If your trying to convince a clueless upper management to move forward with an ecommerce initative then this book would help you frame your case in a way that the non-technical management types would understand. Also - like any book trying to explain technology that is Internet related - parts are bound be out of date before the ink dries on the paper. Now, if put the book at pulpless.com and updated every couple of months so that it was always current - that would be cool.
I doubt the average
I agree completely. I wasn't suggesting that yet another MS monopoly was a good thing - only that it is likely. They are very good at embracing new technolgy and extending their products to incorporate the new technology? Is it fair...probably not. Is it legal....I think it probably is. Maybe we all should have bought more Macs back in the 80's :)
GC said:
/.'er jumps on the bandwagon and makes this a standard - and they probably will - we'll be stuck with it - just like Windows, just like Office...
I'm sorry if this seems like Microsoft bashing, but it is a ridiculous that a single corporation can "invent" currency on the internet and then lobally tax all expenditure on it, which is what this amounts to.
And this is diferent than Visa, Microsoft, and AMEX how?? Its ECON 101 - if MS can establish their "currency" as the dominant form for Internet transactions they have every right to charge as much as they want for the product. Its not a tax - its the free market. If the 99% of the Internet population that is obviously not as bright as the average
Am I going to trust me private data to MS? No way - I'll happily manually type in my credit card number every time. What we really need is an anonymous payment system so we can buy stuff online without the trail of personally identitfying credit card numbers...
Very few people in high power high profile positions today have a background that includes online time. However, think about how bad this will be in 20 years? What if Rob goes onto to a respectable life in corporate America, or God forbid, politics ;) Can you imagine the furor that could erupt over things he may have said on Slashdot 20 years previous? I hope that by then this technology is so pervasive that it won't be that big a deal. However, I suspect our societies values and attitudes will change much slower than the technolgy and resulting lifestyle. I can see it now...I'm running for President in 2030 and my opponent digs up an archived copy of my Pamela Anderson in the nude home page from college :)
:)
Note - that was just an example - I never posted a Pamela Anderson page of any kind....as far as you know
What is the expected life of data on a floppy? Of data on a CD? How do we know that even if the data still exists in 500 years that we will have the technology to read it? BAckwards compatibility for centuries old technolgy certainly isn't a given.
Now, think about paper. The dead sea scrolls are what, about 2000 years old and still very readable. The language may change, but the transer medium, paper (or stone) to the human eye, is backwards compatible to at least 10,000 years or so if start counting with the various prehistoric man cave drawings that have been found...
I just got a free Earthlink coaster, er I mean CD in the mail this week. I guess they don't cleanse their mail lists against their customer base since I've had an earthlink account for about 2 years. The CD had Netscape 4.04 and IE 5 - but they encourage you to install IE at every opportunity.
BTW - I examine the headers of every SPAM I get - I can only remember seeing one that originated from Earthlink. I sent it to them and they responded that his account had been shut down.
Also, their mail servers automatically ignore all BCC's after the 15th address, which is a pain when I need to blast something out to 30 odd friends, but does make it damn hard to use their servers to relay SPAM.
Interesting how NCR decided now would be a good time to pursue this now that Netscape is owned by AOL and has scads of cash. Hopefully, AOL will fight to the death on principle. But that is probably too much to expect from Steve Case. Instead, we'll probably see lots of huffing and pufing in the press for a few months, then a quiet settlement in which nobody admits to anything.
My wife has had great success selling used kids clothes on Ebay for 2 and 3 times what we bought it for (often used) several years ago. I've noticed a definite competitive effect. People just don't like to lose an action - and they bid stuff up for way more than its really worth for no other reason than to make sure somebody else doesn't get the junk.
I have no problem taking there money though. If I can help somebody's self esteem and make a few bucks in the process what the hell. Its probably still cheaper than therapy!
Katz has jumped on the bandwagon big time with this one. The whole fabric of society will unravel because the less productive elements of society don't have 500 MHZ PIII systems in their apartments.
Give me a break. There is no right to computer ownership, no right to Internet Access, and certaintly no right to expect those of us that can afford this stuff to pay for those who can't. The vast majority of people who can't afford a computer are in that position because of choices they've made in life. They chose to get pregnant at 16 and drop out of school, they chose to waste away on drugs,etc. in short they chose to be poor.
People that can't even feed their families without using the police power of government to force those of us that can to pay for their food have no business worrying about a damn computer. Its a tool, nothing more, and it isn't going to change the fact that they are continuing to make bad decisions in their life - thus they are poor.
Following the free cell phone and free PC trend, maybe they will start offering up free televisions if you subscribe. (only half kidding here...)
AOL's core strategy is AOL anywhere. They are a media company for all practical purposes- and the fact is that way more people have TV's than have computers. I've been expectin this anouncement for quite a while. Add a set top box and a keyboard, and your mother will be able to IM you while your watching a pay per view porno. Gee, isn't technology grand!