The problem is that I've used whois info to alert mail admins to known problems with their servers.
Possible use, but relying on the choices between, say, Administrative Contact and Technical Contact seems a bit hit-and-miss, given the general nature of that information, and the distinct possibility that the contact may be an arms-length individual like a corporate officer or VP, or a third-party like a lawyer. At any rate, I'd guess the usual abuse, postmaster, hostmaster, etc. addresses would be just as accurate or useful if needing to contact someone by email.
I'd include a reference to the post office "where submissions made to an overload server are stored on a pallet and thrown away when the pile gets too high".
They might as well attempt to sue the Catholic Church for being (one of the two) oldest branches of Christianity...
If by Catholic Church, you're referring to (as is commonly done) the Roman Catholic Church, then that statement is both misleading and factually incorrect. In fact, another group has claims to being the "true Catholic Church", long before anyone cared about Rome, or pointy hats were all the rage.
Put another way, the Greek origin of the word "Catholic" isn't a curious oddity of history in the same way that the word "Christian" had (and continues to have) meaning long before anyone had heard of Martin Luther, or the host of light-blue-suit and white-shoe wearing denominations he inspired.
Shouldn't governments be particularly sensitive about not having a role in picking economic winners and losers?
I suppose, if one's outlook is a narrow view where the idealogy of capitalism overrules all other ideas. My own opinion is that one of the prime responsibilities of government is to set responsible policy. The citizenry or business interests are free to pursue things however they want in the context of the policy.
When viewed in that light, the notion of "picking winners and losers" is a construct that's as absurd as it is political. If a government chooses to raise mileage standards or raise taxes to offset the costs of environmental degradation, for example, Ford is free to go broke trying to sell SUVs, just as Toyota is free to build another plant in Ohio to meet increased sales. If the government adopts an open document format policy, Microsoft is free to adapt or continue their current practices. If there's any picking involved, it's being done in the corporate boardroom.
A sovereign government mandating local storage may indeed interfere with certain business models, but then again, so what? One door closes, another one opens. That's not to say the politics of the issue aren't interesting or worth discussing.
Normally I'd offer up a link to the book for anyone who is unaware of the Paradise book, or is otherwise unfamiliar with Brooks, but I'll take some time off and rest in my smugness. That said, I'm not sure I agree with the conclusions, either. But like his book, the piece is an entertaining read.
Yeah. Nothing sets the spirits like receiving $0.05 from an enthousiastic user.
You could always extend that to a more personal approach.
I'm a regular at a local Mexican restaurant. Instead of dropping my loose change anonymously in the tip jar, I show up with a few sixpacks of beer for the staff, and maybe some cut flowers for the hostess. I don't do this on a regular basis, but frequently enough to give everyone a good laugh. Now, my food orders are on the grill as soon as they see me pulling into the parking lot, and I walk out knowing the burritos I ordered were bigger than everyone else's, or my order included things that everyone waiting in line would pay extra for.
Substitute beer with hookers and blackjack (be sure the hookers aren't crossing state lines), airline tickets, gift certificates or whatever else you think may be appropriate, and you might discover those few cents can add up and have a greater effect than you'd think.
The OP is not asking about preventing future corruption; the OP wants an automated way to sift through 6500 PDFs to find corrupt (or at least, potentially corrupt) PDF files without having to open each one by hand.
If that is indeed the case, and he's repeatedly encountering corrupt files, then I'd suggest he's asked the wrong question.
As for pdf2ps, I'm unfamiliar with what error codes it returns, but if it's useful as you state, then it's worth pointing out that all the utilities he'll need (including md5, etc.) are available in Cygwin.
so, if I don't get it, then I guess I just don't get it, but I guess it is how they say, "BSD is for people who love UNIX; Linux is for people who hate Windows."
I agree with your sentiments, but it's worth pointing out that the small chimp that wandered into the room way back when has since grown and become 800 lb. gorilla with a proclivity for throwing chairs.
There's social, economic and political concerns today that didn't exist back then. Those issues need to be addressed, especially given the fact that we live in a world where computing and the internet in general is increasingly becoming part of everyone's lives, and what affects one group may affect everyoone. The first step usually takes the form of advocacy.
So if that advocacy is reactionary, and results in the unfortunate combination of a "Microsoft Haters Unite" slogan combined with a "It has to be just like Windows to compete" strategy, then so be it. It can't be any worse than the situation today where some, myself included, rue their once-cherished notion that making computers easier to use so everyone could use them would be A Good Thing.
I can understand why it may boggle your mind that that someone would merely want to "use" Linux or BSD to do basic PC things, but those PC things are increasingly becoming everyday things. To take a trivial example, I'm perfectly happy living in a terminal-based FreeBSD world, but there's not a day that goes by where someone doesn't send me a link to a YouTube video and I have to stop and think why I'm so annoyed, and who, if anyone, is to blame.
We try to have safe work practices, but I have the feeling that in 40 years regulations will make you do all your work with them in gloveboxes/cleanrooms/respirators.
I'm reminded of an autobiographical novel I read some years back by an author describing her childhood in Texas. She told of how her family lived in a little subdivision where the kids would spend their hot summers bored out of their minds. For fun, and to try and cool down, they would ride their bicycles barefoot in the rain racing after the mosquito control truck that routinely drove through the neighbourhood spraying DDT.
Today the parents of those kids would get a visit from someone from Child Protective Services with a clipboard:
Unsupervised kids: check. No bicycle license: check. Inappropriate cycling apparel: check. No helmet: check. Riding in unsafe conditions: check. Riding in traffic lanes: check. Riding in an unsafe manner or racing: check. Exposure to hazardous substances: check.
The kids would be removed, the parents would be arrested, the lawsuits would start, and the evening news across the entire country would be filled with interviews from child abuse experts, toxicologists, environmental groups, concerned citizens protesting "There oughta be a law!", and politicians advocating reform.
Ah, the good old days! If you're not waxing nostalgic, you're scratching your heading asking, "What the hell were we thinking?"
Most DNS servers do both, so "DNS server" means many different things depending on the context.
From the unbound site:
Unbound is an implementation of a DNS resolver, that does caching and DNSSEC validation.
Seems clear to me.
I don't see how describing how servers can behave as clients to/among one another is informative or useful, nor does it make a server a non-server, at least not in the traditional sense. Unbound does lookups and caching, and from what I see, it can make use of some localhost zone files.
Then again, maybe I'm just talking out my ass. Shall I concede dig and nslookup are servers because they perform lookups just as would a non-authoritative bind server, or one with a forwarders clause?
Well, it is if she were a victim of abstinence-only education which, in addition to being boring and therefor not helpful, also fails to teach kids to put on a damned condom, then it would be the school district's fault.
You've got to look at the bright side of life.
Abstinence-only education tends to encourage casual oral sex (frequent, one would hope) as a substitute for losing one's virginity. Or making babies.
Until they come out with an ebook reader that has a full color, 200+dpi (reflective, not emmissive) display that itself is letter-size or larger (or perhaps a tabloid-sized dual screen display that folds in half a little like opening a book), I'm just not interested.
Letter-size or larger, huh? If you're looking for childrens books, I'd suggest staying with the real thing. They often have lots of fun popup thingies you can play with. If more adult fare is what you're after, maybe you want to rethink your requirements. Published books tend to be much smaller than letter-sized paper. And for good reason.
Same thing goes for colour. I'd imagine a colour device would also require more power, which means less reading time, or more batteries to carry around.
His best quip is that Outlook doesn't have threaded views? Is he for real?
I believe the author was referring to threading as it relates to processes, not threaded views.
As for Outlook and it's threaded views, well, that's a funny one. IIRC, Microsoft discovered that old-as-dirt concept only a few years ago. A common whine on usenet was "Why doesn't Outlook Express support threading? Google has since implemented threaded views for their webmail, but decided to call it "Conversations". But what did Microsoft do? Microsoft being Microsoft couldn't use make use the 'Message-ID' header, like everyone else had been doing, but instead decided to add a new Microsoft-only header called 'Thread-Index' or some equally stupid name.
I have no clue as to why this program takes upwards of a minute to read a simple pdf file that is mostly text.
Plugins most likely. Different programs do different things, of course. Gnome's gpdf, for example, creates thumbnail page previews of every page in the document. May not be a problem for some, but that extra processing on a laptop when opening a 1000-page document is as welcome as a hole in the head.
Personally, I default to using xpdf (nothing is faster) until I tire of reading, or its butt-ugly look and rendering, whichever comes first. On Windows, I use an older version of Acrobat and stay away from Reader, and most definitely don't read PDFs in a web browser.
i'd worry about phtalates after i was sure my balls wouldnt get chopped off in a console battery explosion.one has to know his priorities.
Given that phtalates are associates with reduced testoserone levels and testicular cancer, among other things, I'd suggest double-checking your... ugh... priorities.
And while you're at it, maybe check to see whether you're starting to grow breasts. Sometimes friends and family are too polite to say anything.
Yes, they still do "different" things in a terminal, but they're by no means "Windows commands" any more.
I don't think the terminal vs. non-terminal distinction is necessarily valid.
Text can copied from a Firefox window, for example, the same way in which text is copied from a terminal, that is by simply by selecting it. Pasting is similarly identical for both, using SHIFT+INSERT. No CTRL keys required.
Seriously, people bash UAC, but it's pretty much identical to sudo.
Dunno how you would define "pretty much", but my definition is different. If we were to assume they were similar enough, however, your comment is still based on an apples and oranges scenario which renders it "pretty much" meaningless in real world terms.
Put another way, superficial observations of similarity are just that, superficial. It's the implementation that matters. It's fair to say that Windows does, generally, improve its implementation as time goes on, but the approach taken is still one based on a slew of assumptions where ease of use trumps all, and an increasing number of deliberate obfuscations are added to promote user-friendliness. When you layer all that on top of a complex system that gets reinvented from time to time, and one that even the folks at Microsoft have trouble with, your similiarities go out the window.
I'm reminded of a comment I read recently where someone said "Windows users don't obsess over permissions like *nix users routinely do." Indeed. No one but an experienced Windows admin would have a clue as what permissions exist where, how, or why, while their users don't seem to mind that that most everything is set to the equivalent of 777 anyway. Permissions? Who cares. Hide them, along with file extensions and everything else. Access token? Never heard of him.
Sudo ain't UAC, just like *nix ain't Windows. Get over it. And an uneducated user using Windows will never be the same as uneducated user using *nix. Come to think of it, this whole discussion is stupid. Just as stupid as the often-repeated claim that one day, one day real soon now, Mac users will be plagued by malware just like Windows users are.
Let's pretend that "build your own" isn't an option.
Ok.
Have you ever tried to buy a computer without a CD drive? How about one without a power supply? If Dell refuses to sell me a computer without those two items, should I have the right to sue them for a partial refund? Where do you draw the line?
Simple. Hardware isn't software.
Confusing the two, citing personal habits or preferences, bemoaning the state of the retail market or the business practises of large retailers, making generalised comments about the perceptions of the average user, or otherwise succumbing to the undue pressures of monopoly influence, won't now or in the future make "one thing" from "two separate" things.
As a side note, if you want a computer without a CD drive (I have several here at home), I'd suggest getting out more. Dell may be a large retailer/assembler, but the computer market is a lot bigger than you think, as are your choices.
I have the pleasure of babysitting a friends internet cafe (on sundays it's more like Manilla than Athens because that's the day the girls from the Phillipines get their day off - eat yer heart out basement dwellers (grins)).
Pilipinas in Greece? Is there a cultural or socio-economic shift I'm unaware of?
All you need to do is set up an IRC-server in multi-pointcast mode
Bah.
Just use talk(1). Use it to talk to yourself, even. Tell a few jokes, share ideas, brainstorm, engage in role playing (a bit of added configuration will allow you to 'su badgirl16' or 'su leatherman' for quickie session), or just check in and see how things are going.
At the end of the day, hopefully this means cheap healthcare.
Do you mean "have the effect of lowering healthcare costs in Canada", or "the use of robots will make the concept of universal healthcare appealing to citizens of the United States and South Africa"?
I used to get those from one particular friend until I started sending point-by-point responses with links to government websites that actually gave the real facts behind the conservative hype.
And liberal hype?
To the extent it's meaningful or productive, I could categorise myself as leaning left, but I won't. Idealogues of any type are embarrassing, even when you sympathise with some of their views.
In the past I've had a number of seemingly intelligent, well-mannered, and good-intentioned friends include me in their distribution lists, thinking I'd be receptive to their advocacy-message-of-the-day. I tolerated it with an occasional chuckle for a while until I discovered my name was being add to the distributions lists of other seemingly intelligent, well-mannered and good-intentioned people, people who were complete strangers.
The situation wasn't unlike sending a mail to subscriber-only mailing lists and have someone reply using an attribution style that includes the full name and mail address of the person they're quoting. Now the concept of the routinely putting everyone's name and email address in the body of an email may not cause any lightbulbs to turn on for the average person, but correlating having one's email address published all over the web with an increased level of SPAM, should. At least one would hope so.
To make a long story short, I did eventually (after much effort) get my name removed from all these bulk mailings, but not before I was deluged with SPAM and forced into abandoning my email account. Now I think twice before giving anyone my email address, seemingly intelligent, good-intentioned friends especially. It's a shame, really. What gets passed around by email by groups of people may not be interesting in itself, but seeing what people are doing with their spare time can be a hoot.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is that I've used whois info to alert mail admins to known problems with their servers.
Possible use, but relying on the choices between, say, Administrative Contact and Technical Contact seems a bit hit-and-miss, given the general nature of that information, and the distinct possibility that the contact may be an arms-length individual like a corporate officer or VP, or a third-party like a lawyer. At any rate, I'd guess the usual abuse, postmaster, hostmaster, etc. addresses would be just as accurate or useful if needing to contact someone by email.
So now even the dead accounts can mod. Neat.
A good Chicago joke.
I'd include a reference to the post office "where submissions made to an overload server are stored on a pallet and thrown away when the pile gets too high".
And something about the Cubs, of course.
They might as well attempt to sue the Catholic Church for being (one of the two) oldest branches of Christianity ...
If by Catholic Church, you're referring to (as is commonly done) the Roman Catholic Church, then that statement is both misleading and factually incorrect. In fact, another group has claims to being the "true Catholic Church", long before anyone cared about Rome, or pointy hats were all the rage.
Put another way, the Greek origin of the word "Catholic" isn't a curious oddity of history in the same way that the word "Christian" had (and continues to have) meaning long before anyone had heard of Martin Luther, or the host of light-blue-suit and white-shoe wearing denominations he inspired.
Shouldn't governments be particularly sensitive about not having a role in picking economic winners and losers?
I suppose, if one's outlook is a narrow view where the idealogy of capitalism overrules all other ideas. My own opinion is that one of the prime responsibilities of government is to set responsible policy. The citizenry or business interests are free to pursue things however they want in the context of the policy.
When viewed in that light, the notion of "picking winners and losers" is a construct that's as absurd as it is political. If a government chooses to raise mileage standards or raise taxes to offset the costs of environmental degradation, for example, Ford is free to go broke trying to sell SUVs, just as Toyota is free to build another plant in Ohio to meet increased sales. If the government adopts an open document format policy, Microsoft is free to adapt or continue their current practices. If there's any picking involved, it's being done in the corporate boardroom.
A sovereign government mandating local storage may indeed interfere with certain business models, but then again, so what? One door closes, another one opens. That's not to say the politics of the issue aren't interesting or worth discussing.
This is the same David Brooks ...
Normally I'd offer up a link to the book for anyone who is unaware of the Paradise book, or is otherwise unfamiliar with Brooks, but I'll take some time off and rest in my smugness. That said, I'm not sure I agree with the conclusions, either. But like his book, the piece is an entertaining read.
Yeah. Nothing sets the spirits like receiving $0.05 from an enthousiastic user.
You could always extend that to a more personal approach.
I'm a regular at a local Mexican restaurant. Instead of dropping my loose change anonymously in the tip jar, I show up with a few sixpacks of beer for the staff, and maybe some cut flowers for the hostess. I don't do this on a regular basis, but frequently enough to give everyone a good laugh. Now, my food orders are on the grill as soon as they see me pulling into the parking lot, and I walk out knowing the burritos I ordered were bigger than everyone else's, or my order included things that everyone waiting in line would pay extra for.
Substitute beer with hookers and blackjack (be sure the hookers aren't crossing state lines), airline tickets, gift certificates or whatever else you think may be appropriate, and you might discover those few cents can add up and have a greater effect than you'd think.
The OP is not asking about preventing future corruption; the OP wants an automated way to sift through 6500 PDFs to find corrupt (or at least, potentially corrupt) PDF files without having to open each one by hand.
If that is indeed the case, and he's repeatedly encountering corrupt files, then I'd suggest he's asked the wrong question.
As for pdf2ps, I'm unfamiliar with what error codes it returns, but if it's useful as you state, then it's worth pointing out that all the utilities he'll need (including md5, etc.) are available in Cygwin.
so, if I don't get it, then I guess I just don't get it, but I guess it is how they say, "BSD is for people who love UNIX; Linux is for people who hate Windows."
I agree with your sentiments, but it's worth pointing out that the small chimp that wandered into the room way back when has since grown and become 800 lb. gorilla with a proclivity for throwing chairs.
There's social, economic and political concerns today that didn't exist back then. Those issues need to be addressed, especially given the fact that we live in a world where computing and the internet in general is increasingly becoming part of everyone's lives, and what affects one group may affect everyoone. The first step usually takes the form of advocacy.
So if that advocacy is reactionary, and results in the unfortunate combination of a "Microsoft Haters Unite" slogan combined with a "It has to be just like Windows to compete" strategy, then so be it. It can't be any worse than the situation today where some, myself included, rue their once-cherished notion that making computers easier to use so everyone could use them would be A Good Thing.
I can understand why it may boggle your mind that that someone would merely want to "use" Linux or BSD to do basic PC things, but those PC things are increasingly becoming everyday things. To take a trivial example, I'm perfectly happy living in a terminal-based FreeBSD world, but there's not a day that goes by where someone doesn't send me a link to a YouTube video and I have to stop and think why I'm so annoyed, and who, if anyone, is to blame.
Life is political.
We try to have safe work practices, but I have the feeling that in 40 years regulations will make you do all your work with them in gloveboxes/cleanrooms/respirators.
I'm reminded of an autobiographical novel I read some years back by an author describing her childhood in Texas. She told of how her family lived in a little subdivision where the kids would spend their hot summers bored out of their minds. For fun, and to try and cool down, they would ride their bicycles barefoot in the rain racing after the mosquito control truck that routinely drove through the neighbourhood spraying DDT.
Today the parents of those kids would get a visit from someone from Child Protective Services with a clipboard:
Unsupervised kids: check.
No bicycle license: check.
Inappropriate cycling apparel: check.
No helmet: check.
Riding in unsafe conditions: check.
Riding in traffic lanes: check.
Riding in an unsafe manner or racing: check.
Exposure to hazardous substances: check.
The kids would be removed, the parents would be arrested, the lawsuits would start, and the evening news across the entire country would be filled with interviews from child abuse experts, toxicologists, environmental groups, concerned citizens protesting "There oughta be a law!", and politicians advocating reform.
Ah, the good old days! If you're not waxing nostalgic, you're scratching your heading asking, "What the hell were we thinking?"
From the unbound site:
Seems clear to me.
I don't see how describing how servers can behave as clients to/among one another is informative or useful, nor does it make a server a non-server, at least not in the traditional sense. Unbound does lookups and caching, and from what I see, it can make use of some localhost zone files.
Then again, maybe I'm just talking out my ass. Shall I concede dig and nslookup are servers because they perform lookups just as would a non-authoritative bind server, or one with a forwarders clause?
I've only had a quick glance, but it appears you're correct.
Seems this is a first: both the submission and the article are absurdly wrong.
but you're using the plural form of Cat's (Cats) instead of possessive in your user name
I do hope you meant to say "the plural form of cat".
Well, it is if she were a victim of abstinence-only education which, in addition to being boring and therefor not helpful, also fails to teach kids to put on a damned condom, then it would be the school district's fault.
You've got to look at the bright side of life.
Abstinence-only education tends to encourage casual oral sex (frequent, one would hope) as a substitute for losing one's virginity. Or making babies.
Who could be against more blowjobs? Not me.
Until they come out with an ebook reader that has a full color, 200+dpi (reflective, not emmissive) display that itself is letter-size or larger (or perhaps a tabloid-sized dual screen display that folds in half a little like opening a book), I'm just not interested.
Letter-size or larger, huh? If you're looking for childrens books, I'd suggest staying with the real thing. They often have lots of fun popup thingies you can play with. If more adult fare is what you're after, maybe you want to rethink your requirements. Published books tend to be much smaller than letter-sized paper. And for good reason.
Same thing goes for colour. I'd imagine a colour device would also require more power, which means less reading time, or more batteries to carry around.
His best quip is that Outlook doesn't have threaded views? Is he for real?
I believe the author was referring to threading as it relates to processes, not threaded views.
As for Outlook and it's threaded views, well, that's a funny one. IIRC, Microsoft discovered that old-as-dirt concept only a few years ago. A common whine on usenet was "Why doesn't Outlook Express support threading? Google has since implemented threaded views for their webmail, but decided to call it "Conversations". But what did Microsoft do? Microsoft being Microsoft couldn't use make use the 'Message-ID' header, like everyone else had been doing, but instead decided to add a new Microsoft-only header called 'Thread-Index' or some equally stupid name.
Call me impressed.
I have no clue as to why this program takes upwards of a minute to read a simple pdf file that is mostly text.
Plugins most likely. Different programs do different things, of course. Gnome's gpdf, for example, creates thumbnail page previews of every page in the document. May not be a problem for some, but that extra processing on a laptop when opening a 1000-page document is as welcome as a hole in the head.
Personally, I default to using xpdf (nothing is faster) until I tire of reading, or its butt-ugly look and rendering, whichever comes first. On Windows, I use an older version of Acrobat and stay away from Reader, and most definitely don't read PDFs in a web browser.
i'd worry about phtalates after i was sure my balls wouldnt get chopped off in a console battery explosion.one has to know his priorities.
... ugh ... priorities.
Given that phtalates are associates with reduced testoserone levels and testicular cancer, among other things, I'd suggest double-checking your
And while you're at it, maybe check to see whether you're starting to grow breasts. Sometimes friends and family are too polite to say anything.
Yes, they still do "different" things in a terminal, but they're by no means "Windows commands" any more.
I don't think the terminal vs. non-terminal distinction is necessarily valid.
Text can copied from a Firefox window, for example, the same way in which text is copied from a terminal, that is by simply by selecting it. Pasting is similarly identical for both, using SHIFT+INSERT. No CTRL keys required.
Seriously, people bash UAC, but it's pretty much identical to sudo.
Dunno how you would define "pretty much", but my definition is different. If we were to assume they were similar enough, however, your comment is still based on an apples and oranges scenario which renders it "pretty much" meaningless in real world terms.
Put another way, superficial observations of similarity are just that, superficial. It's the implementation that matters. It's fair to say that Windows does, generally, improve its implementation as time goes on, but the approach taken is still one based on a slew of assumptions where ease of use trumps all, and an increasing number of deliberate obfuscations are added to promote user-friendliness. When you layer all that on top of a complex system that gets reinvented from time to time, and one that even the folks at Microsoft have trouble with, your similiarities go out the window.
I'm reminded of a comment I read recently where someone said "Windows users don't obsess over permissions like *nix users routinely do." Indeed. No one but an experienced Windows admin would have a clue as what permissions exist where, how, or why, while their users don't seem to mind that that most everything is set to the equivalent of 777 anyway. Permissions? Who cares. Hide them, along with file extensions and everything else. Access token? Never heard of him.
Sudo ain't UAC, just like *nix ain't Windows. Get over it. And an uneducated user using Windows will never be the same as uneducated user using *nix. Come to think of it, this whole discussion is stupid. Just as stupid as the often-repeated claim that one day, one day real soon now, Mac users will be plagued by malware just like Windows users are.
Let's pretend that "build your own" isn't an option.
Ok.
Have you ever tried to buy a computer without a CD drive? How about one without a power supply? If Dell refuses to sell me a computer without those two items, should I have the right to sue them for a partial refund? Where do you draw the line?
Simple. Hardware isn't software.
Confusing the two, citing personal habits or preferences, bemoaning the state of the retail market or the business practises of large retailers, making generalised comments about the perceptions of the average user, or otherwise succumbing to the undue pressures of monopoly influence, won't now or in the future make "one thing" from "two separate" things.
As a side note, if you want a computer without a CD drive (I have several here at home), I'd suggest getting out more. Dell may be a large retailer/assembler, but the computer market is a lot bigger than you think, as are your choices.
I have the pleasure of babysitting a friends internet cafe (on sundays it's more like Manilla than Athens because that's the day the girls from the Phillipines get their day off - eat yer heart out basement dwellers (grins)).
Pilipinas in Greece? Is there a cultural or socio-economic shift I'm unaware of?
All you need to do is set up an IRC-server in multi-pointcast mode
Bah.
Just use talk(1). Use it to talk to yourself, even. Tell a few jokes, share ideas, brainstorm, engage in role playing (a bit of added configuration will allow you to 'su badgirl16' or 'su leatherman' for quickie session), or just check in and see how things are going.
Disrupting? I prefer to think of it as shaping.
At the end of the day, hopefully this means cheap healthcare.
;-)
Do you mean "have the effect of lowering healthcare costs in Canada", or "the use of robots will make the concept of universal healthcare appealing to citizens of the United States and South Africa"?
Sorry, couldn't resist.
I used to get those from one particular friend until I started sending point-by-point responses with links to government websites that actually gave the real facts behind the conservative hype.
And liberal hype?
To the extent it's meaningful or productive, I could categorise myself as leaning left, but I won't. Idealogues of any type are embarrassing, even when you sympathise with some of their views.
In the past I've had a number of seemingly intelligent, well-mannered, and good-intentioned friends include me in their distribution lists, thinking I'd be receptive to their advocacy-message-of-the-day. I tolerated it with an occasional chuckle for a while until I discovered my name was being add to the distributions lists of other seemingly intelligent, well-mannered and good-intentioned people, people who were complete strangers.
The situation wasn't unlike sending a mail to subscriber-only mailing lists and have someone reply using an attribution style that includes the full name and mail address of the person they're quoting. Now the concept of the routinely putting everyone's name and email address in the body of an email may not cause any lightbulbs to turn on for the average person, but correlating having one's email address published all over the web with an increased level of SPAM, should. At least one would hope so.
To make a long story short, I did eventually (after much effort) get my name removed from all these bulk mailings, but not before I was deluged with SPAM and forced into abandoning my email account. Now I think twice before giving anyone my email address, seemingly intelligent, good-intentioned friends especially. It's a shame, really. What gets passed around by email by groups of people may not be interesting in itself, but seeing what people are doing with their spare time can be a hoot.