They're actually doing that now. The poster in San Diego (a few posts before yours) for instance has already been hit with ridiculously high rate increases. S/he wasn't kidding about people going out of business, either, I saw a story on that on the news a few weeks ago. Our rates (a few hundred miles north of San Diego) will go up 30% soon (just announced by our utility.) You make a good point about the companies - I see individuals making an effort around the office (not turning on their desk lights, shutting down the computers at night, etc.) but upper management hasn't said a word yet. I would think that something like this would prompt a corporate request to conserve, (but then we're a 150-person office who just implemented a recycling program LAST WEEK - sickening - so I suppose I can't expect too much of them.)
At a household level, that 30% increase is going to prompt conservation. The reason that you asked for re: why they haven't done so sooner is that when the electric was deregulated, there was a mandated freeze on the rates for a given length of time. San Diego's time expired first and they were the first to get hit with the increases - now the clock has run down for us and its our turn.
California will recover from this (remember the Carter years?) Meanwhile those of us living here need to turn the lights off and power down the computers - this isn't just about high utility rates, its about whether there's enough power in the grid to keep a family's heat on in the middle of winter. With so many power plants down (3 were shut down for routine maintenance last year and it sounds like several more have gone down since the storms started this week,) every little bit will help.
The bad news is that Southern California Edison just plastered our doors two days ago with a notice of a 30% rate increase. The good news is that there has been no news of rolling blackouts in our neck of the woods. The best news is that a new power plant has been approved - a wind farm! Its unfortunate that it takes a self-imposed crisis like this to get people to start thinking seriously about conserving what energy we have and using alternative energy sources for the future.
Yeah, that's how it is in my department - people on my team routinely turn down promotions because it means leaving the toys behind and replacing them with paperwork. No, thank you. The reason we (my teammates and myself) got into this industry was to get paid to play, learn a whole bunch of cool stuff and always be ahead of the technology curve - the second we step into management we're forced to toe the policy line, pressure the coders and testers to turn out crappy product in order to meet deadlines, put the company entity ahead of the individual employees and a ton of other stuff that makes us sick. The ones who have taken the promotions left the company within a year, they've hated it so much - and then we've lost our strongest talent, usually to the competitor.
Our Ask/.er needs a new job. What his employers are doing is ridiculous. S/he'll have no trouble finding a new position where s/he can be productive and happy for a few more years.
Hrm. I took the usage of "girls" to be referring to school-aged girls getting ready to choose a college/career path, and "women" to be referring to college-aged and up women.
We all have the opportunity to train for whatever we want to train for. There are a lot of reasons to train for business administration, and a lot of reasons not to train for CS - but it doesn't vary from gender to gender, it varies from person to person. If faced with the options of business college vs. a four-year CS degree and I choose business college, its not because anyone made me do it, its because I thought that a) computers are uninteresting, b) computers are arcane, or c) a CS degree will take too much time to acheive and I need a job now.
I was a bookkeeper for years before I got into computers. I came to computers late in life, not for lack of opporunity but rather for lack of interest. I was in my 20s before I had a pc at home - today I'm an engineer. However I had exactly the same educational opportunities as my male schoolmates. No school that I've ever heard of has any policy keeping girls (and here I'm talking about teenaged girls,) from enrolling in a computer class. Nor have I ever heard any teacher actively encouraging the boys to enroll in one. Nor have I ever felt any societal pressures to become one thing or another. I was a teenager in the 80s, which was only a marginally less enlightened time - but I was never given any reason to believe that I couldn't pursue whatever career I chose. I think we exited the dark ages of imposed gender career roles in the 70s. Roughly a third of the programmers in my workplace are female, and they weren't interviewed any differently than the men were.
Cringely makes what I think is an excellent point - computing is not a job, its a life-style. Its not a life-style that I, as a girl, was interested in. Its reclusive and it requires a great deal of time, focus and commitment. Bookkeeping was much easier - add, subtract, carry the one... go out for happy hour at five with my coworkers. I've had to go back to college and pursue a new degree - so what? I've had to test, interview, study, go to conferences, read, participate in discussion boards - so what? The only limitation I have is my willingness to do what's required to succeed in my field of choice.
I love the tech life-style today. I love living it, I love talking about it, I love the cons and boards and hell I even love reading RFCs. I do actively encourage my daughter to get familiar with the computer. She's in elementary school at this point, so she's got a while before she has to make any life-style or career decisions. She loves math, which I think is a good sign - who knows what she'll decide to do? She may end up being a secretary. If she does choose that path, I'll support her in it - there's absolutely nothing wrong with it! - but that will be her decision, not one imposed on her from any source aside from her own desires, ambitions, and willingness.
I already said this in a sub-post, but was anyone else amazed by how few people seemed to know who Ray Park is? The Darth Maul-esque twirl of the pipe toward the end was appreciated by about three people in the theatre.
The movie was awesome, (from this X-Men reader's perspective.) I've already seen it twice. Logan absolutely stole the show - My biggest complaints are Halle's acting, (the writer didn't help her out much,) and the hair in Rogue's mouth at the end. I wonder if those 45 cut minutes will be available on the DVD? If so, I might have to finally buckle under and get a DVD player...
Re:Professor X and Magneto weren't the best parts
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Slashdot Meets X-Men
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Amen.
I remember back in my Wizard-reading days, the "Casting Call" page dealt with the X-Men - my then-husband and I thought Patrick Stewart was the obvious choice for Xavier, of course - but when it came to casting Logan, we couldn't think of a single actor to put in that slot. Has to be short, stocky, jaded and furry - and convincing! I was very very impressed with his portrayal. He did the role justice. I've seen other posts saying that it would be an "easy role" to play - I disagree. He made the movie worth it by himself.
By the way - was anyone else amazed by how few people in the audience knew who Ray Park is? I thought it was cool that they gave Toad the Darth Maul-esque twirling of the pipe toward the end. About three people acknowledged it in the theatre.
The particularly fast kid playing basketball was (probably) Quicksilver, and Jubilee was in the classroom sitting next to Rogue (slightly out of step with the comic - she's a much later character.) Couldn't for the life of me figure out which one was Colossus (though as another poster pointed out that may have been the one running on water.)
I don't think its a complete 180, exactly. The initial ruling was a blanket restriction. Mitnick's lawyers didn't get them to make a blanket reversal of their ruling, saying "he can work at whatever he wants to," (they've tried and failed,) but they did find that presenting his options one at a time had an effect. Basically they've gone the route of letting the court decide whether each individual case is safe. If the court doesn't think he's a threat in a particular job, they'll let him have it.
The courts set the precedent for this by allowing him to speak before Congress a few months ago. Having done that, I'm sure it was harder to say "no" to the next specific request. He still can't access computers, even for his online column - someone else will have to enter and upload it for him.
I'm speculating here, but I think that what the courts wanted was for him to a) stay away from any device that he could conceivably commit intrustion with, and b) not be allowed to make obscene amounts of money off of his celebrity status, since he obtained it by being put in jail for four years without trial. Perhaps these specific allowances don't violate either of those ideas, (I have no idea what he's being paid for his speaking engagements.)
Many, many years ago I picked up a book entitled "Don't Panic," a companion book to the HHGTtG. It was written by Neil Gaiman (I had no idea who he was at the time - today I'm a huge fan of his as well.) Mr. Gaiman spent a lot of time researching it and talking with Mr. Adams - and he answers a lot of questions that/. posters posed, but weren't moderated high enough to be submitted. (An example: who Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings was based on is addressed in the book.) Its a wonderful source of detail and trivia re: the original trilogy (I don't think So Long... is covered in it.)
Good luck finding it - I'll pull it off the shelf tonight and append this comment with the publisher's info as soon as I can.
I had to see it on general principle, (the book is really good and L. Ron Hubbard is an exceptional writer,) and I actually had high hopes for it - the story ended right where I thought it would, (the book goes on for another 700 pages after the final event in the movie.) I think anyone who has NOT read the book would be hopelessly lost - the 'setup' scenes do nothing toward explaining the hero's history.
I was terribly disappointed in Travolta's portrayal of the villain, and I didn't find anyone else's performance convincing either. The effects were not note-worthy enough to make the movie worth seeing. Even the music was inappropriate.
It was a very ambitious project, and I admire them for trying - unfortunately they didn't pull it off. I'm sure that there were a lot of people squirming during the premier, and a lot of hasty retreats when (or before) it was over.
If movie prices are as high there as they are here, wait for the video.
It seems that very few posters are getting the point - if the comments were recorded on paper, video, audio, etc., it would be treated as libel - which again, the police are not involved in.
Libel is handled as a civil case, in a lawsuit filed by one of the insulted parties against the creator of the libelous commentary. A previous poster suggested that a part of the normal procedure would be to request and receive a "cease and desist" order, asking that the webpage be taken down, (or in the print media, that the article not be printed, or a retraction be printed if it was too late.) In no case would a person be ARRESTED and have his or her belongings confiscated (paper, pen, Xerox machine, printing press - whatever medium was used to create these defamatory comments.)
This kid was treated as a criminal. He was arrested. He had his computer confiscated (and the odds that he'll get it back are slim to none.) For insulting someone. That is not how this system is supposed to work.
If we look at this further, though, even libel doesn't really hold much water.
An interesting parallel would be 2600's battles with NBC and Verizon. 2600 said some unpleasant things about them (in the form of registered domain names.) Even these enormous corporations know better than to think they're going to get anywhere by claiming that the statements "NBCsucks" and "VerizonREALLYsucks" are anywhere near libelous. Both corporations have had to go the loophole route, citing anti-cybersquatting and copyright protections laws to sue 2600 with. And I don't think they're going to win those, either.
Now, what if Mr. Goldstein were arrested for registering those domain names, and the 2600 servers confiscated as evidence? If they printed these things in their hardcopy magazine, would they be arrested and their printing presses confiscated? No. They *might* be sued. But probably not. Americans are raised with the idea of Freedom of Speech - it's a rallying cry more powerful than any other.
It *is* the computer that is at issue, and the injustice done to that kid sets a precedent. If its okay to have criminalized this one kid in Nowhere, Utah, then its going to be okay to criminalize you.
And, as I understand it, Katz also intends to publish some email messages, which were _not_ posted to/.
Which is where my questions come in. When I post, I am allowing anyone who happens upon this url to read what I've written. Katz (and anyone else) can do whatever they like with my words (as long as they remain my words and are not altered while still crediting me.)
But when I email somebody, I'm emailing that person - not an entire community. When I write a letter to a friend, I do not expect that letter to show up in a book without my explicit permission. I would be rather likely to sue if anything that I wrote in that letter could damage me, or if I felt I should be compensated for having contributed material to the book that my letter is published in.
Where are the lawyers? Let us know what you are when you post, so we can weed out the arm-chair litigators and know who we should be listening to.
A few other people have posted the idea that most of the people who actually know what they're doing aren't spending their time intruding into our systems. I believe this. Case in point is one of my co-workers, a truly brilliant hacker (and yes, I'm going to use this word as it was originally intended,) whose calling is in security. Yes, he roots our boxes on a regular basis. Yes, he tells us that he did so, and how. And then he helps us plug the holes. He has had me watch as he gets my password off what I thought was a secure system, (result: we got one that IS secure.) He also helps us find the holes in our new products, and is teaching the rest of us to do the same, (our work is in the early developement stages, so we're in a perfect position to find and fix the flaws.) I should probably add that I knew him before he worked here and had a good idea of his character before recruiting him.
The script kiddies grow up, and some of them do continue to learn. Those that do can be your greatest security asset. Why lure in the bad eggs and criminalize them, when there are so many out there who actually want to be legitimized?
Thank you, Chuck. Personally I enjoy these articles - Mr. Katz discusses the issues and values that are important to me, and does it very well. I always look forward to reading his work - and at the same time, I dread reading the posts that follow it. I continue to wade through the posts, however, looking for users with reasonable objections or additional insights. They are few and far between. I echo the same question that Mr. Katz posed in the beginning of his article - "Why haven't they stopped reading?!" I'd like to add a couple more possibilities to Chuck's 'Why Hate Katz?' list:
1. Jealousy. The readers opinions don't get the attention that the articles do. The sentiment "I've always said/thought that myself - why should he get recognition for an idea that I had?" is a prevalent one (usually expressed more simply by the words "that's not news.") It's validatiing to read your own thoughts echoed here on/., (thus they keep reading,) but for someone else to get the credit for thinking them is intolerable.
2. Resentment toward a spokesman who is not 'one of their own,' or the "who the hell is he to speak for me?" notion. Jon Katz does his best to speak for a demographic group to which he does not belong - kids. So perhaps some of the hostility derives from the fact that Jon Katz is not in highschool, is not a proficient Linux user, is simply not experiencing the causes that he champions, and he is therefore (by some people's logic) unqualified to write about people who are.
Jon Katz is good at what he does. I wish him the best and I hope he continues writing, championing any cause he damn well pleases, because the man lends some clarity and simplicity to some very complicated subjects. I'm glad he's out there stirring things up. If you're not, then as Chuck pointed out above, those clever folks at/. gave you a Preferences page.
Has anyone heard anything about the alleged "missile events"? I watched ABC's coverage most of the day (being down with the flu, happy frickin' new year,) and at one point they cut to some place in Colorado where someone in uniform stated that there had been 3 'unreportable events.' The gentleman in question would not disclose what country these events occurred in, only that they were not being reported to Russia. Did anyone else see that who wasn't doped out on Robitussin, and has anyone heard/seen anything further on it?
p.s. Thank you to all who worked on Y2K projects around the world. It would have been the disaster people feared without you.
This is the sort of thing that I look for, sifting through dozens or even hundreds of posts - someone's experience! An opinion means little if the person offering it doesn't have a point of reference. Thanks for posting from the pov of someone who knows what he's talking about.
This subject is one of endless frustration for me as a parent... I find myself having to supplement my daughter's education in ways that I never thought I would. Don't get me wrong - a large part of my job as a parent is to educate my child. The school's job, too, is to educate my child, and my daughter has been taught so far this year that Pluto is a planet and the Brontosaurus was king of the plant-eaters. The Brontosaurus was discovered to be a mismatched skeleton about 15 years ago, (replaced by the Anteosaur if memory serves, please correct me if I'm wrong, I don't want to perpetuate misinformation!) and Pluto was declassified this year.
So how do we keep our teachers updated? I think its easier for individual parents to do than for the educational system as whole. My solution is to take responsibility for the things that I learn and pass it on to my daughter's teachers... print/ clip interesting articles, maybe even write up an age-appropriate summary to include with the information. Not only is my daughter protected from misinformation, but the teacher has learned something that she will pass down to the rest of her classes.
What non-parents can do, I'm really not certain. Maybe the same thing. The problem is that most non-parents (and I'm afraid that most parents) won't care enough to do anything at all. The old addage that it takes a village to raise a child is not far from the truth. If parents were to get involved in their child's education (and their lives in general!) problems like this could be headed off. Take responsibility, parents - and for those of you who are just plain concerned, why not do the same? The need may not seem as pressing to you, but you have information that can help a great many people - its a tremendous power, use it!
Edmund Scientifics is the ultimate geek toy store as far as my family is concerned... I can't even be specific about which items because they have SO MUCH cool stuff. Knock yourselves out.
Well, this whole thread has started my mind churning again on the subject of getting an education.
I am an IT professional. I'm still amazed by that fact, to be honest, because the only 'education' I have is an 8 week night course in HTML. (No, I don't do any web work anymore, I haven't for a couple of years.)
I put my head in a few books, hacked around on my own computers at home, checked out the cabling and played with "net" commands on my non-tech employer's network in my non-tech job... put together a resume with "skills" listed first and "education" not listed at all, sent it to an datacom R&D department, and got an interview. I didn't get the job.
But I closed the interview by asking what I needed to learn, and they were kind enough to tell me - four months later, I came back and *did* get the job.
A friend of mine was just hired here. He has his degree in CS, and was hired at 6k/annum more than I was. That, to me, is really not all that much money to give up, when getting that degree would cost me considerably more than that in tuition, materials and work lost while I'm in school.
That's my story and I'm stickin' to it. Good luck!
I've always wanted to thank Mr. Bradbury for providing us with a book that should be required reading for those wishing to qualify as human - Fahrenheit 451. The edition I have contains a preface by Mr. Bradbury in which he tells the story of discovering a college text book that included the story in an edited form - all uses of profanity were cut! I don't think it gets more ironic than that...
Frankly, I don't know what to think of it either... I was personally pretty dissappointed in my fellow/.ers posts when the interview was announced. From that standpoint, we gave him a great deal of justification to call us stupid and immature. Everything from people leaving slashdot entirely over it, to people resorting to name-calling. I had hoped that we were better than that.
But the questions/comments that were submitted to him did summarize the majority's view rather well, and he did fail to answer much of anything directly. I had read a bit about him on my friends' site, (http://www.hacking.org,) a while back and was actually looking forward to hearing what he had to say. Sometimes what we read isn't the truth, as he said, and there was a part of me that was open to having some of the rumors dispelled. Alas, he said nothing to convince me that he's anything other than what my fellows had claimed him to be.
I agree, I think the worst of it is that all of this has fed his ego and his notoriety further. It really bothers me that this guy is actually *famous.*
And here I am fueling that fame by spending time writing about him. There is no end to the hypocrisy... even my own.
Slashdot Mirror
They're actually doing that now. The poster in San Diego (a few posts before yours) for instance has already been hit with ridiculously high rate increases. S/he wasn't kidding about people going out of business, either, I saw a story on that on the news a few weeks ago. Our rates (a few hundred miles north of San Diego) will go up 30% soon (just announced by our utility.) You make a good point about the companies - I see individuals making an effort around the office (not turning on their desk lights, shutting down the computers at night, etc.) but upper management hasn't said a word yet. I would think that something like this would prompt a corporate request to conserve, (but then we're a 150-person office who just implemented a recycling program LAST WEEK - sickening - so I suppose I can't expect too much of them.)
At a household level, that 30% increase is going to prompt conservation. The reason that you asked for re: why they haven't done so sooner is that when the electric was deregulated, there was a mandated freeze on the rates for a given length of time. San Diego's time expired first and they were the first to get hit with the increases - now the clock has run down for us and its our turn.
California will recover from this (remember the Carter years?) Meanwhile those of us living here need to turn the lights off and power down the computers - this isn't just about high utility rates, its about whether there's enough power in the grid to keep a family's heat on in the middle of winter. With so many power plants down (3 were shut down for routine maintenance last year and it sounds like several more have gone down since the storms started this week,) every little bit will help.
The bad news is that Southern California Edison just plastered our doors two days ago with a notice of a 30% rate increase. The good news is that there has been no news of rolling blackouts in our neck of the woods. The best news is that a new power plant has been approved - a wind farm! Its unfortunate that it takes a self-imposed crisis like this to get people to start thinking seriously about conserving what energy we have and using alternative energy sources for the future.
Article on approved wind farm
Yeah, that's how it is in my department - people on my team routinely turn down promotions because it means leaving the toys behind and replacing them with paperwork. No, thank you. The reason we (my teammates and myself) got into this industry was to get paid to play, learn a whole bunch of cool stuff and always be ahead of the technology curve - the second we step into management we're forced to toe the policy line, pressure the coders and testers to turn out crappy product in order to meet deadlines, put the company entity ahead of the individual employees and a ton of other stuff that makes us sick. The ones who have taken the promotions left the company within a year, they've hated it so much - and then we've lost our strongest talent, usually to the competitor.
Our Ask/.er needs a new job. What his employers are doing is ridiculous. S/he'll have no trouble finding a new position where s/he can be productive and happy for a few more years.
Hrm. I took the usage of "girls" to be referring to school-aged girls getting ready to choose a college/career path, and "women" to be referring to college-aged and up women.
We all have the opportunity to train for whatever we want to train for. There are a lot of reasons to train for business administration, and a lot of reasons not to train for CS - but it doesn't vary from gender to gender, it varies from person to person. If faced with the options of business college vs. a four-year CS degree and I choose business college, its not because anyone made me do it, its because I thought that a) computers are uninteresting, b) computers are arcane, or c) a CS degree will take too much time to acheive and I need a job now.
I was a bookkeeper for years before I got into computers. I came to computers late in life, not for lack of opporunity but rather for lack of interest. I was in my 20s before I had a pc at home - today I'm an engineer. However I had exactly the same educational opportunities as my male schoolmates. No school that I've ever heard of has any policy keeping girls (and here I'm talking about teenaged girls,) from enrolling in a computer class. Nor have I ever heard any teacher actively encouraging the boys to enroll in one. Nor have I ever felt any societal pressures to become one thing or another. I was a teenager in the 80s, which was only a marginally less enlightened time - but I was never given any reason to believe that I couldn't pursue whatever career I chose. I think we exited the dark ages of imposed gender career roles in the 70s. Roughly a third of the programmers in my workplace are female, and they weren't interviewed any differently than the men were.
Cringely makes what I think is an excellent point - computing is not a job, its a life-style. Its not a life-style that I, as a girl, was interested in. Its reclusive and it requires a great deal of time, focus and commitment. Bookkeeping was much easier - add, subtract, carry the one... go out for happy hour at five with my coworkers. I've had to go back to college and pursue a new degree - so what? I've had to test, interview, study, go to conferences, read, participate in discussion boards - so what? The only limitation I have is my willingness to do what's required to succeed in my field of choice.
I love the tech life-style today. I love living it, I love talking about it, I love the cons and boards and hell I even love reading RFCs. I do actively encourage my daughter to get familiar with the computer. She's in elementary school at this point, so she's got a while before she has to make any life-style or career decisions. She loves math, which I think is a good sign - who knows what she'll decide to do? She may end up being a secretary. If she does choose that path, I'll support her in it - there's absolutely nothing wrong with it! - but that will be her decision, not one imposed on her from any source aside from her own desires, ambitions, and willingness.
I already said this in a sub-post, but was anyone else amazed by how few people seemed to know who Ray Park is? The Darth Maul-esque twirl of the pipe toward the end was appreciated by about three people in the theatre.
The movie was awesome, (from this X-Men reader's perspective.) I've already seen it twice. Logan absolutely stole the show - My biggest complaints are Halle's acting, (the writer didn't help her out much,) and the hair in Rogue's mouth at the end. I wonder if those 45 cut minutes will be available on the DVD? If so, I might have to finally buckle under and get a DVD player...
Amen.
I remember back in my Wizard-reading days, the "Casting Call" page dealt with the X-Men - my then-husband and I thought Patrick Stewart was the obvious choice for Xavier, of course - but when it came to casting Logan, we couldn't think of a single actor to put in that slot. Has to be short, stocky, jaded and furry - and convincing! I was very very impressed with his portrayal. He did the role justice. I've seen other posts saying that it would be an "easy role" to play - I disagree. He made the movie worth it by himself.
By the way - was anyone else amazed by how few people in the audience knew who Ray Park is? I thought it was cool that they gave Toad the Darth Maul-esque twirling of the pipe toward the end. About three people acknowledged it in the theatre.
The particularly fast kid playing basketball was (probably) Quicksilver, and Jubilee was in the classroom sitting next to Rogue (slightly out of step with the comic - she's a much later character.) Couldn't for the life of me figure out which one was Colossus (though as another poster pointed out that may have been the one running on water.)
Will we get Sentinels in the next one?!
I don't think its a complete 180, exactly. The initial ruling was a blanket restriction. Mitnick's lawyers didn't get them to make a blanket reversal of their ruling, saying "he can work at whatever he wants to," (they've tried and failed,) but they did find that presenting his options one at a time had an effect. Basically they've gone the route of letting the court decide whether each individual case is safe. If the court doesn't think he's a threat in a particular job, they'll let him have it.
The courts set the precedent for this by allowing him to speak before Congress a few months ago. Having done that, I'm sure it was harder to say "no" to the next specific request. He still can't access computers, even for his online column - someone else will have to enter and upload it for him.
I'm speculating here, but I think that what the courts wanted was for him to a) stay away from any device that he could conceivably commit intrustion with, and b) not be allowed to make obscene amounts of money off of his celebrity status, since he obtained it by being put in jail for four years without trial. Perhaps these specific allowances don't violate either of those ideas, (I have no idea what he's being paid for his speaking engagements.)
Many, many years ago I picked up a book entitled "Don't Panic," a companion book to the HHGTtG. It was written by Neil Gaiman (I had no idea who he was at the time - today I'm a huge fan of his as well.) Mr. Gaiman spent a lot of time researching it and talking with Mr. Adams - and he answers a lot of questions that /. posters posed, but weren't moderated high enough to be submitted. (An example: who Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings was based on is addressed in the book.) Its a wonderful source of detail and trivia re: the original trilogy (I don't think So Long... is covered in it.)
Good luck finding it - I'll pull it off the shelf tonight and append this comment with the publisher's info as soon as I can.
>> is it really that bad?
Yep. It is.
I had to see it on general principle, (the book is really good and L. Ron Hubbard is an exceptional writer,) and I actually had high hopes for it - the story ended right where I thought it would, (the book goes on for another 700 pages after the final event in the movie.) I think anyone who has NOT read the book would be hopelessly lost - the 'setup' scenes do nothing toward explaining the hero's history.
I was terribly disappointed in Travolta's portrayal of the villain, and I didn't find anyone else's performance convincing either. The effects were not note-worthy enough to make the movie worth seeing. Even the music was inappropriate.
It was a very ambitious project, and I admire them for trying - unfortunately they didn't pull it off. I'm sure that there were a lot of people squirming during the premier, and a lot of hasty retreats when (or before) it was over.
If movie prices are as high there as they are here, wait for the video.
It seems that very few posters are getting the point - if the comments were recorded on paper, video, audio, etc., it would be treated as libel - which again, the police are not involved in.
Libel is handled as a civil case, in a lawsuit filed by one of the insulted parties against the creator of the libelous commentary. A previous poster suggested that a part of the normal procedure would be to request and receive a "cease and desist" order, asking that the webpage be taken down, (or in the print media, that the article not be printed, or a retraction be printed if it was too late.) In no case would a person be ARRESTED and have his or her belongings confiscated (paper, pen, Xerox machine, printing press - whatever medium was used to create these defamatory comments.)
This kid was treated as a criminal. He was arrested. He had his computer confiscated (and the odds that he'll get it back are slim to none.) For insulting someone. That is not how this system is supposed to work.
If we look at this further, though, even libel doesn't really hold much water.
An interesting parallel would be 2600's battles with NBC and Verizon. 2600 said some unpleasant things about them (in the form of registered domain names.) Even these enormous corporations know better than to think they're going to get anywhere by claiming that the statements "NBCsucks" and "VerizonREALLYsucks" are anywhere near libelous. Both corporations have had to go the loophole route, citing anti-cybersquatting and copyright protections laws to sue 2600 with. And I don't think they're going to win those, either.
Now, what if Mr. Goldstein were arrested for registering those domain names, and the 2600 servers confiscated as evidence? If they printed these things in their hardcopy magazine, would they be arrested and their printing presses confiscated? No. They *might* be sued. But probably not. Americans are raised with the idea of Freedom of Speech - it's a rallying cry more powerful than any other.
It *is* the computer that is at issue, and the injustice done to that kid sets a precedent. If its okay to have criminalized this one kid in Nowhere, Utah, then its going to be okay to criminalize you.
Well spoken - I hope this post makes it to the top.
Which is where my questions come in. When I post, I am allowing anyone who happens upon this url to read what I've written. Katz (and anyone else) can do whatever they like with my words (as long as they remain my words and are not altered while still crediting me.)
But when I email somebody, I'm emailing that person - not an entire community. When I write a letter to a friend, I do not expect that letter to show up in a book without my explicit permission. I would be rather likely to sue if anything that I wrote in that letter could damage me, or if I felt I should be compensated for having contributed material to the book that my letter is published in.
Where are the lawyers? Let us know what you are when you post, so we can weed out the arm-chair litigators and know who we should be listening to.
A few other people have posted the idea that most of the people who actually know what they're doing aren't spending their time intruding into our systems. I believe this. Case in point is one of my co-workers, a truly brilliant hacker (and yes, I'm going to use this word as it was originally intended,) whose calling is in security. Yes, he roots our boxes on a regular basis. Yes, he tells us that he did so, and how. And then he helps us plug the holes. He has had me watch as he gets my password off what I thought was a secure system, (result: we got one that IS secure.) He also helps us find the holes in our new products, and is teaching the rest of us to do the same, (our work is in the early developement stages, so we're in a perfect position to find and fix the flaws.) I should probably add that I knew him before he worked here and had a good idea of his character before recruiting him.
The script kiddies grow up, and some of them do continue to learn. Those that do can be your greatest security asset. Why lure in the bad eggs and criminalize them, when there are so many out there who actually want to be legitimized?
Thank you, Chuck. Personally I enjoy these articles - Mr. Katz discusses the issues and values that are important to me, and does it very well. I always look forward to reading his work - and at the same time, I dread reading the posts that follow it. I continue to wade through the posts, however, looking for users with reasonable objections or additional insights. They are few and far between. I echo the same question that Mr. Katz posed in the beginning of his article - "Why haven't they stopped reading?!" I'd like to add a couple more possibilities to Chuck's 'Why Hate Katz?' list:
/., (thus they keep reading,) but for someone else to get the credit for thinking them is intolerable.
/. gave you a Preferences page.
1. Jealousy. The readers opinions don't get the attention that the articles do. The sentiment "I've always said/thought that myself - why should he get recognition for an idea that I had?" is a prevalent one (usually expressed more simply by the words "that's not news.") It's validatiing to read your own thoughts echoed here on
2. Resentment toward a spokesman who is not 'one of their own,' or the "who the hell is he to speak for me?" notion. Jon Katz does his best to speak for a demographic group to which he does not belong - kids. So perhaps some of the hostility derives from the fact that Jon Katz is not in highschool, is not a proficient Linux user, is simply not experiencing the causes that he champions, and he is therefore (by some people's logic) unqualified to write about people who are.
Jon Katz is good at what he does. I wish him the best and I hope he continues writing, championing any cause he damn well pleases, because the man lends some clarity and simplicity to some very complicated subjects. I'm glad he's out there stirring things up. If you're not, then as Chuck pointed out above, those clever folks at
Has anyone heard anything about the alleged "missile events"? I watched ABC's coverage most of the day (being down with the flu, happy frickin' new year,) and at one point they cut to some place in Colorado where someone in uniform stated that there had been 3 'unreportable events.' The gentleman in question would not disclose what country these events occurred in, only that they were not being reported to Russia.
Did anyone else see that who wasn't doped out on Robitussin, and has anyone heard/seen anything further on it?
p.s. Thank you to all who worked on Y2K projects around the world. It would have been the disaster people feared without you.
This is the sort of thing that I look for, sifting through dozens or even hundreds of posts - someone's experience! An opinion means little if the person offering it doesn't have a point of reference. Thanks for posting from the pov of someone who knows what he's talking about.
Have you meta-moderated today?
The NSA refused to comment. CNN's sources were people outside the agency. Read the article again.
This subject is one of endless frustration for me as a parent... I find myself having to supplement my daughter's education in ways that I never thought I would. Don't get me wrong - a large part of my job as a parent is to educate my child. The school's job, too, is to educate my child, and my daughter has been taught so far this year that Pluto is a planet and the Brontosaurus was king of the plant-eaters. The Brontosaurus was discovered to be a mismatched skeleton about 15 years ago, (replaced by the Anteosaur if memory serves, please correct me if I'm wrong, I don't want to perpetuate misinformation!) and Pluto was declassified this year.
So how do we keep our teachers updated? I think its easier for individual parents to do than for the educational system as whole. My solution is to take responsibility for the things that I learn and pass it on to my daughter's teachers... print/ clip interesting articles, maybe even write up an age-appropriate summary to include with the information. Not only is my daughter protected from misinformation, but the teacher has learned something that she will pass down to the rest of her classes.
What non-parents can do, I'm really not certain. Maybe the same thing. The problem is that most non-parents (and I'm afraid that most parents) won't care enough to do anything at all. The old addage that it takes a village to raise a child is not far from the truth. If parents were to get involved in their child's education (and their lives in general!) problems like this could be headed off. Take responsibility, parents - and for those of you who are just plain concerned, why not do the same? The need may not seem as pressing to you, but you have information that can help a great many people - its a tremendous power, use it!
Thanks for bringing up such a worthy subject.
Edmund Scientifics is the ultimate geek toy store as far as my family is concerned... I can't even be specific about which items because they have SO MUCH cool stuff. Knock yourselves out.
Well, this whole thread has started my mind churning again on the subject of getting an education.
I am an IT professional. I'm still amazed by that fact, to be honest, because the only 'education' I have is an 8 week night course in HTML. (No, I don't do any web work anymore, I haven't for a couple of years.)
I put my head in a few books, hacked around on my own computers at home, checked out the cabling and played with "net" commands on my non-tech employer's network in my non-tech job... put together a resume with "skills" listed first and "education" not listed at all, sent it to an datacom R&D department, and got an interview. I didn't get the job.
But I closed the interview by asking what I needed to learn, and they were kind enough to tell me - four months later, I came back and *did* get the job.
A friend of mine was just hired here. He has his degree in CS, and was hired at 6k/annum more than I was. That, to me, is really not all that much money to give up, when getting that degree would cost me considerably more than that in tuition, materials and work lost while I'm in school.
That's my story and I'm stickin' to it. Good luck!
I've always wanted to thank Mr. Bradbury for providing us with a book that should be required reading for those wishing to qualify as human - Fahrenheit 451. The edition I have contains a preface by Mr. Bradbury in which he tells the story of discovering a college text book that included the story in an edited form - all uses of profanity were cut! I don't think it gets more ironic than that...
Good luck, Mr. Bradbury, and thank you.
Frankly, I don't know what to think of it either... I was personally pretty dissappointed in my fellow /.ers posts when the interview was announced. From that standpoint, we gave him a great deal of justification to call us stupid and immature. Everything from people leaving slashdot entirely over it, to people resorting to name-calling. I had hoped that we were better than that.
But the questions/comments that were submitted to him did summarize the majority's view rather well, and he did fail to answer much of anything directly. I had read a bit about him on my friends' site, (http://www.hacking.org,) a while back and was actually looking forward to hearing what he had to say. Sometimes what we read isn't the truth, as he said, and there was a part of me that was open to having some of the rumors dispelled. Alas, he said nothing to convince me that he's anything other than what my fellows had claimed him to be.
I agree, I think the worst of it is that all of this has fed his ego and his notoriety further. It really bothers me that this guy is actually *famous.*
And here I am fueling that fame by spending time writing about him. There is no end to the hypocrisy... even my own.