bear in mind that it has never been legal to publish whatever you feel like about someone else.
A working Freenet wouldn't legalize libel, it would just make it essentially unenforceable (unless the comments gave away who you were). And yeah, I think that would be a good thing - we could stand to use technology to make quite a few laws irrelevant in this country (and others).
Every time the subject of freedom of speech comes up on Slashdot, some idiot comes along, chomping at the bit, to say "freedom of speech does not mean freedom from liability" (which has as much semantic meaning as the statement "purple crayon bitterness toggle toggle guide evergreen"). I used to just assume it was just this one guy who had somehow managed to chew through the restraints and gotten access to a computer before the orderlies re-sedated him, but I notice that two separate posters have applied this bit of "logic" on this story, so apparently this bit of brain damage is somewhat contagious.
I'm with you up to "know your professor's office hours and ask questions there". College professors "encourage" that sort of thing (by saying you should do it), but I gave up on it after several years of trying. First of all, the questions I want to ask (and I doubt I'm alone here) are usually along the lines of, "Everything you said in the lecture made sense. The textbook made sense. All the exercises and homework problems made sense. I still tanked on the last exam. What's up with that?" If I had a question like, say, "how does the chain rule for derivatives work again?", I'm sure he'd have a great answer, but I can look that up in the textbook. Instead, I end up trying to formulate a semi-intelligent sounding "I don't get this whole 'analytic geometry' thing" type of question. He goes off on a tangent, reciting what he already presented in class, and sums up with "did that answer your question?" I can either say no and go back to step 1 or nod enthusiastically and go back home and try to divine from the textbook what he might end up asking me on an exam.
- watch for right triangles. One things that almost screwed me when I took the GRE was a simple problem involving a right triangle. Like an idiot, I almost didn't recognize it as a right triangle because the 90-degree angle was on top, not on the bottom like you usually see it drawn.
I'm impressed that you've figured out how to use the internet, seeing as how you were clearly put into hypersleep 30 years ago and were just thawed out yesterday. I think you're going to be surprised how many other things have changed since 1976.
Actually, Senator Ted Stevens has released a good introduction to the basics into the public domain. If you're having trouble with the link above, let me know and I'll see if I can send you an internet.
I love this country and I'd gladly give up privacy to ensure that my children are safer.
What, exactly, is it then, that you love? When you say "this country", you mean the land mass between Canada and Mexico? If the country shifted north or south, would you stop loving it? Do you love certain parts of the land or the whole thing? What if we annexed Cuba, would you start loving that?
If it's just that you love the land that falls under the rulership of the United States government, can I then presume that you would continue loving it regardless of who was actually making the rules for it? If Osama Bin Laden were to take over and institute the Taliban here, would you continue to love your country? After all, it's still the same country, right?
The truth is, America doesn't refer to a land mass - America refers to an idea. A concept. A different way of organizing a society. One where privacy is an absolute right. One where the law restricts what the government can do more than it restricts what the citizenry can do. One where your children can be safe not only from terrorists, but from government officials with more power than one human being should have. That's what it is that you love. Too bad that won't dawn on you until it's too late.
Probably running complete end-to-end regression tests every time he made even a minor code change, as his boss likely required him to do in the name of "efficiency".
I got my first professional programming job in 1990, back in the days before even the term "methodology" had entered the lexicon. After just a few months, practices like what we now call unit testing and refactoring seemed obvious to me - so obvious, in fact, that I just started doing them. Along comes my boss (who's never tried to so much as launch a text editor - back then, it was common for programmers to have bosses who weren't even terribly comfortable with computers) who asks me what I'm doing. I explain that I'm setting up a program to test the program I'm working on (and making subtle changes to the target program itself so that it can be "unit tested") and he berates me for wasting time. As a beginning programmer, I have no choice but to figure he knows something I don't know, so I abandon what I'm doing. (Actually, I continue to do it in secret, because nobody's proposing any more effective ways to get my job done).
Fast forward about seven or eight years - Martin Fowler publishes a book called "Refactoring", Kent Beck publishes a book called "Extreme Programming Explained". My boss introduces me to these revolutionary concepts that will change the way I program. Now I can finally begin writing unit tests in the open and admit to it freely! I start to write unit tests and subtly refactor programs so that they can be unit tested... and the programmers around me berate me for disturbing their pristine, pure code (that works just fine, thank you very much!) by removing things like hardcoded file names and IP addresses in the name of some new-fangled, high-falutin "extreme programming" concept. Sigh...
"We'll like an application to do X as we have Y. It needs to react within T seconds and it needs to communicate with A,B, and C"
Yep, that sounds like every spec I've ever gotten... oh, wait, you mean they say actual things instead of just saying the letters X, Y, T, A, B and C? Wow, you're lucky.
That might just be an old bartenders' myth though - I've never bothered to verify it.
When I did my TABC certification (Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission) about 6 years ago, the instructor told us that this was true (in fact, it was a question on the test) - if somebody's over 18, they can be served alcohol if they're married to somebody over 21. If they're not telling you this in the certification course any more, it's probably not true any more (I'm assuming that you still have to be TABC certified to serve alcoholic beverages in the state of Texas).
Except for the part about "no external libraries of any kind..." Sockets are implemented by libc.so (or winsock.dll). So you have to code your own TCP/IP stack, you'd also have to write your own Ethernet driver, since that's implemented by a driver module library. You'd have to support all the different sorts of cards, too, since you don't know what hardware platform they're going to run it on.
The fact that we can't fix everything does not mean that we shouldn't make life better for those that we can
You left out a couple parts of this sentence:
The fact that we can't fix everything does not mean that we shouldn't tear apart every fiber of the fabric of our society, hound innocent people, make criminals of the nonviolent, jail victims of circumstance, and cast aside the basic principles of a free civilization in a misguided attempt to make life better for those that we can apply knee-jerk emotions rather than reason to.
Slashdot Mirror
A working Freenet wouldn't legalize libel, it would just make it essentially unenforceable (unless the comments gave away who you were). And yeah, I think that would be a good thing - we could stand to use technology to make quite a few laws irrelevant in this country (and others).
That will be quite a challenge on your part, seeing as how you don't know who I am.
Every time the subject of freedom of speech comes up on Slashdot, some idiot comes along, chomping at the bit, to say "freedom of speech does not mean freedom from liability" (which has as much semantic meaning as the statement "purple crayon bitterness toggle toggle guide evergreen"). I used to just assume it was just this one guy who had somehow managed to chew through the restraints and gotten access to a computer before the orderlies re-sedated him, but I notice that two separate posters have applied this bit of "logic" on this story, so apparently this bit of brain damage is somewhat contagious.
Anybody still beleive that Americans don't need anonymous internet options like Freenet? (Assuming, that is, that they EVER get the thing to work).
Actually, he got the story wrong - the $0.00 check was supposed to crash the billing system, too.
I'm with you up to "know your professor's office hours and ask questions there". College professors "encourage" that sort of thing (by saying you should do it), but I gave up on it after several years of trying. First of all, the questions I want to ask (and I doubt I'm alone here) are usually along the lines of, "Everything you said in the lecture made sense. The textbook made sense. All the exercises and homework problems made sense. I still tanked on the last exam. What's up with that?" If I had a question like, say, "how does the chain rule for derivatives work again?", I'm sure he'd have a great answer, but I can look that up in the textbook. Instead, I end up trying to formulate a semi-intelligent sounding "I don't get this whole 'analytic geometry' thing" type of question. He goes off on a tangent, reciting what he already presented in class, and sums up with "did that answer your question?" I can either say no and go back to step 1 or nod enthusiastically and go back home and try to divine from the textbook what he might end up asking me on an exam.
- watch for right triangles. One things that almost screwed me when I took the GRE was a simple problem involving a right triangle. Like an idiot, I almost didn't recognize it as a right triangle because the 90-degree angle was on top, not on the bottom like you usually see it drawn.
I'm impressed that you've figured out how to use the internet, seeing as how you were clearly put into hypersleep 30 years ago and were just thawed out yesterday. I think you're going to be surprised how many other things have changed since 1976.
Your sig seems a tad ironic, considering the tone of your post.
whip and chains leads to ... employees to loose moral
I think you meant "lose morale"... what you actually described sounds like a fun place to work.
Good to hear you're busy creating the next Enron.
hi-def TV to watch Dancin' with the Stars
"You have nothing to lose but your Audi, hi-def TV and your $250 a month cellphone bill" is not really a winning slogan.
On the other hand, "You have nothing to lose but 'Dancin' with the Stars'" might actually get my attention.
Actually, Senator Ted Stevens has released a good introduction to the basics into the public domain. If you're having trouble with the link above, let me know and I'll see if I can send you an internet.
Perhaps it's time you started using FireFox so that you can install the "intentional irony detector" plugin.
Actually, it was established several years ago that it was actually a decline in piracy that led to global warming.
What, exactly, is it then, that you love? When you say "this country", you mean the land mass between Canada and Mexico? If the country shifted north or south, would you stop loving it? Do you love certain parts of the land or the whole thing? What if we annexed Cuba, would you start loving that?
If it's just that you love the land that falls under the rulership of the United States government, can I then presume that you would continue loving it regardless of who was actually making the rules for it? If Osama Bin Laden were to take over and institute the Taliban here, would you continue to love your country? After all, it's still the same country, right?
The truth is, America doesn't refer to a land mass - America refers to an idea. A concept. A different way of organizing a society. One where privacy is an absolute right. One where the law restricts what the government can do more than it restricts what the citizenry can do. One where your children can be safe not only from terrorists, but from government officials with more power than one human being should have. That's what it is that you love. Too bad that won't dawn on you until it's too late.
f.) Invade Iraq.
Probably running complete end-to-end regression tests every time he made even a minor code change, as his boss likely required him to do in the name of "efficiency".
I got my first professional programming job in 1990, back in the days before even the term "methodology" had entered the lexicon. After just a few months, practices like what we now call unit testing and refactoring seemed obvious to me - so obvious, in fact, that I just started doing them. Along comes my boss (who's never tried to so much as launch a text editor - back then, it was common for programmers to have bosses who weren't even terribly comfortable with computers) who asks me what I'm doing. I explain that I'm setting up a program to test the program I'm working on (and making subtle changes to the target program itself so that it can be "unit tested") and he berates me for wasting time. As a beginning programmer, I have no choice but to figure he knows something I don't know, so I abandon what I'm doing. (Actually, I continue to do it in secret, because nobody's proposing any more effective ways to get my job done).
Fast forward about seven or eight years - Martin Fowler publishes a book called "Refactoring", Kent Beck publishes a book called "Extreme Programming Explained". My boss introduces me to these revolutionary concepts that will change the way I program. Now I can finally begin writing unit tests in the open and admit to it freely! I start to write unit tests and subtly refactor programs so that they can be unit tested... and the programmers around me berate me for disturbing their pristine, pure code (that works just fine, thank you very much!) by removing things like hardcoded file names and IP addresses in the name of some new-fangled, high-falutin "extreme programming" concept. Sigh...
Yep, that sounds like every spec I've ever gotten... oh, wait, you mean they say actual things instead of just saying the letters X, Y, T, A, B and C? Wow, you're lucky.
Yeah, I have one of those every time I decide to try XP.
When I did my TABC certification (Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission) about 6 years ago, the instructor told us that this was true (in fact, it was a question on the test) - if somebody's over 18, they can be served alcohol if they're married to somebody over 21. If they're not telling you this in the certification course any more, it's probably not true any more (I'm assuming that you still have to be TABC certified to serve alcoholic beverages in the state of Texas).
Woohoo! Oh, wait... gardens. Umm... no thanks, dude.
Yeah, I tried to watch "Big Brother" once and if I hadn't shut it off when I did, I'm sure it would have killed me.
Except for the part about "no external libraries of any kind..." Sockets are implemented by libc.so (or winsock.dll). So you have to code your own TCP/IP stack, you'd also have to write your own Ethernet driver, since that's implemented by a driver module library. You'd have to support all the different sorts of cards, too, since you don't know what hardware platform they're going to run it on.
You left out a couple parts of this sentence:
The fact that we can't fix everything does not mean that we shouldn't tear apart every fiber of the fabric of our society, hound innocent people, make criminals of the nonviolent, jail victims of circumstance, and cast aside the basic principles of a free civilization in a misguided attempt to make life better for those that we can apply knee-jerk emotions rather than reason to.