You do realize that the president appoints Supreme Court and Federal Curcuit Court judges, don't you? That's probably the most major issue you could even think of. The supreme court is pretty much split half-and-half, and whoever gets elected will probably appoint two new judges, to tip the scales one way or the other. Read the September 9th issue of The Nation (http://www.thenation.com/index.mhtml?i=20001009 - the articles section) for just *how much* that matters.
The president does matter in that respect, and also his veto power. Try to imagine what the country would be like today if we had a republican president as well as a republican house and senate for the past 6 years.
Yes, it's their right. But it is also our right, as consumers and users of their technology, to complain. Is there something wrong with that? Do we have to accept silently everything we don't like from money-grubbing corporations because 'it's their right' to screw us over? Well, that seems to be their party line and you're buying it. We have a right to demand standards and openness, and yes, they have a right to refuse. That's capitalism... they give us what we want or we find it somewhere else.
We could quite conceivably send a probe in that direction well within the next century.
I hereby request that for the rest of the year people fully qualify the century of which they speak. Given that no one can definitively decide when the 21st century starts, I can't tell if you mean the 21st or 22nd century, since it all depends on which position you support.
Not quite. That's religious right propeganda you obviously fell right into. This country was founded by primarily deists, and atheists, or something of the sort (ie. NOT christian). All the rest were protestant. Look here.
> For example, harsher penalties for actually selling or posessing illegal drugs.
They couldn't get much harsher. That's part of the problem. There are some obvious things like prison overcrowding, but also more subtle things you wouldn't notice, such as 20% of African Americans being ineligible to vote due primarily to felony drug laws. Being convicted of a felony now also carries the penalty of being ineligible for foodstamps for the rest of your life (except in some states who have opted out of that, such as New York). Poor people are targeted much more, due most probably to ineffective legal defense, and denying them foodstamps, while they're poor, seems awfully strange to me, felon or not.
Stiffer penalties you say? At least consider the consequences before you add yet another racist, class-biased penalty to drug laws, besides the possibly naive notion that these things will help prevent drug use.
For the record, my personal opinion is that jailing people for drug use is a blatant human rights violation. Addiction is considered by almost everyone in medical professions to be a medical problem. We don't put people in jail for having AIDS, do we? Treat it as a medical problem, not a criminal one. Who knows, it might even just work.
I think most drugs are disgusting and I truly wish they didn't exist. I've had my own experiences with them, and many people close to me. My girlfriend is a cocaine addict, though she's been clean for about a year now (notice I used the present tense; you're never, ever a "former addict," it's for the rest of your life). However, despite my general disgust, I don't forsee any good coming out of this war on drugs no matter how stiff you make the penalties, and no matter how much of a police state you make it. Users will use. Help them stop, don't punish them when they learn from their mistakes.
Obviously companies aren't concerned that the information is correct at all; they're more concerned that it's true. That said, there are many *many* companies which routinely spread lies and misinformation (they call it marketing). Certain chemical companies, for example, have multimillion dollar PR campaigns to convince the public their products are environmentally safe, while at the same time spending a comparable sum in lobbying efforts to get environmental protections weakened.
All these companies are doing the same thing as the tobacco companies have been exposed as doing for years, yet no one flinches when McDonalds blatantly breaks fair animal treatment laws, or when Disney blatantly breaks labor laws. Why? Advertising, PR, marketing. Tobacco companies have been restricted in their means of advertisment for a long time, which means any PR moves by them are ineffective. Plus, they're the perfect scapegoat. The horrible things that tobacco companies have done are so horrible that no one wants to believe Disney is just as, if not more, ethically suspect. Disney, the one who makes all those cute cartoons and owns mickey mouse.
Anyway, I'm really not going off-topic. It's not about punishing libel or anything like that, it's about censoring the truth, it's about union busting, it's about maintaining control over the captive public whose wrath it seems has no (monetary) limit given the sums now expected in anti-tobacco cases. This is *exactly* the thing oppressive governments do. What you don't know can't hurt you, they say. Well, it's more like what your enemies (consumers) don't know can't hurt the companies.
eWatch may have their nice little mission statement about "Stopping the spread of lies" but whatever their mission, the companies they serve have their own agenda.
And I wonder, who decides what's truth and what is lies? Why, the lawyer with the biggest salary, of course.
Consider if Galileo is placed on a trajectory to exit our solar system. Eventially, someday, in some way our little Galileo will impact something in the inuverse and contaminate it. We're just as much a part of the galaxy as everything else in it and we will "contaminate" no matter how carefull.
Not likely. Perhaps you forget how empty space really is. Consider that two spiral galaxies such as ours can pass *THROUGH* each other, and very few, if any, collisions between stars occur. Now a couple hundred thousand stars in such close proximity never collide, the chances of a single spacecraft running into something, and even further something capable of sustaining life in any degree, I don't think there's much to worry about.
Linguistic Intelligence, Logical-matematical, Bodily-kinesthetic (think woodworking, etc), Spatial (Architecure and what-not), Musical, Interpersonal, and Intrapersonal (geeks).
These aren't exclusive. Everyone has all seven, but most people have a specialty, one type of intelligence is much stronger than the others. This fits well with how we evolved...
We're pack animals. We live in groups, and each person must have a function in that group. Some are leaders, some are workers, and ever since we moved into europe long long ago, some are creators and inventors. This hasn't changed if you think about it. It's just on a much larger scale. The leaders filter to "the top" as politicians and businessmen, the "grunts" stay in the lower classes, building things, hunting domesticated plants and animals to feed the pack, etc., but what makes us different from most other species in this respect (and specifically in this respect) is the other people. They make the tools the hunters use, the shelter they all sleep in. The people we call intelligent, but specifically, strongly intelligent in logical, spatial, and intrapersonal intelligences.
It's believed this type of person began to appear when we started moving into europe, to adapt to survive the harsh conditions (it was during an ice age remember), and to compete with the Neandrathal. Our bodies weren't adapted to the conditions, so our minds adapted. Linguistic and intrapersonal intelligence was also key, because the sharing of information between "tribes" during this period was very important, but without the "smart" ones to figure out new ways to live, kill, and eat, there wouldn't be anything worth communicating.
It's also worth mentioning that the artistic didn't appear until about the same time. Homo Sapiens for most of our history weren't that artistic. Once we started moving into europe, from africa (as the prevailing theory believes we did), cave paintings first started to appear. Now, I love looking at psychology from an evolutionary point of view, but for some reason I can't figure this one out. Most of what's been said about that is they'd be used as a teaching tool, to help teach their children about the world before they had to go into it. This makes a lot of sense because the most dangerous time for most mammals would be the time when first venturing from their homes. I'm not sure I like that idea quite as much though because it doesn't seem there was any necessity beforehand. Then again, necessity isn't always what drives evolution. The artists found a niche within our niche, so all the others helped them survive, for providing that service.
I'm really not meaning to go off-topic; The point is that we don't need to be evolving, though often I wish we would. We live in the same social structure as we always have, but on a huge scale, and with many more specialties. We may even still be evolving our intelligence to become even more specialized. Let's face it, everyone who lives serves a purpose for the rest, whether they're genetically messed up or not. If they had no purpose, they simply wouldn't survive, even today. Some people are meant to be presidents, some are meant to work in fast food. If everyone were mathematical geniuses, the world could not function.
Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in. -- Sydney J. Harris
Even "Individuals" band together with those like them, and that's probably the only thing we have going for us.
I hate using words like 'us' and 'we' because I never presume to speak for everyone, but truth be told, there is a growing 'us'. The anti-corporate sentiment is growing. You might not think it, but Labor, environmentalists, netheads, are all moving in the same direction: against corporate domination.
It's clear that the economy is the worlds focus now. The cold war is over, but the mentality hasn't changed: we're still fighting an enemy, still using the same tactics as we did in the cold war, but now instead of fighting against communism, we're fighting for free-market captialism and the World Economy. Yet, we're going about it in all the wrong ways.
Just like during the cold war, it was democracy, civil liberties, and human rights be damned! We're fighting a good cause. Wasn't that supposed to change? It hasn't; the cause has changed, the tactics have not. Are YOU willing to give up your rights as a human because you want a better economy? If not, how can you sit idly by and let oppressive governments around the world do it to their people, with the full support of the US Government and the WTO?
Pandering to corporations by the world governments, in the name of the economy, has got to stop. With labor, it affects both workers in other countries and workers at home. Obviously, companies will move their operations elsewhere, where it's cheaper, where they can exploit people all they want. With environmentalists, it's mostly the same thing: less controls or non-existant controls on companies environmental policies means cheaper operations; that's where the companies will go. With myself, and many others like me, its government sponsored corporate attacks on our rights as citizens, as human beings. I'm neither a strict environmentalist nor a union member, but we share something, a common goal, a common desire, and so they have my full support, just as, I'm sure, I would have theirs.
If only they knew. I wouldn't say we're a quiet bunch (we, as in, those like me), but we're so different that the more traditional groups can't see our interests are anything of the same. The progressives (which is what they are) need to know we stand with them, they need to know we're in the same boat, and god dammit if we could get away from our computers for a little while and out into the real world maybe something would get done. Sorry, I'll stop preaching now:)
I don't care who doesn't agree with what I'm saying. Go ahead and tell me if you want, I'm not listening. I just want to get the point across that we, those like me, aren't alone here. We've got a lot of people on our side in the traditional world, who just don't know they're on our side yet. Why don't we let them know?
I apologize if this doesn't sound very coherent, as I'm having a bad day.
With strict copyright laws, congress is indirectly legislating censorship of the people. By strengthening copyright, companies are able to use legal means to censor anyone they wish, be it other companies, competitors, or consumers. While congress wasn't actively attempting to legislate censorship, inadvertantly they have, to the advantage of corporations who it can now be argued are agents of the government.
That last statement might seem a little strange, so bear with me. It is in the best interests of the government for its companies to do well, to strengthen the economy and keep it strong. They are essentially employing the companies to remain profitable, which they do by censoring others using copyright laws.
Anyway, I'm not against intellectual property; what I *AM* against is congress' obsession with 'protecting' the rights of corporations regardless of the consequences on people's rights. I don't have a problem with copyright per se, but excessive protection of intellectual property is in my opinion unconstitutional: laws passed for a purpose that is not censorhip, and inadvertantly cause censorhip, *are* unconstitutional. The courts have ruled this way before. Government mandated "ratings" on speech are a form of censorship, and aren't tolerated, so it shouldn't be much of a stretch to say government delegated protections on property that promote censorhip are too unconstitutional.
Re:balancing capitalism and (pure) communism
on
Thus Spake Stallman
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· Score: 3
I was talking about this today, before the interview came up. You see, I was a CS student a while ago, and had to stop going for various reasons. I grew up wanting to be a computer programmer, but as I approached college, and finally entered, I changed my mind. I'm not comfortable making software for profit or personal gain. I realized I never had been. It doesn't sit well with me at all. Yet, I still loved programming (though as my education progressed I fell in love with math and will probably major in that instead when I do go back to school). What was I to do? I could never work in some proprietary software house and feel comfortable with it. I decided to teach. Teaching is the perfect way to go, IMO. You can still make money (though teachers aren't that well payed), you have the satisfaction of knowing you're doing good for others, and you can still do whatever else you want. CS teachers in particular must have great lives, so it appears to me. I won't have to give up my idealism to survive, and that's the most important thing to me.
It should be noted I'm not a Free Software zealot. All this happened long before I was intimately acquainted with Free Software at all.
Things never do work out the way we want; I am going to have to give up my ideals (unless I can find some kind of job in Open Source, which is too much to ask). I can satisfy myself by saying it will only be temporary, but I'll still have to live with a profound sense of guilt.
I believe my situation fits in with what you're saying, even though my philosophies and ideals are independent of those of RMS and Free Software for the most part; it's still in the same league.
Once upon a time, advertising used to be so cost-ineffective little more was done other than hanging a sign over one's business's door. Then some ingenious man invented the movable press. Even so, advertising wasn't that effective. There was no good way to distribute it but pay some people to pass out pamphlets on the street. It just didn't reach that many people. Newspapers became the best mode of advertising available at the time and remained so until modern postal services began: snail mail spam, originally in the form of the Sears Catalogue.
Radio opened another door, and a much more effective one than what came before. Now the listeners were captive audiences, ie. they couldn't simply not read an ad that didn't catch their eye, or throw out the piece of junk they got in the mail. All they could do was stop listening or change the station. It was relatively cheap and could reach large audiences, and you had a good way to measure how many people were actually listening to your solicitations. Thus began the era of modern advertising.
Television soon took over, and, while more effective than radio, was also much more expensive. It kept the system relatively clean. It still cost money to advertise, and the more effective advertising you wanted, the more you had to pay (better time slots, tv over radio, all cost more).
And now we have email. Your email address is becoming just as easy to get nowadays as your snail mail address. It's just as effective, if not more-so, than snail-mail spam (easier access to the product if it's online), it's *CLOSE TO FREE*, and it's INSTANT (more or less). If you're sly about it, you could encode the url's in your email to query your web address and see how many people actually clicked through (instantly guaging how many people not only went for more information, but how many people actually BOUGHT the product online). It's almost the perfect medium for advertising, if people didn't hate it so much.
What's my point? My point is, the more efficient and ubiquitous communication becomes, the more intrusive advertising can become. And that's just what spam is, in all forms: intrusive. Most people don't want to see commercials on TV, hear them on radio, get them in their mailbox OR their inbox; it's all downright intrusive. The worst case yet is starting to show, too: as email becomes even more ubiquitous, you'll start seeing more and more spam, from legit and non-legit companies alike, and it will be more and more intrusive, and eventually, given its efficiency, become THE MOST intrusive advertising delivery method in existance.
Perl is difficult to learn for anyone used to a different language with a more regular syntax, and this surely puts people off.
You're joking, right? You shouldn't generalize so much. Two years ago, when I learned perl, I already know C/C++, Tcl, VB, and a host of other languages. Guess what? I took me TWO DAYS to learn enough about perl to use it with nothing but man perl and a telnet window.
Maybe I'm a genius or something, but I doubt it. That it's hard to learn when you know other more structured languages is a claim I've never heard before.
Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.
It seems whenever anyone starts calling their little group a community everything starts falling apart. Everyone now feels justified in making demans upon everyone else; everyone starts to think in the "mass mind" and it's only a matter of time until the tyrrany of the majority destroys everything. There is no community. There's a slashdot community, I'll give you that, but if slashdot is the primary representative of Free Software, all hope in civilization is lost. Free Software, Open Source, whatever you want to call it, I don't see a community. I see everyone as an individual, all with equal rights, specifically the right to use their software however they god damn want to. So we all share something. Isn't that nice? It doesn't make it a community. It MUSTN'T be a community, or it will destroy itself over the petty demands of "the community."
Now, rant over I think. You can't blame slashdot for this backdoor mishap. They got the story from WSJ and C|Net and whatever other websites published it. We've all complained before that slashdot editors should do some fact checking before posting stories that don't sound credible, but really, if you believe everything you read... things like this really aren't worth complaining about. Relax and shrug it off. No one is infallible.
Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.
It really depends on where you are. I live in Syracuse NY (upstate, for those who think The City is all there is to NY). There are a few good IT jobs around here.. administrating, programming, etc. (mostly Oracle-related, however). However, there are so FEW IT related jobs in this area (upstate NY is still living in the 80s economically) that it's hard as hell to find a job you're actually qualified for. I've had my resume on DICE for about a month now, and so far, I've had tons of emails and calls from companies in New York City and California, but all my searching and waiting, not a single job has popped up in Syracuse that I could actually do, and that I'm actually qualified to do.
Those that I know in the tri-state area say that getting an IT job there is incredibly easy, and I believe it. A simple search on dice will show you that - there are SO MANY jobs available it's not even funny (at least not to be because I don't have the money to reloacate).
It all comes down to the area you're in. It looks like NYC and Cali may in fact have a shortage of workers, because their tech economies are booming, and there are more businesses than workers. In places like upstate NY, where the economy is still sub-par, it's the other way around.
Isn't that how unemployment works in every industry?
Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.
Aren't databases copyrightable? If they are, breaking this encryption is illegal under the DMCA, since the information encrypted is copyrighted. If it's not, well, there's nothing to worry about.
Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.
No contract that is internal to the installation (as most are) and that you are forced to sign to even use what you have already paid for is valid. It is legally extremely questionable to attempt to impose such contracts.
That's EXACTLY what the UCITA proposes to fix.
Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.
So, you think it's okay for one special interest group (hackers) to acquire legal rights that the rest of the population does not have?
He didn't say that. The person he was responding to did, but that's another story. He said the FSF or EFF or both should start a lobbying effort to *protect their interests* which congress currently doesn't give two shits about at the moment. If you think there's something wrong lobbying, it's a problem with the system, not with the FSF dogma.
Like it or not, if you want to protect your interests in legislature, you HAVE TO pander to congress. They just won't listen to you if you don't. Maybe we should abolish lobbying altogether, and if that's what you want, don't bitch at us for working with the system we have. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
I also agree that a 'Free Software Exemption' would be a foolish goal. I'm sure the FSF wouldn't mind, but the EFF has nothing to do with free software, but freedom in general. A lobbying effort by them would be an effort to protect the freedoms of everyone on the electronic front. If you disagree with the EFF, then start your own damn lobbying effort and shut up.
Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.
No one's mentioned Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams, yet. I can't remember being a kid, so I'm not sure if a 13 year old could stomach british humor, but all the hitchhikers books are extremely entertaining, and, I would say, a must read.
Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.
This is pretty simple. They don't need a windows monopoly to promote DOS with it. They had a DOS monopoly, and they had windows. Windows would not run on DR DOS, only MS DOS. Thus no one would put DR DOS on their machines if they wanted to run windows. OEMs could not use DR DOS, especially if they bundled with windows.
Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.
I'm sorry. I shouldn't have mentioned moderation. I should have said that I'll probably get flamed, because I don't give a shit about moderation, but I don't like getting flamed. So perhaps that bit of reverse psychology would have been more in my favor.
I'm not a karma whore. IIRC, I even turned off my +2 bonus for this because I *knew* I was posting flamebait. Well, I was being infammatory at any rate. I definitely think my comment is over-rated anyway. This is the first time I've come back to look at my comment so it's been a while but I just want to make it clear I didn't mean to sound like a karma whore.
Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.
Disclaimer: I just woke up so apologies if this sounds garbled.
Regarding story submissions. I know I've heard Rob and co. complain about how many submissions there are, and the large amount of just crap stories among other things, so that's where my idea comes from. Perhaps they could pick a group of about 20 trusted people to 'rank' incoming submissions, based on quality and relevance and whatever else, so the people who really post the stories have less noise to browse through to find the real stories.
This isn't like having the story queue public. Only those 20 people have access. I don't think this would affect us much, but it would make the crew's job a lot easier in finding which stories to actually accept.
so, thats my idea.
Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.
Slashdot Mirror
where nothing really exists, but you can be assured, somebody owns it anyway.
You do realize that the president appoints Supreme Court and Federal Curcuit Court judges, don't you? That's probably the most major issue you could even think of. The supreme court is pretty much split half-and-half, and whoever gets elected will probably appoint two new judges, to tip the scales one way or the other. Read the September 9th issue of The Nation (http://www.thenation.com/index.mhtml?i=20001009 - the articles section) for just *how much* that matters.
The president does matter in that respect, and also his veto power. Try to imagine what the country would be like today if we had a republican president as well as a republican house and senate for the past 6 years.
Yes, it's their right. But it is also our right, as consumers and users of their technology, to complain. Is there something wrong with that? Do we have to accept silently everything we don't like from money-grubbing corporations because 'it's their right' to screw us over? Well, that seems to be their party line and you're buying it. We have a right to demand standards and openness, and yes, they have a right to refuse. That's capitalism... they give us what we want or we find it somewhere else.
We could quite conceivably send a probe in that direction well within the next century.
I hereby request that for the rest of the year people fully qualify the century of which they speak. Given that no one can definitively decide when the 21st century starts, I can't tell if you mean the 21st or 22nd century, since it all depends on which position you support.
was founded by puritans and other crazy bastards.
Not quite. That's religious right propeganda you obviously fell right into. This country was founded by primarily deists, and atheists, or something of the sort (ie. NOT christian). All the rest were protestant. Look here.
Puritan. Riiiiight.
They couldn't get much harsher. That's part of the problem. There are some obvious things like prison overcrowding, but also more subtle things you wouldn't notice, such as 20% of African Americans being ineligible to vote due primarily to felony drug laws. Being convicted of a felony now also carries the penalty of being ineligible for foodstamps for the rest of your life (except in some states who have opted out of that, such as New York). Poor people are targeted much more, due most probably to ineffective legal defense, and denying them foodstamps, while they're poor, seems awfully strange to me, felon or not.
Stiffer penalties you say? At least consider the consequences before you add yet another racist, class-biased penalty to drug laws, besides the possibly naive notion that these things will help prevent drug use.
For the record, my personal opinion is that jailing people for drug use is a blatant human rights violation. Addiction is considered by almost everyone in medical professions to be a medical problem. We don't put people in jail for having AIDS, do we? Treat it as a medical problem, not a criminal one. Who knows, it might even just work.
I think most drugs are disgusting and I truly wish they didn't exist. I've had my own experiences with them, and many people close to me. My girlfriend is a cocaine addict, though she's been clean for about a year now (notice I used the present tense; you're never, ever a "former addict," it's for the rest of your life). However, despite my general disgust, I don't forsee any good coming out of this war on drugs no matter how stiff you make the penalties, and no matter how much of a police state you make it. Users will use. Help them stop, don't punish them when they learn from their mistakes.
Obviously companies aren't concerned that the information is correct at all; they're more concerned that it's true. That said, there are many *many* companies which routinely spread lies and misinformation (they call it marketing). Certain chemical companies, for example, have multimillion dollar PR campaigns to convince the public their products are environmentally safe, while at the same time spending a comparable sum in lobbying efforts to get environmental protections weakened.
All these companies are doing the same thing as the tobacco companies have been exposed as doing for years, yet no one flinches when McDonalds blatantly breaks fair animal treatment laws, or when Disney blatantly breaks labor laws. Why? Advertising, PR, marketing. Tobacco companies have been restricted in their means of advertisment for a long time, which means any PR moves by them are ineffective. Plus, they're the perfect scapegoat. The horrible things that tobacco companies have done are so horrible that no one wants to believe Disney is just as, if not more, ethically suspect. Disney, the one who makes all those cute cartoons and owns mickey mouse.
Anyway, I'm really not going off-topic. It's not about punishing libel or anything like that, it's about censoring the truth, it's about union busting, it's about maintaining control over the captive public whose wrath it seems has no (monetary) limit given the sums now expected in anti-tobacco cases. This is *exactly* the thing oppressive governments do. What you don't know can't hurt you, they say. Well, it's more like what your enemies (consumers) don't know can't hurt the companies.
eWatch may have their nice little mission statement about "Stopping the spread of lies" but whatever their mission, the companies they serve have their own agenda.
And I wonder, who decides what's truth and what is lies? Why, the lawyer with the biggest salary, of course.
Consider if Galileo is placed on a trajectory to exit our solar system. Eventially, someday, in some way our little Galileo will impact something in the inuverse and contaminate it. We're just as much a part of the galaxy as everything else in it and we will "contaminate" no matter how carefull.
Not likely. Perhaps you forget how empty space really is. Consider that two spiral galaxies such as ours can pass *THROUGH* each other, and very few, if any, collisions between stars occur. Now a couple hundred thousand stars in such close proximity never collide, the chances of a single spacecraft running into something, and even further something capable of sustaining life in any degree, I don't think there's much to worry about.
There are 7:
Linguistic Intelligence, Logical-matematical, Bodily-kinesthetic (think woodworking, etc), Spatial (Architecure and what-not), Musical, Interpersonal, and Intrapersonal (geeks).
These aren't exclusive. Everyone has all seven, but most people have a specialty, one type of intelligence is much stronger than the others. This fits well with how we evolved...
We're pack animals. We live in groups, and each person must have a function in that group. Some are leaders, some are workers, and ever since we moved into europe long long ago, some are creators and inventors. This hasn't changed if you think about it. It's just on a much larger scale. The leaders filter to "the top" as politicians and businessmen, the "grunts" stay in the lower classes, building things, hunting domesticated plants and animals to feed the pack, etc., but what makes us different from most other species in this respect (and specifically in this respect) is the other people. They make the tools the hunters use, the shelter they all sleep in. The people we call intelligent, but specifically, strongly intelligent in logical, spatial, and intrapersonal intelligences.
It's believed this type of person began to appear when we started moving into europe, to adapt to survive the harsh conditions (it was during an ice age remember), and to compete with the Neandrathal. Our bodies weren't adapted to the conditions, so our minds adapted. Linguistic and intrapersonal intelligence was also key, because the sharing of information between "tribes" during this period was very important, but without the "smart" ones to figure out new ways to live, kill, and eat, there wouldn't be anything worth communicating.
It's also worth mentioning that the artistic didn't appear until about the same time. Homo Sapiens for most of our history weren't that artistic. Once we started moving into europe, from africa (as the prevailing theory believes we did), cave paintings first started to appear. Now, I love looking at psychology from an evolutionary point of view, but for some reason I can't figure this one out. Most of what's been said about that is they'd be used as a teaching tool, to help teach their children about the world before they had to go into it. This makes a lot of sense because the most dangerous time for most mammals would be the time when first venturing from their homes. I'm not sure I like that idea quite as much though because it doesn't seem there was any necessity beforehand. Then again, necessity isn't always what drives evolution. The artists found a niche within our niche, so all the others helped them survive, for providing that service.
I'm really not meaning to go off-topic; The point is that we don't need to be evolving, though often I wish we would. We live in the same social structure as we always have, but on a huge scale, and with many more specialties. We may even still be evolving our intelligence to become even more specialized. Let's face it, everyone who lives serves a purpose for the rest, whether they're genetically messed up or not. If they had no purpose, they simply wouldn't survive, even today. Some people are meant to be presidents, some are meant to work in fast food. If everyone were mathematical geniuses, the world could not function.
This quote used to be my sig:
Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.
-- Sydney J. Harris
Even "Individuals" band together with those like them, and that's probably the only thing we have going for us.
I hate using words like 'us' and 'we' because I never presume to speak for everyone, but truth be told, there is a growing 'us'. The anti-corporate sentiment is growing. You might not think it, but Labor, environmentalists, netheads, are all moving in the same direction: against corporate domination.
It's clear that the economy is the worlds focus now. The cold war is over, but the mentality hasn't changed: we're still fighting an enemy, still using the same tactics as we did in the cold war, but now instead of fighting against communism, we're fighting for free-market captialism and the World Economy. Yet, we're going about it in all the wrong ways.
Just like during the cold war, it was democracy, civil liberties, and human rights be damned! We're fighting a good cause. Wasn't that supposed to change? It hasn't; the cause has changed, the tactics have not. Are YOU willing to give up your rights as a human because you want a better economy? If not, how can you sit idly by and let oppressive governments around the world do it to their people, with the full support of the US Government and the WTO?
Pandering to corporations by the world governments, in the name of the economy, has got to stop. With labor, it affects both workers in other countries and workers at home. Obviously, companies will move their operations elsewhere, where it's cheaper, where they can exploit people all they want. With environmentalists, it's mostly the same thing: less controls or non-existant controls on companies environmental policies means cheaper operations; that's where the companies will go. With myself, and many others like me, its government sponsored corporate attacks on our rights as citizens, as human beings. I'm neither a strict environmentalist nor a union member, but we share something, a common goal, a common desire, and so they have my full support, just as, I'm sure, I would have theirs.
If only they knew. I wouldn't say we're a quiet bunch (we, as in, those like me), but we're so different that the more traditional groups can't see our interests are anything of the same. The progressives (which is what they are) need to know we stand with them, they need to know we're in the same boat, and god dammit if we could get away from our computers for a little while and out into the real world maybe something would get done. Sorry, I'll stop preaching now :)
I don't care who doesn't agree with what I'm saying. Go ahead and tell me if you want, I'm not listening. I just want to get the point across that we, those like me, aren't alone here. We've got a lot of people on our side in the traditional world, who just don't know they're on our side yet. Why don't we let them know?
I apologize if this doesn't sound very coherent, as I'm having a bad day.
With strict copyright laws, congress is indirectly legislating censorship of the people. By strengthening copyright, companies are able to use legal means to censor anyone they wish, be it other companies, competitors, or consumers. While congress wasn't actively attempting to legislate censorship, inadvertantly they have, to the advantage of corporations who it can now be argued are agents of the government.
That last statement might seem a little strange, so bear with me. It is in the best interests of the government for its companies to do well, to strengthen the economy and keep it strong. They are essentially employing the companies to remain profitable, which they do by censoring others using copyright laws.
Anyway, I'm not against intellectual property; what I *AM* against is congress' obsession with 'protecting' the rights of corporations regardless of the consequences on people's rights. I don't have a problem with copyright per se, but excessive protection of intellectual property is in my opinion unconstitutional: laws passed for a purpose that is not censorhip, and inadvertantly cause censorhip, *are* unconstitutional. The courts have ruled this way before. Government mandated "ratings" on speech are a form of censorship, and aren't tolerated, so it shouldn't be much of a stretch to say government delegated protections on property that promote censorhip are too unconstitutional.
I was talking about this today, before the interview came up. You see, I was a CS student a while ago, and had to stop going for various reasons. I grew up wanting to be a computer programmer, but as I approached college, and finally entered, I changed my mind. I'm not comfortable making software for profit or personal gain. I realized I never had been. It doesn't sit well with me at all. Yet, I still loved programming (though as my education progressed I fell in love with math and will probably major in that instead when I do go back to school). What was I to do? I could never work in some proprietary software house and feel comfortable with it. I decided to teach. Teaching is the perfect way to go, IMO. You can still make money (though teachers aren't that well payed), you have the satisfaction of knowing you're doing good for others, and you can still do whatever else you want. CS teachers in particular must have great lives, so it appears to me. I won't have to give up my idealism to survive, and that's the most important thing to me.
It should be noted I'm not a Free Software zealot. All this happened long before I was intimately acquainted with Free Software at all.
Things never do work out the way we want; I am going to have to give up my ideals (unless I can find some kind of job in Open Source, which is too much to ask). I can satisfy myself by saying it will only be temporary, but I'll still have to live with a profound sense of guilt.
I believe my situation fits in with what you're saying, even though my philosophies and ideals are independent of those of RMS and Free Software for the most part; it's still in the same league.
Once upon a time, advertising used to be so cost-ineffective little more was done other than hanging a sign over one's business's door. Then some ingenious man invented the movable press. Even so, advertising wasn't that effective. There was no good way to distribute it but pay some people to pass out pamphlets on the street. It just didn't reach that many people. Newspapers became the best mode of advertising available at the time and remained so until modern postal services began: snail mail spam, originally in the form of the Sears Catalogue.
Radio opened another door, and a much more effective one than what came before. Now the listeners were captive audiences, ie. they couldn't simply not read an ad that didn't catch their eye, or throw out the piece of junk they got in the mail. All they could do was stop listening or change the station. It was relatively cheap and could reach large audiences, and you had a good way to measure how many people were actually listening to your solicitations. Thus began the era of modern advertising.
Television soon took over, and, while more effective than radio, was also much more expensive. It kept the system relatively clean. It still cost money to advertise, and the more effective advertising you wanted, the more you had to pay (better time slots, tv over radio, all cost more).
And now we have email. Your email address is becoming just as easy to get nowadays as your snail mail address. It's just as effective, if not more-so, than snail-mail spam (easier access to the product if it's online), it's *CLOSE TO FREE*, and it's INSTANT (more or less). If you're sly about it, you could encode the url's in your email to query your web address and see how many people actually clicked through (instantly guaging how many people not only went for more information, but how many people actually BOUGHT the product online). It's almost the perfect medium for advertising, if people didn't hate it so much.
What's my point? My point is, the more efficient and ubiquitous communication becomes, the more intrusive advertising can become. And that's just what spam is, in all forms: intrusive. Most people don't want to see commercials on TV, hear them on radio, get them in their mailbox OR their inbox; it's all downright intrusive. The worst case yet is starting to show, too: as email becomes even more ubiquitous, you'll start seeing more and more spam, from legit and non-legit companies alike, and it will be more and more intrusive, and eventually, given its efficiency, become THE MOST intrusive advertising delivery method in existance.
This is why people care.
Perl is difficult to learn for anyone used to a different language with a more regular syntax, and this surely puts people off.
You're joking, right? You shouldn't generalize so much. Two years ago, when I learned perl, I already know C/C++, Tcl, VB, and a host of other languages. Guess what? I took me TWO DAYS to learn enough about perl to use it with nothing but man perl and a telnet window.
Maybe I'm a genius or something, but I doubt it. That it's hard to learn when you know other more structured languages is a claim I've never heard before.
Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.
It seems whenever anyone starts calling their little group a community everything starts falling apart. Everyone now feels justified in making demans upon everyone else; everyone starts to think in the "mass mind" and it's only a matter of time until the tyrrany of the majority destroys everything. There is no community. There's a slashdot community, I'll give you that, but if slashdot is the primary representative of Free Software, all hope in civilization is lost. Free Software, Open Source, whatever you want to call it, I don't see a community. I see everyone as an individual, all with equal rights, specifically the right to use their software however they god damn want to. So we all share something. Isn't that nice? It doesn't make it a community. It MUSTN'T be a community, or it will destroy itself over the petty demands of "the community."
Now, rant over I think. You can't blame slashdot for this backdoor mishap. They got the story from WSJ and C|Net and whatever other websites published it. We've all complained before that slashdot editors should do some fact checking before posting stories that don't sound credible, but really, if you believe everything you read... things like this really aren't worth complaining about. Relax and shrug it off. No one is infallible.
Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.
Those that I know in the tri-state area say that getting an IT job there is incredibly easy, and I believe it. A simple search on dice will show you that - there are SO MANY jobs available it's not even funny (at least not to be because I don't have the money to reloacate).
It all comes down to the area you're in. It looks like NYC and Cali may in fact have a shortage of workers, because their tech economies are booming, and there are more businesses than workers. In places like upstate NY, where the economy is still sub-par, it's the other way around.
Isn't that how unemployment works in every industry?
Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.
Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.
Discuss among yourselves:
Is Katz getting verklempt(sp)? Sorry, when I read that I couldn't help but think of Coffee Talk.
Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.
No contract that is internal to the installation (as most are) and that you are forced to sign to even use what you have already paid for is valid. It is legally extremely questionable to attempt to impose such contracts.
That's EXACTLY what the UCITA proposes to fix.
Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.
Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.
What the hell are you talking about?
So, you think it's okay for one special interest group (hackers) to acquire legal rights that the rest of the population does not have?
He didn't say that. The person he was responding to did, but that's another story. He said the FSF or EFF or both should start a lobbying effort to *protect their interests* which congress currently doesn't give two shits about at the moment. If you think there's something wrong lobbying, it's a problem with the system, not with the FSF dogma.
Like it or not, if you want to protect your interests in legislature, you HAVE TO pander to congress. They just won't listen to you if you don't. Maybe we should abolish lobbying altogether, and if that's what you want, don't bitch at us for working with the system we have. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
I also agree that a 'Free Software Exemption' would be a foolish goal. I'm sure the FSF wouldn't mind, but the EFF has nothing to do with free software, but freedom in general. A lobbying effort by them would be an effort to protect the freedoms of everyone on the electronic front. If you disagree with the EFF, then start your own damn lobbying effort and shut up.
Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.
Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.
Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.
I'm not a karma whore. IIRC, I even turned off my +2 bonus for this because I *knew* I was posting flamebait. Well, I was being infammatory at any rate. I definitely think my comment is over-rated anyway. This is the first time I've come back to look at my comment so it's been a while but I just want to make it clear I didn't mean to sound like a karma whore.
Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.
Regarding story submissions. I know I've heard Rob and co. complain about how many submissions there are, and the large amount of just crap stories among other things, so that's where my idea comes from. Perhaps they could pick a group of about 20 trusted people to 'rank' incoming submissions, based on quality and relevance and whatever else, so the people who really post the stories have less noise to browse through to find the real stories.
This isn't like having the story queue public. Only those 20 people have access. I don't think this would affect us much, but it would make the crew's job a lot easier in finding which stories to actually accept.
so, thats my idea.
Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.