Revisionism is alive and well, but this is always equal parts evil conspirators and the gullible public who are willing, nay, eager to believe. Netscape invented the World Wide Web and the Web browser itself -- everybody knows that! Seems it's all just a little bit of history repeating.
Those responsible for the "Y2K" television movie, of course, have money and respectability and so were in no danger of being busted for essentially the same "crime". If Orson Welles did "War of the Worlds" today, his radio station would be shut down in minutes.
My personal experiences: I ordered a Hong Kong movie from a rather small, independent looking merchant, and two albums from cdnow.com. The movie had arrived quite quickly with no problems, and I have to admit I was expecting some screwup or another from the "big name". However, not only did they offer a free upgrade to 2-day Fed Ex on orders before December 21st, it actually worked and arrived promptly as promised.
Re:Hey, Rob, what about that porn opportunity?
on
Suing the Spammers
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· Score: 1
Designing a site in proper accordance with World Wide Web principles does not mean making your pages "boring and text-only", it does not mean you can't use whatever "latest and greatest technology" is de rigeur for your sacred cowser, and it does not mean you have to work harder. I recommend reading what the Pedantic Gang of Five have to say in comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html, with Alan Flavell and Arjun Ray being the most knowledgeable.
Yes, and I apologize for being lazy and not hyperlinking the original quote, especially since I recently did a search to verify it myself, since I first saw it in someone's sig here on/.:) It pops up in all sorts of diverse spots on the web.
So many parallels -- "Use a debugger, go to jail." Only so much may ye know, and no more, unless ye be Approved.
On a slightly related note, I have the opposite reaction from Lawrence Lessig when it comes to "code as law": I think it's a good thing, and want to see more of it. Not crippling code, but empowering code: stuff like IPSEC, not lame brained "copy protection".
Back in my heavy MUDding days I recall endless flamefests over various issues ranging from social to technical to everything in between, which always boiled down to being annoyed at something someone was doing. In the end, my response was always the same: It's your bloody world! You've got the code -- if you don't want someone to be able to do something, write it into the code. Don't waste your breath and raise your blood pressure complaining about it.
That's why "cypherpunks write code": To address problems that can never be wholly solved by "behavior modification." There will always be dishonest and unscrupulous people, but if enough people are educated and empowered then their ability to prey on others is significantly reduced.
Re:Revolution-proofing the elites
on
WTO + SDMI = NWO
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· Score: 4
Real revolution isn't the mindless action of the mob, but rather the education and empowerment of the individual. Richard Mitchell, the Underground Grammarian, has written extensively on the subject of education and its popular use to produce followers rather than people who can be leaders in and of themselves.
More on the original topic, I recall a recent post here that said people don't like using tools that serve someone else's purposes. Crippling hardware and software is working against the design of the machine, impeding the progress of bits from point A to point B. Recall David Aucsmith of Intel:
The actual user of the PC -- someone who can do anything they want -- is the enemy.
To any entrenched elite, the enemy is those who can and do think for themselves -- and those who do for themselves without relying on the "elites" to guide them down the "approved" path of life.
Unfortunately, B&N does not provide any sort of "mailto" link on their page. I wasn't about to go hunting through their site for contact information, so I mailed webmaster@bn.com, telling them that not including a mailto link is a great way to avoid having any contact with your customers. (Yes, I also noted that if they fought this ridiculous Amazon suit they'd likely earn my money.)
[RANT] Cluelessness, minor and major, runs rampant. The Internet has been deluged with so many "normal people" that it now shares their values: "I get to do whatever I want, my whims are the only thing that matter, and I deserve to have everything done for me and handed to me on a silver platter without expending any effort or bothering to educate myself in the slightest." I asked a company representative to please crosspost instead of multiposting; he replied that "for various reasons" they had decided to multipost; I asked what they were; he replied that these were "not for public consumption." I really need to learn some Zen, or I'm going to have a stroke and a heart attack at the same time watching these clueless fucking wankers drown out what little signal remains on the net. [/RANT]
Yes, it's the fault of those evil hackers that people think they have the right to do what they want with the product they've paid money for (we've gone into excruciating detail comparing this with shrinkwrap licensing "agreements"). How dare they?
On a more serious note, I hear that after this year, all DVD players MUST have region locking enabled in hardware...but it's only a matter of time before someone breaks from the pack, like Plextor did with Digital Audio Extraction in CD-ROM drives. Even to the uneducated, apathetic layman, stuff like this makes no sense, and annoys them to the point where it may galvanize them into either breaking the "security" (bad enough from the industry's standpoint) -- or worse, educating themselves on the issues and becoming a real threat.
Big Government and Big Business don't want you thinking (or creating) for yourself. Just sit back, shut up and eat your gruel, citizen-unit.
Don't watch DOGMA again, then, or you might realize that it's not bashing religion like you are, but rather reaffirming the value of faith and whatever god(s) there may be. It certainly isn't as black and white as you made it out to be...and neither is reality, as you may discover.
"And if you're not careful, you may learn something before we're done." (Bill Cosby)
But DOGMA is not an anti-Catholic film by any stretch of the imagination! I'm an atheist and always have been, except for a brief flirtation with neopaganism in my impetuous youth -- but I am not an anti-Christian bigot or anything else of the kind. I hate willfully stupid or evil people, and any human can be those no matter what their beliefs, color, etc.
DOGMA was, for me, one of the most profoundly religious-positive movies I have ever seen come out of Hollywood, and especially in this modern, cynical, relativistic age when everything funny is meant to be ironic and anyone who believes in anything is portrayed in a negative light. Some of the "shots at organized religion" in DOGMA are easy shots, but hardly any of them are cheap ones.
For the faithful, DOGMA will reaffirm their faith -- and for me, with little or no faith, it lifted me out of a severe depression and actually made me feel better. Not just about my life, but about the world, and anything else there might be out there.
(I still wanted Tori Amos as God instead of [possible spoiler], but you can't have everything.:)
Ken Kesey says, "Take what you can use, and let the rest go by." The excesses of the modern age are hardly wholly due to the concepts of natural rights and ownership of property. Sure, most commercials drive me nuts -- I try not to watch 'em, and the few that are good can be enjoyed on many levels without succumbing to the mindset that one is not complete unless one Buys and Consumes. And as shown in many past discussions here, a lot of problems can be traced to passive and/or active stupidity and/or malevolence by the PHB's of the world and their underlings -- as well as the "ordinary people" who cooperate to further enslave their fellows or sit back and let it happen.
It's a shame that the Indians have had to "resort" to casinos (argh! the pun!), but only because they've been backed into a corner (IIRC, every treaty the United States government has ever made with the Indians has been broken...hardly a good example of equal rights, respecting contracts/one's word, etc). Ideally, neither they nor anyone else would get special privileges from the state, but merely overseen enough to prosecute fraud or other true criminal activity.
Karl: "A good friend, good lover, good neighbor."
Questioner: "That's all there is to being an anarchist?"
Like "hacker", "nigger", or any other label, the word "hippie" has a wide and varied meaning depending on context, and can be positive or negative.
While the popular image of hippies as ones who would completely abolish the idea of privately owned property, many have in fact worked within that context of rights, seeking instead to empower individuals despite the various constraints placed upon them by nation-states, corporate entities and thieves, control freaks, etc. not already working for the latter groups: Co-ops, voluntary standards for organic foods, private/local currencies, fighting the War on Some Drugs from the FDA to the CIA, and more.
As another poster noted, much of the harm done by this sort of thing is in the secrecy. And as Justice Brandeis noted, "a little sunlight is the best disinfectant." They claim we have nothing to hide? Let's make sure their inner workings are given complete public exposure.
The American Indians had a conception of property, just as Richard Stallman does. The difference between them and today's tribe of suits, pinks and lawyer-sharks that seek so much control and deep scrutiny over every last detail of the lives of "the rest of us" is, I think, readily apparent. Frank Zappa 's autobiography, "The Real Frank Zappa Book", noted:
In every language, the first word after "Mama!" that every kid learns to say is "Mine!" A system that doesn't allow ownership, that doesn't allow you to say "Mine!" when you grow up, has -- to put it mildly -- a fatal design flaw.
Actually, to be slightly closer, I think of Robert Fripp as the Richard Stallman of the music world, and Frank Zappa as its Eric Raymond.
Male, female, any color, yadda -- vive la difference! But despite the value of individuality, let's not lose sight of our essential similarities -- definitely where we should be focusing our attention if we want to improve the way we interact. Life isn't a zero-sum game...or at least, it doesn't have to be.
Peace and prosperity to y'all, in all your honest endeavors.
Everything old is new again -- Wanted!
on
Interface Zen
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· Score: 1
I love the older, gen-yoo-wine IBM keyboards with that exquisite feel, but the sound also drives my wife up the wall. I'd be grateful if anyone could provide a pointer to my dream keyboard:
Has the up-and-down "clicky-clack" tactile feedback, without the audible (feel, not sound)
Integrated Trackpoint (the "pencil eraser" pointing device)
And black. Blacker than Zaphod's stolen spaceship. Blacker than James Brown. Etc.
Anyone aware of such a beast? The first two would be enough even, since I can paint it myself.
Could you go into more depth on how "the current widespread abuse of the GPL and Open Source is already part of Common Law"? (Based on my observations, common law has long since given way to equity, admiralty, bureaucracy and just plain stupid tyranny, at least in most parts of America.)
It sounds like your dislike for the term "open source" might be coloring your views, but I'd like to understand your position better. Please expound!
PS: A friend of mine noted:
Reading the paraphrase of the title, 'Commentary and Source,' and reading the description of it as _samizdat_, and the importance of possessing a cherished, water-damaged copy, one really gets a definite feeling of Unix hacking as secular yet religious vocation.
More lawyer crap. Big organizations that yammer about freedom of trade are usually not thinking the freedom of individuals to buy and sell to whomever they wish, and whatever they wish, but the freedom of corporations to have special privileges and to take away the normal freedom of individuals. They remind me of the British sugar merchants during the American Revolution who bitched when people smuggled in French molasses to avoid taxes:
"The American derived his right of cheating the Revenue, and of perjuring himself, from the example of his fathers and the rights of nature...[and would continue to] complain and smuggle, and smuggle and complain, till all Restraints are removed, and till he can both buy and sell, whenever, and wheresoever, he pleases. Anything short of this, is still a Greivance, a Badge of Slavery." Charles Adams,
For Good and Evil: The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization
Damn straight.
Hippies can rail all they want about how evil money is, and how evil the freedom of individuals to trade amongst themselves is. Meanwhile, these frigging control freaks speak forked tongue lawyerese instead of plain, simple language...understandable, if your goals are FUD and power over others' lives.
When I first saw that Marines commercial with the idiotic fiery-sword-and-demona motif, all I could think was, "Great. The Armed Forces are trying to attract geeks."
I was about to chuckle, but a pause for reflection. Q3 is the first Quake to be "officially" released for Linux. As I recall, Id was also going to finally release "official" Linux versions of Q1 and Q2. What's the status on these? While the LinQuake page lists clients for a number of platforms, the only non-x86 Linux versions appear to be DEC Alpha -- the rest are specifically for SGI, Solaris, BSD, etc (not that that's a bad thing). So will the official releases of Quakes 1, 2 and/or 3 for Linux include binary support for non-x86 architectures? Anyone?
If you'd like to view my comments as whining, you're free to do so. After visiting your web site, I'd hazard a guess that this is just the way your particular sense of humor works. Reminds me of Primus' website: "Your browser doesn't support frames? C'mon, Sparky, get with the program and ditch that C-64!"
Maybe, if you feel like bothering, you could tell me how you interpret my views as whining; I try to get the most out of what I have, and not waste time or energy complaining about things I can't change.
Id could avoid this with a license clause, or they could do as Metallica did with "The $5.98 EP" (also known as "The $9.98 CD"). State, both in the fine print and in big bold font on the box, "All versions of Q3 cost $X" and add something akin to the Citadel: "If you paid more, someone is ripping you off." Fugazi, similarly, never charge more than five bucks for tickets to their shows and enforce similar restrictions on the prices of their albums, T-shirts and the like.
Still sounds as though it could be useful, if it was all one had. And yes, I have tried it. Really wasn't any worse than running Quake3 on a Voodoo1 -- actually less painful:)
How arrogant! Believe it or not, some people cannot or will not purchase "new" hardware -- they simply want to get the best out of what they have. X will run on a bloody 386 with 4Mb of RAM, so says the Debian team. Give it a window manager and everything else is gravy.
I was under the impression that free software was about choice, not belittling others for the choices they have made -- and about doing the best with what one has, rather than "solving" a problem by throwing money at it.
Hell, man, you can play Quake 3 on a Voodoo 1 (ONE!) in Linux. I know -- I tried it. Lag was awful, but it was worth it to see the look on my friend's face when he realized I was using the same Voodoo1 that he couldn't get to work with Q3 under Windows...
Slashdot Mirror
Revisionism is alive and well, but this is always equal parts evil conspirators and the gullible public who are willing, nay, eager to believe. Netscape invented the World Wide Web and the Web browser itself -- everybody knows that! Seems it's all just a little bit of history repeating.
Those responsible for the "Y2K" television movie, of course, have money and respectability and so were in no danger of being busted for essentially the same "crime". If Orson Welles did "War of the Worlds" today, his radio station would be shut down in minutes.
My personal experiences: I ordered a Hong Kong movie from a rather small, independent looking merchant, and two albums from cdnow.com. The movie had arrived quite quickly with no problems, and I have to admit I was expecting some screwup or another from the "big name". However, not only did they offer a free upgrade to 2-day Fed Ex on orders before December 21st, it actually worked and arrived promptly as promised.
I vote for "Commander Taco's House of Ho's".
Designing a site in proper accordance with World Wide Web principles does not mean making your pages "boring and text-only", it does not mean you can't use whatever "latest and greatest technology" is de rigeur for your sacred cowser, and it does not mean you have to work harder. I recommend reading what the Pedantic Gang of Five have to say in comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html, with Alan Flavell and Arjun Ray being the most knowledgeable.
So many parallels -- "Use a debugger, go to jail." Only so much may ye know, and no more, unless ye be Approved.
Back in my heavy MUDding days I recall endless flamefests over various issues ranging from social to technical to everything in between, which always boiled down to being annoyed at something someone was doing. In the end, my response was always the same: It's your bloody world! You've got the code -- if you don't want someone to be able to do something, write it into the code. Don't waste your breath and raise your blood pressure complaining about it.
That's why "cypherpunks write code": To address problems that can never be wholly solved by "behavior modification." There will always be dishonest and unscrupulous people, but if enough people are educated and empowered then their ability to prey on others is significantly reduced.
More on the original topic, I recall a recent post here that said people don't like using tools that serve someone else's purposes. Crippling hardware and software is working against the design of the machine, impeding the progress of bits from point A to point B. Recall David Aucsmith of Intel:
To any entrenched elite, the enemy is those who can and do think for themselves -- and those who do for themselves without relying on the "elites" to guide them down the "approved" path of life.[RANT] Cluelessness, minor and major, runs rampant. The Internet has been deluged with so many "normal people" that it now shares their values: "I get to do whatever I want, my whims are the only thing that matter, and I deserve to have everything done for me and handed to me on a silver platter without expending any effort or bothering to educate myself in the slightest." I asked a company representative to please crosspost instead of multiposting; he replied that "for various reasons" they had decided to multipost; I asked what they were; he replied that these were "not for public consumption." I really need to learn some Zen, or I'm going to have a stroke and a heart attack at the same time watching these clueless fucking wankers drown out what little signal remains on the net. [/RANT]
On a more serious note, I hear that after this year, all DVD players MUST have region locking enabled in hardware...but it's only a matter of time before someone breaks from the pack, like Plextor did with Digital Audio Extraction in CD-ROM drives. Even to the uneducated, apathetic layman, stuff like this makes no sense, and annoys them to the point where it may galvanize them into either breaking the "security" (bad enough from the industry's standpoint) -- or worse, educating themselves on the issues and becoming a real threat.
Big Government and Big Business don't want you thinking (or creating) for yourself. Just sit back, shut up and eat your gruel, citizen-unit.
"And if you're not careful, you may learn something before we're done." (Bill Cosby)
DOGMA was, for me, one of the most profoundly religious-positive movies I have ever seen come out of Hollywood, and especially in this modern, cynical, relativistic age when everything funny is meant to be ironic and anyone who believes in anything is portrayed in a negative light. Some of the "shots at organized religion" in DOGMA are easy shots, but hardly any of them are cheap ones.
For the faithful, DOGMA will reaffirm their faith -- and for me, with little or no faith, it lifted me out of a severe depression and actually made me feel better. Not just about my life, but about the world, and anything else there might be out there.
(I still wanted Tori Amos as God instead of [possible spoiler], but you can't have everything. :)
Ken Kesey says, "Take what you can use, and let the rest go by." The excesses of the modern age are hardly wholly due to the concepts of natural rights and ownership of property. Sure, most commercials drive me nuts -- I try not to watch 'em, and the few that are good can be enjoyed on many levels without succumbing to the mindset that one is not complete unless one Buys and Consumes. And as shown in many past discussions here, a lot of problems can be traced to passive and/or active stupidity and/or malevolence by the PHB's of the world and their underlings -- as well as the "ordinary people" who cooperate to further enslave their fellows or sit back and let it happen.
It's a shame that the Indians have had to "resort" to casinos (argh! the pun!), but only because they've been backed into a corner (IIRC, every treaty the United States government has ever made with the Indians has been broken...hardly a good example of equal rights, respecting contracts/one's word, etc). Ideally, neither they nor anyone else would get special privileges from the state, but merely overseen enough to prosecute fraud or other true criminal activity.
Karl: "A good friend, good lover, good neighbor."
Questioner: "That's all there is to being an anarchist?"
Karl: "What did you expect, a bunch of rules?"
- Karl Hess, 1923-1994
- Like "hacker", "nigger", or any other label, the word "hippie" has a wide and varied meaning depending on context, and can be positive or negative.
- While the popular image of hippies as ones who would completely abolish the idea of privately owned property, many have in fact worked within that context of rights, seeking instead to empower individuals despite the various constraints placed upon them by nation-states, corporate entities and thieves, control freaks, etc. not already working for the latter groups: Co-ops, voluntary standards for organic foods, private/local currencies, fighting the War on Some Drugs from the FDA to the CIA, and more.
- As another poster noted, much of the harm done by this sort of thing is in the secrecy. And as Justice Brandeis noted, "a little sunlight is the best disinfectant." They claim we have nothing to hide? Let's make sure their inner workings are given complete public exposure.
The American Indians had a conception of property, just as Richard Stallman does. The difference between them and today's tribe of suits, pinks and lawyer-sharks that seek so much control and deep scrutiny over every last detail of the lives of "the rest of us" is, I think, readily apparent. Frank Zappa 's autobiography, "The Real Frank Zappa Book", noted:Actually, to be slightly closer, I think of Robert Fripp as the Richard Stallman of the music world, and Frank Zappa as its Eric Raymond.
Male, female, any color, yadda -- vive la difference! But despite the value of individuality, let's not lose sight of our essential similarities -- definitely where we should be focusing our attention if we want to improve the way we interact. Life isn't a zero-sum game...or at least, it doesn't have to be.
Peace and prosperity to y'all, in all your honest endeavors.
- Has the up-and-down "clicky-clack" tactile feedback, without the audible (feel, not sound)
- Integrated Trackpoint (the "pencil eraser" pointing device)
- And black. Blacker than Zaphod's stolen spaceship. Blacker than James Brown. Etc.
Anyone aware of such a beast? The first two would be enough even, since I can paint it myself.It sounds like your dislike for the term "open source" might be coloring your views, but I'd like to understand your position better. Please expound!
PS: A friend of mine noted:
Damn straight.
Hippies can rail all they want about how evil money is, and how evil the freedom of individuals to trade amongst themselves is. Meanwhile, these frigging control freaks speak forked tongue lawyerese instead of plain, simple language...understandable, if your goals are FUD and power over others' lives.
When I first saw that Marines commercial with the idiotic fiery-sword-and-demona motif, all I could think was, "Great. The Armed Forces are trying to attract geeks."
I was about to chuckle, but a pause for reflection. Q3 is the first Quake to be "officially" released for Linux. As I recall, Id was also going to finally release "official" Linux versions of Q1 and Q2. What's the status on these? While the LinQuake page lists clients for a number of platforms, the only non-x86 Linux versions appear to be DEC Alpha -- the rest are specifically for SGI, Solaris, BSD, etc (not that that's a bad thing). So will the official releases of Quakes 1, 2 and/or 3 for Linux include binary support for non-x86 architectures? Anyone?
If you'd like to view my comments as whining, you're free to do so. After visiting your web site, I'd hazard a guess that this is just the way your particular sense of humor works. Reminds me of Primus' website: "Your browser doesn't support frames? C'mon, Sparky, get with the program and ditch that C-64!"
Maybe, if you feel like bothering, you could tell me how you interpret my views as whining; I try to get the most out of what I have, and not waste time or energy complaining about things I can't change.
Id could avoid this with a license clause, or they could do as Metallica did with "The $5.98 EP" (also known as "The $9.98 CD"). State, both in the fine print and in big bold font on the box, "All versions of Q3 cost $X" and add something akin to the Citadel: "If you paid more, someone is ripping you off." Fugazi, similarly, never charge more than five bucks for tickets to their shows and enforce similar restrictions on the prices of their albums, T-shirts and the like.
Still sounds as though it could be useful, if it was all one had. And yes, I have tried it. Really wasn't any worse than running Quake3 on a Voodoo1 -- actually less painful :)
I was under the impression that free software was about choice, not belittling others for the choices they have made -- and about doing the best with what one has, rather than "solving" a problem by throwing money at it.
Hell, man, you can play Quake 3 on a Voodoo 1 (ONE!) in Linux. I know -- I tried it. Lag was awful, but it was worth it to see the look on my friend's face when he realized I was using the same Voodoo1 that he couldn't get to work with Q3 under Windows...