This story reminds me of some other telephone weirdness/coolness from some years ago. Bryant Pond, Maine was the last place in the US to have a "Hooterville" style switchboard for the entire town, and it was still in operation up until 1983. You can read some of the history here: 'the Bryant Pond board remains the last central office manual exchange in America'. At least they had phones! I was kind of sad when I heard they'd modernized after '83.
OK, maybe I'm missing something here, but what do you guys see in those old games? I remember playing VIC-20 games when I was a kid, but compared to what I can play today those games absolutely sucked ass.
nostalgia.
Probably the same reason I just bought an entire season of "I Love Lucy" on DVD when I could be watching "Stargate". I can play the new games, but I just love the old ones more. I never thought/. would have me whipping out the Mastercard and running over to QVC like a maniac.
I bought a Mozilla T-shirt a few months ago, and today the Mozilla Store sends me a spammish e-mail announcing the Firefox release and offering to sell me the Firefox CD and Guidebook, or other "cool" stuff like the mug or hat. I don't recall opting in to receiving anything by e-mail. Funny how even something Mozilla related like the store will push it right to the line on spam. I love the browser, love the nice shirt I bought, just leave me out of the suggestive selling. Crossing off the Mozilla Store from my shopping list now.
Land lines are so much easier, you have unlimited calls to all your friends in your area code, and you can sit and chat with them all day like it is nothing if you want, because it isn't going to cost you a dime more or less todo so.
Watch out, I was thinking of taking on Sprint for my local service until I read this: "Service may not be used for commercial use, Internet, data or facsimile service for extended periods of time. If Sprint determines that usage is not consistent with residential voice applications, service may be assessed a data usage fee or disconnected."
That is way too vague. It sounds like even doing a net dialup would put your service in jeopardy. There are so many traps.
These search engines make it seem as though it is OK to take what ever you want and not credit the source.
I don't know about the others, but Google displays the site's URL underneath every thumbnail, and clicking the images takes you right to the website.
Almost every image that I like, I click and visit the originating website to see and learn more. Imagine, a search engine that helps webmasters get more hits!
Yes. Opera is significantly faster, and believe it or not, it saves me time. I think the small fee is acceptable to save 20 minutes per day and allow time for a "coffee break". It adds up over time
I feel the same way, I really get a lot out of Opera; however, they really burned me up when they made me pay AGAIN to get into the 5+ series. Seems I supported them too soon. If you bought your first Opera license before a certain date, you only got half off the current 5+ series. That makes me hesitant to ever pay them again.
Only Lynx, Opera, and Netscape 4.77 run acceptably on my older machine. For over a year I have heard "try the Mozilla nightlies, they're good!" I cannot use something that to this day takes so long to load and runs so slow. I'll miss them swirlin' Netscape comets.....they served me well for years.
Very true. The Kansas decision was previous to the release of the news of the genome study. Inaccuracies like the one in the Slashdot header, "even Kansas agrees", get magnified over time and become "fact".
Whadya mean? Aren't they still making brand new 1974 model year VW bugs in Mexico?
Last I heard, yes they are. They aren't importable to the USA though without going through a whole lotta trouble. If I lived in Mexico (which I want to do), I'd be driving one now.
Blame Canada Blame Canada For all the Volkswagon Bugs they go around hangin' 'round like thugs
I just worry about the BUGS, man! There aren't so many of those to go around anymore. Maybe a nice Chevy Vega or Ford Pinto next time. They aren't as cool I guess.:-(
According to a story by Tamar Lewin in the New York Times this week, almost every school in the nation is now wired, but there are enormous differences in how indvidual schools use computers.
I taught for a while in a "wired" high school. The contractors came in and installed the cables for broadband, but we had no PC's to connect to this. Fine, I thought, I can at least bring a machine from home and use it in my classroom, however, the cables were not connected to the Internet. It looks like my school goes into the local/state/national pot as being "wired", even though 3 years later I hear the cables are still not connected. That's how we became a "wired" school. We help the "guv'nuh" say blah-blah percentage of his schools are wired, even though there's no net access except for a few stations in the media center.
Yep, Earthlink's a port blocker. I travel to every nook and cranny of the USA on business during the year, so if I don't want to use AOL, Earthlink is about the only other viable choice. They are very good in so many ways, but I don't like this particular form of censorship of my legitimate use of their network.
What also amuses me is my new hobby: I now send the postage-page envelopes back from junk mailers. Empty. Eat that! 30 cents out of your pocket!
I don't do this because I really don't mind junk mail through the regular post. They are paying to use the system, it brings in revenue for the Post Office, and it's easy to throw away. E-mail Spam, however, has brought down MY e-mail account on 2 occaisions. Some Spammer had a software fart both times and sent me each Spam 1000's of times filling my account to the limit and making my mail bounce.
Also, Spammers frequently forge common e-mail addresses in the "reply to" or "from" field, so if you are "steve12**@hotmail.com" for example, you can kiss your account goodbye.
Prices are way up but there's a shortage. I wonder how much of this news is spin, for scare value, and to prep the consumer for even bigger sock-it-to-yas!
Who ran off with all the money? It reminds me of the savings & loan dereg from years ago.
At least/. and most Internet and print journalism doesn't make me sick to my stomach like the local TV "newscast" does. Local TV is pure "info-tainment" and seems to have no standards at all, regardless of the damage they do. I come here for the most part knowing the deal and can distill useful stuff out of it.
Bottom line is that TLDs should be for categorizing content, not restricting content which is
what the proposed.SEX,.XXX, and.KIDS TLDs would do.
Well said. Most commercial adult sites ALREADY require some type of adult verification (AVS). Those sites which do not are not likely to abide by the new TLD's.sex, or.xxx. There will always be flash-in-the-pan Geocities-type adult content. Then the big censorship monster rears its head as to who decides what is adult content when we try to fit all those grey areas into the new TLD's. At this point we are back to the political and capricious decisions of "what is" and "what isn't" as is evidenced by current filtering software.
The obligatory link to Peacefire. Founder Bennett Haselton usually shows up when a library is under attack to argue against immediately reaching for blocking software.
I've rarely had a problem with public library access, no fees, rarely any harrassment over what I wanted to do, etc. I usually don't mention that I don't have a card, but if asked, I politely state that I'm on the road and really need a few minutes on a machine. Most medium-sized cities have branches all over the place. The main restriction is usually time. You get an hour at best. It's a good solution for basic keeping in touch, and you can java your way into AOL's IM or Yahoo's Messenger if you need that.
Keep in mind, this plan does not prohibit such speech in any way.
This is presumptive in that it would indeed prevent the right to be heard, which is why most people make a webpage or post anything on the net to begin with. Somebody, somewhere, will always be able to apply your definition of hate speech to anything said that they disagree with to relegate it to a pre-supposed hate catagory. In other words, they'll silence you by finding a way to shove you into the hate domain, thus keeping you out of the main channels of communication.
In the same vein, a "xxx" domain is likely to fail in that the only sites that will use it will be the ones that already use some form of age verification to prevent access. IMO, the xxx domain will be used once again to supress disliked speech or images by groups that can't handle (gasp!) the thought that other people might have different points of view on love and/or sexual relationships than they do, or believe that any image of an unclad human body is pornographic.
Sure, there are more or less clear cut cases of hate speech or porn out there, but there are a lot of grey areas that stand to get the axe depending upon who is wielding that axe. I can usually tune out what I don't care to hear on my own. I just don't want to see wholesale regulation on the Internet, even if it "seems" to be objective.
I does disturb me that providing more information about myself (such as gender, age, education) might cause me to be discriminated against in a forum that I consider to be freer of social biases that the rest of my environment; it disturbs me even more that after a bad day and a bunch of bad posts, I might, given that kind of information, find myself the one doing the discriminating.
When I first got online, one of the first places I went to was the website of the Utne Reader (mentioned in another post above) because I loved (notice past tense) that magazine. I found that if you selected male as your gender, you were barred from the forums for 2 weeks, because they were "unbalanced". They had an entire webpage rationalizing this, but regardless, I cancelled my subscription to the magazine and never went to the webpage again. This hit me as pretty strange moderating for a group that claims to be free and open minded. At least with admitted bigots, you know where you and they stand.
It also bothers me that Jon lays so much of the blame on young white males. Sure, that segment is responsible for a lot of things, but it ain't just them. If you have ever worked general customer service, you'll get beheaded by senior citizens every day. Also, I'm a member of several Spanish-language Latin American forums. The flame wars get so bad there sometimes that the listserver has to be shut down to cool off the list. Can't hang that one on little young pale Anglos. My marriage partner is a member of a listserv that is mostly female. Lots of flame wars there. Gee, I guess it's mainly a human thing!
Reader's Digest is actually making fun of its readers in that it is written on about a 4th grade level, yet it implies that they are "READERS!", like serious high-level readers.
I found User Friendly to be quite funny. You just can't make everyone happy.
Slashdot Mirror
This story reminds me of some other telephone weirdness/coolness from some years ago. Bryant Pond, Maine was the last place in the US to have a "Hooterville" style switchboard for the entire town, and it was still in operation up until 1983. You can read some of the history here: 'the Bryant Pond board remains the last central office manual exchange in America'. At least they had phones! I was kind of sad when I heard they'd modernized after '83.
OK, maybe I'm missing something here, but what do you guys see in those old games? I remember playing VIC-20 games when I was a kid, but compared to what I can play today those games absolutely sucked ass.
/. would have me whipping out the Mastercard and running over to QVC like a maniac.
nostalgia.
Probably the same reason I just bought an entire season of "I Love Lucy" on DVD when I could be watching "Stargate". I can play the new games, but I just love the old ones more. I never thought
I bought a Mozilla T-shirt a few months ago, and today the Mozilla Store sends me a spammish e-mail announcing the Firefox release and offering to sell me the Firefox CD and Guidebook, or other "cool" stuff like the mug or hat. I don't recall opting in to receiving anything by e-mail. Funny how even something Mozilla related like the store will push it right to the line on spam. I love the browser, love the nice shirt I bought, just leave me out of the suggestive selling. Crossing off the Mozilla Store from my shopping list now.
Land lines are so much easier, you have unlimited calls to all your friends in your area code, and you can sit and chat with them all day like it is nothing if you want, because it isn't going to cost you a dime more or less todo so.
Watch out, I was thinking of taking on Sprint for my local service until I read this: "Service may not be used for commercial use, Internet, data or facsimile service for extended periods of time. If Sprint determines that usage is not consistent with residential voice applications, service may be assessed a data usage fee or disconnected."
That is way too vague. It sounds like even doing a net dialup would put your service in jeopardy. There are so many traps.
also, watch out for the ones made with palm oil (usually sold in the Asian food stores). fat-fat-fat!!!
These search engines make it seem as though it is OK to take what ever you want and not credit the source.
I don't know about the others, but Google displays the site's URL underneath every thumbnail, and clicking the images takes you right to the website.
Almost every image that I like, I click and visit the originating website to see and learn more. Imagine, a search engine that helps webmasters get more hits!
Yes. Opera is significantly faster, and believe it or not, it saves me time. I think the small fee is acceptable to save 20 minutes per day and allow time for a "coffee break". It adds up over time
I feel the same way, I really get a lot out of Opera; however, they really burned me up when they made me pay AGAIN to get into the 5+ series. Seems I supported them too soon. If you bought your first Opera license before a certain date, you only got half off the current 5+ series. That makes me hesitant to ever pay them again.
Only Lynx, Opera, and Netscape 4.77 run acceptably on my older machine. For over a year I have heard "try the Mozilla nightlies, they're good!" I cannot use something that to this day takes so long to load and runs so slow. I'll miss them swirlin' Netscape comets.....they served me well for years.
Least they could do was give you a shell account or dialup....
;-) ....errr, the axe will fall one day, I'm sure.
You don't have those? I left the "institution" years ago and still have access to several.
Very true. The Kansas decision was previous to the release of the news of the genome study. Inaccuracies like the one in the Slashdot header, "even Kansas agrees", get magnified over time and become "fact".
Whadya mean? Aren't they still making brand new 1974 model year VW bugs in Mexico?
Last I heard, yes they are. They aren't importable to the USA though without going through a whole lotta trouble. If I lived in Mexico (which I want to do), I'd be driving one now.
Blame Canada
:-(
Blame Canada
For all the Volkswagon Bugs
they go around hangin' 'round like thugs
I just worry about the BUGS, man! There aren't so many of those to go around anymore. Maybe a nice Chevy Vega or Ford Pinto next time. They aren't as cool I guess.
According to a story by Tamar Lewin in the New York Times this week, almost every school in the nation is now wired, but there are enormous differences in how indvidual schools use computers.
I taught for a while in a "wired" high school. The contractors came in and installed the cables for broadband, but we had no PC's to connect to this. Fine, I thought, I can at least bring a machine from home and use it in my classroom, however, the cables were not connected to the Internet. It looks like my school goes into the local/state/national pot as being "wired", even though 3 years later I hear the cables are still not connected. That's how we became a "wired" school. We help the "guv'nuh" say blah-blah percentage of his schools are wired, even though there's no net access except for a few stations in the media center.
Yep, Earthlink's a port blocker. I travel to every nook and cranny of the USA on business during the year, so if I don't want to use AOL, Earthlink is about the only other viable choice. They are very good in so many ways, but I don't like this particular form of censorship of my legitimate use of their network.
What also amuses me is my new hobby: I now send the postage-page envelopes back from junk mailers. Empty. Eat that! 30 cents out of your pocket!
I don't do this because I really don't mind junk mail through the regular post. They are paying to use the system, it brings in revenue for the Post Office, and it's easy to throw away. E-mail Spam, however, has brought down MY e-mail account on 2 occaisions. Some Spammer had a software fart both times and sent me each Spam 1000's of times filling my account to the limit and making my mail bounce.
Also, Spammers frequently forge common e-mail addresses in the "reply to" or "from" field, so if you are "steve12**@hotmail.com" for example, you can kiss your account goodbye.
Was this system discussed in Cryptonomicon or one of the other dozen /. reads I've been through this year?
Vaporware news.
Prices are way up but there's a shortage. I wonder how much of this news is spin, for scare value, and to prep the consumer for even bigger sock-it-to-yas!
Who ran off with all the money? It reminds me of the savings & loan dereg from years ago.
At least /. and most Internet and print journalism doesn't make me sick to my stomach like the local TV "newscast" does. Local TV is pure "info-tainment" and seems to have no standards at all, regardless of the damage they do. I come here for the most part knowing the deal and can distill useful stuff out of it.
Bottom line is that TLDs should be for categorizing content, not restricting content which is what the proposed .SEX, .XXX, and .KIDS TLDs would do.
.sex, or .xxx. There will always be flash-in-the-pan Geocities-type adult content. Then the big censorship monster rears its head as to who decides what is adult content when we try to fit all those grey areas into the new TLD's. At this point we are back to the political and capricious decisions of "what is" and "what isn't" as is evidenced by current filtering software.
Well said. Most commercial adult sites ALREADY require some type of adult verification (AVS). Those sites which do not are not likely to abide by the new TLD's
The obligatory link to Peacefire. Founder Bennett Haselton usually shows up when a library is under attack to argue against immediately reaching for blocking software.
I always thought he had brains as well as beauty. Beats Michael Jackson all t'hell. :-)
I loved listening to his LP's as I learned on my old Vic20.
I've rarely had a problem with public library access, no fees, rarely any harrassment over what I wanted to do, etc. I usually don't mention that I don't have a card, but if asked, I politely state that I'm on the road and really need a few minutes on a machine. Most medium-sized cities have branches all over the place. The main restriction is usually time. You get an hour at best. It's a good solution for basic keeping in touch, and you can java your way into AOL's IM or Yahoo's Messenger if you need that.
Keep in mind, this plan does not prohibit such speech in any way.
This is presumptive in that it would indeed prevent the right to be heard, which is why most people make a webpage or post anything on the net to begin with. Somebody, somewhere, will always be able to apply your definition of hate speech to anything said that they disagree with to relegate it to a pre-supposed hate catagory. In other words, they'll silence you by finding a way to shove you into the hate domain, thus keeping you out of the main channels of communication.
In the same vein, a "xxx" domain is likely to fail in that the only sites that will use it will be the ones that already use some form of age verification to prevent access. IMO, the xxx domain will be used once again to supress disliked speech or images by groups that can't handle (gasp!) the thought that other people might have different points of view on love and/or sexual relationships than they do, or believe that any image of an unclad human body is pornographic.
Sure, there are more or less clear cut cases of hate speech or porn out there, but there are a lot of grey areas that stand to get the axe depending upon who is wielding that axe. I can usually tune out what I don't care to hear on my own. I just don't want to see wholesale regulation on the Internet, even if it "seems" to be objective.
I does disturb me that providing more information about myself (such as gender, age, education) might cause me to be discriminated against in a forum that I consider to be freer of social biases that the rest of my environment; it disturbs me even more that after a bad day and a bunch of bad posts, I might, given that kind of information, find myself the one doing the discriminating.
When I first got online, one of the first places I went to was the website of the Utne Reader (mentioned in another post above) because I loved (notice past tense) that magazine. I found that if you selected male as your gender, you were barred from the forums for 2 weeks, because they were "unbalanced". They had an entire webpage rationalizing this, but regardless, I cancelled my subscription to the magazine and never went to the webpage again. This hit me as pretty strange moderating for a group that claims to be free and open minded. At least with admitted bigots, you know where you and they stand.
It also bothers me that Jon lays so much of the blame on young white males. Sure, that segment is responsible for a lot of things, but it ain't just them. If you have ever worked general customer service, you'll get beheaded by senior citizens every day. Also, I'm a member of several Spanish-language Latin American forums. The flame wars get so bad there sometimes that the listserver has to be shut down to cool off the list. Can't hang that one on little young pale Anglos. My marriage partner is a member of a listserv that is mostly female. Lots of flame wars there. Gee, I guess it's mainly a human thing!
Reader's Digest is actually making fun of its readers in that it is written on about a 4th grade level, yet it implies that they are "READERS!", like serious high-level readers.
I found User Friendly to be quite funny. You just can't make everyone happy.