You summed up EXACTLY what has been bothering me a long time about those who go evangelistic about the net.
Slashdot seems by some to be seen as one place where the cream of the new "revolution" gather to exchange ideas, and if this is the best, then I am worried. Lots of smart people, but there are gaps in their education IMO. All they know or care about is computer technology. I thought the people of the enlightenment, like those of the Renaissance, valued a broad education which included both science and liberal arts.
>This is always a reliable barometer : something >important is happening; people are threatened by >it.
Forgive me for saying this, but this is just so vague it borders on being meaningless. Also, I thought programmers if anyone knew that only because A leads to B, it does not always follow that B->A. People can feel threatened by lots of things, good things, bad things. This does not automatically mean that this thing is good or an eartshaking "paradigm shift".
"The men of the Enlightenment united on a vastly ambitious program," writes historian Peter Gay in "The Enlightenment." That program was "secularism, humanity, cosmopolitanism, and freedom, above all, freedom in its many forms - freedom from arbitrary power, freedom of speech, freedom of trade, freedom to realize one's talents, freedom of aesthetic response, freedom, in a word, of moral man to make his own way in the world." Among the Enlightenment's many legacies were the American and French Revolutions, both of which advanced the then-radical idea that individuals had rights, including the right to determine their own personal, cultural, and political histories.
Well, the people on the net seems mostly interested in their right to free porn, free music and free software. Lots of people know 1984, but how many here have read "A Brave New World?" by Huxley?
>That online culture is too diverse to generalize about.
I agree. But I think you go down a slippery slope and start generalizing more and more, projecting your own values onto the net and its population in the following paragraphs.
>[...] the central beliefs are freedom and >individual rights. Freedom to speak your mind.
You mean the central beliefs of the young, well off, usually white, western techies who have been a long time on the net.
>We reject dogma, especially from political >parties, and journalism's foolish insistence >that there are two ways of looking at the >world, from the left or the right, and that all >discussion be confined to those suffocatingly >narrow points of view.
I wish. You know how many times I have been debating with people (Americans) on the net and they say "Yeah, but you're from Sweden. That means you are a socialist. So your views are irrelevant."
>We take the risk of discovery every day by >exploring new technologies, developing new >programs, struggling with new challenges, and >patching together a new kind of culture. We >accept unfettered criticism. We dare to know, >and in embracing these ideas, we also accept the >loneliness of autonomy, the fact that we exist >out of the mainstream.
People in the third world are starving. People are being ethnically clensed in Indonesia, Africa and the Balkans as we speak. Those people take risks. THEY are really out of the mainstream. (If by mainstream you mean western culture. If you count heads they are of course in the majority.) They have no chance to get on the net. WE on Slashdot on the other hand are sitting in front of our expensive toy computers playing. Some "enlightenment" eh?:-/
This sucks SOOOO much. I had just gotten to know the show, then Sci-Fi stops sending in Scandinavia. And now this. I can order some of the films from sci-fi online, but many are only available from Rhino, and they don't deliver outside of the US. It's like a conspiracy to keep me from watching MST3K.
Now, my dream is this: ALL the seasons, released on DVD. Maybe 3 or 4 episodes per disc. Think there is any chance of convincing them to do this? Probably not, but one can dream.
I'd say it differs greatly between European countries. I hazard to guess Swedish cops tend to be more mellow than American or French ones. A friend who studied in Poland said you do not want to mess with Polish cops. Most look like crooks from Tintin albums, big fists, plenty of scars and five-o'clock shadows. He actually managed to get mauled by police dogs on the way home from a late party in Krakow.:-)
The cops called out to him to stop (in Polish), but he thought they were talking to someone else so he kept walking. They sicked their big German sheperds on him, and he panicked and started running. This was taken as an admition of guilt, so they let the dogs chew on him a while and whacked him a couple of times with their batons while he lay on the ground. He had to spend the night in a drunk cell with plenty of drunks, but when they found out he was a (western) foreigner the captain of the police station was on his knees apologizing, all but asking to lick my friend's shoes clean. He didn't dare sue them since he was going to spend a second semester there. When he came home his mother almost fainted when he showed her the bloodied tatters that used to be his jeans.
I guess police attitudes in the US differ a lot between, say, Vermont and South Carolina too?
There are lots of things that has made ESR fall in my opinion, but the picture where he compares Hitler and Bill Gates is just too fucking much. How the HELL can you be so moronic and utterly tasteless?
They do nothing but decrease the signal to noise ratio. As a previous Slashdot article proved, their behaviour keep more than 90% of people from posting.
If people must flame they should have the guts to do it under their own names.
I have been hesitant to buy DVD because of the different codings for all the continents. I do understand that the movie companies wants to do something about pirated films from Asia, but this is such a hassle. Just when I had gotten NTSC capable TV and VCR. When we are on the subject of incompatibility, especially annoying is the "staggered release" that we have to live with in Europe and the rest of the world. Only when the film has earned enough money in the US to make a release to the rest of the world a safe bet do we get to see the latest and greatest - after six months or so.:-(
As someone else mentioned, quality movies might not be converted to DVD, and the risk could be even greater for those with non-US encoding -unless I only want to watch French movies. And I don't. Delikatessen and others are great, but I would like to see independent movies from all over the world. These things make me wonder if there is any idea to buy DVD here.
However, someone said to me that "all DVD players sold in Sweden these days are with zero encoding so you can see any films". Is this true? Are there any legal DVD players with that ability?
I don't think I would write a hero worshipping story with myself as one of the heroes and describe myself as "smarter in my sleep" than Bill Gates. But then I'm not Eric Raymond.
I happen to know a guy who likes Linux (in fact, he was the one who introduced me to it) and is a MSCE at the same time. He must earn money to survive somehow. Go figure! But I guess all who are in any way associated with Microsoft is tainted and evil? "A few MCSEs try to lay hands on them. Tove side-kicks the luckless minions. They fall down." Haha. Violence. Fun.
I'm also sick of Eric's "nerds with guns" propaganda which has occasionally appeared in Slashdot. "If you're politically correct you'd better skip this -- it might put you in danger of learning something." Right.
Slashdot Mirror
You summed up EXACTLY what has been bothering me a long time about those who go evangelistic about the net.
Slashdot seems by some to be seen as one place where the cream of the new "revolution" gather to exchange ideas, and if this is the best, then I am worried. Lots of smart people, but there are gaps in their education IMO. All they know or care about is computer technology. I thought the people of the enlightenment, like those of the Renaissance, valued a broad education which included both science and liberal arts.
>This is always a reliable barometer : something
:-/
>important is happening; people are threatened by
>it.
Forgive me for saying this, but this is just so vague it borders on being meaningless. Also, I thought programmers if anyone knew that only because A leads to B, it does not always follow that B->A. People can feel threatened by lots of things, good things, bad things. This does not automatically mean that this thing is good or an eartshaking "paradigm shift".
"The men of the Enlightenment united on a
vastly ambitious program," writes historian
Peter Gay in "The Enlightenment." That program
was "secularism, humanity, cosmopolitanism,
and freedom, above all, freedom in its many
forms - freedom from arbitrary power, freedom
of speech, freedom of trade, freedom to
realize one's talents, freedom of aesthetic
response, freedom, in a word, of moral man to
make his own way in the world." Among the
Enlightenment's many legacies were the
American and French Revolutions, both of which
advanced the then-radical idea that
individuals had rights, including the right to
determine their own personal, cultural, and
political histories.
Well, the people on the net seems mostly interested in their right to free porn, free music and free software. Lots of people know 1984, but how many here have read "A Brave New World?" by Huxley?
>That online culture is too diverse to generalize about.
I agree. But I think you go down a slippery slope and start generalizing more and more, projecting your own values onto the net and its population in the following paragraphs.
>[...] the central beliefs are freedom and
>individual rights. Freedom to speak your mind.
You mean the central beliefs of the young, well off, usually white, western techies who have been a long time on the net.
>We reject dogma, especially from political
>parties, and journalism's foolish insistence
>that there are two ways of looking at the
>world, from the left or the right, and that all
>discussion be confined to those suffocatingly
>narrow points of view.
I wish. You know how many times I have been debating with people (Americans) on the net and they say "Yeah, but you're from Sweden. That means you are a socialist. So your views are irrelevant."
>We take the risk of discovery every day by
>exploring new technologies, developing new
>programs, struggling with new challenges, and
>patching together a new kind of culture. We
>accept unfettered criticism. We dare to know,
>and in embracing these ideas, we also accept the
>loneliness of autonomy, the fact that we exist
>out of the mainstream.
People in the third world are starving. People are being ethnically clensed in Indonesia, Africa and the Balkans as we speak. Those people take risks. THEY are really out of the mainstream. (If by mainstream you mean western culture. If you count heads they are of course in the majority.) They have no chance to get on the net. WE on Slashdot on the other hand are sitting in front of our expensive toy computers playing.
Some "enlightenment" eh?
This sucks SOOOO much. I had just gotten to know the show, then Sci-Fi stops sending in Scandinavia. And now this. I can order some of the films from sci-fi online, but many are only available from Rhino, and they don't deliver outside of the US. It's like a conspiracy to keep me from watching MST3K.
Now, my dream is this: ALL the seasons, released on DVD. Maybe 3 or 4 episodes per disc. Think there is any chance of convincing them to do this? Probably not, but one can dream.
The cops called out to him to stop (in Polish), but he thought they were talking to someone else so he kept walking. They sicked their big German sheperds on him, and he panicked and started running. This was taken as an admition of guilt, so they let the dogs chew on him a while and whacked him a couple of times with their batons while he lay on the ground. He had to spend the night in a drunk cell with plenty of drunks, but when they found out he was a (western) foreigner the captain of the police station was on his knees apologizing, all but asking to lick my friend's shoes clean. He didn't dare sue them since he was going to spend a second semester there. When he came home his mother almost fainted when he showed her the bloodied tatters that used to be his jeans.
I guess police attitudes in the US differ a lot between, say, Vermont and South Carolina too?
There are lots of things that has made ESR fall in my opinion, but the picture where he compares Hitler and Bill Gates is just too fucking much. How the HELL can you be so moronic and utterly tasteless?
They do nothing but decrease the signal to noise ratio. As a previous Slashdot article proved, their behaviour keep more than 90% of people from posting.
:)
If people must flame they should have the guts to do it under their own names.
IMHO.
I have been hesitant to buy DVD because of the different codings for all the continents. I do understand that the movie companies wants to do something about pirated films from Asia, but this is such a hassle. Just when I had gotten NTSC capable TV and VCR. When we are on the subject of incompatibility, especially annoying is the "staggered release" that we have to live with in Europe and the rest of the world. Only when the film has earned enough money in the US to make a release to the rest of the world a safe bet do we get to see the latest and greatest - after six months or so. :-(
As someone else mentioned, quality movies might not be converted to DVD, and the risk could be even greater for those with non-US encoding -unless I only want to watch French movies. And I don't. Delikatessen and others are great, but I would like to see independent movies from all over the world. These things make me wonder if there is any idea to buy DVD here.
However, someone said to me that "all DVD players sold in Sweden these days are with zero encoding so you can see any films". Is this true? Are there any legal DVD players with that ability?
If this is the case, DVD - here I come!
I don't think I would write a hero worshipping story with myself as one of the heroes and describe myself as "smarter in my sleep" than Bill Gates. But then I'm not Eric Raymond.
I happen to know a guy who likes Linux (in fact, he was the one who introduced me to it) and is a MSCE at the same time. He must earn money to survive somehow. Go figure! But I guess all who are in any way associated with Microsoft is tainted and evil?
"A few MCSEs try to lay hands on them. Tove side-kicks the luckless minions. They fall down."
Haha. Violence. Fun.
I'm also sick of Eric's "nerds with guns" propaganda which has occasionally appeared in Slashdot.
"If you're politically correct you'd better skip this -- it might put you in danger of learning something." Right.