Are politicians really that different from the average joe? The ones who don't know what a virus is, trust emails from phishers, complain when their computer's really slow but they don't know why, etcetera? Hardly anyone except geeks actually has a grasp of the way technology changes things and how it actually works. Even the generation that's coming up - does being able to use Myspace and iTunes actually qualify kids as "tech-savvy"?
That's half the problem of the proliferation of technology - everyone's using it, but most have a vague idea at best of what it actually is. The job of a politician is not to be an expert on the things they make laws about, it's to represent the views of the people who elected them in government. So we either need a much higher level of general awareness about technology so that people can vote accordingly, or advisers who do know what they're talking about to guide the politicians. I'm not hopeful myself...
If you happen to have violent, spanky, whips and chains sex and you happen to leave a bruise or a cut or anything more than "transient and trifling" you can't say that you consented to it. So if you need to go to the doctor after a heavy session, he may call the police and your partner in the act can be jailed for actual bodily harm. The fact that you consented to get beaten up is no defence.
And now they want to make it illegal to even watch two people beating each other up for their own gratification. This, in a country that has a long history of caning and other such fetishy acts - do a search for "English punishment" and see what comes up.
Tabloid media, and idiots. Same as usual. Are they now going to ban sales of canes and whips and other toys designed to inflict pain on people for sexual gratification? Sooner or later, someone's going to commit a crime and they'll find a pair of fluffy handcuffs and outlaw those as well. Arrrgh!
Right, so this approach to spam has been proven to work, or at least to get enough attention from the people it's working against that they've taken action. Which has killed the company, but its software is still around.
Isn't this a perfect opportunity for the open source community? Without a central server or corporate body to attack, the principle could be made unkillable. Where do you direct your DDoS attacks if there is no single person or entity responsible for harming your shady business? Or does this require more than just the software to do - in which case, how many people does it take to run, and how much time each would a network of worldwide users have to donate to make it effective?
Maybe it's a pipe-dream, mass human cooperation on a worldwide scale to take back the internet, but distributed cooperation like this could effect some major change. If people will donate hours of their time to look for grains of cosmic dust, would they donate hours to sending off emails to spammers under the banner of taking back their inbox?
Probably not. Because they want that done automatically. And there's the problem. Any solutions?
Windows, Linux, whatever - computers are complex things to operate. This is the basic problem - we have these massively fast devices that can do any number of things, and then we're surprised when it's not as easy as using a telephone.
Until someone comes up with a fully foolproof, stick-in-a-disc and it'll work flawlessly operating system that responds to what you want it to do, rather than what you tell it to do, these arguments are going to be going round forever.
Can't remember where it was, but someone asked:"Years ago we were all told that computers would allow us to do more, faster, and we'd have more free time because the machines would work for us. What happened?" One of the answers was that computers in the service of people can really save time and effort - but computers in the service of industry, business and the giant money-making corporations, are used as tools to make us do more in less time, serving money rather than humanity. And why? Because someone at the top wants a newer, bigger car.
Personally I long for the days of yore, when I'd leave the house and if someone rang me, I wasn't in, and there was no voicemail. With mobile phones, voicemail, email on the move, and more people every morning on the Underground with laptops doing work in the half-hour it takes to get into central London, it's no wonder people think they're falling behind - we're no longer dealing with jobs that are "When you're finished, go home," there's always something waiting to be attended to, emails coming in from around the world, and workers rarely get to sit back and think, "Good job."
I suppose I've been reasonably lucky in that I've had the perfect job : street performing. No boss, no requirement to turn up at the workplace on any given day or at any given time, no tax, work as long as you like for as much money as you need, spend all day in the sunshine doing something that's lots of fun, that gets you appreciation from your fellow man... perfect! Made a decent living for a while, but eventually found I couldn't sustain it, and came a bit unstuck when I got injured as I didn't have too much of a backup plan, took me about two years to get back up and reasonably stable financially - currently a data entry clerk, for my sins.
Thing is, at least I know how to have fun as a data entry clerk - and as an office furniture fitter, and as a telesales rep, and a warehouse operative, and an internet forum moderator, all of which I've done while planning and scheming to get back to the "perfect" job again (only properly this time), and paradoxically I'm enjoying juggling a lot more than I did when it was my living, which is always a problem when a hobby becomes a livelihood. Doing too much of what you love is a recipe for growing to hate it - far better to cultivate flexibility to be good at everything and a mindset that will find enjoyment in even the most mundane of tasks.
I seem to recall that a telephone handset has about 25000 bacteria on it, and you put that next to your mouth and ears. We'll all perish when the telephone sanitizers and hairbrush salesmen are sent off on a spaceship along with the middle managers.
Right, so we have pills that will "solve" erectile dysfunction, pills that will "cure" depression, and now pills that will "help" people who have undergone trauma. How long before we have pills that will do everything else, or have it become accepted to sprinkle something on your cornflakes that will increase your ability to slog through work, pills that will blot out a bad day at the office, pills you can take to get through arguments with your girlfriend... While I appreciate that some things are harder to get through than others, it is probably better in the long run for people to take responsibility for their own mental functioning without treating the body as a machine - how long before it's considered unnatural to live without supplements?
First one, here goes... wouldn't lumping all "objectionable material" into one place make it more tantalising for kids? Part of the thrill of being young is pushing the boundaries, and knowing that there's a place where everything is porn is going to make sure that the kids will know it's there, that all they have to do is find an unblocked computer or find a way around the firewall (single key to unlock *all* porn, yay!) and they'll be the coolest out there for doing something they've been told not to. After all, it's not going to be "You're 18 now, and here's something you've never been told before :.xxx is full of pictures of naked women." Prohibition tends to make things more desirable, not less.
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Are politicians really that different from the average joe? The ones who don't know what a virus is, trust emails from phishers, complain when their computer's really slow but they don't know why, etcetera? Hardly anyone except geeks actually has a grasp of the way technology changes things and how it actually works. Even the generation that's coming up - does being able to use Myspace and iTunes actually qualify kids as "tech-savvy"?
That's half the problem of the proliferation of technology - everyone's using it, but most have a vague idea at best of what it actually is. The job of a politician is not to be an expert on the things they make laws about, it's to represent the views of the people who elected them in government. So we either need a much higher level of general awareness about technology so that people can vote accordingly, or advisers who do know what they're talking about to guide the politicians. I'm not hopeful myself...
How much are the rights to the Encyclopaedia Britannica? *ducks*
If you happen to have violent, spanky, whips and chains sex and you happen to leave a bruise or a cut or anything more than "transient and trifling" you can't say that you consented to it. So if you need to go to the doctor after a heavy session, he may call the police and your partner in the act can be jailed for actual bodily harm. The fact that you consented to get beaten up is no defence. And now they want to make it illegal to even watch two people beating each other up for their own gratification. This, in a country that has a long history of caning and other such fetishy acts - do a search for "English punishment" and see what comes up. Tabloid media, and idiots. Same as usual. Are they now going to ban sales of canes and whips and other toys designed to inflict pain on people for sexual gratification? Sooner or later, someone's going to commit a crime and they'll find a pair of fluffy handcuffs and outlaw those as well. Arrrgh!
Right, so this approach to spam has been proven to work, or at least to get enough attention from the people it's working against that they've taken action. Which has killed the company, but its software is still around. Isn't this a perfect opportunity for the open source community? Without a central server or corporate body to attack, the principle could be made unkillable. Where do you direct your DDoS attacks if there is no single person or entity responsible for harming your shady business? Or does this require more than just the software to do - in which case, how many people does it take to run, and how much time each would a network of worldwide users have to donate to make it effective? Maybe it's a pipe-dream, mass human cooperation on a worldwide scale to take back the internet, but distributed cooperation like this could effect some major change. If people will donate hours of their time to look for grains of cosmic dust, would they donate hours to sending off emails to spammers under the banner of taking back their inbox? Probably not. Because they want that done automatically. And there's the problem. Any solutions?
Windows, Linux, whatever - computers are complex things to operate. This is the basic problem - we have these massively fast devices that can do any number of things, and then we're surprised when it's not as easy as using a telephone. Until someone comes up with a fully foolproof, stick-in-a-disc and it'll work flawlessly operating system that responds to what you want it to do, rather than what you tell it to do, these arguments are going to be going round forever.
Can't remember where it was, but someone asked :"Years ago we were all told that computers would allow us to do more, faster, and we'd have more free time because the machines would work for us. What happened?" One of the answers was that computers in the service of people can really save time and effort - but computers in the service of industry, business and the giant money-making corporations, are used as tools to make us do more in less time, serving money rather than humanity. And why? Because someone at the top wants a newer, bigger car.
Personally I long for the days of yore, when I'd leave the house and if someone rang me, I wasn't in, and there was no voicemail. With mobile phones, voicemail, email on the move, and more people every morning on the Underground with laptops doing work in the half-hour it takes to get into central London, it's no wonder people think they're falling behind - we're no longer dealing with jobs that are "When you're finished, go home," there's always something waiting to be attended to, emails coming in from around the world, and workers rarely get to sit back and think, "Good job."
I suppose I've been reasonably lucky in that I've had the perfect job : street performing. No boss, no requirement to turn up at the workplace on any given day or at any given time, no tax, work as long as you like for as much money as you need, spend all day in the sunshine doing something that's lots of fun, that gets you appreciation from your fellow man... perfect! Made a decent living for a while, but eventually found I couldn't sustain it, and came a bit unstuck when I got injured as I didn't have too much of a backup plan, took me about two years to get back up and reasonably stable financially - currently a data entry clerk, for my sins. Thing is, at least I know how to have fun as a data entry clerk - and as an office furniture fitter, and as a telesales rep, and a warehouse operative, and an internet forum moderator, all of which I've done while planning and scheming to get back to the "perfect" job again (only properly this time), and paradoxically I'm enjoying juggling a lot more than I did when it was my living, which is always a problem when a hobby becomes a livelihood. Doing too much of what you love is a recipe for growing to hate it - far better to cultivate flexibility to be good at everything and a mindset that will find enjoyment in even the most mundane of tasks.
I seem to recall that a telephone handset has about 25000 bacteria on it, and you put that next to your mouth and ears. We'll all perish when the telephone sanitizers and hairbrush salesmen are sent off on a spaceship along with the middle managers.
Right, so we have pills that will "solve" erectile dysfunction, pills that will "cure" depression, and now pills that will "help" people who have undergone trauma. How long before we have pills that will do everything else, or have it become accepted to sprinkle something on your cornflakes that will increase your ability to slog through work, pills that will blot out a bad day at the office, pills you can take to get through arguments with your girlfriend... While I appreciate that some things are harder to get through than others, it is probably better in the long run for people to take responsibility for their own mental functioning without treating the body as a machine - how long before it's considered unnatural to live without supplements?
First one, here goes... wouldn't lumping all "objectionable material" into one place make it more tantalising for kids? Part of the thrill of being young is pushing the boundaries, and knowing that there's a place where everything is porn is going to make sure that the kids will know it's there, that all they have to do is find an unblocked computer or find a way around the firewall (single key to unlock *all* porn, yay!) and they'll be the coolest out there for doing something they've been told not to. After all, it's not going to be "You're 18 now, and here's something you've never been told before : .xxx is full of pictures of naked women." Prohibition tends to make things more desirable, not less.