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A Letter from 2020 206

Posted by Hemos from the i've-got-goosebumps dept.
Auckerman writes: "Mark Summerfield, of Perl Press , has written an excellent article over at OsOpinion. It's written as a letter from his future self on what life will be like in 20 years. Kinda scary and certainly worst case scenerio, but his point gets across."
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A Letter from 2020 More

A Letter from 2020

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  • The shrine of Linus Torvalds will be attended daily by his disciples, who spread around printed sheets of their project source code daily, a ritual begun by Kevin Mitnick in 2003.

    Bill Gates, after his recent voluntary demotion to janitor, works yet another day in the halls of Microsoft. "Hey, I got sick of coding, and I had a change of conscience. This was the only way for me to escape," says Bill of his career decision.

    Rob "Commander Taco" Malda spends yet another day in Cabo San Lucas, on the coastline, wearing only his 18-karat gold-enameled Speedo, coding away on his Sony VAIO laptop with Debian 20.2.13. The locals beg him to put on a shirt.

    The Apple world mourns the loss of Steve Jobs, who died in a hyperbaric chamber accident. Apparently, he drank too much soda while in the chamber, causing his lungs to explode.

    Today marks the 15th anniversary of Sony CEO Norio Ohaga and chief design technician Akio Morita trying yet again to take over the world with a proprietary programming language. The result was a humiliating failure similar to that of the original DIVX DVD format. Sony was forced to halt all product production except in the fields of personal sound systems, video production tools, and animé.

  • Politicians corrupt themselves, and businesses just coronate the most corrupt.
  • There are great points in this, but one important thing in lobbying is know your topic. We are geeks, nerds, or whatever you want to call us. We know a lot about what we love -- COMPUTERS. Why then should we go lobby for the environment? Let's work on the matters that effect us, and let the uninformed be informed by our voices. Sure, our problems might not seem like a big deal to other people, but they are important to us, and they should be treated as such. Get involved with areas you know about, that's where you can help the most.

    Just my few cents...

    ~KONala

  • Hard drive technology is always present and therefore you can store things. Microsoft has already been bitchslapped by the government and will eventually be totally broken up. Also you can't redefine the US consitution without a great deal of effort and that would be almost impossible to allow. Programmers and Historians are not subversives and never will be. Microsoft is not big brother and dosn't have the clout, etc. In other words not in 100,000,000 years.
  • and people will recreate representations of the turn-of-the-century internet on their computers. Of course our current internet will fit on one home system then.

    Stan: Hey Bob, I'm having an Internet Retro party this weekend, you coming?

    Bob: Hell yeah! I wouldn't miss that pron & e-commerce! Let's see if I still remember how to type.

    Stan: Don't forget that, aw, what did they call it...oh yeah, Latency!

    Both: hahahaha
  • The Apple world mourns the loss of Steve Jobs, who died in a hyperbaric chamber accident. Apparently, he drank too much soda while in the chamber, causing his lungs to explode.


    His stommace would explode instaed, that's where soda goes when you drink it.

    If your stommace exploded, you wouldn't have to worry about the blood loss and internal injuries, the shock would likely kill you first.

    Still, he'd have to drink a lot so soda, and something would have to be seriously wrong with the hyperbaric chamber for that to happen.

  • Re:Businesses don't corrupt politicians... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Now, if corporations where some sort of socialist communes, then perhaps we could get away with thinking that corporations are "us" therefore we have only to blame "ourselves".

    My dear Green Socialist:
    Consider that the majority of American households now hold stock and mutual funds invested in these "evil" corporations. In other words, they already are "us"! Which by implication means, what's good for them is good for us, too! The old saw about "What's good for General Motors is good for America" has more truth to it than you might think. Call it a Capitalist Commune, maybe!? The notion of a class divide between the prolitariat vs. the capitalist is ridiculously outdated. Today the prolitariat is the capitalist!

    $$$$$$
  • Microsoft.net is already somewhat a reality. MS owns a pretty good chunk
    of shares in UU.NET. Not extremely unbelievable in that light :/

  • All I have to say can be summed up in one sentence: what is wrong with you people??

    Currently I'm working with some others to produce a free development kit for the Dreamcast. It doesn't sound like much, but the big issue here is that we're scared to release anything for fear of Sega coming down on us, whether we did anything wrong or not. Barring that, every Dreamcast disc is forced to display "Licensed by Sega Enterprises", which even if you disclaim it, is an open invitation to "get rid" of anyone they don't like.

    You might be sitting there smug going "heh heh, stupid game consoles, who gives a shit" but the fact is that a lot of companies are heading this way. What happens when all widely available PCs come with a thing like that that makes it next to impossible to install a free OS? Or even worse, like RMS's scenerio, where the computer will not allow a new OS to be installed without some kind of encryption keys? They are already actively developing monitors with encryption in the cable so that you can't copy movies. Forget the logisitcal problems -- there is a possibility that we'll have things like video cards and other hardware that need special encryption keys to unlock usage of them.

    The Suck guys were right, the people here at Slashdot have a bad tendancy to just assume that things will always be the same and never get worse. I'm not saying that they'll keep getting worse and worse and there won't be a backlash.. but some laws and precedents are being laid down right now that provide the foundation for things like he describes.

  • I wonder if he conotes the Indians with hackers...

    Atill amusing to read and the line with the "European open mindness being crushed by the dollar" is absolutely transferable to today, or not?

    da St0p
  • In fact, poorer nations are mired in poverty BECAUSE of Amercian-style cpitalits.

  • "Funding a project is not "taking the initiative in creating the Internet." The Internet was created by scientists"

    Well, this isn't completely correct. The Internet was "created" by whichever group of people decided initially to build the arpanet (the DoD in this case). Those scientists would not have done what they did by themselves, they were funded by someone higher up whose idea the whole thing was, and in essence, were just implementors of that idea. Sure they came up with original ideas for the lower level components that the project was built with (e.g. TCP/IP) but not for the Internet itself. I don't see that all the parties involved would have had the initiative to come work together and build what they built, without some higher level entity driving the project. (see "Computer Networks, 3rd Edition, Tanenbaum, page 47 for a few more details on the beginning of the arpanet .. it pretty much happened like that)

    It's kind of like, if I decide "I'm going to create my own house", then I go draw up a few rough plans of where I want the kitchen, how big the windows must be, where the bedrooms must be etc etc. Of course, I don't have all the skills required to bring the project to completion, so I hire an architect to draw up the plans, and I hire a builder to physically put it together. But the house is still "my creation", even though I hired some help for implementation. The guy who laid down a bunch of bricks and cement is not, in general, considered the "creator" of my house.

    I'm not trying to comment on Al Gore here, I have no idea what he did or didn't do regarding the internet. I'm just making a more general comment on who gets considered a "creator" of something, and 9 times out of 10 it's the person(s) who thought something up, conceptualized and designed the whole thing and then organized its implementation. The house is just one example, but that applies to most other things, especially businesses, software etc. Bjarne Stroustrup created C++, not the hundreds of people who write C++ compilers. Sun is considered the "creator" of Java, not the bunch of scientists who really created it. Etc etc etc.

  • Two wild points:

    • I remember gopher [dyndns.org]. It's a hell of a lot simpler and more efficient than the HTTPD-world of today
    • Some documentation has been found that indicates the original 13th amendment dissapeared some three or four years after its publication. It was replaced, of course, with the modern 13th amendment. I don't recall exactly what it was that it was about, so if anyone has heard about this, please update (:

  • Don't you guys realize this guy is being totally felicitous? Not only his he making comments on where things could end up if people like Bill Gates has his way with his .NET strategy, but also the horrific brainwashing capabilities that come when laws like the DMCA and UCITA make it illegal to re-create history. After all history is stored on some medium, and any storage could be outlawed through the leasing paradigm being pushed by Corprations like Microsoft. Worse, already the recording and motion picture industries are trying to overturn the 1982 Home Recording Act . And now the FCC is requiring copyright protection chips be placed in all digital televisions. These technologies give them the power to re-write history to suit their agenda. Play this out over the next 20 years, and people will start believing that what they have now is the best, as the history of anything else will be erased.

  • I feel like such a clod. I've been rooting for Al Gore all this time because I think George W. Bush is way worse.

    I tell people around me to vote for anybody except for the big two parties just to send the message that there is unrest about the way things are.

    Now I have a good recommendation. Thanks.

    BTW: (obligitory on topic message so I dont get modded to blackest hell) The huge Mega-Corps like Microsoft an oligarchys like RIAA and MPAA would not be able to survive a libertarian government because their kingdoms are won and protected by an overbearing government. Going libertarian will bring the Constitution back to power.

    Let us reclaim this great country and strike down government support of the god-less comunist Mega-Corps!


    meept!
  • Let me quote what I found on a mesage board today... let's say this'll make your comment seem like nothing. This is horrible:

    "(not unlike all the os dicussions going on, what is coolest/best? linux or windows? we all know windows is "better", it may just not be so fucking cool, all depending on each individual's interests;" [...] "some people may have problems accepting that others simply just are more creative/better humans."

    You are now considered a better human if you use windows... And that story doesnt seem so far out anymore.

  • Agreed. "Look, I can make references to a work of brilliance and Microsoft's most recent business initiative, spout a bit about corporate monoculture, and get linked to by /."

    Stupid waste of time.

    This is, as you say, a no case scenario.

    And what point, exactly, was gotten across? Corporations are scary? Get over it.
  • Surely you don't take Kahuna Burger (or today's apparently fascist sympathizer moderators) to be typical of Slashdot attitudes, do you?

    Remember, if it were up to Kahuna Burger, the Sega Dreamcast itself would be illegal, since all video games do is stir people up and make them into zombie killbots in his warped world view. He certainly wouldn't want a free development kit for Dreamcast, no one would be able to censor it. Kahuna Burger is a fascist, he'd easily adjust to the future portrayed in the letter, probably landing a job as copyright enforcer and shooting violaters.

    My suggestion to you is to keep working on it, and when you've finished it, release it. If Bleem is legal, and SOA allows Bleem on Dreamcast, your development kit should be ok.

  • I don't think it was very well written, but it has some interesting points. The part about history was Insightful. In fact, there are historians who are allready very worried about the current development, it was recently a long coloumn by a historian in a Norwegian newspaper who wrote that much of our recent history has been erased, not because it would violate somebody's IP rights, but nobody thinks anybody would be interested.

    If, in addition, historians will have problems with IP regulation, it is a significan risk. And, if nothing is static, it's even worse, if historians has to rent, then, yes, our history is erased.

    Around here, for dead tree magazines, there is a law requiring everybody to send a copy to a public archive for a nominal compensation. I know there has been discussions about things like that for digital media as well (at least I know they have been recording USENET for years), but they have to get publishers consent on the web. For historians, that's probably a Bad Thing. BTW, I have been dumping all my stuff to a tape once a year lately, with the intention of keeping it there for the future. In 20 years I can look back on it.... :-)

  • Okay. Letting corporations run things is a Bad Idea. We figured that out. How about we all get together and tell the other people? You know, those other people around you?

    *sigh* Why do I feel like a choir member when reading stuff like this?
    -----------------------------
    1,2,3,4 Moderation has to Go!
  • If you are from 20 years in the future and somehow reading this, please answer my questions:

    1 - Have there been any advances in prewarmed ground corn since 2000? Or is hot grits just passe and lukewarm oatmeal is where it's at?

    2 - What is the status of Beowulf clustering? More importantly, could I even imagine a circa 2020 Beowulf cluster?

    3 - What is the current status of the Miss Portman? If she is unmarried then my plan has failed :(

    4 - Tom Christiansen - Once and for, is this guy dead!?!

    5 - #5 is more of a request. Can you please browse the 20 year old Slashdot archives and tell me what this post god mod'ed too? If it's not +5, Insightfull...frrr

    Thank you.


    With love,
  • > Take a worldwide survey, and I think you'll find that most *individuals*
    aren't willing to admit to themselves that they're really greedy
    bastards, and that it makes them feel better about themselves if they
    claim to be good people on a survey; then they don't have to actually go
    act like they really care, they can just talk about it.
  • Even in the heyday or government/business buddy, buddying in the 1880-1900 you really didn't see that much coorporation. People always have critism and you couldn't execute anyone or send them to internment camps. It just dosn't work that way. There is due process and the force of law, etc.
  • ...does the sky ever stop falling around here? This guy -- in a very reactionary way -- does raise some good points. Things like DCMA are Orwellian, I grant that. But the way things get portrayed on Slashdot has long since become a parody of itself: everything is a crisis, everything is an emergency, everything is a threat to our beloved GPL -- and not just to a simple license, but to our very way of life, to the American way, to life and liberty and freedom and happiness and ice cream cones too. Help help! We must Act, and Quickly!

    Yawn

    Guys: It's just software. It is not the end of the world. there are more important things in life than this. Really.

    It gets pretty tiresome after a year or two guys. Can't this band play any other numbers?



  • Well, the reason I consider mega-corps communist is because of their sheer size and the way they do business. A capitalist busines, in my mind, is a small and fast moving company that competes with many other small and fast moving companies to sell the best product possable at the lowest cost possable in order to still make a profit. On the other hand, I see mega-corps as a rigidly structured self contained government. Products are often controlled through litigation to create or maintain a monopoly or an oligarchy. Employees are cared for in every manner by the company (insurance, child care, predictable salary not based on skill). Also mega-corps are given state financial assistance in the form of very low cost loans, grants, corporate welvare, government surplus purchasing programs, etc. These corporations far closer resemble the state run "businesses" of communist China than they do the capitalist ideal stated above.


    meept!
  • I also enjoyed the reference to "National Corporation".

    Yikes, and I've just finished rolling up a character for a Cyberpunk 2020 campaign. The similarities are quite evident. Gotta love those corporate governments...

  • At worst this letter was entertaining, but at best it's an Orwellian warning that we should take heed of. Of course it is a little over the top, but hyperbole is usually the best way to get important points across.

    As much as I feel that we are heading to a society that resembles Mark's prediction. I've always felt that there will be a breaking point where people just won't stand for it anymore. The general apathy towards UCITA, DMCA, and the fiasco with Napster (at least outside of geek circles) can only continue for so long. Eventually disgust with the system will hit a threshhold and a large enough group of people will fight back. I'm not sure that working in the system is the way things like this will change. My prediction is that rampant civil disobediance will be the force for change. I'm sure there are others out there, like me, that will choose to ignore laws that take away our rights. The powers that be cannot win, when the numbers that are resisting are too huge to punish. Of course this all hinges on normal people feeling that their rights are being severely violated and realizing that there is something that they can do about it.

  • Certainly I would need a steel rod implanted in my head to believe a libertarian government would bust up the monopolies.

    Your points about economic libertarians are well taken and I believe what you say coinsides with my fellings. I believe the government needs strong social programs so that every American has a place to live, food, and good health care, and free education even if they lose every cent they have.

    The reason I like libertarians however is my belief that the government has no place in regulating my business dealings. If I want to buy a CD and rip into MP3s for all my friends I should be able to. If the RIAA does not want me to do this they should have had me sign a zillion page contract saying exactly how, when, and who is allowed to listen to the music on that CD. They could even put some teeth into the contract threatening to never sell me another CD if I violate their contract.




    meept!
  • Nope. I'm with you on this one. It has the feel as if he just read 1984 and was trying to copy the feel (substitute proles for subversives and you start to see what I'm saying). Maybe I'm a optimist but what he writes seems really unlikely. And what's this about the last digital copy of Sgt. Pepper being erased? I still have the original album (and the record player to play it one) and it's over twenty years old. What makes him think all this is just going to evaporate?

  • Letter to myself from the year 2000 (Score:4)

    by Elvis Maximus ( 193433 ) on Monday September 18, 2000 @07:48AM (#771509) Homepage

    Dear Elvis,

    Greetings from the year 2000! I'm writing you from my auto-piloted aircar on my way to work. Normally my wife, Claudia Schiffer, takes the aircar, but my jet pack is in the shop this week.

    I just wanted to drop you a line to thank you for making the decision to major in Near Eastern Studies rather than Computer Science. Excellent idea. I now work for a multi-billion dollar Near Eastern Studies company while my Unix hacking friends beg for quarters in the street.

    By the way, you should probably sell all that Cisco stock you've got. Networking is going nowhere. Invest in cold fusion.

    Sincerely,
    You

    -

  • If Amazon keeps their "One Click" patent, then it expires in 2024 and, it can never be patented again.
    Specifically, I was refering to the possibility of other patents similar to that taking hold in the market. Granted, their patent would run out in 2004, and granted they'll go through hell keeping it even if they do persue it. However, all it would take is a few patents from Microsoft along the same lines and we'd be in trouble.
  • As many times as we have to remind you limeys that the expression is "sheesh". And BTW, how can you be sure you don't have a problem with gas and the rest of us are just too polite to mention it?
  • And not even well reasoned FUD at that.
  • We do not just fight this in the courts, we fight it in the streets.

    Bingo -- stop right there. That is exactly what I'm getting at. Is this a problem? Yes. Should we be concerned? Absolutely. Should we do something about it? Of course we should.

    Should we keep preaching to the already converted?

    NO.

    The big fallacy here is in thinking that Slashdot is anything but our little geek soapbox to rant upon, but that's all it is. I'd like to see some changes too, but this isn't the place to bring them about. A start, sure, but you're sufficently riled up & organized that it's now time to move on to bigger strategies -- write (with atoms & paper, not bits & keys!) to your congressmen and let them know how important this is. Don't bitch about it to me -- I'm already on your side. Bitch about it to people that can do something about the problem. If you invest all your energy here then the world is going to pass you by, and the issue you're so worked up about will never be helped by your contribution.

    That would almost be worse than anything else, wouldn't it?



  • Making them illegal is unlikely. However, making them obsolete is quite possible. How many cassette drives have you seen lately? (For the kiddies here, Commodore, etc. used to use standard audio casettes to store data.)
  • Then see which of the two categories contains most of the world's "desolate, sterilized wastelands".

    Uhm. I asume you mean corporate web sites have more content, cleaner designs, ect. It might be true, to some extent, but did you stop and ask yourself why?

    Maybe they have the resources (read money) to hire people to build those.

    While the "free" and uncolonised may have good ideas, they have to work to "earn their lives" (anyone else than me sees something wrong with the way that sounds?) and do that in their free time.

    My point is that we're all stuck in a capitalistic system and some are advantaged and others held back by it. But you can't judge people's capabilities based on their production in such unequal system.

    Anarchy is the answer.
    Must read [cmu.edu]
    An Anarchy FAQ [geocities.com]

  • This text has been illegally obtained from vault files. Do not leave this terminal or attempt to enter any commands. You will be arrested momentarily. Resistance is futile.

    • Software. Use open source. If you need Win32, don't upgrade beyond Win98.

    Better yet, don't use Windows at all! If you feel the need for Windows, of any version:

    1. Actively search out open source/non-Windows alternatives.
    2. Run the 'needed' windows software under WINE.
    3. Many 'Windows only' programs actually have versions for use on MacOS. Buy a cheap iMac and run the Mac version.
    4. Third, enter a detox program ;-)

    • Hardware. Never buy RDRAM-based motherboards.

    Better yet, never by Intel based hardware (which is the one of the main RDRAM boosters). Try an Alpha-based system, Power Macintosh, or even a Sun workstation. If you absolutely must use an x86 compatible system, get an AMD solution. When the AMD x86-64 stuff comes out definitely get an AMD solution ;-)

    • Music. ...

    Start going to local music events by small, unsigned bands. You might be suprised by how much good music is out there that never makes it to national distribution. Many of those small bands are even able to afford to have their own CDs pressed and sell them at performances.

    • Movies. Watch'em in the theater and buy DVD's as you see fit. ...

    Watch them in the theaters only after they move to the second string, $1/$1.50/$2.00 theaters or wait for the movis on non-pay-per-view cable or open broadcast TV. As for DVD's just don't buy them at all! If you really care about this issue, you can forego a little bit of entertainment.

    • Vote. ...

    I can't agree more with this one. If you live in a democratic country and you don't like what's going on, get out there and do something about it. If you don't live in a democracy, maybe you should look into doing something about that as well ;-)

  • In case you havn't noticed, the internet has been and still is running from software, and most of the people reading slashdot scrape out their living from software. So if you don't really care how all this affects you, you should at least realize that every little detail can affect people make their livelyhood from this software.

  • The author of this short story (not article) should have focused on the monopolistic tendacies of AOL instead of Microsoft.
  • You're missing a number of points.

    I'm not saying the issue isn't important. It is, but this is no longer the best forum to raise your concerns. Just about everyone here is already on your side; the goal now should be to move forward and convince people that actually matter -- members of congress, judges, and our presidents & governors. Arguably, the private sector is at least as important, but you're never going to get them on your side on this one so it's a dead end to go after them.

    There are more important issues. Copyright is a strange & muddied thing, and very interesting in these GNU / Linux / mp3 / Napster / etc days. But it's not the end of the world. Sorry, but that's all there is to it. It ties in to some very dangerous issues (the AOL-TimeWarner merger terrifies me, for example) but there are more important things to worry about. Health care. Education. Defense. Ecology. Et cetera -- pick any one you choose. Just because copyright plays a role in our livlihoods does not, by that very connection, make it the most important issue on the docket -- and implying such implies quite a bit about the self-importance of the readers here. Is software a big deal? Sure, I guess. But give me a break, get a grip on reality. The jonny one note thing gets really, really old after a while...



  • I despise guns and killing. However, reading this made me feel something I haven't before. I suddenly realized I'd be willing to take up a gun and defend the government of these United States from traitors and revolutionaries. I'd be willing to shoot and kill you to protect it. Call me a Loyalist, I suppose. But you need to realize that there are people who disagree with you, perhaps violently. Me, for instance. I could never "go off" to war. I probably wouldn't even be able to fight if we were invaded by a foreign power. But the thought of being betrayed by fellow citizens makes me angry beyond explanation.

    Of course, I was born, raised, and have always lived in Richmond, VA (Capitol of the Confederacy). Go figure... guess that doesn't really make much sense.

    Supreme Lord High Commander of the Interstellar Task Force for the Eradication of Stupidity

  • Hopefully this story is grossly hysteric. Anyway it should be a wake-up call -- fight the UCITA!
    --
  • I like the Live Goat Porn number. Oh wait... damn... I guess I'm a one trick pony, too...
  • Does this mean that we get M$ stock options at birth?
    This article is silly. Al Gore would never let this happen - oh, wait, he DID put the Internet for sale on eBay, so I guess anything is possible.
  • I think an interesting part about this "letter" from 2020 is that all technology mentioned sounds to be on the same level as what we have today. To me, this is the most poignant part of the Winopoly/RIAA/MPAA trend toward litigation. A new technology emerges and it gets its ass sued off.

    Given the tendency of big business to sue, I'm amazed we've gotten this far.
  • I actually know people who sound like this...."Windows sucks and crashes, but hey everyone knows how to use it and I can listen to my music..."

  • Re:1984, anyone? (Score:5)

    by Mad-cat ( 134809 ) on Monday September 18, 2000 @07:50AM (#771529) Homepage
    1984 is about government getting into our private lives. If governments weren't corrupt, corporations wouldn't have the power to be corrupt.

    Splitting up the 500 richest corporations and giving the money to the public isn't going to solve any problems. We should have more freedom to skirt around these ridiculous laws, not make laws to strip away more freedom (elect Harry Browne [harrybrowne.org])

  • Re:1984, anyone? (Score:4)

    by systemapex ( 118750 ) on Monday September 18, 2000 @07:51AM (#771530)
    That would be against the DMCA. According to the DMCA, all border crossings to Canada are considered devices allowing people to get around copyright protections and thus, are illegal.
  • While this article is a work of fiction, it speaks of a reality that I have been scared of for some time - no local storage - all storage mus tbe "rented" from a service provider - I'm Scared.
    • IF---
    • Amazon is allowed to keep their patent on the "One Click" ordering system.
    • Microsoft .NET (God forbid... PLEASE) actually takes off and gains market share
    • User-owned storage media begins to vanish
    • RIAA shuts down Napster/Gnutella, etc (**** NO I'M NOT ADVOCATING COPYRIGHT INFRINGMENT - ONLY THE PRINCIPLE UNDER WHICH NAPSTER OPPERATES - A FREE MEDIUM FOR EXCHANGE OF FILES AND IDEAS)
    • UCITA passes in all 50 states
    • Licenses to hardware can be enforced without any signed agreement between parties (READ: :Cue:Cat)
    Then this story could become reality in 20 years. God help us all.
  • I think of my dad, and how back when he was my age, everything was airplanes... airplanesairplanesairplanes... (heheh)

    Now, airplanes are still around, but we all don't have one in our garage. True there have been many advantages like cleaner fuel, and more efficient jets, but they're still the same planes from the 60's and 70's.

    With Moore's law its hard to imaging if computers will go the way of the jet, and hind-sight is always 20/20, but I feel comfortable being in the IS/IT market. I think we need to focus on the fact that computers have been a boom *long* in the making, and planes are more of a boom that fizzled moreso than computers are today. We are the generation that forms this technology into a service that will benefit everyone, and not just a skilled pilot and a few travelors packed like sardines...

    Why are you all proud to be in IS/IT, and what do you think about technology trends becoming more informational than physical (er... that is as far as the common man is concerned) ?

    ----

  • One thing I know. Predictions of what life will be like n years in the future are always wrong and get more wrong the larger the values of n.
    They're all bollocks!


    Hacker: A criminal who breaks into computer systems

  • Bush has over $90 million in campaign contributions, mostly from BB, while Gore has just over $50 million)

    What's needed is a simple rule, if it can't vote, it can't make a campaign contribution. Clearly, campaign contributions have an influence on the outcome of an election to some degree (nobody will hear of Bob Smith who has $5.00 in his campaign fund), thus, contributions should be restricted to those who have a right to influence an election's outcome (voters). Add to that a cap on the amount an individual may contribute (since no particular voter is to have more influence than another) and perhaps representatives might start representing the people they're supposed to again.

  • Hi, I'm your friendly neighbourhood Fascist Moderator at osOpinion. What happened, in few words: the site used to be affiliated with Maximum PC; then Kelly McNeill, our editor-in-chief, got a better offer from the NewsFactor Network. A few weeks ago, we switched, and the NewsFactor people came up with this new portal-like look. I personally would like a pure-text alternative look (like /.'s "Light" option), but you can't have everything...

  • Past sucked, present is better (Score:3)

    by Benjamin Shniper ( 24107 ) on Monday September 18, 2000 @07:52AM (#771547) Homepage
    I don't forget how it was to be a kid on the Bboards.

    All the stuff you couldn't download... it was a bunch of porn and warez and dumb online games.

    Still, the old apache systems were quite cute, and though I don't miss the connection speeds, it was quite convenient to have everything a little boy shouldn't have in one place. Anarchist's handbook and warez comander keen games in one place. As it went on, it got more focused as a message board tool and less as a pure file-leech place. And that's how the internet started, too. What will the next generation of networking tools be?

    This was pre-linux popularity, pre-slashdot. What will replace the internet? A corporate network like Microsoft.net? I'm guessing (just guessing) digital tv and transferrence of free movies and songs. And why shouldn't music videos be given free from companies, or sold for cheap.

    Is our personal freedom worth more than the good of society? Yes. So let's fight for the next technology to be as free as possible.

    -Ben
  • The corporate influence is slowly but surely eating away the open nature of the net and replacing it with barbed wire fencing to protect their property. They are claiming "land", dumping property on it and putting up "no trespassing" signs without ever stopping to think whether it would be better to keep their property somewhere else.

    The net is in a danger of becoming a desolate, sterilized wasteland Take a look around the world. As you look, please note which parts of the world have been "colonised" by corporations grabbing land and "putting up 'no trespassing' signs without ever stopping to think whether it would be better to keep their property somewhere else". In other words, which parts of the world have been developed under the normal, capitalist, Western mode of production.

    Then note which parts of the world remain "free" and uncolonised, without the plague of that cursed private property.

    Then see which of the two categories contains most of the world's "desolate, sterilized wastelands".

    You may be surprised.

  • big deal (Score:4)

    by marlowe23 ( 54624 ) on Monday September 18, 2000 @07:53AM (#771550)
    What's the big fuss? Doesn't Bruce Sterling write one or two of these every time he gets drunk or depressed? "The Giant Cataclysmic Economic Crash of (insert five years from whenever article was written) took us all by surprise... well... except for me, Bruce Sterling..."

    I guess the big difference is, Wired publishes all his Henny Penny tripe.

  • OMFG! Another George Orwell in the making! Notify the Media!

    Now if we can just pull another "Animal Farm" out of the poor boob before we suck out his brains with a bicycle pump...

    "Sure, living in today's modern workaday world IS a little like having Bees live in your head.

    But, there they are..."
    -- Firesign Theatre, 1972

  • Anyone care to hazzard a guess on what WUCITA stands for in the article?

    World Unification Copyright Infringement Trade Act?

    Well, U Can't Innovate Trade Act?

    Okay, that was dumb, I'm sorry.

  • If governments weren't corrupt, corporations wouldn't have the power to be corrupt

    And exactly who corrupts the government? That's right... Big Business. If it weren't for lobbyists giving millions to Dubyuh or Gore, there might still be a shread of dignity in political elections (and I'm not exagerating; Bush has over $90 million in campaign contributions, mostly from BB, while Gore has just over $50 million)

    And I'm not advocating splitting up the Fortune 500; I'm advocating restricting their influence over the government and the laws that are passed at the federal level.
    ------

  • For what it's worth, Al Gore never said that he personally created the internet. He said that he took initiative in the internet's creation, which (while a lot less of a good punchline) is actually true: he really did provide a lot of leadership in getting funding for the building of the 'net through congress.

    This wasn't all stuff back in the days of Arpanet, but check out, for example, the High Performance Computing Act of 1991. And I actually remember an article about a national "network of networks" *written* by Gore in Byte magazine in the early 90s.

    It's a real shame that this soundbyte has been so widely spread out of context. Check the facts.

    (That said, I personally support Nader, for reasons given quite clearly in the article).

    --

  • Re:Businesses don't corrupt politicians... (Score:4)

    by Hard_Code ( 49548 ) on Monday September 18, 2000 @10:21AM (#771557)
    I'm not so willing to bet joe blue-collar-worker has exactly the same political ideas as niles upper-management. And guess who has the money? Upper management of course. And they give that money to political groups that represent *their* interests, not necessarily the interests of their employees. Corporations are not politically homogenous entities. In fact I'd say that the hierarchy in corporations reflect the general political differences of the population at large. Those at top have substantially different views than those at bottom. Now, if corporations where some sort of socialist communes, then perhaps we could get away with thinking that corporations are "us" therefore we have only to blame "ourselves". Just look at YOUR corporation and who is in charge. Do you coders in the trenches really have that much power over your ivory tower business school PHBs and marketing suits? Do you *really* think they share your political views identically?

    Yes human nature is at fault. But the bad part of it is at fault more.
  • I didn't hear that ad, but in the actual interview, he never claimed to have invented the internet.

    --

  • That was a pretty good read, and presents a rather chilling scenario. Oddly enough, I don't see it as being as far fetched as 1984 was for it's time. It really makes me wonder what kind of world my grandkids will live in ... or even my kids when they hit their 30's or 40's.

    The rise of the multi-national corporation is playing a big part in the changes in society, don't you think? When a single corporation can challenge laws in two or three countries simultaneously, that has some rather disturbing implications for freedom.

  • Microsoft... (Score:3)

    by kennedy ( 18142 ) on Monday September 18, 2000 @08:01AM (#771571) Homepage
    ...can pry my unix/unix-like operating systems from my cold dead fingers.
  • I too found this article shrill and tiresome. I mean, come on, folks, it's not like everything that's now off patent will suddenly become patentable anytime in our lifetimes!

    DMCA and UCITA are crap. Fine. Work to repeal them, or work around them.

    sulli

  • Re:History proves this type of thing wrong (Score:3)

    by gfxguy ( 98788 ) on Monday September 18, 2000 @08:25AM (#771577)
    I don't think you've been paying attention. When Richard Stallman wrote his vision of the future, people laughed, but it's not funny anymore:

    Right to Read [gnu.org]

    I'm not trying to belittle you or anything, but I've seen several of your postings and I just think you're overly optimistic.
    ----------

  • Re:[a bit OT] Al Gore and the internet (Score:3)

    by Jeffrey Baker ( 6191 ) on Monday September 18, 2000 @08:26AM (#771579)
    Funding a project is not "taking the initiative in creating the Internet." The Internet was created by scientists. They were creative people who invented and developed a fast and scalable system for connecting computers over long and short distances around the world.

    Al Gore enthusiastically gave them money. There is a huge difference. He should have said "I took the initiative in spending tax money on the Internet." That would have been 100% accurate. As it stands, his comment makes it sound like the federal funding was the key element. Gore has a habit of making statements that belittle the acheivements of the individual. He believes that the goverment is responsible for the strong economy, low crime, and the Internet. In reality these things are the result of dedicated work by the people of America, and the government is merely the tool of the people.

  • HA! exactly! if you read this as a mockery of the average whiny, paranoid, i'd-join-a-militia-if-they-only-had-DSL slashdot reader it's hilarious, but it obviously was meant to be serious.

    sig:

  • Grin, the closest I had was the senior year letter that went out 2 years later (was supposed to be one, our English teacher forgot... the only teacher lazier than the seniors)...

    It was really freaky, and that was two years... I couldn't imagine 10...

    Alex
  • Rip DVD movies to MPEG-4 and burn them on CD-R or distribute them on broadband internet connections.

    Tom's Hardware - Copying a DVD Video to CD-ROM [tomshardware.com]

  • things we can do (Score:4)

    by abde ( 136025 ) <apoonawa-blog@yaho[ ]om ['o.c' in gap]> on Monday September 18, 2000 @08:11AM (#771600) Homepage

    The article was indeed drivel as another poster pointed out. But all the scary legal compromising going on IS something to be concerned about. Fortunately, there are things we can do with existing technology to preserve our rights...

    Software. Use open source. If you need Win32, don't upgrade beyond Win 98.

    Hardware. Never buy RDRAM-based motherboards.

    Music. Buycott the MPAA but start looking into new indie groups too. Try MOD [traxinspace.com] music. Rip your CD's at home into OGG [vorbis.com], not MP3. Share your OGGs via Gnutella. Never buy an Audio CDR - always use data CDrs.

    Movies. Watch 'em in the theater and buy DVD's as you see fit. The MPAA has a lock on this one, we don't have much legal opportunity to fight back (ideas anyone?)

    Privacy. Use PGP.

    Vote! email and write your congressman - get informed about what the DMCA and the UCITA and the other threats are. Slashdot's YRO section is easily one of the best references. Support the EFF. get informed - and help inform.

  • Re:1984, anyone? (Score:3)

    by deacent ( 32502 ) on Monday September 18, 2000 @08:13AM (#771605)

    And exactly who corrupts the government? That's right... Big Business.

    Don't forget that the US voters are also partially to blame. We can be such sheep sometime. We vote for candidates the way we root for football teams where we should be looking at candidates as interviewees for a job. I too support the idea of getting special interest perks out of politics (or perhaps politics out of government), but I think that ultimately the responsibility lies with the voters.

    Remember, if you're able to vote and don't, you're not allowed to complain.

    -Jennifer

  • It's just software. It is not the end of the world. there are more important things in life than this. Really.

    How much of US society today is unworkable without software? Yes, I realize this is a US-centric view, but the world shows every indication of following suit.

    It's not just software-- it's our future. Society develops in what is called "punctuated equilibrium" in evolutionary circles-- long periods of stasis in which things evolve slowly, interrupted by short, frantic periods in which things change drastically and quickly. During those periods of rapid change, little things can make a big difference in the final outcome (chaos theory). Those who control the change control the outcome.

    We are building our future society right now, in more ways than you can imagine. Corporations are struggling to control the genie-out-of-the-bottle that is the Internet; the only way to control the Internet is to control the software with which people access the Internet. Note the recent DeCSS and Napster rulings. We'll see more and more patent wars between corporations, with our rights being collateral damage; eventually, it will become almost impossible to even write programs because every little thing will be a patent infringement.

    Personally, I would like to see a patent system that allows anyone to use any patent under a GPL-compatible license. That way, corporations can keep other corporations from making a buck off their patent, but it allows fair use of the patent for citizens who will not profit from use of the patent.

    In any case, corporations will not be satisfied until they can force us to hand over our money. They will use any means necessary, including infringing on our rights. Ten years from now, this will have settled down into equilibrium-- the time for them to act is now. The time for us to stop them is now.

    Our future depends on it.
  • there are more important things to worry about. Health care. Education. Defense. Ecology. Et cetera

    And what do all of these rely heavily on? Software. Thus if software is threatened, for example by stupid copyright/patent laws, then so are all the other important issues. To pick an example, what good is getting funding for health care if it's going to go into buying stupid software licenses for buggy programs from the Evil Empire?

    Just because copyright plays a role in our livlihoods does not, by that very connection, make it the most important issue on the docket

    Because software is affected by intellectual property laws, the connection is stronger than that. Copyright and patent's role in our livelihoods is pivotal, because they allow and disallow many other things, most notably software. If the ability to create software effectively is lost, then have no doubt, tons of other stuff will suffer as a result of their dependency on software.

    I do agree that it's not necessarily the biggest issue around, but I think that you've definately understated its importance.

  • I really liked the bit about how nobody could link to his stuff even if they wanted.

    The corporate influence is slowly but surely eating away the open nature of the net and replacing it with barbed wire fencing to protect their property. They are claiming "land", dumping property on it and putting up "no trespassing" signs without ever stopping to think whether it would be better to keep their property somewhere else.

    The net is in a danger of becoming a desolate, sterilized wasteland decorated by islands of corporate information protected behind the walls of greed.

  • Cute but why the notice here? (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 18, 2000 @07:31AM (#771619)
    20 years is not all that far off into the future and while technology has changed drastically I see no reason for that to give somone the impression we're going to be in a Big Brother situation with MS controlling the monitors. If history (remember that kiddies) has taught us anything it's that the big companies that once roared tend to get the smack-down after fscking the public over many years.

    I guess what I'm trying to say is that in the 1970's the same cute "scenario" could've been written about IBM except that the last copy of Sgt Peppers would've been on an 8-track.

    Bah...

  • Letter to myself from 2020 (Score:5)

    by zpengo ( 99887 ) on Monday September 18, 2000 @07:31AM (#771625) Homepage
    Dear ZPengo,

    Today was a great day. I finally reformatted my house's hard drive and installed Linux on it, so the toaster, blender, television and vibrating easy chair are finally working again. I'm still having some trouble getting X Windows installed in the bathroom, but I think it's because all the BSODs from the old operating system still have the toilet clogged up.

    I took my car in to the mechanic today. He said that the problem with my windshield wipers was that I had Perl in /usr/bin/perl18 instead of /usr/bin/perl. Well, duh! I swear, I was never cut out to be a mechanic.

    Anyway, I have to go get ready for work. My shoes take a while to boot up, so I must be going now.

    ZPengo

  • 1984, anyone? (Score:5)

    by Wind_Walker ( 83965 ) on Monday September 18, 2000 @07:32AM (#771627) Homepage Journal
    Excellent article. It does a good job of making (subtle) references to Orwell's 1984 by mentioning the rarity of paper books, and at the same tying in today's issues of DeCSS (linking to illegal material). I also enjoyed the reference to "National Corporation".

    Yes, it is a worst-case scenario. And, personally, I think that things will never get that bad. But I see things leaning that way; corporations becoming more and more powerful, the freedom of the Internet starting to be reigned in... It's scary, but what can we do (besides elect Ralph Nader [votenater.org]).

    The article leaves out a big part, though. The United States may be heading towards a terrible future, but what about other countries? Copyrights and patents could get so insane here in the USA that somebody can patent the alphabet (I wouldn't put it past them...) but those patents don't hold water in other countries. If things get too hairy here in the USA, let's all just defect North to Canada and leave behind idiotic copyright laws. Sounds like a sound plan to me.
    ------

  • Re:Businesses don't corrupt politicians... (Score:3)

    by orbital3 ( 153855 ) on Monday September 18, 2000 @11:21AM (#771628)
    But what are the chances that joe blue-collar-worker when put in niles upper-management's place wouldn't do the same despicable things? What truly makes joe the more admirable of the two in this scenario? joe's values and politcal ideas are likely just as self-serving as niles' are, we just tend to side with joe because the niles already had his lucky break. His parents were millionaires, or his friend was in upper-management too.

    I think Ted's point was more along the lines of "People, almost ALL people, are selfish and greedy, and aim only to make their own lives easier and more comfortable, while not giving a damn about anyone else."

    For example, as I was driving home from class today, I noticed while I was stopped at a light that the median was COVERED with black gum spots. Who sincerely thought to themselves that throwing their chewed gum out the window was a viable alternative to wrapping it up in a piece of paper and throwing it in a garbage can later? A whole lot of people must have, because there was a whole lot of gum on that median. They somehow justified to themselves that throwing their crap out the window for someone else to deal with was OK. How? It made their life easier.

    Do you honestly think that it was niles upper-management who was throwing his gum out the window? Nope, chances are it was joe.

    While I know this is a very trivial example, I think it illustrates the spirit of Ted's comment quite well.
  • elect Harry Browne

    Libertarians scare me too. It's not that minimal government is not a good idea in theory, it is. Government is evil. But it's also a necessary evil.

    Face it, people on the whole are stupid uneducated easily-influenced idiots. Take away controlling influences and they'll "educate" themselves from TV. The end result will be corporations having even more power over us.

    "Parents know what's best for their children?" Give me a fucking break. Look who is pumping out children. The uneducated idiots. Anyone with an education tends to breed in low numbers, if at all. You know the kind, you see them in the store and when the kid picks up some candy and mommy "bitch slaps" the kid in public and screams "PUT THE FUCKING CANDY DOWN NOW."

    And this is not about race. White Trash are just as bad. Poor people are in an economic jail. Yes, anyone can aspire and lift themselves out of it, but only if they ain't STUPID and don't have STUPID parents. Otherwise odds are against them. Face it, poor beget poor, middle class begets middle class and rich beget rich. How many rich people end up with kids that are poor? How many poor people have children that become rich? So, since Blacks started out economically with nothing dozens of years ago, sure, their kids have followed in their footsteps and so will there's.

    A lot of White people started out in the U.S. rich or well off. Not a single Black in the U.S. can say this. You see an educated well-off Black person in the U.S. and you don't have to look hard in their family to see a real hero, someone who had to overcome overwhelming odds against them to better themselves.

    Getting back to the point, remove government mandates for local public schooling, for example. Sounds good. Parents should be able to pick the best school for their child and pay for it, not blow school taxes on a school that they have no choice in. But that breaks down when it comes to the poor idiot. They can't afford to send their kid to a good school so they don't, or go cheap. Their kid ends up stupid just like Mommy and Daddy. School vouchers? Yet another government program trying to fix a good idea on paper yet it ends up being as much of a mess as the original problem.

    Without Government regulations, how far do you think Microsoft would be today? Would the auto companies have ever decided to make cars cleaner burning if they didn't have to? Would that plant a few miles away voluntarily put scrubbers on its stacks to clean out most of the toxins if it didn't have to?

    Capitalism means you do whatever it takes to earn the biggest money. Being socially responsible and doing the right thing is often counter to that. If, for example, manufacturer "A" decided to install the more expensive stack scrubbers for environmental purposes and manufacturer "B" decided to not spend the money, the market would punish "A" and drive it out of business since the IDIOTS in the world are too STUPID to care about anything but saving a buck or two on their collect calls (whoops, see the power of advertising!). I mean save a buck or two on what they buy, irregardless of how it was produced, etc...

    As for the original article, it's plausible. Big change is best done a wee bit at a time. Take away a little here and a little there. Insert a tad bit here and a tad bit there. Before you know it, you've lost all your rights and freedoms. How? Because PEOPLE ARE STUPID IDIOTS.

    Weave's closing thoughts...

    Remember:

    • People are stupid idiots
    • The real heros in this world are the poor persons who struggle to get an education, get a skill, and become just moderately successful.
    • People are stupid idiots
    • Vote early, vote often
    • People are stupid idiots
    Thank you for this opportunity to whore for kharma!

  • Businesses and politicians corrupt people (Score:3)

    by MarNuke ( 34221 ) on Monday September 18, 2000 @11:23AM (#771633) Homepage
    Business isn't the problem. Humanity is, and by extension, _we_ are the problem.

    Right, but I feel you fail to really see the realtionship between business, common people and goverment.

    Business relies on common people to fund them, the goverment also relies on common people to fund them too. With a relationship of two thing so powerful with the same goals in mind, it easy to screw over people.

    Think about this, say we vote someone into office. He (or she) seams like a good honest person. A business man comes up to him and offer him and 400 other people outragest gifts and reward for voting one way. The bill they vote on is, let's say the DMCA. The media, which is the one *REALLY* in control of the people, protries it as a great bill to help the artist, and say something along the line of "it's for the childern, save the childern. protect the work of your childern" and everyone in the public think, oh yeah! These guys are doing great things for us. Little do they know the law that they pass is the root of all evil to be. And if it fails, someone rewrites it until it something the people will fall for.

    Ok you're going to blam the people, "humanity as a whole". That's fine. But where do people get the real information about the subjects? They aren't born with it. They have to be tought. Where do they get tought? Schools! Who are the schools? The Goverment!

    Most people send thier kids into goverment school, teaching socialism and how to be a productive, mindless slave for "the good of society". Then kids leave goverment schools and where do they end up? Most of them go to "Public Colleges". Who run these schools? Business people!! People who only goal is to make money. Sure there are a few school theach ideas, but most soul goal is to make money, and produce people who make money for businesses.

    Great! We have a group of people that are mindless slaves to corparations with the ideas of socialism implaneted there by the goverment and businesses.

    And we are the problem? No, we are not the people, the problem is the ideas that been implanted by businesses and politicians over 200 years. Heck the idea1 might been around for 1000's of years.

    Or it's becuase all the mindless slaves people living in this world don't vote, and leave people in office. Most people don't want the goverment in thier lives, and which to live free without worries. Today politicians are selling votes, like businesses sell products. Heck, you could tell people "we are going to have a income tax, but don't worry, we will only tax the "rich"". Opps, that worked.

    What are people really voting for anyways? A idea? A idea of what? A way to live thier lives? Where do they get these ideas? Do they want what they know to be good? What do they know? They know that they are slaves and can everything surpiled to them.

    Isn't that what the goverment is today?

    I think it is.

    The US is screwed. It's too late to change it. Just like all goverments in the past, time is up for the US goverment.

    Rome is buring...

  • Businesses don't corrupt politicians... (Score:5)

    by Ted V ( 67691 ) on Monday September 18, 2000 @08:20AM (#771641) Homepage
    People corrupt politicians. Business are just made up of hundreds and thousands of people who want to get ahead in life, and the upper management uses the weight of the organization to force some changes. Labor parties do the same thing. So do religious groups. Sure, individuals used to have a voice in politics, but the voice of a large collective silences many individuals. So lets not target "Businesses". People as a whole are willing to backstab each other to get a step up in life, and we are part of that society. Business isn't the problem. Humanity is, and by extension, _we_ are the problem.

    Of course, that's not an excuse for agnostic apathy. Sure, the agnostic apathetics are technically correct-- they don't know anything and they don't care about anything. You don't worry about your foundation breaking when you haven't built anything. Rather, we must understand and expect that this is how the world works, and we need to manipulate the system for the greater good of everyone, not just for our own "greater good".

    Only when we finally admit that We are the problem can we benefit humanity as a whole. Until then, everyone is still wrapped in their own selfishness and pride.

    -Ted

    (Score -1: Karma Whore)

  • Anybody remember "Max Headroom"? (Score:3)

    by DarkbladePDX ( 204080 ) on Monday September 18, 2000 @08:21AM (#771642) Homepage
    Network 23 lives, folks. It looks just like that. Is it gonna be that bad in 2020? Maybe not, but I'll bet it gets worse before it gets better. We don't have enough of a good start (lawyers/bottom of the sea) yet.

  • I mean, come on, folks, it's not like everything that's now off patent will suddenly become patentable anytime in our lifetimes!

    Why not? They've already retroactively extended the lifespan of copyrights. What's to stop them from doing that with patents? What's to stop them from doing that and taking it one step further and reinstating patents and copyrights that have expired? Hell, they got the copyright extensions through with relatively little fuss. I bet the patents wouldn't be too big a problem either.

    DMCA and UCITA are crap. Fine. Work to repeal them, or work around them.

    Working around them won't work. If we find ways around them, they'll pass new laws. Working to get them repealed is a better idea, but that requires educating the public on the issues and what they really mean. The problem is that the public has already been indoctrinated by the media to believe that copyrighted works are owned by the copyright holder and nobody has any right to do anything with them without permission from the copyright holder. Now that they've gotten the lifespan extended to longer than the average human lifespan, people seem to consider copyrights to be perpetual. Most of us will never see anything created in our lifetime pass into the public domain. Kinda sad. But all of this makes it quite difficult to have a rational debate about the issues. As soon as someone starts putting forward the idea that copyrights need to be rethought and perhaps reimplemented in a different fashion (i.e. for shorter periods, with greater fair-use protection) they are branded with the label of extremist or pirate by the media and big business. They will be demonized for depriving the poor artists of the ability to make a living (despite the fact that most of the media industry is constantly coming up with new ways to screw the creators and increase profits).

  • I liked the article-- though I think it's safe to say he's preaching to the choir.

    One thing I noticed is his opinion that this would start in the US and be opposed by Europe. The Euros are anti-MS, but that's only because it's an American company. Look at what's been going on lately: British Telecom, anything France has done in this century, and some of the EU's bizarre laws seem to me to point to Europe being an early adopter! If nothing else, the world as he describes it seems to be more like minitel and less like those hearings in the US a few weeks ago.

    BTW, is Slashdot going to pay BT the patent royalty for their many links? After all, Al Gore invented the Internet, but British Telecom invented hypertext...

  • Re:A letter from 20/20? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Moderators should browse at -1, NEWEST FIRST.

    Users should not try to tell moderators what to do.

  • The problem with this is soft money. Suppose I support Bush, donate the maximum amount to his campaign, but feel that it is not enough.

    At the least, you personally did it, not a corperation. It's nowhere near perfect, but at least it's something.

    It should be noted that if your employer in any way compensates you for 'your' contribution, it is considered to be federal election tampering, and you are an accomplice. That is the only way to hope that corperations won't use the back door. Also, if any cantidate accepts a contribution knowing that it's source is corperate (especially if it is 'laundered' through an individual), the cantidate is also an accomplice.

    It won't put an end to the problem, but will at least move the corperates out of it, and make explicit dealmaking much harder to get away with.

  • Flying Cars (Score:3)

    by President Skroob ( 215797 ) on Monday September 18, 2000 @07:35AM (#771655)
    What the hell, no flying cars in 2020? I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Microsoft's attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Apples' Cube. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.

  • Patent Beethoven? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Stop smoking that west coast herb you hippie. You remind me of all the people who screamed that electing George Bush (Sr) was going to be the end of the world. It's all hype for hits; don't follow the link.

  • Drivel (Score:5)

    by KahunaBurger ( 123991 ) on Monday September 18, 2000 @07:36AM (#771660)
    Kinda scary and certainly worst case scenerio, but his point gets across.

    What point would that be? "I can write silly future fiction that makes 1984 look realisitic"?

    Its not a worst case scenerio, its a no case scenerio. At best it could pass as a satire of geek fears.

    In a word, ugh.

    -Kahuna Burger

  • Check this out, for example: High-Performance Computing Act of 1991 [tamu.edu]. This was 1991 -- before 99% percent of the people on Slashdot had even heard of the internet. Gore may have overstated his role, but I don't think he meant to. Like I said, get beyond the soundbyte and look at the facts.

    --

  • Ivan Illich is your friend. Read him.
    (Deschooling Society, Tools for Conviviality)

    Pan
  • Back in 7th grade I had an English teacher (Robert Smiley) who gave us a creative writing project where we were to write ourselves a letter that was to be opened 10 years down the road. The subject matter was to be what we envisioned our lives being like at that time frame in our future. Well, about 17 years later my mother ran across this small envelope addressed to me stating 'if the fates allow open me now' and a wax seal of a penny and the year 1992 impressed into the wax where the date on the penny was. I opened it, completely having forgotten what I wrote and was really surprised. You see, the 'predictions' were all wrong but the mindset wasn't. No, I didn't go to college like I had foreseen, but I made references to free speech (was really into Jefferson at the time and writing a report for another class) and online communications (at 11 I was addicted to Compuserve and my new 300 baud screemer..I digress) being the 'in thing' for people to speak freely where the couldn't in the real world. Opening the letter to myself had a profound impact on me and I spent many months contemplating my thoughts as an 11 year old and rejuvinating ideas/goals that had become dormant. So far, the end result being my return to college and certain passions rekindled. I recently wrote myself a new letter and placed it in my mothers safe deposit box for some date in the future. This article is great in the sense that it has the right feel and vision. It is probably not far off (eerie) from where things are headed. It would be interesting to see this letter in 2020 and see how close to a bullseye it is.I wonder if any of Mr. Smiley's students are out there who found thier letters. If you had a similar project please reply as it would be great to hear the results/thoughts/outcome.

  • Or in other words, "Karl Marx was wrong" (Score:3)

    by Ted V ( 67691 ) on Monday September 18, 2000 @12:08PM (#771675) Homepage
    I guess what I'm trying to say is...

    There is no difference in motivation between joe blue collar and joe white collar. It's just that the white collar folks have more means than everyone else.

    It's a catagorical denial of Marxism, actually. Marx claims that eventually the working class will overthrow the ruling class and live in Utopia. "THIS revolution will be different! This revolution will be the LAST!"

    What Marx fails to see is that the problem is not with the means (money and power) but the motive (greed and pride). Not all humans have money and power, but almost all humans are greedy and proud. It is pure hubris to claim that we the workers as a whole would act any different if we were in power.

    There are two courses of action. You can become agnostic apathetic-- another term for a cynic, meaning you don't do anything. Or you can shed the evil motives and then work the means in favor of humanity (and against the system itself).

    Clearly this is a difficult task, but only because personal humility is learned one mind at a time. It's easy to coordinate selfish people, but it's hard to even find self-sacrificing people, much less become one.

    -Ted
  • I have a better idea. Teach people that the rights they have come with responsibilities.

    Having the right to vote makes one responsible to vote. What one does with that vote is their choice but not voting is a poor decision.

  • Re:Where are the flying cars? (Score:3)

    by PhuCknuT ( 1703 ) on Monday September 18, 2000 @07:38AM (#771677) Homepage
    Flying cars [moller.com]

  • Re:Letter to myself from 2020 (Score:3)

    by bripeace ( 112526 ) on Monday September 18, 2000 @07:40AM (#771681) Homepage
    Employee: "Sorry I was late to work today boss. I wrote this new Linux program in my free time and it was posted on slashdot, the resulting traffic to my house slashdotted my house"
    Boss: "Oh it's no problem, I had a party last week and our toilet was slashdotted"

    oh the future!

    -Brian Peace
    Drum N Bass Massive [dyndns.org]

  • Yes, I think I'd tend to disagree with the basic underlying assumption: "People, almost ALL people, are selfish and greedy, and aim only to make their own lives easier and more comfortable, while not giving a damn about anyone else.".

    I have a bit more faith in humanity. Take a worldwide survey, and I think you'll find that most *individuals* are pretty decent people who are not that greedy, who share, who have manners, who are modest, who respect each other, and want nothing more than a moderately happy and comfortable life and prospects for their children. I don't think people are inherently greedy and proud. Most people on earth I think are just trying to make a damn living, keep healthy and happy. They are not collecting the most toys to win the "game" of life. However, individual behavior is a lot different from *group* behavior. Start aggregating people and individual virtues become obscured by vice made possible by anonymity and group rationalization, etc. Then compare this with the sole purpose of corporations as generating profit, and I think you have a very bad situation where people end up isolating themselves and rationalizing away activity that would otherwise be stigmatized if they were acting as individuals.

    As far as your two courses of action, I have chosen the latter, which means I might not be able to, as Denis Leary puts it, "get myself a 1967 Cadillac El Dorado convertible, hot pink with whaleskin hub caps and all leather cow interior and big brown baby seal eyes for headlights, yeah! And I'm gonna drive around in that baby at 115mph getting one mile per gallon, sucking down quarter pounder cheese burgers from McDonald's in the old-fashioned non-biodegradable styrofoam containers and when I'm done sucking down those grease ball burgers, I'm gonna wipe my mouth with the American flag and then I'm gonna toss the styrofoam container right out the side and there ain't a God damned thing anybody can do about it."

    While it means I might not be able to accumulate as much material "stuff", which is the measure of success in this society, I think I will have a much more fulfilling life.

  • Re:Wow (Score:3)

    by JCCyC ( 179760 ) on Monday September 18, 2000 @07:41AM (#771685) Journal
    Hell, he's got it good- his future self didn't mention being bald, overweight, twice divorced, bankrupt, et cetera.

    He IS (will be?) bald, overweight, and twice divorced. But if he wrote that, Word.NET would instantly trigger a Negative Attitude Warning and he'd be sent to the Valenti-Kaplan Reeducation Camp. Few people come alive from that place.

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