[geeks] Writing software [was Re: Can't decide on an OS]

[Mouse]

>>> Why is it so hostile, from your point of view?  What is so
>>> inescapable?
>> The September that never ended - when the net, and the culture that
>> co-arose with it, was invaded and overrun; I feel like a member of
>> an invaded and conquered people.
> Technologies, as a general rule, are morally neutral; it is the
> people who wield them that determine how they impact the rest of us.

Generally, yes.  And I think most of the Internet falls there.

> The majority of people on the new Internet are not using it to annoy
> the old-timers.

They're not intending to, which is not the same thing.

I'm also not convinced "old-timers" is a coherent class; as a class of
which my stance is representative, I'm fairly sure it's invalid.  Of
the comparative few who go back far enough to remember the days when
there was a machine on the net with a null root password (want an
account? log in and create yourself one!), I can't think of any whom I
know share even a significant fraction of my feelings on this matter.

I know of one person who seems to share some of my feelings.  He's not
an "old-timer" in this sense, at least not as far as I know, and I
think he does not share the feeling of being part of a conquered
people, though he does see some of the same deep problems I do.

> They merely see a different set of use cases which enhance their
> lives.  How is that so awful?

There's no one piece that's "so awful", with the possible exception of
large corporations (and they are a problem not specific to the net).
It's more the assemblage of them all.

> Sure, they're being passive eyeball vendors for the likes of Facebook
> and DoubleClick, and they're not contributing anything to the network
> as a whole, but they're not taking anything away, either.

Actually, I disagree with that last.  They are damaging the net in that
they are supporting - creating, even - the idea that "everybody" does
this or that, that the Web is a suitable interface for anyone to
anything - that the net is not horribly broken.

>> "[T]hat's what happens when you put the US Department of Commerce in
>> charge of something: [...]"
> I will never defend the US government's interference in the
> governance of the network, but there's also no federal mandate that
> the network continue to exist at the sole pleasure of shareholder
> value.

No; that is implicit in the societal structure that is rapidly giving
us the Corporate State.  The problem here is the dissonance between
what the net needs (good government) and what it's getting (government
designed and tuned to concentrate money in its top levels).  Or, to put
it another way, the problem is that the current Internet governance
pyramid is built around the assumption that concentrating money in the
hands of a few _constitutes_ "good".  "That's what happens when you put
the US Department of Commerce in charge of something".

> Nor is there any active mechanism in place to degrade the network to
> keep overhead low.  That's more-or-less a conspiracy among network
> "service" providers.

How is that not an active mechanism?

It wasn't intended to do that.  That doesn't mean it's not actively
operating to do that.

>> The Web's disastrous dominance, to the point where people actually
>> advertise Internet access with a straight face when all they
>> actually offer is Web access.
> The fact is that the web is "good enough" for most people right now.
> It has its quirks, but the platform itself isn't too bad.

You asked what the basis for my emotions was; I was giving my best
guesses.  Rational arguments have little-to-nothing to do with them.

> Having a lexical scope for differentiation of services (rather than
> "well known" ports) is really pretty nice.

I said the Web, not HTTP.  HTTP certainly has its problems, but I was
really talking about the Web.

> The statelessness gets annoying, but it offers many of the same
> scalability propositions as functional programming.

And, like functional programming, it is not suitable for everything.
But it is getting imposed for everything.

> If I may, I'd like to offer the hardest and least-comforting lesson
> that life continues to teach me:  You can't go back.

I know.

That's why this is driving me into depression.

> Now, we can wallow in that until the world has sufficiently passed us
> by like veterans of a forgotten war, or we can run away to something
> completely foreign, or we can look at the beauty that has sprung from
> this new reality.

I'm having trouble finding that "beauty", much less finding enough of
it to outweigh the dross.

>    4. I don't have to worry about an unscrupulous person intercepting
>       paperwork that sits unmonitored in an unlocked box in front of
>       my house.

Instead, you have to worry about a _much_ larger set of unscrupulous
people doing something analogous to the softcopy.  Or perhaps you don't
worry about that.  I hope you never get bitten by it.

> This is a good thing!

If you find it so, great.  Enjoy it.

I don't mind the Web being available to people who, like you, want to
use it.  I mind it being imposed on people who, like me, don't.  I mind
calling a company and being forced to listen to an ad for their website
for fifteen seconds before it pays attention to any input I give.  I
mind...nah, never mind.  If you care, just go read my blah; I've said
it all there, several times, probably better than I can say it now.

> [0] Note: I would MUCH rather have PDFs sent to me in PGP-encrypted
>     email rather than my having to periodically visit a website to
>     download them.

I'd prefer plain text.  But if they were willing to do that, I'd even
tolerate PDFs.

But that would actually offer something approaching real security, not
just the illusion of security, so of course it won't happen.

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