On Wednesday, November 21, 2001, at 03:54 , Jay Moore wrote:
[..]
>
> "I want to emphasize that education and knowledge are the most powerful
> tools that we have available in engaging in the struggle to make a better
> world," he told a gathering in 1971. "It is through the control of
> knowledge
> that the ruling class maintains its power."
>
> With Mr. Watson at the helm in 1968-69, the South End's radicalism often
> put
> it at odds with the Wayne State administration. The newspaper's masthead
> carried the images of two black panthers and the slogan: "One
> class-conscious worker is worth 100 students."
[..]
I found it an interest trilogy of pieces, one covering the problems
that Microsoft has with achieving global domination, The Left's
on going discipline issues with Horowitz, and the possibility that
he might be right - the 'new kids on the block' may be a bit confused
about how to Appropriately DO 'new left' - and as such be more of a
threat to National Security by way of providing the very excuses that
the Evil Korporate Welfare State Militarists will need to crack down
on everything everywhere.
For those who may have missed out on the H1B crisis of the nineties,
Computers, by way of Foreign Born Computer Geeks, was a leading cause of
taking high paying jobs in computer industry jobs that americans did not
want to take the time to master, and shipping all of that money off
overseas
to countries like India, Pakistan, Isreal, and on and on and on. It was
also more of the same old export Tech Jobs overseas to 3rd world countries
where Corporate Overlords like AOL found it cheaper to set up their
customer
service sites in places like the Phillipines, rather than get americans who
were not willing to work for low wages, to do those jobs here. Maybe
knowledge
is a dangerous thing, and it might confuse people if we oblige them to step
back and look at the full case load and not just the cool bits....
I will of course, out of pure professional curtesy, not comment on some of
the bad coding habits of american born code monkey's and the current
outflowing
of 'java trained' typists from american colleges, nor their management, nor
the shills who stood like carnival barkers hustling the whole dot.com
craze.
Since to ask for, well, some analysis that would lead to knowledge, would
mean,
a lot of hard technical work, and not simple pie in the sky solutions.
As for the dope smoking notion that any country can 'monitor all of the
email'
is cool marketting - but there are only about a Bagillion Small Technical
STOOPIDS
that make it little more than viewGraphWare that the party comrades share
with
each other, before signing the checks to the code monkey keepers. We
started laughing
about this back when it was really funny as a usenet news gag about the
'line eaters'
and then became the 'wave of the future' when Vietnam gave the contract to
the Aussies.
And of course, who can forget the american monolith, that all knowing, all
seeing,
all omnipresnet NSA who clearly knew everything about the World Trade
Center Bombing,
but their friends in the liberal media are of course covering all of that
up....
Get real folks - the NSA FREAKED when RSA leaked, and now there is DES2
out there,
and if you are really interested in the wealth of cryptographics work that
one can
do for fun and amusement, just webSurf Yourself to death, and pound your
little
fingers into the ground coding it all up. So let us just say, if you
really want
to encrypt and be secure, there are more ways than merely Johnny Mneomic
to get
that information through.
But that is a part of what gives Bill Gates an edge. Mom and Dad do not
want to
know an IP Packet Header from a UCP datagram, let alone the differences
between
a router, a switch, a hub and why JAVA is a better platform, for the
moment, than
the .NET craze, or that they could actually make their own embedded
applets using
linux and java. They have just figured out how to get their VCR to stop
blinking
12:00 when they have to go out and get a DVD player. All they really want
is to
get something to and from the kids - you know foto's - a letter, email,
anything
so that the next time we drop over we know who is who and what is
important, and
whether or not Santa Claus should bring them what in particular.
So if you don't want BillWare - you can always 'just get a Mac' - the eye
candy
will kill you - or you can join the open source linux folks....
But I think that it is a bit premature to hope that the collapse of
america will
be due to MicroSoft. Some here will recall that 'unix' leaked out of Bell
Labs
because AT&T's anti-trust issues prevented them from selling computer
stuff, and
as everyone, left, right and center, will recall, the break up of AT&T was
trumpetted
as the end of the Free World and the complete Collapse of Everything
Everywhere.
Hum.... Windows2000 took the unix kids from Digital, when it belly flopped,
and
now Apple is built on a BSD Mach Kernel.... and well, the linux geeks are
still
that collection of moral reprobates, heirs to the first port of Unix from
it's
AT&T standard.... So like maybe they are right. Heaven only knows but AT&T
is
still trying to figure out whether to keep or spin off its broadband
service....
Hum, that's history, its a part of that 'military style knowledge' stuff
that
could be dangerous if folks ever got their hands on it....
What if there IS an advantage in having cellphones? So that one can
conference
in the rest of the housemates while you're standing at the Togo's to get a
consolidated take away order, so that everyone eats what they want, and
they
don't all have to drive a care everywhere? What if using email to
co-ordinate
who picks up whom so that everyone gets to TurkeyDay in the fewest
vehicles.
Why, what if we started to support 'telecommuting' as part and parcel of
the
whole 'work experience' so as to actually cut down on the back log of
commute
traffic - and one has time to stay on top of the important things - rather
than
spending hours in traffic.
What if it isn't the 'technology' that is the problem?
What if it isn't the 'oppressor boogey perkin' out there somewhere?
What if it really is all about the VALUE of one 'class conscious worker'
really being worth more than a hundred student trendies of left or right,
who is willing to Put in a Solid Days Work for a Solid Days Wage. Who is
not
willing to let their co-workers slide, whether they are line code-monkies,
or manglement, or executives. What if that 'class conscious worker' happens
to be Management or an Exectutive, who is not willing to support the hot
new buzzphrase filled marketting schpeel of either the wall street wankers
or the current chic techGeekTrick, or the Litigation Anxieties because the
PC freaks have figured out it is cheaper to sue for
<youWereDiscriminatedAgainst>
cause du jure, than to actually be a productive worker.
What if the Diggers were Right?
ciao
drieux
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Nov 23 2001 - 02:06:36 EST