But here we are, and our best successes are smaller than their biggest failures. They'll go in history books. We'll be forgotten in time just like the majority of people who ever lived. 

They are main characters, and we're ultimately just NPCs. 

And they *know* it. So getting them to accept any humility is a long shot. 

Thu Aug 26 2021 20:49:10 MST from Jerry Moore

Jobs may have been able to connect the dots and see farther ahead, but he still committed suicide by not taking proper care of himself. Musk is a genius, but he's on the autism spectrum, and occasionally puts his foot in things. Bezos is smart financially, but has recently put HIS foot in it by letting his attitude get ahead of his checkbook while suing NASA, who are unlikely to look favorably at any chance of contracting for his services. Zuck is still running over his privilege by bending the rules way too far. In my opinion, Gates is a thief who stole TRSDOS from Radio Shack, filed off the serial number, and sold it to IBM to get his start. Did I miss anyone? Oh, yeah - Not in quite the same league, but close: Phillipe Kahn, who founded Borland Software (because he misspelled the name of the Astronaut Borman, whose name he wanted to use for his company) was making a lot of money from the Paradox database, when he was sued by Lotus 123 for replicating the look and feel of their database in the Borland version, and lost the suit. To cover his losses, he sold Paradox to Word Perfect Corporation, who totally flubbed marketing it, and subsequently sold it to Corel, based in Canada. Corel had the expertise in graphics to noticeably improve the database product, but they dropped the ball, although they DID apply the Borland produced improvements to the database software that Word Perfect had failed to apply. What had been a promising product got run over by an inferior database, Microsoft's Access.

Tue Aug 24 2021 21:39:53 MST from ParanoidDelusions <paranoiddelusions@wallofhate.com>

I think the tech industry in general got drunk on the idea that we were changing the world for better, extending freedom to the furthest reaches of the globe, empowering the voiceless to have a voice, starting in the early 90s. 

And it *was* revolutionary for society - it was a jump every bit as significant to the development of human society as the printing press, or landing on the moon. 

But - it quickly started going off the rails. We're all brilliant people in the industry - especially those of us who were on the first wave of it crashing on the shores of society. The dumbest person in tech at the start was 10 points above the average IQ in society. We're widely regarded as an industry full of arrogant, abrasive people for a justifiable reason. 

And those of us who are TRULY brilliant, who have the entire package of drive, determination, leadership, intelligence, and concept... guys like Musk and Zuck, Gates and Jobs - are the worst. They don't just *know* they're better than the rest of us - and it isn't just arrogance - they *are*. They see things, they connect dots, and they also see how to get where those dots lead. They succeed so wildly *because* of their absolute, narcissistic faith in themselves. 


Getting people like that to "wise up" - especially to the fact that none of this is about them... when they are at the drunkest with their success and power... 


Seems like a pretty long shot. 

 

Tue Aug 24 2021 02:49:42 MST from Wangiss <wangiss@wallofhate.com>

I'm expecting augmented reality to kick in pretty soon. Then we'll have a new petty tyrant to deal with. Some new Zucc. Although Jack Dorsey just posted a link to Anatomy Of The State, possibly the most succinct and still-relevant anarchist tract of the last century. So he might be returning to his roots. It kinda helps that he's no longer a major force in the Twitter vision.

 

I guess there's a chance that these tech kings will start wising up to the fact that none of this is about them. Thanks for the service, entrepreneur guy. Here's your money. We're square. Go away. 

 

 

I was just logging into my Citadel, running in a VM on Proxmox, over the public Internet, through a path that takes me out from my house, into a network in New York, then back across the country back into my house where my server is... on my Mac i7 I rebuilt... 

And I just had a moment of, "Wow... this is so cool." 

Then I realized that mostly my Citadel serves to redirect me to Reddit where I get side tracked and spend more time there than here. 

Thu Aug 26 2021 20:49:10 MST from Jerry Moore

Jobs may have been able to connect the dots and see farther ahead, but he still committed suicide by not taking proper care of himself. Musk is a genius, but he's on the autism spectrum, and occasionally puts his foot in things. Bezos is smart financially, but has recently put HIS foot in it by letting his attitude get ahead of his checkbook while suing NASA, who are unlikely to look favorably at any chance of contracting for his services. Zuck is still running over his privilege by bending the rules way too far. In my opinion, Gates is a thief who stole TRSDOS from Radio Shack, filed off the serial number, and sold it to IBM to get his start. Did I miss anyone? Oh, yeah - Not in quite the same league, but close: Phillipe Kahn, who founded Borland Software (because he misspelled the name of the Astronaut Borman, whose name he wanted to use for his company) was making a lot of money from the Paradox database, when he was sued by Lotus 123 for replicating the look and feel of their database in the Borland version, and lost the suit. To cover his losses, he sold Paradox to Word Perfect Corporation, who totally flubbed marketing it, and subsequently sold it to Corel, based in Canada. Corel had the expertise in graphics to noticeably improve the database product, but they dropped the ball, although they DID apply the Borland produced improvements to the database software that Word Perfect had failed to apply. What had been a promising product got run over by an inferior database, Microsoft's Access.

Tue Aug 24 2021 21:39:53 MST from ParanoidDelusions <paranoiddelusions@wallofhate.com>

I think the tech industry in general got drunk on the idea that we were changing the world for better, extending freedom to the furthest reaches of the globe, empowering the voiceless to have a voice, starting in the early 90s. 

And it *was* revolutionary for society - it was a jump every bit as significant to the development of human society as the printing press, or landing on the moon. 

But - it quickly started going off the rails. We're all brilliant people in the industry - especially those of us who were on the first wave of it crashing on the shores of society. The dumbest person in tech at the start was 10 points above the average IQ in society. We're widely regarded as an industry full of arrogant, abrasive people for a justifiable reason. 

And those of us who are TRULY brilliant, who have the entire package of drive, determination, leadership, intelligence, and concept... guys like Musk and Zuck, Gates and Jobs - are the worst. They don't just *know* they're better than the rest of us - and it isn't just arrogance - they *are*. They see things, they connect dots, and they also see how to get where those dots lead. They succeed so wildly *because* of their absolute, narcissistic faith in themselves. 


Getting people like that to "wise up" - especially to the fact that none of this is about them... when they are at the drunkest with their success and power... 


Seems like a pretty long shot. 

 

Tue Aug 24 2021 02:49:42 MST from Wangiss <wangiss@wallofhate.com>

I'm expecting augmented reality to kick in pretty soon. Then we'll have a new petty tyrant to deal with. Some new Zucc. Although Jack Dorsey just posted a link to Anatomy Of The State, possibly the most succinct and still-relevant anarchist tract of the last century. So he might be returning to his roots. It kinda helps that he's no longer a major force in the Twitter vision.

 

I guess there's a chance that these tech kings will start wising up to the fact that none of this is about them. Thanks for the service, entrepreneur guy. Here's your money. We're square. Go away. 

 

 

Gates stole TRSdos? I worked for Tandy/RadioShack and RadioShack invented nothing but stole everything, mostly the souls of store managers. Pretty sure MS-dos came from CP/M that was wrapped to run on an 8086. Still stolen, but who gates stole from needs credit.

Tandy actually did some remarkable things with the early days of computing - and the TRS-80 and the CoCo are both recognized as the earliest platforms to pioneer some trailblazing things. They just never could escape the perception that Tandy/Radio Shack put out cheap knock off electronics that were always lesser versions of the bigger name brands. 

But, they did their fair share of ripping off, too, granted. 

Tue Sep 14 2021 00:59:57 MST from smashbot64

 

Thu Aug 26 2021 20:49:10 MST from Jerry Moore

Jobs may have been able to connect the dots and see farther ahead, but he still committed suicide by not taking proper care of himself. Musk is a genius, but he's on the autism spectrum, and occasionally puts his foot in things. Bezos is smart financially, but has recently put HIS foot in it by letting his attitude get ahead of his checkbook while suing NASA, who are unlikely to look favorably at any chance of contracting for his services. Zuck is still running over his privilege by bending the rules way too far. In my opinion, Gates is a thief who stole TRSDOS from Radio Shack, filed off the serial number, and sold it to IBM to get his start. Did I miss anyone? Oh, yeah - Not in quite the same league, but close: Phillipe Kahn, who founded Borland Software (because he misspelled the name of the Astronaut Borman, whose name he wanted to use for his company) was making a lot of money from the Paradox database, when he was sued by Lotus 123 for replicating the look and feel of their database in the Borland version, and lost the suit. To cover his losses, he sold Paradox to Word Perfect Corporation, who totally flubbed marketing it, and subsequently sold it to Corel, based in Canada. Corel had the expertise in graphics to noticeably improve the database product, but they dropped the ball, although they DID apply the Borland produced improvements to the database software that Word Perfect had failed to apply. What had been a promising product got run over by an inferior database, Microsoft's Access.

Tue Aug 24 2021 21:39:53 MST from ParanoidDelusions <paranoiddelusions@wallofhate.com>

I think the tech industry in general got drunk on the idea that we were changing the world for better, extending freedom to the furthest reaches of the globe, empowering the voiceless to have a voice, starting in the early 90s. 

And it *was* revolutionary for society - it was a jump every bit as significant to the development of human society as the printing press, or landing on the moon. 

But - it quickly started going off the rails. We're all brilliant people in the industry - especially those of us who were on the first wave of it crashing on the shores of society. The dumbest person in tech at the start was 10 points above the average IQ in society. We're widely regarded as an industry full of arrogant, abrasive people for a justifiable reason. 

And those of us who are TRULY brilliant, who have the entire package of drive, determination, leadership, intelligence, and concept... guys like Musk and Zuck, Gates and Jobs - are the worst. They don't just *know* they're better than the rest of us - and it isn't just arrogance - they *are*. They see things, they connect dots, and they also see how to get where those dots lead. They succeed so wildly *because* of their absolute, narcissistic faith in themselves. 


Getting people like that to "wise up" - especially to the fact that none of this is about them... when they are at the drunkest with their success and power... 


Seems like a pretty long shot. 

 

Tue Aug 24 2021 02:49:42 MST from Wangiss <wangiss@wallofhate.com>

I'm expecting augmented reality to kick in pretty soon. Then we'll have a new petty tyrant to deal with. Some new Zucc. Although Jack Dorsey just posted a link to Anatomy Of The State, possibly the most succinct and still-relevant anarchist tract of the last century. So he might be returning to his roots. It kinda helps that he's no longer a major force in the Twitter vision.

 

I guess there's a chance that these tech kings will start wising up to the fact that none of this is about them. Thanks for the service, entrepreneur guy. Here's your money. We're square. Go away. 

 

 

Gates stole TRSdos? I worked for Tandy/RadioShack and RadioShack invented nothing but stole everything, mostly the souls of store managers. Pretty sure MS-dos came from CP/M that was wrapped to run on an 8086. Still stolen, but who gates stole from needs credit.

I have no idea what my app will do to the world and I'm a little worried about it, but also it needs to happen because the current system is stupid.  Maybe I'll just kick off the next phase of apprenticeship being a thing.  Who the hell knows.

No one knows what their app is going to do. It is how you handle it when it has made you a billionaire and you didn't see how your app was going to do terrible things - but by then, you may be little more than a figurehead trying not to get McAffee-ed. 

Wed Sep 22 2021 04:14:19 MST from TheDave

I have no idea what my app will do to the world and I'm a little worried about it, but also it needs to happen because the current system is stupid.  Maybe I'll just kick off the next phase of apprenticeship being a thing.  Who the hell knows.

I can already see how it could do terrible things, which is why I refuse to give up control.

Wed Sep 22 2021 15:13:43 MST from ParanoidDelusions <paranoiddelusions@wallofhate.com>

No one knows what their app is going to do. It is how you handle it when it has made you a billionaire and you didn't see how your app was going to do terrible things - but by then, you may be little more than a figurehead trying not to get McAffee-ed. 

Wed Sep 22 2021 04:14:19 MST from TheDave

I have no idea what my app will do to the world and I'm a little worried about it, but also it needs to happen because the current system is stupid.  Maybe I'll just kick off the next phase of apprenticeship being a thing.  Who the hell knows.

 

It's not so much what terrible things your app will do, it's the terrible things that YOU might do if your app becomes so popular that you become a Tech billionaire. That's our problem with Zuccerboob and Bezos and WAS our problem with crazy McAfee and businessman Jobs. I don't even know who started Radio Schlock, but their problem, like Apple's was trying to make everything proprietary!

I have a story to tell. When I was running The Dragon's Den (the book\game\comics store, not the BBS), I bought a new RadioShack TRS-80 Model II because if had the best BASIC on the market for a PC computer. What I didn't realize was that they had put the eight-inch floppy drive in upside down to make it proprietary. I bought a cleaning disk for it and used it faithfully for about a year before I started having problems. One of my customers at the store was Brenda Daniels, a BBS user and technician who introduced me to the world of BBSS by getting me to buy a 300 baud acoustic modem and helped me set it up and log in to Charles Meadows' Omni BBS. When I told her about my problem,she asked me to show her how I cleaned the beads. When I showed her, following the instructions on the box, she informed me that I had put the cleaning disk  in upside down, but that was RadioShack's fault because they installed the drive upside-down. Between that and the fact that the cheap accounting package I had bought with the computer didn't get the same numbers that I goton my paper books that I had been using for about eight months and would not refund my three hundred dollars against their thousand dollar package that I was willing to buy if they gave me the three hundred dollars off, I decided to start taking my business elsewhere. It didn't help that the manager there told me that he was quitting at the end of the month because RadioShack was changing their policy on software developed by their employees on their own time, to say that RadioShack would own the copyright on software they produced. This was in 1980, if l'm remembering right.

Wed Sep 22 2021 21:45:17 MST from TheDave

 

I can already see how it could do terrible things, which is why I refuse to give up control.

Wed Sep 22 2021 15:13:43 MST from ParanoidDelusions <paranoiddelusions@wallofhate.com>

No one knows what their app is going to do. It is how you handle it when it has made you a billionaire and you didn't see how your app was going to do terrible th - but by then, you may be little more than a figurehead trying not to get McAffee-ed. 

Wed Sep 22 2021 04:14:19 MST from Th

I have no idea what my app will do to the world and I'm a little worried about it, but also it needs to happen because the current system is stupid.  Maybe I'll just kick off the next phase of apprenticeship being a thing.  Who the hell knows.

 

 

I don't really think this is the case. I don't think Zuckenberg started out thinking Facebook would do this - I think he wanted to make a directory for college hookups. I don't think Google planned on their algorithms having so much influence on attitudes and opinions in society. I think they wanted to help people find things. I think they *believed* in the "Democratization of the Internet," that they would give the disenfranchised a voice with online publishing that couldn't be censored or stopped.

I don't think they foresaw that this meant adult men with a My Little Pony fetish would be able to find other like minded men all over the world and that would help establish that their weird kink wasn't as uncommon as they had thought - and that *this* would in turn help normalize the idea. I don't think they thought that this would mobilize anti-vaxxers into an organized group with a platform and a bullhorn - or that flat-earthers would explode in numbers. I think they thought that just the information *they* thought should get out and be accepted would get out and be accepted - and instead, a lot of NOISE that they disagreed with was enabled by their platforms.

I think they were as shocked as the rest of us to discover that if you give all of mankind a nearly instantaneous, global bullhorn - they'll start shoveling bullshit through it as soon as they discover it, and that other people will gladly accept that bullshit. They didn't understand that if most people on the planet are incompetent and base and barely evolved past the first primate that decided to walk upright. I also don't think they really saw beyond mining data to *market* to people initially. At some point, they realized that the same things that predicted what you would BUY next predicted if you would get a divorce, or cheat on your spouse, or commit a murder, or blow up a building - and then the GOVERNMENT started getting interested in their technology.

Once they realized that it was a double edged sword, most of them swung way too far in the other direction. Instead of seeing how the technology would free us from oppression, they saw how it could make oppression a "thing for the common good." It wasn't that authoritarianism was bad - it was that HUMAN administered authoritarianism was bad. Machine administered authoritarianism was increasingly seen as creating a UTOPIAN ideal.

"If we can get everyone to AGREE to bend the knee, they'll be happy that they did it, they'll think they did it by choice, and thus being, their problems will vanish like a mist. We can tell them what they want, in fact, we KNOW what they want, and our AI says this is what they want. So we should give it to them."

And they're *not* wrong - and they *are* doing it.

Which doesn't make it any less evil.

Fri Sep 24 2021 18:29:14 MST from Jerry Moore Subject: Q

It's not so much what terrible things your app will do, it's the terrible things that YOU might do if your app becomes so popular that you become a Tech billionaire. That's our problem with Zuccerboob and Bezos and WAS our problem with crazy McAfee and businessman Jobs. I don't even know who started Radio Schlock, but their problem, like Apple's was trying to make everything proprietary!

I have a story to tell. When I was running The Dragon's Den (the book\game\comics store, not the BBS), I bought a new RadioShack TRS-80 Model II because if had the best BASIC on the market for a PC computer. What I didn't realize was that they had put the eight-inch floppy drive in upside down to make it proprietary. I bought a cleaning disk for it and used it faithfully for about a year before I started having problems. One of my customers at the store was Brenda Daniels, a BBS user and technician who introduced me to the world of BBSS by getting me to buy a 300 baud acoustic modem and helped me set it up and log in to Charles Meadows' Omni BBS. When I told her about my problem,she asked me to show her how I cleaned the beads. When I showed her, following the instructions on the box, she informed me that I had put the cleaning disk  in upside down, but that was RadioShack's fault because they installed the drive upside-down. Between that and the fact that the cheap accounting package I had bought with the computer didn't get the same numbers that I goton my paper books that I had been using for about eight months and would not refund my three hundred dollars against their thousand dollar package that I was willing to buy if they gave me the three hundred dollars off, I decided to start taking my business elsewhere. It didn't help that the manager there told me that he was quitting at the end of the month because RadioShack was changing their policy on software developed by their employees on their own time, to say that RadioShack would own the copyright on software they produced. This was in 1980, if l'm remembering right.

Wed Sep 22 2021 21:45:17 MST from TheDave

 

I can already see how it could do terrible things, which is why I refuse to give up control.

Wed Sep 22 2021 15:13:43 MST from ParanoidDelusions <paranoiddelusions@wallofhate.com>

No one knows what their app is going to do. It is how you handle it when it has made you a billionaire and you didn't see how your app was going to do terrible th - but by then, you may be little more than a figurehead trying not to get McAffee-ed. 

Wed Sep 22 2021 04:14:19 MST from Th

I have no idea what my app will do to the world and I'm a little worried about it, but also it needs to happen because the current system is stupid.  Maybe I'll just kick off the next phase of apprenticeship being a thing.  Who the hell knows.

 

 

 

an app that has the potential to do terrible things is an app we want to see. Mathematically, its not easy (or in theory impossible) to prove a negative, please release this app with negative potential into the wild or into our controlled environment so that we can pick it apart. I have lots of virtual environments in which it can run, poked by human stupidity. If you require non compete agreements and or non disclosure protection, we can do that too.

Damn! I just spent half an hour or so typing a long response agreeing with most of your observations, and then somehowI found myself in the next room, and when I hit the back button I was informed that the document had expired! I'm too tired to trying to do it again, so I'll just add that I think that we may get the ability to sue Facebook and that could be a game changer.

Mon Sep 27 2021 10:11:54 MST from ParanoidDelusions <paranoiddelusions@wallofhate.com> Subject: Re: Q

I don't really think this is the case. I don't think Zuckenberg started out thinking Facebook would do this - I think he wanted to make a directory for college hookups. I don't think Google planned on their algorithms having so much influence on attitudes and opinions in society. I think they wanted to help people find things. I think they *believed* in the "Democratization of the Internet," that they would give the disenfranchised a voice with online publishing that couldn't be censored or stopped.

I don't think they foresaw that this meant adult men with a My Little Pony fetish would be able to find other like minded men all over the world and that would help establish that their weird kink wasn't as uncommon as they had thought - and that *this* would in turn help normalize the idea. I don't think they thought that this would mobilize anti-vaxxers into an organized group with a platform and a bullhorn - or that flat-earthers would explode in numbers. I think they thought that just the information *they* thought should get out and be accepted would get out and be accepted - and instead, a lot of NOISE that they disagreed with was enabled by their platforms.

I think they were as shocked as the rest of us to discover that if you give all of mankind a nearly instantaneous, global bullhorn - they'll start shoveling bullshit through it as soon as they discover it, and that other people will gladly accept that bullshit. They didn't understand that if most people on the planet are incompetent and base and barely evolved past the first primate that decided to walk upright. I also don't think they really saw beyond mining data to *market* to people initially. At some point, they realized that the same things that predicted what you would BUY next predicted if you would get a divorce, or cheat on your spouse, or commit a murder, or blow up a building - and then the GOVERNMENT started getting interested in their technology.

Once they realized that it was a double edged sword, most of them swung way too far in the other direction. Instead of seeing how the technology would free us from oppression, they saw how it could make oppression a "thing for the common good." It wasn't that authoritarianism was bad - it was that HUMAN administered authoritarianism was bad. Machine administered authoritarianism was increasingly seen as creating a UTOPIAN ideal.

"If we can get everyone to AGREE to bend the knee, they'll be happy that they did it, they'll think they did it by choice, and thus being, their problems will vanish like a mist. We can tell them what they want, in fact, we KNOW what they want, and our AI says this is what they want. So we should give it to them."

And they're *not* wrong - and they *are* doing it.

Which doesn't make it any less evil.

 

Fri Sep 24 2021 18:29:14 MST from Jerry Moore Subject: Q

It's not so much what terrible things your app will do, it's the terrible things that YOU might do if your app becomes so popular that you become a Tech billionaire. That's our problem with Zuccerboob and Bezos and WAS our problem with crazy McAfee and businessman Jobs. I don't even know who started Radio Schlock, but their problem, like Apple's was trying to make everything proprietary!

I have a story to tell. When I was running The Dragon's Den (the book\game\comics store, not the BBS), I bought a new RadioShack TRS-80 Model II because if had the best BASIC on the market for a PC computer. What I didn't realize was that they had put the eight-inch floppy drive in upside down to make it proprietary. I bought a cleaning disk for it and used it faithfully for about a year before I started having problems. One of my customers at the store was Brenda Daniels, a BBS user and technician who introduced me to the world of BBSS by getting me to buy a 300 baud acoustic modem and helped me set it up and log in to Charles Meadows' Omni BBS. When I told her about my problem,she asked me to show her how I cleaned the beads. When I showed her, following the instructions on the box, she informed me that I had put the cleaning disk  in upside down, but that was RadioShack's fault because they installed the drive upside-down. Between that and the fact that the cheap accounting package I had bought with the computer didn't get the same numbers that I goton my paper books that I had been using for about eight months and would not refund my three hundred dollars against their thousand dollar package that I was willing to buy if they gave me the three hundred dollars off, I decided to start taking my business elsewhere. It didn't help that the manager there told me that he was quitting at the end of the month because RadioShack was changing their policy on software developed by their employees on their own time, to say that RadioShack would own the copyright on software they produced. This was in 1980, if l'm remembering right.

Wed Sep 22 2021 21:45:17 MST from TheDave

 

I can already see how it could do terrible things, which is why I refuse to give up control.

Wed Sep 22 2021 15:13:43 MST from ParanoidDelusions <paranoiddelusions@wallofhate.com>

No one knows what their app is going to do. It is how you handle it when it has made you a billionaire and you didn't see how your app was going to do terrible th - but by then, you may be little more than a figurehead trying not to get McAffee-ed. 

Wed Sep 22 2021 04:14:19 MST from Th

I have no idea what my app will do to the world and I'm a little worried about it, but also it needs to happen because the current system is stupid.  Maybe I'll just kick off the next phase of apprenticeship being a thing.  Who the hell knows.

 

 

 

 

"If we can get everyone to AGREE to bend the knee, they'll be happy that they did it, they'll think they did it by choice, and thus being, their problems will vanish like a mist." 

Everyone ELSE will bend the knee, of course. The bad people over there that do bad things like making people bend the knee. ;) 

I mean, I *am* trying to render government obsolete through superior technology, so...

So, I recently lost a very long message the same way - and so did Smashbox. 

If you're really on a rant - go ahead and save it... then continue it in a second, third message - I wouldn't recommend typing for more than half an hour maximum. I really don't know how long the timeout is. I wish Citadel was better at saving buffers. 

Sun Oct 03 2021 22:42:51 MST from Jerry Moore Subject: Re: Q

Damn! I just spent half an hour or so typing a long response agreeing with most of your observations, and then somehowI found myself in the next room, and when I hit the back button I was informed that the document had expired! I'm too tired to trying to do it again, so I'll just add that I think that we may get the ability to sue Facebook and that could be a game changer.

 

It happens on Facebook too. Pro-tip. If you start noticing you're off on a rant... cut and paste your current buffer into NOTEPAD on your local machine, and finish the thought there, saving locally. That way, if something goes wrong online, you just need to cut and paste. 

So, I had a network outage around 4 AM this morning, almost immediately after receiving notification from Facebook that I had received a 3 day ban for a bullshit reason. 

I posted a picture of Jules Winifred along with his bible verse and the comment, "then you shoot the MFers in the face." 

And they went... "You're promoting violence!" 

Not even an opportunity to appeal it. They're on a two week suspension from my posts. 

Wed Oct 06 2021 15:22:27 MST from ParanoidDelusions <paranoiddelusions@wallofhate.com>

So, I had a network outage around 4 AM this morning, almost immediately after receiving notification from Facebook that I had received a 3 day ban for a bullshit reason. 

I posted a picture of Jules Winifred along with his bible verse and the comment, "then you shoot the MFers in the face." 

And they went... "You're promoting violence!" 

Not even an opportunity to appeal it. They're on a two week suspension from my posts. 

Their AI sucks ass.  I got a 7 day because there was a post saying "how do you get people to leave your house without saying the word leave" and my response was "In 3 minutes anyone who doesn't live here will be set on fire" which is obviously a joke based on the context of the question.

Anyhow, it was altogether weird timing. I get taken off Facebook, and suddenly my BBS is offline, and then Uncensored was offline... and then I got panicked - Is some sort of sweep happening starting right now? 

And then I checked on my phone, and everything else was still up... then I checked my network, and that was what was down. 


It was 4 AM in the morning. I wasn't my quickest. 

Ungoto doesn't really work here so... 

If you have my real phone number - you can call me, whenever you need me. That is why you have my real phone number. I don't give it out like one of my girlfriends when I was single. You're trusted.



If you need to call... CALL. 

If you feel you should have my number and you don't, let me know. We'll fix that. 

I would like to take this opportunity to apply a name to the event you described.

I kinda think my application of this Proper Noun is a nexxus of art and science.

Art is what we type into these incarnations of BBS. Science is the code developed by teenagers to present it back to a screen for others.

I call the situation of typing in a lengthy heart felt or science based (i dont use hyphens today) post, email, blog, whatever long content, ONLY TO HAVE IT EVAPORATE...

a(n) MacArthur Park.

What is a MacArthur Park? Quite simply, it is the result of typing in a very wordy, yet internally edited by the contributor, work of linguistic art by the same contributor, only to have a technological mistake or bug destroy it. Upon the author's realization that their hour long non-compulsory 500 word composition has vanished as a result of poor client configuration, server side errors, connectivity interruptions, or even substance indulgence, it is most likely that the very same author will abandon further comment, or, in lesser instances, post a generic statement, i.e. "I hate it when that happens." In reduced baseline expression this can be accepted as the author's way of indirectly saying "Fuck it".

My selection of editor nomenclature as MacArthur Park for this phenomenom is most likely a result of being born in the early 1970s.

Years and years of hearing the song and thinking "ITS JUST A FUCKING CAKE..."

references:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacArthur_Park_(song)

Sun Oct 03 2021 22:42:51 MST from Jerry Moore Subject: Re: Q

Damn! I just spent half an hour or so typing a long response agreeing with most of your observations, and then somehowI found myself in the next room, and when I hit the back button I was informed that the document had expired! I'm too tired to trying to do it again, so I'll just add that I think that we may get the ability to sue Facebook and that could be a game changer.

Mon Sep 27 2021 10:11:54 MST from ParanoidDelusions <paranoiddelusions@wallofhate.com> Subject: Re: Q

I don't really think this is the case. I don't think Zuckenberg started out thinking Facebook would do this - I think he wanted to make a directory for college hookups. I don't think Google planned on their algorithms having so much influence on attitudes and opinions in society. I think they wanted to help people find things. I think they *believed* in the "Democratization of the Internet," that they would give the disenfranchised a voice with online publishing that couldn't be censored or stopped.

I don't think they foresaw that this meant adult men with a My Little Pony fetish would be able to find other like minded men all over the world and that would help establish that their weird kink wasn't as uncommon as they had thought - and that *this* would in turn help normalize the idea. I don't think they thought that this would mobilize anti-vaxxers into an organized group with a platform and a bullhorn - or that flat-earthers would explode in numbers. I think they thought that just the information *they* thought should get out and be accepted would get out and be accepted - and instead, a lot of NOISE that they disagreed with was enabled by their platforms.

I think they were as shocked as the rest of us to discover that if you give all of mankind a nearly instantaneous, global bullhorn - they'll start shoveling bullshit through it as soon as they discover it, and that other people will gladly accept that bullshit. They didn't understand that if most people on the planet are incompetent and base and barely evolved past the first primate that decided to walk upright. I also don't think they really saw beyond mining data to *market* to people initially. At some point, they realized that the same things that predicted what you would BUY next predicted if you would get a divorce, or cheat on your spouse, or commit a murder, or blow up a building - and then the GOVERNMENT started getting interested in their technology.

Once they realized that it was a double edged sword, most of them swung way too far in the other direction. Instead of seeing how the technology would free us from oppression, they saw how it could make oppression a "thing for the common good." It wasn't that authoritarianism was bad - it was that HUMAN administered authoritarianism was bad. Machine administered authoritarianism was increasingly seen as creating a UTOPIAN ideal.

"If we can get everyone to AGREE to bend the knee, they'll be happy that they did it, they'll think they did it by choice, and thus being, their problems will vanish like a mist. We can tell them what they want, in fact, we KNOW what they want, and our AI says this is what they want. So we should give it to them."

And they're *not* wrong - and they *are* doing it.

Which doesn't make it any less evil.

 

Fri Sep 24 2021 18:29:14 MST from Jerry Moore Subject: Q

It's not so much what terrible things your app will do, it's the terrible things that YOU might do if your app becomes so popular that you become a Tech billionaire. That's our problem with Zuccerboob and Bezos and WAS our problem with crazy McAfee and businessman Jobs. I don't even know who started Radio Schlock, but their problem, like Apple's was trying to make everything proprietary!

I have a story to tell. When I was running The Dragon's Den (the book\game\comics store, not the BBS), I bought a new RadioShack TRS-80 Model II because if had the best BASIC on the market for a PC computer. What I didn't realize was that they had put the eight-inch floppy drive in upside down to make it proprietary. I bought a cleaning disk for it and used it faithfully for about a year before I started having problems. One of my customers at the store was Brenda Daniels, a BBS user and technician who introduced me to the world of BBSS by getting me to buy a 300 baud acoustic modem and helped me set it up and log in to Charles Meadows' Omni BBS. When I told her about my problem,she asked me to show her how I cleaned the beads. When I showed her, following the instructions on the box, she informed me that I had put the cleaning disk  in upside down, but that was RadioShack's fault because they installed the drive upside-down. Between that and the fact that the cheap accounting package I had bought with the computer didn't get the same numbers that I goton my paper books that I had been using for about eight months and would not refund my three hundred dollars against their thousand dollar package that I was willing to buy if they gave me the three hundred dollars off, I decided to start taking my business elsewhere. It didn't help that the manager there told me that he was quitting at the end of the month because RadioShack was changing their policy on software developed by their employees on their own time, to say that RadioShack would own the copyright on software they produced. This was in 1980, if l'm remembering right.

Wed Sep 22 2021 21:45:17 MST from TheDave

 

I can already see how it could do terrible things, which is why I refuse to give up control.

Wed Sep 22 2021 15:13:43 MST from ParanoidDelusions <paranoiddelusions@wallofhate.com>

No one knows what their app is going to do. It is how you handle it when it has made you a billionaire and you didn't see how your app was going to do terrible th - but by then, you may be little more than a figurehead trying not to get McAffee-ed. 

Wed Sep 22 2021 04:14:19 MST from Th

I have no idea what my app will do to the world and I'm a little worried about it, but also it needs to happen because the current system is stupid.  Maybe I'll just kick off the next phase of apprenticeship being a thing.  Who the hell knows.