gaelian

Quite so. The purpose of my simplified question was to contrast the concept of punishment with really any other option. Because I don't think America has faced the fact that many of its citizens still require punishment of criminals as opposed to rehabilitation, isolation or whatever may actually be a more appropriate and humane response, were religious or pseudo-religious doctrine taken out of the equation.

I believe the privitisation of the penal system in the US has set the stage for all kinds of misdirected incentives. I wonder if some who benefit from the system as it stands are in fact quite happy to perpetuate the need for revenge/punishment.

I do none the less understand the impulse for revenge on an individual level. Anyone who says they don't must have had a charmed life indeed. I just think it's time we start consciously removing such instincts from our penal systems.

Yes, I can understand it while at the same time not agreeing with it.

It seems to me that one of the biggest questions on this issue that Americans need to face is: are you punishing or are you rehabilitating? I don't pretend to have a universally applicable and useful answer to that question, but societies should at least be very clear about which option is being chosen and what the consequences of that choice are.

The fact that the US has a ridiculous amount of people in prison[1] seems like a fairly clear example of short sighted third world thinking to me. I know I personally find this fact rather concerning and I'm not even American. Some things should not be run for a profit.

Discussion on the conditions of low-security prisons in the US should be secondary to discussions about why so many Americans are in prison in the first place, IMO.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison#Population_statistics

I have a general policy of not divulging exact personal details of friends or family on the Internet without their express consent. But suffice it to say she was old enough to understand what the Stasi did, and lucky enough to have not been directly affected by them as an individual, although some people around her were: interrogations, permanent disappearances, etc.

However, not everything was beatings, disappearances and terror. Believe it or not, East Germany wasn't all downsides. People were employed, general crime was apparently quite low, children felt relatively safe, children were given education (though indoctrination was certainly a heavy component), they were clothed and fed. While the standard of living sounded like it was relatively low across the board, it also seemed that this standard of living was more evenly distributed than might have been the case in some other places at the time. Obviously traditional Communism has borne out to be more or less unsustainable, and I won't be participating in any debate about Communism vs other dogmas, but I feel I would not be accurately conveying all that I've been told were I not to mention these counterpoints to the Stasi's behaviour.

One fascinating thing my partner has told me is that for some reason, the memories she has of East Germany before the wall came down tend to be in black and white, in her mind's eye.

As you retell, the Stasi were quite big on the human intelligence angle, but I doubt they would have had to resort to such measures would they have had access to the kind of communication infrastucture that is common in the developed world today. Such a system as the NSA et al have access to now, would have been a Stasi wet dream, I'd imagine.

My partner grew up in East Germany and has told me of the Stasi and their activities. I note that the GP wrote 'we have a government surveillance program that literally surpasses the level of the Stasi' - emphasis mine, and I think this is a fair statement.

Also, on a meta-point, every time I see someone start their post off with the word 'Bullshit' on HN - and I see it quite often, like it's some sort of HN meme - I always think: gee, that post would have lost nothing from the exclusion of that first word and probably would have been a little more in service of promoting civil discourse.

I didn't think anyone would be that interested in my little hypothetical. :)

Well, I may live in a different country to you, so any department I describe may not be familiar to you. But without getting too specific, my first starting observation is that the hiring practices of most public organisations are terrible. They're not stringent enough and they don't encourage self motivated workers. So that would be the first thing I'd want to try and fix. Self motivation within the workforce would seem to be one of - if not the most - important ingredients to get the Valve/GitHub style culture working.

Size of the organisation also would seem to be important. I have seen it discussed here before as to just how large an organisation this kind of flat strucutre would scale out to. I obviously don't know the answer. But again I think it would largely come back to how well the hiring process is managed.

And how such a essentially anarchistic department would interface with the rest of the government and/or the public would also be a interesting experiment.

I suspect it is much harder to retrofit such a culture to an existing organisation than to have it that way from the outset.

With Valve, GitHub et al we see organisations that are trying to encourage novelty and creativity in their workforce. Many organisations are more interested in repeatability in their workforce. By which I mean many of their workers are basically following a workflow of some sort that requires just enough human judgement so as they cannot yet be replaced by a robot.

So I think you're right, not all organisations can work this way and some probably don't even want to. But I entertain myself sometimes wondering how they could. My personal favourite is thinking about how one might manage to get a government department to work like Valve/GitHub.

> a hacker claiming allegiance with Anonymous

But then we'd have to argue about what the word "hacker" means.

Seriously though, I'm actually quite OK with using "Anonymous" as a collective noun. Granted, it is a less accurate shorthand, but we all know what it means. For those who don't, I'm not sure using "a hacker claiming allegiance with Anonymous" would be any more enlightening. In fact, it may actually reinfornce the mistaken idea that so many in the non-tech media still seem to have, which is that Anonymous is some kind of more or less traditional, hierarchical, online terror organisation.

"An Anonymous", yeah, maybe. Still seems needlessly confusing to the less knowledgeable. But I'm open to being convinced.

> It's fair to question how much developers should concern themselves with external costs for using their service.

I wouldn't go so far as to say we have a solemn duty to always take such issues into account. But as a designer/developer, it is certainly something I myself would spare a thought for because - putting on my consumer hat - I am directly affected by the problem of shitty data plans at present and I'd like to think it's something that designers/developers would be aware of, regardless of whether they then make an informed choice one way or the other.

> Do we have a responsibility to do the opposite, as an industry exerting pressure on carriers to increase cap levels?

I'd like to think this would work. But I really just can't see it.

I too would be leaning towards designing for ther reality. But it seems we're in the time of 'case by case basis' on this issue. I don't think there's a single correct answer.

It's neither bandwidth nor latency that I would be most concerned about (though I agree they are a problem) but the other point he raises:

> ... the amount of data included in their plans before insane pricing kicks in is frequently still measured in megabytes.

Mobile data plans are a joke in my country[1].

1. http://blog.binarybalance.com.au/2012/05/12/internet-anemia-...

For what it's worth, that blog post was from September last year and Notifo notifications are still being sent at present. I assume the dude has put it in caretaker mode as he says in his post.

That is sad news (and I somehow missed this until now). I thought it was a good little service, I have been using it for a personal project too.

Indeed, something like HN notify would seem to be the go for me now also.

Yeah, it is a little cryptic isn't it. I should have been less so with my comment. To get it working:

1. Sign up for an account at http://notifo.com

2. Download one or more of their client applications here: http://notifo.com/mobile_apps and enter your details

3. Enter your notifo username in the box on your HN profile page.

I think the reason this facility exists here on HN is because Notifo is a Y Combinator company.

> Is kinda the point I've been trying to make. :)

OK fair enough. But I could have sworn I was just replying directly to something you said in your above comment. And I don't think I took it too far out of context. :)

> A big part of twitter's initial growth was due to 3rd party development. But the tides shifted there as well, not (just) because of advertisers but because of "normal people" joining as users.

Agreed. But what would you think the split would be on tide shifting regarding 3rd party development due to advertisers vs. 'normal people' signing up? I'd still bet on the former being the more pressing issue.

> I wonder if that's who we're actually excited to keep out? Not the advertisers, but all of those totally mediocre people who make our trending topics embarrassingly dull ;)

For me personally, I'm more excited about losing the advertisers. But now that you mention it, maybe losing (at least for a while) the mediocre users you speak of is just an added bonus. :P

Of course, not I or anyone else knows how App.net is going to turn out at this point, but I'm approaching it with curiosity at this stage, I don't yet see a reson to add morbidity.

But couldn't part of the potential be that a 3rd party developer ecosystem that feels healthy and secure will focus on providing added value for users, thereby encouraging more users? More developers? More revenue? And assumedly proving the developers worth to the company as being greater than just their $100/year (or whatever it ends up being)? I'm not saying that all parties are always going to get along like a friendly gang-bang, but I don't think it is as simple as 'The developers still make up a minority of the user revenue.'

But that blot contains within it a pretty obvious potential to be viewed as a bat though, doesn't it? If it was say, a square with a smaller square inside it, then it's unlikly anyone would interpret it as a bat. I understand the purpose of a Rorschach test (dubious as it may be), and I get the point being made by the OP. But my point is that I have backed App.net because it looks enough like it has the potential to become something useful to me, in a number of ways. I don't feel that there's a bait and switch going on here or that I have been otherwise swindled in some way. And I'm pretty cynical most of the time.

Free but ad supported isn't the only way online, but one could be forgiven for thinking it is. I am happy to encourage anyone trying alternatives. I want to see what social services that don't need to cater to advertisers look like, and this is one such model. I wonder why some people appear quite threatened by such.

Time will tell if the service turns out to be a bat or not. I approach with few preconceptions, I'm happy to wait it out for a while and give the guy the benefit of the doubt. Seems to me he's doing OK so far.

There is the notifo option on the profile page, which I've been using successfully for some time.

It also doesn't address the 'mostly want other people to be aware of it' part though.

Individual web savviness doesn't always come into it. There are those here who work within environments that mandate less than cutting edge browsers.

> Also, my point in saying I like The Social Network, etc. meant nothing more than to explain why I've started 140 Stiches; I have a love for technology and fashion and want to give advice to guys in technology who are willing to take it.

OK. But you follow up the paragraph in question with 'Basically what I'm trying to say here is, I understand your language.' which implied to me that the purpose of the preceeding paragraph was largely to establish your 'geek credentials' in some manner. This (in isolation) is what rang hollow for me.

And no doubt you will still find guys who want help, even if - in my own anecdotal experience - there's not as many of these guys around as there perhaps once was. And I wish you luck.

But what I took issue with was the tone you use in some of your writing. That sentence I quoted from your site just sounds horrible and my initial gut reaction to it is that you don't know the audience you're apparently targeting. The little secrets of fashion that will help me fool people into thinking I'm more awesome that I actually am? Yes, first impressions are important, people often judge a book by its cover, etc. etc. but ultimately, trying to keep up such charades (when not able to base things off some true aspect of who you really are) is unsatisfying, tiring and counter-productive. Ergo, I honestly hope that sentence doesn't convey what you really meant.

You say you understand our language, but I see little so far that confirms this. If I could give some subjective but hopfully constructive criticism: dial back the bravado just a little, show us some interesting research/data about your chosen topic, or just tell us an insightful story or two about fashion and nerds.

Using the word 'interwebs' and saying you liked The Social Network isn't - on its own - enough to convince me you understand my world. In relative isolation, it actually has the opposite effect to what I assume you intended, i.e. it comes off as 'try-hard' or contrived.

> I'm here to let you in on the little secrets of fashion so people think you're more awesome than you truly are.

I hope that came out wrong, I really do.

The copy on this site comes off as pretentious and kind of annoying to me. Maybe it's just the groups I associate with, but am I the only one who thinks that the stereotype of the fashion-clueless nerd really isn't as pervasive in current reality as it once was?

I agree the browser is not all bad if you take into account the original target market. But I stand by my surprise that even after the writing has been on the wall for so long, times clearly changing even in the enterprise market, MS still hasn't made it a priority to improve the day-to-day experience for today's user.

Maybe I'm just expecting too much.

I haven't tried 10. But I'm hopeful about it.

I agree that I probably shouldn't be projecting assumptions onto people I don't know.

For me at any rate, as a person who does not consider themselves religious in any conventional sense, I don't find the fact that someone believes something without proof to be frightening at all, in and of itself. The problem only comes when someone else uses those beliefs as the basis to impinge on my own life/liberties or the life/liberties of others who do not share their belief.

> Why? Religious people commit less crime, get and stay married more, use less illegal drugs, donate and volunteer more... It would make more sense to fear people becoming less religious.

Are you just playing devils advocate (no pun intended)? Because there seems to be a rather large creationism, abstinence only sex education, and homophobia shaped blindspot in your view. There's plenty of ostesnibly legitimate stuff that religion does to damage society without needing to do anything outright illegal (but if you need illegal, then we need only look as far as systemic child abuse in the Catholic Church). I suspect that when the OP talks about being frightened, this is the kind of thing he's thinking of. Certainly this is some of the stuff that frightens me.

Of course this is not to say that religion is all bad. I know one couple, devout members of a Christian sect, lovely people and I have great respect for them. Why? Because they walk their talk and they don't feel a need to proselytize all within earshot, trying to force others to live by the same rules they do. I assume they must realise at some level that they have no right to make such a demand. I wish more religious people were like them.

Exactly. I would rather see them err on the side of radicalism at this point.

I have primarily been a Mac user for the last couple of years (whenever I have a choice about it), but I'd love to see MS start making its self more relevant again. I feel the consumers (i.e. my) interestes are best served when progress from the tech giants are spurred on by their competition. Not when a single platform has the majority of mind share in terms of perceived innovation.

I wrote a blog post about my own lucid dreaming experiences a little while back[1].

People may also be interested in r/luciddreaming over on Reddit[2].

1. http://blog.binarybalance.com.au/2011/02/26/lucid-dreaming

2. http://www.reddit.com/r/luciddreaming

... and then abandoning it? Or am I missing something?

I don't think even Rushkoff would disagree that not all people have the drive to learn programming. And I would agree that programming is not the only way that one can learn the knowledge that one should have in the modern world so that one can be adequately informed on security/privacy issues and so on. But it certainly helps. Coding is becomming a less specialised job by the decade regardless of what any of us think about it. If one espouses the idea that 'programming is as important as reading' even if it may not yet be literally or globally true, then we are aiming for the stars and in the process, at least perhaps hitting a mountain.

No doubt your father is an acomplished man, but he would be a better Windows power user or sys admin if he was comfortable with PowerShell. One of my pet peeves are server admins who don't thnk they need to know any programming and thus don't truly understand the requirements of the developers who interact with their servers.

I feel that we're discussing things (if you'll excuse the cliché) too far inside the box. If one has a very blinkered view of the advantages that programming can provide then yeah, it's just a highly specialised tool, useful only to a few. But that's not what programming is to me. To me, its about communication, expression of ideas and discovery.

You say that learning JavaScript won't help you to understand your computer better. I disagree. By learning JavaScript, you will involuntarily learn more about one or more web browsers and perhaps from there, you may become more informed on how information is transmitted across the web and perhaps from there, you may learn to better protect yourself through more consistent use of encrypted data transfer, just as an example. You are right when you say learning to program does not magically impart knowledge of file systems or networking but when I learned Ruby, I would have had to try pretty damn hard not to learn by osmosis at least something I didn't know before about these topics while I was learning the language.

So yes, in the narrowest sense, programming is not currently as important as reading. But what does the public potentially gain if we suggest that it is? And I predict that the distance between ideal and reality will close as the decades pass.

There was a book written by Douglas Rushkoff called Program or be programmed[1] wherein he asserts quite a compelling argument for why learning at least a basic understanding of programming and how a computer works actually is (or very soon will be) just as important as being able to read.

The basic crux of the issue for me is this: you can control a society via the flow of information through that society. Both reading and more recently, programming are activities intimately connected to the flow of information through modern society. Along with an understanding of programming comes a greater understanding of computers to computer networks to privacy issues and all manner of things that more people should be thinking about more conciously, regardless of whether they wish to program as a career.

While no doubt the flow of material through plumbing pipes is also quite important for societies in general, I don't think an understanding of plumbing affords quite the same insights and protections against being potentially manipulated by the powers that be as one might acquire through the pursuit of reading and programming.

1. http://programorbeprogrammed.com/