[MUD-Dev] Wild west (was Guilds & Politics)

[JC Lawrence]

On Sat, 27 Dec 1997 15:52:58 PST8PDT stad <Ola> wrote:
> JC Lawrence <claw at under.Eng.Sun.COM> wrote:

>> Even that to the side, what freedom is abridged or compromised by
>> the fact of logging?

> Isn't that obvious?  The freedom to act in the moment and focus on
> whatever seems like a good idea?

Ahh, but logging does not prevent that.  It is merely your
sensibilities which do.  I'm not about to take responsibility for
those.

>>> A robust systems should protect the users from the admins!!! I'm
>>> serious!
>>
>>  I don't doubt your sincerity.  I do heavily question the value and
>> negative results of protectionism.

> What is "protectionism" ?  1. protecting the users from the admins
> 2. protecting the users from other users through admin control

Neither and both.  Protectionism is gearing a system so that members
of the system are artificially protected from what are deemed to be
bad effects of the system.

>> There are two original sins:
>> 
>> 1) Being there.  2) Communicating.
>> 
>> Everything else pretty well stems from there.

> ?

> The alternative is suicide?

Yup.  A corpse commits few sins, but is also less than interesting.

>> Whether we like it or note we are about to enter an age where the
>> flow of data is both uncontrollable and uncontrolled.  Govt's and
>> other such may attempt to delay this change.  They can do nothing
>> to avert it entirely.  It is, quite literally, inevitable.

> Why?  This is a self-fullfilling prophecy.

Quite.  It will happen for the utterly simple reason that it can
happen, and there is nothing that can prevent it from happening.  Its
sort of like living in a sea of nitroglycerine along with billions of
others, when the favourite passtime of all those millions is making
sparks...  It will happen for the very simple reason that slowly or
not, people will begin to move, release, and collect data, and that
process is a self-fertilising one.

Think of it in terms of data maning.

> You can do quite a lot if you are _aware_ that you are being
> monitored.  You can avoid having a telephone.  You can avoid buying
> with cards.  You can browse the web with somebodyelses browser.  I
> can grow my own food.  Use my own energy powerplant.  Etc.

Yup.  This essentially equates to removing yourself from the rest of
human society by limiting the points of interaction (IO) with that
society.  Given a person who has absolutely no interaction or
dependency on the rest of the world, does he really matter?  Does a
tree falling in the woods make a sound if nobody hears it?

> In addition, I can use the law to enforce some rights that I admit
> is somewhat more difficult to enforce, because information hiding is
> too easy.  (I've got the right to demand a copy of all information a
> source has about me. I've got the right to demand the deletion of
> that information) But the case is, if they use the information then
> I should have a pretty good case for a lawsuit?

The problem is more nasty that that as you are ignoring the case of
distribution and collection.

How about if the company in question has no data on you, but instead
used a data collection service to assemble a report on you?  In turn
the data collection service has no data on you either, but polls and
collects data from hundreds or thousands of other data services across
the planet, many in unknown or virtual locations.  Those services in
turn are often sub-collectors, and occassionally original sources.

Sure you could chase a given datum down to its source -- but there are
likely hundreds of other data sources with the same data also
available which are now mirrors of the original datum which were not
referenced by the initial query.

Think of it like attmepts at censorship.  It doesn't work.  It never
has. 

--
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw at null.net
                                           Internet: coder at ibm.net
----------(*)                        Internet: jc.lawrence at sun.com
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...