News and commentary from the cross-platform scripting community.
	Mail Starting 6/27/97

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From: correia@barebones.com (Jim Correia);
Sent at 6/28/97; 1:42:21 PM;
Steve Johnson on Free Speech

Steve's message reminds me of something that is said again and again, yet people seem to forget. Freedom of Speech was designed to protect the speech and expression that nobody likes, because no one would try to ban the other kind.

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From: tjh@ic.net (Tom Hopper);
Sent at 6/27/97; 7:53:32 PM;
Sexuality

I came your Frontier Web site looking to download Frontier, but I read with interest your page about sexuality and our society's misguided attempts to suppress it. I agree absolutely with you. We are sexual creatures, and denying that fact--oppressing the very real and integral feelings--can only harm us as individuals and as a society.

You may be interested in a recent Derek McGinty Show that dealt with precisely this issue. In case you're not familiar with it, the Derek McGinty Show airs daily on NPR stations, and usually deals with minority and lower-income issues. It's a marvelous show. Anyway, Derek's guest was basically advocating expanding sex education in the U.S. as a means of reducing the number of teen pregnancies. What stuck with me (I didn't get to hear the whole show) is that U.S. has the highest rate of teen pregnancies in the developed world. When you compare the U.S. with similar western countries like England (something like 1/5th the rate of teen pregnancies) and the Netherlands (1/100th the rate?), the only difference is in attitudes and education. In those countries, they have K-12 sex ed, and don't have this insane need to ignore our sexual "tendencies."

If you're interested in hearing that particular show, the Show's Web site is at http://www.wamu.org/mcginty.html, and there's contact information there.

Regards,

Tom

P.S. I *did* download Frontier. An article in the latest MacUser convinced me that Frontier could help me maintain my personal Web site, which is created on a Mac and hosted on a local ISP.

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From: ckray@pixera.com (C. Keith Ray);
Sent at 6/27/97; 4:52:59 PM;
comments on davenet

My response to Cornelius Willis On Java

>* Explain how to do [array arithmetic, bitmap operations, multimedia or >any other large-scale data operations] efficiently without the use of >pointers;

Smalltalk doesn't have C-like pointers visible to the programmers, but good programs can be written in Smalltalk (running in highly-optimized Virtual Machines, even). Ditto for FORTRAN, BASIC, even HyperCard. Not everyone needs to write multimedia apps from the machine-code up.

(The Linux comment is really strange. Is microsoft porting Office9x to Linux?)

My response to Scott Guthery on Java

>3) It's JAPL

The two great hopes of Java are (1) it is more programmer-friendly than C++, avoiding whole hoards of hard-to-write memory management code and hard-to-fix memory management bugs, and (2) its virtual machine allows moving compiled apps onto multiple platforms. In the state of the world today, the VM cross-platform experience is not as good as one would hope.

I'm hopeful about Java, but I'm still programming in C and C++ for device-drivers and application code while waiting for Java to catch up.

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From: dori@pobox.com (Dori Smith);
Sent at 6/27/97; 1:02:34 PM;
E Pluribus Unum

I think that you're being a little too subtle, with the DaveNet mentioning Gore right next to the link to the ACLU's article on music censorship.

It should be made clear: the PMRC (Parent's Music Resource Center) was started in 1985 by Tipper Gore, Al's wife. Trying to change Gore to believe in free speech is a waste of time, imo. He and his wife have spent far too long advocating censorship to believably change now.

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From: xtian@Eng.Sun.COM (xtian);
Sent at 6/27/97; 12:05:46 PM;
Re:E Pluribus Unum

However, in the same week they threw out the option for suffering, terminally ill, but mentally capable, people to ask for a doctor assisted suicide.

So all that is left for these people is a long painful death, or a short painful messy death with a gun or other less-efficient method. We even give criminals the lethal injection.

Such wisdom and such blindness all in a single week.

- Christian (who would NEVER want to make the decisions the Supreme Court does)

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From: david_morgenstern@macweek.com (David Morgenstern);
Sent at 6/27/97; 9:17:29 AM;
Re:E Pluribus Unum

Perhaps a rabbinic saying is in order here: "Adam's dust was collected from all parts of the world," said Rabbi Meir in Talmud. The first human being was not created with dust found one particular place, but with countless small additions from everywhere. The Web also is not from a single place; it's a collection and interaction of individuals and organizations around the globe.

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From: tinman@xnet.com (David Newman);
Sent at 6/27/97; 11:53:52 AM;
Re:E Pluribus Unum

One of the problems we have in the USA is voter apathy. One of the reasons for that apathy is we never seem to know who our elected officals are or how to contact them. Even if we do, writing them a letter takes time. There's the letter to write and print, the envelope to address, the stamp. We mean to, tomorrow. The web can fix that.

Imagine a website would allow one to enter your zip code and find out who your elected officals are for national, state, regional and local regions. Want to send them an email? Just click and you're at a text edit page. Type away and post it when you've said your piece. For those officals with only postal addresses, you can get their address, phone, fax, etc.

The website can make this easy. A non-partisan site run honestly with integrity would gain acceptance. IF successfully and the donations come in, add their votes on bills, new bills before legislative bodies, veto records, etc. It's about keeping people informed and making it easier to excercise one's responsibility of being an informed and vocal citizen and voter.

There may be sites now that do some of this. Where are they? Who runs them? Can you trust them? A good site will have to gain trust, maintain strict non-partisan rules.

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From: dannyg@dannyg.com (Danny Goodman);
Sent at 6/27/97; 9:30:55 AM;
Re:E Pluribus Unum

I wonder what you'd be calling the court if it had ruled to uphold the CDA. Probably a different kind of absolute.

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From: thepattern@hotmail.com (Laurence Rozier);
Sent at 6/27/97; 8:54:16 AM;
E Pluribus Unum

http://www.forbes.com/asap/120296/html/stanley_crouch.htm

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From: marc@canter.com (Marc Canter);
Sent at 6/27/97; 8:28:56 AM;
Re:E Pluribus Unum

I think one issues that's been missed from all this CDA hub-bub is that it was designed as a spoiler/rider added onto a VERY important bill called the Telecom Reform Act. Without that Act - we'd still be back in the dark ages with controlled and constrained teleco and media businesses being told what they can and can't do by our government.

So this red-neck Senator spoils all those years of hard work (in trying to reform the antiquated telco laws) - by adding this slimey CDA bill into the package at the last minute. Everybody knew it would get overturned, but Clinton supported it anyway, as it made him look good to his new found centrist policies.

But he knew it would never hold up - and so we have another precedent setting case on the books.

BTW The same folks are trying it again with a limitation on encryption technology bill, so watch out - the fight ain't over with yet!

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From: siegel@barebones.com (Rich Siegel);
Sent at 6/27/97; 12:13:34 PM;
Re:E Pluribus Unum

>We have representative government, we elect the president and the
>Congress. They belong to us, they reflect us. If we vote for someone
>else, in next election we become something else. They want to get
>re-elected, and we fear change, so they're constantly refining
>their positions to echo our complaints, thinking in four year
>intervals, saying and doing things that will get them re-elected.

I'm still processing the implications of this remark, but I sense a disconnect somewhere in the middle. Yes, we elect the president and Congress. Yes, they say and do things that will get them re-elected. But between the time they get elected, and the time they start trying to get re-elected (a period which seems measured in days, sometimes), what happens? It -appears- that many politicians start following their own agenda, or one set by the various special interests and lobbyists. Either way, the elected officials stop representing the voters, and start representing something else.

Are you a Tom Clancy fan? His novels are wonderful escapist material. In his latest, "Executive Orders", Jack Ryan (the protagonist in almost every fictional work that Clancy has written) is the president, and needs to rebuild the government after a suicidal pilot flies a 747 into the Capitol during a joint session of Congress. This act wipes out all three branches of the government, and Ryan has to appoint a new Supreme Court, new Congress, and a new cabinet.

The relevant thing here is that the old establishment is swept aside in a single stroke, and there's a chance to re-form the government into something that reflects the spirit that was lost; instead of a government run by professional politicians, it's a collection of farmers, doctors, scientists, financiers, laborers, businessmen, and others. In other words, people who do something for a living other than play politics.

I'm not suggesting that someone fly an airliner into the Capitol building (and I'm certainly not volunteering!), but the prospect of -some- process by which the current political structure is swept away and rebuilt is pretty seductive. It won't happen by the electoral process, though -- politicians tell people what they want to hear, and then the people vote with their fears in one hand and their wallets in the other.

Here's one for you: cloning. Did you notice the knee-jerk reaction of many scientists and politicians upon the announcement that a couple of guys in Scotland cloned a sheep? Now, the Gang of Eight (the industrialized nations that just wrapped up a summit in Denver last week) have decided to endorse an international ban on human cloning. It's like these guys watched Jurassic Park (or perhaps The Boys from Brazil) one too many times...

I think the very fact that the CDA existed at all is symptomatic of the degeneration of our society. There are entirely too many people out there who are unwilling to assume or accept the responsibility for their own actions or, in many cases, the upbringing or actions of their children. This is why bizarre things like the CDA and TV rating systems came about in the first place -- too many people who don't want to teach their own kids right from wrong, and who think someone else ought to do it for them.

So I think one way to avoid things like the CDA is to force people to accept responsibility for their own actions, or, more to the point, for the actions of minor children in their household. Your kid skips school? Spray-paints a wall? Shoplifts? Deals drugs? You get fined. Or go to jail. (I also think that the stocks should make a comeback, for things like driving under the influence. But I digress.)

That's JMTCW. :-)