>Doug: I only find it annoying that people want everything for free and
>refuse to see how they're paying. That's been going on a long time, sure,
>but it's especially insidious these days and contributes to the notion
>that writers, artists, etc. don't need to be paid for their work. it's on
>the net! for free! download away! it's free! whee! that would be great, in
>the socialist figure, right now writers, editors, artists, and musicians
>actually, you know, have to make a fucking living.
Get a job y' bludgers! ;-)
What Doug says strikes a chord for me. For years it has irritated me when people whine about privacy and its getting steadily worse. It must be very widespread, because nowadays government and corporations are responding with all kinds of token measures to reassure the whiners. The Privacy Act is bandied about by all kind of people.
I guess that the less people have any actual privacy, the more they like to cling to petty token bits of privacy that are afforded to them. Or rebel against innocuous things like Facebook, because they can't resist the real intrusions, like employers taking blood and DNA samples, corporations swapping their credit profile and governments tapping their phone and reading their mail.
"Can't fight that, just have to bend over and take it. So give me some token privacy, so I can pretend to have some dignity."
Its never bothered me much. For one thing I come from the bush, small communities never did afford any privacy to speak of. For another thing I have something wrong with me so that I don't actually care what people think. (That isn't normal apparently.) Not to mention that any activist, especially the left-wing kind, automatically must expect to go onto all kinds of lists. Giving up your privacy is one of the prices you pay, you expect to have your phone tapped (it would be degrading if the class enemy thought so little of you that they weren't tapping your phone). You expect to be subject to raids, to have a file kept on you.
So of course you automatically despise anyone who whines about privacy - how bourgeois! ;-)
On the subject of privacy whiners, has anyone noticed how many people have "private" (unlisted) phone numbers these days? I swear, the white pages in the phone book is becoming a tiny exclusive elite.
In days gone by, only top industrialists and movie stars would have bother to have their phone numbers taken out of the phone book. And not many of them. Us ordinary people actually wanted others to be able to find our number.
Nowadays, every man and his dog has a private number, its a bloody epidemic. Another symptom of the privacy plague? It disgusts me. What kind of wanker pays good money to have his phone number kept secret? What is the point of having a phone if no-one can ring you, because they can't look up your phone number? Or do you expect me to become a part of the charade, being given confidential access to your phone number and being sworn to secrecy never to divulge it? Dream on, I won't even remember it, you fuckwit!
I'm with you on this one Doug, they give me the shits too.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas (Look me up, I'm in the phone book)