Originally Posted by
RadioGirl
Of all the discouraging aspects of the video, this was the worst. There didn't seem to be one person involved that had ever used Adobe to create a pdf or had figured out ctrl-c, ctrl-v to edit documents. The overwhelming impression I had was people saying "it was all due to a, whatyamacallit, computer blogging software hacking thingie". I had a boss in the early 90s who used to open his email program, send all the messages to the printer in the next room, then ring his secretary to bring them in so he could read them; it looks that the leaders of the USA are still in that era!
How can they possibly hope to understand the image analysis issues of x-rays and nude-o-scopes, the forgery possibilities of IDs and barcodes, the possibility of mixing two 3.3 oz bottles of magic liquid A and two 3.3 oz bottles of magic liquid B, etc, if they are this technologically incompetent? (Which answers itself, really, in that they
don't understand any of those things.)
A sad state of affairs, truly.
I've had this conversation with a number of reporters in addition to the staffer from the Congresswoman's office. I made it very clear to the Congressfolk that I wanted to help educate them so that the process could move in a productive direction. One of the reporters I talked to didn't really understand what the big deal was initially. She explained that she printed the document out and it seemed fine.
If they want to call me a hacker I suppose that is vaguely accurate if using the same definition that
ITA Hacker has in their sig since I play on computers all day and "hack" at stuff.
Educating the world is a slow, laborious, painful process. But if we don't do it, who will?