<nettime> That moose may soon be just a mouse click away

[andy@remotelinux.com]

Whoever says that the net is a completely progressive thing, look at this 
article of a Texan letting people shoot guns and soon-- hunt, from their 
computer.  A /. post continued, "While this may sound like cheating to 
some people, this may be a large benefit to hunters with disabilities." 
Americans make things so damn difficult.

Where is the law-- shit, wheres the Depot of Homeland Security with this? 
Are they to busy frisking grandmas in airports for this kind of stuff. 
Sitting on their asses like most Security Guards... I'll give them the 
benefit of the doubt, like doing something.  It's just I'm not really sure 
what.  Has anyone else noticed this?  What do they really in their last 
three years of existence.  The Terror Threat Level?  Www.ready.gov? 
Www.lifeandliberty.gov? Kits Including Duct tape? (the last two are 
wonderfully 1984 kitsch)  OK perhaps I'm being a little pessimistic, but 
I'll let other Americans delude themselves as citizens and not criminals.

I have my theory on the election, although I ignored every dribble about 
it for over a year.  The Bush family has had real-time demographic 
tracking software since the 1980s and have used this to build an exact 
blip of what Americans do every day.  And this is how their Industrial 
buddies manipulated the markets for their benefit.  Thats how oil was so 
irrationally low the week of the election.  Four major Iraq oil-pipelines 
were blown up the week before.  But economic forecasts showed positive 
earnings in Q4.  The target demographic is as wide as it is sparse, 
catching blips of reality in real-time.  Watching the trends of everyday 
people, everywhere, is more then enough to know how to fix elections, just 
consider the average member of the electorality.  (This is what an 
enhanced version of a program called Promis is 
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.01/inslaw.html).  Will the true 
minority please stand up?  Hey wait, we're all a part of the majority? 
Shucks, where has my identity gone.  Thats what its like to be white in 
America.

But perhaps all this will accomplish is a showdown with anti-gun activists 
seizing the opportunity to make a dive for more restrictions on guns and 
hunting?  Or the pro-gun lobby tout the safety and 2nd Amendment rights to 
shooting virtually as in reality?  What then are the difference between 
the virtual and the real world?

I think this says an important thing about most aspects of of the laws 
concerning interconnected devices is written and applied.  Pattens is one, 
fair use another.  But imho, being able to raise these kinds of questions 
shows how far more important this development, the Internet, with all the 
shadows haunting the independence of cyberspace, is just as much under 
threat by the same perverse forces in the reality of this country that 
want to make freedom a privilege and not a right.  And it's sure as hell 
funny.

ciao,
Andy

http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/11/16/life.hunting.reut/index.html

"HOUSTON, Texas (Reuters) -- Hunters soon may be able to sit at their 
computers and blast away at animals on a Texas ranch via the Internet, a 
prospect that has state wildlife officials up in arms.

The Web site already offers target practice with a .22 caliber rifle and 
could soon let hunters shoot at deer, antelope and wild pigs, site creator 
John Underwood said on Tuesday...."







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