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MS Cites National Security to Justify Closed Source
guacamolefoo writes: "It was recently reported in eWeek that "A senior Microsoft Corp. executive told a federal court last week that sharing information with competitors could damage national security and even threaten the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan. He later acknowledged that some Microsoft code was so flawed it could not be safely disclosed."
(Emphasis added.) The follow up from Microsoft is even better: As a result of the flaws, Microsoft has asked the court to allow a "national security" carve-out from the requirement that any code or API's be made public. Microsoft has therefore taken the position that their code is so bad that it must kept secret to keep people from being killed by it. Windows - the Pinto of the 21st century."
Their next move will be lobbying Fritz Hollings to sponsor OSPA, Open Source Prohibition Act: making it illegal to publish your APIs so the "terrorists" can't exploit them. As if terrorists could code :-)
"As flies to the wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for sport." - William Shakespeare, King Lear
in his hands a federal court in his back pocket.
I got in my 2.4.17 Linux box's log. It hasn't crashed 86 days so far, so I guess "The ship sailed on"...
= )
May 5 04:27:51 [myIP] kernel: Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at virtual address 00000004
May 5 04:27:51 [myIP] kernel: printing eip:
May 5 04:27:51 [myIP] kernel: c01256d8
May 5 04:27:51 [myIP] kernel: *pde = 00000000
May 5 04:27:51 [myIP] kernel: Oops: 0002
May 5 04:27:51 [myIP] kernel: CPU: 0
May 5 04:27:51 [myIP] kernel: EIP: 0010:[filemap_fdatawait+24/80] Not tainted
May 5 04:27:51 [myIP] kernel: EIP: 0010:[] Not tainted
May 5 04:27:51 [myIP] kernel: EFLAGS: 00010206
.....
Kindly name one--any one--and I'll tell you why I don't find it "inconvenient." Please limit your responses to "facts" that are proven positives, not assumed negatives like "there is no God."
I have no problem with the concept of god, the force, yahweh, allah, the mother, the godess, or whatever, in general. But since you asked, and since you specified that you're a christian, I couldn't resist the opportunity oblige you.
To quote the KJV Edition of your Bible, Book of Genesis;
6:6 And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. 6:7 And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.
The christian god as outlined by modern religion is supposedly omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, knows all things, sees all things, knows the past, the future and the present. An inconvenient fact in logic even if you take the bible itself as gospel with no regard whatsoever to the mortal laws of science which he have so far been able to find quite a degree of reliability in, is that in the above passage, god has regrets for his actions.
Omnipotent, omniscient, all knowing, all seeing creatures need never have regrets and need never make mistakes, this is in the earliest part of the bible, and already there are self-referencing logical inconsitencies
You may also note that you refer to an assumed negative with disdain in your post, yet in the same fashion your entire religion is based upon a great many assumed positives
The basic fact of religion is that God has stated many times that He doesn't want to be easily found--hence, no fact should be hard to accept for anyone of a religious mind.
The divine great invisible azure cow that floats on it's deified beacon of incredible lightness in the lower atmosphere has also stated the same thing.
But not really.
Convenient, no?
I will agree that "scientific creationism" is bad science. It's much more logical to simply look for "How did God create the universe" or "why did God create the universe this way?" Of course, many religious authorities have historically countered "science"'s illogical refutation of religion with equally bad logic.
Science is an empirical evaluation of the laws of the universe that we are presented with, to the best degree we are able to fathom. Religion is an organised form of spirituallity seeking to answer the most complex questions in existence with fables and bedtime stories.
Science doesn't know everything, but then a true scientist never assumes to know everything, that is the entire point of science and why it is a Good Idea (tm). Everything that is observed in science is checked and peer reviewed with no small degree of skepticism and each and every theory has it's own empirically verifiable evidence, correlating usually as to how well that theory is accepted in the minds of the scientific.
Religion proposes all the answers, justifies none of it's position, and asks it's followers for fealty and ignorance. In exchange it promises the unverifiable and when resisted it does the same, except in a far less pleasant fashion.
Don't misunderstand my meaning though, I did state that science does not have all the answers, there are things that at the moment we just don't know, and perhaps we'll never know them. The point is that it does not pretend to, only religion does.
I'm all for personalised spirituallity, personally. ;)
I am an atheist and yet brought up as a Christian. What would history reocrd my beliefs as I wonder? How many habitual church goers have a REAL faith? Strange to think that so many believe EXACTLY the same thing, and KNOW that they are right, and that THEIR God is the true God and yet so many others believe in another God or no God at all. That very conflict invalidates ALL beliefs. Why? I s a human notion and looks for human motivations, it has NO bearing on the rest of the universe as far as we know. That we know very little is undeniable, that only science EVER recognises this fact is regrettable.
That was classic intercourse!
HEY YOU! Join the NAVY!!!
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.