Are you going to accept responsibility for any trouble your software causes,
or just offer it without "Warranties of Merchantability or Fitness for a Particular Purpose?"
Do any of the idiots in the movie/music industry that get residuals take responsibility for the crap that they produce?
I agree companies are taking the license idea beyond the realm of reasonable, but to play devils advocate I actually understand and agree with this ruling.
The reality is that for physical goods the average person can not buy a book/CD/DVD/etc.., make an undistinguishable copy (including packaging and presentation), and then sell the copies on the used market while keeping the original for themselves. Certainly it's possible to do, but not in a way that is financially worthwhile to the average person.
For digital files, anyone with a computer and a copy command can make such undistinguishable copies and pass them off as the original. In this case you don't have to make the copy yourself, just uploading it to the service makes the copy and your copy remains intact and it's only your word that you'll never use the file again without first purchasing a new license. The reality is that in most cases even the honest person won't delete the remaining file (and certainly not all copies they may (possibly without even knowing) have. Then some time down the road they'll go through cleaning up old files, have forgotten that they've "sold" that particular track, and think "hey, I haven't heard this song in a long time. I should listen to it". There doesn't have to be malice involved for the application of first sale to fall down.
I wholly support the idea that most licenses should be transferable in a manner that each person in turn can recoup some of/all/more than their original purchase price if there is a market for the "used" license. For people to stick their head in the sand and claim digital media should be treated the same as physical media is not helping anyone as they are just saying what won't work and not reasonably working on solutions that will.
To bring politics into it, this is no different than what the NRA is doing over gun legislation. The reality of the world is that legislation is coming regardless if gun owners want it or not. The NRA's stance of legislation not working and refusing to be a contributing part of the discussion just means that when it does finally come it will not favor the legitimate and responsible gun owners.
The discussions about copyright, IP, and piracy are much the same. The average/.er sits on the internet and goes on about "information wants to be free" and doesn't contribute to a solution that meets the needs of product creators to see a return on their investment while also protecting the consumer from being violated in the process. Just like the NRA, while we (collectively) sit here and act like petulant children refusing to play the game, those we oppose are playing the game and re-crafting the rules to work against us.
Generally you are correct, but one point should be clarified.
Diesel engines actually have the broader range of fuels that can be used.
The newer diesels of today are not nearly as tolerant as they used to be. This is due to high tolerances in the fuel systems (fuel rails are the common failure for "bad" fuel types) and the tighter emissions rules. Still a much broader range than gassers, but no longer like the days of being able to dump Kerosene into a HUM-V and having it work.
Let us assume that even if you could impregnate a female Mastiff with with Chihuahua sperm
We don't have to assume anything. Different breeds mate all the time and produce viable offspring. Poodles and Labradors are the current most famous generating the recently accredited Labradoodle. I personally have 3 lab mixes (Walker Coonhound, Border Collie, and Norwegian Elkhound) and we previously had a Dachshund/Coonhound. All common dogs are from the base Canine species (Canis lupus familiaris if you want to be technical), which is then in turn a sub-species of the Grey Wolf (Canis lupus). Wolf != Dog at the species level. Chihuahua == Mastiff at the species level. Chihuahua != Mastiff at the breed level.
Next time please understand the subject of your analogy before throwing it out. In fact if you had spent 5 seconds you'd see that your "impossible" mix is indeed quite possible.
What you are describing is just pandering of a different sort. It is possible to have convictions and still be able to make compromises and get things done. What I'm talking about wanting is politicians that will actually make real attempts to accomplish the things they (and those they represent) want. I don't want the idiots we have now that all cry and pout when they don't get what they want, I want representatives that actually move things forward.
Isn't getting more votes the "right" reason for a president to do something? Would you be happier if he consistently did something that would get him less votes?
No the President is meant to lead the country by representing what the majority want. The same is true of all the idiots down the street from him that are so childish they refuse to talk to each other. What this country needs is people leading it that are more concerned with doing something than trying to make sure their party gets more votes in the next election.
I'd just like to see a politician with some convictions and backbone for a change.
Fuck you very much the FCC,
Fuck you very much for fining me,
Five thousand bucks a fuck,
So I’m really out of luck,
That’s more than Heidi Fleiss was charging me.
Same as everything else - nothing, nothing at all - then get into a huge argument about something completely unrelated and mind-bogglingly unimportant.
Sadly you are wrong. They will conveniently leave the "billions of years from now" part out and stir up fear so that they can funnel more money that we don't have into whomever's pockets that bought them dinner the previous night in the name of preventing the end of the universe.
And if they can spin it so it's the "terrorists" that will be ending the universe, well then there is just no stopping them...
I'd like to say the sarcasm tags should be implied there, but I'm not at all sure at least one senator/representative won't try it...
I know you are going for the humor, but having your speedo tested and showing that it is under reporting is indeed a valid defense. Any ticket that justifies getting a lawyer will have said lawyer tell you to get your speedo tested for just that reason.
I don't know when the various laws took effect, but I know it's "broken" for cars at least since 1998 (first car I had cause to check the calibration and learned about all this) to be accurate with wheels and tires within OEM specs. It's a big deal in many places (Europe is where I'm the most familiar since I have a penchant for German cars apparently...) as the car MFG can face some pretty serious fines and penalties should it be found that one of their cars underreports the speed. Because of this they add the 5-10% buffer so that almost no matter what you do (e.g. short of 35" mud tires on a Smart) with a wheel/tire combination it won't underreport.
The speeds? Is that the "lie"? Teslas have 21" wheels normally. He was driving on 19" snow tires. If the system logging his speed wasn't calibrated for the wheel difference you'd see the logs indicate speeds about 10% higher than Broder was actually traveling. There's your discrepancy between the two.
You are only partially correct here and not where it is important. It's not the size of the wheel itself that matters, it's the overall size of the tire. A 21" tire (on this type of car) is going to have a significantly shorter sidewall than a 19" snow tire will. As such the overall size won't have changed that significantly and you are looking at far less than a 10% difference.
Additionally what they were reporting in those graphs was the information in the ECU which would be the same information given to the speedometer on the dash since that is where the dash gets it's information. So while the car may have said he was doing one speed and he was actually doing another based on tire size, what he thought he was doing was no different than what the ECU thought he was doing. The only way he could think he was doing a different speed than the car thought was if he was using another device (e.g. GPS) to track it and in that case most of any discrepancy is going to be due to the built-in overrating of the ECU/speedo (due to various laws and penalties around the world) which is typically in the 5-10% range.
If carrier's want a BYOD to work they need to offer cheaper rates.
That's just it though. They DON'T want BYOD to work as they make more from the subsidized lock in contracts over the course of the typical 2 year term.
Except that it wont happen for 25 years... FEAR, UNCERTAINTY, CHANGE... RUN!!!!! THE SKY IS FALLING!! (in 25 years)...
With the acceleration of development that has been occurring over even the last 10 years, I hardly doubt there will be much to worry about 25 years from now.
This sentiment seems familiar. I wonder where I've heard it before? Oh yeah, the idiots that thought Y2K was way overblown because they believed that A) developers would never do something as stupid as work with year information in a 2 digit format in modern code and B) all that old code had long since been updated or replaced. Developers (on their own or at the direction of management) will always take short cuts and it's usually the worst/sloppiest code that seems to have the longest life.
You also have to remember that many "programmers" today learned by using examples from the web which continue to propagate bad ideas (see PHP and SQL Injections that just won't die because of the horrid form processing examples all over the web) and you end up with a bunch of people doing 'printf("Time is %d\n", (int) time(NULL));' without understanding that it is wrong.
Oh well I suppose the upside from no one learning from Y2K is that like all the retired COBOL programmers for Y2K us C and C++ programmers will be able to come out of retirement for a few years and sock away enough extra cash to spend the rest of our retirement on a nice beach somewhere...
So you'd rather pay thousands of dollars a year in tax than a dollar or two when you actually the roads?
All total for our 3 vehicles I pay maybe $1500 for "property" taxes and the tax on the gas we use (no hybrids or electrics). If I was forced to use the greenway everyday to get back and forth to work ($5.80 from one end to the other each way during rush-hours) I'd be looking between $2000 and $2400 for just one part of of the commute.
Of course, as you point out, they wouldn't (significantly) reduce the taxes if they sold all the roads out to corporations (they need money from somewhere after all).
So yes, I would prefer to continue to pay the "thousands" in taxes a year vs the "dollar or two" when I use the road.
So roads and other infrastructure are all expertly maintained by the governments that own them?
No, but at least they are there and don't (directly) cost anything to use. VA on the other hand just opened the "hot" lanes on it's portion of 495 around DC and gave the ownership and all revenue from the tolls to a private company (yet we still get to pay for the state police and v-dot to monitor and maintain it). They say the cost of the toll is to be based on traffic, but they basically have a free license to charge almost anything they want (e.g. people will bear). They also did this by selling out the "greenway" portion of 267 and for the few miles between Leesburg and Dulles we've watched the tolls creep up to outrageous rates since there is only minimal control (and again it's the State that pays for the cops and maintenance while getting none of the revenue). They've also given away the rest of 267 (which was a serious cash cow for the state) to the Airport Authority which just jacked up the rates and will do so again next year. And this has apparently worked out so well according to the "Representatives" that got it done that they want to do more of it, yet they keep saying we don't have any transportation budget...
It's true that for the most part there are other reasonable options (mostly sitting in traffic with everyone else) to avoid the tolls, but if the people that pushed this so far have their way all the major roads are likely going to be turned into toll roads that are owned by private companies that get all the money. Thank you, but I'll live with undersized and over potholed roads that I'm already paying through the various taxes meant to pay for it (but McDonnell is trying to screw with that by removing the gas tax...).
Corporations also are a lot about making money not stealing people's girlfriends.
You don't seem to be aware of the very lucrative "stolen girlfriend' market then.
Have you seriously not been paying attention enough that you believe "Corporations don't have the power to spy on people"? They do it all the time and veil it exactly like Disney is doing ("too make a better experience") which makes people feel good about it and not complain. Stuff like this isn't about making your life better. It's all about how they can better market their goods to get you to spend more money (or selling the detailed information to someone else to market their goods/services to you).
Then of course because all these companies have all this information the government has to do far less work when they do want to spy on you as they simply work with various companies you have a relationship with (with and without warrants).
At the turn of the century this was still tinfoil hat territory, but unfortunately we didn't listen to those "crazy overly paranoid" people at the time and the reality snuck up on us rather quickly.
See subject-line, & that quote of myself, vs your misinterpretation of what I wrote (or perhaps you just missed it)...
You mean the subject line that is simply showing as "Whitelisting of a sort (& the future of securi"?
As far as possibly misinterpreting you, I will admit your writing style is not as clear as it could be but you clearly go on about whitelisting being most/all of the security solution (to the extent you talk about it possibly replacing AV software). If that was not the point you were trying to get across, then I apologize but that is how it came across to me.
See above again - in corporate environs, where THE MACHINE IS NOT THE USERS but the companies? That'd be the network admins doing the testing (hopefully).
In this case the network admins/company are still the end user even if the result is that they represent more than one physical person. Using the iOS example without buying into Apple's development system there is no "authorized" method for the company to build an internal application and deploy it to their employees iOS devices. So in that case the corporate environment operators still have limited control to do their own vetting. Even still, I've been on the receiving end of "by god you will install this" in the corporate environment so you still have the "users can't be trusted" element there as well.
Whitelisting is the security holy grail, but as with all hardline security measures it forgets that there needs to be a balance between letting the user perform the work that needs to be done while still protecting them from themselves.
I spent some time in a secure environment that tightly controlled what ran on desktops and needed an application that was allowed, but not for the role I was filling. We spent 6 months going back and forth before finally getting approval and getting it installed. Because what I was doing couldn't wait those 6 months we had to work around the restrictions in the meantime. While I am sure of my personal computers, that I had to use them and email the data back and forth opened a vector for a potential problem (as well as violating the corporate rules so you can be sure I had it in writing from a couple levels of management that they approved of what I was doing).
The flip side of course is that I've also worked in environments where everyone had admin rights and could install anything the wanted (though the written policy said they "can only use approved software"). That environment was a constant headache for security and the help desk due to the near constant malware issues (which almost always manifested as performance problems).
Those are the reasons that a rigid whitelisting policy can't work in the real world. Exceptions have to be able to be made in a responsive manner, but that control still needs to be somewhat centralized. In a corporate environment this is relatively easy to do (in principle anyway), but when you start talking about home users that becomes near impossible as there is no way a large company (Apple/Google/MS/...) know what all their users need to do (and really have no business knowing that level of detail in my opinion) and the individual can't really be trusted either. Really the only way to possibly do it would be a community based system, but even there you need some kind of control to keep the likes of 4chan from polluting it by tagging malware as "safe" and Photoshop as "unsafe".
Except the problem with your whole premise is that you forget the user.
Basically Apple "whitelists" what Apps can run under iOS (and are clearly moving that way for OSX too), yet people rail against it and even go so far as to remove the "whitelist" (e.g. jailbreak).
The problem comes down to who does the vetting and testing of an application to add it to a whitelist? If it is the user, they've proven they can't be trusted because they'll "vet" any new screensaver/antivirus/cursor application that comes along. If it is a central organization (Microsoft/Apple/Google/etc..) you then run into conflicts of interest in what they think you should do with the platform and what you actually need/want to do (e.g. what happens when you have a problem that can't be solved by any existing approved application?).
There is no simple single solution to the problem of security. A real solution by nature needs to be multilayered which means there is some complexity and ultimately users have to take responsibility for their actions. The idea that a single company/program can keep you safe just keeps perpetuating this idea that you don't have to pay attention to what your are downloading/executing and it's that mentality that allows malware to continue to be so successful.
I thought (this is a genuine query) that US law had a concept called "fighting words", where provoking someone into hitting you by using strong enough insults and offensive speech made you, not them, legally liable.
It's a gray area at best. If you hit someone, it is assault which is a criminal offense and there is no gray area there. Where it gets gray is that (in the criminal trial) you can bring the mitigating circumstances into it that should be considered (e.g. self defense) which can impact the judge's/jury's verdict and recommended sentence. The civil case (which they also file since that's their whole business model) gets more muddied since there are different rules. Furthermore, even if you are not found criminally liable you can still be found guilty in the civil case (OJ being the most famous example).
Since the "church" is just a family of lawyers they know exactly where the line is that they can push people so that when/if something happens they can't be criminally held accountable for their actions. Furthermore no matter how much we all detest what they do, the default reaction to most people (outside of that moment) is "violence is never the answer" which is the view that the "church" preys on in the civil cases since it's unlikely that anyone on the jury has faced the stress and agony of having their dead child's funeral protested by these lunatics. They also count on their victims not being able to afford/handle both a civil and criminal trial and go for a settlement (sound like any other organizations we vilify around here?).
I believe in free speech (and unlike many, it seems, actually understand the limits of the 1st amendment) and that idiots and assholes like this have a right to say what they want without the government stoping them. What I also support is that they also shouldn't be able to use the government to hide behind when there are consequences to their words/actions. I don't think violence should be the answer, but I also can understand and sympathize with the victims of the "church's" actions. Unfortunately protecting violence of that type opens up a whole mess of problems as you could then go around attacking random people and claiming "moral offense".
Personally I'd like to see some intelligent judges get their cases and rule the assault justifiable as well as finding against them in the civil cases and forcing them to pain for the pain and suffering they caused. I think my purple unicorn breeding program will have made me independently wealthy before that happens though...
In United States "laws against hate speech" are unconstitutional. There may be many laws against hate speech in other countries, but if you are talking about US, you are wrong.
You may be thinking of "inciting to violence speech", but pure hate speech (e.g., "[someone] should burn in hell") is not illegal.
You are correct, but if you think their protesting of funerals of these children and dead soldiers (or any other high profile event) is meant to do anything other than incite violence you haven't been following these nut jobs at all. Their whole goal is to offend people to the point that someone physically attacks them, then they sue everyone they possibly can.
What they do is no different than the old "yelling fire in a crowded theater" analogy and such "speech" is very much banned in the US.
Not to mention...if you try usinig/installing some tools, like Oracle, which forces you to use a java GUI to install and other configs....you have to have X running.
Command line only, is often not a valid paradigm, depending on what you want to do with Linux these days, especially if using commercial software on it.
Oracle is a bad example for your point since you don't have to have X running on the target host. You simply need to export your DISPLAY (over your SSH tunnel of course) back to your X workstation. Works fine and you don't need an X server running anywhere it isn't needed. Having X apps and X libraries installed (so you can remote display apps when needed) is much different having X running on a server that is not meant to have direct human interaction (e.g. not a terminal).
And if you are a competent Oracle Admin you save the config when you are done so that subsequent installs can be done with the silent installer so no manual interaction is needed.
Those of us who cut our teeth on HP test equipment, early HP/UX workstations and servers, HP LaserJet printers, and HP calculators still mourn the death of Bill and Dave's dream.:-(
HP/UX 9.04 was their peak and 10.x was the beginning of the disaster that is now HP. That was long before Compaq was involved.
Slashdot Mirror
residuals on the software I write?
Are you going to accept responsibility for any trouble your software causes, or just offer it without "Warranties of Merchantability or Fitness for a Particular Purpose?"
Do any of the idiots in the movie/music industry that get residuals take responsibility for the crap that they produce?
I agree companies are taking the license idea beyond the realm of reasonable, but to play devils advocate I actually understand and agree with this ruling.
The reality is that for physical goods the average person can not buy a book/CD/DVD/etc.., make an undistinguishable copy (including packaging and presentation), and then sell the copies on the used market while keeping the original for themselves. Certainly it's possible to do, but not in a way that is financially worthwhile to the average person.
For digital files, anyone with a computer and a copy command can make such undistinguishable copies and pass them off as the original. In this case you don't have to make the copy yourself, just uploading it to the service makes the copy and your copy remains intact and it's only your word that you'll never use the file again without first purchasing a new license. The reality is that in most cases even the honest person won't delete the remaining file (and certainly not all copies they may (possibly without even knowing) have. Then some time down the road they'll go through cleaning up old files, have forgotten that they've "sold" that particular track, and think "hey, I haven't heard this song in a long time. I should listen to it". There doesn't have to be malice involved for the application of first sale to fall down.
I wholly support the idea that most licenses should be transferable in a manner that each person in turn can recoup some of/all/more than their original purchase price if there is a market for the "used" license. For people to stick their head in the sand and claim digital media should be treated the same as physical media is not helping anyone as they are just saying what won't work and not reasonably working on solutions that will.
To bring politics into it, this is no different than what the NRA is doing over gun legislation. The reality of the world is that legislation is coming regardless if gun owners want it or not. The NRA's stance of legislation not working and refusing to be a contributing part of the discussion just means that when it does finally come it will not favor the legitimate and responsible gun owners.
The discussions about copyright, IP, and piracy are much the same. The average /.er sits on the internet and goes on about "information wants to be free" and doesn't contribute to a solution that meets the needs of product creators to see a return on their investment while also protecting the consumer from being violated in the process. Just like the NRA, while we (collectively) sit here and act like petulant children refusing to play the game, those we oppose are playing the game and re-crafting the rules to work against us.
Generally you are correct, but one point should be clarified.
Diesel engines actually have the broader range of fuels that can be used.
The newer diesels of today are not nearly as tolerant as they used to be. This is due to high tolerances in the fuel systems (fuel rails are the common failure for "bad" fuel types) and the tighter emissions rules. Still a much broader range than gassers, but no longer like the days of being able to dump Kerosene into a HUM-V and having it work.
Let us assume that even if you could impregnate a female Mastiff with with Chihuahua sperm
We don't have to assume anything. Different breeds mate all the time and produce viable offspring. Poodles and Labradors are the current most famous generating the recently accredited Labradoodle. I personally have 3 lab mixes (Walker Coonhound, Border Collie, and Norwegian Elkhound) and we previously had a Dachshund/Coonhound. All common dogs are from the base Canine species (Canis lupus familiaris if you want to be technical), which is then in turn a sub-species of the Grey Wolf (Canis lupus). Wolf != Dog at the species level. Chihuahua == Mastiff at the species level. Chihuahua != Mastiff at the breed level.
Next time please understand the subject of your analogy before throwing it out. In fact if you had spent 5 seconds you'd see that your "impossible" mix is indeed quite possible.
What you are describing is just pandering of a different sort. It is possible to have convictions and still be able to make compromises and get things done. What I'm talking about wanting is politicians that will actually make real attempts to accomplish the things they (and those they represent) want. I don't want the idiots we have now that all cry and pout when they don't get what they want, I want representatives that actually move things forward.
Isn't getting more votes the "right" reason for a president to do something? Would you be happier if he consistently did something that would get him less votes?
No the President is meant to lead the country by representing what the majority want. The same is true of all the idiots down the street from him that are so childish they refuse to talk to each other. What this country needs is people leading it that are more concerned with doing something than trying to make sure their party gets more votes in the next election.
I'd just like to see a politician with some convictions and backbone for a change.
Fuck you very much for fining me,
Five thousand bucks a fuck,
So I’m really out of luck,
That’s more than Heidi Fleiss was charging me.
FCC Song
Same as everything else - nothing, nothing at all - then get into a huge argument about something completely unrelated and mind-bogglingly unimportant.
Sadly you are wrong. They will conveniently leave the "billions of years from now" part out and stir up fear so that they can funnel more money that we don't have into whomever's pockets that bought them dinner the previous night in the name of preventing the end of the universe.
And if they can spin it so it's the "terrorists" that will be ending the universe, well then there is just no stopping them...
I'd like to say the sarcasm tags should be implied there, but I'm not at all sure at least one senator/representative won't try it...
I know you are going for the humor, but having your speedo tested and showing that it is under reporting is indeed a valid defense. Any ticket that justifies getting a lawyer will have said lawyer tell you to get your speedo tested for just that reason.
I don't know when the various laws took effect, but I know it's "broken" for cars at least since 1998 (first car I had cause to check the calibration and learned about all this) to be accurate with wheels and tires within OEM specs. It's a big deal in many places (Europe is where I'm the most familiar since I have a penchant for German cars apparently...) as the car MFG can face some pretty serious fines and penalties should it be found that one of their cars underreports the speed. Because of this they add the 5-10% buffer so that almost no matter what you do (e.g. short of 35" mud tires on a Smart) with a wheel/tire combination it won't underreport.
The speeds? Is that the "lie"? Teslas have 21" wheels normally. He was driving on 19" snow tires. If the system logging his speed wasn't calibrated for the wheel difference you'd see the logs indicate speeds about 10% higher than Broder was actually traveling. There's your discrepancy between the two.
You are only partially correct here and not where it is important. It's not the size of the wheel itself that matters, it's the overall size of the tire. A 21" tire (on this type of car) is going to have a significantly shorter sidewall than a 19" snow tire will. As such the overall size won't have changed that significantly and you are looking at far less than a 10% difference.
Additionally what they were reporting in those graphs was the information in the ECU which would be the same information given to the speedometer on the dash since that is where the dash gets it's information. So while the car may have said he was doing one speed and he was actually doing another based on tire size, what he thought he was doing was no different than what the ECU thought he was doing. The only way he could think he was doing a different speed than the car thought was if he was using another device (e.g. GPS) to track it and in that case most of any discrepancy is going to be due to the built-in overrating of the ECU/speedo (due to various laws and penalties around the world) which is typically in the 5-10% range.
If carrier's want a BYOD to work they need to offer cheaper rates.
That's just it though. They DON'T want BYOD to work as they make more from the subsidized lock in contracts over the course of the typical 2 year term.
Except that it wont happen for 25 years... FEAR, UNCERTAINTY, CHANGE... RUN!!!!! THE SKY IS FALLING!! (in 25 years)... With the acceleration of development that has been occurring over even the last 10 years, I hardly doubt there will be much to worry about 25 years from now.
This sentiment seems familiar. I wonder where I've heard it before? Oh yeah, the idiots that thought Y2K was way overblown because they believed that A) developers would never do something as stupid as work with year information in a 2 digit format in modern code and B) all that old code had long since been updated or replaced. Developers (on their own or at the direction of management) will always take short cuts and it's usually the worst/sloppiest code that seems to have the longest life.
You also have to remember that many "programmers" today learned by using examples from the web which continue to propagate bad ideas (see PHP and SQL Injections that just won't die because of the horrid form processing examples all over the web) and you end up with a bunch of people doing 'printf("Time is %d\n", (int) time(NULL));' without understanding that it is wrong.
Oh well I suppose the upside from no one learning from Y2K is that like all the retired COBOL programmers for Y2K us C and C++ programmers will be able to come out of retirement for a few years and sock away enough extra cash to spend the rest of our retirement on a nice beach somewhere...
So you'd rather pay thousands of dollars a year in tax than a dollar or two when you actually the roads?
All total for our 3 vehicles I pay maybe $1500 for "property" taxes and the tax on the gas we use (no hybrids or electrics). If I was forced to use the greenway everyday to get back and forth to work ($5.80 from one end to the other each way during rush-hours) I'd be looking between $2000 and $2400 for just one part of of the commute.
Of course, as you point out, they wouldn't (significantly) reduce the taxes if they sold all the roads out to corporations (they need money from somewhere after all).
So yes, I would prefer to continue to pay the "thousands" in taxes a year vs the "dollar or two" when I use the road.
So roads and other infrastructure are all expertly maintained by the governments that own them?
No, but at least they are there and don't (directly) cost anything to use. VA on the other hand just opened the "hot" lanes on it's portion of 495 around DC and gave the ownership and all revenue from the tolls to a private company (yet we still get to pay for the state police and v-dot to monitor and maintain it). They say the cost of the toll is to be based on traffic, but they basically have a free license to charge almost anything they want (e.g. people will bear). They also did this by selling out the "greenway" portion of 267 and for the few miles between Leesburg and Dulles we've watched the tolls creep up to outrageous rates since there is only minimal control (and again it's the State that pays for the cops and maintenance while getting none of the revenue). They've also given away the rest of 267 (which was a serious cash cow for the state) to the Airport Authority which just jacked up the rates and will do so again next year. And this has apparently worked out so well according to the "Representatives" that got it done that they want to do more of it, yet they keep saying we don't have any transportation budget...
It's true that for the most part there are other reasonable options (mostly sitting in traffic with everyone else) to avoid the tolls, but if the people that pushed this so far have their way all the major roads are likely going to be turned into toll roads that are owned by private companies that get all the money. Thank you, but I'll live with undersized and over potholed roads that I'm already paying through the various taxes meant to pay for it (but McDonnell is trying to screw with that by removing the gas tax...).
Corporations also are a lot about making money not stealing people's girlfriends.
You don't seem to be aware of the very lucrative "stolen girlfriend' market then.
Have you seriously not been paying attention enough that you believe "Corporations don't have the power to spy on people"? They do it all the time and veil it exactly like Disney is doing ("too make a better experience") which makes people feel good about it and not complain. Stuff like this isn't about making your life better. It's all about how they can better market their goods to get you to spend more money (or selling the detailed information to someone else to market their goods/services to you).
Then of course because all these companies have all this information the government has to do far less work when they do want to spy on you as they simply work with various companies you have a relationship with (with and without warrants).
At the turn of the century this was still tinfoil hat territory, but unfortunately we didn't listen to those "crazy overly paranoid" people at the time and the reality snuck up on us rather quickly.
See subject-line, & that quote of myself, vs your misinterpretation of what I wrote (or perhaps you just missed it)...
You mean the subject line that is simply showing as "Whitelisting of a sort (& the future of securi"?
As far as possibly misinterpreting you, I will admit your writing style is not as clear as it could be but you clearly go on about whitelisting being most/all of the security solution (to the extent you talk about it possibly replacing AV software). If that was not the point you were trying to get across, then I apologize but that is how it came across to me.
See above again - in corporate environs, where THE MACHINE IS NOT THE USERS but the companies? That'd be the network admins doing the testing (hopefully).
In this case the network admins/company are still the end user even if the result is that they represent more than one physical person. Using the iOS example without buying into Apple's development system there is no "authorized" method for the company to build an internal application and deploy it to their employees iOS devices. So in that case the corporate environment operators still have limited control to do their own vetting. Even still, I've been on the receiving end of "by god you will install this" in the corporate environment so you still have the "users can't be trusted" element there as well.
Whitelisting is the security holy grail, but as with all hardline security measures it forgets that there needs to be a balance between letting the user perform the work that needs to be done while still protecting them from themselves.
I spent some time in a secure environment that tightly controlled what ran on desktops and needed an application that was allowed, but not for the role I was filling. We spent 6 months going back and forth before finally getting approval and getting it installed. Because what I was doing couldn't wait those 6 months we had to work around the restrictions in the meantime. While I am sure of my personal computers, that I had to use them and email the data back and forth opened a vector for a potential problem (as well as violating the corporate rules so you can be sure I had it in writing from a couple levels of management that they approved of what I was doing).
The flip side of course is that I've also worked in environments where everyone had admin rights and could install anything the wanted (though the written policy said they "can only use approved software"). That environment was a constant headache for security and the help desk due to the near constant malware issues (which almost always manifested as performance problems).
Those are the reasons that a rigid whitelisting policy can't work in the real world. Exceptions have to be able to be made in a responsive manner, but that control still needs to be somewhat centralized. In a corporate environment this is relatively easy to do (in principle anyway), but when you start talking about home users that becomes near impossible as there is no way a large company (Apple/Google/MS/...) know what all their users need to do (and really have no business knowing that level of detail in my opinion) and the individual can't really be trusted either. Really the only way to possibly do it would be a community based system, but even there you need some kind of control to keep the likes of 4chan from polluting it by tagging malware as "safe" and Photoshop as "unsafe".
Except the problem with your whole premise is that you forget the user.
Basically Apple "whitelists" what Apps can run under iOS (and are clearly moving that way for OSX too), yet people rail against it and even go so far as to remove the "whitelist" (e.g. jailbreak).
The problem comes down to who does the vetting and testing of an application to add it to a whitelist? If it is the user, they've proven they can't be trusted because they'll "vet" any new screensaver/antivirus/cursor application that comes along. If it is a central organization (Microsoft/Apple/Google/etc..) you then run into conflicts of interest in what they think you should do with the platform and what you actually need/want to do (e.g. what happens when you have a problem that can't be solved by any existing approved application?).
There is no simple single solution to the problem of security. A real solution by nature needs to be multilayered which means there is some complexity and ultimately users have to take responsibility for their actions. The idea that a single company/program can keep you safe just keeps perpetuating this idea that you don't have to pay attention to what your are downloading/executing and it's that mentality that allows malware to continue to be so successful.
I thought (this is a genuine query) that US law had a concept called "fighting words", where provoking someone into hitting you by using strong enough insults and offensive speech made you, not them, legally liable.
It's a gray area at best. If you hit someone, it is assault which is a criminal offense and there is no gray area there. Where it gets gray is that (in the criminal trial) you can bring the mitigating circumstances into it that should be considered (e.g. self defense) which can impact the judge's/jury's verdict and recommended sentence. The civil case (which they also file since that's their whole business model) gets more muddied since there are different rules. Furthermore, even if you are not found criminally liable you can still be found guilty in the civil case (OJ being the most famous example).
Since the "church" is just a family of lawyers they know exactly where the line is that they can push people so that when/if something happens they can't be criminally held accountable for their actions. Furthermore no matter how much we all detest what they do, the default reaction to most people (outside of that moment) is "violence is never the answer" which is the view that the "church" preys on in the civil cases since it's unlikely that anyone on the jury has faced the stress and agony of having their dead child's funeral protested by these lunatics. They also count on their victims not being able to afford/handle both a civil and criminal trial and go for a settlement (sound like any other organizations we vilify around here?).
I believe in free speech (and unlike many, it seems, actually understand the limits of the 1st amendment) and that idiots and assholes like this have a right to say what they want without the government stoping them. What I also support is that they also shouldn't be able to use the government to hide behind when there are consequences to their words/actions. I don't think violence should be the answer, but I also can understand and sympathize with the victims of the "church's" actions. Unfortunately protecting violence of that type opens up a whole mess of problems as you could then go around attacking random people and claiming "moral offense".
Personally I'd like to see some intelligent judges get their cases and rule the assault justifiable as well as finding against them in the civil cases and forcing them to pain for the pain and suffering they caused. I think my purple unicorn breeding program will have made me independently wealthy before that happens though...
In United States "laws against hate speech" are unconstitutional. There may be many laws against hate speech in other countries, but if you are talking about US, you are wrong.
You may be thinking of "inciting to violence speech", but pure hate speech (e.g., "[someone] should burn in hell") is not illegal.
You are correct, but if you think their protesting of funerals of these children and dead soldiers (or any other high profile event) is meant to do anything other than incite violence you haven't been following these nut jobs at all. Their whole goal is to offend people to the point that someone physically attacks them, then they sue everyone they possibly can.
What they do is no different than the old "yelling fire in a crowded theater" analogy and such "speech" is very much banned in the US.
I was a contractor on the original DeathStar, hired to do the wall vaacum systems.
Huh. I always thought the average Storm Trooper knew how to install a toilet main and there was no need for civilian contractors.
Maybe those Rebels were just a bunch of bastards that killed a lot of innocent people indiscriminately.
Not to mention...if you try usinig/installing some tools, like Oracle, which forces you to use a java GUI to install and other configs....you have to have X running.
Command line only, is often not a valid paradigm, depending on what you want to do with Linux these days, especially if using commercial software on it.
Oracle is a bad example for your point since you don't have to have X running on the target host. You simply need to export your DISPLAY (over your SSH tunnel of course) back to your X workstation. Works fine and you don't need an X server running anywhere it isn't needed. Having X apps and X libraries installed (so you can remote display apps when needed) is much different having X running on a server that is not meant to have direct human interaction (e.g. not a terminal).
And if you are a competent Oracle Admin you save the config when you are done so that subsequent installs can be done with the silent installer so no manual interaction is needed.
Laden or Unladen?
Those of us who cut our teeth on HP test equipment, early HP/UX workstations and servers, HP LaserJet printers, and HP calculators still mourn the death of Bill and Dave's dream. :-(
HP/UX 9.04 was their peak and 10.x was the beginning of the disaster that is now HP. That was long before Compaq was involved.
Damn. Now I'm missing my old 715/33.
I can only imagine the bandwidth of that station wagon full of mag-tape.
I think that reference wins this thread. Well played sir. Well played.
;-)