You may think that I'm missing your point, but I get your point entirely and I agree with you about why Linux does not see widespread adoption. It is not about the price, as you allude to. The price is driven by market demand. There are a lot of factors as to why something would not see widespread adoption.
But my question is, should Linux really have widespread adoption? Anyone can purchase or download a Linux distro, but, there is a reason that they don't. It just wasn't meant for them.
I have worked with MANY people - both in higher education and the public sector - who knew nothing about the Win XP computer that they were working on. They just didn't care about it. They would blow through pop-up boxes without reading them and hardly understand why the box appeared in the first place. They were not enthusiastic about "what's under the hood" of their OS. They wouldn't know the difference between the kernel and a kernel if it blew up in their face.
Linux is a powerful O/S family that can be used in a professional and home environment, and at the same time, it allows the user to be a hobbyist (granted the right permissions.) I am not a Linux elitist*, but I think that it would be worthless to people who don't really care to learn more about their O/S and just want to drag-n-drop shit. You can't touch the Windows kernel (unless you find a buffer overrun.) Yes, you could set-up KDE or Gnome to see a GUI for those visual people, but if the user doesn't want to spend more than a minute figuring out WHY they have kdelibs or kdeutils as packages, or why they should use Bourne over Bash (or vice versa), then why bother marketing to them?
I'd love to see everyone take the time to become educated about whatever Linux flavour or Free/Net/OpenBSD, especially if it gives them a choice, rather than being stuck with Windows. But as of right now, I see a disaster occurring if Linux was sexed-up for the average user to make it work more like Windows. Imagine if all users of Windows - whom log in with full administrative rights just to check e-mail - were to do the same under Linux as root.
*I say I am not an elitist, because I do not use Linux. Surprise, surprise. My initial foray into the world of anything-but-windows started with FreeBSD, and I did not do so well. So I am starting over. I WANT to use a Linux or UNIX distribution, but I also want to approach it the right way instead of mashing buttons on the keyboard.
We could say the same thing about our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
This is why dignity is defined by the society that wishes to apply it. I often read about few people in the U.K. who grumble a bit about the CCTV, but, generally accept it. Others broadly approve of it. To them, it ensures their safety. Now try to propose CCTV to a small town in North Dakota or Wyoming, and see what kind of response the proposal gets.
In other words, it is up to the society to define what they claim to be upholding human dignity. Countries that lash their citizens (and sometimes, foreigners) may have a different take as to what dignity is.
On a personal level, I feel that dignity should be something that is defined by society and upheld. Whether or not it is feasible for the rest of society is something up to debate.
What I would like to know is how registering their names would help prevent a crime from occurring? I read the article, and it just seems like there would be a million loopholes around this. Not every teen spends time on Myspace. Check out deviantart.com, for example. And how about online gaming? This just seems more like a way for law enforcement to cover their asses.
This is more of an off-hand comment not directed towards anyone in particular, but I wish people would understand that everyone makes a choice with respects to the career they choose. Nobody forced anyone to sign the dotted line before boot camp. Nobody forced the doctor to go to medical school. They chose to. We all made a choice. It is tough, it sucks, the conditions are not ideal, but certainly, a true warrior would go through all of toughest moments of their respective career without wanting to be thanked for it each step of the way.
Please define Mainstream Islam. Is it Sunni or Shiite?
Both. The difference between the two is that the Sunni branch believes that the first four successors to Mohammed rightfully took his place as the leaders of Muslims. Shiites believe that only the heirs of Ali are the legitimate successors of Mohammed. Based on percentages though, Sunnis have, I believe, an eighty-five percent advantage over Shiites. Iran is one of the few countries with a Shiite majority.
You know that every place that has a significant muslim population has a surge in violence, right?
No, I don't. Turkey, Iran*, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, and the UAE (United Arab Emirates) are some countries that do not experience this "surge in violence" that you keep referring to.
While I agree that not ALL muslims are hateful people, and violent, a significant portion of them are.
In other words "I don't want to overgeneralize, but here is my overgeneralized statement anyway. Thank you very much have a nice day."
So, by definition, I would almost agree that "mainstream" Islam DOES incourage violence (not just against not muslims, be even against other muslims, which aren't muslim enough). The evidence of world wide violence by a significant portion of muslims is all one needs to conclude this.
Again, your argument would be much stronger were you to provide some research and say "blah blah reported that x percent of all violent crime around the world was done by Muslims, those shitty bastards." What is this evidence that you keep alluding to? Your logic results in "Muslims are very violent people because they are just simply very violent people."
Based on what you've written, it seems like you are making a lot of your statements based on articles and headlines that you have read in the paper and not through actual travels across the globe. Perhaps you have traveled to the Middle East, but had a very different experience from me. Every nook and cranny in this planet has violent crime. If you can find me a plot of land on this planet that has peace and prosperity, I will buy it from you. (Antarctica does not count.)
The problem with going solely based on the media is that the media rarely reports the good news. The Middle East is a hotspot right now and every car bomb that goes off will be amplified around the world. It's what sells. People will not buy the newspaper to read about kittens being saved from trees and old ladies being helped across the street. No, the media does not have some hidden agenda in making Islam look bad. Just expect to hear nothing but the most shocking news come from that region.
I do agree with one of your points. The moderate Muslim population has done little to try to get the message across. And if they have, we are not hearing about it. But I do not recall one instance where a moderate was interviewed and for them to say "Oh, we fully support the Jihad against infidels." At the same time, I do not hear their disdain for violence. If they are truly protesting extremism, then, it is not as loud as the extremists.
So, you can try to portray me as some sort of "sad fucker" all you want. The problem is, you are either ignorant or stupid to suggest that "mainstream" Islam is anything, without actually backing it up with facts.
This part of your rambling post was what gave me the biggest chuckle. You chastise the parent for not providing facts about Islam, yet, you come across as someone who only discovered Islam after 9/11 by providing ZERO facts of your own. You may have a pHd in Islamic studies, but, based on this post, you make no mention as to where you are getting your information from.
You are not a "sad fucker", though, as your post was obviously based on your thoughts and not bigoted feelings. And, much like those that post on/., I certainly respect your thoughts.
*By the way, I am not a Muslim. Being Persian, I am quite resentful of the role Islam and Arabs in general played in the history of Iran. I just hate broad generalizations about any topic. And yes, I have been to the Middle East.
Seriously, it's just a pyramid scheme that takes advantage of people's unhappiness. The leaders of scientology make bank by brainwashing their followers....
I know that this is a trollish thing to say, but my reasons for saying this are far from trolling. I have always felt that way about mainstream religion. While I believe that Christianity would have become popular nonetheless, it truly exploded at the rate that it did because the message of Christ was directed towards those whom lived below the poverty line, which, at the time, was quite a lot. I believe that there was no middle class during the early Roman empire and one-tenth of one per-cent lived comfortably while the rest were borderline or straight up poverty.
The message at the time was also very welcoming. In Rome, especially in the Augustan system, you had a strict hierarchy where the emperor was at the very top. The Emperor was, what Helmut Koester labels as, "the conduit to the divine world." The bottom feeders, which I alluded to earlier as to being the majority, received very little.
Suddenly, you have a guy with a message of equality, peace, love, and hope. This certainly played upon the unhappiness of those whom lived in the era. The message was lost, however, and one can see a parallel between this and how much power the seat of the Papacy would assume over the years.
I won't go as far as to say that Islam, Christianity, and Judaism (to name a few) were MEANT to brainwash followers, however, in the hands of power-hungry people, it became a powerful tool to control the masses. Surely nobody still believes that the reasons behind the Crusades were, to this day, holy in nature, despite the reasons that were given at the time.
I think the average attitude is "If I haven't signed up for it, don't send it to me." I do agree, there are people who are just too lazy to follow unsubscribe procedures and would rather just hit the spam button on newsletters and advertisements that they signed up for themselves.
I don't completely blame people for marking everything as spam though, as most people are just entirely too used to getting "good-looking russiann Woman in poono!" or "n33d sum v1agR@" e-mails when they never asked for it. (I didn't make those up, I actually copied and pasted the headers from my gmail spam box.) I can imagine that being able to hit the spam button is psychologically empowering, as there really is no other recourse to take with some of these spammers. There is no excuse for laziness, but, when you are used to getting 25 spam e-mails per hour, then it gets cumbersome and tedious to sift through each and every message.
Gmail has been very kind for me with respects to sending real spam e-mails to the spam box. I can only imagine the problems people have with Hotmail or Yahoo mail though.
Some spammers will put "reply with the word Unsubscribe" to be removed from the mailing list. The minute you do that, they will then know that you are a legitimate address and will stick you in more mailing lists. (Keep in mind, I am referring to spammers who buy e-mail addresses by the bulk from consumer databases, not people like you who run a legitimate mailing list.)
I do have sympathy for legitimate marketers, but the few legitimate messages will always get lost in the sea of Viagra and Russian Porn spam.
How would this be illegal? It sounds like the BCC: function.
You may have been referring to the CC: function, but with the Blind Carbon Copy (BCC:) function, the e-mail addresses are not visible to any of the recipients. When one of the chief officers of the company I work for sends out a bulletin or memo, the header line usually says "undisclosed recipients" rather than listing out each and every account that this e-mail was directed towards.
Well, this means several things. The people in charge of security are not to be trusted 100%. With all of the bureaucracy, funding issues, nepotism, and other such problems that regularly plague a federal administration, no doubt will there be security lapses. The problem is what they do about it. Usually nothing is done until a big stink is made.
In this case, some computer security student found a way to potentially bypass the security mechanism set-up to safeguard against danger. He could have spoken to the security people in charge, but, would have most likely been shunned. Now that he's gone to the press, and pretty much humiliated the administration, a legislature is now wanting his head. Now, I'm predicting that said legislature, a democrat and senior member of the Committee on Homeland Security, will push the security people to work on the problem, thus, claiming victory.
Pretty interesting that the legislature who is most going crazy about this is one that is on a Homeland Security committee.
All this means is that there is no way to win. Try to do a public service, and you get arrested. Stay quiet, and live with knowledge that someday someone else could exploit the problem. While the problem that Christopher Soghoian pointed out is not a new one, he should be commended for trying to raise the issue.
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You may think that I'm missing your point, but I get your point entirely and I agree with you about why Linux does not see widespread adoption. It is not about the price, as you allude to. The price is driven by market demand. There are a lot of factors as to why something would not see widespread adoption.
But my question is, should Linux really have widespread adoption? Anyone can purchase or download a Linux distro, but, there is a reason that they don't. It just wasn't meant for them.
I have worked with MANY people - both in higher education and the public sector - who knew nothing about the Win XP computer that they were working on. They just didn't care about it. They would blow through pop-up boxes without reading them and hardly understand why the box appeared in the first place. They were not enthusiastic about "what's under the hood" of their OS. They wouldn't know the difference between the kernel and a kernel if it blew up in their face.
Linux is a powerful O/S family that can be used in a professional and home environment, and at the same time, it allows the user to be a hobbyist (granted the right permissions.) I am not a Linux elitist*, but I think that it would be worthless to people who don't really care to learn more about their O/S and just want to drag-n-drop shit. You can't touch the Windows kernel (unless you find a buffer overrun.) Yes, you could set-up KDE or Gnome to see a GUI for those visual people, but if the user doesn't want to spend more than a minute figuring out WHY they have kdelibs or kdeutils as packages, or why they should use Bourne over Bash (or vice versa), then why bother marketing to them?
I'd love to see everyone take the time to become educated about whatever Linux flavour or Free/Net/OpenBSD, especially if it gives them a choice, rather than being stuck with Windows. But as of right now, I see a disaster occurring if Linux was sexed-up for the average user to make it work more like Windows. Imagine if all users of Windows - whom log in with full administrative rights just to check e-mail - were to do the same under Linux as root.
*I say I am not an elitist, because I do not use Linux. Surprise, surprise. My initial foray into the world of anything-but-windows started with FreeBSD, and I did not do so well. So I am starting over. I WANT to use a Linux or UNIX distribution, but I also want to approach it the right way instead of mashing buttons on the keyboard.
We could say the same thing about our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
This is why dignity is defined by the society that wishes to apply it. I often read about few people in the U.K. who grumble a bit about the CCTV, but, generally accept it. Others broadly approve of it. To them, it ensures their safety. Now try to propose CCTV to a small town in North Dakota or Wyoming, and see what kind of response the proposal gets.
In other words, it is up to the society to define what they claim to be upholding human dignity. Countries that lash their citizens (and sometimes, foreigners) may have a different take as to what dignity is.
On a personal level, I feel that dignity should be something that is defined by society and upheld. Whether or not it is feasible for the rest of society is something up to debate.
Mine is way cooler
the authorities do not spend much time online.
What I would like to know is how registering their names would help prevent a crime from occurring? I read the article, and it just seems like there would be a million loopholes around this. Not every teen spends time on Myspace. Check out deviantart.com, for example. And how about online gaming? This just seems more like a way for law enforcement to cover their asses.
This is more of an off-hand comment not directed towards anyone in particular, but I wish people would understand that everyone makes a choice with respects to the career they choose. Nobody forced anyone to sign the dotted line before boot camp. Nobody forced the doctor to go to medical school. They chose to. We all made a choice. It is tough, it sucks, the conditions are not ideal, but certainly, a true warrior would go through all of toughest moments of their respective career without wanting to be thanked for it each step of the way.
Based on what you've written, it seems like you are making a lot of your statements based on articles and headlines that you have read in the paper and not through actual travels across the globe. Perhaps you have traveled to the Middle East, but had a very different experience from me. Every nook and cranny in this planet has violent crime. If you can find me a plot of land on this planet that has peace and prosperity, I will buy it from you. (Antarctica does not count.)
The problem with going solely based on the media is that the media rarely reports the good news. The Middle East is a hotspot right now and every car bomb that goes off will be amplified around the world. It's what sells. People will not buy the newspaper to read about kittens being saved from trees and old ladies being helped across the street. No, the media does not have some hidden agenda in making Islam look bad. Just expect to hear nothing but the most shocking news come from that region.
I do agree with one of your points. The moderate Muslim population has done little to try to get the message across. And if they have, we are not hearing about it. But I do not recall one instance where a moderate was interviewed and for them to say "Oh, we fully support the Jihad against infidels." At the same time, I do not hear their disdain for violence. If they are truly protesting extremism, then, it is not as loud as the extremists. This part of your rambling post was what gave me the biggest chuckle. You chastise the parent for not providing facts about Islam, yet, you come across as someone who only discovered Islam after 9/11 by providing ZERO facts of your own. You may have a pHd in Islamic studies, but, based on this post, you make no mention as to where you are getting your information from.
You are not a "sad fucker", though, as your post was obviously based on your thoughts and not bigoted feelings. And, much like those that post on
*By the way, I am not a Muslim. Being Persian, I am quite resentful of the role Islam and Arabs in general played in the history of Iran. I just hate broad generalizations about any topic. And yes, I have been to the Middle East.
The message at the time was also very welcoming. In Rome, especially in the Augustan system, you had a strict hierarchy where the emperor was at the very top. The Emperor was, what Helmut Koester labels as, "the conduit to the divine world." The bottom feeders, which I alluded to earlier as to being the majority, received very little.
Suddenly, you have a guy with a message of equality, peace, love, and hope. This certainly played upon the unhappiness of those whom lived in the era. The message was lost, however, and one can see a parallel between this and how much power the seat of the Papacy would assume over the years.
I won't go as far as to say that Islam, Christianity, and Judaism (to name a few) were MEANT to brainwash followers, however, in the hands of power-hungry people, it became a powerful tool to control the masses. Surely nobody still believes that the reasons behind the Crusades were, to this day, holy in nature, despite the reasons that were given at the time.
I think the average attitude is "If I haven't signed up for it, don't send it to me." I do agree, there are people who are just too lazy to follow unsubscribe procedures and would rather just hit the spam button on newsletters and advertisements that they signed up for themselves.
I don't completely blame people for marking everything as spam though, as most people are just entirely too used to getting "good-looking russiann Woman in poono!" or "n33d sum v1agR@" e-mails when they never asked for it. (I didn't make those up, I actually copied and pasted the headers from my gmail spam box.) I can imagine that being able to hit the spam button is psychologically empowering, as there really is no other recourse to take with some of these spammers. There is no excuse for laziness, but, when you are used to getting 25 spam e-mails per hour, then it gets cumbersome and tedious to sift through each and every message.
Gmail has been very kind for me with respects to sending real spam e-mails to the spam box. I can only imagine the problems people have with Hotmail or Yahoo mail though.
Some spammers will put "reply with the word Unsubscribe" to be removed from the mailing list. The minute you do that, they will then know that you are a legitimate address and will stick you in more mailing lists. (Keep in mind, I am referring to spammers who buy e-mail addresses by the bulk from consumer databases, not people like you who run a legitimate mailing list.)
I do have sympathy for legitimate marketers, but the few legitimate messages will always get lost in the sea of Viagra and Russian Porn spam.
If you're going to insult someone, at least have the decency to log in first.
Well, this means several things. The people in charge of security are not to be trusted 100%. With all of the bureaucracy, funding issues, nepotism, and other such problems that regularly plague a federal administration, no doubt will there be security lapses. The problem is what they do about it. Usually nothing is done until a big stink is made.
In this case, some computer security student found a way to potentially bypass the security mechanism set-up to safeguard against danger. He could have spoken to the security people in charge, but, would have most likely been shunned. Now that he's gone to the press, and pretty much humiliated the administration, a legislature is now wanting his head. Now, I'm predicting that said legislature, a democrat and senior member of the Committee on Homeland Security, will push the security people to work on the problem, thus, claiming victory.
Pretty interesting that the legislature who is most going crazy about this is one that is on a Homeland Security committee.
All this means is that there is no way to win. Try to do a public service, and you get arrested. Stay quiet, and live with knowledge that someday someone else could exploit the problem. While the problem that Christopher Soghoian pointed out is not a new one, he should be commended for trying to raise the issue.