The part that's newsworthy isn't "another Windows exploit discovered". The part that's newsworthy is that the way Microsoft is handling the issue is a complete about-face from the usual way that they handle it.
Usually, a security hole is discovered by someone who then spends a considerable amount of time advising Microsoft about the vulnerability. Microsoft will then acknowledge receipt and mention something about fixing it some day. In the worst case, Microsoft completely ignores the reporter. One day they do release a patch for the flaw. Some people even end up applying the patch.
This situation is a little different. They've committed to a release date for a series of patches to holes that are, as of now, unknown. Furthermore, they're well publicising this fact and encouraging users to upgrade.
A lot more of your expenses can be quantified and written off as business expenses when you work for multiple people. Of course, there's a little more risk here for error, but the IRS doesn't seem to put you in jail if you make honest mistakes.
Oh, there's certainly a lot more freedom involved too. You make your own schedule, and you're in a much better position to tell someone to fuck off without impacting your lifestyle too badly. On the other hand, when you're not charting up billable hours, you're spending your time marketing. Always marketing.
I've been doing this for about 3 years now and I don't think I've billed more than 20 hours a week on average, but being able to select which 20 is really convenient for your sanity. There are some weeks where you won't work at all and others where you don't lift your head higher than your shoulders. If you can't stand regular routine, independent consulting is the lifestyle for you.
There's a certain anxiety that comes with alway having to market yourself to new clients and not being sure if you can make ends meet in six months, but this isn't so bad in the computer industry since if you run into trouble, you can usually fall back on a fulltime job before you starve to death. You definitely need to save up a cash cushion to help even out the unsteadiness of work, but simply knowing that you have it there puts you in a better position to weigh whether you wan't to prostitute yourself out for that ActiveX project.
Unless you have iron will self-control, working out of your house is usually a bad idea because you end up finding as many distractions as possible to keep you from working. You also never feel that you're "off", since your day always looks like a 16-hour work/play haze.
All in all, I certainly don't regret getting into this.
People don't want lots and lots of single purpose devices....
On the average trip, I take with me my car keys (the ignition key has an IrDA-ish interface), a cell phone, sometimes a digital camera, laptop, and/or a PDA.
I may also take a large or small notebook, or many notebooks, and a pen.
Consolidating all of these devices is exactly what I don't want. I want many single purpose devices that can be easily and independently replaced or serviced.
It's easy to lose sight of this, but the criminal justice system is supposed to be rehabilitive. The focus should be on the criminal and finding a way to allow him to come back into society. It's absolutely wrong to point at the injured victim and say that someone must pay for this with their blood. It serves no useful purpose. It turns criminal justice into a spectacular freak show.
If a slap on the wrist will prevent that teenager from ever writing a virus again, then that's all you need. If he goes back to his sinister ways (and most people who get a visit from the FBI sure won't), then you start stepping up the severity.
I don't know how I could ever sit on a jury and vote guilty unless the guy literally stood up and confessed and showed a video of it happening.
Maybe some people are comfortable with reasonable doubt, but I have such a distrust for the entire criminal justice system that I'd set the burden of proof so high as to acquit probably 100 guilty people so as not to put a single innocent person in jail.
On the other hand, the truly not-guilty probably just plea bargain because they figure that if they've gotten this far along without being guilty of anything, then a jury really might just put them away forever.
A fat female is unattractive because it looks like she is pregnant.
Funny how not all societies associate fat woman with unattractive, then. It's speculated that in our society, fat women are unattractive because food (particularly fattening foods) is plentiful (and hence fatness is common), and associated with being unfit; whereas better off people eat healthy food and keep fit.
Precisely. Look at pre-industrial revolution artwork. Most of the thin women are cast unflatteringly, whereas fat women have nice clothes and good hair. Thin was OUT!
If you want to start totalling up dollars lost and costs to make things as they were, that's more appropriate for civil court. Dishing out punishment to scale against a dollar amount is just crazy.
I'm not a scientist, but I've watched people play scientists, and I think they would say that this graph does not prove that increased industrial activity causes temperature increase.
It certainly does show correlation, but that's not the same as proof. The article agrees?
I maintain that I should have the right to cook up whatever I want and inject it into myself and my friends and family if that's what they want me to do, and that furthermore it's none of your business.
Is there any proof that temperature increase is related to industrial activity?
Is there any proof that temperature increase directly causes "worldwide catastrophe"?
Plenty of assertions, correlations, theories, but no science. The argument that this is a normal part of our planet's healthy development is just as valid, in that both arguments are based on faith.
What I find so infuriating isn't that my tax dollars fund the FDA (and friends) but rather that their authority restricts goods and services from reaching the people that want them because they're unpopular, or misunderstood, or currently morally evil. The tax dollar funded part is just the icing on the FDA approved cake.
Which example should I cite? How birth control is on the table every time some religious groups gain power? How racists get some kind of candy banned because they identify it as being from Asia? How about recreational drugs and when a cop utters the magical words "I smell marijuana", they can perform a full body search against someone of the wrong skin color?
Here, lets try something you haven't heard before.
For people that suffer from migraine, the drug Imitrex is basically like God's gift from heaven. The injectable form is instant relief, being able to reclaim a day that would otherwise be spent bed-ridden, possibly dry-heaving for hours. The only problem is that it's really freaking expensive. I seriously considered pooling money among my friends and family (many of whom suffer from it) so that we could produce it ourselves, but trying to comply with the FDA would have been too cost-prohibitive and I didn't want to end up being sentenced to life imprisonment for operating a drug lab.
Maybe you think it's ridiculous, but spending $50/shot when you need to administer 3 or 4 shots a week makes you seriously weigh your options.
Serving public safety is founded in good intentions, but in building all of the avenues to carry out regulations, the state opens itself up to manipulation by racist, sexist, and religious bigots who have their will enforced through the power of the police. It's not supposed to happen this way, but it always does.
I can't help but to wonder, constantly, that maybe we would be better off without these institutions restricting what we can do for our own good?
It's some kind of hillarious irony that this quote is Ronald Reagan's: The kind of government that is strong enough to give you everything you need is also strong enough to take away everything that you have.
However, labelling cars is not helpful and it is a serious public health risk to have unqualified drivers on the road.
Licenses don't do anything to keep incompetent people from driving. What they are great at, though, is giving police a great excuse to pull over black people that make the mistake of wandering into a white neighborhood.
OK... and when you (or someone else) takes a non-FDA drug, does that mean you waive all rights to suck up my tax dollars when you show up at the emergency room?
Maybe one day we can apply this thinking elsewhere and stop encroaching other freedoms. I look forward to the day when I don't have to look underground to find doctors who don't want to listen to the AMA, people to design my buildings that don't have to suck the teet of the AIA, lawyers who aren't constrained in representing me by rule of the bar association, etc.
And maybe one day, just one day, I won't need to grovel on my hands and knees to be granted the "privilege" of driving a motor vehicle, and say please and thank you to a cop who threatens to get it revoked.
But hey, getting them out of my fuckin' bedroom, or, in this case, out of what I do at my desk, is a fine start.
But some things are just better done low tech. This guy had a point, but he lost it in suggesting commercial software.
I keep business cards. Computerized address books are just too cumbersome for me to integrate in all of the places I want them to be available. Eventually they fall out of sync and become an annoyance to deal with.
I pay bills by check, the checks are written out in ink. I don't set up direct debit with my vendors since errors are such a PITA to address. I use ink to fill the checks out because I don't want to maintain check writing software. Seven ring binders were the greatest discovery of 2003 for me.
Financial records are all kept on paper. Syncing income/expenses to a computer is tedious. I used to scan invoices but that got tiresome and I didn't want to maintain scanners or scanner software. Now I have file cabinets, with files in it. The files contain invoices and other records. I can pull them up pretty quickly, and it breaks up my day to get up and fetch them.:D
I keep about an equal number of note files that I edit with vi, and notebooks that I fill out in ink. About the most high-tech thing I do in business is ssh into a shell account to check my mail and update notes.
I'd rather call someone on the phone or have a secretary do the typing over sitting down and writing some email. Directing someone by phone takes 30 seconds. Writing an email usually takes much longer, and is much higher latency feedback.
Most commercial software is mind-bogglingly complicated. Many custom software projects try to emulate the design of commercial software. Both, are, I think, a collossal waste of money because the complications and frustrations in dealing with them are more expensive than the problem they address, and that the problem often has a low tech solution, or a better mixed high/low tech solution.
Prefer to print documents out because ensuring that I always have a device that can read their electronic form wherever I can take the stack of paper with me is an annoyance.
Used to have a PDA but found them to be unfulfilling.
Used to have a phone that had sophisticated features and camera but stopped caring and now look for simplest one.
I got a crib full of corn, and a turnin' plow But the ground's too wet for the hopper now. Got a cultivator and a double tree A leather line for the hull and gee Let the thunder roll and the lighting flash I'm doing alright for Country Trash
I'm saving up dimes for a rainy day I got about a dollar laid away The winds from the south and the fishings good Got a pot belly stove a quart of wood Mama turns the left-overs into hash I'm doing alright for Country Trash
I got a mackinaw and a hunting dog A cap I ordered from the catalog A good tall tree that shades the yard A good fat sow for the winters lard Let the thunder roll and the lighting flash I'm doing alright for Country Trash
Well there's not much new ground left to plow And the crops need fertilizer now My hands don't earn me too much gold For security when I grow old But we'll all be equal under the grass And God's got a heaven for Country Trash And God's got a heaven for Country Trash I'll be doing alright for Country Trash
The only real solution is to take it into your own hands and do your own marketing and PR and everything else that you would normally be paying to the label to do for you.
I think the fact that so very very few bands become blindingly rich and famous by taking an independent approach completely validates my point. There is not an enormous market of people out there that wants to hear from any one band that much more than a hundred others that will take the sort of crappy record deal.
Or, stated another way, the music industry isn't an industry that really works on mass-market diversity. The market only tolerates a few new bands a year, the rest fall into niches.
It's not unlike the software industry. 5% of it is shrinkwrap commodity software, the other 95% of it is custom development. The few shrinkwrap commodity software companies make billions, the tens of thousands of custom development companies make thousands to millions.
If the terms of the contract are going to fuck the artist, they shouldn't sign the contract?
Does anyone have a good rebuttal?
Right, I'm sure most garage bands have at least one qualified lawyer or business manager in it right? Most bands have high intelligence and a mature outlook on things right? Most bands aren't 16-25 and filled wiht mostly dumb stoners?
Dear Investor,
We would like to interest you in financing this hip new rock group, Dumb Stoned Kids, at a cost of $2,000,000. The money we raise will be used to record their album, design, press, market, and distribute said album, and promote the band.
Unfortunately, the band is full of retards who are incapable of understanding a binding agreement, so we decided to forego one and put ourselves in a position with no legal recourse in the event that they flake on their responsibilities or abandon us for a different record company. However, their manager did have some reassuring words, such as "dude, chill out" when we voiced our concerns, and that's good enough for us.
"This store down the block sells the same things I do but at half the price, my customers are leaving..."
"This other guy works for less pay than I do and does the same exact job. I can't find work..."
"This other band is willing to put up with record deal contracts that we won't. We can't get signed..."
It's a free market.
The fact that it's so hard to get signed might mean that collectively, mass-market listeners don't want to hear from you that much more than they want to hear from any one of the other 100 bands in line behind you.
Having an infinite market for your talents or goods is not an inalienable right. Take it or leave it.:D
Agree with everything you said, but I zeroed in on this section.
Maybe they're just too stupid to know they're stupid, but that's still no excuse. Even the most least expensive entertainment lawyer should be able to describe the situation outlined by the paperwork.
Well, it might be an excuse. "Your honor, my client is so incredibly stupid, that he's in no condition to be committing to anything at all. Why, there are 12 year olds who should enter contracts before my client. Thus, the contract is void."
Maybe even anti-progress. I think computer uninitiates are terrified of modern desktops. They don't really guide the experience. You get a mouse pointer and you're basically told to figure it out. Some things you push down get mad and ring a bell, some things open other things to push, and some things just do nothing. Seemingly at random, ALERTS! pop up and give you a cryptic message. The thing you once pushed down that gave you a mad sound now does nothing, or gives you a happy sound. The thing you tapped earlier doesn't respond. Somehow you find out it needs to be double-tapped. Of course, you're new at this so your double tap comes out like tap---jerk mouse---tap. Instead of "launching" this program, what you did was just move the picture of it over a picture of something else. Now you can't even access the something else since it's covered. What do you do?! You click on it again and suddenly the text underneath the picture is now surrounded by a white box and there's a cursor in it. You try to click it again but the cursor just sits there blinking, impatiently. You try typing something and suddenly you've obliterated the name of the program you're trying to start. You freak out, fearing you've destroyed the computer and call your son for help, who laughs at you.
Eventually you start to notice patterns (these always mean happy, these always mean sad), but these trends are occasionally thwarted and you're thrown for a loop.
A command-line interface, on the other hand, is a guided conversation. Starting out from ground zero can be a bit rough, but you figure out very quickly that you type a command, and the computer tries to interpret it and give you a response. It's clear that you need to learn the computer's language (after someone explains what the seemingly terrifying "syntax error" means). You usually know when it's your turn to speak and when it's the computer's turn to speak. Of course, there's an entire body of stuff to learn before you can do any work with it, but the experience itself is very calm and soothing compared to the information overload that's in a modern desktop.
Try teaching your grandparents to use a computer sometime. I did.
My grandmother kept picking the mouse up and moving it around in the air because she didn't understand dragging it on the pad. She was confused that such a sophisticated piece of machinery didn't let her do something that felt so natural to her.
Slashdot Mirror
The part that's newsworthy isn't "another Windows exploit discovered". The part that's newsworthy is that the way Microsoft is handling the issue is a complete about-face from the usual way that they handle it.
Usually, a security hole is discovered by someone who then spends a considerable amount of time advising Microsoft about the vulnerability. Microsoft will then acknowledge receipt and mention something about fixing it some day. In the worst case, Microsoft completely ignores the reporter. One day they do release a patch for the flaw. Some people even end up applying the patch.
This situation is a little different. They've committed to a release date for a series of patches to holes that are, as of now, unknown. Furthermore, they're well publicising this fact and encouraging users to upgrade.
Man bites dog.
Sure. But the graphics cards cost a whole lot more money.
A lot more of your expenses can be quantified and written off as business expenses when you work for multiple people. Of course, there's a little more risk here for error, but the IRS doesn't seem to put you in jail if you make honest mistakes.
Oh, there's certainly a lot more freedom involved too. You make your own schedule, and you're in a much better position to tell someone to fuck off without impacting your lifestyle too badly. On the other hand, when you're not charting up billable hours, you're spending your time marketing. Always marketing.
I've been doing this for about 3 years now and I don't think I've billed more than 20 hours a week on average, but being able to select which 20 is really convenient for your sanity. There are some weeks where you won't work at all and others where you don't lift your head higher than your shoulders. If you can't stand regular routine, independent consulting is the lifestyle for you.
There's a certain anxiety that comes with alway having to market yourself to new clients and not being sure if you can make ends meet in six months, but this isn't so bad in the computer industry since if you run into trouble, you can usually fall back on a fulltime job before you starve to death. You definitely need to save up a cash cushion to help even out the unsteadiness of work, but simply knowing that you have it there puts you in a better position to weigh whether you wan't to prostitute yourself out for that ActiveX project.
Unless you have iron will self-control, working out of your house is usually a bad idea because you end up finding as many distractions as possible to keep you from working. You also never feel that you're "off", since your day always looks like a 16-hour work/play haze.
All in all, I certainly don't regret getting into this.
People don't want lots and lots of single purpose devices....
On the average trip, I take with me my car keys (the ignition key has an IrDA-ish interface), a cell phone, sometimes a digital camera, laptop, and/or a PDA.
I may also take a large or small notebook, or many notebooks, and a pen.
Consolidating all of these devices is exactly what I don't want. I want many single purpose devices that can be easily and independently replaced or serviced.
It's easy to lose sight of this, but the criminal justice system is supposed to be rehabilitive. The focus should be on the criminal and finding a way to allow him to come back into society. It's absolutely wrong to point at the injured victim and say that someone must pay for this with their blood. It serves no useful purpose. It turns criminal justice into a spectacular freak show.
If a slap on the wrist will prevent that teenager from ever writing a virus again, then that's all you need. If he goes back to his sinister ways (and most people who get a visit from the FBI sure won't), then you start stepping up the severity.
You want revenge? Take it to civil court.
I don't know how I could ever sit on a jury and vote guilty unless the guy literally stood up and confessed and showed a video of it happening.
Maybe some people are comfortable with reasonable doubt, but I have such a distrust for the entire criminal justice system that I'd set the burden of proof so high as to acquit probably 100 guilty people so as not to put a single innocent person in jail.
On the other hand, the truly not-guilty probably just plea bargain because they figure that if they've gotten this far along without being guilty of anything, then a jury really might just put them away forever.
A fat female is unattractive because it looks like she is pregnant.
Funny how not all societies associate fat woman with unattractive, then. It's speculated that in our society, fat women are unattractive because food (particularly fattening foods) is plentiful (and hence fatness is common), and associated with being unfit; whereas better off people eat healthy food and keep fit.
Precisely. Look at pre-industrial revolution artwork. Most of the thin women are cast unflatteringly, whereas fat women have nice clothes and good hair. Thin was OUT!
If you want to start totalling up dollars lost and costs to make things as they were, that's more appropriate for civil court. Dishing out punishment to scale against a dollar amount is just crazy.
A YEAR AND A HALF is getting off light? I mean, it sure is for a hacking case, but jesus, a year and a half is not something you just sleep through.
I'm not a scientist, but I've watched people play scientists, and I think they would say that this graph does not prove that increased industrial activity causes temperature increase.
It certainly does show correlation, but that's not the same as proof. The article agrees?
I maintain that I should have the right to cook up whatever I want and inject it into myself and my friends and family if that's what they want me to do, and that furthermore it's none of your business.
Is there any proof that temperature increase is related to industrial activity?
Is there any proof that temperature increase directly causes "worldwide catastrophe"?
Plenty of assertions, correlations, theories, but no science. The argument that this is a normal part of our planet's healthy development is just as valid, in that both arguments are based on faith.
What I find so infuriating isn't that my tax dollars fund the FDA (and friends) but rather that their authority restricts goods and services from reaching the people that want them because they're unpopular, or misunderstood, or currently morally evil. The tax dollar funded part is just the icing on the FDA approved cake.
Which example should I cite? How birth control is on the table every time some religious groups gain power? How racists get some kind of candy banned because they identify it as being from Asia? How about recreational drugs and when a cop utters the magical words "I smell marijuana", they can perform a full body search against someone of the wrong skin color?
Here, lets try something you haven't heard before.
For people that suffer from migraine, the drug Imitrex is basically like God's gift from heaven. The injectable form is instant relief, being able to reclaim a day that would otherwise be spent bed-ridden, possibly dry-heaving for hours. The only problem is that it's really freaking expensive. I seriously considered pooling money among my friends and family (many of whom suffer from it) so that we could produce it ourselves, but trying to comply with the FDA would have been too cost-prohibitive and I didn't want to end up being sentenced to life imprisonment for operating a drug lab.
Maybe you think it's ridiculous, but spending $50/shot when you need to administer 3 or 4 shots a week makes you seriously weigh your options.
Serving public safety is founded in good intentions, but in building all of the avenues to carry out regulations, the state opens itself up to manipulation by racist, sexist, and religious bigots who have their will enforced through the power of the police. It's not supposed to happen this way, but it always does.
I can't help but to wonder, constantly, that maybe we would be better off without these institutions restricting what we can do for our own good?
It's some kind of hillarious irony that this quote is Ronald Reagan's: The kind of government that is strong enough to give you everything you need is also strong enough to take away everything that you have.
However, labelling cars is not helpful and it is a serious public health risk to have unqualified drivers on the road.
Licenses don't do anything to keep incompetent people from driving. What they are great at, though, is giving police a great excuse to pull over black people that make the mistake of wandering into a white neighborhood.
OK ... and when you (or someone else) takes a non-FDA drug, does that mean you waive all rights to suck up my tax dollars when you show up at the emergency room?
That's an easy yes. Is this a trick question?
My sentiments exactly.
Maybe one day we can apply this thinking elsewhere and stop encroaching other freedoms. I look forward to the day when I don't have to look underground to find doctors who don't want to listen to the AMA, people to design my buildings that don't have to suck the teet of the AIA, lawyers who aren't constrained in representing me by rule of the bar association, etc.
And maybe one day, just one day, I won't need to grovel on my hands and knees to be granted the "privilege" of driving a motor vehicle, and say please and thank you to a cop who threatens to get it revoked.
But hey, getting them out of my fuckin' bedroom, or, in this case, out of what I do at my desk, is a fine start.
But some things are just better done low tech. This guy had a point, but he lost it in suggesting commercial software.
I keep business cards. Computerized address books are just too cumbersome for me to integrate in all of the places I want them to be available. Eventually they fall out of sync and become an annoyance to deal with.
I pay bills by check, the checks are written out in ink. I don't set up direct debit with my vendors since errors are such a PITA to address. I use ink to fill the checks out because I don't want to maintain check writing software. Seven ring binders were the greatest discovery of 2003 for me.
Financial records are all kept on paper. Syncing income/expenses to a computer is tedious. I used to scan invoices but that got tiresome and I didn't want to maintain scanners or scanner software. Now I have file cabinets, with files in it. The files contain invoices and other records. I can pull them up pretty quickly, and it breaks up my day to get up and fetch them. :D
I keep about an equal number of note files that I edit with vi, and notebooks that I fill out in ink. About the most high-tech thing I do in business is ssh into a shell account to check my mail and update notes.
I'd rather call someone on the phone or have a secretary do the typing over sitting down and writing some email. Directing someone by phone takes 30 seconds. Writing an email usually takes much longer, and is much higher latency feedback.
Most commercial software is mind-bogglingly complicated. Many custom software projects try to emulate the design of commercial software. Both, are, I think, a collossal waste of money because the complications and frustrations in dealing with them are more expensive than the problem they address, and that the problem often has a low tech solution, or a better mixed high/low tech solution.
Prefer to print documents out because ensuring that I always have a device that can read their electronic form wherever I can take the stack of paper with me is an annoyance.
Used to have a PDA but found them to be unfulfilling.
Used to have a phone that had sophisticated features and camera but stopped caring and now look for simplest one.
I'm 24.
The only real solution is to take it into your own hands and do your own marketing and PR and everything else that you would normally be paying to the label to do for you.
I think the fact that so very very few bands become blindingly rich and famous by taking an independent approach completely validates my point. There is not an enormous market of people out there that wants to hear from any one band that much more than a hundred others that will take the sort of crappy record deal.
Or, stated another way, the music industry isn't an industry that really works on mass-market diversity. The market only tolerates a few new bands a year, the rest fall into niches.
It's not unlike the software industry. 5% of it is shrinkwrap commodity software, the other 95% of it is custom development. The few shrinkwrap commodity software companies make billions, the tens of thousands of custom development companies make thousands to millions.
If the terms of the contract are going to fuck the artist, they shouldn't sign the contract?
Does anyone have a good rebuttal?
Right, I'm sure most garage bands have at least one qualified lawyer or business manager in it right? Most bands have high intelligence and a mature outlook on things right? Most bands aren't 16-25 and filled wiht mostly dumb stoners?
Dear Investor,
We would like to interest you in financing this hip new rock group, Dumb Stoned Kids, at a cost of $2,000,000. The money we raise will be used to record their album, design, press, market, and distribute said album, and promote the band.
Unfortunately, the band is full of retards who are incapable of understanding a binding agreement, so we decided to forego one and put ourselves in a position with no legal recourse in the event that they flake on their responsibilities or abandon us for a different record company. However, their manager did have some reassuring words, such as "dude, chill out" when we voiced our concerns, and that's good enough for us.
Please send us the money now.
Sincerely,
Record Company Executive
"This store down the block sells the same things I do but at half the price, my customers are leaving..."
"This other guy works for less pay than I do and does the same exact job. I can't find work..."
"This other band is willing to put up with record deal contracts that we won't. We can't get signed..."
It's a free market.
The fact that it's so hard to get signed might mean that collectively, mass-market listeners don't want to hear from you that much more than they want to hear from any one of the other 100 bands in line behind you.
Having an infinite market for your talents or goods is not an inalienable right. Take it or leave it. :D
Agree with everything you said, but I zeroed in on this section.
Maybe they're just too stupid to know they're stupid, but that's still no excuse. Even the most least expensive entertainment lawyer should be able to describe the situation outlined by the paperwork.
Well, it might be an excuse. "Your honor, my client is so incredibly stupid, that he's in no condition to be committing to anything at all. Why, there are 12 year olds who should enter contracts before my client. Thus, the contract is void."
If the terms of the contract are going to fuck the artist, they shouldn't sign the contract?
Does anyone have a good rebuttal?
I have just as much difficulty using a CLI on MacOS X as you do.
Maybe even anti-progress. I think computer uninitiates are terrified of modern desktops. They don't really guide the experience. You get a mouse pointer and you're basically told to figure it out. Some things you push down get mad and ring a bell, some things open other things to push, and some things just do nothing. Seemingly at random, ALERTS! pop up and give you a cryptic message. The thing you once pushed down that gave you a mad sound now does nothing, or gives you a happy sound. The thing you tapped earlier doesn't respond. Somehow you find out it needs to be double-tapped. Of course, you're new at this so your double tap comes out like tap---jerk mouse---tap. Instead of "launching" this program, what you did was just move the picture of it over a picture of something else. Now you can't even access the something else since it's covered. What do you do?! You click on it again and suddenly the text underneath the picture is now surrounded by a white box and there's a cursor in it. You try to click it again but the cursor just sits there blinking, impatiently. You try typing something and suddenly you've obliterated the name of the program you're trying to start. You freak out, fearing you've destroyed the computer and call your son for help, who laughs at you.
Eventually you start to notice patterns (these always mean happy, these always mean sad), but these trends are occasionally thwarted and you're thrown for a loop.
A command-line interface, on the other hand, is a guided conversation. Starting out from ground zero can be a bit rough, but you figure out very quickly that you type a command, and the computer tries to interpret it and give you a response. It's clear that you need to learn the computer's language (after someone explains what the seemingly terrifying "syntax error" means). You usually know when it's your turn to speak and when it's the computer's turn to speak. Of course, there's an entire body of stuff to learn before you can do any work with it, but the experience itself is very calm and soothing compared to the information overload that's in a modern desktop.
Try teaching your grandparents to use a computer sometime. I did.
My grandmother kept picking the mouse up and moving it around in the air because she didn't understand dragging it on the pad. She was confused that such a sophisticated piece of machinery didn't let her do something that felt so natural to her.