The laws of the USA define many crimes where the offense is just words. For example, talking about a crime that co-conspirators are preparing. If you believe this is against the Constitution and against the will of people, please go ahead and impeach the entire government.
Those companies are not refusing to cooperate, and they are not circumventing the order. They deliver what they are asked to deliver; too bad that it's zero bits - and here is why...
But the proposed solution would be an obvious obstruction of justice, and any first minute law student can tell why - because you chose to terminate the service instead of following lawful instructions from the court. Hello, conspiracy charges.
During that fiasco, the LAPD tried to extrajudicially execute an elderly lady and her daughter (100 shots fired) for simply having a similar car to Dorner near where he lived.
The shooting of newspaper delivery women happened not where Dorner lived, but where some police boss lived. The shooting was done by his protection team.
There is a very small chance that those ladies could know the location of Dorner's house; but there is exactly zero chance that they could possibly know where protected persons live. Therefore they couldn't just avoid the area. Besides, it was their duty to deliver newspapers to those addresses. The police acted as Elite Guards of some paranoid dictator.
So what you're saying is the stock market reflects what a few people think the company is worth and isn't tied to real value?
Imagine that you discovered the secret of antigravity. What would be the "real value" of one man (you) sitting behind an empty desk in a tiny, rented office? Would that be the $500 that your chair and your desk can be sold for? Or, perhaps, it would be a tad higher? Which value is real here?
It's a matter of balance between complexity (which is your personal time) and price (which is your own money.) The linked project, I think, goes a bit too far in trying to do demod in an audio path of a PC. The problem is that once you go DIY you are stuck forever maintaining it because there is nobody else who could help. I use Insteon, and if a switch fails (a few did) I just replace them. I still invest my time in the system (it is HS based,) but I'm investing it on a level where my time is best spent - such as on programming what I want out of it, and on adding (developing) new devices. There is very little gain in redoing the work that other people did many times over, unless you are just learning. Besides, this way of doing RF modulation is probably not going to pass FCC compatibility checks; while you are not likely to be busted, unless someone complains, this is a dead end.
Home automation costs are 99% in sensors and controlled equipment (switches, motors, annunciators, etc.) The cost of the control system is the remaining 1%. You would be better off just buying the best one on the market. Homeseer is pretty good, and it costs about $250. That's the cost of about 5 to 7 wall switches. There is no need to add failure points into the system by using a cloud. HS3 runs also on Linux, by the way.
The firm really needs to cull management [...] Booting Balmer would be a good first step
I'm sure every manager would eagerly support your offer, and Ballmer will gladly sign the reorg plan:-)
Of course there is 99% of dead wood at MS. People who do nothing of value; who do not code, do not invent. Managers who mismanage; KB maintainers who write unintelligible text; sales people who wouldn't be able to sell an elixir of eternal life to a dying billionaire. People who do not produce are busy with something else... such as with those "interdepartmental wars over policy and prestige." All companies go through this. Managers become master vampires who'd rather drink the lifeblood of the company than resign and allow new life to form. In the end, nothing remains. Even the vampires leave for redder pastures eventually; only the CEO of the like of Darl McBride stays in the dark, dusty office and desperately files lawsuits against everyone and everything.
"nearly free" = "hidden from the uncurious customer." Apple customers pay for the whole experience - from rounded corners to the hardware to the OS to the online services.
It was actually surprising - not in the good sense, though. It was surprising that MS decided to enter a cutthroat market that is dominated by dirt cheap hardware made in China and an excellent free OS (Android) or a nearly free OS (Apple.) It was surprising that it chose to compete against MILLIONS of applications written for those two OSes. It was surprising that it decided to release a tablet that carries the name "Windows" [RT] but doesn't run Windows software. It was surprising that MS expected to actually win some place under the Sun in this market.
But of course why would they get any share of the market if they haven't delivered anything new, anything unique that would be worth of jumping the safe and sound ship of iOS/Android? What is it that lures the customer toward WinRT? I do not know, and I'm somewhat aware of what's happening with computing devices. As far as I know, there is nothing new in WinRT, except the fact that it is devoid of applications (compared to the competition.) What they have, is rumored to be largely garbage. I can't check those rumors because I don't know anyone who'd have WinRT. Everyone these days runs with iOS or Android, and they are happy campers.
MS is a million pound giant who is attempting to walk on thin ice. But whatever they do, they cannot get enough traction (=profit) to sustain their humongous empire, where one LOC of change costs a million dollars, after everything is said and done and all the uninvolved parties are paid. They cannot survive on low calorie food. They grew their business on products that they were the sole supplier, and they dictated their prices - hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars for a copy of software that is sold in millions. This tablet market does not have such a profit margin. MS wants for their OS more than the whole competitor's tablet costs! And if they charge less then they are shipping money with every unit sold.
Pixel-accurate, in a single file, with embedded vector fonts and raster images? What kind of text file is that?
Contract: Rich Text file (signed with GPG/PGP), Text file (signed with GPG/PGP), HTML (with SHA hash stored elsewhere), markdown (signed with GPG/PGP), ODF, or even Doc or Docx.
Doc and Docx are the likeliest candidates, at least because most documents are prepared in them. However these files are not pixel-accurate, and they do not lock the content, and they contain hard to remove traces of past edits. Still, MS Word documents are a popular format in business - as long as both sides intend to edit them.
Drawing: lossless: bit map, Portable Net Graphic, Giff, WebP, tiff, Scalar Vector Graphic
lossy: Jpeg
Not even funny. Did you ever try to export a D size architectural drawing into a JPEG? An SVG may do well on vectors, but how will it handle small rasters that are often there? How will it deal with fonts?
User Manual:
Windows: HTML files compiled to.lit format, HTML document, Doc or Docx, Rich text file, or text file
I see no reason to separate Windows and Linux here because user manuals must be platform-independent. But ebook formats are not very nice because they don't deal nicely with *all* of the text, raster and vector graphics. HTML comes very close, but it's usually not a single file (hard to distribute.) RTF is, of course, good - but it's very complex. User manuals are rarely published as.doc[x] because the end result is not pixel-accurate, and reflowing of the document can (and will) mess it up considerably.
Encryption and signing:
GPG/PGP, TrueCrypt Volume (where you can even hide the files even exist for plausible deniability), ste[GA]nographs
Businesses rarely need to hide data in images. Volume encryption does nothing to secure documents that you email. GPG/PGP is somewhat OK, but it is arcane and requires an extra step to verify.
As you can see, PDF combines all those desirable features in one convenient format, and there are many different readers and writers. A good number of them are free. What is there not to like? Alternatives may be just as good in one specific aspect, but there is no competition that does all of that pretty well.
That software cracks the password(s) by brute force. As I understand, there are not too many better attacks against AES. This means that a password like 9~}~w\1[X\3{F968|05|\St3\Ya7Lh~~ is not going to be cracked in this millennium. Besides, it would be entirely illegal to use such software in a business. Cracking of a password may take a second, or it may take a year. How would you integrate that into your mail processing chain?
PDF can be also encrypted with PKI, and with Adobe's own DRM. Those cannot be cracked, as far as I know. You either attack the symmetric cipher, which is usually AES256, or you find a new attack against RSA. If you can do either of those in reasonable time, you have better things to do - like becoming filthy rich and famous. (Or dead.)
I'm hoping that somebody can reply to this with a _genuine_ reason why sending a PDF (Pretty Damn F'ked) attachment to an e-mail is either necessary or optimal
What else would you use to send an invoice, or a contract, or a drawing, or a user's manual, or anything else that requires pixel-accurate placement of all elements as designed ? It has to support digital signatures as a minimum, and preferrably a complete public key encryption. PDF does that.
'It's good looking' sounds like a weak reason.
The 'good looking' is a weak reason. "Correct" is a far better reason. Once you print into a PDF, it captures your document exactly as it is. You want your documents to represent what you put into them - neither more nor less. Perhaps there are better formats, but I'm not aware of any.
I want to say that passworded files will often just ignore the password prompt and display normally, and if a PDF can be read, it can be printed.
It's because there are two passwords; one to open for reading, and another for other purposes. Let me open Acrobat and tell exactly...
Four security methods: None, Password, Certificate, Adobe LiveCycle DRM
Password uses AES256; encrypts all, all ~metadata, only attachments
Require password to open: Y/N
Require password to print: Y/N (if Y then select output resolution)
Require password to edit: Y/N (many options)
Enable copying of text, images, etc.
Enable screen readers
The certificate security seems to support that too. It's a complicated cardhouse, and I wouldn't want to become responsible for hacking it. Not as a volunteer, at least (no "thank you" if it stops a virus, but all the blame if it breaks someone's workflow.) Generally, if a PDF is signed or certified or encrypted, it's off limits. I do sign PDFs now and then, and I have seen workflows where *every* PDF is signed (the government does that.) Those are not something you dare to hack - those are often multimillion contracts awarded to your company.
Signed PDFs can be read in any reader, but the signature will be still validated (if the reader is not defective.) Encrypted PDFs will not be even readable if they are not encrypted to you. Password-protected PDFs may require the password to be readable, let alone printable or changeable.
In other words, PDFs are not designed for wanton modification. Some of them can be modified, but others cannot. This means that you cannot build a reliable method for converting suspect PDFs into safe PDFs.
Before you jump in and start messing with corporate documents, make sure you understand very well why you are doing it in the first place. Is it what you are specifically hired to do? Some PDFs are cryptographically signed, and there is nothing that you can do to alter them that won't invalidate the signature. Other PDFs are password-protected from copying. You cannot legally extract their content (even if technically there are ways.) Malicious content inside a PDF is, therefore, not blockable unless you block all PDFs - and then you will cause more harm to the business than all the PDF viruses taken together. The best solution is to enforce a safe reader.
If you aren't man enough, this goes for women too, to realize and admit to making a stupid fucking mistake, if in fact you made a stupid fucking mistake, and someone points out to your face that you made a stupid fucking mistake, then you have no business being in a position to make stupid fucking mistakes in the first place.
I agree that it's better for the guilty party to confess, rather than for someone else to heap accusations upon him. Here is what I proposed elsewhere. Best of both worlds.
I thought geeks were above "making enemies" over stupid shit like that
You'd wish it be true, but it isn't. Look into any large project and find a clash of personalities. Most geeks are civilized enough to keep it down, though, but it's not unheard of when a developer quits a project and slams the door. Many are motivated by a social atmosphere in which the development is occurring. Otherwise they'd code at home, alone - like many others do.
In my example the absurdity of the proposal needs no comment. However if a developer made a mistake that needs to be announced, the best way to do it is to have a private talk with the developer, after which he posts a retraction of his ill-conceived actions. This way he can save the face, and at the same time spell out mea culpa. This can be followed up by the leader, who may explain the problem from a different aspect.
For example, the previous sh1tstorm was caused by a developer breaking userspace and then blaming userspace software for not being clairvoyant to foresee his changes. Linus was screaming then. A different approach would have the deloper posting "After some forced thinking (thanks, Linus!) I no longer believe that the patch was a good idea. I screwed up, and that caused pain in userspace. Sorry about that, it was a good lesson." And then Linus follows up saying "Yes, that was a bad call because {...} and let it be a lesson to us all: {...}"
No screaming required, and it can actually initiate a helpful and honest discussion about how to prevent such errors in the future, without stomping someone's ego into the mud. No fake politeness either - just the basic respect for your fellow human.
Cowardice requires some noble cause to fail to fight for. It is not cowardice to walk away from a fight simply because you are not interested. Often it is wise to bypass the danger - not because you are a coward but just because it's foolish to take risks (or, worse, risk lives of others.) Coward is an antonym for a hero; both require a situation when heroism, or at least duty, is called for. There is nothing heroic in meeting a gang of yutes and beating them up; therefore there is nothing cowardly in avoiding them - unless you are expected to confront the gang (if you are a police officer, for example.)
Furthermore, when an entire society is walking on eggshells for fear of being gunned down, you know there's not a signle brave man (left) among them.
It's a very strange definition of bravery. Are you brave enough to don black clothes and repeatedly run across a busy freeway at night? That'd be the same definition of "bravery" - a foolish opposition to an external condition.
The armed society does not make you a coward. It simply associates every aggressive act with a price to pay. You are still free to go ahead - and pay the price in the end. Heinlein's plot does exactly that. An unarmed society, on the other hand, does not even give you the choice. If you meet aggression, all you can do is run away and complain to United Nations. You have no other options.
Nobody needs to remember coordinates. I'm using GPS for navigation, and I enter coordinates very rarely - and when I do, it's a copy/paste from Google Maps.
Numerical coordinates have one huge advantage: they can be put into a formula, and that can be done on any tiny portable device that is offline. A database requires an online connection.
Most people use street numbers instead of coordinates or those word triplets. The street numbers have their own advantage: they are generally regular, and if you are at 1200 Main St. you can generally tell where 300 Main St. should be, and how far. Streets require databases, but those are already programmed into navigation GPS devices - and we aren't going to abandon street numbers any time soon.
As others said, this is just yet another useless service that tries to sell us words from the dictionary.
Have you ever considered that if "an armed society is a polite society" is true, it means that everyone (including you) is a coward?
No. Cowardice is not an opposite of suicide. A coward saves his own hide instead of saving someone else. But there is no "saving someone else" in Heinlein's scenario. Would you want to be called a coward if you refuse to jump from a high cliff?
If the kind of money that was spent on guns and war machines was dedicated to education and health, that crime rate you speak of would drop significantly.
You are arguing that crime is 100% nurture and 0% nature. Everyone is a hidden genius. But that's clearly untrue. But the IQ is not the only factor here. Crime appeals to low IQ people (who then rob houses and earn thousands) and to high IQ people (who create hedge funds and earn millions.) Desire for power is very strong in humans. An educated man usually does a lot of harm on his way to the top of the pyramid.
Slashdot Mirror
The laws of the USA define many crimes where the offense is just words. For example, talking about a crime that co-conspirators are preparing. If you believe this is against the Constitution and against the will of people, please go ahead and impeach the entire government.
Those companies are not refusing to cooperate, and they are not circumventing the order. They deliver what they are asked to deliver; too bad that it's zero bits - and here is why...
But the proposed solution would be an obvious obstruction of justice, and any first minute law student can tell why - because you chose to terminate the service instead of following lawful instructions from the court. Hello, conspiracy charges.
How does one authenticate their authenticity?
When men with guns say it's authentic, it is.
During that fiasco, the LAPD tried to extrajudicially execute an elderly lady and her daughter (100 shots fired) for simply having a similar car to Dorner near where he lived.
The shooting of newspaper delivery women happened not where Dorner lived, but where some police boss lived. The shooting was done by his protection team.
There is a very small chance that those ladies could know the location of Dorner's house; but there is exactly zero chance that they could possibly know where protected persons live. Therefore they couldn't just avoid the area. Besides, it was their duty to deliver newspapers to those addresses. The police acted as Elite Guards of some paranoid dictator.
So what you're saying is the stock market reflects what a few people think the company is worth and isn't tied to real value?
Imagine that you discovered the secret of antigravity. What would be the "real value" of one man (you) sitting behind an empty desk in a tiny, rented office? Would that be the $500 that your chair and your desk can be sold for? Or, perhaps, it would be a tad higher? Which value is real here?
It's a matter of balance between complexity (which is your personal time) and price (which is your own money.) The linked project, I think, goes a bit too far in trying to do demod in an audio path of a PC. The problem is that once you go DIY you are stuck forever maintaining it because there is nobody else who could help. I use Insteon, and if a switch fails (a few did) I just replace them. I still invest my time in the system (it is HS based,) but I'm investing it on a level where my time is best spent - such as on programming what I want out of it, and on adding (developing) new devices. There is very little gain in redoing the work that other people did many times over, unless you are just learning. Besides, this way of doing RF modulation is probably not going to pass FCC compatibility checks; while you are not likely to be busted, unless someone complains, this is a dead end.
Home automation costs are 99% in sensors and controlled equipment (switches, motors, annunciators, etc.) The cost of the control system is the remaining 1%. You would be better off just buying the best one on the market. Homeseer is pretty good, and it costs about $250. That's the cost of about 5 to 7 wall switches. There is no need to add failure points into the system by using a cloud. HS3 runs also on Linux, by the way.
The firm really needs to cull management [...] Booting Balmer would be a good first step
I'm sure every manager would eagerly support your offer, and Ballmer will gladly sign the reorg plan :-)
Of course there is 99% of dead wood at MS. People who do nothing of value; who do not code, do not invent. Managers who mismanage; KB maintainers who write unintelligible text; sales people who wouldn't be able to sell an elixir of eternal life to a dying billionaire. People who do not produce are busy with something else ... such as with those "interdepartmental wars over policy and prestige." All companies go through this. Managers become master vampires who'd rather drink the lifeblood of the company than resign and allow new life to form. In the end, nothing remains. Even the vampires leave for redder pastures eventually; only the CEO of the like of Darl McBride stays in the dark, dusty office and desperately files lawsuits against everyone and everything.
"nearly free" = "hidden from the uncurious customer." Apple customers pay for the whole experience - from rounded corners to the hardware to the OS to the online services.
It was actually surprising - not in the good sense, though. It was surprising that MS decided to enter a cutthroat market that is dominated by dirt cheap hardware made in China and an excellent free OS (Android) or a nearly free OS (Apple.) It was surprising that it chose to compete against MILLIONS of applications written for those two OSes. It was surprising that it decided to release a tablet that carries the name "Windows" [RT] but doesn't run Windows software. It was surprising that MS expected to actually win some place under the Sun in this market.
But of course why would they get any share of the market if they haven't delivered anything new, anything unique that would be worth of jumping the safe and sound ship of iOS/Android? What is it that lures the customer toward WinRT? I do not know, and I'm somewhat aware of what's happening with computing devices. As far as I know, there is nothing new in WinRT, except the fact that it is devoid of applications (compared to the competition.) What they have, is rumored to be largely garbage. I can't check those rumors because I don't know anyone who'd have WinRT. Everyone these days runs with iOS or Android, and they are happy campers.
MS is a million pound giant who is attempting to walk on thin ice. But whatever they do, they cannot get enough traction (=profit) to sustain their humongous empire, where one LOC of change costs a million dollars, after everything is said and done and all the uninvolved parties are paid. They cannot survive on low calorie food. They grew their business on products that they were the sole supplier, and they dictated their prices - hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars for a copy of software that is sold in millions. This tablet market does not have such a profit margin. MS wants for their OS more than the whole competitor's tablet costs! And if they charge less then they are shipping money with every unit sold.
Invoice: Text file, HTML, spreadsheet, etc.
Pixel-accurate, in a single file, with embedded vector fonts and raster images? What kind of text file is that?
Contract: Rich Text file (signed with GPG/PGP), Text file (signed with GPG/PGP), HTML (with SHA hash stored elsewhere), markdown (signed with GPG/PGP), ODF, or even Doc or Docx.
Doc and Docx are the likeliest candidates, at least because most documents are prepared in them. However these files are not pixel-accurate, and they do not lock the content, and they contain hard to remove traces of past edits. Still, MS Word documents are a popular format in business - as long as both sides intend to edit them.
Drawing: lossless: bit map, Portable Net Graphic, Giff, WebP, tiff, Scalar Vector Graphic lossy: Jpeg
Not even funny. Did you ever try to export a D size architectural drawing into a JPEG? An SVG may do well on vectors, but how will it handle small rasters that are often there? How will it deal with fonts?
User Manual: Windows: HTML files compiled to .lit format, HTML document, Doc or Docx, Rich text file, or text file
I see no reason to separate Windows and Linux here because user manuals must be platform-independent. But ebook formats are not very nice because they don't deal nicely with *all* of the text, raster and vector graphics. HTML comes very close, but it's usually not a single file (hard to distribute.) RTF is, of course, good - but it's very complex. User manuals are rarely published as .doc[x] because the end result is not pixel-accurate, and reflowing of the document can (and will) mess it up considerably.
Encryption and signing: GPG/PGP, TrueCrypt Volume (where you can even hide the files even exist for plausible deniability), ste[GA]nographs
Businesses rarely need to hide data in images. Volume encryption does nothing to secure documents that you email. GPG/PGP is somewhat OK, but it is arcane and requires an extra step to verify.
As you can see, PDF combines all those desirable features in one convenient format, and there are many different readers and writers. A good number of them are free. What is there not to like? Alternatives may be just as good in one specific aspect, but there is no competition that does all of that pretty well.
That software cracks the password(s) by brute force. As I understand, there are not too many better attacks against AES. This means that a password like 9~}~w\1[X\3{F968|05|\St3\Ya7Lh~~ is not going to be cracked in this millennium. Besides, it would be entirely illegal to use such software in a business. Cracking of a password may take a second, or it may take a year. How would you integrate that into your mail processing chain?
PDF can be also encrypted with PKI, and with Adobe's own DRM. Those cannot be cracked, as far as I know. You either attack the symmetric cipher, which is usually AES256, or you find a new attack against RSA. If you can do either of those in reasonable time, you have better things to do - like becoming filthy rich and famous. (Or dead.)
I'm hoping that somebody can reply to this with a _genuine_ reason why sending a PDF (Pretty Damn F'ked) attachment to an e-mail is either necessary or optimal
What else would you use to send an invoice, or a contract, or a drawing, or a user's manual, or anything else that requires pixel-accurate placement of all elements as designed ? It has to support digital signatures as a minimum, and preferrably a complete public key encryption. PDF does that.
'It's good looking' sounds like a weak reason.
The 'good looking' is a weak reason. "Correct" is a far better reason. Once you print into a PDF, it captures your document exactly as it is. You want your documents to represent what you put into them - neither more nor less. Perhaps there are better formats, but I'm not aware of any.
I want to say that passworded files will often just ignore the password prompt and display normally, and if a PDF can be read, it can be printed.
It's because there are two passwords; one to open for reading, and another for other purposes. Let me open Acrobat and tell exactly...
The certificate security seems to support that too. It's a complicated cardhouse, and I wouldn't want to become responsible for hacking it. Not as a volunteer, at least (no "thank you" if it stops a virus, but all the blame if it breaks someone's workflow.) Generally, if a PDF is signed or certified or encrypted, it's off limits. I do sign PDFs now and then, and I have seen workflows where *every* PDF is signed (the government does that.) Those are not something you dare to hack - those are often multimillion contracts awarded to your company.
Signed PDFs can be read in any reader, but the signature will be still validated (if the reader is not defective.) Encrypted PDFs will not be even readable if they are not encrypted to you. Password-protected PDFs may require the password to be readable, let alone printable or changeable.
In other words, PDFs are not designed for wanton modification. Some of them can be modified, but others cannot. This means that you cannot build a reliable method for converting suspect PDFs into safe PDFs.
Before you jump in and start messing with corporate documents, make sure you understand very well why you are doing it in the first place. Is it what you are specifically hired to do? Some PDFs are cryptographically signed, and there is nothing that you can do to alter them that won't invalidate the signature. Other PDFs are password-protected from copying. You cannot legally extract their content (even if technically there are ways.) Malicious content inside a PDF is, therefore, not blockable unless you block all PDFs - and then you will cause more harm to the business than all the PDF viruses taken together. The best solution is to enforce a safe reader.
If you aren't man enough, this goes for women too, to realize and admit to making a stupid fucking mistake, if in fact you made a stupid fucking mistake, and someone points out to your face that you made a stupid fucking mistake, then you have no business being in a position to make stupid fucking mistakes in the first place.
I agree that it's better for the guilty party to confess, rather than for someone else to heap accusations upon him. Here is what I proposed elsewhere. Best of both worlds.
I thought geeks were above "making enemies" over stupid shit like that
You'd wish it be true, but it isn't. Look into any large project and find a clash of personalities. Most geeks are civilized enough to keep it down, though, but it's not unheard of when a developer quits a project and slams the door. Many are motivated by a social atmosphere in which the development is occurring. Otherwise they'd code at home, alone - like many others do.
In my example the absurdity of the proposal needs no comment. However if a developer made a mistake that needs to be announced, the best way to do it is to have a private talk with the developer, after which he posts a retraction of his ill-conceived actions. This way he can save the face, and at the same time spell out mea culpa. This can be followed up by the leader, who may explain the problem from a different aspect.
For example, the previous sh1tstorm was caused by a developer breaking userspace and then blaming userspace software for not being clairvoyant to foresee his changes. Linus was screaming then. A different approach would have the deloper posting "After some forced thinking (thanks, Linus!) I no longer believe that the patch was a good idea. I screwed up, and that caused pain in userspace. Sorry about that, it was a good lesson." And then Linus follows up saying "Yes, that was a bad call because {...} and let it be a lesson to us all: {...}"
No screaming required, and it can actually initiate a helpful and honest discussion about how to prevent such errors in the future, without stomping someone's ego into the mud. No fake politeness either - just the basic respect for your fellow human.
But what is this service good for? If not for much, it makes it useless. The same happens if enough people refuse to use it.
Cowardice requires some noble cause to fail to fight for. It is not cowardice to walk away from a fight simply because you are not interested. Often it is wise to bypass the danger - not because you are a coward but just because it's foolish to take risks (or, worse, risk lives of others.) Coward is an antonym for a hero; both require a situation when heroism, or at least duty, is called for. There is nothing heroic in meeting a gang of yutes and beating them up; therefore there is nothing cowardly in avoiding them - unless you are expected to confront the gang (if you are a police officer, for example.)
Furthermore, when an entire society is walking on eggshells for fear of being gunned down, you know there's not a signle brave man (left) among them.
It's a very strange definition of bravery. Are you brave enough to don black clothes and repeatedly run across a busy freeway at night? That'd be the same definition of "bravery" - a foolish opposition to an external condition.
The armed society does not make you a coward. It simply associates every aggressive act with a price to pay. You are still free to go ahead - and pay the price in the end. Heinlein's plot does exactly that. An unarmed society, on the other hand, does not even give you the choice. If you meet aggression, all you can do is run away and complain to United Nations. You have no other options.
Nobody needs to remember coordinates. I'm using GPS for navigation, and I enter coordinates very rarely - and when I do, it's a copy/paste from Google Maps.
Numerical coordinates have one huge advantage: they can be put into a formula, and that can be done on any tiny portable device that is offline. A database requires an online connection.
Most people use street numbers instead of coordinates or those word triplets. The street numbers have their own advantage: they are generally regular, and if you are at 1200 Main St. you can generally tell where 300 Main St. should be, and how far. Streets require databases, but those are already programmed into navigation GPS devices - and we aren't going to abandon street numbers any time soon.
As others said, this is just yet another useless service that tries to sell us words from the dictionary.
I'm sure some people dismissed URL shorterners when they first appeared as well. I think it's a cool service.
Just wait until you stumble upon a shortened URL that leads to a CP honeypot.
Adam and Eve is a cute story but from a biology standpoint it is quite impossible.
Especially considering that Adam and Eve's offspring was all male.
Have you ever considered that if "an armed society is a polite society" is true, it means that everyone (including you) is a coward?
No. Cowardice is not an opposite of suicide. A coward saves his own hide instead of saving someone else. But there is no "saving someone else" in Heinlein's scenario. Would you want to be called a coward if you refuse to jump from a high cliff?
If the kind of money that was spent on guns and war machines was dedicated to education and health, that crime rate you speak of would drop significantly.
You are arguing that crime is 100% nurture and 0% nature. Everyone is a hidden genius. But that's clearly untrue. But the IQ is not the only factor here. Crime appeals to low IQ people (who then rob houses and earn thousands) and to high IQ people (who create hedge funds and earn millions.) Desire for power is very strong in humans. An educated man usually does a lot of harm on his way to the top of the pyramid.