And yet, when somebody offers bribes to gain a competitive advantage on the United States, who squeals louder than Americans? They even made a law about it, if I remember correctly.
'Scuse me, I have to go cough up some of the hypocrisy I'm choking on.
Maybe I can explain the view that you're having trouble with. It has nothing to do with "conservatism" or hatred of change. The key to it all is in the sentence, "The most annoying feeling while using a computer is being yanked out of thinking about what you're doing with the computer to having to concentrate on how to use it."
I love what my computer makes possible. On the other hand, I don't much like the thing itself. I resent every minute I've had to spend finding out that Messenger Service is different from Windows Messenger and assorted other pointless crap. It's like this: I don't know how to change the timing chain on my car. I have no interest in learning how, either. I know how to change the oil, but I'd rather not (It's messy, and I have to save the used oil 'til I find a place to legally dispose of it). I'm the same with my computer. I want it to get me from A to B without any drama. I can't comprehend the mindset of somebody who would design a start menu that, by default, hides things you only use occasionally. That's simply insane.
So when Microsoft jams a new operating system down my throat that's loaded with a bunch of these stupid little changes that make me learn crap I have no interest in all over again, I get frustrated, then angry. When, on top of that, it overrules my wishes on a regular basis, I want to take an axe to the people who created it. Who the FUCK do they think they are? By all means warn me that I'm about to do something stupid. Then get the hell out of the way. You've done your job.
In the plainest possible terms, my computer is a tool. I would no more play with it than I'd play with a wrench. Its usefulness declines in direct proportion to the amount of time I have to spend dicking around with it to make it do as it's told. End of story.
I'm sure you'd find my job boring, pointless and frustrating. You're more than bright enough to learn it, but I doubt very much whether you'd want to. You'd probably find the fact that I enjoy it enough to do it outside of office hours incomprehensible. All I ask is that you consider that the reverse is also true.
I'm not in a position to have my career affected by my innocent presence on an FBI "Watch List" or some other fascist equivalent. In fact, as somebody who has covered controversial subjects on a couple of occasions, I'd be surprised and perhaps a little insulted if I wasn't on somebody's shit list.
Some of my friends, however, are in a much different situation. A couple have sensitive government jobs, and their careers could be damaged or even ended if they were denied a flight across U.S. territory on security grounds, or if they had trouble at the border.
Their personal contact information is on my PDA. Must I now "sanitize" the device before I dare cross into the United States or bear the responsibility of harming my friends and their families?
It's past time somebody had the guts to slap these dirty little Nazis down. Freedom has never been free, and those of us who treasure the sacrifice made by our ancestors to hand us a democratic society based on openness and the rule of law must stand up and remind the drones of that fact. If we don't, then we're all headed for a very, very ugly place indeed.
The next time somebody says, "If you've got nothing to hide, what are you worried about", every computer they or their family uses should immediately be confiscated and everything on them except actual passwords, bank account numbers, etc. made public.
Let me see. How can I respond to Comcast's statements in a manner commensurate with their honour, forthrightness and basic corporate decency? Ah, I think I have it: When is somebody going to take these scummy, deceptive shitsacks to court?
I think that captured it properly.
Supposedly, the old-fashioned paper ballot method is supposed to be too expensive and in need of replacement. It's awfully hard to pretend when a hundred thousand slips of paper go missing. A rigged e-vote? Who's going to know, as long as the cheaters are even a little creative?
How would you like to explain to the grandkids how you pissed away your democracy because you were too effing cheap to fork out a few bucks to maintain it. Dump these machines, fork out the bucks and do it right. I'd have thought eight years of Bush would be enough warning for anybody.
IBM appears to be one of the few surviving "last generation" companies former Labor Secretary Robert Reich writes about. They seem to have some appreciation at the highest corporate level that the long view has real value, and that corporations are to some degree responsible for the well-being of the society in which they operate. IBM's stand against the clearly-inferior OOXML standard indicates that they understand long-term viability sometimes means sacrificing a bit of short-term profit.
Right-wingers took over the Labour Party the same way they took over the Democratic Party in the U.S. If somebody doesn't come up with an alternative and kick some of these fascist pricks out pretty soon, we're going to find out just how much worse a police state can be than anything a bunch of terrorists could hope to accomplish.
And when that comment comes from a bully pulpit and is made by an interested party who is far from objective? Your faith is touching. Grossly uninformed, perhaps...but touching.
The problem with Vista is that Microsoft decided to get down on its knees and give a nice Lewinski to the entertainment conglomerates. Aside from the usual tendency toward Bloatware, which could be dealt with largely as the author suggests, all the stuff that makes Vista run like an 85-year-old with a bad knee is linked to DRM in one way or another.
No "do-over" that doesn't strip every bit of that crap out of Vista and put the operating system first, last and always at the service of the user is going to find acceptance. The average person isn't necessarily aware of all the technical stuff, but they're starting to figure out that Vista is spyware. And since just about everybody has something on their system that might violate copyright, they don't want Vista ratting them out. There's actually an article by some lawyer documenting how just going about his legitimate daily on-line activities exposes him to copyright liability in the millions of dollars because the law is completely insane on the matter. A lot of people are simply afraid installing Vista will lead to a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate siccing a slime of lawyers on them (That's my collective term for lawyers...like a flock of birds or a swarm of bees) and grabbing their house, their car and their kids' education fund.
And there's a lot of people out there who know just a little about computers, but all their friends and relatives who hardly know how to turn one on constantly look to them for advice. What do you think that advice is going to be? I'll give you a hint: "Hmm...Vista might try to rat my granny out to the RIAA, I don't know how to configure the security stuff to stop it from squealing without leaving her vulnerable to all kinds of malware, and I don't have time to visit her twice a day to make sure everything's working OK. I think I'll get her a nice, up-to-date copy of XP and sleep easier."
There are indeed some pretty awful auto maintenance designs. The king of them all was a mid-60's GM (Olds, I think). You had to dismount the engine to change the spark plugs. A more modern example is the 2000 Celica. One of the headlights is a major pain in the ass to replace.
I'm certain there's people out there who know far more than I who can come up with better cases.
Those poor Australian police. All that open, free society stuff is just so darned inconvenient when you want to make sure some guy's enjoying the attentions of an Egyptian torturer before news of his arrest is published.
If I was Osama, I'd be laughing myself sick watching these clowns destroy that nasty, evil free society I hate so much. I couldn't do a better job with another hundred planes.
"I'm often under the impression that a strong factor in the success of this line of argumentation is the fact that these populations are getting older, affecting not only their own opinion but also the whole cultural tone of their societies."
I think you're right...but they're also getting a lot of encouragement from the police, right wing media and others who stand to do well in a climate of fear and paranoia.
I wonder how many people appreciate that all those cameras aren't going to stop a committed terrorist, but help convince average, law-abiding citizens that the state has every right to stick its nose into their business as a matter of course. Even a successful act of nuclear terrorism would only kill a single city. The erosion of our open societies by people who claim they want to keep us safe is a threat to our whole way of life.
I guess this would explain why just about everybody in Canada thinks crime is on the increase, even though the numbers conclusively prove otherwise.
You can't sell security hardware and convince nervous old women to throw away their rights if they know there's a long list of things more important than so-called "security". And a lot of those "nervous old women", by the way, are male, in their 30's, and convinced that everything will be fine if we just forget all that due process nonsense and start trusting the cops to throw the right people in jail.
Given the earlier statement that a Wikipedia entry had been altered to hide the Snopes/Malware connection, it seems to me that it's unlikely the people running the site are unaware of the predatory advertising practice occurring under their aegis.
Others have noted that a splendid opportunity to do something really insidious to the RIAA site was wasted. It's worse than that. Even a brain-damaged idiot has enough sense to hire somebody to make the site 'way more difficult to hack next time.
So when somebody finds the next vulnerability, allow me to suggest that before they act, they view "The Yes Men vs The WTA". It's funny, it's subversive in the best sense of the word, and it shows what you can accomplish with a little imagination.
When you've got a bunch of asshats like the RIAA bent over a chair with their pants to their knees, letting them go with a warning verges on criminal irresponsibility.
All that intelligence. All that education. Lifetimes spent in an unceasing uphill struggle to help mankind take the next great technological leap forward...ended in an instant to provide fodder for a/. joke.
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And yet, when somebody offers bribes to gain a competitive advantage on the United States, who squeals louder than Americans? They even made a law about it, if I remember correctly.
'Scuse me, I have to go cough up some of the hypocrisy I'm choking on.
Are you sure the name of that star isn't B.J. Piscium?
Maybe I can explain the view that you're having trouble with. It has nothing to do with "conservatism" or hatred of change. The key to it all is in the sentence, "The most annoying feeling while using a computer is being yanked out of thinking about what you're doing with the computer to having to concentrate on how to use it."
I love what my computer makes possible. On the other hand, I don't much like the thing itself. I resent every minute I've had to spend finding out that Messenger Service is different from Windows Messenger and assorted other pointless crap. It's like this: I don't know how to change the timing chain on my car. I have no interest in learning how, either. I know how to change the oil, but I'd rather not (It's messy, and I have to save the used oil 'til I find a place to legally dispose of it). I'm the same with my computer. I want it to get me from A to B without any drama. I can't comprehend the mindset of somebody who would design a start menu that, by default, hides things you only use occasionally. That's simply insane.
So when Microsoft jams a new operating system down my throat that's loaded with a bunch of these stupid little changes that make me learn crap I have no interest in all over again, I get frustrated, then angry. When, on top of that, it overrules my wishes on a regular basis, I want to take an axe to the people who created it. Who the FUCK do they think they are? By all means warn me that I'm about to do something stupid. Then get the hell out of the way. You've done your job.
In the plainest possible terms, my computer is a tool. I would no more play with it than I'd play with a wrench. Its usefulness declines in direct proportion to the amount of time I have to spend dicking around with it to make it do as it's told. End of story.
I'm sure you'd find my job boring, pointless and frustrating. You're more than bright enough to learn it, but I doubt very much whether you'd want to. You'd probably find the fact that I enjoy it enough to do it outside of office hours incomprehensible. All I ask is that you consider that the reverse is also true.
I'm not in a position to have my career affected by my innocent presence on an FBI "Watch List" or some other fascist equivalent. In fact, as somebody who has covered controversial subjects on a couple of occasions, I'd be surprised and perhaps a little insulted if I wasn't on somebody's shit list.
Some of my friends, however, are in a much different situation. A couple have sensitive government jobs, and their careers could be damaged or even ended if they were denied a flight across U.S. territory on security grounds, or if they had trouble at the border.
Their personal contact information is on my PDA. Must I now "sanitize" the device before I dare cross into the United States or bear the responsibility of harming my friends and their families?
It's past time somebody had the guts to slap these dirty little Nazis down. Freedom has never been free, and those of us who treasure the sacrifice made by our ancestors to hand us a democratic society based on openness and the rule of law must stand up and remind the drones of that fact. If we don't, then we're all headed for a very, very ugly place indeed.
The next time somebody says, "If you've got nothing to hide, what are you worried about", every computer they or their family uses should immediately be confiscated and everything on them except actual passwords, bank account numbers, etc. made public.
...why do so many Trekkies dress like Captain Kirk, but they never get lucky with all the beautiful alien girls?
Let me see. How can I respond to Comcast's statements in a manner commensurate with their honour, forthrightness and basic corporate decency? Ah, I think I have it: When is somebody going to take these scummy, deceptive shitsacks to court? I think that captured it properly.
Anyone foolish enough to believe that capitalism is the friend of democracy need look no further than this.
Supposedly, the old-fashioned paper ballot method is supposed to be too expensive and in need of replacement. It's awfully hard to pretend when a hundred thousand slips of paper go missing. A rigged e-vote? Who's going to know, as long as the cheaters are even a little creative?
How would you like to explain to the grandkids how you pissed away your democracy because you were too effing cheap to fork out a few bucks to maintain it. Dump these machines, fork out the bucks and do it right. I'd have thought eight years of Bush would be enough warning for anybody.
Shock and Awe Two, coming soon to a sand dune near you. Testing...testing...(background laughter) Hey, Dick, is this mike on?
IBM appears to be one of the few surviving "last generation" companies former Labor Secretary Robert Reich writes about. They seem to have some appreciation at the highest corporate level that the long view has real value, and that corporations are to some degree responsible for the well-being of the society in which they operate. IBM's stand against the clearly-inferior OOXML standard indicates that they understand long-term viability sometimes means sacrificing a bit of short-term profit.
This is a lesson Microsoft has never learned.
Right-wingers took over the Labour Party the same way they took over the Democratic Party in the U.S. If somebody doesn't come up with an alternative and kick some of these fascist pricks out pretty soon, we're going to find out just how much worse a police state can be than anything a bunch of terrorists could hope to accomplish.
Free speech, yes. Bully pulpit, no. You sound a lot like those idiots who believe using a megaphone to shout down other people is just free speech.
And when that comment comes from a bully pulpit and is made by an interested party who is far from objective? Your faith is touching. Grossly uninformed, perhaps...but touching.
The problem with Vista is that Microsoft decided to get down on its knees and give a nice Lewinski to the entertainment conglomerates. Aside from the usual tendency toward Bloatware, which could be dealt with largely as the author suggests, all the stuff that makes Vista run like an 85-year-old with a bad knee is linked to DRM in one way or another.
No "do-over" that doesn't strip every bit of that crap out of Vista and put the operating system first, last and always at the service of the user is going to find acceptance. The average person isn't necessarily aware of all the technical stuff, but they're starting to figure out that Vista is spyware. And since just about everybody has something on their system that might violate copyright, they don't want Vista ratting them out. There's actually an article by some lawyer documenting how just going about his legitimate daily on-line activities exposes him to copyright liability in the millions of dollars because the law is completely insane on the matter. A lot of people are simply afraid installing Vista will lead to a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate siccing a slime of lawyers on them (That's my collective term for lawyers...like a flock of birds or a swarm of bees) and grabbing their house, their car and their kids' education fund.
And there's a lot of people out there who know just a little about computers, but all their friends and relatives who hardly know how to turn one on constantly look to them for advice. What do you think that advice is going to be? I'll give you a hint: "Hmm...Vista might try to rat my granny out to the RIAA, I don't know how to configure the security stuff to stop it from squealing without leaving her vulnerable to all kinds of malware, and I don't have time to visit her twice a day to make sure everything's working OK. I think I'll get her a nice, up-to-date copy of XP and sleep easier."
Fuck Vista. Next stop after XP: "X"-nix.
There are indeed some pretty awful auto maintenance designs. The king of them all was a mid-60's GM (Olds, I think). You had to dismount the engine to change the spark plugs. A more modern example is the 2000 Celica. One of the headlights is a major pain in the ass to replace.
I'm certain there's people out there who know far more than I who can come up with better cases.
Those poor Australian police. All that open, free society stuff is just so darned inconvenient when you want to make sure some guy's enjoying the attentions of an Egyptian torturer before news of his arrest is published.
If I was Osama, I'd be laughing myself sick watching these clowns destroy that nasty, evil free society I hate so much. I couldn't do a better job with another hundred planes.
"I'm often under the impression that a strong factor in the success of this line of argumentation is the fact that these populations are getting older, affecting not only their own opinion but also the whole cultural tone of their societies."
I think you're right...but they're also getting a lot of encouragement from the police, right wing media and others who stand to do well in a climate of fear and paranoia.
I wonder how many people appreciate that all those cameras aren't going to stop a committed terrorist, but help convince average, law-abiding citizens that the state has every right to stick its nose into their business as a matter of course. Even a successful act of nuclear terrorism would only kill a single city. The erosion of our open societies by people who claim they want to keep us safe is a threat to our whole way of life.
I guess this would explain why just about everybody in Canada thinks crime is on the increase, even though the numbers conclusively prove otherwise.
You can't sell security hardware and convince nervous old women to throw away their rights if they know there's a long list of things more important than so-called "security". And a lot of those "nervous old women", by the way, are male, in their 30's, and convinced that everything will be fine if we just forget all that due process nonsense and start trusting the cops to throw the right people in jail.
Given the earlier statement that a Wikipedia entry had been altered to hide the Snopes/Malware connection, it seems to me that it's unlikely the people running the site are unaware of the predatory advertising practice occurring under their aegis.
Will it help me remember what I actually wanted when I went down the steps to the basement?
What Hitler couldn't do with the Blitz, that smarmy little prick Blair did with the stroke of a pen.
"Software written for most industries where human lives could conceivably be on the line IS under the watchful eyes of regulators."
I'm not so sure about that. Nobody checked Diebold's software, and now a whole bunch of people are dead in Iraq.
Others have noted that a splendid opportunity to do something really insidious to the RIAA site was wasted. It's worse than that. Even a brain-damaged idiot has enough sense to hire somebody to make the site 'way more difficult to hack next time.
So when somebody finds the next vulnerability, allow me to suggest that before they act, they view "The Yes Men vs The WTA". It's funny, it's subversive in the best sense of the word, and it shows what you can accomplish with a little imagination.
When you've got a bunch of asshats like the RIAA bent over a chair with their pants to their knees, letting them go with a warning verges on criminal irresponsibility.
All that intelligence. All that education. Lifetimes spent in an unceasing uphill struggle to help mankind take the next great technological leap forward...ended in an instant to provide fodder for a /. joke.
Gotta love it.
Wither, Microsoft.