Soon we will all be augmented by our extra brain bags! Organic computers in a purse that we either wear or have implanted in our abdomens. I can't wait for the beta test.
People with their brains implated in their (lower) abdomen? We've already got those. They're called "The RIAA".
As any mouse user can tell you, taking your hands off your keyboard is damaging to your productivity.
Yet people still use a mouse. Why? The "damage" to their productivity in removing their hands from the keyboard is offset by the boost to productivity gained by using a mouse.
So no, this isn't a "Very bad idea" in the slightest. What's a bad idea is not trying new things.
Yeah, globalization, would, by it's very nature, occur in many parts of the world.
"Globalization" is a euphamism for "corporate colonialism". Substitute in the proper variation of that phrase when you "globaliz*" and it makes a lot more sense.
The offending excerpt becomes:
An HP executive said the companies were not responding to anything other than the fact that "we are
colonizing in many parts of the world."
So you'd like your well considered and thoughtful vote (signal) to be swamped in the noise of people whose only motivating factors are the possibility of a free handout?
I already answered that. The answer is "Yes!". More below.
Don't we have enough of that problem already?
And it might get worse, or it might not. But in the long run I expect 3 things to happen:
1. Non-voters will get more involved in politics--not all of them, I'm sure, but a good number. This will also push those of us who already vote to get even more involved.
2. When people vote, they will likely gain some hope in the system (again, not all, but the overall effects), and begin to feel that their vote counts. At first this might just be a plecebo-like effect, but after a time, it becomes real as the chaotic system (the noise you are talking about) coalesces into order, and they (being us as a whole now) will have a nation of our choosing, for good or bad, instead of one of some "elite's" choosing (which leads to less voters out of despair and disillusionment).
3. *If* the extra voters just foul up the system, that will provide an incentive for those of us with any brains to pitch in and educate them (whether directly or by strengthening our education system). I don't just mean educating them about the "issues", but about everything so they can be productive, autonomous members of our nation. We do this already--with regards to vocational training. We turn people into serfs because if we don't, they just become drains on our economy. If their inabilities affected our laws directly, we'd work to educate them more thoroughly. It would also motivate us to fix our broken media system. I can't see any of this as a bad thing--except the fact that we need to be dragged into it kicking and screaming.
I agree that there are some structural changes (I'll assume you'd have this reservation) that need to be made. For example, the Federal Government should not legislate morality as much as it does, but instead provide the support the states need (and the State Governments should act in the same manner towards the cities). The reason is that what's good for the middle of the country is not always good for the coasts, and vice versa.
Frankly, I don't see any widespread legitimate reason why ANY American who has the RIGHT to vote CAN'T vote;
You haven't been keeping up with the news, have you? Many people will be in for a surprise in two weeks when they aren't allowed to vote. This happened in 2000 as well, and I'm sure happens every election.
if this type of citizen is disenfranchised in any way, it is a SELF-EMPOSED disenfranchisement,
Limiting this just to people who voluntarily don't vote, a large portion of this group is disenfranchised by the system which they don't feel is effective and/or doesn't offer any real choice. Fix the system (or at least gussy it up a bit), and they'll vote. I'd say their disenfranchisement isn't self-imposed, but imposed by a flawed system.
and THAT's a right we need to support too - the right NOT to vote.
What do you mean "support" it? Allow it? Sure, I can agree with that, but support it? Discouraging non-voting should be one of any Democratic nation's top priorities. This idea of a lottery allows non-voting, but promotes voting. Sounds good to me.
If someone is only going to vote because of the long-shot chance of winning a lot of money, do you really want that person to help decide the future of our country?
Yes. I rather fancy the idea of living in a Democracy.
Getting a non-voter to vote can be hard, and there are many reasons for not voting so you can't claim that not voting means incompetent. Once they make the effort to vote, they are more likely to take an interest in national and local politics. This is a positive effect, and next thing you know, we actually have a legitimate Democracy.
The artificial monopoly is what gives the incentive to create the so-called IP.
The ability to exploit the artificial monopoly is not required to get someone to voluntarily create so-called IP. It's not even required to get someone to pay for someone else to create IP.
All it really does is force people into paying for things they otherwise wouldn't have to pay for. The reason behind this is to expand (monetarily) a market, via artificial means, not to "promote the arts" but to promote the sale of the arts.
But then there is nothing to prevent some company from developing software in the country that people can afford because the cost of development is cheaper there isn't it?
Isn't there? Can you think of nothing that is stopping someone from independantly producing Windows? Or something stopping someone from recording, exactly, the new U2 album?
This isn't a materials scarcity issue, like with cars. It's not even a labor issue (as all the labor is done by the bootleggers).
If you have a monopoly on iron mines, then all iron comes through you. You can't say, "what's stopping you from finding your own mines, eh?" What we have is an artificial monopoly on so-called IP. The effect (in as much as the monopoly is effective) is the same.
While it's kind of a stretch, it's basically the same as "it's okay to steal a loaf of bread if you're hungry." (With the vendors being the thieves).
Not even close. Copyright violation is not *theft*. It's called theft, but only as a metaphor.
Stealing bread is theft. Copying a CD is unauthorized copying of information. The metaphor is that these two acts are similar, but are indeed *very* different actions.
(and with your bread scenario, if your life depends on it, theft is rational)
"What's that? Looks like a game where you go around killing people, and which focuses on the glorification of the criminal, gangster lifestyle? Cool. Turn up the volume so I can hear!"
<faints>
Re:Except Animals are more likely to be right.
on
Good Bad Attitude
·
· Score: 1
Now, of course that might be just a bit optimistic on my part, but I feel that those who have power tend to want to keep things nice and stable so they can keep it, and part of that means keeping the masses happy, so we're probably OK.
Stable means they have the power and you don't. The only way to keep that stable is to make it more and more difficult for you and I to shake things up.
From this, you get copyright laws which reinforce the status quo. You get tax breaks for corporations to do whatever it takes to make them stronger, not America as a whole stronger. And so on.
Most alarming of all: Democracy is very dangerous to the status quo.
ACTUALLY, Communism is simply a method of socialism, where everything produced is pooled, and handed out according to who needs it.
Communism is a form of Capitalism, where the state runs the business, not a corporation or private business owner.
It's like combining the worst parts of both Capitalism and Socialism.
Capitalism simply means you keep what you produce, and can trade what you have for what you don't.
That doesn't make any sense. Under Capitalism, do you mean to say that if I work at Sprocket Co, I get to keep every sprocket I produce? Just like under Communism (where I work for the state voluntarily (sometimes non-voluntarily, but Communism does not require forced labor), I get paid by the state, same as if I work for a company (again, the same basic level of "voluntary" applies), and I get paid by the company. Both payments are not required to have any relation to what I actually produce.
All that said, I don't mean to say Communism is good at all. What I am saying is that Communism is a form of Capitalism where the State owns all of the means of production, where Capitalism the means of production are in the hands of another ruling class. You could say Capitalism is a kinder, gentler, form of Communism.
I don't know the guy down the street, and I don't care about him; he's got his own problems and solutions, and it would be arrogant of me to assume that I 1: know what his problems are, and 2: that I would have the solution to them. I'd probably irritate the fellow if I were to provide him with my "answers."
Where did all that come from? I just said that you can't be a mentally healthy human being if you don't care about other people in some general manner. I never said you had to control his life.
The American Dream as is known is based in the third basic right: The pursuit of happiness. Note, PURSUIT, not GUARANTEE. I should be free to pursue my dreams without any governmental intervention, so long as I respect the three basic rights of everyone else.
The three basic rights are contradictory. To base a philosophy on the explicit assumption that these rights are absolutes is flawed.
As of right now, we don't have a true capitalist society, as evidenced by the labrynthian maze of laws surrounding all kinds of things, and including such socialist tendencies as medicare and welfare, and fascist tendencies like corporate non-liability.
You are absolutely correct about this. I submit for your consideration, that pure Capitalism, without any Socialism at all is the law of the jungle.
The problem is that the three generally promoted economic (and by necessity, political) systems of Capitalism, Socialism, and Communism are all unworkable in their extreme, ideal, forms, and this is because the dynamics of humans as individuals and societies are far more complex than these simplistic ideals can adequately address.
How many non-geeks know how to install Debian and configure mail services?
Dude, what the hell's wrong with you?
All you have to do is download and burn a Debian.iso, install, configure your firewall, set up DNS, install a mail server, configure the rules for handling your domain and any appropriate aliases and relaying settings, set up IMAP with SSL and any auth schemes you want, test for adequate security and that you aren't an open relay, then keep up with software updates and security bulletins and make sure your system is adequately backed up and stable (including power and network glitches) for adequate availability. Oh yeah, you'll also need to find a domain name that is both available and doesn't suck, and register and administer it as well.
Piece of cake. I don't see what you're complaining about, but whatever. Go back to using the 1 of 5 free e-mail addresses that came with the ISP you have to have anyway, and use "Outlook" or "Mail.app" or "Evolution" or whatever easy-to-use program your OS comes with. Pshaw.
There is a long history of anti-American, anti-technology fanaticism that works to destroy successful enterprises and nations.
Nobody complains about a country that is the most kind, most efficient, least belligerent, most enlightened, etc. They complain when a country rides high atop the shoulders of the poor and pretends its success is due entirely to its morally superior system of Capitalism.
It's not success, progress, or technology that riles the world, it's the subjugation of the morality of the human to the morality of the dollar. You and your philosophical brethren like to claim that the concerned citizens of the world want to throw the world back to the stone-age, but in fact they want to make sure that human progress is both fairly distributed, and that it doesn't consume the resources of the world at an unsustainable rate.
Right now, the US is the worst offender. In a few decades it will likely be China. How would you like it if China polluted the air (imagine smog warnings in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and LA being subject to the whim of China's industrial sector) and claimed anyone who complains is an "anti-Chinese", anti-technology fanatic?
Progress is good, we all love it, but it must be sustainable, rational, and equitable.
A bug (a real one - actually a Flower Fly) was named after Bill Gates.
I'm truly torn. I'm either jealous that the son of a bitch got a fly named after him, or I'm rather pleased that there's some lowly, disease-ridden swarm of flies sitting atop some dung-heap in Costa Rica bearing his name.
Come to think of it, that's quite similar to his connection with Windows. One could really go either way on that.
The American Dream is for me and my childern to have a better life.
That's part of it, sure.
I wouldn't go as far as to say that it includes other people. Do you dream of what some guy across the city childern future is?
Absolutely. Anyone who doesn't is a psychopathic asshole.
To say that everyone should have a better future isn't the American Dream, its more, IMHO, of the Communist Dream.
The Communist Dream is to tell the people that they are working for a better tomorrow for everyone, but instead are working to give more and more power to the party leaders. The corollary is to want to be a Party leader.
In fact, that's not so terribly different from the current scheme in America except that the corporation is the "Party".
I suspect we are thinking of different groups of people here.
Especially when you say this:
it's about how little I expect their lackadaisical approach to operating powerful machinery to affect my computing experience
I'm not thinking of some cavalier warez d00d whose promiscuous KaZaA activities have left his computer more dangerous on the net than a N. Korean Hacker Squad * the Kaos Komputer Klub--and even with the KaZaA moron class, there's a secondary group of people who are told by the primary group of "shoulda-known-betters" that "yeah, install this and get free shit. don't worry, I've done it for years and never got a virus." The first group I think of as responsible enough to take blame, where the second group is an unwitting dupe, who deserves a good dressing down over their activity (so they don't do it again), but you can't really blame them, you know?
Pretty much everyone understands how a gun works well enough to be responsible for its misuse. Some people understand the mechanisms (which are quite simple, even so, most people actually don't understand them) in the gun, and the chemistry and physics of the cartridges (again, some do, most don't), but such knowledge isn't required.
With a computer, even fewer people really understand the basic underlying principles, and never will. I don't know if it's mostly because it's beyond them, or they're just lazy/have better things to do.
This puts us into a situation where a PC is more powerful and versatile than your average human can responsibly handle, but that it's so useful and desirable that we can't justify legally restricting their use (like we do with instruments of war).
In this situation, we're sort of "all in this together". The average user is really having a hard enough time understanding (well, not even understanding, but just muddling by) the basics of their programs (for example, I'm certain there are a lot of Windows users who do not know how to find their Word Documents except through Word's file->open dialog). They're really essentially at the limit of what they can do, for good or ill. On the other hand, Microsoft especially, but Google in this particular case, can do quite a lot.
The real annoying aspect of this situation is that Microsoft is actually in a position to benefit more by ignoring these problems (or even making them worse!).
So yeah, there's a problem, but the user I'm thinking of really can't fix the problem, whereas Microsoft certainly can and should (but won't), and Google can at least minimize their participation in exploiting these "holes" (and they should make some effort).
your notion that Joe Jobs shouldn't be expected to know how to secure their data or their PC is out-and-out dangerously flawed thinking
I don't mean to state that they shouldn't take measures to secure access to their computers. What I mean, simply, is that they shouldn't have to become "computer experts". They are taught that if they keep their password safe, their data is safe, and if they're lucky, they learn a bit about firewalls, spyware, and Windows Update.
What I don't find reasonable is that your average user be expected to ever have to edit the registry or manually modify permissions (until such a day that you can tell by looking at a folder what the permissions are, that you know what that means, that it's simple to change, and that the default permissions are secure). I blame MS more than the user at this point.
More to my point, if you're not keen to get steeped in how to protect your PC in some small way, I don't want you traversing the same network I do.
You can be certain there's some smug hacker who's more 1337 than you who feels just the same about you, and so on. It's just a question of how much should you expect them to know?
Windows users have too much of a burden on them regarding basic security. Right now, MS is more to blame than the user. If MS were to adopt more intelligent security standards, then it's a different story.
As for Google, it doesn't matter at all what MS does by default, it should be abundantly clear that users don't want their private data, even if it's world readable to show up in another user's query by default. Yes, the lax permissions are MS's design, and yes the user can tighten the security, but it's the Google's software that's showing the data, so they're the ones who should show some initiative.
Slashdot Mirror
Rat brains flew a plane for the National Guard to get out of the Vietnam War.
Soon we will all be augmented by our extra brain bags! Organic computers in a purse that we either wear or have implanted in our abdomens. I can't wait for the beta test.
People with their brains implated in their (lower) abdomen? We've already got those. They're called "The RIAA".
Or they're using poorly defined software which is downright hostile about letting you use only the keyboard to move around the interface.
Like Photoshop?
As any mouse user can tell you, taking your hands off your keyboard is damaging to your productivity.
Yet people still use a mouse. Why? The "damage" to their productivity in removing their hands from the keyboard is offset by the boost to productivity gained by using a mouse.
So no, this isn't a "Very bad idea" in the slightest. What's a bad idea is not trying new things.
"Globalization" is a euphamism for "corporate colonialism". Substitute in the proper variation of that phrase when you "globaliz*" and it makes a lot more sense.
The offending excerpt becomes:
We wait in anticipation for the Chinese version of DDR online...
I think we now know the method used by those scientists who predicted those (15?) Californian earthquakes.
So you'd like your well considered and thoughtful vote (signal) to be swamped in the noise of people whose only motivating factors are the possibility of a free handout?
I already answered that. The answer is "Yes!". More below.
Don't we have enough of that problem already?
And it might get worse, or it might not. But in the long run I expect 3 things to happen:
1. Non-voters will get more involved in politics--not all of them, I'm sure, but a good number. This will also push those of us who already vote to get even more involved.
2. When people vote, they will likely gain some hope in the system (again, not all, but the overall effects), and begin to feel that their vote counts. At first this might just be a plecebo-like effect, but after a time, it becomes real as the chaotic system (the noise you are talking about) coalesces into order, and they (being us as a whole now) will have a nation of our choosing, for good or bad, instead of one of some "elite's" choosing (which leads to less voters out of despair and disillusionment).
3. *If* the extra voters just foul up the system, that will provide an incentive for those of us with any brains to pitch in and educate them (whether directly or by strengthening our education system). I don't just mean educating them about the "issues", but about everything so they can be productive, autonomous members of our nation. We do this already--with regards to vocational training. We turn people into serfs because if we don't, they just become drains on our economy. If their inabilities affected our laws directly, we'd work to educate them more thoroughly. It would also motivate us to fix our broken media system. I can't see any of this as a bad thing--except the fact that we need to be dragged into it kicking and screaming.
I agree that there are some structural changes (I'll assume you'd have this reservation) that need to be made. For example, the Federal Government should not legislate morality as much as it does, but instead provide the support the states need (and the State Governments should act in the same manner towards the cities). The reason is that what's good for the middle of the country is not always good for the coasts, and vice versa.
Well, I rather fancy the idea of living in a Republic. Like the USA.
To each his own. I'll take Democracy.
As I have heard many times - Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for lunch.
As opposed to a Republic where you have two sheep and a wolf, but only the wolf gets to vote on what's for lunch?
Frankly, I don't see any widespread legitimate reason why ANY American who has the RIGHT to vote CAN'T vote;
You haven't been keeping up with the news, have you? Many people will be in for a surprise in two weeks when they aren't allowed to vote. This happened in 2000 as well, and I'm sure happens every election.
if this type of citizen is disenfranchised in any way, it is a SELF-EMPOSED disenfranchisement,
Limiting this just to people who voluntarily don't vote, a large portion of this group is disenfranchised by the system which they don't feel is effective and/or doesn't offer any real choice. Fix the system (or at least gussy it up a bit), and they'll vote. I'd say their disenfranchisement isn't self-imposed, but imposed by a flawed system.
and THAT's a right we need to support too - the right NOT to vote.
What do you mean "support" it? Allow it? Sure, I can agree with that, but support it? Discouraging non-voting should be one of any Democratic nation's top priorities. This idea of a lottery allows non-voting, but promotes voting. Sounds good to me.
If someone is only going to vote because of the long-shot chance of winning a lot of money, do you really want that person to help decide the future of our country?
Yes. I rather fancy the idea of living in a Democracy.
Getting a non-voter to vote can be hard, and there are many reasons for not voting so you can't claim that not voting means incompetent. Once they make the effort to vote, they are more likely to take an interest in national and local politics. This is a positive effect, and next thing you know, we actually have a legitimate Democracy.
The artificial monopoly is what gives the incentive to create the so-called IP.
The ability to exploit the artificial monopoly is not required to get someone to voluntarily create so-called IP. It's not even required to get someone to pay for someone else to create IP.
All it really does is force people into paying for things they otherwise wouldn't have to pay for. The reason behind this is to expand (monetarily) a market, via artificial means, not to "promote the arts" but to promote the sale of the arts.
Really, I'd rather pirate The GIMP than buy it for $600.
I'll sell you a legitimate copy the GIMP for $600 if you ever change your mind.
But then there is nothing to prevent some company from developing software in the country that people can afford because the cost of development is cheaper there isn't it?
Isn't there? Can you think of nothing that is stopping someone from independantly producing Windows? Or something stopping someone from recording, exactly, the new U2 album?
This isn't a materials scarcity issue, like with cars. It's not even a labor issue (as all the labor is done by the bootleggers).
If you have a monopoly on iron mines, then all iron comes through you. You can't say, "what's stopping you from finding your own mines, eh?" What we have is an artificial monopoly on so-called IP. The effect (in as much as the monopoly is effective) is the same.
While it's kind of a stretch, it's basically the same as "it's okay to steal a loaf of bread if you're hungry." (With the vendors being the thieves).
Not even close. Copyright violation is not *theft*. It's called theft, but only as a metaphor.
Stealing bread is theft. Copying a CD is unauthorized copying of information. The metaphor is that these two acts are similar, but are indeed *very* different actions.
(and with your bread scenario, if your life depends on it, theft is rational)
How can this even make sense?
"What's that? Looks like a game where you go around killing people, and which focuses on the glorification of the criminal, gangster lifestyle? Cool. Turn up the volume so I can hear!"
<faints>
Now, of course that might be just a bit optimistic on my part, but I feel that those who have power tend to want to keep things nice and stable so they can keep it, and part of that means keeping the masses happy, so we're probably OK.
Stable means they have the power and you don't. The only way to keep that stable is to make it more and more difficult for you and I to shake things up.
From this, you get copyright laws which reinforce the status quo. You get tax breaks for corporations to do whatever it takes to make them stronger, not America as a whole stronger. And so on.
Most alarming of all: Democracy is very dangerous to the status quo.
ACTUALLY, Communism is simply a method of socialism, where everything produced is pooled, and handed out according to who needs it.
Communism is a form of Capitalism, where the state runs the business, not a corporation or private business owner.
It's like combining the worst parts of both Capitalism and Socialism.
Capitalism simply means you keep what you produce, and can trade what you have for what you don't.
That doesn't make any sense. Under Capitalism, do you mean to say that if I work at Sprocket Co, I get to keep every sprocket I produce? Just like under Communism (where I work for the state voluntarily (sometimes non-voluntarily, but Communism does not require forced labor), I get paid by the state, same as if I work for a company (again, the same basic level of "voluntary" applies), and I get paid by the company. Both payments are not required to have any relation to what I actually produce.
All that said, I don't mean to say Communism is good at all. What I am saying is that Communism is a form of Capitalism where the State owns all of the means of production, where Capitalism the means of production are in the hands of another ruling class. You could say Capitalism is a kinder, gentler, form of Communism.
I don't know the guy down the street, and I don't care about him; he's got his own problems and solutions, and it would be arrogant of me to assume that I 1: know what his problems are, and 2: that I would have the solution to them. I'd probably irritate the fellow if I were to provide him with my "answers."
Where did all that come from? I just said that you can't be a mentally healthy human being if you don't care about other people in some general manner. I never said you had to control his life.
The American Dream as is known is based in the third basic right: The pursuit of happiness. Note, PURSUIT, not GUARANTEE. I should be free to pursue my dreams without any governmental intervention, so long as I respect the three basic rights of everyone else.
The three basic rights are contradictory. To base a philosophy on the explicit assumption that these rights are absolutes is flawed.
As of right now, we don't have a true capitalist society, as evidenced by the labrynthian maze of laws surrounding all kinds of things, and including such socialist tendencies as medicare and welfare, and fascist tendencies like corporate non-liability.
You are absolutely correct about this. I submit for your consideration, that pure Capitalism, without any Socialism at all is the law of the jungle.
The problem is that the three generally promoted economic (and by necessity, political) systems of Capitalism, Socialism, and Communism are all unworkable in their extreme, ideal, forms, and this is because the dynamics of humans as individuals and societies are far more complex than these simplistic ideals can adequately address.
How many non-geeks know how to install Debian and configure mail services?
.iso, install, configure your firewall, set up DNS, install a mail server, configure the rules for handling your domain and any appropriate aliases and relaying settings, set up IMAP with SSL and any auth schemes you want, test for adequate security and that you aren't an open relay, then keep up with software updates and security bulletins and make sure your system is adequately backed up and stable (including power and network glitches) for adequate availability. Oh yeah, you'll also need to find a domain name that is both available and doesn't suck, and register and administer it as well.
Dude, what the hell's wrong with you?
All you have to do is download and burn a Debian
Piece of cake. I don't see what you're complaining about, but whatever. Go back to using the 1 of 5 free e-mail addresses that came with the ISP you have to have anyway, and use "Outlook" or "Mail.app" or "Evolution" or whatever easy-to-use program your OS comes with. Pshaw.
There is a long history of anti-American, anti-technology fanaticism that works to destroy successful enterprises and nations.
Nobody complains about a country that is the most kind, most efficient, least belligerent, most enlightened, etc. They complain when a country rides high atop the shoulders of the poor and pretends its success is due entirely to its morally superior system of Capitalism.
It's not success, progress, or technology that riles the world, it's the subjugation of the morality of the human to the morality of the dollar. You and your philosophical brethren like to claim that the concerned citizens of the world want to throw the world back to the stone-age, but in fact they want to make sure that human progress is both fairly distributed, and that it doesn't consume the resources of the world at an unsustainable rate.
Right now, the US is the worst offender. In a few decades it will likely be China. How would you like it if China polluted the air (imagine smog warnings in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and LA being subject to the whim of China's industrial sector) and claimed anyone who complains is an "anti-Chinese", anti-technology fanatic?
Progress is good, we all love it, but it must be sustainable, rational, and equitable.
It would have been nice had they caught this error earlier. Then maybe we could have avoided this year's barrage of hurricanes.
Oh well, at least they caught it well before winter sets in. This should help prevent any severe snow storms and blizzards this season.
A bug (a real one - actually a Flower Fly) was named after Bill Gates.
I'm truly torn. I'm either jealous that the son of a bitch got a fly named after him, or I'm rather pleased that there's some lowly, disease-ridden swarm of flies sitting atop some dung-heap in Costa Rica bearing his name.
Come to think of it, that's quite similar to his connection with Windows. One could really go either way on that.
Gunning for a new toy Linus?
Yeah, I see your point. He must be looking for kickbacks from Cellphones, Inc., Refrigerators Corps, and Supercomputers Ltd.
The American Dream is for me and my childern to have a better life.
That's part of it, sure.
I wouldn't go as far as to say that it includes other people. Do you dream of what some guy across the city childern future is?
Absolutely. Anyone who doesn't is a psychopathic asshole.
To say that everyone should have a better future isn't the American Dream, its more, IMHO, of the Communist Dream.
The Communist Dream is to tell the people that they are working for a better tomorrow for everyone, but instead are working to give more and more power to the party leaders. The corollary is to want to be a Party leader.
In fact, that's not so terribly different from the current scheme in America except that the corporation is the "Party".
We agree on a lot and disagree on a lot.
I suspect we are thinking of different groups of people here.
Especially when you say this:
it's about how little I expect their lackadaisical approach to operating powerful machinery to affect my computing experience
I'm not thinking of some cavalier warez d00d whose promiscuous KaZaA activities have left his computer more dangerous on the net than a N. Korean Hacker Squad * the Kaos Komputer Klub--and even with the KaZaA moron class, there's a secondary group of people who are told by the primary group of "shoulda-known-betters" that "yeah, install this and get free shit. don't worry, I've done it for years and never got a virus." The first group I think of as responsible enough to take blame, where the second group is an unwitting dupe, who deserves a good dressing down over their activity (so they don't do it again), but you can't really blame them, you know?
Pretty much everyone understands how a gun works well enough to be responsible for its misuse. Some people understand the mechanisms (which are quite simple, even so, most people actually don't understand them) in the gun, and the chemistry and physics of the cartridges (again, some do, most don't), but such knowledge isn't required.
With a computer, even fewer people really understand the basic underlying principles, and never will. I don't know if it's mostly because it's beyond them, or they're just lazy/have better things to do.
This puts us into a situation where a PC is more powerful and versatile than your average human can responsibly handle, but that it's so useful and desirable that we can't justify legally restricting their use (like we do with instruments of war).
In this situation, we're sort of "all in this together". The average user is really having a hard enough time understanding (well, not even understanding, but just muddling by) the basics of their programs (for example, I'm certain there are a lot of Windows users who do not know how to find their Word Documents except through Word's file->open dialog). They're really essentially at the limit of what they can do, for good or ill. On the other hand, Microsoft especially, but Google in this particular case, can do quite a lot.
The real annoying aspect of this situation is that Microsoft is actually in a position to benefit more by ignoring these problems (or even making them worse!).
So yeah, there's a problem, but the user I'm thinking of really can't fix the problem, whereas Microsoft certainly can and should (but won't), and Google can at least minimize their participation in exploiting these "holes" (and they should make some effort).
your notion that Joe Jobs shouldn't be expected to know how to secure their data or their PC is out-and-out dangerously flawed thinking
I don't mean to state that they shouldn't take measures to secure access to their computers. What I mean, simply, is that they shouldn't have to become "computer experts". They are taught that if they keep their password safe, their data is safe, and if they're lucky, they learn a bit about firewalls, spyware, and Windows Update.
What I don't find reasonable is that your average user be expected to ever have to edit the registry or manually modify permissions (until such a day that you can tell by looking at a folder what the permissions are, that you know what that means, that it's simple to change, and that the default permissions are secure). I blame MS more than the user at this point.
More to my point, if you're not keen to get steeped in how to protect your PC in some small way, I don't want you traversing the same network I do.
You can be certain there's some smug hacker who's more 1337 than you who feels just the same about you, and so on. It's just a question of how much should you expect them to know?
Windows users have too much of a burden on them regarding basic security. Right now, MS is more to blame than the user. If MS were to adopt more intelligent security standards, then it's a different story.
As for Google, it doesn't matter at all what MS does by default, it should be abundantly clear that users don't want their private data, even if it's world readable to show up in another user's query by default. Yes, the lax permissions are MS's design, and yes the user can tighten the security, but it's the Google's software that's showing the data, so they're the ones who should show some initiative.