Yeah, that was a pretty funny follow-up:) But the idea of 'unbiased and objective' is so laughably funny that I break down into a small pile of shaking goo whenever I think of it. If Carnivore passes, all of its opponents will claim that it was bias and pressure from its supports. If Carnivore doesn't pass, all of its supporters will claim that it is bias and pressure from its opponents. Of course, you could put both opponents and supporters on the review team and hope the biases balance out.:) Eric ze Kidder
No, I never have. But I get almost 0 spam. Maybe 1 or 2 every few months. So, I'm probably not the best person to ask:) And I'm still only a tiny tiny part of the sample set.
Something that just occured to me. The thought is still completely forming, so bear with me a moment. Okay, think of it this way:
* I spend $80 to send an advertisement to X people, where X is a really God-forsakenly large number. I'll say 8000, because I like it. Keep in mind that unlike commercials or billboards or the like, this is a *one-time* cost.
* 99% of those 8000 just ignore my advertisement. However, they don't actually cost me any more money and the 1% who bought my product (which hypothetically costs $1) just paid for my advertising fees.
* If I want more revenue..I send it to another 8000 people.
Therefor, I am thinking that this advertising is based on the idea that in a sufficiently large amount of people, -someone- will pay you money. And you can always get more people -at no additional cost-.
Commercials on TV and billboards have to be craftier than that, because they have continuous fees. Spammers don't.
Wow. Never have I seen so many questions non-answered:) Disclaimer time! Yay. Yes, I believe in God, but I don't believe in religion. It's an interesting concept. Anyway, I have no trouble with evolution. Makes perfect sense to me. But then again, so does the idea of some supreme creator creating the universe and setting evolution in motion. WOAH! Beat that for sheer wackiness! (Or ignorance, depending on your point of view.)
(Incidentally, I'm rather ecuministic: I don't believe any religion is "right", but instead have a shard of the truth within them.)
(Woah - lots of parentheses in this comment.)
And the earth didn't explode from a pumpkin. It's resting on the back of a giant ur-Grue. Everyone knows that.
(I completely forgot what I was going to say:*( <-- Clown nose)
Eric ze Kidder
Search for information on the Milgram experiment. Relish in the knowledge that a majority of human beings - not just 'Germans' - like following orders, even when they question the orders.
Eric ze Kidder
Re:Republic vs. Democracy
on
Inside Echelon
·
· Score: 1
Ah, my bad. I was taught differently:) The point I was trying to make is that a (classical, at least) democracy is direct rule by the people, as opposed to representation. But it's occured to me that I'm probably wrong about this as well. Curse me and my inadequare schooling:)
>> As to employees not being responsible for the actions of their companies? Well, I believe the excuse "I was only following orders" went out of fashion in 1945. Also, there is a quote which goes something like "For evil to succeed, all that is required is for no good man to stand against it". >> I enjoy any day I can point out that humans don't work in the most idealistic way that people imagine. The -vast- majority of human beings will do -whatever their bosses tell them to do-. Why? Because they were told to. Humans (myself included, of course:) like to be told what to do.
A good read is the ever-famous and controversial Milgram experiment, conducted in 1962 at Yale. It's rather complex, but involved a situation where a teacher was ordered to 'torture' a learner (it was a setup...)
Most people went right on to the end. Some questioned the orders by the researcher to continue, but they kept on with the torture.
Links to Milgram: http://www.cba.uri.edu/Faculty/dellabitta/mr415s 98/EthicEtcLinks/Milgram.htm http://www.gpc.peachnet.edu/~shale/humanities/co mposition/assignments/experiment/milgram.h tml
Ah, so only evil information wants to be free. Or information used for profit. Now, what is evil and what is for profit? (ignoring the legal definition for a second:) If I promise to never use your login and password for profit, will you still give it to me? Adding artificial constructs (God, I love that phrase - I'm using it so much recently...) to blanket arguments, so as to limit their effects, pretty much negates them. (And, he did not specify 'information being used by evil corporations (what is an evil corporation?) or for profit'. He said 'information', a common mantra). The truth (in my subject little world, that is:) is that you can't have total privacy and total freedom in the same world. Choose one or the other. Either all information is free...or I get to know your credit rating, criminal record, and what you ate for breakfast. AAnndd, when you add a construct like 'personal information should not be free', then I want to know just what is personal and what isn't - and why.
Information yearns for nothing, being the non-sentient thing it is. But as long as we're on the subject, do you mind giving me all of your pertinent personal information? Date of birth, full name, mother's maiden name, state-issued citizens' number (SSN:), criminal record, etc. It does want to be free, after all. Oh yeah, any logins and passwords you could supply would be helpful as well.
I'm bored and have nothing better to do, so I'll simply express that pedophilia is a sexual disorder relating to a sexual attraction to pre-pubescent children. Any more than that are other abuses.
Not that I disagree with what you say at all, but like I said: I'm bored:)
What does linux do? What does any piece of software do? To re-say what was said earlier, how can you determine if a product is working properly when you don't know what 'working properly' is? As a real-world example, I was recently tasked to modify some software we use inhouse. This was a verbal tasking of 'make sure the software conforms to the spec'. I demanded it in writing (CYA) and realized soon after that the specification was broad and almost impossible to test. So, I put everything on hold (effectively going on strike:) until I was given a specification that could be tested. Why? Because otherwise, there's no way to determine if you did it right. Now, here's a question for you, concerning the obvious things you were talking about: what if the specification calls for a back door? (Ignoring the fact this may be bad design..) and that part of the code was taken out? Suddenly, your code does -not work to specification-. Therefor, it cannot be trusted to work properly under the situation it was designed for. That is what it was all about. It's not open vs closed, it's more like orderly vs chaotic (bad example, I know..), as has been said so many times, but I felt the need to post something because I don't have anything to do today:)
There's a plethora (God, I love that word) of tools available for both Windows and the various Unices (and Linux). I use both VS and Cygwin when in Windows and GCC (of course) under Linux. Strangely, there's quite a few bits of VS that I would give several limbs in order to have everywhere, but one cannot have everything.
Tools aren't a real reason, since both system have things the other don't have and, for the most part, both systems have the same set of tools. As an idealogical reason, freedom is a good answer, but I don't really care for idealogy:)
No reason at all to develop under Linux unless you want to. I develop under both (and a bit of cross-platform work..and VAX.. dear God, no more VAX..) and I've got all of the tools I could ever need or want on both systems. While there may be philosophical reasons for developing under Linux, I haven't run into any practical reasons. If the development is happy under Windows, then stick with Windows. If the Linux development brings unforeseen joy and peace, then be happy with Linux.
Eric ze Kidder
Re:It's all been said before, just not this time
on
More Napster Updates
·
· Score: 1
Mmm..ad hominem attacks.. I support Metallica's right (privilege, whatever) to 'protect' their intellectual property. It's a simple philosophical choice and has nothing to do with corporations policing the net, which they could probably do anyway if they were really bored enough. Of course, like any philosophical issue, some people see it one way, some people it another, and never the twain shall meet (or something like that). And both sides take the moral high ground. It's only right that way. And there's probably lots of hypocrites on both sides. Absolute tons. Hell, there's probably more than two sides. Well, that's my waste of bandwidth for the week.
I have (had) lazy eye as well, although I've had two operations to correct the problem. Unfortunately, I still don't have 100% stereovision (a psych professor of mine called me a walking case study:) and so stereoscopes (and even distance vision to some extent) don't work too well for me.
Let's not forget so-called 'private' information. If there is a right to *any* piece of information, it's not just media, it's also any piece of information about YOU. (using the 3rd-person, generalistic view, of course:)
Okay, true, that is a difference. Of course, this makes Lars right as well - relativism aside, I agree with him (and seriously mock the 'information wants to be free' thing). Do Lars and I 'get it'? That depends on just what 'it' is. In this case, 'it' is a particular philosophy espoused by a particular organization (just look at those big words gooooo), and since I don't subscribe to that philosophy, of course I don't get it. Ah well:) I'll probably be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.
Even should the code not be run automatically, once it is run it is a huge mistake to allow untrusted code to be executed with the same permissions as the end user. MS made a very big mistake with that 'feature'.
Okay, I send someone on a unix box a perl script that supposed to do something wacky with their terminal. Maybe flash 'I LOVE YOU' in weird letters. They go 'oh cool', open it, and run the perl script. Suddenly, sendmail gets a little present from my perl script.
Who is responsible for this needless destruction? The fact that someone was able to run a program that I sent them - obviously untrusted - in their user space is a serious problem.
Or maybe the user just made a mistake:)
The comparison between the Intel bug and the 'Microsoft' bug was rather poorly done and not the same thing at all. But it gave people a chance to bash Microsoft, so it can't be all bad, eh?:)
Or perhaps it is your morality that is wrong?:) I'm not saying that it is, of course, since morality is a very subjective thing. But to dismiss a person's beliefs offhand like is rather rude. I also agree that what MP3 did was illegal, but I can see the point of view which argues that they did nothing wrong. Most (and I say this from observation) people who post to Slashdot are in agreement that information should be 'free' (ironically, most people are also privacy advocates) and that intellectual property has no place in the multiverse. But you know, that's the just one way of looking at things and it's neither wrong nor right. It just is. Same with believing that MP3.com was doing something 'bad' because they were infringing on others' intellectual property. Now that I've said absolutely nothing of content to support my idea that morality is subjective, I go now.
When I was at school, the university owned the rights to any work I developed using their machines, but I could do anything on my own time, as long as I used my hardware and such.
> Personally, I think we might start to see more of this - people just > getting fundamentally fed up and choosing whole new careers. I'm doing that. It's not the computer field that I'm fed up with, it's corporations in general. They really really don't mesh with the way my mind goes. And, I've noticed, ever since I started programming professionally, I stopped programming as a hobby - it wasn't fun anymore. Very depressing. So, in order to get my Happiness rating back up, I'm going back to school and switching to the psychology field. Freaky, huh?
> Why even bother with a scripting language, use C and fix the app > itself. More power and speed. And fame too, if you add something > really useful. I can think of many reasons. You don't know C and have no intention of learning it. You just want to get the job out. Fixing the hardcode is a great way to make a program non-configurable. One of the neat things about VBA is that you can pretty much make any app using a core engine - similar to MOOs, MUSHes, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
One of my favorite kernel panics was when I copied over a QT library to upgrade KDE. I did:
:)
mv <new lib> <old lib>
Problem: I did this from -within- KDE. As soon as I hit enter, X disappeared into a nice 'kernal panic'. It was very cool.
(another cool panic is when my hard drive cable came loose and linux couldn't find itself anymore
Eric ze Kidder
Yeah, that was a pretty funny follow-up :) But the idea of 'unbiased and objective' is so laughably funny that I break down into a small pile of shaking goo whenever I think of it. :)
If Carnivore passes, all of its opponents will claim that it was bias and pressure from its supports.
If Carnivore doesn't pass, all of its supporters will claim that it is bias and pressure from its opponents.
Of course, you could put both opponents and supporters on the review team and hope the biases balance out.
Eric ze Kidder
No, I never have. But I get almost 0 spam. Maybe 1 or 2 every few months. So, I'm probably not the best person to ask :) And I'm still only a tiny tiny part of the sample set.
Something that just occured to me. The thought is still completely forming, so bear with me a moment. Okay, think of it this way:
* I spend $80 to send an advertisement to X people, where X is a really God-forsakenly large number. I'll say 8000, because I like it. Keep in mind that unlike commercials or billboards or the like, this is a *one-time* cost.
* 99% of those 8000 just ignore my advertisement. However, they don't actually cost me any more money and the 1% who bought my product (which hypothetically costs $1) just paid for my advertising fees.
* If I want more revenue..I send it to another 8000 people.
Therefor, I am thinking that this advertising is based on the idea that in a sufficiently large amount of people, -someone- will pay you money. And you can always get more people -at no additional cost-.
Commercials on TV and billboards have to be craftier than that, because they have continuous fees. Spammers don't.
Eric ze Kidder
Wow. Never have I seen so many questions non-answered :) Disclaimer time! Yay. Yes, I believe in God, but I don't believe in religion. It's an interesting concept. Anyway, I have no trouble with evolution. Makes perfect sense to me. But then again, so does the idea of some supreme creator creating the universe and setting evolution in motion. WOAH! Beat that for sheer wackiness! (Or ignorance, depending on your point of view.)
:*( <-- Clown nose)
(Incidentally, I'm rather ecuministic: I don't believe any religion is "right", but instead have a shard of the truth within them.)
(Woah - lots of parentheses in this comment.)
And the earth didn't explode from a pumpkin. It's resting on the back of a giant ur-Grue. Everyone knows that.
(I completely forgot what I was going to say
Eric ze Kidder
Search for information on the Milgram experiment. Relish in the knowledge that a majority of human beings - not just 'Germans' - like following orders, even when they question the orders.
Eric ze Kidder
Ah, my bad. I was taught differently :) The point I was trying to make is that a (classical, at least) democracy is direct rule by the people, as opposed to representation. But it's occured to me that I'm probably wrong about this as well. Curse me and my inadequare schooling :)
Just being a pain, but the US was never a democracy; it's a republic. :)
Unless their ethics and the laws coincide :)
>> :) like to be told what to do.
s 98/EthicEtcLinks/Milgram.htm o mposition/assignments/experiment/milgram.h tml
As to employees not being responsible for the actions of their companies? Well, I believe the excuse "I was only following orders" went out of fashion in 1945. Also, there is a quote which goes something like "For evil to succeed, all that is required is for no good man to stand against it".
>>
I enjoy any day I can point out that humans don't work in the most idealistic way that people imagine. The -vast- majority of human beings will do -whatever their bosses tell them to do-. Why? Because they were told to. Humans (myself included, of course
A good read is the ever-famous and controversial Milgram experiment, conducted in 1962 at Yale. It's rather complex, but involved a situation where a teacher was ordered to 'torture' a learner (it was a setup...)
Most people went right on to the end. Some questioned the orders by the researcher to continue, but they kept on with the torture.
Links to Milgram:
http://www.cba.uri.edu/Faculty/dellabitta/mr415
http://www.gpc.peachnet.edu/~shale/humanities/c
Ah, so only evil information wants to be free. Or information used for profit. Now, what is evil and what is for profit? (ignoring the legal definition for a second :) If I promise to never use your login and password for profit, will you still give it to me? :) is that you can't have total privacy and total freedom in the same world. Choose one or the other. Either all information is free...or I get to know your credit rating, criminal record, and what you ate for breakfast. AAnndd, when you add a construct like 'personal information should not be free', then I want to know just what is personal and what isn't - and why.
Adding artificial constructs (God, I love that phrase - I'm using it so much recently...) to blanket arguments, so as to limit their effects, pretty much negates them. (And, he did not specify 'information being used by evil corporations (what is an evil corporation?) or for profit'. He said 'information', a common mantra).
The truth (in my subject little world, that is
Eric
Information yearns for nothing, being the non-sentient thing it is. But as long as we're on the subject, do you mind giving me all of your pertinent personal information? Date of birth, full name, mother's maiden name, state-issued citizens' number (SSN :), criminal record, etc. It does want to be free, after all. Oh yeah, any logins and passwords you could supply would be helpful as well.
I'm bored and have nothing better to do, so I'll simply express that pedophilia is a sexual disorder relating to a sexual attraction to pre-pubescent children. Any more than that are other abuses.
:)
Not that I disagree with what you say at all, but like I said: I'm bored
Eric ze Kidder
What does linux do? What does any piece of software do? To re-say what was said earlier, how can you determine if a product is working properly when you don't know what 'working properly' is? As a real-world example, I was recently tasked to modify some software we use inhouse. This was a verbal tasking of 'make sure the software conforms to the spec'. I demanded it in writing (CYA) and realized soon after that the specification was broad and almost impossible to test. So, I put everything on hold (effectively going on strike :) until I was given a specification that could be tested. Why? Because otherwise, there's no way to determine if you did it right. :)
Now, here's a question for you, concerning the obvious things you were talking about: what if the specification calls for a back door? (Ignoring the fact this may be bad design..) and that part of the code was taken out? Suddenly, your code does -not work to specification-. Therefor, it cannot be trusted to work properly under the situation it was designed for.
That is what it was all about. It's not open vs closed, it's more like orderly vs chaotic (bad example, I know..), as has been said so many times, but I felt the need to post something because I don't have anything to do today
Never used Cygwin, I see.
:)
There's a plethora (God, I love that word) of tools available for both Windows and the various Unices (and Linux). I use both VS and Cygwin when in Windows and GCC (of course) under Linux. Strangely, there's quite a few bits of VS that I would give several limbs in order to have everywhere, but one cannot have everything.
Tools aren't a real reason, since both system have things the other don't have and, for the most part, both systems have the same set of tools. As an idealogical reason, freedom is a good answer, but I don't really care for idealogy
Eric ze Kidder
No reason at all to develop under Linux unless you want to. I develop under both (and a bit of cross-platform work ..and VAX.. dear God, no more VAX..) and I've got all of the tools I could ever need or want on both systems. While there may be philosophical reasons for developing under Linux, I haven't run into any practical reasons. If the development is happy under Windows, then stick with Windows. If the Linux development brings unforeseen joy and peace, then be happy with Linux.
Eric ze Kidder
Mmm..ad hominem attacks..
I support Metallica's right (privilege, whatever) to 'protect' their intellectual property. It's a simple philosophical choice and has nothing to do with corporations policing the net, which they could probably do anyway if they were really bored enough. Of course, like any philosophical issue, some people see it one way, some people it another, and never the twain shall meet (or something like that).
And both sides take the moral high ground. It's only right that way.
And there's probably lots of hypocrites on both sides. Absolute tons.
Hell, there's probably more than two sides.
Well, that's my waste of bandwidth for the week.
I have (had) lazy eye as well, although I've had two operations to correct the problem. Unfortunately, I still don't have 100% stereovision (a psych professor of mine called me a walking case study :) and so stereoscopes (and even distance vision to some extent) don't work too well for me.
Let's not forget so-called 'private' information. If there is a right to *any* piece of information, it's not just media, it's also any piece of information about YOU. (using the 3rd-person, generalistic view, of course :)
Eric ze Kidder
Okay, true, that is a difference. Of course, this makes Lars right as well - relativism aside, I agree with him (and seriously mock the 'information wants to be free' thing). Do Lars and I 'get it'? That depends on just what 'it' is. In this case, 'it' is a particular philosophy espoused by a particular organization (just look at those big words gooooo), and since I don't subscribe to that philosophy, of course I don't get it. Ah well :) I'll probably be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.
Eric ze Kidder
Okay, I send someone on a unix box a perl script that supposed to do something wacky with their terminal. Maybe flash 'I LOVE YOU' in weird letters. They go 'oh cool', open it, and run the perl script. Suddenly, sendmail gets a little present from my perl script.
Who is responsible for this needless destruction? The fact that someone was able to run a program that I sent them - obviously untrusted - in their user space is a serious problem.
Or maybe the user just made a mistake :)
The comparison between the Intel bug and the 'Microsoft' bug was rather poorly done and not the same thing at all. But it gave people a chance to bash Microsoft, so it can't be all bad, eh? :)
Eric ze Kidder
Or perhaps it is your morality that is wrong? :)
I'm not saying that it is, of course, since morality is a very subjective thing. But to dismiss a person's beliefs offhand like is rather rude. I also agree that what MP3 did was illegal, but I can see the point of view which argues that they did nothing wrong.
Most (and I say this from observation) people who post to Slashdot are in agreement that information should be 'free' (ironically, most people are also privacy advocates) and that intellectual property has no place in the multiverse. But you know, that's the just one way of looking at things and it's neither wrong nor right. It just is. Same with believing that MP3.com was doing something 'bad' because they were infringing on others' intellectual property.
Now that I've said absolutely nothing of content to support my idea that morality is subjective, I go now.
Eric ze Kidder
When I was at school, the university owned the rights to any work I developed using their machines, but I could do anything on my own time, as long as I used my hardware and such.
Eric
> Personally, I think we might start to see more of this - people just
> getting fundamentally fed up and choosing whole new careers.
I'm doing that. It's not the computer field that I'm fed up with, it's corporations in general. They really really don't mesh with the way my mind goes. And, I've noticed, ever since I started programming professionally, I stopped programming as a hobby - it wasn't fun anymore. Very depressing.
So, in order to get my Happiness rating back up, I'm going back to school and switching to the psychology field. Freaky, huh?
Eric
> Why even bother with a scripting language, use C and fix the app
> itself. More power and speed. And fame too, if you add something
> really useful.
I can think of many reasons. You don't know C and have no intention of learning it. You just want to get the job out. Fixing the hardcode is a great way to make a program non-configurable. One of the neat things about VBA is that you can pretty much make any app using a core engine - similar to MOOs, MUSHes, etc.
Eric