"religious and ideological sites were found to have triple the average number of threats per infected site than adult/pornographic sites."
Three points:
1. The report lumps religious and ideological sites together. Maybe the infected sites were ideological (non-religious) sites. You cannot conclude anything about religious sites at all from that statistic.
2. The report implies nothing about the safety of religious/ideological sites. It just says that if a religious/ideological site is infected, then it has more threats on average than an infected adult site. If the percentage of religious/ideological sites that are infected is lower than the percentage of adult sites that are infected, then religious/ideological sites could be much safer on average. Indeed, figure 16 on page 36 of the report doesn't list religous/ideological sites as dangerous. The point is that the safety of religious/ideological sites as a whole must account for uninfected sites. The "number of threats per infected site" is just about irrelevant.
3. If there is any limit to the gullibility or statistical illiteracy of internet users, I have yet to perceive it.
Given that IS professionals tend to be creative and intelligent, it seems to me unethical for them to work so long that they don't have time frequently and deeply to assess the actual benefits and purpose of the work that they do. Each smart person working to improve some project to help some corporation make money is one less working to evaluate the direction society itself should be moving, it seems to me.
Hence, unless you've already concluded we're all moving in the right direction, working hard can be unethical.
Greg Egan's novel Teranesia discusses ideas that sound similar to Quantum Evolution. By the way, although Teranesia is not my favorite of Egan's works, I think Egan is the deepest and most interesting novelist writing today that I know of; his themes as exposited in Diaspora, Axiomatic, Permutation City, have relevance to computer science.
This is the weekly "stupid patent" discussion which seems to demonstrate nothing so much as the tendency of many slash-dotters to label as "stupid" that which does not benefit themselves.
If you do a search, you will see hundreds of people calling these patents "stupid". What does this mean? The companies and people filing the patents and the lawsuits are experts in the area. They may be many things, but they are not "stupid"; underestimate your opponent at your peril.
The fact is: these patents are not stupid at all. They do exactly what they are intended to: they protect the interest of patent attorneys and large companies.
It's true they are antithetical to the interests of engineers who actually want to build products - but this does NOT mean they are stupid. A slash-dotter hacker is NOT more important than a patent lawyer. Just because a course of action benefits a large company and hurts a small company does NOT mean the patent is "stupid". The egotism of engineers who believe the world revolves around creating new products is incredible - most people care more about their paychecks and their families than about whether Stallman can use some new technique in GCC.
I guess what I am trying to say here is that the constant rambling here about stupid patents is getting kind of annoying - if these guys are so stupid, how come they're winning?
The call for an Amazon boycott and the concomitant calls to end patenting "obvious" ideas or stopping "stupid patents" all betray fundamental misunderstandings of the nature of society and of human nature.
Most people are interested in two things: themselves and their families. Under that is their friends, and then possibly society at large.
Stallman has been arguing about patents for years, without any noticeable effect on burgeoning software patents. Here's why:
Who controls whether a patent is awarded? The Patent Office.
Is it in the best interest of a particular manager or bureaucrat there not to award a patent? No. The more patents awarded, the bigger and more important becomes that office. It is in the long-term financial best-interest of any particular USPTO employee to try and make sure as many patents are awarded as possible. (In fact, those who don't believe in software patents probably aren't working there anyway).
So arguing or boycotting on slashdot won't affect USPTO decisions since it doesn't affect what really moves them - they are trying to feed their families and build a stable bureaucratic system.
Once it's agreed that the patent office will award patents as much as they can, then we see it's in any company's best interest to apply for them. Once applied for, it's in their best interest to defend them. Similarly, as with any government entity, it's always in the best interest of that entity to expand, not to contract, its scope. So the whole legal apparatus - judges, lawyers, legislators - for all of these people, it's in their best interest to expand patents as much as possible without actually killing the entire net. It's true that such patents are not in the best interest of individual programmers not employed by large patent-hungry corporations in which they have equity. But this is irrelevant to the process of creating and upholding patents.
In conclusion, the patent system, like any other government system that slashdot types like to rail against (drug control, gun control) will simply expand indefinitely. Occasional individual patents will get overturned, maybe the Amazon boycott will make a tiny difference, but there are thousands of such patents and in the long run it will make no difference.
In conclusion, the patent system is a self-sustaining feedback system. No amount of slashdot posturing can change this. The patent system will continue to expand, and there is nothing slashdot or Stallman can do about it. Boycotting Amazon is like boycotting the ocean because floods kill people sometimes. Patents at this point are a natural force that cannot be stopped.
Slashdot Mirror
The Symantec report, the Internet Security Threat Report, 2011 Trends, did not say what the article in the OP claims.
The actual report is here: http://www.symantec.com/content/en/us/enterprise/other_resources/b-istr_main_report_2011_21239364.en-us.pdf . Page 33 of the report, the only discussion of religion, states
"religious and ideological sites were found to have triple the average number of threats per infected site than
adult/pornographic sites."
Three points:
1. The report lumps religious and ideological sites together. Maybe the infected sites were ideological (non-religious) sites. You cannot conclude anything about religious sites at all from that statistic.
2. The report implies nothing about the safety of religious/ideological sites. It just says that if a religious/ideological site is infected, then it has more threats on average than an infected adult site. If the percentage of religious/ideological sites that are infected is lower than the percentage of adult sites that are infected, then religious/ideological sites could be much safer on average. Indeed, figure 16 on page 36 of the report doesn't list religous/ideological sites as dangerous. The point is that the safety of religious/ideological sites as a whole must account for uninfected sites. The "number of threats per infected site" is just about irrelevant.
3. If there is any limit to the gullibility or statistical illiteracy of internet users, I have yet to perceive it.
A PhD who wants to eat.
Given that IS professionals tend to be creative and intelligent, it seems to me unethical for them to work so long that they don't have time frequently and deeply to assess the actual benefits and purpose of the work that they do. Each smart person working to improve some project to help some corporation make money is one less working to evaluate the direction society itself should be moving, it seems to me. Hence, unless you've already concluded we're all moving in the right direction, working hard can be unethical.
Greg Egan's novel Teranesia discusses ideas that sound similar to Quantum Evolution. By the way, although Teranesia is not my favorite of Egan's works, I think Egan is the deepest and most interesting novelist writing today that I know of; his themes as exposited in Diaspora, Axiomatic, Permutation City, have relevance to computer science.
If you do a search, you will see hundreds of people calling these patents "stupid". What does this mean? The companies and people filing the patents and the lawsuits are experts in the area. They may be many things, but they are not "stupid"; underestimate your opponent at your peril.
The fact is: these patents are not stupid at all. They do exactly what they are intended to: they protect the interest of patent attorneys and large companies.
It's true they are antithetical to the interests of engineers who actually want to build products - but this does NOT mean they are stupid. A slash-dotter hacker is NOT more important than a patent lawyer. Just because a course of action benefits a large company and hurts a small company does NOT mean the patent is "stupid". The egotism of engineers who believe the world revolves around creating new products is incredible - most people care more about their paychecks and their families than about whether Stallman can use some new technique in GCC.
I guess what I am trying to say here is that the constant rambling here about stupid patents is getting kind of annoying - if these guys are so stupid, how come they're winning?
Most people are interested in two things: themselves and their families. Under that is their friends, and then possibly society at large.
Stallman has been arguing about patents for years, without any noticeable effect on burgeoning software patents. Here's why:
Who controls whether a patent is awarded? The Patent Office.
Is it in the best interest of a particular manager or bureaucrat there not to award a patent? No. The more patents awarded, the bigger and more important becomes that office. It is in the long-term financial best-interest of any particular USPTO employee to try and make sure as many patents are awarded as possible. (In fact, those who don't believe in software patents probably aren't working there anyway).
So arguing or boycotting on slashdot won't affect USPTO decisions since it doesn't affect what really moves them - they are trying to feed their families and build a stable bureaucratic system.
Once it's agreed that the patent office will award patents as much as they can, then we see it's in any company's best interest to apply for them. Once applied for, it's in their best interest to defend them. Similarly, as with any government entity, it's always in the best interest of that entity to expand, not to contract, its scope. So the whole legal apparatus - judges, lawyers, legislators - for all of these people, it's in their best interest to expand patents as much as possible without actually killing the entire net. It's true that such patents are not in the best interest of individual programmers not employed by large patent-hungry corporations in which they have equity. But this is irrelevant to the process of creating and upholding patents.
In conclusion, the patent system, like any other government system that slashdot types like to rail against (drug control, gun control) will simply expand indefinitely. Occasional individual patents will get overturned, maybe the Amazon boycott will make a tiny difference, but there are thousands of such patents and in the long run it will make no difference.
In conclusion, the patent system is a self-sustaining feedback system. No amount of slashdot posturing can change this. The patent system will continue to expand, and there is nothing slashdot or Stallman can do about it. Boycotting Amazon is like boycotting the ocean because floods kill people sometimes. Patents at this point are a natural force that cannot be stopped.