Claiming no OS today allows you to run an application that way is just a bit of friendly trolling.
I think he still has a point because: How does Joe Public easily use "sandbox" for an arbitrary program he just downloaded and have the program actually work if the program is actually safe...
The people who can easily figure out 1) and 2) typically need sandboxes less than Joe Sixpack:).
Just because there's SELinux and AppArmor doesn't mean much, they're the equivalent of security doors, locks, walls and safes. They are the building blocks, someone has to build a few default rooms for people to run stuff in, and ones which are actually secure.
I have seen an Ubuntu default AppArmor template for Firefox that really doesn't prevent a pwned firefox instance from accessing the user's documents - it only blacklists access to specific areas, it doesn't whitelist.
p.s. do you have a link to the sandbox(8) man page? I can't seem to find it.
But if those managers lost their jobs they might not live as long:).
Seriously though, if we ever get robots to do nearly all of the work, socialist countries would more likely be better for the humans, than "full free market capitalist" countries.
After all, you only need a very few robot programmers to keep the very rich happy with stuff. What do you then do with the other people who are "redundant". Perhaps a few ultra-rich would adopt a few million people as pets?
So taking the long view, a socialist country is likelier to have a better "migration/upgrade path" than a less socialist and more "capitalist" one.
I'd probably be jobless too in that sort of future, since even though I'm smarter than average (maybe even smarter than the average slashdotter:) ), I'm far from the smartest. My quality of life would then depend on the sort of society I live in. In one society, it would be just above subsistence living, with > 99% of the resources controlled by the wealthy. Might even still be a democracy with the stupid voters repeatedly voting for one of the Same Two they'd think would screw them less "this time round"... In a different society, I might even be "well off" by current modern standards, just not filthy rich (no personal jet and skyscraper for me).
After all say we postpone[1] the energy problem (nuclear reactors etc) and have robots to do the work, there would be more resources and energy to go around for all. It's just a matter of whether > 99% goes to 1-2% or it's spread out a bit more...
[1] It's all postponing the seemingly inevitable:).
You'd be better off with a different employer. They're doing both parties a favour by picking someone else instead.
It's like having a girl reject you just because she saw a pic of you drunk on a Saturday, you shouldn't be in a more permanent and closer relationship with her.
My prediction is once the upcoming generation start setting up their own businesses, it'll be the bosses and their friends who have pictures/videos of themselves drunk on FB, and "Overshare Syndrome", and they'd think nothing of it (not even one rule for them, one rule for the others - it'll be the norm). Could even work against you if they think you're too straight-laced or paranoid for certain jobs. Times change, the bosses from the Victorian era probably wouldn't want to hire a typical employee of today.
Fact is, at a recent company trip, bosses, subordinates etc were all drinking and doing silly stuff (a boss even ended up having a colourful wig on his head). Plenty of pics of that on FB. I think we call that having a good time.
Now if you drive while drunk and kill somebody, or show up for an important presentation drunk that shows poor judgement.
It might help, but more efficient cars and driving, plus efficient heating/cooling (including insulation) for houses would help a lot more.
Typical non-gaming laptops nowadays consume not more than 60W. Non game desktops including monitor = 150W. Let's just assume 100W average for simplicity. Running for 10 hours a day (work + home) = 1 kilowatt hour. Flash would contribute to only a fraction of that - say 33%. So banning flash would save you 0.333kWh.
A 2 kilowatt electric heater running for just 10 minutes would use 0.333kWh of energy.
Ovens, dryers, heaters, air-conditioners all consume power in the kilowatts. Washing machines use kilowatts on hot/warm cycles. So if you run these for hours they very quickly surpass PC energy consumption.
40 litres of petrol is about 380 kilowatt hours. So if you use 40 litres per week, that's 54 kilowatt hours per day. Of course that's directly as fossil fuel not electricity, so that's just more for perspective.
Assuming conversion of fossil fuel to electricity is at 33% efficiency, multiply the electricity consumption figures by 3 to compare fossil fuel consumption with the petrol car (of course normally coal is used not petroleum).
Just drive 10% more efficiently (or drive 10% less) per day and save more than an entire PC's daily power consumption.
I suspect the scheduler would make a bigger difference if you were running multiple processes at the same time.
e.g. multiple processes in various scenarios: CPU intensive. disk IO intensive. network IO intensive, single NIC. network IO intensive, two NICs. network IO intensive, four NICs. And various combinations of CPU, disk, network.
Then latency tests: One to X processes with high CPU, while measuring latency experienced by another process. One to X processes with high IO, while measuring latency experienced by another process.
Whether they really wanted to or not almost everyone votes for one of the two major parties because they feel voting for a 3rd party is effectively throwing their vote away. (Which only makes sense to think that way because everyone votes for the two major parties. It's a feedback loop but it's one we seem to be stuck in.)
It's not throwing your vote away if say some 3rd party gets 20% of the votes, and 1) The other voters notice (and might start voting accordingly in future) 2) The politicians notice and start changing their priorities
But I suppose you know that already.
Anyway if most voters really think this system sucks, perhaps someone should start a political party and their campaign promise would be to change the election system so that it's not first past the post, and their second promise would be to resign soon after to test out the system:).
As the OP proposes, the ones who only care about abortion will only vote about abortion. Everything else will be left to people who care about them. I think it could even be extended to say "I trust _____ to represent me in matters of abortion, but I think that ____ better represents my views on matters of war."
OK what then would be considered enough votes to pass? If it's > 50% of all voters (even those who don't bother to vote) it could mean nothing ever gets done.
third party candidates are seen as "throwing one's vote away"
That's only if you don't look long term.
If a third party candidate gets significant number of votes, the other voters might vote for that candidate again in the next election. This is called "signalling".
Meanwhile the third party candidates only get 1% of the votes.
If you think the both parties are crap, then it's time to start voting for someone else. Rather than _waste_ your vote voting for crap, you might as well "waste" it to signal to the voters and candidates that you are also unhappy with the two parties and are trying for someone else.
Lastly is it really true that all political parties are so one dimensional that they can be summarized as "left" and "right"? I think it's more that people aren't bothering to look at the details.
So you go to an Italian restaurant and like the food. Next week you're going to go to the same cook and order sushi?
Only if: 1) The restaurant serves good sushi 2) I feel like having their sushi
If there are enough people who want Italian restaurants that serve sushi, people would start restaurants that do so.
Such restaurants already exist.
The exact same problem exists with the party system: the Republicans may have dragged our country into two wars, presided over a major recession, gave the banks a big fat bailout so they could pay their CEOs a big fat bonus... but at least they're (mostly) anti-abortion, and that's what really counts right?
You should ask the voters. The Two Parties seem to be able to figure out what really counts for the voters. As a result, between the two, they've been getting about 98% of the votes. Which is not bad given the diversity of the USA.
If you think voters are voting for stuff just because of one item, without taking into consideration of other rather important factors, I don't see why such voters will do any different or better for "metagovernment" as the OP proposes.
If after 4 years voters can't even see the effects/results of their votes for themselves and still keep voting for the wrong bunch (and then blame the system, everyone, except themselves), then I don't see why letting them micromanage government is a good idea.
Of course if after 4 years the voters are voting for the same bunch because they actually like the results, hey Democracy is working as designed, even if you don't like it.
Lastly, war is where I agree that all voters should get a vote, since war is a major issue that affects everyone even people from other countries. My proposal for war is this: http://slashdot.org/journal/208853/How-to-reduce-unwanted-wars In contrast, allowing voters to vote on "everything" is a pretty stupid idea. Like getting a million committee members to vote on a novel/legislation/computer program line by line.
Yes, the people vote for the legislators fairly well. Then those legislators sell their policy votes to the highest bidder
And the voters reelect those legislators after that? Seems to me many US legislators have been around for years or even decades.
2. The majority of voters did not get what they want. Congressional Confidence has been below 40% since at least the 1970s. No matter what party is in charge, they are letting the people down.
Really? Then the voters should vote differently right? The last I checked the voters have been voting for the same two parties. There are more than two parties. I don't see why the Two Parties should be doing things differently when they keep getting 98% of the votes.
So the Two Parties are clearly doing their jobs pretty well. Whether the voters are doing their jobs well as voters is a different matter.
If the people have been voting for stuff they don't want for so long, why should your metagovernment thing be better?
Don't they already have a system in California where voters can vote on all sorts of stuff? Is that working well for California?
Better voting systems still won't fix the root issue: the people who get elected into power are corrupted by that power.
votes are sold to the highest bidder, idiots are in charge
The root issue is not what you claim. If you're talking about the USA, are votes really sold to the highest bidder? I am assuming the elections are not badly Diebolded.
What makes you so confident "metagovernment" will work? Makes no sense to me.
1) So far from what I see, in the 2008 US Presidential election, more than 98% of the voters who voted, voted for either a Democrat or a Republican. You get similar figures for the 2004 elections and so on.
There is choice- the voters could have voted for someone else (e.g Nader) but less than 2% ever do so. So either the Two Parties are better choices than the rest, or the voters are idiots.
If the voters are idiots then metagovernment won't work, nor would a "small government + Big Corps" system work (how well are voters going to vote with their wallets if you think they're not getting "ballot box" right).
2) I don't tell a chef in detail how to cook my dinner. I'm not as good a cook as he is (if I was better, maybe I should be a chef instead). But I can taste the results for myself. If the results are satisfactory, I'll vote for him again. If they aren't to my taste, I'll vote for someone else.
Just because your party didn't win doesn't mean the system isn't working the way the majority of the voters want.
Then again you may be right, the idiots are in charge. But in nondiebolded elections, the voters are in charge:).
0) A main requirement for voting systems is convincing the losing sides that they _lost_.
If not enough of the losers believe they lost, you may have riots or civil war.
Something simple like a decent paper ballot system where the votes are counted in front of observers (from the various parties, and 3rd party observers) can be quite convincing to the losers.
So even if this e-voting system is that good, it may be still too opaque/fancy for the losers and their supporters.
The main weakness I see with paper ballots (assuming they are done correctly) is postal votes, but e-voting stuff may still be just as vulnerable to rigging via postal votes.
Now, is there any reason why a cloned person would be any less of a person than one born and raised?
Of course not- identical twins.
To me the big issue would be transgenic creatures. At what point do you legally consider a transgenic creature human. Or a nonhuman (and thus without the rights and responsibilities of a human).
We might have a future where the technology might be ready for it- such transhumans/posthumans can be grown/created.
But society might not be ready for it. That's why IMO we should be very careful about what technologies we start pushing/developing.
Same goes for AIs. If you make a really advanced AI, at what point do you start giving it the same rights as: a farm animal, a pet, or a human?
Too many people have the "do it because we can" philosophy. That won't be good in the long term.
The other thing that just gets me ticked is people NOT WASHING THEIR HANDS when they use the restroom. I see it daily...people walk in, do their business, and walk out. H*ll, didn't your momma tell you to wash up after you do your business?
From a selfish POV, it's sometimes better for you if you don't wash your hands assuming you can manage to not touch anything else in the washroom on your way in and out- e.g. door knobs/handles, taps, etc. Because, assuming you're somewhat healthy, your body can cope with whatever it has already. So if you don't touch anything else and keep your hands reasonably dry (e.g. momma taught you to not pee on your hands ), nothing changes much and so stuff is likely to stay AOK for you (someone else might not be able to cope with your germs though.).
In contrast if you wash your hands you are more likely to touch a tap that has been contaminated by someone else who is sick and has germs that your body isn't immune to.
Which brings us to the next issue - many washrooms/toilets have design flaws: 1) People can't easily turn off the taps without recontaminating their already cleaned hands (or turn them on without contaminating them with their dirty hands). 2) People can't easily open the doors without recontaminating their already cleaned hands (or contaminate the surfaces with their dirty hands).
Yes, if you are careful you can close the taps etc without recontamination however most people are oblivious about such stuff, so they'd be contributing to and taking from the shared pool of germs on the taps and handles in the process of washing their hands. The moisture after washing is nice for most bacteria. Not all toilets are so badly designed of course, and if it's your own toilet, you'd just be getting your own germs anyway:).
Furthermore this normally isn't a big problem, because most of us do have somewhat working immune systems after all, but it is rather silly to keep telling people to wash their hands but not tell washroom builders/managers to fix their flawed washrooms.
Re:OSNews? Thom Holwerda? Seriously?
on
OpenBSD 4.8 Released
·
· Score: 1, Interesting
I'm sure you're not talking about Unix because Unix was never designed with security in mind and it's ridiculous to think that security was even a consideration in 1970
Yeah it's kind of funny how people keep talking about how secure unix systems are and how superior they are when they aren't.
Slashdot Mirror
Claiming no OS today allows you to run an application that way is just a bit of friendly trolling.
I think he still has a point because: How does Joe Public easily use "sandbox" for an arbitrary program he just downloaded and have the program actually work if the program is actually safe...
The people who can easily figure out 1) and 2) typically need sandboxes less than Joe Sixpack :).
I have actually proposed this: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/156693
Just because there's SELinux and AppArmor doesn't mean much, they're the equivalent of security doors, locks, walls and safes. They are the building blocks, someone has to build a few default rooms for people to run stuff in, and ones which are actually secure.
I have seen an Ubuntu default AppArmor template for Firefox that really doesn't prevent a pwned firefox instance from accessing the user's documents - it only blacklists access to specific areas, it doesn't whitelist.
p.s. do you have a link to the sandbox(8) man page? I can't seem to find it.
So that explains it now.
The ISPs in my country have obviously been preparing us for years of cyberwar.
But if those managers lost their jobs they might not live as long :).
:) ), I'm far from the smartest. My quality of life would then depend on the sort of society I live in. In one society, it would be just above subsistence living, with > 99% of the resources controlled by the wealthy. Might even still be a democracy with the stupid voters repeatedly voting for one of the Same Two they'd think would screw them less "this time round"... In a different society, I might even be "well off" by current modern standards, just not filthy rich (no personal jet and skyscraper for me).
:).
Seriously though, if we ever get robots to do nearly all of the work, socialist countries would more likely be better for the humans, than "full free market capitalist" countries.
After all, you only need a very few robot programmers to keep the very rich happy with stuff. What do you then do with the other people who are "redundant". Perhaps a few ultra-rich would adopt a few million people as pets?
So taking the long view, a socialist country is likelier to have a better "migration/upgrade path" than a less socialist and more "capitalist" one.
I'd probably be jobless too in that sort of future, since even though I'm smarter than average (maybe even smarter than the average slashdotter
After all say we postpone[1] the energy problem (nuclear reactors etc) and have robots to do the work, there would be more resources and energy to go around for all. It's just a matter of whether > 99% goes to 1-2% or it's spread out a bit more...
[1] It's all postponing the seemingly inevitable
Heh sure take Scotland the land of deep fried Mars Bars out of it, that'll make the US look better...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep-fried_Mars_bar
Not.
You'd be better off with a different employer. They're doing both parties a favour by picking someone else instead.
It's like having a girl reject you just because she saw a pic of you drunk on a Saturday, you shouldn't be in a more permanent and closer relationship with her.
My prediction is once the upcoming generation start setting up their own businesses, it'll be the bosses and their friends who have pictures/videos of themselves drunk on FB, and "Overshare Syndrome", and they'd think nothing of it (not even one rule for them, one rule for the others - it'll be the norm). Could even work against you if they think you're too straight-laced or paranoid for certain jobs. Times change, the bosses from the Victorian era probably wouldn't want to hire a typical employee of today.
Fact is, at a recent company trip, bosses, subordinates etc were all drinking and doing silly stuff (a boss even ended up having a colourful wig on his head). Plenty of pics of that on FB. I think we call that having a good time.
Now if you drive while drunk and kill somebody, or show up for an important presentation drunk that shows poor judgement.
That's US black propaganda.
All of it? That whole page untrue? Citation please :).
To get an excuse for doing something they know is wrong?
There was a Costa Rican flag there... So I don't buy the bullshit that it's "Google Maps".
Maybe the next step: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_images_in_the_Soviet_Union
Wow, sweet spot is 7 feet? I somehow doubt it's going to do well in the Japanese market ;).
It might help, but more efficient cars and driving, plus efficient heating/cooling (including insulation) for houses would help a lot more.
Typical non-gaming laptops nowadays consume not more than 60W. Non game desktops including monitor = 150W. Let's just assume 100W average for simplicity.
Running for 10 hours a day (work + home) = 1 kilowatt hour. Flash would contribute to only a fraction of that - say 33%. So banning flash would save you 0.333kWh.
A 2 kilowatt electric heater running for just 10 minutes would use 0.333kWh of energy.
Ovens, dryers, heaters, air-conditioners all consume power in the kilowatts. Washing machines use kilowatts on hot/warm cycles. So if you run these for hours they very quickly surpass PC energy consumption.
40 litres of petrol is about 380 kilowatt hours. So if you use 40 litres per week, that's 54 kilowatt hours per day. Of course that's directly as fossil fuel not electricity, so that's just more for perspective.
Assuming conversion of fossil fuel to electricity is at 33% efficiency, multiply the electricity consumption figures by 3 to compare fossil fuel consumption with the petrol car (of course normally coal is used not petroleum).
Just drive 10% more efficiently (or drive 10% less) per day and save more than an entire PC's daily power consumption.
I suspect the scheduler would make a bigger difference if you were running multiple processes at the same time.
e.g. multiple processes in various scenarios:
CPU intensive.
disk IO intensive.
network IO intensive, single NIC.
network IO intensive, two NICs.
network IO intensive, four NICs.
And various combinations of CPU, disk, network.
Then latency tests:
One to X processes with high CPU, while measuring latency experienced by another process.
One to X processes with high IO, while measuring latency experienced by another process.
Yeah, try putting a single quote in the browser name as well ;).
I'm sure the CEO of HP checks his email once in a while.
Whether they really wanted to or not almost everyone votes for one of the two major parties because they feel voting for a 3rd party is effectively throwing their vote away. (Which only makes sense to think that way because everyone votes for the two major parties. It's a feedback loop but it's one we seem to be stuck in.)
It's not throwing your vote away if say some 3rd party gets 20% of the votes, and
1) The other voters notice (and might start voting accordingly in future)
2) The politicians notice and start changing their priorities
But I suppose you know that already.
Anyway if most voters really think this system sucks, perhaps someone should start a political party and their campaign promise would be to change the election system so that it's not first past the post, and their second promise would be to resign soon after to test out the system :).
As the OP proposes, the ones who only care about abortion will only vote about abortion. Everything else will be left to people who care about them. I think it could even be extended to say "I trust _____ to represent me in matters of abortion, but I think that ____ better represents my views on matters of war."
OK what then would be considered enough votes to pass? If it's > 50% of all voters (even those who don't bother to vote) it could mean nothing ever gets done.
third party candidates are seen as "throwing one's vote away"
That's only if you don't look long term.
If a third party candidate gets significant number of votes, the other voters might vote for that candidate again in the next election. This is called "signalling".
Meanwhile the third party candidates only get 1% of the votes.
If you think the both parties are crap, then it's time to start voting for someone else. Rather than _waste_ your vote voting for crap, you might as well "waste" it to signal to the voters and candidates that you are also unhappy with the two parties and are trying for someone else.
Lastly is it really true that all political parties are so one dimensional that they can be summarized as "left" and "right"? I think it's more that people aren't bothering to look at the details.
And when they grow up they become traffic light robots: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHMSGQwLPrA
So you go to an Italian restaurant and like the food. Next week you're going to go to the same cook and order sushi?
Only if:
1) The restaurant serves good sushi
2) I feel like having their sushi
If there are enough people who want Italian restaurants that serve sushi, people would start restaurants that do so.
Such restaurants already exist.
The exact same problem exists with the party system: the Republicans may have dragged our country into two wars, presided over a major recession, gave the banks a big fat bailout so they could pay their CEOs a big fat bonus... but at least they're (mostly) anti-abortion, and that's what really counts right?
You should ask the voters. The Two Parties seem to be able to figure out what really counts for the voters. As a result, between the two, they've been getting about 98% of the votes. Which is not bad given the diversity of the USA.
If you think voters are voting for stuff just because of one item, without taking into consideration of other rather important factors, I don't see why such voters will do any different or better for "metagovernment" as the OP proposes.
If after 4 years voters can't even see the effects/results of their votes for themselves and still keep voting for the wrong bunch (and then blame the system, everyone, except themselves), then I don't see why letting them micromanage government is a good idea.
Of course if after 4 years the voters are voting for the same bunch because they actually like the results, hey Democracy is working as designed, even if you don't like it.
Lastly, war is where I agree that all voters should get a vote, since war is a major issue that affects everyone even people from other countries. My proposal for war is this: http://slashdot.org/journal/208853/How-to-reduce-unwanted-wars
In contrast, allowing voters to vote on "everything" is a pretty stupid idea. Like getting a million committee members to vote on a novel/legislation/computer program line by line.
Yes, the people vote for the legislators fairly well. Then those legislators sell their policy votes to the highest bidder
And the voters reelect those legislators after that? Seems to me many US legislators have been around for years or even decades.
2. The majority of voters did not get what they want. Congressional Confidence has been below 40% since at least the 1970s. No matter what party is in charge, they are letting the people down.
Really? Then the voters should vote differently right? The last I checked the voters have been voting for the same two parties. There are more than two parties. I don't see why the Two Parties should be doing things differently when they keep getting 98% of the votes.
So the Two Parties are clearly doing their jobs pretty well. Whether the voters are doing their jobs well as voters is a different matter.
If the people have been voting for stuff they don't want for so long, why should your metagovernment thing be better?
Don't they already have a system in California where voters can vote on all sorts of stuff? Is that working well for California?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_ballot_proposition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_California_ballot_propositions_2000%E2%80%932009
Better voting systems still won't fix the root issue: the people who get elected into power are corrupted by that power.
votes are sold to the highest bidder, idiots are in charge
The root issue is not what you claim. If you're talking about the USA, are votes really sold to the highest bidder? I am assuming the elections are not badly Diebolded.
What makes you so confident "metagovernment" will work? Makes no sense to me.
1) So far from what I see, in the 2008 US Presidential election, more than 98% of the voters who voted, voted for either a Democrat or a Republican. You get similar figures for the 2004 elections and so on.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2008#Nationwide_results
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2004#Grand_total
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2000#National_results
There is choice- the voters could have voted for someone else (e.g Nader) but less than 2% ever do so. So either the Two Parties are better choices than the rest, or the voters are idiots.
If the voters are idiots then metagovernment won't work, nor would a "small government + Big Corps" system work (how well are voters going to vote with their wallets if you think they're not getting "ballot box" right).
2) I don't tell a chef in detail how to cook my dinner. I'm not as good a cook as he is (if I was better, maybe I should be a chef instead). But I can taste the results for myself. If the results are satisfactory, I'll vote for him again. If they aren't to my taste, I'll vote for someone else.
Just because your party didn't win doesn't mean the system isn't working the way the majority of the voters want.
Then again you may be right, the idiots are in charge. But in nondiebolded elections, the voters are in charge :).
What many e-voting proponents overlook is:
0) A main requirement for voting systems is convincing the losing sides that they _lost_.
If not enough of the losers believe they lost, you may have riots or civil war.
Something simple like a decent paper ballot system where the votes are counted in front of observers (from the various parties, and 3rd party observers) can be quite convincing to the losers.
So even if this e-voting system is that good, it may be still too opaque/fancy for the losers and their supporters.
The main weakness I see with paper ballots (assuming they are done correctly) is postal votes, but e-voting stuff may still be just as vulnerable to rigging via postal votes.
Heh, you should see a Japanese person waiting at a non-japanese train station for the first time.
They start getting anxious when it's 2 minutes and no train has showed up yet...
Related links:
http://www.japanechoweb.jp/economy/jew0210
http://www.dannychoo.com/post/en/25405/Tokyo+Train+Timetable.html
Japan seems to be a really different country from the rest of the world.
Joke: when the Japanese went to watch football in a football stadium, the stadium ended up cleaner when they were done... :).
Now, is there any reason why a cloned person would be any less of a person than one born and raised?
Of course not- identical twins.
To me the big issue would be transgenic creatures. At what point do you legally consider a transgenic creature human. Or a nonhuman (and thus without the rights and responsibilities of a human).
We might have a future where the technology might be ready for it- such transhumans/posthumans can be grown/created.
But society might not be ready for it. That's why IMO we should be very careful about what technologies we start pushing/developing.
Same goes for AIs. If you make a really advanced AI, at what point do you start giving it the same rights as: a farm animal, a pet, or a human?
Too many people have the "do it because we can" philosophy. That won't be good in the long term.
The other thing that just gets me ticked is people NOT WASHING THEIR HANDS when they use the restroom. I see it daily...people walk in, do their business, and walk out. H*ll, didn't your momma tell you to wash up after you do your business?
From a selfish POV, it's sometimes better for you if you don't wash your hands assuming you can manage to not touch anything else in the washroom on your way in and out- e.g. door knobs/handles, taps, etc. Because, assuming you're somewhat healthy, your body can cope with whatever it has already. So if you don't touch anything else and keep your hands reasonably dry (e.g. momma taught you to not pee on your hands ), nothing changes much and so stuff is likely to stay AOK for you (someone else might not be able to cope with your germs though.).
In contrast if you wash your hands you are more likely to touch a tap that has been contaminated by someone else who is sick and has germs that your body isn't immune to.
Which brings us to the next issue - many washrooms/toilets have design flaws:
1) People can't easily turn off the taps without recontaminating their already cleaned hands (or turn them on without contaminating them with their dirty hands).
2) People can't easily open the doors without recontaminating their already cleaned hands (or contaminate the surfaces with their dirty hands).
Yes, if you are careful you can close the taps etc without recontamination however most people are oblivious about such stuff, so they'd be contributing to and taking from the shared pool of germs on the taps and handles in the process of washing their hands. The moisture after washing is nice for most bacteria. Not all toilets are so badly designed of course, and if it's your own toilet, you'd just be getting your own germs anyway :).
Furthermore this normally isn't a big problem, because most of us do have somewhat working immune systems after all, but it is rather silly to keep telling people to wash their hands but not tell washroom builders/managers to fix their flawed washrooms.
I'm sure you're not talking about Unix because Unix was never designed with security in mind and it's ridiculous to think that security was even a consideration in 1970
Yeah it's kind of funny how people keep talking about how secure unix systems are and how superior they are when they aren't.
Unix was a watered down Multics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multics
Security was a major consideration in Multics in 1970 and even earlier. Unix on the other hand had different objectives.