...one "benefit of the doubt" (presumption of innocence) had to be handed out in this trial regardless of facts, and in our legal system the recipient must be the person on trial (e.g. the survivor of the conflict).
What this translates to on the streets of Florida is anyone's guess, but it seems to me that people who find themselves being pursued by strangers are generally assumed by the "justice" system to forfiet their right to life.
People like you and me were not the intended target of the movement that kicked off the 'Year Of The Linux Desktop'.
Your only real complaint there about OS X is Network Utility. As for the far more important Network Manager, is still barely works and gets confused easily. Apple's network management works 200% better, and is packed with options in a consistent UI.
And then there is Unity, which is also half-broken in its own way. I'm using it right now and don't mind it too much (as I know what's going on underneath and can take care of myself), but I would never recommend it or other Linux desktop to a regular user these days. The whole premise is faulty; that you can get an OS to work well when 1) its no one's role to ensure software and hardware are well integrated, and 2) the blame for bugs and omissions is habitually directed 'upstream'.
The list of fundatmental wrongs is actually quite a bit longer than that. Apple and Microsoft created a defacto standard for how a personal computer should behave; that standard was shaped by many also-rans plus users' needs and expectations. The Linux desktop tried to cut across the grain of that PC culture by applying multiple candy coatings half-heartedly over something that is culturally grounded in the server room. The result is that you can't even give it away.
Apple tends to keep lots of options in the GUI. They are just layered so the more advanced stuff doesn't immediately get in your face.
OTOH, Gnome is famous for its 'feature dismemberment' habit. If a feature raises questions or requires effort to make sure it works in different system configurations, then its deemed too much trouble and is cut off.
Because this removal of a major feature indicates Mozilla has caught Gnome Disease. And, like Gnome, their usability and popularity will suffer for it.
Qubes OS is a heck of a lot stronger and less fuss than SELinux. Anything that is not using hardware VM features to keep apps and services from misbehaving is looking pretty outmoded, IMO.
something like a pure debian with tor and privoxy in it, which starts a browser, and load virtualbox/vmware modules. Then you just boot it and switch to "seamless mode" and get nothing but a free floating browser window. if you close it, you will be asked if you want to restart the browser or shutdown the vm.
Qubes OS has those features. The Tor VM just has to be installed as an additional step.
This system lets you easily launch browsers (or other apps) within different security contexts. Security is enforced by a hardened Xen hypervisor, and even some system services like graphics and net stack that are considered high-risk are also run within their own VMs. You can selectively grant a VM access to particular hardware if your system supports VT-d or IOMMU. A special variation on copy-and-paste lets you perform those functions between VMs without the risk of a compromised program trying to sniff your clipboard.
There are App VMs which appear on the desktop as normal windows except for their context frame color, and HVMs which can run a whole different OS like Windows, and Disposable VMs that retain no state between launches.
There is also special VM support for Tor that can be installed.
And no one is claiming it is perfect, BTW. But a candidate "most secure browser" should ideally be running on a system such as Qubes.
So rights are a privilege now to be dictated by loose wording and interpretation...fuck. that. shit....oh wait...should be old news in light of all the other bullshittery USDOJ spews.
Not only that... Rights are a privilege to be handed out by the police.
First of all, virtually any built-in exploit worth having would show up on someone's network analysis. Someone would flag it as unwanted behavior, at the very least. That already puts the implementor out on a limb.
Second, the difference between getting zero-days fresh from MS and making them put backdoors in the OS or hardware is like the difference between getting your best friend's wife pregnant from a fling or locking her up in your basement as a slave.
What's telling about responses like yours is that they start off with a presumption of absolute certainty. Like anything else in life, its usually a matter of degrees. Absolutes just makes everything that's worth fighting for look impossible.
Recent [in 1999] remarks to CIA veterans by the head of staff of the US House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, ex CIA officer John Millis illustrate how NSA views the same issues:
"Signals intelligence is in a crisis.... Over the last fifty years... In the past, technology has been the friend of NSA, but in the last four or five years technology has moved from being the friend to being the enemy of Sigint.
The media of telecommunications is no longer Sigint-friendly. It used to be. When you were doing RF signals, anybody within range of that RF signal could receive it just as clearly as the intended recipient. We moved from that to microwaves, and people figured out a great way to harness that as well. Well, we're moving to media that are very difficult to get to.
Encryption is here and it's going to grow very rapidly. That is bad news for Sigint... It is going to take a huge amount of money invested in new technologies to get access and to be able to break out the information that we still need to get from Sigint".
To look at this even more simply: Since the propeller is geared to the wheels (ground), the craft can continue picking up energy as long as there is a difference between air speed and ground speed.
Win8 is their second great opportunity... the first one was Vista. When Win7 was announced I realized that the Desktop Linux bandwagon hadn't just lost its wheels... it didn't have enough of them to begin with.
UserLinux, Progeny Linux, Debian Core Consortium and that attempt Mark Shuttleworth made to get distros to align their library versions... those were missed opportunities too. It just isn't within the old PC hacker mindset to come together on this issue and give consumers and esp. app developers what they need. They'd rather take consumer things apart and turn them into web servers.
Meanwhile a whole new generation of developers is re-generating the personal computing dynamic on Android.
The irony is that you can sell mostly libre Android to hundreds of millions of people, but its almost impossible to give away even the most proprietary-bejeweled "Desktop Linux".
Here's a clue as to why: The Linux Foundation had an SDK for "mobile Linux" *years* before they had one for their much older desktop spec. Of course, they were just reacting to what Google was already doing with Android.
Something I call 'greybeard distro culture' was unequipped to give people (esp. app developers) what they needed: Feature stability (from the calendar GUI right through to a standard IDE and package installer) and ABI stability (...if I try programming to explore this new idea of mine, my classmates and my cousin can run it on the first try... otherwise will just cut my programming teeth on Windows or Mac, and stay there). Greybeard rejectionists limited the role of desktop interface design to the periphery where those features could not hold stable forms, and they fostered a culture where app coders were seen as mere coders-- no differentiation except that they were "stupid" for not wanting to or knowing how to write OS code.
Those two features that make a real PC platform will engender the confidence that creative users need to invest their time and their minds to eventually become creative and brilliant *developers*. The first feature also makes remote telephone/web technical support a realistic proposition.
Hardware compatibility is another issue, but one that the Linux Foundation could have solved if they accepted the need for a limited range of offically recognized compatible models... not hard to do.
Amongst the thing that gave Compaq and the IBM clones their rise was their level of openness. You could buy any commodity x86 box (or pieces and DIY assemble said box), and run DOS or Windows or OS/2 or Linux on them...
The last days of "openness" died when MS knifed OS/2 in the back. From that point on, no (typical, time-limited) consumer could count on getting new hardware with a fully-working alternative OS. A substantial fraction of popular components was (is still) poorly documented with the only *proper* drivers written only for Windows.
Nowadays, no vendor offering "Linux" as an alternative for their machine would bother to ensure that all hardware features are working and accessible to the user (yet they go out of their way for Windows). They source the chips most highly-regarded for compatibility by people who have next-to-zero resemblance to a typical computer user or even 92% of the techie demographic... so its "compatible" if you can use the features by spending days typing in a CLI.
The consumer PC market isn't "open". The target systems might as well be Macs.
Because that would mean that a martian colony is clearly more favored than an earth fallout bunker, and has a higher chance of being built, and that would totally ruin your argument!
THIS demonstrates how femtobyte elegantly and economically punctured your Mars concept: Hey, but lots of people signed up for this fantasy and will even pay!
I was actually starting to think you were arguing from a well educated and reasoned perspective, which alas turned out to be more a curtain of rhetorical talking points with a 15 year old brat behind it.
Here is a tip: Don't pitch a Mars *colony*. Go for an outpost instead. The idea of a colony is too far-fetched at our level of development, and setting ourselves up to fail at huge expense is not the way to nurture that development. Colonies exist to raise new generations of inhabitants, and attempts to raise children in that environment and with 1/3 Earth gravity would turn into an unspeakably cruel sadist's spectacle. You need a round trip proposal or else you are cutting deep against the grain of humanity.
Culture - You could call it that. More accurately it has to do with calvinistic attitudes about right and wrong, and how certain groups become demonized as a result. To most peolpe in my family, for instance, cities are demonic miserable places that should be disbanded. Yes... Cities = Evil. Of course there is a lot of identity baggage that goes along with that, emanating from social phenomena like the White Flight.
The White Flight kicked off right around the time that the Civil Rights movement did. White people became anti-urban and anti-government because they couldn't have those institutions devoted primarily to them any longer. By the late 70s, the suburbs had the inner cities increasingly surrounded and the War On Drugs commenced mainly against city inhabitants.
People summon taxibus service with their cellphones, then a computer directs a nearby driver to a curb within a block of passengers' location... while figuring out how to accomodate more than one passenger at any given time.
Slashdot Mirror
...one "benefit of the doubt" (presumption of innocence) had to be handed out in this trial regardless of facts, and in our legal system the recipient must be the person on trial (e.g. the survivor of the conflict).
What this translates to on the streets of Florida is anyone's guess, but it seems to me that people who find themselves being pursued by strangers are generally assumed by the "justice" system to forfiet their right to life.
Take the finance out of the equation.
I would guess it isn't the 'next generation' but the old hacker CLI-based mentality that results in such embarrassing behavior.
to list the passing of the inventor of the modern UI as a single-line footnote.
make sure s/he is organically certified. :)
People like you and me were not the intended target of the movement that kicked off the 'Year Of The Linux Desktop'.
Your only real complaint there about OS X is Network Utility. As for the far more important Network Manager, is still barely works and gets confused easily. Apple's network management works 200% better, and is packed with options in a consistent UI.
And then there is Unity, which is also half-broken in its own way. I'm using it right now and don't mind it too much (as I know what's going on underneath and can take care of myself), but I would never recommend it or other Linux desktop to a regular user these days. The whole premise is faulty; that you can get an OS to work well when 1) its no one's role to ensure software and hardware are well integrated, and 2) the blame for bugs and omissions is habitually directed 'upstream'.
The list of fundatmental wrongs is actually quite a bit longer than that. Apple and Microsoft created a defacto standard for how a personal computer should behave; that standard was shaped by many also-rans plus users' needs and expectations. The Linux desktop tried to cut across the grain of that PC culture by applying multiple candy coatings half-heartedly over something that is culturally grounded in the server room. The result is that you can't even give it away.
Apple tends to keep lots of options in the GUI. They are just layered so the more advanced stuff doesn't immediately get in your face.
OTOH, Gnome is famous for its 'feature dismemberment' habit. If a feature raises questions or requires effort to make sure it works in different system configurations, then its deemed too much trouble and is cut off.
Because this removal of a major feature indicates Mozilla has caught Gnome Disease. And, like Gnome, their usability and popularity will suffer for it.
Qubes OS is a heck of a lot stronger and less fuss than SELinux. Anything that is not using hardware VM features to keep apps and services from misbehaving is looking pretty outmoded, IMO.
something like a pure debian with tor and privoxy in it, which starts a browser, and load virtualbox/vmware modules. Then you just boot it and switch to "seamless mode" and get nothing but a free floating browser window. if you close it, you will be asked if you want to restart the browser or shutdown the vm.
Qubes OS has those features. The Tor VM just has to be installed as an additional step.
Very much not in the advertising business, and they let you review the source code on request.
http://qubes-os.org/
This system lets you easily launch browsers (or other apps) within different security contexts. Security is enforced by a hardened Xen hypervisor, and even some system services like graphics and net stack that are considered high-risk are also run within their own VMs. You can selectively grant a VM access to particular hardware if your system supports VT-d or IOMMU. A special variation on copy-and-paste lets you perform those functions between VMs without the risk of a compromised program trying to sniff your clipboard.
There are App VMs which appear on the desktop as normal windows except for their context frame color, and HVMs which can run a whole different OS like Windows, and Disposable VMs that retain no state between launches.
There is also special VM support for Tor that can be installed.
And no one is claiming it is perfect, BTW. But a candidate "most secure browser" should ideally be running on a system such as Qubes.
So rights are a privilege now to be dictated by loose wording and interpretation...fuck. that. shit....oh wait...should be old news in light of all the other bullshittery USDOJ spews.
Not only that... Rights are a privilege to be handed out by the police.
Texas justice comes to the rest of the USA.
First of all, virtually any built-in exploit worth having would show up on someone's network analysis. Someone would flag it as unwanted behavior, at the very least. That already puts the implementor out on a limb.
Second, the difference between getting zero-days fresh from MS and making them put backdoors in the OS or hardware is like the difference between getting your best friend's wife pregnant from a fling or locking her up in your basement as a slave.
What's telling about responses like yours is that they start off with a presumption of absolute certainty. Like anything else in life, its usually a matter of degrees. Absolutes just makes everything that's worth fighting for look impossible.
Recent [in 1999] remarks to CIA veterans by the head of staff of the US House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, ex CIA officer John Millis illustrate how NSA views the same issues:
"Signals intelligence is in a crisis. ... Over the last fifty years ... In the past, technology has been the friend of NSA, but in the last four or five years technology has moved from being the friend to being the enemy of Sigint.
The media of telecommunications is no longer Sigint-friendly. It used to be. When you were doing RF signals, anybody within range of that RF signal could receive it just as clearly as the intended recipient. We moved from that to microwaves, and people figured out a great way to harness that as well. Well, we're moving to media that are very difficult to get to.
Encryption is here and it's going to grow very rapidly. That is bad news for Sigint ... It is going to take a huge amount of money invested in new technologies to get access and to be able to break out the information that we still need to get from Sigint".
http://www.cyber-rights.org/interception/stoa/ic2kreport.htm#_Toc448565560
They got their budgets *and* general approval from the public, who would rather fantasize about "justice" as portrayed in superhero and spy fiction.
Yields 4 results in Ubuntu. You can search reputable open source archives on the web, too.
How deep are your pockets?
*IBM Consulting*
Um, really???
To look at this even more simply: Since the propeller is geared to the wheels (ground), the craft can continue picking up energy as long as there is a difference between air speed and ground speed.
...which were illegal. They have a history of bending over when the US establishment wants something.
Win8 is their second great opportunity... the first one was Vista. When Win7 was announced I realized that the Desktop Linux bandwagon hadn't just lost its wheels... it didn't have enough of them to begin with.
UserLinux, Progeny Linux, Debian Core Consortium and that attempt Mark Shuttleworth made to get distros to align their library versions... those were missed opportunities too. It just isn't within the old PC hacker mindset to come together on this issue and give consumers and esp. app developers what they need. They'd rather take consumer things apart and turn them into web servers.
Meanwhile a whole new generation of developers is re-generating the personal computing dynamic on Android.
The irony is that you can sell mostly libre Android to hundreds of millions of people, but its almost impossible to give away even the most proprietary-bejeweled "Desktop Linux".
Here's a clue as to why: The Linux Foundation had an SDK for "mobile Linux" *years* before they had one for their much older desktop spec. Of course, they were just reacting to what Google was already doing with Android.
Something I call 'greybeard distro culture' was unequipped to give people (esp. app developers) what they needed: Feature stability (from the calendar GUI right through to a standard IDE and package installer) and ABI stability (...if I try programming to explore this new idea of mine, my classmates and my cousin can run it on the first try... otherwise will just cut my programming teeth on Windows or Mac, and stay there). Greybeard rejectionists limited the role of desktop interface design to the periphery where those features could not hold stable forms, and they fostered a culture where app coders were seen as mere coders-- no differentiation except that they were "stupid" for not wanting to or knowing how to write OS code.
Those two features that make a real PC platform will engender the confidence that creative users need to invest their time and their minds to eventually become creative and brilliant *developers*. The first feature also makes remote telephone/web technical support a realistic proposition.
Hardware compatibility is another issue, but one that the Linux Foundation could have solved if they accepted the need for a limited range of offically recognized compatible models... not hard to do.
Amongst the thing that gave Compaq and the IBM clones their rise was their level of openness. You could buy any commodity x86 box (or pieces and DIY assemble said box), and run DOS or Windows or OS/2 or Linux on them...
The last days of "openness" died when MS knifed OS/2 in the back. From that point on, no (typical, time-limited) consumer could count on getting new hardware with a fully-working alternative OS. A substantial fraction of popular components was (is still) poorly documented with the only *proper* drivers written only for Windows.
Nowadays, no vendor offering "Linux" as an alternative for their machine would bother to ensure that all hardware features are working and accessible to the user (yet they go out of their way for Windows). They source the chips most highly-regarded for compatibility by people who have next-to-zero resemblance to a typical computer user or even 92% of the techie demographic... so its "compatible" if you can use the features by spending days typing in a CLI.
The consumer PC market isn't "open". The target systems might as well be Macs.
THIS demonstrates how femtobyte elegantly and economically punctured your Mars concept: Hey, but lots of people signed up for this fantasy and will even pay!
I was actually starting to think you were arguing from a well educated and reasoned perspective, which alas turned out to be more a curtain of rhetorical talking points with a 15 year old brat behind it.
Here is a tip: Don't pitch a Mars *colony*. Go for an outpost instead. The idea of a colony is too far-fetched at our level of development, and setting ourselves up to fail at huge expense is not the way to nurture that development. Colonies exist to raise new generations of inhabitants, and attempts to raise children in that environment and with 1/3 Earth gravity would turn into an unspeakably cruel sadist's spectacle. You need a round trip proposal or else you are cutting deep against the grain of humanity.
Culture - You could call it that. More accurately it has to do with calvinistic attitudes about right and wrong, and how certain groups become demonized as a result. To most peolpe in my family, for instance, cities are demonic miserable places that should be disbanded. Yes... Cities = Evil. Of course there is a lot of identity baggage that goes along with that, emanating from social phenomena like the White Flight.
The White Flight kicked off right around the time that the Civil Rights movement did. White people became anti-urban and anti-government because they couldn't have those institutions devoted primarily to them any longer. By the late 70s, the suburbs had the inner cities increasingly surrounded and the War On Drugs commenced mainly against city inhabitants.
A better question is whether AMD or Intel will ever put backdoors into their hardware (for any purpose).
If they don't then I think we're OK.
Intelligent Grouping Transportation, AKA Taxibus...
http://www.taxibus.org.uk/index.html
People summon taxibus service with their cellphones, then a computer directs a nearby driver to a curb within a block of passengers' location... while figuring out how to accomodate more than one passenger at any given time.