We're talking about a state-mandated monopoly here. Wouldn't people like you -- haven't people like you -- gone berserk when states and other governments awarded exclusive contracts to MS, giving them an effective state-mandated monopoly in the market?
Make up your mind: Are you against monopolies, or would you rather see Linux replace Windows as the monopoly OS?
I don't really care what software Massachusetts buys, but you have to wonder about the credibility of people who rant about the evils of the Microsoft monopoly and then turn around and cheer when a state decides to tie itself down with another monopoly.
I thought "choice" was the cornerstone of open source. Guess some folks have been taking hypocrisy lessons.
After using this Internet thing for a while (I sent my first email in the mid-'70's) I've decided it adds, at best, just one more place to look for information. If you rely on it as your only source, odds are you're missing something. I increasingly find myself using it to locate more traditional sources of information.
The Internet is just technology. It's the words that count, whether someone uses a pen, a typewriter, a word processor, or a blog to create them.
Putting aside the news sites, much of the information available via the net seems shallow. I.e., you may find any number of websites that purport to tell you "How To Make Widgets", but the total word count of all content on all 3 sites might be surprisingly low. A visit to a good library might turn up several books on widget building, at several hundred pages each.
Now, it is possible to digitize those books and put them on the net, but how many people can comfortably wade through thousands of pages of online text?
The net still has issues with integrity and trust. In some circles, much, mostly unwarranted, criticism is heaped on the mainstream press simply because most of it is corporate-owned. Well, if you don't trust your local TV station or your local newspapers because they've incorporated themselves, why would you trust some unknown individual posting stories to the web? With a corporation, at least, you can do a bit of research and chase down some facts about their finances, etc. On the other hand, you can't do that with some blooger. Typically, all you've got to go by is what the guy's blog says about himself. And why should you be willing to take that at face value?
Apart from blogs posing as news site and bloggers posing as journalists, many sites purporting to deliver news are openly biased, often in an obvious attempt to curry favor, pageviews and ad revenue from their target audience. E.g., would you really expect unbiased and impartial reporting about Microsoft, Linux, and SCO on any OSDN site? No, because that's not what they're really in business to do.
The truth is that all forms of media and everyone writing for publication is subject to influence, biases and pressure. It is the responsibility of anyone reading the news published by any source to make an effort to understand the influences that source is subject to, and to take that into account.
For example, if you know that the Ajax Press Service is 80 percent owned by, say, Shell Oil, then you might reasonably examine their oil reporting with a critical eye. If you eventually determine that they're "evil" and slant their reporting toward Shell Oil, that doesn't make them hopelessly corrupt and useless. Rather, using what you now know you can use Ajax's oil reporting to draw inferences about Shell Oil policy.
Likewise, in the international arena, much of the world's media remains under the direct ownership and control of governments, and many media outlets that aren't owned outright voluntarily slant their reporting in order to keep the regime from putting them out of business. Hence, following the press can be an excellent way of tracking what a closed regime is doing and thinking.
Re:No Thanks: If They Scan It, They Can Read It
on
Snail Mail As E-Mail
·
· Score: 1
There's no reason for a sender to use this service and then ask it to mail hardcopy to the recipient. Just use the mail in the first place.
No Thanks: If They Scan It, They Can Read It
on
Snail Mail As E-Mail
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
What security? If they scan my mail, they have to open it. If they open it, they can read it. Why should I trust these folks?
And what about all those times when the recipient really needs hardcopy, not email.
Besides, if I'm in, say, the UK, how long is it going to take for my mail to get to Australia?
>>,,,who are we to make this decision for others? We are who we are. We're right, they're wrong. We have no reason to excuse them merely because we think their "culture" is different. Any such "culture" should be removed.
>> Your only morally culpable if you are under the impression that you are somehow morally responsible for the actions of others.
We're morally responsible for our own actions. If it is within our ability to end the immoral behavior of others and we still do nothing, then we our morally culpable for what they do.
the foolish idea is the one that posits that we have no responsibility for the behavior of others. or who sits by idly while others destroy what is good and important merely because he is afraid of trespassing on the sensitivities of another so-called culture.
People who want to do us harm merit punishment and elimination; only fools excuse their behavior under the illusion that they are "different" from us and, therefore, have a right to behave in that manner.
Saddam was already in the U.S. camp when he attacked Iran. U.S. aid during that war was designed to keep him there.
U.S. aid to Saddam in one decade in no way constrains the U.S. from acting against him when he became a threat in another decade. That said, it is interesting to note that Iraq, vice Iran, never held U.S. diplomats hostage for months or finances Hezbollah and other terrorists. Saddam was a bastard in uniform, but Iran is ruled by bastards in robes. Neither regime deserves to exist.
>>..."virtue" is an intensely culture-specific idea, and not some sort of universal truth.
If that's your premise, you're beyond hope in my book.
To argue that virtue, ethics and morality -- our notions of justice and right and wrong -- are culture-based is to begin down the path of accepting any belief as valid and equivalent to any other, and, thereby, deny the validity of your own.
For example, there are cultures that believe that a father should kill his daughter if he thinks the daughter has dishonored the family. I don't care if that is culture-based or not, but I hold that it is repugnant, inhuman, and uncivilized behavior that should be eliminated. Are we to excuse such murderers simply by accepting that their behavior is based on a culturalbelief? Nonsense. If I do that, I am morally culpable in their crimes.
>>...I would caution you that in believing this...
Why? There's no virtue in sitting on the fence and giving equal moral wieght to opposing beliefs.
Why is it right for some people to enslave themselves under a theocracy or a monarchy, but it is wrong for me to say those kind of regimes are illegitimate? (Regardless of the feelings of their population. People don't have the right to vote away their freedoms, because that action enslaves their children and future generations.)
To argue that I am compelled to give equal weight to theocracy or monarchy is equivalent to arguing that I am compelled not to act on my belief in democracy.
>> According to your reasoning, a 3 day span between a bomb and a surrender is unacceptable (hence the Nagasaki bomb), and therefore there should have been 8 more nuclear bombs dropped on Japan before they surrendered.
You must be an engineer, or a wanna-be engineer, who thinks human behavior can be reduced to equations and formulas.
First, it isn't my "reasoning" that leads to your assertion. The Japanese had ample time to surrender between Hiroshima and Nagasaki. All it took was for the emperor to make the announcement. (which he did on 15 August, not 2 Spetember.)
The decision to bomb Nagasaki was based on human judgment, not the kind of sophistry you assert.
The U.S. had these choices:
1) Not use the bomb, but instead invade Japan. Contemporary eestimated, based on Japanese behavior elsewhere in the Pacific, projected at least one more year of war and fatalities measuring in seven figures.
2) Use the bomb, producing fatalities in the 50,000-100,000 range, and potentially compelling a quick Japanese surrender.
Death is death, regardless of its cause. In my book, the U.S. made the right decision -- a decision that saved Japanese and American lives. (And likely also prevented part of Japan and certainly all of Korea from being absorbed by Stalin.)
>>...the power of the individual is supreme. A lot of people don't share that view.
And a lot of people are wrong. I see no reason to be tolerant of people who believe people don't have the right to govern themselves. Belief in a theocracy makes no more sense that a belief in the divine right of kings, and is just as dangerous.
Saddam, the Saudi's and Pakistan were seens as anti-Soviet tools. Now that the Soviets are gone, so is Saddam. The Pakistani's are needed against al-Qaeda and friends. The Saudi's are a medieval throwback regime, but they are a medieval throwback regime on our side. Better them than a fundamentalist terrorist-sponsoring regime with all that oil.
Remember, no one, and no nation, needs to meet your criteria for moral perfection before having a right to act in their own self-interest.
>> Or perhaps we just wanted them to surrender before the Russians got in.
That's revisionist history that I disagree with, but, even if true, so what? It's a legitimate motive. The fewer people brought under Stalin's yoke, the better.
What possible reason was there for Nagasaki anyway?
Because the Japanese didn't surrender after Hiroshima. The deaths at Nagasaki were fewer in number than the projected deaths during an invasion of Japan. The fact that they were caused by a nuclear weapon has no impact on the ethics of the situation. 100,000 people killed by infrantrymen and carpet bombing are just as dead as 100,000 people killed by a 20-kiloton weapon. The Japanese fascists, not the U.S., bear responsiility for what happened to their country.
No, were not. Americans believe that everyone has a right to rule themselves, that any non-democratic regime is illegitimate and has no right to exist, and the any non-democratic regime anywhere poses a threat, simply because it exists, to every democratic government.
But, even if your assertion were accurate, so what? Is receiving a grade of moral perfection from you a prerequisite for condemning and deploring the evil actions of others? If so, how have you managed to escape culpability?
>> I would excuse a person if he walked by my house found the door open looked inside and picked up a picture of himself, set it down and immediatly called me to tell me my door is unlocked.
You might, but I'd press trespassing charges. An unlocked front door is not an invitation to enter.
>> Didn't the American army killed a load of their students?
Sorry, no. (Nice grammer, too. Builds confidence in you,eh.)
Just in case you're alluding to the shootings at Kent State, it wasn't a "load" of students (4) and it wasn't the "Army" (it was the National Guard, not exactly the same thing.)
I had friends who were at the scene of the Kent shootings. It was a terrible thing, but in no way comparable to real atrocities committed elsewhere by thugs in power, and it in no way excuses people like you from equating imagined U.S. evil with real evil elsewhere and absolving yourselves of any resopnsiblity to do anything about it. You're just using your little pose of cynicism as an excuse for ethical laziness.
>>... if you want to speak about what is best while considering the past...
I don't. I want to see the Chinese people free to democratically elect their own leaders. As long as the Chinese Communist Party, via the PLA, have power, that won't happen, no matter how prosperous the big cities become.
I bring Tiannamen into it because the party, the ruling elite, and the government structure that brought about that atrocity are still in power. I see no reason to forgive them, only reasons to remove them.
All non-democratic governments are illegimate, have no right to exist, and should be eliminated.
Rah, rah. Hardly anyone has the expertise to understand OS code, so even with open source, you still have to trust some unknown "experts" to tell you if it is secure or not.
Typical knee-jerk blather. Motivations counts. The Chinese regime is interested in suppressing its people and making money. They're still an anti-democratic totalitarian regime and, asu such, threaten free people everywhere.
The U.S. actions you cite, even if you disagree with them, were actins intended to defeat fascist and totalitarian powers bent on destroying democracy and freedom. Rather than rant about the U.S., people like you should be asking why the rest of the world consistently spawns these evil regimes and consistently fails to eliminate them. If the rest of the world would eliminate the thuggish garbage that passes for government in many places, the U.S. and a few other rational countries wouldn't have to do it themselves.
AS for "genocide of the First Nation", I presume you're referring to Native Americans (not that any such "First Nation" ever existed outside the romantically racist minds of certain Americans). I can't deny that many Native Americans died as Europeans and others colonized the continent. But, then, many Neanderthals apparently died as Cro Magnons colonized Europe. Would you call that genocide and argue that Cro Magnons had not right to live in Europe? Animal migrations and depopulations of species are normal events, yet wehn the human animal experiences them, self-loathing humans rant about how evil it is.
As for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, well... the likely alternative would have been an order of magnitude more U.S. and Japanese deaths from conventional warfare on the main islands. The Japanese fascists started the war, they attacked the U.S., and they got what they deserved.
Don't know about any backdoors in Windows, but we all certainly have reason to distrust any OS sponsored by the Chinese government. They may have adopted a friendlier demeanor, but the folks who gave us Tiananmen still run the place.
>>..this guy was doing companies HUGE favors by helping them patch holes in their systems as he discovered them.
That's simply just stupid nonsense. Criminals don't do their victims a favor by assaulting them. Criminals don't draw a pass because they "discovered" a vulnerability in their victim.
Would you excuse a bank robber because he helped the bank uncover a new way into the vault?
The rules don't change just because it's the internet.
If the mission is to get people and cargo into and out of orbit safely and routinely, I'd opt for the capsule-like approach. Odds are, it will be operational years before a lifting body. NASA has spent billions on lifting bodies, and not one of them bore fruit. Gotta be a reason.
So, go with the capsule. Meanwhile, keep working on building a large (think 747-size) winged vehicle that can take off from a runway, fly to orbit, and land on the same runway.
By the way, this article, lke most on this subject, didn't mention that a capsule can be just as resuable as any other approach.
Slashdot Mirror
We're talking about a state-mandated monopoly here. Wouldn't people like you -- haven't people like you -- gone berserk when states and other governments awarded exclusive contracts to MS, giving them an effective state-mandated monopoly in the market?
Make up your mind: Are you against monopolies, or would you rather see Linux replace Windows as the monopoly OS?
There's hypocrisy in berating Microsoft for its monopoly based on closed source and yet a supporting state-mandated monopoly of Linux.
I don't really care what software Massachusetts buys, but you have to wonder about the credibility of people who rant about the evils of the Microsoft monopoly and then turn around and cheer when a state decides to tie itself down with another monopoly.
I thought "choice" was the cornerstone of open source. Guess some folks have been taking hypocrisy lessons.
After using this Internet thing for a while (I sent my first email in the mid-'70's) I've decided it adds, at best, just one more place to look for information. If you rely on it as your only source, odds are you're missing something. I increasingly find myself using it to locate more traditional sources of information.
The Internet is just technology. It's the words that count, whether someone uses a pen, a typewriter, a word processor, or a blog to create them.
Putting aside the news sites, much of the information available via the net seems shallow. I.e., you may find any number of websites that purport to tell you "How To Make Widgets", but the total word count of all content on all 3 sites might be surprisingly low. A visit to a good library might turn up several books on widget building, at several hundred pages each.
Now, it is possible to digitize those books and put them on the net, but how many people can comfortably wade through thousands of pages of online text?
The net still has issues with integrity and trust. In some circles, much, mostly unwarranted, criticism is heaped on the mainstream press simply because most of it is corporate-owned. Well, if you don't trust your local TV station or your local newspapers because they've incorporated themselves, why would you trust some unknown individual posting stories to the web? With a corporation, at least, you can do a bit of research and chase down some facts about their finances, etc. On the other hand, you can't do that with some blooger. Typically, all you've got to go by is what the guy's blog says about himself. And why should you be willing to take that at face value?
Apart from blogs posing as news site and bloggers posing as journalists, many sites purporting to deliver news are openly biased, often in an obvious attempt to curry favor, pageviews and ad revenue from their target audience. E.g., would you really expect unbiased and impartial reporting about Microsoft, Linux, and SCO on any OSDN site? No, because that's not what they're really in business to do.
The truth is that all forms of media and everyone writing for publication is subject to influence, biases and pressure. It is the responsibility of anyone reading the news published by any source to make an effort to understand the influences that source is subject to, and to take that into account.
For example, if you know that the Ajax Press Service is 80 percent owned by, say, Shell Oil, then you might reasonably examine their oil reporting with a critical eye. If you eventually determine that they're "evil" and slant their reporting toward Shell Oil, that doesn't make them hopelessly corrupt and useless. Rather, using what you now know you can use Ajax's oil reporting to draw inferences about Shell Oil policy.
Likewise, in the international arena, much of the world's media remains under the direct ownership and control of governments, and many media outlets that aren't owned outright voluntarily slant their reporting in order to keep the regime from putting them out of business. Hence, following the press can be an excellent way of tracking what a closed regime is doing and thinking.
There's no reason for a sender to use this service and then ask it to mail hardcopy to the recipient. Just use the mail in the first place.
What security? If they scan my mail, they have to open it. If they open it, they can read it. Why should I trust these folks?
And what about all those times when the recipient really needs hardcopy, not email.
Besides, if I'm in, say, the UK, how long is it going to take for my mail to get to Australia?
>> ,,,who are we to make this decision for others?
We are who we are. We're right, they're wrong. We have no reason to excuse them merely because we think their "culture" is different. Any such "culture" should be removed.
>> Your only morally culpable if you are under the impression that you are somehow morally responsible for the actions of others.
We're morally responsible for our own actions. If it is within our ability to end the immoral behavior of others and we still do nothing, then we our morally culpable for what they do.
the foolish idea is the one that posits that we have no responsibility for the behavior of others. or who sits by idly while others destroy what is good and important merely because he is afraid of trespassing on the sensitivities of another so-called culture.
People who want to do us harm merit punishment and elimination; only fools excuse their behavior under the illusion that they are "different" from us and, therefore, have a right to behave in that manner.
Try again.
Saddam was already in the U.S. camp when he attacked Iran. U.S. aid during that war was designed to keep him there.
U.S. aid to Saddam in one decade in no way constrains the U.S. from acting against him when he became a threat in another decade. That said, it is interesting to note that Iraq, vice Iran, never held U.S. diplomats hostage for months or finances Hezbollah and other terrorists. Saddam was a bastard in uniform, but Iran is ruled by bastards in robes. Neither regime deserves to exist.
>> ..."virtue" is an intensely culture-specific idea, and not some sort of universal truth.
If that's your premise, you're beyond hope in my book.
To argue that virtue, ethics and morality -- our notions of justice and right and wrong -- are culture-based is to begin down the path of accepting any belief as valid and equivalent to any other, and, thereby, deny the validity of your own.
For example, there are cultures that believe that a father should kill his daughter if he thinks the daughter has dishonored the family. I don't care if that is culture-based or not, but I hold that it is repugnant, inhuman, and uncivilized behavior that should be eliminated. Are we to excuse such murderers simply by accepting that their behavior is based on a culturalbelief? Nonsense. If I do that, I am morally culpable in their crimes.
>> ...I would caution you that in believing this...
Why? There's no virtue in sitting on the fence and giving equal moral wieght to opposing beliefs.
Why is it right for some people to enslave themselves under a theocracy or a monarchy, but it is wrong for me to say those kind of regimes are illegitimate? (Regardless of the feelings of their population. People don't have the right to vote away their freedoms, because that action enslaves their children and future generations.)
To argue that I am compelled to give equal weight to theocracy or monarchy is equivalent to arguing that I am compelled not to act on my belief in democracy.
>> According to your reasoning, a 3 day span between a bomb and a surrender is unacceptable (hence the Nagasaki bomb), and therefore there should have been 8 more nuclear bombs dropped on Japan before they surrendered.
You must be an engineer, or a wanna-be engineer, who thinks human behavior can be reduced to equations and formulas.
First, it isn't my "reasoning" that leads to your assertion. The Japanese had ample time to surrender between Hiroshima and Nagasaki. All it took was for the emperor to make the announcement. (which he did on 15 August, not 2 Spetember.)
The decision to bomb Nagasaki was based on human judgment, not the kind of sophistry you assert.
The U.S. had these choices:
1) Not use the bomb, but instead invade Japan. Contemporary eestimated, based on Japanese behavior elsewhere in the Pacific, projected at least one more year of war and fatalities measuring in seven figures.
2) Use the bomb, producing fatalities in the 50,000-100,000 range, and potentially compelling a quick Japanese surrender.
Death is death, regardless of its cause. In my book, the U.S. made the right decision -- a decision that saved Japanese and American lives. (And likely also prevented part of Japan and certainly all of Korea from being absorbed by Stalin.)
>> ...the power of the individual is supreme. A lot of people don't share that view.
And a lot of people are wrong. I see no reason to be tolerant of people who believe people don't have the right to govern themselves. Belief in a theocracy makes no more sense that a belief in the divine right of kings, and is just as dangerous.
Yes.
Saddam, the Saudi's and Pakistan were seens as anti-Soviet tools. Now that the Soviets are gone, so is Saddam. The Pakistani's are needed against al-Qaeda and friends. The Saudi's are a medieval throwback regime, but they are a medieval throwback regime on our side. Better them than a fundamentalist terrorist-sponsoring regime with all that oil.
Remember, no one, and no nation, needs to meet your criteria for moral perfection before having a right to act in their own self-interest.
>> Or perhaps we just wanted them to surrender before the Russians got in.
That's revisionist history that I disagree with, but, even if true, so what? It's a legitimate motive. The fewer people brought under Stalin's yoke, the better.
What possible reason was there for Nagasaki anyway?
Because the Japanese didn't surrender after Hiroshima. The deaths at Nagasaki were fewer in number than the projected deaths during an invasion of Japan. The fact that they were caused by a nuclear weapon has no impact on the ethics of the situation. 100,000 people killed by infrantrymen and carpet bombing are just as dead as 100,000 people killed by a 20-kiloton weapon. The Japanese fascists, not the U.S., bear responsiility for what happened to their country.
>> Americans are such hypocrites
No, were not. Americans believe that everyone has a right to rule themselves, that any non-democratic regime is illegitimate and has no right to exist, and the any non-democratic regime anywhere poses a threat, simply because it exists, to every democratic government.
Consider the implications of that...
Not by a long shot. Go read your history.
But, even if your assertion were accurate, so what? Is receiving a grade of moral perfection from you a prerequisite for condemning and deploring the evil actions of others? If so, how have you managed to escape culpability?
>> I would excuse a person if he walked by my house found the door open looked inside and picked up a picture of himself, set it down and immediatly called me to tell me my door is unlocked.
You might, but I'd press trespassing charges. An unlocked front door is not an invitation to enter.
>> Didn't the American army killed a load of their students?
Sorry, no. (Nice grammer, too. Builds confidence in you,eh.)
Just in case you're alluding to the shootings at Kent State, it wasn't a "load" of students (4) and it wasn't the "Army" (it was the National Guard, not exactly the same thing.)
I had friends who were at the scene of the Kent shootings. It was a terrible thing, but in no way comparable to real atrocities committed elsewhere by thugs in power, and it in no way excuses people like you from equating imagined U.S. evil with real evil elsewhere and absolving yourselves of any resopnsiblity to do anything about it. You're just using your little pose of cynicism as an excuse for ethical laziness.
>> ... if you want to speak about what is best while considering the past...
I don't. I want to see the Chinese people free to democratically elect their own leaders. As long as the Chinese Communist Party, via the PLA, have power, that won't happen, no matter how prosperous the big cities become.
I bring Tiannamen into it because the party, the ruling elite, and the government structure that brought about that atrocity are still in power. I see no reason to forgive them, only reasons to remove them.
All non-democratic governments are illegimate, have no right to exist, and should be eliminated.
Rah, rah. Hardly anyone has the expertise to understand OS code, so even with open source, you still have to trust some unknown "experts" to tell you if it is secure or not.
Typical knee-jerk blather. Motivations counts. The Chinese regime is interested in suppressing its people and making money. They're still an anti-democratic totalitarian regime and, asu such, threaten free people everywhere.
The U.S. actions you cite, even if you disagree with them, were actins intended to defeat fascist and totalitarian powers bent on destroying democracy and freedom. Rather than rant about the U.S., people like you should be asking why the rest of the world consistently spawns these evil regimes and consistently fails to eliminate them. If the rest of the world would eliminate the thuggish garbage that passes for government in many places, the U.S. and a few other rational countries wouldn't have to do it themselves.
AS for "genocide of the First Nation", I presume you're referring to Native Americans (not that any such "First Nation" ever existed outside the romantically racist minds of certain Americans). I can't deny that many Native Americans died as Europeans and others colonized the continent. But, then, many Neanderthals apparently died as Cro Magnons colonized Europe. Would you call that genocide and argue that Cro Magnons had not right to live in Europe? Animal migrations and depopulations of species are normal events, yet wehn the human animal experiences them, self-loathing humans rant about how evil it is.
As for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, well... the likely alternative would have been an order of magnitude more U.S. and Japanese deaths from conventional warfare on the main islands. The Japanese fascists started the war, they attacked the U.S., and they got what they deserved.
Don't know about any backdoors in Windows, but we all certainly have reason to distrust any OS sponsored by the Chinese government. They may have adopted a friendlier demeanor, but the folks who gave us Tiananmen still run the place.
>> ..this guy was doing companies HUGE favors by helping them patch holes in their systems as he discovered them.
That's simply just stupid nonsense. Criminals don't do their victims a favor by assaulting them. Criminals don't draw a pass because they "discovered" a vulnerability in their victim.
Would you excuse a bank robber because he helped the bank uncover a new way into the vault?
The rules don't change just because it's the internet.
If the mission is to get people and cargo into and out of orbit safely and routinely, I'd opt for the capsule-like approach. Odds are, it will be operational years before a lifting body. NASA has spent billions on lifting bodies, and not one of them bore fruit. Gotta be a reason.
So, go with the capsule. Meanwhile, keep working on building a large (think 747-size) winged vehicle that can take off from a runway, fly to orbit, and land on the same runway.
By the way, this article, lke most on this subject, didn't mention that a capsule can be just as resuable as any other approach.