The problem is the user. The users need to be educated on security before you can keep viri from popping up in your enterprise
You are claiming that it's impossible to write a secure OS, such that a naive user cannot (or at least is very unlikely to) have his system compromised?
Or is it just that it hasn't been done, yet?
Certainly there have been some promising attempts towards this goal -- but the market apparently isn't ready yet to take such things seriously.
To me that is one more deterrent to the people committing these crimes in the first place.
And the ends justify the means? If so, then why stop with rape? Why not allow inmates to torture and murder each other as well? Heck, we could even pay them to kill each other off, saving taxpayer dollars...
What it boils down to is this: either we are a nation of laws, or we are not. Assuming that we are a nation of laws, then if a person is sentenced to incarceration, he should be incarcerated, not incarcerated and raped. If we someday decide it is wise to employ rape as a legal punishment (as some societies do), then so be it, but at least let's be honest with ourselves and not tolerate violent, degrading crimes just because don't personally like the victims.
Show me one documented time this has _ever_ happened.
Okay, here are one hundred and fifty documented third-strike outcomes -- life sentences, for such offences as as "waslking away from fire camp", "filling out a false DMV application", "shoplifting of a baseball glove", etc.
As an aside, I think the three strikes law has a good idea at its root, but it is implemented way too bluntly. Instead of an oversimplified-to-the-point-of-injustice "third conviction gets you life in prison" rule (which is the rule only because people in the US like baseball and a good sound-bite!), we should consider something like "every previous crime on your record results in a doubling of the prison sentence for subsequent crimes"... so, for example, if shoplifting normally would get you two weeks in jail, then shoplifting with a prior conviction would get you four weeks, with two priors -- eight weeks, and so on. This would avoid ridiculously long sentences for minor crimes, except in cases of extreme recidivism.
This is a very bad thing for the American software industry
Yes, and cars were a very bad thing for the American buggy-whip industry. But progress is progress, and when a better way of doing things comes to the fore, you can bitch and moan, or you can face reality and admit that the days of proprietary operating systems and productivity software are numbered. And why shouldn't they be? Americans benefit from having cheap software and control over their own data as much as anybody else does.
That's easily explained... Dubya got Weasliest Individual for pushing through idiotic foreign policy decisions based on obvious lies (or at best, half-truths), and the Democrats were rated Weasliest Party for rolling over and rubber-stamping those decisions even though they knew they were the wrong thing for the country.
Thanks to their hand-in-glove co-operation, every single American citizen now has to fork over an extra $3,480 per year to the "Keep Iraq from Turning Into Afghanistan Fund", in perpetuity. I suppose it's not so bad though -- lots of that money will be going into the pockets of American companies (read: Halliburton and other year-2000 Bush campaign contributors), which will be good for the crony economy.
Whatever happened to the idea of an opposition party, anyway?
The ACLU got voted on at all. They are traditionally loved by the democrats and THEY got more votes than the republican party
The inclusion of the ACLU surprised me also. Maybe I have the definition of "weasel" wrong? (seems unlikely since I'm half-way through Adam's book) AFAIK it means someone who practices "situational ethics", i.e. tries to project an image of ethical behaviour but has no compuction about breaking his own rules if he thinks he can get away with it.
Now you may love the ACLU or you may hate it, but it's hard to find an organization that more consistently sticks by its ethical code through thick and thin. Their sole purpose is to defend civil liberties, and they defend them devoutly, whether the party whose rights are being abused is popular or not. I don't see anything weaselly about that... weaselly would be defending civil rights only when doing so was non-controversial (i.e. only when the client was seen as a "good guy").
Hey, don't shoot the messenger, I'm just pointing out "why".
Okay, I'll let you live... this time.:^)
Not to mention, last time I checked, fossil fuels were more efficient and more reliable than windmills...
I'm not so sure that's true, at least in the long term. Any oil well is guaranteed to fail (stop producing significant quantities of energy) after a finite period of time. A wind farm, properly maintained, can continue producing energy indefinitely. (not to mention that a good portion of the world's oil is located in places that are decidedly not "reliable" from a geopolitical perspective!)
As for efficiency, sure, it's more efficient to find free energy lying in the ground than it is to make your own, just like it's "more efficient" to inherit lots of money than it is to go to college and get a good-paying job. The problem is, that strategy only works until the inheritance runs out, at which point we're going to need another strategy or all hell is going to break loose.
Taking out and putting in a several-hundred pound battery pack is a bit more complicated than sticking a nozzle in a hole
I imagine something like what you have at the oil-changing places... a pit in the floor that you drive over. Once your car is lined up, a robot in the pit removes your current battery pack and puts in a fresh one.
Also, what's the incentive? What would you be willing to pay the "juice" station owner for this service?
As a rule of thumb, I think people would be willing to pay as much as an equivalent (in terms of drivable miles added) gasoline fill-up costs them now. So perhaps $5-$10 per battery change?
And where's he going to put all these packs while they're charging up before getting installed on a new car? That's a significant storage/power issue.
Where do gas stations store all their extra gasoline now? In a big pit in the ground, of course. There are no real problems here that haven't been solved before.
No, I think fuel cells, gassed up with methanol or somesuch, is more feasible... though also far-off.
I tend to agree, but I don't think a battery-swap system would be impossible if people put their minds to it.
Want to improve air quality? Quit fretting about the number of cars on the road, and target the tiny tenth of a percent of the cars out there that, due to age or neglect of maintenance, are the REAL polluters.
Are you suggesting that once we get rid of those, the air pollution problems will be solved?
Why is it that the "Not in my backyard" logic never seems to apply to the smog and pollution produced by our current methods? I know I would gladly accept the presence of windmills, solar panels, etc in exchange for being able to breathe clean air...
This country was founded by people who wisely kept religion in government but wisely made sure that the government did not pass laws forcing any particular religion on the populous (respecting an established religion). This is why the Pilgrims came over here: so they could pick any religion they want without the gov't forcing it on them. It doesn't mean the gov't can't prefer a religion but it doesn't mean the gov't can force that same religion on the public.
Here is where we differ. It absolutely means the government can't "prefer a religion". Once the governemnt is allowed to "prefer a religion", then we have a de facto State Religion, and the separation of church and state is lost. From there it is an easy and well-travelled path down the road to government persecution and marginalization of other religions. It may seem like a reasonable situation to you now, since it benefits your religion, but without that protection, there is nothing that prevents some future generation of the US government from favoring some other religion over yours, either. The separation of church and state exists as much for the protection of Christians as anyone else.
Bottom line: You just don't like seeing someone else's (dare I say anyone's?) religion in a public/political atmosphere and want to stifle it even when it is in no way infringing on yours.
You're wrong about that -- I'm happy to see religion in a public/political atmosphere; I think people should be free to believe and discuss anything they want. I merely object to the government taking a position in a topic where the Consitution demands that it remain neutral.
So answer me this: if your kids' school implemented a Pledge of Allegiance that had them say "under Satan" instead of "under God", would you object? If you answered "yes", then you are admitting that it's oppression, and that you are trying to force something on other people that you wouldn't accept for yourself. If you answered "no", then you are indicating that the phrase is just a meaningless affectation, in which case there's no reason for you to object to it being removed.
You can jawbone all you like about how great Christianity is, but the fact remains -- this country was founded by people who wisely kept religion out of government, and the wisdom of that decision still applies today. Nobody is trying to "take your religion away", they are just trying to keep you from forcing it on other people's kids.
Is the ultimate goal for everybody to believe in nothing?
No, the ultimate goal is for everybody to believe whatever they want to believe, and for the government not to get involved in peoples' beliefs. You may recall it was government meddling in peoples' religious beliefs that drove many of our original settlers all the way out to North America in the first place, and that's what was on the Founding Fathers' minds when they placed at the top of the Bill of Rights that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof".
So what do Americans stand for?
American government stands for Freedom of Religion. Specifically, freedom from the government telling Americans what to believe.
Schools must expose children to multiple viewpoints. I think that eliminating religion entirely is a bad thing
You're right. But informing students about religion and advocating a particular religion are completely different things. And including God in a "Pledge of Allegiance" is definitely advocating, not informing.
But America == democracy so if the majority wants God in the government and in public areas then shutup about it.
That's absolutely wrong. The whole reason the USA has the Bill of Rights is to protect the minority from the oppression of the majority. Forcing everyone to recite a Pledge that includes God violates the principle of separation of church and state, which is part of the First Amendment. So unless you can get the Constitution changed, it doesn't matter what the majority wants. Like it or not, that's how the system was designed, and there were very good reasons for designing it that way.
And if you think having God in the Pledge shouldn't bother people of other religions, imagine replacing "God" with "Satan" in the pledge of Allegiance, and how you would feel about your kids being encouraged to recite that. That's how people of non-God-based faiths (like myself) feel now.
The first entry in the "top news stories" sidebar of that page is an article entitled Astronomers date Universe's 'cosmic jerk'. What do they see in that guy, anyway?
You're missing the point -- most Apple customers are people who do not wish to assemble their own computer from parts. Apple is not marketing their products to the technological kit-crowd. So comparing Apple's turnkey product to a do-it-yourself system is pointless.
Bah. What we need isn't another space race -- what we need is a better way to get out of our gravity well. Blowing ourselves into orbit with explosives isn't much safer or more practical for our astronauts than it was for Wiley Coyote. If NASA were to ask my opinion (and rest assured that they won't;^)), I'd say take all the money from the space shuttle program and invest it into developing a nice Space Elevator.
Hm, it's not obvious at all to me. How does pissing off the Open Source community "increase SCO shareholder value"? Much more likely SCO is just trying to extort $$$ out of companies that use Linux, and is pissing off the Open Source community as a side effect. (on the other hand, SCO's stupid placards do lend credence to the just-trying-to-piss-us-off argument, if not a motive)
For many open source projects, marketing and distribution are handled informally, in a peer to peer style -- users tell their friends about the software and give them copies of it. The costs are distributed amongst the users that way.
Slashdot Mirror
You are claiming that it's impossible to write a secure OS, such that a naive user cannot (or at least is very unlikely to) have his system compromised?
Or is it just that it hasn't been done, yet?
Certainly there have been some promising attempts towards this goal -- but the market apparently isn't ready yet to take such things seriously.
these crimes in the first place.
And the ends justify the means? If so, then why stop with rape? Why not allow inmates to torture and murder each other as well? Heck, we could even pay them to kill each other off, saving taxpayer dollars...
What it boils down to is this: either we are a nation of laws, or we are not. Assuming that we are a nation of laws, then if a person is sentenced to incarceration, he should be incarcerated, not incarcerated and raped. If we someday decide it is wise to employ rape as a legal punishment (as some societies do), then so be it, but at least let's be honest with ourselves and not tolerate violent, degrading crimes just because don't personally like the victims.
Okay, here are one hundred and fifty documented third-strike outcomes -- life sentences, for such offences as as "waslking away from fire camp", "filling out a false DMV application", "shoplifting of a baseball glove", etc.
As an aside, I think the three strikes law has a good idea at its root, but it is implemented way too bluntly. Instead of an oversimplified-to-the-point-of-injustice "third conviction gets you life in prison" rule (which is the rule only because people in the US like baseball and a good sound-bite!), we should consider something like "every previous crime on your record results in a doubling of the prison sentence for subsequent crimes"... so, for example, if shoplifting normally would get you two weeks in jail, then shoplifting with a prior conviction would get you four weeks, with two priors -- eight weeks, and so on. This would avoid ridiculously long sentences for minor crimes, except in cases of extreme recidivism.
Yes, and cars were a very bad thing for the American buggy-whip industry. But progress is progress, and when a better way of doing things comes to the fore, you can bitch and moan, or you can face reality and admit that the days of proprietary operating systems and productivity software are numbered. And why shouldn't they be? Americans benefit from having cheap software and control over their own data as much as anybody else does.
Otherwise evil companies would have now way to escape their own reputations!
To be fair, if the parent poster really is Scott Evil, then investing in SCO would be entirely appropriate for him.
We have people that do that... we call them "users".
Thanks to their hand-in-glove co-operation, every single American citizen now has to fork over an extra $3,480 per year to the "Keep Iraq from Turning Into Afghanistan Fund", in perpetuity. I suppose it's not so bad though -- lots of that money will be going into the pockets of American companies (read: Halliburton and other year-2000 Bush campaign contributors), which will be good for the crony economy.
Whatever happened to the idea of an opposition party, anyway?
The inclusion of the ACLU surprised me also. Maybe I have the definition of "weasel" wrong? (seems unlikely since I'm half-way through Adam's book) AFAIK it means someone who practices "situational ethics", i.e. tries to project an image of ethical behaviour but has no compuction about breaking his own rules if he thinks he can get away with it.
Now you may love the ACLU or you may hate it, but it's hard to find an organization that more consistently sticks by its ethical code through thick and thin. Their sole purpose is to defend civil liberties, and they defend them devoutly, whether the party whose rights are being abused is popular or not. I don't see anything weaselly about that... weaselly would be defending civil rights only when doing so was non-controversial (i.e. only when the client was seen as a "good guy").
Okay, I'll let you live... this time.
Not to mention, last time I checked, fossil fuels were more efficient and more reliable than windmills...
I'm not so sure that's true, at least in the long term. Any oil well is guaranteed to fail (stop producing significant quantities of energy) after a finite period of time. A wind farm, properly maintained, can continue producing energy indefinitely. (not to mention that a good portion of the world's oil is located in places that are decidedly not "reliable" from a geopolitical perspective!)
As for efficiency, sure, it's more efficient to find free energy lying in the ground than it is to make your own, just like it's "more efficient" to inherit lots of money than it is to go to college and get a good-paying job. The problem is, that strategy only works until the inheritance runs out, at which point we're going to need another strategy or all hell is going to break loose.
Last time I checked, windmills don't give your kids asthma.
I imagine something like what you have at the oil-changing places... a pit in the floor that you drive over. Once your car is lined up, a robot in the pit removes your current battery pack and puts in a fresh one.
Also, what's the incentive? What would you be willing to pay the "juice" station owner for this service?
As a rule of thumb, I think people would be willing to pay as much as an equivalent (in terms of drivable miles added) gasoline fill-up costs them now. So perhaps $5-$10 per battery change?
And where's he going to put all these packs while they're charging
up before getting installed on a new car? That's a significant storage/power issue.
Where do gas stations store all their extra gasoline now? In a big pit in the ground, of course. There are no real problems here that haven't been solved before.
No, I think fuel cells, gassed up with methanol or somesuch, is more feasible... though also far-off.
I tend to agree, but I don't think a battery-swap system would be impossible if people put their minds to it.
Want to improve air quality? Quit fretting about the number of cars on the road, and target the tiny tenth of a percent of the cars out there that, due to age or neglect of maintenance, are the REAL polluters.
Are you suggesting that once we get rid of those, the air pollution problems will be solved?
Why is it that the "Not in my backyard" logic never seems to apply to the smog and pollution produced by our current methods? I know I would gladly accept the presence of windmills, solar panels, etc in exchange for being able to breathe clean air...
Here is where we differ. It absolutely means the government can't "prefer a religion". Once the governemnt is allowed to "prefer a religion", then we have a de facto State Religion, and the separation of church and state is lost. From there it is an easy and well-travelled path down the road to government persecution and marginalization of other religions. It may seem like a reasonable situation to you now, since it benefits your religion, but without that protection, there is nothing that prevents some future generation of the US government from favoring some other religion over yours, either. The separation of church and state exists as much for the protection of Christians as anyone else.
Bottom line: You just don't like seeing someone else's (dare I say anyone's?) religion in a public/political atmosphere and want to stifle it even when it is in no way infringing on yours.
You're wrong about that -- I'm happy to see religion in a public/political atmosphere; I think people should be free to believe and discuss anything they want. I merely object to the government taking a position in a topic where the Consitution demands that it remain neutral.
You can jawbone all you like about how great Christianity is, but the fact remains -- this country was founded by people who wisely kept religion out of government, and the wisdom of that decision still applies today. Nobody is trying to "take your religion away", they are just trying to keep you from forcing it on other people's kids.
No, the ultimate goal is for everybody to believe whatever they want to believe, and for the government not to get involved in peoples' beliefs. You may recall it was government meddling in peoples' religious beliefs that drove many of our original settlers all the way out to North America in the first place, and that's what was on the Founding Fathers' minds when they placed at the top of the Bill of Rights that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof".
So what do Americans stand for?
American government stands for Freedom of Religion. Specifically, freedom from the government telling Americans what to believe.
Schools must expose children to multiple viewpoints. I think that eliminating religion entirely is a bad thing
You're right. But informing students about religion and advocating a particular religion are completely different things. And including God in a "Pledge of Allegiance" is definitely advocating, not informing.
That's absolutely wrong. The whole reason the USA has the Bill of Rights is to protect the minority from the oppression of the majority. Forcing everyone to recite a Pledge that includes God violates the principle of separation of church and state, which is part of the First Amendment. So unless you can get the Constitution changed, it doesn't matter what the majority wants. Like it or not, that's how the system was designed, and there were very good reasons for designing it that way.
And if you think having God in the Pledge shouldn't bother people of other religions, imagine replacing "God" with "Satan" in the pledge of Allegiance, and how you would feel about your kids being encouraged to recite that. That's how people of non-God-based faiths (like myself) feel now.
Please explain exactly what would stop Microsoft from going SCO on the ass of every project that uses Mono, if Microsoft was inclined to do so.
The first entry in the "top news stories" sidebar of that page is an article entitled Astronomers date Universe's 'cosmic jerk'. What do they see in that guy, anyway?
You're missing the point -- most Apple customers are people who do not wish to assemble their own computer from parts. Apple is not marketing their products to the technological kit-crowd. So comparing Apple's turnkey product to a do-it-yourself system is pointless.
obNitpick: Eccentrica Gallumbits, the triple-breasted whore of Eroticon VI.
Bah. What we need isn't another space race -- what we need is a better way to get out of our gravity well. Blowing ourselves into orbit with explosives isn't much safer or more practical for our astronauts than it was for Wiley Coyote. If NASA were to ask my opinion (and rest assured that they won't ;^)), I'd say take all the money from the space shuttle program and invest it into developing a nice Space Elevator.
Hm, it's not obvious at all to me. How does pissing off the Open Source community "increase SCO shareholder value"? Much more likely SCO is just trying to extort $$$ out of companies that use Linux, and is pissing off the Open Source community as a side effect. (on the other hand, SCO's stupid placards do lend credence to the just-trying-to-piss-us-off argument, if not a motive)
Okay, how about "of all the asteroids that flew past Earth, this one was the closest"?
For many open source projects, marketing and distribution are handled informally, in a peer to peer style -- users tell their friends about the software and give them copies of it. The costs are distributed amongst the users that way.