Here in the future, when we want an interactive presentation, we use Flash or Java as noted earlier.
The Flash plugin has all the same "security vulnerabilities" of using Javascript as Quicktime does. Java can send JS, too! There is nothing even remotely unique or special about a plugin that supports Javascript. If you're on a mission to eradicate JS from the Internet, have fun raging against the machine. Changing Quicktime because you are as ignorant about the Internet as the average MySpace user is not a compelling argument.
No, QuickTime doesn't need to "allow interactive behavior". It just needs to play video. If I want interactive behavior, I'll use Flash or Java.
Hi, 1991 is calling. Quicktime was created from the very beginning, and has always been, a complete interactive multimedia development and presentation system. Most of the multimedia CD-ROMs produced in the 90s were just giant Quicktime applications. In fact, it can play most Flash files, so trying to make a distinction between Quicktime and Flash features is mostly a matter of version matching.
It (like RealPlayer) is also a W3C compliant SMIL player, which requires interactive support. Quicktime isn't doing anything insecure or unusual, it is providing support for widely accepted standard media technologies.
That's got to come out of Quicktime players. They're a huge security hole now. That's just unacceptable.
What security hole? Quicktime is a multimedia authoring and playback tool, just like Flash, RealPlayer, WMP, and every other multimedia system. It needs to be able to get media, display it, and allow interactive behavior just like every other multimedia program. You could create the exact same "security hole" using 100% W3C-approved SMIL.
The only security hole is the server allowing unauthorized Javascript to initiate MySpace user actions without any confirmation. Someone clever realized that the Javascript blocks wouldn't recognize JS sent from the plugin -- that doesn't mean the plugin has a security hole, it means the web application itself was vulnerable to a malicious injection of code from perfectly normal and common network behavior. The plugin worked perfectly and didn't do anything sketchy with the OS or network. If allowing code to be sent is a security hole then every browser has a huge security hole called the anchor tag.
The Zune comes in an easy to open cardboard package. So what does this say for Microsoft vs. Apple in UI?
The iPod comes in a cardboard box, too (well, the smaller ones come in plastic boxes, but not sealed plastic like this article is talking about). He was talking about a 3rd-party case for the iPod that was packaged poorly.
Indeed, Apple spends a LOT of time and money designing the packaging and "opening presentation" for their products, more than anyone else in the computer industry by far, and more than the vast majority of consumer products companies. I don't think Apple has made anything (with Jobs at the helm) that was difficult to open -- he's said he considers the first experience of opening the box to be where people form the first impressions of elegance or frustration with the product. And I think this whole thread is proving him right.
I've heard from other friends in the packaging industry that this is the "official" reason but not the real reason. The real reason is that returns of items packed in this way are lower because people have to destroy the package to get the item out, and they think it isn't returnable in such condition. (I believe them that returns are lower, but I don't know if they've done real research to establish the reason, it could just be that the packaging is better at keeping stuff from breaking or accessories from being swiped)
It is the production of innovative medical products and devices which require a free market. Including new drugs. Without the U.S. as a free market engine to drive the development of new drugs, the entire world would be worse off because of their absence.
You can say that as frequently as you like, there's little to no evidence of it being true. Aside from Cuba's hugely successful biotech and pharmaceutical industries (which have produced vaccines such as Hep B that were "unprofitable" for American companies, yet have saved tens of millions of lives worldwide in only a decade), you have only to look to Canada and Europe for fully half the new drugs and technologies being created today. This is not 1970 anymore, the United States is not far ahead of our contemporaries in medical science either on a research or commercialization basis.
If we had a free market for healthcare, perhaps your ideas would work, but right now what we have is nothing whatsoever like a free market. Indeed, I know of many countries around the world that have truly free unregulated medical care, and not a single one of them produces any research or commercial products of significance. Every major pharmaceutical and research center I or you could name is located in a country that has very, very unfree healthcare markets.
Added to that, there would nowhere left in the world for medical innovation to take place.
Wow, having worked in medical research for the last decade I have to admit I'm surprised to find out that private insurance companies are spending so much more on research than the government. It will be news to most of my colleagues, as well.
Of course, like most people, I'm sure you're completely unaware of the fact that Cuba is one of the world's foremost countries in medical research. (No doubt it is because of their cutthroat capitalist medical care market!) One of the wonderful side-effects of our embargo is that American physicians have to get a lot of new medical developments second-hand rather than being able to attend the world-class seminars right next door. But hey, who wants to be saved by a surgical technique developed by communists?
For instance, a RPG may take you 50 hours to complete, but there's really not much replay value usually. It'll be the same experience all over again.
A well-designed RPG has huge replay value. I've played Fallout 2 probably a dozen times through and still haven't seen every combination of cool stuff a character can do. The problem is that we think of RPGs now as being like Neverwinter Nights 2, which was immensely disappointing since it was about as free form as a rail shooter. It made no difference what choices you made or what kind of character you had, you still got the exact same story every time through.
Games like Fallout let you be a savior, a slave trader, a porn star, a mobster, a hitman, etc, etc. That's role playing. If you want to be a charismatic asshole who never fires a shot and sells his NPCs to drug dealers for a fix, go ahead. If you want to be a Rambo superhero righting wrongs, you can do that too. Morrowind had similar flexibility (though not as good writing). Everything newer (like Oblivion and NWN2) has been way too linear to qualify as an RPG IMHO.
talk about how wonderful small business is and how it's the bedrock of the economy, yet healthcare costs are strangling small business.
This is very true. For all the talk about taxes, "Equal Opportunity" employment, and regulation killing small businesses, I have never personally met someone whose company failed for any of those reasons. Yet I know literally dozens of people who have had to go back to the corporate world because health care was unavailable or impossible to afford when they worked freelance, contract, self-employed or started small companies.
When you're in your 20s it's no big deal, but as soon as you get married and have kids the idea of having no insurance and knowing your entire life's work will disappear overnight with a single medical problem is sobering. Talk about a disincentive to entrepreneurship.
Imagine those tanks in the streets of Kuwait (again) or over the skies of Jeddah. Still think that those tanks and fighters aren't a threat to the US?
Is this some sort of trick question? How would either of those things present any threat to the US? Last time I checked we only had 50 states and a few territories, none of which are in the range of any weapons in the Iraqi armory. The threat we were supposedly defending ourselves against was that of non-conventional weapons which could be delivered by terrorists.
You completely misunderstood both the posts you responded to and provided a total non-sequiter about conventional military forces. Just walk away.
Speaking of staggeringly stupid statement, how exactly are you going to drive a tank from Iraq to the continental United States?
Obviously the poster was referring to the supposed "weapons of mass destruction" that didn't exist, and the person he was replying to was specifically saying the mission was successful because they were "no longer a threat". Tanks and fighters located halfway around the world were never a threat to the United States.
By your logic, Iraq is even more heavily armed now than they were before -- after all, now they have lots of modern American military equipment at their disposal!
the second amendment preserves the right to bear arms explicitly for the defense of the state - not for the overthrow of the government.
The defense of the state was against the federal government. Or did you somehow miss the historical context where the states had just staged a revolution? Nobody was worried about the right to hunt, or about the possibility of the Spanish suddenly invading New York. They were worried about a federal government overstepping its bounds. Obviously since the Civil War, the legal questions have gotten only murkier, but don't try to rewrite history to imply these revolutionaries who extensively documented their motivations were not thinking of the possibility that the new federal government would have to be overthrown.
This is a bit of American civic theory that I've never understood. You claim that free speech and the right to bear arms are necessary to enable you to violently overthrow your government. But doesn't violently overthrowing your government also fall under the definition of treason and/or terrorism? How do you tell the difference?
Well, of course actually advocating the violent overthrow of the government is illegal. The basic principle is that the people (through the individual states) should always have the tools available to make whatever changes in the federal government are necessary, not that we should encourage them to use them any more frequently than absolutely required. The legal aspects of all this have changed dramatically since the US Civil War, since the autonomy of the individual states was pretty much abandoned at that point, which is why it is such a contentious Constitutional issue.
Similarly, juries can find a person not guilty of any crime if they don't believe the law is just (jury nullification), but no lawyer or judge is allowed to tell the jury that. You don't want to encourage juries to just ignore the law, but at the same time if the jury is so offended that they cannot in good conscience convict a person of breaking an unjust law, that is in their authority.
Why is this a different question for people than corporations?
I don't know about your peer group, but most people I know do consider it a basic moral standard that people shouldn't knowingly lie (about anything significant).
Your constant invocation of red herrings about making it illegal completely drives past the point of the original poster, which is that most poeple DO consider it immoral for individuals to lie for personal benefit. Yet you and others consider it not just acceptable but in fact necessary for corporations to lie whenever necessary for shareholder benefit. It is the Friedman libertarians who are holding a double standard.
Why would you laugh? An oil slick really will evaporate over time. It happens every day in the Gulf of Mexico where oil literally rises to the surface from the sea floor.
Yes, and every day on the Gulf of Mexico beaches are covered with natural tar. All the components do not just vanish.
what is a civil war will descend into complete Chaos as Sunni's and Shia fight for that piece of land called Iraq.
Oh, well then I guess we'd better stick around until they resolve their centuries-old religious conflict. We wouldn't want the Sunni and Shiites to start fighting. No doubt our presence there is the only thing that has kept that unimaginable possibility from happening so far..
Unlikely that they would be able to protect it but I doubt that they did it for 'bragging rights'. It is too expensive to do it for 'bragging rights.'
Most research groups and companies use patents as a metric for success. It's something they point to when searching for investors, when reporting progress, when evaluating raises and promotions. Spending a few thousand dollars of corporate money on a useless patent is a bargain if it gains your company, division, or personal salary a boost.
That was an awful lot of typing for a circular argument. Abraham did not invent ethics or morality, and believe it or not, before the Jews and Christians existed societies still had concepts of right and wrong. There are, in fact, large land masses right now on this planet where none of the monotheistic religions are widely accepted, yet the people are not amoral.
or you have developed a framework that provides for moral behavior but is essentially amoral, because there is no right and wrong, just a social contract enforced with arms.
And when God threatens you with an eternity of suffering, is he not enforcing his social contract with arms? Are Christians moral because they chose to be, or because they are threatened with infinite torture? Isn't it amoral (by your definition) to choose actions not because you believe them to be truly right, but because you believe them to be favored by an external force, whether it is called society or God?
You point out something I have always found amusing. Let's say someone breaks into your home, in most states you are within your legal rights to kill them. However, in all states that I am aware of, if you setup a trap you are not only liable but criminally liable.
Yeah, and there's nothing amusing about it. A fireman or paramedic will set off a booby trap just as readily as a burglar will. You aren't allowed to kill ANYONE who walks through your door, only those with criminal intent (and in many states, only those who present a direct physical threat). Since booby traps are incapable of making those judgments, they're illegal.
Yeah - there was absolutely no public discussion of the Partriot Act, was there?
You seem to be trying to be sarcastic, so I'm not sure you remember the Patriot Act was pushed through Congress in a matter of days. There are many statements from congressional staffers saying that basically nobody had time to even read the bill since it was so huge, but the Presdient wanted it passed, so everyone lined up and passed it. There was basically no discussion or debate whatsoever before the Patriot Act was passed, it was only after the fact that anyone could read the darn thing and see how much bad stuff had been put in by the Executive, some of which were allowed to expire when the act went up for renewal.
Right before the election, and... that's a total red herring.
So you ARE aware that they do push out uncertified software updates at the last minute. I'm glad we both agree your earlier statement was wrong. Making sure everyone has their facts straight is generally not considered a red herring.
Even though Foley is not running the Democrats refused to allow his name to be removed from the ballot. Not only that they will not allow signs to put in the polling places to tell people that they are not really voting for Foley! If that is not trying to manipulate the election I don't know what is.
Uh, no, the legislature and courts refused to allow the ballot to be changed after the candidates were legally established, and they also refuse to allow any postings about particular candidates within a certain distance of a polling place. These are laws that were set up specifically to prevent the manipulation of elections.
I haven't used the new touch screen voting machines, but if you went Democrat "across the board", isn't that a single check box?
It said she was seeing Republicans on the summary screen. If you cast a straight-ticket ballot, you only click one box, but at the end you get a verification screen with the list of all the votes (including all the individual votes your straight ticket represented).
The eSlate systems here in TX are so poorly designed that if the candidate's name or office is more than 12 letters long, it's just cut off. So you see useful verifications like "Officer of the Com - Sarah-Jessica L Pa". Considering most people only know candidates by the last name and party, it's basically useless. And all the important information in the office is cut off like which district, which specific seat, etc.
And of course there was no receipt printed at the end, so god only knows if my vote counted.
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The Flash plugin has all the same "security vulnerabilities" of using Javascript as Quicktime does. Java can send JS, too! There is nothing even remotely unique or special about a plugin that supports Javascript. If you're on a mission to eradicate JS from the Internet, have fun raging against the machine. Changing Quicktime because you are as ignorant about the Internet as the average MySpace user is not a compelling argument.
LOL, yes some of us got it
Hi, 1991 is calling. Quicktime was created from the very beginning, and has always been, a complete interactive multimedia development and presentation system. Most of the multimedia CD-ROMs produced in the 90s were just giant Quicktime applications. In fact, it can play most Flash files, so trying to make a distinction between Quicktime and Flash features is mostly a matter of version matching.
It (like RealPlayer) is also a W3C compliant SMIL player, which requires interactive support. Quicktime isn't doing anything insecure or unusual, it is providing support for widely accepted standard media technologies.
What security hole? Quicktime is a multimedia authoring and playback tool, just like Flash, RealPlayer, WMP, and every other multimedia system. It needs to be able to get media, display it, and allow interactive behavior just like every other multimedia program. You could create the exact same "security hole" using 100% W3C-approved SMIL.
The only security hole is the server allowing unauthorized Javascript to initiate MySpace user actions without any confirmation. Someone clever realized that the Javascript blocks wouldn't recognize JS sent from the plugin -- that doesn't mean the plugin has a security hole, it means the web application itself was vulnerable to a malicious injection of code from perfectly normal and common network behavior. The plugin worked perfectly and didn't do anything sketchy with the OS or network. If allowing code to be sent is a security hole then every browser has a huge security hole called the anchor tag.
The iPod comes in a cardboard box, too (well, the smaller ones come in plastic boxes, but not sealed plastic like this article is talking about). He was talking about a 3rd-party case for the iPod that was packaged poorly.
Indeed, Apple spends a LOT of time and money designing the packaging and "opening presentation" for their products, more than anyone else in the computer industry by far, and more than the vast majority of consumer products companies. I don't think Apple has made anything (with Jobs at the helm) that was difficult to open -- he's said he considers the first experience of opening the box to be where people form the first impressions of elegance or frustration with the product. And I think this whole thread is proving him right.
I've heard from other friends in the packaging industry that this is the "official" reason but not the real reason. The real reason is that returns of items packed in this way are lower because people have to destroy the package to get the item out, and they think it isn't returnable in such condition. (I believe them that returns are lower, but I don't know if they've done real research to establish the reason, it could just be that the packaging is better at keeping stuff from breaking or accessories from being swiped)
You can say that as frequently as you like, there's little to no evidence of it being true. Aside from Cuba's hugely successful biotech and pharmaceutical industries (which have produced vaccines such as Hep B that were "unprofitable" for American companies, yet have saved tens of millions of lives worldwide in only a decade), you have only to look to Canada and Europe for fully half the new drugs and technologies being created today. This is not 1970 anymore, the United States is not far ahead of our contemporaries in medical science either on a research or commercialization basis.
If we had a free market for healthcare, perhaps your ideas would work, but right now what we have is nothing whatsoever like a free market. Indeed, I know of many countries around the world that have truly free unregulated medical care, and not a single one of them produces any research or commercial products of significance. Every major pharmaceutical and research center I or you could name is located in a country that has very, very unfree healthcare markets.
Wow, having worked in medical research for the last decade I have to admit I'm surprised to find out that private insurance companies are spending so much more on research than the government. It will be news to most of my colleagues, as well.
Of course, like most people, I'm sure you're completely unaware of the fact that Cuba is one of the world's foremost countries in medical research. (No doubt it is because of their cutthroat capitalist medical care market!) One of the wonderful side-effects of our embargo is that American physicians have to get a lot of new medical developments second-hand rather than being able to attend the world-class seminars right next door. But hey, who wants to be saved by a surgical technique developed by communists?
A well-designed RPG has huge replay value. I've played Fallout 2 probably a dozen times through and still haven't seen every combination of cool stuff a character can do. The problem is that we think of RPGs now as being like Neverwinter Nights 2, which was immensely disappointing since it was about as free form as a rail shooter. It made no difference what choices you made or what kind of character you had, you still got the exact same story every time through.
Games like Fallout let you be a savior, a slave trader, a porn star, a mobster, a hitman, etc, etc. That's role playing. If you want to be a charismatic asshole who never fires a shot and sells his NPCs to drug dealers for a fix, go ahead. If you want to be a Rambo superhero righting wrongs, you can do that too. Morrowind had similar flexibility (though not as good writing). Everything newer (like Oblivion and NWN2) has been way too linear to qualify as an RPG IMHO.
This is very true. For all the talk about taxes, "Equal Opportunity" employment, and regulation killing small businesses, I have never personally met someone whose company failed for any of those reasons. Yet I know literally dozens of people who have had to go back to the corporate world because health care was unavailable or impossible to afford when they worked freelance, contract, self-employed or started small companies.
When you're in your 20s it's no big deal, but as soon as you get married and have kids the idea of having no insurance and knowing your entire life's work will disappear overnight with a single medical problem is sobering. Talk about a disincentive to entrepreneurship.
Is this some sort of trick question? How would either of those things present any threat to the US? Last time I checked we only had 50 states and a few territories, none of which are in the range of any weapons in the Iraqi armory. The threat we were supposedly defending ourselves against was that of non-conventional weapons which could be delivered by terrorists.
You completely misunderstood both the posts you responded to and provided a total non-sequiter about conventional military forces. Just walk away.
Speaking of staggeringly stupid statement, how exactly are you going to drive a tank from Iraq to the continental United States?
Obviously the poster was referring to the supposed "weapons of mass destruction" that didn't exist, and the person he was replying to was specifically saying the mission was successful because they were "no longer a threat". Tanks and fighters located halfway around the world were never a threat to the United States.
By your logic, Iraq is even more heavily armed now than they were before -- after all, now they have lots of modern American military equipment at their disposal!
The defense of the state was against the federal government. Or did you somehow miss the historical context where the states had just staged a revolution? Nobody was worried about the right to hunt, or about the possibility of the Spanish suddenly invading New York. They were worried about a federal government overstepping its bounds. Obviously since the Civil War, the legal questions have gotten only murkier, but don't try to rewrite history to imply these revolutionaries who extensively documented their motivations were not thinking of the possibility that the new federal government would have to be overthrown.
Well, of course actually advocating the violent overthrow of the government is illegal. The basic principle is that the people (through the individual states) should always have the tools available to make whatever changes in the federal government are necessary, not that we should encourage them to use them any more frequently than absolutely required. The legal aspects of all this have changed dramatically since the US Civil War, since the autonomy of the individual states was pretty much abandoned at that point, which is why it is such a contentious Constitutional issue.
Similarly, juries can find a person not guilty of any crime if they don't believe the law is just (jury nullification), but no lawyer or judge is allowed to tell the jury that. You don't want to encourage juries to just ignore the law, but at the same time if the jury is so offended that they cannot in good conscience convict a person of breaking an unjust law, that is in their authority.
I don't know about your peer group, but most people I know do consider it a basic moral standard that people shouldn't knowingly lie (about anything significant).
Your constant invocation of red herrings about making it illegal completely drives past the point of the original poster, which is that most poeple DO consider it immoral for individuals to lie for personal benefit. Yet you and others consider it not just acceptable but in fact necessary for corporations to lie whenever necessary for shareholder benefit. It is the Friedman libertarians who are holding a double standard.
Yes, and every day on the Gulf of Mexico beaches are covered with natural tar. All the components do not just vanish.
Oh, well then I guess we'd better stick around until they resolve their centuries-old religious conflict. We wouldn't want the Sunni and Shiites to start fighting. No doubt our presence there is the only thing that has kept that unimaginable possibility from happening so far..
Most research groups and companies use patents as a metric for success. It's something they point to when searching for investors, when reporting progress, when evaluating raises and promotions. Spending a few thousand dollars of corporate money on a useless patent is a bargain if it gains your company, division, or personal salary a boost.
That was an awful lot of typing for a circular argument. Abraham did not invent ethics or morality, and believe it or not, before the Jews and Christians existed societies still had concepts of right and wrong. There are, in fact, large land masses right now on this planet where none of the monotheistic religions are widely accepted, yet the people are not amoral.
or you have developed a framework that provides for moral behavior but is essentially amoral, because there is no right and wrong, just a social contract enforced with arms.
And when God threatens you with an eternity of suffering, is he not enforcing his social contract with arms? Are Christians moral because they chose to be, or because they are threatened with infinite torture? Isn't it amoral (by your definition) to choose actions not because you believe them to be truly right, but because you believe them to be favored by an external force, whether it is called society or God?
Yeah, and there's nothing amusing about it. A fireman or paramedic will set off a booby trap just as readily as a burglar will. You aren't allowed to kill ANYONE who walks through your door, only those with criminal intent (and in many states, only those who present a direct physical threat). Since booby traps are incapable of making those judgments, they're illegal.
You seem to be trying to be sarcastic, so I'm not sure you remember the Patriot Act was pushed through Congress in a matter of days. There are many statements from congressional staffers saying that basically nobody had time to even read the bill since it was so huge, but the Presdient wanted it passed, so everyone lined up and passed it. There was basically no discussion or debate whatsoever before the Patriot Act was passed, it was only after the fact that anyone could read the darn thing and see how much bad stuff had been put in by the Executive, some of which were allowed to expire when the act went up for renewal.
So you ARE aware that they do push out uncertified software updates at the last minute. I'm glad we both agree your earlier statement was wrong. Making sure everyone has their facts straight is generally not considered a red herring.
As opposed to the conspiracy to hide WMDs in Iraq?
Uh, no, the legislature and courts refused to allow the ballot to be changed after the candidates were legally established, and they also refuse to allow any postings about particular candidates within a certain distance of a polling place. These are laws that were set up specifically to prevent the manipulation of elections.
It said she was seeing Republicans on the summary screen. If you cast a straight-ticket ballot, you only click one box, but at the end you get a verification screen with the list of all the votes (including all the individual votes your straight ticket represented).
The eSlate systems here in TX are so poorly designed that if the candidate's name or office is more than 12 letters long, it's just cut off. So you see useful verifications like "Officer of the Com - Sarah-Jessica L Pa". Considering most people only know candidates by the last name and party, it's basically useless. And all the important information in the office is cut off like which district, which specific seat, etc.
And of course there was no receipt printed at the end, so god only knows if my vote counted.