By posting a comment on/., you've proved that you're at least somewhat technologically aware, if not a "tech geek". The problem with most people isn't laziness, it's lack of knowledge altogether -- they don't even know what ABP does or what it is, and wouldn't really consider using it. As well, many depend on a "tech guy" to make their decisions for them (such as you, perhaps), and it really depends on the "tech guy". There are many obstinately pro-Microsoft people from Gen Y (a.k.a. the commercial whore generation), or simply ones who will not tell their friends/family to do anything for fear of being held responsible for their advice, regardless of how good it was.
Exactly. If people aren't installing Adblock Plus, despite all of the enormous benefits, they are going to mess with alternate DNS -- assuming they even know what DNS is and what it does. On the other hand, it doesn't necessarily need to have perfect adoption. Like torrents, it is fine if it starts with a few technically proficient people, then spreads outwards.
Also, you've probably underestimated the use against, say, schools or workplaces that use alternate DNS servers with "questionable" domains removed. Using this with encryption will pretty much kill any attempt at monitoring.
I agree fully. However, both of the examples you listed are trivial in a wide sense. Personally, they are damaging, but the decision is not a great one and both are fairly clear. As well, how can one person be relied upon to decide? Discretion, in many cases, can hurt far more than indiscretion. I definitely prefer Wikileaks' "give it all" attitude.
Second of all, if someone is having a personal/secret conversation, it might not be a good idea to record it as public within the sphere of their own organization. If they are, institutionally, going to be critical of a country or person without publicizing it, then I don't see the huge crime in publicizing it. Rather than protecting the interests of an individual's opinion, you are hiding an institutional agenda that, in my opinion, should be publicly known.
Many open-source projects have meaningful names that require a certain level of knowledge to understand. For example, Pidgin -- with the symbol of a pidgeon for being a "messenger" and the name "pidgin" (a composite of two languages used for easy communication between different cultures) representative of its multi-protocol nature -- is one of those. Others could be Nitrogen (a "desktop element") and I'm sure there are many more.
The developers anticipate a certain level of general knowledge and vocabulary, as well as a taste for puns and little jokes that would pass most people by.
This is the great battle with distributions like Ubuntu. There's a fine line between auto-configuring and helping the user make decisions (or making decisions for the user) and preventing the user from making decisions on their own.
It's all about recognizing who would be receptive to it. I've talked to almost all my friends about it (and all of them definitely know I use Linux) but most are uninterested or are too ignorant to start using Linux right away -- they would be lost almost immediately. Instead, I heavily encourage Linux to those people who are generally hobbyist types, are intelligent, and have time on their hands.
I was making more of a point that Linux (the software) enables such tinkering and Linux (the community) encourages it. A truly motivated person would do it anyway, but such people are few and far between. A good community spirit draws in and encourages people that otherwise would do nothing.
I generally come from the perspective that your computer is as stable and user-friendly as you want to make it. Unless you're running hardware with poor support (Broadcom, anyone?) you're not going to have a really rocky experience with Linux. I like running computers with little resources and making my machine rock-solid stable and perfectly configured to my tastes. This is a process that takes dozens of hours of messing around and experimentation, but it pays off in the end, in my opinion.
As I understand, most of this is because of the developers, who do a great deal of work testing new updates.
It's also related to a difference in paradigms; distributions that have an "unstable" repository are saying "this software is unstable, don't use it unless you really want to." Having a "testing" repository instead implies that software in it is cutting-edge and new, which excites and interests people. That way, rather than a dumping ground for semi-broken software, it becomes a testing area for new software. This allows the developers to rely more heavily on the community to report problems encountered with new software rather than heroically trying to do everything to make the experience as smooth as possible for the user. It also allows users to more effectively define their risk tolerance while avoiding the issue of only benefitting from updates years after they come out.
Indeed, I find that Linux has an almost miraculous ability to convert users into developers. I've encouraged several friends over the years to use it, and out of those that have actually done it, most have not just stuck with it but have even surpassed me in some ways. It can take a teenager or young adult who knows barely anything about coding or even much about computers and can turn them into a coder or admin in no time. My theory is that people follow a sort of a path:
1. They use a bloated (but more immediately user-friendly) distribution like Ubuntu.
2. They hear about other users with lighter software and try it out. It requires a bit more configuration to be the way they want it to be. In the process, they learn more about their system and they learn many useful things.
3. The drive for improved performance and usability leads them to learning more and more and doing deeper and deeper configuration until they know a great deal and are very comfortable with their system.
4. The "scratch that itch" (ESR) effect comes into play; they see deficiencies in existing software and go out to make their own.
5. Before long, they are contributing to several projects, have a technical blog, and are advanced users.
It seems to be some sort of natural progression and it's interesting to see it happen over the period of several years. More significantly, Linux seems to turn a higher percentage of basic users (even those of the luser variety) into developers and advanced users. This seems to be why Linux progresses at such a fast pace; its users actively encourage other users to involve themselves on a deeper level.
Was? Still is. There is/was a cabal of editors who would upvote any story they viewed as pro-conservative (that is, positive press about issues or people they supported and negative press about people or issues they disliked) and downvote any story they viewed as "too liberal". They have ties to Conservapedia, although not in the "evil conspiracy" way, more in the "this is the same five cranks doing everything" kind of way. There were hundreds of accounts but only a handful of actual people, most of them sockpuppeted heavily to increase their voting power.
Mod parent up. Regardless of the fairness of the law, the judge has to follow it if there is less room for interpretation, otherwise they would be legislating from the bench.
The problem is that most people would rather trust a human in life-or-death situations, despite the fact that humans would be hampered by slow decision-making and reflexes.
It looks like TFS was written by a Windows fanboy; why mention Linux specifically when it is a general problem? Why try to half-assedly imply that Windows is more advanced than Linux?
Slashdot Mirror
By posting a comment on /., you've proved that you're at least somewhat technologically aware, if not a "tech geek". The problem with most people isn't laziness, it's lack of knowledge altogether -- they don't even know what ABP does or what it is, and wouldn't really consider using it. As well, many depend on a "tech guy" to make their decisions for them (such as you, perhaps), and it really depends on the "tech guy". There are many obstinately pro-Microsoft people from Gen Y (a.k.a. the commercial whore generation), or simply ones who will not tell their friends/family to do anything for fear of being held responsible for their advice, regardless of how good it was.
Exactly. If people aren't installing Adblock Plus, despite all of the enormous benefits, they are going to mess with alternate DNS -- assuming they even know what DNS is and what it does. On the other hand, it doesn't necessarily need to have perfect adoption. Like torrents, it is fine if it starts with a few technically proficient people, then spreads outwards.
Also, you've probably underestimated the use against, say, schools or workplaces that use alternate DNS servers with "questionable" domains removed. Using this with encryption will pretty much kill any attempt at monitoring.
I agree fully. However, both of the examples you listed are trivial in a wide sense. Personally, they are damaging, but the decision is not a great one and both are fairly clear. As well, how can one person be relied upon to decide? Discretion, in many cases, can hurt far more than indiscretion. I definitely prefer Wikileaks' "give it all" attitude.
Second of all, if someone is having a personal/secret conversation, it might not be a good idea to record it as public within the sphere of their own organization. If they are, institutionally, going to be critical of a country or person without publicizing it, then I don't see the huge crime in publicizing it. Rather than protecting the interests of an individual's opinion, you are hiding an institutional agenda that, in my opinion, should be publicly known.
There is a very, very big difference between "illegal" and "wrong".
Many open-source projects have meaningful names that require a certain level of knowledge to understand. For example, Pidgin -- with the symbol of a pidgeon for being a "messenger" and the name "pidgin" (a composite of two languages used for easy communication between different cultures) representative of its multi-protocol nature -- is one of those. Others could be Nitrogen (a "desktop element") and I'm sure there are many more.
The developers anticipate a certain level of general knowledge and vocabulary, as well as a taste for puns and little jokes that would pass most people by.
I find it funny that my post was modded "Informative" and people actually took me seriously even with the disclaimer that I was exaggerating.
Comparing apples and oranges.
This is the great battle with distributions like Ubuntu. There's a fine line between auto-configuring and helping the user make decisions (or making decisions for the user) and preventing the user from making decisions on their own.
It's all about recognizing who would be receptive to it. I've talked to almost all my friends about it (and all of them definitely know I use Linux) but most are uninterested or are too ignorant to start using Linux right away -- they would be lost almost immediately. Instead, I heavily encourage Linux to those people who are generally hobbyist types, are intelligent, and have time on their hands.
I was making more of a point that Linux (the software) enables such tinkering and Linux (the community) encourages it. A truly motivated person would do it anyway, but such people are few and far between. A good community spirit draws in and encourages people that otherwise would do nothing.
I generally come from the perspective that your computer is as stable and user-friendly as you want to make it. Unless you're running hardware with poor support (Broadcom, anyone?) you're not going to have a really rocky experience with Linux. I like running computers with little resources and making my machine rock-solid stable and perfectly configured to my tastes. This is a process that takes dozens of hours of messing around and experimentation, but it pays off in the end, in my opinion.
As I understand, most of this is because of the developers, who do a great deal of work testing new updates.
It's also related to a difference in paradigms; distributions that have an "unstable" repository are saying "this software is unstable, don't use it unless you really want to." Having a "testing" repository instead implies that software in it is cutting-edge and new, which excites and interests people. That way, rather than a dumping ground for semi-broken software, it becomes a testing area for new software. This allows the developers to rely more heavily on the community to report problems encountered with new software rather than heroically trying to do everything to make the experience as smooth as possible for the user. It also allows users to more effectively define their risk tolerance while avoiding the issue of only benefitting from updates years after they come out.
Indeed, I find that Linux has an almost miraculous ability to convert users into developers. I've encouraged several friends over the years to use it, and out of those that have actually done it, most have not just stuck with it but have even surpassed me in some ways. It can take a teenager or young adult who knows barely anything about coding or even much about computers and can turn them into a coder or admin in no time. My theory is that people follow a sort of a path:
1. They use a bloated (but more immediately user-friendly) distribution like Ubuntu.
2. They hear about other users with lighter software and try it out. It requires a bit more configuration to be the way they want it to be. In the process, they learn more about their system and they learn many useful things.
3. The drive for improved performance and usability leads them to learning more and more and doing deeper and deeper configuration until they know a great deal and are very comfortable with their system.
4. The "scratch that itch" (ESR) effect comes into play; they see deficiencies in existing software and go out to make their own.
5. Before long, they are contributing to several projects, have a technical blog, and are advanced users.
It seems to be some sort of natural progression and it's interesting to see it happen over the period of several years. More significantly, Linux seems to turn a higher percentage of basic users (even those of the luser variety) into developers and advanced users. This seems to be why Linux progresses at such a fast pace; its users actively encourage other users to involve themselves on a deeper level.
Arch Linux: Already in core.
I exaggerate, but it's not far from the truth - the kernel releases are imported into the testing repository as soon as they come out.
The ethics thesis he wrote really did it for me. I wonder if the people farming out their thesis-writing saw the irony of their position.
Was? Still is. There is/was a cabal of editors who would upvote any story they viewed as pro-conservative (that is, positive press about issues or people they supported and negative press about people or issues they disliked) and downvote any story they viewed as "too liberal". They have ties to Conservapedia, although not in the "evil conspiracy" way, more in the "this is the same five cranks doing everything" kind of way. There were hundreds of accounts but only a handful of actual people, most of them sockpuppeted heavily to increase their voting power.
Well? It does. Now, if only using a cell phone in public sterilized people as well ...
Mod parent up. Regardless of the fairness of the law, the judge has to follow it if there is less room for interpretation, otherwise they would be legislating from the bench.
The problem is that most people would rather trust a human in life-or-death situations, despite the fact that humans would be hampered by slow decision-making and reflexes.
Did they bring back any spices or silk? And we can't trust their tall tales of two-headed men without proof!
Well, they'd certainly get the "attempted" record just for all the attempts on Castro.
He is a Muslim; I don't want to be Islamophobic but it might help to explain some of his beliefs. He is also apparently Russian.
It looks like TFS was written by a Windows fanboy; why mention Linux specifically when it is a general problem? Why try to half-assedly imply that Windows is more advanced than Linux?
A better question might be: "Is our children learning?"
Mod parent up; this describes everything perfectly