You nailed down my exact reasons why marketing is annoying to me. The goal of marketing is to cause me to buy something that I normally wouldn't have by subverting my reasoning process. If the product was the best, and I required that product, then marketing wouldn't be needed because I would have chosen that product.
I used to hate martketing and advertisements for the same reasons, it just seems so manipulative. But looking at it differently, look what marketing has achieved:
Newspapers with loads of information and content on the state of the world (with differing ranges of bias, but some are pretty good). Price:.50 to $1.00.
TV, loads of entertainment ranging from mindless slapstick to intelligent drama to historical documentaries (I've learnt so much about WWII, thanks History channel), with some productions that easily rival movie quality. Price: I've seen as low as $7/month (plus price of a TV).
Magazines, (skipping the newsweeklies) filled with stories ranging from so-so writers to great undiscovered talent. Price: depending, a few dollars normally, never as much as a hardcover.
Point being, there's a load of content out there that's maintained very cheaply off of subversive marketing. Have I been affected by it, probably (in my case, I can't afford much anyways), but damn I get a lot out of it.
Of course I don't know marketing well, for all I know, there might be a reasonable alternative for similar prices that doesn't include advertisements. But this system seems to work pretty okay.
Jakob Nielsen writes a very good column on web useability, he's a common-sense standard you can use to evaluate good and bad web design against. Just about the only thing he's gotten wrong is his predictions of micro payments.
His arguments are that current web models for raising revenue don't work. In this case I think he's talking about web pages that don't sell a product, and have just content. Most people have a blind eye to banner ads, and I don't know anyone who doesn't close popups before they even finish loading.
He's been saying for years (completely incorrect every time) that micropayments are coming, probably for those very special sites like Yahoo, that fulfill a functions that few have matched. Probably something like a dollar or two a month.
Personally I don't agree with him, and if it weren't for that fact that I respect so many of his other predictions and theories, I'd probably ignore it. I think that some people want micropayments to happen because they want the web to thrive, and this is the only way they can think of for it to continue to function economically. They might be right in that it's the best way (I don't know), but I don't think that means that it'll happen.
Reminds me of of the US raid on Tehran. The special-warfare troopers were out in the middle of the desert, in a spot so remote nobody would be there looking for them... and they got discovered by a busload of people who stumbled across the area by virtue of getting lost.
Moral of the story: security through obscurity doesn't work. It's a numbers game, a calculated risk, and the risk involved is far higher than other more proactive forms of security.
I don't follow your logic, you're saying that since you know one story where the govt failed to hide their operation, then security through obscurity doesn't work. If you can't think of more than a handful of those stories for every war we've had, then the govt obviously has had far more success than failure with their technique.
Also, if a single example proves something to be a worthless concept, then security without obscurity has also had plenty of its shares of defeat.
Would you be willing to do all your online banking if your bank told you, "We don't bother to encrypt your financial records or firewall our system from malicious hackers--but don't worry! All the data is kept on a URL so obscure nobody will ever come across it!"
Security through obscurity doesn't nessesarily mean that their security IS obscurity. They would have regular security measures in place, it's just that they wouldn't release exactly what they are.
2. "We don't use any security measures to speak of"
Same thing as above, they're not saying that their obscurity is their only security, only that they believe obscurity enhances it.
Plumbing didn't take care of basic needs, it refined them. We've had means of waste displosal before the 20th century, outhouses and such, modern plumbing just made it more convenient.
I think if you're going to start arguing about basic needs, at the extremes you can say once we had women to fuck and meat to eat, our needs ended there something thousand years ago (male perspective obviously). Everything since then has just been a refinement of those two goals.
Plus innovation might have unseen consequences, like the printing press, which started with bringing the bible to the masses, it eventually also brought them cheap education and information. It has permanently changed the way governments act. At the time, it probably just seemed like a refinement of hand lettering, much like the internet seems just like a refinement of commercials, newspapers, and people on streetside soap boxes. With any luck, it'll become something greater than that.
When people (like many physicists) devote their lives to a single pursuit, it's hard for them to not attach meaning to their work. Notice now many people refer to what their regular job/career as "their art", people like chess players, mathematicians, and computer scientists. These are all jobs that 'non-participants' think of as highly ordered and rational, but those involved in the fields know that to be really good involves a great deal of intuition.
Physics easily falls within this category; all of the big scientific achievements weren't produced by analysis alone, they took a flash of inspiration from a gifted individual, a revelation. Physics isn't all a "solid basis of empirical observation and experimentation", at least not with the great minds that have pushed us forward. There is a great amount of dogma and irrational arguments all the way up through the highest levels.
I've always disliked that myth that scientists are all people who produce their work solely on the laws of logic and standardized mathematics.
Recall that Einstein introduced a variable into his equations for the expansion of the universe, simply because he didn't like the way it would look without it. (the whole "God doesn't play dice with the universe" thing)
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You nailed down my exact reasons why marketing is annoying to me. The goal of marketing is to cause me to buy something that I normally wouldn't have by subverting my reasoning process. If the product was the best, and I required that product, then marketing wouldn't be needed because I would have chosen that product.
I used to hate martketing and advertisements for the same reasons, it just seems so manipulative. But looking at it differently, look what marketing has achieved:
Point being, there's a load of content out there that's maintained very cheaply off of subversive marketing. Have I been affected by it, probably (in my case, I can't afford much anyways), but damn I get a lot out of it.
Of course I don't know marketing well, for all I know, there might be a reasonable alternative for similar prices that doesn't include advertisements. But this system seems to work pretty okay.
His arguments are that current web models for raising revenue don't work. In this case I think he's talking about web pages that don't sell a product, and have just content. Most people have a blind eye to banner ads, and I don't know anyone who doesn't close popups before they even finish loading.
He's been saying for years (completely incorrect every time) that micropayments are coming, probably for those very special sites like Yahoo, that fulfill a functions that few have matched. Probably something like a dollar or two a month.
Most recent article on the topic
Personally I don't agree with him, and if it weren't for that fact that I respect so many of his other predictions and theories, I'd probably ignore it. I think that some people want micropayments to happen because they want the web to thrive, and this is the only way they can think of for it to continue to function economically. They might be right in that it's the best way (I don't know), but I don't think that means that it'll happen.
Moral of the story: security through obscurity doesn't work. It's a numbers game, a calculated risk, and the risk involved is far higher than other more proactive forms of security.
I don't follow your logic, you're saying that since you know one story where the govt failed to hide their operation, then security through obscurity doesn't work. If you can't think of more than a handful of those stories for every war we've had, then the govt obviously has had far more success than failure with their technique.
Also, if a single example proves something to be a worthless concept, then security without obscurity has also had plenty of its shares of defeat.
Would you be willing to do all your online banking if your bank told you, "We don't bother to encrypt your financial records or firewall our system from malicious hackers--but don't worry! All the data is kept on a URL so obscure nobody will ever come across it!"
Security through obscurity doesn't nessesarily mean that their security IS obscurity. They would have regular security measures in place, it's just that they wouldn't release exactly what they are.
2. "We don't use any security measures to speak of"
Same thing as above, they're not saying that their obscurity is their only security, only that they believe obscurity enhances it.
Plumbing didn't take care of basic needs, it refined them. We've had means of waste displosal before the 20th century, outhouses and such, modern plumbing just made it more convenient.
I think if you're going to start arguing about basic needs, at the extremes you can say once we had women to fuck and meat to eat, our needs ended there something thousand years ago (male perspective obviously). Everything since then has just been a refinement of those two goals.
Plus innovation might have unseen consequences, like the printing press, which started with bringing the bible to the masses, it eventually also brought them cheap education and information. It has permanently changed the way governments act. At the time, it probably just seemed like a refinement of hand lettering, much like the internet seems just like a refinement of commercials, newspapers, and people on streetside soap boxes. With any luck, it'll become something greater than that.
Physics easily falls within this category; all of the big scientific achievements weren't produced by analysis alone, they took a flash of inspiration from a gifted individual, a revelation. Physics isn't all a "solid basis of empirical observation and experimentation", at least not with the great minds that have pushed us forward. There is a great amount of dogma and irrational arguments all the way up through the highest levels.
I've always disliked that myth that scientists are all people who produce their work solely on the laws of logic and standardized mathematics.
Recall that Einstein introduced a variable into his equations for the expansion of the universe, simply because he didn't like the way it would look without it. (the whole "God doesn't play dice with the universe" thing)