Einstin[sic] had very little to do with it. The internal structure of atoms was fairly well understood (modulo quantum effects) before he came on the scene.
Atoms was one theory among many competing theories at the time. Einstein provided the mathematical framework that pretty much blew away all the other theories and made Atoms the standard model. Instead of relying on Wikipedia (which does mention Einstein in 1905), do a google for "einstein proved the existence of atoms", which will most likely turn up more interesting information.
Why can't he? He can take the components, separate them and then show you with instruments that can read such materials. "See we were in a vacuum that had pure H2O. Now after applying the electrical process, we have some gas in there. My instruments are able to tell me that it is Hydrogen and Oxygen...in a 2-1 ratio.
Congratulations, you have just proved that electricity transmutes the element "water" into the elements "hydrogen" and "oxygen".
That tells us nothing about what's "really" going on at the atomic level. Remember, clear evidence for atoms was only gathered a relatively short time ago (1905 by Einstin, I believe). At this stage, we still only have "evidence" for the existence of atoms.
The original poster is correct. There are very few things that can be definitively proven. Your own existence is the canonical case, some would also argue mathematics, and there are some interesting sub-cases to your own existence, such as the implications of being able to think in a language. But that's getting off the topic.
Lack of CSS support, lack of W3C compliance, activeX vulnerabilities, vulnerabilities to the OS, spyware, viruses, browser hijacking, popups, lack of customization capabilities... the list goes on and on.
Regular users don't care about any of that (and again, sheesh, IE has had popup blocking for YEARS). All they know is that their computer "got really slow" and their brother-in-law installed Firefox for them. IE renders all web sites perfectly, as far as regular users are concerned.
IE may have earned itself a bad repution, but keep in mind they still have around 90% marketshare. When people buy new computers with Vista, most people are not going to bother downloading Firefox. Heck, most people won't even *remember* they were using Firefox before.
All he knows is that with Firefox, he doesn't get POPUPS, it lets him modify it to what he wants it to look and act like and it's simple easy and fun to use. Most users completely forget about IE until another applications forces them to open it and asks if they want it to be their default browser.
Um, IE has had a popup blocker for years now, and the average user doesn't even know you can plug things in.
There is only one reason Firefox has gained marketshare: IE's vulnerability to spyware. If they fix that, then no one will have any incentive to move to Firefox. Hell, I use Firefox for this reason, and if IE finally becomes fixed (and has tabbed, which I've grown to like), I probably won't bother with Firefox anymore. Why should I if IE works well enough?
People need a really good reason to use something other than what works well enough. Firefox managed to gain a foothold when IE wasn't working well enough, but I think that probably won't last.
Some greedy patent grubbing jerk will sue you for daring to make use of "his idea" that he's been sitting on not using for the last half a dozen years or so.
If it was already patented, then it wasn't much of an idea, now was it?
I know there has been a few stupid software and business patents, but please people, get a clue. The WHOLE POINT of patents is to protect the little guy from getting ripped off from the big guys! Sure, you might be able to point to a few cases of absuses where someone got ripped off, but without patent protections, little guys would ALWAYS get ripped off. Why wouldn't they?
Also don't discount the fact that patents require inventions to be made public. Without the patent system, people would simply hide their inventions for fear of getting ripped off. Then if they aren't able to make a go of it, the knowledge is lost forever.
Can we please stop this "all patents are evil" nonsense? I know, I know. That's hopeless dreaming. But patents are simply the greatest engine for innovation ever invented by man. They should get a lot more respect around here.
You would hope with his experience in the public eye, that he would have learnt that nobel efforts to help the less fortunate should be encouraged. Good luck to MIT and anyone associated with the project.
Actually, whether he's right about this particular issue or not, I respect the fact that he's willing to go against the grain and calling something stupid that he thinks is stupid.
If only more people would stand up and say, "This is a waste of time and money". I'm sure a lot of people who are making "noble efforts" have their hearts in the right place, but who the hell cares? I care about RESULTS. It's not enough to just "care", and too many people think it IS enough.
Duval said that last year Mandriva CEO Francois Bancilhon asked him to leave the company. Instead, Duval agreed to move from his long-time position as vice president of communication to head a new "community department" intended "to improve Mandriva's image in the open source arena." Now the company has terminated that effort.
What the hell do you do everyday as head of the "community department"? Post on bulletin boards? No wonder the guy was let go. He was moved from one pretty fluffy department ("communication") to an even lighter weight position. It seems pretty apparent he wasn't exactly a mainspring of the operation.
"Abusive layoff"? Sheesh. Get over yourself. Maybe it would be a better strategy to do something crucial for an organization so you're not part of the layoffs.
First, let me say that one of my "real" sites uses PostgreSQL, has used it for about six years, and I'm very happy with it. It was the right decision.
Now, about a year ago, I had a client that wanted a web site back-end written. Now, I wasn't sure what the future of that site was going to be, whether I was going to be involved, etc. I also knew that it would be probably be run on inexpensive shared hosting solutions.
Guess what I chose? MySQL and PHP. The reason was because those are always available. It gives my client the flexibility to move it to any hosting solution. PostgreSQL simply is not everywhere. In my case, I run my own servers and can afford to have to understand it. But my client needs a hosting solution that does all the work for him (including back-ups). There's something to be said for using "the standard".
And you know what? I originally chose PostgreSQL because it was ACID compliant, but I have to say that MySQL sucks a lot less than it used to. It defaults to tables that support commit/rollback. It supports sub-transactions (which PostgreSQL v7 doesn't support, not sure about 8). It (FINALLY) supports sub-selects. If you're still turning up your nose at MySQL, it really isn't as bad as it used to be.
except I have a marketing/advetising background [...] Can you suggest any resources for someone in my situation to find people who can fully handle those aspects of it?
Here's my advice for someone like you: don't try and invent the wheel yourself. By that I mean don't try and find a programming consultant to program something for you. There is a 99% probability that you'll get screwed. Number one, it's EXTREMELY hard to find good people. By the nature of programming, you can't tell easily how well something is done. If you hire a someone to, say, build you a brick wall, even a layman can tell if it's straight or if they did a crappy job. Not so with programming. You can pay and pay and pay and still end with a barely functioning piece of crap that no one can fix. I've seen it time and time again with my more marketing-oriented friends.
The only way that sort of thing works out if is if you can find someone with a proven track record that you partner with, who has an incentive to get things done economically and done well. But, of course, partners have their own set of problems, and even if you're sure this tech partner of yours is good, there's a fair chance that he's been faking it all along and he's really bad.:)
I say all this to really put the fear of God into you about trusting tech people. It's REALLY hard to be successful doing something home grown when you're not the one doing the growing. I cannot tell you how many friends I've seen go down in flames this way.
Here's what I suggest: find something already built and selling. If you're good at marketing, then focus on what you're good at. Look for "private label" relationships where you can set up a site, but someone else is running the back-end. There are lots of affiliate relationships where they pay for referrals. That can pay off, though I'm not sure how well. I tend to like better the ones where you set up your own site. It just makes it a bit more of a unique thing than affiliates.
Another play I like are drop-ship companies with various product lines. Take the catalog, feed it into a web commerce hosting site, and start marketing the heck out of it.
The bottom line is to focus on what you're good at, and minimize the risk of what you're not good at. The fact that you have some geeky credentials puts you ahead of the marketing people who try and do things like this.
What you need to do is find needs that nobody else is filling, and design cutting edge programs to fill those needs.
Actually, my point is that you DON'T need to find something that "nobody else is filling". It's incredibly hard to find totally virgin territory. If you're waiting for that to happen, you'll probably have a very long wait.
The play with a much higher probability of success is to find a niche with a lot of demand. The fact that there are a lot of players making money there means that it's a successful niche! The trick is to find a way to elbow your way into your share of the business (that's also called "marketing"). Of course, you want to choose a niche that you're good at.
Take Internet hosting companies. Tons of 'em, right? Well, that's because the market is big enough to support tons of them. You don't have to reinvent the idea of a hosting company to have a successful little business with recurring income. That's just an example -- there are lots of little businesses like that.
Inventing something that no one has ever thought of is a lot like winning the lottery... nice if you can do it, but don't bet your future on it.
Having been involved in a number of successful businesses over the years, I can tell you that good ideas are a dime a dozen. There's no huge mystery about what's successful and what isn't... look around you.
The difference between someone who is successful and someone who isn't is execution. The world is full of people who dream big but don't get off their ass and do it.
What people don't get is that you don't have to be the dominant player on the block to make a LOT of money, but what it does require is taking a risk and putting yourself out there. Find your little niche and set up shop. The world is like a raging river of money. You don't have to set up a very big flume to get a pretty good stream coming to you.
And if (or when...) you fail the first couple of times, learn from your mistakes, get back up and try again.
Just a step at a time, folks. Just take a step a time. It's not how fast you're stepping, but the fact that you're stepping at all.
I agree with your point, but just for the record, that phrase by the Founding Fathers did not mean "equal in ability" or even "equal in value". It meant that no one is born divine, in the sense of more than human. This was a direct attack on the idea that kings are ordained by God.
As someone with a pretty large ladle of German heritage, I have to say that I have the gene that desires meticulous organization. This possibly can also be seen by German's love of clocks. Of course, the extreme expression of that are the almost ridiculous levels of Nazi record keeping. I've often wondered if this is a cultural trait, or if it's something genetic in the brain. Given that I have pretty close to zero German cultural influence, I tend to by sympathetic toward a genetic possibility.
More generally, I think people are going to have to face someday that brain genetics are not somehow special. Just like certain races are shorter, taller, darker, lighter, faster, stronger, etc, certain races (and sexes...) are going to have bell curves that are different shapes. Of course, this doesn't preclude any individual from falling anywhere on the bell curve.
Trying to turn the clock back isn't the right way to go about fixing the ills of society. It is merely pitting one generation against another.
I'm not suggesting turning back the clock, only pointing out the absurdity of the original poster's premise that the 1950s were some sort of hidden hellhole comparable to "tale of two cities" and were only covered up by some sort of "Ozzie and Harriet" conspiracy.
I guess you never had to go through the "duck and cover" drills in school or having your parents thinking of building bomb shelters in your basement. Those times were far from rosy and just like today with terrorism, fear of the bomb ruled people's lives.
Sure, that was one of the issues of the day (and certainly a significant one), but I think it hardly "ruled people's lives". There's a reason there was a baby boom after WW/II, and that was because people were confident about their future.
We had duck and cover drills back then, but now we have lockdown drills because of students shooting up schools. I don't remember any of that back in the 50s. The difference is that one was political (the Soviet Union attacking), and today it's purely because of social decay (a normal citizen shooting innocent people).
There's no doubt that certain things today are a lot better than they used to be, but there are certain other things that were much better back then.
Oops, you're right, I should've remembered that. But it was actually symptomatic of the times that the war was relatively forgotten. People were confident going into the future and didn't want to focus on more war.
There was a great deal of American propaganda in the fifties and sixties in which television shows and movies depicted the way that authority figures wished society was, but it was completely inaccurate. Coat-hanger abortions, drug use, prostitution, unreported rapes, lynching of blacks, the blackmails of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, and a thousand other offenses went on all the time. The populace of the fifties knew this, but their children and their grandchildren fell for the saccharine story.
The pop culture of the 50s and 60s wasn't the entire picture, but your post is hardly more accurate, especially when then go on to compare England from the 1780s-1790s!! The only difference is that you're focusing relentlessly on the negative, while the 50s stereotype focuses on the positive.
The 1950s was a unique period in American history. It was the post-war period after a devastating war, but that left American industry quite strong. Things were damn good for a LOT of people. Sure, there were negatives (especially for black minorities), but don't kid yourself that everyone had a life of black depression hidden in every closet. The "Ozzie and Harriet" life did happen for a lot of middle-class people, though of course no one has a perfect life. But it was a quiet time of a combination of prosperity and peace between the WW/II and the Vietnam era.
just because you delete it doesn't mean *they* will delete it - think documents you might regret seeing in court.
If I had anything that sensitive, I would encrypt it anyway.
why do you think Google is going to give you free storage? They aren't benevolent, they are using your data to make a quick buck. Do you really want them to aggregate your life based off your data so they can advertise to you?
I didn't say it would definitely be free, but if it would, sure, let them advertise for me. It would be totally worth it for a free backup.
you don't know who will have access to your data.
Like I said, Paranoids won't be interested in this service. I'm not particularly paranoid, so I'm not too worried about it. Do you worry about who might be breaking into your office at night to read your docs?
is it really worth having your data out of your hands? You can get 16x dual layer DVD burners for $24.00. Media is pretty cheap too nowadays. Back it up yourself and don't feed the Google Monster, don't worry about your private life coming back to haunt you.
Definitely worth it. First of all, a DVD is only 4.7GB, which ain't much these days. Second of all, you have to DO IT. That's always the achilles heal of backups. I should say that my current backup strategy is to use Connected Online Backup, which does it for me automatically every night. It's a good service, but it doesn't do my whole drive.
Obviously Paranoids won't bother to use this service.
But for the rest of us, the idea of a cheap online backup (or even free, which would Rock Hard) of our ENTIRE hard drive would be very, very nice. It would be cool if Google provided automatic encryption, but I wouldn't care if they didn't.
Surely you mean Austrian freedom. You do know Europe is a continent with nations that have different laws, right? Some of these nations are authoritarian, some are not. Some are socialist, some are not. Not all of them have these stupid restrictions on free-speech rights.
There are different nations, but there is still a common European culture. Sure, other nations don't have as strict of laws, but there is clearly a lot of sympathy for this. Why is there no outrage over this? This one incident dwarfs ANYTHING questionable the Bush administration may have done. I still can't quite wrap my head around the concept that a country in Europe has literal thought police that put someone in jail for THREE YEARS. Think about that -- THREE YEARS -- for thinking the wrong thoughts.
every society has had an end, the mayans, egyptians, romans, greeks
Sheesh. Those societies ended because of a LACK of modern Capitalism. Note that modern Capitalism also requires a) Representative Democracy b) Stable Contract Law, and c) Stable Money Policy.
The only way the USA will die is if the government weighs down capitalism (also known as "freedom") so much that it can't function anymore (like, say, France with their insane worker policies). Unfortunately, we've been on that road for awhile, but it seems to ebb and flow. I'm fairly confident that we'll never get full-blown socialism. As long as we stay away from that, the US will live forever.
(And just to make the necessary disclaimer, no, I'm not a Libertarian)
If you trust your employee base with docs that can't be leaked or copied into the wrong hands, why aren't you training them on software best practices and using filtering and scanning to make sure they aren't taking it off network?
This is so naive I can't believe it. Sure, you can train people to do stuff, but people aren't network adminstrators, and shouldn't HAVE to be network administrators. They'll (naturally) assume that they can do anything they want with software authorized for their systems. Especially Sales People, who are notorious for ignoring (*cough*not understanding*cough*) whatever IT tells them to do. If you want security, you NEVER trust users to be smart. You put practices in place so they don't have to be smart (or call it "alert", if you prefer that word).
Filtering and scanning can only do so much, depending on how Google is transmitting this information.
Really, Isn't this a bit of an amature hour effect here? If your security is that lax you probably also let people connect USB mass storage devices to your desktops as well. This is unlikely to be your greatest security hole.
Yes, I'm sure USB mass storage devices ARE forbidden as well. I'm also sure that P2P program are banned (where a dim bulb can easily accidently share the entire network drive with world). Exactly my point. Anything that a user can potentially abuse, either by accident or by willful stupidity, has to be banned if you want a secure network.
This article is a joke. It's all about quoting people talking about how dangerous the new version of Google Desktop is when Google is very up-front about telling you what features will result in data being copied, and how to turn it off. IT'S DISABLED BY DEFAULT. You have to WANT to turn it on.
I see you've never worked in customer support. Rule #1: People f*** with stuff. If there's a way for users to screw things up, then users WILL screw things up. All it takes is one secretary in the wrong position to flip the switch and suddenly you have Ubersecret Documents flying out of your not-as-secure-as-you-thought network. Sure, I doubt Google is going to spray your documents all over the web, but if I was a CIO whose entire livelihood depending on locking down the network of a multi-billion dollar company, I wouldn't want this thing on my desktops, either. The "neat-o" functionality provided just isn't worth the risk that someone might sniff out the data somewhere in the chain.
11.9% of US households suffer from food insecurity, while 3.9% suffer from hunger. That's about 11 million people. But go on thinking everyone here is fat and happy, if that helps you sleep easier at night.
Those stats make me sleep quite peacefully, thank you. Do people occasionally have to "make do"? Of course. But you'll note that only 3.5% of households used emergency assistance, which is actually way lower than I would've thought.
Then let's ask how many died of starvation because of lack of resources. That would be zero.
Now, what percentage of those stats are due to be people with drug addictions and other self-inflicted behavior? A lot of them. How many households are due to "the evil capitalist American system that screws the little guy"? Almost none of them.
Not that I think people should go hungry, but geez, I've knew a LOT of middle-class friends out of high school who were between jobs that had go awhile on cheap food. Technically, they were in "poverty" and suffered from "food insecurity", but it was a temporary condition.
The important fact of all this is how much is due to problems of "the system". And the answer is that the system works pretty damn well.
I am more than happy to live in a country where the burden of life is placed on the individual, and the state is there only as a last resort. That's the way it should be, and that's the way you grow a healthy society.
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Atoms was one theory among many competing theories at the time. Einstein provided the mathematical framework that pretty much blew away all the other theories and made Atoms the standard model. Instead of relying on Wikipedia (which does mention Einstein in 1905), do a google for "einstein proved the existence of atoms", which will most likely turn up more interesting information.
Congratulations, you have just proved that electricity transmutes the element "water" into the elements "hydrogen" and "oxygen".
That tells us nothing about what's "really" going on at the atomic level. Remember, clear evidence for atoms was only gathered a relatively short time ago (1905 by Einstin, I believe). At this stage, we still only have "evidence" for the existence of atoms.
The original poster is correct. There are very few things that can be definitively proven. Your own existence is the canonical case, some would also argue mathematics, and there are some interesting sub-cases to your own existence, such as the implications of being able to think in a language. But that's getting off the topic.
Regular users don't care about any of that (and again, sheesh, IE has had popup blocking for YEARS). All they know is that their computer "got really slow" and their brother-in-law installed Firefox for them. IE renders all web sites perfectly, as far as regular users are concerned.
IE may have earned itself a bad repution, but keep in mind they still have around 90% marketshare. When people buy new computers with Vista, most people are not going to bother downloading Firefox. Heck, most people won't even *remember* they were using Firefox before.
Um, IE has had a popup blocker for years now, and the average user doesn't even know you can plug things in.
There is only one reason Firefox has gained marketshare: IE's vulnerability to spyware. If they fix that, then no one will have any incentive to move to Firefox. Hell, I use Firefox for this reason, and if IE finally becomes fixed (and has tabbed, which I've grown to like), I probably won't bother with Firefox anymore. Why should I if IE works well enough?
People need a really good reason to use something other than what works well enough. Firefox managed to gain a foothold when IE wasn't working well enough, but I think that probably won't last.
If it was already patented, then it wasn't much of an idea, now was it?
I know there has been a few stupid software and business patents, but please people, get a clue. The WHOLE POINT of patents is to protect the little guy from getting ripped off from the big guys! Sure, you might be able to point to a few cases of absuses where someone got ripped off, but without patent protections, little guys would ALWAYS get ripped off. Why wouldn't they?
Also don't discount the fact that patents require inventions to be made public. Without the patent system, people would simply hide their inventions for fear of getting ripped off. Then if they aren't able to make a go of it, the knowledge is lost forever.
Can we please stop this "all patents are evil" nonsense? I know, I know. That's hopeless dreaming. But patents are simply the greatest engine for innovation ever invented by man. They should get a lot more respect around here.
Actually, whether he's right about this particular issue or not, I respect the fact that he's willing to go against the grain and calling something stupid that he thinks is stupid.
If only more people would stand up and say, "This is a waste of time and money". I'm sure a lot of people who are making "noble efforts" have their hearts in the right place, but who the hell cares? I care about RESULTS. It's not enough to just "care", and too many people think it IS enough.
What the hell do you do everyday as head of the "community department"? Post on bulletin boards? No wonder the guy was let go. He was moved from one pretty fluffy department ("communication") to an even lighter weight position. It seems pretty apparent he wasn't exactly a mainspring of the operation.
"Abusive layoff"? Sheesh. Get over yourself. Maybe it would be a better strategy to do something crucial for an organization so you're not part of the layoffs.
Now, about a year ago, I had a client that wanted a web site back-end written. Now, I wasn't sure what the future of that site was going to be, whether I was going to be involved, etc. I also knew that it would be probably be run on inexpensive shared hosting solutions.
Guess what I chose? MySQL and PHP. The reason was because those are always available. It gives my client the flexibility to move it to any hosting solution. PostgreSQL simply is not everywhere. In my case, I run my own servers and can afford to have to understand it. But my client needs a hosting solution that does all the work for him (including back-ups). There's something to be said for using "the standard".
And you know what? I originally chose PostgreSQL because it was ACID compliant, but I have to say that MySQL sucks a lot less than it used to. It defaults to tables that support commit/rollback. It supports sub-transactions (which PostgreSQL v7 doesn't support, not sure about 8). It (FINALLY) supports sub-selects. If you're still turning up your nose at MySQL, it really isn't as bad as it used to be.
Here's my advice for someone like you: don't try and invent the wheel yourself. By that I mean don't try and find a programming consultant to program something for you. There is a 99% probability that you'll get screwed. Number one, it's EXTREMELY hard to find good people. By the nature of programming, you can't tell easily how well something is done. If you hire a someone to, say, build you a brick wall, even a layman can tell if it's straight or if they did a crappy job. Not so with programming. You can pay and pay and pay and still end with a barely functioning piece of crap that no one can fix. I've seen it time and time again with my more marketing-oriented friends.
The only way that sort of thing works out if is if you can find someone with a proven track record that you partner with, who has an incentive to get things done economically and done well. But, of course, partners have their own set of problems, and even if you're sure this tech partner of yours is good, there's a fair chance that he's been faking it all along and he's really bad. :)
I say all this to really put the fear of God into you about trusting tech people. It's REALLY hard to be successful doing something home grown when you're not the one doing the growing. I cannot tell you how many friends I've seen go down in flames this way.
Here's what I suggest: find something already built and selling. If you're good at marketing, then focus on what you're good at. Look for "private label" relationships where you can set up a site, but someone else is running the back-end. There are lots of affiliate relationships where they pay for referrals. That can pay off, though I'm not sure how well. I tend to like better the ones where you set up your own site. It just makes it a bit more of a unique thing than affiliates.
Another play I like are drop-ship companies with various product lines. Take the catalog, feed it into a web commerce hosting site, and start marketing the heck out of it.
The bottom line is to focus on what you're good at, and minimize the risk of what you're not good at. The fact that you have some geeky credentials puts you ahead of the marketing people who try and do things like this.
Actually, my point is that you DON'T need to find something that "nobody else is filling". It's incredibly hard to find totally virgin territory. If you're waiting for that to happen, you'll probably have a very long wait.
The play with a much higher probability of success is to find a niche with a lot of demand. The fact that there are a lot of players making money there means that it's a successful niche! The trick is to find a way to elbow your way into your share of the business (that's also called "marketing"). Of course, you want to choose a niche that you're good at.
Take Internet hosting companies. Tons of 'em, right? Well, that's because the market is big enough to support tons of them. You don't have to reinvent the idea of a hosting company to have a successful little business with recurring income. That's just an example -- there are lots of little businesses like that.
Having been involved in a number of successful businesses over the years, I can tell you that good ideas are a dime a dozen. There's no huge mystery about what's successful and what isn't... look around you.
The difference between someone who is successful and someone who isn't is execution. The world is full of people who dream big but don't get off their ass and do it.
What people don't get is that you don't have to be the dominant player on the block to make a LOT of money, but what it does require is taking a risk and putting yourself out there. Find your little niche and set up shop. The world is like a raging river of money. You don't have to set up a very big flume to get a pretty good stream coming to you.
And if (or when...) you fail the first couple of times, learn from your mistakes, get back up and try again.
Just a step at a time, folks. Just take a step a time. It's not how fast you're stepping, but the fact that you're stepping at all.
I agree with your point, but just for the record, that phrase by the Founding Fathers did not mean "equal in ability" or even "equal in value". It meant that no one is born divine, in the sense of more than human. This was a direct attack on the idea that kings are ordained by God.
More generally, I think people are going to have to face someday that brain genetics are not somehow special. Just like certain races are shorter, taller, darker, lighter, faster, stronger, etc, certain races (and sexes...) are going to have bell curves that are different shapes. Of course, this doesn't preclude any individual from falling anywhere on the bell curve.
I'm not suggesting turning back the clock, only pointing out the absurdity of the original poster's premise that the 1950s were some sort of hidden hellhole comparable to "tale of two cities" and were only covered up by some sort of "Ozzie and Harriet" conspiracy.
Sure, that was one of the issues of the day (and certainly a significant one), but I think it hardly "ruled people's lives". There's a reason there was a baby boom after WW/II, and that was because people were confident about their future.
We had duck and cover drills back then, but now we have lockdown drills because of students shooting up schools. I don't remember any of that back in the 50s. The difference is that one was political (the Soviet Union attacking), and today it's purely because of social decay (a normal citizen shooting innocent people).
There's no doubt that certain things today are a lot better than they used to be, but there are certain other things that were much better back then.
Oops, you're right, I should've remembered that. But it was actually symptomatic of the times that the war was relatively forgotten. People were confident going into the future and didn't want to focus on more war.
The pop culture of the 50s and 60s wasn't the entire picture, but your post is hardly more accurate, especially when then go on to compare England from the 1780s-1790s!! The only difference is that you're focusing relentlessly on the negative, while the 50s stereotype focuses on the positive.
The 1950s was a unique period in American history. It was the post-war period after a devastating war, but that left American industry quite strong. Things were damn good for a LOT of people. Sure, there were negatives (especially for black minorities), but don't kid yourself that everyone had a life of black depression hidden in every closet. The "Ozzie and Harriet" life did happen for a lot of middle-class people, though of course no one has a perfect life. But it was a quiet time of a combination of prosperity and peace between the WW/II and the Vietnam era.
If I had anything that sensitive, I would encrypt it anyway.
why do you think Google is going to give you free storage? They aren't benevolent, they are using your data to make a quick buck. Do you really want them to aggregate your life based off your data so they can advertise to you?
I didn't say it would definitely be free, but if it would, sure, let them advertise for me. It would be totally worth it for a free backup.
you don't know who will have access to your data.
Like I said, Paranoids won't be interested in this service. I'm not particularly paranoid, so I'm not too worried about it. Do you worry about who might be breaking into your office at night to read your docs?
is it really worth having your data out of your hands? You can get 16x dual layer DVD burners for $24.00. Media is pretty cheap too nowadays. Back it up yourself and don't feed the Google Monster, don't worry about your private life coming back to haunt you.
Definitely worth it. First of all, a DVD is only 4.7GB, which ain't much these days. Second of all, you have to DO IT. That's always the achilles heal of backups. I should say that my current backup strategy is to use Connected Online Backup, which does it for me automatically every night. It's a good service, but it doesn't do my whole drive.
But for the rest of us, the idea of a cheap online backup (or even free, which would Rock Hard) of our ENTIRE hard drive would be very, very nice. It would be cool if Google provided automatic encryption, but I wouldn't care if they didn't.
There are different nations, but there is still a common European culture. Sure, other nations don't have as strict of laws, but there is clearly a lot of sympathy for this. Why is there no outrage over this? This one incident dwarfs ANYTHING questionable the Bush administration may have done. I still can't quite wrap my head around the concept that a country in Europe has literal thought police that put someone in jail for THREE YEARS. Think about that -- THREE YEARS -- for thinking the wrong thoughts.
Sheesh. Those societies ended because of a LACK of modern Capitalism. Note that modern Capitalism also requires a) Representative Democracy b) Stable Contract Law, and c) Stable Money Policy.
The only way the USA will die is if the government weighs down capitalism (also known as "freedom") so much that it can't function anymore (like, say, France with their insane worker policies). Unfortunately, we've been on that road for awhile, but it seems to ebb and flow. I'm fairly confident that we'll never get full-blown socialism. As long as we stay away from that, the US will live forever.
(And just to make the necessary disclaimer, no, I'm not a Libertarian)
This is so naive I can't believe it. Sure, you can train people to do stuff, but people aren't network adminstrators, and shouldn't HAVE to be network administrators. They'll (naturally) assume that they can do anything they want with software authorized for their systems. Especially Sales People, who are notorious for ignoring (*cough*not understanding*cough*) whatever IT tells them to do. If you want security, you NEVER trust users to be smart. You put practices in place so they don't have to be smart (or call it "alert", if you prefer that word).
Filtering and scanning can only do so much, depending on how Google is transmitting this information.
Really, Isn't this a bit of an amature hour effect here? If your security is that lax you probably also let people connect USB mass storage devices to your desktops as well. This is unlikely to be your greatest security hole.
Yes, I'm sure USB mass storage devices ARE forbidden as well. I'm also sure that P2P program are banned (where a dim bulb can easily accidently share the entire network drive with world). Exactly my point. Anything that a user can potentially abuse, either by accident or by willful stupidity, has to be banned if you want a secure network.
I see you've never worked in customer support. Rule #1: People f*** with stuff. If there's a way for users to screw things up, then users WILL screw things up. All it takes is one secretary in the wrong position to flip the switch and suddenly you have Ubersecret Documents flying out of your not-as-secure-as-you-thought network. Sure, I doubt Google is going to spray your documents all over the web, but if I was a CIO whose entire livelihood depending on locking down the network of a multi-billion dollar company, I wouldn't want this thing on my desktops, either. The "neat-o" functionality provided just isn't worth the risk that someone might sniff out the data somewhere in the chain.
Those stats make me sleep quite peacefully, thank you. Do people occasionally have to "make do"? Of course. But you'll note that only 3.5% of households used emergency assistance, which is actually way lower than I would've thought.
Then let's ask how many died of starvation because of lack of resources. That would be zero.
Now, what percentage of those stats are due to be people with drug addictions and other self-inflicted behavior? A lot of them. How many households are due to "the evil capitalist American system that screws the little guy"? Almost none of them.
Not that I think people should go hungry, but geez, I've knew a LOT of middle-class friends out of high school who were between jobs that had go awhile on cheap food. Technically, they were in "poverty" and suffered from "food insecurity", but it was a temporary condition.
The important fact of all this is how much is due to problems of "the system". And the answer is that the system works pretty damn well.
I am more than happy to live in a country where the burden of life is placed on the individual, and the state is there only as a last resort. That's the way it should be, and that's the way you grow a healthy society.
Perhaps, but in a free, capitalistic society you can choose whether to live in the gutter.