Well you're the one who said "bad and evil." I simply agreed that, in general, allowing ideas we don't like or agree with to be expressed is preferable to suppressing them. We do make exceptions, such as hate speech, or yelling "fire" in a crowded place. But that doesn't necessarily make that speech "evil" (if there is such a thing); it's just an example of the common good trumping an individual's freedom, like conscription, or taxes.
As for your political sign analogy, if I put one (or a thousand) signs in my yard, that's self-expression. If I provide space in my yard for others to display whatever signs they like, but specifically prohibit you from displaying a particular sign because I don't like the content of it, then I'm censoring you.
People load that word up with all sorts of baggage, but it simply means... well, here's Merriam-Webster's definition of the word censor:
to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable
If I consider your speech objectionable and decide to suppress it on those grounds, I'm censoring you.
Whether others consider that act to be "bad or evil" would probably depend on how they feel about censorship in general, and the content of your sign in particular.
by not displaying my political banners on the front of your house. Censorship is bad and evil you jackbooted thug!!!
If I routinely display other people's banners on the front of my house, but refuse to display yours because I don't like the content of your message, I would indeed be censoring you.
And yes, in general it is bad and evil, but fortunately there are a lot more "houses" displaying "banners" these days, and people are increasingly finding ways around the efforts of governments, corporations and individuals to censor them.
If this passes I'm so becoming I'm a "musician"....
I propose we charge everyone a $10.00 fee on their ISP bills for all the free tech support they receive from a relatively small number of geeks. To collect your share of the fee, you'd just have to produce an email from a relative saying they need help "downloading" their camera on to their iPod or something.
That is not a meta-mod system. It is a comment popularity system.
It is useful as well. It is comment-centric, and gives site administrators a very high level snapshot of what users think about the current state of the user generated content.
The old meta-moderation system oth tasked the meta-moderator with judging whether a specific moderation a comment received was fair. It wasn't a perfect system, but it provided just the smallest possibility that there may be consequences for abuse of moderation privileges.
the difference in security between an "OK" prompt and an "enter your password" prompt, in a standard end user scenario, is essentially zero. Unless you think the average person sitting at home is likely to have an attacker break into their house just so they can get admin rights on their PC ?
Computers are used in many places other than the home these days. Unless you are saying the behavior of UAC was different in Vista Home and Business editions.
Besides, suppose you have kids at home, who will merrily click OK on any dialog that pops up? Or employees at work who will do the same?
The difference between being prompted for a password and being prompted to click OK is far from zero.
UAC can be trivially configured to prompt for a username and password if the security policies of the site require it.
sudo is also configurable. I was talking about out of the box behavior. UAC - especially when first implemented in Vista - falls short of being a "GUI sudo prompt."
MS *tried* to fight it (in part) by effectively adding a GUI sudo prompt into Windows Vista. A million people -- including Linux users posting on Slashdot -- immediately flew into fits of nerd rage about how annoying it was to have a GUI sudo prompt.
If you are referring to UAC, it is hardly a "GUI sudo prompt." sudo requires you to prove that you are an authentic user by providing your password each time you open a shell to perform an administrative task (and every fifteen minutes after), and you also have to be a member of the sudo group (which only the first account created at install time is by default).
All UAC does is basically confirm with whomever is currently sitting at the computer (authorized or not) that they initiated some arbitrary action. This is also useful, in that it prevents some web site from installing a piece of malicious software without the user's knowledge, but it is far from a "GUI sudo prompt."
This is the reason it was met with derision by Slashdotters (and I don't recall many "fits of nerd rage," although a few might have snorted Code Red through their noses when they realized how impotent - and easily disabled - this new Microsoft "security feature" was).
According to information from krebsonsecurity.com it appears HBGary was victimized by a combination of social engineering and a shared password between systems.
The company was done in by its own lax security, which is kind of funny, considering it purports to be a "security firm."
MS has less motivation to violate my privacy than Google does
Check out GoogleSharing. It's a proxy service that anonymizes your queries, but also utilizes Google's encryption service. So GoogleSharing doesn't know what your queries are, and Google doesn't know where they came from.
And what you don't see in shittypedia is what any ass-hat with admin powers, an axe to grind, and no common sense decided to "blacklist" off of the page.
it contains, a hard drive, and the ability to serve as a DVR. Someone hacks into it, and can now use it to store what ever they want, even use it as part of the botnet
I would be more concerned with entertainment companies "hacking in to it" to remove programs you might be storing. The Kindle experience has shown us that devices that can be remotely accessed by the vendor can not be trusted.
I'll stick with dumb devices that simply do what I tell them.
PCI slots dried up. My latest mobo has just the one.
My new motherboard has one PCI slot that's essentially useless, as it's right up next to the first PCIe slot, which the manual says you must use to get best performance. Most video cards take two slots, and there's no onboard video, so the only way I can see using it is on a headless system, and you wouldn't use a board with three PCIe slots for that.
The only PCI card I have that I might want to use is a TV tuner card, and PCIe tuner cards are cheap and plentiful, so that didn't stop me from using the board. But it is too bad the board manufacturers seem to have abandoned PCI expansion slots.
Has the current version of MidpSSH overcome the Blackberry's annoying tendancy to capitalize the first letter of the first word in the commands you type? I seem to recall you had to type your commands in to some intermediary console, rather than interact directly with the shell.
If Amazon were refusing to sell to certain customers, then that analogy would be appropriate, but since they're not, the analogy is irrelevant.
It wasn't a great analogy, but the point was that the existence of other retailers is irrelevant in determining whether or not Amazon is engaging in censorship.
I don't see why this is a big deal. It looks like Amazon does not want to sell books with the word "rape" in the title. I fail to see how this is "censorship" any more than it would be censorship for Barnes & Noble to decide it does not want to carry magazines with photos of naked people on the cover
If their motivation for not carrying the magazines with naked people on the cover is to exclude materials they feel people might object to, that is most certainly censorship. I don't understand why that word is a big deal. It's just a word. It means to suppress material that might be considered objectionable.
The word "censorship" is loaded with meaning beyond what is found in Wikipedia or Webster's, and you know it. It implies malicious intent and a desire to suppress the freedom of speech. Clearly that is not Amazon's intent; it seems quite obvious that they are merely trying to clean the list of titles found in their store so that they can maintain their desired appearance.
I'm not so sure Amazon's intent is as clear as you seem to believe. What happens when Amazon or Google or Apple or whomever decides certain political ideas are objectionable and not in keeping with their desired appearance. I'm not necessarily saying they shouldn't be allowed to do it, but you seem to be suggesting we shouldn't call it what it is, and help others to understand the ramifications of them doing it.
A single company choosing to not sell or stop selling a product in their own store is not censorship in any meaningful way.
When that single company controls as much of the market as Amazon or Google or Apple, it is censorship in a *very* meaningful way.
Nah, all they really needed was one for iPad 2. I don't think there are a lot of people 'hotly anticipating" windows tablets (which don't work... windows simply isn't touch screen friendly) or android tablets (which are likely to suffer from the same thing android phones do: OS version fragmentation.)
The one I'm "hotly anticipating" is the Playbook. 7" form factor, duo core processor, supports flash, HTML 5, multi-tasking, POSIX compliant QNX OS, WIFI and 3G (via tethering to your Blackberry, so no need for a second data plan), 3 MP camera on the front, 5 MP camera on the back, HDMI & USB ports, supports wireless keyboard. I don't know what the price on these things is going to be, but it's the only tablet coming to market that gets me excited.
Amazon is not censoring anything or anybody. They are not the press
Of course it's censorship. You don't have to be the press, or government, to engage in censorship.
Here's the definition from Wikipedia:
Censorship is suppression of speech or other communication which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient to the general body of people as determined by a government, media outlet, or other controlling body.
Don't trust Wikipedia? Here's Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary's definition of the word censor:
To examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable
All the word censorship means is to suppress speech on the assumption someone might object to it. Telling your kids to not swear in front of Grandma is also a very low level form of censorship.
they are not the only place to purchase literature
Irrelevant. Would you be okay with your local grocery store not serving blacks, or Jews, since they're not the only place to purchase groceries?
The government purchased a service from Amazon, that doesn't mean Amazon has to sell every book in the world that wants to be sold there thats insanity.
Nobody is suggesting they have to sell every book in the world that wants to be sold. But if they decide to not sell any book that contains a particular subject matter, they are engaging in censorship.
I bet Amazon would fire an employee for saying "Jeff Bezo's wife has some juicy knockers, I want to rape her." in the middle of a meeting, does that count as "censorship" and mean the government can't do business with them?
Yes, it would mean they are engaging in censorship. That doesn't mean the employee is right, or that he shouldn't be fired. It simply means the employer is setting standards as to what type of speech is acceptable in the workplace, and censuring anyone who does not comply with that policy.
I'm not sure why you think that would mean the government could not do business with them. The article seems to be making the point that Amazon engages in censorship because they want the government to do business with them, not the other way around.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, did you write the headline for this article?
Well you're the one who said "bad and evil." I simply agreed that, in general, allowing ideas we don't like or agree with to be expressed is preferable to suppressing them. We do make exceptions, such as hate speech, or yelling "fire" in a crowded place. But that doesn't necessarily make that speech "evil" (if there is such a thing); it's just an example of the common good trumping an individual's freedom, like conscription, or taxes.
As for your political sign analogy, if I put one (or a thousand) signs in my yard, that's self-expression. If I provide space in my yard for others to display whatever signs they like, but specifically prohibit you from displaying a particular sign because I don't like the content of it, then I'm censoring you.
People load that word up with all sorts of baggage, but it simply means ... well, here's Merriam-Webster's definition of the word censor:
If I consider your speech objectionable and decide to suppress it on those grounds, I'm censoring you.
Whether others consider that act to be "bad or evil" would probably depend on how they feel about censorship in general, and the content of your sign in particular.
The sound the rest of us heard was Anonymous Freak's point, which you've managed to miss in spectacular fashion.
If I routinely display other people's banners on the front of my house, but refuse to display yours because I don't like the content of your message, I would indeed be censoring you.
And yes, in general it is bad and evil, but fortunately there are a lot more "houses" displaying "banners" these days, and people are increasingly finding ways around the efforts of governments, corporations and individuals to censor them.
I'm using ff 3.6.15 on Ubuntu and I don't see his bullets.
I predict your friends list will grow exponentially after that comment.
I propose we charge everyone a $10.00 fee on their ISP bills for all the free tech support they receive from a relatively small number of geeks. To collect your share of the fee, you'd just have to produce an email from a relative saying they need help "downloading" their camera on to their iPod or something.
So time spent fiddling with a Windows system is somehow magically free?
That is not a meta-mod system. It is a comment popularity system.
It is useful as well. It is comment-centric, and gives site administrators a very high level snapshot of what users think about the current state of the user generated content.
The old meta-moderation system oth tasked the meta-moderator with judging whether a specific moderation a comment received was fair. It wasn't a perfect system, but it provided just the smallest possibility that there may be consequences for abuse of moderation privileges.
Dear Slashdot
Please give us a plug-in we can use to report moderation abuse.
Missing the old meta-mod system,
A concerned Slashdotter
Computers are used in many places other than the home these days. Unless you are saying the behavior of UAC was different in Vista Home and Business editions.
Besides, suppose you have kids at home, who will merrily click OK on any dialog that pops up? Or employees at work who will do the same?
The difference between being prompted for a password and being prompted to click OK is far from zero.
sudo is also configurable. I was talking about out of the box behavior. UAC - especially when first implemented in Vista - falls short of being a "GUI sudo prompt."
If you are referring to UAC, it is hardly a "GUI sudo prompt." sudo requires you to prove that you are an authentic user by providing your password each time you open a shell to perform an administrative task (and every fifteen minutes after), and you also have to be a member of the sudo group (which only the first account created at install time is by default).
All UAC does is basically confirm with whomever is currently sitting at the computer (authorized or not) that they initiated some arbitrary action. This is also useful, in that it prevents some web site from installing a piece of malicious software without the user's knowledge, but it is far from a "GUI sudo prompt."
This is the reason it was met with derision by Slashdotters (and I don't recall many "fits of nerd rage," although a few might have snorted Code Red through their noses when they realized how impotent - and easily disabled - this new Microsoft "security feature" was).
And by "cracking," we mean "social engineering":
The company was done in by its own lax security, which is kind of funny, considering it purports to be a "security firm."
No.
I saw the headline, and thought the story was about hackers finding some new and novel use for telnet. You know, hacking.
But it's just another article about infected Windows machines using brute force attacks on port 445 and - apparently - 23. You know, "hacking."
Here's my favorite part:
As Steve Martin once said, "I'm sorry officer, I forgot armed robbery was illegal."
Check out GoogleSharing. It's a proxy service that anonymizes your queries, but also utilizes Google's encryption service. So GoogleSharing doesn't know what your queries are, and Google doesn't know where they came from.
So was Microsoft Windows for the first 10 years of its existance.
And it was there for me to find, along with citations for all of the claims in the article.
Where is the revision history and list of citations for the articles you linked to?
Oh really?
I would be more concerned with entertainment companies "hacking in to it" to remove programs you might be storing. The Kindle experience has shown us that devices that can be remotely accessed by the vendor can not be trusted.
I'll stick with dumb devices that simply do what I tell them.
My new motherboard has one PCI slot that's essentially useless, as it's right up next to the first PCIe slot, which the manual says you must use to get best performance. Most video cards take two slots, and there's no onboard video, so the only way I can see using it is on a headless system, and you wouldn't use a board with three PCIe slots for that.
The only PCI card I have that I might want to use is a TV tuner card, and PCIe tuner cards are cheap and plentiful, so that didn't stop me from using the board. But it is too bad the board manufacturers seem to have abandoned PCI expansion slots.
Thanks, I'll check BBSSH out.
Has the current version of MidpSSH overcome the Blackberry's annoying tendancy to capitalize the first letter of the first word in the commands you type? I seem to recall you had to type your commands in to some intermediary console, rather than interact directly with the shell.
It wasn't a great analogy, but the point was that the existence of other retailers is irrelevant in determining whether or not Amazon is engaging in censorship.
If their motivation for not carrying the magazines with naked people on the cover is to exclude materials they feel people might object to, that is most certainly censorship. I don't understand why that word is a big deal. It's just a word. It means to suppress material that might be considered objectionable.
I'm not so sure Amazon's intent is as clear as you seem to believe. What happens when Amazon or Google or Apple or whomever decides certain political ideas are objectionable and not in keeping with their desired appearance. I'm not necessarily saying they shouldn't be allowed to do it, but you seem to be suggesting we shouldn't call it what it is, and help others to understand the ramifications of them doing it.
When that single company controls as much of the market as Amazon or Google or Apple, it is censorship in a *very* meaningful way.
The one I'm "hotly anticipating" is the Playbook. 7" form factor, duo core processor, supports flash, HTML 5, multi-tasking, POSIX compliant QNX OS, WIFI and 3G (via tethering to your Blackberry, so no need for a second data plan), 3 MP camera on the front, 5 MP camera on the back, HDMI & USB ports, supports wireless keyboard. I don't know what the price on these things is going to be, but it's the only tablet coming to market that gets me excited.
Of course it's censorship. You don't have to be the press, or government, to engage in censorship.
Here's the definition from Wikipedia:
Don't trust Wikipedia? Here's Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary's definition of the word censor:
All the word censorship means is to suppress speech on the assumption someone might object to it. Telling your kids to not swear in front of Grandma is also a very low level form of censorship.
Irrelevant. Would you be okay with your local grocery store not serving blacks, or Jews, since they're not the only place to purchase groceries?
Nobody is suggesting they have to sell every book in the world that wants to be sold. But if they decide to not sell any book that contains a particular subject matter, they are engaging in censorship.
Yes, it would mean they are engaging in censorship. That doesn't mean the employee is right, or that he shouldn't be fired. It simply means the employer is setting standards as to what type of speech is acceptable in the workplace, and censuring anyone who does not comply with that policy.
I'm not sure why you think that would mean the government could not do business with them. The article seems to be making the point that Amazon engages in censorship because they want the government to do business with them, not the other way around.