For the average consumer who does not see the difference between a $100 50 watt amp and $800 50 watt amp other than price, they won't ever understand paying $1000 for an Empeg.
I am far from an "average consumer" when it comes to audio equipment. My Linn turntable costs more than most people spend on an entire stereo. My VMPS speakers are very highly regarded by the audiophile press. My preamp is a custom, unity gain buffered Class A design. I won't bore you with the rest but I wanted to make the point that I am a discerning audio enthusiast.
That said, the Empeg is just a car stereo component and, given the road noise and inherently poor audio environment of a car, spending gobs of money on car stereo equipment is silly. Having the world's best car stereo is right up there with having the world's best boom box. Neither one is likely to impress a real audiophile.
Further, why would anyone who fancies themselves a car audiophile choose a component that can only play lossy compression MP3s but not sonically superior CDs?
The Empeg is not selling because it starts at $1000 (and that's after a $300 price drop). It is inconvenient because you have to pull it out and hook it up to your computer to add music to it. It cannot play CDs and does not receive radio stations -- and that's a big deal if you are like most people and only have a single DIN opening in your vehicle. It requires a separate power amp -- even for use in a subcompact car where built-in amps are normally adequate. This is not an example of stupid consumers. It's an example of an expensive product that satisfies only a very limited audience.
It can do so much less than the unit I have. The Empeg can't receive AM or FM. It cannot play a CD that I buy at the store and is totally helpless unless I have a computer handy to convert from CD to MP3. It does not drive speakers directly. It cannot play MP3s off of media that I burn in my computer.
It isn't that hard to see both sides of the story and the empeg seems pretty cheap considering it's oly a bit more than 2x your CD player.
I don't have a "CD player." I have an in-dash MP3 player that can read music CDs, MP3 CD/Rs and CD/RWs, and that has a top-quality AM/FM tuner and a decent amp. The Empeg only plays from its hard disk. That's some real good "fuzzy math" as the politicians would say. The unit I bought, complete with built-in amp, was $400. Now, how much is the Empeg plus a 4 channel amp?
People can get a JVC KD-SH99 (or the equivalent) that plays MP3s burned onto CD-ROMs. The JVC has a great display, a tuner, a parametric EQ, two line-level inputs, subwoofer output with built-in crossover. It can play normal CDs, and has a built-in 4-channel amp that works quite well. It's $400 at Crutchfield and even has a nifty motorized front panel.
Why should I care about the manufacturer's cost of the Empeg if it can't even play a CD or listen to a radio station? And don't forget the cost and hassle for the separate amp (no, normal people do not need separate amps when units like the JVC incorporate 4x19W RMS (4x50W peak) amps).
People judge the cost of things by what the things do, not what they cost to manufacture. Why pay over a grand for something that does so little? That's a question that too many people asked in this case.
You are a decent, reasonable, and intelligent person. Thank you for your thoughtful response. As time permits, I will attempt to continue this in e-mail (as I am getting uncomfortably close to dropping below 40 Karma points).
People have commented that without an Internet connection, the problem will be hard to fix. Why? Because Microsoft requires infected and at-risk systems be on the Internet to download patches. If Microsoft had done the respectable thing and mailed out patch CDs to registered users (and maybe even given them away at computer stores), much of this could have been avoided.
When large numbers of our own citizens start to blame privacy for this act, the terrorists are already winning. I have heard talk of requiring back doors in all encryption software and routine scanning of all e-mail.
Let's look at what else might have enabled the terrorists:
1. Freedom to assemble in private.
2. Ability for private individuals to get pilot training.
3. Protection from random searches of homes.
4. Laws against descrimination based on race, religion, or national origin.
Are we take legislative action on those things next? I think that our country needs to stop, take a collective deep breath, and recognize what makes this country worth fighting for. If we take away the very freedoms that define America in order to make people feel safer, the terrorists will have struck a more crushing blow against us than I would ever have imagined possible.
To me, an agnostic is someone who is "on the fence" and cannot decide whether to believe or not. I am absolutely not in that category. I do not believe that there is a God and will not believe it unless someone provides me with credible evidence -- and old books don't count as evidence to me.
Also, you did implicitly state that you believed that God wasn't real:
I do not believe in anything without evidence -- God included. If credible evidence is presented, my mind can be changed, but right now, I see no significant chance that God exists in any form.
I also don't want to fall into the religious zealot trap that argues anyone unwilling to claim with certainty that God does or does not exist is confused. It's the same line of reasoning that causes them to claim that evolution is only considered a "theory" so creationism must be an an equally likely explanation.
I suspect that a lot of smart religious people do not believe in a bearded guy sitting on a cloud, but have a more sophisticated notion of a universal principle.
I am sure that is true but my intent was not to argue their point. A caricature the less sophisticated beliefs better serves my purpose and the very fact that God is so ill-defined as to be so different to different people is, in and of itself, telling.
Prove to me that the positive benefits of capitalism, secular humanism, Taoism, etc, etc outweigh the negative. What a pointless challenge.
Not pointless at all. You urge me to be more tolerant of religious views that I feel lead to death, torture, destruction, pain, suffering, grief, and war. All I am asking you to do is show me why I should be more tolerant of something that I feel does so much harm. Or should I just take it on faith that religion is good?
The only intellectually pure stance is Agnosticism, when you believe that the existence of God can neither be proven or disproven. Atheism takes it as an article of faith that God doesn't exist, without any proof.
Atheism means "without religious beliefs." It does not mean an absolute conviction that it is impossible for God to exist.
I agree that the existence of God cannot be proven or disproven. Neither can the existence of ghosts, the Loch Ness Monster, the tooth fairy, or Bigfoot be proven, but that does not mean that you must mentally give each one a 50/50 chance of existing in order to be intellectually pure. If I went into a room full of cosmologists and claimed that the universe was populated with invisible, massless, giant warthogs, I doubt that they would be "agnostic" about the subject -- even though they could not disprove my claim.
Not to mention that there is at least some "documented" evidence (the resurrection of Christ).
Just as there is "documented evidence" of the Greek gods, the Roman gods, and the Norse gods? Evidence is more than something written anonymously in a book.
A lack of belief is not the same as disbelief. This is an important, though subtle, distinction. My beliefs are based on logic and reasoning, not faith. I have been provided no credible evidence of a god, therefore I do not believe that there is one. That is not the same as believing that there could not be a god.
A totally specious line of reasoning. Just because someone believes one thing, they are not compelled to believe in everything.
It is not at all specious. My point was that you are holding religious beliefs to a different standard of evidence than you would other beliefs. You implied that my lack of religious belief was akin to being closed-minded. Would you characterize a lack of belief in the tooth fairy the same way?
Yes, you did:
I'm tired of holy wars, crusades, jihads, fatwas, terrorist acts by Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, and Jews
That's an implicit assumption of intolerance.
I don't view those things as "intolerance." Denying medical care to a sick child due to religious beliefs is not intolerance and that was another example I provided. I view those things as heinous acts done in the name or religion. Intolerance is far too tame a word.
Perhaps because you have an overly simplistic view of one of the most (if not the most) influential elements of human thought over the course of recorded history.
Now show me that it's positive influence outweighs the negative. When you do that, I will be more tolerant.
Why should I care what you have to say about any of this?
I don't know, but you clearly do as evidenced by your lengthy response.
The victims died, convinced by their upbringing that these terrorists would go straight to hell.
The terrorists thought they would go to heaven, the Christians thought they would go to hell, and neither side has a shred of evidence to support their beliefs.
I am a Christian, realist, and an adult.
That is simply contradictory.
I do not need athiesm to tell me comforting stories about how I'm supposedly statistically smarter
Where did that come from? An atheist is someone who does not hold religious beliefs. It is not based on statistics about intelligence.
-- but who think that morality is subjective and bend it to whatever they want to believe in.
Personal insults about my morality are both inappropriate and baseless. You don't know me. You don't know how I lead my life, whether I help people in need, donate to charities, or have a strict moral code. Since you brought up the supposedly superior morality of Christians, I'll throw out a couple of names: Jimmy Swaggert and Jim Baker.
I can distinguish right from wrong without just making it up as I go along.
Right. You have such divine guidance as:
Exodus 21:20 And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand; he shall be surely punished.
Great. You can beat servants as long as you do not kill them.
Deuteronomy 15:12 [And] if thy brother, an Hebrew man, or an Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee, and serve thee six years; then in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from thee.
And you can only keep slaves for six years. Boy, that is some great moral guidance.
1 Corinthians 14:34 Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but [they are commanded] to be under obedience, as also saith the law.
More declarations of right and wrong. Women are not to speak in church.
Exodus 31:15 Six days may work be done; but in the seventh [is] the sabbath of rest, holy to the LORD: whosoever doeth [any] work in the sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death.
More clear-cut moral guidance: Capital punishment for those who work on the sabbath.
The more I learn about the Bible, the more proud I am to be an atheist.
Atheism is a religion, too. It is a concrete belief that is held without any conclusive proof one way or another.
Atheism is not a religion. It is the rejection of "faith" -- which is the term for believing in something without real evidence. If you are unwilling to reject the notion of "God", why would you reject the notion of the Easter bunny, Santa Claus, or the tooth fairy? Would you feel that someone who believed there was no tooth fairy was closed-minded or intellectually inferior to those who said "there could be a tooth fairy"?
You need to draw a distinction between the positive philosophies espoused by most major religions and the self-serving hypocrisy of those who would use noble concepts to their own ends.
I don't care about the positive philosophies of religion. It's time for man to grow up and take responsibility for his own behavior, thoughts, and morals. Christianity led to the Crusades. There was no weird splinter group that had perverted Christianity to that purpose. And religion brainwashes its practitioners into believing that they are doing the right thing, whether it's murdering abortion providers or crashing planes into skyscrapers.
Perhaps you should examine your own belligerent tone of phrase before you start accusing others of intolerance.
I never accused anyone of intolerance and I never claimed to be tolerant of religion. I am not and do not wish to be. Why should I be tolerant of something that has caused so much death and suffering? You act like intolerance is, by definition, bad. Are you tolerant of child molestors, muggers, rapists, murderers, and neo-nazis?
Why should I care what the Pope has to say about any of this? If it was not for religion, we would not be in this absurd mess. The terrorists died, convinced by their religion that they would go on to live some kind of glorious, joy-filled afterlife.
I'm tired of holy wars, crusades, jihads, fatwas, terrorist acts by Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, and Jews, bombings of abortion clinics, murders of doctors, torture, murder, mutilation, and oppression by the Taliban, and dying children being denied medical treatment.
I am an atheist, realist, and an adult. I do not need religion to tell me comforting stories about an all-powerful being that watches over us -- but who will allow thousands of innocent people to be murdered by terrorists. I can do without the religious fantasies that say I will never die. I can distinguish right from wrong without ancient works of fiction to provide me with a moral compass.
More bad news for the religious among us: the Easter bunny, tooth fairy, and Santa Claus aren't real either. Grow up.
Guns equalize people. The little girl can shoot the rapist as easily as he could beat her barehanded.
The rapist would grab the girl from behind, take the gun, rape her, and maybe shoot her with her own gun. When rapes start happening from 50 yards away, then guns will be a reasonable defense. Besides, I'm amazed that anyone would suggest arming children with guns.
By your logic, cops dont need guns either
Untrue. Trained police officers increase public safety by having guns. Untrained yahoos, unstable people, drug addicts, alcoholics, suicide risks, and many other random people that might be on an airplane would present a risk to the public and their fellow passengers if armed with guns.
Guns are tools.
Dynamite is a tool, too, but it does not mean that it belongs on airplanes.
Hand-guns are tools used primarily for self defense
That is bull. Excluding use by trained law enforcement personnel, handguns are more often used to commit crimes than to defend against crimes. Owning a handgun drastically increases the chance that a family member will murder another family member or that there will be a suicide in the home. Handguns are statistically insignificant at reducing crime in the home. If you want to protect your family, you buy a shotgun, not a handgun.
Abrogation of basic human rights caused this problem. A human should never be denied the ability to defend him/herself.
This may be the most reprehensible, and absurd, claim that I've yet heard in the wake of this tragedy. If everyone on board airplanes had guns, how many cases of air rage would have ended in tragic deaths or even plane crashes? How many stupid yahoos would be looking for an excuse to pull a gun and be a hero? "I thought he was reaching for his gun so I started emptying my clip..." How many inebriated passengers would accidentally discharge their guns, taking the plane down? How many distraught, disturbed, and jilted passengers would decide to take their own lives and the lives of everyone else by starting a gun battle? The terrorists would be thrilled by your idea. They could sit at home and watch passengers take down U.S. commercial aircraft with disturbing regularity.
No "basic human right" was taken away. If you are such a weak little man that you can't defend yourself without a gun, you are a truly pathetic specimen. If you are not man enough to travel without your gun, then stay home. The brave passengers on flight 93 who overpowered the hijackers would have been disgusted by some pussy like you cowering in the back of the plane saying "I can't do anything because I don't have my gun."
Do you really want to establish a precedence that sez all software developers are libel for the worms others create?
No. I want to establish a precedent that makes software publishers responsible for making their products work as described and proactively notifying users of patches necessitated for security reasons.
I'm guessing you don't write much code.
You guessed wrong. I've been a professional software developer since 1980 -- back when Microsoft's only products were languages like BASIC, Fortran, and Cobol for 8-bit CP/M systems. Now I develop embedded systems -- currently for satellites. If my code causes a mission failure, I expect to be unemployed. So I don't have a lot of sympathy for Microsoft when they pretend that it is impossible to write robust, secure software.
They talk about "security features", but I don't see the claims you are talking about. Tell me the quote.
There is not a single quote saying "this product is 100% secure." The clear and obvious purpose of the web page is to leave the user with the impression that the IIS product is secure.
At least since Outlook 2000 (which I run), you can adjust security settings for HTML e-mail, or HTML anything else for that matter. It's actually very flexible.
Then tell me how to prevent it from fetching items from the web -- i.e., no permission for Outlook to access data via HTTP. Then I might switch from Outlook Express 6 -- the most current version of Outlook Express and what I run.
Outlook gives you all sort of warning bells and whistles for a long time now.
You are correct that the newer versions do give warnings. I stand corrected.
If you want to make it apples and apples, I would not blame my bank, but instead the software company that created their operating system, or the person or group of people that wrote their CGI scripts. After all, the bank just maintains the PC's, they don't write the software themselves, correct?
Thank you. You just proved my point. You would blame the company that wrote the software, not the bank that "just maintains the PCs." Well, Microsoft wrote IIS and now you want to foist 100% of the blame on the user who 'just maintains the PC.'
Because the people that are the cause of this problem don't bother to register their software. How exactly could Microsoft reach these clueless morons?
Where do you get your information on what kinds of people do and do not register software? Would that fall under the category of "brown facts"?
Maybe the fact that Microsoft does not make a proactive effort to notify users, by mail -- including a patch disc, when there are problems explains why software registration is less than it could be.
I said Microsoft patched THE FLAW.
You can release a patch to correct a flaw or you can patch a program or system. You cannot patch a flaw. If I tell my client that I patched something, he assumes, correctly, that I installed a software change on one or more systems, not that I created the patch and left it for his staff to read about on the company web page. But, that's semantics and I seriously doubt that either of us will concede that point.
In the case of IIS, Microsoft claimed that it was secure.
Show me a quote where Microsoft claims that their software is perfect. No software is perfectly secure
I did not say that they claimed it was "perfect". I only said that they claimed it was secure (see the URL http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/server/evalua tion/features/web.asp)
I like being able to open a document that someone e-mails me without having to save it off somewhere.
Now combine that "feature" with Microsoft's default of hiding file extensions and someone e-mails resume.doc.exe, the recipient sees resume.doc, and he double clicks on it. Outlook then executes the application without so much as an "are you sure?" prompt.
But what I was referring to was execution of script languages (e.g. VBScript) within e-mails.
Are you aware that a spammer can send you HTML e-mail and know when it is displayed on your screen? All he does is include a unique 1x1.GIF URL. When his system sees a "GET" on his web server for the.GIF, he knows that your e-mail address is valid, the IP address of your machine, and that he's got a live one. Welcome to more spam. And you cannot turn off HTML fetching from your e-mail or have it ask you first.
These are all examples of gross security flaws that Microsoft has created. Sorry, but that's negligence in its simplist form.
No. You could simply admit that I am right or choose not to participate. Either one is fine by me.
Summary: Microsoft did not write the virus.
So what? They are still liable for product flaws. Suppose that your bank had a flaw on their web page that let anyone find your credit card number. Would you say that they were not to blame if someone exploited that flaw and used your credit card?
Microsoft patched the flaw over a year ago.
Not true. Microsoft made a patch available to those that knew about it. "Patched" would mean that they actively installed the patch.
Microsoft has made every attempt to patch known flaws.
Not true. There are many flaws in their "Knowledge Base" that have never been patched -- some of which are related to security.
Microsoft makes every effort to notify known administrators about problems as they arise.
Absolutely not true. The way you make the public aware of a product defect is to send registered owners mail (with a stamp -- not e-mail). Microsoft has not done this. Instead, they put notices up on their web pages and relied on users checking for patches regularly -- even though they know that most never do.
If Microsoft can send you snail mail telling you that they want to sell you a new version of Visual C++, they can send you a CD-ROM with patches for severe security flaws in the OS that they sold to you.
I can go down the street to bob's lawn care and get materials to create a car bomb. Does that mean that Scott's Turf Builder is responsible for my actions?
In addition to that being an extremely tasteless analogy in light of recent events, it's not even a remotely fair one. In the case of IIS, Microsoft claimed that it was secure. In the case of their e-mail client (Outlook/Outlook Express), who in their right mind would write an e-mail client that executed code (vbscript, etc.) enclosed in an e-mail?
You can't reasonably hold microsoft responsible for the upkeep and mantinence of literally millions of desktop computers in the united states alone.
That would be like Ford/Firestone having to recall tens of thousands of tires just because they fall apart and cause accidents. Should drivers of Ford SUVs go to www.ford.com to check for recalls every day? Maybe in your world...
Now, if you're gonna criticize microsoft, put your money where your mouth is, and write your own operating system, and get it on the desktop of 97% of the computer users in the united states, and have it impervious to viruses.
That's the most ridiculous thing I've read in a while. So you are actually saying that I don't have a right to complain about an unsafe car unless I start my own competing car factory? Parents cannot complain about strollers that injure their kids unless they start a stroller company? People deformed by Thalidimide have no right to complain until they start their own pharmaceutical company and make a competing drug? How many moons circle your home world?
Or be logical, and talk to people about linux. Educate them that there's something better out there, more secure, crashes less.
Damn! All I had to do was talk to 25,000+ Road Runner users throughout the country, convince them to switch to Linux, and I could have avoided my connection being hammered for two weeks? Now you tell me. I'll put all of my belongings into an RV so that I can tour the country convincing people to switch to Linux.
Less bitching, more solutions.
Solution: AOL, Earthlink, UUNet, and every other major ISP in the world join together, sues Microsoft, and wins a large settlement. Microsoft stops developing and bundling bad video editors, paint packages, web servers, and online Othello games and, instead, concentrates on making a more secure, robust OS.
Anyway, my point is, if people start suing Microsoft over this, Linux distro companies and even potentially individual Linux programmers could also be at risk.
While I am aware that there are, and always have been, exploits for the various Unix systems out there, any damages awarded in a lawsuit would be related to the harm done by the exploit. So what if a worm got into ten end-user FreeBSD 4.3 systems used on Earthlink? The collateral damage would be minimal as they could not generate enough traffic to take Earthlink to its knees.
That is not the case when there is a bug in 2000 and NT. Microsoft is well aware of the potential for damage if there are tens of thousands of systems ready for an exploit -- especially when defective components like IIS are installed by default regardless of whether the user needs them or not.
I have been a professional software developer since 1980. I am sick and tired of the attitude that software, unlike every other product produced by man, should be exempt from lawsuits, scrutiny, etc. That attitude is precisely why Microsoft is spending time writing bad video editors and copy protection schemes rather than making their OS solid and bug-free.
You really are an illiterate half-wit, aren't you? No wonder you post as Anonymous Coward. Are you a actually a stupid adult or just some short-bus kid from special ed?
Microsoft has cost ISPs, businesses, and end users an incalculable amount of money and frustration and it is all due to their negligence. They were negligent when they created software and technologies that are so easily exploited. They were negligent in their testing of their products. They were negligent in not sending patch CDs through the mail to registered users. If they can send you upgrade offers via the mail, they can send you patch CDs to repair their defective products.
And before anyone starts quoting the Microsoft license, ISPs that run Linux/*BSD/Solaris are being hurt by the traffic, too. They have no license with Microsoft and they've been injured by Microsoft's negligence.
I'd like to see AOL, Earthlink, or some other big ISP take Microsoft's corporate butt to court, demanding compensatory and punitive damages for Microsoft's negligence.
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For the average consumer who does not see the difference between a $100 50 watt amp and $800 50 watt amp other than price, they won't ever understand paying $1000 for an Empeg.
I am far from an "average consumer" when it comes to audio equipment. My Linn turntable costs more than most people spend on an entire stereo. My VMPS speakers are very highly regarded by the audiophile press. My preamp is a custom, unity gain buffered Class A design. I won't bore you with the rest but I wanted to make the point that I am a discerning audio enthusiast.
That said, the Empeg is just a car stereo component and, given the road noise and inherently poor audio environment of a car, spending gobs of money on car stereo equipment is silly. Having the world's best car stereo is right up there with having the world's best boom box. Neither one is likely to impress a real audiophile.
Further, why would anyone who fancies themselves a car audiophile choose a component that can only play lossy compression MP3s but not sonically superior CDs?
The Empeg is not selling because it starts at $1000 (and that's after a $300 price drop). It is inconvenient because you have to pull it out and hook it up to your computer to add music to it. It cannot play CDs and does not receive radio stations -- and that's a big deal if you are like most people and only have a single DIN opening in your vehicle. It requires a separate power amp -- even for use in a subcompact car where built-in amps are normally adequate. This is not an example of stupid consumers. It's an example of an expensive product that satisfies only a very limited audience.
Perhaps because it can do so much more?
It can do so much less than the unit I have. The Empeg can't receive AM or FM. It cannot play a CD that I buy at the store and is totally helpless unless I have a computer handy to convert from CD to MP3. It does not drive speakers directly. It cannot play MP3s off of media that I burn in my computer.
It isn't that hard to see both sides of the story and the empeg seems pretty cheap considering it's oly a bit more than 2x your CD player.
I don't have a "CD player." I have an in-dash MP3 player that can read music CDs, MP3 CD/Rs and CD/RWs, and that has a top-quality AM/FM tuner and a decent amp. The Empeg only plays from its hard disk. That's some real good "fuzzy math" as the politicians would say. The unit I bought, complete with built-in amp, was $400. Now, how much is the Empeg plus a 4 channel amp?
People can get a JVC KD-SH99 (or the equivalent) that plays MP3s burned onto CD-ROMs. The JVC has a great display, a tuner, a parametric EQ, two line-level inputs, subwoofer output with built-in crossover. It can play normal CDs, and has a built-in 4-channel amp that works quite well. It's $400 at Crutchfield and even has a nifty motorized front panel.
Why should I care about the manufacturer's cost of the Empeg if it can't even play a CD or listen to a radio station? And don't forget the cost and hassle for the separate amp (no, normal people do not need separate amps when units like the JVC incorporate 4x19W RMS (4x50W peak) amps).
People judge the cost of things by what the things do, not what they cost to manufacture. Why pay over a grand for something that does so little? That's a question that too many people asked in this case.
Are all conservatives as nutty as you are?
I'm much more worried about rabies and distemper.
You are a decent, reasonable, and intelligent person. Thank you for your thoughtful response. As time permits, I will attempt to continue this in e-mail (as I am getting uncomfortably close to dropping below 40 Karma points).
Regards,
Fred Maxwell
People have commented that without an Internet connection, the problem will be hard to fix. Why? Because Microsoft requires infected and at-risk systems be on the Internet to download patches. If Microsoft had done the respectable thing and mailed out patch CDs to registered users (and maybe even given them away at computer stores), much of this could have been avoided.
When large numbers of our own citizens start to blame privacy for this act, the terrorists are already winning. I have heard talk of requiring back doors in all encryption software and routine scanning of all e-mail.
Let's look at what else might have enabled the terrorists:
1. Freedom to assemble in private.
2. Ability for private individuals to get pilot training.
3. Protection from random searches of homes.
4. Laws against descrimination based on race, religion, or national origin.
Are we take legislative action on those things next? I think that our country needs to stop, take a collective deep breath, and recognize what makes this country worth fighting for. If we take away the very freedoms that define America in order to make people feel safer, the terrorists will have struck a more crushing blow against us than I would ever have imagined possible.
Sounds like agnosticism to me.
To me, an agnostic is someone who is "on the fence" and cannot decide whether to believe or not. I am absolutely not in that category. I do not believe that there is a God and will not believe it unless someone provides me with credible evidence -- and old books don't count as evidence to me.
Also, you did implicitly state that you believed that God wasn't real:
I do not believe in anything without evidence -- God included. If credible evidence is presented, my mind can be changed, but right now, I see no significant chance that God exists in any form.
I also don't want to fall into the religious zealot trap that argues anyone unwilling to claim with certainty that God does or does not exist is confused. It's the same line of reasoning that causes them to claim that evolution is only considered a "theory" so creationism must be an an equally likely explanation.
I suspect that a lot of smart religious people do not believe in a bearded guy sitting on a cloud, but have a more sophisticated notion of a universal principle.
I am sure that is true but my intent was not to argue their point. A caricature the less sophisticated beliefs better serves my purpose and the very fact that God is so ill-defined as to be so different to different people is, in and of itself, telling.
Prove to me that the positive benefits of capitalism, secular humanism, Taoism, etc, etc outweigh the negative. What a pointless challenge.
Not pointless at all. You urge me to be more tolerant of religious views that I feel lead to death, torture, destruction, pain, suffering, grief, and war. All I am asking you to do is show me why I should be more tolerant of something that I feel does so much harm. Or should I just take it on faith that religion is good?
The only intellectually pure stance is Agnosticism, when you believe that the existence of God can neither be proven or disproven. Atheism takes it as an article of faith that God doesn't exist, without any proof.
Atheism means "without religious beliefs." It does not mean an absolute conviction that it is impossible for God to exist.
I agree that the existence of God cannot be proven or disproven. Neither can the existence of ghosts, the Loch Ness Monster, the tooth fairy, or Bigfoot be proven, but that does not mean that you must mentally give each one a 50/50 chance of existing in order to be intellectually pure. If I went into a room full of cosmologists and claimed that the universe was populated with invisible, massless, giant warthogs, I doubt that they would be "agnostic" about the subject -- even though they could not disprove my claim.
Not to mention that there is at least some "documented" evidence (the resurrection of Christ).
Just as there is "documented evidence" of the Greek gods, the Roman gods, and the Norse gods? Evidence is more than something written anonymously in a book.
You have faith that your disbelief is true.
A lack of belief is not the same as disbelief. This is an important, though subtle, distinction. My beliefs are based on logic and reasoning, not faith. I have been provided no credible evidence of a god, therefore I do not believe that there is one. That is not the same as believing that there could not be a god.
A totally specious line of reasoning. Just because someone believes one thing, they are not compelled to believe in everything.
It is not at all specious. My point was that you are holding religious beliefs to a different standard of evidence than you would other beliefs. You implied that my lack of religious belief was akin to being closed-minded. Would you characterize a lack of belief in the tooth fairy the same way?
Yes, you did:
I'm tired of holy wars, crusades, jihads, fatwas, terrorist acts by Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, and Jews
That's an implicit assumption of intolerance.
I don't view those things as "intolerance." Denying medical care to a sick child due to religious beliefs is not intolerance and that was another example I provided. I view those things as heinous acts done in the name or religion. Intolerance is far too tame a word.
Perhaps because you have an overly simplistic view of one of the most (if not the most) influential elements of human thought over the course of recorded history.
Now show me that it's positive influence outweighs the negative. When you do that, I will be more tolerant.
Why should I care what you have to say about any of this?
I don't know, but you clearly do as evidenced by your lengthy response.
The victims died, convinced by their upbringing that these terrorists would go straight to hell.
The terrorists thought they would go to heaven, the Christians thought they would go to hell, and neither side has a shred of evidence to support their beliefs.
I am a Christian, realist, and an adult.
That is simply contradictory.
I do not need athiesm to tell me comforting stories about how I'm supposedly statistically smarter
Where did that come from? An atheist is someone who does not hold religious beliefs. It is not based on statistics about intelligence.
-- but who think that morality is subjective and bend it to whatever they want to believe in.
Personal insults about my morality are both inappropriate and baseless. You don't know me. You don't know how I lead my life, whether I help people in need, donate to charities, or have a strict moral code. Since you brought up the supposedly superior morality of Christians, I'll throw out a couple of names: Jimmy Swaggert and Jim Baker.
I can distinguish right from wrong without just making it up as I go along.
Right. You have such divine guidance as:
Exodus 21:20 And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand; he shall be surely punished.
Great. You can beat servants as long as you do not kill them.
Deuteronomy 15:12 [And] if thy brother, an Hebrew man, or an Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee, and serve thee six years; then in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from thee.
And you can only keep slaves for six years. Boy, that is some great moral guidance.
1 Corinthians 14:34 Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but [they are commanded] to be under obedience, as also saith the law.
More declarations of right and wrong. Women are not to speak in church.
Exodus 31:15 Six days may work be done; but in the seventh [is] the sabbath of rest, holy to the LORD: whosoever doeth [any] work in the sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death.
More clear-cut moral guidance: Capital punishment for those who work on the sabbath.
The more I learn about the Bible, the more proud I am to be an atheist.
Atheism is a religion, too. It is a concrete belief that is held without any conclusive proof one way or another.
Atheism is not a religion. It is the rejection of "faith" -- which is the term for believing in something without real evidence. If you are unwilling to reject the notion of "God", why would you reject the notion of the Easter bunny, Santa Claus, or the tooth fairy? Would you feel that someone who believed there was no tooth fairy was closed-minded or intellectually inferior to those who said "there could be a tooth fairy"?
You need to draw a distinction between the positive philosophies espoused by most major religions and the self-serving hypocrisy of those who would use noble concepts to their own ends.
I don't care about the positive philosophies of religion. It's time for man to grow up and take responsibility for his own behavior, thoughts, and morals. Christianity led to the Crusades. There was no weird splinter group that had perverted Christianity to that purpose. And religion brainwashes its practitioners into believing that they are doing the right thing, whether it's murdering abortion providers or crashing planes into skyscrapers.
Perhaps you should examine your own belligerent tone of phrase before you start accusing others of intolerance.
I never accused anyone of intolerance and I never claimed to be tolerant of religion. I am not and do not wish to be. Why should I be tolerant of something that has caused so much death and suffering? You act like intolerance is, by definition, bad. Are you tolerant of child molestors, muggers, rapists, murderers, and neo-nazis?
Why should I care what the Pope has to say about any of this? If it was not for religion, we would not be in this absurd mess. The terrorists died, convinced by their religion that they would go on to live some kind of glorious, joy-filled afterlife.
I'm tired of holy wars, crusades, jihads, fatwas, terrorist acts by Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, and Jews, bombings of abortion clinics, murders of doctors, torture, murder, mutilation, and oppression by the Taliban, and dying children being denied medical treatment.
I am an atheist, realist, and an adult. I do not need religion to tell me comforting stories about an all-powerful being that watches over us -- but who will allow thousands of innocent people to be murdered by terrorists. I can do without the religious fantasies that say I will never die. I can distinguish right from wrong without ancient works of fiction to provide me with a moral compass.
More bad news for the religious among us: the Easter bunny, tooth fairy, and Santa Claus aren't real either. Grow up.
Guns equalize people. The little girl can shoot the rapist as easily as he could beat her barehanded.
The rapist would grab the girl from behind, take the gun, rape her, and maybe shoot her with her own gun. When rapes start happening from 50 yards away, then guns will be a reasonable defense. Besides, I'm amazed that anyone would suggest arming children with guns.
By your logic, cops dont need guns either
Untrue. Trained police officers increase public safety by having guns. Untrained yahoos, unstable people, drug addicts, alcoholics, suicide risks, and many other random people that might be on an airplane would present a risk to the public and their fellow passengers if armed with guns.
Guns are tools.
Dynamite is a tool, too, but it does not mean that it belongs on airplanes.
Hand-guns are tools used primarily for self defense
That is bull. Excluding use by trained law enforcement personnel, handguns are more often used to commit crimes than to defend against crimes. Owning a handgun drastically increases the chance that a family member will murder another family member or that there will be a suicide in the home. Handguns are statistically insignificant at reducing crime in the home. If you want to protect your family, you buy a shotgun, not a handgun.
Abrogation of basic human rights caused this problem. A human should never be denied the ability to defend him/herself.
This may be the most reprehensible, and absurd, claim that I've yet heard in the wake of this tragedy. If everyone on board airplanes had guns, how many cases of air rage would have ended in tragic deaths or even plane crashes? How many stupid yahoos would be looking for an excuse to pull a gun and be a hero? "I thought he was reaching for his gun so I started emptying my clip..." How many inebriated passengers would accidentally discharge their guns, taking the plane down? How many distraught, disturbed, and jilted passengers would decide to take their own lives and the lives of everyone else by starting a gun battle? The terrorists would be thrilled by your idea. They could sit at home and watch passengers take down U.S. commercial aircraft with disturbing regularity.
No "basic human right" was taken away. If you are such a weak little man that you can't defend yourself without a gun, you are a truly pathetic specimen. If you are not man enough to travel without your gun, then stay home. The brave passengers on flight 93 who overpowered the hijackers would have been disgusted by some pussy like you cowering in the back of the plane saying "I can't do anything because I don't have my gun."
Do you really want to establish a precedence that sez all software developers are libel for the worms others create?
No. I want to establish a precedent that makes software publishers responsible for making their products work as described and proactively notifying users of patches necessitated for security reasons.
I'm guessing you don't write much code.
You guessed wrong. I've been a professional software developer since 1980 -- back when Microsoft's only products were languages like BASIC, Fortran, and Cobol for 8-bit CP/M systems. Now I develop embedded systems -- currently for satellites. If my code causes a mission failure, I expect to be unemployed. So I don't have a lot of sympathy for Microsoft when they pretend that it is impossible to write robust, secure software.
They talk about "security features", but I don't see the claims you are talking about. Tell me the quote.
There is not a single quote saying "this product is 100% secure." The clear and obvious purpose of the web page is to leave the user with the impression that the IIS product is secure.
At least since Outlook 2000 (which I run), you can adjust security settings for HTML e-mail, or HTML anything else for that matter. It's actually very flexible.
Then tell me how to prevent it from fetching items from the web -- i.e., no permission for Outlook to access data via HTTP. Then I might switch from Outlook Express 6 -- the most current version of Outlook Express and what I run.
Outlook gives you all sort of warning bells and whistles for a long time now.
You are correct that the newer versions do give warnings. I stand corrected.
If you want to make it apples and apples, I would not blame my bank, but instead the software company that created their operating system, or the person or group of people that wrote their CGI scripts. After all, the bank just maintains the PC's, they don't write the software themselves, correct?
Thank you. You just proved my point. You would blame the company that wrote the software, not the bank that "just maintains the PCs." Well, Microsoft wrote IIS and now you want to foist 100% of the blame on the user who 'just maintains the PC.'
Because the people that are the cause of this problem don't bother to register their software. How exactly could Microsoft reach these clueless morons?
Where do you get your information on what kinds of people do and do not register software? Would that fall under the category of "brown facts"?
Maybe the fact that Microsoft does not make a proactive effort to notify users, by mail -- including a patch disc, when there are problems explains why software registration is less than it could be.
I said Microsoft patched THE FLAW.
You can release a patch to correct a flaw or you can patch a program or system. You cannot patch a flaw. If I tell my client that I patched something, he assumes, correctly, that I installed a software change on one or more systems, not that I created the patch and left it for his staff to read about on the company web page. But, that's semantics and I seriously doubt that either of us will concede that point.
In the case of IIS, Microsoft claimed that it was secure.
a tion/features/web.asp)
.GIF URL. When his system sees a "GET" on his web server for the .GIF, he knows that your e-mail address is valid, the IP address of your machine, and that he's got a live one. Welcome to more spam. And you cannot turn off HTML fetching from your e-mail or have it ask you first.
Show me a quote where Microsoft claims that their software is perfect. No software is perfectly secure
I did not say that they claimed it was "perfect". I only said that they claimed it was secure (see the URL http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/server/evalu
I like being able to open a document that someone e-mails me without having to save it off somewhere.
Now combine that "feature" with Microsoft's default of hiding file extensions and someone e-mails resume.doc.exe, the recipient sees resume.doc, and he double clicks on it. Outlook then executes the application without so much as an "are you sure?" prompt.
But what I was referring to was execution of script languages (e.g. VBScript) within e-mails.
Are you aware that a spammer can send you HTML e-mail and know when it is displayed on your screen? All he does is include a unique 1x1
These are all examples of gross security flaws that Microsoft has created. Sorry, but that's negligence in its simplist form.
Do we really have to argue this all over again?
No. You could simply admit that I am right or choose not to participate. Either one is fine by me.
Summary: Microsoft did not write the virus.
So what? They are still liable for product flaws. Suppose that your bank had a flaw on their web page that let anyone find your credit card number. Would you say that they were not to blame if someone exploited that flaw and used your credit card?
Microsoft patched the flaw over a year ago.
Not true. Microsoft made a patch available to those that knew about it. "Patched" would mean that they actively installed the patch.
Microsoft has made every attempt to patch known flaws.
Not true. There are many flaws in their "Knowledge Base" that have never been patched -- some of which are related to security.
Microsoft makes every effort to notify known administrators about problems as they arise.
Absolutely not true. The way you make the public aware of a product defect is to send registered owners mail (with a stamp -- not e-mail). Microsoft has not done this. Instead, they put notices up on their web pages and relied on users checking for patches regularly -- even though they know that most never do.
If Microsoft can send you snail mail telling you that they want to sell you a new version of Visual C++, they can send you a CD-ROM with patches for severe security flaws in the OS that they sold to you.
I can go down the street to bob's lawn care and get materials to create a car bomb. Does that mean that Scott's Turf Builder is responsible for my actions?
In addition to that being an extremely tasteless analogy in light of recent events, it's not even a remotely fair one. In the case of IIS, Microsoft claimed that it was secure. In the case of their e-mail client (Outlook/Outlook Express), who in their right mind would write an e-mail client that executed code (vbscript, etc.) enclosed in an e-mail?
You can't reasonably hold microsoft responsible for the upkeep and mantinence of literally millions of desktop computers in the united states alone.
That would be like Ford/Firestone having to recall tens of thousands of tires just because they fall apart and cause accidents. Should drivers of Ford SUVs go to www.ford.com to check for recalls every day? Maybe in your world...
Now, if you're gonna criticize microsoft, put your money where your mouth is, and write your own operating system, and get it on the desktop of 97% of the computer users in the united states, and have it impervious to viruses.
That's the most ridiculous thing I've read in a while. So you are actually saying that I don't have a right to complain about an unsafe car unless I start my own competing car factory? Parents cannot complain about strollers that injure their kids unless they start a stroller company? People deformed by Thalidimide have no right to complain until they start their own pharmaceutical company and make a competing drug? How many moons circle your home world?
Or be logical, and talk to people about linux. Educate them that there's something better out there, more secure, crashes less.
Damn! All I had to do was talk to 25,000+ Road Runner users throughout the country, convince them to switch to Linux, and I could have avoided my connection being hammered for two weeks? Now you tell me. I'll put all of my belongings into an RV so that I can tour the country convincing people to switch to Linux.
Less bitching, more solutions.
Solution: AOL, Earthlink, UUNet, and every other major ISP in the world join together, sues Microsoft, and wins a large settlement. Microsoft stops developing and bundling bad video editors, paint packages, web servers, and online Othello games and, instead, concentrates on making a more secure, robust OS.
Anyway, my point is, if people start suing Microsoft over this, Linux distro companies and even potentially individual Linux programmers could also be at risk.
While I am aware that there are, and always have been, exploits for the various Unix systems out there, any damages awarded in a lawsuit would be related to the harm done by the exploit. So what if a worm got into ten end-user FreeBSD 4.3 systems used on Earthlink? The collateral damage would be minimal as they could not generate enough traffic to take Earthlink to its knees.
That is not the case when there is a bug in 2000 and NT. Microsoft is well aware of the potential for damage if there are tens of thousands of systems ready for an exploit -- especially when defective components like IIS are installed by default regardless of whether the user needs them or not.
I have been a professional software developer since 1980. I am sick and tired of the attitude that software, unlike every other product produced by man, should be exempt from lawsuits, scrutiny, etc. That attitude is precisely why Microsoft is spending time writing bad video editors and copy protection schemes rather than making their OS solid and bug-free.
You really are an illiterate half-wit, aren't you? No wonder you post as Anonymous Coward. Are you a actually a stupid adult or just some short-bus kid from special ed?
Microsoft has cost ISPs, businesses, and end users an incalculable amount of money and frustration and it is all due to their negligence. They were negligent when they created software and technologies that are so easily exploited. They were negligent in their testing of their products. They were negligent in not sending patch CDs through the mail to registered users. If they can send you upgrade offers via the mail, they can send you patch CDs to repair their defective products.
And before anyone starts quoting the Microsoft license, ISPs that run Linux/*BSD/Solaris are being hurt by the traffic, too. They have no license with Microsoft and they've been injured by Microsoft's negligence.
I'd like to see AOL, Earthlink, or some other big ISP take Microsoft's corporate butt to court, demanding compensatory and punitive damages for Microsoft's negligence.