Re:Liberalism != (Communism || Socialism)
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Working Hard?
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· Score: 1
As for the below average intelligence among us. There's dumb and there's not competent. Again, the dumb are protected by limiting participants eligible for investment by SS funds in private accounts. The not competent (in a legal sense) already have guardians who watch over their interests. I assume that these guardians will have custody of their investment accounts and a fiduciary duty to maximize their return.
Pure frigging hogwash. There are plenty of people of limited intelligence that are competent (in a legal sense) and who do not have guardians but that would have no ability to invest money wisely.
And finally, if somebody's smart, interested in th market, and wants to have a better old age or even leave a bigger legacy to his descendents, what gives you or I the right to say no to him as long as he's not going to end up a burden on us no matter how well or poorly he does?
Congress has that right. Just because you think you can do a better job investing your social security does not mean that you have a legal or moral right to. There are people who are convinced that lottery tickets are a good investment. Should their Social Security be based on their investing skills? And who says that the person won't end up being a burden on us? If he f***s up his investing and is left with too little Social Security to make ends meet, he's a burden on society, including you and me.
As I said before, you don't deserve a bigger Social Security check than your neighbor just because you were luckier, or better, at picking stocks. If you and he contributed the same amount to the system, then you should both get the same amount back.
Whatever failings in finding ineffective private charties are multiplied in the case of public ones... It's just that oversight on public charity is less, of less quality, and has zero effect on funding.... Your analysis is filled with double standards....
Just stop with the vague, unsubstantiated claims. Let's get down to facts.
Fact: Government social programs were enacted because private sector charities could not meet the needs of the poor. Fact: Millions of Americans are served by government social programs and you cannot identify a combination of private charities that will serve the needs of all of those citizens. Fact: Charities cluster in populous, urban areas. People outside of those areas often cannot get needed help from private charities. Fact: Private charities that provide help to the desperately poor can get donations while one that provided unemployment to middle class people would not. Fact: Private charities do not receive enough donations to provide all of the services needed by the poor. Fact: There is no evidence to support the notion that tax cuts from reduced government social spending would result in substantially higher charitable contributions.
Hold the govt. charities to the same standard as the private ones and you will find that they don't provide nearly as good a deal for the poor as private charity.
How "good a deal" does Meals on Wheels provide to someone who lives 100 miles from the nearest city? None. No meal is delivered. Government social programs help everyone regardless of race, ethnicity, geographic location, sexual preference, religious beliefs, etc. The same cannot be said of private charities. I can look at all of the numbers for government charity spending. I cannot get that same level of information from the Catholic church for its charitable work, can I?
When the first work requirements were rammed through Congress and President Clinton reluctantly signed on, there were widespread predictions of mass starvation and cruel conditions for the poor.
"Workfare" was implemented by Democratic state governors before any Republican ever signed on, so quite telling me that Clinton and the Democrats in Congress were so "reluctant." The Democrats have been the ones that wanted meaningful reform to social programs. The Republicans do everything they can to make the programs fail so that they can trot them out every election as wasteful Democratic spending.
The same people who brought that success are now suggesting that private charities be given a bigger portion of our money.
I am an atheist and do not want my tax dollars funding a bunch of proselytizing religious zealots to foist off their own misguided views on the poor. Screw that.
You probably think that it was great that The Salvation Army was working behind the scenes with Bush to craft legislation that would let them get government funds while still discriminating against gays.
First of all, the majority of this bulletin is an FAQ stating why MS had to re-issue this security bulletin. Turns out they were more vulnerable than they first thought and that their first fix caused other problems.
The specifics of the bulletin are irrelevent. I just picked one at random. I could have been more selective and picked out something that was inconsequential or was not security-related.
It should be pointed out that not only are SuSE's security announcements equally as descript, they are much easier to find.
How is it easier to find than hitting "Windows Update" and then clicking on the description of the updates shown?
So, it is better to penalize people who work for their money than to penalize the leeches who just take and don't contribute anything to society except for another generation of leeches?
So you believe that some guy who works for 20 years at a steel mill and ends up getting unemployment is a "leech"? You believe that a school teacher who gets paid so little that he/she qualifies for subsidized housing is a "leech"? You think that the people who get up at 5:00AM to haul away your garbage are "leeches" because they need food stamps to feed their family? You think that J.K. Rowling (author of the Harry Potter books), who lived on welfare for six months, and her daughter, are "leeches"?
You are the perfect example of a leech. You want all of the benefits of living in our society, but want none of the responsibilities. Using part of your tax dollars to keep people from becoming homeless and from starving to death is not "penalizing" you. It's giving you an opportunity to do some good in the world rather than simply lining your own pockets.
You would rather let the down-on-their-luck starve so that you could keep more of your precious money. I think that the government should take all of your money away, throw you in prison, and let you you get raped up the ass every day. You deserve it.
Elaborate on this... how do you check closed source updates ?
By reading the description provided by the vendor as to what the update does. Microsoft typically supplies very detailed, informative descriptions of what each update does, to whom it applies, etc. For instance, here's one. I have never seen that level of detail and professionalism from any Linux distro vendor.
The vast majority of computer users, and even network administrators, would not be able to read C source and, to them, a detailed description of the update is far more valuable than source code. Providing the information to them is much more important than providing source code to you -- given their numbers.
Do you review and fully understand the source code to every update that you install on your computer? As you said, if not -> shut up.
Re:Liberalism != (Communism || Socialism)
on
Working Hard?
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· Score: 1
You could invest in US Treasuries and get a better return than present.
That argues in favor of revamping Social Security rather than turning it into a Las Vegas style gaming system where two people contribute the same thing and one ends up rich while the other does not get enough to scrape by. If two people pay the same amount into Social Security over their lifetimes, then they should reap the same rewards when they retire.
The stock market isn't about investing lucky but about researching and investing for long-term value over the 40 odd years you'll be saving up for that retirement.
Bull. What about people who did their research and invested in AOL/Time Warner and Enron only to find out that the books were cooked? What about people who invested in companies that sold asbestos products? What about those who invested in tobacco companies? "Sound investments" can be destroyed by factors that the investor could know nothing about.
If you want to reform Social Security, then let government contracts to companies like Fidelity to invest all of the money so that everyone benefits equally. Don't turn it into a crapshoot where a hard-working American ends up with nothing because he wasn't good/lucky at investing. There are Americans with Down's Syndrome, brain damage, mental retardation, etc. working hard in tough jobs. Are you telling me that their Social Security benefits should be determined by their investing abilities?
When NYC adopted welfare reform and made people show up for their checks, 50% of their caseload disappeared.
So it is possible to put simple reforms into place which significantly reduce fraud. That sounds like a good argument in favor of reforming, rather than dismantling, government assistance programs.
If a private charity were discovered to do that their contribution base would be decimated.
*IF* it was discovered then *SOME* contributers might stop funding. But many others would never know anything about it. They would write their checks and feel good about doing it. That's why there are huge charities whose main function appears to be paying inflated salaries to people who work for them.
Inevitably, any system of charity will have its foul ups as its always going to be run by fallible humans. Private charity lets you cut off the screwups more easily than govt. charity.
If you find out about them. How do you know that a given charity is really doling out aid properly, though? Based on their own reports?
I would rather have government social programs that wasted money while providing help for all needy Americans than to have private charities that were more efficient and helped only a small percentage of the needy.
However, you fail to address many of the points that I made in my previous post:
* Reducing people's taxes by cutting social programs will not result in the tax savings going to charitable organizations -- as evidenced by the fact that the Bush tax cuts have not significantly increase charitable donations. * That government social programs were instituted because private charities were not capable of providing the necessary safety net * That charities like to help desperate cases rather than keeping a middle-class family from losing their home (like unemployment insurance does) * That it is dangerous to put millions of Americans at risk by cutting off the government assistance that they receive based on an unproven belief that charities will step up to fill the void.
I won't rehash all of my arguments. You can read, and quote, them should you choose to debate the points.
Re:Liberalism != (Communism || Socialism)
on
Working Hard?
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· Score: 1
A reactionary change would be eliminating Social Security. A radical change would be transforming it into something not in existence before, like a private account plan (GWB is pushing this).
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Let people gamble away their Social Security in the stock market. Bush ran his mouth off about this idea while he was campaigning, but has been curiously quiet about it since the stock market has tanked under his [sarcasm]ever-so-capable leadership[/sarcasm].
Social security is not supposed to be gambling. It is just the opposite. It's supposed to be a rock-solid account which you can rely on after you retire. Investing is gambling, whether it is through individual stocks or mutual funds. You don't deserve a more comfortable retirement than your neighbor just because you were luckier in picking stocks. Period. End of story.
They don't involve prison terms for tax evasion but they do involve a loss of respect, influence, and social status.
I can claim that I donated $50,000 to charity last year and be praised and admired -- even though I did no such thing. Or did you mean that really wealthy people whose huge donations make the headlines would enjoy incresed respect, influence, and social status? I mean, they are rich, so, as a right-winger, you probably think that entitles them to more status, influence, and respect than the rest of us enjoy.
What makes you think that a federal tax cut would have a significant impact on what private charities receive? You probably got one of those $300 bribe checks cut by the Bush administration. Did your charitable donations go up by $300 that year? Did most people's? Hell no. They put it into their own bank accounts or bought things for themselves. Damned few put it towards charitable causes.
The private systems are much more efficient than the public systems.
What a load of bull. Why don't you read this article and then come back to discuss efficiency? You have a funny definition of "efficient." I guess you think that a charity that takes in $1000 and gives $1000 to a single crack addict is 100% efficient. I do not. Efficiency is not measured by simply determining what percentage of the money goes to the poor. It's also measured by how fairly the charity gives out that aid. If a charity gives two winter coats to 50 homeless people and 50 others freeze to death, that charity is not efficient -- even if none of their donations went to overhead.
Private charities are rife with corruption. Just look at the scandals at private charities like The United Way, The American Red Cross, and others and that becomes obvious. The President of the United Way gets paid almost $500,000 per year in salary and other compensation. How is that efficient?
They also don't give aid out uniformly and fairly. That makes it much easier to claim to be efficient. There's no cost associated with assuring that benefits are doled out fairly. A private charity can "cherry-pick" who receives aid. A Mormon charity can decide that it's going to only help poor in the local Mormon community. Another charity can decide that helping poor, urban, black people is 'not their thing' and no one can do anything about it. Many of the charities take a paternalistic approach where they basically adopt some down-and-out families and lavish assistance on them -- ignoring the needs of others in the area. If you live in a populous area, there may be a privately run "soup kitchen." If you are homeless in rural Nebraska, you're out of luck.
In fact, the public systems often are socially perverse, trapping the poor and not letting them progress. Forget about the stupid greedheads, don't you have compassion for the poor?
What a bunch of right-wing backwards-speak: "If you care about the poor, demand that the government stop providing them aid." If you have a problem with the way that the government administers the programs, then reform the programs. Don't cut them based on some unproven claim that the private sector will be step in and provide a safety net for all. In fact, social spending by the government began because private sector charities were not able to do the whole job.
I don't want someone to have to listen to some Christian sermon in order to get a meal. I don't want someone in North Dakota starving to death because he's in an area not served by any of the private charities. I don't want some family to become homeless because they were not poor enough to make the charities feel good about helping them. Yes, I have compassion for the poor, but, apparently, you do not.
Keep paying your taxes. Support government spending on social programs. If you have specific suggestions to improve the efficiency of those programs, then contact your elected representatives and pass those suggestions on. But don't put the lives of millions of people at risk based on your false claim that private charities would take up all of the slack.
Without actually reading the information (I am a Slashdot user after all), it looks to me like this thing is just a mouse that prints. It recognizes positional (including rotational) information and spews dots accordingly. It's cute, but it's not like they've invented a fantastic new technology. Why it can't hit the market before 2005 (their estimate) is beyond me.
Now, if you really wanted to give your money to the needy and be assured that it gets where it belongs *efficiently* (for well less than $0.36 every hour we all work) feel free to give to a local charity.
And the greedy bastards who decided not to give to charity would be rewarded for their greed with a bigger paycheck. That's why it's not voluntary. We don't want a system that rewards people for being self-centered.
In your example, that user might have a problem (maybe lose files, or whatever), but the system would not be infected as you claim.
Wrongo! If you are running as a non-root user and you can still install and run software, then you can install and run malicious software, too. Since all that the program in question does is e-mail itself to other users, that doesn't seem like a root-level user would be needed to run or install it.
Funny, I have tons of really good dos+Win3.1 stuff (Perfect General 2 being the canonical example) that DOESN'T run under so much as Win95.
That's not surprising at all. What is surprising is that the vast majority of Win 3.1 and DOS stuff does work under the current versions of Windows, not that a minority of software does not.
The Windows users are always blaming the fact that their are more Windows machines on why they have more viruses.
Let's think about this for a while. Is the average virus writer more likely to have a Windows PC or a Sun Solaris Sparcstation? Is he going to have tools for building Windows apps or tools to build AIX apps? If he builds a Windows binary, it probably runs on everything from Windows 95 to Windows XP. If he builds a Solaris binary, it will run on some Solaris machines. Period.
Next, there is the social engineering aspect of this. You simply could not convince a sysadmin working for a Fortune 500 company or the military to execute a random file that arrived unexpectedly in e-mail. Thus, there would be no means of spreading a worm/trojan like the one being discussed here. Because Windows is used by everyone from software engineers with decades of experience to elementary school children, there is a large swathe of the users that will click on said attachment. On top of that, many Windows machines are rarely, if ever, updated, Thus the writers of malicious software can exploit bugs for months, or even years, after patches are created for them.
A "successful" worm written for Windows can bring the Internet to its knees while a successful worm written for Solaris would, at best, take down some Solaris machines.
The reason is if a user gets a virus then it will only affect their home directory, or at least should on a good unix machine.
This thing isn't a virus. It isn't even really a worm since it relies on human action to spread it. It's just a trojan horse with a malicious payload. It doesn't wipe out system files, format the hard drive, or even destroy user files. It simply e-mails itself around. The same thing could be done on any Linux/Unix/Solaris/etc. distro if a user was dumb enough to run a random attachment mailed to him/her. Admittedly, this one copies itself to the Windows directory, but it could accomplish the same thing without access to system directories.
It's a rare open-source Linux application that doesn't have binaries for at least two or three major distros available on their web site, and generally, those binaries will work just fine on other distros as well. And do so without static linking (which is usually not a very good idea).
One binary should work on all x86 2.x kernel versions of Linux. This stuff of different binaries depending on which x86 distro is installed is silly. Silly, too is the complete lack of a standard directory under which Linux applications are installed. C:\Program Files\ may not be elegant or even very descriptive, but at least it's a standard that everyone groks.
I *really* want to like Linux. I've been fooling with it off and on for several years now and just keep hoping that it will really gel into something that isn't a PITA to maintain and upgrade.
... and WHAM! just like that, you've just divined why Linux IS still a marginal operating system. Most people don't want to have to do this to run an executable sent them by email.
Most people don't want to do that to run a program that they download, either. The Linux community could learn a lot from Bill Gates. I still have DOS and Windows 3.1 programs that run fine under XP. Great efforts are expended at Microsoft to make certain that, wherever possible, new releases of Windows don't break existing apps. You can rightly fault Microsoft for security holes, slimy marketing practices, and monopolistic abuses, but they understand what most end-users want.
Sadly, there seems to be far too little interest in maintaining binary compatability in Linux. I really hope that the Linux-guru-bravado thing dies off so that the operating system can be made more practical for end-users. The goal should be that no one should ever have to recompile an application due to an OS upgrade. Until that goal is ingrained into the Linux development community, Linux will continue to be be a marginal OS.
To others it's just a troll, because he assumes this oh so complicated process of compiling your own binaries (which must have gotten him pissed more than once, probably because he didn't understand it *bash*bash*)
Just take a look at the instructions for building most Linux apps and you will see that I'm not far off the mark. That's why so many people thought my comment was funny. Comedy only works when it has the ring of truth.
With Windows or Mac, you normally download a pre-compiled binary installer and everything installs and runs. With Linux, you get source code and cryptic, painful instructions to build the binary for your system. Did it piss me off more than once? Hell yes. Was it because I didn't understand it? Nope. Been a professional software developer since before IBM even introduced their first PC. It doesn't mean that I like overly complex and lengthy procedures.
To grandparent: Moron, if I was to release a virus it would be a statically linked binary, most probably for i386.
If it's so damned easy to distribute statically linked x86 binaries for Linux, then why do the vast majority of packages come as huge source trees that the end user has to compile? Why isn't there a precompiled, executable installer that handles the binary installation, creation of KDE/Gnome/etc. icons and menu items, and so forth? When 99% of Linux systems are x86-based, why not just force those not on x86 to compile the source? Is it an active effort to keep Linux from succeeding on the desktop -- because it sure is a good way to go about it?
By the way, if you're going to troll, at least be man enough to do it under your own user name. As to being a moron, you are my bitch when it comes to intelligence.
As the parent poster said, a malicious person trying to do maximum damage would write for Windows. The Mac is the next best choice because, like Windows, you don't have big binary compatability problems.
Linux is tougher to write this kind of thing for because it would require that the user perform so many steps. First the user would have to extract the tar file from the gzip file. Then he would have to expand the tar archive onto his hard drive, which would put the source there. Then the user would cd to the location where the source extracted. Then he would probably have to set various environment variables. Then he would have to run gmake. Then he would need to interpret the error messages to determine why the build didn't work. Then he would have to find and add various development tools and libraries to his system, adding any environment variables that they needed. Then he could try building again. When he finally got the build to work, he could then run the resulting executable, which would tell him to to type "man {trojan/worm name}. The man page would show various command line switches for specifying the e-mail client being used and various network options. Then the user would construct the proper command line to run the program and WHAM! Just like that, his system is infected.
I may have left out a few steps or so, but you get the idea...
Perhaps you simply have never listened to an audiophile system, so therefore, you simply don't realize how much more detail and depth can be heard from even a ordinary CD and don't even get me started about SACD quality.
Perhaps I own a high-end system that could embarass yours. Don't be too quick to assume that my dislike of the audiophile mentality means that I have a poor-performing system.
Personally, I find it incredible that anyone could dismiss the entire audiophile domain out of hand.
I don't dismiss it out of hand. Years ago, after being an active participant, I got fed up with the ignorance and superstition. I wasted incalculable hours arguing with people who made, and believed, absurd statements that had no basis in science or reality.
Have you ever considered that the millions of people who are involved in high end audio may know something you simply haven't gotten to yet?
You make a logical flaw by arguing an appeal to belief. That is where one makes the argument that something must be true because many people believe it. There are more people who believe in astrology than people who are audiophiles. Does that mean that astrology is somehow even more credible than the beliefs of audiophiles?
In this regard, I respect those who have spent their precious time developing knowledge and mastery of a subject, however, I have no respect for those who dis others out of simple ignorance.
Most so-called audiophiles have not spent a lot of time developing knowledge. They have spent their time reading advertising pseudo-science babble. Their time wasn't "precious." It was wasted. "Simple ignorance" is believing that some kind of $500 power cord will magically improve the sound of your system rather than just learning enough about engineering to recognize that as a bunch of crap.
Please, do yourselves a favor, go to the local audio hackers hang-out and listen to a real stereo.
My VMPS Super Tower/R speakers sold for about $3600 per pair. My amp is a Hafler PRO2400 MOSFET model which was sold to the professional recording studio industry. My preamp is one that I designed and built myself using a class A BUF-03 unity gain video buffer. My cables are all hand-built to length using a stranded 8259 cable with exceedingly low capacitance. So don't tell me about high-end audio.
Personally, I think even allowing HTML in email was a bad idea from the very beginning.
I used to think that way, but I have come to appreciate the formatting that HTML allows. It can really increase the legibility of a complex e-mail.
What was a mistake was to allow the use of any HTML that loads from external sites. All HTML should have been self-contained in the e-mail, including any images.
The biggest, and stupidest, mistake was to allow scripts to be processed by e-mail. What is Microsoft thinking when they won't let you share your "Program Files" directory over a network but will allow some kid in Panama to download and execute viruses via an e-mail?
Sorry to reply twice, but when I designed and built my own preamplifier, I think it is rather presumptuous of you to claim that I "don't understand" audio.
No, I understand it all too well. That's the problem.
I have a decent ear, and although I don't know anything about electrons aligning, I can tell the difference between a cheap pair of audio cables and an expensive one.
What you can tell is the difference between how your equipment works with the basic electrical characteristics of the cable (inductance, capacitance, and resistance). As respected designer Frank Van Alstine wrote:
Too many people want me to tell them what magic cable and speaker wire to use! They don't want me to be honest and explain that there is no correlation between cable quality and price. They certainly don't want me to inform them that the only differences between the sound of various cables is the way the real electrical characteristics of the cable (the resistance, capacitance, and the inductance) loads the driving source. They don't want me to say that any sonic differences can be replicated with 10Â worth of resistors, capacitors, and inductors wired across the cable. They don't seem to even want to know that if an amplifier is not load sensitive, the characteristics of the cable won't matter at all. None of that good electrical engineering advice is any fun at all. Magic is a lot more fun and is much easier to understand. So, I keep getting call after call and letter after letter asking me only what brand of magic cable I recommend. And, when I respond, the answer is perceived that I don't like magic cables. Wrong again!
I don't like fraud!
The cables in my system are all ones that I constructed out of a stranded version of RG-59/U coax. I chose it because it has very low capacitance, resistance, and inductance per foot as well as having superb shielding. My system is rack-mounted and that lets me keep cable runs to a minimum in length. The less reactance in the load, the less it affect the sound. Someone once said that many of the audio cables were just very expensive tone controls and they were essentially right.
No one I know can't. It's the difference between your standard Walkman headphones and a good set from Bose. You must never have heard the difference - granted, it's not night and day, but it's obvious.
If you want to hear how good headphones can sound, I recommend that you take a listen to higher end models from Grado, Sennheiser HD-600s, or Stax electrostatics. Be aware, though, that the Stax electrostatics are not cheap (approaching a grand for the lower cost models).
It's well known that improperly shielded cables get interference...Certainly the cheap cables are not the shielded ones.
Every cheap audio cable I have seen was shielded. I have, however, seen no small number of expensive audio cables which had no shielding at all. An example is the Music Metre Calibre, which is a "bargain" at about $150. I will admit that many of the very cheap "figure-8" cables (those tiny diameter interconnects which are joined together) have lousy shielding and should be stowed in a drawer and replaced with physically separate left and right interconnects.
Honestly, it was a huge waste of money to purchase such a high end stereo system, if you don't have the ability to tell the difference between an MP3 and a CD.
Honestly, it was a huge waste of money to purchase a computer if you don't have the ability to understand science.
I've done studio work, audio post production in the digital arena, and have quite good hearing. Perhaps you would like to participate in a double-blind (ABX) test rather than simply listening to an MP3 with the preconception that it will sound audibly worse than a CD.
Yes, but I'm not going to publish results of a non-scientific listening session complete with preconceptions. I really do believe in the scientific method and don't believe that it furthers the discussion to publish something that's not credible as a test.
(Even to option to hook your soundcard directly up to the amp in your stereo is sub-optimal.)
It's all based on the quality of your soundcard. There are soundcards that outperform all but the best CD players.
Oh if only this were true. It would save me a lot of money on audio equipment and on CDs. I could download all my music and listen to everything on a cheap walkman with stock headphones or motherboard audio connected to $10 computer speakers. I would save a lot of money.
Lossy compression does not mean that it has to be played on substandard audio equipment. Or are you saying that you have decided that lossy compression, even at high bit rates, sounds bad because you only listen to it through poor quality equipment?
Of course, I would save even more money by not listening to music at all.
Or you could spend $50 or less and get a good book on audio compression and psycho-acoustics so that you better understood that "lossy" refers to data and not necessarily sound. I suppose you don't watch DVDs or satellite TV because they use lossy compression for both audio and video. Oh well, your loss. Maybe that's what they mean by lossy...
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As for the below average intelligence among us. There's dumb and there's not competent. Again, the dumb are protected by limiting participants eligible for investment by SS funds in private accounts. The not competent (in a legal sense) already have guardians who watch over their interests. I assume that these guardians will have custody of their investment accounts and a fiduciary duty to maximize their return.
Pure frigging hogwash. There are plenty of people of limited intelligence that are competent (in a legal sense) and who do not have guardians but that would have no ability to invest money wisely.
And finally, if somebody's smart, interested in th market, and wants to have a better old age or even leave a bigger legacy to his descendents, what gives you or I the right to say no to him as long as he's not going to end up a burden on us no matter how well or poorly he does?
Congress has that right. Just because you think you can do a better job investing your social security does not mean that you have a legal or moral right to. There are people who are convinced that lottery tickets are a good investment. Should their Social Security be based on their investing skills? And who says that the person won't end up being a burden on us? If he f***s up his investing and is left with too little Social Security to make ends meet, he's a burden on society, including you and me.
As I said before, you don't deserve a bigger Social Security check than your neighbor just because you were luckier, or better, at picking stocks. If you and he contributed the same amount to the system, then you should both get the same amount back.
Whatever failings in finding ineffective private charties are multiplied in the case of public ones... It's just that oversight on public charity is less, of less quality, and has zero effect on funding.... Your analysis is filled with double standards....
Just stop with the vague, unsubstantiated claims. Let's get down to facts.
Fact: Government social programs were enacted because private sector charities could not meet the needs of the poor.
Fact: Millions of Americans are served by government social programs and you cannot identify a combination of private charities that will serve the needs of all of those citizens.
Fact: Charities cluster in populous, urban areas. People outside of those areas often cannot get needed help from private charities.
Fact: Private charities that provide help to the desperately poor can get donations while one that provided unemployment to middle class people would not.
Fact: Private charities do not receive enough donations to provide all of the services needed by the poor.
Fact: There is no evidence to support the notion that tax cuts from reduced government social spending would result in substantially higher charitable contributions.
Hold the govt. charities to the same standard as the private ones and you will find that they don't provide nearly as good a deal for the poor as private charity.
How "good a deal" does Meals on Wheels provide to someone who lives 100 miles from the nearest city? None. No meal is delivered. Government social programs help everyone regardless of race, ethnicity, geographic location, sexual preference, religious beliefs, etc. The same cannot be said of private charities. I can look at all of the numbers for government charity spending. I cannot get that same level of information from the Catholic church for its charitable work, can I?
When the first work requirements were rammed through Congress and President Clinton reluctantly signed on, there were widespread predictions of mass starvation and cruel conditions for the poor.
"Workfare" was implemented by Democratic state governors before any Republican ever signed on, so quite telling me that Clinton and the Democrats in Congress were so "reluctant." The Democrats have been the ones that wanted meaningful reform to social programs. The Republicans do everything they can to make the programs fail so that they can trot them out every election as wasteful Democratic spending.
The same people who brought that success are now suggesting that private charities be given a bigger portion of our money.
I am an atheist and do not want my tax dollars funding a bunch of proselytizing religious zealots to foist off their own misguided views on the poor. Screw that.
You probably think that it was great that The Salvation Army was working behind the scenes with Bush to craft legislation that would let them get government funds while still discriminating against gays.
First of all, the majority of this bulletin is an FAQ stating why MS had to re-issue this security bulletin. Turns out they were more vulnerable than they first thought and that their first fix caused other problems.
The specifics of the bulletin are irrelevent. I just picked one at random. I could have been more selective and picked out something that was inconsequential or was not security-related.
It should be pointed out that not only are SuSE's security announcements equally as descript, they are much easier to find.
How is it easier to find than hitting "Windows Update" and then clicking on the description of the updates shown?
So, it is better to penalize people who work for their money than to penalize the leeches who just take and don't contribute anything to society except for another generation of leeches?
So you believe that some guy who works for 20 years at a steel mill and ends up getting unemployment is a "leech"? You believe that a school teacher who gets paid so little that he/she qualifies for subsidized housing is a "leech"? You think that the people who get up at 5:00AM to haul away your garbage are "leeches" because they need food stamps to feed their family? You think that J.K. Rowling (author of the Harry Potter books), who lived on welfare for six months, and her daughter, are "leeches"?
You are the perfect example of a leech. You want all of the benefits of living in our society, but want none of the responsibilities. Using part of your tax dollars to keep people from becoming homeless and from starving to death is not "penalizing" you. It's giving you an opportunity to do some good in the world rather than simply lining your own pockets.
You would rather let the down-on-their-luck starve so that you could keep more of your precious money. I think that the government should take all of your money away, throw you in prison, and let you you get raped up the ass every day. You deserve it.
Elaborate on this ... how do you check closed source updates ?
By reading the description provided by the vendor as to what the update does. Microsoft typically supplies very detailed, informative descriptions of what each update does, to whom it applies, etc. For instance, here's one. I have never seen that level of detail and professionalism from any Linux distro vendor.
The vast majority of computer users, and even network administrators, would not be able to read C source and, to them, a detailed description of the update is far more valuable than source code. Providing the information to them is much more important than providing source code to you -- given their numbers.
Do you review and fully understand the source code to every update that you install on your computer? As you said, if not -> shut up.
You could invest in US Treasuries and get a better return than present.
That argues in favor of revamping Social Security rather than turning it into a Las Vegas style gaming system where two people contribute the same thing and one ends up rich while the other does not get enough to scrape by. If two people pay the same amount into Social Security over their lifetimes, then they should reap the same rewards when they retire.
The stock market isn't about investing lucky but about researching and investing for long-term value over the 40 odd years you'll be saving up for that retirement.
Bull. What about people who did their research and invested in AOL/Time Warner and Enron only to find out that the books were cooked? What about people who invested in companies that sold asbestos products? What about those who invested in tobacco companies? "Sound investments" can be destroyed by factors that the investor could know nothing about.
If you want to reform Social Security, then let government contracts to companies like Fidelity to invest all of the money so that everyone benefits equally. Don't turn it into a crapshoot where a hard-working American ends up with nothing because he wasn't good/lucky at investing. There are Americans with Down's Syndrome, brain damage, mental retardation, etc. working hard in tough jobs. Are you telling me that their Social Security benefits should be determined by their investing abilities?
When NYC adopted welfare reform and made people show up for their checks, 50% of their caseload disappeared.
So it is possible to put simple reforms into place which significantly reduce fraud. That sounds like a good argument in favor of reforming, rather than dismantling, government assistance programs.
If a private charity were discovered to do that their contribution base would be decimated.
*IF* it was discovered then *SOME* contributers might stop funding. But many others would never know anything about it. They would write their checks and feel good about doing it. That's why there are huge charities whose main function appears to be paying inflated salaries to people who work for them.
Inevitably, any system of charity will have its foul ups as its always going to be run by fallible humans. Private charity lets you cut off the screwups more easily than govt. charity.
If you find out about them. How do you know that a given charity is really doling out aid properly, though? Based on their own reports?
I would rather have government social programs that wasted money while providing help for all needy Americans than to have private charities that were more efficient and helped only a small percentage of the needy.
However, you fail to address many of the points that I made in my previous post:
* Reducing people's taxes by cutting social programs will not result in the tax savings going to charitable organizations -- as evidenced by the fact that the Bush tax cuts have not significantly increase charitable donations.
* That government social programs were instituted because private charities were not capable of providing the necessary safety net
* That charities like to help desperate cases rather than keeping a middle-class family from losing their home (like unemployment insurance does)
* That it is dangerous to put millions of Americans at risk by cutting off the government assistance that they receive based on an unproven belief that charities will step up to fill the void.
I won't rehash all of my arguments. You can read, and quote, them should you choose to debate the points.
A reactionary change would be eliminating Social Security. A radical change would be transforming it into something not in existence before, like a private account plan (GWB is pushing this).
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Let people gamble away their Social Security in the stock market. Bush ran his mouth off about this idea while he was campaigning, but has been curiously quiet about it since the stock market has tanked under his [sarcasm]ever-so-capable leadership[/sarcasm].
Social security is not supposed to be gambling. It is just the opposite. It's supposed to be a rock-solid account which you can rely on after you retire. Investing is gambling, whether it is through individual stocks or mutual funds. You don't deserve a more comfortable retirement than your neighbor just because you were luckier in picking stocks. Period. End of story.
They don't involve prison terms for tax evasion but they do involve a loss of respect, influence, and social status.
I can claim that I donated $50,000 to charity last year and be praised and admired -- even though I did no such thing. Or did you mean that really wealthy people whose huge donations make the headlines would enjoy incresed respect, influence, and social status? I mean, they are rich, so, as a right-winger, you probably think that entitles them to more status, influence, and respect than the rest of us enjoy.
What makes you think that a federal tax cut would have a significant impact on what private charities receive? You probably got one of those $300 bribe checks cut by the Bush administration. Did your charitable donations go up by $300 that year? Did most people's? Hell no. They put it into their own bank accounts or bought things for themselves. Damned few put it towards charitable causes.
The private systems are much more efficient than the public systems.
What a load of bull. Why don't you read this article and then come back to discuss efficiency? You have a funny definition of "efficient." I guess you think that a charity that takes in $1000 and gives $1000 to a single crack addict is 100% efficient. I do not. Efficiency is not measured by simply determining what percentage of the money goes to the poor. It's also measured by how fairly the charity gives out that aid. If a charity gives two winter coats to 50 homeless people and 50 others freeze to death, that charity is not efficient -- even if none of their donations went to overhead.
Private charities are rife with corruption. Just look at the scandals at private charities like The United Way, The American Red Cross, and others and that becomes obvious. The President of the United Way gets paid almost $500,000 per year in salary and other compensation. How is that efficient?
They also don't give aid out uniformly and fairly. That makes it much easier to claim to be efficient. There's no cost associated with assuring that benefits are doled out fairly. A private charity can "cherry-pick" who receives aid. A Mormon charity can decide that it's going to only help poor in the local Mormon community. Another charity can decide that helping poor, urban, black people is 'not their thing' and no one can do anything about it. Many of the charities take a paternalistic approach where they basically adopt some down-and-out families and lavish assistance on them -- ignoring the needs of others in the area. If you live in a populous area, there may be a privately run "soup kitchen." If you are homeless in rural Nebraska, you're out of luck.
In fact, the public systems often are socially perverse, trapping the poor and not letting them progress. Forget about the stupid greedheads, don't you have compassion for the poor?
What a bunch of right-wing backwards-speak: "If you care about the poor, demand that the government stop providing them aid." If you have a problem with the way that the government administers the programs, then reform the programs. Don't cut them based on some unproven claim that the private sector will be step in and provide a safety net for all. In fact, social spending by the government began because private sector charities were not able to do the whole job.
I don't want someone to have to listen to some Christian sermon in order to get a meal. I don't want someone in North Dakota starving to death because he's in an area not served by any of the private charities. I don't want some family to become homeless because they were not poor enough to make the charities feel good about helping them. Yes, I have compassion for the poor, but, apparently, you do not.
Keep paying your taxes. Support government spending on social programs. If you have specific suggestions to improve the efficiency of those programs, then contact your elected representatives and pass those suggestions on. But don't put the lives of millions of people at risk based on your false claim that private charities would take up all of the slack.
Without actually reading the information (I am a Slashdot user after all), it looks to me like this thing is just a mouse that prints. It recognizes positional (including rotational) information and spews dots accordingly. It's cute, but it's not like they've invented a fantastic new technology. Why it can't hit the market before 2005 (their estimate) is beyond me.
Now, if you really wanted to give your money to the needy and be assured that it gets where it belongs *efficiently* (for well less than $0.36 every hour we all work) feel free to give to a local charity.
And the greedy bastards who decided not to give to charity would be rewarded for their greed with a bigger paycheck. That's why it's not voluntary. We don't want a system that rewards people for being self-centered.
In your example, that user might have a problem (maybe lose files, or whatever), but the system would not be infected as you claim.
Wrongo! If you are running as a non-root user and you can still install and run software, then you can install and run malicious software, too. Since all that the program in question does is e-mail itself to other users, that doesn't seem like a root-level user would be needed to run or install it.
Funny, I have tons of really good dos+Win3.1 stuff (Perfect General 2 being the canonical example) that DOESN'T run under so much as Win95.
That's not surprising at all. What is surprising is that the vast majority of Win 3.1 and DOS stuff does work under the current versions of Windows, not that a minority of software does not.
The Windows users are always blaming the fact that their are more Windows machines on why they have more viruses.
Let's think about this for a while. Is the average virus writer more likely to have a Windows PC or a Sun Solaris Sparcstation? Is he going to have tools for building Windows apps or tools to build AIX apps? If he builds a Windows binary, it probably runs on everything from Windows 95 to Windows XP. If he builds a Solaris binary, it will run on some Solaris machines. Period.
Next, there is the social engineering aspect of this. You simply could not convince a sysadmin working for a Fortune 500 company or the military to execute a random file that arrived unexpectedly in e-mail. Thus, there would be no means of spreading a worm/trojan like the one being discussed here. Because Windows is used by everyone from software engineers with decades of experience to elementary school children, there is a large swathe of the users that will click on said attachment. On top of that, many Windows machines are rarely, if ever, updated, Thus the writers of malicious software can exploit bugs for months, or even years, after patches are created for them.
A "successful" worm written for Windows can bring the Internet to its knees while a successful worm written for Solaris would, at best, take down some Solaris machines.
The reason is if a user gets a virus then it will only affect their home directory, or at least should on a good unix machine.
This thing isn't a virus. It isn't even really a worm since it relies on human action to spread it. It's just a trojan horse with a malicious payload. It doesn't wipe out system files, format the hard drive, or even destroy user files. It simply e-mails itself around. The same thing could be done on any Linux/Unix/Solaris/etc. distro if a user was dumb enough to run a random attachment mailed to him/her. Admittedly, this one copies itself to the Windows directory, but it could accomplish the same thing without access to system directories.
It's a rare open-source Linux application that doesn't have binaries for at least two or three major distros available on their web site, and generally, those binaries will work just fine on other distros as well. And do so without static linking (which is usually not a very good idea).
One binary should work on all x86 2.x kernel versions of Linux. This stuff of different binaries depending on which x86 distro is installed is silly. Silly, too is the complete lack of a standard directory under which Linux applications are installed. C:\Program Files\ may not be elegant or even very descriptive, but at least it's a standard that everyone groks.
I *really* want to like Linux. I've been fooling with it off and on for several years now and just keep hoping that it will really gel into something that isn't a PITA to maintain and upgrade.
... and WHAM! just like that, you've just divined why Linux IS still a marginal operating system. Most people don't want to have to do this to run an executable sent them by email.
Most people don't want to do that to run a program that they download, either. The Linux community could learn a lot from Bill Gates. I still have DOS and Windows 3.1 programs that run fine under XP. Great efforts are expended at Microsoft to make certain that, wherever possible, new releases of Windows don't break existing apps. You can rightly fault Microsoft for security holes, slimy marketing practices, and monopolistic abuses, but they understand what most end-users want.
Sadly, there seems to be far too little interest in maintaining binary compatability in Linux. I really hope that the Linux-guru-bravado thing dies off so that the operating system can be made more practical for end-users. The goal should be that no one should ever have to recompile an application due to an OS upgrade. Until that goal is ingrained into the Linux development community, Linux will continue to be be a marginal OS.
To others it's just a troll, because he assumes this oh so complicated process of compiling your own binaries (which must have gotten him pissed more than once, probably because he didn't understand it *bash*bash*)
Just take a look at the instructions for building most Linux apps and you will see that I'm not far off the mark. That's why so many people thought my comment was funny. Comedy only works when it has the ring of truth.
With Windows or Mac, you normally download a pre-compiled binary installer and everything installs and runs. With Linux, you get source code and cryptic, painful instructions to build the binary for your system. Did it piss me off more than once? Hell yes. Was it because I didn't understand it? Nope. Been a professional software developer since before IBM even introduced their first PC. It doesn't mean that I like overly complex and lengthy procedures.
To grandparent: Moron, if I was to release a virus it would be a statically linked binary, most probably for i386.
If it's so damned easy to distribute statically linked x86 binaries for Linux, then why do the vast majority of packages come as huge source trees that the end user has to compile? Why isn't there a precompiled, executable installer that handles the binary installation, creation of KDE/Gnome/etc. icons and menu items, and so forth? When 99% of Linux systems are x86-based, why not just force those not on x86 to compile the source? Is it an active effort to keep Linux from succeeding on the desktop -- because it sure is a good way to go about it?
By the way, if you're going to troll, at least be man enough to do it under your own user name. As to being a moron, you are my bitch when it comes to intelligence.
As the parent poster said, a malicious person trying to do maximum damage would write for Windows. The Mac is the next best choice because, like Windows, you don't have big binary compatability problems.
Linux is tougher to write this kind of thing for because it would require that the user perform so many steps. First the user would have to extract the tar file from the gzip file. Then he would have to expand the tar archive onto his hard drive, which would put the source there. Then the user would cd to the location where the source extracted. Then he would probably have to set various environment variables. Then he would have to run gmake. Then he would need to interpret the error messages to determine why the build didn't work. Then he would have to find and add various development tools and libraries to his system, adding any environment variables that they needed. Then he could try building again. When he finally got the build to work, he could then run the resulting executable, which would tell him to to type "man {trojan/worm name}. The man page would show various command line switches for specifying the e-mail client being used and various network options. Then the user would construct the proper command line to run the program and WHAM! Just like that, his system is infected.
I may have left out a few steps or so, but you get the idea...
Perhaps you simply have never listened to an audiophile system, so therefore, you simply don't realize how much more detail and depth can be heard from even a ordinary CD and don't even get me started about SACD quality.
Perhaps I own a high-end system that could embarass yours. Don't be too quick to assume that my dislike of the audiophile mentality means that I have a poor-performing system.
Personally, I find it incredible that anyone could dismiss the entire audiophile domain out of hand.
I don't dismiss it out of hand. Years ago, after being an active participant, I got fed up with the ignorance and superstition. I wasted incalculable hours arguing with people who made, and believed, absurd statements that had no basis in science or reality.
Have you ever considered that the millions of people who are involved in high end audio may know something you simply haven't gotten to yet?
No. I know something that they don't: science and engineering. If they 'knew something', they would not be paying $20 for green magic markers to color the edges of their CDs, $100 for a "Waveguide" which clamps on to every kind of cable from speaker to power, and hundreds of dollars for AC line cords.
You make a logical flaw by arguing an appeal to belief. That is where one makes the argument that something must be true because many people believe it. There are more people who believe in astrology than people who are audiophiles. Does that mean that astrology is somehow even more credible than the beliefs of audiophiles?
In this regard, I respect those who have spent their precious time developing knowledge and mastery of a subject, however, I have no respect for those who dis others out of simple ignorance.
Most so-called audiophiles have not spent a lot of time developing knowledge. They have spent their time reading advertising pseudo-science babble. Their time wasn't "precious." It was wasted. "Simple ignorance" is believing that some kind of $500 power cord will magically improve the sound of your system rather than just learning enough about engineering to recognize that as a bunch of crap.
Please, do yourselves a favor, go to the local audio hackers hang-out and listen to a real stereo.
My VMPS Super Tower/R speakers sold for about $3600 per pair. My amp is a Hafler PRO2400 MOSFET model which was sold to the professional recording studio industry. My preamp is one that I designed and built myself using a class A BUF-03 unity gain video buffer. My cables are all hand-built to length using a stranded 8259 cable with exceedingly low capacitance. So don't tell me about high-end audio.
Personally, I think even allowing HTML in email was a bad idea from the very beginning.
I used to think that way, but I have come to appreciate the formatting that HTML allows. It can really increase the legibility of a complex e-mail.
What was a mistake was to allow the use of any HTML that loads from external sites. All HTML should have been self-contained in the e-mail, including any images.
The biggest, and stupidest, mistake was to allow scripts to be processed by e-mail. What is Microsoft thinking when they won't let you share your "Program Files" directory over a network but will allow some kid in Panama to download and execute viruses via an e-mail?
Sorry to reply twice, but when I designed and built my own preamplifier, I think it is rather presumptuous of you to claim that I "don't understand" audio.
No, I understand it all too well. That's the problem.
I have a decent ear, and although I don't know anything about electrons aligning, I can tell the difference between a cheap pair of audio cables and an expensive one.
What you can tell is the difference between how your equipment works with the basic electrical characteristics of the cable (inductance, capacitance, and resistance). As respected designer Frank Van Alstine wrote: The cables in my system are all ones that I constructed out of a stranded version of RG-59/U coax. I chose it because it has very low capacitance, resistance, and inductance per foot as well as having superb shielding. My system is rack-mounted and that lets me keep cable runs to a minimum in length. The less reactance in the load, the less it affect the sound. Someone once said that many of the audio cables were just very expensive tone controls and they were essentially right.
No one I know can't. It's the difference between your standard Walkman headphones and a good set from Bose. You must never have heard the difference - granted, it's not night and day, but it's obvious.
If you want to hear how good headphones can sound, I recommend that you take a listen to higher end models from Grado, Sennheiser HD-600s, or Stax electrostatics. Be aware, though, that the Stax electrostatics are not cheap (approaching a grand for the lower cost models).
It's well known that improperly shielded cables get interference...Certainly the cheap cables are not the shielded ones.
Every cheap audio cable I have seen was shielded. I have, however, seen no small number of expensive audio cables which had no shielding at all. An example is the Music Metre Calibre, which is a "bargain" at about $150. I will admit that many of the very cheap "figure-8" cables (those tiny diameter interconnects which are joined together) have lousy shielding and should be stowed in a drawer and replaced with physically separate left and right interconnects.
Honestly, it was a huge waste of money to purchase such a high end stereo system, if you don't have the ability to tell the difference between an MP3 and a CD.
Honestly, it was a huge waste of money to purchase a computer if you don't have the ability to understand science.
I've done studio work, audio post production in the digital arena, and have quite good hearing. Perhaps you would like to participate in a double-blind (ABX) test rather than simply listening to an MP3 with the preconception that it will sound audibly worse than a CD.
Say, did you ever try this:
Yes, but I'm not going to publish results of a non-scientific listening session complete with preconceptions. I really do believe in the scientific method and don't believe that it furthers the discussion to publish something that's not credible as a test.
(Even to option to hook your soundcard directly up to the amp in your stereo is sub-optimal.)
It's all based on the quality of your soundcard. There are soundcards that outperform all but the best CD players.
Oh if only this were true. It would save me a lot of money on audio equipment and on CDs. I could download all my music and listen to everything on a cheap walkman with stock headphones or motherboard audio connected to $10 computer speakers. I would save a lot of money.
Lossy compression does not mean that it has to be played on substandard audio equipment. Or are you saying that you have decided that lossy compression, even at high bit rates, sounds bad because you only listen to it through poor quality equipment?
Of course, I would save even more money by not listening to music at all.
Or you could spend $50 or less and get a good book on audio compression and psycho-acoustics so that you better understood that "lossy" refers to data and not necessarily sound. I suppose you don't watch DVDs or satellite TV because they use lossy compression for both audio and video. Oh well, your loss. Maybe that's what they mean by lossy...