You can't be so dense, can you? This is not an open source program with a malware hidden inside. It is a malware by design explicitly documented like so and made with the sole objective of creating such a program. It has absolutely nothing to do with what we are talking about.
Of course you do. Just like a search warrant for property. Or are you OK with the police searching your house on a whim?
There's no justification for searching the source code unless a crime has been committed. If a crime has been committed then there must be evidence of it from the behaviour of the software, not it's source.
There is plenty of justification to searching the source code. I want to know what a program is doing in my system when I run it. I should have this right. I am not trying to invade the company and search their financial files, or invade your house to search anything. I want to be able to check for myself if the program you sold me does what you tell me it does and nothing else.
You're just dealing in paranoia. And that is a mental problem. Hence "insane".
Nope. I am dealing with the reasonable right of knowing what I bought. You on the other hand is dealing with blind and absolute trust. Between the two of us you are by far the insaner one.
Where did that comment come from? The vast majority of offences are committed in plain sight.
Sure, sure. Then find me a single open source program that has been found to have any illegal code embedded. A worm, a trojan, anything. Good luck!
Any illegal thing that closed source DID is not protected by law. You seem to be advocating the equivalent of pre-crime. Worse in fact. That closed source is guilty not for having done anything. But because you suspect it it might do at some unspecified point in the future.
Insane.
The secrecy of the code is protected by law, and you need a considerable amount of evidence to get a court order to inspect it, if you can get one at all. And please, closed sourced programs cannot be guilty of anything, they are just programs. The companies that developed them may be guilty of installing trojans in your hardware, though, or may be not, but we will never know until something too obvious happens. In the meanwhile if the companies or the government through them decides to snoop your data in the next security update you make, how can you be sure they can't?
You, my good friend, is the insane one, and naive on top of that.
Your guess about what would be the situation back them after twice or thrice the number of losses from US is just that a guess. You are entitled to believe in any fantasy you may feel fond of, but don't spew nonsense to me. Attempting to guess at what would have happened at this alternative timeline, thinking your guesses are certainties only shows how delusional you are.
You severely underestimate the Soviet Union rebuild capacity. It managed in 5 years to polarize the world, becoming one of the two super powers. If US resources kept being drained by a longer war with Japan sooner or later they would have taken a good part of the Occidental Europe, and after that, who knows what the political situation would be?
That is what your delusions say. The US population union and morale wouldn't likely last a couple million losses of soldiers for basically nothing, rest assured.
And when the US war machine had finished to enfeeble itself by fighting a long attrition war with Japan of many more years, it would be the perfect opportunity of Russia to take action against the devastated Europe and agglutinate more territory. If they could keep US busy by helping Japan, even if not officially they certainly would as they did in the Korean War and all the proxy wars after it.
Without nuclear weapons, Japan could end in the communist block, more of Europe in Russian Hands, and the cold war wouldn't be so cold.
Or for someone that is not naive enough to take a corporation's good will for granted.
You probably don't know with open-source either. Because you're probably incapable of understanding all the code. And even if you are capable you don't have time to read it all. Despite the "many eyes" catechism of open source, the truth is that most open source has only ever had one pair of eyeballs on it. The eye-balls of the person that wrote it.
Even if that was true the proof is there. You will find that very few people are bold enough to take the risk to do illegal things in plain sight. On the other hand when the secret of whatever you did is protected by law you may do whatever you want.
Or nothing at all. In your case. Yet. Which proves nothing.
There is no way for you to tell what they could do, what trojans they have built in and could be used at will. Or even what they are doing right now when you decide to install those critical security updates.
That is the main problem with closed source, you just don't know. Ever.
Japan would be a much harder nut to crack in the Second World War, even without a healthy industrial base, than Vietnam was more than two decades later, without any industrial base. And yes, Pearl Harbor or not, I think USA would have given up much sooner than it would take to conquer Japan. USA is notoriously lax in prolonged conflicts.
Regarding Russia, it would probably ally to anyone that offered an advantage against US, especially considering that its industrial base was not in good shape either and it invading Japan would have been a very costly enterprise.
Or until they retreated to their islands and US got tired of trying to take them from there, as happened in Vietnam, Middle-East, etc. Japan could as well ally with Russia in the meantime.
Oh there certainly was. Which means we did not stay put in the last centuries. The world wasn't a barren place as you suggest though. Most of the art produced by humanity was produced before copyright, including books and novels. Most of the advanced in math too. Science and medicine advanced far more in wars than because copyright and such, although I have to admit that medical science benefited from patents (but again not from copyright).
Copyright beneficial effects are highly contestable. And whatever benefiticial effects it MAY have caused in the past are not true or needed anymore in the present.
Without nuclear weapons the cost would be too high to be paid. US would have to back down eventually. For much less than that the pressure in Vietnam and more recently in the middle East shows that US population, with reason, doesn't like very much the idea to lose their husbands and sons in mass to a war that already lost its reason to be.
Sorry, exchanging a possibility to be infected by malware in a badly maintained open system to the certainty of living full of malwares built in by the manufacturing company is indeed stupidity no matter how much you value your time.
Which only means that underage girls of 17 (by insane US standards that are not followed anywhere else in the world) should be able to decide if they want to have sex with without sending the poor guys to jail.
Considering corporations dictate government policies more and more it wouldn't be far fetched to see a future where a patented standard was mandatory and people would indeed be forced to use a product. Or "trusting computing" would be enforced by law to allow governments to spy on you.
Even if it does not come to that, high end technology is dominated by the same players and thinking that another one will come and fill the void is wishful thinking. It is much more likely that another one will come to join the club.
An easy example of how it works is the Telecom market. Most Telecoms have a very disgruntled user base, but few users have any other option but to accept their services as they are or having none.
Considering what depends on computers nowadays and how much more will likely do in the future, saying "just computers" is stupidity at its best, and rest assured most people can only say so until it becomes too obvious to be ignored.
There are certain freedoms that need to be enforced regardless of the will of an individual to sell them off for what he, in despair or ignorance, may judge to be of his benefit That is why you can't sell yourself to slavery even if you want to, and that is why you shouldn't be able to compromise the freedom to use your property as you see fit because you mistakenly think that you aren't giving up on anything important and that it won't come to bite you in the ass later on.
He is just saying that convenient features, and peer and institutions pressure force people into non open standards. He didn't say a thing about all convenient features being exclusive to closed source. Currently Apple has inferior products, with far less convenient features than the competition and still it sells as if it was good, due to it being fashionable and a symbol of status. MS products have mostly infuriating features, but people are used to them and learning new things is inconvenient to many.
Mostly because they can't see what waits them in the end of the road if they keep on this path. RMS has a very good point. Most users would abhor, if they could see a bit ahead, the dystopia companies like Apple and MS want to create where they have absolute control over what we can or cannot do with the devices we buy. If they don't it is mostly because of ignorance.
Sorry, but no other country tries to extend their laws outside their borders as US does. US seems to think that their laws trump any local laws of any other country whenever they see fit. That is a delusion of grandeur that may still prove to be its downfall.
Slashdot Mirror
Without idealists pushing their way you would be more likely than not a slave and would be living in caves.
Really? The third link on a google search: http://blog.seculert.com/2012/02/citadel-open-source-malware-project.html [seculert.com]
You can't be so dense, can you? This is not an open source program with a malware hidden inside. It is a malware by design explicitly documented like so and made with the sole objective of creating such a program. It has absolutely nothing to do with what we are talking about.
Of course you do. Just like a search warrant for property. Or are you OK with the police searching your house on a whim? There's no justification for searching the source code unless a crime has been committed. If a crime has been committed then there must be evidence of it from the behaviour of the software, not it's source.
There is plenty of justification to searching the source code. I want to know what a program is doing in my system when I run it. I should have this right. I am not trying to invade the company and search their financial files, or invade your house to search anything. I want to be able to check for myself if the program you sold me does what you tell me it does and nothing else.
You're just dealing in paranoia. And that is a mental problem. Hence "insane".
Nope. I am dealing with the reasonable right of knowing what I bought. You on the other hand is dealing with blind and absolute trust. Between the two of us you are by far the insaner one.
Where did that comment come from? The vast majority of offences are committed in plain sight.
Sure, sure. Then find me a single open source program that has been found to have any illegal code embedded. A worm, a trojan, anything. Good luck!
Any illegal thing that closed source DID is not protected by law. You seem to be advocating the equivalent of pre-crime. Worse in fact. That closed source is guilty not for having done anything. But because you suspect it it might do at some unspecified point in the future. Insane.
The secrecy of the code is protected by law, and you need a considerable amount of evidence to get a court order to inspect it, if you can get one at all. And please, closed sourced programs cannot be guilty of anything, they are just programs. The companies that developed them may be guilty of installing trojans in your hardware, though, or may be not, but we will never know until something too obvious happens. In the meanwhile if the companies or the government through them decides to snoop your data in the next security update you make, how can you be sure they can't?
You, my good friend, is the insane one, and naive on top of that.
Your guess about what would be the situation back them after twice or thrice the number of losses from US is just that a guess. You are entitled to believe in any fantasy you may feel fond of, but don't spew nonsense to me. Attempting to guess at what would have happened at this alternative timeline, thinking your guesses are certainties only shows how delusional you are.
You severely underestimate the Soviet Union rebuild capacity. It managed in 5 years to polarize the world, becoming one of the two super powers. If US resources kept being drained by a longer war with Japan sooner or later they would have taken a good part of the Occidental Europe, and after that, who knows what the political situation would be?
That is what your delusions say. The US population union and morale wouldn't likely last a couple million losses of soldiers for basically nothing, rest assured.
And when the US war machine had finished to enfeeble itself by fighting a long attrition war with Japan of many more years, it would be the perfect opportunity of Russia to take action against the devastated Europe and agglutinate more territory. If they could keep US busy by helping Japan, even if not officially they certainly would as they did in the Korean War and all the proxy wars after it.
Without nuclear weapons, Japan could end in the communist block, more of Europe in Russian Hands, and the cold war wouldn't be so cold.
It proves nothing to the insanely paranoid.
Or for someone that is not naive enough to take a corporation's good will for granted.
You probably don't know with open-source either. Because you're probably incapable of understanding all the code. And even if you are capable you don't have time to read it all. Despite the "many eyes" catechism of open source, the truth is that most open source has only ever had one pair of eyeballs on it. The eye-balls of the person that wrote it.
Even if that was true the proof is there. You will find that very few people are bold enough to take the risk to do illegal things in plain sight. On the other hand when the secret of whatever you did is protected by law you may do whatever you want.
Or nothing at all. In your case. Yet. Which proves nothing.
There is no way for you to tell what they could do, what trojans they have built in and could be used at will. Or even what they are doing right now when you decide to install those critical security updates.
That is the main problem with closed source, you just don't know. Ever.
Japan would be a much harder nut to crack in the Second World War, even without a healthy industrial base, than Vietnam was more than two decades later, without any industrial base. And yes, Pearl Harbor or not, I think USA would have given up much sooner than it would take to conquer Japan. USA is notoriously lax in prolonged conflicts.
Regarding Russia, it would probably ally to anyone that offered an advantage against US, especially considering that its industrial base was not in good shape either and it invading Japan would have been a very costly enterprise.
Or until they retreated to their islands and US got tired of trying to take them from there, as happened in Vietnam, Middle-East, etc. Japan could as well ally with Russia in the meantime.
Oh there certainly was. Which means we did not stay put in the last centuries. The world wasn't a barren place as you suggest though. Most of the art produced by humanity was produced before copyright, including books and novels. Most of the advanced in math too. Science and medicine advanced far more in wars than because copyright and such, although I have to admit that medical science benefited from patents (but again not from copyright).
Copyright beneficial effects are highly contestable. And whatever benefiticial effects it MAY have caused in the past are not true or needed anymore in the present.
Without nuclear weapons the cost would be too high to be paid. US would have to back down eventually. For much less than that the pressure in Vietnam and more recently in the middle East shows that US population, with reason, doesn't like very much the idea to lose their husbands and sons in mass to a war that already lost its reason to be.
You are 100% right. That is why there was no Art, Math or Science before copyright was created a few centuries ago. Oh, wait! Err... Maybe not...
And exactly in which way that determines what MS can or cannot do with your system?
Sorry, exchanging a possibility to be infected by malware in a badly maintained open system to the certainty of living full of malwares built in by the manufacturing company is indeed stupidity no matter how much you value your time.
Which only means that underage girls of 17 (by insane US standards that are not followed anywhere else in the world) should be able to decide if they want to have sex with without sending the poor guys to jail.
It is very hard for me to respect idiots either. That does not make ad hominem arguments any more valid, though, be them made by me or against me.
Considering corporations dictate government policies more and more it wouldn't be far fetched to see a future where a patented standard was mandatory and people would indeed be forced to use a product. Or "trusting computing" would be enforced by law to allow governments to spy on you.
Even if it does not come to that, high end technology is dominated by the same players and thinking that another one will come and fill the void is wishful thinking. It is much more likely that another one will come to join the club.
An easy example of how it works is the Telecom market. Most Telecoms have a very disgruntled user base, but few users have any other option but to accept their services as they are or having none.
Considering what depends on computers nowadays and how much more will likely do in the future, saying "just computers" is stupidity at its best, and rest assured most people can only say so until it becomes too obvious to be ignored.
How exactly can you say that for sure. Do you have access to Windows Source Code?
There are certain freedoms that need to be enforced regardless of the will of an individual to sell them off for what he, in despair or ignorance, may judge to be of his benefit That is why you can't sell yourself to slavery even if you want to, and that is why you shouldn't be able to compromise the freedom to use your property as you see fit because you mistakenly think that you aren't giving up on anything important and that it won't come to bite you in the ass later on.
It has not been the case many times in History, and I don't see why should it be a prerequisite now.
And a certificate from Apple or Jailbreaking your phone (which they try to make harder and even illegal as time goes).
He is just saying that convenient features, and peer and institutions pressure force people into non open standards. He didn't say a thing about all convenient features being exclusive to closed source. Currently Apple has inferior products, with far less convenient features than the competition and still it sells as if it was good, due to it being fashionable and a symbol of status. MS products have mostly infuriating features, but people are used to them and learning new things is inconvenient to many.
Mostly because they can't see what waits them in the end of the road if they keep on this path. RMS has a very good point. Most users would abhor, if they could see a bit ahead, the dystopia companies like Apple and MS want to create where they have absolute control over what we can or cannot do with the devices we buy. If they don't it is mostly because of ignorance.
Sorry, but no other country tries to extend their laws outside their borders as US does. US seems to think that their laws trump any local laws of any other country whenever they see fit. That is a delusion of grandeur that may still prove to be its downfall.