>If you have received this communication in error, please immediately notify the sender and delete this message.
Wouldn't notifying the sender be taking an action based on the information contained therein, and thus be expressly prohibited?
I get a laugh out of them making it my responsiblity to make sure the sender didn't type the wrong address. If I'm not the intended recipient, then how did I get it? If the To: header isn't necessarily the intended recipient, then how am I supposed to know who is and that it isn't me? If it's so important, why aren't you being more careful who you send it to?
One cost the RIAA complains about, that is legitimate, is the cost of distributing the recordings of CDs that turn out to be poor sellers.
I don't agree with this at all. If they're losing money because they don't know their market, that's not a legitimate cost, it's bad business. Their business model is based on signing artists who can sell records and not signing artists who can't. If they are bad at this, they should lose money whatever their distribution model is. Passing that loss on to the consumer is one of the reasons the price of a CD is too high.
if this standard was applied to all art, or all property ownership in general, it would be impossible or illegal to claim the rights to anything.
Copyright does not give you property rights. Ideas are not property. Never were. You can be deprived of property. You cannot be deprived of an idea. That is the fundamental difference and no amount of legislation can change that.
We have these rights because a man's labor is his.
No we don't. Go read the Constitution:
"[Congress shall have the power] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"
Copyrights only exist to promote the sharing of ideas, not to give artists a source of income. The ability to generate income from creative works is the incentive to share creations. The benefit to society from the sharing of those creations is the goal. Without the benefit there is no reason for the incentive. The benefit has been gradually legislated away by continual extensions to the terms of copyright and what copyright covers. There is no longer any benefit to society.
et off your geek ass and learn to play an instrument. Do it for ten years. five hours a day. maybe if your young enough, go to berkley. if not, study from a berkley student for $20/half hour.
then, after bloody lips (in the case of the trumpet, what I play) and tired fingers, play shitty shows that only your friends go to. sell homemade cds with inkjet printed album art. reek of smoke and get booed off stage.
None of this entitles you to any payment whatsoever. Not one bit. Your suffering does not automatically make you deserving. Your effort is not in and of itself sufficient reason for reward. Skill is not in and of itself valuable.
The creative content industry, from the biggest star to the starving artist, has to get it throught their thick skulls that the simple act of creating does not entitle them to payment for their effort. There has to be some benefit, some value, to make people want to encourage you to create. That is the whole idea behind copyright: to give the creators some incentive to create so that it will benefit society. That benefit is practically non-existent. Ideas are only valuable if they can be used and built upon. Nothing created today will give that benefit in my or my children's lifetime. What incentive do I have to pay you for it? Where is the value that I should be buying? The privelege of listening to it? Gee, thanks. I'll pass.
its not yours to take.
What, exactly, is being taken? What are you being deprived of? A copy, however its made, costs you nothing. The only loss, and the only thing you are entitled to complain about, is the sale you didn't get from the person who copied it instead of buying it. You're just not getting something you didn't have in the first place and weren't necessarily entitled to. Nothing was taken from you.
STOP ILLEGALLY DOWNLOADING MUSIC YOU HAVEN'T PAID FOR!
I'll go one better. I'm not buying music at all. Not from major labels, not from independent labels, I'm not even listening to the radio anymore. I'm not going to see any bands, whoever produces their CDs.
Is this extreme? Probably. Does this punish people who aren't the problem. Sure. Call it collateral damage. The point is I'm so fucking tired of the RIAA and their bullshit that I can't even enjoy music anymore. And after all, it's just entertainment. I've got better things to do.
Copyright was supposed to benefit society. It no longer does that. Copyright is now just a way to create income for corporations that think ideas are property. Fine. They want to own music, they can have it. I want no part of it anymore. And they're not getting another fucking dollar from me to support this broken copyright industry.
And for the record, I've only ever downloaded two songs in my entire life and already owned the albums for both of them. I was just too lazy to get them out of my car.
They do a good job of defining what good software should do without having to define the term "spyware". It's suggesting proper behavior for software which includes clearly informing the user what its purpose is, that it's being installed, and how to remove it (and that it will stay removed). It doesn't say anything about not collecting information or showing ads, only that it should be clear to the user that it will, and how to stop it if the user changes his mind later.
Actually no, this is NOT a yahoo news story. It's listed among the press releases which you can see if you look carefully.
You're right, it is, but you have to look very carefully to notice that. It's got a great big "Yahoo! News" banner with a tiny arrow next to "press releases". So it's not unreasonable to believe others might think it was a real news story. Which makes it even more important to point out that it isn't real news but a press release.
If you read through other press releases, it's obvious that they're all just marketing releases.
This particular one read as though it was an actual news story, though. And you would only notice that it was in the press release section if you had navigated there from the front page. It would not be immediately apparent to someone clicking the link as I did.
Well, we've seen a version of this come true with the internet and the jury is still out as to whether improved global comms has made mankind unite as one, or ever will.
In human history terms, the internet is just a baby. It hasn't been around long enough to really be able to tell whether it will or won't.
Humanity, if anything, seems more polarized and divided into tiny like-minded niche communities than ever, and if anything the internet has facilitated that.
Has it really, or are we just more aware of it since we have many more sources of information? We may still be niche communities, but at least we have access to opposing viewpoints like never before. We may still be huddled in our little groups, but we know there are others that think differently than we do. And while we may not agree with them, we at least know what their viewpoints are. And sometimes we find out we do agree with them.
Life in infinite space would drain us of all our hatred and rottenness. I loved Bill's comedy but I always felt this was a cop-out.
I don't think going to space and settling other worlds is going to magically cure us of our hate. What will happen though, is the process of going into space, having to depend on others directly for your very life, and having others depend on you, will motivate people to get along more than it does here. Those motivations will lead to solutions which can probably be adapted here.
Get this little baby fixed first. Because going somewhere else certainly ain't going to cure it.
Let's assume that everything does get fixed. We make Earth the perfect place for all humanity. Why leave? What motivation do we have to leave the perfect place and risk dying? If the original settlers of the US could have fixed all the problems that made them want to leave, they wouldn't have. Why would they bother? "Leave my home, go to a new, uncivilized and hostile place, and risk my life, for what? I'm happy here." It's human misery that motivates people to take the risk and the desire to escape that misery that motivates them to survive.
What if the solution to our problems is out there waiting for us and all we have to do is go find it? Getting enough to eat on a hostile planet would be a great motivator for developing ways to grow food. Those methods could be applied here where we still have people dying of starvation. I'm not suggesting that feeding the poor should be our only reason to go. My point is that we can't possibly know what we'll find, and the only way to find it is to go look for it. The process of going to space will make us stronger in the end.
If fools continue to dignify this trash by linking to it, it might end up at that. Slashdot should be embarresed to even link to this garbage.
If the story was on some obscure website with little readership you might have a point. But it was on Yahoo News for crying out loud. It's already got the publicity. Linking to the story with opposing viewpoints is necessary in this case because the Yahoo story doesn't have all the facts. Somebody has to supply the rest.
People have a tendency to believe what they read in a news source like Yahoo until someone else corrects it. If nobody refutes the AdTI report most people will tend to believe it.
I agree that the AdTI and other FUD factories like them should be ignored. But when they are picked up by a major news source and reported as fact, somebody has to correct it.
Actually, I'd probably say "Hey, the Matrix is on. I love that movie!"
The Matrix at least gives an explanation why he is able to bend the laws of physics: because it's not real.
In the context of that movie, in the reality that movie creates, that is possible and railguns that small actually exist.
But that's the point. It doesn't matter that railguns that small don't exist, it's possible that they could. It's not hard to believe that they could.
I watched Dawn of the Dead the other day[...], so let's use that.
In all fairness, the appeal of Dawn of the Dead is how bad it is. It's like Plan 9 From Outer Space or any of Friday the 13th part 4 or higher. They are so bad, and so unbelievable, that they're funny. People watch them for the same reason they slow down for car wrecks. But these are the exception rather than the rule.
I doubt it. They still wouldn't give a fuck. I KNOW the REAL physics, and sometimes it just doesn't matter.
Sometimes it doesn't matter. Sometimes it does. My point is that the more physics people know, the more it will matter because it affects the believability.
Reality isn't fun. It isn't interesting. I live here, it's fucking boring. I don't want to watch movies filled with people acting like everyone I know doing the usual things I do.
No one said it has to be all true, just believable.
I want to see something INTERESTING.
It can be interesting and correct at the same time. They are not mutually exclusive.
It's called "Suspension of Disbelief".
Suspension of Disbelief still requires it to be believable. It has to be at least remotely possible. If a guy jumped from the sidewalk to the top of a thirty story building with no explanation for his ability to do so, I'm willing to bet even you would say "that's bullshit. It can't happen". The only difference between that and most bad movie physics is that people know better. The existence of midget bears and turd-shaped monsters hasn't been conclusively proven to be impossible, while a shotgun blast knocking a guy through a plate glass window (without getting cut, mind you) has. If everybody knew that being shot wouldn't knock you through a window, how often do you think we'd see it in movies?
The suckiness of movie physics is directly proportional to the audience's knowledge of physics. If NORMAL people understood more physics, the bad-physics movie would suck more.
You don't see many flying pigs in movies, and when you do, the filmmakers will usually go out of their way to explain how the pigs are able to fly. This is because most NORMAL people understand that pigs, on average, don't normally fly. An unexplained flying pig in a movie would increase the suckiness of the movie.
If most people understood the correct physics of space travel, they would be less likely to accept the bad physics and the filmmakers would make sure it was correct.
Re:Those of us in the know...
on
Evoting in the News
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· Score: 3, Interesting
E-voting won't increase voter turnout. Voting can't get any easier than it already is.
Truth be told, I'm not so concerned about increasing voter turnout as I am informing voters. I'd rather the people who can't be bothered to vote stayed home and left the decisions to people who care. Increasing voter turnout simply increases the number of uninformed voters. Make people care, and they'll find their way to the polls all by themselves.
Action is the only thing that's going to fix the system, cuz it aint fixing itself. Regardless of the philosophical constraints in our systems, concerted action is the only thing that makes things happen.
I agree, but sometimes the system is so fouled up that you can't fix it from within the system. In the election process, the only people who have the power to change it are in power because of it. They have no desire to change it because they will likely suffer from the change. The system has no way to change the system, so the change has to be made from outside.
There are arguments for changing the voting process itself, but I think the main reason people have lost faith is because of the end result. Choosing the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil, and voting for an independent, or worse, writing in a candidate, has little to no chance of doing any more than not voting at all.
The election process is a paralysing feedback loop all of its own. If everyone voted, regardless of their feelings about why voting doesn't matter, how would we know there was a problem? Say what you like about "voter apathy", but it's at least got us talking about how to fix the problem rather than not knowing there is one.
Personally, I think we need to fix what our choices are before we fix how we make them.
Time to quit bitching and get off the apathy wagon, kids.
Sorry, but I have to take issue with this. Voter apathy is not a problem unto itself. If voters have lost faith in the system, it's because the system is broken, not the voters.
Re:Who cares what most Americans think?
on
Evoting in the News
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· Score: 2, Interesting
If the machines are not rigorously trustworthy, and provably so, they should not be used. End of story. What Americans think is irrelevant.
You are absolutely correct, but the problem is that what Americans think tends to drive public policy. People vote for those who support their views, even if their views are demonstrably wrong. That so many people trust the machines means that not enough people know how bad they are and is an indication that the people need to be educated, not that the machines should be used.
So, yes, what Americans think is irrelevant to whether the machines should be used, but is compeletely relevant to whether they will be used.
Now look at what I wrote ("you may be") and look at what you wrote ("accuse me of").
Now read my next sentence. I was making a comparison which you are conveniently ignoring.
I said that it was extremely unlikely, not impossible.
With a tone suggesting it was as likely as the sun not coming up tomorrow.
I can't show that they did,
Then how can you be so certain they did? You claimed people have tested it and found no errors. How do you know? Where is the evidence to support your assertion?
nor can I prove that New York Times reporters would have known about, or mentioned, a terrorist attack against the Statue of Liberty, but I feel pretty confident that none happened if it's not mentioned in the New York Times.
But the lack of a New York Times article reporting the presence of a bomb hidden in the Statue of Liberty is not evidence that there isn't one when you already have reason to believe there might be. Trojan Horse's are meant to be hard to discover. The lack of any reports that there is one is hardly enough reason to rule it out, especially on an unofficial patch that, at the time of your post, was only eleven days old.
Yes, many years of experience in the business world, publishing experience, and common sense.
Would you care to cite any evidence or am I supposed to take your word for this, too?
There is no reason to suspect it. He did nothing to warrant your suspicion.
I don't know him from Adam. Knowing that some people do it is reason enough to take precautions against it. A complete stranger may do nothing to warrant my suspicions but I'm still not leaving my child alone with him.
I did provide evidence - just not proof.
That is exactly what we are arguing about. You didn't. You provided your opinion of why he wouldn't bother. None of your other claims are supported.
I was not trying to make you feel stupid. I was trying to make others believe you are stupid.
If you'd pay attention, you'd notice I didn't write the comment you were replying to originally. You were trying to make the original poster, as well as those who agreed with him, feel stupid for taking precautions which you have, as of yet, not shown to be unreasonable.
You can't prove that you aren't a child molestor, so should we suggest that you may be?
If you're going to accuse me of being a child molester, you had better have proof that I am. However, if you are going to refrain from leaving your child alone with me on the off-chance that I (or anyone else you don't know for that matter) may be a child molester, that's just good sense. I never accused him of writing a trojan. But I am going to refrain from installing the patch until I'm convinced that he didn't. You haven't convinced me.
You can make up any kind of unsubstantiated suspicion and then argue that it's valid becaue no one can prove that it's wrong.
First, the suspicion is not completely unsubstantiated. People do write trojans, many of them claiming to be patches, like this one. And to assume, without good evidence, that this one isn't a trojan is naive at best, reckless and negligent at worst.
Second, again, I'm not asking for proof, just evidence. You made the claim that it couldn't possibly be a trojan, berated those who thought it could possibly be, and haven't provided much in the way of evidence to back it up except a) he says it isn't, b) no one else has said it is, and c) your opinion of why he wouldn't bother. Not very convincing I'm afraid.
Third, not being able to prove the assertion does not mean you are relieved of providing evidence to support it.
Besides, you will not convince me that thousands of people tried it and none of them were looking for malware.
Who's asking whom to prove a negative now? I'm not trying to convince you no one looked. The point is you haven't even shown one case where they have. It's not up to me to show they didn't. You're claiming they did, you show they did.
If they publish a link to it and it turns out to have malware, then they get sued for negligence. Therefore, logic dictates that they would have checked that before publishing the story.
Do you have any support for this claim? Any at all?
Then just what do you do? Run an unpatched Windows 98SE system? If so, doesn't that mean that you trust Microsoft, since they supplied the OS?
This has nothing to do with whether or not I trust Microsoft. Nothing at all. It is entirely about you claiming there is no reason to suspect the existence of malware in the patch, providing no evidence to support the assertion, and trying to make others feel stupid for believing otherwise.
Which is sort of my point. You can't prove it's not, but you're deriding people for believing it may be.
Suppose a Google search had turned up a page that said that it was malware-free. Would you have trusted that?
Not implicitly, but it would at least support your argument.
If hundreds, or thousands, of people fail to find a problem, it's evidence that no problem exists.
But that's not what you said. You said:
There's 96 hits on Google [google.com] when you look up "Alper Coskun" (with quotes) and "98SE" -- none of which mentions his sinister plot to get your oh-so-valuable data that you keep on an ancient Windows 98 PC.
That doesn't mean people have looked for a problem and not found one. It simply means that there is no evidence that it is malware, or that it didn't turn up in your search. "There is evidence that it isn't" is vastly different from "there is no evidence that it is". Not being able to find evidence either way doesn't support its legitmacy any more than it supports it being malware. It's simply a lack of evidence. "You can't prove it isn't" is not evidence that it is.
One place is where you fail to address the issue of a major computer publication providing a link to it.
And making no mention of the legitimacy of the patch. They don't indicate whether they or anybody else has tested the patch. Only that it exists and where to find it. Again, a lack of evidence either way.
So you'll only install patches provided by Microsoft, a company which has already proven itself willing to install spyware and software which transmits private information without permission. (e.g., Windows Media Player, Windows Update). Only a company with a financial interest in selling your private data will get your trust. Interesting.
You're engaging in a false dichotomy. There are more choices than "trust him outright" and "don't trust any third-party vendors". I'm just not as quick to right off the possibility that it is malware as quickly as you are. And because I don't implicity trust him does not mean I implicity trust Microsoft.
Yes, it would be foolish to believe otherwise, but that's because of the preponderance of evidence, not just because there is a disclaimer.
Your original post asked "why would he put up the disclaimers if it wasn't legitimate", to which I responded "because he might be lying". You also mentioned a Google search which turned up nothing conclusive, to which I did not respond because it doesn't prove anything except that there's no page in Google's listing saying it's not legitimate which only means that either nobody knows, or nobody has said so. Where exactly is the flaw in my logic?
Of course they should be dismissed readily
So go ahead and dismiss them. I'll be a little more careful with my systems.
If this is an attempt to get people to install malicious software, it's the most idiotic attempt I've ever heard of.
All it means is that you can't think of a reason why he would.
The fact is it probably is legitimate. But your original post made it sound like anyone who would think it could possibly be malicious was out of their mind with little evidence accept "why would he bother?". People have bothered for less.
That is a mistrepresentation of what I said. I gave that as evidence supporting the notion that the patch was legitimate, not proof-positive that it was.
Your tone and phrasing both indicated that someone would be foolish to believe otherwise. To top it off, you said, "You need to take the aluminum foil off of your head." I was merely pointing out that the concerns were valid and ought not be dismissed so readily.
Re:Isn't there a no record flag?
on
CableCARDs and HDTV
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· Score: 3, Insightful
If broadcasters prevent people from recording the shows, less people are going to watch them. They know this.
The broadcast flag, to my recollection, is there to prevent you from making a copy of a copy. You can record it but you can't send the recording to someone else. It makes sense for anti-piracy purposes but it also prevents you from lending the recording to a friend who forgot to record it or watching it in a different room without moving the DVR, or possibly making a backup copy of something you wish to keep but not on the DVR.
I have a suspicion that the broacast flag is going to annoy enough people that broadcast-flag enabled DVRs wont replace the VCR which, although of much lower quality, will give them more functionality. People don't like buying new technology that does less than the old.
Then you must be scared shitless when you read the reverse-reverse psychology on Microsoft's licenses and web site. With all of the disclaimers and warnings about backing up your system that you find there, they must be installing something that will make you go blind, cause cancer, and post your Social Security number on the big screen in Times Square.
Uh, no. I wasn't saying the claims on his website were proof that it was a trojan. I was saying the claims on his website were not proof that it wasn't a trojan. There's a difference. You offered an argument to the patch's legitimacy and I showed how that argument was flawed.
So all you want me to do is prove a negative? Gee, that sounds really reasonable.
I'm not asking you to prove anything. You made the claim that the patch must be legitimate because these claims appeared on his website and I showed how that is not necessarily true.
Slashdot Mirror
>If you have received this communication in error, please immediately notify the sender and delete this message.
Wouldn't notifying the sender be taking an action based on the information contained therein, and thus be expressly prohibited?
I get a laugh out of them making it my responsiblity to make sure the sender didn't type the wrong address. If I'm not the intended recipient, then how did I get it? If the To: header isn't necessarily the intended recipient, then how am I supposed to know who is and that it isn't me? If it's so important, why aren't you being more careful who you send it to?
One cost the RIAA complains about, that is legitimate, is the cost of distributing the recordings of CDs that turn out to be poor sellers.
I don't agree with this at all. If they're losing money because they don't know their market, that's not a legitimate cost, it's bad business. Their business model is based on signing artists who can sell records and not signing artists who can't. If they are bad at this, they should lose money whatever their distribution model is. Passing that loss on to the consumer is one of the reasons the price of a CD is too high.
I know that it's not entirely fair to compare DVDs and CDs,
From Amazon.com: High Fidelity DVD - $14.99 New, $7.99 used. High Fidelity Soundtrack CD - $14.99 New, $8.99 used.
When the prices are that out of whack, the comparison is entirely fair.
if this standard was applied to all art, or all property ownership in general, it would be impossible or illegal to claim the rights to anything.
Copyright does not give you property rights. Ideas are not property. Never were. You can be deprived of property. You cannot be deprived of an idea. That is the fundamental difference and no amount of legislation can change that.
We have these rights because a man's labor is his.
No we don't. Go read the Constitution:
"[Congress shall have the power] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"
Copyrights only exist to promote the sharing of ideas, not to give artists a source of income. The ability to generate income from creative works is the incentive to share creations. The benefit to society from the sharing of those creations is the goal. Without the benefit there is no reason for the incentive. The benefit has been gradually legislated away by continual extensions to the terms of copyright and what copyright covers. There is no longer any benefit to society.
et off your geek ass and learn to play an instrument. Do it for ten years. five hours a day. maybe if your young enough, go to berkley. if not, study from a berkley student for $20/half hour.
then, after bloody lips (in the case of the trumpet, what I play) and tired fingers, play shitty shows that only your friends go to.
sell homemade cds with inkjet printed album art. reek of smoke and get booed off stage.
None of this entitles you to any payment whatsoever. Not one bit. Your suffering does not automatically make you deserving. Your effort is not in and of itself sufficient reason for reward. Skill is not in and of itself valuable.
The creative content industry, from the biggest star to the starving artist, has to get it throught their thick skulls that the simple act of creating does not entitle them to payment for their effort. There has to be some benefit, some value, to make people want to encourage you to create. That is the whole idea behind copyright: to give the creators some incentive to create so that it will benefit society. That benefit is practically non-existent. Ideas are only valuable if they can be used and built upon. Nothing created today will give that benefit in my or my children's lifetime. What incentive do I have to pay you for it? Where is the value that I should be buying? The privelege of listening to it? Gee, thanks. I'll pass.
its not yours to take.
What, exactly, is being taken? What are you being deprived of? A copy, however its made, costs you nothing. The only loss, and the only thing you are entitled to complain about, is the sale you didn't get from the person who copied it instead of buying it. You're just not getting something you didn't have in the first place and weren't necessarily entitled to. Nothing was taken from you.
STOP ILLEGALLY DOWNLOADING MUSIC YOU HAVEN'T PAID FOR!
I'll go one better. I'm not buying music at all. Not from major labels, not from independent labels, I'm not even listening to the radio anymore. I'm not going to see any bands, whoever produces their CDs.
Is this extreme? Probably. Does this punish people who aren't the problem. Sure. Call it collateral damage. The point is I'm so fucking tired of the RIAA and their bullshit that I can't even enjoy music anymore. And after all, it's just entertainment. I've got better things to do.
Copyright was supposed to benefit society. It no longer does that. Copyright is now just a way to create income for corporations that think ideas are property. Fine. They want to own music, they can have it. I want no part of it anymore. And they're not getting another fucking dollar from me to support this broken copyright industry.
And for the record, I've only ever downloaded two songs in my entire life and already owned the albums for both of them. I was just too lazy to get them out of my car.
They do a good job of defining what good software should do without having to define the term "spyware". It's suggesting proper behavior for software which includes clearly informing the user what its purpose is, that it's being installed, and how to remove it (and that it will stay removed). It doesn't say anything about not collecting information or showing ads, only that it should be clear to the user that it will, and how to stop it if the user changes his mind later.
Actually no, this is NOT a yahoo news story. It's listed among the press releases which you can see if you look carefully.
You're right, it is, but you have to look very carefully to notice that. It's got a great big "Yahoo! News" banner with a tiny arrow next to "press releases". So it's not unreasonable to believe others might think it was a real news story. Which makes it even more important to point out that it isn't real news but a press release.
If you read through other press releases, it's obvious that they're all just marketing releases.
This particular one read as though it was an actual news story, though. And you would only notice that it was in the press release section if you had navigated there from the front page. It would not be immediately apparent to someone clicking the link as I did.
Well, we've seen a version of this come true with the internet and the jury is still out as to whether improved global comms has made mankind unite as one, or ever will.
In human history terms, the internet is just a baby. It hasn't been around long enough to really be able to tell whether it will or won't.
Humanity, if anything, seems more polarized and divided into tiny like-minded niche communities than ever, and if anything the internet has facilitated that.
Has it really, or are we just more aware of it since we have many more sources of information? We may still be niche communities, but at least we have access to opposing viewpoints like never before. We may still be huddled in our little groups, but we know there are others that think differently than we do. And while we may not agree with them, we at least know what their viewpoints are. And sometimes we find out we do agree with them.
Life in infinite space would drain us of all our hatred and rottenness. I loved Bill's comedy but I always felt this was a cop-out.
I don't think going to space and settling other worlds is going to magically cure us of our hate. What will happen though, is the process of going into space, having to depend on others directly for your very life, and having others depend on you, will motivate people to get along more than it does here. Those motivations will lead to solutions which can probably be adapted here.
Get this little baby fixed first. Because going somewhere else certainly ain't going to cure it.
Let's assume that everything does get fixed. We make Earth the perfect place for all humanity. Why leave? What motivation do we have to leave the perfect place and risk dying? If the original settlers of the US could have fixed all the problems that made them want to leave, they wouldn't have. Why would they bother? "Leave my home, go to a new, uncivilized and hostile place, and risk my life, for what? I'm happy here." It's human misery that motivates people to take the risk and the desire to escape that misery that motivates them to survive.
What if the solution to our problems is out there waiting for us and all we have to do is go find it? Getting enough to eat on a hostile planet would be a great motivator for developing ways to grow food. Those methods could be applied here where we still have people dying of starvation. I'm not suggesting that feeding the poor should be our only reason to go. My point is that we can't possibly know what we'll find, and the only way to find it is to go look for it. The process of going to space will make us stronger in the end.
If fools continue to dignify this trash by linking to it, it might end up at that. Slashdot should be embarresed to even link to this garbage.
If the story was on some obscure website with little readership you might have a point. But it was on Yahoo News for crying out loud. It's already got the publicity. Linking to the story with opposing viewpoints is necessary in this case because the Yahoo story doesn't have all the facts. Somebody has to supply the rest.
People have a tendency to believe what they read in a news source like Yahoo until someone else corrects it. If nobody refutes the AdTI report most people will tend to believe it.
I agree that the AdTI and other FUD factories like them should be ignored. But when they are picked up by a major news source and reported as fact, somebody has to correct it.
Actually, I'd probably say "Hey, the Matrix is on. I love that movie!"
The Matrix at least gives an explanation why he is able to bend the laws of physics: because it's not real.
In the context of that movie, in the reality that movie creates, that is possible and railguns that small actually exist.
But that's the point. It doesn't matter that railguns that small don't exist, it's possible that they could. It's not hard to believe that they could.
I watched Dawn of the Dead the other day[...], so let's use that.
In all fairness, the appeal of Dawn of the Dead is how bad it is. It's like Plan 9 From Outer Space or any of Friday the 13th part 4 or higher. They are so bad, and so unbelievable, that they're funny. People watch them for the same reason they slow down for car wrecks. But these are the exception rather than the rule.
I doubt it. They still wouldn't give a fuck. I KNOW the REAL physics, and sometimes it just doesn't matter.
Sometimes it doesn't matter. Sometimes it does. My point is that the more physics people know, the more it will matter because it affects the believability.
Reality isn't fun. It isn't interesting. I live here, it's fucking boring. I don't want to watch movies filled with people acting like everyone I know doing the usual things I do.
No one said it has to be all true, just believable.
I want to see something INTERESTING.
It can be interesting and correct at the same time. They are not mutually exclusive.
It's called "Suspension of Disbelief".
Suspension of Disbelief still requires it to be believable. It has to be at least remotely possible. If a guy jumped from the sidewalk to the top of a thirty story building with no explanation for his ability to do so, I'm willing to bet even you would say "that's bullshit. It can't happen". The only difference between that and most bad movie physics is that people know better. The existence of midget bears and turd-shaped monsters hasn't been conclusively proven to be impossible, while a shotgun blast knocking a guy through a plate glass window (without getting cut, mind you) has. If everybody knew that being shot wouldn't knock you through a window, how often do you think we'd see it in movies?
The suckiness of movie physics is directly proportional to the audience's knowledge of physics. If NORMAL people understood more physics, the bad-physics movie would suck more.
You don't see many flying pigs in movies, and when you do, the filmmakers will usually go out of their way to explain how the pigs are able to fly. This is because most NORMAL people understand that pigs, on average, don't normally fly. An unexplained flying pig in a movie would increase the suckiness of the movie.
If most people understood the correct physics of space travel, they would be less likely to accept the bad physics and the filmmakers would make sure it was correct.
E-voting won't increase voter turnout. Voting can't get any easier than it already is.
Truth be told, I'm not so concerned about increasing voter turnout as I am informing voters. I'd rather the people who can't be bothered to vote stayed home and left the decisions to people who care. Increasing voter turnout simply increases the number of uninformed voters. Make people care, and they'll find their way to the polls all by themselves.
Action is the only thing that's going to fix the system, cuz it aint fixing itself. Regardless of the philosophical constraints in our systems, concerted action is the only thing that makes things happen.
I agree, but sometimes the system is so fouled up that you can't fix it from within the system. In the election process, the only people who have the power to change it are in power because of it. They have no desire to change it because they will likely suffer from the change. The system has no way to change the system, so the change has to be made from outside.
There are arguments for changing the voting process itself, but I think the main reason people have lost faith is because of the end result. Choosing the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil, and voting for an independent, or worse, writing in a candidate, has little to no chance of doing any more than not voting at all.
The election process is a paralysing feedback loop all of its own. If everyone voted, regardless of their feelings about why voting doesn't matter, how would we know there was a problem? Say what you like about "voter apathy", but it's at least got us talking about how to fix the problem rather than not knowing there is one.
Personally, I think we need to fix what our choices are before we fix how we make them.
Time to quit bitching and get off the apathy wagon, kids.
Sorry, but I have to take issue with this. Voter apathy is not a problem unto itself. If voters have lost faith in the system, it's because the system is broken, not the voters.
If the machines are not rigorously trustworthy, and provably so, they should not be used. End of story. What Americans think is irrelevant.
You are absolutely correct, but the problem is that what Americans think tends to drive public policy. People vote for those who support their views, even if their views are demonstrably wrong. That so many people trust the machines means that not enough people know how bad they are and is an indication that the people need to be educated, not that the machines should be used.
So, yes, what Americans think is irrelevant to whether the machines should be used, but is compeletely relevant to whether they will be used.
Now look at what I wrote ("you may be") and look at what you wrote ("accuse me of").
Now read my next sentence. I was making a comparison which you are conveniently ignoring.
I said that it was extremely unlikely, not impossible.
With a tone suggesting it was as likely as the sun not coming up tomorrow.
I can't show that they did,
Then how can you be so certain they did? You claimed people have tested it and found no errors. How do you know? Where is the evidence to support your assertion?
nor can I prove that New York Times reporters would have known about, or mentioned, a terrorist attack against the Statue of Liberty, but I feel pretty confident that none happened if it's not mentioned in the New York Times.
But the lack of a New York Times article reporting the presence of a bomb hidden in the Statue of Liberty is not evidence that there isn't one when you already have reason to believe there might be. Trojan Horse's are meant to be hard to discover. The lack of any reports that there is one is hardly enough reason to rule it out, especially on an unofficial patch that, at the time of your post, was only eleven days old.
Yes, many years of experience in the business world, publishing experience, and common sense.
Would you care to cite any evidence or am I supposed to take your word for this, too?
There is no reason to suspect it. He did nothing to warrant your suspicion.
I don't know him from Adam. Knowing that some people do it is reason enough to take precautions against it. A complete stranger may do nothing to warrant my suspicions but I'm still not leaving my child alone with him.
I did provide evidence - just not proof.
That is exactly what we are arguing about. You didn't. You provided your opinion of why he wouldn't bother. None of your other claims are supported.
I was not trying to make you feel stupid. I was trying to make others believe you are stupid.
If you'd pay attention, you'd notice I didn't write the comment you were replying to originally. You were trying to make the original poster, as well as those who agreed with him, feel stupid for taking precautions which you have, as of yet, not shown to be unreasonable.
You can't prove that you aren't a child molestor, so should we suggest that you may be?
If you're going to accuse me of being a child molester, you had better have proof that I am. However, if you are going to refrain from leaving your child alone with me on the off-chance that I (or anyone else you don't know for that matter) may be a child molester, that's just good sense. I never accused him of writing a trojan. But I am going to refrain from installing the patch until I'm convinced that he didn't. You haven't convinced me.
You can make up any kind of unsubstantiated suspicion and then argue that it's valid becaue no one can prove that it's wrong.
First, the suspicion is not completely unsubstantiated. People do write trojans, many of them claiming to be patches, like this one. And to assume, without good evidence, that this one isn't a trojan is naive at best, reckless and negligent at worst.
Second, again, I'm not asking for proof, just evidence. You made the claim that it couldn't possibly be a trojan, berated those who thought it could possibly be, and haven't provided much in the way of evidence to back it up except a) he says it isn't, b) no one else has said it is, and c) your opinion of why he wouldn't bother. Not very convincing I'm afraid.
Third, not being able to prove the assertion does not mean you are relieved of providing evidence to support it.
Besides, you will not convince me that thousands of people tried it and none of them were looking for malware.
Who's asking whom to prove a negative now? I'm not trying to convince you no one looked. The point is you haven't even shown one case where they have. It's not up to me to show they didn't. You're claiming they did, you show they did.
If they publish a link to it and it turns out to have malware, then they get sued for negligence. Therefore, logic dictates that they would have checked that before publishing the story.
Do you have any support for this claim? Any at all?
Then just what do you do? Run an unpatched Windows 98SE system? If so, doesn't that mean that you trust Microsoft, since they supplied the OS?
This has nothing to do with whether or not I trust Microsoft. Nothing at all. It is entirely about you claiming there is no reason to suspect the existence of malware in the patch, providing no evidence to support the assertion, and trying to make others feel stupid for believing otherwise.
Which is sort of my point. You can't prove it's not, but you're deriding people for believing it may be.
Suppose a Google search had turned up a page that said that it was malware-free. Would you have trusted that?
Not implicitly, but it would at least support your argument.
If hundreds, or thousands, of people fail to find a problem, it's evidence that no problem exists.
But that's not what you said. You said:
That doesn't mean people have looked for a problem and not found one. It simply means that there is no evidence that it is malware, or that it didn't turn up in your search. "There is evidence that it isn't" is vastly different from "there is no evidence that it is". Not being able to find evidence either way doesn't support its legitmacy any more than it supports it being malware. It's simply a lack of evidence. "You can't prove it isn't" is not evidence that it is.
One place is where you fail to address the issue of a major computer publication providing a link to it.
And making no mention of the legitimacy of the patch. They don't indicate whether they or anybody else has tested the patch. Only that it exists and where to find it. Again, a lack of evidence either way.
So you'll only install patches provided by Microsoft, a company which has already proven itself willing to install spyware and software which transmits private information without permission. (e.g., Windows Media Player, Windows Update). Only a company with a financial interest in selling your private data will get your trust. Interesting.
You're engaging in a false dichotomy. There are more choices than "trust him outright" and "don't trust any third-party vendors". I'm just not as quick to right off the possibility that it is malware as quickly as you are. And because I don't implicity trust him does not mean I implicity trust Microsoft.
Yes, it would be foolish to believe otherwise, but that's because of the preponderance of evidence, not just because there is a disclaimer.
Your original post asked "why would he put up the disclaimers if it wasn't legitimate", to which I responded "because he might be lying". You also mentioned a Google search which turned up nothing conclusive, to which I did not respond because it doesn't prove anything except that there's no page in Google's listing saying it's not legitimate which only means that either nobody knows, or nobody has said so. Where exactly is the flaw in my logic?
Of course they should be dismissed readily
So go ahead and dismiss them. I'll be a little more careful with my systems.
If this is an attempt to get people to install malicious software, it's the most idiotic attempt I've ever heard of.
All it means is that you can't think of a reason why he would.
The fact is it probably is legitimate. But your original post made it sound like anyone who would think it could possibly be malicious was out of their mind with little evidence accept "why would he bother?". People have bothered for less.
Your link is broken, but if this is the case, it's a little bothersome that the copies are regulated based on number and not purpose.
Anyone with a three-year-old can attest to the fragility of DVD's. One permitted backup is about 10 too few.
Keep in mind only a handful of viewers timeshift anyway.
It's the only thing I use the record function on my VCR for. I thought the whole point of Tivo was to make time shifting considerably easier.
That is a mistrepresentation of what I said. I gave that as evidence supporting the notion that the patch was legitimate, not proof-positive that it was.
Your tone and phrasing both indicated that someone would be foolish to believe otherwise. To top it off, you said, "You need to take the aluminum foil off of your head." I was merely pointing out that the concerns were valid and ought not be dismissed so readily.
If broadcasters prevent people from recording the shows, less people are going to watch them. They know this.
The broadcast flag, to my recollection, is there to prevent you from making a copy of a copy. You can record it but you can't send the recording to someone else. It makes sense for anti-piracy purposes but it also prevents you from lending the recording to a friend who forgot to record it or watching it in a different room without moving the DVR, or possibly making a backup copy of something you wish to keep but not on the DVR.
I have a suspicion that the broacast flag is going to annoy enough people that broadcast-flag enabled DVRs wont replace the VCR which, although of much lower quality, will give them more functionality. People don't like buying new technology that does less than the old.
Then you must be scared shitless when you read the reverse-reverse psychology on Microsoft's licenses and web site. With all of the disclaimers and warnings about backing up your system that you find there, they must be installing something that will make you go blind, cause cancer, and post your Social Security number on the big screen in Times Square.
Uh, no. I wasn't saying the claims on his website were proof that it was a trojan. I was saying the claims on his website were not proof that it wasn't a trojan. There's a difference. You offered an argument to the patch's legitimacy and I showed how that argument was flawed.
So all you want me to do is prove a negative? Gee, that sounds really reasonable.
I'm not asking you to prove anything. You made the claim that the patch must be legitimate because these claims appeared on his website and I showed how that is not necessarily true.