I said I see the similarity between 'stealing' and illegally copying movies
Actually, you said, and I quote, "it's called stealing" (seriously, it's easy for anyone to check, it's just two posts up, so you can't get out of this one, sorry). You didn't say "it's like stealing" or "it's similar to stealing", you said "it's called stealing". It's not called stealing. Yes, there are similarities to stealing, but using the word "stealing" for copying movies is AT BEST a metaphor, and like any metaphor, it's imperfect.
There is a marginal cost to the provider, however small, to *providing* a free ride at a theme park, in the form of wear and tear / maintenance, energy costs, property rentals and taxes, insurance and risk etc.. If someone copies a movie illegally from a friend over a computer network, the marginal cost to the provider is ZERO. They have not lost anything that they did not have before. They don't wake up poorer. They wake up EXACTLY the same as the day before. There isn't less money in the bank account, and they don't have to pay any penalties.
That doesn't condone illegal copying. Obviously if everybody copied, and nobody bought, the movie makers couldn't make money.
But it's not called stealing. It's the wrong word. That doesn't make it "less bad", we're not trying to justify it (I mean, I make my living making and selling software, and I have first-hand seen people pirating my own software) --- we're just trying to avoid broken metaphors that lead people to think about these things in an incorrect way.
Not sure if you were being sarcastic, but to be fair, Vista broke numerous major applications for me, and ended up costing me hundreds of dollars in other software upgrades --- although that's definitely not equivalent to this, I knew going in that there could be application compatibility problems. Usually I'm behind Apple but this sounds like crap, it's not clear to me if it's a bug (i.e. 'honest but huge mistake') or what they're trying to achieve otherwise.
Oh, and of COURSE I realise it's possible to have oppressive but capitalist systems (China is another example of solid, widespread free market economics in the context of political oppression) - that was the WHOLE POINT of my argument, that the left/right labels are too simplistic, and yet there you go, trying to cram all my arguments back into left and right again *sigh* why even bother speaking.
How convenient, use one definition of left and another definition of right *yawn*... look, we all know these terms all have quite different meanings/connotations in many different countries and contexts and even times of history, that doesn't mean you can pick and choose which definition of "left" and which definition of "right" you want just to be able to "prove" that you have both a "totalitarian right and left" that Orwell was against. Let's stick to some common, modern definitions.
By your own oversimplified political quiz, economic freedoms are the province of the right, but social freedoms are the province of the left and not the right as you strangely suggest.
Yes and no, you've missed the point a bit , social freedoms are the province of the North. Furthermore, it's definitely NOT strange that suggesting the right is against social freedoms - after all, it's the American right (conservatives) who have traditionally been more against homosexuals and abortion and freedom of religion and e.g. historically in favour of slavery. The American left has a better approach to those aspects, but are more in favour of socialism, welfare etc.
I wouldn't call a crony-capitalist system 'left', I'm not sure where you got that, I think that today's American right is closer to a crony-capitalist system (it's definitely not really a major one, but it's the closest in the US).
OK, I don't normally feed the trolls, but you've struck on a topic that actually matters a great deal to me: Look, I'm not entirely in disagreement with you, there ARE valid and even pressing reasons to preach precision in language use, and even to make *certain* limited judgments of people based on their language use (on their diligence, not on their worth as a person - these are two different things). But classism, I'm afraid, is not one of those reasons; in fact, not only is it a terrible reason, it's harmful to the very values you are pretending to espouse. It is people who specifically purport a correlation between correct language use and elitism / supposed worth as a person, i.e. to display alleged status, who have caused the current massive cultural rise in the purposeful, nihilistic end-goal of poor language 'skillz, yo'.
To educate yourself on the REAL reasons 'language matters' (hint, none of which have anything to do with immature displays of classism), I wholly recommend Less than Words Can Say (available online), by Richard Mitchell.
Clearly your goal was simply to impress upon us all your supposed superiority *yawn*. Unfortunately for you, you just happened to do so incorrectly - you seriously need to educate yourself about the current state of English academia, the entire approach has changed 180 degrees since the 1800s (seriously, I work in this field); whether or not you agree doesn't matter. Honestly though, if you are actually sitting spending your free time trolling peoples' English on Slashdot (where many people aren't even mother-tongue speakers, or speak any of the thousands of dialects of English, many of which are considered far more standard than American English - after all, it's the English who speak English, and nobody else) to point out obscure semi-outdated English "rules" to prove how "educated" and superior you are, that is pathetic, and does indicate some serious underlying self-worth issues that you should get help for, because they are going to affect your quality of life later on.
Way I see it, if you want to prove to us you're not trailer trash, rather do so by actually saying intelligent, useful things - that will go much much further than throwing a few words about that you think all us poor plebians can't understand *boo hoo hoo*.
Having an excellent mastery of English doesn't make you a better person, being a better person makes you a better person. It's possible, as you seem to be trying hard to demonstrate, that you can speak perfect English but still be an asshole who doesn't make the world a better place and instead just pollutes it. Language use, class and value as a human are all independent; you can be a crappy person who speaks great English, a crappy person who speaks terrible English, a decent person who speaks terrible English, a decent person who speaks great English (*ahem*), and any of those combinations may or not arise from both trailer parks and leafy 'burbs with mansions.
This isn't really a "new operating system", it's basically Vista Service Pack 2 (or 3) RENAMED to something else. Vista has been such a bomb that they now probably want to get away from the name Vista - call it something else as quickly as possible and say "hey look, a new OS".
Do you really think they can develop new features faster somehow, and fix more bugs over a given period of time just because it's labelled a "new operating system"? It doesn't really work that way - maaybe sometimes if you really are rewriting something from scratch, but that's hardly the case, and there are also extra overheads to a new OS (e.g. relabelling everything plus a new look and feel) that slow it down. So apart from maybe pushing forward the release of a few new features, whether they call it Vista SP3 or "some new OS" is for the most part semantic.
They may also want to close in on Apple's quicker OS release cycle, by releasing newer 'OSes' faster, but just evolving them slower.
Cue the famous Carl Sagan quote: "But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
He seems to be suggesting that ridiculing him in this case is evidence of a greater conspiracy to 'control' the spread of these ideas.
I think the paper reference is at least interesting from another viewpoint - that astroturf marketers commonly use this strategy to control opinions of company products, and competing company products.
Yes, but to be fair, the homeless guy really can just say no. Likewise for the schools. They won't have lost anything they never had before; even under highly distorted negotiating conditions (i.e. one side having much more bargaining power and control than the other) it remains the case that all trade is mutually beneficial. (Just for the record, I can't stand Microsoft or the unethical and lying way they do business; I wish the market was better at choosing the best product.) 'We welcome competition', what a load of crap.
'Totalitarian right'? That's technically a contradiction in terms, actually --- the source of most people's confusion in this regard is that left/right is overly simplistic, there are actually at least four poles (left/right/north/south), plus centrist... take the world's smallest political quiz, it'll give a basic introductory overview of why. Usually when people speak of 'the right', at least in the US, they refer to freedoms (either economic freedoms and social freedoms, or just the former - where the confusion starts); I'm not sure what you mean by "totalitarian right", but under most definitions of "right", a "totalitarian right" can no longer be regarded as a true "right" system - certainly a 100% corporate-fascism-controlled crony-capitalist system would not be.
We are more forgiving of people who aren't more chronically evil, life just is that way, get over it.
Nobody and nothing is perfect, this does NOT mean that everything imperfect, is equivalent.
Do you divorce your wife for making occasional mistakes? No, only if she is habitually and frequently bad. Are you more forgiving of a son who just occasionally screws up lightly, as opposed to one who does drugs and steals from you and ends up in jail regularly? Of course. Is every political leader who has lied at least once, just as bad as Hitler? Is somebody who beats his wife every day equally bad to somebody who once slapped his wife over 50 years of marriage?
Please, stop with this pretending that all things are equivalent. There is NO double-standard here.
Do you want to add a single tag that all other browsers will ignore, or do you want to spend all your time hacking workarounds?
For the foreseeable future, you're going to have to spend all your time hacking workarounds *anyway*, because IE6 and 7 are going to be around for a long time to come. Maybe five or ten years ago it'll start helping us move to standards, but until then you're still going to have to create both a standards-based version and a Microsoft-IE-6-and-7-based version. I'm sure MS could help this change along a lot faster if they wanted, but obviously that's not in their interests.
For company documents, this problem has already been solved, just any of the many encryption solutions available... I don't think there is any major need in normal business use that DRM fulfills that regular encryption based solutions do not. (Actually your request just sounds like a FUD-style attempt to 'legimitise' DRM, good luck with that around here.)
Re:Getting in ahead of the crowd...
on
Geekonomics
·
· Score: 1
A good coder can make windows secure. A slacker can ensure that SecureBSD is insecure.
This isn't a very useful way of looking at this, because "security" isn't a binary yes/no concept. This is akin to saying "all areas have crime, therefore all areas are equally risky to be in". Obviously that is false. In reality your underlying risk profile is effectively a probability (in matters of crime and computer security), and differs dramatically from one system / area to the next.
To continue the crime analogy, a smart "user" can lower his/her risk profile in a high-crime area (e.g. don't flash valuables, don't look touristy, etc. - likewise a good user can e.g. apply updates, use a firewall), but CANNOT change the underlying fact that in, say, a dangerous ghetto, his likelihood of being attacked remains much higher, and there is absolutely nothing he can do about that component of the risk other than leave the area for a safer one.
The answer is "both". Technology gives us more options. Those that like living closer (evidently, most) can choose to do so. Those that like getting away (evidently, a minority) now also can and do choose to do so. There's always some pros and cons to either decision, but at least more options are available now.
So you now want to dictate every company how much profits it can make? What a socialist attitude!
Here, since you are having trouble reading, let me repeat my very own words in bold for you again:
"I'm certainly not advocating legally mandating anything, I'm in favor of free markets, and free markets can 'solve' this problem if the markets become more informed and start demanding better"
Now how you got from that to socialism and "dictating how much profits" companies make, only God knows. Perhaps you meant to reply to a completely different post by somebody else. Or probably I just took the bait and am feeding the trolls now.
So you now want to dictate every company how much profits it can make? What a socialist attitude!
WTF!? Where did I say that? I'm a libertarian, you idiot, get some reading comprehension skills and read my post again. Seriously, are you just trolling, or are you really so thick that you are unable to comprehend basic English?
I'm suggesting that FUCKING MARKET COMPETITION bring down prices, you dolt.
If you think that raising the quality always raises the price, you are completely clueless as to how even the basics of business work. Where do you think profits go?
I've probably been working on "large software projects" since you were a kid, it's what I do, I run a company, I have a software business. You think it's impossible for Microsoft with billions in profits to fix IE over 11 YEARS, yet a few people working in their free time with little to no income can make a more secure browser in just a few years?
Re:Well, excuuuse me...
on
Geekonomics
·
· Score: 1
the cost of software will rise even higher than it is today
Actually the point of that book is that the "real" cost of software is already much higher than what you see as the price because of externalities. A lousy manufacturer that pollutes a river forces some of the costs of production onto the downstream inhabitants; similarly, a software vendor that sells insecure software pushes external costs down onto its own users (e.g. the cost of antivirus and anti-spyware software, downtime from virus infections etc.) - these are all also in that "cost of software" you refer to ALREADY.
I'm certainly not advocating legally mandating anything, I'm in favor of free markets, and free markets can 'solve' this problem if the markets become more informed and start demanding better --- the cost increases won't be anywhere near what you suggest, in fact aren't required AT ALL, and with the reduction of externalities, plus economies of scale, most companies would see cost savings.
Some of the major software vendors (MS, Apple etc.) have high to very high margins and profits - WELL more than enough to make their software MUCH more secure if they wanted to, at a cost of only a miniscule fraction of their current profits. Nobody said anything about demanding "perfection", that's a strawman or false dilemma (i.e. it's not "choose between 100% or no extra effort") --- the vast majority of the world's software security problems, and associated costs, could be drastically reduced with just a few comparatively small changes (e.g. fix Internet Explorer, for example, a prime infection vector that has been continuously exploitable for over 10 years - fortunately recently decent more secure alternatives have appeared).
Actually, I'd say it usually (also) makes fun of those who 'fall for' the thing being parodied - which still fits in with your viewpoint (which is actually based on the principle of social status hierarchies, in which laughter is a.o. one mechanism whereby we feel and express joy at not being the lowest on the rung - this is why sitcoms almost always have some unrealistically uber-nerdy loser character - having a "lowest common denominator" character who is such a loser that he falls below basically every possible viewer in the status hierarchy makes the viewers enjoy their comparatively higher status). Homer Simpson was even once used to meta-parody this exact thing (he himself *is* such a character, but in one episode laughs at a character in a sitcom for being such a loser/moron, without noticing the self-referential nature of his own comment).
Think of it - every time you tell a dumb blonde joke, what are you REALLY saying? Every time you tell a gay joke, what does it say about YOU? Every time you tell a racist joke, what message are YOU really sending?
That others are below you on the social status hierarchy. Every aspect of human behaviour is driven by this, it's our strongest, core overriding instinct.
Put it another way: If things are truly as bad as the picture you paint - a world where science is largely stifled and cannot progress - then why are overall scientific knowledge and consequent improvements in technology (application of new scientific research) plundering forth at such an incredible and exponential pace? The evidence is everywhere around us... things surely cannot be as dismal as all that. In fact there are signs of rapid improvement everywhere in every imagineable field, I'd even say the world has 'never been this good'.
Slashdot Mirror
I said I see the similarity between 'stealing' and illegally copying movies
Actually, you said, and I quote, "it's called stealing" (seriously, it's easy for anyone to check, it's just two posts up, so you can't get out of this one, sorry). You didn't say "it's like stealing" or "it's similar to stealing", you said "it's called stealing". It's not called stealing. Yes, there are similarities to stealing, but using the word "stealing" for copying movies is AT BEST a metaphor, and like any metaphor, it's imperfect.
There is a marginal cost to the provider, however small, to *providing* a free ride at a theme park, in the form of wear and tear / maintenance, energy costs, property rentals and taxes, insurance and risk etc.. If someone copies a movie illegally from a friend over a computer network, the marginal cost to the provider is ZERO. They have not lost anything that they did not have before. They don't wake up poorer. They wake up EXACTLY the same as the day before. There isn't less money in the bank account, and they don't have to pay any penalties.
That doesn't condone illegal copying. Obviously if everybody copied, and nobody bought, the movie makers couldn't make money.
But it's not called stealing. It's the wrong word. That doesn't make it "less bad", we're not trying to justify it (I mean, I make my living making and selling software, and I have first-hand seen people pirating my own software) --- we're just trying to avoid broken metaphors that lead people to think about these things in an incorrect way.
Not sure if you were being sarcastic, but to be fair, Vista broke numerous major applications for me, and ended up costing me hundreds of dollars in other software upgrades --- although that's definitely not equivalent to this, I knew going in that there could be application compatibility problems. Usually I'm behind Apple but this sounds like crap, it's not clear to me if it's a bug (i.e. 'honest but huge mistake') or what they're trying to achieve otherwise.
Oh, and of COURSE I realise it's possible to have oppressive but capitalist systems (China is another example of solid, widespread free market economics in the context of political oppression) - that was the WHOLE POINT of my argument, that the left/right labels are too simplistic, and yet there you go, trying to cram all my arguments back into left and right again *sigh* why even bother speaking.
How convenient, use one definition of left and another definition of right *yawn* ... look, we all know these terms all have quite different meanings/connotations in many different countries and contexts and even times of history, that doesn't mean you can pick and choose which definition of "left" and which definition of "right" you want just to be able to "prove" that you have both a "totalitarian right and left" that Orwell was against. Let's stick to some common, modern definitions.
By your own oversimplified political quiz, economic freedoms are the province of the right, but social freedoms are the province of the left and not the right as you strangely suggest.
Yes and no, you've missed the point a bit , social freedoms are the province of the North. Furthermore, it's definitely NOT strange that suggesting the right is against social freedoms - after all, it's the American right (conservatives) who have traditionally been more against homosexuals and abortion and freedom of religion and e.g. historically in favour of slavery. The American left has a better approach to those aspects, but are more in favour of socialism, welfare etc.
I wouldn't call a crony-capitalist system 'left', I'm not sure where you got that, I think that today's American right is closer to a crony-capitalist system (it's definitely not really a major one, but it's the closest in the US).
OK, I don't normally feed the trolls, but you've struck on a topic that actually matters a great deal to me: Look, I'm not entirely in disagreement with you, there ARE valid and even pressing reasons to preach precision in language use, and even to make *certain* limited judgments of people based on their language use (on their diligence, not on their worth as a person - these are two different things). But classism, I'm afraid, is not one of those reasons; in fact, not only is it a terrible reason, it's harmful to the very values you are pretending to espouse. It is people who specifically purport a correlation between correct language use and elitism / supposed worth as a person, i.e. to display alleged status, who have caused the current massive cultural rise in the purposeful, nihilistic end-goal of poor language 'skillz, yo'.
To educate yourself on the REAL reasons 'language matters' (hint, none of which have anything to do with immature displays of classism), I wholly recommend Less than Words Can Say (available online), by Richard Mitchell.
Clearly your goal was simply to impress upon us all your supposed superiority *yawn*. Unfortunately for you, you just happened to do so incorrectly - you seriously need to educate yourself about the current state of English academia, the entire approach has changed 180 degrees since the 1800s (seriously, I work in this field); whether or not you agree doesn't matter. Honestly though, if you are actually sitting spending your free time trolling peoples' English on Slashdot (where many people aren't even mother-tongue speakers, or speak any of the thousands of dialects of English, many of which are considered far more standard than American English - after all, it's the English who speak English, and nobody else) to point out obscure semi-outdated English "rules" to prove how "educated" and superior you are, that is pathetic, and does indicate some serious underlying self-worth issues that you should get help for, because they are going to affect your quality of life later on.
Way I see it, if you want to prove to us you're not trailer trash, rather do so by actually saying intelligent, useful things - that will go much much further than throwing a few words about that you think all us poor plebians can't understand *boo hoo hoo*.
Having an excellent mastery of English doesn't make you a better person, being a better person makes you a better person. It's possible, as you seem to be trying hard to demonstrate, that you can speak perfect English but still be an asshole who doesn't make the world a better place and instead just pollutes it. Language use, class and value as a human are all independent; you can be a crappy person who speaks great English, a crappy person who speaks terrible English, a decent person who speaks terrible English, a decent person who speaks great English (*ahem*), and any of those combinations may or not arise from both trailer parks and leafy 'burbs with mansions.
In the first example you "corrected", they're actually interchangeable, but hey, whatever makes you feel better about yourself.
This isn't really a "new operating system", it's basically Vista Service Pack 2 (or 3) RENAMED to something else. Vista has been such a bomb that they now probably want to get away from the name Vista - call it something else as quickly as possible and say "hey look, a new OS".
Do you really think they can develop new features faster somehow, and fix more bugs over a given period of time just because it's labelled a "new operating system"? It doesn't really work that way - maaybe sometimes if you really are rewriting something from scratch, but that's hardly the case, and there are also extra overheads to a new OS (e.g. relabelling everything plus a new look and feel) that slow it down. So apart from maybe pushing forward the release of a few new features, whether they call it Vista SP3 or "some new OS" is for the most part semantic.
They may also want to close in on Apple's quicker OS release cycle, by releasing newer 'OSes' faster, but just evolving them slower.
Cue the famous Carl Sagan quote: "But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
He seems to be suggesting that ridiculing him in this case is evidence of a greater conspiracy to 'control' the spread of these ideas.
I think the paper reference is at least interesting from another viewpoint - that astroturf marketers commonly use this strategy to control opinions of company products, and competing company products.
Yes, but to be fair, the homeless guy really can just say no. Likewise for the schools. They won't have lost anything they never had before; even under highly distorted negotiating conditions (i.e. one side having much more bargaining power and control than the other) it remains the case that all trade is mutually beneficial. (Just for the record, I can't stand Microsoft or the unethical and lying way they do business; I wish the market was better at choosing the best product.) 'We welcome competition', what a load of crap.
That would be clever if it 'were/was not' the case that "was" has actually become an acceptable substitute for the subjunctive form "were".
'Totalitarian right'? That's technically a contradiction in terms, actually --- the source of most people's confusion in this regard is that left/right is overly simplistic, there are actually at least four poles (left/right/north/south), plus centrist ... take the world's smallest political quiz, it'll give a basic introductory overview of why. Usually when people speak of 'the right', at least in the US, they refer to freedoms (either economic freedoms and social freedoms, or just the former - where the confusion starts); I'm not sure what you mean by "totalitarian right", but under most definitions of "right", a "totalitarian right" can no longer be regarded as a true "right" system - certainly a 100% corporate-fascism-controlled crony-capitalist system would not be.
We are more forgiving of people who aren't more chronically evil, life just is that way, get over it.
Nobody and nothing is perfect, this does NOT mean that everything imperfect, is equivalent.
Do you divorce your wife for making occasional mistakes? No, only if she is habitually and frequently bad. Are you more forgiving of a son who just occasionally screws up lightly, as opposed to one who does drugs and steals from you and ends up in jail regularly? Of course. Is every political leader who has lied at least once, just as bad as Hitler? Is somebody who beats his wife every day equally bad to somebody who once slapped his wife over 50 years of marriage?
Please, stop with this pretending that all things are equivalent. There is NO double-standard here.
Sorry, not "ten years ago", I meant "ten years from now".
Do you want to add a single tag that all other browsers will ignore, or do you want to spend all your time hacking workarounds?
For the foreseeable future, you're going to have to spend all your time hacking workarounds *anyway*, because IE6 and 7 are going to be around for a long time to come. Maybe five or ten years ago it'll start helping us move to standards, but until then you're still going to have to create both a standards-based version and a Microsoft-IE-6-and-7-based version. I'm sure MS could help this change along a lot faster if they wanted, but obviously that's not in their interests.
For company documents, this problem has already been solved, just any of the many encryption solutions available ... I don't think there is any major need in normal business use that DRM fulfills that regular encryption based solutions do not. (Actually your request just sounds like a FUD-style attempt to 'legimitise' DRM, good luck with that around here.)
A good coder can make windows secure. A slacker can ensure that SecureBSD is insecure.
This isn't a very useful way of looking at this, because "security" isn't a binary yes/no concept. This is akin to saying "all areas have crime, therefore all areas are equally risky to be in". Obviously that is false. In reality your underlying risk profile is effectively a probability (in matters of crime and computer security), and differs dramatically from one system / area to the next.
To continue the crime analogy, a smart "user" can lower his/her risk profile in a high-crime area (e.g. don't flash valuables, don't look touristy, etc. - likewise a good user can e.g. apply updates, use a firewall), but CANNOT change the underlying fact that in, say, a dangerous ghetto, his likelihood of being attacked remains much higher, and there is absolutely nothing he can do about that component of the risk other than leave the area for a safer one.
The answer is "both". Technology gives us more options. Those that like living closer (evidently, most) can choose to do so. Those that like getting away (evidently, a minority) now also can and do choose to do so. There's always some pros and cons to either decision, but at least more options are available now.
That was obviously NOT a troll ... I guess I'm being targeted here.
So you now want to dictate every company how much profits it can make? What a socialist attitude!
Here, since you are having trouble reading, let me repeat my very own words in bold for you again:
"I'm certainly not advocating legally mandating anything, I'm in favor of free markets, and free markets can 'solve' this problem if the markets become more informed and start demanding better"
Now how you got from that to socialism and "dictating how much profits" companies make, only God knows. Perhaps you meant to reply to a completely different post by somebody else. Or probably I just took the bait and am feeding the trolls now.
So you now want to dictate every company how much profits it can make? What a socialist attitude!
WTF!? Where did I say that? I'm a libertarian, you idiot, get some reading comprehension skills and read my post again. Seriously, are you just trolling, or are you really so thick that you are unable to comprehend basic English?
I'm suggesting that FUCKING MARKET COMPETITION bring down prices, you dolt.
If you think that raising the quality always raises the price, you are completely clueless as to how even the basics of business work. Where do you think profits go?
I've probably been working on "large software projects" since you were a kid, it's what I do, I run a company, I have a software business. You think it's impossible for Microsoft with billions in profits to fix IE over 11 YEARS, yet a few people working in their free time with little to no income can make a more secure browser in just a few years?
the cost of software will rise even higher than it is today
Actually the point of that book is that the "real" cost of software is already much higher than what you see as the price because of externalities. A lousy manufacturer that pollutes a river forces some of the costs of production onto the downstream inhabitants; similarly, a software vendor that sells insecure software pushes external costs down onto its own users (e.g. the cost of antivirus and anti-spyware software, downtime from virus infections etc.) - these are all also in that "cost of software" you refer to ALREADY.
I'm certainly not advocating legally mandating anything, I'm in favor of free markets, and free markets can 'solve' this problem if the markets become more informed and start demanding better --- the cost increases won't be anywhere near what you suggest, in fact aren't required AT ALL, and with the reduction of externalities, plus economies of scale, most companies would see cost savings.
Some of the major software vendors (MS, Apple etc.) have high to very high margins and profits - WELL more than enough to make their software MUCH more secure if they wanted to, at a cost of only a miniscule fraction of their current profits. Nobody said anything about demanding "perfection", that's a strawman or false dilemma (i.e. it's not "choose between 100% or no extra effort") --- the vast majority of the world's software security problems, and associated costs, could be drastically reduced with just a few comparatively small changes (e.g. fix Internet Explorer, for example, a prime infection vector that has been continuously exploitable for over 10 years - fortunately recently decent more secure alternatives have appeared).
Parody makes fun of the thing being parodied
Actually, I'd say it usually (also) makes fun of those who 'fall for' the thing being parodied - which still fits in with your viewpoint (which is actually based on the principle of social status hierarchies, in which laughter is a.o. one mechanism whereby we feel and express joy at not being the lowest on the rung - this is why sitcoms almost always have some unrealistically uber-nerdy loser character - having a "lowest common denominator" character who is such a loser that he falls below basically every possible viewer in the status hierarchy makes the viewers enjoy their comparatively higher status). Homer Simpson was even once used to meta-parody this exact thing (he himself *is* such a character, but in one episode laughs at a character in a sitcom for being such a loser/moron, without noticing the self-referential nature of his own comment).
Think of it - every time you tell a dumb blonde joke, what are you REALLY saying? Every time you tell a gay joke, what does it say about YOU? Every time you tell a racist joke, what message are YOU really sending?
That others are below you on the social status hierarchy. Every aspect of human behaviour is driven by this, it's our strongest, core overriding instinct.
Put it another way: If things are truly as bad as the picture you paint - a world where science is largely stifled and cannot progress - then why are overall scientific knowledge and consequent improvements in technology (application of new scientific research) plundering forth at such an incredible and exponential pace? The evidence is everywhere around us ... things surely cannot be as dismal as all that. In fact there are signs of rapid improvement everywhere in every imagineable field, I'd even say the world has 'never been this good'.