Shortly after I posted that, I remembered that Richard Stallman wants us to have nothing running on our computer but his "free software" - even its BIOS should be "free." Just like that famous Trojan horse of yore, every last bit of it is "free"...
Now there you go again with that "enemy" thinking. I just hope that one day you and Santa Claus can reconcile so that you can finally enjoy that nice wooden horse he left for you under the tree.
But now you've got me wondering...what is Richard Stallman really up to with all this "free software" business...? He tells us that It doesn't cost anything and that it somehow protects our freedom. Just wait until his army of loyal minions jump out of that horse...
I'll admit, that's reason for them to do something desperate. Having competition again does not imply Microsoft has become trustworthy.
Actually, I think that's exactly what it implies. Let's take the premise that MS, like most corporations, does whatever it sees to be in its best interest. I believe that they're smart enough at this point to see that becoming trustworthy (at least as much as any other corporation) is in their best business interest.
It's axiomatic that corporations need to evolve in order to survive in the long term. Although it's possible that MS would stick to their former "evil" behavior at any cost, in order to do evil-for-the-sake-of-evil, like a Disney cartoon villain, I just don't think they're that evil - or that stupid. Especially when their founder now seems to be doing his best to use his massive fortune to improve the world.
Then again, maybe that's all just part of his twisted, evil, plot. (Don't tell the Disney folks - they'll turn it into a movie.)
It's a darn shame that MS still is in control of these things. Wouldn't it be much better if someone would create a full-featured, free of charge, and open source computing system? First things first: we need license. Then, of course, we'll need a compiler. Next, let's use that to build an OS: to make that job a little easier, let's imitate some existing commercial OS. Even so, the kernel's gonna be really hard, though - I hope we can find somebody smart enough to make one that actually works - we can outsource that to some smart college kid from Finland, if necessary. After that, let's create a desktop (or two). And of course, we'll need a state-of-the-art browser (or two). Next, we'll come up with an office suite.
With all that, we won't care about what MS does at all! And if MS does happen to come with something good, we can just imitate that - like we did the OS and most everything else we "created".
Sadly, though, that's all a bit utopian. I doubt it will ever actually happen.
I hear you. And I've been hearing people just like you for over a decade. "But now things are different." "Microsoft have changed."
I understand, but help me out here: at what point can we declare that the war is over, and the good guys have won? Here are some possible turning points:
- The US government succeeds in anti-trust action against MS. Certain other world governments take action of their own. - Several strong competitors emerge who dominate in related areas of phones, tablets, cloud, search, social media, etc. Which leads us to: - The market changes where the dominance in desktop OS is no longer the dominant factor in computing - New leadership takes the reins at MS - MS begins to open-source their software, not because they suddenly received a vision from the Prophet Richard Stallman, but because they recognize that the old model of "embrace and extend" simply doesn't work anymore.
There's your answer right there. Maybe things have changed. If you see this as a war (e.g. "ammunition"), you're absolutely right: why give aid and comfort to the enemy? But if you see.net as having some sort of technological benefit, and you see the war as having been fought and lost by the enemy who has capitulated by releasing.net as open source (I know, I know, with strings attached...) then there's no longer any need to keep fighting the war.
In that vein, I see no need to boycott clothing produced in Viet Nam. That war was over long ago. If the clothing has benefits and can be used under acceptable terms, then why not? Alternatively, if you find the terms unacceptable, don't buy the clothing. But the war of the past doesn't much enter into it at this point. Enjoy the benefits of peace. (That said, I know that's easier said than done for those who still suffer from PTSD.;-)
The number one complaint I hear from those forced to use Windows is that it takes forever to boot.
As one who uses Windows voluntarily, it's hard for me to relate to this. I typically boot it once a day (after turning it off the previous night), so it's no hardship to spend the couple of minutes it takes to boot on some other part of my morning routine.
My Android phone may be faster to boot than Windows, though I typically leave it on all the time since it doesn't use enough power to bother with turning it off at night. When I do restart it though, the process seems "slow". I think the reason is that I don't have cereal that needs eating or teeth that need brushing at those times.
So where's the hardship in waiting for Windows to boot? It ain't perfect, but boot time would be pretty far down on my own list of Windows complaints.
Likewise, ISIS views all infidels as being on morally dubious grounds. They've beheaded a few Westerners to serve as an example, presumably in an effort to improve the morality of both the specific Westerners in question (who, admittedly did nothing immoral whatsoever after losing their heads), as well as infidels as a whole.
However, I can't say that my own morality has improved much as a result of those beheadings - either in terms of my own personal values or the values of ISIS. Do you happen to be an infidel, like me? If so, maybe the ISIS beheadings of the few random Westerners that ISIS happened to get a hold of have had a better effect on your morality than they've had on mine. Those folks mostly were aid workers, but maybe they would have become Death Star roofers in the future if given half a chance.
Anyway, I sometimes wonder who died and left ISIS in charge of morality. Likewise for Edward Snowden. Don't we all have some form of morality that someone else would regard as dubious?
(BTW, maybe we should amend Godwin's Law to include ISIS.;-)
Coincidentally, I ran across an interesting Wikipedia article on self-deception the other day. It's always been interesting to me to ponder to what extent characters such as the ones you name are acting morally within "morality" as they define it, or if they're purely wielding power for its own sake. I suspect that it's a little of both in nearly every case. For example, I just saw part of an old interview with the late founder of Singapore, who more-or-less said that he was "trying to do the best for his people" along the lines expressed higher above.
The ISIS caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is a more recent example. I suspect that he at least partly genuinely believes that all the terrible things that ISIS does are "moral" and "right". Of course, he probably also enjoys the power and takes smug satisfaction every time he watches one of the resulting propaganda videos of some act that the vast majority of other human beings on the planet would instinctively see as immoral.
All that is distinct from pure psychopathy, which does not involve any consideration of morality because the true psychopath's mind doesn't work that way.
By "agent", perhaps you're thinking of the CIA. The NSA doesn't have agents, only analysts and various other white-collar workers. Their charter is to gather and analyze information for other branches of government (such as the CIA), not to act on it themselves.
That said, as I understand the news, the death was actually of one of the attackers. In any event, this gives me an opportunity to climb on my soapbox about something that's been bothering me a lot lately.
[begin soapbox]
Why do we celebrate the deaths of "innocents" so frequently lately? An NSA employee could be a manager, an analyst, a security guard, a janitor, or many other types of employee. Do each and every one of those human beings deserve to die because of actions you disagree with that were taken by the organization as a whole?
Coincidentally, I read today about some grisly testimony from the Boston Marathon bombing of innocents who lost their lives or were seriously wounded. This mentality of "any person who belongs to a group I don't like deserves to die" may seem appealing at first, but it becomes less so when you realize that you probably also fit into some group that someone else disagree with.
Or, to paraphrase John Kennedy, "Ich bin ein infidel".
As someone who dabbles in genealogy, one approach I've used for creating hard-to-crack yet easy-to-remember passphrases is to base them on one or more of my ancestors who have unusual, antiquated names. (Any genealogist will memorize those without even trying.) Of course, to make these passphrases harder to crack, you can throw in numbers such as their birth year, capitalize certain letters from a small memorized list, add your favorite symbol, etc.
I don't have any way to prove that this really works, but those odd old names seem unlikely to appear in any corpus of common passwords.
[head slap!] Now, it's beginning to all make sense...
When I visited The World of Coke a couple of years ago, they would show me the vault that contains the Secret Formuler but not the Secret Formuler itself. Seems like a simple idear: I think these BRG jokers could learn a thing or two from the Coke folks...
The Apple Newton failed too, from its experience and lessons learned it became the iPhone, and iPad.
I think the primary lesson learned from the Apple Newton was that Steve Jobs should replace John Sculley. If so, I guess your assessment of its relation to the iPhone and iPad is correct.
My phone system at home is provided by my cable company, which uses VoIP (I assume) to provide phone service over the same cable that my Internet traffic flows through. In this common scenario, are the network and phone somehow logically isolated from each other even though they use the same physical medium?
Well, it's because the purpose of the courts is to try to make yourself whole. Except in the case of a class action, where it's practically impossible.
FWIW, ever since I received that airline coupon, I have thought it would be nice if there was a law that stated that the lawyers and plaintiffs must receive compensation in the same form: if the lawyers get cash, the plaintiffs should get cash, and if the plaintiffs get coupons, the lawyers should get coupons.
If I had received just one dollar and the lawyers had received thousands of dollars, or, if I had received one coupon and the lawyers had received thousands of coupons, I wouldn't have felt cheated.
In my story above, the fact that I received a worthless coupon as "compensation" seemed to indicate that I was never actually part of the equation. The legal notice I received indicated that I could file my own claim (which I knew anyway), but as you suggest, it wasn't economical to do so. Nor did I feel at all damaged when I originally bought the airline ticket - until I received the worthless coupon and found out that the lawyers were getting all the money.
In cases like this, I would much prefer that all the worthless "compensation" be pooled together and given to charity or whatever - which would actually do somebody some good - rather than the current sham system that continues to operate for the benefit of everyone except the plaintiffs.
I've always regarded these class action lawsuits as a bit like gold prospecting: whichever lawyer first discovers the hidden nugget of some damages ostensibly due to class of people gets to dig the nugget out of the legal landscape and run off with it. I guess the legal theory would be that the lawyers deserve the golden nugget in return for for all the good they're doing society with these lawsuits. Likewise, plaintiffs are no more important than any other tailings in a gold mine.
Interesting points. I hadn't thought about possible whistleblower protection and/or its inapplicability to Snowden's case.
Another escape valve the system offers for "faireness" in such cases is a Presidential pardon, but that seems very unlikely. The US government as a whole sees Snowden's acts as quite damaging to national security, even if others see them as beneficial overall.
Class action suits are not designed to provide compensation to the current class.
OK, IANAL, so help me out here. If that's the case, why do plaintiffs get anything at all? Why not just give all the compensation to the lawyers and let those naive plaintiffs go make themselves whole? Why in the heck should the legal system care about people who were damaged in the first place?
Actually, to me, it looks much more like a situation of the foxes being in charge of the hen house. That would neatly explain why the hens never always receive chicken feed as compensation. (My apologies if you happen to be a fox by trade.)
Why can't germany do its own intelligence? Why outsource intelligence to america?
I guess they're not that smart. (Sorry, couldn't resist.)
Actually, it's common for allies to share intelligence, which works to everyone's benefit. They probably all do it selectively: nobody shares everything they've got. See the Pollard case for an example.
By "fair trial" do you mean to be tried in accordance with the law? Don't put me on the jury, because it seems clear to me that he did break the law by divulging classified information - and lots of it. In fact, he wouldn't be the popular hero he is if he hadn't broken the law. (Nobody becomes a popular hero by working secretly behind the scenes at NSA to reform the system from within.) So, I think even a fair trial would convict him. (Then again, that's why you shouldn't put me on the jury.) We could then expect his supporters to claim that the trial was unfair.
However, note that I'm referring only to the legal issue here. Whether or not what Snowden did was "right", "good", "moral", etc. is a different question that I know that many people here feel strongly about. But that's a separate issue.
Regardless, you can't simultaneously lionize him for having the guts to break the law in order to do what he and others see as the right thing, then expect him not to be convicted for breaking the law because "the full power of the US government would make any fair trial impossible."
I think the lawyers are always the winners in these class action lawsuits. Years ago, I received a notice that I was the beneficiary of a class action lawsuit revolving around an airline ticket I had once purchased. It seemed like a gift to me because I didn't even know that I had been "damaged." So, the lawyers who brought the suit seemed to be doing me a favor.
As part of the settlement, I was to receive a coupon for a discount on a future ticket from the same airline. The coupon didn't have much face value, maybe $20. Even worse, there were a lot of restrictions on it. So, it was basically worthless.
The lawyers got paid in cash. I assume the lawyers and the defendant always structure these things to minimize the real cost to the defendant in return for maximizing the payout to the lawyers. And of course, compensating the "damaged" plaintiff doesn't really enter into it.
Slashdot Mirror
whores makes lots of money
Bah! What street do you walk, Sister? It's the pimps that make all the money - as any good whore or pimp knows. Clearly, you're not either...
(sorry, couldn't resist :-)
A person of marginal morality
I resemble that remark.
Shortly after I posted that, I remembered that Richard Stallman wants us to have nothing running on our computer but his "free software" - even its BIOS should be "free." Just like that famous Trojan horse of yore, every last bit of it is "free"...
Now there you go again with that "enemy" thinking. I just hope that one day you and Santa Claus can reconcile so that you can finally enjoy that nice wooden horse he left for you under the tree.
But now you've got me wondering...what is Richard Stallman really up to with all this "free software" business...? He tells us that It doesn't cost anything and that it somehow protects our freedom. Just wait until his army of loyal minions jump out of that horse...
I'll admit, that's reason for them to do something desperate. Having competition again does not imply Microsoft has become trustworthy.
Actually, I think that's exactly what it implies. Let's take the premise that MS, like most corporations, does whatever it sees to be in its best interest. I believe that they're smart enough at this point to see that becoming trustworthy (at least as much as any other corporation) is in their best business interest.
It's axiomatic that corporations need to evolve in order to survive in the long term. Although it's possible that MS would stick to their former "evil" behavior at any cost, in order to do evil-for-the-sake-of-evil, like a Disney cartoon villain, I just don't think they're that evil - or that stupid. Especially when their founder now seems to be doing his best to use his massive fortune to improve the world.
Then again, maybe that's all just part of his twisted, evil, plot. (Don't tell the Disney folks - they'll turn it into a movie.)
It's a darn shame that MS still is in control of these things. Wouldn't it be much better if someone would create a full-featured, free of charge, and open source computing system? First things first: we need license. Then, of course, we'll need a compiler. Next, let's use that to build an OS: to make that job a little easier, let's imitate some existing commercial OS. Even so, the kernel's gonna be really hard, though - I hope we can find somebody smart enough to make one that actually works - we can outsource that to some smart college kid from Finland, if necessary. After that, let's create a desktop (or two). And of course, we'll need a state-of-the-art browser (or two). Next, we'll come up with an office suite.
With all that, we won't care about what MS does at all! And if MS does happen to come with something good, we can just imitate that - like we did the OS and most everything else we "created".
Sadly, though, that's all a bit utopian. I doubt it will ever actually happen.
I hear you. And I've been hearing people just like you for over a decade. "But now things are different." "Microsoft have changed."
I understand, but help me out here: at what point can we declare that the war is over, and the good guys have won? Here are some possible turning points:
- The US government succeeds in anti-trust action against MS. Certain other world governments take action of their own.
- Several strong competitors emerge who dominate in related areas of phones, tablets, cloud, search, social media, etc. Which leads us to:
- The market changes where the dominance in desktop OS is no longer the dominant factor in computing
- New leadership takes the reins at MS
- MS begins to open-source their software, not because they suddenly received a vision from the Prophet Richard Stallman, but because they recognize that the old model of "embrace and extend" simply doesn't work anymore.
If that's not enough, what is?
at one point
There's your answer right there. Maybe things have changed. If you see this as a war (e.g. "ammunition"), you're absolutely right: why give aid and comfort to the enemy? But if you see .net as having some sort of technological benefit, and you see the war as having been fought and lost by the enemy who has capitulated by releasing .net as open source (I know, I know, with strings attached...) then there's no longer any need to keep fighting the war.
In that vein, I see no need to boycott clothing produced in Viet Nam. That war was over long ago. If the clothing has benefits and can be used under acceptable terms, then why not? Alternatively, if you find the terms unacceptable, don't buy the clothing. But the war of the past doesn't much enter into it at this point. Enjoy the benefits of peace. (That said, I know that's easier said than done for those who still suffer from PTSD. ;-)
The number one complaint I hear from those forced to use Windows is that it takes forever to boot.
As one who uses Windows voluntarily, it's hard for me to relate to this. I typically boot it once a day (after turning it off the previous night), so it's no hardship to spend the couple of minutes it takes to boot on some other part of my morning routine.
My Android phone may be faster to boot than Windows, though I typically leave it on all the time since it doesn't use enough power to bother with turning it off at night. When I do restart it though, the process seems "slow". I think the reason is that I don't have cereal that needs eating or teeth that need brushing at those times.
So where's the hardship in waiting for Windows to boot? It ain't perfect, but boot time would be pretty far down on my own list of Windows complaints.
Likewise, ISIS views all infidels as being on morally dubious grounds. They've beheaded a few Westerners to serve as an example, presumably in an effort to improve the morality of both the specific Westerners in question (who, admittedly did nothing immoral whatsoever after losing their heads), as well as infidels as a whole.
However, I can't say that my own morality has improved much as a result of those beheadings - either in terms of my own personal values or the values of ISIS. Do you happen to be an infidel, like me? If so, maybe the ISIS beheadings of the few random Westerners that ISIS happened to get a hold of have had a better effect on your morality than they've had on mine. Those folks mostly were aid workers, but maybe they would have become Death Star roofers in the future if given half a chance.
Anyway, I sometimes wonder who died and left ISIS in charge of morality. Likewise for Edward Snowden. Don't we all have some form of morality that someone else would regard as dubious?
(BTW, maybe we should amend Godwin's Law to include ISIS. ;-)
Speaking of annoyingly random and obtuse, didn't James Joyce use Perl as the typesetting language for "Ulysses?"
Coincidentally, I ran across an interesting Wikipedia article on self-deception the other day. It's always been interesting to me to ponder to what extent characters such as the ones you name are acting morally within "morality" as they define it, or if they're purely wielding power for its own sake. I suspect that it's a little of both in nearly every case. For example, I just saw part of an old interview with the late founder of Singapore, who more-or-less said that he was "trying to do the best for his people" along the lines expressed higher above.
The ISIS caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is a more recent example. I suspect that he at least partly genuinely believes that all the terrible things that ISIS does are "moral" and "right". Of course, he probably also enjoys the power and takes smug satisfaction every time he watches one of the resulting propaganda videos of some act that the vast majority of other human beings on the planet would instinctively see as immoral.
All that is distinct from pure psychopathy, which does not involve any consideration of morality because the true psychopath's mind doesn't work that way.
By "agent", perhaps you're thinking of the CIA. The NSA doesn't have agents, only analysts and various other white-collar workers. Their charter is to gather and analyze information for other branches of government (such as the CIA), not to act on it themselves.
That said, as I understand the news, the death was actually of one of the attackers. In any event, this gives me an opportunity to climb on my soapbox about something that's been bothering me a lot lately.
[begin soapbox]
Why do we celebrate the deaths of "innocents" so frequently lately? An NSA employee could be a manager, an analyst, a security guard, a janitor, or many other types of employee. Do each and every one of those human beings deserve to die because of actions you disagree with that were taken by the organization as a whole?
Coincidentally, I read today about some grisly testimony from the Boston Marathon bombing of innocents who lost their lives or were seriously wounded. This mentality of "any person who belongs to a group I don't like deserves to die" may seem appealing at first, but it becomes less so when you realize that you probably also fit into some group that someone else disagree with.
Or, to paraphrase John Kennedy, "Ich bin ein infidel".
[end soapbox]
Good one! - like anybody actually pays attention to comments posted to online forums...
As someone who dabbles in genealogy, one approach I've used for creating hard-to-crack yet easy-to-remember passphrases is to base them on one or more of my ancestors who have unusual, antiquated names. (Any genealogist will memorize those without even trying.) Of course, to make these passphrases harder to crack, you can throw in numbers such as their birth year, capitalize certain letters from a small memorized list, add your favorite symbol, etc.
I don't have any way to prove that this really works, but those odd old names seem unlikely to appear in any corpus of common passwords.
[head slap!] Now, it's beginning to all make sense...
When I visited The World of Coke a couple of years ago, they would show me the vault that contains the Secret Formuler but not the Secret Formuler itself. Seems like a simple idear: I think these BRG jokers could learn a thing or two from the Coke folks...
The Apple Newton failed too, from its experience and lessons learned it became the iPhone, and iPad.
I think the primary lesson learned from the Apple Newton was that Steve Jobs should replace John Sculley. If so, I guess your assessment of its relation to the iPhone and iPad is correct.
My phone system at home is provided by my cable company, which uses VoIP (I assume) to provide phone service over the same cable that my Internet traffic flows through. In this common scenario, are the network and phone somehow logically isolated from each other even though they use the same physical medium?
Well, it's because the purpose of the courts is to try to make yourself whole. Except in the case of a class action, where it's practically impossible.
FWIW, ever since I received that airline coupon, I have thought it would be nice if there was a law that stated that the lawyers and plaintiffs must receive compensation in the same form: if the lawyers get cash, the plaintiffs should get cash, and if the plaintiffs get coupons, the lawyers should get coupons.
If I had received just one dollar and the lawyers had received thousands of dollars, or, if I had received one coupon and the lawyers had received thousands of coupons, I wouldn't have felt cheated.
In my story above, the fact that I received a worthless coupon as "compensation" seemed to indicate that I was never actually part of the equation. The legal notice I received indicated that I could file my own claim (which I knew anyway), but as you suggest, it wasn't economical to do so. Nor did I feel at all damaged when I originally bought the airline ticket - until I received the worthless coupon and found out that the lawyers were getting all the money.
In cases like this, I would much prefer that all the worthless "compensation" be pooled together and given to charity or whatever - which would actually do somebody some good - rather than the current sham system that continues to operate for the benefit of everyone except the plaintiffs.
I've always regarded these class action lawsuits as a bit like gold prospecting: whichever lawyer first discovers the hidden nugget of some damages ostensibly due to class of people gets to dig the nugget out of the legal landscape and run off with it. I guess the legal theory would be that the lawyers deserve the golden nugget in return for for all the good they're doing society with these lawsuits. Likewise, plaintiffs are no more important than any other tailings in a gold mine.
Interesting points. I hadn't thought about possible whistleblower protection and/or its inapplicability to Snowden's case.
Another escape valve the system offers for "faireness" in such cases is a Presidential pardon, but that seems very unlikely. The US government as a whole sees Snowden's acts as quite damaging to national security, even if others see them as beneficial overall.
Class action suits are not designed to provide compensation to the current class.
OK, IANAL, so help me out here. If that's the case, why do plaintiffs get anything at all? Why not just give all the compensation to the lawyers and let those naive plaintiffs go make themselves whole? Why in the heck should the legal system care about people who were damaged in the first place?
Actually, to me, it looks much more like a situation of the foxes being in charge of the hen house. That would neatly explain why the hens never always receive chicken feed as compensation. (My apologies if you happen to be a fox by trade.)
Why can't germany do its own intelligence? Why outsource intelligence to america?
I guess they're not that smart. (Sorry, couldn't resist.)
Actually, it's common for allies to share intelligence, which works to everyone's benefit. They probably all do it selectively: nobody shares everything they've got. See the Pollard case for an example.
By "fair trial" do you mean to be tried in accordance with the law? Don't put me on the jury, because it seems clear to me that he did break the law by divulging classified information - and lots of it. In fact, he wouldn't be the popular hero he is if he hadn't broken the law. (Nobody becomes a popular hero by working secretly behind the scenes at NSA to reform the system from within.) So, I think even a fair trial would convict him. (Then again, that's why you shouldn't put me on the jury.) We could then expect his supporters to claim that the trial was unfair.
However, note that I'm referring only to the legal issue here. Whether or not what Snowden did was "right", "good", "moral", etc. is a different question that I know that many people here feel strongly about. But that's a separate issue.
Regardless, you can't simultaneously lionize him for having the guts to break the law in order to do what he and others see as the right thing, then expect him not to be convicted for breaking the law because "the full power of the US government would make any fair trial impossible."
I think the lawyers are always the winners in these class action lawsuits. Years ago, I received a notice that I was the beneficiary of a class action lawsuit revolving around an airline ticket I had once purchased. It seemed like a gift to me because I didn't even know that I had been "damaged." So, the lawyers who brought the suit seemed to be doing me a favor.
As part of the settlement, I was to receive a coupon for a discount on a future ticket from the same airline. The coupon didn't have much face value, maybe $20. Even worse, there were a lot of restrictions on it. So, it was basically worthless.
The lawyers got paid in cash. I assume the lawyers and the defendant always structure these things to minimize the real cost to the defendant in return for maximizing the payout to the lawyers. And of course, compensating the "damaged" plaintiff doesn't really enter into it.