There is a large and interesting attack target. Usually when they do find exploits for a LAMP stack, it is within PHP or Apache, and not the Linux kernel. So both parties are correct in that Linux does have vulnerabilities as well, but even when people are targeting Linux, it proves to be more secure on the whole than Windows.
Most "exploits" aren't "exploiting" OS (or even software) problems.
A big part of the problem is that Unix and Unix variants have been designed for security from the beginning. They've been designed to sandbox apps, and not run everything with full rights.
This is not even vaguely correct. UNIX has a superuser, FFS, the principle of "running everything with full rights" is built into its foundation.
Windows was designed for users to have admin rights from day 1.
False. Windows NT was designed as an ACL-driven multiuser OS from day 1. From a design perspective, it's more multiuser and security-driven than UNIX.
The implementation of UAC in Vista, was 99% just wrapping a UI around OS functionality that has always existed.
Actually, they replaced it with free storage on.mac. You know... "cloud storage" before the world knew what cloud storage was.
Firstly,.mac wasn't around until years after the first iMac.
Secondly, "the internet" hardly counted as a reasonable replacement in 1998, when most people were still using dial-up modems, if they had internet connectivity at all.
There is no such thing as completely independent, non-partisan, non-biased media.
I would take a centrally-funded media outlet that attempts to be non-partisan and non-biased, long before I would take the partisan, biased crap that's found throughout the US.
At least with the former you have a chance at getting something worthwhile. With the latter you just end up shifting further and further to the extremes.
When the iMac came out without a floppy disk dive in 1998, exactly the same sentiment was expressed. PC makers gasped, then heckled Apple... But before long they too followed suite and started gradually phasing out floppy disk drives.
The problem with Apple dropping the floppy drive when they did, is that they didn't *replace* it with anything. If the iMac had shipped with a CD-RW drive, there probably wouldn't have been much grumbling at all.
The same is not really true today, with widespread distribution via download, ISO images, etc.
Though I am amazed, given Apple's eagerness to abandon the floppy, that they didn't ditch the optical drive in their laptops years ago to replace them with more batteries.
Actually if you read all the restrictions, you'd realize that the "rich" couldn't buy any politician they couldn't vote for.
Hardly a significant restriction. The rich can trivially relocate to whichever locality they want to influence.
Additionally if you place restrictions on Citizens donating to campaigns, I would consider that a violation of first amendment rights.
Money is not speech. Your premise is broken.
If the rich want to exercise their first amendment rights, then they can stand on a street corner, write a letter, or volunteer to *personally* help with a campaign, just like normal people do.
You are restricting Liberty because you don't like rich people. Interesting value system you have.
I'm not restricting liberty, I'm restricting the avenues for money to flow into politics because I don't think one person should have more influence over the political process than another, simply because they're lucky enough to be rich.
You seem to think the rich should explicitly be allowed more influence in politics than the poor. Interesting value system *you* have.
Only individuals can donate to campaigns, and monetarily only up to a limit of two weeks worth of whatever the current full time minimum wage is.
But I would also REVOKE all personal donation limits to campaigns, provided that they are from Citizens eligible to vote for those representatives.
So you wouldn't really change anything at all. The ridiculously wealthy would still be able to channel vast sums of money towards their preferred ideals, they'd just have to do it as an individual rather than as part of a group.
No it isnt. You say money in politics is bribery and I point out that bribery is not a logical way to do things. Unless you are using the word in a way not found in a dictionary.
Bribery is the giving of money to influence behaviour.
You do not need to change someone's opinion dramatically to be bribing them.
You do not need to choose between bribing only one person out of two (or more) options.
And I say there is no practical way to do the one without also doing the other.
This is like arguing if cars were speed-limited to 100km/h, cars that could only do 120 would be slowed down more than cars that could do 150.
Capping "speech" to a maximum reasonably attainable by practically everyone, doesn't prevent those at the bottom from making that level of contribution, but it does prevent those at the top from making a larger one.
Your hatred of the evil rich is so strong you would silence the weak in the false belief it would also silence the strong... when we BOTH know it wouldn't. Who is the fool?
You haven't identified any way in which my suggestion would "silence the weak".
What? You are against forced unionization or something?
Absolutely.
Ok, lets fix that. Get to the root of the problem instead of treating symptoms.
The root of the problem is codifying inequality in law by equating money with speech, and thus explicitly giving the rich greater power of "speech".
Scare quotes aside, sounds like you are 'this' close to admitting money == speech and are willing to limit it for your own 'higher' goals such that everyone still has a right to speak... so long as nobody can actually hear them or it actually does any good.
No, I'm not. I reject the very concept that money and speech are interchangeable. My point was that if someone were to try and make that argument, it could only be considered vaguely reasonable if the maximum amount of "speech" was as disconnected from their wealth as possible.
Unless of course they simply use their wealth to BUY A TV NETWORK. OR A NEWSPAPER? I can't do that, certain other people can. Rich people.
This is another, separate problem that needs to be addressed. It's also irrelevant to the topic.
"What part of Congress shall make NO law... is beyond your English comprehension skills?"
What part of "money is not speech" is beyond your comprehension skills ?
If you want to exercise your right to free speech, then write a letter or get up on your soapbox on a street corner. Don't try and pretend, however, that writing a cheque for a few hundred grand is in any way similar to doing that.
Perhaps I read the wrong thing in it? Or perhaps you would like to revise and extend your remarks?
Taxation is not seizure. A 10% land tax (to use an example) doesn't mean teh evilz gubbermint takes 10% of your land away every year.
This is a popular notion but it completely mistakes cause and effect. While some outright bribery does occur, the vast majority of political giving is exactly the opposite. Think it through. Which is more likely to be successful, bribing someone who disagrees with your position to change their vote (and piss off their previous supporters) or dumping money into electing someone who already agrees with your philosophy?
This is a false dichotomy wrapped up in a non-sequitur.
Oh right. That will empower the little people. NOT. The two groups I cites, the NRA and AARP, are the two most feared outfits on the hill. You might call it undue influence but their millions of members call it the power of numbers. Granny donating $50 to a congressional campaign doesn't mean jack, AARP on the other hand commands everyone's attention.
The point is not to "empower the little people". It's to DISempower the "big people", who currently have a vastly disproportional influence.
Firstly by requiring individuals to "speak" for themselves, and not have their "speech" co-opted by the leaders of a group who may not actually represent them.
Secondly by preventing a small number of rich individuals misrepresenting their "speech" as the "speech" of a large group.
Thirdly by restricting the maximum amount of "speech" anyone can have, and making that level within the grasp of basically everyone.
As it should be. Funding ongoing expenses of the government by seizing assets [...]
This is a straw man. No-one said anything about seizing assets.
Money is not speech. No amount of repetition will change this.
Money is bribery, and given the nearly incomprehensible wealth gap between the fraction of 1% at the top and everyone else - to say nothing of corporate wealth - trying to equate money and speech clearly and obviously places far, far too much influence in too few people.
About the only fair and reasonable way one could go with the "money == speech" thing is if only individuals (not corporations, unions, or other collectives) could donate, and donations were annually limited to no more than whatever 2 weeks of full-time labour at the current minimum wage.
And anyway, in case you haven't been watching the news, there is a bit of a recession on right now. Tax receipts are down because we already depend on the rich for the vast majority of the taxes and they ain't doing too well at the moment.
Tax receipts are down because taxation is focused too much on income rather than wealth. This is particularly relevant to taxing the rich, since they tend to have relatively (to their overall wealth) low incomes
You guys are always pissing and moaning about income inequality. I understand it is a blessing. Why? Because nobody is actually falling behind (once you correct for social factors) the rich getting richer is just a side effect of wealth creation, and that wealth doesn't tend to stay concentrated beyond the second generation of the creator and even before it spreads out from inheritence it tends to enrich everyone around.
Utter bullshit. Wealth has been coming steadily more concentrated for decades. For all but the richest few percent, real incomes have barely moved in nearly half a century, while productivity and overall wealth creation has gone through the roof.
Point of information: Libertarianism actually says that corporations should be fairly compensating the citizens affected for their polluting activities.
The problem is it only allows them to seek that compensation after the fact, via the legal system.
I think the reason people don't eat horses is because they don't taste very good; the meat is tough. It's probably something like deer; deer meat isn't easy to cook because it's so low-fat, so most people screw it up and it ends of having the consistency of shoe leather.
I ate plenty of horse (and Ostrich) living in Switzerland (it's reasonably common throughout the continent). From memory (it's been a few years) it's similar to the less tender cuts of beef (since horses are pretty lean animals).
[1]: Infringement on a non commercial nature. Of course, copying someone's CD to sell it is a completely different ballgame and is actual theft (as it removed legitimate revenue from the IP holder).
No, it's not theft and it hasn't implicitly "removed legitimate revenue from the IP holder".
It's still Copyright Infringement, it's just a more serious example of it.
Firstly, Windows NT (ie: contemporary Windows) was designed and built from day 1 as a multiuser OS.
Secondly, also from day 1, it has had a far more comprehensive and capable security infrastructure than traditional UNIX.
Thirdly, UNIX was originally built as a single-user OS. Multiuser capability was added (soon) afterwards. One rather visible aspect of this is the presence of a superuser (root).
You are wrong about pretty much everything you've written.
I doubt that. Ultimately icons on screens are worthless until you get physical stuff done. Airplanes don't fly without fuel, and without working parts. That requires guys with wrenches.
Aircraft are assembled on robotic production lines, why can't they be maintained on them ?
The actual airplane needs to be loaded with stuff like luggage and mail and unloaded every single time.
It's a struggle to see why a few robotic arms and some conveyor belts can't do this.
The runway needs to be cleaned and that can't be done by a computer. Etc...
If a robot can navigate my living room and vacuum my floor, it can certainly clean a runway.
I should have gone with the term "First world country".
That still doesn't change my point. Switzerland and America are both first world countries, but the environmental "cost" of the Swiss lifestyle is dramatically lower.
It's not irrelevant when your trying to negotiate a treaty[...]
I'm not talking about negotiating a treaty, I'm talking about actual emissions volumes (and by extension, their effects).
I cannot for the life of me think of a reason why "per-capita" numbers are senseless [...]
Because the amount that matters *to the climate* is the absolute amount. The results will be the same regardless of whether those emissions are coming from seven billion humans or seven hundred thousand.
It is below U.S. American consumption rate, but any "western" society's consumption rate would already need > 1 Earth (currently 1.3 Earth, IIRC) if projected to the whole earth population.
How is "western" being defined here ? Because an average measurement that includes America will be significantly distorted upwards.
Including past emissions is as senseless as the per-capita numbers people like to throw around.
What matters is present emissions, and how much they can be reduced. You can't unscramble and egg, and you can't magically stop historical emissions from having occurred.
Australia could disappear off the face of the Earth tomorrow, and the impact on global warming would be basically zero. That's why our Carbon Tax on its own means diddly squat from the perspective of reducing emissions and global warming.
(Note: I am a supporter of the Carbon Tax, I merely don't hold any illusions about its relevance to actually reducing emissions.)
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What security capabilities are lacking in Windows ?
Most "exploits" aren't "exploiting" OS (or even software) problems.
This is not even vaguely correct. UNIX has a superuser, FFS, the principle of "running everything with full rights" is built into its foundation.
False. Windows NT was designed as an ACL-driven multiuser OS from day 1. From a design perspective, it's more multiuser and security-driven than UNIX.
The implementation of UAC in Vista, was 99% just wrapping a UI around OS functionality that has always existed.
AV is the roving patrol that's there to pick up the intruders who have made it over the minefield, through the fence and past the security doors.
Firstly, .mac wasn't around until years after the first iMac.
Secondly, "the internet" hardly counted as a reasonable replacement in 1998, when most people were still using dial-up modems, if they had internet connectivity at all.
I would take a centrally-funded media outlet that attempts to be non-partisan and non-biased, long before I would take the partisan, biased crap that's found throughout the US.
At least with the former you have a chance at getting something worthwhile. With the latter you just end up shifting further and further to the extremes.
The problem with Apple dropping the floppy drive when they did, is that they didn't *replace* it with anything. If the iMac had shipped with a CD-RW drive, there probably wouldn't have been much grumbling at all.
The same is not really true today, with widespread distribution via download, ISO images, etc.
Though I am amazed, given Apple's eagerness to abandon the floppy, that they didn't ditch the optical drive in their laptops years ago to replace them with more batteries.
Hardly a significant restriction. The rich can trivially relocate to whichever locality they want to influence.
Money is not speech. Your premise is broken.
If the rich want to exercise their first amendment rights, then they can stand on a street corner, write a letter, or volunteer to *personally* help with a campaign, just like normal people do.
I'm not restricting liberty, I'm restricting the avenues for money to flow into politics because I don't think one person should have more influence over the political process than another, simply because they're lucky enough to be rich.
You seem to think the rich should explicitly be allowed more influence in politics than the poor. Interesting value system *you* have.
Because it could have been done (much easier, since Microsoft's influence over the hardware vendors was far greater) twenty years ago and wasn't.
Because it's an additional layer of complexity and support for hardware manufacturers and vendors, for little to no benefit.
Because it would fall afoul of the same antitrust law that got them into trouble with per-PC licensing of DOS & Windows in the '80s and '90s.
I trust hardware vendors to not go out of their way actively preventing sales of their product, for little to no benefit.
A simpler version:
Only individuals can donate to campaigns, and monetarily only up to a limit of two weeks worth of whatever the current full time minimum wage is.
So you wouldn't really change anything at all. The ridiculously wealthy would still be able to channel vast sums of money towards their preferred ideals, they'd just have to do it as an individual rather than as part of a group.
Bribery is the giving of money to influence behaviour.
You do not need to change someone's opinion dramatically to be bribing them.
You do not need to choose between bribing only one person out of two (or more) options.
This is like arguing if cars were speed-limited to 100km/h, cars that could only do 120 would be slowed down more than cars that could do 150.
Capping "speech" to a maximum reasonably attainable by practically everyone, doesn't prevent those at the bottom from making that level of contribution, but it does prevent those at the top from making a larger one.
You haven't identified any way in which my suggestion would "silence the weak".
Absolutely.
The root of the problem is codifying inequality in law by equating money with speech, and thus explicitly giving the rich greater power of "speech".
No, I'm not. I reject the very concept that money and speech are interchangeable. My point was that if someone were to try and make that argument, it could only be considered vaguely reasonable if the maximum amount of "speech" was as disconnected from their wealth as possible.
This is another, separate problem that needs to be addressed. It's also irrelevant to the topic.
What part of "money is not speech" is beyond your comprehension skills ?
If you want to exercise your right to free speech, then write a letter or get up on your soapbox on a street corner. Don't try and pretend, however, that writing a cheque for a few hundred grand is in any way similar to doing that.
Taxation is not seizure. A 10% land tax (to use an example) doesn't mean teh evilz gubbermint takes 10% of your land away every year.
This is a false dichotomy wrapped up in a non-sequitur.
The point is not to "empower the little people". It's to DISempower the "big people", who currently have a vastly disproportional influence.
Firstly by requiring individuals to "speak" for themselves, and not have their "speech" co-opted by the leaders of a group who may not actually represent them.
Secondly by preventing a small number of rich individuals misrepresenting their "speech" as the "speech" of a large group.
Thirdly by restricting the maximum amount of "speech" anyone can have, and making that level within the grasp of basically everyone.
This is a straw man. No-one said anything about seizing assets.
Money is not speech. No amount of repetition will change this.
Money is bribery, and given the nearly incomprehensible wealth gap between the fraction of 1% at the top and everyone else - to say nothing of corporate wealth - trying to equate money and speech clearly and obviously places far, far too much influence in too few people.
About the only fair and reasonable way one could go with the "money == speech" thing is if only individuals (not corporations, unions, or other collectives) could donate, and donations were annually limited to no more than whatever 2 weeks of full-time labour at the current minimum wage.
Tax receipts are down because taxation is focused too much on income rather than wealth. This is particularly relevant to taxing the rich, since they tend to have relatively (to their overall wealth) low incomes
Utter bullshit. Wealth has been coming steadily more concentrated for decades. For all but the richest few percent, real incomes have barely moved in nearly half a century, while productivity and overall wealth creation has gone through the roof.
The problem is it only allows them to seek that compensation after the fact, via the legal system.
I ate plenty of horse (and Ostrich) living in Switzerland (it's reasonably common throughout the continent). From memory (it's been a few years) it's similar to the less tender cuts of beef (since horses are pretty lean animals).
No, it's not theft and it hasn't implicitly "removed legitimate revenue from the IP holder".
It's still Copyright Infringement, it's just a more serious example of it.
Thinking you were entitled to content for free suggests that you have justification in requiring other people to create content for you.
I'm not aware of anyone who thinks this, even the most extreme anti-Copyright advocate.
And it would still be wrong.
What content owners have, ostensibly, is a right to control the distribution of their content.
It is questionable, however, whether a) this right should exist, or b) that it should exist so expansively.
On the other hand, those don't tend to be the parts of the world where bottled water is a big seller.
Firstly, Windows NT (ie: contemporary Windows) was designed and built from day 1 as a multiuser OS.
Secondly, also from day 1, it has had a far more comprehensive and capable security infrastructure than traditional UNIX.
Thirdly, UNIX was originally built as a single-user OS. Multiuser capability was added (soon) afterwards. One rather visible aspect of this is the presence of a superuser (root).
You are wrong about pretty much everything you've written.
Aircraft are assembled on robotic production lines, why can't they be maintained on them ?
It's a struggle to see why a few robotic arms and some conveyor belts can't do this.
If a robot can navigate my living room and vacuum my floor, it can certainly clean a runway.
We've also been evolving along with that food for millenia.
That still doesn't change my point. Switzerland and America are both first world countries, but the environmental "cost" of the Swiss lifestyle is dramatically lower.
I'm not talking about negotiating a treaty, I'm talking about actual emissions volumes (and by extension, their effects).
Because the amount that matters *to the climate* is the absolute amount. The results will be the same regardless of whether those emissions are coming from seven billion humans or seven hundred thousand.
How is "western" being defined here ? Because an average measurement that includes America will be significantly distorted upwards.
Which is irrelevant.
Including past emissions is as senseless as the per-capita numbers people like to throw around.
What matters is present emissions, and how much they can be reduced. You can't unscramble and egg, and you can't magically stop historical emissions from having occurred.
Australia could disappear off the face of the Earth tomorrow, and the impact on global warming would be basically zero. That's why our Carbon Tax on its own means diddly squat from the perspective of reducing emissions and global warming.
(Note: I am a supporter of the Carbon Tax, I merely don't hold any illusions about its relevance to actually reducing emissions.)