Why bother watching? Your vote doesn't count anyway. It's the "swing voters" who decide elections, the uninformed nitwits who don't even look at the policies of each candidate. They're the ones who re-elected Bush. They're the ones who are going to hand the Democrats a supermajority next year, even though the Democrats encouraged the high-risk loans that lead to the financial crisis, ignored the public's wishes for offshore drilling, and voted for the government bailout that the public didn't want. Democrats are on the left side of the political spectrum that dictates an investment of trust and power in the government, which means we're going to get more of the same one-party legislation, big government, big spending, and little oversight that we've already had during the Bush Administration.
Government works best when there is a spread of power between the branches, forcing them to clash with each other constantly until the public overwhelmingly demands something that they're forced to agree on. This keeps them all in check--they don't do things for their party; they only do them for us. However, as I said, swing voters are nitwits, so the current financial news means they blame whichever party currently has the presidency. Thus, Obama and the Congress Democrats have shot up in the polls despite encouraging the very loans that caused the crisis and adjourning the Congress before the offshore drilling problem could be addressed. Hell, top Democrats ran Fannie Mae, and Barney Frank even blocked Bush's and McCain's warnings about Fannie Mae back in 2003! And I'm sure you all saw the news a while back that Obama was the biggest recipient of donations from those companies.
We are screwed. So do what I'm doing. Stay home and don't vote. Why contribute to another supermajority administration that's going to mess everything up? If there was a chance of a Democrat for president but a Republican house, or a Republican for president with a Democrat house, I'd show up. But we're not going to get that. We're getting a supermajority so big that the minority party won't even have enough seats to launch investigations when the inevitable administration scandals come up (as they always do for every President). Swing voters are going to reward the same people who have screwed us over by giving them a one-party government--a party that believes in bigger government and bigger spending. This is the same shit we hated about Bush. We're going to get an EVEN BIGGER government. So screw 'em. Stay home and have nothing to do with it.
I'm very disillusioned with the election and with the press in particular. I say let the media obsess over the debates--all they care about is who "gaffes" so they can have some goofy clip to run the rest of the week for higher ratings, and they're actually disappointed when a debate comes out as a draw. Let each party try to steal the election--for instance, like ACORN is doing by registering thousands of dead people. Let the uninformed nitwits show up on election day and contribute to our country's downfall. Reasonable people don't have a choice.
Just my political rant for the day. Interested in your thoughts, counterarguments, and so on.
Being UNIX certified does not imply that it is secure.
I didn't say it did. I was responding to your question about whether Darwin resembled the same UNIX that currently powers most of the Internet by pointing out that it is an official UNIX.
Apple's implementation of UNIX differs greatly from an internal standpoint from anything running mission critical UNIX, so the comparison is ridiculous.
If this was true, they wouldn't have received UNIX certification, and UNIX software wouldn't run on it.
The most important aspect of the security model is shared by both OS X and Windows nowadays, in that processes run under the least privileged account possible to perform the given task. Sudo and UAC are synonymous for required privilege escalation. Regardless, it's the implementation that matters, not some arbitrary certification.
"Nowadays" for Windows means "since Vista was released," and most people aren't using Vista for various reasons. OS X has used this sort of reduced privilege execution since its release, while Windows is just now getting around to it. This is part of the reason why Windows has gotten 0wned so many times this decade and OS X hasn't.
Microsoft had a terrible security track record. Who is refuting this? No one. But if you look at the last two years, Apple's track record is the worse of the two. And right back at you, by the way, saying that "Just because OS X is certified UNIX, none of the exploits over the years never happened."
Again, ignoring all the data previous to 2006 is selection bias. You can't pick and choose your data and then make a claim. That's not even getting into your odd claim that Microsoft has been oh-so-secure the last two years, despite all the patches that point to the contrary.
Yeah, right. And I'm sure all the other people downloading the file chunks from you while you're downloading it from them are treating it as a "demo" too. All these demo-ers!
Yeah, I've heard this fallacy before. Are you going to tell me that the Unix that "runs" the internet in anyway resembles the Unix that runs OS X? OS X is a hybrid kernel to begin with, so that's strike one. Strike two, it's Unix with an entire desktop stack on top of it, which is where the majority of your exploits are introduced.
It's not a "fallacy" just because you can't refute it. Yes, the UNIX that runs Internet servers around the world resembles Darwin, which is a UNIX-certified operating system using a FreeBSD/Mach core. Second, that UNIX security foundation permeates to the rest of the system because the desktop layer relies on much of those services. In addition, OS X has always been multi-user from the start, unlike Win32 which, last I checked, was still vulnerable to a hilarious window messaging exploit until just a couple of years ago when Vista came out. Vista is NT with the old 9x Win32 desktop system grafted onto it. Until Vista came out, Windows was still setting people up with admin accounts by default.
Microsoft had a terrible track record on security. So, using that reasoning, can I use pre-OS X (or, pre-OS X 10.2 for that matter) examples to justify my point? In fairness, I look at MS track record post XP SP2.
If you want to selectively bias your data, go ahead. This doesn't even have anything to do with the topic of the argument, which was that lack of popularity is why OS X hasn't had Microsoft's miserable security track record. If you want to look at today, how about comparing how many exploits Microsoft patches every Patch Tuesday compared to what Apple puts out in Software Update?
Desktop software and Server software are entirely different beasts, and you're comparing them apples-to-apples. For one, a server is usually administered by a professional, which is certainly not the case with Desktops. Secondly, the number of desktop computers running Windows far outnumbers the amount of servers running any operating system. And lastly: http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/today/top.avg.html IIS is number two overall, behind freeBSD. Must not be that insecure.
I see, so when I refute your argument that being more popular increases your number of exploits, suddenly there's another caveat. First you only wanted to look at data post-SP2, and now you want to make distinctions between desktops and servers. And then you cite one single IIS server, ignoring the countless IIS servers that have gotten 0wned (including the military's website, which ended up switching to OS X!).
The facts remain that: 1.) OS X is built on Darwin, a UNIX operating system. That means UNIX security ideas permeate through the system upward. 2.) Popularity doesn't automatically mean your software gets exploited more, because Apache has a better security track record than IIS. 3.) When these issues are brought up, you invent caveats to avoid refuting them. Somehow, one single IIS server means all the exploits over the years never happened.
UNIX runs the Internet, so I suspect OS X has the more scrutinized foundation. Simply blaming popularity for Windows' myriad of problems over the years compared to OS X ignores that Win32 began as a single-user subsystem and that Microsoft ignored the Internet until 1998.
Another counterargument is that Apache has higher market share than IIS, yet IIS has had more security flaws over the years. By your reasoning, Apache should be the one with more flaws.
The point of the GPL is to make source code available to end users, as per Stallman's definition of software freedom. Without copyright, GPL code authors would have no way of enforcing source code availability when others make changes to it. Microsoft could sell a closed-source version of Windows Server running on the Linux kernel, and there's nothing Linus could do to stop them. The viral, protective nature of the GPL would be gone.
The GPL is a form of copyright licensing that attempts to enforce certain usage restrictions/requirements. I don't understand why you think the GPL would be unnecessary if we didn't have copyright. The purpose of the GPL is to ensure that changes made to something are returned to everybody, and without copyright, there would be no reason to follow the license and distribute any changes made. The GPL doesn't exist as a reaction to copyright; it requires copyright to have any power.
According to Slashdot and its readership, my experimental submission of another person's Spider-man 2 review to Slashdot a few years ago shouldn't have been removed, because I was merely distributing creativity and sharing a cultural expression that had been released into the fuzzy wild. I didn't even take credit for it. I just reposted what was there to see what Slashdot would do in light of their constant pro-piracy articles. The text was removed.
Also, there's clearly no such thing as "stolen GPL code." Attempts to enforce a GPL license are extreme attempts to squash free information that deserves to spread to the rest of the culture. There's no such thing as a GPL because there shouldn't be copyright in the first place. Right?
Here's hoping for an interesting conversation here and not some reactive modbombing...
If you end all copyright, you won't have the GPL anymore, since it relies on it. There is such a thing as intellectual property, and this is value assigned to mind creations, like music, artwork, and more.
You're essentially saying that, say, if I spent three years writing an epic novel, I have no right to be compensated for it because you can easily copy a text file of it. Sorry, but that's silly. Your rant really stems from a desire to pirate everything for free without having to pay for it.
The notion that without monopolies, creative people would not create has long been disproved. No monopolies are necessary to foster creativity. The best, most creative people will create regardless. [snip] Because copyright has been so greatly abused, because it's been proven to be based on flawed logic...
You cite no proof, and you throw out an assumptions about artists. There are essentially no facts whatsoever in your entire post--just fuzzy dorm room ideals and unproven claims.
For some reason, people like you purposely ignore the reality of making a living off your work. A painter sells his paintings so he can make money and continue painting, supplying himself with more canvas and oils, traveling to locations to paint as well as to display his artwortk in galleries, and so forth. It's basic common sense. You want to deprive him of that money so that it's harder for him to paint. He might even have to work a regular day job that interferes with his painting time. In fact, if he seeks money for his paintings, you might criticize him for not being a "true artist." It's all bullshit, frankly. How would John Carmack have made a living in your fantasy world?
There's just this odd double-standard where people like you imply that artists who try to make a living are greedy or selfish, when you're the one arguing for a lack of copyright so you can pirate their work without paying them for it. We'll see how my post gets moderated--anti-piracy views tend to get knocked down on this site, for whatever reasons...
If the expansion content was patched into the original game, people wouldn't buy the expansions because they would just be overpriced single-player mods. I'm really interested in where you get your 99% certainty from. The fact Starcraft is a cash-cow "eSport" is exactly why Blizzard would want to make people pay three times for the sequel.
The problem is that each will probably be full price (Burning Crusade, despite being an expansion pack, was $50). Each installment is also going to add units and buildings, so essentially, you're paying three times to get the original Starcraft II and all its campaigns, units, and buildings, which you'll need to compete in multiplayer. It's a bit ridiculous. They're professional developers; they could have packed the campaigns into one product. They're purposely stretching it out.
The problem is, to keep up with everyone else in multiplayer, you'll now have to buy three whole Starcraft games for one multiplayer experience. You're paying three times. It just...sucks. You say we'll be getting two more worthy games, but we're actually getting minor expansion packs that finish the original game.
What I don't understand is, if each game is going to include the full multiplayer component (the primary draw for Starcraft), that means the last two titles are just single player missions that won't include new units or buildings. Doesn't that just make them mission packs that shouldn't cost more than $15-20?
I just don't understand why they would part out the least wanted aspect of the game as if it's the most important. Multiplayer is the primary feature people are waiting for.
While the economic crisis is big news, it's not like we haven't had economic blowouts in the past. This isn't the Great Depression. You're buying into the hype of the media--the hype that says everything happening at this moment is a critical disaster from which you will never recover. A year later, that same media has forgotten it all and is reporting on the latest exploits of Britney Spears. So calm down a little.
Your sound card works perfectly. Your sound card works perfectly. Your sound card works perfectly. Enjoying yourself? Your sound card works perfectly. Your sound card works perfectly. Your sound card works perfectly. It doesn't get any better than this!
I wonder why it wasn't like OS X in the first place. On OS X, I only see the prompt if I try to install software, install a system update, or click a lock in System Preferences to enable editing of certain preferences. Once in a while I also see it if I'm doing something with a folder I don't have access rights to by default, which is rare.
I just had to respond to your post. All I did was point out that piracy is about getting stuff for free by ripping people off, and suddenly I'm apparently "parroting" the industry. There is no subversion of prior perception here, whatever that's referring to. You're making sure artists don't get paid by taking their work for free. That's the situation.
Then you conclude with a generic, stereotypical anti-capitalist rant claiming we've somehow become more profit-driven than we ever have, and that we're somehow destroying our culture. You even claim we're selling our souls. Naturally, you give no examples, and you ignore that the computer you're typing on, the ISP, you're using, the software you're using, and more were all produced by the profit-driven capitalism you so despise.
What you're really trying to do is complain about greed, which is ironic because you're trying to justify piracy in doing so. Piracy is about selfish greed. You find a way to get somebody's work for free instead of paying them for it. Like other pirates who weave elaborate mythologies to justify it, you've latched onto the anti-capitalist, soul-selling rant, as if not paying people is somehow going to save our culture. Please, get out of the dorm room and experience the real world for a while.
I think it's you who have a need to redefine language to make it fit your warped world view. How on earth can you say that consuming someones artwork is not taking part in culture? Why does the method of delivery or how much you paid for it affect the cultural influence the work has on you?
What "warped worldview" would that be?
I didn't say experiencing art isn't taking part in culture. I said piracy isn't taking part in culture. You were trying to justify piracy by redefining it to mean taking part in fuzzy "cultural expressions," as in, pirated materials.
And just to clarify something, computer programs does not normally qualify as art and have little cultural impact. And for the record, I've not only worked in a software company, I've owned one. I don't see art and tools as being comparable, but my company had no problem competing with "pirated" versions of our software.
Now you're happy to define for everyone what constitutes art? Ballsy.
Where is your source for this? Every time I've ever logged onto Second Life (I tend to avoid it because it's ridiculously slow and choppy for such simple graphics), the furry population is everywhere. You just can't get away from it. Even in the MST3K theater I visited (/cry).
Slashdot Mirror
Why bother watching? Your vote doesn't count anyway. It's the "swing voters" who decide elections, the uninformed nitwits who don't even look at the policies of each candidate. They're the ones who re-elected Bush. They're the ones who are going to hand the Democrats a supermajority next year, even though the Democrats encouraged the high-risk loans that lead to the financial crisis, ignored the public's wishes for offshore drilling, and voted for the government bailout that the public didn't want. Democrats are on the left side of the political spectrum that dictates an investment of trust and power in the government, which means we're going to get more of the same one-party legislation, big government, big spending, and little oversight that we've already had during the Bush Administration.
Government works best when there is a spread of power between the branches, forcing them to clash with each other constantly until the public overwhelmingly demands something that they're forced to agree on. This keeps them all in check--they don't do things for their party; they only do them for us. However, as I said, swing voters are nitwits, so the current financial news means they blame whichever party currently has the presidency. Thus, Obama and the Congress Democrats have shot up in the polls despite encouraging the very loans that caused the crisis and adjourning the Congress before the offshore drilling problem could be addressed. Hell, top Democrats ran Fannie Mae, and Barney Frank even blocked Bush's and McCain's warnings about Fannie Mae back in 2003! And I'm sure you all saw the news a while back that Obama was the biggest recipient of donations from those companies.
We are screwed. So do what I'm doing. Stay home and don't vote. Why contribute to another supermajority administration that's going to mess everything up? If there was a chance of a Democrat for president but a Republican house, or a Republican for president with a Democrat house, I'd show up. But we're not going to get that. We're getting a supermajority so big that the minority party won't even have enough seats to launch investigations when the inevitable administration scandals come up (as they always do for every President). Swing voters are going to reward the same people who have screwed us over by giving them a one-party government--a party that believes in bigger government and bigger spending. This is the same shit we hated about Bush. We're going to get an EVEN BIGGER government. So screw 'em. Stay home and have nothing to do with it.
I'm very disillusioned with the election and with the press in particular. I say let the media obsess over the debates--all they care about is who "gaffes" so they can have some goofy clip to run the rest of the week for higher ratings, and they're actually disappointed when a debate comes out as a draw. Let each party try to steal the election--for instance, like ACORN is doing by registering thousands of dead people. Let the uninformed nitwits show up on election day and contribute to our country's downfall. Reasonable people don't have a choice.
Just my political rant for the day. Interested in your thoughts, counterarguments, and so on.
George Carlin - I Don't Vote
I didn't say it did. I was responding to your question about whether Darwin resembled the same UNIX that currently powers most of the Internet by pointing out that it is an official UNIX.
If this was true, they wouldn't have received UNIX certification, and UNIX software wouldn't run on it.
"Nowadays" for Windows means "since Vista was released," and most people aren't using Vista for various reasons. OS X has used this sort of reduced privilege execution since its release, while Windows is just now getting around to it. This is part of the reason why Windows has gotten 0wned so many times this decade and OS X hasn't.
Again, ignoring all the data previous to 2006 is selection bias. You can't pick and choose your data and then make a claim. That's not even getting into your odd claim that Microsoft has been oh-so-secure the last two years, despite all the patches that point to the contrary.
Yeah, right. And I'm sure all the other people downloading the file chunks from you while you're downloading it from them are treating it as a "demo" too. All these demo-ers!
So you can pirate it?
It's not a "fallacy" just because you can't refute it. Yes, the UNIX that runs Internet servers around the world resembles Darwin, which is a UNIX-certified operating system using a FreeBSD/Mach core. Second, that UNIX security foundation permeates to the rest of the system because the desktop layer relies on much of those services. In addition, OS X has always been multi-user from the start, unlike Win32 which, last I checked, was still vulnerable to a hilarious window messaging exploit until just a couple of years ago when Vista came out. Vista is NT with the old 9x Win32 desktop system grafted onto it. Until Vista came out, Windows was still setting people up with admin accounts by default.
If you want to selectively bias your data, go ahead. This doesn't even have anything to do with the topic of the argument, which was that lack of popularity is why OS X hasn't had Microsoft's miserable security track record. If you want to look at today, how about comparing how many exploits Microsoft patches every Patch Tuesday compared to what Apple puts out in Software Update?
I see, so when I refute your argument that being more popular increases your number of exploits, suddenly there's another caveat. First you only wanted to look at data post-SP2, and now you want to make distinctions between desktops and servers. And then you cite one single IIS server, ignoring the countless IIS servers that have gotten 0wned (including the military's website, which ended up switching to OS X!).
The facts remain that:
1.) OS X is built on Darwin, a UNIX operating system. That means UNIX security ideas permeate through the system upward.
2.) Popularity doesn't automatically mean your software gets exploited more, because Apache has a better security track record than IIS.
3.) When these issues are brought up, you invent caveats to avoid refuting them. Somehow, one single IIS server means all the exploits over the years never happened.
UNIX runs the Internet, so I suspect OS X has the more scrutinized foundation. Simply blaming popularity for Windows' myriad of problems over the years compared to OS X ignores that Win32 began as a single-user subsystem and that Microsoft ignored the Internet until 1998.
Another counterargument is that Apache has higher market share than IIS, yet IIS has had more security flaws over the years. By your reasoning, Apache should be the one with more flaws.
Do we need a comment from every person who doesn't think a story should be on the front page when all they had to do was scroll past and not read it?
The point of the GPL is to make source code available to end users, as per Stallman's definition of software freedom. Without copyright, GPL code authors would have no way of enforcing source code availability when others make changes to it. Microsoft could sell a closed-source version of Windows Server running on the Linux kernel, and there's nothing Linus could do to stop them. The viral, protective nature of the GPL would be gone.
The GPL is a form of copyright licensing that attempts to enforce certain usage restrictions/requirements. I don't understand why you think the GPL would be unnecessary if we didn't have copyright. The purpose of the GPL is to ensure that changes made to something are returned to everybody, and without copyright, there would be no reason to follow the license and distribute any changes made. The GPL doesn't exist as a reaction to copyright; it requires copyright to have any power.
According to Slashdot and its readership, my experimental submission of another person's Spider-man 2 review to Slashdot a few years ago shouldn't have been removed, because I was merely distributing creativity and sharing a cultural expression that had been released into the fuzzy wild. I didn't even take credit for it. I just reposted what was there to see what Slashdot would do in light of their constant pro-piracy articles. The text was removed.
Also, there's clearly no such thing as "stolen GPL code." Attempts to enforce a GPL license are extreme attempts to squash free information that deserves to spread to the rest of the culture. There's no such thing as a GPL because there shouldn't be copyright in the first place. Right?
Here's hoping for an interesting conversation here and not some reactive modbombing...
If you end all copyright, you won't have the GPL anymore, since it relies on it. There is such a thing as intellectual property, and this is value assigned to mind creations, like music, artwork, and more.
You're essentially saying that, say, if I spent three years writing an epic novel, I have no right to be compensated for it because you can easily copy a text file of it. Sorry, but that's silly. Your rant really stems from a desire to pirate everything for free without having to pay for it.
You cite no proof, and you throw out an assumptions about artists. There are essentially no facts whatsoever in your entire post--just fuzzy dorm room ideals and unproven claims.
For some reason, people like you purposely ignore the reality of making a living off your work. A painter sells his paintings so he can make money and continue painting, supplying himself with more canvas and oils, traveling to locations to paint as well as to display his artwortk in galleries, and so forth. It's basic common sense. You want to deprive him of that money so that it's harder for him to paint. He might even have to work a regular day job that interferes with his painting time. In fact, if he seeks money for his paintings, you might criticize him for not being a "true artist." It's all bullshit, frankly. How would John Carmack have made a living in your fantasy world?
There's just this odd double-standard where people like you imply that artists who try to make a living are greedy or selfish, when you're the one arguing for a lack of copyright so you can pirate their work without paying them for it. We'll see how my post gets moderated--anti-piracy views tend to get knocked down on this site, for whatever reasons...
Idea stage? They're telling people that this is what they're going to do.
If the expansion content was patched into the original game, people wouldn't buy the expansions because they would just be overpriced single-player mods. I'm really interested in where you get your 99% certainty from. The fact Starcraft is a cash-cow "eSport" is exactly why Blizzard would want to make people pay three times for the sequel.
It was so worthless that you clicked Read More, clicked Reply, and typed an entire message to LET US KNOW how worthless it is! You go!
The problem is that each will probably be full price (Burning Crusade, despite being an expansion pack, was $50). Each installment is also going to add units and buildings, so essentially, you're paying three times to get the original Starcraft II and all its campaigns, units, and buildings, which you'll need to compete in multiplayer. It's a bit ridiculous. They're professional developers; they could have packed the campaigns into one product. They're purposely stretching it out.
The problem is, to keep up with everyone else in multiplayer, you'll now have to buy three whole Starcraft games for one multiplayer experience. You're paying three times. It just...sucks. You say we'll be getting two more worthy games, but we're actually getting minor expansion packs that finish the original game.
What I don't understand is, if each game is going to include the full multiplayer component (the primary draw for Starcraft), that means the last two titles are just single player missions that won't include new units or buildings. Doesn't that just make them mission packs that shouldn't cost more than $15-20?
I just don't understand why they would part out the least wanted aspect of the game as if it's the most important. Multiplayer is the primary feature people are waiting for.
While the economic crisis is big news, it's not like we haven't had economic blowouts in the past. This isn't the Great Depression. You're buying into the hype of the media--the hype that says everything happening at this moment is a critical disaster from which you will never recover. A year later, that same media has forgotten it all and is reporting on the latest exploits of Britney Spears. So calm down a little.
Your sound card works perfectly.
Your sound card works perfectly.
Your sound card works perfectly.
Enjoying yourself?
Your sound card works perfectly.
Your sound card works perfectly.
Your sound card works perfectly.
It doesn't get any better than this!
I wonder why it wasn't like OS X in the first place. On OS X, I only see the prompt if I try to install software, install a system update, or click a lock in System Preferences to enable editing of certain preferences. Once in a while I also see it if I'm doing something with a folder I don't have access rights to by default, which is rare.
You were trying to justify piracy as part of some fuzzy cultural experience.
The ends don't justify the means. What you were saying, essentially, is that piracy is okay because you like to listen to music. It's quite a leap.
Art is totally subjective.
I'm overwhelmed by the sheer number of data sources you cited when making your claims! Help, I'm suffocating under the weight!
I just had to respond to your post. All I did was point out that piracy is about getting stuff for free by ripping people off, and suddenly I'm apparently "parroting" the industry. There is no subversion of prior perception here, whatever that's referring to. You're making sure artists don't get paid by taking their work for free. That's the situation.
Then you conclude with a generic, stereotypical anti-capitalist rant claiming we've somehow become more profit-driven than we ever have, and that we're somehow destroying our culture. You even claim we're selling our souls. Naturally, you give no examples, and you ignore that the computer you're typing on, the ISP, you're using, the software you're using, and more were all produced by the profit-driven capitalism you so despise.
What you're really trying to do is complain about greed, which is ironic because you're trying to justify piracy in doing so. Piracy is about selfish greed. You find a way to get somebody's work for free instead of paying them for it. Like other pirates who weave elaborate mythologies to justify it, you've latched onto the anti-capitalist, soul-selling rant, as if not paying people is somehow going to save our culture. Please, get out of the dorm room and experience the real world for a while.
What "warped worldview" would that be?
I didn't say experiencing art isn't taking part in culture. I said piracy isn't taking part in culture. You were trying to justify piracy by redefining it to mean taking part in fuzzy "cultural expressions," as in, pirated materials.
Now you're happy to define for everyone what constitutes art? Ballsy.
Where is your source for this? Every time I've ever logged onto Second Life (I tend to avoid it because it's ridiculously slow and choppy for such simple graphics), the furry population is everywhere. You just can't get away from it. Even in the MST3K theater I visited (/cry).