Re:Best examples of heresy I can think of
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What You Can't Say
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Tammy Bruce is a faux liberal who's on the payroll of the right wing as a lapdog to berate the left while claiming to be a
leftist and a feminist. How can she be the voice of how feminism has gone wrong if she's a feminist herself? Her book, which you recommend, refers to heroes of the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks as totalitarian. She's full of shit. Looking over your arguments, so are you.
Re:Best examples of heresy I can think of
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What You Can't Say
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· Score: 1
Now feminist dogma is that men are evil, that every "macho" characteristic are bad
This is a straw man argument. You're painting the whole of the femenist movement with a brush dipped in the fringe element. Why don't you go to N.O.W. and read what a mainstream femenist organization has to say and then debate that.
The problem with 'femenism' is not femenists, but assholes who try their best to make the word synonymous with 'pushy castrating bitch' instead of 'person who believes in equal rights for women'. And its done with posts like yours.
But since feminism reached its goals
What gives you the right to both determine what femenist goals are and then to say they've been reached? Are you a femenist? Are you a woman? Even if you consider yourself both, have you participated in the debate and struggle for achieving the rights you think women should have? I'm going to go out on a limb here and say the answer is no. Many women AND men believe there is a long way to go before women really have the same chance as men to succeed. To tell femenists to pack up and go home because the battle is over, well, just because you don't care, doesn't mean no one else does.
The big problem is, how did they evolve so much in 40 years? Something went down.
I don't think so. Humanity evolves slowly because we aren't designed from the get go to work collectively as a species. We don't have networked minds all working to the same end. And even so, if you look at the advances we've made in robotics and computing the last 40 years its astonishing. If you're starting off with an already higher technology base and everyone is working in unison, you're pace of advancement is going to be even more astonishing.
Jherico
Wrong. The goal was to build a cheap solution that is not dependent on a single provider (because that provider will screw you).
I got the impression that the goal was to find a way to replace specialized equipment that costs hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, with equipment that was much cheaper.
The whole 'the provider will screw you' argument is dubious. Windows and Mac OS X boxen are commodities, so its not as if Apple or MS will be able to apply pressure to some community using store bought machines to give them more money.
My point isn't that linux should not have been used. It was most likely the best choice and had I been a part of the project I would have supported Linux over any other OS. It can be argued that it wasn't the only possible choice for reducing the cost of such systems by an order of magnitude.
This project has built a solution in which all parts are interchangeable and available through many sources. You can build a Debian/Intel system and switch to SuSE/AMD next time or vice versa.
In practice its never that simple. First off, the only company making this software right now is Vanu, so its probably going to sell the system as a turnkey solution, so while Vanu isn't stuck with any one provider, the customers may be. Second, this is specifically targeted at rural or underdeveloped areas, places where technical expertise in Linux (or indeed any OS) isn't likely to be as common as in areas that already have cell phone coverage.
If it will make you feel better, you know, "Hooray for linux!", but don't kid yourself into thinking that linux is the perfect solution for every problem, or that joe farming community in Bumfuck, WI needs to use linux because it will defeat communism and create utopia. overenthusiastic linux zealotry has probably done as much to hurt linux as MS could ever hope to do.
I don't disagree that this is an advantage of Linux, but its still not relevant to the article. Driver development for a windows box can still be done without the windows source, and though the tools for writing drivers on Windows aren't free, they're still a tiny fraction of the cost of developing drivers for custom or highly specialized hardware, as would be used in a cell phone tower. This is not a case of Linux vs Windows, this is a case of PC vs custom hardware.
Cell phone calls aren't real time either. If you stand next to someone and talk to them on a cell phone there's almost always a very perceptible delay. But by human perceptive standards, its not noticeable unless you have the contrast of no delay to look at.
Linux just keeps demonstrating how it's more equal than anything else.
This story shows nothing of the sort. Its not about how linux is the 'end all, be all' operating system for every kind of hardware. Its more about how a cheap, general purpose piece of hardware (the ubiquity of which having virtually nothing to do with linux) can serve the function of a larger set of very expensive, specialized hardware.
If the group had instead ported linux to that 'closet full of communications equipment'm your point might be valid, but sadly a) a lot of that equipment is may already running linux and b) that doesn't make the equipment any cheaper.
I believe in Linux as much as anyone, but I don't doubt they could have done the same thing with a windows box, or an OS X box. Linux is the great equalizer in the software arena, but cell phone towers are as much of a hardware problem as software, and PC's (regardless of OS) are the great equalizer in that arena.
Virtually nothing that's fed into a microsoft compiler ever is. They have some of the worst compliance I've ever seen.
it won't work in Microsoft Visual Studio.NET 2003
Disappointing. I've seen consistent performance improvements in code generated by VC.Net 2003 over VC6 in my tests. Its probably not a big deal when the code is mostly limited by the graphics card, but for the physics engine and such, I bet they'd do a lot better with an updated compiler.
I wasn't trying to suggest he was denied his place in history next to Van Gogh, just that he had at one point other ambitions than conquering europe and wiping out the jews.
Yes, slashdot posters have a tendency to behave like a bunch of idiots that are easily parasited by stupid memes, myself included. And yes, they are a self serving bunch who will tend to root for whoever is least evil at the time, even if its was someone they reviled a week ago.
I still don't think that qualifies as full blown doublethink, just opportunism and possibly hipocracy.
Godwin's law applies to comparisons with Nazis/Hitler. I didn't compare anyone with Hitler. Just illustrating a point.
I fail to see how you can invalidate someone elses interpretation
A big chunk of 1984 is devoted to explaining the concepts of doublethink and other ingsoc concepts to the reader (via the protagonist), both from the point of view of the part and from the supposed point of view of the 'resistance'. I think from that doublethink and to a lesser extent, newspeak, are clearly defined concepts. Someone else could interpret doublethink to mean 'thinking two different things', but they'd be wrong, or at least, incomplete. Doublethink IS thinking two mutually contradictory things. If you want to argue another interpretation, support it with evidence. Don't just make the claim 'there are only interpretations', because ultimately that can be applied to any argument.
Don't be obtuse. Good and Evil are not absolute attributes. A person or organization can have both qualities depending on what they're trying to do. Hitler creates paintings in Vienna in the 1930s. Good. Hitler tries to exterminate the jews in the 1940s. Evil.
Its very difficult to try to pin down a group and say 'Everything they do or have ever done is evil'. There's always going to be a counter argument because of something they did that was at least benign.
And the comparison you're trying to draw is to doublethink, NOT newspeak. Orwellian doublethink on the other hand is something entirely different. It is the act of holding two mutually exclusive ideas in your head at the same time, or to discard facts if they impede a required belief. Like believing that freedom and slavery are the same thing.
Newspeak is just a kind of communication, like 'Oldthinkers unbellyfeel ingsoc'.
Your statement is turned around 100% from reality. You call Heinlein's output for "most of his career" "crap", and then stunningly declare "I haven't read much of his older stuff, but there is a good reason for that". No, there isn't. Ask 99% of SF fans (and by that, I mean all but 5 guys), and they will tell you that it is Heinlein's later output that is crap.
Well I have read virtually all of Heinleins work, and I think a lot of it is crap. His science fiction elements were fine for the most part, as far as I'm concerned. Its more his politics that I cannot stand as I grow older and presumably (hopefully?) wiser.
I do have to agree with the original poster though that when you put Heinlein next to say Alastair Reynolds, or Greg Egan, his science fiction elements pale considerably, all of it.
Wow, I just realized I sound exactly like one of those guys who can't stop talking about how he doesn't watch TV and brings it up as much as he can. My apologies.
Jherico
P.S. I hate SCO and Microsoft SOOOOO much. There. Now I sound like everyone else again
I will admit, though, that Enterprise isn't really science fiction. Some of the other Star Trek series/movies were, but Enterprise is a completely lost cause.
Oh please. Every series of Star Trek has had the occasional snippet of a new idea in it, but by and large, every show has had the guts to ask the bold question 'What if we had faster than light travel and teleporters, but society was exactly like it was today despite this?' In terms of exploring the idea of what the future will actually be like, Star Trek is, and always has been, utter bullshit.
Don't jump on me for being a Trek basher either. I'm a total trekkie, and I've seen every episode of every series, but its just entertainment. Well, granted, in the case of Voyager and Enterprise, its more like some sort of self-inflicted punishment I can't turn away from. A concept all the more disturbing when you consider that since the addition of 7of9, there has always been a dominatrix character on the show. You know, the utterly icy yet undeniably desirable babe with the bondage fetish clothes on?
When I was in high school I had an english teacher who told the class that science fiction served only one purpose. To warn us about the dangers of the future and technology. I didn't really believe her, but I didn't say anything. I didn't speak up and say "I read science fiction, and not so I can be warned about the future". I so wish I had. But it was high school and there are a million things I wish I could have done differently, knowing what I know now. But this one is a gem, because I already pretty much knew that she was speaking out of her ass.
The T&K website response reminds me of that teacher. It says that stories are tools to share and explore ideas, and then seems to go on to say essentially 'Science fiction serves only one purpose, to explore ideas related to all the emergent technology of the 20th century.' The T&K website is speaking out of its ass.
Granted, I'll agree with the statement that stories are tools to share and explore ideas. They can be used for other things. They're often used to inspire emotions, or to entertain, which is essentially the same thing.
T&K seems to take the position that the paltry foray's we've made into integrating new technology into our lives represent some sort of plateau, if not pinnacle of achievement. Its as if to say, we've got cell phones, we've got GPS, we can occasionally send a probe to mars and not have it crash, hoorah, the future is here.
Sorry, the future is NOT here. Never will be. We will always remain in the present, always, because if we start living in the future, we stop trying to get there. Sure, cell phones are nice, but wouldn't a subcutaneous direct neural link to all of human knowledge and all other humans be nifty? Or perhaps dangerous. I'm not sure. Lets explore and share ideas. What? You say the future is here and this is the way it will always be? Oh, perhaps I should write a book about navel gazing then.
So long as there are heroines, (and hormones), there will be romance novels. Not so with Science Fiction. No hormones there.
I don't know about the author of this statement, but I've definately experience a thrilling rush reading about engineering on a scale I never imagined before, like a gigantic spinning ring around a sun. Or how about one of the myriad ways of defeating death, poverty, and inequality I've read about, couched in science fiction terms.
The need for stories examining all the possibilities of science and technology isn't really there anymore either.
100 years ago no one could have imagined the way the world would change with the automobile. 50 years ago no one could have imagined the way the world would change with computers. We can't imagine how the world will be in 50 years, but we can try.
Sure, today's technology is growing mature, but science fiction is like a nebula. For those who don't know, nebulas are the results of a star exploding, and are the birthplace of new stars. The remnants of a pervious generation giving birth to the next. That works for ideas as well. Maybe some of today's technology was born in some science fiction writer's mind, and maybe the next generation which we can't even imagine yet is being born right now, slowly drawing itself together.
The idea of readers defecting to 'fantasy'. Trying to draw a line in the sand between science fiction and fantasy is like trying to nail jello to a tree. Most people call Star Trek science fiction, but its not. Not to me. Star Trek has always been about people, at least when its been good. If you watch the 5 series you'll see that they're each set in the era they were produced in. Watch the original and look at the way people act and interact and try to believe you're not in the 60's. Look at 'Enterprise' and try to believe you're not living in an America that is living in fear of terrorists. The fact is that technology molds society just as much as socie
He used Dell 'advertised' numbers probably because he didn't want to go out and pay $2000 for a dell just to test on. Therefore he only had access to Apple's numbers and Dell's numbers. Rather than present one as the truth he presented both, probably understanding that the astute reader would recognize that the truth most likely lie somewhere in the middle.
There is a big difference between Sun $14K offerings and Apply $2K offerings. The difference isn't predicated on speed, but on sustainability. Sun's expensive enterprise level machines have all sorts of hardware and software support to make sure they never EVER go down, at least not without warning.
You cannot just take an enterprise machine and replace it with a desktop, because eventually the desktop will fail, usually unexpectedly and usually at the worst possible time.
Desktop PC's are meant to go on DESKTOPS, where if they fail, the most you've lost is a few man-hours of work. Enterprise machines go in server rooms where if they fail you might have just lost a few million in sales, and pissed off your customer base.
The United States just a short time ago helped the Northern Alliance take down their enemy the Taliban half a world away in a land notorious for "chewing up" big-shot powers for hundreds of years.
The Taliban are largely made up of the people we armed and trained during the cold war to 'chew up' the russians. Essentially the whole thing back then was just a war by proxy. They weren't bad-assed fighters, they were just backed up by the CIA.
Of course after the cold war ended, they just became a bunch of fuckers with guns that we didn't really care about anymore, which pissed them off quite a bit and in turn led straight to September 11th.
With military backing from a major power (super or otherwise), and with world opinion against them after the attack, it was just a matter of flying in and stomping them flat.
I believe its hard to argue that the Kilrathi are anything other than a thinly veiled version of the Kzin. There were references in the game to Niven and his writing. There was a Niven system for christ's sake.
As for the 'movie'. I'm not sure anything with Matthew Lillard qualifies as being an actual 'movie'.
The Kzin have been integreated in Star Trek myhology exactly since Niven put them there when he wrote an episode of the Star Trek animated series that was based on his short story 'The Soft Weapon'.
What if the Ford had a dashbord made of jagged glass, a seatbelt made of tissue paper and a rollcage made of balsa wood. Every day before you drive, you need to install the 'Ford safety upgrade kit' which bit by bit makes it less dangerous to drive.
Now, most people don't get into accidents, so they don't bother with the kit, because its hard to install and requires that they have a detailed understanding of how the car works. They don't want to know how the car works, they just want to drive it to and from work, and to the mall on the weekend.
In this metaphor, Xuipiter is probably best described as an asshole on the freeway with a tank, who likes to go around causing accidents.
In this case, Ford would be culpable for making cars that are deathtraps, despite providing kits and patches. That is indeed why car companies have to do recalls, rather than sending kits out to owners.
Admittedly, when dealing with a car you're gambling with people's lives, so a recall can be forced. With software, you're only gambling with people's privacy and computer integrity. But if IE had the capacity to kill someone because of an security flaw, even one with a patch available, you can bet MS would be culpable.
Given a hard drive that has been 'formatted', not zeroed out, anyone can install the drive and with some special software look for old data. If you zero the data out, it takes special hardware to recover the old data. And 'several random patterns' isn't going to make a lick of difference in that regard. With sufficient hardware resources and funds, old data can be recovered from a hard drive that has undergone just about anything short of being melted down into slag.
Zeroing out data is an order of magnitude better than simple formatting. But several random passes isn't that much better than zeroing out.
Slashdot Mirror
Tammy Bruce is a faux liberal who's on the payroll of the right wing as a lapdog to berate the left while claiming to be a leftist and a feminist. How can she be the voice of how feminism has gone wrong if she's a feminist herself? Her book, which you recommend, refers to heroes of the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks as totalitarian. She's full of shit. Looking over your arguments, so are you.
This is a straw man argument. You're painting the whole of the femenist movement with a brush dipped in the fringe element. Why don't you go to N.O.W. and read what a mainstream femenist organization has to say and then debate that.
The problem with 'femenism' is not femenists, but assholes who try their best to make the word synonymous with 'pushy castrating bitch' instead of 'person who believes in equal rights for women'. And its done with posts like yours.
But since feminism reached its goals
What gives you the right to both determine what femenist goals are and then to say they've been reached? Are you a femenist? Are you a woman? Even if you consider yourself both, have you participated in the debate and struggle for achieving the rights you think women should have? I'm going to go out on a limb here and say the answer is no. Many women AND men believe there is a long way to go before women really have the same chance as men to succeed. To tell femenists to pack up and go home because the battle is over, well, just because you don't care, doesn't mean no one else does.
Most of the 'invented' slang in Clockwork Orange is russian.
I don't think so. Humanity evolves slowly because we aren't designed from the get go to work collectively as a species. We don't have networked minds all working to the same end. And even so, if you look at the advances we've made in robotics and computing the last 40 years its astonishing. If you're starting off with an already higher technology base and everyone is working in unison, you're pace of advancement is going to be even more astonishing. Jherico
I got the impression that the goal was to find a way to replace specialized equipment that costs hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, with equipment that was much cheaper.
The whole 'the provider will screw you' argument is dubious. Windows and Mac OS X boxen are commodities, so its not as if Apple or MS will be able to apply pressure to some community using store bought machines to give them more money.
My point isn't that linux should not have been used. It was most likely the best choice and had I been a part of the project I would have supported Linux over any other OS. It can be argued that it wasn't the only possible choice for reducing the cost of such systems by an order of magnitude.
This project has built a solution in which all parts are interchangeable and available through many sources. You can build a Debian/Intel system and switch to SuSE/AMD next time or vice versa.
In practice its never that simple. First off, the only company making this software right now is Vanu, so its probably going to sell the system as a turnkey solution, so while Vanu isn't stuck with any one provider, the customers may be. Second, this is specifically targeted at rural or underdeveloped areas, places where technical expertise in Linux (or indeed any OS) isn't likely to be as common as in areas that already have cell phone coverage.
If it will make you feel better, you know, "Hooray for linux!", but don't kid yourself into thinking that linux is the perfect solution for every problem, or that joe farming community in Bumfuck, WI needs to use linux because it will defeat communism and create utopia. overenthusiastic linux zealotry has probably done as much to hurt linux as MS could ever hope to do.
I don't disagree that this is an advantage of Linux, but its still not relevant to the article. Driver development for a windows box can still be done without the windows source, and though the tools for writing drivers on Windows aren't free, they're still a tiny fraction of the cost of developing drivers for custom or highly specialized hardware, as would be used in a cell phone tower. This is not a case of Linux vs Windows, this is a case of PC vs custom hardware.
Cell phone calls aren't real time either. If you stand next to someone and talk to them on a cell phone there's almost always a very perceptible delay. But by human perceptive standards, its not noticeable unless you have the contrast of no delay to look at.
This story shows nothing of the sort. Its not about how linux is the 'end all, be all' operating system for every kind of hardware. Its more about how a cheap, general purpose piece of hardware (the ubiquity of which having virtually nothing to do with linux) can serve the function of a larger set of very expensive, specialized hardware.
If the group had instead ported linux to that 'closet full of communications equipment'm your point might be valid, but sadly a) a lot of that equipment is may already running linux and b) that doesn't make the equipment any cheaper.
I believe in Linux as much as anyone, but I don't doubt they could have done the same thing with a windows box, or an OS X box. Linux is the great equalizer in the software arena, but cell phone towers are as much of a hardware problem as software, and PC's (regardless of OS) are the great equalizer in that arena.
Virtually nothing that's fed into a microsoft compiler ever is. They have some of the worst compliance I've ever seen.
it won't work in Microsoft Visual Studio.NET 2003
Disappointing. I've seen consistent performance improvements in code generated by VC.Net 2003 over VC6 in my tests. Its probably not a big deal when the code is mostly limited by the graphics card, but for the physics engine and such, I bet they'd do a lot better with an updated compiler.
What the FUCK?
I wasn't trying to suggest he was denied his place in history next to Van Gogh, just that he had at one point other ambitions than conquering europe and wiping out the jews.
Yes, slashdot posters have a tendency to behave like a bunch of idiots that are easily parasited by stupid memes, myself included. And yes, they are a self serving bunch who will tend to root for whoever is least evil at the time, even if its was someone they reviled a week ago. I still don't think that qualifies as full blown doublethink, just opportunism and possibly hipocracy. Godwin's law applies to comparisons with Nazis/Hitler. I didn't compare anyone with Hitler. Just illustrating a point.
A big chunk of 1984 is devoted to explaining the concepts of doublethink and other ingsoc concepts to the reader (via the protagonist), both from the point of view of the part and from the supposed point of view of the 'resistance'. I think from that doublethink and to a lesser extent, newspeak, are clearly defined concepts. Someone else could interpret doublethink to mean 'thinking two different things', but they'd be wrong, or at least, incomplete. Doublethink IS thinking two mutually contradictory things. If you want to argue another interpretation, support it with evidence. Don't just make the claim 'there are only interpretations', because ultimately that can be applied to any argument.
Way off topic now.
Don't be obtuse. Good and Evil are not absolute attributes. A person or organization can have both qualities depending on what they're trying to do. Hitler creates paintings in Vienna in the 1930s. Good. Hitler tries to exterminate the jews in the 1940s. Evil.
Its very difficult to try to pin down a group and say 'Everything they do or have ever done is evil'. There's always going to be a counter argument because of something they did that was at least benign.
And the comparison you're trying to draw is to doublethink, NOT newspeak. Orwellian doublethink on the other hand is something entirely different. It is the act of holding two mutually exclusive ideas in your head at the same time, or to discard facts if they impede a required belief. Like believing that freedom and slavery are the same thing.
Newspeak is just a kind of communication, like 'Oldthinkers unbellyfeel ingsoc'.
Well I have read virtually all of Heinleins work, and I think a lot of it is crap. His science fiction elements were fine for the most part, as far as I'm concerned. Its more his politics that I cannot stand as I grow older and presumably (hopefully?) wiser.
I do have to agree with the original poster though that when you put Heinlein next to say Alastair Reynolds, or Greg Egan, his science fiction elements pale considerably, all of it.
Jherico
P.S. I hate SCO and Microsoft SOOOOO much. There. Now I sound like everyone else again
Oh please. Every series of Star Trek has had the occasional snippet of a new idea in it, but by and large, every show has had the guts to ask the bold question 'What if we had faster than light travel and teleporters, but society was exactly like it was today despite this?' In terms of exploring the idea of what the future will actually be like, Star Trek is, and always has been, utter bullshit.
Don't jump on me for being a Trek basher either. I'm a total trekkie, and I've seen every episode of every series, but its just entertainment. Well, granted, in the case of Voyager and Enterprise, its more like some sort of self-inflicted punishment I can't turn away from. A concept all the more disturbing when you consider that since the addition of 7of9, there has always been a dominatrix character on the show. You know, the utterly icy yet undeniably desirable babe with the bondage fetish clothes on?
Don't even get me started on 'The blue room'.
The T&K website response reminds me of that teacher. It says that stories are tools to share and explore ideas, and then seems to go on to say essentially 'Science fiction serves only one purpose, to explore ideas related to all the emergent technology of the 20th century.' The T&K website is speaking out of its ass.
Granted, I'll agree with the statement that stories are tools to share and explore ideas. They can be used for other things. They're often used to inspire emotions, or to entertain, which is essentially the same thing.
T&K seems to take the position that the paltry foray's we've made into integrating new technology into our lives represent some sort of plateau, if not pinnacle of achievement. Its as if to say, we've got cell phones, we've got GPS, we can occasionally send a probe to mars and not have it crash, hoorah, the future is here.
Sorry, the future is NOT here. Never will be. We will always remain in the present, always, because if we start living in the future, we stop trying to get there. Sure, cell phones are nice, but wouldn't a subcutaneous direct neural link to all of human knowledge and all other humans be nifty? Or perhaps dangerous. I'm not sure. Lets explore and share ideas. What? You say the future is here and this is the way it will always be? Oh, perhaps I should write a book about navel gazing then.
I don't know about the author of this statement, but I've definately experience a thrilling rush reading about engineering on a scale I never imagined before, like a gigantic spinning ring around a sun. Or how about one of the myriad ways of defeating death, poverty, and inequality I've read about, couched in science fiction terms.
100 years ago no one could have imagined the way the world would change with the automobile. 50 years ago no one could have imagined the way the world would change with computers. We can't imagine how the world will be in 50 years, but we can try.
Sure, today's technology is growing mature, but science fiction is like a nebula. For those who don't know, nebulas are the results of a star exploding, and are the birthplace of new stars. The remnants of a pervious generation giving birth to the next. That works for ideas as well. Maybe some of today's technology was born in some science fiction writer's mind, and maybe the next generation which we can't even imagine yet is being born right now, slowly drawing itself together.
The idea of readers defecting to 'fantasy'. Trying to draw a line in the sand between science fiction and fantasy is like trying to nail jello to a tree. Most people call Star Trek science fiction, but its not. Not to me. Star Trek has always been about people, at least when its been good. If you watch the 5 series you'll see that they're each set in the era they were produced in. Watch the original and look at the way people act and interact and try to believe you're not in the 60's. Look at 'Enterprise' and try to believe you're not living in an America that is living in fear of terrorists. The fact is that technology molds society just as much as socie
He used Dell 'advertised' numbers probably because he didn't want to go out and pay $2000 for a dell just to test on. Therefore he only had access to Apple's numbers and Dell's numbers. Rather than present one as the truth he presented both, probably understanding that the astute reader would recognize that the truth most likely lie somewhere in the middle.
You cannot just take an enterprise machine and replace it with a desktop, because eventually the desktop will fail, usually unexpectedly and usually at the worst possible time.
Desktop PC's are meant to go on DESKTOPS, where if they fail, the most you've lost is a few man-hours of work. Enterprise machines go in server rooms where if they fail you might have just lost a few million in sales, and pissed off your customer base.
The Taliban are largely made up of the people we armed and trained during the cold war to 'chew up' the russians. Essentially the whole thing back then was just a war by proxy. They weren't bad-assed fighters, they were just backed up by the CIA.
Of course after the cold war ended, they just became a bunch of fuckers with guns that we didn't really care about anymore, which pissed them off quite a bit and in turn led straight to September 11th.
With military backing from a major power (super or otherwise), and with world opinion against them after the attack, it was just a matter of flying in and stomping them flat.
As for the 'movie'. I'm not sure anything with Matthew Lillard qualifies as being an actual 'movie'.
The Kzin have been integreated in Star Trek myhology exactly since Niven put them there when he wrote an episode of the Star Trek animated series that was based on his short story 'The Soft Weapon'.
Now, most people don't get into accidents, so they don't bother with the kit, because its hard to install and requires that they have a detailed understanding of how the car works. They don't want to know how the car works, they just want to drive it to and from work, and to the mall on the weekend.
In this metaphor, Xuipiter is probably best described as an asshole on the freeway with a tank, who likes to go around causing accidents.
In this case, Ford would be culpable for making cars that are deathtraps, despite providing kits and patches. That is indeed why car companies have to do recalls, rather than sending kits out to owners.
Admittedly, when dealing with a car you're gambling with people's lives, so a recall can be forced. With software, you're only gambling with people's privacy and computer integrity. But if IE had the capacity to kill someone because of an security flaw, even one with a patch available, you can bet MS would be culpable.
Zeroing out data is an order of magnitude better than simple formatting. But several random passes isn't that much better than zeroing out.