Well now, some MS prole marked me down from a 1 to a 0 claiming my post was overrated. But hey, when your karma's just shy of 50 you can do the following and trounce the trolls:
Uh huh. And tell us why 98lite was capable of completely stripping out IE and leaving the rest of the OS functional (or as functional as Windows gets)? Or are you going to tell me that in Win2000 MS *suddenly built in a dependency on IE that wasn't needed*.
Gee, this makes them just as guilty of monopoly charges as, well, they were found in court. If it can be proved that you can remove IE from Win98, then the action of MS to make the entire OS of Win2000 depend on it was deliberate and for the sole purpose of extending a monopoly.
Amazing how you fail to make a logical connection here. By your own faulty rationale, we should then ban stairs, ladders, swimming pools, alcohol, and cars.
Good going, Jack - you win the door prize for "stupid premise - stupid conclusion".
BTW, more than 90% of the children murdered are done so by an adult, almost always from being beaten to death. So what are you going to do? Outlaw hands?
God forbid that our children should be exposed to fictional violence. We ban them from the movies, from computer and video games...but what about books? Books are incredibly violent and worse, the violence takes place in the unrestricted space of the imagination! Who knows what damage takes place when a child *imagines* violence spurred on by a violent story, without the limiting effects of graphics technology?
Yes, friends, it's time to start banning books. At the very least they should be labeled as to their violent content. God knows the parents don't have time to judge the content of a book, so letting strangers do it for them is perfectly sensible.
Anti-gun freaks unite! It's for the chiiiillldreeen, after all! If we prevent just one death then the law will have been worth it.
Okay, so last year, according to the FBI:
- more than 90% of all murders in the U.S. were committed with 'weapons of opportunity', including blunt objects and knives, even when a gun was available. So hey! Save the children! Outlaw knives and baseball bats! If we just save one life....
- this means that of the approximately 30,000 people who were murdered last year, about 3,000 were killed with guns. In contrast, 5,000 died in falls (mostly stairs, followed by ladders) and 12,000 drownded (mainly in pools or local rivers or lakes). So while you're rabidly making the world safer for children don't forget to ban: all stairs, ladders, stools, pools, rivers, lakes, and all eight oceans. After all, If we just save one life....
- ooooh, and let's not forget that a little less than 50,000 people were killed in car accidents. Ban cars!
- and finally, at least another 50,000 died due to alcohol or alcohol-related diseases. So let's ban alcohol too, it's for the chiiiillldren! Wait, where have I heard that before....
Uh huh. And tell us why 98lite was capable of completely stripping out IE and leaving the rest of the OS functional (or as functional as Windows gets)? Or are you going to tell me that in Win2000 MS *suddenly built in a dependency on IE that wasn't needed*.
Gee, this makes them just as guilty of monopoly charges as, well, they were found in court. If it can be proved that you can remove IE from Win98, then the action of MS to make the entire OS of Win2000 depend on it was deliberate and for the sole purpose of extending a monopoly.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech
As it's likely you're unfamiliar with it, this is part of the First Amendment. What about "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech" don't you understand?
Your right to email stops at my machines. I can choose to accept it, redirect it, or reject based upon any criteria I like. Could be I use a blacklist, could be I reject anyone with an aol.com address, could be your name is Fred and I don't like that name.
The point is, all of these reasons are valid because they're *my machines*. Only I get to say what goes and what doesn't on them. My users might get disgruntled and go someplace else but they don't have any say in how my machines are run - and neither do you. I might decide to respond to my users for fear of losing their patronage but I don't *have* to.
If the blacklists really do such a lousy job then the people using them will get annoyed, then pissed, then stop using them altogether. It's a great system for weeding out the incompetents and the fanatics, since in the end only incompetents and fanatics are left using the badly-managed list. Works for me.
If the blacklists are doing okay then people will continue to use them instead of migrating away. From what I've seen the 'big' blacklists have a growing clientele, not a shrinking one, which is somewhat credible testimony that most of the time they do an okay job.
You can complain that it isn't fair if you can't get your name off a list, but you don't have any rights (legal, moral, or otherwise) to petition for a redress of a non-existent grievance. They can keep you on their list on a whim, if they like, just like I block all aol.com addresses universally and have for years.
And if the database flags the company as a repeat offender the process is locked for them, requiring actual human intervention. Easy to write something like this.
It's clear the government was completely full of shit about the bomb-making materials and simply used them to concoct a reason to arrest this guy and hold him. Sitting here at my desk thinking about it for a moment I realized that in my house alone are enough "bomb-making" materials to blow an entire apartment building to hell, if constructed properly.
(If you have a solid background in basic chemistry, then you know just how easy it is to brew up something deadly.)
I suppose if I ever get arrested for saying something the government doesn't like they'll scream to the high heavens about all those nasty "terrorist tools" I had tucked away. You know: empty beer bottles that need to be recycled, bags of fertilizer for the back lawn and garden, various economy-sized jugs of cleaners bought in bulk, and so forth. With that much ammunition on the government's side I'll spend the rest of my days rotting in jail....
So nice to know that what few rights I have left don't matter for shit if Big Brother actually takes a dislike to me, in part because my fellow citizens will jump up and say "fuck the Constitution! Hang the terrorist son of a bitch!".
There is no clause in the First Amendment which prohibits speech advocating armed action against the government, nor was one ever intended to be inferred from it. This is probably because the guys who wrote the First Amendment advocated and actually took armed action against the government.
How about a big "ddduuuuuuh" for all those folks who think that speaking out for violent action against the government is a form of terrorism?
According to the First Amendment there is no exclusion of rights based upon speech that is "violent in nature", whatever that means.
The law surrounding the bomb-making speech is clearly unconstitutional, just like so many laws being passed these days. And hardly anyone gives a shit as long as they can cloak themselves in a false sense of security.
Liberty in the USA is fucked if this is how much people care for it, if it boils down to "only the liberties I agree with".
Exercise of monopoly powers is a *criminal* act, not one of civil liability. If you're really this clueless about the law I suggest you visit a local library and do a bit of reading.
I see. So if the government refuses to follow the law because it'd be too much of a hassle to comply then that's okay. But if *I* refuse to follow the law because it'd be too much of hassle then I go to jail?
The actual facts resulted in a criminal conviction of Microsoft. Popular opinion won't rule, a single judge will - the precise opposite of democratic mob justice. The opinions are meant only as a sample of public thought on the matter, with no requirement for statistical accuracy.
right-wing conservatives *and* far-left liberals. Both are loud, obnoxious, and should be committed to a mental health institution or deported to a small Pacific island.
The author of the article engages in FUD to refute the "many eyes" argument. He implies that the eyes aren't qualified, or that the qualified eyes aren't looking, even when such a claim has no empirical evidence to support it. His statement seems to be based on nothing more than the hot air blowing out of his ass.
Furthermore he then makes the contradictory claim that more discovered hacks = a greater security risk. The actual explanation is probably what he refuses to accept: that the "many eyes" caught more vulnerabilities and identified them for correction, whereas in a closed system with a limited number of people working on the problem most hacks are never discovered, much less revealed to the general public.
The article was a piece of propaganda, and not a very well written one at that.
Interesting to note that people somehow equate "more vulnerabilities found" with "less secure". The fact that these vulnerabilities are found, made public, and fixed shows that Linux has a better review system than Windows, not less security. What would happen, I wonder, if the Windows source were made public? Would the list include hundreds or even thousands of potential hacks?
Can't say I'm terribly concerned, given the quality of the first film. As for this next one - forget the theater, I'm going to rent it. And not for the story (har har!), but simply because I have a thing for Natalie Portman.
And I don't know where you get the idea that this requires extra laws. I think it requires that extra laws aren't passed.
And I agree. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Americans seem to think that giving up privacy in return for the illusion of safety is a good trade. Most keep carping over that tired line "if you have nothing to hide..." never bothering to rub a couple of brain cells together to see that privacy enables the poor and powerless.
And as to who gets to watch who... There are a lot more poor people and the rich will never seperate too far. They need maids and nannies and butlers, etc. The rich will of course have more ability to watch any individual poor person, but there will be a thousand poor people willing to watch and record the rich person.
You're still assuming that they'll let you watch them. You aren't invited into their homes, you don't get to go to their country clubs or private spas or vacation resorts. You're already excluded from their private activities and mounting a camera on your forehead will do nothing to change this. You still won't be in a position to watch them any more than you are right now.
And given the lack of public privacy, the rich will turn more and more to these 'gated' settings, further excluding you from their lives. At the same time the life of the average person will become far less anonymous, exposing this person to reprisals and censures that they otherwise wouldn't have to deal with.
As for employees...NDAs. If privacy for the commoner dies for good, the rich will get laws passed making the violation of an NDA a criminal matter punishable by long jail sentences. Mark my words on this: the rich and powerful will never let you spy on them. They will do whatever it takes to further exclude you and ruin any sort of wishful egalitarian ideal you might harbor.
The rich will be able to monitor the poor to a degree never before imagined, while the poor won't be able to do the same to the rich.
Brin never addresses this in Earth and doesn't even seem to think this is possible. Apparently he doesn't live in the same world that I do.
Neither future will be good, but the one that doesn't include selectively enforced laws to punish the poor even more than now.
And how are you going to impose this? Shut down private country clubs, private vacation retreats, private theaters, private restaurants? You can't force the rich to mingle with the poor, and because they can afford to separate themselves your laws won't matter a whit.
In the end a loss of privacy is a win for the rich and powerful and a loss for everyone else.
No, I'm just sick of ignoramuses like you clambering up the moral high ground to deride some bit of technology you don't like, then go on to tell other people how to live and how to think.
Piss off, already. If I want to clone my dog it isn't your business. It's mine, and mine alone. The sheer gall you have, thinking that you can intrude into my life with your proclamations, is nauseating.
Slashdot Mirror
Well now, some MS prole marked me down from a 1 to a 0 claiming my post was overrated. But hey, when your karma's just shy of 50 you can do the following and trounce the trolls:
Uh huh. And tell us why 98lite was capable of completely stripping out IE and leaving the rest of the OS functional (or as functional as Windows gets)? Or are you going to tell me that in Win2000 MS *suddenly built in a dependency on IE that wasn't needed*.
Gee, this makes them just as guilty of monopoly charges as, well, they were found in court. If it can be proved that you can remove IE from Win98, then the action of MS to make the entire OS of Win2000 depend on it was deliberate and for the sole purpose of extending a monopoly.
Max
Amazing how you fail to make a logical connection here. By your own faulty rationale, we should then ban stairs, ladders, swimming pools, alcohol, and cars.
Good going, Jack - you win the door prize for "stupid premise - stupid conclusion".
BTW, more than 90% of the children murdered are done so by an adult, almost always from being beaten to death. So what are you going to do? Outlaw hands?
Max
God forbid that our children should be exposed to fictional violence. We ban them from the movies, from computer and video games...but what about books? Books are incredibly violent and worse, the violence takes place in the unrestricted space of the imagination! Who knows what damage takes place when a child *imagines* violence spurred on by a violent story, without the limiting effects of graphics technology?
Yes, friends, it's time to start banning books. At the very least they should be labeled as to their violent content. God knows the parents don't have time to judge the content of a book, so letting strangers do it for them is perfectly sensible.
Max
Anti-gun freaks unite! It's for the chiiiillldreeen, after all! If we prevent just one death then the law will have been worth it.
Okay, so last year, according to the FBI:
- more than 90% of all murders in the U.S. were committed with 'weapons of opportunity', including blunt objects and knives, even when a gun was available. So hey! Save the children! Outlaw knives and baseball bats! If we just save one life....
- this means that of the approximately 30,000 people who were murdered last year, about 3,000 were killed with guns. In contrast, 5,000 died in falls (mostly stairs, followed by ladders) and 12,000 drownded (mainly in pools or local rivers or lakes). So while you're rabidly making the world safer for children don't forget to ban: all stairs, ladders, stools, pools, rivers, lakes, and all eight oceans. After all, If we just save one life....
- ooooh, and let's not forget that a little less than 50,000 people were killed in car accidents. Ban cars!
- and finally, at least another 50,000 died due to alcohol or alcohol-related diseases. So let's ban alcohol too, it's for the chiiiillldren! Wait, where have I heard that before....
Max
Uh huh. And tell us why 98lite was capable of completely stripping out IE and leaving the rest of the OS functional (or as functional as Windows gets)? Or are you going to tell me that in Win2000 MS *suddenly built in a dependency on IE that wasn't needed*.
Gee, this makes them just as guilty of monopoly charges as, well, they were found in court. If it can be proved that you can remove IE from Win98, then the action of MS to make the entire OS of Win2000 depend on it was deliberate and for the sole purpose of extending a monopoly.
Max
Given the sophistication of your website I'd say you're hardly in a position to judge the technical merits of any product.
Max
What's amusing is that I submitted this story - twice - yesterday morning. And it was rejected - twice.
Guess I must've pissed some dork off.
Max
Sure, we can do this. Through what's called the *amendment process*. Anything else is illegal.
If you think you have the support then amend the bloody Constitution. End-runs around the highest law in the land are the tactics of scumbags.
Max
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech
As it's likely you're unfamiliar with it, this is part of the First Amendment. What about "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech" don't you understand?
Max
Your right to email stops at my machines. I can choose to accept it, redirect it, or reject based upon any criteria I like. Could be I use a blacklist, could be I reject anyone with an aol.com address, could be your name is Fred and I don't like that name.
The point is, all of these reasons are valid because they're *my machines*. Only I get to say what goes and what doesn't on them. My users might get disgruntled and go someplace else but they don't have any say in how my machines are run - and neither do you. I might decide to respond to my users for fear of losing their patronage but I don't *have* to.
If the blacklists really do such a lousy job then the people using them will get annoyed, then pissed, then stop using them altogether. It's a great system for weeding out the incompetents and the fanatics, since in the end only incompetents and fanatics are left using the badly-managed list. Works for me.
If the blacklists are doing okay then people will continue to use them instead of migrating away. From what I've seen the 'big' blacklists have a growing clientele, not a shrinking one, which is somewhat credible testimony that most of the time they do an okay job.
You can complain that it isn't fair if you can't get your name off a list, but you don't have any rights (legal, moral, or otherwise) to petition for a redress of a non-existent grievance. They can keep you on their list on a whim, if they like, just like I block all aol.com addresses universally and have for years.
Max
And if the database flags the company as a repeat offender the process is locked for them, requiring actual human intervention. Easy to write something like this.
Max
It's clear the government was completely full of shit about the bomb-making materials and simply used them to concoct a reason to arrest this guy and hold him. Sitting here at my desk thinking about it for a moment I realized that in my house alone are enough "bomb-making" materials to blow an entire apartment building to hell, if constructed properly.
(If you have a solid background in basic chemistry, then you know just how easy it is to brew up something deadly.)
I suppose if I ever get arrested for saying something the government doesn't like they'll scream to the high heavens about all those nasty "terrorist tools" I had tucked away. You know: empty beer bottles that need to be recycled, bags of fertilizer for the back lawn and garden, various economy-sized jugs of cleaners bought in bulk, and so forth. With that much ammunition on the government's side I'll spend the rest of my days rotting in jail....
So nice to know that what few rights I have left don't matter for shit if Big Brother actually takes a dislike to me, in part because my fellow citizens will jump up and say "fuck the Constitution! Hang the terrorist son of a bitch!".
Jefferson must be weeping in his grave.
Max
There is no clause in the First Amendment which prohibits speech advocating armed action against the government, nor was one ever intended to be inferred from it. This is probably because the guys who wrote the First Amendment advocated and actually took armed action against the government.
How about a big "ddduuuuuuh" for all those folks who think that speaking out for violent action against the government is a form of terrorism?
Max
According to the First Amendment there is no exclusion of rights based upon speech that is "violent in nature", whatever that means.
The law surrounding the bomb-making speech is clearly unconstitutional, just like so many laws being passed these days. And hardly anyone gives a shit as long as they can cloak themselves in a false sense of security.
Liberty in the USA is fucked if this is how much people care for it, if it boils down to "only the liberties I agree with".
Max
Exercise of monopoly powers is a *criminal* act, not one of civil liability. If you're really this clueless about the law I suggest you visit a local library and do a bit of reading.
Max
I see. So if the government refuses to follow the law because it'd be too much of a hassle to comply then that's okay. But if *I* refuse to follow the law because it'd be too much of hassle then I go to jail?
Nice example you're setting there, DOJ.
Max
The actual facts resulted in a criminal conviction of Microsoft. Popular opinion won't rule, a single judge will - the precise opposite of democratic mob justice. The opinions are meant only as a sample of public thought on the matter, with no requirement for statistical accuracy.
Max
right-wing conservatives *and* far-left liberals. Both are loud, obnoxious, and should be committed to a mental health institution or deported to a small Pacific island.
Max
The author of the article engages in FUD to refute the "many eyes" argument. He implies that the eyes aren't qualified, or that the qualified eyes aren't looking, even when such a claim has no empirical evidence to support it. His statement seems to be based on nothing more than the hot air blowing out of his ass.
Furthermore he then makes the contradictory claim that more discovered hacks = a greater security risk. The actual explanation is probably what he refuses to accept: that the "many eyes" caught more vulnerabilities and identified them for correction, whereas in a closed system with a limited number of people working on the problem most hacks are never discovered, much less revealed to the general public.
The article was a piece of propaganda, and not a very well written one at that.
Max
T
Interesting to note that people somehow equate "more vulnerabilities found" with "less secure". The fact that these vulnerabilities are found, made public, and fixed shows that Linux has a better review system than Windows, not less security. What would happen, I wonder, if the Windows source were made public? Would the list include hundreds or even thousands of potential hacks?
Max
Who cares how well she acts? It's the "endless stamina" part that has my attention....
Max
However, it would change the current state of porn in every .corner .nook and .crany
And this is supposed to be a good thing? Or are you one of those yahoos who's always off to "save the chiiiiiildren!"?
Max
Can't say I'm terribly concerned, given the quality of the first film. As for this next one - forget the theater, I'm going to rent it. And not for the story (har har!), but simply because I have a thing for Natalie Portman.
Ummmmmm, dessert....
Max
And I don't know where you get the idea that this requires extra laws. I think it requires that extra laws aren't passed.
And I agree. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Americans seem to think that giving up privacy in return for the illusion of safety is a good trade. Most keep carping over that tired line "if you have nothing to hide..." never bothering to rub a couple of brain cells together to see that privacy enables the poor and powerless.
And as to who gets to watch who... There are a lot more poor people and the rich will never seperate too far. They need maids and nannies and butlers, etc. The rich will of course have more ability to watch any individual poor person, but there will be a thousand poor people willing to watch and record the rich person.
You're still assuming that they'll let you watch them. You aren't invited into their homes, you don't get to go to their country clubs or private spas or vacation resorts. You're already excluded from their private activities and mounting a camera on your forehead will do nothing to change this. You still won't be in a position to watch them any more than you are right now.
And given the lack of public privacy, the rich will turn more and more to these 'gated' settings, further excluding you from their lives. At the same time the life of the average person will become far less anonymous, exposing this person to reprisals and censures that they otherwise wouldn't have to deal with.
As for employees...NDAs. If privacy for the commoner dies for good, the rich will get laws passed making the violation of an NDA a criminal matter punishable by long jail sentences. Mark my words on this: the rich and powerful will never let you spy on them. They will do whatever it takes to further exclude you and ruin any sort of wishful egalitarian ideal you might harbor.
The rich will be able to monitor the poor to a degree never before imagined, while the poor won't be able to do the same to the rich.
Brin never addresses this in Earth and doesn't even seem to think this is possible. Apparently he doesn't live in the same world that I do.
Neither future will be good, but the one that doesn't include selectively enforced laws to punish the poor even more than now.
And how are you going to impose this? Shut down private country clubs, private vacation retreats, private theaters, private restaurants? You can't force the rich to mingle with the poor, and because they can afford to separate themselves your laws won't matter a whit.
In the end a loss of privacy is a win for the rich and powerful and a loss for everyone else.
Max
No, I'm just sick of ignoramuses like you clambering up the moral high ground to deride some bit of technology you don't like, then go on to tell other people how to live and how to think.
Piss off, already. If I want to clone my dog it isn't your business. It's mine, and mine alone. The sheer gall you have, thinking that you can intrude into my life with your proclamations, is nauseating.
Max