I'm sorry to break this to you, but I don't think the public has much perception of OSS at all, for the most part. They look to experts (or self-proclaimed experts with loud voices) for advice, and form opinions based on that. This is why it is important that any official statements from government departments do reflect reality, as demonstrated by things like facts and logic.
As for twisting logic, how exactly am I doing that? All I'm doing is pointing out that as a matter of fact, all of the major OSS-based browsers have private systems with limited access for dealing with security bugs, just like their closed source competitors. The post to which I originally replied was claiming inherent superiority for OSS because of greater transparency, faster response, and the like. A typical user of an OSS-based browser cannot possibly know those things to be true any more than he can know the corresponding things about a closed source browser. No logical deduction is required, this is purely observation of publicly available information (or rather, publicly available policies stating that the relevant information will not be made public).
Security issues are reported by both the community and third party vendors, and they're handled rapidly.
As I observed two posts ago, unless you are one of the select few with access to the full security issue process, you don't know that.
On the other hand, I have absolutely no assurance that Microsoft will either (1) be aware of security issues, or (2) responsibly handle them.
To all intents and purposes, the security issue policy for Firefox and IE is exactly the same. In neither case do you or I have any idea how many security vulnerabilities have been reported but remain unpatched at any given time (unless we happen to be a suitably senior member of the development team). In neither case is there any guarantee that any given security bug will be noticed and reported.
How many times do we have to get stung by holes that were reported to Microsoft months ago, when they only get forced into doing something about it due to a widespread and very nasty exploit?
This is where I have to wonder how my universe is so different to yours. I've got my own machine here running Windows. I've worked at small businesses running Windows. I've worked for some of the largest businesses in the world with massive corporate IT departments running Windows. And yet I've never once seen anyone suffering from these disastrous IE exploits that are apparently out there waiting to eat all our babies. Of course, that's not to say they don't exist, but let's not exaggerate the reality, OK?
I've got 20 years of combined public sector, private sector, and military experience that says I'm right.
Are you sure you haven't just built up 20 years of prejudice? You certainly don't have 20 years of experience comparing the security policies of Microsoft's IE8 team and the Firefox project, do you? Or even 20 years of experience of how major OSS projects fare generally in the security stakes, given that they have only become a significant part of the software landscape much more recently.
Oh, I understand completely why they run their security issue process the way they do. Pretty much everyone does it that way, for the same reasons.
I'm just saying that these facts undermine any argument that an OSS project is more secure than a CSS project just because it has a relatively low number of disclosed vulnerabilities. The typical OSS process for security bugs is not more transparent than the typical CSS one in the way that matters most: knowing how many security issues are being raised, and how severe is the risk of each.
I'm not quite sure what the panopticon idea has to do with this, unless you are arguing that people are less likely to try to insert security flaws maliciously knowing that there is an open review process. It's not really those I'm worried about, it's the inadvertent flaws that slip through and no-one notices until the exploit is out in the wild.
Sorry, perhaps you missed my point: the database of security bugs for Firefox is not public. When you file a security bug report, using a special e-mail address, the details do not immediately and automatically get disclosed, any more than they do if you report a bug in IE.
Speaking of tired old arguments, you lost all credibility right there.
By doing what, expressing a sentiment that is not popular around here?
Suffice it to say there are a lot of eyes on Firefox, for both the code itself and for evaluating and testing exploits.
You are making my point for me: that claim does not suffice.
Either you are personally one of those people and you personally check all of the code you rely on, or you are trusting that other people are doing it. Whether those other people are Firefox developers employed by Mozilla, or a community of OSS contributors, it's no different to trusting that people at Microsoft check IE: all you see is what those people choose to share with you, and you have no way to know how good a job they are really doing.
I don't mind reading your "answers", but no, I don't think they have much merit. Your arguments are just as based on contradictory logic or outright faith as those I was criticising before. For example:
Likewise though I may not have read all the code in Firefox, if there were any big problems, someone WOULD have seen it:
So presumably there will be no serious security bugs reported in any existing Firefox version in the future? But wait...
But FF 3.5 when locked down as much is still usable. Putting it under LIDS makes it much safer. Adding RBAC from NSA makes it yet more secure.
Hang on, why do I still need to make FF "much safer" and then "yet more secure" if any bugs would surely already have been identified?
In any case, if we're comparing against IE we are presumably talking about browsers running on Windows rather than Linux, so what is the relevance of things like LIDS?
Even then, isn't comparing the security of IE8 (after turning down the default settings to cope with broken third-party plug-ins) to the security of FF (after installing custom third party security software that most Firefox users will never even have heard of, and ignoring any potential vulnerabilities caused by Firefox's own plug-in system) not so much apples vs. oranges as rotten apples vs. gourmet cuisine?
With closed source software, you're at the mercy of the manufacturer when it comes to even getting an acknowledgment of security issues, let alone receiving fixes in a timely fashion or before damage is already done.
This argument endlessly amuses me. Do you really think the exact same thing is not true of OSS-based browsers such as Firefox and Chrome?
Hint #1: If you have not personally evaluated the source code of the browser you are using, nor employed a skilled specialist to do so for you, then you are just as dependent on other parties over whom you have no direct control to identify and patch security issues before the bad guys exploit them. The theoretical possibility that you can examine the source code is just security theatre unless you actually spend the time and resources to do it.
Hint #2: Which OSS browser do you think has a public bug database listing all known vulnerabilities, whether or not they have yet been patched, and keeps that database updated immediately every time a new vulnerability is reported?
With Firefox, there is generally a very high degree of transparency when it comes to security problems.
Unless you are one of the select few with access to the full security issue process, you don't know that.
Additionally, fixes are pushed out quickly.
Or that.
Although Firefox continues to gain market share, the actual damage caused by exploits continues to remain quite low. That's certainly not the case with IE, and as long as it's closed source that won't change.
Or any of that.
If you really don't see the blind spot you're exhibiting here, try answering these simple questions (and be honest with yourself):
When you bashed IE above, how many exploited vulnerabilities in the latest version of IE did you actually know about?
How many confirmed cases could you name where damage had been caused as a result of one of the exploits you just listed (if there were any)?
Did you know whether those vulnerabilities (if you could actually name any) had been patched, and if so, how quickly?
How would you answer the same questions for the latest versions of the major OSS-based browsers?
If you can't immediately answer those questions, and provide yourself with objective, factual data to support your claims above, then please consider that you may just be projecting your own prejudices based on IE6 from many years ago onto the IE8 of today, while letting your own faith in OSS onto other browsers convince you that they are more secure even though you don't have access to all the facts.
Unfortunately, blocking Javascript also breaks the web. Almost every site I use regularly relies on Javascript, and a high proportion of those I visit occasionally seem to as well. I'm sorry, but Noscript is not the correct answer to these problems; it's cutting off one's nose to spite one's face.
I guess I'm somewhat paranoid/security conscious, e.g., I do clear out things like Flash cookies, and I block sites like Google Analytics. What surprised me was that Firefox, a browser I originally chose in part for its reputation of having better security and privacy settings than certain other browsers, seems to be broadcasting a signature that tells any site I visit all of the plug-ins I am using. This not only uniquely identifies me, it also paints a huge target if any of those plug-ins is found to have a security hole. This information should never have been broadcast publicly, and it should certainly be blocked by a patch in the immediate future!
Hey, this is fun! I bash every political party I could vote for, and loads of people reply to tell me who I should vote for instead.:-)
The Lib Dems are not socalist. And you say it as if the UK is in any way socialist, which is nonsense.
I'm afraid we have very different perspectives on the Lib Dems. The way I see it, the following major Lib Dem policies are all on the socialist end of the spectrum:
a Local Income Tax that will charge high earners more to pay for council services that they typically use less;
taxing capital gains as income, hitting millions of freelancers and contractors so that working independently in the private sector carries a huge financial penalty;
the whole Citizen's Pension plan;
an emphasis on public transport, which would require vast subsidies from the public purse to be viable, those subsidies funded inter alia by taxes that artificially penalise private transport;
many expensive policies related to boosting the NHS;
continued support for subsidised public service broadcasting.
Please note that I'm not necessarily saying that these policies are bad, merely that they are all socialist in nature.
As for the UK not being socialist, note that we already have organisations like the NHS and BBC, we spend something like 200 billion pounds every year on social security, to the extent that many people have found it more profitable to live off state benefits than to work, and at the other end of the spectrum we now have a 50% tax rate for some people, i.e., the government appropriates half the money those people earn. Sure, we are not as socialist as some places, but there are plenty of socialist policies at work here.
What would be better is if we had a better voting system than FPTP, such as STV, Approval or Condorcet.
FPTP is a mockery of fair representation, it's true, and it's compounded by the vast number of political appointments that are not directly elected, starting with the Prime Minister and other Ministers of State, then the Lords (some of whom still get to make law because of who daddy was or holding a senior position in a religious organisation!), the leadership of many executive agencies of the central government, not to mention the whole Europe thing.
But just changing the voting system is nowhere near enough. We demonstrably do not have sufficient separation of powers in our system of government to prevent abuse by the administration of the day, nor sufficient representation of the will of the people in timely fashion.
We need a written constitution, modified only by referendum, and a constitutional court with supremacy over the administration of the day to enforce it. We should probably add a dedicated organisation with the ability to forcibly effect the decisions of such a court within government, including a legal power to physically remove any government officials of any level who refuse to comply and to put them on trial directly before the constitutional court.
We need a separate executive administration, directly elected independent of representatives in the bodies that form the legislature.
I'm in two minds over direct administration of the leaders of executive agencies, but as a general principle, I err on the side of electing more people with legal powers and/or the authority to spend significant amounts of taxpayers' money, rather than appointing them.
I'm also a fan of the idea that the people can, with sufficient popular support, force a binding referendum on any matter they choose, to be held within a matter of months and take effect on a similar timescale, with the result trumping statute law (but secondary to the principles in the constitution). Putting cute petitions on the No. 10 web site is one thing. Having several million people tell the administration it is wrong about something and its authority to make those decisions has been revoked is somethi
There is certainly merit in the current political climate in voting on indirect merit, i.e., for candidates whose election will improve the system of government itself, rather than necessarily who will directly govern as I would wish. And yes, at least with the Liberal Democrats, the worst they are likely to do to me personally and immediately is increase my tax bill, and the broader, long-term problems I see with their policies are unlikely to cause significant permanent damage within a single electoral cycle. (Similarly things could be said about some of the minor parties as well, FWIW, but I don't know whether any of them will be fielding a candidate in my constituency.)
I just wish there were a party where making the obviously necessary improvements to our system of representative government followed as a natural consequence of general principles I agree with, so those same principles would motivate their direct actions in government as well.
I'd settle for a moderate political party to vote for. Take a look at the major choices in England at the next election, and some of the minor parties that have attracted significant public attention:
Labour: Demonstrably clueless, got us into this mess in the first place, willing to ignore court rulings that their policies are illegal, willing to fire scientists who openly say the evidence doesn't support the policy, basically just about the worst of all worlds.
Conservatives: Change direction faster than a sportsman running up the field, and tend to back big business (and any dubious employment practices, failed business models, and the like that come with it) way too much.
Liberal Democrats: Actually think we should have more socialism, and the canonical example of politicians thinking that "fair" just means "screwing people who probably aren't going to vote for us anyway".
Greens: Still trying to pretend they aren't a one-issue party, still with policies that sound nice until you have to deal with the non-environmental consequences.
UKIP: Some of their policies sound quite respectable, if only I believed they actually meant what they said and weren't just a more socially acceptable BNP.
BNP: [This entry has been removed by the Godwin filter.]
Short of founding my own political party or supporting someone else who does, it looks like those are going to be my choices in this constituency at the general election later this year. By the way, I really dislike negative campaigning, and I find it deeply regrettable that the only way I can find to characterise the parties at the moment is by which aspects of their policies I dislike. I'm not sure I've seen a single policy announcement from any of them yet that actually made me nod and think "Yes, that's a good idea, someone should give that a try".
Our political system seems to have been pushing more and more toward the extremes in recent years, and then each party makes some token grab for the centre ground in the last few months of an election campaign. We're already starting to see this since the new year.
Maybe someone does need to found a moderate, relatively central party, that advocates realistic policies (and explains why, if those policies are unpalatable), supports the genuinely needy but without subsidising slackers, promotes competition in the markets but without letting big business get away with things just because it's big...? If recent conversations are anything to go by, almost everyone I know would vote for such a party rather than any of the current lot, and taken in isolation you'd probably say the people I know cover a wide spectrum of political opinion!
Then again, making that mistake in middle school isn't likely to get someone deeply inconvenienced, embarrassed, or, y'know, shot. Maybe we should hold the security services to a higher standard if they are to be granted powers that the common citizen does not have?
Then again, these are the same security services who IIRC managed to put a US senator and a world-renowned peace campaigner, among others, on "terrorist" watch lists. I guess expecting any exercise of common sense was just wishful thinking.
The problem is that political parties that use the labels "social democrats" or "liberal democrats" may or may not have anything to do with the descriptions you just gave.
I completely agree that extreme, black-and-white policies such as pure capitalism or total communism are folly. But, to give one example, the Liberal Democrats here in the UK are waaaaaay more socialist than your description of "liberal democrat" would suggest. This country under Labour has become a textbook example of the fundamental tension in any predominantly socialist community: those who contribute more are penalised for it, while those who contribute less reap the benefits. Under the policies advocated by the Liberal Democrats, it is hard to see how this would become any better.
I never click anything I don't read, nor do I sign anything I don't read.
You really think you have read every legal document that applies to any legal relationship you have? You've read the ToS and privacy policy on every web site you visit, the EULA for every piece of software you use? You've read all the small print on every letter, statement, bill, or change-of-conditions notice sent to you by every financial organisation you deal with?
Maybe you lead a fairly simple life with few legal dealings. Perhaps that is possible with your lifestyle and in your country. If I tried to do that, I suspect there would literally not be enough hours in the day. I probably receive an average of 1–2 complete restatements of agreements in the post per week, probably running to 30–40 pages each on average, based on unilateral changes in conditions by a bank, pension fund, investment fund, credit card company, insurance policy, landlord, phone or Internet service provider, etc. A careful reading of those alone would take nearly a day every week. And that's before checking conditions for all the software and on-line services I use, reading any new agreements, line-by-line checking of several statements/bills of several pages each every week, and so on.
Fortunately for me, there are laws to protect me in the event that unreasonable and unexpected stuff was sneaked into a contract. You may not like this. Maybe it offends your sense of justice and fair play. But it is the law, for all the reasons I gave before. As I said, the law is very clear that you can't just say you're going to be an arsehole in a footnote on page 27 and then expect to get away with being an arsehole. The law says that everyone has to understand any contract they enter for it to mean anything, and if you as a big company with a big legal department are stupid enough to ask people to sign a contract they can't realistically have been expected to fully understand then you are the one who needs hitting with the cluestick, because courts throw out such contracts, or at least unreasonable/unexpected parts of them, all the time.
By the way, I have never said that "you can merrily agree to everything in sight and claim you didn't know what you were doing", nor anything remotely like it. I merely contend that the law tends to protect the little guy when it comes to consequences of contracts that would not realistically have been fully understood by that little guy when the agreement was made. That certainly applies to lengthy Ts&Cs documents written by big companies like Facebook if said company is openly advertising a policy of privacy and protection but then gives the quietly keys to thousands of application writers behind their users' backs, for example.
I find it kind of odd that you are so keen for everyone to understand every little agreement in full detail, yet you appear to have no faith whatsoever in the legal system to act according to the rules anyway. Then again, I also find it kind of arrogant that you acknowledge that a lawyer was worth it the twice you used them, yet you assume that your understanding of every other agreement you have ever entered into in 55 years was actually correct and not just false confidence.
You are being naive, morally dubious, and legally outright wrong, all at once.
No-one can stop and read every detail of every agreement required to live even a basic modern existence. It simply isn't possible. Leaving aside the degree of legal training required to appreciate the subtlety of some of the wording used, which is not accessible to most people, the sheer length and complexity of the documents is enough to take a prohibitive amount of time. And while Facebook may be expendable, things like running a bank account, taking out a tenancy or mortgage, and signing up for healthcare are necessities for most people.
The law in every jurisdiction with which I am familiar recognises this difficulty, overtly, in several ways. For one thing, for any contract to be valid, there must be a meeting of minds: both parties have to genuinely understand what is being agreed. For another thing, some contractual terms simply aren't enforceable: typically, there are certain things that are legally proscribed in employment contracts, for example, and certain consumer rights are legally inalienable. Then there is the related issue of contracts of adhesion, where it is recognised that a fixed contract, written by one side with a huge army of lawyers behind it but agreed with another party who has little or no realistic opportunity to negotiate on the terms, is inevitably going to be a biased arrangement.
Finally, I find your entire position to be ethically horrible. The idea that everyone in the world should have to be a legal expert, and have the resources to mount an effective lawsuit, just in order to get by in life, well, that's just not a world I want to live in. It implies, as I noted before, that doing the right thing should no longer be constrained by any moral or ethical values, merely a product of your legal ability to defend whatever action you choose to take.
I did quit Facebook, a long time ago, very quickly after I joined and figured out how it really worked.
But that's not the point. Saying that you're going to be an arsehole in the small print of an agreement almost no-one is going to read doesn't make it OK to be an arsehole. Why the hell should I have to call a lawyer to enforce basic privacy and common decency? If people working for big businesses like Facebook feel the need to do things in the name of profit that might otherwise be considered inappropriate behaviour, then the law needs to fine the business 10x the profit it makes from that behaviour and throw the directors' asses in jail until they get the point.
When did it become OK to do anything that you aren't specifically prevented from doing by law or that you can get away with because the other party doesn't have the time or money to enforce the law against you? This sort of attitude is exactly why we have the problems with privacy and data protection that we have today, and of course people like Zuckerberg are going to promote it because if they repeat it often enough then they'll get away with making yet more money while fools continue to give up valuable rights without noticing.
By the way, while your efforts to characterise privacy in terms of social norms are interesting, you always seem to overlook something fundamental: most of society don't really understand the implications of things like signing up to Facebook, and actually think that because Facebook currently says only their "friends" will see information that this will be the case. As everything from the Beacon fiasco to the lack of security in the application APIs makes very clear, this is not really the case. I wonder how many of those people would still feel comfortable with the way Facebook works if they were made fully aware of the facts.
But that's the crux of the problem, isn't it: is that actually true?
Social networking sites such as Facebook rely on building a comprehensive network of information that affects each individual, much of which is provided indirectly and not by, or even with the consent of, that individual.
Privacy serves an important social function, and always has done. Modern technology, with its global communication systems and massive databases, is providing new ways to collect and process personal data that have profound implications for the preservation of privacy because of the combination of indirect sources now available.
But it probably takes a generation for society to understand such fundamental shifts in technological capabilities. In the meantime, technology marches on, and not everyone appreciates the significance of what they're doing by using it. Often, in the case of social networking, either those people are young and impressionable, or they simply aren't fully aware of important facts (something Facebook, in particular, is very good at being sneaky with).
[Zuckerberg] said that expectations had changed, and people now default to sharing online, not privacy.
Well, sure, this week, because they haven't worked it out yet. Get back to us in a few years. Social networking is by its nature a more resilient trend than those that have gone before, because it relies on peer pressure for its power. But even then, so far it's rare for any community-based site to survive as the trendy choice for very long. After a while, the novelty wears off, and people's scepticism about all-powerful services kicks in.
I expect both Google and Facebook to learn this the hard way in the not too distant future. My friends have long since stopped asking me to join services like Facebook. Recently, a small but growing number seem to be turning away, tired of the idea of sharing everything with hundreds of "friends" they don't really know as anything other than a profile picture and a news feed.
The fact that Facebook doesn't highlight when people leave and a lot of people have so many "friends" that they don't notice when some go missing is masking this effect, but that doesn't make it any less real. I'll wager people like Zuckerberg don't much like that idea.
The thing that annoys me is the implication that it is somehow OK to force anyone over the age of 18 to go through what, to many people, will be a deep and humiliating invasion of privacy.
We shouldn't be objecting to these things because of child porn laws, we should be objecting because they're being rammed through now, in the face of public fear after the (failed!) Christmas Day attack, when they couldn't be passed under normal conditions because too many people would find them offensive and unjustified.
How have the authorities suddenly got so many machines almost ready to roll out in all the UK airports? Normally it takes months, if not years, for them to make these sorts of changes, yet we're supposed to believe they could do this within days or weeks? Tell me they weren't just waiting for an excuse, I dare you.
OK, for one thing, I didn't say America doesn't make anything any more, nor anything of the sort. I merely asked what they made, as a subject for debate, and suggested that secondary effects alone are not sufficient to support a strong economy.
Secondly, profitability in most of the industries you mentioned before is a function of two major factors: making the right products, and protectionism. Again, I have never denied that US companies today make valuable products. But again, we are not talking about today.
Much of the reason those US tech companies have become dominant in their respective fields is because of the heavyweight US patent regime, which the US government takes great pains to push onto anyone else they can influence as well. But even with the excessive duration of protection in the US, those patents are starting to run out. Big pharma, in particular, is getting very nervous about the relative lack of new drugs it has developed that will spin as much money as tried and tested ones whose patent protection is starting to expire. As you may have noticed, no-one else likes software patents all that much, either.
As US influence on other nations diminishes, so will the pressure to support silly patent durations that favour US companies rather than newer but smaller home-grown ones. And in any case, rising powers like China don't give much of a **** about US intellectual property anyway.
So once again, we come back to the point I have been making all along: no-one seriously disputes that the US is a leader in tech fields today, but with diminishing worldwide influence and diminishing academic and research standards, it is far from clear that they will retain that position for another 10 or 20 years.
In the UK, we have a government endorsed by only 22% of the population at the last general election (and only around 1/3 of those who actually voted). They didn't even win the popular vote in England. And then there's the West Lothian question.
We currently have a Prime Minister who was never approved by the electorate. (Please everyone, spare us any comments about voting for a party instead of a PM; the party in question explicitly and repeatedly stated before the last general election that Tony Blair would serve a full third term, after explicit and repeated questions over whether Gordon Brown would be taking over mid-term.)
We have prospective law like the Digital Economy Bill being pushed through by a man who has resigned from government under dubious circumstances not once but twice and who was never re-elected, who suddenly started acting in favour of Big Media after a friendly chat hosted by... Big Media. That particular unelected, repeatedly failed politician is currently the #2 man in the British government, by the way.
We have police (and, worse, judges) who seem to think it is acceptable to imprison hundreds of people (and kill the odd one or two) who just want to protest peacefully (or walk home from work). We give the police other sweeping powers, which are known to be widely abused, yet we impose little effective regulation on how those powers are used, nor are we very good at holding to account police officers of any rank who are responsible for the abuses. All we get are excuses like "systemic failure" or "institutional failure", i.e., "we won't single out any individual so everyone gets away with it".
One could go on and on, but I think it's pretty clear that we can do corruption as well as anyone.
I suppose that depends on what you consider "mistreatment".
Personally, I consider several of the increasingly invasive security measures to be mistreatment, yet everyone who flies to (or, apparently, over) the US is subject to them. At the current rate, we might as well just skip to chipping everyone at birth, 24/7 logging of all movements and interactions shared with any low-level public official in any country who wants to see it, and a public strip/cavity search at gunpoint on arrival at any transport hub just to be sure.
As for more direct mistreatment, I've known more than one friend who was stopped and given extra pat downs or side room checks with unusual frequency when travelling by air. Whether it was because of the various countries they came from or whether it was because in almost all cases they were attractive girls in their late teens or twenties at the time, I can't say.
Given who recently received the Nobel Peace Prize—while leading the country with the worst record in the world on war in recent years and one of the worst on human rights, and having talked a bit but acted very little to improve either situation—counting Nobel Prizes awarded to those from the US was perhaps not the most convincing argument you could have made.:-/
China is the number 1 polluter (and the gap is widening, not shrinking).
Sorry, I should have been explicit: I was referring to per capita figures, because (as in most areas of this debate) those are the ones that really tell you how well a country is doing. If you look at absolute figures then it's true that China has overtaken the US recently, and other major developing economies like India's are also rising.
BTW, even looking at absolute figures, the fact that you think only being second in the "worst polluter in the world" awards is some sort of victory is quite telling.
Methinks you exagerrate a bit. Here is a list off the top of my head:
World class: Passenger jets, Large construction equipment, Medical devices (CT, MRI, Ultrasound, Lab automation), Pharmaceuticals, Weapon systems (military jets, missiles, missile defense systems), Satellites, Semiconductors, Networking gear
There's a lot of interesting stuff in those lists. Technologies like passenger jets and automobiles, as they stand today, are doomed, and the serious research into more future-proof alternatives is mostly happening outside the US. In fact, the US auto industry is basically one big disaster waiting to happen, currently kept afloat only by the US government because of the horrendous economic implications of letting it fail. Does "too big to fail" really not sound warning bells over there yet?
Things like pharma and medical equipment are interesting. Yes, the US has some very profitable companies, but again, what really counts is who is doing the research and producing the health-improving drugs and diagnostic/treatment systems of tomorrow. And again, while the US takes a fair share of this, it is hardly a scientific powerhouse on which everyone else depends or without which medical research would cease.
Satellites? Well, maybe, but in case you hadn't noticed the US space shuttle programme is coming to an end and NASA don't have a viable replacement yet, so the Russians and Europeans are pretty much going to be laughing on that count in a few years.
Computers, semiconductors and networking gear are all tech products, and yes, the US is certainly one of the best centres in the world for these today. But of all the major industries, technology moves on perhaps the most quickly, and again you need to have the thinkers and R&D budgets to maintain a leading position. Otherwise established rivals in places like Europe (or some almost-out-of-nowhere enterprise in China) will suddenly be the dominant guys. And in any case, much of the income the US derives from these products comes from trade, which is exactly where the US is going to find itself increasingly squeezed in coming years.
In a nutshell, almost every field you mentioned is technology-based, and while the US is relatively strong in these areas today, we're talking about tomorrow, or more likely, a decade or two from now. By that time, it is likely that current technology will be all but obsolete. What matters for this debate is the degree to which the US can maintain a position near the top of the table through continued research and development and evolving manufacturing and service industries. If the smart people stop moving to the US, the quality of education of its own citizens continues to decrease relative to other nations, and its economy goes to hell, that degree is not going to be great, and all three of those things look like the dominant trends to me.
Oh, and your dismissive attitude regarding the US military reminds me of a favorite movie quote
That was a good movie, with an outstanding performance from Jack Nicholson, but a cute quotation does not replace facts. What benefits are the people of the US really gaining in exchange for the vast commitment to military power that they make? Perhaps you didn't realise, but far more US military personnel h
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I'm sorry to break this to you, but I don't think the public has much perception of OSS at all, for the most part. They look to experts (or self-proclaimed experts with loud voices) for advice, and form opinions based on that. This is why it is important that any official statements from government departments do reflect reality, as demonstrated by things like facts and logic.
As for twisting logic, how exactly am I doing that? All I'm doing is pointing out that as a matter of fact, all of the major OSS-based browsers have private systems with limited access for dealing with security bugs, just like their closed source competitors. The post to which I originally replied was claiming inherent superiority for OSS because of greater transparency, faster response, and the like. A typical user of an OSS-based browser cannot possibly know those things to be true any more than he can know the corresponding things about a closed source browser. No logical deduction is required, this is purely observation of publicly available information (or rather, publicly available policies stating that the relevant information will not be made public).
Security issues are reported by both the community and third party vendors, and they're handled rapidly.
As I observed two posts ago, unless you are one of the select few with access to the full security issue process, you don't know that.
On the other hand, I have absolutely no assurance that Microsoft will either (1) be aware of security issues, or (2) responsibly handle them.
To all intents and purposes, the security issue policy for Firefox and IE is exactly the same. In neither case do you or I have any idea how many security vulnerabilities have been reported but remain unpatched at any given time (unless we happen to be a suitably senior member of the development team). In neither case is there any guarantee that any given security bug will be noticed and reported.
How many times do we have to get stung by holes that were reported to Microsoft months ago, when they only get forced into doing something about it due to a widespread and very nasty exploit?
This is where I have to wonder how my universe is so different to yours. I've got my own machine here running Windows. I've worked at small businesses running Windows. I've worked for some of the largest businesses in the world with massive corporate IT departments running Windows. And yet I've never once seen anyone suffering from these disastrous IE exploits that are apparently out there waiting to eat all our babies. Of course, that's not to say they don't exist, but let's not exaggerate the reality, OK?
I've got 20 years of combined public sector, private sector, and military experience that says I'm right.
Are you sure you haven't just built up 20 years of prejudice? You certainly don't have 20 years of experience comparing the security policies of Microsoft's IE8 team and the Firefox project, do you? Or even 20 years of experience of how major OSS projects fare generally in the security stakes, given that they have only become a significant part of the software landscape much more recently.
Oh, I understand completely why they run their security issue process the way they do. Pretty much everyone does it that way, for the same reasons.
I'm just saying that these facts undermine any argument that an OSS project is more secure than a CSS project just because it has a relatively low number of disclosed vulnerabilities. The typical OSS process for security bugs is not more transparent than the typical CSS one in the way that matters most: knowing how many security issues are being raised, and how severe is the risk of each.
I'm not quite sure what the panopticon idea has to do with this, unless you are arguing that people are less likely to try to insert security flaws maliciously knowing that there is an open review process. It's not really those I'm worried about, it's the inadvertent flaws that slip through and no-one notices until the exploit is out in the wild.
Sorry, perhaps you missed my point: the database of security bugs for Firefox is not public. When you file a security bug report, using a special e-mail address, the details do not immediately and automatically get disclosed, any more than they do if you report a bug in IE.
Speaking of tired old arguments, you lost all credibility right there.
By doing what, expressing a sentiment that is not popular around here?
Suffice it to say there are a lot of eyes on Firefox, for both the code itself and for evaluating and testing exploits.
You are making my point for me: that claim does not suffice.
Either you are personally one of those people and you personally check all of the code you rely on, or you are trusting that other people are doing it. Whether those other people are Firefox developers employed by Mozilla, or a community of OSS contributors, it's no different to trusting that people at Microsoft check IE: all you see is what those people choose to share with you, and you have no way to know how good a job they are really doing.
I don't mind reading your "answers", but no, I don't think they have much merit. Your arguments are just as based on contradictory logic or outright faith as those I was criticising before. For example:
Likewise though I may not have read all the code in Firefox, if there were any big problems, someone WOULD have seen it:
So presumably there will be no serious security bugs reported in any existing Firefox version in the future? But wait...
But FF 3.5 when locked down as much is still usable. Putting it under LIDS makes it much safer. Adding RBAC from NSA makes it yet more secure.
Hang on, why do I still need to make FF "much safer" and then "yet more secure" if any bugs would surely already have been identified?
In any case, if we're comparing against IE we are presumably talking about browsers running on Windows rather than Linux, so what is the relevance of things like LIDS?
Even then, isn't comparing the security of IE8 (after turning down the default settings to cope with broken third-party plug-ins) to the security of FF (after installing custom third party security software that most Firefox users will never even have heard of, and ignoring any potential vulnerabilities caused by Firefox's own plug-in system) not so much apples vs. oranges as rotten apples vs. gourmet cuisine?
With closed source software, you're at the mercy of the manufacturer when it comes to even getting an acknowledgment of security issues, let alone receiving fixes in a timely fashion or before damage is already done.
This argument endlessly amuses me. Do you really think the exact same thing is not true of OSS-based browsers such as Firefox and Chrome?
Hint #1: If you have not personally evaluated the source code of the browser you are using, nor employed a skilled specialist to do so for you, then you are just as dependent on other parties over whom you have no direct control to identify and patch security issues before the bad guys exploit them. The theoretical possibility that you can examine the source code is just security theatre unless you actually spend the time and resources to do it.
Hint #2: Which OSS browser do you think has a public bug database listing all known vulnerabilities, whether or not they have yet been patched, and keeps that database updated immediately every time a new vulnerability is reported?
With Firefox, there is generally a very high degree of transparency when it comes to security problems.
Unless you are one of the select few with access to the full security issue process, you don't know that.
Additionally, fixes are pushed out quickly.
Or that.
Although Firefox continues to gain market share, the actual damage caused by exploits continues to remain quite low. That's certainly not the case with IE, and as long as it's closed source that won't change.
Or any of that.
If you really don't see the blind spot you're exhibiting here, try answering these simple questions (and be honest with yourself):
If you can't immediately answer those questions, and provide yourself with objective, factual data to support your claims above, then please consider that you may just be projecting your own prejudices based on IE6 from many years ago onto the IE8 of today, while letting your own faith in OSS onto other browsers convince you that they are more secure even though you don't have access to all the facts.
Unfortunately, blocking Javascript also breaks the web. Almost every site I use regularly relies on Javascript, and a high proportion of those I visit occasionally seem to as well. I'm sorry, but Noscript is not the correct answer to these problems; it's cutting off one's nose to spite one's face.
I guess I'm somewhat paranoid/security conscious, e.g., I do clear out things like Flash cookies, and I block sites like Google Analytics. What surprised me was that Firefox, a browser I originally chose in part for its reputation of having better security and privacy settings than certain other browsers, seems to be broadcasting a signature that tells any site I visit all of the plug-ins I am using. This not only uniquely identifies me, it also paints a huge target if any of those plug-ins is found to have a security hole. This information should never have been broadcast publicly, and it should certainly be blocked by a patch in the immediate future!
Hey, this is fun! I bash every political party I could vote for, and loads of people reply to tell me who I should vote for instead. :-)
The Lib Dems are not socalist. And you say it as if the UK is in any way socialist, which is nonsense.
I'm afraid we have very different perspectives on the Lib Dems. The way I see it, the following major Lib Dem policies are all on the socialist end of the spectrum:
Please note that I'm not necessarily saying that these policies are bad, merely that they are all socialist in nature.
As for the UK not being socialist, note that we already have organisations like the NHS and BBC, we spend something like 200 billion pounds every year on social security, to the extent that many people have found it more profitable to live off state benefits than to work, and at the other end of the spectrum we now have a 50% tax rate for some people, i.e., the government appropriates half the money those people earn. Sure, we are not as socialist as some places, but there are plenty of socialist policies at work here.
What would be better is if we had a better voting system than FPTP, such as STV, Approval or Condorcet.
FPTP is a mockery of fair representation, it's true, and it's compounded by the vast number of political appointments that are not directly elected, starting with the Prime Minister and other Ministers of State, then the Lords (some of whom still get to make law because of who daddy was or holding a senior position in a religious organisation!), the leadership of many executive agencies of the central government, not to mention the whole Europe thing.
But just changing the voting system is nowhere near enough. We demonstrably do not have sufficient separation of powers in our system of government to prevent abuse by the administration of the day, nor sufficient representation of the will of the people in timely fashion.
We need a written constitution, modified only by referendum, and a constitutional court with supremacy over the administration of the day to enforce it. We should probably add a dedicated organisation with the ability to forcibly effect the decisions of such a court within government, including a legal power to physically remove any government officials of any level who refuse to comply and to put them on trial directly before the constitutional court.
We need a separate executive administration, directly elected independent of representatives in the bodies that form the legislature.
I'm in two minds over direct administration of the leaders of executive agencies, but as a general principle, I err on the side of electing more people with legal powers and/or the authority to spend significant amounts of taxpayers' money, rather than appointing them.
I'm also a fan of the idea that the people can, with sufficient popular support, force a binding referendum on any matter they choose, to be held within a matter of months and take effect on a similar timescale, with the result trumping statute law (but secondary to the principles in the constitution). Putting cute petitions on the No. 10 web site is one thing. Having several million people tell the administration it is wrong about something and its authority to make those decisions has been revoked is somethi
There is certainly merit in the current political climate in voting on indirect merit, i.e., for candidates whose election will improve the system of government itself, rather than necessarily who will directly govern as I would wish. And yes, at least with the Liberal Democrats, the worst they are likely to do to me personally and immediately is increase my tax bill, and the broader, long-term problems I see with their policies are unlikely to cause significant permanent damage within a single electoral cycle. (Similarly things could be said about some of the minor parties as well, FWIW, but I don't know whether any of them will be fielding a candidate in my constituency.)
I just wish there were a party where making the obviously necessary improvements to our system of representative government followed as a natural consequence of general principles I agree with, so those same principles would motivate their direct actions in government as well.
What are the odds of Britain having a revolution?
I'd settle for a moderate political party to vote for. Take a look at the major choices in England at the next election, and some of the minor parties that have attracted significant public attention:
Short of founding my own political party or supporting someone else who does, it looks like those are going to be my choices in this constituency at the general election later this year. By the way, I really dislike negative campaigning, and I find it deeply regrettable that the only way I can find to characterise the parties at the moment is by which aspects of their policies I dislike. I'm not sure I've seen a single policy announcement from any of them yet that actually made me nod and think "Yes, that's a good idea, someone should give that a try".
Our political system seems to have been pushing more and more toward the extremes in recent years, and then each party makes some token grab for the centre ground in the last few months of an election campaign. We're already starting to see this since the new year.
Maybe someone does need to found a moderate, relatively central party, that advocates realistic policies (and explains why, if those policies are unpalatable), supports the genuinely needy but without subsidising slackers, promotes competition in the markets but without letting big business get away with things just because it's big...? If recent conversations are anything to go by, almost everyone I know would vote for such a party rather than any of the current lot, and taken in isolation you'd probably say the people I know cover a wide spectrum of political opinion!
Then again, making that mistake in middle school isn't likely to get someone deeply inconvenienced, embarrassed, or, y'know, shot. Maybe we should hold the security services to a higher standard if they are to be granted powers that the common citizen does not have?
Then again, these are the same security services who IIRC managed to put a US senator and a world-renowned peace campaigner, among others, on "terrorist" watch lists. I guess expecting any exercise of common sense was just wishful thinking.
The problem is that political parties that use the labels "social democrats" or "liberal democrats" may or may not have anything to do with the descriptions you just gave.
I completely agree that extreme, black-and-white policies such as pure capitalism or total communism are folly. But, to give one example, the Liberal Democrats here in the UK are waaaaaay more socialist than your description of "liberal democrat" would suggest. This country under Labour has become a textbook example of the fundamental tension in any predominantly socialist community: those who contribute more are penalised for it, while those who contribute less reap the benefits. Under the policies advocated by the Liberal Democrats, it is hard to see how this would become any better.
I never click anything I don't read, nor do I sign anything I don't read.
You really think you have read every legal document that applies to any legal relationship you have? You've read the ToS and privacy policy on every web site you visit, the EULA for every piece of software you use? You've read all the small print on every letter, statement, bill, or change-of-conditions notice sent to you by every financial organisation you deal with?
Maybe you lead a fairly simple life with few legal dealings. Perhaps that is possible with your lifestyle and in your country. If I tried to do that, I suspect there would literally not be enough hours in the day. I probably receive an average of 1–2 complete restatements of agreements in the post per week, probably running to 30–40 pages each on average, based on unilateral changes in conditions by a bank, pension fund, investment fund, credit card company, insurance policy, landlord, phone or Internet service provider, etc. A careful reading of those alone would take nearly a day every week. And that's before checking conditions for all the software and on-line services I use, reading any new agreements, line-by-line checking of several statements/bills of several pages each every week, and so on.
Fortunately for me, there are laws to protect me in the event that unreasonable and unexpected stuff was sneaked into a contract. You may not like this. Maybe it offends your sense of justice and fair play. But it is the law, for all the reasons I gave before. As I said, the law is very clear that you can't just say you're going to be an arsehole in a footnote on page 27 and then expect to get away with being an arsehole. The law says that everyone has to understand any contract they enter for it to mean anything, and if you as a big company with a big legal department are stupid enough to ask people to sign a contract they can't realistically have been expected to fully understand then you are the one who needs hitting with the cluestick, because courts throw out such contracts, or at least unreasonable/unexpected parts of them, all the time.
By the way, I have never said that "you can merrily agree to everything in sight and claim you didn't know what you were doing", nor anything remotely like it. I merely contend that the law tends to protect the little guy when it comes to consequences of contracts that would not realistically have been fully understood by that little guy when the agreement was made. That certainly applies to lengthy Ts&Cs documents written by big companies like Facebook if said company is openly advertising a policy of privacy and protection but then gives the quietly keys to thousands of application writers behind their users' backs, for example.
I find it kind of odd that you are so keen for everyone to understand every little agreement in full detail, yet you appear to have no faith whatsoever in the legal system to act according to the rules anyway. Then again, I also find it kind of arrogant that you acknowledge that a lawyer was worth it the twice you used them, yet you assume that your understanding of every other agreement you have ever entered into in 55 years was actually correct and not just false confidence.
You are being naive, morally dubious, and legally outright wrong, all at once.
No-one can stop and read every detail of every agreement required to live even a basic modern existence. It simply isn't possible. Leaving aside the degree of legal training required to appreciate the subtlety of some of the wording used, which is not accessible to most people, the sheer length and complexity of the documents is enough to take a prohibitive amount of time. And while Facebook may be expendable, things like running a bank account, taking out a tenancy or mortgage, and signing up for healthcare are necessities for most people.
The law in every jurisdiction with which I am familiar recognises this difficulty, overtly, in several ways. For one thing, for any contract to be valid, there must be a meeting of minds: both parties have to genuinely understand what is being agreed. For another thing, some contractual terms simply aren't enforceable: typically, there are certain things that are legally proscribed in employment contracts, for example, and certain consumer rights are legally inalienable. Then there is the related issue of contracts of adhesion, where it is recognised that a fixed contract, written by one side with a huge army of lawyers behind it but agreed with another party who has little or no realistic opportunity to negotiate on the terms, is inevitably going to be a biased arrangement.
Finally, I find your entire position to be ethically horrible. The idea that everyone in the world should have to be a legal expert, and have the resources to mount an effective lawsuit, just in order to get by in life, well, that's just not a world I want to live in. It implies, as I noted before, that doing the right thing should no longer be constrained by any moral or ethical values, merely a product of your legal ability to defend whatever action you choose to take.
I did quit Facebook, a long time ago, very quickly after I joined and figured out how it really worked.
But that's not the point. Saying that you're going to be an arsehole in the small print of an agreement almost no-one is going to read doesn't make it OK to be an arsehole. Why the hell should I have to call a lawyer to enforce basic privacy and common decency? If people working for big businesses like Facebook feel the need to do things in the name of profit that might otherwise be considered inappropriate behaviour, then the law needs to fine the business 10x the profit it makes from that behaviour and throw the directors' asses in jail until they get the point.
When did it become OK to do anything that you aren't specifically prevented from doing by law or that you can get away with because the other party doesn't have the time or money to enforce the law against you? This sort of attitude is exactly why we have the problems with privacy and data protection that we have today, and of course people like Zuckerberg are going to promote it because if they repeat it often enough then they'll get away with making yet more money while fools continue to give up valuable rights without noticing.
By the way, while your efforts to characterise privacy in terms of social norms are interesting, you always seem to overlook something fundamental: most of society don't really understand the implications of things like signing up to Facebook, and actually think that because Facebook currently says only their "friends" will see information that this will be the case. As everything from the Beacon fiasco to the lack of security in the application APIs makes very clear, this is not really the case. I wonder how many of those people would still feel comfortable with the way Facebook works if they were made fully aware of the facts.
This is a choice you made.
But that's the crux of the problem, isn't it: is that actually true?
Social networking sites such as Facebook rely on building a comprehensive network of information that affects each individual, much of which is provided indirectly and not by, or even with the consent of, that individual.
Privacy serves an important social function, and always has done. Modern technology, with its global communication systems and massive databases, is providing new ways to collect and process personal data that have profound implications for the preservation of privacy because of the combination of indirect sources now available.
But it probably takes a generation for society to understand such fundamental shifts in technological capabilities. In the meantime, technology marches on, and not everyone appreciates the significance of what they're doing by using it. Often, in the case of social networking, either those people are young and impressionable, or they simply aren't fully aware of important facts (something Facebook, in particular, is very good at being sneaky with).
[Zuckerberg] said that expectations had changed, and people now default to sharing online, not privacy.
Well, sure, this week, because they haven't worked it out yet. Get back to us in a few years. Social networking is by its nature a more resilient trend than those that have gone before, because it relies on peer pressure for its power. But even then, so far it's rare for any community-based site to survive as the trendy choice for very long. After a while, the novelty wears off, and people's scepticism about all-powerful services kicks in.
I expect both Google and Facebook to learn this the hard way in the not too distant future. My friends have long since stopped asking me to join services like Facebook. Recently, a small but growing number seem to be turning away, tired of the idea of sharing everything with hundreds of "friends" they don't really know as anything other than a profile picture and a news feed.
The fact that Facebook doesn't highlight when people leave and a lot of people have so many "friends" that they don't notice when some go missing is masking this effect, but that doesn't make it any less real. I'll wager people like Zuckerberg don't much like that idea.
The thing that annoys me is the implication that it is somehow OK to force anyone over the age of 18 to go through what, to many people, will be a deep and humiliating invasion of privacy.
We shouldn't be objecting to these things because of child porn laws, we should be objecting because they're being rammed through now, in the face of public fear after the (failed!) Christmas Day attack, when they couldn't be passed under normal conditions because too many people would find them offensive and unjustified.
How have the authorities suddenly got so many machines almost ready to roll out in all the UK airports? Normally it takes months, if not years, for them to make these sorts of changes, yet we're supposed to believe they could do this within days or weeks? Tell me they weren't just waiting for an excuse, I dare you.
OK, for one thing, I didn't say America doesn't make anything any more, nor anything of the sort. I merely asked what they made, as a subject for debate, and suggested that secondary effects alone are not sufficient to support a strong economy.
Secondly, profitability in most of the industries you mentioned before is a function of two major factors: making the right products, and protectionism. Again, I have never denied that US companies today make valuable products. But again, we are not talking about today.
Much of the reason those US tech companies have become dominant in their respective fields is because of the heavyweight US patent regime, which the US government takes great pains to push onto anyone else they can influence as well. But even with the excessive duration of protection in the US, those patents are starting to run out. Big pharma, in particular, is getting very nervous about the relative lack of new drugs it has developed that will spin as much money as tried and tested ones whose patent protection is starting to expire. As you may have noticed, no-one else likes software patents all that much, either.
As US influence on other nations diminishes, so will the pressure to support silly patent durations that favour US companies rather than newer but smaller home-grown ones. And in any case, rising powers like China don't give much of a **** about US intellectual property anyway.
So once again, we come back to the point I have been making all along: no-one seriously disputes that the US is a leader in tech fields today, but with diminishing worldwide influence and diminishing academic and research standards, it is far from clear that they will retain that position for another 10 or 20 years.
Unfortunately, that includes also corruption.
In the UK, we have a government endorsed by only 22% of the population at the last general election (and only around 1/3 of those who actually voted). They didn't even win the popular vote in England. And then there's the West Lothian question.
We currently have a Prime Minister who was never approved by the electorate. (Please everyone, spare us any comments about voting for a party instead of a PM; the party in question explicitly and repeatedly stated before the last general election that Tony Blair would serve a full third term, after explicit and repeated questions over whether Gordon Brown would be taking over mid-term.)
We have prospective law like the Digital Economy Bill being pushed through by a man who has resigned from government under dubious circumstances not once but twice and who was never re-elected, who suddenly started acting in favour of Big Media after a friendly chat hosted by... Big Media. That particular unelected, repeatedly failed politician is currently the #2 man in the British government, by the way.
We have police (and, worse, judges) who seem to think it is acceptable to imprison hundreds of people (and kill the odd one or two) who just want to protest peacefully (or walk home from work). We give the police other sweeping powers, which are known to be widely abused, yet we impose little effective regulation on how those powers are used, nor are we very good at holding to account police officers of any rank who are responsible for the abuses. All we get are excuses like "systemic failure" or "institutional failure", i.e., "we won't single out any individual so everyone gets away with it".
One could go on and on, but I think it's pretty clear that we can do corruption as well as anyone.
I suppose that depends on what you consider "mistreatment".
Personally, I consider several of the increasingly invasive security measures to be mistreatment, yet everyone who flies to (or, apparently, over) the US is subject to them. At the current rate, we might as well just skip to chipping everyone at birth, 24/7 logging of all movements and interactions shared with any low-level public official in any country who wants to see it, and a public strip/cavity search at gunpoint on arrival at any transport hub just to be sure.
As for more direct mistreatment, I've known more than one friend who was stopped and given extra pat downs or side room checks with unusual frequency when travelling by air. Whether it was because of the various countries they came from or whether it was because in almost all cases they were attractive girls in their late teens or twenties at the time, I can't say.
Given who recently received the Nobel Peace Prize—while leading the country with the worst record in the world on war in recent years and one of the worst on human rights, and having talked a bit but acted very little to improve either situation—counting Nobel Prizes awarded to those from the US was perhaps not the most convincing argument you could have made. :-/
China is the number 1 polluter (and the gap is widening, not shrinking).
Sorry, I should have been explicit: I was referring to per capita figures, because (as in most areas of this debate) those are the ones that really tell you how well a country is doing. If you look at absolute figures then it's true that China has overtaken the US recently, and other major developing economies like India's are also rising.
BTW, even looking at absolute figures, the fact that you think only being second in the "worst polluter in the world" awards is some sort of victory is quite telling.
Methinks you exagerrate a bit. Here is a list off the top of my head:
World class: Passenger jets, Large construction equipment, Medical devices (CT, MRI, Ultrasound, Lab automation), Pharmaceuticals, Weapon systems (military jets, missiles, missile defense systems), Satellites, Semiconductors, Networking gear
Competitive: Automobiles, Computers, Cell phones, furniture
There's a lot of interesting stuff in those lists. Technologies like passenger jets and automobiles, as they stand today, are doomed, and the serious research into more future-proof alternatives is mostly happening outside the US. In fact, the US auto industry is basically one big disaster waiting to happen, currently kept afloat only by the US government because of the horrendous economic implications of letting it fail. Does "too big to fail" really not sound warning bells over there yet?
Things like pharma and medical equipment are interesting. Yes, the US has some very profitable companies, but again, what really counts is who is doing the research and producing the health-improving drugs and diagnostic/treatment systems of tomorrow. And again, while the US takes a fair share of this, it is hardly a scientific powerhouse on which everyone else depends or without which medical research would cease.
Satellites? Well, maybe, but in case you hadn't noticed the US space shuttle programme is coming to an end and NASA don't have a viable replacement yet, so the Russians and Europeans are pretty much going to be laughing on that count in a few years.
Computers, semiconductors and networking gear are all tech products, and yes, the US is certainly one of the best centres in the world for these today. But of all the major industries, technology moves on perhaps the most quickly, and again you need to have the thinkers and R&D budgets to maintain a leading position. Otherwise established rivals in places like Europe (or some almost-out-of-nowhere enterprise in China) will suddenly be the dominant guys. And in any case, much of the income the US derives from these products comes from trade, which is exactly where the US is going to find itself increasingly squeezed in coming years.
In a nutshell, almost every field you mentioned is technology-based, and while the US is relatively strong in these areas today, we're talking about tomorrow, or more likely, a decade or two from now. By that time, it is likely that current technology will be all but obsolete. What matters for this debate is the degree to which the US can maintain a position near the top of the table through continued research and development and evolving manufacturing and service industries. If the smart people stop moving to the US, the quality of education of its own citizens continues to decrease relative to other nations, and its economy goes to hell, that degree is not going to be great, and all three of those things look like the dominant trends to me.
Oh, and your dismissive attitude regarding the US military reminds me of a favorite movie quote
That was a good movie, with an outstanding performance from Jack Nicholson, but a cute quotation does not replace facts. What benefits are the people of the US really gaining in exchange for the vast commitment to military power that they make? Perhaps you didn't realise, but far more US military personnel h