Your negative assessment is only accurate as far as it goes. If the Slashdot moderation were not so borken (sic), that could explain your lack of an "insightful" mod, though I'd prefer to think it was your omission of the positive side (in the fantasy context of good moderation). I think your missing keyword is "priority", as in security is not a high (or high enough) priority at Apple because something else is. That something else is profit, as summarized in my earlier reply.
Apple's response is just PR-driven BS, and your comment does NOT deserve the "insightful" moderation the shills and sakura gave it. The only insight from your comment is that you have minimal contact with Apple.
Try and honestly criticize Apple in an Apple-controlled venue and you will find out what total lack of respect means in a profit-dominated context. For example, if you had tried to describe this rather horrendous security problem and gotten too negative, I predict you would have found your comment blocked. Based on my years of experiences involving a MacBook Pro (which I still use on a daily basis for certain tasks), I actually think Apple has automated the censorship using sentiment analysis of the draft comment. Or perhaps it's profile-driven by the secret dossiers they have on each of us?
I could write a more substantive response on the topic, but here on Slashdot such a comment would merely be shouted down by pro-Apple fanbois with mod points to burn. Not worth the time, though I will donate a few seconds for a rerun of the capsule version:
Capitalism and communism are dead. Our new religion is corporate cancerism. There is no gawd but profit, and Apple is gawd's chief prophet.
Actually you reminded me of a different economic model that could be done as part of an alternative kind of email system. The email provider would also be offering privacy protection services coupled with more reliable personal information--because it was the information we had agreed to provide to support our OWN shopping plans. Contrast with the "ram it down your throat with fake desire" model of most of today's ads.
The email provider would actually act as an auctioneer for our personal time. For example, you could say that you are willing to spend 20 minutes each day reading information about things you want to buy, and the auctions would sell that amount of time to the legitimate companies that most wanted to reach you. The profits of the auctions would be split between you and the auctioneer/email-provider, who would also have a strong incentive to (1) protect your privacy to protect their own place in the auctions, and (2) to REALLY screen your email for ALL spam to prevent competing with free.
You wouldn't even have to read the advertising email, but if you did, then you would be increasing the value of your time as sold in the auctions. For example, you might be grouped with a package such as: "This group of 25 anonymized customers has a historical purchase rate of 75% for the products they have expressed interest in and which your company sells. The customers in this group have only agreed to receive ads from up to 5 companies at a time for each product they are shopping for. Would you like to bid to send ads to this group of customers?"
I very much agree with you. The economic model that I would advocate would involve such a radical reversal of the money model. If you want some new service or feature, you would have to join with other people to help fund it. If the service or feature incurred ongoing costs, for example by needing a server, then there would be a funding project for support of the ongoing costs, and if the project runs out of funding, it would become inactive until refunded.
In philosophic terms, I'm arguing for cost recovery based on what people want and are willing to pay for, not profit maximization with an element of gambling thrown in. Unfortunately I also agree with you that I cannot see how such a transition can take place, especially given where we are now. Essentially the winning gamblers are bribing the cheapest politicians to rig the game ever more in their favor.
We have the Data Protection Act in the UK. Every individual has the right to request a copy of all the data any corporation or company holds about them. Failure to provide the data in the format requested within a fixed period of time or to confirm that the data doesn't exist, can lead to the company being fined.
I like the idea very much. Now how can we avoid creating competitive disadvantage for countries that actually care so much about the rights of their citizens? [sarcasm]Dare I fear[/sarcasm] that some [tttwtanbtt]soulless corporate monsters[/tttwtanbtt] might flee such [sarcasm]onerous restrictions[/sarcasm] and race to the bottom in other less restrictive nations? I bet Russia has no such nuisance law.
Let me clarify that my fundamental position is that our personal information should belong to each of us. The default should be for private information to remain private, whereas the current laws are like "open season" for soulless corporations to hunt us to increase their profits, with a few small bribes kicked back to rich fools who imagine they have some power over their "pet" monsters. Having said that, I see no path towards positive change, so...
Why can't we have some access to the information that is collected about us for OUR own benefit?
Specifically, I think a standardized public profile could be extremely helpful as a filter to use my time better. It would be useful even if the data were limited to public reactions to public comments. If someone has a public reputation for posting crap, then I don't want to waste time with that person's newest post. I'd prefer to spend my time primarily with people who have earned favorable reputations.
More specifically in the context of this specific topic, personal location data is extremely sensitive--and valuable. I can think of LOTS of things I could do with mine, but I cannot think of ANY reason to trust the google not to abuse it. Still, it would be nice if it could actually be used for such purposes as reminding me when I'm near a restaurant I enjoyed before without the corporate abuse.
Enough effort for today's Slashdot. However, I'll close with the usual ancient joke: Detailed suggestions available upon polite request.
I feel like I failed to be sufficiently clear, though I think I agree with your comment. Technology remains morally neutral. Technology can be used to increase freedom or destroy it. Highly centralized networks of the corporations, with rules by the lawyers, for the greater wealth of the richest 0.1% are NOT going to increase your (or my) freedom. It's not a struggle between capitalism and socialism. Dead concepts. What we have here is corporate cancerism running amok.
My alternative vision from more than 30 years ago was for a kind of a universal network of good neighbors. You would be able to decide what computing resources you wanted to buy and how you wanted to use them, but insofar as you were willing to share them, your good-neighbor behaviors would be recognized and vouched for by your neighbors. For example, if your neighborhood needed more storage resources and you decided to provide them, then you would be recognized as a better neighbor on that basis. Ditto other resources like long-distance links or mobile relay units.
In cities where the density of privately owned computers is high enough, it would be technically feasible to use mesh networks for most of the local traffic. You scratch my back, I forward your packets and provide local caching services for viral content. Something along those lines. Still need some gateways to long-distance networks, but most of the infrastructure doesn't need to be owned by giant cancerous corporations. Let's not forget soulless and driven by nothing but profit maximization. (Ranting now, but "All our attention are belong to them" and "There is no gawd but profit, and Apple is gawd's #1 prophet." I was surprised the google was so far down the list...)
Won't happen because the government and the corporations and the professional politicians all agree that they want to control our data. Their motives differ, but they can still agree where it counts. (Ranting again, but I think today's most entertaining battles are mostly between proponents of government of the corporations, by the lawyers, for the richest 0.1% and #PresidentTweety, who wants the simpler government of, by, and for the Donald.)
Anyway, I still like to dream. I think the best design would need to use variable power transmitters so that the cell size could be reduced as density increases. The goal would be to retain uniformly high bandwidth without interference as the density of [privately owned nodes] increases.
Obligatory rant against Facebook? Naw, you can look through the comments and see for yourself where Slashdot is now.
Personal experience (email exchanges) have convinced me that Stallman is a nice guy, but his priorities are warped around ideas. As an idealist, I sympathize, but...
The problem is NOT the tools or even who wrote the tools. Not even the financial models underlying the tools, though one of my crazy ideas involves an alternate financial model for more democratic control over software. (Ancient joke time: Lots of detailed suggestions available upon polite (and sincere) request.)
The problem is that the decisions are made by materialists. You don't have to be super-greedy to become a dominant materialist, but you don't become super-rich unless that is one of your attributes. I actually think the extremely rich bastards have to know something about manipulating people and often know how to play games with ideals (especially to disguise their greed), but it always comes back to the insane greed. In this context "insane" means a willingness to hurt other people.
In summary: (1) Super-rich bastards are bribing the cheapest politicians (mostly #BolshevikRepublicans these years) to rig the rules of the games to make themselves richer. (2) It's painful enough just watching mindless morons voting to hurt themselves without watching their fear-filled leader #PresidentTweety hurt the entire nation.
I object to the insightful moderation on this comment because it is fundamentally inaccurate. #PresidentTweety is the culmination of a long destruction of America, mostly from within, but also exploited by external adversaries such as Vladimir Putin. He was NOT the choice of "the people of the United States", but rather was able to stagger into the White House with the support of just enough mindless morons strategically located. I think the hilarious part is that the American system includes a number of safeguards that were supposed to prevent #PresidentTweety or anyone like him, but some self-proclaimed conservatives are so confused about "conserving" their own personal wealth that they actively supported the subversion of those safeguards.
Wow. For a fairly active topic with lots of room for interesting comments, I am still amazed at how low Slashdot has sunk.
Not ONE comment moderated as funny. In my admittedly mostly random searching, I couldn't even find an attempt at humor.
Only 5 moderated as insightful. That should be a surprise, too, but it's worn out. Even less surprising that the insights were spread between trivial and imaginary.
So I considered where as-yet-unmoderated "insight" should lie. Obviously "profit" is involved. Only 5 mentions, but nothing insightful there. Another key aspect would involve "efficiency", but that didn't get a single mention.
Maybe there's something hidden in the AC stuff I can't see (without lots of favorable mods)? I doubt it.
In conclusion, there are some insights on the interesting topic, but why would I invest the time seeking (or sharing) them on Slashdot?
I always prefer to close on a positive note, but even that seems too pointless now. Search for the #1 problem that deserves the highest priority? I've already noted (repeatedly) that it's the financial model, but the borken (sic.) moderation is also not helping.
No, I know Apple is bad, even EVIL, to put money ahead of human beings. I think you are seriously messed up, but perhaps you can explain to me exactly why you "think" Apple needs another billion dollars of profit? Last I heard Apple was simply sitting on an obscene amount of cash in the bank.
My preliminary theory is that you have delusions of getting a billion of your own and mostly you fantasize about what you would do to other people when you had the kind of power that comes with that kind of money. I call that SERIOUSLY messed up.
While I agree with you in some places, I think you're kind of misled on this "capitalism" thing. Next you'll be trying to convince me that "communism" still exists (or ever existed outside of Marx's dreams).
I think the best description of what we have now is "corporate cancerism". I would even argue that cancerism is the natural outcome of attempting to reduce all value to the single dimension of profit.
So I can't help wondering about the REAL costs of Apple's profits. No, I don't think Apple is destroying the planet to the degree that the Koch brothers and Exxon do. No, I don't think Apple is an evil empire like Microsoft was in its monopolistic and abusive heyday. I actually think the google has much more potential for cancerous and evil growth than Apple does, but the jury is still out and I don't want to ignore Apple's ability to create profitable fashion stampedes around peculiar fads.
And yet, I recall the recent story about the engineer who lost his job and possibly his career because his daughter visited him at the office and took a naughty picture of a new iPhone. Seems like a somewhat evil prioritization of profits over people.
In general I think tax policy should favor freedom over profit. Extreme profits tend to involve monopolies or other choice-reducing systems that cut into freedom. A progressive profits tax would encourage highly successful to reproduce into competing companies. The current profits-uber-alles tax system only encourages cancerous growth.
Also, I think smaller government must be predicated upon smaller companies. Soulless, huge, immoral, and immortal companies running amok in search of infinite profits without any control is one of the worst scenarios I can image.
Is the devil really so naive? I suggest that you read about how private pharmaceutical companies set their research priorities. They do NOT want to spend money developing medicines that actually cure diseases, though it sometimes happens. Most of the researchers are less concerned about profit. To maximize Gilead's profits they would actually prefer to develop medicines that address symptoms without curing the underlying diseases. Also, they use the patents almost exclusively to maximize profits, not to accelerate the progress of medical science. An inexpensive medication that immediately and permanently cures a disease is just a terrible investment.
Wandering away from the original article, but there's some fundamental confusion about "the pursuit of happiness" as a justification for greed. A certain amount of greed is okay, but once your greed for profit causes you to hurt other people, then it is not okay. Setting research priorities based on profit maximization is just what the devil ordered.
Wandering even farther afield, I think healthcare should be considered under the "right to life" part of the Constitution. The government actually has a legitimate interest in helping people live longer. Countries like Japan are able to do a much better job of providing healthcare than America while spending less money because profit and greed are not the driving factors. Hey, devil, do you even know that Japan's healthcare system is quite similar to ObamaCare except that it includes public insurance options to keep the private insurance companies honest?
The funniest part was the bit about the stock prices. Not just the hilarious and unclear description of the price gyrations, but the insane underlying assumption that the stock prices have any linkage to reality. Today's stock prices are only linked to the fantasy of selling the shares at a higher price, with NO relation to the underlying realities of the property that is supposedly owned by the shares. Actually, most of the shares these years are for fake entities that are just holding companies for random bags of other companies, with a few real companies somewhere at the bottom. Some of the real companies may be producing real products or real services, but most of them are producing illusions like the value of Apple's latest and greatest and most profitable iPhone.
Remember there is no gawd but profit, and Apple is gawd's chief prophet.
That's according to Forbes for 2016. The rest of the top 10 include Gilead, Alphabet (AKA the google), Exxon, and some huge gamblers (AKA financial speculators playing games with other people's money and having socialized loss insurance since they're now "too big to fail" (assuming the federal government is still big enough to bail them out when they do fail again)).
Me? I think we should have tax policies designed to increase freedom. Make companies smaller so we can have smaller government. Make companies smaller so we have more choice and freedom. Make companies smaller so they have smaller profits! Oh, wait. I forgot profit is gawd.
Your comment is quite insane. Apple has absolutely NO "right to operate as it sees fit". At least not until after they bribe the politicians sufficiently to eliminate all laws and regulations. Perhaps they can eliminate my moral considerations at the same time?
Troll identified. Further comments from 598059 go straight to the Z file.
In other words, you think the child who made a mistake deserves to suffer so the soulless corporation can increase the hoopla and fake buzz around a slightly improved smartphone. Did you ever do anything that caused some sort of problem for your parents? Of course not.
Me? Mostly I think children make mistakes and should learn from them. Ditto parents. The massive penalty for her childish enthusiasm may well traumatize her for life. Also, I think our hardware is running away from us and the software continues to reek like the big dogs' m0es. I also think you're probably some sort of troll, but I don't really care about the details of your disordered priorities.
Too bad the EVIL is NOT unusual. That's just how corporations work in their mindless and soulless pursuit of infinite profit.
Spent a while searching through this promising topic in search of funny or insightful comments. Remarkably disappointing. There was a recent article with a little wayback machine for old Slashdot articles, and each time I tested it I seemed to find much more humor and insight in the ancient history of Slashdot.
Actually I regard this topic of being fired for theoretically threatening profits as a religious issue:
There is no gawd but profit, and Apple is profit's prophet.
That's as in #1 profit according to Forbes for 2016. Lesser prophets include Gilead, the google, Exxon, and some gamblers.
The priority is money, not principles or people. Rather like #PresidentTweety, eh? I think that prioritization tends to produce evil, but your mileage may differ. I think good programmers naturally tend to put principles first, insofar as programs are just instantiated abstractions.
Only tried it a couple of times, but the old articles it selected had far more funny comments than anything I've seen on Slashdot recently.
Perhaps the selection mechanism is somehow biased in favor of good articles, even though it claims to be random? For example, it might be favoring articles with more comments?
Fred got tired so we sent him to a nice farm upstate where he can play with all the other old programmers all day long!
Thus spake management.
Rather disappointed that no one had bothered with the ancient joke yet. (Or maybe it was ACed to invisibility?)
Speaking more seriously, I had no desire to retire yet. I had already moved up from programming, though my last 15 years still benefited from my technical experience and I worked pretty hard to remain relevant so I could understand what the young developers and even the researchers were working on, the better to help them succeed. Doesn't matter in these days of corporate cancerism. In the end it comes down to reducing head count to boost profits. Don't forget:
"There is no gawd but profit, and IBM is gawd's true prophet!"
The last part is the big joke. According to Forbes, profit's chief prophets for 2016 are Apple, Gilead, the google, Exxon, and some gamblers. By gamblers I mean giant financial organizations that gamble with other people's money.
(Actually, you can't really call it gambling, because at that level of the game, they are so close to the gawd of profit that they have special dispensation and are sainted as "too big to fail". If they phuck up hugely enough, they'll be bailed out with public money, but don't you DARE call it socialism. (By the way, this is how you know #PresidentTweety is no saint, because he had to be bailed out with dirty rubles and didn't qualify for socialism.))
I think it's a typical Slashdot response of unjustified hostility and disagreement. When in doubt, scream and shout. It's the Slashdot way.
I didn't say anything about American antivirus software being any more reliable or trustworthy or uninstallable than the Russian stuff. I suppose the amusing paradox here is that whoever is best at detecting malware becomes the least trustworthy precisely because they would also be the best at evading detection of their malware by other antivirus software.
However, I do have to say that I do not agree with you about either of your examples of OSes that don't rely on antivirus software. They need it just as much, even if they can't rely on it. (I use at least 4 OSes these days, but probably around 8 if you count by versions.)
The most dangerous delusion is that you or your computers are safe. Unfortunately, I don't have any real solutions to offer. The problems are really difficult and in any contest between amateurs and experts, I'm going to bet on the experts and I know that I'm no expert when it comes to computer security (and even though friends and acquaintances seem to think I know a bit about the field). Or as the old joke puts it: âoeThe race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong, but thatâ(TM)s the way to bet.â (Attributed to Damon Runyon)
Hmm... Is it even worth the effort to see humor in this active topic? The "funny" shortage on Slashdot is reaching crisis levels...
Would truly malicious software actually allow itself to be uninstalled? If the Kaspersky people are competent at what they do, and if they are doing it for Putin, then you are in a world of hurt. The question of "Should you uninstall?" is relatively trivial compared to the big questions of "Are you able to uninstall the software?" and "How can you be sure you really got rid of it?"
The makers of the best anti-virus software (which might be Kaspersky for all I know) would know about every backdoor into your system and every way to hide bad code. If that company was evil or suborned for evil purposes, that same knowledge would make it impossible to remove their software unless they REALLY wanted to let you remove it.
All things considered, especially things like how good Putin is at manipulating people, at this point I'd have very little trust in any computer that ever ran any software that originated in Russia. Or even software that was exposed to Russians who have family members still living in Russia.
Technology remains morally neutral. Putin and his kleptocrats? Not so much.
Before commenting, I searched this discussion for prior statements of this obvious reality. Didn't find any, but maybe I just hadn't thought of the right keywords yet. So I'll try another search now...
Slashdot Mirror
Your negative assessment is only accurate as far as it goes. If the Slashdot moderation were not so borken (sic), that could explain your lack of an "insightful" mod, though I'd prefer to think it was your omission of the positive side (in the fantasy context of good moderation). I think your missing keyword is "priority", as in security is not a high (or high enough) priority at Apple because something else is. That something else is profit, as summarized in my earlier reply.
Apple's response is just PR-driven BS, and your comment does NOT deserve the "insightful" moderation the shills and sakura gave it. The only insight from your comment is that you have minimal contact with Apple.
Try and honestly criticize Apple in an Apple-controlled venue and you will find out what total lack of respect means in a profit-dominated context. For example, if you had tried to describe this rather horrendous security problem and gotten too negative, I predict you would have found your comment blocked. Based on my years of experiences involving a MacBook Pro (which I still use on a daily basis for certain tasks), I actually think Apple has automated the censorship using sentiment analysis of the draft comment. Or perhaps it's profile-driven by the secret dossiers they have on each of us?
I could write a more substantive response on the topic, but here on Slashdot such a comment would merely be shouted down by pro-Apple fanbois with mod points to burn. Not worth the time, though I will donate a few seconds for a rerun of the capsule version:
Capitalism and communism are dead. Our new religion is corporate cancerism. There is no gawd but profit, and Apple is gawd's chief prophet.
Actually you reminded me of a different economic model that could be done as part of an alternative kind of email system. The email provider would also be offering privacy protection services coupled with more reliable personal information--because it was the information we had agreed to provide to support our OWN shopping plans. Contrast with the "ram it down your throat with fake desire" model of most of today's ads.
The email provider would actually act as an auctioneer for our personal time. For example, you could say that you are willing to spend 20 minutes each day reading information about things you want to buy, and the auctions would sell that amount of time to the legitimate companies that most wanted to reach you. The profits of the auctions would be split between you and the auctioneer/email-provider, who would also have a strong incentive to (1) protect your privacy to protect their own place in the auctions, and (2) to REALLY screen your email for ALL spam to prevent competing with free.
You wouldn't even have to read the advertising email, but if you did, then you would be increasing the value of your time as sold in the auctions. For example, you might be grouped with a package such as: "This group of 25 anonymized customers has a historical purchase rate of 75% for the products they have expressed interest in and which your company sells. The customers in this group have only agreed to receive ads from up to 5 companies at a time for each product they are shopping for. Would you like to bid to send ads to this group of customers?"
I very much agree with you. The economic model that I would advocate would involve such a radical reversal of the money model. If you want some new service or feature, you would have to join with other people to help fund it. If the service or feature incurred ongoing costs, for example by needing a server, then there would be a funding project for support of the ongoing costs, and if the project runs out of funding, it would become inactive until refunded.
In philosophic terms, I'm arguing for cost recovery based on what people want and are willing to pay for, not profit maximization with an element of gambling thrown in. Unfortunately I also agree with you that I cannot see how such a transition can take place, especially given where we are now. Essentially the winning gamblers are bribing the cheapest politicians to rig the game ever more in their favor.
We have the Data Protection Act in the UK. Every individual has the right to request a copy of all the data any corporation or company holds about them. Failure to provide the data in the format requested within a fixed period of time or to confirm that the data doesn't exist, can lead to the company being fined.
I like the idea very much. Now how can we avoid creating competitive disadvantage for countries that actually care so much about the rights of their citizens? [sarcasm]Dare I fear[/sarcasm] that some [tttwtanbtt]soulless corporate monsters[/tttwtanbtt] might flee such [sarcasm]onerous restrictions[/sarcasm] and race to the bottom in other less restrictive nations? I bet Russia has no such nuisance law.
Let me clarify that my fundamental position is that our personal information should belong to each of us. The default should be for private information to remain private, whereas the current laws are like "open season" for soulless corporations to hunt us to increase their profits, with a few small bribes kicked back to rich fools who imagine they have some power over their "pet" monsters. Having said that, I see no path towards positive change, so...
Why can't we have some access to the information that is collected about us for OUR own benefit?
Specifically, I think a standardized public profile could be extremely helpful as a filter to use my time better. It would be useful even if the data were limited to public reactions to public comments. If someone has a public reputation for posting crap, then I don't want to waste time with that person's newest post. I'd prefer to spend my time primarily with people who have earned favorable reputations.
More specifically in the context of this specific topic, personal location data is extremely sensitive--and valuable. I can think of LOTS of things I could do with mine, but I cannot think of ANY reason to trust the google not to abuse it. Still, it would be nice if it could actually be used for such purposes as reminding me when I'm near a restaurant I enjoyed before without the corporate abuse.
Enough effort for today's Slashdot. However, I'll close with the usual ancient joke: Detailed suggestions available upon polite request.
I feel like I failed to be sufficiently clear, though I think I agree with your comment. Technology remains morally neutral. Technology can be used to increase freedom or destroy it. Highly centralized networks of the corporations, with rules by the lawyers, for the greater wealth of the richest 0.1% are NOT going to increase your (or my) freedom. It's not a struggle between capitalism and socialism. Dead concepts. What we have here is corporate cancerism running amok.
My alternative vision from more than 30 years ago was for a kind of a universal network of good neighbors. You would be able to decide what computing resources you wanted to buy and how you wanted to use them, but insofar as you were willing to share them, your good-neighbor behaviors would be recognized and vouched for by your neighbors. For example, if your neighborhood needed more storage resources and you decided to provide them, then you would be recognized as a better neighbor on that basis. Ditto other resources like long-distance links or mobile relay units.
In cities where the density of privately owned computers is high enough, it would be technically feasible to use mesh networks for most of the local traffic. You scratch my back, I forward your packets and provide local caching services for viral content. Something along those lines. Still need some gateways to long-distance networks, but most of the infrastructure doesn't need to be owned by giant cancerous corporations. Let's not forget soulless and driven by nothing but profit maximization. (Ranting now, but "All our attention are belong to them" and "There is no gawd but profit, and Apple is gawd's #1 prophet." I was surprised the google was so far down the list...)
Won't happen because the government and the corporations and the professional politicians all agree that they want to control our data. Their motives differ, but they can still agree where it counts. (Ranting again, but I think today's most entertaining battles are mostly between proponents of government of the corporations, by the lawyers, for the richest 0.1% and #PresidentTweety, who wants the simpler government of, by, and for the Donald.)
Anyway, I still like to dream. I think the best design would need to use variable power transmitters so that the cell size could be reduced as density increases. The goal would be to retain uniformly high bandwidth without interference as the density of [privately owned nodes] increases.
Obligatory rant against Facebook? Naw, you can look through the comments and see for yourself where Slashdot is now.
Personal experience (email exchanges) have convinced me that Stallman is a nice guy, but his priorities are warped around ideas. As an idealist, I sympathize, but...
The problem is NOT the tools or even who wrote the tools. Not even the financial models underlying the tools, though one of my crazy ideas involves an alternate financial model for more democratic control over software. (Ancient joke time: Lots of detailed suggestions available upon polite (and sincere) request.)
The problem is that the decisions are made by materialists. You don't have to be super-greedy to become a dominant materialist, but you don't become super-rich unless that is one of your attributes. I actually think the extremely rich bastards have to know something about manipulating people and often know how to play games with ideals (especially to disguise their greed), but it always comes back to the insane greed. In this context "insane" means a willingness to hurt other people.
In summary:
(1) Super-rich bastards are bribing the cheapest politicians (mostly #BolshevikRepublicans these years) to rig the rules of the games to make themselves richer.
(2) It's painful enough just watching mindless morons voting to hurt themselves without watching their fear-filled leader #PresidentTweety hurt the entire nation.
I object to the insightful moderation on this comment because it is fundamentally inaccurate. #PresidentTweety is the culmination of a long destruction of America, mostly from within, but also exploited by external adversaries such as Vladimir Putin. He was NOT the choice of "the people of the United States", but rather was able to stagger into the White House with the support of just enough mindless morons strategically located. I think the hilarious part is that the American system includes a number of safeguards that were supposed to prevent #PresidentTweety or anyone like him, but some self-proclaimed conservatives are so confused about "conserving" their own personal wealth that they actively supported the subversion of those safeguards.
I should come back later to see if it gets modded funny?
There is a fundamental equality among universal Turing machines, but not when time is taken into consideration.
Took me many years to complete that computation, but a sufficiently faster UTM could have finished in that many seconds.
Wow. For a fairly active topic with lots of room for interesting comments, I am still amazed at how low Slashdot has sunk.
Not ONE comment moderated as funny. In my admittedly mostly random searching, I couldn't even find an attempt at humor.
Only 5 moderated as insightful. That should be a surprise, too, but it's worn out. Even less surprising that the insights were spread between trivial and imaginary.
So I considered where as-yet-unmoderated "insight" should lie. Obviously "profit" is involved. Only 5 mentions, but nothing insightful there. Another key aspect would involve "efficiency", but that didn't get a single mention.
Maybe there's something hidden in the AC stuff I can't see (without lots of favorable mods)? I doubt it.
In conclusion, there are some insights on the interesting topic, but why would I invest the time seeking (or sharing) them on Slashdot?
I always prefer to close on a positive note, but even that seems too pointless now. Search for the #1 problem that deserves the highest priority? I've already noted (repeatedly) that it's the financial model, but the borken (sic.) moderation is also not helping.
No, I know Apple is bad, even EVIL, to put money ahead of human beings. I think you are seriously messed up, but perhaps you can explain to me exactly why you "think" Apple needs another billion dollars of profit? Last I heard Apple was simply sitting on an obscene amount of cash in the bank.
My preliminary theory is that you have delusions of getting a billion of your own and mostly you fantasize about what you would do to other people when you had the kind of power that comes with that kind of money. I call that SERIOUSLY messed up.
While I agree with you in some places, I think you're kind of misled on this "capitalism" thing. Next you'll be trying to convince me that "communism" still exists (or ever existed outside of Marx's dreams).
I think the best description of what we have now is "corporate cancerism". I would even argue that cancerism is the natural outcome of attempting to reduce all value to the single dimension of profit.
So I can't help wondering about the REAL costs of Apple's profits. No, I don't think Apple is destroying the planet to the degree that the Koch brothers and Exxon do. No, I don't think Apple is an evil empire like Microsoft was in its monopolistic and abusive heyday. I actually think the google has much more potential for cancerous and evil growth than Apple does, but the jury is still out and I don't want to ignore Apple's ability to create profitable fashion stampedes around peculiar fads.
And yet, I recall the recent story about the engineer who lost his job and possibly his career because his daughter visited him at the office and took a naughty picture of a new iPhone. Seems like a somewhat evil prioritization of profits over people.
In general I think tax policy should favor freedom over profit. Extreme profits tend to involve monopolies or other choice-reducing systems that cut into freedom. A progressive profits tax would encourage highly successful to reproduce into competing companies. The current profits-uber-alles tax system only encourages cancerous growth.
Also, I think smaller government must be predicated upon smaller companies. Soulless, huge, immoral, and immortal companies running amok in search of infinite profits without any control is one of the worst scenarios I can image.
Is the devil really so naive? I suggest that you read about how private pharmaceutical companies set their research priorities. They do NOT want to spend money developing medicines that actually cure diseases, though it sometimes happens. Most of the researchers are less concerned about profit. To maximize Gilead's profits they would actually prefer to develop medicines that address symptoms without curing the underlying diseases. Also, they use the patents almost exclusively to maximize profits, not to accelerate the progress of medical science. An inexpensive medication that immediately and permanently cures a disease is just a terrible investment.
Wandering away from the original article, but there's some fundamental confusion about "the pursuit of happiness" as a justification for greed. A certain amount of greed is okay, but once your greed for profit causes you to hurt other people, then it is not okay. Setting research priorities based on profit maximization is just what the devil ordered.
Wandering even farther afield, I think healthcare should be considered under the "right to life" part of the Constitution. The government actually has a legitimate interest in helping people live longer. Countries like Japan are able to do a much better job of providing healthcare than America while spending less money because profit and greed are not the driving factors. Hey, devil, do you even know that Japan's healthcare system is quite similar to ObamaCare except that it includes public insurance options to keep the private insurance companies honest?
The funniest part was the bit about the stock prices. Not just the hilarious and unclear description of the price gyrations, but the insane underlying assumption that the stock prices have any linkage to reality. Today's stock prices are only linked to the fantasy of selling the shares at a higher price, with NO relation to the underlying realities of the property that is supposedly owned by the shares. Actually, most of the shares these years are for fake entities that are just holding companies for random bags of other companies, with a few real companies somewhere at the bottom. Some of the real companies may be producing real products or real services, but most of them are producing illusions like the value of Apple's latest and greatest and most profitable iPhone.
Remember there is no gawd but profit, and Apple is gawd's chief prophet.
That's according to Forbes for 2016. The rest of the top 10 include Gilead, Alphabet (AKA the google), Exxon, and some huge gamblers (AKA financial speculators playing games with other people's money and having socialized loss insurance since they're now "too big to fail" (assuming the federal government is still big enough to bail them out when they do fail again)).
Me? I think we should have tax policies designed to increase freedom. Make companies smaller so we can have smaller government. Make companies smaller so we have more choice and freedom. Make companies smaller so they have smaller profits! Oh, wait. I forgot profit is gawd.
Your comment is quite insane. Apple has absolutely NO "right to operate as it sees fit". At least not until after they bribe the politicians sufficiently to eliminate all laws and regulations. Perhaps they can eliminate my moral considerations at the same time?
Troll identified. Further comments from 598059 go straight to the Z file.
In other words, you think the child who made a mistake deserves to suffer so the soulless corporation can increase the hoopla and fake buzz around a slightly improved smartphone. Did you ever do anything that caused some sort of problem for your parents? Of course not.
Me? Mostly I think children make mistakes and should learn from them. Ditto parents. The massive penalty for her childish enthusiasm may well traumatize her for life. Also, I think our hardware is running away from us and the software continues to reek like the big dogs' m0es. I also think you're probably some sort of troll, but I don't really care about the details of your disordered priorities.
Too bad the EVIL is NOT unusual. That's just how corporations work in their mindless and soulless pursuit of infinite profit.
Spent a while searching through this promising topic in search of funny or insightful comments. Remarkably disappointing. There was a recent article with a little wayback machine for old Slashdot articles, and each time I tested it I seemed to find much more humor and insight in the ancient history of Slashdot.
Actually I regard this topic of being fired for theoretically threatening profits as a religious issue:
There is no gawd but profit, and Apple is profit's prophet.
That's as in #1 profit according to Forbes for 2016. Lesser prophets include Gilead, the google, Exxon, and some gamblers.
The priority is money, not principles or people. Rather like #PresidentTweety, eh? I think that prioritization tends to produce evil, but your mileage may differ. I think good programmers naturally tend to put principles first, insofar as programs are just instantiated abstractions.
Only tried it a couple of times, but the old articles it selected had far more funny comments than anything I've seen on Slashdot recently.
Perhaps the selection mechanism is somehow biased in favor of good articles, even though it claims to be random? For example, it might be favoring articles with more comments?
Fred got tired so we sent him to a nice farm upstate where he can play with all the other old programmers all day long!
Thus spake management.
Rather disappointed that no one had bothered with the ancient joke yet. (Or maybe it was ACed to invisibility?)
Speaking more seriously, I had no desire to retire yet. I had already moved up from programming, though my last 15 years still benefited from my technical experience and I worked pretty hard to remain relevant so I could understand what the young developers and even the researchers were working on, the better to help them succeed. Doesn't matter in these days of corporate cancerism. In the end it comes down to reducing head count to boost profits. Don't forget:
"There is no gawd but profit, and IBM is gawd's true prophet!"
The last part is the big joke. According to Forbes, profit's chief prophets for 2016 are Apple, Gilead, the google, Exxon, and some gamblers. By gamblers I mean giant financial organizations that gamble with other people's money.
(Actually, you can't really call it gambling, because at that level of the game, they are so close to the gawd of profit that they have special dispensation and are sainted as "too big to fail". If they phuck up hugely enough, they'll be bailed out with public money, but don't you DARE call it socialism. (By the way, this is how you know #PresidentTweety is no saint, because he had to be bailed out with dirty rubles and didn't qualify for socialism.))
I think it's a typical Slashdot response of unjustified hostility and disagreement. When in doubt, scream and shout. It's the Slashdot way.
I didn't say anything about American antivirus software being any more reliable or trustworthy or uninstallable than the Russian stuff. I suppose the amusing paradox here is that whoever is best at detecting malware becomes the least trustworthy precisely because they would also be the best at evading detection of their malware by other antivirus software.
However, I do have to say that I do not agree with you about either of your examples of OSes that don't rely on antivirus software. They need it just as much, even if they can't rely on it. (I use at least 4 OSes these days, but probably around 8 if you count by versions.)
The most dangerous delusion is that you or your computers are safe. Unfortunately, I don't have any real solutions to offer. The problems are really difficult and in any contest between amateurs and experts, I'm going to bet on the experts and I know that I'm no expert when it comes to computer security (and even though friends and acquaintances seem to think I know a bit about the field). Or as the old joke puts it: âoeThe race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong, but thatâ(TM)s the way to bet.â (Attributed to Damon Runyon)
Hmm... Is it even worth the effort to see humor in this active topic? The "funny" shortage on Slashdot is reaching crisis levels...
Think about it for a minute.
Would truly malicious software actually allow itself to be uninstalled? If the Kaspersky people are competent at what they do, and if they are doing it for Putin, then you are in a world of hurt. The question of "Should you uninstall?" is relatively trivial compared to the big questions of "Are you able to uninstall the software?" and "How can you be sure you really got rid of it?"
The makers of the best anti-virus software (which might be Kaspersky for all I know) would know about every backdoor into your system and every way to hide bad code. If that company was evil or suborned for evil purposes, that same knowledge would make it impossible to remove their software unless they REALLY wanted to let you remove it.
All things considered, especially things like how good Putin is at manipulating people, at this point I'd have very little trust in any computer that ever ran any software that originated in Russia. Or even software that was exposed to Russians who have family members still living in Russia.
Technology remains morally neutral. Putin and his kleptocrats? Not so much.
Before commenting, I searched this discussion for prior statements of this obvious reality. Didn't find any, but maybe I just hadn't thought of the right keywords yet. So I'll try another search now...