Thus a paradox: as the coconuts grow, a person's ability to masterbate lessens, thus making the coconuts shrink, masterbastion intensifies, cocnonuts reappear, then disappear...oh the disapointment!
When you get a faster computer you start working with it without really noticing a major speed change. But then after a week you go back to your old system then you see the difference.
My fastest computer at home is six years old and has a 300MHz CPU--I guess I can dream, though.
They insisted the contract was required - so I cancelled.
There is something fundamentally wrong with any business that turns away customers. This reminds me of posts about how Best Buy employees would turn away customers who didn't want the extended warranties (they should just be happy to be moving stuff off of shelves!).
I would have thought that total sales volume was more important than sucking each individual customer dry, but, then, I could just be an idiot for thinking that customer satisfaction and repeat business was important.
No, what the carriers actually profit from is misleading their customers into thinking a roaming call is "in network" via a very subtly different on-screen display (thanks, SunCom!) leaving their customers with an obscene phone bill. However, given that these customers most likely will not renew their contract, perhaps the carriers will simply burn in hell (a fitting end, I think).
It seems that corporations that can persist indefinitely regardless of corruption and criminal deeds do so with the support of laws that insulate them from their victims.
Sure, regulation is a tool, but how often is it used to provide a genuinely better balance of power between the people, the government, and the corporations? If anything, the balance of power now-a-days is so artificially skewed that I don't know what the future brings--it's sort of like worrying about a meteor of apocalypic scale that may, or may not, come.
There is still the problem of uncompensated greed. The following paragraph in the report reads: "Educators in the U.S. want high-quality free textbooks, special programs for handicapped and disadvantaged kids, guidance counselors, school nurses, school libraries and librarians to staff them." Everyone wants everyone to be accomodated without having to honestly recognize just how damn expensive it is to do so. It isn't a problem of decentralization nor of a lack of standards but one of the school systems (perhaps the elected school boards themselves) not having the courage to tell the voting public to piss off and grow up. So, they invent all these programs and special allowances to the point where everything is spread around so thin that even buying art supplies is a challenge (yet 500 video surveillence systems in Biloxi aren't a problem...).
If people are still vulnerable, it's their own damned fault.
Microsoft has $40 fucking billion dollars (so much money that it transcends "dollars"). Why don't they make more effort to educate their customers in the use of their products? It's not like people can just go out and operate a 200-ton crane without some basic training, right? Computer software, regardless of how much sweet sugar coating it has, is complex, and people will struggle to understand it. Ignorance is an excuse, in this case, because Microsoft simply has done very little to improve the public consciousness about the risks associated with the Internet. People are already very very aware of the risk of cars (usually). Why not computers? Because no one has taught them!
If you didn't patch, you know who to blame. Not Bill Gates.
I wish these naive statements would stop. Microsoft has not made significant efforts to educate their customers about the Internet and all it entails. Figuratively, Microsoft just shoves the keys into a 12-year-old's hands and says "Have a ball! (No warranty or liability for your death)." Simply, the blame is not as one-sided as you propose.
I think there's a slight difference of scale there.
This is very true, but there is another lesson in this. Unless a person runs a default install of Red Hat in minimal-security mode, odds are a UNIX/Linux/BSD box won't get owned by an automated root kits or worms. The result is that UNIX crackers will tend to be more personal and more targetted in their efforts. For example, the FSF computer that got broken into was done so with the full criminal science suite of motive, opportunity, etc. Compare with most Windows users who are just the victims of yet another stupid automated program that takes advantage of Microsoft's negligence and the users' own ignorance.
That's right, Microsoft nuked the power station to offset the bad worm publicity.
Well, Bill Gates is already more powerful than any government leader in the world, so perhaps we shouldn't be suprised if he has also mastered lightning and other natural phenomena to do his bidding.
Maybe if people would get it through their skulls that Windows ships with a BIG WINDOWS UPDATE LINK in the Start Menu for a REASON
Sorry to burst your bubble, but Microsoft also provides reasons to NOT use Windows Update. Microsoft has been known to 1) break existing configurations, 2) upgrade EULAs to suit themselves, 3) install DRM, and 4) alter user settings.
I'm not convinced that Microsoft handles Windows Update responsibly enough for me to trust them with altering my computers on their schedule. Thankfully, I don't run Windows at home, but my home configuration wouldn't change if I did. I would still have a firewall on a separate dedicated computer that blocks all incoming connections and allows only my pre-approved outgoing connections. Then, I periodically patch my systems, but when it is convenient for me to do so.
Yet the news channels are TRYING to make it out to be worse than it is.
Yeah, a CNN reporter was struggling last night with some guy who got stuck in an elevator.
CNN: So you were trapped in an elevator, were you terrified? Guy: No. I was just stuck between floors, and eventually someone pried the doors open and I got out of the elevator. CNN: Were you afraid for your life? Guy: Not really. CNN: How long were you stranded and alone? Guy: Oh perhaps five minutes.
Cheney and Bush's response to the gang-rape of CA ratepayers was to hold the victim down.
Cheney and Bush should never have been elected in the first place. All voters, from the Libertarians to the Socialists (Democrats and Republicans, inclusive), should have been able to see through the thin veil covering the conflicts of interest present. Also, the prior administration isn't all roses and cotton candy in this matter, either.
I can't quite understand the willingness to trust the assholes who colluded to create the CA power crises.
The assholes, like Enron, who conspired to do their deeds did so in the fertile soil of a f*cked up artifically propped-up system of kludgey poo excreted from the lovely beast we call government. The assholes simply saw the opportunity and went after it like a dog in heat. Sure, the assholes should be punished (punished severely, that is), but their ability to find new opportunities in seriously flawed system is actually quite commendable.
- UNIX is simple (yes, UNIX is simple). - UNIX is transparent (post-kernel bootstrapping is via shell scripts for god's sake--it don't get better than that). - UNIX is documented, bugs and all (thirty years of history plus POSIX ain't too shabby). - UNIX is modular (I can guarantee not everyone runs the same mail server, DNS server, or even window manager). - As a result, fixing UNIX is easy (all the system administrator has to do is admit "Oops, I was a real dumbass there" and either fix it or replace it (again, UNIX is modular, transparent, and documented)).
A cracker could attack certain subsets of the UNIX realm, but diversity is on the side of the users, in this case. It isn't like 95% of UNIX users happened to leave RPC open to the Internet, or something like that.
the V1 was a missile propelled by a jet engine, not a rocket.
No, it was propelled by a pulse-jet engine (so, both of you are half-right:). Its only moving parts are a set of reed valves on the intake and, perhaps, some sort of fuel pump.
Pulse-jet engines have been around for decades (obviously, the V-1), and have also found uses on remote control model airplanes.
...you think these "less-than-ethical companies" would be better behaved with fewer rules? That makes a lot of sense.
It does make sense. Unethical companies would ultimately fail due to an unsustainable business model. Microsoft will fail. The RIAA will fail. It is only a matter of time before the market sets itself straight.
How about a little blame for the companies that abuse them?
Regulation is often a reaction to a corrupt company that burned and got burned, yet the regulation comes before other companies have the opportunity to fill the opportunity. An earlier poster mentioned an example about JetBlue and Southwest airlines. These are perfect examples of companies rising up and showing up the big old bastards (AA, United). Other great examples: Lindows is an upstart with Microsoft in their cross-hairs. Sun is releasing Mad Hatter with Microsoft in thier cross-hairs. It requires only time, and someone will take advantage of the opportunitiy to provide better service. The problems start when the government comes in, shoves a company like Lindows in the mud, and regulates Microsoft all to hell.
Mod parent up, please. The government's ability to cover up the truth and prop up untenable situations causes much much more damage than just letting things take their course.
New Zealand has seen how the privatisation of public services gives you the worst of both the private and public sectors.
Ultimately, the basis for this is that the private sector had to absorb the fallout from the government. Blaming this on privatization is short-sighted.
Upping taxes to fix the problem is not a vote winner.
The more pervasive problem is that the voters are both lazy and greedy. They want the government to solve their problems, but, then, they don't want to pay for it (the outcome of this is obvious--shitty half-ass government projects).
People need to make commitments: either you pay for the public school system, for example, or you do away with public schools. Right now, the public schools are a heaping pile of trash and are more or less a babysitting service, and the people themselves are largely to blame. It would be better to leave schooling either to families or groups of families or to private businesses who provide education as a service. At least, then, the true cost of education would be obvious and not swept under the rug like it is now.
the results have generally been regarded as disasterous
Deregulating a regulated system takes years if not decades for the system to repair itself. With so much government meddeling, there is no doubt a heaping steaming kludge left in their wake. The reasons prices increase after a deregulation is that the companies have to make a profit, but the beast they have to live with gives them little choice but to get money any way they can.
In time, the companies would figure out how to trim the fat. Independent standards boards, consumer purchasing power, political parties and groups, and journalists would help keep the companies honest. Embarrassment has a monetary value, too, you know.
It's just that this all takes time, but people are impatient and greedy themselves. When a deregulation fails everyone is to blame.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't wait, just masturbate more vigorously.
Thus a paradox: as the coconuts grow, a person's ability to masterbate lessens, thus making the coconuts shrink, masterbastion intensifies, cocnonuts reappear, then disappear...oh the disapointment!
PCs with Microsoft Windows: Still pieces of shit since 1985.
When you get a faster computer you start working with it without really noticing a major speed change. But then after a week you go back to your old system then you see the difference.
My fastest computer at home is six years old and has a 300MHz CPU--I guess I can dream, though.
They insisted the contract was required - so I cancelled.
There is something fundamentally wrong with any business that turns away customers. This reminds me of posts about how Best Buy employees would turn away customers who didn't want the extended warranties (they should just be happy to be moving stuff off of shelves!).
I would have thought that total sales volume was more important than sucking each individual customer dry, but, then, I could just be an idiot for thinking that customer satisfaction and repeat business was important.
I wonder how many lawsuits will be filed by people blown through the walls of their house?
No, what the carriers actually profit from is misleading their customers into thinking a roaming call is "in network" via a very subtly different on-screen display (thanks, SunCom!) leaving their customers with an obscene phone bill. However, given that these customers most likely will not renew their contract, perhaps the carriers will simply burn in hell (a fitting end, I think).
You're a moron.
Thanks for the vote of confidence.
It seems that corporations that can persist indefinitely regardless of corruption and criminal deeds do so with the support of laws that insulate them from their victims.
Sure, regulation is a tool, but how often is it used to provide a genuinely better balance of power between the people, the government, and the corporations? If anything, the balance of power now-a-days is so artificially skewed that I don't know what the future brings--it's sort of like worrying about a meteor of apocalypic scale that may, or may not, come.
There is still the problem of uncompensated greed. The following paragraph in the report reads: "Educators in the U.S. want high-quality free textbooks, special programs for handicapped and disadvantaged kids, guidance counselors, school nurses, school libraries and librarians to staff them." Everyone wants everyone to be accomodated without having to honestly recognize just how damn expensive it is to do so. It isn't a problem of decentralization nor of a lack of standards but one of the school systems (perhaps the elected school boards themselves) not having the courage to tell the voting public to piss off and grow up. So, they invent all these programs and special allowances to the point where everything is spread around so thin that even buying art supplies is a challenge (yet 500 video surveillence systems in Biloxi aren't a problem...).
Right, Bill Gates personally wrote this worm and released it into the wild.
No, Bill Gates just built the gun and left it alongside the ammunition on a table at a day care.
If people are still vulnerable, it's their own damned fault.
Microsoft has $40 fucking billion dollars (so much money that it transcends "dollars"). Why don't they make more effort to educate their customers in the use of their products? It's not like people can just go out and operate a 200-ton crane without some basic training, right? Computer software, regardless of how much sweet sugar coating it has, is complex, and people will struggle to understand it. Ignorance is an excuse, in this case, because Microsoft simply has done very little to improve the public consciousness about the risks associated with the Internet. People are already very very aware of the risk of cars (usually). Why not computers? Because no one has taught them!
If you didn't patch, you know who to blame. Not Bill Gates.
I wish these naive statements would stop. Microsoft has not made significant efforts to educate their customers about the Internet and all it entails. Figuratively, Microsoft just shoves the keys into a 12-year-old's hands and says "Have a ball! (No warranty or liability for your death)."
Simply, the blame is not as one-sided as you propose.
I think there's a slight difference of scale there.
This is very true, but there is another lesson in this. Unless a person runs a default install of Red Hat in minimal-security mode, odds are a UNIX/Linux/BSD box won't get owned by an automated root kits or worms. The result is that UNIX crackers will tend to be more personal and more targetted in their efforts. For example, the FSF computer that got broken into was done so with the full criminal science suite of motive, opportunity, etc. Compare with most Windows users who are just the victims of yet another stupid automated program that takes advantage of Microsoft's negligence and the users' own ignorance.
I'm tired of this same "joke" showing up in every article.
I want some taquitos.
That's right, Microsoft nuked the power station to offset the bad worm publicity.
Well, Bill Gates is already more powerful than any government leader in the world, so perhaps we shouldn't be suprised if he has also mastered lightning and other natural phenomena to do his bidding.
Maybe if people would get it through their skulls that Windows ships with a BIG WINDOWS UPDATE LINK in the Start Menu for a REASON
Sorry to burst your bubble, but Microsoft also provides reasons to NOT use Windows Update. Microsoft has been known to 1) break existing configurations, 2) upgrade EULAs to suit themselves, 3) install DRM, and 4) alter user settings.
I'm not convinced that Microsoft handles Windows Update responsibly enough for me to trust them with altering my computers on their schedule. Thankfully, I don't run Windows at home, but my home configuration wouldn't change if I did. I would still have a firewall on a separate dedicated computer that blocks all incoming connections and allows only my pre-approved outgoing connections. Then, I periodically patch my systems, but when it is convenient for me to do so.
Yet the news channels are TRYING to make it out to be worse than it is.
Yeah, a CNN reporter was struggling last night with some guy who got stuck in an elevator.
CNN: So you were trapped in an elevator, were you terrified?
Guy: No. I was just stuck between floors, and eventually someone pried the doors open and I got out of the elevator.
CNN: Were you afraid for your life?
Guy: Not really.
CNN: How long were you stranded and alone?
Guy: Oh perhaps five minutes.
Journalism, while important, is overrated.
Cheney and Bush's response to the gang-rape of CA ratepayers was to hold the victim down.
Cheney and Bush should never have been elected in the first place. All voters, from the Libertarians to the Socialists (Democrats and Republicans, inclusive), should have been able to see through the thin veil covering the conflicts of interest present. Also, the prior administration isn't all roses and cotton candy in this matter, either.
I can't quite understand the willingness to trust the assholes who colluded to create the CA power crises.
The assholes, like Enron, who conspired to do their deeds did so in the fertile soil of a f*cked up artifically propped-up system of kludgey poo excreted from the lovely beast we call government. The assholes simply saw the opportunity and went after it like a dog in heat. Sure, the assholes should be punished (punished severely, that is), but their ability to find new opportunities in seriously flawed system is actually quite commendable.
Unix is more secure for (at least) two reasons:
I'd like to add:
- UNIX is simple (yes, UNIX is simple).
- UNIX is transparent (post-kernel bootstrapping is via shell scripts for god's sake--it don't get better than that).
- UNIX is documented, bugs and all (thirty years of history plus POSIX ain't too shabby).
- UNIX is modular (I can guarantee not everyone runs the same mail server, DNS server, or even window manager).
- As a result, fixing UNIX is easy (all the system administrator has to do is admit "Oops, I was a real dumbass there" and either fix it or replace it (again, UNIX is modular, transparent, and documented)).
A cracker could attack certain subsets of the UNIX realm, but diversity is on the side of the users, in this case. It isn't like 95% of UNIX users happened to leave RPC open to the Internet, or something like that.
the V1 was a missile propelled by a jet engine, not a rocket.
:). Its only moving parts are a set of reed valves on the intake and, perhaps, some sort of fuel pump.
No, it was propelled by a pulse-jet engine (so, both of you are half-right
Pulse-jet engines have been around for decades (obviously, the V-1), and have also found uses on remote control model airplanes.
...you think these "less-than-ethical companies" would be better behaved with fewer rules? That makes a lot of sense.
It does make sense. Unethical companies would ultimately fail due to an unsustainable business model. Microsoft will fail. The RIAA will fail. It is only a matter of time before the market sets itself straight.
How about a little blame for the companies that abuse them?
Regulation is often a reaction to a corrupt company that burned and got burned, yet the regulation comes before other companies have the opportunity to fill the opportunity. An earlier poster mentioned an example about JetBlue and Southwest airlines. These are perfect examples of companies rising up and showing up the big old bastards (AA, United). Other great examples: Lindows is an upstart with Microsoft in their cross-hairs. Sun is releasing Mad Hatter with Microsoft in thier cross-hairs. It requires only time, and someone will take advantage of the opportunitiy to provide better service. The problems start when the government comes in, shoves a company like Lindows in the mud, and regulates Microsoft all to hell.
The best thing to do is to let them fail.
Mod parent up, please. The government's ability to cover up the truth and prop up untenable situations causes much much more damage than just letting things take their course.
New Zealand has seen how the privatisation of public services gives you the worst of both the private and public sectors.
Ultimately, the basis for this is that the private sector had to absorb the fallout from the government. Blaming this on privatization is short-sighted.
The only risk publicly traded corporations worry about is not making projections for this quarter.
Aren't corporations forced to do this due to regulation?!?!?
Upping taxes to fix the problem is not a vote winner.
The more pervasive problem is that the voters are both lazy and greedy. They want the government to solve their problems, but, then, they don't want to pay for it (the outcome of this is obvious--shitty half-ass government projects).
People need to make commitments: either you pay for the public school system, for example, or you do away with public schools. Right now, the public schools are a heaping pile of trash and are more or less a babysitting service, and the people themselves are largely to blame. It would be better to leave schooling either to families or groups of families or to private businesses who provide education as a service. At least, then, the true cost of education would be obvious and not swept under the rug like it is now.
the results have generally been regarded as disasterous
Deregulating a regulated system takes years if not decades for the system to repair itself. With so much government meddeling, there is no doubt a heaping steaming kludge left in their wake. The reasons prices increase after a deregulation is that the companies have to make a profit, but the beast they have to live with gives them little choice but to get money any way they can.
In time, the companies would figure out how to trim the fat. Independent standards boards, consumer purchasing power, political parties and groups, and journalists would help keep the companies honest. Embarrassment has a monetary value, too, you know.
It's just that this all takes time, but people are impatient and greedy themselves. When a deregulation fails everyone is to blame.