"I think you're ignoring a fundamental problem with "moral issues": taking a stance, one way or another, forces your opinion on those who do not share your position."
I'm not sure I understand what you are trying to say. Sure, an opinion in itself is not a bad thing. But Bush wants to force his opinion on others through legistation.
"Candidates in an election can debate issues and hope that their arguments will sway voters, they can only advertise those positions derived from their moral frameworks."
Right. But abortion and sexuality are personal issues, and of no concern to the government or anyone else.
If they are going to start suing BitTorrent application authors, then one of the most prominent ones would be Blizzard, of Warcraft/Diablo/Starcraft fame...:)
I don't find it very likely that BitTorrent authors will be sued. Many Linux distributions use BitTorrent to distribute Linux ISOs. Many download sites, like Filerush.com, offer torrents as alternatives in addition to normal HTTP/FTP download sites.
Heck, even the entertainment industry could use BitTorrent-like technology to offer video or music on demand without having to invest truckloads of money into bandwidth.
"Isn't it clear that BitTorrent wasn't designed with copyright infringement in mind?"
Not at all. For one, banning tools like P2P clients just because some people are using them for illegal activities is silly. If that's the path we are going down, why don't we ban stuff like knives and guns? Or PCs. Or the Internet!
Wheher BitTorrent was designed with copyright infringement in mind is completely irrelevant. It's seeing many useful legal purposes. I use it for completely legal downloads all the time.
"I don't see banning abortion as a problem, because it's a simple human rights issue. The right to live trumps another person's right to convenience. It's as simple as that."
No, it is not as simple as that. In the first weeks of pregnancy, we are talking about a fetus which bears no resemblance to a human being. It is not a human being at all, in my opinion, and this is also the opinion of many, many others. See the problem?
You will obviously argue that it is a human, or that it is a potential human, and we can argue about this until the day we die, because we will never agree.
We will always be discussing where to draw the line. When can't it be removed anymore. Is sex only for the sake of pleasure a sin? After all, your semen is wasted, and those could have turned into humans.
As you can see, it is not that simple. Some even say that until the baby is actually born, it is the property of its mother, who uses her body to protect and carry the child. Therefore, it should be her choice whether to continue to carry that child or not.
In the end, it all comes down to definitions and moral values.
You are proving his point, that you don't see the problem, because it fits with your beliefs. But it is not as simple as you think it is!
It is a moral issue in the end, and you see no problem with Bush pushing his Christian values on others?
"I don't see banning "gay marriage" as a problem, because marriage has a very specific definition and meaning."
Which is a Christian one?
Again, if the last thing a Christian wants to do is force his religion on someone else, then who or what is in the White House?
And people do disagree with the issue of gay marriage as well. Shouldn't two people of the same sex who love one another and want to spend the rest of their lives together have the right to, say, visit each other in the hospital?
Abortion is a religious question in this context. Gay marriage is a religious question in this context.
Again, he wrote:
"I find that the more religious someone is the harder time they have seeing the way religion is overtaking our country."
And so the comment made - "the last thing a Christian wants to do is force his religion on someone else" - doesn't make sense, because this is exactly what Bush is doing.
No, this is a case of rogue extensions finding their way onto the official site.
Example: Firefox has gained 40% of the market, and is used by millions. Joe creates a nice extension which he submits to UMO, and it turns out to be clean when checked, so it is approved and is put in full circulation.
It becomes popular, and is used by a lot of people, but Joe has had a plan all along: He wants to make money!
So he submits an update to UMO, which somehow makes it past quality control, and this update installs malware on the PC. Since people use autoupdate, it spreads out easily enough.
Now, there are many ways to approach this, and ways to make sure it doesn't happen.
Someone will need to check absolutely all extensions and updates to those extensions, and this could turn out to be a huge task.
But at that point, perhaps Mozilla.org is better equipped to handle it, so no extensions what so ever are let through without a thorough security inspection.
" really enjoy using Firefox, it's a real breath of fresh air after years of IE window opening, cluttering the taskbar and having to deal with popups wasting my time."
Cluttered Windows task bar, yes. However IE with Windows XP Service Pack 2 does block popups.
"Are difficult to install for my family, who simply don't understand or trust the process."
While security concerns could be justified, does your family really need extensions? And if they do, can't you help them?
"Often incompatible with latest releases, preventing me from upgrading for months"
Firefox isn't out as a finished product yet. As far as I know, the extension system will be frozen with 1.0, and from then on, there won't be any incompatibilities. The incompatibilities have been a result of changes, and the changes a result of Firefox's unfinished state.
"What happens when one of those authors goes bad? We are so used to installing these extensions we really never give it a second thought, especially upgrades. verson 0.5 of ACME extension does what we want so yea lets install 0.6 clickerty click. We probably install more extensions than we ever clicked "YES I WANT A DIALER" button in IE. Isnt this a huge community driven security risk."
In a nutshell, one is worried that the UMO (update.mozilla.org) staff does not have the resources to properly scan all extensions and extension updates for malicious code. And even if you do check the extension when submitted, the author may add an update later with malicious code, and then Firefox installations all over the world may get infected.
Currently, they may be able to handle the task, but if Firefox manages to gain even more popularity, one can probably expect even more submitted extensions, and with a larger user base, it becomes a tempting target for crackers.
Fortunately, the discussion in the MozillaZine forums seems to result in a lot of nice ideas about how one can handle this, but it might still be something one needs to keep in mind.
It would be sad if Firefox was hit by security problems with extensions similar to how ActiveX has been a problem in Internet Explorer.
Perhaps Firefox's growing popularity will lead to more donations, of which some money can be used to hire staff to really make sure that UMO is not used as a tool to spread malware?
In what way doesn't Google have "salable products"?
We are Google's product. We, the users of their free and popular services. And there are a lot of us out there. To me, Google Groups alone is invaluable in finding information. I use it several times a day.
And not only that, but people don't seem to be very concerned about blocking Google ads. They block banner as and popup ads, and all those nasty things, but Google's nice and unintrusive text ads are often let through.
I think you are underestimating Google's product line. You are one of its products, and Google is making money because millions of people like you and I use them, often every day. And as long as Google continues to be useful and offer something we want, we'll use it, and we'll spread the word, and more and more people will use it.
Either I'm just getting old, or I've missed something important. Reeve has always been the "real" Superman to me, and I remember the movies with fondness.
I'm not that old, but is it now that I'm supposed to say that "you young folks today don't understand how things were back then"?:)
But anyway, how can you claim that Cain is the "real Superman to most people"? I never saw the series as anything but a lame spinoff. The original movies were better in style, more suited to my tastes. The series is too bright and happy and... well, light. It just doesn't seem right, and Cain doesn't feel like the real thing to me.
Am I getting old or what?:)
By the way, why are you adding that... "spam" line to your posts automatically?
"It's a brand. How many times have you heard, "American is the best nation in the world!", from someone who doesn't know anything about the rest of the world. Or how about "America has the best healthcare system in the world!" Well, we're the only industrializaed nation that doesn't have national healthcare coverage, and we have some of most expensive medical bills in the world, so objectively we don't. Say that and people start yelling "Why do you hate America?" and crap like that. Why? You're dimishinishing the brand."
Kerry comes across as flip-flopping because the Bush propaganda machinery wants it that way. They have stuff like Fox News to create false ideas like this, just to attack the opponent without having to go into the difficult parts: The actual politics. Instead, make people think that the opponent does one thing in a certain way, and they'll soon forget to listen to what they are actually saying, and go with the "he's flip-flopping" nonsense instead.
"The Norwegian police's economic crime division ("Økokrim") has a nifty program that (I'm not kidding) can monitor P2P traffic everywhere, to see which IP is downloading what. They used it with great success in a recent international kiddie pr0n raid ("Operation Enea"). There was a documentary about the sting on Norwegian television, showing how it worked. I was baffled, they monitored all P2P traffic over the course of a weekend, looking for certain known filenames and general keywords, storing all the info in a database. They caught a great number of kiddie pr0n peddlers in the sting."
I'm sorry, but I believe that you have misunderstood completely.
They have no way to monitor all P2P traffic, obviously.
What they did was simple. They knew some common search term for child porn, and they searched the FastTrack network for hits. They then downloaded files, and registered the IP addresses of the people they had received kiddie porn from. They may also have checked the user's file list to see if he was sharing anything else.
It's that simple. There is nothing baffling about this. You can do it yourself! Fire up Kazaa (beware of spyware), and search for kiddie porn (use your imagination). Now you can download it and check the IP address of the person you downloaded from.
Actually, they used a customized FastTrack client which made all this easier.
But that kind of begs the question: Can Sharman Networks now sue OKOKRIM for this? They probably used an unauthorized client, after all.
How is this spyware if it requires a virus to pass on information? That's like saying that anything on your system is spyware, since a virus can pick it up and send it to someone.
"WTF are you talking about? It's a well-established HCI principle that things changing in the corner of your eye when you are trying to read something is distracting."
I've never noticed that it changes while I'm viewing a page. Then again, I never notice the ads anyway.
"The default UI has four bars above the page, cutting down the vertical space significantly, and a sidebar that reduces horizontal space."
There's always plenty of horizontal space. It goes to waste with most pages. As for vertical space, it's not much worse than Firefox. Firefox has a personal bar too, and a status bar in addition to that. The ads are there because there should be an incentive to buy Opera you know.
"'m just asking what the hell Opera does that is so special, and I still haven't got an answer.
Pay attention. I answered this ages ago:
The way everything is put together!
Opera is an integrated package, and everything is created to fit smoothly together. Features work together, complementing each other, working together, working well. And it works without having to build your own browser!
In contrast, Firefox is stripped down, and you have to spend a long time finding useful extensions. Problem is, they don't fit very well together, or at least not as smoothly as Opera, and they tend to be rather buggy, and you get problems when upgrading...
Opera is just a smoother ride. No effort, everything is there, ready to use.
To sum up: It's not just about the features. Any idiot can throw togeter a bunch of random features. And that's what you do in Firefox. Extensions can conflict with each other, and they are created by different people with different goals. In Opera, everything is a tightly integrated package, ready to use when installed. That's what it does better. Everything works together!
Oh, and Opera renders Slashdot correctly and goes back instantly instead of reloading the page:)
"Looking at the EXACT SAME INTELLIGENCE as Bush, Kerry came to the same conclusion about Iraq's weapons programs. Logically, Kerry is therefore either a dupe or a liar himself."
However, Kerry has also stated that he would have let the weapons inspectors do their jobs, hasn't he?
Weren't they forced to get the hell out of Iraq when Bush signalled that an attack was imminent?
So, was Iraq invaded because of WMD or not? I think Bush is a little unclear on that.
I have all my facts straight and proved you wrong. Next time you want to discuss, try to come up with your own arguments, and don't just spew out propaganda you've read somewhere else.
"Boo hoo... Opera still isn't popular and better no matter how much you whine or troll. Boo hoo."
Cute. The young and inexperienced Firefox zealot is discussing browsers! He's run out of Firefox pages to steal arguments from, so now he's got nothing left.
"In fact, for last three years, most of my lost income has been due to overzelous spamfighters (like ORBS etc)."
Which is exactly my point. You let the spam filter kill mails without checking if it got any valid ones. I'm glad that works for you. It doesn't for me. I need to go through my spam to make sure my filter hasn't caugh anything it shouldn't.
So you are in a position of luxury where it doesn't matter if a legit email is filtered out every now and then. I'm sure it works for you.
But others want to make sure their filter doesn't filter out email they were supposed to read! It happens, you know.
I'm happy for you. You don't care if you lose a few non-spam messages. Well, I do, and even using filtering, spam is a major pain in the neck, as I need to go through it anyway, to make sure the filter didn't catch anything important.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't find it very likely that BitTorrent authors will be sued. Many Linux distributions use BitTorrent to distribute Linux ISOs. Many download sites, like Filerush.com, offer torrents as alternatives in addition to normal HTTP/FTP download sites.
Heck, even the entertainment industry could use BitTorrent-like technology to offer video or music on demand without having to invest truckloads of money into bandwidth.
Not at all. For one, banning tools like P2P clients just because some people are using them for illegal activities is silly. If that's the path we are going down, why don't we ban stuff like knives and guns? Or PCs. Or the Internet!Wheher BitTorrent was designed with copyright infringement in mind is completely irrelevant. It's seeing many useful legal purposes. I use it for completely legal downloads all the time.
Blame the people, not the tools.
You will obviously argue that it is a human, or that it is a potential human, and we can argue about this until the day we die, because we will never agree.
We will always be discussing where to draw the line. When can't it be removed anymore. Is sex only for the sake of pleasure a sin? After all, your semen is wasted, and those could have turned into humans.
As you can see, it is not that simple. Some even say that until the baby is actually born, it is the property of its mother, who uses her body to protect and carry the child. Therefore, it should be her choice whether to continue to carry that child or not.
In the end, it all comes down to definitions and moral values.
You are proving his point, that you don't see the problem, because it fits with your beliefs. But it is not as simple as you think it is!
It is a moral issue in the end, and you see no problem with Bush pushing his Christian values on others?
Which is a Christian one?Again, if the last thing a Christian wants to do is force his religion on someone else, then who or what is in the White House?
And people do disagree with the issue of gay marriage as well. Shouldn't two people of the same sex who love one another and want to spend the rest of their lives together have the right to, say, visit each other in the hospital?
Abortion is a religious question in this context. Gay marriage is a religious question in this context.
Again, he wrote:
"I find that the more religious someone is the harder time they have seeing the way religion is overtaking our country."
And so the comment made - "the last thing a Christian wants to do is force his religion on someone else" - doesn't make sense, because this is exactly what Bush is doing.
Which one is that? I'm not aware of any.
Let's remain vigilant and make sure we don't sweep this under the rug and pretend it doesn't exist.
Spammers send out viruses that turn PCs into drones used to send out spam. Just an example.
Example: Firefox has gained 40% of the market, and is used by millions. Joe creates a nice extension which he submits to UMO, and it turns out to be clean when checked, so it is approved and is put in full circulation.
It becomes popular, and is used by a lot of people, but Joe has had a plan all along: He wants to make money!
So he submits an update to UMO, which somehow makes it past quality control, and this update installs malware on the PC. Since people use autoupdate, it spreads out easily enough.
Now, there are many ways to approach this, and ways to make sure it doesn't happen.
Someone will need to check absolutely all extensions and updates to those extensions, and this could turn out to be a huge task.
But at that point, perhaps Mozilla.org is better equipped to handle it, so no extensions what so ever are let through without a thorough security inspection.
In a nutshell, one is worried that the UMO (update.mozilla.org) staff does not have the resources to properly scan all extensions and extension updates for malicious code. And even if you do check the extension when submitted, the author may add an update later with malicious code, and then Firefox installations all over the world may get infected.
Currently, they may be able to handle the task, but if Firefox manages to gain even more popularity, one can probably expect even more submitted extensions, and with a larger user base, it becomes a tempting target for crackers.
Fortunately, the discussion in the MozillaZine forums seems to result in a lot of nice ideas about how one can handle this, but it might still be something one needs to keep in mind.
It would be sad if Firefox was hit by security problems with extensions similar to how ActiveX has been a problem in Internet Explorer.
Perhaps Firefox's growing popularity will lead to more donations, of which some money can be used to hire staff to really make sure that UMO is not used as a tool to spread malware?
We are Google's product. We, the users of their free and popular services. And there are a lot of us out there. To me, Google Groups alone is invaluable in finding information. I use it several times a day.
And not only that, but people don't seem to be very concerned about blocking Google ads. They block banner as and popup ads, and all those nasty things, but Google's nice and unintrusive text ads are often let through.
I think you are underestimating Google's product line. You are one of its products, and Google is making money because millions of people like you and I use them, often every day. And as long as Google continues to be useful and offer something we want, we'll use it, and we'll spread the word, and more and more people will use it.
Either I'm just getting old, or I've missed something important. Reeve has always been the "real" Superman to me, and I remember the movies with fondness.
I'm not that old, but is it now that I'm supposed to say that "you young folks today don't understand how things were back then"? :)
But anyway, how can you claim that Cain is the "real Superman to most people"? I never saw the series as anything but a lame spinoff. The original movies were better in style, more suited to my tastes. The series is too bright and happy and... well, light. It just doesn't seem right, and Cain doesn't feel like the real thing to me.
Am I getting old or what? :)
By the way, why are you adding that... "spam" line to your posts automatically?
Wow, an AC who's a bit slow!
Opera 7.60 supports the non-standard XMLHttpRequest.
Now go and hide under your rock, where you belong.
Kerry comes across as flip-flopping because the Bush propaganda machinery wants it that way. They have stuff like Fox News to create false ideas like this, just to attack the opponent without having to go into the difficult parts: The actual politics. Instead, make people think that the opponent does one thing in a certain way, and they'll soon forget to listen to what they are actually saying, and go with the "he's flip-flopping" nonsense instead.
Actually, you could potentially end up slashdotting the tracker. It has to handle all the requests, after all. It's just like any web server, I think.
They have no way to monitor all P2P traffic, obviously.
What they did was simple. They knew some common search term for child porn, and they searched the FastTrack network for hits. They then downloaded files, and registered the IP addresses of the people they had received kiddie porn from. They may also have checked the user's file list to see if he was sharing anything else.
It's that simple. There is nothing baffling about this. You can do it yourself! Fire up Kazaa (beware of spyware), and search for kiddie porn (use your imagination). Now you can download it and check the IP address of the person you downloaded from.
Actually, they used a customized FastTrack client which made all this easier.
But that kind of begs the question: Can Sharman Networks now sue OKOKRIM for this? They probably used an unauthorized client, after all.
How is this spyware if it requires a virus to pass on information? That's like saying that anything on your system is spyware, since a virus can pick it up and send it to someone.
But it's not an issue anyway. The spyware claim in this article is ridiculous. It's sensationalist journalism at its worst.
I'm not going to go into any greater detail, as many have put it more eloquently than I can, earlier in this discussion.
The way everything is put together!
Opera is an integrated package, and everything is created to fit smoothly together. Features work together, complementing each other, working together, working well. And it works without having to build your own browser!
In contrast, Firefox is stripped down, and you have to spend a long time finding useful extensions. Problem is, they don't fit very well together, or at least not as smoothly as Opera, and they tend to be rather buggy, and you get problems when upgrading...
Opera is just a smoother ride. No effort, everything is there, ready to use.
To sum up: It's not just about the features. Any idiot can throw togeter a bunch of random features. And that's what you do in Firefox. Extensions can conflict with each other, and they are created by different people with different goals. In Opera, everything is a tightly integrated package, ready to use when installed. That's what it does better. Everything works together!
Oh, and Opera renders Slashdot correctly and goes back instantly instead of reloading the page :)
Weren't they forced to get the hell out of Iraq when Bush signalled that an attack was imminent?
So, was Iraq invaded because of WMD or not? I think Bush is a little unclear on that.
Maybe I should get in touch with CT again, and see if there's mod abuse involved. Mod points will be lost.
I have all my facts straight and proved you wrong. Next time you want to discuss, try to come up with your own arguments, and don't just spew out propaganda you've read somewhere else.
Oh well. You lost this time too.
But others want to make sure their filter doesn't filter out email they were supposed to read! It happens, you know.
I'm happy for you. You don't care if you lose a few non-spam messages. Well, I do, and even using filtering, spam is a major pain in the neck, as I need to go through it anyway, to make sure the filter didn't catch anything important.