Well, exactly. Plenty of people use loaded guns to shoot ducks, bullseyes, deer, clay pigeons, etc. Loaded guns aren't necessarily about murder of humans.
An IT admin might want to see if people in his/her company are running insecure activity on company computers. For example.
I have seen several Star Trek episodes where they emphatically pointed out that they had never found a cure for the common cold. So how could there be one in the mere 21st century? Idiots.
Transporters that can reverse the aging process? Sure. (Though somehow they repeatedly forget this and continue to die of old age.) A cure for most every disease except the common cold? Sure! But a cure for the common cold itself? Impossible!
"We have detected that the browser you are using is incompatible with this application. This site requires Internet Explorer 5.0 and above, Netscape 7.0 and above, or Firefox 1.0 and above.
The use of an incompatible browser could possibly cause line and image format problems, as well as functionality issues when using this application.
To upgrade your Internet Explorer browser, go to Microsoft.com
To upgrade your Netscape browser, go to Netscape.com
To upgrade your Firefox browser, go to GetFirefox.com
So he was right that it didn't let him in with Safari, but admittedly quite wrong that it said anything about security.
But it is very weird. The programmers decided they can program for IE 5 and Firefox 1 but not Safari 5?
It is pretty amusing, because I have repeatedly seen government (and corporate) IT talk about avoiding Macs because they are a Single Source Solution: you can't buy Macs from anyone but Apple, so you are locked into dealing with only one vendor. Then these same people would turn around and specify Microsoft Windows solutions. Precisely how many vendors do they think make Microsoft Windows?
If any of these people were honestly interested in avoiding vendor lock-in, they would require that all solutions be free and open source software. And preferably "open source hardware," if there actually can be said to be such a thing.
And yet just last week, a friend told me he couldn't make a filing with the Georgia Department of Revenue because "his browser was insecure." Nevermind that he was using the latest version of Safari, which is likely more secure than any version of IE.
What they actually meant was "we are too lazy to program for anything but IE... but that's OK, because 99% of the world uses IE... right?"
It's an appeal to the authoritarian personality. Some people really like being told what to do, and will respect a brand that makes them do uncomfortable things. Hm... or is that called BDSM? Meh, same difference.
Seriously. Einstein didn't create the question behind the theory of relativity: he simply turned an existing question on its head. (The question others couldn't answer was why the speed of light always seemed to be constant regardless of the velocity of the observer, and Einstein "simply" started with the proposition that c is always constant and derived Special Relativity from there.)
This is another beautiful example of turning a problem on it's head. It gives me faith in the infinite potential of science to make new discoveries.
Moldy cardboard? Wow, you were pampered! We had to use each other as furniture, even though we weren't allowed to eat on weekdays and had to walk naked through five feet of snow for three miles, uphill in both directions. And we used each other as paper too... scratching our notes onto each others' backs with out dirty, cracked fingernails.
Why is all this military intelligence stuff presented as so difficult? You can just look at the board and see what the other player's pieces look like.
My point is about revealing passwords. If you're communicating with an e-mail server over insecure protocols, what's protecting your password from being snooped?
It blows my mind to think of people using insecure mail protocols over open or readily hackable wifi networks, using the same password for everything.
It is like everyone is walking around with their wallet dragging ten feet behind them by a bit of weak thread. They're practically insisting on being robbed by any nearby thief.
The news is that still hardly anyone understands SSL or what it is for.
People like to see that little lock sign (or whatever obscure message their browser displays) when they log into their bank. But I sincerely doubt that the great majority of people have any idea that things like e-mail transactions can be routed over SSL or why that might be a good (i.e., critically important) idea.
Just scan your local neighborhood and look at (for an analogous example) how many people are still using WEP and thinking that somehow they are protecting themselves.
This is silly. Everyone understands that Google is the holy grail of geek perfection, and they can do no wrong. Go ahead, entrust all your e-mail, all your web searches, all your documents, all your photos, all your click behaviors, all everything you do online to Google. They will always be on your side and never, ever, ever violate your trust.
Though... hm. Even if Google is absolute do-no-evil perfection... If you think about it, the more of that data you give to them, the more attractive it becomes to people who might be just a little bit evil. Right now, Google is way too big to be a target for those people (completely assuming that those people aren't already there), but it is conceivable that some day they might not be so entirely rich. Someday someone may be able to snap up that nice enormous chunk of data.
And here's the interesting bit. Once someone who is not trustworthy gets the reigns of Google (and in a corporation, don't forget that this is possible at any moment), they have all the history of all of your activities, nicely archived, cataloged, indexed, and searchable. Everything you give to Google today is available to that unknown future entity. At any time in the future.
But I'm sure that's just ridiculous paranoia. Do go ahead and give Google every detail of your life. Trust them implicitly, because after all they say they're not evil. What more do you really need?
It is also evolving very rapidly. It was recently nothing. Now it is climbing up to at least as good as the commercial products, in a much shorter time-frame than they did.
The answer to your problem is contained in your analysis of it. Maybe collaborative governance doesn't scale up to large nations. But... what do we need large nations for?
Gigantic nations, or even small ones, are artifacts of the before-internet days, when we organized ourselves by geography. Increasingly, we are organizing ourselves by interest, and there is decreasing need for megaliths like nation-states.
There will always be need for geography-related governance, but it would be much more sensible to take a more fractured approach to that. See for example the map of 867 terrestrial ecoregions (third page).
The term encryption can have various meanings, but technically SSL encrypts information. To say that he is not allowed to use SSL is just inhumane.
It would be like ordering a burglar to never use "locking hardware," so he would have to leave his house, car, gym locker, bike, etc. unlocked at all times.
Is there any difference? Requiring someone to not use encryption opens them up to anyone who wants to hack anything they do online.
To be fair, the judge probably thought "encryption" only referred to deliberate encryption of personal communications. But it doesn't.
It may be a slow road, and the results may not be perfect. But it beats the alternative of just living under a totalitarian regime, does it not?
Those are your choices: 1. admit that you want to give in to totalitarianism and stop complaining. 2. start working with Metagovernment or one of the many projects linked from there and build real democracy.
It's all free, open source, transparent, and otherwise completely open. How is it going to be infiltrated?
That's like saying Microsoft will infiltrate Apache or Firefox and take it over. They have every motivation to do so, but it does not appear to be happening.
Do you think it is worth trying? Or do we just sit back and wait for Skynet to take over? You gave that as our two choices. So which are you going to root for?
There is practically zero chance of revolution in the U.S. or most any other advanced society any time in the foreseeable future. Citizens constantly see TV shows about how the government can squash them like bugs if they misbehave. Plus they have enough appeasements that all-out revolution seems a little extreme compared to the nebulous concept of maintaining democracy.
So what you are effectively saying is that we are just stuck watching democracy die, right? It is only a matter of time until a Stalin or Hitler comes along and drives us into armageddon or 1984 or whatever other distopia you can imagine.
Now consider the alternative which "sounds good in theory." It is a practical, non-violent, easy way of getting real, participative democracy started in small communities. As it grows, adapts and gradually proves itself, it can demonstrate that it is a viable governance mechanism for larger and larger communities. Eventually, people will find they have the mechanism in place to run entire cities, and then even larger societies.
It might work, it might not. But given the alternative of totalitarian armageddon, doesn't it seem worth giving a try? Doesn't it seem worth actually putting some effort into it? You can at least join the list server and see what happens...
What is the point of caring? How can an individual affect change? Vote for the other guy? What else is there?
In the original post, there was a decidedly good solution, open source governance (also known as collaborative governance, open democracy, electronic direct democracy, etc.).
Instead of just complaining that democracy is dead, we now have a viable chance to build a new one by side-stepping the whole political process.
It will not be easy, nor will it be instantaneous. It will not be ready for something as huge as the US government for years. But you can help build it right now. Please check out the Metagovernment project and see if you can contribute. Everyone in the world is invited.
Slashdot Mirror
Except then your subject line would have read: "57 downloads later..."
Well, exactly. Plenty of people use loaded guns to shoot ducks, bullseyes, deer, clay pigeons, etc. Loaded guns aren't necessarily about murder of humans.
An IT admin might want to see if people in his/her company are running insecure activity on company computers. For example.
So if they make me a miniature liver, does that mean I can only drink those little 8oz beers?
No, no, no, no, no. This is just silly.
I have seen several Star Trek episodes where they emphatically pointed out that they had never found a cure for the common cold. So how could there be one in the mere 21st century? Idiots.
Transporters that can reverse the aging process? Sure. (Though somehow they repeatedly forget this and continue to die of old age.) A cure for most every disease except the common cold? Sure! But a cure for the common cold itself? Impossible!
It wasn't a personal tax filing. I just looked up the division he was filing with.
Go here:
https://gaefile.dor.ga.gov/HelpLinks/welcome.htm
the last link is:
https://gaefile.dor.ga.gov/AUT/welcome.aspx/
which in Safari leads to:
https://gaefile.dor.ga.gov/AUT/BrowserCheck.aspx
"We have detected that the browser you are using is incompatible with this application. This site requires Internet Explorer 5.0 and above, Netscape 7.0 and above, or Firefox 1.0 and above.
The use of an incompatible browser could possibly cause line and image format problems, as well as functionality issues when using this application.
To upgrade your Internet Explorer browser, go to Microsoft.com
To upgrade your Netscape browser, go to Netscape.com
To upgrade your Firefox browser, go to GetFirefox.com
So he was right that it didn't let him in with Safari, but admittedly quite wrong that it said anything about security.
But it is very weird. The programmers decided they can program for IE 5 and Firefox 1 but not Safari 5?
It is pretty amusing, because I have repeatedly seen government (and corporate) IT talk about avoiding Macs because they are a Single Source Solution: you can't buy Macs from anyone but Apple, so you are locked into dealing with only one vendor. Then these same people would turn around and specify Microsoft Windows solutions. Precisely how many vendors do they think make Microsoft Windows?
If any of these people were honestly interested in avoiding vendor lock-in, they would require that all solutions be free and open source software. And preferably "open source hardware," if there actually can be said to be such a thing.
And yet just last week, a friend told me he couldn't make a filing with the Georgia Department of Revenue because "his browser was insecure." Nevermind that he was using the latest version of Safari, which is likely more secure than any version of IE.
What they actually meant was "we are too lazy to program for anything but IE... but that's OK, because 99% of the world uses IE... right?"
It's an appeal to the authoritarian personality. Some people really like being told what to do, and will respect a brand that makes them do uncomfortable things. Hm... or is that called BDSM? Meh, same difference.
...like the first sentence...
Seriously. Einstein didn't create the question behind the theory of relativity: he simply turned an existing question on its head. (The question others couldn't answer was why the speed of light always seemed to be constant regardless of the velocity of the observer, and Einstein "simply" started with the proposition that c is always constant and derived Special Relativity from there.)
This is another beautiful example of turning a problem on it's head. It gives me faith in the infinite potential of science to make new discoveries.
Moldy cardboard? Wow, you were pampered! We had to use each other as furniture, even though we weren't allowed to eat on weekdays and had to walk naked through five feet of snow for three miles, uphill in both directions. And we used each other as paper too... scratching our notes onto each others' backs with out dirty, cracked fingernails.
Why is all this military intelligence stuff presented as so difficult? You can just look at the board and see what the other player's pieces look like.
My point is about revealing passwords. If you're communicating with an e-mail server over insecure protocols, what's protecting your password from being snooped?
It blows my mind to think of people using insecure mail protocols over open or readily hackable wifi networks, using the same password for everything.
It is like everyone is walking around with their wallet dragging ten feet behind them by a bit of weak thread. They're practically insisting on being robbed by any nearby thief.
The news is that still hardly anyone understands SSL or what it is for.
People like to see that little lock sign (or whatever obscure message their browser displays) when they log into their bank. But I sincerely doubt that the great majority of people have any idea that things like e-mail transactions can be routed over SSL or why that might be a good (i.e., critically important) idea.
Just scan your local neighborhood and look at (for an analogous example) how many people are still using WEP and thinking that somehow they are protecting themselves.
The scoring itself is insightful:
Moderation -2
50% Troll
30% Overrated
20% Insightful
This is silly. Everyone understands that Google is the holy grail of geek perfection, and they can do no wrong. Go ahead, entrust all your e-mail, all your web searches, all your documents, all your photos, all your click behaviors, all everything you do online to Google. They will always be on your side and never, ever, ever violate your trust.
Though... hm. Even if Google is absolute do-no-evil perfection... If you think about it, the more of that data you give to them, the more attractive it becomes to people who might be just a little bit evil. Right now, Google is way too big to be a target for those people (completely assuming that those people aren't already there), but it is conceivable that some day they might not be so entirely rich. Someday someone may be able to snap up that nice enormous chunk of data.
And here's the interesting bit. Once someone who is not trustworthy gets the reigns of Google (and in a corporation, don't forget that this is possible at any moment), they have all the history of all of your activities, nicely archived, cataloged, indexed, and searchable. Everything you give to Google today is available to that unknown future entity. At any time in the future.
But I'm sure that's just ridiculous paranoia. Do go ahead and give Google every detail of your life. Trust them implicitly, because after all they say they're not evil. What more do you really need?
It is also evolving very rapidly. It was recently nothing. Now it is climbing up to at least as good as the commercial products, in a much shorter time-frame than they did.
The answer to your problem is contained in your analysis of it. Maybe collaborative governance doesn't scale up to large nations. But... what do we need large nations for?
Gigantic nations, or even small ones, are artifacts of the before-internet days, when we organized ourselves by geography. Increasingly, we are organizing ourselves by interest, and there is decreasing need for megaliths like nation-states.
There will always be need for geography-related governance, but it would be much more sensible to take a more fractured approach to that. See for example the map of 867 terrestrial ecoregions (third page).
The term encryption can have various meanings, but technically SSL encrypts information. To say that he is not allowed to use SSL is just inhumane.
It would be like ordering a burglar to never use "locking hardware," so he would have to leave his house, car, gym locker, bike, etc. unlocked at all times.
Is there any difference? Requiring someone to not use encryption opens them up to anyone who wants to hack anything they do online.
To be fair, the judge probably thought "encryption" only referred to deliberate encryption of personal communications. But it doesn't.
Almost as bad as Flash, eh?
I constantly see people decrying that democracy is a sham, but I don't see anyone trying to do anything about it.
Sure, it seems impossible to reform the system, given that the people in control have not the slightest inclination to help you reduce their power.
That's why people who actually want to fix this problem are starting from the ground up. And you are invited to join.
It may be a slow road, and the results may not be perfect. But it beats the alternative of just living under a totalitarian regime, does it not?
Those are your choices:
1. admit that you want to give in to totalitarianism and stop complaining.
2. start working with Metagovernment or one of the many projects linked from there and build real democracy.
It's all free, open source, transparent, and otherwise completely open. How is it going to be infiltrated?
That's like saying Microsoft will infiltrate Apache or Firefox and take it over. They have every motivation to do so, but it does not appear to be happening.
Funny, I just posted a reply to this on another thread.
Do you think it is worth trying? Or do we just sit back and wait for Skynet to take over? You gave that as our two choices. So which are you going to root for?
There is practically zero chance of revolution in the U.S. or most any other advanced society any time in the foreseeable future. Citizens constantly see TV shows about how the government can squash them like bugs if they misbehave. Plus they have enough appeasements that all-out revolution seems a little extreme compared to the nebulous concept of maintaining democracy.
So what you are effectively saying is that we are just stuck watching democracy die, right? It is only a matter of time until a Stalin or Hitler comes along and drives us into armageddon or 1984 or whatever other distopia you can imagine.
Now consider the alternative which "sounds good in theory." It is a practical, non-violent, easy way of getting real, participative democracy started in small communities. As it grows, adapts and gradually proves itself, it can demonstrate that it is a viable governance mechanism for larger and larger communities. Eventually, people will find they have the mechanism in place to run entire cities, and then even larger societies.
It might work, it might not. But given the alternative of totalitarian armageddon, doesn't it seem worth giving a try? Doesn't it seem worth actually putting some effort into it? You can at least join the list server and see what happens...
What is the point of caring? How can an individual affect change? Vote for the other guy? What else is there?
In the original post, there was a decidedly good solution, open source governance (also known as collaborative governance, open democracy, electronic direct democracy, etc.).
Instead of just complaining that democracy is dead, we now have a viable chance to build a new one by side-stepping the whole political process.
It will not be easy, nor will it be instantaneous. It will not be ready for something as huge as the US government for years. But you can help build it right now. Please check out the Metagovernment project and see if you can contribute. Everyone in the world is invited.