It is hilariously disgusting to watch wannabe atheists trivializing existence because they don't believe in a god.
Personally, I think what is hilarious is watching you try to sound like an intellectual.
For starters, if you believe there is no god you are an atheist. You're not a wanna-be anything, even if it makes you sound oh-so-cool to say it.
Second, speaking as an atheist, whose friends are all atheists, and who has read plenty of atheist and theist opinions, I have never seen an atheist "trivialize existence." In fact, every atheist I know finds religion to be what trivializes existence, reducing our lives to some sort of sick test to see whether we get to live in bliss or burn in torment for eternity. When you're an atheist, you don't trivialize life; you believe life is all there is. It is the paramount importance because it's all you have. You die and you're gone. You don't live on and on with your ever-loving God or devil tormentor depending on how some crazy and undefinable metric of sin weighs out on your soul.
you can spew shit from your mouth all day about how we are only chemical computers but both you and I know that our existence is true (whatever that implies) and our feelings and central nervous system exist and that for whatever reason we are important and relevant even if not universally.
Of course our feelings and central nervous systems exist. Who the hell ever said otherwise, or is your entire post just an elaborate strawman? Their existence doesn't change their basis or their potential effects on our development and future behavior, which is the issue at hand with genetics in the courtroom.
when a person is looked at on his genetic level it is like missing a forest for the trees.
Somewhat, yes. A person is clearly a combination of lots of genetic information, along with many other non-genetic factors. But looking at specific genetic components in specific circumstances is certainly not worthless. I want to know if I'm pre-disposed to alcoholism so I can take steps to avoid it. I want to know if I'm pre-disposed to heart attacks so I can take better care of myself. Neither of those pieces of knowledge are worthless, regardless of whether or not they're genetics in a vacuum.
Whether looking at a potential pre-disposition to violence when accused of a violent act is overboard is a perfectly valid question, but your self-assuredness that we shouldn't is hardly compelling. It obviously means something. The central question is how much and whether it mitigates what you did to any extent.
There are a lot of goals of the court system in general and imprisonment in particular: Punishment, rehabilitation, deterrence, protection. The over-arching goal of all of these, however, is justice. An alcoholic is an alcoholic whether he was pre-disposed to it or not, but is he equally at fault for his alcoholism with or without a genetic predisposition? I don't think he is. If there truly is a well-defined link between violence and genetics--and nothing I have seen in this article or elsewhere has established that link to my satisfaction--then I think that's something worth investigating. The person made the ultimate decision to commit the crime, the same as the alcoholic did to bring the bottle to his lips -- but what drove that action? Motive, intention -- these have always been crucial in the process of justice. Why should we throw out a potential factor just because you say so?
In a way, it reminds me of civil liability. If I slip in your driveway and sue you for $100,000, the jury can actually apportion blame; say, I'm 40% responsible for what happened because I was staring into the sky when it happened and not watching where I was going, and you're 60% responsible for not having the gaping hole in your cement fixed. So instead of $100k the judgment would be $60k. Is i
He was still punished; he's still going to jail, serving 89% of his original sentence. Nobody has made any indications whatsoever that he did not do wrong or should not be punished. Agree or disagree, the judge simply decided that being genetically predisposed* to something makes it a slightly smaller deal if you end up doing it.
I also think it's worth nothing that Italy seems, in general, to take a less heavy-handed approach to criminal justice. He admitted to murder and was given a 9 year sentence, something all but impossible in the United States.
* Which he also obviously believed. Personally I would be more interested in that side of the story because the link seems weak to me.
Flagging this as "Troll" for being critical of how Linux distros don't get the same levels of QA testing isn't exactly demonstrating great professionalism...
Probably because it's trolling, same as this comment. The vast majority of people here, much less the vast majority of those with mod points and the people who modded the particular post in question, are not in any way "linux professionals," whatever that would even mean. Even fewer work specifically for Canonical, which is the only group you can base ANY judgment about Linux QA on from this article. So, other than trying to score some cheap points, what exactly is the point of calling it unprofessional? All it does is confirm that you're walking into the discussion with a bias and make us want to dismiss you.
I don't use Ubuntu. I don't use this release in particular, and I have no idea what the causes of the problems in question are; I don't know if they're widespread or overblown. I use all three (Windows XP, Linux and Mac OS X) operating systems, so I don't particularly have any bias. But even if the problems are real and widespread, calling it a lack of QA is nothing more than jumping to conclusions at this point. The reality is that linux runs on vastly more hardware than Windows does, and those users are much more likely to have non-standard and otherwise more complicated configurations. It's impossible to test on all of them, much less cost-prohibitive.
Further, there are plenty of well-documented similar issues with Microsoft's releases. For starters, how about the entirety of the Vista OS? Updates that hose your system? Non-essential crap foisted on you as critical security upgrades? Pouncing on Ubuntu for problems and claiming it's because of lack of QA, while happily ignoring similar issues from Microsoft but giving them credit for their QA is hypocritical at best. Maybe "Hypocritical" would be a better mod, but in its absence it doesn't seem as though "Troll" or "Flamebait" are that far off the mark.
Yes, maybe they fucked something up royally -- frankly, that's what it sounds like right now. It's very possible. So does Microsoft. Are you going to claim it's because Microsoft doesn't QA test its products? For all the anti-Microsoft vitriol here, I don't think anybody has ever made that claim. Sometimes shit just happens.
At the very least, if we're going to criticize for it, let's make sure we actually know what "it" is first? Comments here on Slashdot are mixed as to people who have problems with the upgrades and people for whom it worked fine. Maybe it's not as simple as people want to make it out to be. Maybe, just maybe, it's horrendously premature to be assigning blame to a lack of QA and Troll mods aren't quite so undeserved as you claim?
Wow, over-generalize to try to sound smarter much?
You seriously don't see any difference between instructions on how to use a tool and instructions on what you need to do to hack a cable modem and bypass speed restrictions? Really?
And you're acting snotty about it?! Wow, talk about being an idiot or a fool.
If you care so much about constitutionality, then you should be comforted in knowing that the body we have determined has the final authority to decide such matters has declared that life + 70 is fully constitutional and thus fully legal. (In fact if you care so much about constitutionality you should recognize that the ability to declare things unconstitutional is itself unconstitutional and that the judiciary is a mouthpiece fully devoid of any power, but that is neither here nor there.)
More likely, you're just making shit up that sounds good to justify your position.
I happen to think the copyright terms in effect today are an abomination. I think they should absolutely be changed. But I'm not going to play Master of the Universe and assume that it means my opinions about it should somehow matter more than the United States Supreme Court, in which we have entrusted the power to make those determinations. I am hopeful that, given the close nature of the decision upholding the latest extension to copyright terms, the decision will be overturned in the near future--but I will not claim it is illegal in the present when it has already been ruled to be legal. To do so would be nothing but hyperbole.
If you really want to punish this "greater crime," if you really believe that piracy is some noble act of rebellion against a bad law, then judging by the piracy rates you should have tremendous support. Go oust the politicians who voted for it. Install ones sympathic to your positions. Such is the nature of our Republic.
The OP is correct; pirates do it because they want free stuff. The rest is tangential at best, regardless of how valid or invalid it may ultimately be.
I want to know where this idea has come from that making music should make you a millionaire [. ..] somewhere in the 20th century came the concept that every single mediocre pop act should earn 6 figure sums
I want to know where this idea that people like you can reframe the debate in frankly ridiculous terms without getting called on it has come from.
Nobody has said that every single mediocre pop act should earn six figure sums. At least not until you came around and claimed it was said as if that somehow makes it fact. What people who do not support piracy are saying is very simple: You do not have a right--in fact, it is morally wrong--to take something which is being sold without providing compensation for it. That you're not entitled to somebody else's creation just for being born into a family with an Internet connection. If those people paying for mediocre pop act albums make them six-figure sums, so be it. Maybe they're not as mediocre as you claim.
Can artists give away their music? Absolutely. Should they make their money from concerts and merchandise instead of albums sales? There's a fair degree of sense to it. Is it up to you to decide for them? No.
And somehow, despite this lack of monetary incentive, magnificent music still got made. Musicians made music because it was what they loved to do, and the music scene was a lot better for it.
So you (and presumably others) pirate music to help the progress of the field of music? I wonder if you really believe that or if it's just what you say to rationalize a behavior you've decided long-ago you were going to do.
There are a lot of things wrong with the music industry, some of which are solved, some of which are being worked on and some of which are frankly getting ignored. Copyright terms are too long and penalties disproportionately stiff. A cartel of labels fixes the price of CDs. Outside of a few hits, most of an artists' music is filler trash. Prices are too high for a product for which costs continue to trend down. The labels and artists are too slow to react to changing technologies, choosing to label them evil and obstruct them instead of embracing them as opportunities. And many, many more.
It still doesn't make piracy somehow right. It doesn't mean that you can choose to reject their price and still take their product, much less that you can walk away feeling morally superior after having done it.
It's not about whether or not music can still happen. It's about whether or not you have the right to unilaterally dictate terms to the creator that they have to meet; that failure to do so somehow entitles you to their work for free.
Pirate or don't pirate, I don't particularly care. Just stop couching it in this faux-morality nonsense.
We need good people in the math/sci fields, not dumbasses who got a degree because it was "going to make them rich."
You're always going to get dumbasses in any field who are only there because they think it's going to make them rich. That's just the way of life. What you need are more good people to stay in math and science (and every field), and whether you approve of it or not, money is a contributing factor to that.
If you're looking for some world where every candidate you see for every job is super awesome, you're living on the wrong planet. Just be grateful that you've seemingly been successful at weeding out the bad ones and keep on top of it.
Nope, mass murder of civilians is basically not justifiable at all.
Despite denying his claim, you couched your statement with "basically." I don't think that was accidental or a slip of the tongue.
I don't believe in "the ends justify the means" as a general principle because doing so is simply too dangerous. At the same time, I think that there are (rarely) situations where doing a horrible thing helps you to prevent even more horrible things from happening--and though I may be inferring far too much from one word, I think you do as well.
Sometimes the situations are really contrived; that's usually what you would get if you give a "oh yeah? Name one!" response. This game scene is a potentially realistic and viable example. It sounds like you're the "good guy," taking place in the slaughter as part of some deep cover assignment. Not participating once you get to that point is dangerous. Your best hope is that they didn't notice. If they did, not only do the people die anyway, but chances are so do you and you lose whatever foothold you had into an organization with obvious disregard for human life, who is undoubtedly planning bigger and more horrible things. Turn your gun on them? Best case is you actually win, fewer innocents die and you still lose your foothold into the organization. Better hope you got them all in that one scene!
In other words, while "less evil" and such are oft-abused responses, sometimes you really are in a situation where even the least of the evil choices you have are horrible.
I agree with your general premise, but I think you went a step too far. If we're operating in a mythical world were what you do in a video game is 100% as real mentally/etc, then you run smack into the potential to inflict things such as PTSD, depression, etc on the players. If that sort of thing is happening to any great extent I think we've definitely crossed a line we need to be reeled back over.
What you're getting at is that peoples' virtual actions not only have little effect on their real-world actions, but they're poor predictors of real-world actions as well. This I agree with completely. Nobody should be concerned for the fates of random video game characters unless compelled toward it by the game itself.
It's like whining that Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert have a liberal bias. Hannity and Beck are entertainers.
Of course you know that, but it's just not a good troll if you admit it, right?
Hmm, let's see. Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert -- Comedy Central.
Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity -- Fox News Channel.
You're right; absolute equivalence. I can't believe those damn liberal hypocrites!
Look, nobody's bitching that Rush Limbaugh isn't balanced. Not only does he not claim to be, nobody claims he's anything but a man paid to stir up conservatives. But when your show airs on a news network above the banner "Fair and Balanced," yes, you're doing everything you can to pretend toward an air of impartiality that you not only don't have, but have absolutely no intention of trying for. It is exactly what the OP suggested: Opinion masquerading as if it is impartial news.
If they want to get their own TV shows on Comedy Central, they're more than welcome to them and you will hear nary another word about their lack of impartiality. So long as they're airing on the biggest network news channel in the nation, above a claim of balance, they deserve to be held to a higher standard. We'll start with the standard their own damn network branding claims to set and go from there.
For starters, a well-developed CMS and some competent IT people can produce a site every bit as quick as a static HTML site, because that's exactly what they'll be serving up with good server-side caching. Any "weight" in the backend is more than offset by the increased ease with which content can be updated.
Moreover, a CMS allows non-technical people to be involved in the process. Most likely, people from the press and communications offices are going to be the ones in charge of the content on this website, and it's not at all unreasonable to assume that most of them aren't going to be any good with HTML.
And why should they be? CMS is exactly what it says it is -- a content management system, letting people focus on content by hiding away the markup and technical nonsense they're not concerned with anyway. Sometimes it's fully inappopriate; sometimes a custom one is better than off-the-shelf. But you really can't see why anybody would want to use one? Ever?
What gives you the moral right to restrict him from listening to/using it. It isn't like there is some law of scarcity involved that makes it necessary to restrict access?
Rejection of the "I take what I want" attitude that pervades our society is in no way immoral. Quite the contrary, the people who think that just because they don't like the price or don't want to spend the money that they can have somebody else's time and effort anyway is immoral.
Claiming "I wouldn't have bought it anyway, so shut up!" may be true in theory, but it's not relevant. It's not about control, it's not about lording money over the poor folks who would oh-so-love to use your product if only they could afford it. It's about realizing that there is a value to peoples' time and that they deserve to be compensated for that time if they so wish. If they so wish. Nobody gives a damn what you wish other peoples' work cost. If you don't find the product worth the money, if you don't have the money to spend, so be it; you're not entitled to take it. You wouldn't steal a physical object, and the reasons have nothing to do with some BS rationalization over whether or not property is actually lost.
I've fought long and hard against people who call downloading music, movies or software "theft" or "stealing," but people like you abuse the difference to justify your entire behavior. No wonder so many people just want you to shut the hell up and go to jail. You're beginning to make me a convert.
Those who claim that it is a sin, are those who want to strive backwards into the middle ages.
It sounds awfully like you're the one who wants to strive backward into the middle ages. I'm sorry that people making money from non-tangible goods doesn't meet with your approval, but that's the way we've gone as a global society. That you would literally attack somebody who suggests maybe, just maybe, you should actually have to compensate people who create something rather than just taking it as you please makes you little more than a neanderthal, desperately trying to provide some sort of moral justification for something you planned on doing anyway.
Of course, wasting resources is exactly what you are promoting. Efficiency is not in your vocabulary.
You're right; stealing is the most money-efficient way for you to get something. In fact it's the most money-efficient way for anybody to get anything. Yet we've decided as a society that it's not only illegal but immoral. I wonder why that is? Could it be that the only way it doesn't collapse in on itself is when as few people as possible are doing it? And you're advocating doing that as efficient for a society? Congratulations, sir. Your self-entitlement astounds a person who thought he could no longer be astounded by the depths to which people will sink to self-justify.
You have the right to claim that, but it doesn't make it true.
It has been true since the formation of modern societies. Laws and punishments for theft are always among the first that socities create. That you want morality and legality set aside for your personal enrichment--just as long as other people go ahead and pick up the tab to allow your free-loading to continue--doesn't make it true, or reasonable, regardless of what overblown, over-used excuse you throw up for how this is sooooo different and we should all just chill, maaan.
lso curious about the choice of programming language, Ruby, when Python is known to be more readable, and more easily audited
Known by whom? Python fanbois?
I'm honestly not trolling and I'm honestly not trying to start a Python/Ruby flame war, but let's not try to hide opinions behind worthless statements like "Python is known to be," particularly when the metric is as subjective as "readb[ility]."
Aside from the enforced nature of Python whitespace, I don't find there to be much of a difference between the two in terms of readability. I prefer specified ending blocks, whereas Python seems to merely use a blank line and the indentation. What jumps out at me (as a Ruby fan) more than anything is how stupid and unintuitive '"""' is as a commenting option. Eesh. But all of that is personal preferences, as it should be. There's no substantive differences and certainly nothing measurable enough that we should bandy about statements like Python being known to be more readable.
Chances are, by the way, that's your answer. Why Ruby instead of Python? The authors likely preferred it and were more familiar with it. It needn't be any more complex than that.
I fully understand people saying that it's wrong to download music or movies - but downloading a tv show is no different than your friend recording it on VHS and then giving the tape to you
A few things jump out at me:
First, to be accurate, it is no different than your friend recording it on VHS and giving a copy of that VHS to you. I am not sure about the legality of that, but since he is making a copy for non-personal use it is probably copyright infringement the same as him making you that copy via torrents would be.
Second, it actually is different. The reason nobody particularly cares about your friend giving you a VHS copy of the show is because the scale is nearly non-existent. It costs him (or you) money to buy the tapes and time to dub them for every copy made. Downloading that same show is a distribution method that would allow one person with very small money (tuner) and time (encoding) investments to provide that video, essentially for free, to thousands and thousands of people with exactly the same effort as it would take them for their own use, or to hand it to their friends. I am not intending to argue for one side or the other in the copyright debate, but the difference is hardly semantic.
And third, if it is wrong to download a movie--and again I am not making any personal judgments--then it is equally wrong to download a TV show. Both can be had from free- or nearly-free mediums, both deprive the producers of potential sales later on. If you do not think that people downloading Show X cuts into not only Show X's viewership and thus ad revenues but also their merchandise like box sets, then you are horribly and irrevocably biased.
It may sound as though I am taking the side of copyright owners; I am not, and a look around my hard drives would probably bear that fact out. I just do not see a reason to pretend there are no consequences to such actions for other parties.
Software is being installed on his PC that he doesn't want. All he wants is it to stop being forced on him every time he upgrades a music library, and you're contriving a really lame example in order to defend Apple doing it.
Do you realize how ridiculous that is?
Sometimes you need to find some sunglasses and look past the glare of Steve Jobs to realize not everything Apple does is the best thing since sliced bread. And I say that as I submit this message on my new Macbook Pro, so I'm not exactly an Apple hater.
Cannot have such a rule. The anti-gay(-marriage) people will be quick to tell you the Constitution does not forbid discrimination based on sexual preference. Indeed, you won't find the words "sexual preference" or "sexuality" anywhere in the document. But pretending that you can in any way separate sexual preference from gender, against which discrimination is expressly forbidden by the Fourteenth Amendment, is nothing more than parlor-trick hand-waiving by a homophobic community intent on forcing Biblical morality on an entire nation.
If two people each have the right to marry, they have the right to marry each other. No, that does not somehow open the door to marriages with goats like some people (including, sadly, some in this very discussion) would like you to believe. Does this somehow create a strain on government programs that pay you for being married? Good. Get rid of them. It's ridiculous to incentivize marriage, for straight or gay people.
I'm sorry if this doesn't fit with some peoples' narrow-minded world view, but I'm tired of gay bashing being the last acceptable form of discrimination in the US. End rant.
(And sorry to the grandparent; most of this rant was not intended for you, merely used as a jumping-off point.)
True. His point was that presumably the higher your education (either better schools or more education like a master's degree, etc) the more money you'll make, which means the more money the government will make from you via taxes. Over the course of a lifetime, that may even be enough to have paid back the money they invested you. I'm not sure on that, somebody would have to crunch some numbers, but it's a distinct possibility.
In other words, he's suggesting that the government invests in its populace in the form of free education and recoups that outlay in the increased economic benefit that a more educated populace would provide. Doesn't seem like a horrible idea to me.
Speaking of nitpicking: It's 72 House Democrats. There aren't 72 Democrats in the Senate total, and if 72 senators of any stripe were opposed to this legislation it would be dead on arrival and completely moot.
For comparison purposes, 72 house members--assuming all of them were to vote no--is about 16.5%. Significant, but not insurmountable. It's somewhere around 28% of the democrats in the House. And, of course, chances are either little tweaks are made to bring more on board before it comes to a vote or the majority whip starts whippin' some into line.
Vaccines do not protect everyone they are given to (the vaccine merely trains immune systems, after all, which differ from person to person).
You're correct that vaccines don't protect everyone, but it's not because they "just train" the person's immune system. It's all about whether or not the strain of a particular disease you catch is the one you were vaccinated for.
Every year, before flu season, some medical people get together and make a list of what they feel will be the most common strains of flu that year, then they pick one to mass produce a vaccine for. It's essentially nothing more than an educated guess. Hopefully they're right, but whether they are or not is only matters slightly; you can still catch the other strains, either because of bad luck or maybe they simply picked wrong.
One way to make yourself safe from a disease is to make yourself immune, so you can't get the disease.
Well, you do actually get the disease.
If I remember my biology correctly, you don't actually catch the same disease twice, you catch a different strain. IE, a mutated version. The vaccination actually gives you a version of the disease, usually in an inert form so you don't actually develop symptoms. Your body still creates antibodies for it though. Again, if I'm realling it correctly, anti-bodies essentially are puzzle pieces: They fit up against the particular bacteria and destroy it. If it doesn't fit, it doesn't work.
Once you've created the anti-bodies, they stay with you a long time (forever?). Meaning you may actually be exposed to the same thing again, but it's quickly destroyed. To use a military example, it's the difference between happening to have a standing army where you're attacked and having to create one and transport it where it's needed. The bacteria (or virus) never has a chance to get a foothold.
The rest of your post is pretty much spot on, though I would suggest "ZOMG POSSIBLE SIDE EFFECTS!" is a bigger reason that people don't get vaccinated than "meh, enough other people will do it to protect me." I think the latter is giving the average person too much credit for actually understanding what's going on.
Not directly, but the article does give sample size information and goes on to state: "About 69 percent of those who reported having committed violent acts also reported eating candy daily at age 10, compared to 42 percent of those who did not have a violent criminal past, the study authors noted."
Then again, even if you were correct I'm not sure what the point of bringing it up was. Read the full study if you're actually interested in what its findings are.
Is it the candy that's causing the impulsive behaviour or the rewards themselves?
A perfectly valid question. A little reading comprehension would indicate that they're not sure, given that two different groups are hypothesizing two different explanations based on the same data. In fact you've merely restated the two positions as a question.
If it's the Candy, which chemical, or mixture of chemicals, is causing it and is it contained in all candy?
Well, you're getting on the pedantic side now so far as criticizing the study goes. But yes, if it turns out to be the contents of the candy itself I'm sure they'll investigate that further. Unless you demonstrate who's saying that candy is the actual cause of the increased violence though, I'm not sure what the question has to do with what you quoted for your response, nor to what degree your new post somehow explains what you originally said.
Yes, correlation is not causation, and that's important to distinguish. If you're not simply going for brownie-point mods, then you're going to have to explain who said otherwise. Yours was a root comment, without parent, so one has to assume you're talking about the article. Well, it's not the title, which simply says "linked." Nor the summary, which explicitly uses "correlation." And hell, the article itself actually uses the phrase "correlation never shows causation." So other than the cheap mod points you're accused of, what the hell were either of your posts trying to accomplish?
My suspicion is that you're one of those people who thinks repeating memes without even a cursory examination of what he's referring to makes you sound smarter. If that's the case: No problem, carry on. Otherwise I suggest you articulate what value you're trying to add to the conversation more clearly.
I'm sorry that you struggle to accept the fact that not all information belongs in public view. Perhaps you can explain your position to me while you hand over your bank account numbers and routing codes.
I hate to shatter your world view, but sometimes keeping things from certain groups of people is the right thing to do and that doesn't change just because one of the entities is a government. Yes, it will be abused. Yes, abuse should be punished. No, that does not mean the concept is without merit or that it's not worth trying.
Information security is definitely harder in this day and age, and it would be a colossal blunder to rely on mere obfuscation or concealment to protect things. That doesn't mean they don't have their places, nor does it mean that proper use of such in appropriate situations somehow makes them WW2-era codeword-loving spooks. Frankly, suggesting it just makes you sound like an idiot. Couple it with your ever-so-reasonable comments about police beating people but ignoring crime and, well, that cinches it up pretty firmly doesn't it?
Re:Crossbrowser libraries just perpetuate the prob
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Learning Ext JS
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Why not just refuse to use non-standard features, browser sniffing, etc.
A good developer uses them for the same reason they use anything else that isn't technically essential: To improve the experience. Granted, a lot of people do things for a lot of bad reasons, but that's another issue.
Accommodating multiple broken browsers just perpetuates the "we don't need no stinking standards but our OWN!" mentality.
A web browser is a tool, both for the user of the websites in question and the developers. As a professional web developer, I would prefer everybody perfectly and identically implemented all standards. That's my mentality; it would make things much easier for me. That said, while it's a shame that things are implemented so differently in different browsers, it won't prevent me from supporting them in reasonably up-to-date browsers if it's feasible to do so. "Reasonably up-to-date" at this point means IE6 or better to me. If somebody really, reeeeally wanted IE 5.5 support I would probably agree to it -- but they're going to pay for every last extra minute it takes, and that's probably going to be a lot of money.
"But my customers want it to work in their browser!" is not an argument when better browsers are freely available.
Why? Because "I don't give a crap as long as it works in MY browser" is so much more reasonable?
We're web developers. Our job (and in my case, my passion) is to create things that help people get things done, not to change the world. It would be awesome if some things were easier and/or more consistent across browsers, but to give people an inferior product because it takes extra work doesn't help anybody and doesn't progress anything.
Life isn't a fairy tale where everybody does the Bestest Thing Evar(tm) all the time. It's hard enough to keep an income stream when you're competing with people from India working for fractions of what you do without outright refusing work because they won't let you play to your pet projects. SOMEBODY is going to be doing the work, that's the reality of the world and of the capitalist system in general. So long as an employer/client can simply replace me by going to the next guy in the list, I have no power to change how fast outside organizations develop and implement standards. Wishing doesn't make it so.
What next - make a version that works for IE3 or Mosaic because someone is still running WFW3.1?
Like pretty much everything else in life, it's a trade-off. Or to steal one of those evil business terms, a cost-benefit analysis. Two years ago, refusing to support IE6 would have shut out 34% of potential customers. One year ago it would have been about 20%, and today it would be around 12%. Two years ago it's a no-brainer to support it, pretty much regardless of how much time it takes. Simply turning away one in every three potential customers that come to you isn't going to get you anywhere. Today, it's not as clear.
Why do you feel this incredible need to consistently resort to hyperbole as if there aren't reasonable intermediary steps? Nobody is going to develop for IE3 or Mosaic; the differences (and thus costs) are too great and the benefit too small. These days, pretty much no client I've come across even cares about IE 5.5. They do care about IE6, for now. Maybe not next year. What's unreasonable about that? Particularly if there are enough people out there who care that they develop things like, oh I don't know, JavaScript libraries that abstract away the differences for me?
We benefit from standards for everything else - electricity, water, sanitation, food, health, ram, tires, gasoline, soda pop containers, air quality, asbestos, drugs, alcohol, etc. - and yet in this one area, we tolerate immaturity. Why?
For starters, most of these comparisons are pretty lame.
the plaintiff should be heavily penalized if the lawsuit is determined to be frivolous by a jury of his/her peers.
That's what judges are for, and they already have that power. They can 1) declare the lawsuit to be frivolous, 2) dismiss the suit with prejudice and 3) order Rule 11 sanctions against the litigant or the attorney who brought the suit.
Unfortunately, the US is a country that considers you to have a constitutional right to sue. (I'm honestly not sure where it comes from, but I believe it stems from the 7th Amendment; if you have a right to a jury trial if you sue for $20 or more the intimation would be that you first had the right to sue for that $20.) That makes it harder to dismiss cases out of hand. Rule 11 sanctions are extremely rare, far more rare than they probably should be. I don't know what the solution is to judges being reluctant to use a power they already possess.
However, antivirus applications are plentiful and the money MS will be investing in this thing makes them justified in not wanting to simply give it away.
They are giving it away, just not to pirates. I don't see the distinction as particularly meaningful.
If the analyst's comments are indicative of Microsoft's thinking, I'm not sure I understand it. "It's important to protect PCs from viruses that harm everybody, so we're going to go ahead and give patches to pirates of the product we're selling. BUT WE DRAW THE LINE AT THE PRODUCT WE'RE GIVING AWAY FREE!!"
Not that it matters much anyway. The pirates will just pirate Security Essentials if they want it that much. Chances are they even have a cracked version of WGA to let them get it "legitimately" from Microsoft, making the whole exercise even more silly.
Microsoft's free to do whatever they want in both regards (Windows and Security Essentials), I don't really care either way. It just doesn't seem like a consistent position. Keeping PCs safe, even if they're running pirated versions of your software, is important or not. AV is an important step in that process, even if there are alternatives. What are they trying to accomplish, really?
The best you could come up with is for somebody to commit multiple felonies in order to get you some overdraft fees that, while admittedly inconvenient, you could probably get resolved?
I think the idea is silly, and I wouldn't use such a feature if my bank offered it, but let's not pretend it's some gaping security hole if we have to stretch that far to illustrate one.
Slashdot Mirror
Personally, I think what is hilarious is watching you try to sound like an intellectual.
For starters, if you believe there is no god you are an atheist. You're not a wanna-be anything, even if it makes you sound oh-so-cool to say it.
Second, speaking as an atheist, whose friends are all atheists, and who has read plenty of atheist and theist opinions, I have never seen an atheist "trivialize existence." In fact, every atheist I know finds religion to be what trivializes existence, reducing our lives to some sort of sick test to see whether we get to live in bliss or burn in torment for eternity. When you're an atheist, you don't trivialize life; you believe life is all there is. It is the paramount importance because it's all you have. You die and you're gone. You don't live on and on with your ever-loving God or devil tormentor depending on how some crazy and undefinable metric of sin weighs out on your soul.
Of course our feelings and central nervous systems exist. Who the hell ever said otherwise, or is your entire post just an elaborate strawman? Their existence doesn't change their basis or their potential effects on our development and future behavior, which is the issue at hand with genetics in the courtroom.
Somewhat, yes. A person is clearly a combination of lots of genetic information, along with many other non-genetic factors. But looking at specific genetic components in specific circumstances is certainly not worthless. I want to know if I'm pre-disposed to alcoholism so I can take steps to avoid it. I want to know if I'm pre-disposed to heart attacks so I can take better care of myself. Neither of those pieces of knowledge are worthless, regardless of whether or not they're genetics in a vacuum.
Whether looking at a potential pre-disposition to violence when accused of a violent act is overboard is a perfectly valid question, but your self-assuredness that we shouldn't is hardly compelling. It obviously means something. The central question is how much and whether it mitigates what you did to any extent.
There are a lot of goals of the court system in general and imprisonment in particular: Punishment, rehabilitation, deterrence, protection. The over-arching goal of all of these, however, is justice. An alcoholic is an alcoholic whether he was pre-disposed to it or not, but is he equally at fault for his alcoholism with or without a genetic predisposition? I don't think he is. If there truly is a well-defined link between violence and genetics--and nothing I have seen in this article or elsewhere has established that link to my satisfaction--then I think that's something worth investigating. The person made the ultimate decision to commit the crime, the same as the alcoholic did to bring the bottle to his lips -- but what drove that action? Motive, intention -- these have always been crucial in the process of justice. Why should we throw out a potential factor just because you say so?
In a way, it reminds me of civil liability. If I slip in your driveway and sue you for $100,000, the jury can actually apportion blame; say, I'm 40% responsible for what happened because I was staring into the sky when it happened and not watching where I was going, and you're 60% responsible for not having the gaping hole in your cement fixed. So instead of $100k the judgment would be $60k. Is i
He was still punished; he's still going to jail, serving 89% of his original sentence. Nobody has made any indications whatsoever that he did not do wrong or should not be punished. Agree or disagree, the judge simply decided that being genetically predisposed* to something makes it a slightly smaller deal if you end up doing it.
I also think it's worth nothing that Italy seems, in general, to take a less heavy-handed approach to criminal justice. He admitted to murder and was given a 9 year sentence, something all but impossible in the United States.
* Which he also obviously believed. Personally I would be more interested in that side of the story because the link seems weak to me.
Probably because it's trolling, same as this comment. The vast majority of people here, much less the vast majority of those with mod points and the people who modded the particular post in question, are not in any way "linux professionals," whatever that would even mean. Even fewer work specifically for Canonical, which is the only group you can base ANY judgment about Linux QA on from this article. So, other than trying to score some cheap points, what exactly is the point of calling it unprofessional? All it does is confirm that you're walking into the discussion with a bias and make us want to dismiss you.
I don't use Ubuntu. I don't use this release in particular, and I have no idea what the causes of the problems in question are; I don't know if they're widespread or overblown. I use all three (Windows XP, Linux and Mac OS X) operating systems, so I don't particularly have any bias. But even if the problems are real and widespread, calling it a lack of QA is nothing more than jumping to conclusions at this point. The reality is that linux runs on vastly more hardware than Windows does, and those users are much more likely to have non-standard and otherwise more complicated configurations. It's impossible to test on all of them, much less cost-prohibitive.
Further, there are plenty of well-documented similar issues with Microsoft's releases. For starters, how about the entirety of the Vista OS? Updates that hose your system? Non-essential crap foisted on you as critical security upgrades? Pouncing on Ubuntu for problems and claiming it's because of lack of QA, while happily ignoring similar issues from Microsoft but giving them credit for their QA is hypocritical at best. Maybe "Hypocritical" would be a better mod, but in its absence it doesn't seem as though "Troll" or "Flamebait" are that far off the mark.
Yes, maybe they fucked something up royally -- frankly, that's what it sounds like right now. It's very possible. So does Microsoft. Are you going to claim it's because Microsoft doesn't QA test its products? For all the anti-Microsoft vitriol here, I don't think anybody has ever made that claim. Sometimes shit just happens.
At the very least, if we're going to criticize for it, let's make sure we actually know what "it" is first? Comments here on Slashdot are mixed as to people who have problems with the upgrades and people for whom it worked fine. Maybe it's not as simple as people want to make it out to be. Maybe, just maybe, it's horrendously premature to be assigning blame to a lack of QA and Troll mods aren't quite so undeserved as you claim?
Wow, over-generalize to try to sound smarter much?
You seriously don't see any difference between instructions on how to use a tool and instructions on what you need to do to hack a cable modem and bypass speed restrictions? Really?
And you're acting snotty about it?! Wow, talk about being an idiot or a fool.
If you care so much about constitutionality, then you should be comforted in knowing that the body we have determined has the final authority to decide such matters has declared that life + 70 is fully constitutional and thus fully legal. (In fact if you care so much about constitutionality you should recognize that the ability to declare things unconstitutional is itself unconstitutional and that the judiciary is a mouthpiece fully devoid of any power, but that is neither here nor there.)
More likely, you're just making shit up that sounds good to justify your position.
I happen to think the copyright terms in effect today are an abomination. I think they should absolutely be changed. But I'm not going to play Master of the Universe and assume that it means my opinions about it should somehow matter more than the United States Supreme Court, in which we have entrusted the power to make those determinations. I am hopeful that, given the close nature of the decision upholding the latest extension to copyright terms, the decision will be overturned in the near future--but I will not claim it is illegal in the present when it has already been ruled to be legal. To do so would be nothing but hyperbole.
If you really want to punish this "greater crime," if you really believe that piracy is some noble act of rebellion against a bad law, then judging by the piracy rates you should have tremendous support. Go oust the politicians who voted for it. Install ones sympathic to your positions. Such is the nature of our Republic.
The OP is correct; pirates do it because they want free stuff. The rest is tangential at best, regardless of how valid or invalid it may ultimately be.
I want to know where this idea that people like you can reframe the debate in frankly ridiculous terms without getting called on it has come from.
Nobody has said that every single mediocre pop act should earn six figure sums. At least not until you came around and claimed it was said as if that somehow makes it fact. What people who do not support piracy are saying is very simple: You do not have a right--in fact, it is morally wrong--to take something which is being sold without providing compensation for it. That you're not entitled to somebody else's creation just for being born into a family with an Internet connection. If those people paying for mediocre pop act albums make them six-figure sums, so be it. Maybe they're not as mediocre as you claim.
Can artists give away their music? Absolutely. Should they make their money from concerts and merchandise instead of albums sales? There's a fair degree of sense to it. Is it up to you to decide for them? No.
So you (and presumably others) pirate music to help the progress of the field of music? I wonder if you really believe that or if it's just what you say to rationalize a behavior you've decided long-ago you were going to do.
There are a lot of things wrong with the music industry, some of which are solved, some of which are being worked on and some of which are frankly getting ignored. Copyright terms are too long and penalties disproportionately stiff. A cartel of labels fixes the price of CDs. Outside of a few hits, most of an artists' music is filler trash. Prices are too high for a product for which costs continue to trend down. The labels and artists are too slow to react to changing technologies, choosing to label them evil and obstruct them instead of embracing them as opportunities. And many, many more.
It still doesn't make piracy somehow right. It doesn't mean that you can choose to reject their price and still take their product, much less that you can walk away feeling morally superior after having done it.
It's not about whether or not music can still happen. It's about whether or not you have the right to unilaterally dictate terms to the creator that they have to meet; that failure to do so somehow entitles you to their work for free.
Pirate or don't pirate, I don't particularly care. Just stop couching it in this faux-morality nonsense.
You're always going to get dumbasses in any field who are only there because they think it's going to make them rich. That's just the way of life. What you need are more good people to stay in math and science (and every field), and whether you approve of it or not, money is a contributing factor to that.
If you're looking for some world where every candidate you see for every job is super awesome, you're living on the wrong planet. Just be grateful that you've seemingly been successful at weeding out the bad ones and keep on top of it.
Despite denying his claim, you couched your statement with "basically." I don't think that was accidental or a slip of the tongue.
I don't believe in "the ends justify the means" as a general principle because doing so is simply too dangerous. At the same time, I think that there are (rarely) situations where doing a horrible thing helps you to prevent even more horrible things from happening--and though I may be inferring far too much from one word, I think you do as well.
Sometimes the situations are really contrived; that's usually what you would get if you give a "oh yeah? Name one!" response. This game scene is a potentially realistic and viable example. It sounds like you're the "good guy," taking place in the slaughter as part of some deep cover assignment. Not participating once you get to that point is dangerous. Your best hope is that they didn't notice. If they did, not only do the people die anyway, but chances are so do you and you lose whatever foothold you had into an organization with obvious disregard for human life, who is undoubtedly planning bigger and more horrible things. Turn your gun on them? Best case is you actually win, fewer innocents die and you still lose your foothold into the organization. Better hope you got them all in that one scene!
In other words, while "less evil" and such are oft-abused responses, sometimes you really are in a situation where even the least of the evil choices you have are horrible.
I agree with your general premise, but I think you went a step too far. If we're operating in a mythical world were what you do in a video game is 100% as real mentally/etc, then you run smack into the potential to inflict things such as PTSD, depression, etc on the players. If that sort of thing is happening to any great extent I think we've definitely crossed a line we need to be reeled back over.
What you're getting at is that peoples' virtual actions not only have little effect on their real-world actions, but they're poor predictors of real-world actions as well. This I agree with completely. Nobody should be concerned for the fates of random video game characters unless compelled toward it by the game itself.
Hmm, let's see. Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert -- Comedy Central.
Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity -- Fox News Channel.
You're right; absolute equivalence. I can't believe those damn liberal hypocrites!
Look, nobody's bitching that Rush Limbaugh isn't balanced. Not only does he not claim to be, nobody claims he's anything but a man paid to stir up conservatives. But when your show airs on a news network above the banner "Fair and Balanced," yes, you're doing everything you can to pretend toward an air of impartiality that you not only don't have, but have absolutely no intention of trying for. It is exactly what the OP suggested: Opinion masquerading as if it is impartial news.
If they want to get their own TV shows on Comedy Central, they're more than welcome to them and you will hear nary another word about their lack of impartiality. So long as they're airing on the biggest network news channel in the nation, above a claim of balance, they deserve to be held to a higher standard. We'll start with the standard their own damn network branding claims to set and go from there.
With all due respect, are you a web developer?
For starters, a well-developed CMS and some competent IT people can produce a site every bit as quick as a static HTML site, because that's exactly what they'll be serving up with good server-side caching. Any "weight" in the backend is more than offset by the increased ease with which content can be updated.
Moreover, a CMS allows non-technical people to be involved in the process. Most likely, people from the press and communications offices are going to be the ones in charge of the content on this website, and it's not at all unreasonable to assume that most of them aren't going to be any good with HTML.
And why should they be? CMS is exactly what it says it is -- a content management system, letting people focus on content by hiding away the markup and technical nonsense they're not concerned with anyway. Sometimes it's fully inappopriate; sometimes a custom one is better than off-the-shelf. But you really can't see why anybody would want to use one? Ever?
Rejection of the "I take what I want" attitude that pervades our society is in no way immoral. Quite the contrary, the people who think that just because they don't like the price or don't want to spend the money that they can have somebody else's time and effort anyway is immoral.
Claiming "I wouldn't have bought it anyway, so shut up!" may be true in theory, but it's not relevant. It's not about control, it's not about lording money over the poor folks who would oh-so-love to use your product if only they could afford it. It's about realizing that there is a value to peoples' time and that they deserve to be compensated for that time if they so wish. If they so wish. Nobody gives a damn what you wish other peoples' work cost. If you don't find the product worth the money, if you don't have the money to spend, so be it; you're not entitled to take it. You wouldn't steal a physical object, and the reasons have nothing to do with some BS rationalization over whether or not property is actually lost.
I've fought long and hard against people who call downloading music, movies or software "theft" or "stealing," but people like you abuse the difference to justify your entire behavior. No wonder so many people just want you to shut the hell up and go to jail. You're beginning to make me a convert.
It sounds awfully like you're the one who wants to strive backward into the middle ages. I'm sorry that people making money from non-tangible goods doesn't meet with your approval, but that's the way we've gone as a global society. That you would literally attack somebody who suggests maybe, just maybe, you should actually have to compensate people who create something rather than just taking it as you please makes you little more than a neanderthal, desperately trying to provide some sort of moral justification for something you planned on doing anyway.
You're right; stealing is the most money-efficient way for you to get something. In fact it's the most money-efficient way for anybody to get anything. Yet we've decided as a society that it's not only illegal but immoral. I wonder why that is? Could it be that the only way it doesn't collapse in on itself is when as few people as possible are doing it? And you're advocating doing that as efficient for a society? Congratulations, sir. Your self-entitlement astounds a person who thought he could no longer be astounded by the depths to which people will sink to self-justify.
It has been true since the formation of modern societies. Laws and punishments for theft are always among the first that socities create. That you want morality and legality set aside for your personal enrichment--just as long as other people go ahead and pick up the tab to allow your free-loading to continue--doesn't make it true, or reasonable, regardless of what overblown, over-used excuse you throw up for how this is sooooo different and we should all just chill, maaan.
Efficiency my ass.
Known by whom? Python fanbois?
I'm honestly not trolling and I'm honestly not trying to start a Python/Ruby flame war, but let's not try to hide opinions behind worthless statements like "Python is known to be," particularly when the metric is as subjective as "readb[ility]."
Aside from the enforced nature of Python whitespace, I don't find there to be much of a difference between the two in terms of readability. I prefer specified ending blocks, whereas Python seems to merely use a blank line and the indentation. What jumps out at me (as a Ruby fan) more than anything is how stupid and unintuitive '"""' is as a commenting option. Eesh. But all of that is personal preferences, as it should be. There's no substantive differences and certainly nothing measurable enough that we should bandy about statements like Python being known to be more readable.
Chances are, by the way, that's your answer. Why Ruby instead of Python? The authors likely preferred it and were more familiar with it. It needn't be any more complex than that.
A few things jump out at me:
First, to be accurate, it is no different than your friend recording it on VHS and giving a copy of that VHS to you. I am not sure about the legality of that, but since he is making a copy for non-personal use it is probably copyright infringement the same as him making you that copy via torrents would be.
Second, it actually is different. The reason nobody particularly cares about your friend giving you a VHS copy of the show is because the scale is nearly non-existent. It costs him (or you) money to buy the tapes and time to dub them for every copy made. Downloading that same show is a distribution method that would allow one person with very small money (tuner) and time (encoding) investments to provide that video, essentially for free, to thousands and thousands of people with exactly the same effort as it would take them for their own use, or to hand it to their friends. I am not intending to argue for one side or the other in the copyright debate, but the difference is hardly semantic.
And third, if it is wrong to download a movie--and again I am not making any personal judgments--then it is equally wrong to download a TV show. Both can be had from free- or nearly-free mediums, both deprive the producers of potential sales later on. If you do not think that people downloading Show X cuts into not only Show X's viewership and thus ad revenues but also their merchandise like box sets, then you are horribly and irrevocably biased.
It may sound as though I am taking the side of copyright owners; I am not, and a look around my hard drives would probably bear that fact out. I just do not see a reason to pretend there are no consequences to such actions for other parties.
Software is being installed on his PC that he doesn't want. All he wants is it to stop being forced on him every time he upgrades a music library, and you're contriving a really lame example in order to defend Apple doing it.
Do you realize how ridiculous that is?
Sometimes you need to find some sunglasses and look past the glare of Steve Jobs to realize not everything Apple does is the best thing since sliced bread. And I say that as I submit this message on my new Macbook Pro, so I'm not exactly an Apple hater.
Cannot have such a rule. The anti-gay(-marriage) people will be quick to tell you the Constitution does not forbid discrimination based on sexual preference. Indeed, you won't find the words "sexual preference" or "sexuality" anywhere in the document. But pretending that you can in any way separate sexual preference from gender, against which discrimination is expressly forbidden by the Fourteenth Amendment, is nothing more than parlor-trick hand-waiving by a homophobic community intent on forcing Biblical morality on an entire nation.
If two people each have the right to marry, they have the right to marry each other. No, that does not somehow open the door to marriages with goats like some people (including, sadly, some in this very discussion) would like you to believe. Does this somehow create a strain on government programs that pay you for being married? Good. Get rid of them. It's ridiculous to incentivize marriage, for straight or gay people.
I'm sorry if this doesn't fit with some peoples' narrow-minded world view, but I'm tired of gay bashing being the last acceptable form of discrimination in the US. End rant.
(And sorry to the grandparent; most of this rant was not intended for you, merely used as a jumping-off point.)
True. His point was that presumably the higher your education (either better schools or more education like a master's degree, etc) the more money you'll make, which means the more money the government will make from you via taxes. Over the course of a lifetime, that may even be enough to have paid back the money they invested you. I'm not sure on that, somebody would have to crunch some numbers, but it's a distinct possibility.
In other words, he's suggesting that the government invests in its populace in the form of free education and recoups that outlay in the increased economic benefit that a more educated populace would provide. Doesn't seem like a horrible idea to me.
Speaking of nitpicking: It's 72 House Democrats. There aren't 72 Democrats in the Senate total, and if 72 senators of any stripe were opposed to this legislation it would be dead on arrival and completely moot.
For comparison purposes, 72 house members--assuming all of them were to vote no--is about 16.5%. Significant, but not insurmountable. It's somewhere around 28% of the democrats in the House. And, of course, chances are either little tweaks are made to bring more on board before it comes to a vote or the majority whip starts whippin' some into line.
You're correct that vaccines don't protect everyone, but it's not because they "just train" the person's immune system. It's all about whether or not the strain of a particular disease you catch is the one you were vaccinated for.
Every year, before flu season, some medical people get together and make a list of what they feel will be the most common strains of flu that year, then they pick one to mass produce a vaccine for. It's essentially nothing more than an educated guess. Hopefully they're right, but whether they are or not is only matters slightly; you can still catch the other strains, either because of bad luck or maybe they simply picked wrong.
Well, you do actually get the disease.
If I remember my biology correctly, you don't actually catch the same disease twice, you catch a different strain. IE, a mutated version. The vaccination actually gives you a version of the disease, usually in an inert form so you don't actually develop symptoms. Your body still creates antibodies for it though. Again, if I'm realling it correctly, anti-bodies essentially are puzzle pieces: They fit up against the particular bacteria and destroy it. If it doesn't fit, it doesn't work.
Once you've created the anti-bodies, they stay with you a long time (forever?). Meaning you may actually be exposed to the same thing again, but it's quickly destroyed. To use a military example, it's the difference between happening to have a standing army where you're attacked and having to create one and transport it where it's needed. The bacteria (or virus) never has a chance to get a foothold.
The rest of your post is pretty much spot on, though I would suggest "ZOMG POSSIBLE SIDE EFFECTS!" is a bigger reason that people don't get vaccinated than "meh, enough other people will do it to protect me." I think the latter is giving the average person too much credit for actually understanding what's going on.
Not directly, but the article does give sample size information and goes on to state: "About 69 percent of those who reported having committed violent acts also reported eating candy daily at age 10, compared to 42 percent of those who did not have a violent criminal past, the study authors noted."
Then again, even if you were correct I'm not sure what the point of bringing it up was. Read the full study if you're actually interested in what its findings are.
A perfectly valid question. A little reading comprehension would indicate that they're not sure, given that two different groups are hypothesizing two different explanations based on the same data. In fact you've merely restated the two positions as a question.
Well, you're getting on the pedantic side now so far as criticizing the study goes. But yes, if it turns out to be the contents of the candy itself I'm sure they'll investigate that further. Unless you demonstrate who's saying that candy is the actual cause of the increased violence though, I'm not sure what the question has to do with what you quoted for your response, nor to what degree your new post somehow explains what you originally said.
Yes, correlation is not causation, and that's important to distinguish. If you're not simply going for brownie-point mods, then you're going to have to explain who said otherwise. Yours was a root comment, without parent, so one has to assume you're talking about the article. Well, it's not the title, which simply says "linked." Nor the summary, which explicitly uses "correlation." And hell, the article itself actually uses the phrase "correlation never shows causation." So other than the cheap mod points you're accused of, what the hell were either of your posts trying to accomplish?
My suspicion is that you're one of those people who thinks repeating memes without even a cursory examination of what he's referring to makes you sound smarter. If that's the case: No problem, carry on. Otherwise I suggest you articulate what value you're trying to add to the conversation more clearly.
I'm sorry that you struggle to accept the fact that not all information belongs in public view. Perhaps you can explain your position to me while you hand over your bank account numbers and routing codes.
I hate to shatter your world view, but sometimes keeping things from certain groups of people is the right thing to do and that doesn't change just because one of the entities is a government. Yes, it will be abused. Yes, abuse should be punished. No, that does not mean the concept is without merit or that it's not worth trying.
Information security is definitely harder in this day and age, and it would be a colossal blunder to rely on mere obfuscation or concealment to protect things. That doesn't mean they don't have their places, nor does it mean that proper use of such in appropriate situations somehow makes them WW2-era codeword-loving spooks. Frankly, suggesting it just makes you sound like an idiot. Couple it with your ever-so-reasonable comments about police beating people but ignoring crime and, well, that cinches it up pretty firmly doesn't it?
A good developer uses them for the same reason they use anything else that isn't technically essential: To improve the experience. Granted, a lot of people do things for a lot of bad reasons, but that's another issue.
A web browser is a tool, both for the user of the websites in question and the developers. As a professional web developer, I would prefer everybody perfectly and identically implemented all standards. That's my mentality; it would make things much easier for me. That said, while it's a shame that things are implemented so differently in different browsers, it won't prevent me from supporting them in reasonably up-to-date browsers if it's feasible to do so. "Reasonably up-to-date" at this point means IE6 or better to me. If somebody really, reeeeally wanted IE 5.5 support I would probably agree to it -- but they're going to pay for every last extra minute it takes, and that's probably going to be a lot of money.
Why? Because "I don't give a crap as long as it works in MY browser" is so much more reasonable?
We're web developers. Our job (and in my case, my passion) is to create things that help people get things done, not to change the world. It would be awesome if some things were easier and/or more consistent across browsers, but to give people an inferior product because it takes extra work doesn't help anybody and doesn't progress anything.
Life isn't a fairy tale where everybody does the Bestest Thing Evar(tm) all the time. It's hard enough to keep an income stream when you're competing with people from India working for fractions of what you do without outright refusing work because they won't let you play to your pet projects. SOMEBODY is going to be doing the work, that's the reality of the world and of the capitalist system in general. So long as an employer/client can simply replace me by going to the next guy in the list, I have no power to change how fast outside organizations develop and implement standards. Wishing doesn't make it so.
Like pretty much everything else in life, it's a trade-off. Or to steal one of those evil business terms, a cost-benefit analysis. Two years ago, refusing to support IE6 would have shut out 34% of potential customers. One year ago it would have been about 20%, and today it would be around 12%. Two years ago it's a no-brainer to support it, pretty much regardless of how much time it takes. Simply turning away one in every three potential customers that come to you isn't going to get you anywhere. Today, it's not as clear.
Why do you feel this incredible need to consistently resort to hyperbole as if there aren't reasonable intermediary steps? Nobody is going to develop for IE3 or Mosaic; the differences (and thus costs) are too great and the benefit too small. These days, pretty much no client I've come across even cares about IE 5.5. They do care about IE6, for now. Maybe not next year. What's unreasonable about that? Particularly if there are enough people out there who care that they develop things like, oh I don't know, JavaScript libraries that abstract away the differences for me?
For starters, most of these comparisons are pretty lame.
That's what judges are for, and they already have that power. They can 1) declare the lawsuit to be frivolous, 2) dismiss the suit with prejudice and 3) order Rule 11 sanctions against the litigant or the attorney who brought the suit.
Unfortunately, the US is a country that considers you to have a constitutional right to sue. (I'm honestly not sure where it comes from, but I believe it stems from the 7th Amendment; if you have a right to a jury trial if you sue for $20 or more the intimation would be that you first had the right to sue for that $20.) That makes it harder to dismiss cases out of hand. Rule 11 sanctions are extremely rare, far more rare than they probably should be. I don't know what the solution is to judges being reluctant to use a power they already possess.
They are giving it away, just not to pirates. I don't see the distinction as particularly meaningful.
If the analyst's comments are indicative of Microsoft's thinking, I'm not sure I understand it. "It's important to protect PCs from viruses that harm everybody, so we're going to go ahead and give patches to pirates of the product we're selling. BUT WE DRAW THE LINE AT THE PRODUCT WE'RE GIVING AWAY FREE!!"
Not that it matters much anyway. The pirates will just pirate Security Essentials if they want it that much. Chances are they even have a cracked version of WGA to let them get it "legitimately" from Microsoft, making the whole exercise even more silly.
Microsoft's free to do whatever they want in both regards (Windows and Security Essentials), I don't really care either way. It just doesn't seem like a consistent position. Keeping PCs safe, even if they're running pirated versions of your software, is important or not. AV is an important step in that process, even if there are alternatives. What are they trying to accomplish, really?
The best you could come up with is for somebody to commit multiple felonies in order to get you some overdraft fees that, while admittedly inconvenient, you could probably get resolved?
I think the idea is silly, and I wouldn't use such a feature if my bank offered it, but let's not pretend it's some gaping security hole if we have to stretch that far to illustrate one.