the stories of their involvement in Danger and Daring Do are greatly exaggerated. I would doubt that many of them have ever held a gun before.
Probably true, but they do have field agents; what sort of activities these guys do is anybody's guess. One interesting piece of trivia is that the first American casualty in Viet Nam was an NSA agent posing as a USAF SSgt.
They're also doing some of the leading work in things like computerized face recognition. They've already got this working surprisingly well, and claim that it's far more accurate than a fingerprint. 'Course if they admit that much, who knows what they've actually got going there; maybe it can guess your weight too.;)
The most interesting thing to me is that they have their own fab; they can design and build all the custom chips they want in house. I'd be willing to bet they've commited some sweet things to silicon in there. It's also interesting to note that they say the fab is for designing chips for the purposes of encryption, not decryption. Personally, I wonder how big a wink comes with that statement.
Picture this: A scientist spends years compiling the world's largest book of poison antidotes. Then, shortly after it's published, he turns on his computer to find a competing researcher has photocopied the book, posted it on a Web page, and splashed it across the Internet. Legal? Yes, under current law.
BS. This is no more legal than would be doing the same thing with Steven King's latest horror epic. At least they let us know up front what the factual content of the rest of the article is liable to be.
Why would anyone spend $2 million to create a database if it's not going to be protected?'' said David Mirchin, of SilverPlatter Information, a database publisher in Norton, Mass.
Gee, I don't know. Why do they do it now? The fact is, databases are protected. Taking a database someone else has compiled and republishing it is a violation of law. The courts have ruled on this several times as specifically regards the internet in the last several years. However, the information in the database is not necessarily protected. If said info is otherwise publically available, then you cannot prevent others from using it.
What you see here is a push (not a new one; it's been going on for a while) to allow someone to create a database of freely available information, and make that information proprietary. The rationale behind this has been that it's the only way to ensure that the information hasn't been 'stolen' from the database, rather than gathered independently. Of course, it's not hard to see what the real motivation is; it's becoming very easy to gather large collections of freely available information. Many people see this as an opportunity to grab a free ride and make a lot of money.
I'm sure most everyone here can see the obvious problem with allowing the proprietization of this information. If you obtain it independently, how are you going to prove it? And if you create an independent database? Yes, you can document your sources, but unless you can afford to defend yourself in court, this information will be effectively off limits to you unless you pay whoever has bothered to gather it into one spot.
I keep hearing so much about how Americans are doing so well, how strong our economy is, how much everybody has. Why then, is greed becoming the defining trait of our culture? Are not Bill Gates' tens of billions enough? I kid you not, we as a culture and as a country are headed down a very ugly road; should we persist, we most certainly will get what we deserve.
Well, we'll have to disagree here. You see that as granting to law enforcement the right to access my private information. I see it as explicitly forbidding law enforcement that right, with exceptions to be made when law enforcement already has evidence that a crime has occured. Why else would a warrant require presenting said evidence to a judge in order to obtain it? Let's look at the rest of the amendment, shall we?
"and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
I realize that probable cause has been watered down to some ridiculous levels in this country, but I would also point out that attitudes like yours have allowed it to happen.
So what we have here is law enforcement (and you, apparently) telling us that I don't have the right to be secure in my belongings unless there is evidence that I have committed a crime, at which point law enforcement can try to obtain permission to access the things they believe were involved.
Instead, I only have the right to be as secure as they decide I need to be, and furthermore I need to give them a copy of the key to my front door so they can get in more easily, without my realizing they've done so, and fish around until they find something.
Does this really make sense to you? Perhaps a class in critical thinking can help.
As far as trying somewhere else, if you would like a police state to live in, there are plenty to choose from; somehow, though, I feel safe in assuming you won't be leaving anytime soon.
"The failure to provide law enforcement with the necessary ability to obtain the plaintext version of the evidence makes existing authorities useless." "Law enforcement has tools at its disposal to fight crime, but those tools are rendered useless when encryption gets involved"
What bothers me most about comments like these is that they are based on the assumption that 'law enforcement' has an implicit right to have access to your information, as long as they feel the need. This is not so. A relevant passage:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated"
Since when does building a back door into all communications qualify as secure? And a promise from law enforcement not to use it improperly is not security, even if they could make such a promise honestly; what happens when someone else figures out how to use the back door (and someone will)?
Another thing that I don't see being brought up much when statements like the above are being thrown about is history. People have been using various types of codes to encrypt sensitive communications for hundreds of years. Has law enforcement been 'useless' for all this time?
I find it (almost) amusing that one of the agencies screaming loudest about their need for this (the FBI) touts as their greatest victory the incarceration of a man who was convicted based on evidence they couldn't decipher. So what did they do? They offered the guy who knew what it meant a deal, and he did it for them. Is there some reason this doesn't work anymore?
Okay, I see where you're coming from. BIG picture;). FWIW, I think you're dead on the money.
Problem is, it would be a really hard sell to gov't regulators. There is a long history of these types of market consolidations, and invariably the gov't stays out of it unless it gets ridiculous. After all, it's fairly easy to show that these things benefit the consumer short term, and difficult to show the long term damage.
Pan Am back in the early part of the century, and RCA in about the same time frame, are two excellent examples of times the gov't stayed hands off when they probably should have gotten involved. While both of these companies 'got theirs' in the end, they did a very good job of stomping competition flat (and all the innovations that come with it) for several decades first.
As far as the legality goes, if Microsoft's intent in buying Visio is to leverage (blech; hate that word) the Windows monopoly in order to gain the same dominance in the productivity market that they have in the 'office suite' market (which, as you pointed out, they basically created for the purpose), then yes, that's illegal. Again, though, the legality is basically defined by intent. Keeping in mind that most people don't believe that giving away IE and integrating it into Windows was done to kill Netscape, I have little hope that anyone's going to do anything about it.
The thing to keep in mind here is that Microsoft doesn't currently have any major products in the same space that Visio occupies. Since they are potentially only trying to expand their market, there's no real problem.
Now, if Microsoft had the 2nd most popular business diagramming package and tried to buy Visio, you'd have a whole different ballgame. Here's where the fact that they have a monopoly in one area can prevent them from doing things in another. This is exactly why they weren't allowed to purchase Intuit; it was seen as an attempt to eliminate competition in an area where they had tried (and failed) to gain a majority marketshare.
...then its pretty clear that Microfot is trying to extend its Monopoly through aquisition which isn't legal.
Actually, unless it can be shown that they're trying to extend their monopoly to prevent others from entering the market, it's perfectly legal. Let's remember, having a monopoly is not illegal in the U.S. Using it to stifle competition is, which is basically what the DOJ is charging Microsoft with.
Okay, so probably there will never come a Linux port of this software now. Are there any alternatives?
Dia is a program that is quite similar. It doesn't have all the functionality of Visio (yet), but it's early days. Still, I've heard several people swear by it. Check it out.
Lessee, at the first LinuxWorld Expo I talked to a gentleman who confided that even though his company made a database product that was 'Red Hat Certified', all the development was done on Debian boxes; at the latest I spoke at length with a gentleman from Motorola about their current experiments with moving to RT Linux for their embedded products (availabitilty of source is something they're used to paying 10's or 100's of thousands for); I got to try to convince an engineer from SGI that Debian wasn't a flash in the pan distro, and would be around for awhile. I find business fascinating, and it's great to be able to talk to these people and find out what's going on behind the scenes.
Perhaps best of all, though, is that I got to meet many of the people whose names I'm always seeing around the net. Can't beat it with a stick.
Many codes have been broken with just pencil and paper
Extremely fascinating in this regard is how the Japanese code was broken in WWII. The Japanese employed one time pads (which I think the strengths and weaknesses of have been thoroughly addressed in previous/. discussions). One of the codebreakers was a student of Japanese culture and knew that communications from junior officers to senior officers always started with a fairly lengthy formal salutation, and that it never varied. Not to do so was considered very bad form, so he basically knew how each dispatch to senior officers began. At one point he noticed that someone had used their pad twice, and armed with that knowledge and a lot of pencil and paper (no machines were involved), broke the Japanese code. An absolutely incredible story, and well worth your time to check out if you're remotely into this kind of stuff.
Another point often overlooked that this and Enigma show very well is that in any form of crypto, the people using it are invariably the weakest link in the chain.
Well, let's face it, laws are supposed to legislate morality! That's why we have laws! Things like don't steal, don't rape, don't kill; all of our laws legislate morality, the only question is whose.
You're wrong here. This is a frequent argument from those that would like to be able to legislate their viewpoint, but it's not reality.
The reason these things are illegal in most modern societies (yes, most; not all) is because for the most part a society cannot function when these behaviors are allowed to continue. If I can kill my neighbors when they play their music too loud or their cat is using my yard for a litterbox, then pretty soon I have few neighbors. Their children have no parents. Their employers have no employees. The fabric begins to unravel. This is why these things are legislated. Morality has little to do with it. However, as you have undoubtedly noticed, most morality codes recognize that these things are true and so recommend against the same behaviors.
One: Do the people with these concerns have children themselves? And two: If they do have children, what are they doing AT HOME to "protect the children?"
Interesting questions. I have two 'school age' children, and I am constantly being given advice on how I should be raising them. This advice rarely comes from people who don't have kids themselves; non-parents(?) seem to have a lot of opinions about how my kids should behave, but not on how I should get them there. Which is as it should be.
That said, you would not believe the number of people (again, most of whom are parents themselves) who tell me that I am not raising my children properly because I am doing something different than they would, but will also tell me that my children are some of the best behaved they've ever met. I have had this said in the same sentence! The fact that there is probably a connection between my parenting style and my childrens' behavior seems to be completely lost on them. I think this is extremely significant in light of all the calls for various types of censorship ('voluntary' or otherwise) we see today. Basically, we hear parents saying that it's not their fault if their children are bad; it's some bogeyman outside influence. Parents today don't seem to want to deal with the fact that they are the single overriding influence on their child's behavior. Clue for you all - if your kid has problems, there's a 99.9% chance it's your fault. Period.
I'll relate my favorite incident, then I'll get off my soapbox. A gentleman I worked with was giving me some rather strong advice in how I should be dealing with my son, who had gotten in a fight in school the day before. No, he didn't start it, but the school felt he shared responsibility for not avoiding it. I don't always feel this is a correct assumption, but in the particular circumstances of this incident I thought it was fair. Anyway, my coworker was holding forth in rather strong language on how I should be handling my son, how I should be dealing with the situation, and how doing it any differently would result in disaster in terms of who my son would be as an adult. Standard 'you're doing it all wrong, do it my way' fare. He felt he had an inside track on the problem because he was a member of a religious group whose stated purpose is to bring back the strength and values of the American family (no, this is not to say all religious people are this way; it's only significant here because this was his justification for feeling that he was right and I was wrong).
I was going to ask him what was up these days with his (19 year old) son, but I didn't have the heart. I already knew. He had started his prison term the day before.
So the news story says Cobalt has net losses of 8.2 million on revenues of 7.7 million. A couple of questions:
What are they spending all the money on? If it's R&D, maybe I can have an "investing in the future" warm fuzzy, but if it's manufacturing or something else I have to wonder how they're going to get costs under control.
Of the many companies that have IPO'd with such numbers, how many have actually come back and made the investment worthwhile? And how many of those have been software companies, where the fixed costs are relatively low?
Kind of a follow-on to #2, many software companies have proven to be good for short term stock gains despite the lack of long term profits; have any hardware manufacturers?
And lastly, the obvious question that must be asked - how do these guys stack up against VA and Penguin, and are they really even competitors (it seems to me they aim at a somewhat different market)?
Reminds me of a gentleman I saw an interview with a while back. He teaches memebers of a certain group of people (group shall remain anonymous to prevent flamewars; doesn't really matter anyway) to act a certain way, say certain things, etc in order to get elected. When it was pointed out that this meant most of these people would be flat out lying in order to get elected, he basically said "Whatever it takes. It's for their (the general public) own good anyway, they're just too dumb to know it".
This, my friends, is the reality of modern politics.
I hadn't really considered that some of the more mainstream journalist types are probably lurkers here. It's a good point.
Don't assume that because it's obvious to you and me, it's obvious to everyone
I don't, but I do think that most people that read Slashdot regularly have all the info they need to make the same conclusions. My point wasn't that you wrote a bad essay or (necessarily) wasted your time; it was that if they haven't bothered to think these things through already, they're not likely to because someone wrote an essay about it. Again, if this gets significant circulation outside Slashdot, then it's a moot point.
Gee, maybe you should write about some other obvious things! I could use the help!
Actually, Bruce, I've made some moves in that direction, but they're pretty much always received with a "who the hell are you?" kind of attitude, so I've given up trying to contribute that way. But hey, thanks for the encouragement!
It's a well written essay, and I can appreciate Bruce's desire to help out, but I really think just about everything he said is pretty self-evident. If people are paying so little attention that they can't figure these things out for themselves, then I doubt they'll even bother to read this, let alone give it any thought. Are there any plans to get this into more mainstream media where it might actually do some good?
You forgot the only alternative that will actually work. That is, for parents to keep track of what their kids are watching/doing, and (what most people seem to miss) communicate with them about it.
I frequently hear the excuse that "I don't have time to check everything my kids see". If that's true, it's a good sign that your kids are watching too much tv, spending too much time with video games, etc. Like it or not, being a parent carries with it a huge amount of responsibility - if you don't want it, don't have kids!
I for one am getting pretty damn tired of the government telling me they know better than I do what my children can and can't see, and even more tired of people saying "that's ok" because it lets them shrug off the responsibilities they took on when they became parents.
And since blacks are more likely to be poor than whites
Actually, the single largest group of poor people in this country (US) are white. They're rural poor rather than urban poor, so they don't get much media attention, but there you go. Might be different where you're from.
Injuns get drunk more easily than whites. Thus a higher percentage of drunk Injuns.
I've been playing along with you so far because many people actually think the way you're talking, but this last is just too much of a stretch. Very few people are so ignorant that they will make that jump. Especially since statistically speaking (and this is where your fun lies, right?) most American Indians don't drink. In any case, it's been fun playing good cop bad cop with you. We should keep in mind, though, that satirizing the ignorant for their misconceptions probably isn't any more fair than the stereotypes they espouse.
Is every black going to steal your car? Possibly not, but a black is more likely to steal it than a white.
Only if the black is poorer than the white.
Is every Native a lazy drunk? Possibly not, although it is well known that Injuns have a higher incidence of lazy drunkenness than other races.
Not even remotely true. What is known is that most Native American people (along with many Asian groups) lack an enzyme that protects against the effects of alcohol. One effect of this is that they're more easily intoxicated by a given amount of alcohol than the average person of European descent.
Is every white a redneck? Possibly not, although since being white seems to be a prerequisite for redneck status, it stands to reason that a white is more likely to be a redneck than a member of any other race.
Since the term redneck has its basis in the sunburns suffered by white field workers, and in popular usage it has come to mean an ignorant white male, it would be difficult to find a redneck of another 'color'.
I don't think the sterotype says that jews will try to _steal_ your money, I think the sterotype say that jews will try to _cheat_ you out of your money, and that jews in general are more concerned about money than other races.
A stereotype that came about because Jews used to be forbidden from participation in most professions. However, due to the Christian prohibitions on loaning money, this was one of the areas Jews could get into - and they did. In short, the Jews were more concerned about money than other groups because it was one of the few things they were allowed to be concerned about.
And please refrain from asking me to ignore relevant information
Excellent example. HP started off making electronic test equipment. They've recently spun that division off into a separate company, so you could say that HP is no longer even in their core business!
There are no programs containing LZW compression or any other proprietary items on the official Debian CDs. While GIMP does come with Debian, a quick check will show you their version doesn't do GIFs. For precisely the reasons you mention. Packages to add this support are available, but they don't come on the CD.
Slashdot Mirror
Beats the hell outta me. I'm just parroting what the program I saw about it said. ;)
Probably true, but they do have field agents; what sort of activities these guys do is anybody's guess. One interesting piece of trivia is that the first American casualty in Viet Nam was an NSA agent posing as a USAF SSgt.
They're also doing some of the leading work in things like computerized face recognition. They've already got this working surprisingly well, and claim that it's far more accurate than a fingerprint. 'Course if they admit that much, who knows what they've actually got going there; maybe it can guess your weight too. ;)
The most interesting thing to me is that they have their own fab; they can design and build all the custom chips they want in house. I'd be willing to bet they've commited some sweet things to silicon in there. It's also interesting to note that they say the fab is for designing chips for the purposes of encryption, not decryption. Personally, I wonder how big a wink comes with that statement.
One of the girls mentioned in the article has already done it - hers says 911
Legal? Yes, under current law.
BS. This is no more legal than would be doing the same thing with Steven King's latest horror epic. At least they let us know up front what the factual content of the rest of the article is liable to be.
Why would anyone spend $2 million to create a database if it's not going to be protected?'' said David Mirchin, of SilverPlatter Information, a database publisher in Norton, Mass.
Gee, I don't know. Why do they do it now? The fact is, databases are protected. Taking a database someone else has compiled and republishing it is a violation of law. The courts have ruled on this several times as specifically regards the internet in the last several years. However, the information in the database is not necessarily protected. If said info is otherwise publically available, then you cannot prevent others from using it.
What you see here is a push (not a new one; it's been going on for a while) to allow someone to create a database of freely available information, and make that information proprietary. The rationale behind this has been that it's the only way to ensure that the information hasn't been 'stolen' from the database, rather than gathered independently. Of course, it's not hard to see what the real motivation is; it's becoming very easy to gather large collections of freely available information. Many people see this as an opportunity to grab a free ride and make a lot of money.
I'm sure most everyone here can see the obvious problem with allowing the proprietization of this information. If you obtain it independently, how are you going to prove it? And if you create an independent database? Yes, you can document your sources, but unless you can afford to defend yourself in court, this information will be effectively off limits to you unless you pay whoever has bothered to gather it into one spot.
I keep hearing so much about how Americans are doing so well, how strong our economy is, how much everybody has. Why then, is greed becoming the defining trait of our culture? Are not Bill Gates' tens of billions enough? I kid you not, we as a culture and as a country are headed down a very ugly road; should we persist, we most certainly will get what we deserve.
"and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
I realize that probable cause has been watered down to some ridiculous levels in this country, but I would also point out that attitudes like yours have allowed it to happen.
So what we have here is law enforcement (and you, apparently) telling us that I don't have the right to be secure in my belongings unless there is evidence that I have committed a crime, at which point law enforcement can try to obtain permission to access the things they believe were involved.
Instead, I only have the right to be as secure as they decide I need to be, and furthermore I need to give them a copy of the key to my front door so they can get in more easily, without my realizing they've done so, and fish around until they find something.
Does this really make sense to you? Perhaps a class in critical thinking can help.
As far as trying somewhere else, if you would like a police state to live in, there are plenty to choose from; somehow, though, I feel safe in assuming you won't be leaving anytime soon.
"Law enforcement has tools at its disposal to fight crime, but those tools are rendered useless when encryption gets involved"
What bothers me most about comments like these is that they are based on the assumption that 'law enforcement' has an implicit right to have access to your information, as long as they feel the need. This is not so. A relevant passage:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated"
Since when does building a back door into all communications qualify as secure? And a promise from law enforcement not to use it improperly is not security, even if they could make such a promise honestly; what happens when someone else figures out how to use the back door (and someone will)?
Another thing that I don't see being brought up much when statements like the above are being thrown about is history. People have been using various types of codes to encrypt sensitive communications for hundreds of years. Has law enforcement been 'useless' for all this time?
I find it (almost) amusing that one of the agencies screaming loudest about their need for this (the FBI) touts as their greatest victory the incarceration of a man who was convicted based on evidence they couldn't decipher. So what did they do? They offered the guy who knew what it meant a deal, and he did it for them. Is there some reason this doesn't work anymore?
Problem is, it would be a really hard sell to gov't regulators. There is a long history of these types of market consolidations, and invariably the gov't stays out of it unless it gets ridiculous. After all, it's fairly easy to show that these things benefit the consumer short term, and difficult to show the long term damage.
Pan Am back in the early part of the century, and RCA in about the same time frame, are two excellent examples of times the gov't stayed hands off when they probably should have gotten involved. While both of these companies 'got theirs' in the end, they did a very good job of stomping competition flat (and all the innovations that come with it) for several decades first.
As far as the legality goes, if Microsoft's intent in buying Visio is to leverage (blech; hate that word) the Windows monopoly in order to gain the same dominance in the productivity market that they have in the 'office suite' market (which, as you pointed out, they basically created for the purpose), then yes, that's illegal. Again, though, the legality is basically defined by intent. Keeping in mind that most people don't believe that giving away IE and integrating it into Windows was done to kill Netscape, I have little hope that anyone's going to do anything about it.
The whole thing's kind of depressing, actually.
Now, if Microsoft had the 2nd most popular business diagramming package and tried to buy Visio, you'd have a whole different ballgame. Here's where the fact that they have a monopoly in one area can prevent them from doing things in another. This is exactly why they weren't allowed to purchase Intuit; it was seen as an attempt to eliminate competition in an area where they had tried (and failed) to gain a majority marketshare.
Actually, unless it can be shown that they're trying to extend their monopoly to prevent others from entering the market, it's perfectly legal. Let's remember, having a monopoly is not illegal in the U.S. Using it to stifle competition is, which is basically what the DOJ is charging Microsoft with.
Dia is a program that is quite similar. It doesn't have all the functionality of Visio (yet), but it's early days. Still, I've heard several people swear by it. Check it out.
Perhaps best of all, though, is that I got to meet many of the people whose names I'm always seeing around the net. Can't beat it with a stick.
Extremely fascinating in this regard is how the Japanese code was broken in WWII. The Japanese employed one time pads (which I think the strengths and weaknesses of have been thoroughly addressed in previous /. discussions). One of the codebreakers was a student of Japanese culture and knew that communications from junior officers to senior officers always started with a fairly lengthy formal salutation, and that it never varied. Not to do so was considered very bad form, so he basically knew how each dispatch to senior officers began. At one point he noticed that someone had used their pad twice, and armed with that knowledge and a lot of pencil and paper (no machines were involved), broke the Japanese code. An absolutely incredible story, and well worth your time to check out if you're remotely into this kind of stuff.
Another point often overlooked that this and Enigma show very well is that in any form of crypto, the people using it are invariably the weakest link in the chain.
You're wrong here. This is a frequent argument from those that would like to be able to legislate their viewpoint, but it's not reality.
The reason these things are illegal in most modern societies (yes, most; not all) is because for the most part a society cannot function when these behaviors are allowed to continue. If I can kill my neighbors when they play their music too loud or their cat is using my yard for a litterbox, then pretty soon I have few neighbors. Their children have no parents. Their employers have no employees. The fabric begins to unravel. This is why these things are legislated. Morality has little to do with it. However, as you have undoubtedly noticed, most morality codes recognize that these things are true and so recommend against the same behaviors.
Interesting questions. I have two 'school age' children, and I am constantly being given advice on how I should be raising them. This advice rarely comes from people who don't have kids themselves; non-parents(?) seem to have a lot of opinions about how my kids should behave, but not on how I should get them there. Which is as it should be.
That said, you would not believe the number of people (again, most of whom are parents themselves) who tell me that I am not raising my children properly because I am doing something different than they would, but will also tell me that my children are some of the best behaved they've ever met. I have had this said in the same sentence! The fact that there is probably a connection between my parenting style and my childrens' behavior seems to be completely lost on them. I think this is extremely significant in light of all the calls for various types of censorship ('voluntary' or otherwise) we see today. Basically, we hear parents saying that it's not their fault if their children are bad; it's some bogeyman outside influence. Parents today don't seem to want to deal with the fact that they are the single overriding influence on their child's behavior. Clue for you all - if your kid has problems, there's a 99.9% chance it's your fault. Period.
I'll relate my favorite incident, then I'll get off my soapbox. A gentleman I worked with was giving me some rather strong advice in how I should be dealing with my son, who had gotten in a fight in school the day before. No, he didn't start it, but the school felt he shared responsibility for not avoiding it. I don't always feel this is a correct assumption, but in the particular circumstances of this incident I thought it was fair. Anyway, my coworker was holding forth in rather strong language on how I should be handling my son, how I should be dealing with the situation, and how doing it any differently would result in disaster in terms of who my son would be as an adult. Standard 'you're doing it all wrong, do it my way' fare. He felt he had an inside track on the problem because he was a member of a religious group whose stated purpose is to bring back the strength and values of the American family (no, this is not to say all religious people are this way; it's only significant here because this was his justification for feeling that he was right and I was wrong).
I was going to ask him what was up these days with his (19 year old) son, but I didn't have the heart. I already knew. He had started his prison term the day before.
This, my friends, is the reality of modern politics.
I hadn't really considered that some of the more mainstream journalist types are probably lurkers here. It's a good point.
Don't assume that because it's obvious to you and me, it's obvious to everyone
I don't, but I do think that most people that read Slashdot regularly have all the info they need to make the same conclusions. My point wasn't that you wrote a bad essay or (necessarily) wasted your time; it was that if they haven't bothered to think these things through already, they're not likely to because someone wrote an essay about it. Again, if this gets significant circulation outside Slashdot, then it's a moot point.
Gee, maybe you should write about some other obvious things! I could use the help!
Actually, Bruce, I've made some moves in that direction, but they're pretty much always received with a "who the hell are you?" kind of attitude, so I've given up trying to contribute that way. But hey, thanks for the encouragement!
It's a well written essay, and I can appreciate Bruce's desire to help out, but I really think just about everything he said is pretty self-evident. If people are paying so little attention that they can't figure these things out for themselves, then I doubt they'll even bother to read this, let alone give it any thought. Are there any plans to get this into more mainstream media where it might actually do some good?
I frequently hear the excuse that "I don't have time to check everything my kids see". If that's true, it's a good sign that your kids are watching too much tv, spending too much time with video games, etc. Like it or not, being a parent carries with it a huge amount of responsibility - if you don't want it, don't have kids!
I for one am getting pretty damn tired of the government telling me they know better than I do what my children can and can't see, and even more tired of people saying "that's ok" because it lets them shrug off the responsibilities they took on when they became parents.
Actually, the single largest group of poor people in this country (US) are white. They're rural poor rather than urban poor, so they don't get much media attention, but there you go. Might be different where you're from.
Injuns get drunk more easily than whites. Thus a higher percentage of drunk Injuns.
I've been playing along with you so far because many people actually think the way you're talking, but this last is just too much of a stretch. Very few people are so ignorant that they will make that jump. Especially since statistically speaking (and this is where your fun lies, right?) most American Indians don't drink. In any case, it's been fun playing good cop bad cop with you. We should keep in mind, though, that satirizing the ignorant for their misconceptions probably isn't any more fair than the stereotypes they espouse.
Only if the black is poorer than the white.
Is every Native a lazy drunk? Possibly not, although it is well known that Injuns have a higher incidence of lazy drunkenness than other races.
Not even remotely true. What is known is that most Native American people (along with many Asian groups) lack an enzyme that protects against the effects of alcohol. One effect of this is that they're more easily intoxicated by a given amount of alcohol than the average person of European descent.
Is every white a redneck? Possibly not, although since being white seems to be a prerequisite for redneck status, it stands to reason that a white is more likely to be a redneck than a member of any other race.
Since the term redneck has its basis in the sunburns suffered by white field workers, and in popular usage it has come to mean an ignorant white male, it would be difficult to find a redneck of another 'color'.
I don't think the sterotype says that jews will try to _steal_ your money, I think the sterotype say that jews will try to _cheat_ you out of your money, and that jews in general are more concerned about money than other races.
A stereotype that came about because Jews used to be forbidden from participation in most professions. However, due to the Christian prohibitions on loaning money, this was one of the areas Jews could get into - and they did. In short, the Jews were more concerned about money than other groups because it was one of the few things they were allowed to be concerned about.
And please refrain from asking me to ignore relevant information
And please refrain from ignoring it.
Excellent example. HP started off making electronic test equipment. They've recently spun that division off into a separate company, so you could say that HP is no longer even in their core business!
While quoting Lisa Simpson does have its amusement factor, please tell me you know that she (the cartoonist? actor?) was quoting Abraham Lincoln.
Lessee, that would make nearly 3 million people in the US alone, over 50 million worldwide, and all it takes is one to find it and say something...
There are no programs containing LZW compression or any other proprietary items on the official Debian CDs. While GIMP does come with Debian, a quick check will show you their version doesn't do GIFs. For precisely the reasons you mention. Packages to add this support are available, but they don't come on the CD.