If you actually wanted to answer that question, you'd have to define what "free will" is, in a concrete, scientific way. That means defining what choice is, likely what "you" are, and other things that are essentially undefinable except using other non-concrete definitions you can't nail down.
This experiment raises some interesting questions about the nature of existence, consciousness, and being. I don't think it's going to give us any answers on whether we have "free will" though, whatever that means.
Apple just "does" it, they don't pre-announce years in advance.
That's very true. The reasons are more to do with where each company is in the market though. Apple doesn't have much to lose if some applications don't maintain backward compatibility. Microsoft has a hell of a lot to lose. Shit, Apple just announced they were ditching Carbon for the fully 64 bit version of OSX. That means a lot of re-development, and incompatibility of apps. For Microsoft when you're at the front of the race you've got a LOT more to lose than anyone else.
The other major difference is Apple doesn't have this horrid codebase that Microsoft does. They went through their transition pretty recently having ditched all their legacy code long ago. Essentially OSX and Linux are light on their feet, modular, and can turn on a dime. Windows is the hulking giant dinosaur that takes years to realize it-ain't-gonna-work.
But generally speaking, drug use becomes abuse when there are negative health/social consequences.
Right. Like for instance people who smoke cigarettes? Under your idiotic definition, a fully informed heroin junkie isn't abusing drugs.
And someone on a methadone program isn't a drug abuser.
"Drug Abuse" is usually defined by what's socially acceptable. It has little to do with health/social consequences. I don't find that a very usefull word, as socially acceptable is relative.
Getting back the original discussion, I don't see much difference between someone taking "performance enhancing drugs", and someone smoking cigarettes. Both are possibly doing damage to themselves, but are willing to accept the consequences. How is this any different than someone prescribed a medication, where they can also easily be doing damage? (any drug has potential negative risks).
They were mostly games where you had to use lay/lie correctly, or add up numbers, or whatever. This was in the early 80s on PET computers.
I also remember some weird machine that combined a record player with a series of slides. It asked some questions via the record player and you entered in a choice from a series of a few buttons. (I'm still dying to know what this thing was, so if anyone knows, please respond).
Anyway, I don't see what peoples issue is. If modern educational games are anything like what I had, I'd say they're doing their job. I think most parents are just unfamiliar with educational games (my grade school was pretty advanced for the times).
I don't think he meant the agencies that report to corps, but rather the variety of websites that sell you access to your own credit report(s) with optional services like emailing you every time there is change to your report.
He may not have, but all 3 of the credit reporting services have an arm that'll tell you what your credit score is, and the items on it. Fair Isaac, the company that came up with the scoring system has a credit reporting service too. IMO you'd be wiser to go to one of these companies than the fly-by-night guys.
Interestingly, as an aside, all the credit reporting services run sites like that.
Huh? Each of the 3 major credit reporting companies (transunion, equifax, and experian) have 800 numbers, and physical addresses to contact them at. I'm not sure if they're such great companies, but there's nothing particularly shady about them.
As a software developer and business owner why would I want to leave myself at the mercy of Google like this by being tied to their service?
Who said anything about tying yourself to Google? The apps are written in Python, they'll give you an appserver to run on your own machine. How is this service tying yourself to Google any more than using any other provider (including yourself)?
"you get what you pay for". And this in the "Joe Sixpack" crowd, not even talking about fellow IT professionals.
That's because "free" has been used as a marketing scheme for such a long time that people have decided there's some big catch whenever someone says something is "free". It's the main reason Open Source was pushed as a replacement for "free software".
Maybe a good comeback to people who talk about "getting what you pay for" is asking if they think sex you pay for is better than "free" sex. (Of course some poor bastards might say yes). They either embrace it, or shun it (with reasons ranging from the "viral" licensing BS, to (yes, seriously) tirades about damned hippies trying to buck the system).
These complaints are harder, because they're part political, and simply part misinformation. A lot of developers simply don't understand licensing very well, and will believe the FUD being thrown around. Why should they? I don't recall a single college class being required that covered software licensing or IP issues. If you pay attention to OSS, you just naturally start to understand copyright, licensing, and IP laws better than the vast majority of any developer not in OSS. I also believe anyone throwing around "viral licensing" has some kind of political bent against OSS for whatever reason (perhaps they think of it as anti-capitalistic).
I think the way to convince these people is to address any misunderstandings, and just start talking about all the benefits OSS has to developers. I won't list them, since any developer using OSS already knows those. Peoples political biases often go away when they realize how something can seriously benefit them.
Why is the Wii so popular (Technically weak compared to the other systems), it is designed to play with other (diverse group) people vs. the PS III which is designed for a bunch of Gammers in a basement to play with blank expressions on their face for hours
I largely agree with your post, but this is one thing I don't.
I always find it strange when someone mentions the "why is the wii popular, the technology isn't as good!" argument. No one cares about technology except people who think technology is a giant pissing contest.
The Wii is very popular because someone figured out that games are ALSO about the UI people use to play the game, and not just about the graphics. I'd bet someone at NES looked at the sales of games like DDR, and realized that was a whole new market of gamers that played these games who just weren't into the game because they didn't like the traditional button+direction-pad that's been prevalent for 25 years. Give those people a UI where they get to interact in a more natural way, and they'll buy it like mad. Hell, it may even go down to a basic brain level where many people can't extend "themselves" through the button+direction pad, but can through motion.
Come to think of it, the Wii actually IS technically superior to the PS3, it's just superior in a different way. (Accelerometers + IR Bar + Software vs. raw computing power). Judging technical merit on one aspect of the system alone is just misleading.
It's interesting to wonder what would have happened if the talented folks working on Samba has spent the time instead building a next-generation networked filesystem
You mean Microsoft working to make the OS and Samba as incompatible as possible with the new next-gen client/server at every OS release? Or maybe the Samba folks having divide their resources among supporting all the various different client versions (95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP/Vista), and being able to work less on the server part?
Things would have turned out differently, that's for sure.
Yah, anyone on a Microsoft server already would have no alternative to switch to without a pain in the ass upgrade and potential software incompatibility (and thus wouldn't switch). The clients would suffer from incompatibility and divided effort on supporting the various quirks of the different MS OS's. Software makers would ignore the new client/server architecture, and a few "I hate microsoft" people would sing about how great the new thing was and they just can't understand why more people don't switch. Anyone running a Linux desktop wouldn't be able to connect to Windows servers, and thus Linux would be a far less attractive option.
No, I think the Samba team took the right approach. Tie yourself to the SMB/CIFS way, but do it better than Microsoft. That greatly limits Microsoft's ability to use their power against you. It also increases compatibility with software packages.
The reason why Samba is such a success is it provides instant compatibility with minimum fuss. Going on your own and trying to establish your own standards and protocol is often a poor choice. I remember having to install Novell clients on Windows 95/NT, and they all sucked in their own special ways. That may be because Novell can't write client software properly, or it may be because Microsoft is constantly mucking with their OS and didn't give a damn about Novell. Either way, it wasn't a good situation.
Generally no, but if there were a good reason to do so, of course. I've also seen over the years it's very common for people to give passwords to trusted colleagues. It's how they get work done, and nobody really thinks much of it.
This is a "certification" process. How much do you want to bet Microsoft just wants to use this as a tool to control OSS? I'm sure Microsoft thinks they can create the artificial need for "certification" to run on Windows. Then just don't certify certain products, or make the certification process wind up making the software hugely advantageous for Windows. They could try to design the certification process so the software becomes less cross-platform, say uses a lot of closed-source windows specific APIs.
I'm not sure exactly how MS will turn the certification process to try to control OSS, but based on past behavior I'm pretty skeptical to accept it at face value.
You never know when you might get caught, so the actual lesson is "don't be evil"
Right, because Microsoft has never been caught being evil and been able to get out of any repercussions for doing so. We all know their aggressive anti-competitive strategy has made them billions of dollars.
The real lesson is "figure out what you can get away with for how long and how much it'll make you, then do that". The only difference here is that Creative thought they could get away with a little more than they actually did.
Companies aren't going to stop "being evil". They might figure out what they can get away with a bit more in the changing landscape of internet reporting.
I just have to believe this is going to produce a lot of rejected authorizations that shouldn't have been rejected. Also as someone pointed out, what about the legitimate times when someone else is using your username/password? (your boss needs something while you're away on vacation, etc).
This might work out well for some kind of intrusion detection system though. Look for cases where there's two people consistently typing in the password two different ways. Then set off an alert to the administrator. There's legit cases for that of course (root/admin password comes to mind), but you just exclude those cases.
Besides, what other kind of update would you expect on ssh?
Going from a 4.x release to a 5.x release? Something more than what's sounds like a small patch to fix a security problem. (I believe I saw a backport of this fix on a recent Ubuntu update).
Funny - I didn't know linux came bundled with ANY media player or browser. I know distributions do, but not Linux.
"Linux" to the general public is shorthand for "various popular Linux distributions". It doesn't mean "the linux kernel", or "the linux kernel + shared libraries".
As far as the "immune from such criticism" goes, that's essentially correct, but for good reason. Linux and MacOS X don't have monopolies. Having a monopoly means you have to play by different rules.
Well according to their own support policy it's supposed to be 5 years or 2 years after the next release (i.e. Vista), whichever is longer.
That's true. My point is really more that they've had to add time support time to what was originally expected. No such policy this time though, there's no minimum after last retail sale that I know of.
Policies aren't set in stone, but promises based on what's good for Microsoft. It seems pretty strange to be still selling licenses for a product you no longer fully support. Why are you selling it if you're not supporting it? If say, the US switched back to the old DST changeover in late 2009 would Microsoft really sell a version of XP that was broken?
Mainstream support for XP is set to expire on April 14, 2009 according to http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?LN=en-gb&x=16&y=12&C2=1173 Which is obviously before June 30, 2010. Does that mean they'll extend Mainstream support as well (I'd assume so). If so, it'd be the second time they've extended support (originally 5 years after release, or Dec 31, 2006).
speed limit you described or the shorter yellow light associated with red light cameras that others have pointed out are the exception, not the rule.
It wasn't that long ago that the speed limits across the country were an abysmally low 55mph. That's changed not too long ago, and the limits in most states are closer to 65-80 mph, but yet the roads haven't changed. The roads are obviously able to handle the higher speeds, so that would lead me to believe that a few years ago dumb laws were "the rule", and not "the exception".
I recently drove on the Autobahn in Germany where people routinely drive 110-120 mph in the fast lane. (Much slower in the slow lanes). The roads weren't really any better than the US Interstates. So tell me why the speed limit laws are such great ideas?
Why can't anyone develop a computerized voting system that exceeds every attribute of all other voting systems (inexpensive, simple, open, secure, reliable, maintainable, anonymous, auditable, etc.)?
Because very few people (and no it's not just government) have learned how to write a contract for software development, and the Big Software development companies know this. They get paid no matter if the project fails or not.
The other big failing is getting all the requirements up front and not changing them.
This sounds like a fairly standard story for Large Software Projects that failed from the article.
There's this belief that software can be developed with a "I want one of those doohickeys that makes my job easier. Give me the Final Product in 2 years" attitude. Then someone goes about trying to figure out what the doohickey is. Sometimes they do it right, other times they don't. Most of the time the people designing the system don't really know what they want.
That's fine, people don't know what they want and they don't always know what works. If you have this situation though, you're just not going to get the Final Product at some future point in time, like you're building a bridge or something. You have to start out small, solve SOME of the problems, and find out what works. It sounds like nobody really did that.
The likely scenario is MS decided that anyone re-installing the OS from scratch shouldn't have to first install the old OS, or produce installation CDs for the old OS. Sure, a few people might violate the EULA and buy upgrade instead of the full version.. but at least you're getting their market share and their money. In the end it's probably better to not piss off the legit upgraders than it is to squeeze everyone with ridiculous procedures.
So to call this an intentional backdoor is misleading IMO. It might just be Microsoft admitting that their licensing procedures have been detrimental to business in the past. (I assume previous "upgrade" versions have looked for an old OS before installing?)
for instance, here's a statement with no basis in fact, and based on pure distrust and speculation: Then there's the super fun idea that Novell is putting in source code from Windows that Windows "accidentally" gave Novell
Pure paranoia only serves to hurt everyone, and doesn't help anyone (except maybe Microsoft).
These arguments are starting to sound like a "who's the alien shape shifter?" speech by the guy who's lost it in your average bad sci-fi show.
In the same way, would we prefer the army to use propaganda on its own citizens to convince us of its message or perhaps we would prefer being thrown in a secret prison for descent?
What I really just can't even fathom is why you think these are the only choices here.
I've got one for you.. would you prefer to be:
Killed outright. or Have your left hand cut off?
Cuz those are the only two possible choices.
I guess my choice would be to have a military that protects the people, and doesn't engage in propaganda campaigns because a democracy requires an informed citzenry. (Oh, and to NOT be killed OR have any hands cut off). Can you please tell me why those aren't among your options?
Slashdot Mirror
If you actually wanted to answer that question, you'd have to define what "free will" is, in a concrete, scientific way. That means defining what choice is, likely what "you" are, and other things that are essentially undefinable except using other non-concrete definitions you can't nail down.
This experiment raises some interesting questions about the nature of existence, consciousness, and being. I don't think it's going to give us any answers on whether we have "free will" though, whatever that means.
Apple just "does" it, they don't pre-announce years in advance.
That's very true. The reasons are more to do with where each company is in the market though. Apple doesn't have much to lose if some applications don't maintain backward compatibility. Microsoft has a hell of a lot to lose. Shit, Apple just announced they were ditching Carbon for the fully 64 bit version of OSX. That means a lot of re-development, and incompatibility of apps. For Microsoft when you're at the front of the race you've got a LOT more to lose than anyone else.
The other major difference is Apple doesn't have this horrid codebase that Microsoft does. They went through their transition pretty recently having ditched all their legacy code long ago. Essentially OSX and Linux are light on their feet, modular, and can turn on a dime. Windows is the hulking giant dinosaur that takes years to realize it-ain't-gonna-work.
But generally speaking, drug use becomes abuse when there are negative health/social consequences.
Right. Like for instance people who smoke cigarettes?
Under your idiotic definition, a fully informed heroin junkie isn't abusing drugs.
And someone on a methadone program isn't a drug abuser.
"Drug Abuse" is usually defined by what's socially acceptable. It has little to do with health/social consequences. I don't find that a very usefull word, as socially acceptable is relative.
Getting back the original discussion, I don't see much difference between someone taking "performance enhancing drugs", and someone smoking cigarettes. Both are possibly doing damage to themselves, but are willing to accept the consequences. How is this any different than someone prescribed a medication, where they can also easily be doing damage? (any drug has potential negative risks).
They were mostly games where you had to use lay/lie correctly, or add up numbers, or whatever. This was in the early 80s on PET computers.
I also remember some weird machine that combined a record player with a series of slides. It asked some questions via the record player and you entered in a choice from a series of a few buttons. (I'm still dying to know what this thing was, so if anyone knows, please respond).
Anyway, I don't see what peoples issue is. If modern educational games are anything like what I had, I'd say they're doing their job. I think most parents are just unfamiliar with educational games (my grade school was pretty advanced for the times).
I don't think he meant the agencies that report to corps, but rather the variety of websites that sell you access to your own credit report(s) with optional services like emailing you every time there is change to your report.
He may not have, but all 3 of the credit reporting services have an arm that'll tell you what your credit score is, and the items on it. Fair Isaac, the company that came up with the scoring system has a credit reporting service too. IMO you'd be wiser to go to one of these companies than the fly-by-night guys.
Interestingly, as an aside, all the credit reporting services run sites like that.
Huh? Each of the 3 major credit reporting companies (transunion, equifax, and experian) have 800 numbers, and physical addresses to contact them at. I'm not sure if they're such great companies, but there's nothing particularly shady about them.
As a software developer and business owner why would I want to leave myself at the mercy of Google like this by being tied to their service?
Who said anything about tying yourself to Google? The apps are written in Python, they'll give you an appserver to run on your own machine. How is this service tying yourself to Google any more than using any other provider (including yourself)?
Maybe you're just doing it to impress yourself, about how great a connoisseur you are?
"you get what you pay for". And this in the "Joe Sixpack" crowd, not even talking about fellow IT professionals.
That's because "free" has been used as a marketing scheme for such a long time that people have decided there's some big catch whenever someone says something is "free". It's the main reason Open Source was pushed as a replacement for "free software".
Maybe a good comeback to people who talk about "getting what you pay for" is asking if they think sex you pay for is better than "free" sex. (Of course some poor bastards might say yes).
They either embrace it, or shun it (with reasons ranging from the "viral" licensing BS, to (yes, seriously) tirades about damned hippies trying to buck the system).
These complaints are harder, because they're part political, and simply part misinformation. A lot of developers simply don't understand licensing very well, and will believe the FUD being thrown around. Why should they? I don't recall a single college class being required that covered software licensing or IP issues. If you pay attention to OSS, you just naturally start to understand copyright, licensing, and IP laws better than the vast majority of any developer not in OSS. I also believe anyone throwing around "viral licensing" has some kind of political bent against OSS for whatever reason (perhaps they think of it as anti-capitalistic).
I think the way to convince these people is to address any misunderstandings, and just start talking about all the benefits OSS has to developers. I won't list them, since any developer using OSS already knows those. Peoples political biases often go away when they realize how something can seriously benefit them.
Why is the Wii so popular (Technically weak compared to the other systems), it is designed to play with other (diverse group) people vs. the PS III which is designed for a bunch of Gammers in a basement to play with blank expressions on their face for hours
I largely agree with your post, but this is one thing I don't.
I always find it strange when someone mentions the "why is the wii popular, the technology isn't as good!" argument. No one cares about technology except people who think technology is a giant pissing contest.
The Wii is very popular because someone figured out that games are ALSO about the UI people use to play the game, and not just about the graphics. I'd bet someone at NES looked at the sales of games like DDR, and realized that was a whole new market of gamers that played these games who just weren't into the game because they didn't like the traditional button+direction-pad that's been prevalent for 25 years. Give those people a UI where they get to interact in a more natural way, and they'll buy it like mad. Hell, it may even go down to a basic brain level where many people can't extend "themselves" through the button+direction pad, but can through motion.
Come to think of it, the Wii actually IS technically superior to the PS3, it's just superior in a different way. (Accelerometers + IR Bar + Software vs. raw computing power). Judging technical merit on one aspect of the system alone is just misleading.
It's interesting to wonder what would have happened if the talented folks working on Samba has spent the time instead building a next-generation networked filesystem
You mean Microsoft working to make the OS and Samba as incompatible as possible with the new next-gen client/server at every OS release? Or maybe the Samba folks having divide their resources among supporting all the various different client versions (95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP/Vista), and being able to work less on the server part?
Things would have turned out differently, that's for sure.
Yah, anyone on a Microsoft server already would have no alternative to switch to without a pain in the ass upgrade and potential software incompatibility (and thus wouldn't switch). The clients would suffer from incompatibility and divided effort on supporting the various quirks of the different MS OS's. Software makers would ignore the new client/server architecture, and a few "I hate microsoft" people would sing about how great the new thing was and they just can't understand why more people don't switch. Anyone running a Linux desktop wouldn't be able to connect to Windows servers, and thus Linux would be a far less attractive option.
No, I think the Samba team took the right approach. Tie yourself to the SMB/CIFS way, but do it better than Microsoft. That greatly limits Microsoft's ability to use their power against you. It also increases compatibility with software packages.
The reason why Samba is such a success is it provides instant compatibility with minimum fuss. Going on your own and trying to establish your own standards and protocol is often a poor choice. I remember having to install Novell clients on Windows 95/NT, and they all sucked in their own special ways. That may be because Novell can't write client software properly, or it may be because Microsoft is constantly mucking with their OS and didn't give a damn about Novell. Either way, it wasn't a good situation.
Do you really give your passwords out?
Generally no, but if there were a good reason to do so, of course. I've also seen over the years it's very common for people to give passwords to trusted colleagues. It's how they get work done, and nobody really thinks much of it.
This is a "certification" process. How much do you want to bet Microsoft just wants to use this as a tool to control OSS? I'm sure Microsoft thinks they can create the artificial need for "certification" to run on Windows. Then just don't certify certain products, or make the certification process wind up making the software hugely advantageous for Windows. They could try to design the certification process so the software becomes less cross-platform, say uses a lot of closed-source windows specific APIs.
I'm not sure exactly how MS will turn the certification process to try to control OSS, but based on past behavior I'm pretty skeptical to accept it at face value.
You never know when you might get caught, so the actual lesson is "don't be evil"
Right, because Microsoft has never been caught being evil and been able to get out of any repercussions for doing so. We all know their aggressive anti-competitive strategy has made them billions of dollars.
The real lesson is "figure out what you can get away with for how long and how much it'll make you, then do that". The only difference here is that Creative thought they could get away with a little more than they actually did.
Companies aren't going to stop "being evil". They might figure out what they can get away with a bit more in the changing landscape of internet reporting.
I just have to believe this is going to produce a lot of rejected authorizations that shouldn't have been rejected. Also as someone pointed out, what about the legitimate times when someone else is using your username/password? (your boss needs something while you're away on vacation, etc).
This might work out well for some kind of intrusion detection system though. Look for cases where there's two people consistently typing in the password two different ways. Then set off an alert to the administrator. There's legit cases for that of course (root/admin password comes to mind), but you just exclude those cases.
Besides, what other kind of update would you expect on ssh?
Going from a 4.x release to a 5.x release? Something more than what's sounds like a small patch to fix a security problem. (I believe I saw a backport of this fix on a recent Ubuntu update).
Funny - I didn't know linux came bundled with ANY media player or browser. I know distributions do, but not Linux.
"Linux" to the general public is shorthand for "various popular Linux distributions". It doesn't mean "the linux kernel", or "the linux kernel + shared libraries".
As far as the "immune from such criticism" goes, that's essentially correct, but for good reason. Linux and MacOS X don't have monopolies. Having a monopoly means you have to play by different rules.
Well according to their own support policy it's supposed to be 5 years or 2 years after the next release (i.e. Vista), whichever is longer.
That's true. My point is really more that they've had to add time support time to what was originally expected.
No such policy this time though, there's no minimum after last retail sale that I know of.
Policies aren't set in stone, but promises based on what's good for Microsoft. It seems pretty strange to be still selling licenses for a product you no longer fully support. Why are you selling it if you're not supporting it? If say, the US switched back to the old DST changeover in late 2009 would Microsoft really sell a version of XP that was broken?
Mainstream support for XP is set to expire on April 14, 2009 according to http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?LN=en-gb&x=16&y=12&C2=1173 Which is obviously before June 30, 2010. Does that mean they'll extend Mainstream support as well (I'd assume so). If so, it'd be the second time they've extended support (originally 5 years after release, or Dec 31, 2006).
speed limit you described or the shorter yellow light associated with red light cameras that others have pointed out are the exception, not the rule.
It wasn't that long ago that the speed limits across the country were an abysmally low 55mph. That's changed not too long ago, and the limits in most states are closer to 65-80 mph, but yet the roads haven't changed. The roads are obviously able to handle the higher speeds, so that would lead me to believe that a few years ago dumb laws were "the rule", and not "the exception".
I recently drove on the Autobahn in Germany where people routinely drive 110-120 mph in the fast lane. (Much slower in the slow lanes). The roads weren't really any better than the US Interstates. So tell me why the speed limit laws are such great ideas?
Why can't anyone develop a computerized voting system that exceeds every attribute of all other voting systems (inexpensive, simple, open, secure, reliable, maintainable, anonymous, auditable, etc.)?
Because very few people (and no it's not just government) have learned how to write a contract for software development, and the Big Software development companies know this. They get paid no matter if the project fails or not.
The other big failing is getting all the requirements up front and not changing them.
This sounds like a fairly standard story for Large Software Projects that failed from the article.
There's this belief that software can be developed with a "I want one of those doohickeys that makes my job easier. Give me the Final Product in 2 years" attitude. Then someone goes about trying to figure out what the doohickey is. Sometimes they do it right, other times they don't. Most of the time the people designing the system don't really know what they want.
That's fine, people don't know what they want and they don't always know what works. If you have this situation though, you're just not going to get the Final Product at some future point in time, like you're building a bridge or something. You have to start out small, solve SOME of the problems, and find out what works. It sounds like nobody really did that.
The likely scenario is MS decided that anyone re-installing the OS from scratch shouldn't have to first install the old OS, or produce installation CDs for the old OS. Sure, a few people might violate the EULA and buy upgrade instead of the full version.. but at least you're getting their market share and their money. In the end it's probably better to not piss off the legit upgraders than it is to squeeze everyone with ridiculous procedures.
So to call this an intentional backdoor is misleading IMO. It might just be Microsoft admitting that their licensing procedures have been detrimental to business in the past. (I assume previous "upgrade" versions have looked for an old OS before installing?)
for instance, here's a statement with no basis in fact, and based on pure distrust and speculation:
Then there's the super fun idea that Novell is putting in source code from Windows that Windows "accidentally" gave Novell
Pure paranoia only serves to hurt everyone, and doesn't help anyone (except maybe Microsoft).
These arguments are starting to sound like a "who's the alien shape shifter?" speech by the guy who's lost it in your average bad sci-fi show.
In the same way, would we prefer the army to use propaganda on its own citizens to convince us of its message or perhaps we would prefer being thrown in a secret prison for descent?
What I really just can't even fathom is why you think these are the only choices here.
I've got one for you.. would you prefer to be:
Killed outright.
or
Have your left hand cut off?
Cuz those are the only two possible choices.
I guess my choice would be to have a military that protects the people, and doesn't engage in propaganda campaigns because a democracy requires an informed citzenry. (Oh, and to NOT be killed OR have any hands cut off). Can you please tell me why those aren't among your options?