Perhaps that's a difference between conservatives and libertarians. I am also for less government in pretty much everything, but *especially* in the areas that affect me. For example, I would like to be able to telecommute in the future, and if I do so having OSHA "protect" me is the last thing I want.
You're exactly right. I remember a documentary I saw which was suppposed to show how dangerous speeding was. One of their examples had a driver (presumably going over the speed limit) coming over a hill, seeing a parked cop car, and hitting his brakes. Unfortunately the large truck behind the car was unable to decelerate as quickly and rammed the car from behind. The documentary missed the blindingly obvious point that the cop car, not the driver's speeding, was the primary cause of the accident.
First, the reason that this is a bad idea is not because speeding is a good activity, but because controlling everyone's cars is a power that government should not have as the potential for abuse is large. We could prevent lots of crimes and accidents if everyone were required to have subdermal tracking devices too, are you in favor of that?
Second, to continue your argument just slightly, we need a strictly enforced national speed limit of 20 mph. This would virtually eliminate deaths and serious accidents on the roads, and sure it would take longer to get somewhere, but isn't safety the most important thing?
Of course, safety is not the most important thing in life. Every day we make decisions that increase the probability of our deaths. And getting somewhere in 2 hours instead of 4 is worth a miniscule increase in the chance of a fatal accident for most people.
How do you feel about Apple's failure to keep up on technical issues (pre-emptive multi-tasking, etc) because of it's focus on interface issues (GUI, colored plastic boxes, etc)?
I agree it isn't a troll, but that question makes a large unfounded assumption. It's not like Steve Jobs is in a meeting and gets told "ok, you can have a translucent blue case, or you can have a fully protected preemptive buzzword-compliant OS, pick one". The two issues have virtually nothing to do with each other. You might say that Apple should have taken the money spent on hardware design and put it into the OS, but as has been repeatedly shown flinging money at a software project is often counterproductive.
Do you think that Apple should abandon Mac OS in favor of a Linux-based OS and focus on building and branding their INTERFACE?
That's exactly what they are doing. Well, not exactly, since it's BSD instead of Linux, but the kernel and low-level parts of OS X will be open source. The proprietary pieces are the legacy Mac OS API support (Carbon) and the NeXT-based GUI libraries (Yellow Box aka Cocoa).
IANAL, but I believe standard copyright law would still apply. I don't agree to a EULA when I buy a paper book, but I can't make 100 Xerox copies and sell them.
If we geeks really want no regulation on the internet, then we should vote for the people that are consistently anti-big govt. That would be the Republicans.
It would be the Republicans, except for their very large religious fundamentalist wing who are hell-bent on criminalizing anything "immoral", meaning anything they don't like. And every potential Republican candidate has to suck up to these people to get the nomination, thus promises to end abortion, get "pornography" off the Internet, etc.
Ok, one more time. The President is not solely responsible for the budget. Reagan wanted big tax cuts and big spending cuts. The Democrat-controlled Congress wanted neither, so they compromised on just having tax cuts. There's plenty of blame to be shared by both parties for the deficit.
Umm, most libertarians have always acknowledged that military projects, such as DARPA, are valid functions of government. DARPA may have provided the backbone, but the Internet as it exists today is almost entirely the product of freedom and capitalism.
Of course, this is AMerica, and everyone has enough free speech to be able to bitch about anything. However, if you can vote, and don't, as far as I am concerned, shut up. You had your chance to express your real opinion, and you didn't. If you don't have the chance, then that's different.
I don't entirely agree with this. If you're faced with two candidates who in your mind are equally bad, I don't think it's unreasonable to abstain as a protest rather than trying to pick the lesser of two evils (unless as you suggest there's A None Of The Above option).
you may be legally liable for making it possible for a cyber-terrorist to use your computer to attack someone else, if you do not apply the fix and still leave your Macintosh connected to the Internet.
IANAL, but that sounds like total crap. Are victims of Melissa legally liable because they "allowed" the virus to propogate to other machines? Copeland did a very good service by identifying this issue, but I think he went a bit overboard with his legal psuedo-threats and Y2K doomsday predictions.
Who said anything about lying? All they have to do is down-play certain side effects, like, say, a 10% incidence of heart failure. You think people always read the fine print? What if there were no requirement for the fine print at all?
Then you move from fraud to criminal negligence. Not having massive regulatory bodies does not mean that companies can get away with selling dangerous products.
I think that our current regulations on tobacco and alcohol are sufficient. The places where these regulations are weak can be made up by strong parenting.
In that case you should also support the immediate decriminalization of marijuana, since every unbiased study shows it to be substantially less harmful then alcohol. (No, I don't use pot. Nor drink.)
The remainder of your examples are not remotely in the same class and unworthy of a response.
Really? A huge number of people die of heart disease every year, many of whom probably could have been saved by better diets and/or exercise. My point is that once you start passing "for your own good" laws how do you decide where to stop?
Continuing with your analogy, though, how many people do you know honestly do any research into the candidates up for office? How many simply vote with the party?
Exactly my point. Why should I believe that a politician whose only qualification was that he fooled enough people into voting for him can run my life better than I can?
Do you think they're going to read the warnings on the box of medication? How many of these people are going to die because they didn't know drug X had a strong reaction with drug Y?
Yes, I do. In fact I think a large majority would continue to get their medications through their doctors. If some idiot is going to randomly combine 17 prescriptions from Bob's House of Amphetamines then we have another candidate for the Darwin Awards. Fools are always going to find ways to injure themsevles; they're clever that way.
Few people are stupid about all things. Even fewer are smart about all things. Most everyone is smart about certain things, and not-so-smart about everything else. Doctors are smart about the human body and the drugs we put into it, thus it's only logical to trust them with these decisions. We're not talking about wristwatch preferences here. A very trivial mistake with a prescription drug can easily spell death.
We are not in disagreement here. Taking drugs whose effects you are unaware of without the advice of a doctor is very stupid. But there is a difference between saying "X is stupid" and "anyone who does X should be imprisoned".
If a drug is classified as a prescription drug, it's been classified that way for a reason. If you think the FDA is full of idiots, perhaps it's time you wrote some letters and got them all fired. I mean it's not like any of them have degrees or doctorates in any of this stuff. Maybe they'll be kind enough to hire you in their place. I'm sure we'll all be better off.
Good grief, I never remotely implied that the FDA is full of idiots. (Although they're not perfect either; why is medical marijuana illegal despite numerous studies proving its value?) You seem to be operating under the theory that not having medications tightly controlled by the government is equivalent to encouraging everyone to self-medicate at will.
If a drug company lies about their products, they are guilty of fraud and will eventually be facing a huge class-action suit.
Since you believe government should be protecting us from ourselves, shall I assume you support bans on tobacco, alcohol, fried foods, and skiing? How about a government-mandated exercise period of 30 minutes every day?
If people are incompetent to run their own lives, how can they be competent to elect leaders to run their lives for them?
FireWire is where USB was two years ago. Lots of PCs had USB ports, but nobody made peripherals for them because all PCs had serial ports. The introduction of the iMac did a huge amount to increase the market for USB devices, since the iMac had no legacy serial alternative. FireWire is in a similar situation-until a few months ago it was found only on high-end Macs and a very few PCs, which isn't much of a market. Now that the new iMacs (all but the cheapest config) have FireWire built in (and no SCSI), the demand and supply of FireWire devices should increase substantially over the next year.
Since some people are willing to put up with the conditions you describe, it clearly is worth it to them. Maybe they genuinely enjoy what they do, or maybe in their opinion the chance of becoming insanely rich is worth the short-term sacrifice. Whatever their reasons, don't assume they're wrong because you don't agree. There are plenty of jobs out there (like mine) that pay well and don't require 70-hour weeks. But then I won't be making millions in an IPO anytime soon. It's all about tradeoffs.
I still don't understand how that can work. Couldn't someone get a blessed Netrek client, figure out what it sends to the server to authenticate itself, and then do a replay attack by making their hacked client send the same data? Isn't that just more security through obscurity?
Because the government has to play by different rules. Government is the only agency of society that can legitimately use violence and threats of violence to resolve issues. That is a great deal of power, and if unchecked would rapidly lead to totalitarianism. Thus strong limitations are placed on the government to insure that it does not abuse its power. One of those limitations is that government agencies (which exist on taxpayer money) do not get to operate in absolute secrecy except in extreme circumstances.
Plus, your assertion that this is equivalent to reading the NSA's mail is silly. The suit requests specific information about NSA activities that they are required by law to provide. Think of it as the equivalent of an SEC filing for a corporation.
I would be very surprised if it didn't. Making an app Carbon-compatible mostly just means not using crufty pseudo-deprecated Mac OS API calls, so pretty much any new Mac program should be compliant. It would be really cool if they used Cocoa (aka Yellow Box aka OpenStep, a vastly superior API to the standard Mac or Windows API), but then it would only run on OS X. Fine with me, but people with older Macs would probably complain.
I'm disturbed that a good many people actually believe these lies. Republicans have done nothing remotely similar to what you claim. Regarding health care, Republicans proposed an increase in Medicare funding slightly greater than was proposed by Hillary's socialized medicine plan. The Democrats wanted an even larger increase, and announced that the Republicans were trying to kill old people, almost in those exact words. Your Kraft dinner comment is completely unsubstantiated, and you've apparently failed to notice that welfare rolls have gone down since Clinton signed the Republicans' welfare reform bill (under duress). An old saying seems appropriate here: "Liberals measure compassion by how many people they provide for. Conservatives measure compassion by how many people are able to provide for themselves." (Probably not the exact wording, but you get the idea). Finally, as you know perfectly well, Republicans have never proposed eliminating public education.
This is somewhat off topic, but your insinuation that anyone who thinks that government is too big is selfish and uncaring is a standard mantra of the left and needs to be challenged whenever it appears. Of course, regarding Internet freedom neither party is very attractive. Both believe that they must "protect" us from undesirable content, they just differ on what that content is. (left: "hate speech", violence, guns; right: "pornography", homosexuality, drugs).
I hope somebody moderates that to at least a 1 so more people will see it. It's exactly right from what I've seen. In almost every survey people will say that taxes are too high, government is too big and intrusive, and spending should be cut. Yet every time a new media-manufactured crisis comes out these same people demand a solution from the government. The most ridiculous recent example is the California cities that banned ATM fees, effectively mandating that banks provide valuable services to noncustomers for free. Until people are willing to support limited government in practice as well as in theory these abuses will continue.
The public can only play leapfrog with the NSA to a certain point... a nanometer scale CPU is basically as small as you can get, and the only way to make a more powerful machine is to network more processors together. It's not very feasible for Joe Public to have a computer the size of a gymnasium that could run an encryption algorithm that the NSA couldn't crack without a computer the size of a city, as Joe Public simply doesn't have the space and other resources required
That's not true at all. Encryption algorithms run in polynomial time, and brute-force attacks are (believed to be) exponential. That means that as you increase the key size, the relative difference between CPU power for encryption and decryption gets very large very quickly. See Scheiner, p 158, where he calculates that channelling all the energy released by a supernova into a decryption computer would not be able to crack a 256-bit key.
The fact that the regulations are being developed secretly is not a good sign. I seriously doubt the revised laws will offer any improvement in the area of personal freedom. They may make it easier for commercial companies to make money selling their products, but as long as the FBI and NSA are calling the shots don't expect to be able to freely distribute strong crypto.
I don't believe compromise is possible on this issue. Either I can write open source crypto code and post it publicly without going to jail, or I can't. I see no indication that the FBI and NSA are prepared to allow that. My guess is that they're stalling for time, since they know if this issue ever gets before the Supreme Court all restrictions are likely to be struck down.
And in a truly free country all email would be encrypted, so this issue would never arise. By relying on a legislative solution, in France your email can still be snooped by corrupt government agents or any cracker good enough to not get caught.
Slashdot Mirror
So then the library has a nice log of all the sites you've been to. Umm, no thanks.
Perhaps that's a difference between conservatives and libertarians. I am also for less government in pretty much everything, but *especially* in the areas that affect me. For example, I would like to be able to telecommute in the future, and if I do so having OSHA "protect" me is the last thing I want.
You're exactly right. I remember a documentary I saw which was suppposed to show how dangerous speeding was. One of their examples had a driver (presumably going over the speed limit) coming over a hill, seeing a parked cop car, and hitting his brakes. Unfortunately the large truck behind the car was unable to decelerate as quickly and rammed the car from behind. The documentary missed the blindingly obvious point that the cop car, not the driver's speeding, was the primary cause of the accident.
Second, to continue your argument just slightly, we need a strictly enforced national speed limit of 20 mph. This would virtually eliminate deaths and serious accidents on the roads, and sure it would take longer to get somewhere, but isn't safety the most important thing?
Of course, safety is not the most important thing in life. Every day we make decisions that increase the probability of our deaths. And getting somewhere in 2 hours instead of 4 is worth a miniscule increase in the chance of a fatal accident for most people.
IANAL, but I believe standard copyright law would still apply. I don't agree to a EULA when I buy a paper book, but I can't make 100 Xerox copies and sell them.
Ok, one more time. The President is not solely responsible for the budget. Reagan wanted big tax cuts and big spending cuts. The Democrat-controlled Congress wanted neither, so they compromised on just having tax cuts. There's plenty of blame to be shared by both parties for the deficit.
Umm, most libertarians have always acknowledged that military projects, such as DARPA, are valid functions of government. DARPA may have provided the backbone, but the Internet as it exists today is almost entirely the product of freedom and capitalism.
Since you believe government should be protecting us from ourselves, shall I assume you support bans on tobacco, alcohol, fried foods, and skiing? How about a government-mandated exercise period of 30 minutes every day?
If people are incompetent to run their own lives, how can they be competent to elect leaders to run their lives for them?
FireWire is where USB was two years ago. Lots of PCs had USB ports, but nobody made peripherals for them because all PCs had serial ports. The introduction of the iMac did a huge amount to increase the market for USB devices, since the iMac had no legacy serial alternative. FireWire is in a similar situation-until a few months ago it was found only on high-end Macs and a very few PCs, which isn't much of a market. Now that the new iMacs (all but the cheapest config) have FireWire built in (and no SCSI), the demand and supply of FireWire devices should increase substantially over the next year.
Since some people are willing to put up with the conditions you describe, it clearly is worth it to them. Maybe they genuinely enjoy what they do, or maybe in their opinion the chance of becoming insanely rich is worth the short-term sacrifice. Whatever their reasons, don't assume they're wrong because you don't agree. There are plenty of jobs out there (like mine) that pay well and don't require 70-hour weeks. But then I won't be making millions in an IPO anytime soon. It's all about tradeoffs.
I still don't understand how that can work. Couldn't someone get a blessed Netrek client, figure out what it sends to the server to authenticate itself, and then do a replay attack by making their hacked client send the same data? Isn't that just more security through obscurity?
Plus, your assertion that this is equivalent to reading the NSA's mail is silly. The suit requests specific information about NSA activities that they are required by law to provide. Think of it as the equivalent of an SEC filing for a corporation.
I would be very surprised if it didn't. Making an app Carbon-compatible mostly just means not using crufty pseudo-deprecated Mac OS API calls, so pretty much any new Mac program should be compliant. It would be really cool if they used Cocoa (aka Yellow Box aka OpenStep, a vastly superior API to the standard Mac or Windows API), but then it would only run on OS X. Fine with me, but people with older Macs would probably complain.
This is somewhat off topic, but your insinuation that anyone who thinks that government is too big is selfish and uncaring is a standard mantra of the left and needs to be challenged whenever it appears. Of course, regarding Internet freedom neither party is very attractive. Both believe that they must "protect" us from undesirable content, they just differ on what that content is. (left: "hate speech", violence, guns; right: "pornography", homosexuality, drugs).
I hope somebody moderates that to at least a 1 so more people will see it. It's exactly right from what I've seen. In almost every survey people will say that taxes are too high, government is too big and intrusive, and spending should be cut. Yet every time a new media-manufactured crisis comes out these same people demand a solution from the government. The most ridiculous recent example is the California cities that banned ATM fees, effectively mandating that banks provide valuable services to noncustomers for free. Until people are willing to support limited government in practice as well as in theory these abuses will continue.
I don't believe compromise is possible on this issue. Either I can write open source crypto code and post it publicly without going to jail, or I can't. I see no indication that the FBI and NSA are prepared to allow that. My guess is that they're stalling for time, since they know if this issue ever gets before the Supreme Court all restrictions are likely to be struck down.
And in a truly free country all email would be encrypted, so this issue would never arise. By relying on a legislative solution, in France your email can still be snooped by corrupt government agents or any cracker good enough to not get caught.