I assume most people do. So why are some people naturally well disposed to figure out how to use search engines and email while others think of a computer as a magical device they cannot use?
Judging from my experience, it's a mixture of curiosity (enjoying tinkering) and courage (not being afraid to try out things). And most of the time, what those who don't get along well with computers etc. and don't pick up any knowledge even after using them for years are missing is courage - people who never do anything they don't already know about will never learn anything new.
Of course, I can understand that people value their data and don't want to lose any of it, but it seems that the less knowledge people have with regard to computers, the more outright paranoid they get.
It's kind of a vicious circle really (ignorance produces fear, and fear prevents tinkering and thus - indirectly - knowledge), and I'm not sure how to break out of it. The idea that software has to be "dumbed down" until even the most clueless person can use it without ever having to check the manual/online help/whatever seems good at first glance, but it also limits what you can and cannot do, and gives you the impression that you in fact DO know everything there is to know when you don't, thus robbing you of the ability (or at least making it more difficult) to learn more.
It's not AMD they're playing games with but Intel. The whole talk about how they consider to offer AMD-based systems is most likely just meant to publicly put pressure on Intel to give them better prices.
Actually, no, people do not think it's a good idea - or at least those who've been around for a while (on Wikipedia) and gathered experience don't. What the grandparent describes is essentially Nupedia, Wikipedia's precursor - and that one was a horrible, horrible failure.
The idea that anyone can edit (almost) any article and immediately have the change go live may seem strange, counterproductive or even outright dangerous at first glance, but it really isn't, just like giving everyone (above a certain age) the ability to vote instead of limiting it to those of a certain race/gender/income/... is a good idea, too.
In other words, just because common sense tells you something doesn't mean it's right; some things turn out to be quite different in reality than from what you'd think they'd be after thinking about it for 2 minutes.
Thanks - that was quite informative. (Pity I don't have mod points, but then, considering I already posted in this discussion, I couldn't mod you up anyways).
Interesting. I wonder what right the Secret Service actually has to ask him all those questions? "Names and phone numbers of all his friends" in particular sounds like something that you don't give out to just anyone to me, ESPECIALLY not a government person. It *may* be a different story if you're actually accused of doing something illegal (in that case, though, I probably would talk to my lawyer about the whole thing first), but if it's just the SS wanting to intimidate you after you did something unusual...
I don't know, but it could very well be - the recent Antipiratbyran case is really in the same league, only that it was about copyright infringement, not child porn.
But yeah, the laws regarding these things are rather strange at times, and the fact that they differ not only be country, but also by state (maybe even county/city/...?) doesn't exactly help.
And people really can marry at the age of 13 in some places in the USA? Goodness, that's really fucked up, if you'll forgive the expletive. Over here, the earliest age at which you can marry is 16; and even then, when you're not at least 18, you still need your parents permission. And personally, I find even that to be rather problematic still; 13, on the other hand, is insane.
Why is open source e-voting software an oxymoron? Quite the opposite is true: transparency is an integral part of any democracy and democratic process.
Oh, you say that if it was open source, then anybody could rig the elections? Sure! Let me see how you put your custom version which allows you to manipulate the results on even a single voting machine.
I don't want to say that electronic voting in general is a good idea (I'm not sure either way, really), but the idea that open-source is bad as far as e-voting software is concerned is the biggest piece of bull I've heard today.
"child" = "someone who is not of legal age in the jurisdiction you're currently in".
So what if the person he had sex with was his wife? Girls are still married at the age of 12 (or maybe even younger) in many parts of the world; that does not mean that when a 12-year old and their husband travel to - say - the USA, it should be legal for them to have sex.
(The case is much less clear when the "child" is, for example, 17 or so, of course...)
But if the program was indeed under an open-source license, then any member of that group could make the binary and source available to the general public - and what's more, it wouldn't be a "leak" or anything, it would be something that's perfectly within their rights.
Considering M$ seems to have stated that they purposefully want to keep the technology secret in order to give the "good guys" an advantage, I doubt it's under any open-source or free license - in fact, considering this goal, it's probably pretty much safe to say that it will NOT be.
However, there is another question that I haven't seen anyone ask so far. What does M$ get out of this? They are a company, so ultimately, what they want to do is make money - even more so since they got shareholder value to worry about. So... do they plan on screwing police departments using this over in the future in some way? Or do they just want the free advertising value (hoping for a "ooh, look at those guys, they help track down child porn for free, what a noble cause, I will buy M$ Office now to support them" effect)? Do they just want to be on "good terms" with law enforcement people/governments for the future?
I don't know. The only thing I *do* know is that there is no such thing as a free lunch, and while I don't blame M$ for (ultimately) wanting to make money, if I was a decision maker in a law enforcement agency, I'd certainly wonder what exactly *they* hope to get out of this whole thing.
I had a similar thing happen to me. While I didn't run a special daemon designed to catch spamming attempts, I did notice a big bunch of weird entries in my logs; I checked where they were coming from - turned out to be an IP registered to Schlund + Partner - and then contacted Schlund about it, as I assumed that one of their customers was trying to use my mail server as a relay.
I got an answer the next day, and it turned out that it was, in fact, Schlund themselves who had done this - not to spam, I presume, but to check whether my system was an open relay. Why that is any of their business I don't understand, but OK - I can live with it, as the worst thing it did was eat up logfile space.
However, what really bugged me was the attitude of the person who got back to me - "arrogant jerk" does not even begin to describe it. What it essentially came down to was "I'm better than you, so shut up, and BTW, my penis (i.e., the servers I'm administrating, the pipe they're connected to etc.) is bigger than yours, too".
I lost a *lot* of respect for Schlund that day, and in fact, until today, I will not do any business with them. Well, not that I would anyway, but it at least gives me a certain satisfaction to know that they're on my own personal blacklist, at least.
Seamonkey, however, is different in that the source code is available for anyone who wants to keep working on it. From what I know, there already is a group of people who want to do just that, too; whether they will succeed remains to be seen, of course, but the important thing is that they can TRY.
What's more, the fact that the Mozilla guys won't develop Seamonkey anymore does not mean that those who're using it now will have to stop doing so, which seems to be the case with BK now.
Slashdot Mirror
Or you could use Tor, which was more or less made for occasions like this.
Judging from my experience, it's a mixture of curiosity (enjoying tinkering) and courage (not being afraid to try out things). And most of the time, what those who don't get along well with computers etc. and don't pick up any knowledge even after using them for years are missing is courage - people who never do anything they don't already know about will never learn anything new.
Of course, I can understand that people value their data and don't want to lose any of it, but it seems that the less knowledge people have with regard to computers, the more outright paranoid they get.
It's kind of a vicious circle really (ignorance produces fear, and fear prevents tinkering and thus - indirectly - knowledge), and I'm not sure how to break out of it. The idea that software has to be "dumbed down" until even the most clueless person can use it without ever having to check the manual/online help/whatever seems good at first glance, but it also limits what you can and cannot do, and gives you the impression that you in fact DO know everything there is to know when you don't, thus robbing you of the ability (or at least making it more difficult) to learn more.
It's not AMD they're playing games with but Intel. The whole talk about how they consider to offer AMD-based systems is most likely just meant to publicly put pressure on Intel to give them better prices.
I thought you can only be held for 24 hours if there's no reason?
Actually, no, people do not think it's a good idea - or at least those who've been around for a while (on Wikipedia) and gathered experience don't. What the grandparent describes is essentially Nupedia, Wikipedia's precursor - and that one was a horrible, horrible failure.
The idea that anyone can edit (almost) any article and immediately have the change go live may seem strange, counterproductive or even outright dangerous at first glance, but it really isn't, just like giving everyone (above a certain age) the ability to vote instead of limiting it to those of a certain race/gender/income/... is a good idea, too.
In other words, just because common sense tells you something doesn't mean it's right; some things turn out to be quite different in reality than from what you'd think they'd be after thinking about it for 2 minutes.
Thanks - that was quite informative. (Pity I don't have mod points, but then, considering I already posted in this discussion, I couldn't mod you up anyways).
You obviously don't check Newgrounds often. :)
OK, thanks. Weird...
But if their refusal to take legal tender already makes your debt paid in full, then why do you let them take the (large) bills in the end after all?
Interesting. I wonder what right the Secret Service actually has to ask him all those questions? "Names and phone numbers of all his friends" in particular sounds like something that you don't give out to just anyone to me, ESPECIALLY not a government person. It *may* be a different story if you're actually accused of doing something illegal (in that case, though, I probably would talk to my lawyer about the whole thing first), but if it's just the SS wanting to intimidate you after you did something unusual...
Here's something I'm wondering about - what does the Secret Service have to do with counterfeit bills, anyway?
Actually, it's not even that.
I don't know, but it could very well be - the recent Antipiratbyran case is really in the same league, only that it was about copyright infringement, not child porn.
But yeah, the laws regarding these things are rather strange at times, and the fact that they differ not only be country, but also by state (maybe even county/city/...?) doesn't exactly help.
And people really can marry at the age of 13 in some places in the USA? Goodness, that's really fucked up, if you'll forgive the expletive. Over here, the earliest age at which you can marry is 16; and even then, when you're not at least 18, you still need your parents permission. And personally, I find even that to be rather problematic still; 13, on the other hand, is insane.
Why is open source e-voting software an oxymoron? Quite the opposite is true: transparency is an integral part of any democracy and democratic process.
Oh, you say that if it was open source, then anybody could rig the elections? Sure! Let me see how you put your custom version which allows you to manipulate the results on even a single voting machine.
I don't want to say that electronic voting in general is a good idea (I'm not sure either way, really), but the idea that open-source is bad as far as e-voting software is concerned is the biggest piece of bull I've heard today.
"child" = "someone who is not of legal age in the jurisdiction you're currently in".
So what if the person he had sex with was his wife? Girls are still married at the age of 12 (or maybe even younger) in many parts of the world; that does not mean that when a 12-year old and their husband travel to - say - the USA, it should be legal for them to have sex.
(The case is much less clear when the "child" is, for example, 17 or so, of course...)
But if the program was indeed under an open-source license, then any member of that group could make the binary and source available to the general public - and what's more, it wouldn't be a "leak" or anything, it would be something that's perfectly within their rights.
Considering M$ seems to have stated that they purposefully want to keep the technology secret in order to give the "good guys" an advantage, I doubt it's under any open-source or free license - in fact, considering this goal, it's probably pretty much safe to say that it will NOT be.
However, there is another question that I haven't seen anyone ask so far. What does M$ get out of this? They are a company, so ultimately, what they want to do is make money - even more so since they got shareholder value to worry about. So... do they plan on screwing police departments using this over in the future in some way? Or do they just want the free advertising value (hoping for a "ooh, look at those guys, they help track down child porn for free, what a noble cause, I will buy M$ Office now to support them" effect)? Do they just want to be on "good terms" with law enforcement people/governments for the future?
I don't know. The only thing I *do* know is that there is no such thing as a free lunch, and while I don't blame M$ for (ultimately) wanting to make money, if I was a decision maker in a law enforcement agency, I'd certainly wonder what exactly *they* hope to get out of this whole thing.
1. The code is the same size, but it doesn't matter since the space the software would take up on a CD/DVD/... is dwarfed by the size of the data.
2. The English Wikipedia has (roughly) about 2,5 times as many articles as the German Wikipedia. Mean article size (in bytes) is roughly equivalent.
3. The English Wikipedia uses many more images etc. than the German Wikipedia.
How much is "much of"? And how would you know how much of Wikipedia's content is "copyright infringements", anyway?
Y'know, that's actually a very cool name.
"Good boy. Here's a donut." (For being able to quote Dilbert cartoons :))
Yes - the fact that you do not hold the copyrights to the PearPC code.
I had a similar thing happen to me. While I didn't run a special daemon designed to catch spamming attempts, I did notice a big bunch of weird entries in my logs; I checked where they were coming from - turned out to be an IP registered to Schlund + Partner - and then contacted Schlund about it, as I assumed that one of their customers was trying to use my mail server as a relay.
I got an answer the next day, and it turned out that it was, in fact, Schlund themselves who had done this - not to spam, I presume, but to check whether my system was an open relay. Why that is any of their business I don't understand, but OK - I can live with it, as the worst thing it did was eat up logfile space.
However, what really bugged me was the attitude of the person who got back to me - "arrogant jerk" does not even begin to describe it. What it essentially came down to was "I'm better than you, so shut up, and BTW, my penis (i.e., the servers I'm administrating, the pipe they're connected to etc.) is bigger than yours, too".
I lost a *lot* of respect for Schlund that day, and in fact, until today, I will not do any business with them. Well, not that I would anyway, but it at least gives me a certain satisfaction to know that they're on my own personal blacklist, at least.
Seamonkey, however, is different in that the source code is available for anyone who wants to keep working on it. From what I know, there already is a group of people who want to do just that, too; whether they will succeed remains to be seen, of course, but the important thing is that they can TRY.
What's more, the fact that the Mozilla guys won't develop Seamonkey anymore does not mean that those who're using it now will have to stop doing so, which seems to be the case with BK now.
Actually, the rule of thumb is... the bigger the iron, the longer it takes to boot up.
Just how many more failed at attempts at April Fool's Day humour will we have to endure today?