Yes, and he would abolish the "right" political party, claiming that two parties just complicates the system when most people only need a single "left" political party to get the job done anyway.
The funny thing is that when you pop the CD into your computer and look up "sucker", it brings up a picture of you.
Re:Your excuses for business immorality are shocki
on
Amazon Sues Alexaholic
·
· Score: 1
You aren't being in any way insightful or wise when you point out that businesses want to make money. By presenting it in such a simplistic manner, you are offering up an excuse for immoral behavior on the part of these companies and simultaneously denigrating those of us who do not enjoy doing business with scoundrels as naive fools who don't know how the real world works.
You obviously don't understand the difference between an explanation and an excuse. I wasn't in any way excusing Amazon's behavior. I was just pointing out that there's nothing shocking or surprising about it.
Until the rules of the economy are changed such that ethical behavior and profits coincide 100%, you're going to keep seeing businesses behaving badly. Period.
I suspect there is an entire world of things out there you've never thought of.
No need for sarcastic rudeness.
And public, unsecured networks intended for everyone's use are quite common
Not among anyone I know.
and my ISP, a co-op BTW, is just fine with that.
Good for them.
I'm in a hotel right now, using what? An open, unsecured network.
Most hotels' wi-fi networks I've used are secured and require a shared key for access. Then again, I don't inhabit those pay-by-the-hour places.
I was at a coffee shop yesterday doing the same thing (City Brew.)
Again, good for you.
So can the whole silly "you should be held liable" nonsense.
That wasn't a complete sentence. What were you trying to say?
No one with an IQ above room temperature should be spouting such poorly thought-out dreck.
IQ, knowledge, and recall ability are completely unrelated things. IQ is mostly about pattern-recognition and problem-solving ability, whereas knowledge is mostly about education and experience and recall ability is usually about personality type (fast haphazard thinker, careful methodical thinker, etc).
There are problems a-plenty with this whole "require everyone to lock the doors" idea. First, we have a technology problem. With a linux laptop and a couple of readily available utilities, I can get into your "secure" network. Quickly and easily. So you can "protect" it all you want, and still, you're not actually protected. IOW, locks are for honest people.
That may be true of WEP, but it's not true of a properly-secured WPA2 access point.
Second, the idea that securing networks - if you could really secure them, which you can't - would stop access of porn (or anything else) is blatantly false.
I never claimed to support that argument, so you're just preaching to the choir here. Nothing will stop name-your-illegal-activity-here. Outlawing it and enforcing those laws merely drives the activity into other more reclusive arenas.
What you end up with then is (somewhat) secure access to porn (and anything else.) Encrypting a network (especially when done very poorly, as wireless is) in no way controls what type of data passes over it - the very idea is silly. So what actually happens is some dimwit in Washington (such as congress's head Internet guy, Ted "Tubes" Stevens) decides that now that your networks have to be "secure", it makes "sense" that you should be held liable for things other people might transfer over your network.
Again, preaching to the choir. But be careful to note: being held liable for the content flowing over your network is different than being held liable for securing your network. I'd be in favor of laws requiring providers of internet access (above a certain large number of consumers of the service -- say 500) to secure their networks. I'd also be in favor of laws that basically say that if someone busts into your network or PC and commits a computing crime, and it can be proven that you didn't bother to competently secure your network before the attack, that you were negligent and the perpetrator therefore is immune to any charges you may bring against them for the break-in.
Third, the idea that information censorship of public data on public networks is OK is the fruit of a diseased mind.
Again, preaching to the choir. I don't disagree with you here.
In the case of child porn or snuff, for instance, it is 100% sufficient that making the photos is illegal. Bump the penalty up to death (please!) but don't make laws where people can be made victims of those laws because some photo they probably are appalled by suddenly appeared in their mailbox.
Back off! It never even occurred to me that someone might intentionally offer up their access point out of some mysterious desire to provide a public service to their neighbors. That's not exactly a common intention, but if it's what you want to do, I have nothing against it (although your ISP might -- check their policy).
I'd say that 99% of the unsecured access points I've seen are obviously NOT people trying to provide public access out of the goodness of their hearts, but are actually just people with no idea that their access point is unsecured.
Yeah -- the credit-card system as-is is so entrenched that you'll never get all the disparate parties involved to agree to throw it out and adopt something new all at the same time.
Banks, the banking backbone network, credit reporting mechanisms, ATM machines, point-of-sale hardware, retails... they would all have to throw away their existing systems and software/hardware investments and move to the new system, and they would have to do it altogether in concert for it all to work end-to-end.
The difficulty isn't in dreaming up a better system. It's in moving off the existing system without excessive cost or service disruption.
This isn't any different than the FOSS community's attempts the Windows monopoly -- coming up with something technically superior to Windows isn't hard. Coming up with a way to get the world to willingly transition away from the OS they already depend on for everything is the hard part.
So if I have a unsecured wireless access point in my home [...] would I be held liable for that?
In an ideal world, you'd just be held liable for being too stupid to secure your access point.
I live in a townhome on a street with many others and my wife and I can pick up at least ten completely unsecured wifi networks from our living room, and see windows boxes with file sharing wide-open and unsecured. And this is in Redmond, WA. If a bunch of Microsoft computer geeks can't figure out how to secure their wifi routers, then hope is lost for the rest of humankind.
Oh my god... a business behaving like a business rather than like a friendly community contributor? I can't believe it! Why on earth would this business behave as if its only concern is making money?
There are now no interesting non-networked applications.
Bullshit.
Counterexamples:
3D rendering/animation creation software
Photoshop, Illustrator, and other image editing/creation software
VirtualDub, Premiere, and other video editing/manipulation software
Protools, Cubase, Cakewalk, tracker software, and other audio/music editing/creation/manipulation software
Video game emulators
Computer emulators
Computer games
Desktop PC operating systems
Desktop finance management software
MS Office and OpenOffice
Tools for circumventing DRM and other technologies that abuse consumer rights
Driver development
Embedded device development
...etc...
Just because something isn't part of the "networked OS! AJAX! Live.com and Google! It's all about the network! Woo-hoo!" hype, that doesn't mean it's unneeded, not useful, uninteresting, or has exhausted its potential.
There's still a LOT of room for improvement in desktop software and OSes that has nothing to do with a focus on networking features, and that's still very exciting stuff to work on.
we have millions of years of ice core data giving us a feel for global temperature.. and because we continue to drill we get more and more data every year.
here is a sample of that data charted
I don't doubt that mankind's pollution is causing unnatural levels and rate of global warming, but I do feel obligated to point one thing out here: correlation does not equal (or even imply) causation.
The ice core data shows an undeniably strong correlation between greenhouse gases and temperature, but it says nothing about which causes which. It's possible that the temperature changes caused greenhouse gas changes (for instance, plants could thrive less when it gets really hot, thus reducing their role in atmospheric regeneration).
If someone starts creating problems, ban their account and reject all access. Block their e-mails and IM. Don't take their phone calls.
Or, alternatively, turn the "open source is a good thing for building your reputation" concept to your advantage: post a "hall of shame" page on your project's web page or in its release notes, that lists the names and all known contact information for people who have caused problems. Ammend your license terms to require that the list be distrubted along with the source for the software.
Not trying to invalidate your point. Just pointing out how everything you said is equally applicable to security in the air travel industry.
Bottom line -- good security isn't about bug-free implementation. It's about having a sensible design that actually plugs all possible problems. It's about accurately identifying the holes and then taking the right steps to plug them.
Wrong. More often, it's a case of hardware problems (either hardware failure, or hardware design defects that are only now exposed by software pushing the hardware in new ways).
Great example: VIA's original AGP-capable motherboard chipsets had major design defects in terms of their ability to deliver adequate clean power to the AGP device. Most people who bought into those systems didn't notice the problem until they moved to WinXP and started running games that finally pushed the graphics boards enough to expose the problem. Then all of a sudden you had message boards absolutely filled with complaints of instability and lock-ups, and people blaming everything from ACPI to Windows to ATI and nVidia, when the real problem was with VIA's defective chipset design.
Vista is a new OS, with a completely rewritten kernal. It utilizes your hardware in ways WinXP never did under normal usage. It will likely expose things like bad RAM, underpowered components, inadequate cooling, etc, even though the system appears to work fine under XP.
The biggest foolishness is the government's security architecture for the air travel industry. Any time someone questions airport or airplane security, the government accuses that person of being anti-security, or is just bummed because they can't do naughty things that they otherwise wanted to do. The government's security is weird, it's like a house made out of concrete walls but has screen doors. It's an enormously overbuilt security system with huge, gaping holes. It's extremely intrusive, and it gets in the way of the traveller's experience without actually being secure. It makes it even harder for travellers to take business trips or vacations, without actually gaining any security benefits. It basically fucks up legitimate travel plans while leaving holes for the bad ones to just climb on through.
Then it's not all business people who annoy you. It's only the short-sighted business people who annoy you.
Any business person with a good understanding of market forces and real concern for the long-term health and growth of the business understands the value of intangible things like customer satisfaction, corporate reputation, and word-of-mouth.
Unfortunately it is true that 95% of business people (and thus businesses) are incredibly short-sighted and stupid.
Slashdot Mirror
the Internet: the global-scale counterexample of the notion of "intellectual property".
but facts don't change themselves to suit a like.
George W. thinks otherwise.
http://www.cartridgeworld.com/
Bravo. It's nice to see someone else who truly understands basic economics.
Yes, and he would abolish the "right" political party, claiming that two parties just complicates the system when most people only need a single "left" political party to get the job done anyway.
The funny thing is that when you pop the CD into your computer and look up "sucker", it brings up a picture of you.
You aren't being in any way insightful or wise when you point out that businesses want to make money. By presenting it in such a simplistic manner, you are offering up an excuse for immoral behavior on the part of these companies and simultaneously denigrating those of us who do not enjoy doing business with scoundrels as naive fools who don't know how the real world works.
You obviously don't understand the difference between an explanation and an excuse. I wasn't in any way excusing Amazon's behavior. I was just pointing out that there's nothing shocking or surprising about it.
Until the rules of the economy are changed such that ethical behavior and profits coincide 100%, you're going to keep seeing businesses behaving badly. Period.
I suspect there is an entire world of things out there you've never thought of.
No need for sarcastic rudeness.
And public, unsecured networks intended for everyone's use are quite common
Not among anyone I know.
and my ISP, a co-op BTW, is just fine with that.
Good for them.
I'm in a hotel right now, using what? An open, unsecured network.
Most hotels' wi-fi networks I've used are secured and require a shared key for access. Then again, I don't inhabit those pay-by-the-hour places.
I was at a coffee shop yesterday doing the same thing (City Brew.)
Again, good for you.
So can the whole silly "you should be held liable" nonsense.
That wasn't a complete sentence. What were you trying to say?
No one with an IQ above room temperature should be spouting such poorly thought-out dreck.
IQ, knowledge, and recall ability are completely unrelated things. IQ is mostly about pattern-recognition and problem-solving ability, whereas knowledge is mostly about education and experience and recall ability is usually about personality type (fast haphazard thinker, careful methodical thinker, etc).
There are problems a-plenty with this whole "require everyone to lock the doors" idea. First, we have a technology problem. With a linux laptop and a couple of readily available utilities, I can get into your "secure" network. Quickly and easily. So you can "protect" it all you want, and still, you're not actually protected. IOW, locks are for honest people.
That may be true of WEP, but it's not true of a properly-secured WPA2 access point.
Second, the idea that securing networks - if you could really secure them, which you can't - would stop access of porn (or anything else) is blatantly false.
I never claimed to support that argument, so you're just preaching to the choir here. Nothing will stop name-your-illegal-activity-here. Outlawing it and enforcing those laws merely drives the activity into other more reclusive arenas.
What you end up with then is (somewhat) secure access to porn (and anything else.) Encrypting a network (especially when done very poorly, as wireless is) in no way controls what type of data passes over it - the very idea is silly. So what actually happens is some dimwit in Washington (such as congress's head Internet guy, Ted "Tubes" Stevens) decides that now that your networks have to be "secure", it makes "sense" that you should be held liable for things other people might transfer over your network.
Again, preaching to the choir. But be careful to note: being held liable for the content flowing over your network is different than being held liable for securing your network. I'd be in favor of laws requiring providers of internet access (above a certain large number of consumers of the service -- say 500) to secure their networks. I'd also be in favor of laws that basically say that if someone busts into your network or PC and commits a computing crime, and it can be proven that you didn't bother to competently secure your network before the attack, that you were negligent and the perpetrator therefore is immune to any charges you may bring against them for the break-in.
Third, the idea that information censorship of public data on public networks is OK is the fruit of a diseased mind.
Again, preaching to the choir. I don't disagree with you here.
In the case of child porn or snuff, for instance, it is 100% sufficient that making the photos is illegal. Bump the penalty up to death (please!) but don't make laws where people can be made victims of those laws because some photo they probably are appalled by suddenly appeared in their mailbox.
Again, preaching to the choir here.
Back off! It never even occurred to me that someone might intentionally offer up their access point out of some mysterious desire to provide a public service to their neighbors. That's not exactly a common intention, but if it's what you want to do, I have nothing against it (although your ISP might -- check their policy).
I'd say that 99% of the unsecured access points I've seen are obviously NOT people trying to provide public access out of the goodness of their hearts, but are actually just people with no idea that their access point is unsecured.
Microsoft Issues Holes for 25 Security Patches
Any obvious glaring errors?
Yeah -- the credit-card system as-is is so entrenched that you'll never get all the disparate parties involved to agree to throw it out and adopt something new all at the same time.
Banks, the banking backbone network, credit reporting mechanisms, ATM machines, point-of-sale hardware, retails... they would all have to throw away their existing systems and software/hardware investments and move to the new system, and they would have to do it altogether in concert for it all to work end-to-end.
The difficulty isn't in dreaming up a better system. It's in moving off the existing system without excessive cost or service disruption.
This isn't any different than the FOSS community's attempts the Windows monopoly -- coming up with something technically superior to Windows isn't hard. Coming up with a way to get the world to willingly transition away from the OS they already depend on for everything is the hard part.
So if I have a unsecured wireless access point in my home [...] would I be held liable for that?
In an ideal world, you'd just be held liable for being too stupid to secure your access point.
I live in a townhome on a street with many others and my wife and I can pick up at least ten completely unsecured wifi networks from our living room, and see windows boxes with file sharing wide-open and unsecured. And this is in Redmond, WA. If a bunch of Microsoft computer geeks can't figure out how to secure their wifi routers, then hope is lost for the rest of humankind.
Oh my god... a business behaving like a business rather than like a friendly community contributor? I can't believe it! Why on earth would this business behave as if its only concern is making money?
So does this technically qualify as transparent aluminum?
.. in order for this to work, they need a clear, concise definition of what Spyware is.
Okay, here's a clear, concise way to code it into law:
come ask me, and I'll tell you if it's spyware
Bullshit.
Counterexamples:
Just because something isn't part of the "networked OS! AJAX! Live.com and Google! It's all about the network! Woo-hoo!" hype, that doesn't mean it's unneeded, not useful, uninteresting, or has exhausted its potential.
There's still a LOT of room for improvement in desktop software and OSes that has nothing to do with a focus on networking features, and that's still very exciting stuff to work on.
we have millions of years of ice core data giving us a feel for global temperature.. and because we continue to drill we get more and more data every year.
here is a sample of that data charted
I don't doubt that mankind's pollution is causing unnatural levels and rate of global warming, but I do feel obligated to point one thing out here: correlation does not equal (or even imply) causation.
The ice core data shows an undeniably strong correlation between greenhouse gases and temperature, but it says nothing about which causes which. It's possible that the temperature changes caused greenhouse gas changes (for instance, plants could thrive less when it gets really hot, thus reducing their role in atmospheric regeneration).
I was just about to reply and offer my overwhelming evidence showing how dual monitors boost my productivity.
Then I realized I was using my second monitor to post to Slashdot.
Oops!
As long as what you say is true, witnessed by others, and documented, you should have no problem.
but how can it or something similar be enforced?
If someone starts creating problems, ban their account and reject all access. Block their e-mails and IM. Don't take their phone calls.
Or, alternatively, turn the "open source is a good thing for building your reputation" concept to your advantage: post a "hall of shame" page on your project's web page or in its release notes, that lists the names and all known contact information for people who have caused problems. Ammend your license terms to require that the list be distrubted along with the source for the software.
Not trying to invalidate your point. Just pointing out how everything you said is equally applicable to security in the air travel industry.
Bottom line -- good security isn't about bug-free implementation. It's about having a sensible design that actually plugs all possible problems. It's about accurately identifying the holes and then taking the right steps to plug them.
OS instability is almost always a case of drivers
Wrong. More often, it's a case of hardware problems (either hardware failure, or hardware design defects that are only now exposed by software pushing the hardware in new ways).
Great example: VIA's original AGP-capable motherboard chipsets had major design defects in terms of their ability to deliver adequate clean power to the AGP device. Most people who bought into those systems didn't notice the problem until they moved to WinXP and started running games that finally pushed the graphics boards enough to expose the problem. Then all of a sudden you had message boards absolutely filled with complaints of instability and lock-ups, and people blaming everything from ACPI to Windows to ATI and nVidia, when the real problem was with VIA's defective chipset design.
Vista is a new OS, with a completely rewritten kernal. It utilizes your hardware in ways WinXP never did under normal usage. It will likely expose things like bad RAM, underpowered components, inadequate cooling, etc, even though the system appears to work fine under XP.
serious, lengthy German board games in the last few years.
You mean such as Sprockets: Touch my monkey!?
The biggest foolishness is the government's security architecture for the air travel industry. Any time someone questions airport or airplane security, the government accuses that person of being anti-security, or is just bummed because they can't do naughty things that they otherwise wanted to do. The government's security is weird, it's like a house made out of concrete walls but has screen doors. It's an enormously overbuilt security system with huge, gaping holes. It's extremely intrusive, and it gets in the way of the traveller's experience without actually being secure. It makes it even harder for travellers to take business trips or vacations, without actually gaining any security benefits. It basically fucks up legitimate travel plans while leaving holes for the bad ones to just climb on through.
Then it's not all business people who annoy you. It's only the short-sighted business people who annoy you.
Any business person with a good understanding of market forces and real concern for the long-term health and growth of the business understands the value of intangible things like customer satisfaction, corporate reputation, and word-of-mouth.
Unfortunately it is true that 95% of business people (and thus businesses) are incredibly short-sighted and stupid.