I work for a mid sized ISP. We host a small number of commerce sites using IIS and MSSQL . Most of our customers use FP98 or some variant to maintain/screw up their pages. Part of the frustration in hearing of backdoor issues like this involves the cost of migrating away from NT based hosting. Think of it like this;we pay X amount of dollars to license NT and IIS to start off with. That's no small chunk.Then we spend a huge amount of hours designing and maintaing sites. Now, since we have spent all this money , well the board wants to squeeze it's money's worth out of it. What kind of man hours are involved in making a *smooth* transition to a flavor of BSD for instance? And how do you rationalize the money spent on MS licensing? Kind of a catch 22, it is going to cost plenty...one way or another. That is what it boils down to for our company. Which one is going to be cheaper in the long run? That is not something any company (especially this one) is prepared to make quickly. Another quick point, this is the third time this week some type of *major* issue has been found with MS web hosting software. I do know that our ops dept is getting a bit cranky lately , and who blames them .
Mabbe the sysadmins that are locking up shop are planning on studying different ways to combat DoS attacks.I did hear that one guy had a flux capacitor to install and configure. It does sound very silly and childish to punish the many for the sins of thew few sounds like sysadmin powertripping to me. Try this analogy...a bar fight....does the bar close because a few jackasses throw some hooks? Its just stupid. A DoS denies service, as does this silly garbage,no matter what the motivation or source of that Dos. I guess it is each sysadmins right to pull his server at any time , but in this instance I think they are just shooting their own feet.
I work for a local ISP. I wouldn't really mind a ban on Napster. Yes, I do use it, yes I enjoy the heck out of it. The majority of our users are older retired folks who are *barely* able to retrieve mail, much less operate an mp3 player. So , go ahead, block the port. Really won't stop my friends and I, and who knows, it might just speed things up for us. We also have a cap on our monthly unlimited dial ups. 175 hours is the limit, with an additional charge for hours over. This is a tough selling point in the days of unlimited access. But once again, I love it. Lots of people do not like the idea of 175 hours , so we only sign up a few real dedicated users who have the brains to realize that 175 hours is still a good amount of time for the average user. We not claim to be the ISP for everyone, thus we preserve the limited IPs we do have for our own users.Point here being, the only reason this cap works, is because our customers have accepted it. If not, we would be out of business real fast. Until the hardware backbone catches up so to speak, with the boom we have in consumer participation in the Internet as a whole, we will probably have to put up with caps and limitations of all sorts. How long the caps and such continue is pretty much up to us, as we are the only ones controlling our wallets. If there becomes(is) a need for higher speed (broadband), higher bandwidth providers, it will not be long before some enterprising indiviual with some money to spare starts providing this service( for a fee of course). But as long as people are willing to pay for capped or limited usage, I am afraid that the almighty dollar will continue to speak for us.
Seems that Napster and the like have taken the role of scapegoat in this situation. Try this analogy. Imagine traffic on a rather busy urban street. How many of those folks out there are speeding? How many do not have insurance...etc..? The point is, how many are illegal in one fashion or another. Now we come to an intersection..holy cow , what a traffic jam. Is the solution to try and remove the illegal drivers from the road? Not really, even though there is a marginal force in place to curtail it. The solution is to widen the intersection, make new lanes, find new ways to route traffic. Actually, to really nail this home, in Tucson where I reside, there is a busy intersection that was actually *reduced* by two lanes, because the local police department is unable to control speeders through the intersection. I do not fully understand this rationale, but it does show that even police departments realize that the absolute ideal of a crime free society is just that: an unattainable absolute ideal.
Well I just feel like being a dick and pointing out that with all of the problems with security and such with Hotmail, and especially since it is so highly publicized every time Hotmail/MS hiccups, you must be an absolute moron to continue using it. Geezus H Christ, spend $ 5.00 and go get a goddam personal email account at an ISP that doesn't include a dial up if mail is all you need. C'mon people, let's use our brains here.
As a former employee of Intuit, I can assure you that Intuit has NO plans for a port to Linux. Their last port of their Turbo Tax software for Windows was botched so bad in the Mac port it was absolutely ridiculous. I have spoken with their developers . They sneer at Linux ( sad, but true). There are 15 developers for the WIn apps, 3 for the Mac, and no plans to expand.Linux??? Ha hah, they simply aren't capable of being that foresighted.
While I have had support for the Mach64 video chipset for a while, it has only been in the last few months that my ATI TV card had any Linux support. This was due to ATI's refusal to provide any driver info whatsoever. What a fine turnaround this new attitude seems to be, wonder what changed their mind, and how long it will last?
Unfortunately with all the flak Macs have been receiving lately, I do not find this surprising. Macintosh has always been notoriously hard to get good *current* games for. It's nice hardware, but all these years later, we still cannot get the same quality/quantity of software that's available for the Wintel platform.
You can have your license suspended for not being in town when you have a court date for a speeding ticket. Point is, licensing does nothing to guarantee a safe driver.
Imagine if your favorite group of musicians asked you to come over and help write their latest hit. How many of us would do it *gladly* ? I for one would. The parallel is this; does every contribution to a project come with finacial gain? New problems demand new solutions, and congrats to any company willing and able to be as flexible as Loki in implementing , or at the very least experimenting with new solutions.
Good god, but slack was my first attempt at a Linux install. What an absolute nightmare. Is it valid to still be a bit gunshy about retying something that caused me severe emotional distress? I am real used to the Mandrake/Redhat way of doing things. Might be a good idea to broaden my experience though, and try some new flavors.
I must be one in a million. I went to a private catholic high school in New York, and was taught both Creationism in my religion class, and Evolution in biology. What a concept!! To further sweeten the pot, my comparative religions course was *not* taught by one of the nuns, it was taught by a layperson(non clergy teacher). We did have the occasional chapel ceremony, but for the most part , it was a perfect combination of religous dogma vs scientific thinking. We were even very specifically taught the connotations of dogma, so we would be better prepared to make decisions for ourselves. Why wouldn't more schools do this? Good question, here's my thought(s). When the U.S. school system was put together many years ago, it was designed as more of a child care so the parents could work type of situation. We still conform to that type of thinking unfortunately. It is a biological fact, as puberty approaches, the human brain does much better if the morning starts about 10:00 am. Even though there is scientific evidence for this, we still send kids to school at roughly the same time that parents leave for work (in the stereotypical american family). We teach our children that when approaching a busy street with traffic, as long as there are lines painted on the ground, traffic will stop for you. Sorry, that's just not very well thought out IMHO. Let's *teach* our children the skills involved in crossing a busy street:in the long run its much more realistic.My point here is this: there appears to be some illogic going on in the way we approach teaching our kids. The curriculum in a lot of cases is just inadequate to prepare our kids for the Real World. The example of evolution vs creationism is just that;an example of more ways our own confusion between dogma and scientific evidence works against us. In order to solve some of this education problem in the U.S. , we would need to rethink every principle taught our youngsters, and I am sorry to say we are not mature enough as a race to do this. Historically there has always been a battle between dogma and scientific evidence (or lack of evidence). It seems that it is human nature to resist change to our foundational thinking processes, so I am kind of forced into a rather pessimistic view of the future on this one.
-how to learn for yourself when there is no teacher (and get paid while doing it!)
What a wise way to state that. This comment really hits home. As a freshman CSC student at the local community college, my first class of the week is Programming Fundamentals. This class teaches basic programming fundamentals, while using C++ as its tool. All well and good, I was rather pleased to find out I'd be learning C++ rather than Pascal. The difficulty comes with the C++ assignments given. The teacher absolutely refuses to answer even the most basic C++ questions: such as what does this "#include iostream.h>" mean? The teacher got upset , calling me compulsive in front of class for not letting him not answer this pretty basic question. I basically understand his logic behind not wanting to answer C++ questions,(he wants us to know basic global principles which apply to all languages) but darn it, I don't have any psuedocoding questions. Being under financial aid, dropping the class is *not* an option as I would lose all future financial aid. Transferring classes is an option, but not a viable one as the other campus this class is offered at is almost 22 miles away. So , I am stuck with trying to look at this situation in as positive a light as I can. I ask my C++ questions at the monthly 2600 meeting held at the same campus. Lemme tell you, if you have a vaild programming question, that sure seems to be the place to get answers. In the end, I am forced to question why I need to pay for this type of education. I am consistently proving throughout life that no one else educates me, I teach myself. Let me repeat thatin a different way, because it is the core of what I need to say. No one teaches you anything;all education is an internal process directly related to your desire to learn.Now there are different methods of presentation which can make material markedly easier to learn, but it all boils down to what you are willing to teach yourself. I think the social dicipline learned by accepting harsh (even unfair) criticism in this case in the long run will be what I learn from this CSC degree, but since Im just a freshman (first semester) let's see what happens..
I for one am utterly sick and tired of the holier than thou attitude that seems to flourish on this site. This site gives a real nice forum to express ideas and comments, and yet every single day I see conversations degenerate into name calling and other antisocial hostilities. Jesus H Christ, if you cannot communicate like a civil human being, then PLEASE go back to AOL chat rooms where name calling and assorted flames are more commonly accepted. Wakko, I looked for your original comment , as I do have moderator access. I sure don't see it. Was it written using the same inflamatory tones? Learn to communicate, it will really help in the long run. Granted, mistakes and poor moderation do occur, but to degenerate to calling people morons...really now...grow the fsck up!!
Are we sure that we want to help these people? Remember, the pricipal audience of Jane's are the people that will use violence to surpress civillian populace. Better to try and keep them in the dark as long as possible.
What a concept. Has anyone seen the recent TBS showing of Animal Farm? Anyone notice how eloquent and civil the pigs were? Especially when explaining something;something oppressive and deadly like military intelligence. Let's all be thankful that Microsoft marketing does not operate using these tones, or we would be looking at blue screens of death forever.
-Just my 2 cents; I run an AMD K-6 200 with an FIC motherboard, and there is no way in hell NT will install on this box, forget about the service paks.NT apparently does not support this model mother board. Linux installs in approximately 1 hr, start to finish, with a somewhat usable X window system. The biggest problem I consistently have with a Linux install is clock (or is it hwclock) installs broke every time. Only by applying a "patch" from an older flavor of Redhat will my clock set up properly.Granted, the first time my semi educated ass tried to do this fix, it took several hours, now I've got it down to about 5 minutes or so. To update things, I usually create a dir called updates, and cram it with RPMs. From there it's "rpm -Uvh *.rpm". Now it makes my brain hurt to hear that that is more difficult than applying one (five) Big patches to NT. Let's say I have a mission critical machine. When updating it, would the sysadmin rather have control over every last file that goes in, or would they like a unlabeled envelope of fixes accompanied by a README that *must* be applied as one big whole. I know what I would prefer. I also know that I do not think in the same fashion as a suited manager, who I really believe would make a decision like this. To really even things out, I have nothing to prove/disprove like this test did. I just use what I like,what I can fix, and what I can afford. One other thing I would like to point out is the turn around time. I mean the amount of time elapsed from the definition that a problem exists to the acknowlegement and *release* of a fix. With all of this in consideration, I think it rather insulting to think that once again the masses have been fed misinformation and FUD. But rather than take offense, I for one will add this to my arsenal of "Things I have learned about the real world". Face it people, we are surrounded by incompetence at all levels;from your average Mc'Donald's worker , to the most high office(presidency,etc..) I think that is sysadmins really think that they would rather wait for 1(5) *big* updates for NT really had best look out for their jobs, there are too many hungry college students just itching to take your job .
We better pay real close attention to what happens with this patent idea. As computing becomes more heuristic, we have more and more of this type of technology to deal with. Technology is becoming more powerful by leaps and bounds; is it true that absolute power corrupts absolutely?
In this new age of near instantaneous transmission of information(except when under the slashdot effect), it is very interesting to see the weight which this betting agency places on Y2k events happening.As a true computer nerd, I get asked quite often by computer newbies what I think will happen come Y2k. Honestly, with my level of outside the home PC usage, I'm not too sure.While I know that one of my machines is Y2k compliant, the 486 in the corner is not. What I am saying is this does not mean I am more than passingly familiar with the system the electric company uses, or the airport, or the police department. Here comes CompanyX, who puts it all in perspective for me by translating technology that I am not expert in into financial terms that are much more universally understood. I mean how else do we assign importance to an event/object; Assign a monetary value to it! Isn't this extension of capitalism to be expected in this day of communication? One of the biggest adjustments our society as a whole needs to contemplate, is the way we process our information. There is a lot of new technology in this world, and for most people, there is not the time or motivation to become experts in more than a few fields. What about the rest of the world , the world in which we are not expert? We need to rely on others to gather data, and to some extent process that information for us. As with any scientific process, if the data is bad or unreliable, then the results from that point on are skewed. For the majority of us who rely on mass media for our info/processing, how often is that data skewed or incomplete? While I feel confident that I can point to my own weakness' in this area, I wish I had an answer. I do believe that for me, the answer is continued education, and a constant re evaluation of what I believe to be relevant/important/true. As I grow older and wiser, well...we'll see, won't we.
The police are there to stop the kind of abuse you describe, when individuals use your excuse it simply becomes vigilante tactics. I beg to differ. The police have neither the manpower nor the resources to act as personal security guards. How much time do you really have if you are being threatened? Ask your local officer what his response time would be in the case of a home invasion. You might be surprised at his/her answer.
Slashdot Mirror
I work for a mid sized ISP. We host a small number of commerce sites using IIS and MSSQL . Most of our customers use FP98 or some variant to maintain/screw up their pages. Part of the frustration in hearing of backdoor issues like this involves the cost of migrating away from NT based hosting. Think of it like this;we pay X amount of dollars to license NT and IIS to start off with. That's no small chunk.Then we spend a huge amount of hours designing and maintaing sites. Now, since we have spent all this money , well the board wants to squeeze it's money's worth out of it. What kind of man hours are involved in making a *smooth* transition to a flavor of BSD for instance? And how do you rationalize the money spent on MS licensing? Kind of a catch 22, it is going to cost plenty...one way or another. That is what it boils down to for our company. Which one is going to be cheaper in the long run? That is not something any company (especially this one) is prepared to make quickly. Another quick point, this is the third time this week some type of *major* issue has been found with MS web hosting software. I do know that our ops dept is getting a bit cranky lately , and who blames them .
Mabbe the sysadmins that are locking up shop are planning on studying different ways to combat DoS attacks.I did hear that one guy had a flux capacitor to install and configure.
It does sound very silly and childish to punish the many for the sins of thew few sounds like sysadmin powertripping to me. Try this analogy...a bar fight....does the bar close because a few jackasses throw some hooks? Its just stupid. A DoS denies service, as does this silly garbage,no matter what the motivation or source of that Dos. I guess it is each sysadmins right to pull his server at any time , but in this instance I think they are just shooting their own feet.
BTW, that quote is by Thomas Jefferson
I work for a local ISP. I wouldn't really mind a ban on Napster. Yes, I do use it, yes I enjoy the heck out of it. The majority of our users are older retired folks who are *barely* able to retrieve mail, much less operate an mp3 player. So , go ahead, block the port. Really won't stop my friends and I, and who knows, it might just speed things up for us. We also have a cap on our monthly unlimited dial ups. 175 hours is the limit, with an additional charge for hours over. This is a tough selling point in the days of unlimited access. But once again, I love it. Lots of people do not like the idea of 175 hours , so we only sign up a few real dedicated users who have the brains to realize that 175 hours is still a good amount of time for the average user. We not claim to be the ISP for everyone, thus we preserve the limited IPs we do have for our own users.Point here being, the only reason this cap works, is because our customers have accepted it. If not, we would be out of business real fast. Until the hardware backbone catches up so to speak, with the boom we have in consumer participation in the Internet as a whole, we will probably have to put up with caps and limitations of all sorts. How long the caps and such continue is pretty much up to us, as we are the only ones controlling our wallets. If there becomes(is) a need for higher speed (broadband), higher bandwidth providers, it will not be long before some enterprising indiviual with some money to spare starts providing this service( for a fee of course). But as long as people are willing to pay for capped or limited usage, I am afraid that the almighty dollar will continue to speak for us.
Seems that Napster and the like have taken the role of scapegoat in this situation. Try this analogy. Imagine traffic on a rather busy urban street. How many of those folks out there are speeding? How many do not have insurance...etc..? The point is, how many are illegal in one fashion or another. Now we come to an intersection..holy cow , what a traffic jam. Is the solution to try and remove the illegal drivers from the road? Not really, even though there is a marginal force in place to curtail it. The solution is to widen the intersection, make new lanes, find new ways to route traffic. Actually, to really nail this home, in Tucson where I reside, there is a busy intersection that was actually *reduced* by two lanes, because the local police department is unable to control speeders through the intersection. I do not fully understand this rationale, but it does show that even police departments realize that the absolute ideal of a crime free society is just that: an unattainable absolute ideal.
Well I just feel like being a dick and pointing out that with all of the problems with security and such with Hotmail, and especially since it is so highly publicized every time Hotmail/MS hiccups, you must be an absolute moron to continue using it. Geezus H Christ, spend $ 5.00 and go get a goddam personal email account at an ISP that doesn't include a dial up if mail is all you need. C'mon people, let's use our brains here.
As a former employee of Intuit, I can assure you that Intuit has NO plans for a port to Linux. Their last port of their Turbo Tax software for Windows was botched so bad in the Mac port it was absolutely ridiculous. I have spoken with their developers . They sneer at Linux ( sad, but true). There are 15 developers for the WIn apps, 3 for the Mac, and no plans to expand.Linux??? Ha hah, they simply aren't capable of being that foresighted.
" A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither"--Thomas Jefferson
Think about it...
While I have had support for the Mach64 video chipset for a while, it has only been in the last few months that my ATI TV card had any Linux support. This was due to ATI's refusal to provide any driver info whatsoever. What a fine turnaround this new attitude seems to be, wonder what changed their mind, and how long it will last?
Unfortunately with all the flak Macs have been receiving lately, I do not find this surprising. Macintosh has always been notoriously hard to get good *current* games for. It's nice hardware, but all these years later, we still cannot get the same quality/quantity of software that's available for the Wintel platform.
You can have your license suspended for not being in town when you have a court date for a speeding ticket. Point is, licensing does nothing to guarantee a safe driver.
Imagine if your favorite group of musicians asked you to come over and help write their latest hit. How many of us would do it *gladly* ? I for one would. The parallel is this; does every contribution to a project come with finacial gain? New problems demand new solutions, and congrats to any company willing and able to be as flexible as Loki in implementing , or at the very least experimenting with new solutions.
Good god, but slack was my first attempt at a Linux install. What an absolute nightmare. Is it valid to still be a bit gunshy about retying something that caused me severe emotional distress? I am real used to the Mandrake/Redhat way of doing things. Might be a good idea to broaden my experience though, and try some new flavors.
I must be one in a million. I went to a private catholic high school in New York, and was taught both Creationism in my religion class, and Evolution in biology. What a concept!! To further sweeten the pot, my comparative religions course was *not* taught by one of the nuns, it was taught by a layperson(non clergy teacher). We did have the occasional chapel ceremony, but for the most part , it was a perfect combination of religous dogma vs scientific thinking. We were even very specifically taught the connotations of dogma, so we would be better prepared to make decisions for ourselves. Why wouldn't more schools do this?
Good question, here's my thought(s). When the U.S. school system was put together many years ago, it was designed as more of a child care so the parents could work type of situation. We still conform to that type of thinking unfortunately. It is a biological fact, as puberty approaches, the human brain does much better if the morning starts about 10:00 am. Even though there is scientific evidence for this, we still send kids to school at roughly the same time that parents leave for work (in the stereotypical american family). We teach our children that when approaching a busy street with traffic, as long as there are lines painted on the ground, traffic will stop for you. Sorry, that's just not very well thought out IMHO. Let's *teach* our children the skills involved in crossing a busy street:in the long run its much more realistic.My point here is this: there appears to be some illogic going on in the way we approach teaching our kids. The curriculum in a lot of cases is just inadequate to prepare our kids for the Real World. The example of evolution vs creationism is just that;an example of more ways our own confusion between dogma and scientific evidence works against us.
In order to solve some of this education problem in the U.S. , we would need to rethink every principle taught our youngsters, and I am sorry to say we are not mature enough as a race to do this. Historically there has always been a battle between dogma and scientific evidence (or lack of evidence). It seems that it is human nature to resist change to our foundational thinking processes, so I am kind of forced into a rather pessimistic view of the future on this one.
if (evolution_theory != no_evidence)
truth = creationism
else
mind_closes_like steel trap
-how to learn for yourself when there is no teacher (and get paid while doing it!)
What a wise way to state that. This comment really hits home. As a freshman CSC student at the local community college, my first class of the week is Programming Fundamentals. This class teaches basic programming fundamentals, while using C++ as its tool. All well and good, I was rather pleased to find out I'd be learning C++ rather than Pascal. The difficulty comes with the C++ assignments given. The teacher absolutely refuses to answer even the most basic C++ questions: such as what does this "#include iostream.h>" mean? The teacher got upset , calling me compulsive in front of class for not letting him not answer this pretty basic question. I basically understand his logic behind not wanting to answer C++ questions,(he wants us to know basic global principles which apply to all languages) but darn it, I don't have any psuedocoding questions. Being under financial aid, dropping the class is *not* an option as I would lose all future financial aid. Transferring classes is an option, but not a viable one as the other campus this class is offered at is almost 22 miles away. So , I am stuck with trying to look at this situation in as positive a light as I can. I ask my C++ questions at the monthly 2600 meeting held at the same campus. Lemme tell you, if you have a vaild programming question, that sure seems to be the place to get answers. In the end, I am forced to question why I need to pay for this type of education. I am consistently proving throughout life that no one else educates me, I teach myself.
Let me repeat thatin a different way, because it is the core of what I need to say. No one teaches you anything;all education is an internal process directly related to your desire to learn.Now there are different methods of presentation which can make material markedly easier to learn, but it all boils down to what you are willing to teach yourself. I think the social dicipline learned by accepting harsh (even unfair) criticism in this case in the long run will be what I learn from this CSC degree, but since Im just a freshman (first semester) let's see what happens..
I for one am utterly sick and tired of the holier than thou attitude that seems to flourish on this site. This site gives a real nice forum to express ideas and comments, and yet every single day I see conversations degenerate into name calling and other antisocial hostilities. Jesus H Christ, if you cannot communicate like a civil human being, then PLEASE go back to AOL chat rooms where name calling and assorted flames are more commonly accepted. Wakko, I looked for your original comment , as I do have moderator access. I sure don't see it. Was it written using the same inflamatory tones? Learn to communicate, it will really help in the long run. Granted, mistakes and poor moderation do occur, but to degenerate to calling people morons ...really now...grow the fsck up!!
Are we sure that we want to help these people? Remember, the pricipal audience of Jane's are the people that will use violence to surpress civillian populace. Better to try and keep them in the dark as long as possible.
;something oppressive and deadly like military intelligence. Let's all be thankful that Microsoft marketing does not operate using these tones, or we would be looking at blue screens of death forever.
What a concept. Has anyone seen the recent TBS showing of Animal Farm? Anyone notice how eloquent and civil the pigs were? Especially when explaining something
-Just my 2 cents; I run an AMD K-6 200 with an FIC motherboard, and there is no way in hell NT will install on this box, forget about the service paks.NT apparently does not support this model mother board. Linux installs in approximately 1 hr, start to finish, with a somewhat usable X window system. The biggest problem I consistently have with a Linux install is clock (or is it hwclock) installs broke every time. Only by applying a "patch" from an older flavor of Redhat will my clock set up properly.Granted, the first time my semi educated ass tried to do this fix, it took several hours, now I've got it down to about 5 minutes or so. To update things, I usually create a dir called updates, and cram it with RPMs. From there it's "rpm -Uvh *.rpm". Now it makes my brain hurt to hear that that is more difficult than applying one (five) Big patches to NT. Let's say I have a mission critical machine. When updating it, would the sysadmin rather have control over every last file that goes in, or would they like a unlabeled envelope of fixes accompanied by a README that *must* be applied as one big whole. I know what I would prefer. I also know that I do not think in the same fashion as a suited manager, who I really believe would make a decision like this. To really even things out, I have nothing to prove/disprove like this test did. I just use what I like,what I can fix, and what I can afford.
One other thing I would like to point out is the turn around time. I mean the amount of time elapsed from the definition that a problem exists to the acknowlegement and *release* of a fix. With all of this in consideration, I think it rather insulting to think that once again the masses have been fed misinformation and FUD. But rather than take offense, I for one will add this to my arsenal of "Things I have learned about the real world". Face it people, we are surrounded by incompetence at all levels;from your average Mc'Donald's worker , to the most high office(presidency,etc..)
I think that is sysadmins really think that they would rather wait for 1(5) *big* updates for NT really had best look out for their jobs, there are too many hungry college students just itching to take your job .
We better pay real close attention to what happens with this patent idea. As computing becomes more heuristic, we have more and more of this type of technology to deal with. Technology is becoming more powerful by leaps and bounds; is it true that absolute power corrupts absolutely?
In this new age of near instantaneous transmission of information(except when under the slashdot effect), it is very interesting to see the weight which this betting agency places on Y2k events happening.As a true computer nerd, I get asked quite often by computer newbies what I think will happen come Y2k. Honestly, with my level of outside the home PC usage, I'm not too sure.While I know that one of my machines is Y2k compliant, the 486 in the corner is not. What I am saying is this does not mean I am more than passingly familiar with the system the electric company uses, or the airport, or the police department. Here comes CompanyX, who puts it all in perspective for me by translating technology that I am not expert in into financial terms that are much more universally understood. I mean how else do we assign importance to an event/object; Assign a monetary value to it! Isn't this extension of capitalism to be expected in this day of communication? One of the biggest adjustments our society as a whole needs to contemplate, is the way we process our information. There is a lot of new technology in this world, and for most people, there is not the time or motivation to become experts in more than a few fields. What about the rest of the world , the world in which we are not expert? We need to rely on others to gather data, and to some extent process that information for us. As with any scientific process, if the data is bad or unreliable, then the results from that point on are skewed. For the majority of us who rely on mass media for our info/processing, how often is that data skewed or incomplete?
While I feel confident that I can point to my own weakness' in this area, I wish I had an answer. I do believe that for me, the answer is continued education, and a constant re evaluation of what I believe to be relevant/important/true. As I grow older and wiser, well...we'll see, won't we.
The police are there to stop the kind of abuse you describe, when individuals use your excuse it simply becomes vigilante tactics.
I beg to differ. The police have neither the manpower nor the resources to act as personal security guards. How much time do you really have if you are being threatened? Ask your local officer what his response time would be in the case of a home invasion. You might be surprised at his/her answer.