You are either delusional, bad at math or both. You would have to spend $1000 per month from the time you turned 16 until you were 100 for it to cost around a million dollars.
That's already $800 as an average figure. For some people, insurance will be much higher than that (even higher than $1000!), for others, it may be lower. Some people might buy a new car every 5 years or so (so always paying something for the car), others might use the same car for 30 years (this would make a huge difference, actually).
Now, if you factor in inflation (about 4%), in 50 years, that $800 will be $5700, so, for rough estimation, we can use the average: more than $3000, and that's more than enough to spend $1 mil, if you drive from when you were 20 until you were 70---not a terribly unlikely scenario.
Who's bad at math now?
P.S. To be perfectly honest, I came up with that $1 mil figure by squinting at my parent poster's figure of $20,000 - $30,000 that he would save by not paying for insurance, but it's not too far from the truth.
Anyway, I think the last thing you want to do with drivers is to make them think that they are anonymous. That would be a recipe for disaster!
When you walk around the street, you are completely anonymous (if you'd like, you can wear hats and sun glasses---those don't really arouse suspicions), and yet, I don't see a disaster happening.
Sure, some people get mugged every now and then (and some cars do get hijacked as well), but you don't see people punching each other at every given chance, or pushing other people over so that they can get to their destination faster.
The truth is, most people, at least in person, are nice. Anonymous or not, most of them won't be a jackass without cause. People who hit and run will hit and run even with their license plate in full view, but I'd hope that most people, after hitting someone/something, will stop to clean up their mess even if they are anonymous to passers-by. (If that's not true, I hope a nuclear war would happen right now to cleanse the earth of these miserable creatures.)
On the Internet, where it's easy to get an audience and where there are no real (perceived) consequences, it's a different situation, of course. But in real life, where there isn't a huge audience and the consequences of one's actions are quite clear, anonymity is not a recipe for disaster.
If license plate numbers didn't exist, you'd have WAAAY more people running from the cops.
You know, I had an idea. If we legally require that an RFID tag be implanted on every adult's hand (if you don't like electronics, simple barcode may suffice as well), then we will make law enforcement much easier and more effective. Now all a cop needs to do is scan your RFID tag from a distance, and when they tell you to stop, you stop.
If you try to run after they take your RFID code, you are an idiot because "evading a police officer" charge will show up on your record, possibly including an arrest warrant, etc.
So, this sounds like a great idea to make the society safe from all those people running from the law, no? After all, if it works with vehicles, why not with people?
Having been in an accident, and been sued, I will always maintain insurance. Even if I have billions, to the point where I've no worries at all about being able to handle any settlement, I'll still maintain auto insurance because they will handle things if something happens. The $30,000-50,000 or so I'd save over my life of driving just isn't worth the hassle.
On the other hand, I'd rather not drive at all. I'll save practically a million or so (cost of car + gas + insurance) over my life of not driving, and occasional rental costs + public transportation usage is pocket change compared to that.
Sadly, what most people do not realize is that they do not actually need a car ownership (or need to put themselves in a situation in which they need a car ownership).
I point your attention to "Microsoft Giving Campaign" on this page.
If everyone at Microsoft were evil, we wouldn't be seeing that name there (unless it's some sort of a practical joke).
But at some point, we have to weigh the evil (things and people) of a company against the good (things and people). When that point comes, where will Microsoft lie?
It will not change minds. And the FSF needs to win the hearts and minds, not reinforce your opinion as an FSF supporter.
The only way FSF (or anybody else) can do that is by "moving to the center" (as Obama has abundantly proven so far).
I'd like to think that a vocal minority has far more capacity to change the society than a maleable feel-good charity organization.
I prefer fanatics and extremists (either those with whom I agree, e.g. FSF and EFF, or those with whom I don't agree, e.g. Al Qaeda) to the self-described "moderates". At least with fanatics, you know where they stand---and you know they won't flip-flop (the definition of which is changing one's position for a purely political reason---FSF has changed its position on various issues for non-political reasons, e.g. a license, such as 4-clause BSD license, was revised sufficiently to be considered free, plenty of times).
And by society you mean Californian society. A non-Californian has a snowball's chance in hell of getting in and being able to pay.
Let me know when non-Californians have to pay the California state tax. Until that changes, I don't see why a Californian institution should place any value in serving those who have not contributed to the Californian society [1]. If you are from out of state, then it's just like any other highly prestigious private colleges to you, at least until you get here.
And I should say that most students, especially if they hold a job while they are here, qualify for California residency for tuition purposes in a year or two. On the other hand, if they are trust-fund babies, with mom and dad paying for their way all the way through the fourth year, I have absolutely no sympathy for them---and I don't see why the state should.
[1] Having said that, I should also say that indirectly, University of California has been beneficial to the society (O.K. U.S. society) at large. It provides a model for other state universities, as well as having been instrumental in certain changes, such as getting ETS to change SAT several years ago, which has been deemed discriminatory by some people for some time. Many private colleges have neither the mindset nor the capacity for doing as much good.
You mean that a progressive institution like Berkeley has not instituted affirmative action to right wrongs?
In California, that would be illegal, per Proposition 209. Note that these propositions are supposed to be "voter-initiated". Do you think that a public-funded university (somewhere from 1/3 to 1/2 of the budget comes from the state, I think) shouldn't heed the public's needs and wants? If that's what "progressive" means, boy, I am glad that I don't consider myself "progressive" (on the other hand, I do consider myself a libertarian).
Besides, this has to be the most self-contradictory thing I read this month: "Merit-based admissions are highly discriminatory." Merit-based admissions are fair and balanced. Affirmative action isn't called "reverse discrimination" without a reason---we should strive for equality of opportunities, not equality of statistics (and, in that aspect, University of California sponsors plenty of outreach programs, especially now that they are forbidden from using gender and race as a factor in admissions).
They're just using it to mean "university that I could never afford".
Except, of course, they added UC Berkeley to the list. UC Berkeley is a public institution, whose mission is partly making post-secondary education accessible to everyone (... everyone in California, that is), regardless of their social status (of course, you still have to be good enough to get in, unlike Ivy League schools, where you can simply donate enough, if you aren't good enough).
In my mind, UC Berkeley shouldn't be roped together with Ivy League schools---because regardless of what rankings may say, UC Berkeley (and, to be fair, other leading public universities) is fundamentally better than Ivy League schools, in terms of how it contributes to the society at large.
You know that as soon as some really unbreakable OSS project takes the place of skype, someone will jump up and claim that OSS is promoting terrorism since it keeps the feds from snooping at you?
Well, if they haven't gone after PGP (and by extension, GnuPG) yet, even though, as far as anyone knows, even the NSA can't break it, I highly doubt that the feds will be able to do anything about secure and free VoIP software. In fact, I think they exist already (after all, you just need to tack an end-to-end encryption on usual VoIP), except that very few people are using them.
There used to be something called Wengophone but it looks like its supporting company, Wengo, has moved onto other things.
As far as I know, the software is still being developed (at least no one admitted that it's being abandoned completely), but I am not so sure about the VoIP service itself. My account still seems to work (and apparently, they are not expiring points after 6 months any more, even though I can't find anything official that says they changed their rules), but I'm not sure if you can open a new one.
To confirm this you can do as I do and send emails offering to take over a defunct project. See if you get a reply in less than three months and you will be doing better than I did. I did get a reply, and it went along the lines of nobody being bothered enough to see if they could track down one of the many gnu CDROMS with the original code.
Which defunct project? I don't know of any---it's true many of the software releases haven't been as often as, e.g. Firefox, but I suspect that's more because most of GNU tools have matured and bug-fix releases haven't been necessary for a while. Newer projects, such as GNU Octave, are very actively developed.
And, pray tell me, why would they need to track down "one of the many GNU CD-ROMs with the original code", when the whole program, with its source code, in its entirety, is available on their FTP server?
Unless your anecdote is from before the age of Internet (which is never, since free software movement was practically born with the Internet), I highly doubt that there is any truth to it.
And as a member of FSF, I fully support this campaign. Apple is on the forefront of eroding users' freedom these days, and it's about time that someone asked the right questions.
Of course, Apple fanboys will blow this campaign all out of proportion, but just imagine:
there are 217 Apple stores, and at an extremely generous estimate, there are 10,000 FSF members (I'm going by my member number). Even if all FSF members were to book at least one slot (again, an unlikely scenario), that works out to less than 50 slots per store, fewer than 4 hours per day per stores (for total of 8 hours per store, but a more realistic estimate will probably keep it to something less than 1 hour per store). I highly doubt that this will inconvenience anyone, especially just before a weekend---but the right questions will be asked, and who knows, maybe one of those geniuses will finally realize what Apple is doing is wrong.
You know what, I think I'll increase my monthly contribution to FSF just for this---and swear off Apple for ever.
* OSX' core (Darwin) is actually open source. The NT core (last I checked) is not.
Er, you might want to check that. Darwin hasn't been open source in a long time. They never released the source code for Intel versions, and unless OS X itself hasn't changed in, oh, over two years, Apple effectively stopped supporting Darwin altogether.
Apple might have started out with OS X looking like "open source", but since then, it went back to its old proprietary ways in more ways than one.
Apple might not be the monopolist, but Apple is the master of vendor lock-in (that's how Microsoft got to be so popular in the first place, before they became too evil for people to bear), from its Apple II days until now. I shudder to think what would happen if Apple ever gains a significant market share.
So what? If a handful of users can see the trolls big deal - the goal is to mute not delete.
Er, when the handful of users also get muted along with the troll---i.e. if and when they post, no one else sees their posts either---is it still not a big deal?
I suppose that's a decision the forum/website admin has to make eventually, but I'd sure hope that a majority of admins would rather let a troll speak than silence many rule-abiding users.
I don't wonder that the Tor people are upset by this study, because it makes some credible-looking claims that Tor does not adequately provide the anonymity it claims to.
I don't know where you get that idea. TOR developers are perfectly aware of TOR's limitations. They even warn you on their website.
They say specifically,
3. No anonymity system is perfect these days, and Tor is no exception: you should not rely solely on the current Tor network if you really need strong anonymity.
And in the list of warnings,
5. While Tor blocks attackers on your local network from discovering or influencing your destination, it opens new risks: malicious or misconfigured Tor exit nodes can send you the wrong page, or even send you embedded Java applets disguised as domains you trust.
Nothing in this study is new or ground-breaking. While I am not familiar enough with TOR to say whether if it will even be marginally useful, but I won't be surprised if there is nothing in this study that TOR developers didn't know or suspect already.
The word appears in my copy of "Greek-English Lexicon" by Liddell and Scott, Ninth Edition (Abridged).
Didn't anyone tell you that only high schoolers who, with their small brain, didn't have time to learn Greek properly use the little Liddell? Anyone who has studied Greek with any proficiency eventually moves up to middle Liddell, since it has rarer vocabularies while not wasting space on the "irregular" forms that any worthy student ought to know.
Here's the page where you supposedly claim that this mythical word "rheteros" appears [1]. Do you see it? I don't [2]. If I were in an extremely generous mood, I might say that you meant the genitive form of "rheter", "rheteros" (both etas, not epsilons), but in that case, you got both the meaning and the grammatical function wrong: It means "of a speaker", not "speech".
And my point stands, whether you take it or not.
And your point is completely wrong. I was going to leave it off at the little nitpicking, but your hypocrisy (especially "Nowadays, it seems "one-upmanship" is far more important than scholarship. Your reply is Q.E.D." My criticism was a perfectly valid, fact-based, well-cited criticism of a factual remark you made. That comment of yours, to borrow your own word, is "one-upmanship", you hypocrite) is so disgusting that I have to dismantle your entire argument.
One, "rhetoric" never meant anything positive. If you mean "rhetoric" as the study of public speaking, it is at best value-neutral. The way nuclear technology is value neutral---it can be used for good, or great unspeakable evil. But, from the beginning, rhetoric always carried negative connotation. Do you know who the first "rhetors" (public speakers) were? If you had any sort of education befitting your posturing, you should know: they were the sophists, or their students, whose job, in the words of Socrates (to be granted, their enemy), was "to make weak argument stronger". The function of rhetoric was solely to convince others to what you are advocating, right from the very beginning, not to mention its English version. It didn't matter whether what you were advocating was true (it may well have been). It didn't matter whether it was for public interest (it may well have been). It didn't matter if you yourself actually believed it (you may well have).
The only way one could attach any sort of positive connotation to "rhetoric" was if you were a mercenary. Why? It gave you money and prestige being the demagogue, or a servant of one (that is, if one was any good at it, unlike you, Illbay).
Two, to get to the heart of your point, no, everyone (except you, apparently) understands English perfectly. I believe by "clarity", you were simply complaining about the changing meaning of words, such as "monopolistic". Sibling posters also brought up this point, so I'll be light on it, but if the word "monopolistic" has come to mean simply "evil" (or sharing other characteristics of a monopoly), then that is the correct English meaning, Greek root be damned (and I say it as a long-time student of Greek, well into college and graduate school). It's about time that you prescriptive grammarians realized that native speakers, as a group, can never be wrong. Native speakers DEFINE the language. If they want to use "monopoly" to mean what we mean by "giraffe" now, and if the majority do use it like that, then that is the correct meaning of "monopoly". Something like that happened many, many times over the years (for example, look up the word "apothecary", which is a perfectly fine English word, and see if its present meaning has any hint of what the originating Greek word meant).
So, to wrap up, the young generation speaks English just fine (or even better so, presumably because they write more blogging and such), and you, Illbay, are a freaking hypocrite.
I am not denying or claiming that anything is wrong but how does CEO's hands-on involvement for patching indicate anything?
I don't think anyone has said it's a "proof" of a cover-up when a CEO gets involved. It's just that it's very suspicious (why didn't he send a technician/engineer, who should be cheaper and more competent than a CEO at this sort of thing?).
It's same with voting irregularities (also mentioned in TFA). It doesn't prove anything, but it is very suspicious and warrants a detailed investigation in hopes of picking up (or not picking up) something more concrete than suspicion.
Er, did you even read the summary? The summary says:
Stephen Spoonamore, founder of IT security firm Cybrinth and former advisor to John McCain, claims he has new evidence of election tampering by Diebold in the 2002 Georgia gubernatorial and senate races.
So, since you like blaming Republicans for everything, perhaps you will think that this is only because this accusation will benefit Republicans, but if you RTFA, it says that some of the voting irregularity was Democratic candidates (a senator and a governor) losing to Republican candidates, despite having led the polls by a significant margin.
Why don't you just come out and say that you hate Republicans for some irrational reason (perhaps you were molested as a child by Republicans)?
This is an example of how the rising generation is so used to "buzz words" chosen for shock value, etc., and has gone completely away from clarity of speech and writing. What the O.P. means to say, really, is "I don't want to pay the going rate for this service, so I'll call Verisign 'a monopolistic company' because everyone knows 'monopolies' are bad, and that will communicate the 'badness' of 'companies like Verisign.'"
Oddly, the word "rhetoric," also from the Greek (rheteros, "a speech") used to be a positive appellation for the study of good, clear communication of thoughts and ideas. But it has also succumbed to the buzz-word dementia, and now usually means "empty words."
Speak for yourself. The real Greek word meaning "speech" (among many one that is still related to the term "rhetor" or "rheter") is "rhesis".
Come back either after you've found "rheteros" (at best a made-up "Greek" word that you came up with to sound smart without being) or realized your stupidity.
I mean, if you really wanted to sound smart and start spewing "Greek" words without knowing Greek words, why didn't you simply look up an English dictionary that usually states the etymology in a very friendly transliteration to alphabet (so you won't have to wreak your brain trying to learn the Greek letters)?
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You are either delusional, bad at math or both. You would have to spend $1000 per month from the time you turned 16 until you were 100 for it to cost around a million dollars.
Let's see here, per month:
* Insurance for most people: $100
* Monthly payment on the car: $500
* Monthly gas: $200 (based on usage of some people I know)
That's already $800 as an average figure. For some people, insurance will be much higher than that (even higher than $1000!), for others, it may be lower. Some people might buy a new car every 5 years or so (so always paying something for the car), others might use the same car for 30 years (this would make a huge difference, actually).
Now, if you factor in inflation (about 4%), in 50 years, that $800 will be $5700, so, for rough estimation, we can use the average: more than $3000, and that's more than enough to spend $1 mil, if you drive from when you were 20 until you were 70---not a terribly unlikely scenario.
Who's bad at math now?
P.S. To be perfectly honest, I came up with that $1 mil figure by squinting at my parent poster's figure of $20,000 - $30,000 that he would save by not paying for insurance, but it's not too far from the truth.
Anyway, I think the last thing you want to do with drivers is to make them think that they are anonymous. That would be a recipe for disaster!
When you walk around the street, you are completely anonymous (if you'd like, you can wear hats and sun glasses---those don't really arouse suspicions), and yet, I don't see a disaster happening.
Sure, some people get mugged every now and then (and some cars do get hijacked as well), but you don't see people punching each other at every given chance, or pushing other people over so that they can get to their destination faster.
The truth is, most people, at least in person, are nice. Anonymous or not, most of them won't be a jackass without cause. People who hit and run will hit and run even with their license plate in full view, but I'd hope that most people, after hitting someone/something, will stop to clean up their mess even if they are anonymous to passers-by. (If that's not true, I hope a nuclear war would happen right now to cleanse the earth of these miserable creatures.)
On the Internet, where it's easy to get an audience and where there are no real (perceived) consequences, it's a different situation, of course. But in real life, where there isn't a huge audience and the consequences of one's actions are quite clear, anonymity is not a recipe for disaster.
If license plate numbers didn't exist, you'd have WAAAY more people running from the cops.
You know, I had an idea. If we legally require that an RFID tag be implanted on every adult's hand (if you don't like electronics, simple barcode may suffice as well), then we will make law enforcement much easier and more effective. Now all a cop needs to do is scan your RFID tag from a distance, and when they tell you to stop, you stop.
If you try to run after they take your RFID code, you are an idiot because "evading a police officer" charge will show up on your record, possibly including an arrest warrant, etc.
So, this sounds like a great idea to make the society safe from all those people running from the law, no? After all, if it works with vehicles, why not with people?
Having been in an accident, and been sued, I will always maintain insurance. Even if I have billions, to the point where I've no worries at all about being able to handle any settlement, I'll still maintain auto insurance because they will handle things if something happens. The $30,000-50,000 or so I'd save over my life of driving just isn't worth the hassle.
On the other hand, I'd rather not drive at all. I'll save practically a million or so (cost of car + gas + insurance) over my life of not driving, and occasional rental costs + public transportation usage is pocket change compared to that.
Sadly, what most people do not realize is that they do not actually need a car ownership (or need to put themselves in a situation in which they need a car ownership).
You are right.
I point your attention to "Microsoft Giving Campaign" on this page.
If everyone at Microsoft were evil, we wouldn't be seeing that name there (unless it's some sort of a practical joke).
But at some point, we have to weigh the evil (things and people) of a company against the good (things and people). When that point comes, where will Microsoft lie?
It will not change minds. And the FSF needs to win the hearts and minds, not reinforce your opinion as an FSF supporter.
The only way FSF (or anybody else) can do that is by "moving to the center" (as Obama has abundantly proven so far).
I'd like to think that a vocal minority has far more capacity to change the society than a maleable feel-good charity organization.
I prefer fanatics and extremists (either those with whom I agree, e.g. FSF and EFF, or those with whom I don't agree, e.g. Al Qaeda) to the self-described "moderates". At least with fanatics, you know where they stand---and you know they won't flip-flop (the definition of which is changing one's position for a purely political reason---FSF has changed its position on various issues for non-political reasons, e.g. a license, such as 4-clause BSD license, was revised sufficiently to be considered free, plenty of times).
And by society you mean Californian society. A non-Californian has a snowball's chance in hell of getting in and being able to pay.
Let me know when non-Californians have to pay the California state tax. Until that changes, I don't see why a Californian institution should place any value in serving those who have not contributed to the Californian society [1]. If you are from out of state, then it's just like any other highly prestigious private colleges to you, at least until you get here.
And I should say that most students, especially if they hold a job while they are here, qualify for California residency for tuition purposes in a year or two. On the other hand, if they are trust-fund babies, with mom and dad paying for their way all the way through the fourth year, I have absolutely no sympathy for them---and I don't see why the state should.
[1] Having said that, I should also say that indirectly, University of California has been beneficial to the society (O.K. U.S. society) at large. It provides a model for other state universities, as well as having been instrumental in certain changes, such as getting ETS to change SAT several years ago, which has been deemed discriminatory by some people for some time. Many private colleges have neither the mindset nor the capacity for doing as much good.
You mean that a progressive institution like Berkeley has not instituted affirmative action to right wrongs?
In California, that would be illegal, per Proposition 209. Note that these propositions are supposed to be "voter-initiated". Do you think that a public-funded university (somewhere from 1/3 to 1/2 of the budget comes from the state, I think) shouldn't heed the public's needs and wants? If that's what "progressive" means, boy, I am glad that I don't consider myself "progressive" (on the other hand, I do consider myself a libertarian).
Besides, this has to be the most self-contradictory thing I read this month: "Merit-based admissions are highly discriminatory." Merit-based admissions are fair and balanced. Affirmative action isn't called "reverse discrimination" without a reason---we should strive for equality of opportunities, not equality of statistics (and, in that aspect, University of California sponsors plenty of outreach programs, especially now that they are forbidden from using gender and race as a factor in admissions).
In the words of Robert Lund: I'll support your right to bare arms and legs and mammaries :-)
What about the incubator?
They're just using it to mean "university that I could never afford".
Except, of course, they added UC Berkeley to the list. UC Berkeley is a public institution, whose mission is partly making post-secondary education accessible to everyone (... everyone in California, that is), regardless of their social status (of course, you still have to be good enough to get in, unlike Ivy League schools, where you can simply donate enough, if you aren't good enough).
In my mind, UC Berkeley shouldn't be roped together with Ivy League schools---because regardless of what rankings may say, UC Berkeley (and, to be fair, other leading public universities) is fundamentally better than Ivy League schools, in terms of how it contributes to the society at large.
You really think that there exists a practical attack on PGP-based cryptography?
Other than the famous rubberhose attack?
Or did you imply more than the stupidity of GP by saying,
Are you a politician?
?
You know that as soon as some really unbreakable OSS project takes the place of skype, someone will jump up and claim that OSS is promoting terrorism since it keeps the feds from snooping at you?
Well, if they haven't gone after PGP (and by extension, GnuPG) yet, even though, as far as anyone knows, even the NSA can't break it, I highly doubt that the feds will be able to do anything about secure and free VoIP software. In fact, I think they exist already (after all, you just need to tack an end-to-end encryption on usual VoIP), except that very few people are using them.
There used to be something called Wengophone but it looks like its supporting company, Wengo, has moved onto other things.
As far as I know, the software is still being developed (at least no one admitted that it's being abandoned completely), but I am not so sure about the VoIP service itself. My account still seems to work (and apparently, they are not expiring points after 6 months any more, even though I can't find anything official that says they changed their rules), but I'm not sure if you can open a new one.
To confirm this you can do as I do and send emails offering to take over a defunct project. See if you get a reply in less than three months and you will be doing better than I did. I did get a reply, and it went along the lines of nobody being bothered enough to see if they could track down one of the many gnu CDROMS with the original code.
Which defunct project? I don't know of any---it's true many of the software releases haven't been as often as, e.g. Firefox, but I suspect that's more because most of GNU tools have matured and bug-fix releases haven't been necessary for a while. Newer projects, such as GNU Octave, are very actively developed.
And, pray tell me, why would they need to track down "one of the many GNU CD-ROMs with the original code", when the whole program, with its source code, in its entirety, is available on their FTP server?
Unless your anecdote is from before the age of Internet (which is never, since free software movement was practically born with the Internet), I highly doubt that there is any truth to it.
Indeed.
And as a member of FSF, I fully support this campaign. Apple is on the forefront of eroding users' freedom these days, and it's about time that someone asked the right questions.
Of course, Apple fanboys will blow this campaign all out of proportion, but just imagine:
there are 217 Apple stores, and at an extremely generous estimate, there are 10,000 FSF members (I'm going by my member number). Even if all FSF members were to book at least one slot (again, an unlikely scenario), that works out to less than 50 slots per store, fewer than 4 hours per day per stores (for total of 8 hours per store, but a more realistic estimate will probably keep it to something less than 1 hour per store). I highly doubt that this will inconvenience anyone, especially just before a weekend---but the right questions will be asked, and who knows, maybe one of those geniuses will finally realize what Apple is doing is wrong.
You know what, I think I'll increase my monthly contribution to FSF just for this---and swear off Apple for ever.
* OSX' core (Darwin) is actually open source. The NT core (last I checked) is not.
Er, you might want to check that. Darwin hasn't been open source in a long time. They never released the source code for Intel versions, and unless OS X itself hasn't changed in, oh, over two years, Apple effectively stopped supporting Darwin altogether.
Apple might have started out with OS X looking like "open source", but since then, it went back to its old proprietary ways in more ways than one.
Apple might not be the monopolist, but Apple is the master of vendor lock-in (that's how Microsoft got to be so popular in the first place, before they became too evil for people to bear), from its Apple II days until now. I shudder to think what would happen if Apple ever gains a significant market share.
So what? If a handful of users can see the trolls big deal - the goal is to mute not delete.
Er, when the handful of users also get muted along with the troll---i.e. if and when they post, no one else sees their posts either---is it still not a big deal?
I suppose that's a decision the forum/website admin has to make eventually, but I'd sure hope that a majority of admins would rather let a troll speak than silence many rule-abiding users.
Probably just a typo. He missed "policy":
http://www.craigslist.org/about/privacy.policy.html
This is not perfect and there are ways around it
Tor and block cookies?
And how do you prevent the troll from getting a sockpuppet account to check whether other persons can see their posts?
I don't wonder that the Tor people are upset by this study, because it makes some credible-looking claims that Tor does not adequately provide the anonymity it claims to.
I don't know where you get that idea. TOR developers are perfectly aware of TOR's limitations. They even warn you on their website.
They say specifically,
3. No anonymity system is perfect these days, and Tor is no exception: you should not rely solely on the current Tor network if you really need strong anonymity.
And in the list of warnings,
5. While Tor blocks attackers on your local network from discovering or influencing your destination, it opens new risks: malicious or misconfigured Tor exit nodes can send you the wrong page, or even send you embedded Java applets disguised as domains you trust.
Nothing in this study is new or ground-breaking. While I am not familiar enough with TOR to say whether if it will even be marginally useful, but I won't be surprised if there is nothing in this study that TOR developers didn't know or suspect already.
The word appears in my copy of "Greek-English Lexicon" by Liddell and Scott, Ninth Edition (Abridged).
Didn't anyone tell you that only high schoolers who, with their small brain, didn't have time to learn Greek properly use the little Liddell? Anyone who has studied Greek with any proficiency eventually moves up to middle Liddell, since it has rarer vocabularies while not wasting space on the "irregular" forms that any worthy student ought to know.
Here's the page where you supposedly claim that this mythical word "rheteros" appears [1]. Do you see it? I don't [2]. If I were in an extremely generous mood, I might say that you meant the genitive form of "rheter", "rheteros" (both etas, not epsilons), but in that case, you got both the meaning and the grammatical function wrong: It means "of a speaker", not "speech".
And my point stands, whether you take it or not.
And your point is completely wrong. I was going to leave it off at the little nitpicking, but your hypocrisy (especially "Nowadays, it seems "one-upmanship" is far more important than scholarship. Your reply is Q.E.D." My criticism was a perfectly valid, fact-based, well-cited criticism of a factual remark you made. That comment of yours, to borrow your own word, is "one-upmanship", you hypocrite) is so disgusting that I have to dismantle your entire argument.
One, "rhetoric" never meant anything positive. If you mean "rhetoric" as the study of public speaking, it is at best value-neutral. The way nuclear technology is value neutral---it can be used for good, or great unspeakable evil. But, from the beginning, rhetoric always carried negative connotation. Do you know who the first "rhetors" (public speakers) were? If you had any sort of education befitting your posturing, you should know: they were the sophists, or their students, whose job, in the words of Socrates (to be granted, their enemy), was "to make weak argument stronger". The function of rhetoric was solely to convince others to what you are advocating, right from the very beginning, not to mention its English version. It didn't matter whether what you were advocating was true (it may well have been). It didn't matter whether it was for public interest (it may well have been). It didn't matter if you yourself actually believed it (you may well have).
The only way one could attach any sort of positive connotation to "rhetoric" was if you were a mercenary. Why? It gave you money and prestige being the demagogue, or a servant of one (that is, if one was any good at it, unlike you, Illbay).
Two, to get to the heart of your point, no, everyone (except you, apparently) understands English perfectly. I believe by "clarity", you were simply complaining about the changing meaning of words, such as "monopolistic". Sibling posters also brought up this point, so I'll be light on it, but if the word "monopolistic" has come to mean simply "evil" (or sharing other characteristics of a monopoly), then that is the correct English meaning, Greek root be damned (and I say it as a long-time student of Greek, well into college and graduate school). It's about time that you prescriptive grammarians realized that native speakers, as a group, can never be wrong. Native speakers DEFINE the language. If they want to use "monopoly" to mean what we mean by "giraffe" now, and if the majority do use it like that, then that is the correct meaning of "monopoly". Something like that happened many, many times over the years (for example, look up the word "apothecary", which is a perfectly fine English word, and see if its present meaning has any hint of what the originating Greek word meant).
So, to wrap up, the young generation speaks English just fine (or even better so, presumably because they write more blogging and such), and you, Illbay, are a freaking hypocrite.
If you aren't a lying hy
I am not denying or claiming that anything is wrong but how does CEO's hands-on involvement for patching indicate anything?
I don't think anyone has said it's a "proof" of a cover-up when a CEO gets involved. It's just that it's very suspicious (why didn't he send a technician/engineer, who should be cheaper and more competent than a CEO at this sort of thing?).
It's same with voting irregularities (also mentioned in TFA). It doesn't prove anything, but it is very suspicious and warrants a detailed investigation in hopes of picking up (or not picking up) something more concrete than suspicion.
Yes, Republicans.
Er, did you even read the summary? The summary says:
Stephen Spoonamore, founder of IT security firm Cybrinth and former advisor to John McCain, claims he has new evidence of election tampering by Diebold in the 2002 Georgia gubernatorial and senate races.
So, since you like blaming Republicans for everything, perhaps you will think that this is only because this accusation will benefit Republicans, but if you RTFA, it says that some of the voting irregularity was Democratic candidates (a senator and a governor) losing to Republican candidates, despite having led the polls by a significant margin.
Why don't you just come out and say that you hate Republicans for some irrational reason (perhaps you were molested as a child by Republicans)?
This is an example of how the rising generation is so used to "buzz words" chosen for shock value, etc., and has gone completely away from clarity of speech and writing. What the O.P. means to say, really, is "I don't want to pay the going rate for this service, so I'll call Verisign 'a monopolistic company' because everyone knows 'monopolies' are bad, and that will communicate the 'badness' of 'companies like Verisign.'"
Oddly, the word "rhetoric," also from the Greek (rheteros, "a speech") used to be a positive appellation for the study of good, clear communication of thoughts and ideas. But it has also succumbed to the buzz-word dementia, and now usually means "empty words."
Speak for yourself. The real Greek word meaning "speech" (among many one that is still related to the term "rhetor" or "rheter") is "rhesis".
Come back either after you've found "rheteros" (at best a made-up "Greek" word that you came up with to sound smart without being) or realized your stupidity.
I mean, if you really wanted to sound smart and start spewing "Greek" words without knowing Greek words, why didn't you simply look up an English dictionary that usually states the etymology in a very friendly transliteration to alphabet (so you won't have to wreak your brain trying to learn the Greek letters)?