Voting systems are one of those things people will ALWAYS disagree on
Indeed. The real issue is not so much how we vote for who we vote for, but rather what we allow them to do. We are talking about the question of accountability. Local politicians are very accountable because they are close to the people that they directly affect. State politicians are a little less accountable and Federal politicians are almost not at all accountable. It is perfectly logical that we should have a continuum of authority and responsibility. Those in Washington DC should have responsibility for the issues which do NOT impact our everyday lives and which primarily represent us to other federal-level institutions like other nations of the world. State level politicians should be empowered to address issues which affect citizens at the state level and only local politicians should really be empowered to make the decisions which affect people's everyday lives. These considerations were made in the US Constitution and led to the incorporation of the 9th and 10th Amendments which sought to limit the scope of the Federal Government.
Over the years the 9th and 10th Amendments have been routinely ignored because they pose roadblocks for ambitious politicians seeking to carve out a luxurious political career. Our Federal Government has soaked up nearly every responsibility over every part of our lives. Our State representatives are little more than token middlement to distribute the money that DC doles out to the states to various Federal pursuits, and the local politicians are (apologies in advance) little more than a backwater for those people who wanted to be politicians but never hit the big time--like small clubs for bands that never made a big signing deal.
So please feel free to choose whatever election system you like. Unless we find someone to reign in the out-of-control overadministration at the Federal level, none of it will really make a difference.
As opposed to having 50 sets of arbitrary lines drawn in the ground based on what? I jump over some imaginary line and suddenly a new set of laws apply?
Whenever a citizen has a legitimate complaint about the function of our government, the final argument is always,"If you don't like it, then leave." If we put the powers back into the States, as they should be, perhaps people would be free to leave one state and find a state of like-minded people. Instead, we are contantly shifting towards a single-unified all-encompassing least denominator (most restrictive) Federal Government.
All that blather about changing times and evolving documents is just that--blather. There's are good reasons to limit the responsibilities of a Federal Government and those reasons are still applicable today: potential for abuse, efficiency, separation of powers, right tool for the job.
Someone said that 50 states causes more overhead? How is this so? Citizens already pay for local, state, and federal government. At the very worst the overhead will be shifted from the federal level to the state level, but there's no possible way that each individual citizen will end up paying more if we reduce the size of the federal take and strengthen their state. Most of us would see enormous savings. There's a reason why money goes to Washington DC first and then gets handed back to the states. Most States happily follow lock-step with Washington direction in order to secure their yearly payout.
You know.. although many of us realize the US is a federation of states.. it presents itself to the world, and generally acts as any other country would
Which does not necessitate that the outward facing representative body also take on all the duties of micromanaging our everyday lives. I have no problem with the Federal Government representing us on the world scale. The State and Local governments, however, should be the ones primarily responsible for governing within our borders. As it stands currently the Federal Government has done nothing but make power grabs left, right, and six ways to Sunday since the mid 1800s.
Self discipline is cutting back on the twinkies when your fat ass doesn't fit in the car seat. But we subsidize those people. Self discipline is not screwing every piece of tail that walks by. But we'll happily develop pharmaceuticals to treat all your diseases. Self discipline is holding off on sex so you don't get pregnant. Oh, but here's a pill and/or condoms. Self discipline is in being environmentally conscious. But there's no enforcement for littering, and here are the SUVs you asked for. Self-discipline is not screwing over the shareholders just because you can, not screwing over the investors just because you can, or not charging the maximum possible price for a product just because you can. Self-discipline is about being fair. Self-discipline is not backstabbing the people underneath you to lock in your own promotion.
Don't give me self-discipline crap. No one's setting a good example for it and the examples get worse as you go higher up the corporate ladder.
but slack off on the second part (don't break the law by downloading them anyway).
Everything that I listen to comes from Proton Radio, Bassdrive, and Di. The major media industry simply doesn't have anything worth listening to/downloading anymore.
But, at the same time, I do advocate civil disobedience as a proper means of fighting laws. Sure, some people get nailed. I think even Martin Luther King spent time in jail.
The fact that he gave effectively 1 day's notice points to a character problem
Maybe you should work in a big corporate environment before talking out your posterior. The fact that he gave 1-day's notice says something entirely different.
1) His managers wrote completely unreasonable quarterly goals and did not give him the resources or authority to accomplish them 2) His managers directed him to daily pursuits which would never amount to anything close to the goals 3) When he brought up the disparity between quarterly expectations and daily assignments he was promptly criticized for insubordination and not being a team player.
If the government actually wanted to promote cyber security, the best way to do it would be to put a bounty system on the evildoers and let the market compete to catch them
The best thing to do would be to hold the corporations who hawk substandard products at full retail price responsible for their negligence. If you bought a toaster that started your bread on fire because the settings dial was malfunctional, you don't take the bread back to the baker--you take the toaster back. If your lamp keeps burning out bulbs because it has a short you don't apply to the light bulb company for a refund, you take the lamp back.
With Linux I accept responsibility because I didn't pay for the software. What needs to be done is to remove the protection of the EULA. The EULA is crap. It's a cheap excuse. If a company charges money for a product they should be liable for its quality.
To be honest, maybe it's hard to take seriously because we're busy trying to distort its meaning and importance
It's also hard to take seriously when companies like Microsoft have been telling the public, for years and years and years, that it's perfectly okay to click that EULA because the program was definitely worth $200. There was a corporate brainwashing of the public before putting them online back in '95 and that brainwashing hasn't worn off.
For example, what if some person or organization discovers something like new flaws in both Cisco routers and the standard JPEG rendering.DLL or.so? And instead of posting it to security mailing lists, they write effective exploits to hijack the routers to serve up infected JPEGs?
As an aside... that is exactly what we've been doing. And we've also been trying to get those who are guilt-ridden to quit reporting these exploits to the company.
But don't let me inform you. The big companies say that 0-day exploits don't exist... so, I guess we don't exist.
I'd also argue the invasion of Iraq doesn't approach the definition of illegal, since there were resolutions and treaties dating from 1991 that called for military action if they were broken, and they were
Why wasn't it an issue in '94, or '95, or '96, or '97, or '98, or '99, or '00, or '01?
This business about putting the entire world on notice so that we have justification to invade at will is a complete farce. Yes, we did have treaties with Iraq, but if there were any legitimate need to invade based on the provisions of those treaties we would have done so long ago. The timing alone gives away the thinly veiled illegitimacy.
instead of doing anything meaningful to solve that problem
You and both know they're not empowered to do anything. The politicians get elected on platforms which avoid any real topics--not that they're held accountable for what they say at campaign time anyways.
I've voted with my wallet. I've chopped my yearly CD consumption from close to 1/week to 2 in the last year.
HOWEVER, that doesn't mean you can break them and expect to not be punished
True. Right, wrong, or indifferent... the law is the law.
A few people have had their lives ruined by being falsely accused (and convicted) of pretty much every crime ranging from burglary to murder. Should we stop going after these criminals too?
Burglary and murder involve actual physical loss of property, death, or dismemberment.
Sharing music does none of these things. It's similar to the argument of losing data when Windows crashes--there's no liability because there's no real harm. But we, the consumers, don't get the privelege of an EULA at the point of sale of music: "You, as the retailer, accept all risk that I, the consumer, am going to do what I darn well please with your product."
I support intellectual property. Music CDs and video DVDs are not intellectual property. They are BAIT. Why should we protect a business model that hands out worthless pieces of plastic with the words "don't share me" printed on them? Aren't we all familiar with the psychological studies of the window with the words "don't look here" printed on it? What do we honestly expect people to do?
There is nothing intellectual about selling a product which is easily copied, shared, and redistributed and then acting as if it's a criminal surprise when people (*gasp*) copy, share, and redistribute it. The medium is JUST ASKING FOR IT.
Stop using my tax dollars to support a childishly naive business model. No one but the media industry receives this type of consideration.
It's called a cohesive business model, you AC trolling twit. Business models cannot ignore reality.
Your argument is, "If it's easy to do something, it can't be immoral."
Wrong-O you AC trolling twit. My argument is,"If everyone _IS_ doing it, it can't be immoral." Morality is not legislated by lobbying groups. Morality is dictated by what a majority of the population will participate in. The majority of people do not steal candy from a busy store, they do not grope women walking in dark alleys, and they do not throw babies down stairwells. Your arguments are weak, sensationalist, extremist, over the top, and out of touch. They are every bit as out of touch as the infantile business model of the media industry.
Grow up. Run a business. When a market sector begins relying on legislation to harass everyday citizens then it's time for the business to die. Or at least recognize it's a scam.
Again, it's about the definition of intellectual property. There's nothing intellectual about distributing something which is easy to copy, share, and redistribute and then acting as if it's a criminal surprise when people copy, share, and redistribute it. At that point it's not intellectual property--it's BAIT.
You're familiar with the psychological studies concerning a window with the words "don't look here", aren't you? One could very easily say that music companies aren't selling music and video--they're selling a worthless piece of plastic with the words "don't share this" printed on it. What do you think people are going to do?
Whenever someone does something good, other people will come along and make it better
In the case of computer operating systems, whenever someone does something better, other people will come along to kill it, make something passably good, and profit while denying the entire time that there ever was something better. Then, when something new better comes out, they will dismiss it as not being ready for primetime.
The only trolls are people who distribute material which easily copied, easily shared, and easily redistributed and then act as if it's some big criminal surprise that people are copying, sharing, and redistributing it.
The music companies need to move into the present and quit living in the past. Their business model is no longer valid. They must adapt to the will of the people and the people are never going to quit sharing music. It is infantile and childlike to expect that they can sue the population into submission or legislate their sole ownership of a CD.
Yes, I agree with intellectual property. It is no longer intellectual if you willingly turn a blind eye to facts of reality.
The music industry is well aware of how easy it is to copy, rip, and share CDs. There is no secret here. Adapt or face the consequences. There is nothing realistic about trying to legislate from the high chair or toddler training toilet of business infantilism. They are well aware of the consequences--adapt and deal with it.
Give a person a cookie jar with a thousand cookies, let them keep the cookie jar forever, tell them to take only one cookie. It's flat out stupid to browbeat the person for taking more than one cookie.
I'm not going to get anything that the huge masses of humanity in California don't want. And that is very likely what it would lead to.
This is a direct demonstration of an out of control federal government. The federal government was never supposed to have intimate control over the systems which affect the every day lives of individual state citizens. The federal government has a very limited scope of powers, powers that were to keep it confined in its proper realm. The only reason why people have become so interested in the elected president is because the federal government has vastly overstepped its powers to be a micromanagement tool. It's like using a yard long tractor or airplane crescent wrench to adjust a 10-speed bicycle.
The 9th and 10th Amendments were there for a reason and that was to ensure that the federal government did become the most dominant force in your life.
Third parties seem to fail, year by year, to do their homework
There you go. Shovel the blame back onto those who are left in the cold.
Generally, to get into any debate whether it be persidential, state, or local, one needs only to contact the organizing agency
That's pretty generally speaking and it's also false. Third party candidates, especially Libertarian candidates, have contacted debate organizers time and time again for months preceeding debates only to be rebuffed with red tape or outright ignored. Harry Brown (US-president) went through this in 2000 and Ed Thompson (WI-gov) had the same problem in 2002.
Most 3rd party campaigns do not do their homework, do not maintain contact with the other parties, and do not find out in advance who's hosting a debate
Hogwash. Especially, again, where Libertarians and Greens are concerned they maintain plenty of contact. In the case of presidential and gubernatorial elections there's no secret who is running the debate. The only issue is getting an invite.
You might be the only user on your machine now, but when you allow a trojan
The OP was raising the ages old question about the insecurity of OS design. His main point was to ask why modern OSs are designed such that something like a faulty decoder for a data file can end up executing unknown code. It's actually a good question and one that I'm not qualified to answer in detail. My only thoughts are the implementation of nonexecutable memory pages and OSs which were resident on true ROMs.
In the context of the OP, they never have allowed a trojan, because their question implies a vision of an environment where the trojan never had a chance.
Most wouldn't notice anything unless it came leaping through their window. That doesn't make it the right thing to do.
The only people that wouldn't like this, amazingly enough, are spammers and virus writers
And those of us who realize that ISPs aren't going to happily reopen port 25 just because we ask them to.
Again. Don't let me stop you. Most ISPs already do block port 25 and have shown that it statistically reduces 99.9% of their spam... for the first 15 seconds until all spam trojans are replaced with relays or authentication mechanisms.
Because, of course, no spam virus or trojaned box can 1) use a relay on a different port or 2) intercept the username and password.
Blocking port 25 is blanket punishment. It's no different than making an entire class stay after school for 30 minutes because a single student was misbehaving. But don't let me dissuade you. Corporations can make up any excuse to stroke their authoritarian egos.
Slashdot Mirror
Voting systems are one of those things people will ALWAYS disagree on
Indeed. The real issue is not so much how we vote for who we vote for, but rather what we allow them to do. We are talking about the question of accountability. Local politicians are very accountable because they are close to the people that they directly affect. State politicians are a little less accountable and Federal politicians are almost not at all accountable. It is perfectly logical that we should have a continuum of authority and responsibility. Those in Washington DC should have responsibility for the issues which do NOT impact our everyday lives and which primarily represent us to other federal-level institutions like other nations of the world. State level politicians should be empowered to address issues which affect citizens at the state level and only local politicians should really be empowered to make the decisions which affect people's everyday lives. These considerations were made in the US Constitution and led to the incorporation of the 9th and 10th Amendments which sought to limit the scope of the Federal Government.
Over the years the 9th and 10th Amendments have been routinely ignored because they pose roadblocks for ambitious politicians seeking to carve out a luxurious political career. Our Federal Government has soaked up nearly every responsibility over every part of our lives. Our State representatives are little more than token middlement to distribute the money that DC doles out to the states to various Federal pursuits, and the local politicians are (apologies in advance) little more than a backwater for those people who wanted to be politicians but never hit the big time--like small clubs for bands that never made a big signing deal.
So please feel free to choose whatever election system you like. Unless we find someone to reign in the out-of-control overadministration at the Federal level, none of it will really make a difference.
As opposed to having 50 sets of arbitrary lines drawn in the ground based on what? I jump over some imaginary line and suddenly a new set of laws apply?
Whenever a citizen has a legitimate complaint about the function of our government, the final argument is always,"If you don't like it, then leave." If we put the powers back into the States, as they should be, perhaps people would be free to leave one state and find a state of like-minded people. Instead, we are contantly shifting towards a single-unified all-encompassing least denominator (most restrictive) Federal Government.
All that blather about changing times and evolving documents is just that--blather. There's are good reasons to limit the responsibilities of a Federal Government and those reasons are still applicable today: potential for abuse, efficiency, separation of powers, right tool for the job.
Someone said that 50 states causes more overhead? How is this so? Citizens already pay for local, state, and federal government. At the very worst the overhead will be shifted from the federal level to the state level, but there's no possible way that each individual citizen will end up paying more if we reduce the size of the federal take and strengthen their state. Most of us would see enormous savings. There's a reason why money goes to Washington DC first and then gets handed back to the states. Most States happily follow lock-step with Washington direction in order to secure their yearly payout.
You know.. although many of us realize the US is a federation of states.. it presents itself to the world, and generally acts as any other country would
Which does not necessitate that the outward facing representative body also take on all the duties of micromanaging our everyday lives. I have no problem with the Federal Government representing us on the world scale. The State and Local governments, however, should be the ones primarily responsible for governing within our borders. As it stands currently the Federal Government has done nothing but make power grabs left, right, and six ways to Sunday since the mid 1800s.
It's self discipline
Self discipline is cutting back on the twinkies when your fat ass doesn't fit in the car seat. But we subsidize those people. Self discipline is not screwing every piece of tail that walks by. But we'll happily develop pharmaceuticals to treat all your diseases. Self discipline is holding off on sex so you don't get pregnant. Oh, but here's a pill and/or condoms. Self discipline is in being environmentally conscious. But there's no enforcement for littering, and here are the SUVs you asked for. Self-discipline is not screwing over the shareholders just because you can, not screwing over the investors just because you can, or not charging the maximum possible price for a product just because you can. Self-discipline is about being fair. Self-discipline is not backstabbing the people underneath you to lock in your own promotion.
Don't give me self-discipline crap. No one's setting a good example for it and the examples get worse as you go higher up the corporate ladder.
but slack off on the second part (don't break the law by downloading them anyway).
Everything that I listen to comes from Proton Radio, Bassdrive, and Di. The major media industry simply doesn't have anything worth listening to/downloading anymore.
But, at the same time, I do advocate civil disobedience as a proper means of fighting laws. Sure, some people get nailed. I think even Martin Luther King spent time in jail.
The fact that he gave effectively 1 day's notice points to a character problem
Maybe you should work in a big corporate environment before talking out your posterior. The fact that he gave 1-day's notice says something entirely different.
1) His managers wrote completely unreasonable quarterly goals and did not give him the resources or authority to accomplish them
2) His managers directed him to daily pursuits which would never amount to anything close to the goals
3) When he brought up the disparity between quarterly expectations and daily assignments he was promptly criticized for insubordination and not being a team player.
I've just come to accept that I'm a modern day car-mechanic
If you figure out a way to pull down $35/hour doing this, let me know and I'll work 12-hour days. I already do the work for free in my off time.
If the government actually wanted to promote cyber security, the best way to do it would be to put a bounty system on the evildoers and let the market compete to catch them
The best thing to do would be to hold the corporations who hawk substandard products at full retail price responsible for their negligence. If you bought a toaster that started your bread on fire because the settings dial was malfunctional, you don't take the bread back to the baker--you take the toaster back. If your lamp keeps burning out bulbs because it has a short you don't apply to the light bulb company for a refund, you take the lamp back.
With Linux I accept responsibility because I didn't pay for the software. What needs to be done is to remove the protection of the EULA. The EULA is crap. It's a cheap excuse. If a company charges money for a product they should be liable for its quality.
To be honest, maybe it's hard to take seriously because we're busy trying to distort its meaning and importance
It's also hard to take seriously when companies like Microsoft have been telling the public, for years and years and years, that it's perfectly okay to click that EULA because the program was definitely worth $200. There was a corporate brainwashing of the public before putting them online back in '95 and that brainwashing hasn't worn off.
For example, what if some person or organization discovers something like new flaws in both Cisco routers and the standard JPEG rendering .DLL or .so? And instead of posting it to security mailing lists, they write effective exploits to hijack the routers to serve up infected JPEGs?
As an aside... that is exactly what we've been doing. And we've also been trying to get those who are guilt-ridden to quit reporting these exploits to the company.
But don't let me inform you. The big companies say that 0-day exploits don't exist... so, I guess we don't exist.
I'd also argue the invasion of Iraq doesn't approach the definition of illegal, since there were resolutions and treaties dating from 1991 that called for military action if they were broken, and they were
Why wasn't it an issue in '94, or '95, or '96, or '97, or '98, or '99, or '00, or '01?
This business about putting the entire world on notice so that we have justification to invade at will is a complete farce. Yes, we did have treaties with Iraq, but if there were any legitimate need to invade based on the provisions of those treaties we would have done so long ago. The timing alone gives away the thinly veiled illegitimacy.
instead of doing anything meaningful to solve that problem
You and both know they're not empowered to do anything. The politicians get elected on platforms which avoid any real topics--not that they're held accountable for what they say at campaign time anyways.
I've voted with my wallet. I've chopped my yearly CD consumption from close to 1/week to 2 in the last year.
HOWEVER, that doesn't mean you can break them and expect to not be punished
True. Right, wrong, or indifferent... the law is the law.
A few people have had their lives ruined by being falsely accused (and convicted) of pretty much every crime ranging from burglary to murder. Should we stop going after these criminals too?
Burglary and murder involve actual physical loss of property, death, or dismemberment.
Sharing music does none of these things. It's similar to the argument of losing data when Windows crashes--there's no liability because there's no real harm. But we, the consumers, don't get the privelege of an EULA at the point of sale of music: "You, as the retailer, accept all risk that I, the consumer, am going to do what I darn well please with your product."
I support intellectual property. Music CDs and video DVDs are not intellectual property. They are BAIT. Why should we protect a business model that hands out worthless pieces of plastic with the words "don't share me" printed on them? Aren't we all familiar with the psychological studies of the window with the words "don't look here" printed on it? What do we honestly expect people to do?
There is nothing intellectual about selling a product which is easily copied, shared, and redistributed and then acting as if it's a criminal surprise when people (*gasp*) copy, share, and redistribute it. The medium is JUST ASKING FOR IT.
Stop using my tax dollars to support a childishly naive business model. No one but the media industry receives this type of consideration.
It's called a cohesive business model, you AC trolling twit. Business models cannot ignore reality.
Your argument is, "If it's easy to do something, it can't be immoral."
Wrong-O you AC trolling twit. My argument is,"If everyone _IS_ doing it, it can't be immoral." Morality is not legislated by lobbying groups. Morality is dictated by what a majority of the population will participate in. The majority of people do not steal candy from a busy store, they do not grope women walking in dark alleys, and they do not throw babies down stairwells. Your arguments are weak, sensationalist, extremist, over the top, and out of touch. They are every bit as out of touch as the infantile business model of the media industry.
Grow up. Run a business. When a market sector begins relying on legislation to harass everyday citizens then it's time for the business to die. Or at least recognize it's a scam.
Again, it's about the definition of intellectual property. There's nothing intellectual about distributing something which is easy to copy, share, and redistribute and then acting as if it's a criminal surprise when people copy, share, and redistribute it. At that point it's not intellectual property--it's BAIT.
You're familiar with the psychological studies concerning a window with the words "don't look here", aren't you? One could very easily say that music companies aren't selling music and video--they're selling a worthless piece of plastic with the words "don't share this" printed on it. What do you think people are going to do?
Whenever someone does something good, other people will come along and make it better
In the case of computer operating systems, whenever someone does something better, other people will come along to kill it, make something passably good, and profit while denying the entire time that there ever was something better. Then, when something new better comes out, they will dismiss it as not being ready for primetime.
Intellectual property is no longer intellectual if you put it in a medium that is easy to copy, share, replicate, and redistribute...
And then act as if it's some big criminal surprise when people are copying, sharing, replicating, and redistributing it.
That's not intellectual anymore. It's just plain naive. Stop supporting legislation which promotes the naive. Face reality.
Lets call a troll a troll, here
The only trolls are people who distribute material which easily copied, easily shared, and easily redistributed and then act as if it's some big criminal surprise that people are copying, sharing, and redistributing it.
The music companies need to move into the present and quit living in the past. Their business model is no longer valid. They must adapt to the will of the people and the people are never going to quit sharing music. It is infantile and childlike to expect that they can sue the population into submission or legislate their sole ownership of a CD.
Yes, I agree with intellectual property. It is no longer intellectual if you willingly turn a blind eye to facts of reality.
they're criminals
Please. Give it up. No really. Give it up.
The music industry is well aware of how easy it is to copy, rip, and share CDs. There is no secret here. Adapt or face the consequences. There is nothing realistic about trying to legislate from the high chair or toddler training toilet of business infantilism. They are well aware of the consequences--adapt and deal with it.
Give a person a cookie jar with a thousand cookies, let them keep the cookie jar forever, tell them to take only one cookie. It's flat out stupid to browbeat the person for taking more than one cookie.
at least I know that there is some accountability in your design
What delusion negates the EULA? Windows has no accountability.
Assume a blob of gravel of this mass hits one side of the earth evenly distributed over an entire hemisphere
Meteor shower?
I'm not going to get anything that the huge masses of humanity in California don't want. And that is very likely what it would lead to.
This is a direct demonstration of an out of control federal government. The federal government was never supposed to have intimate control over the systems which affect the every day lives of individual state citizens. The federal government has a very limited scope of powers, powers that were to keep it confined in its proper realm. The only reason why people have become so interested in the elected president is because the federal government has vastly overstepped its powers to be a micromanagement tool. It's like using a yard long tractor or airplane crescent wrench to adjust a 10-speed bicycle.
The 9th and 10th Amendments were there for a reason and that was to ensure that the federal government did become the most dominant force in your life.
Third parties seem to fail, year by year, to do their homework
There you go. Shovel the blame back onto those who are left in the cold.
Generally, to get into any debate whether it be persidential, state, or local, one needs only to contact the organizing agency
That's pretty generally speaking and it's also false. Third party candidates, especially Libertarian candidates, have contacted debate organizers time and time again for months preceeding debates only to be rebuffed with red tape or outright ignored. Harry Brown (US-president) went through this in 2000 and Ed Thompson (WI-gov) had the same problem in 2002.
Most 3rd party campaigns do not do their homework, do not maintain contact with the other parties, and do not find out in advance who's hosting a debate
Hogwash. Especially, again, where Libertarians and Greens are concerned they maintain plenty of contact. In the case of presidential and gubernatorial elections there's no secret who is running the debate. The only issue is getting an invite.
You might be the only user on your machine now, but when you allow a trojan
The OP was raising the ages old question about the insecurity of OS design. His main point was to ask why modern OSs are designed such that something like a faulty decoder for a data file can end up executing unknown code. It's actually a good question and one that I'm not qualified to answer in detail. My only thoughts are the implementation of nonexecutable memory pages and OSs which were resident on true ROMs.
In the context of the OP, they never have allowed a trojan, because their question implies a vision of an environment where the trojan never had a chance.
Most wouldn't even notice it
Most wouldn't notice anything unless it came leaping through their window. That doesn't make it the right thing to do.
The only people that wouldn't like this, amazingly enough, are spammers and virus writers
And those of us who realize that ISPs aren't going to happily reopen port 25 just because we ask them to.
Again. Don't let me stop you. Most ISPs already do block port 25 and have shown that it statistically reduces 99.9% of their spam... for the first 15 seconds until all spam trojans are replaced with relays or authentication mechanisms.
Because, of course, no spam virus or trojaned box can 1) use a relay on a different port or 2) intercept the username and password.
Blocking port 25 is blanket punishment. It's no different than making an entire class stay after school for 30 minutes because a single student was misbehaving. But don't let me dissuade you. Corporations can make up any excuse to stroke their authoritarian egos.