I just re-read my post and I am pretty sure there is nothing about Unabomber in there. Nope, definately not. Are you mad?
This "self directed stuff", its actually all bollocks I am afraid and simply shows that you have not thought your argument through and your attempt to be superior to others through your choice is actually based on flawed assumptions.
It works like this. I look at a TV guide, see whats on, choose what I want to watch and watch it. Same way I browse, skip most things and read what I want. TV can try and shove stuff down my throat by way of adverts, even product placement during shows I choose to watch. Then again, the internet does exactly the same thing, I have tried to rad articles, only to be presented with a flash add on a holding page first and the articles I want to read often have banners on them.
There is no difference. People can sit through adverts in both scenarios, or not in both scenarios. Hell, sometimes if an advert is good I will actually enjoy watching it, for example, John Smiths adverts in the UK. Its also worth noting that I hate John Smiths (its a beer).
People can sit effortlessly in front of the goggle box and press the remote. People can sit effortlessly in front of the pornweb and press the mouse.
I cant get thru one day at work without someone parroting some viewpoint not of their own making becuase some show said something about a topic.
Presumably this people are passing these opinions off as their own insight!? So... given that you don't watch TV, how on earth do you know that what they are saying is from a TV show?
As you claim to only watch one side (co-workers) I don't see how you can draw a comparison between them and TV.
Could there possibly be a more inappropriate rating for the parent post, "insightful" ?? How about uneducated, jump-to-conclusion, does-know-what-he-is-talking-about or possibly troll. What idiotic moderators labelled the parent insightful? Do you have any idea what you are talking about? If not, I suggest you simply refrain from moderating and let the people who have a clue moderate.
You are running an application. Applications that do more than throw up hello world often need to be able to access your hard drive, or access your network. ActiveX controls don't even bother to warn you, they hapily take over in the name of "convinence" Now we have spyware all over the place becuase of those idiots.
Would you rather the application used your hard drive and network without telling you? I suspect you would, since you would not have thought about it at all. Yes, you would have happily examined databases never giving a though to the fact that this meant the application was accessing your network. You seem shocked because the application was honest about what it was doing, you would rather stick your head in the sand and pretend that your machine and data are safe no matter what you do.
Webstart follows good strong security guidelines, like the Java platform itself. This is a good thing. You should take this oportunity to think about what an application needs in order to function. If you trust it, you should give it that access, if not, you don't. Webstart gives you that choice and is very up front about it. Webstart cares about your security, thats why it gave you that warning. I do not know of any competing platforms that come anywhere remotely close.
I have had discussions about this in the past, and I think the main problem is that we try and place everyone somewhere along a 1 dimensional line. Certainly some issues/beliefs have side effects and influence thoughts on other areas, (e.g. religeon & homosexuality) however there is certainly more than one degree of freedom when thinking about the best way to run a country, but our simplistic left-right method forces you to really pick what you think your "core" beliefs are and flatten yourself onto that line somewhere.
I probably am in the middle, but I say that only because I have, what would commonly be considered, far left and far right views that cancel each other out, or something. Its a crap explanation, but then again its a crap system. More accurately, I am at grid coordinate (+1, -1)
And yes, of course we are getting along fine, don't most people? If you started talking about tea being better than coffee, how XP is a good operating system or how the world series is correctly named even when most of the world does not compete in it, _then_ we might have issues.
Everything you said sort of makes sense in theory, but when you ask if it would have been better under a right wing government I can confidently say "yes". The tories (conservative party, more to the right) used to be in power, and we have been on a very slippery slope since the power mad lefties got in. For instance, Blunkett wants ID cards, and it is his dying wish to force them upon us (and in anther audacious slap in the face to the British people, charge everyone 40 to buy their ID card).
The Conservatives, in large, do not support this mass scale monitoring, or at least don't shout for it with quite so much vigour.
The main problem with right wing parties, which you touched on, is that they do tend to be more against the minorities for various reasons (e.g. homosexuals), this is an aspect I find very distasteful in itself. However if you drop the bigotry then that might actually be a side I could claim to lean to.
Right wing goverments are more prone to abuse civil liberties than left-leaning ones
From my experience this is not true.
For example.
USA, right wing, fairly intrusive on its own people but mostly extremely biased against the rest of the world because it is able to act like a big bully with its power. It will insist on biometric passports for any foreign citizen coming in to the country - but is not immediately going around fingerprinting all of its own citizens.
U.K. left wing, no respect for its own people, treats them like the idiots that they are, nanny state attempting to control every aspect of your life, there are more spy cameras in London than any other city in the world. We have one of the most evil men in first world politics going largely undetected (David Blunkett), mainly because the blind fucker gets some sort of sympathy vote.
Its ridiculous that we have to rely on the old farts in the house of Lords to decline a lot of the proposed bills by Blunkett and Blair, if they did not stand up to the government the situation could be much, much worse.
Blunkett actually tried to do away with the right of trial by jury. The basic democratic right to be tried by your peers, was almost gone (and actually is in some circumstances). He wanted a single judge to decide "minor cases". Very fucking minor when some judge who gets out of bed the wrong side that day decides to convict you and you spend the rest of your life struggling to get a job other than flipping burgers. Add to this the attempt to remove double-jeopardy, so if they decide they don't like you they can keep trying till they find a jury that agrees with them. The list goes on with the situation with asylum seekers, the hysteria surrounding paedophilia, etc. Of course none of this goes through without Blair watching, and Blunkett is merely there so that Blair can stay one step removed from the delicate issues that Blunkett relishes trampling on. This UK Government is about grabbing power and not much else.
OK, so this is well and truly a rant now, however it should serve it purpose to show that leftie governments are terrible and respecting ivil lberties albeit in a verbose way. Hmm, I guess I just could have mentioned any one of several communist states to get the point accross.
I am seriously looking to move to another country that will let me live my life without feeling watched all the time, and without feeling that I am enjoying the good stuff because we are fucking half of the world up the ass. Unfortunately I have not found anywhere yet.
Something like this is already implemented in the UK.
We have a congestion charging zone in Central London, and for this they developed cameras that read number plates and check that they are authorised to drive in Central London on that day.
They have now adapted these cameras and are placing them at major junctions on motorways, they record when you join and when you leave and if your average speed is above the speed limit - here's your ticket bozo. All automated, all electronic, no film cameras, no flashes.
http://www.wibbler.com/archives/000822.php
OK, so it turns out it is a hoax, but you just _know_ that in 5 years time it won't be.
I'm sorry, but why the fuck is the parent modded as flamebait?
Its simply fact.
You can bitch about how the record companies charge too much, aren't embracing technology, are taking a draconian stance on P2P, etc. And you would be right on all counts. However, copyright infringement is illegal and you do not have a right to share music.
I think it is foolish of the RIAA to take the stance they have, I think it will hurt them in the lond run, but it is their decision.
If music is too expensive for you, don't buy it. If you can afford it and think it is worth it, buy it. What the hell is so difficult about this?
I agree that this is currently against the law as the law is written, however, I don't think it should be illegal.
Imagine I leave my front door adjar.
Someone, possibly a postman, can walk up my drive and knock on my door (tresspassing?), and because I have left it adjar it opens easily. They can stick their head in and verify that it is not just an outer door and that they really are actually inside my house. They could then call out to me, leave a note or whatever telling me that my front door is on the latch or otherwise open to the wide world. I would probably be very grateful for such advice, and be thankful that a nice chap found this before some northern scum who would probably nick everything.
Have they broken the law? Possibly they have tresspassed by even stepping on my driveway. Point is, this activity should not be illegal, it makes no sense. If the person actually enters my house and nicks a load of stuff its a different matter, but if after finding my house accessible his only action is to notify me of the security breach then I cannot believe anyone would arrest him. Also, the act of stealing something is clearly much more seriuos that even sitting on my couch for a bit before deciding to tell me about it - which is akin to what this guy did.
I fail to see the difference between the above and identifying a security hole in a computer network.
Companies can't be bothered to secure systems properly, they don't want to be responsible for your data or losing it. They would rather scare everyone away from knocking on their door with these laws than listen to legitimate security concerns from concious parties. If they actually cared about protecting their systems they would not allow incidents like this. Which white hat hackers will bother to warn them about other shortcomings in the future?
Imagine you find a security hole in a network, do you;
a) Be nice and warn the company about it, risking going to jail,
or
b) Get out quick, say nothing and hope they don't notice so you don't have the FBI harrassing your fucking parents?
Who you really worried about hacking your system, Lamo or bin Laden? The current laws encourage b) which means the hole stays open longer and makes it easier for black hats to actually get in and collect credit card details, etc. The danger here is that someone will actually get in and do something bad with the data they get, or delete data, etc. Action should be taken which minimizes this risk, but this has the opposite effect.
Slashdot Mirror
This "self directed stuff", its actually all bollocks I am afraid and simply shows that you have not thought your argument through and your attempt to be superior to others through your choice is actually based on flawed assumptions.
It works like this. I look at a TV guide, see whats on, choose what I want to watch and watch it. Same way I browse, skip most things and read what I want. TV can try and shove stuff down my throat by way of adverts, even product placement during shows I choose to watch. Then again, the internet does exactly the same thing, I have tried to rad articles, only to be presented with a flash add on a holding page first and the articles I want to read often have banners on them.
There is no difference. People can sit through adverts in both scenarios, or not in both scenarios. Hell, sometimes if an advert is good I will actually enjoy watching it, for example, John Smiths adverts in the UK. Its also worth noting that I hate John Smiths (its a beer).
People can sit effortlessly in front of the goggle box and press the remote. People can sit effortlessly in front of the pornweb and press the mouse.
Presumably this people are passing these opinions off as their own insight!? So ... given that you don't watch TV, how on earth do you know that what they are saying is from a TV show?
As you claim to only watch one side (co-workers) I don't see how you can draw a comparison between them and TV.
Could there possibly be a more inappropriate rating for the parent post, "insightful" ?? How about uneducated, jump-to-conclusion, does-know-what-he-is-talking-about or possibly troll. What idiotic moderators labelled the parent insightful? Do you have any idea what you are talking about? If not, I suggest you simply refrain from moderating and let the people who have a clue moderate.
You are running an application. Applications that do more than throw up hello world often need to be able to access your hard drive, or access your network. ActiveX controls don't even bother to warn you, they hapily take over in the name of "convinence" Now we have spyware all over the place becuase of those idiots.
Would you rather the application used your hard drive and network without telling you? I suspect you would, since you would not have thought about it at all. Yes, you would have happily examined databases never giving a though to the fact that this meant the application was accessing your network. You seem shocked because the application was honest about what it was doing, you would rather stick your head in the sand and pretend that your machine and data are safe no matter what you do.
Webstart follows good strong security guidelines, like the Java platform itself. This is a good thing. You should take this oportunity to think about what an application needs in order to function. If you trust it, you should give it that access, if not, you don't. Webstart gives you that choice and is very up front about it. Webstart cares about your security, thats why it gave you that warning. I do not know of any competing platforms that come anywhere remotely close.
I probably am in the middle, but I say that only because I have, what would commonly be considered, far left and far right views that cancel each other out, or something. Its a crap explanation, but then again its a crap system. More accurately, I am at grid coordinate (+1, -1)
And yes, of course we are getting along fine, don't most people? If you started talking about tea being better than coffee, how XP is a good operating system or how the world series is correctly named even when most of the world does not compete in it, _then_ we might have issues.
The Conservatives, in large, do not support this mass scale monitoring, or at least don't shout for it with quite so much vigour.
The main problem with right wing parties, which you touched on, is that they do tend to be more against the minorities for various reasons (e.g. homosexuals), this is an aspect I find very distasteful in itself. However if you drop the bigotry then that might actually be a side I could claim to lean to.
From my experience this is not true.
For example.
USA, right wing, fairly intrusive on its own people but mostly extremely biased against the rest of the world because it is able to act like a big bully with its power. It will insist on biometric passports for any foreign citizen coming in to the country - but is not immediately going around fingerprinting all of its own citizens.
U.K. left wing, no respect for its own people, treats them like the idiots that they are, nanny state attempting to control every aspect of your life, there are more spy cameras in London than any other city in the world. We have one of the most evil men in first world politics going largely undetected (David Blunkett), mainly because the blind fucker gets some sort of sympathy vote.
Its ridiculous that we have to rely on the old farts in the house of Lords to decline a lot of the proposed bills by Blunkett and Blair, if they did not stand up to the government the situation could be much, much worse.
Blunkett actually tried to do away with the right of trial by jury. The basic democratic right to be tried by your peers, was almost gone (and actually is in some circumstances). He wanted a single judge to decide "minor cases". Very fucking minor when some judge who gets out of bed the wrong side that day decides to convict you and you spend the rest of your life struggling to get a job other than flipping burgers. Add to this the attempt to remove double-jeopardy, so if they decide they don't like you they can keep trying till they find a jury that agrees with them. The list goes on with the situation with asylum seekers, the hysteria surrounding paedophilia, etc. Of course none of this goes through without Blair watching, and Blunkett is merely there so that Blair can stay one step removed from the delicate issues that Blunkett relishes trampling on. This UK Government is about grabbing power and not much else.
OK, so this is well and truly a rant now, however it should serve it purpose to show that leftie governments are terrible and respecting ivil lberties albeit in a verbose way. Hmm, I guess I just could have mentioned any one of several communist states to get the point accross.
I am seriously looking to move to another country that will let me live my life without feeling watched all the time, and without feeling that I am enjoying the good stuff because we are fucking half of the world up the ass. Unfortunately I have not found anywhere yet.
We have a congestion charging zone in Central London, and for this they developed cameras that read number plates and check that they are authorised to drive in Central London on that day.
They have now adapted these cameras and are placing them at major junctions on motorways, they record when you join and when you leave and if your average speed is above the speed limit - here's your ticket bozo. All automated, all electronic, no film cameras, no flashes.
http://www.wibbler.com/archives/000822.php
OK, so it turns out it is a hoax, but you just _know_ that in 5 years time it won't be.
Its simply fact.
You can bitch about how the record companies charge too much, aren't embracing technology, are taking a draconian stance on P2P, etc. And you would be right on all counts. However, copyright infringement is illegal and you do not have a right to share music.
I think it is foolish of the RIAA to take the stance they have, I think it will hurt them in the lond run, but it is their decision.
If music is too expensive for you, don't buy it. If you can afford it and think it is worth it, buy it. What the hell is so difficult about this?
Imagine I leave my front door adjar.
Someone, possibly a postman, can walk up my drive and knock on my door (tresspassing?), and because I have left it adjar it opens easily. They can stick their head in and verify that it is not just an outer door and that they really are actually inside my house. They could then call out to me, leave a note or whatever telling me that my front door is on the latch or otherwise open to the wide world. I would probably be very grateful for such advice, and be thankful that a nice chap found this before some northern scum who would probably nick everything.
Have they broken the law? Possibly they have tresspassed by even stepping on my driveway. Point is, this activity should not be illegal, it makes no sense. If the person actually enters my house and nicks a load of stuff its a different matter, but if after finding my house accessible his only action is to notify me of the security breach then I cannot believe anyone would arrest him. Also, the act of stealing something is clearly much more seriuos that even sitting on my couch for a bit before deciding to tell me about it - which is akin to what this guy did.
I fail to see the difference between the above and identifying a security hole in a computer network.
Companies can't be bothered to secure systems properly, they don't want to be responsible for your data or losing it. They would rather scare everyone away from knocking on their door with these laws than listen to legitimate security concerns from concious parties. If they actually cared about protecting their systems they would not allow incidents like this. Which white hat hackers will bother to warn them about other shortcomings in the future?
Imagine you find a security hole in a network, do you;
a) Be nice and warn the company about it, risking going to jail,
or
b) Get out quick, say nothing and hope they don't notice so you don't have the FBI harrassing your fucking parents?
Who you really worried about hacking your system, Lamo or bin Laden? The current laws encourage b) which means the hole stays open longer and makes it easier for black hats to actually get in and collect credit card details, etc. The danger here is that someone will actually get in and do something bad with the data they get, or delete data, etc. Action should be taken which minimizes this risk, but this has the opposite effect.