How about "you do _not_ need a 'hidemydata' _coder_".
I've worked on several enterprise projects so far, and in _none_ of them did I need any actual production data while coding the app. All the test databases we worked on were filled with dummy data. Including login accounts, addresses, products/materials, financial data, etc. You name it, it was fake.
What you do need are a few examples that _look_ like the real data. They don't come from a coder, they're not real data that ran through some encription code. They're just bogus.
Where do they come from? They come from the people who work with the real data. Only those need to see it.
_They_ are allowed to see where little Timmy Victim lives and where does he go to school. So they take some records from that data, read it, then replace the name with Bart Simpson, the address with something bogus, and so on. Then send me the database with a few such examples.
What if I need thousands of records, you say? Well, then I, or another "rent-a-hidemydata-coder", takes those bogus samples, and writes a small script to generate thousands that look like those. Voila, now you have thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands, of bogus records to run those tests on.
If there's a bug that needs fixing -- e.g., to stick to the article, the formatting code sucks -- I don't need production data to reproduce the bug. I just need an example -- _any_ example -- that clearly demonstrates the bug. If it's a bogus example, all the better.
You may notice how at no point did a coder actually see the confidential data. Not the developper of the application, not the "rent-a-hidemy-data coder", not the coder's PHB, not the company's marketroid (who might go "ka-ching! we have all those people's records, let's try to sell them stuff.") The only ones who saw the confidential data are (surprise!) the people who actually have a right to work with that data.
In fact, yes. Unless someone were to come at me screaming "die! die! die!" and waving a big old medieval axe, or something equally dangerous, I couldn't tell preoccupied from dumbfounded from annoyed, if my life depended on it.
However, that's also the reason why I prefer interfacing to a compiler than to a human. My boss says I'm even good at it. Of course, I can't tell if he's serious about it.
I can live in society, even have friends, mainly by having learned quickly stuff like "if you can't tell when you're getting on someone's nerves, better not say something which might get on their nerves." Or like "if you can't tell when someone's interested in your topics, do everyone a favour: listen first, and pick one of their own topics." Or like, "if laughing and screaming are the only two signs you can recognize, you might as well go for making people laugh." Etc.
Still, the issue remains: I can understand a compiler, I can understand assembly, but humans are somewhat of a black box to me.
So, as was said before, I find it hard to believe that mild autism can cause someone to be unable to follow more than 2 sentences in a row in a technical presentation. Autists are known to be bad with humans, but good with computers. If there was someone I'd trust the most to follow a spec and implement it, it would be another autist.
But again, I'm no medic. I wouldn't really know.
But, as I've said, you _can_, to some extent, use logic instead of empathy. Which is all I'm asking for in return. If logic tells you that there's not much reason why someone would really need to know the exact font size _now_, please do trust that logic, and don't waste everyone's time with that question.
You may not be able to empathically tell that I'm bored out of my skull. That's ok. So I'm telling you: those irrelevant questions bore me out of my skull. Now use that piece of information next time you think of showing some activity in a meeting.
You may not be able to empathically sense that everyone else would _kill_ to get out of that stupid meeting room after 3 hours straight. It's ok. I understand. So I'm telling you.
Stick to the topic and be prepared to make some concessions. Keeping everyone there while acting like a spoiled brat (whether it's "no, it's _my_ architecture and I'm not changing any bit of it!" or "no, _I_ want every single detail _now_, and none of you are leaving until _I_ am satisfied") is just boring everyone after 1 hour or so. "Informative" uni-directional meetings get boring even faster.
Some meetings really need to stay meetings. You're right there. And keeping it small and on track would be very nice too.
But, I don't know, IMHO there's also a lot of stuff could just as well be solved by email.
E.g., "unidirectional" meetings. I've been in meetings where only the boss talked for 2 hours straight. No suggestions were even expected, or even within our expertise. Same as watching the news on TV: you're not actually expected to voice your feedback.
While I definitely appreciate the feedback from above, I see no real reason why it needs to be a meeting instead of an email. Attach the powerpoint presentation to it, if you really must have one, and there you go. It's still the same information, it's easier to follow, and takes far less time for everyone.
In an ideal company, things would run that way. However, "real" and "ideal" are very often opposite directions on the compass.
In a "real" company, most often things are not like in your "but Dell cut us a deal on 300 PCs, translating into exactly X hundred dollars saved."
They're more like some manager declared a dysfunctional product as a corporate standard, because they got a 10,000$ discount. But that decision has cost the company about 2 extra man-years of expensive contractor programmer fees, just to work around the many bugs in that product. We're talking _hundreds_ _of_ _thousands_ of dollars lost, because of that 10,000$ discount.
Seen that happen twice. Literally.
Why did it happen? Because there that foot soldier knew the product and its limitations better than the manager. If the self-appointed "general" actually listened to the soldiers saying "this weapon can _not_ do that", things would have been far better.
You want analogies with the army? OK, I'll give you just two random examples:
1. The american civil war was a blood bath. Why? The minnie ball.
The grand strategic vision of the generals was built upon the past reality of the smoothbore musket. So everyone marched to the limit of the musket's effective range, neatly aligned, shot mostly for the suppression effect, then charged with the bayonets.
Now enter the rifles. An early rifle had three times the range of a smootbore musket. Not only that, but the hollow minnie ball would expand and break in the wound, causing a fist sized exit wound.
So those soldiers were ordered to march and align at a distance at which firing resulted in a bloodbath. Again, and again, and again. No matter how many times those soldiers saw the catastrophe happening, no matter how sickeningly high the losses, those "wise" generals stuck to their grand vision.
Maybe listening to a foot soldier wouldn't have been such a bad idea?
2. When France first got their Gattling guns, someone decided that it's an artillery piece. Based on its size.
So the soldiers were actually ordered to start firing it at 10 times its actual maximum range. By the time the enemy actually got in range, they'd be completely out of ammo.
Again: maybe listening to a foot soldier wouldn't have been such a bad idea?
Now seriously, it's not about something particularly specific to this day or this week.
I just see a meeting as a way to solve a problem. It's not for small talk, it's not for fulfilling someone's social interaction needs, and it's not for getting noticed by the boss. Anyone who mis-uses it to those ends is just stealing my and everyone else's time, to his/her own needs. And showing remarkable contempt for their co-workers.
For all I care, if they want to impress the boss, they can go brown-nose after the meeting. They don't need to keep a whole team bored to death for another half an hour.
I'm not a doctor, nor that knowledgeable about medicine. Still, I've read a little bit about autism. IMHO what you describe seems to me more like a severe attention deficit problem, than anything autism-related.
But, again, I'm not a medic. If anyone knows more about this, I'd be grateful if he/she shared the knowledge.
And, well, I'd also expect that even without taking a hint from empathy, a simple understanding that "not _everything_ must be solved in _this_ meeting" can go a long way.
E.g., in the case of asking for irrelevant details, you don't need to see if the co-workers are annoyed by the question. You need a little common sense, to ask yourself "do I _need_ to know the font size at this point? does _everyone_ _else_ need to debate the font size right now?" If not, please don't waste everyone's time with the question. That's all.
Plus, from someone who works in this line of job I'd wouldn't expect much empathy, but I would expect them to have abstraction skills. If you don't _need_ a detail for the problem at hand, you should actually exclude it from the model.
E.g., let's take a simple problem like "two trains leave in opposite directions from the same railway station, one doing 80 mph, one doing 60 mph. How far apart will they be after one hour."
A legitimate question might be "ok, so are they going in a straight line and with no stops during that hour?"
However _if_ you start asking stuff like "what colour are the trains?" or "do tickets to the 80mph train cost more?" then you're not lacking empathy, you're lacking abstraction skills. Those details are just not needed at all to solve the problem.
I.e., all I'm asking is that everyone first spends 10 seconds asking themselves if they really need the answer, before asking the question. That's all.
Actually, sometimes meetings serve a purpose. Or are planned that way. Sure, you could argue that we could have cleared the same question by email instead of having a two-hour meeting, but still. We could have just stuck to the point, explained the architecture to the client, or viceversa, answered a few questions, and been done with it.
But no. What I hate is the wiseguy that just has to ask _something_, _anything_, just to show participation. Among my "favourites" are(favourite poster children for euthanasia, that is):
- people who ask something that's been said before. Repeatedly. Bonus points if it's something obvious.
(Yes, for the 5'th time, we _are_ saving the data in an Oracle database.)
- people who, obviously, are stuck in a "misunderstand it" mental mode.
(E.g., no, just because there are two columns in the table, it doesn't mean you can only store two attributes. There's a reason why those two columns are called "key" and "value". It's for storing as many key/value pairs as you need. No, seriously. You can stop asking "what if we later need more than two attributes?")
- people who take some irrelevant detail -- often a tangent or metaphor used -- and, by Jove, they have to get that detail cleared out in detail.
(E.g., if we're discussing the workflow engine, you can jolly well stop picking on the exact font used in the dummy screenshots. Yes, you'll get any font you want, but you'll get it from the GUI team. Can we move ahead already?)
- the more extreme case of the above: people who ask something completely unrelated and completely irrelevant.
(Believe it or not, the "anyone else likes wood?" from a Dilbert strip actually happens in some real meetings. Just replace "wood" by some other completely irrelevant topic.)
- the client PHB who just is affraid to reach a conclusion, and instead just _has_ to show that he/she/it manages. So each time he/she/it will want something else wantonly changed.
(E.g., dude, we already gave you a template editor for those reports. Can we please, please, please not go yet again into whether to use landscape or portrait? Just use the editor and print them diagonally, for all I care.)
I've yet to see an office button that doesn't act like a normal Windows button. Or a scrollbar that doesn't act like a perfectly normal Windows scrollbar.
E.g., click on a button, but don't release. Now drag the cursor off the button. _Now_ release. See, it didn't count as clicking the button. Even WinAmp's self-painted funny buttons obey that.
Or scrollbars. Click and drag on the scrollbar on the right of this page. Now move the mouse off it. See how it jumps back to its original position? Annoying, if you ask me, but it acts like that in all programs that use the standard Windows widgets. You can learn to use it once, and then you're good to go in all programs you'll ever use.
Well, that's the kind of consistency that makes Windows easy to use, and Linux a bloody nightmare for Joe Average. Between KDE whose scrollbars do jump back like in Windows, Motif whose scrollbars don't, half a dozen other widget sets, and a thousand programs which paint their own (presumably because standard widget sets fall under the "not invented here" category), you never know what even something as simple as a scrollbar or button or menu will really do.
It's putting Joe Average through an extra learning curve for each program. And Joe is _not_ a nerd. He doesn't enjoy discovering how obscure undocumented features work. He just wants to get something done, preferrably right now and without learning any new skills.
Again: it's about how it works, not about looks. So please don't suggest downloading a desktop theme.
That's the kind of consistency that Linux GUIs will have to finally aggree on. Hopefully soon.
Even the ones hawking these things tell you that the average size for a human is something like 6.1 inches. And that the vast majority of humans have "only" that size.
So basically guess what? Anyone who "only" has 6 inches -- or is within, say, +/- 10% of that -- is just a perfectly normal member of the human species.
Why, in Odin's name, would anyone feel desperate and inadequate for being perfectly normal? WTH? Since when it's inadequate to _not_ be a mutant?
I mean, what next? Spam for pills to grow a 6'th finger on your hands? Or to grow an elephant trunk instead of a nose? Or to grow a giraffe neck?
Uh... Dude? 1 degree Fahrenheit is about half a degree Celsius. You do _not_ need air conditioning to survive that kind of a temperature difference. In fact, you wouldn't even notice at all if your room was 1F colder or warmer right now.
Either way, my main point is merely that I'm sick and tired of bigots like the parent poster. That's no longer science, that's just religious bigotry.
He (and you) are free to believe in global warming, if you so choose. But the reverse of the coin is: everyone else if free to not believe, if they so choose. Don't go trying to silence everyone who dares question the dogma.
Basically, compare the two following situations, both in the name of a totally unproven theory:
- early 1600's: "You heretics dare question the Holy Scripture? Your lack of faith condemns us all in the eyes of God! You will suffer greatly for your transgressions!"
- early 2000's, on Slashdot: "You Exxon fascists dare question Global Warming? Your lack of faith condemns us all to chaotic weather, needing dams in New York, etc. You should suffer for that!"
Sorry, that's just the exact same kind of mindless bigotry in both cases. That's no longer science, that's blind dogma in both cases. It's only that kind of mindless zealot attitude that I'm against.
These Exxon fascists would also say that global warming is a myth, because it's cold today... well it's warmer than it was 20 years ago. In about 30 years, you'll be paying for dikes to protect New York and Los Angeles from being flooded, ignorant bastard.
The whole warming measured since the late 19 century, is only 1 degree Fahrenheit. (Among other sources, try EPA: http://yosemite.epa.gov/oar/globalwarming.nsf/cont ent/climateuncertainties.html ) That's it. 1 degree Fahrenheit in more than a _century_.
So if we're talking "warmer than it was 20 years ago", we're talking a difference so small that it won't even show up on your thermometer.
EPA's own site again says "IPCC projects further global warming of 2.2-10F (1.4-5.8C) by the year 2100." They also repeat several times that it's _"uncertainty"_, or "likely, but not certain". So even taking the most pessimistic figure there, you will _not_ need dams in 30 years.
What environmentalists conveniently forget to tell you, however, includes:
- Satellite data actually indicates a global _cooling_ over the last two decades. So there goes your "warmer than it was 20 years ago" myth.
- In fact, out of that scary "century of warming", about 70% of the warming happened before 1940. Go figure. So all this wasteful industry sprouting everywhere, actually _reduced_ the heating rate?
- There's plenty of evidence that weather has been even warmer before -- e.g., peaking around 1000 A.D. -- without any industrial emissions. And wouldn't you know it, back then, the ice caps did _not_ melt and submerge the world in water within 30 years, like in your horror story. It takes one helluva lot more time, and one helluva lot more heat to melt any signifficant portion of those.
- A century of data is a spit in the bucket on a planet where ice age vs warming cycles take 100,000 years. And where by any logical reasoning, we're stil on the rising phase from the last ice age which ended 16,000 years ago.
I.e., so far: You're taking data from 1/1000 or 0.1% of the cycle length, and whose amplitude is known to be less than the normal fluctuations over the last millenium (itself just 1% of the cycle.) I.e., you make a whole scare story based on the _noise_, not the signal.
But furthermore:
- There's strong evidence that the heating and cooling cycles actually follow changes in the sun's brightness. (E.g., see how the recent flares caused a warm winter. Now think smaller changes. Fractions of a percent per decade.) I.e., pay attention: it's getting warmer when and because the sun sends more warmth this way, not because of scary greenhouse gasses.
- Only 2% of greenhouse gas emissions are from man-made sources. So even if the whole humanity stopped using cars, burning anything, and even breathing, it would still make buggerall difference.
- A lot of those "feel good" environmental measures actually use _more_ energy. (E.g., yes, melting a bottle, compared to melting sand to make a new one). A lot of those cause _more_ polution. (E.g., cleaning the used paper of ink.) They aren't there to save the planet, they're there just to make some retards feel good about themselves.
So what do we have here? You actually have no clue what you're talking about, you make some false predictions that aren's supported by any data (not even the environmentalists' handpicked set), and you call anyone who disagrees with something unproven "These Exxon fascists".
No, if there are "fascists" out there, it's self-appointed inquisitors like you. The ones who don't care about science, nor about the scientific process. Science is actually _supposed_ to question everything. You've got your dogma, and everyone who dares question it, is automatically a heretic who should suffer for his transgressions. (As spelled out in your message.)
Sorry, dude. That kind of attitude may have been all the rage in the 1600's, but today it's just sad.
As far as I know, they didn't sue anyone for DOWNloading the files, they sued those who host files for download. There's a big difference there.
Same as probably noone will raid your home for having a pirated version of MS Office on your home computer. But if you started distributing CD-R copies of MS Office at a street corner, you might well get to talk to a cop or the BSA real soon.
That's what really pisses me off about this whole "RIAA is evil" masquerade. We're not talking people who make a copy for their own use, and we're not talking people who are downloading a song or two from an album to decide if they should buy it. We're talking people who _distribute_ copyrighted material without the copyright holder's consent.
The whole thing is deliberately mis-represented to sound as if the RIAA went after innocent downloaders, when in reality they're going after very active distributors.
Complete with such bullshit stories as "the RIAA is sueing a 12 year old girl." No, buddy. Unless that 12 year old girl had a credit card and her own ISP account, the IP adress pointed at the _mother_, not at the girl. Just the mother pushed the girl in front, to play the public sympathy card. And, shamefully enough, won.
OSS has many fine points, no doubt, but making the user automatically clued is not one of them.
Try to remember what spyware does. It does _not_ come via a buffer overflow export, but by social engineering. It is installed by the user. It does that by pretending to be something else. (E.g., see the thread we're in.)
Let's use the Clueless family as a hypothetical example. They're the average family, with a home in the suburbs, 2.2 children and _zero_ clue about computers. They're not going to look into the source code, nor compile anything themselves. They wouldn't even know where to start. Anything that does end up installed on their computer, had a nice installer.
Basically: the average kind of people who end up with 10 pieces of spyware and 3 dialers.
The same Joe Clueless who now installs some dialer plugin (because some porn site told him that he needs it to access the site), will just as cheerfully install a new "plugin" or driver in Linux.
Even if someone clued him not to run as root for web browsing, he _will_ su as root if needed to install that great plugin.
The same Jane Clueless who now installs some stupid password reminder (with key logger and backdoor port and all, presumably to make sure someone else remembers your passwords too;) in Windows, will just as cheerfully install the Linux version of it. Going root and even replacing system libraries if needed.
And little Jim Clueless, the lamer kiddie who installs spyware and trojans disguised as Counter-Strike cheats and aimbots... well, will just as cheerfully install them in Linux. Heck, he'll even replace the kernel if those nice l33t h4x0rz on the warez site tell him "we needed to change the kernel itself to keep the game from detecting the cheat. Now when the game asks for that file, we intercept the call and say it doesn't exist."
For _you_, ok, that would probably raise a few questions. The kernel is a very critical program, and _you_ know that very well. But little Jimmy doesn't. The only thing that will go through his cheating retard brain is "kewl!!! now I can get a bigger score and not get caught!!!"
So basically you're saying that a skilled architect, accountant, marketing expert, or car engineer should be fired just because they're not an expert in computers? That instead of learning more about their own job, they should drop everything and stay up to date with computers instead?
Geesh.
Here's some free clue: for those people, the computer is just a tool, just like an abacus or a pencil. It's _not_ their l33t h4x0r skillz that generate revenue for the company. The computer is just a tool for their real job. The software running on it should be designed from the ground up, and tested, with one single purpose in mind: to make their real job easier.
If said tool only makes their life harder, then it's a crap tool. Then it's time someone made a better tool. One which doesn't require a Ph.D. in CS to use.
Let me give you a better idea: how about we fire people like YOU. It's about time we stopped letting such ego-centric assholes design unstable, buggy and unsafe software, and then blame it on the user. Hire someone who can keep the following simple fact in mind: it's your job to meet the customers' needs, not viceversa.
So, yes, the parent poster was right: the computer _should_ be a glorified tool or appliance. And software should be designed from the ground up with the users' needs in mind.
I'm not going to pretend that computers are as dangerous as cars.
... and yet you go on the rest of the message on an analogy _based_ cars being dangerous:)
The _only_ reason why the government wants you to take that test, and to know the rules, is that a car is a mighty dangerous thing. We're talking a relatively thin and fragile -- but very heavy -- tin can, which can do up to 200 miles per hour. Even the cheapest ones typically can do 100 mph on a straight road.
Without testing your skills _and_ knowledge of the rules, you'd not only end up hurting yourself, you'd end up endangering innocent bystanders.
I.e., I'll be all for mandating such skill checks for people whose use of a computer can pose a similar danger. E.g., seeing the link you've posted, those in charge of securing the networks. By all means, I'm all for testing those.
But people using the computer at home to surf the net? There the whole car analogy falls flat on its face. _What_ can spyware do that's even remotely comparable to a car running straight over a playground? No, I'm serious. I want to know.
That's more akin to requiring a license to operate your TV or DVD player. As you undoubtedly know, no government in the world (no, not even in the mandatory Soviet Russia posts) ever required an aptitude test for those.
My thinking is more along the lines of:
1. People expect (maybe mistakenly) that a computer should be as safe and easy to use as the aforementioned TV or DVD player. Maybe instead of ranting about how someone should force them to take aptitude tests, we all ought to remember about the customer-vendor relationship. I.e., it's our job to meet the customer's needs, not viceversa.
(Yes, those of you anti-MS, please feel free to start from Linux or MacOS X there.)
2. Tin-foil hat wearers be damned, I'm all for more laws. Or even just applying the existing ones to software too. I want to see some of these spyware making retards thrown in jail.
(Actually, I'd like them to see them executed in the slowest and most painful way ever invented. But then I'll settle for them being thrown in jail.)
Most of them don't even know what "spyware" _is_, or what to search for. In some cases, nor where.
Again: Do _you_ know everything about mechanical watches? Would you, without internet access (to get you as much out of your element as they are on the 'net) even know where to _start_ looking for information on what can be hidden in yours? Do you also know everything about remote controls? Did you take yours apart and/or decoded its IR transmission, and are 100% sure that it couldn't possibly allow someone with an IR receiver to listen to what you're saying in your house? Etc.
Basically: _your_ field of expertise is _not_ the only one, and it's _not_ the most important one. You cannot decree that everyone should abbandon everything else they were doing, and start learning about computers.
Here's an idea for you: Your well being and even your _life_ depend every day on people whose field of expertise _isn't_ computing science. The medic you see, the architect that designed your house, the car engineers that designed your car, the chemists that created your shampoo and toothpaste, etc. You entrust your very life every day to these people's non-CS expertise, while to them your computing skills ammount at best to some mild entertainment on a slow evening.
Would you prefer that the next time you need surgery, you're in the hands of people with l33t h4x0r skillz, or in the hands of _surgeons_? Well, then you can stop asking that everyone devotes their time to learning computer stuff. Your surviving that surgery, or how much pain do you have after it, might just depend on their learning their own job instead of yours.
OK. This is a possibly legitmate concern, but it's a managable one. Shielded wallets. Refusing to use cards with RFID tags. Requiring some other confirmation. This is not an insurmountable problem, and nowhere near the magnitude of some of the real paranoiacs.
All of which defeat the carrot of "you'll be able to automatically pay when you exit the store." So all that remains is the stick part.
The low power (they are actually passive without a scanner) and limited range of RFID tags means the stalker can actually *see* me by the time he can get a response from any tags on my clothes or shoes
Your seem to underestimate the fact that a very weak signal can be amplified quite a lot. The technology is already there to count crates in warehouses via RFID. I.e., it can and does work at considerably higher ranges than "waving a wand over your butt", and yes it can be multiplexed.
If it required an employee to go wave a wand over each pack of Gillette razor blades, WalMart wouldn't want this technology. It's more work than counting the crates by hand.
Basically: no, it's not an infinite range tracking device. But even if they can tell if you're nearby even from around a corner, or even when you're facing the other way in a crowd, it's already an advantage.
I really want to see an actual demonstration of someone determining the contents of a wallet from a distance great enough that the wallet's owner doen't notice anything suspicious, like a wand being waved over his butt. If someone can demonstrate that effectively, I'll consider it a risk.
Even if the range was as short as you seem to assume, try to think as a criminal there. A RFID scanner carried in your pocket will pass close enough to enough people's wallets by just passing them by close enough on the street, or in the shop. Enough to have quite a bunch of credit card numbers at the end of the day, without much effort or suspicion raised.
I.e., what are you going to do? Strip-search everyone for hidden RFID scanners, when they squeeze by you in a shop? Or when they sit next to you in the bus?
Ever wondered why there are laws and courts of law out there? Because the "ha ha, if you're not informed, it sucks to be you" approach just doesn't work.
You're no less than asking that everyone spends inordinate hours of their life doing research about every single piece of software. Maybe for you it's fun. For most of the rest of the world it isn't.
And even if you enjoy that for software... how about imagining a world where some other product might be affected. Would you like to check every single pencil or roll of toilet paper or disposable razor blade for hidden spyware equipment? It's exactly the non-computer equivalent of spyware: something which masquerades as a useful everyday item, but which in reality exists only to rape your privacy.
Would you even have time to do that? Would you enjoy doing that? Would you actually learn everything about mechanical watches just to be able to tell if there's a little extra in your watch? What about your new cell phone? How do you know it's not transmitting a little extra to a third party? Etc.
If you didn't answer a wholehearted "Yes!" to each of the above, well, then you probably get my drift. Just as you probably have better stuff to do than becoming an expert in mechanical watches, other people have better stuff to do than to become an expert in computers.
Either way, multiplied by the number of computer users, the "so get informed" solution would mean tens or hundreds of billions of hours wasted per year. A murderer can be sentenced to death for, basically, shortening someone's life by 20-30 years. This "so inform yourself" solution ammounts in the long run to stealing years off everyone's life.
The mistake most people make is assuming that we live in an ideal world, where everyone is good and corret. And surely only the checkout doors will read your credit card number. And surely only the government agencies (e.g., the police) will track you by RFID.
But it's ok, since you "don't have anything to hide" and don't intend to leave the shop without paying, either. Right? Wrong.
It's a nicely rose-coloured world, but Real Life isn't that simple. If everyone was that correct, we wouldn't have credit card fraud, identity theft, stalkers, etc. Heck, then we wouldn't even need a police at all.
The problem with these RFID tags is that _anyone_ can read them with a relatively cheap gizmo (and even cheaper once it starts to get mass-produced.) And by making the gizmo only slightly less cheap, it can replay them too, effectively impersonating an RFID tag.
So what can (and _will_) happen in practice? Here's a few examples:
1. As I've said, not only the supermarket can read your credit card data through 5 layers of clothes. Anyone can, and anyone can impersonate it. Identity theft, here we come. Anyone can just walk through the exact same supermarket doors with a big plasma TV, and have it billed to _your_ credit card. They didn't even have to sign anywhere. Doesn't it make you feel special?
2. Don't assume that only the police can (or wants to) track you via RFID. I'd bet that it'll more likely be a stalker's or mugger's dream come true.
3. Speaking of muggers and thieves, it's not only your credit card that can be read by more than the supermarket. Those products you bought can be identified by anyone too. It's not that hard to imagine someone hanging around the exit door, waiting for someone to exit with a small and expensive item, just begging to be stolen. Not only they'll know that you've bought that expensive gold watch, they'll even know in which bag or pocket it is. And they can follow you by the signal all day long, until oportunity presents itself.
4. Or if someone wants to rob your house? Heck, now they can know everything that's inside even before entering through the door. _And_ if _you_ are inside at the time.
5. Since anyone can get that data, even if they don't actually go on to rob you, he/she already has access to a _ton_ of information about you. From how much money do you have in your account, to the exact brand of underwear you're wearing, to god knows what else. Without even you knowing who or when gets that data.
And so on. That was a quick exercise.
That's the real problem: they're indiscriminate. While the government might not even care that you exist (and I'll bet that 99.99% of the people are in this category), the friendly thief next door might. And they can get the exact same data, without you even knowing it.
"We use vacuum tubes because they sound good," says Victor Tiscareno, a trained violinist and vice president of engineering at Red Rose Music, a maker of high-end home audio systems. Low-distortion, solid-state-transistor sound "looks lovely on an oscilloscope," he explains. "But what we measure and what we hear aren't the same. Vacuum tubes just sound more human, more lifelike.
If on an oscilloscope or spectrum analyzer you can't see distortion -- and clipping would be the _very_ visble -- it's because it doesn't exist.
Basically this claim that there's something magical about tubes that you can't measure or see with any tool, is just the saddest case of "the emperor's new clothes." Claim that something can be seen or heard only by the truly gifted (in this case, audiophiles), and enough idiots will start convincing themselves that they're seeing/hearing it too. Just to seem gifted too.
If you believe in that, might as well start believing in Bigfoot too. Noone's seen them or been able to photograph them, but they're there. Just trust me that it's there. See the analogy with the whole tubes issue yet?
That said, I wish I knew which marketing guy started the whole scam, elevating an inferior technology to fashion status over night. That one was a genius. I sincerely hope he/she was handomely rewarded, seein' as decades later there's still a sucker that falls for it every minute.
You're doing the sexagesimal math in your head every time you look at your digital watch [...]Don't mistake your lamentable inability to read an analog display as a weakness of the concept. You're just to lazy to learn something that takes all of a few day's casual practice.
How about taking your own advice. Catch;
"Don't mistake your lamentable inability" to do that maths "as a weakness of the concept. You're just to lazy to learn something that takes all of a few day's casual practice (i.e., wearing an analog watch and looking at it when you want to know the time) to become second nature."
Do you need 0.5 seconds accuracy? Probably not. But then ****ing ignore the seconds part. That's all. Even a monkey can learn to do that. Take your own advice and practice a couple of days.
In fact, unless your digital watch is using 24 hour time, you have to use duodecimal (base 12) arithmetic to find the difference between 9:00 and 2:00. On most analog displays, there are five clearly delineated hour segments between the numbers in question.
Yes, and anyone with an IQ over 50 can do that instinctively. If someone _tells_ you "I'll be back in 5 hours", what do you do? Do you actually have to start counting notches on your analog watch to get the result?
Do you also need to take your shoes off to count higher than 10?
And how about all those watches which _don't_ have the hour notches marked? What excuse do those have? Requiring both a wild guess of the position _and_ maths?
Also, a classy analog watch has approximately thirteen thousand times the sex appeal of wearing uglyfont numbers on your arm.
That's actually the only point you got right. The whole "it's fashionable to be all analog and arrive 15 minutes too late" is more of a fashion statement than any inherent advantage.
Repeat after me: there's nothing inherently great or "elegant" about more inaccuracy.
There are, however plenty of SFVs (Stupid Fashion Victims) who'd buy any idiocy just because it's fashionable to do so. The most overpriced and impractical the crap dictated by fashion, the better.
Congrats. You've just nominated yourself as a SFV. Wear the title with pride.
Well, basically I don't have much non-gaming stuff that I really need done on my home computer. This is really just a glorified game console in a big tower case;)
Well, either way, just to make it clear, since I must have come out a bit unclear the first time around: what I meant by "standing up" was more like insisting that the normal consumer and economic laws and rules apply to software too. Not vigilante actions, nor crippling my own computer to flip the bird to Microsoft.
What I was "preaching" is more along the following lines:
1. let's say Ana's Builders Co is a construction company. And they contact Joe's Steel Corp to buy 10 tons of steel I-beams, with x% carbon content and a bunch of other technical specs.
If said beams don't match the contract, Joe receives a letter from Ana's lawyers. And chances are Joe will pay up a hefty chunk of damages.
Doubly so if said beams broke and caused other damage in the process. Joe doesn't have the luxury of having a catch-all EULA which basically says "ha ha, sucks to be you. You've accepted by opening the crate. Now it's your problem, not mine."
2. let's say I go buy something off the shelf. Let's say a ball point pen, or an el-cheapo electronic watch, or whatever. If it doesn't work as advertised, I can at the very least expect my money back.
Basically I'm arguing that there's a reason why economic laws, regulations and the ever popular civil lawsuits were invented.
Because if everyone must spend time and money to find out if a product even works at all in advance, it is in fact the same kind of plundering everyone's time and money as spam is. So having a law that says "if the pen or watch doesn't work, you get your money back" is far better for society as a whole than making everyone spend half their time reading reviews of pens, and reviews of watches, and reviews of toilet paper rolls, and whatnot. Just to find which brand works at all.
Well, I guess there is some sweet irony in getting back the same kind of mindless zealotry that I was dishing out a couple of years ago. Yep, that was me, starting around 1999. Preaching about how everyone should abandon everything they need that computer for, and switching to linux just to oppose The Beast (TM). And that, obviously, having the unstable Netscape 4.x and gcc must account for everything anyone would ever need on their computer.
And do you even remember the word "astroturfing"? I used to write that word a lot:P
(Before 1999, I was an OS/2 zealot.)
You couldn't tell now, right? Funny what growing up can do to someone, eh?;)
But still... As opposed to what? To turning the whole computer into something completely useless for what I need? Yeah, that's got to count as a good solution. About as good as a hanging counts as helping quit smoking.
At that point I might just sell the damn box and keep just the consoles. (Which I'm using more than the PC anyway, come to think of it.)
Slashdot Mirror
RTFA, lemming.
It's right in there that he _is_ an American programmer. Working in the US. It's also been posted 20 times already in this thread.
So you can get off the "if it was an American programmer" high horse already. Again: he _is_ an American programmer.
How about "you do _not_ need a 'hidemydata' _coder_".
I've worked on several enterprise projects so far, and in _none_ of them did I need any actual production data while coding the app. All the test databases we worked on were filled with dummy data. Including login accounts, addresses, products/materials, financial data, etc. You name it, it was fake.
What you do need are a few examples that _look_ like the real data. They don't come from a coder, they're not real data that ran through some encription code. They're just bogus.
Where do they come from? They come from the people who work with the real data. Only those need to see it.
_They_ are allowed to see where little Timmy Victim lives and where does he go to school. So they take some records from that data, read it, then replace the name with Bart Simpson, the address with something bogus, and so on. Then send me the database with a few such examples.
What if I need thousands of records, you say? Well, then I, or another "rent-a-hidemydata-coder", takes those bogus samples, and writes a small script to generate thousands that look like those. Voila, now you have thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands, of bogus records to run those tests on.
If there's a bug that needs fixing -- e.g., to stick to the article, the formatting code sucks -- I don't need production data to reproduce the bug. I just need an example -- _any_ example -- that clearly demonstrates the bug. If it's a bogus example, all the better.
You may notice how at no point did a coder actually see the confidential data. Not the developper of the application, not the "rent-a-hidemy-data coder", not the coder's PHB, not the company's marketroid (who might go "ka-ching! we have all those people's records, let's try to sell them stuff.") The only ones who saw the confidential data are (surprise!) the people who actually have a right to work with that data.
It wasn't that hard, now was it?
In fact, yes. Unless someone were to come at me screaming "die! die! die!" and waving a big old medieval axe, or something equally dangerous, I couldn't tell preoccupied from dumbfounded from annoyed, if my life depended on it.
However, that's also the reason why I prefer interfacing to a compiler than to a human. My boss says I'm even good at it. Of course, I can't tell if he's serious about it.
I can live in society, even have friends, mainly by having learned quickly stuff like "if you can't tell when you're getting on someone's nerves, better not say something which might get on their nerves." Or like "if you can't tell when someone's interested in your topics, do everyone a favour: listen first, and pick one of their own topics." Or like, "if laughing and screaming are the only two signs you can recognize, you might as well go for making people laugh." Etc.
Still, the issue remains: I can understand a compiler, I can understand assembly, but humans are somewhat of a black box to me.
So, as was said before, I find it hard to believe that mild autism can cause someone to be unable to follow more than 2 sentences in a row in a technical presentation. Autists are known to be bad with humans, but good with computers. If there was someone I'd trust the most to follow a spec and implement it, it would be another autist.
But again, I'm no medic. I wouldn't really know.
But, as I've said, you _can_, to some extent, use logic instead of empathy. Which is all I'm asking for in return. If logic tells you that there's not much reason why someone would really need to know the exact font size _now_, please do trust that logic, and don't waste everyone's time with that question.
You may not be able to empathically tell that I'm bored out of my skull. That's ok. So I'm telling you: those irrelevant questions bore me out of my skull. Now use that piece of information next time you think of showing some activity in a meeting.
You may not be able to empathically sense that everyone else would _kill_ to get out of that stupid meeting room after 3 hours straight. It's ok. I understand. So I'm telling you.
Stick to the topic and be prepared to make some concessions. Keeping everyone there while acting like a spoiled brat (whether it's "no, it's _my_ architecture and I'm not changing any bit of it!" or "no, _I_ want every single detail _now_, and none of you are leaving until _I_ am satisfied") is just boring everyone after 1 hour or so. "Informative" uni-directional meetings get boring even faster.
Now use that knowledge in the next meeting.
Well, it depends on what's discussed, obviously.
Some meetings really need to stay meetings. You're right there. And keeping it small and on track would be very nice too.
But, I don't know, IMHO there's also a lot of stuff could just as well be solved by email.
E.g., "unidirectional" meetings. I've been in meetings where only the boss talked for 2 hours straight. No suggestions were even expected, or even within our expertise. Same as watching the news on TV: you're not actually expected to voice your feedback.
While I definitely appreciate the feedback from above, I see no real reason why it needs to be a meeting instead of an email. Attach the powerpoint presentation to it, if you really must have one, and there you go. It's still the same information, it's easier to follow, and takes far less time for everyone.
In an ideal company, things would run that way. However, "real" and "ideal" are very often opposite directions on the compass.
In a "real" company, most often things are not like in your "but Dell cut us a deal on 300 PCs, translating into exactly X hundred dollars saved."
They're more like some manager declared a dysfunctional product as a corporate standard, because they got a 10,000$ discount. But that decision has cost the company about 2 extra man-years of expensive contractor programmer fees, just to work around the many bugs in that product. We're talking _hundreds_ _of_ _thousands_ of dollars lost, because of that 10,000$ discount.
Seen that happen twice. Literally.
Why did it happen? Because there that foot soldier knew the product and its limitations better than the manager. If the self-appointed "general" actually listened to the soldiers saying "this weapon can _not_ do that", things would have been far better.
You want analogies with the army? OK, I'll give you just two random examples:
1. The american civil war was a blood bath. Why? The minnie ball.
The grand strategic vision of the generals was built upon the past reality of the smoothbore musket. So everyone marched to the limit of the musket's effective range, neatly aligned, shot mostly for the suppression effect, then charged with the bayonets.
Now enter the rifles. An early rifle had three times the range of a smootbore musket. Not only that, but the hollow minnie ball would expand and break in the wound, causing a fist sized exit wound.
So those soldiers were ordered to march and align at a distance at which firing resulted in a bloodbath. Again, and again, and again. No matter how many times those soldiers saw the catastrophe happening, no matter how sickeningly high the losses, those "wise" generals stuck to their grand vision.
Maybe listening to a foot soldier wouldn't have been such a bad idea?
2. When France first got their Gattling guns, someone decided that it's an artillery piece. Based on its size.
So the soldiers were actually ordered to start firing it at 10 times its actual maximum range. By the time the enemy actually got in range, they'd be completely out of ammo.
Again: maybe listening to a foot soldier wouldn't have been such a bad idea?
More like a bad decade :)
Now seriously, it's not about something particularly specific to this day or this week.
I just see a meeting as a way to solve a problem. It's not for small talk, it's not for fulfilling someone's social interaction needs, and it's not for getting noticed by the boss. Anyone who mis-uses it to those ends is just stealing my and everyone else's time, to his/her own needs. And showing remarkable contempt for their co-workers.
For all I care, if they want to impress the boss, they can go brown-nose after the meeting. They don't need to keep a whole team bored to death for another half an hour.
I'm not a doctor, nor that knowledgeable about medicine. Still, I've read a little bit about autism. IMHO what you describe seems to me more like a severe attention deficit problem, than anything autism-related.
But, again, I'm not a medic. If anyone knows more about this, I'd be grateful if he/she shared the knowledge.
And, well, I'd also expect that even without taking a hint from empathy, a simple understanding that "not _everything_ must be solved in _this_ meeting" can go a long way.
E.g., in the case of asking for irrelevant details, you don't need to see if the co-workers are annoyed by the question. You need a little common sense, to ask yourself "do I _need_ to know the font size at this point? does _everyone_ _else_ need to debate the font size right now?" If not, please don't waste everyone's time with the question. That's all.
Plus, from someone who works in this line of job I'd wouldn't expect much empathy, but I would expect them to have abstraction skills. If you don't _need_ a detail for the problem at hand, you should actually exclude it from the model.
E.g., let's take a simple problem like "two trains leave in opposite directions from the same railway station, one doing 80 mph, one doing 60 mph. How far apart will they be after one hour."
A legitimate question might be "ok, so are they going in a straight line and with no stops during that hour?"
However _if_ you start asking stuff like "what colour are the trains?" or "do tickets to the 80mph train cost more?" then you're not lacking empathy, you're lacking abstraction skills. Those details are just not needed at all to solve the problem.
I.e., all I'm asking is that everyone first spends 10 seconds asking themselves if they really need the answer, before asking the question. That's all.
Actually, sometimes meetings serve a purpose. Or are planned that way. Sure, you could argue that we could have cleared the same question by email instead of having a two-hour meeting, but still. We could have just stuck to the point, explained the architecture to the client, or viceversa, answered a few questions, and been done with it.
But no. What I hate is the wiseguy that just has to ask _something_, _anything_, just to show participation. Among my "favourites" are(favourite poster children for euthanasia, that is):
- people who ask something that's been said before. Repeatedly. Bonus points if it's something obvious.
(Yes, for the 5'th time, we _are_ saving the data in an Oracle database.)
- people who, obviously, are stuck in a "misunderstand it" mental mode.
(E.g., no, just because there are two columns in the table, it doesn't mean you can only store two attributes. There's a reason why those two columns are called "key" and "value". It's for storing as many key/value pairs as you need. No, seriously. You can stop asking "what if we later need more than two attributes?")
- people who take some irrelevant detail -- often a tangent or metaphor used -- and, by Jove, they have to get that detail cleared out in detail.
(E.g., if we're discussing the workflow engine, you can jolly well stop picking on the exact font used in the dummy screenshots. Yes, you'll get any font you want, but you'll get it from the GUI team. Can we move ahead already?)
- the more extreme case of the above: people who ask something completely unrelated and completely irrelevant.
(Believe it or not, the "anyone else likes wood?" from a Dilbert strip actually happens in some real meetings. Just replace "wood" by some other completely irrelevant topic.)
- the client PHB who just is affraid to reach a conclusion, and instead just _has_ to show that he/she/it manages. So each time he/she/it will want something else wantonly changed.
(E.g., dude, we already gave you a template editor for those reports. Can we please, please, please not go yet again into whether to use landscape or portrait? Just use the editor and print them diagonally, for all I care.)
I've yet to see an office button that doesn't act like a normal Windows button. Or a scrollbar that doesn't act like a perfectly normal Windows scrollbar.
E.g., click on a button, but don't release. Now drag the cursor off the button. _Now_ release. See, it didn't count as clicking the button. Even WinAmp's self-painted funny buttons obey that.
Or scrollbars. Click and drag on the scrollbar on the right of this page. Now move the mouse off it. See how it jumps back to its original position? Annoying, if you ask me, but it acts like that in all programs that use the standard Windows widgets. You can learn to use it once, and then you're good to go in all programs you'll ever use.
Well, that's the kind of consistency that makes Windows easy to use, and Linux a bloody nightmare for Joe Average. Between KDE whose scrollbars do jump back like in Windows, Motif whose scrollbars don't, half a dozen other widget sets, and a thousand programs which paint their own (presumably because standard widget sets fall under the "not invented here" category), you never know what even something as simple as a scrollbar or button or menu will really do.
It's putting Joe Average through an extra learning curve for each program. And Joe is _not_ a nerd. He doesn't enjoy discovering how obscure undocumented features work. He just wants to get something done, preferrably right now and without learning any new skills.
Again: it's about how it works, not about looks. So please don't suggest downloading a desktop theme.
That's the kind of consistency that Linux GUIs will have to finally aggree on. Hopefully soon.
Even the ones hawking these things tell you that the average size for a human is something like 6.1 inches. And that the vast majority of humans have "only" that size.
So basically guess what? Anyone who "only" has 6 inches -- or is within, say, +/- 10% of that -- is just a perfectly normal member of the human species.
Why, in Odin's name, would anyone feel desperate and inadequate for being perfectly normal? WTH? Since when it's inadequate to _not_ be a mutant?
I mean, what next? Spam for pills to grow a 6'th finger on your hands? Or to grow an elephant trunk instead of a nose? Or to grow a giraffe neck?
The whole thing seems stupid beyond belief to me.
Uh... Dude? 1 degree Fahrenheit is about half a degree Celsius. You do _not_ need air conditioning to survive that kind of a temperature difference. In fact, you wouldn't even notice at all if your room was 1F colder or warmer right now.
Either way, my main point is merely that I'm sick and tired of bigots like the parent poster. That's no longer science, that's just religious bigotry.
He (and you) are free to believe in global warming, if you so choose. But the reverse of the coin is: everyone else if free to not believe, if they so choose. Don't go trying to silence everyone who dares question the dogma.
Basically, compare the two following situations, both in the name of a totally unproven theory:
- early 1600's: "You heretics dare question the Holy Scripture? Your lack of faith condemns us all in the eyes of God! You will suffer greatly for your transgressions!"
- early 2000's, on Slashdot: "You Exxon fascists dare question Global Warming? Your lack of faith condemns us all to chaotic weather, needing dams in New York, etc. You should suffer for that!"
Sorry, that's just the exact same kind of mindless bigotry in both cases. That's no longer science, that's blind dogma in both cases. It's only that kind of mindless zealot attitude that I'm against.
The whole warming measured since the late 19 century, is only 1 degree Fahrenheit. (Among other sources, try EPA: http://yosemite.epa.gov/oar/globalwarming.nsf/cont ent/climateuncertainties.html ) That's it. 1 degree Fahrenheit in more than a _century_.
So if we're talking "warmer than it was 20 years ago", we're talking a difference so small that it won't even show up on your thermometer.
EPA's own site again says "IPCC projects further global warming of 2.2-10F (1.4-5.8C) by the year 2100." They also repeat several times that it's _"uncertainty"_, or "likely, but not certain". So even taking the most pessimistic figure there, you will _not_ need dams in 30 years.
What environmentalists conveniently forget to tell you, however, includes:
- Satellite data actually indicates a global _cooling_ over the last two decades. So there goes your "warmer than it was 20 years ago" myth.
- In fact, out of that scary "century of warming", about 70% of the warming happened before 1940. Go figure. So all this wasteful industry sprouting everywhere, actually _reduced_ the heating rate?
- There's plenty of evidence that weather has been even warmer before -- e.g., peaking around 1000 A.D. -- without any industrial emissions. And wouldn't you know it, back then, the ice caps did _not_ melt and submerge the world in water within 30 years, like in your horror story. It takes one helluva lot more time, and one helluva lot more heat to melt any signifficant portion of those.
- A century of data is a spit in the bucket on a planet where ice age vs warming cycles take 100,000 years. And where by any logical reasoning, we're stil on the rising phase from the last ice age which ended 16,000 years ago.
I.e., so far: You're taking data from 1/1000 or 0.1% of the cycle length, and whose amplitude is known to be less than the normal fluctuations over the last millenium (itself just 1% of the cycle.) I.e., you make a whole scare story based on the _noise_, not the signal.
But furthermore:
- There's strong evidence that the heating and cooling cycles actually follow changes in the sun's brightness. (E.g., see how the recent flares caused a warm winter. Now think smaller changes. Fractions of a percent per decade.) I.e., pay attention: it's getting warmer when and because the sun sends more warmth this way, not because of scary greenhouse gasses.
- Only 2% of greenhouse gas emissions are from man-made sources. So even if the whole humanity stopped using cars, burning anything, and even breathing, it would still make buggerall difference.
- A lot of those "feel good" environmental measures actually use _more_ energy. (E.g., yes, melting a bottle, compared to melting sand to make a new one). A lot of those cause _more_ polution. (E.g., cleaning the used paper of ink.) They aren't there to save the planet, they're there just to make some retards feel good about themselves.
So what do we have here? You actually have no clue what you're talking about, you make some false predictions that aren's supported by any data (not even the environmentalists' handpicked set), and you call anyone who disagrees with something unproven "These Exxon fascists".
No, if there are "fascists" out there, it's self-appointed inquisitors like you. The ones who don't care about science, nor about the scientific process. Science is actually _supposed_ to question everything. You've got your dogma, and everyone who dares question it, is automatically a heretic who should suffer for his transgressions. (As spelled out in your message.)
Sorry, dude. That kind of attitude may have been all the rage in the 1600's, but today it's just sad.
As far as I know, they didn't sue anyone for DOWNloading the files, they sued those who host files for download. There's a big difference there.
Same as probably noone will raid your home for having a pirated version of MS Office on your home computer. But if you started distributing CD-R copies of MS Office at a street corner, you might well get to talk to a cop or the BSA real soon.
That's what really pisses me off about this whole "RIAA is evil" masquerade. We're not talking people who make a copy for their own use, and we're not talking people who are downloading a song or two from an album to decide if they should buy it. We're talking people who _distribute_ copyrighted material without the copyright holder's consent.
The whole thing is deliberately mis-represented to sound as if the RIAA went after innocent downloaders, when in reality they're going after very active distributors.
Complete with such bullshit stories as "the RIAA is sueing a 12 year old girl." No, buddy. Unless that 12 year old girl had a credit card and her own ISP account, the IP adress pointed at the _mother_, not at the girl. Just the mother pushed the girl in front, to play the public sympathy card. And, shamefully enough, won.
OSS has many fine points, no doubt, but making the user automatically clued is not one of them.
Try to remember what spyware does. It does _not_ come via a buffer overflow export, but by social engineering. It is installed by the user. It does that by pretending to be something else. (E.g., see the thread we're in.)
Let's use the Clueless family as a hypothetical example. They're the average family, with a home in the suburbs, 2.2 children and _zero_ clue about computers. They're not going to look into the source code, nor compile anything themselves. They wouldn't even know where to start. Anything that does end up installed on their computer, had a nice installer.
Basically: the average kind of people who end up with 10 pieces of spyware and 3 dialers.
The same Joe Clueless who now installs some dialer plugin (because some porn site told him that he needs it to access the site), will just as cheerfully install a new "plugin" or driver in Linux.
Even if someone clued him not to run as root for web browsing, he _will_ su as root if needed to install that great plugin.
The same Jane Clueless who now installs some stupid password reminder (with key logger and backdoor port and all, presumably to make sure someone else remembers your passwords too;) in Windows, will just as cheerfully install the Linux version of it. Going root and even replacing system libraries if needed.
And little Jim Clueless, the lamer kiddie who installs spyware and trojans disguised as Counter-Strike cheats and aimbots... well, will just as cheerfully install them in Linux. Heck, he'll even replace the kernel if those nice l33t h4x0rz on the warez site tell him "we needed to change the kernel itself to keep the game from detecting the cheat. Now when the game asks for that file, we intercept the call and say it doesn't exist."
For _you_, ok, that would probably raise a few questions. The kernel is a very critical program, and _you_ know that very well. But little Jimmy doesn't. The only thing that will go through his cheating retard brain is "kewl!!! now I can get a bigger score and not get caught!!!"
Well, that's what I was thinking when I read about it. "Gee, it'll affect all the 5 people who still use RealPlayer."
So basically you're saying that a skilled architect, accountant, marketing expert, or car engineer should be fired just because they're not an expert in computers? That instead of learning more about their own job, they should drop everything and stay up to date with computers instead?
Geesh.
Here's some free clue: for those people, the computer is just a tool, just like an abacus or a pencil. It's _not_ their l33t h4x0r skillz that generate revenue for the company. The computer is just a tool for their real job. The software running on it should be designed from the ground up, and tested, with one single purpose in mind: to make their real job easier.
If said tool only makes their life harder, then it's a crap tool. Then it's time someone made a better tool. One which doesn't require a Ph.D. in CS to use.
Let me give you a better idea: how about we fire people like YOU. It's about time we stopped letting such ego-centric assholes design unstable, buggy and unsafe software, and then blame it on the user. Hire someone who can keep the following simple fact in mind: it's your job to meet the customers' needs, not viceversa.
So, yes, the parent poster was right: the computer _should_ be a glorified tool or appliance. And software should be designed from the ground up with the users' needs in mind.
... and yet you go on the rest of the message on an analogy _based_ cars being dangerous :)
The _only_ reason why the government wants you to take that test, and to know the rules, is that a car is a mighty dangerous thing. We're talking a relatively thin and fragile -- but very heavy -- tin can, which can do up to 200 miles per hour. Even the cheapest ones typically can do 100 mph on a straight road.
Without testing your skills _and_ knowledge of the rules, you'd not only end up hurting yourself, you'd end up endangering innocent bystanders.
I.e., I'll be all for mandating such skill checks for people whose use of a computer can pose a similar danger. E.g., seeing the link you've posted, those in charge of securing the networks. By all means, I'm all for testing those.
But people using the computer at home to surf the net? There the whole car analogy falls flat on its face. _What_ can spyware do that's even remotely comparable to a car running straight over a playground? No, I'm serious. I want to know.
That's more akin to requiring a license to operate your TV or DVD player. As you undoubtedly know, no government in the world (no, not even in the mandatory Soviet Russia posts) ever required an aptitude test for those.
My thinking is more along the lines of:
1. People expect (maybe mistakenly) that a computer should be as safe and easy to use as the aforementioned TV or DVD player. Maybe instead of ranting about how someone should force them to take aptitude tests, we all ought to remember about the customer-vendor relationship. I.e., it's our job to meet the customer's needs, not viceversa.
(Yes, those of you anti-MS, please feel free to start from Linux or MacOS X there.)
2. Tin-foil hat wearers be damned, I'm all for more laws. Or even just applying the existing ones to software too. I want to see some of these spyware making retards thrown in jail.
(Actually, I'd like them to see them executed in the slowest and most painful way ever invented. But then I'll settle for them being thrown in jail.)
Most of them don't even know what "spyware" _is_, or what to search for. In some cases, nor where.
Again: Do _you_ know everything about mechanical watches? Would you, without internet access (to get you as much out of your element as they are on the 'net) even know where to _start_ looking for information on what can be hidden in yours? Do you also know everything about remote controls? Did you take yours apart and/or decoded its IR transmission, and are 100% sure that it couldn't possibly allow someone with an IR receiver to listen to what you're saying in your house? Etc.
Basically: _your_ field of expertise is _not_ the only one, and it's _not_ the most important one. You cannot decree that everyone should abbandon everything else they were doing, and start learning about computers.
Here's an idea for you: Your well being and even your _life_ depend every day on people whose field of expertise _isn't_ computing science. The medic you see, the architect that designed your house, the car engineers that designed your car, the chemists that created your shampoo and toothpaste, etc. You entrust your very life every day to these people's non-CS expertise, while to them your computing skills ammount at best to some mild entertainment on a slow evening.
Would you prefer that the next time you need surgery, you're in the hands of people with l33t h4x0r skillz, or in the hands of _surgeons_? Well, then you can stop asking that everyone devotes their time to learning computer stuff. Your surviving that surgery, or how much pain do you have after it, might just depend on their learning their own job instead of yours.
All of which defeat the carrot of "you'll be able to automatically pay when you exit the store." So all that remains is the stick part.
The low power (they are actually passive without a scanner) and limited range of RFID tags means the stalker can actually *see* me by the time he can get a response from any tags on my clothes or shoes
Your seem to underestimate the fact that a very weak signal can be amplified quite a lot. The technology is already there to count crates in warehouses via RFID. I.e., it can and does work at considerably higher ranges than "waving a wand over your butt", and yes it can be multiplexed.
If it required an employee to go wave a wand over each pack of Gillette razor blades, WalMart wouldn't want this technology. It's more work than counting the crates by hand.
Basically: no, it's not an infinite range tracking device. But even if they can tell if you're nearby even from around a corner, or even when you're facing the other way in a crowd, it's already an advantage.
I really want to see an actual demonstration of someone determining the contents of a wallet from a distance great enough that the wallet's owner doen't notice anything suspicious, like a wand being waved over his butt. If someone can demonstrate that effectively, I'll consider it a risk.
Even if the range was as short as you seem to assume, try to think as a criminal there. A RFID scanner carried in your pocket will pass close enough to enough people's wallets by just passing them by close enough on the street, or in the shop. Enough to have quite a bunch of credit card numbers at the end of the day, without much effort or suspicion raised.
I.e., what are you going to do? Strip-search everyone for hidden RFID scanners, when they squeeze by you in a shop? Or when they sit next to you in the bus?
No offense, but I think you've got it all wrong.
Ever wondered why there are laws and courts of law out there? Because the "ha ha, if you're not informed, it sucks to be you" approach just doesn't work.
You're no less than asking that everyone spends inordinate hours of their life doing research about every single piece of software. Maybe for you it's fun. For most of the rest of the world it isn't.
And even if you enjoy that for software... how about imagining a world where some other product might be affected. Would you like to check every single pencil or roll of toilet paper or disposable razor blade for hidden spyware equipment? It's exactly the non-computer equivalent of spyware: something which masquerades as a useful everyday item, but which in reality exists only to rape your privacy.
Would you even have time to do that? Would you enjoy doing that? Would you actually learn everything about mechanical watches just to be able to tell if there's a little extra in your watch? What about your new cell phone? How do you know it's not transmitting a little extra to a third party? Etc.
If you didn't answer a wholehearted "Yes!" to each of the above, well, then you probably get my drift. Just as you probably have better stuff to do than becoming an expert in mechanical watches, other people have better stuff to do than to become an expert in computers.
Either way, multiplied by the number of computer users, the "so get informed" solution would mean tens or hundreds of billions of hours wasted per year. A murderer can be sentenced to death for, basically, shortening someone's life by 20-30 years. This "so inform yourself" solution ammounts in the long run to stealing years off everyone's life.
There has to be a better solution than that.
The mistake most people make is assuming that we live in an ideal world, where everyone is good and corret. And surely only the checkout doors will read your credit card number. And surely only the government agencies (e.g., the police) will track you by RFID.
But it's ok, since you "don't have anything to hide" and don't intend to leave the shop without paying, either. Right? Wrong.
It's a nicely rose-coloured world, but Real Life isn't that simple. If everyone was that correct, we wouldn't have credit card fraud, identity theft, stalkers, etc. Heck, then we wouldn't even need a police at all.
The problem with these RFID tags is that _anyone_ can read them with a relatively cheap gizmo (and even cheaper once it starts to get mass-produced.) And by making the gizmo only slightly less cheap, it can replay them too, effectively impersonating an RFID tag.
So what can (and _will_) happen in practice? Here's a few examples:
1. As I've said, not only the supermarket can read your credit card data through 5 layers of clothes. Anyone can, and anyone can impersonate it. Identity theft, here we come. Anyone can just walk through the exact same supermarket doors with a big plasma TV, and have it billed to _your_ credit card. They didn't even have to sign anywhere. Doesn't it make you feel special?
2. Don't assume that only the police can (or wants to) track you via RFID. I'd bet that it'll more likely be a stalker's or mugger's dream come true.
3. Speaking of muggers and thieves, it's not only your credit card that can be read by more than the supermarket. Those products you bought can be identified by anyone too. It's not that hard to imagine someone hanging around the exit door, waiting for someone to exit with a small and expensive item, just begging to be stolen. Not only they'll know that you've bought that expensive gold watch, they'll even know in which bag or pocket it is. And they can follow you by the signal all day long, until oportunity presents itself.
4. Or if someone wants to rob your house? Heck, now they can know everything that's inside even before entering through the door. _And_ if _you_ are inside at the time.
5. Since anyone can get that data, even if they don't actually go on to rob you, he/she already has access to a _ton_ of information about you. From how much money do you have in your account, to the exact brand of underwear you're wearing, to god knows what else. Without even you knowing who or when gets that data.
And so on. That was a quick exercise.
That's the real problem: they're indiscriminate. While the government might not even care that you exist (and I'll bet that 99.99% of the people are in this category), the friendly thief next door might. And they can get the exact same data, without you even knowing it.
"We use vacuum tubes because they sound good," says Victor Tiscareno, a trained violinist and vice president of engineering at Red Rose Music, a maker of high-end home audio systems. Low-distortion, solid-state-transistor sound "looks lovely on an oscilloscope," he explains. "But what we measure and what we hear aren't the same. Vacuum tubes just sound more human, more lifelike.
If on an oscilloscope or spectrum analyzer you can't see distortion -- and clipping would be the _very_ visble -- it's because it doesn't exist.
Basically this claim that there's something magical about tubes that you can't measure or see with any tool, is just the saddest case of "the emperor's new clothes." Claim that something can be seen or heard only by the truly gifted (in this case, audiophiles), and enough idiots will start convincing themselves that they're seeing/hearing it too. Just to seem gifted too.
If you believe in that, might as well start believing in Bigfoot too. Noone's seen them or been able to photograph them, but they're there. Just trust me that it's there. See the analogy with the whole tubes issue yet?
That said, I wish I knew which marketing guy started the whole scam, elevating an inferior technology to fashion status over night. That one was a genius. I sincerely hope he/she was handomely rewarded, seein' as decades later there's still a sucker that falls for it every minute.
How about taking your own advice. Catch;
"Don't mistake your lamentable inability" to do that maths "as a weakness of the concept. You're just to lazy to learn something that takes all of a few day's casual practice (i.e., wearing an analog watch and looking at it when you want to know the time) to become second nature."
Do you need 0.5 seconds accuracy? Probably not. But then ****ing ignore the seconds part. That's all. Even a monkey can learn to do that. Take your own advice and practice a couple of days.
In fact, unless your digital watch is using 24 hour time, you have to use duodecimal (base 12) arithmetic to find the difference between 9:00 and 2:00. On most analog displays, there are five clearly delineated hour segments between the numbers in question.
Yes, and anyone with an IQ over 50 can do that instinctively. If someone _tells_ you "I'll be back in 5 hours", what do you do? Do you actually have to start counting notches on your analog watch to get the result?
Do you also need to take your shoes off to count higher than 10?
And how about all those watches which _don't_ have the hour notches marked? What excuse do those have? Requiring both a wild guess of the position _and_ maths?
Also, a classy analog watch has approximately thirteen thousand times the sex appeal of wearing uglyfont numbers on your arm.
That's actually the only point you got right. The whole "it's fashionable to be all analog and arrive 15 minutes too late" is more of a fashion statement than any inherent advantage.
Repeat after me: there's nothing inherently great or "elegant" about more inaccuracy.
There are, however plenty of SFVs (Stupid Fashion Victims) who'd buy any idiocy just because it's fashionable to do so. The most overpriced and impractical the crap dictated by fashion, the better.
Congrats. You've just nominated yourself as a SFV. Wear the title with pride.
Well, basically I don't have much non-gaming stuff that I really need done on my home computer. This is really just a glorified game console in a big tower case ;)
Well, either way, just to make it clear, since I must have come out a bit unclear the first time around: what I meant by "standing up" was more like insisting that the normal consumer and economic laws and rules apply to software too. Not vigilante actions, nor crippling my own computer to flip the bird to Microsoft.
What I was "preaching" is more along the following lines:
1. let's say Ana's Builders Co is a construction company. And they contact Joe's Steel Corp to buy 10 tons of steel I-beams, with x% carbon content and a bunch of other technical specs.
If said beams don't match the contract, Joe receives a letter from Ana's lawyers. And chances are Joe will pay up a hefty chunk of damages.
Doubly so if said beams broke and caused other damage in the process. Joe doesn't have the luxury of having a catch-all EULA which basically says "ha ha, sucks to be you. You've accepted by opening the crate. Now it's your problem, not mine."
2. let's say I go buy something off the shelf. Let's say a ball point pen, or an el-cheapo electronic watch, or whatever. If it doesn't work as advertised, I can at the very least expect my money back.
Basically I'm arguing that there's a reason why economic laws, regulations and the ever popular civil lawsuits were invented.
Because if everyone must spend time and money to find out if a product even works at all in advance, it is in fact the same kind of plundering everyone's time and money as spam is. So having a law that says "if the pen or watch doesn't work, you get your money back" is far better for society as a whole than making everyone spend half their time reading reviews of pens, and reviews of watches, and reviews of toilet paper rolls, and whatnot. Just to find which brand works at all.
Well, I guess there is some sweet irony in getting back the same kind of mindless zealotry that I was dishing out a couple of years ago. Yep, that was me, starting around 1999. Preaching about how everyone should abandon everything they need that computer for, and switching to linux just to oppose The Beast (TM). And that, obviously, having the unstable Netscape 4.x and gcc must account for everything anyone would ever need on their computer.
:P
;)
And do you even remember the word "astroturfing"? I used to write that word a lot
(Before 1999, I was an OS/2 zealot.)
You couldn't tell now, right? Funny what growing up can do to someone, eh?
But still... As opposed to what? To turning the whole computer into something completely useless for what I need? Yeah, that's got to count as a good solution. About as good as a hanging counts as helping quit smoking.
At that point I might just sell the damn box and keep just the consoles. (Which I'm using more than the PC anyway, come to think of it.)