One of the things you pick up from motorcycle riding is the ability to predict what the vehicles around you are about to do. Not so much from "psych"ing out other drivers as from an appreciation of the physics involved. Like getting good at billiards.
You also get good at analyzing situations, "looking for a way out", so if some car invades your space, you don't have to think then about what to do - you just execute the plan.
Places where most drivers, at least, start out on a motorcycle and then get a car seem to have more competent drivers. New Zealand, for example - although that trend may change as "cheap vehicles" there are now grey market imports from Japan, not motorcycles.
However, starting out on motorcycles has a problem - it's a school of very hard knocks. Had a friend die when I was 17. Parents don't like this sort of thing - so a system that forced learners onto motorcycles isn't likely to happen other than through economic pressures (and the kids that just like bikes).
If you're going to write legislation that will (probably) affect all software (not just "spyware") why not require that anything being installed either:
- comes with a utility to completely uninstall the product being installed
- user explicitly agrees that the item being installed CANNOT be uninstalled without damaging the environment it's about to be installed into.
Pre cellphones-common-as-dirt, there were people trying to watch the keypads on phones in places like airports - looking for your phone card info. (Dunno if it's still happening...) One defense was to "mix" a bunch of false key presses (put your finger on the button, don't push down) in with the good ones. I guess this would also work here...
There's a gizmo you can buy that plugs into your BIOS-flash-ram socket. It has a flash ram in it and a socket for another flash-ram on top - and a switch that lets you determine which one is active. A very useful thing if you do a lot of BIOS-updating (or have an Asus A7N8X rev-1 that had a tendency to corrupt BIOS when doing a simple save of BIOS params - like changing boot-device order) About $20 as I remember...
Most people routinely travel 5-10 miles above the speed limit on the highway -- regardless of what the posted limit is. Should we change the limit from 65 to 75 so most of us aren't breaking the law anymore? Should we consider the studies that show traffic fatalities increase when speed limits are raised?
But they don't increase - at least not in a statistically significant way across multiple regions and time periods. Having 55 MPH limits were actually more dangerous as it was the difference in velocity between vehicles that could contribute to an accident. Remember that limited access highways were designed for 70 -5 MPH. Of course, once an accident happens, higher speeds mean greater severity (more energy to dissipate) - but again, these roads were designed to not have hard things you could decelerate suddenly against.
I'm some few years out of date with this - got actual studies, please post URLs and I'm prepared to be persuaded I'm wrong. If you're just making a point about "tragedy of the commons" - please stick to cows and grass.
OK, so I'm an "Old Guy"(TM) - but over the years I've now lost three good friends to helmet-less head injury (and a couple of others to head/body trauma suffered even though wearing protective gear). One friend was to a skiing accident (college buddy). One was to a very slow speed motorcycle accident. One was to a bicycle accident (at least we think so as he was found next to his bicycle alongside the road badly concussed - died two days later). I have to think that at least one of my friends would still be walking around if they'd been wearing a helmet. After the skiing-related death, yeah, I turned into a (at least sort of) "yuppie mom" and tried very hard to get my friends to wear helmets. At least the last one I lost knew they were taking a risk (the other one usually wore a helmet - freak parking lot accident).
Losing friends sucks.
Would I make everyone wear helmets? Well...no. I don't even wear one all the time myself (particularly on foot-driven scooters). But I understand where those "yuppie moms" are coming from.
Bob
PS: re: this argument the pro-helmet-law folks use - the one of "societal cost". I have one data point - two days in the ER is more expensive than a funeral (even a lavish one with fancy casket).... not that anybody will ever read this - how did I ever get sucked into another helmet debate...?
Ah-HAH! I'm a part time IT guy for a small legal firm. They use Exchange internally (good shared calender). Recently we've been unable to send email to AOL addresses. AFAICT we're not on any black list DBs, and (also AFAICT) we're not an open relay. I've tried contacting AOL about this, but, well, I've never actually spoken with a wall, but I imagine it must be something like this...
"...With that ONE practice, the single greatest/easiest chunk of security - separation of user from admin, is gone..."
I wonder if what's needed is a "promotable-to-admin" kind of priv? Lots of folks who grew up with NT use "runas" as a matter of course - but home users certainly aren't going to do this. So... maybe something that prompts the user whenever admin privs are needed...? Not a complete solution, of course, but probably pretty easy to add - and it'd at least make the user aware that something out-of-the-ordinary was going on (and they might actually refuse permission if they weren't doing something that might reasonably expect to need adnin privs - like an install)
I'm not sure news sources have ever been "fair and balanced" - and this has nothing to do with the technology involved. When I was a high-schooler (mid '60s - no internet) my Dad subscribed me to two news magazines, one far-right, the other far-left - and had me read articles from each about the same thing. His notion was to "innoculate" me against believing something was true just because I'd seen it in print. IMHO, this is exactly, what Ben Franklin was thinking about when he pushed for freedom of the press - not all voices "fair and balanced", but many opinionated voices, with the reader free to work out his or her own view of truth/reality. In my own biased view, were he here today, he'd be very pleased to see all the different news outlets available on the Web. Bob PS: As a sidenote, reading lots of stuff online is a lot easier if you get a good monitor, and (if it's a CRT monitor) a video card that's good at stable un-shimmery 2D images at high refresh rates (Matrox Milenniums, recent ATIs, probably some others) rather than a game card - but this is my 50+ year old eyes speaking... PS2: Not that I expect anyone to actually read this, given how rarely I post here:-)
Re:The problem is: that's not the problem
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Does C# Measure Up?
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There are plenty of dinosaurian programmers like myself
I'm one of those, too (even IBM 360s needed efficiency if you were writing disk drivers or LU 6.2 equivalents).
But you and I missed the ramifications of the exponential phenomenon going on around us (Moore's Law).
We weren't alone. For example, the OS/2 folks missed it big time (imagine demanding your OS be able to support an already-becoming-obsolete processor that essentially crippled that OS to unusability). They had no concept of how quickly the world was going to move from one processor to the next. (Neither did I - was busy building tiny modules in assembler and sometimes stringing 'em together in C.)
We could have had a modern Multics.
Instead we have VMS (AKA WinNT) and Unix, all over again.
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Places where most drivers, at least, start out on a motorcycle and then get a car seem to have more competent drivers. New Zealand, for example - although that trend may change as "cheap vehicles" there are now grey market imports from Japan, not motorcycles.
However, starting out on motorcycles has a problem - it's a school of very hard knocks. Had a friend die when I was 17. Parents don't like this sort of thing - so a system that forced learners onto motorcycles isn't likely to happen other than through economic pressures (and the kids that just like bikes).
If you're going to write legislation that will (probably) affect all software (not just "spyware") why not require that anything being installed either:
- comes with a utility to completely uninstall the product being installed
- user explicitly agrees that the item being installed CANNOT be uninstalled without damaging the environment it's about to be installed into.
Pre cellphones-common-as-dirt, there were people trying to watch the keypads on phones in places like airports - looking for your phone card info. (Dunno if it's still happening...)
One defense was to "mix" a bunch of false key presses (put your finger on the button, don't push down) in with the good ones.
I guess this would also work here...
IMHO anything enough less than ambient that your cannot hear it.
There's a gizmo you can buy that plugs into your BIOS-flash-ram socket.
It has a flash ram in it and a socket for another flash-ram on top - and a switch that lets you determine which one is active.
A very useful thing if you do a lot of BIOS-updating (or have an Asus A7N8X rev-1 that had a tendency to corrupt BIOS when doing a simple save of BIOS params - like changing boot-device order)
About $20 as I remember...
But they don't increase - at least not in a statistically significant way across multiple regions and time periods.
Having 55 MPH limits were actually more dangerous as it was the difference in velocity between vehicles that could contribute to an accident. Remember that limited access highways were designed for 70 -5 MPH.
Of course, once an accident happens, higher speeds mean greater severity (more energy to dissipate) - but again, these roads were designed to not have hard things you could decelerate suddenly against.
I'm some few years out of date with this - got actual studies, please post URLs and I'm prepared to be persuaded I'm wrong. If you're just making a point about "tragedy of the commons" - please stick to cows and grass.
OK, so I'm an "Old Guy"(TM) - but over the years I've now lost three good friends to helmet-less head injury (and a couple of others to head/body trauma suffered even though wearing protective gear).
... not that anybody will ever read this - how did I ever get sucked into another helmet debate...?
One friend was to a skiing accident (college buddy).
One was to a very slow speed motorcycle accident.
One was to a bicycle accident (at least we think so as he was found next to his bicycle alongside the road badly concussed - died two days later).
I have to think that at least one of my friends would still be walking around if they'd been wearing a helmet.
After the skiing-related death, yeah, I turned into a (at least sort of) "yuppie mom" and tried very hard to get my friends to wear helmets.
At least the last one I lost knew they were taking a risk (the other one usually wore a helmet - freak parking lot accident).
Losing friends sucks.
Would I make everyone wear helmets? Well...no. I don't even wear one all the time myself (particularly on foot-driven scooters). But I understand where those "yuppie moms" are coming from.
Bob
PS: re: this argument the pro-helmet-law folks use - the one of "societal cost".
I have one data point - two days in the ER is more expensive than a funeral (even a lavish one with fancy casket).
Ah-HAH!
I'm a part time IT guy for a small legal firm. They use Exchange internally (good shared calender).
Recently we've been unable to send email to AOL addresses. AFAICT we're not on any black list DBs, and (also AFAICT) we're not an open relay.
I've tried contacting AOL about this, but, well, I've never actually spoken with a wall, but I imagine it must be something like this...
"...With that ONE practice, the single greatest/easiest chunk of security - separation of user from admin, is gone..."
I wonder if what's needed is a "promotable-to-admin" kind of priv?
Lots of folks who grew up with NT use "runas" as a matter of course - but home users certainly aren't going to do this.
So... maybe something that prompts the user whenever admin privs are needed...? Not a complete solution, of course, but probably pretty easy to add - and it'd at least make the user aware that something out-of-the-ordinary was going on (and they might actually refuse permission if they weren't doing something that might reasonably expect to need adnin privs - like an install)
I'm not sure news sources have ever been "fair and balanced" - and this has nothing to do with the technology involved. :-)
When I was a high-schooler (mid '60s - no internet) my Dad subscribed me to two news magazines, one far-right, the other far-left - and had me read articles from each about the same thing. His notion was to "innoculate" me against believing something was true just because I'd seen it in print.
IMHO, this is exactly, what Ben Franklin was thinking about when he pushed for freedom of the press - not all voices "fair and balanced", but many opinionated voices, with the reader free to work out his or her own view of truth/reality.
In my own biased view, were he here today, he'd be very pleased to see all the different news outlets available on the Web.
Bob
PS: As a sidenote, reading lots of stuff online is a lot easier if you get a good monitor, and (if it's a CRT monitor) a video card that's good at stable un-shimmery 2D images at high refresh rates (Matrox Milenniums, recent ATIs, probably some others) rather than a game card - but this is my 50+ year old eyes speaking...
PS2: Not that I expect anyone to actually read this, given how rarely I post here