I'm still trying to figure out whether or not you are a troll. All of your comments mention subluxatioins, and they're always posted at or near the top on seemingly unrelated articles (the same way a first post, or GNAA troll would be posted, they don't need to read the article or think about the subject before posting). For example the only connection between your comment and the article is CO2, but you are talking about soda, and the article is talking about the atmosphere and environmental effects.
Also, cancer has been known as a major killer for all of recorded history (for example, it is mentioned in the Bible). It is not new at all.
I doubt Monsanto will ever have a monopoly on seeds. I don't think it's physically/technically/hypothetically possible, but even if it was, it wouldn't last long. They're not planning to jack up prices in the future, you can tell because their seeds are more expensive than those of their competitors and they are already making a healthy/obscene profit.
Genetically altered plants have been engineered in such a fashion that future generations of food bearing plants are *sterile* requiring you to *buy new seeds * every year.
Your statement implies that the technology is currently in use, when in reality it is still in development. Presumably such seeds would be marketed as having this gene, if they are not I'd think a farmer would stop using them after a year in the event they were planning to reuse the seeds (since they'd have to buy more). As the parent pointed out, farmers are already barred from planting the seeds they've grown by the contracts they've signed. You're playing it like this is some insidious backdoor "gocha" GMO manufacturers are trying to pull over on farmers, and that really isn't the case. It's stupid to get on the case of GMO manufacturers over this, since selling these seeds is their bread and butter and they obviously don't want someone else producing the seeds and under-cutting their prices (which would be easy to do). The people you should be complaining about/to is farmers, who are ok with buying the seeds year after year.
Isn't the goal of quantum theory to explain electric and chemical phenomena on a molecular/sub molecular scale? Since the behavior or electrons on this scale is part of the workings of the brain (as we currently understand it), and consciousness seems to occur in the brain, isn't it reasonable to hypothesize that quantum mechanics might someday explain consciousness? I'm not saying it will, and we're certinally no where near that point, but you have to admit it's not completely off the wall either.
A single infected floppy disk . . . will circumvent all your security.
iPads don't have floppy drives. All software must be installed from the app store, unless you jail-break them. The same thing is possible in enterprise.
Users will jailbreak, as every Iphone fanboy points out that is extremely easy to do on an Iphone. This means unsigned code can run on it
. ..If you've jailbroken it. It's hardly fair to say a feature has failed, if you have to hack in order to disable the feature so that it won't work. To make a car analogy, it would be like complaining an air-bag failed to deploy after manually cutting it out of your vehicle. Of course it doesn't work if you turn it off.
Malware and data miners have made it into the app store.
That's the best part. Once they are aware of the malware, they can take it out of store, and erase if from everyone's device. Brilliant.
To be clear, Safari will not automatically execute downloaded files. But it will automatically open "safe" file formats, and the installer is considered a safe format (probably because you have to approve the install and enter your administrator password when you open it in order for the install to continue).
I see the problem. I was thinking you were claiming that it installed the application automatically. I don't think just opening the installer is really all that bad, since it's a big red flag that something is wrong. The thing is that there's a lot of people who don't know where the downloaded files go, or how to open them. That can lead to a lot of user frustration, and it's why apple opens them automatically. I don't know if that's how I'd design it, but I think the user is adequately protected nonetheless.
I'm sorry, but your experience does not match my own, nor any of the other reports I've read. My understanding is that OSX always prompts you for the administrator password when installing new software (at least that's the default setting and that's they way it is on all the macs I operate).
Also, if you click on a link to a hyperlinked file, it will download and run the linked file. I suppose you could use JavaScript to automatically redirect to an installer file and that would get you to a point where you're running the installer automatically. Even so, it should ask for approval before installing and require a password, most people wouldn't grant it that since they were clicking on a link to a website, not trying to install an application.
Perhaps you stumbled on it accidentally, but the way it happened was not likely result in an install because you wern't prompted with the virus scan warning message. That may be the difference between what you've seen and what most people are seeing.
Fully automatic means that you do nothing (as in you go to the website, and then you are infected with malware). How many buttons are you clicking, and how many times do you have to enter your password?
A big part of the problem is Safari's default settings. Safari will automatically download and run the MacDefender installer.
This is how it appears to work, but in reality the user must click a link to download the file (the link is called "scan"). Then once's it's downloaded it opens an installer, which asks "are you sure you want to install this thing you downloaded from the internet" and prompts you for your administrator password. It's far from automatic.
I don't think the solution is more "click ok" boxes. That just conditions the user to click ok without knowing what is going on. But it shouldn't automatically open installers. A user who is competent to choose software to install also knows how to find and run the installer he's downloaded. Other people should ask someone who knows what they are doing.
That's not true. One of the thing that throws users for a loop is that it opens up a dialog box that says "scan" instead of download. They could change the settings so that any window is obviously a website (so that users can't get confused about whether they are seeing a webpage, or a dialogue box from their computer). The users trust their computer, but they wouldn't trust some random website. The trick is presenting information to the user so that they can understand what is going on. It's not like they're trusting some random website to install shit on their computer. They think MacDefender is a security feature on their own computer and trust if tor that reason. As with anything, the man thing that causes the stupid behavior is a lack of information. So the solution is providing the user with the right information.
Unless and until Apple disables the setting on Safari that causes the MacDefender Trojan to be automatically downloaded and executed just by visiting a malicious web page, Apple has not done a good job, in my opinion.
Apple does not have a setting that automatically downloads files when visiting a website. There is a setting that automatically opens downloaded files, but it's debatable whether they should turn it off or not, since you usually want to open something once you've downloaded it. As others have said before, installing software (any software) on a mac requires your administrator password. You discription can't get much farther from the truth than that You are pretty much completely wrong about everything you've said.
the safest software in the world can't protect against Stupid
This is the idea behind the walled garden approach they've taken to the iPhone and iPad. All the software they run has to be approved by apple first. They seem to be heading this direction with their desktops as well.
I hope Apple doesn't take your advice! It would probably be best to nip this problem in the bud. That may discourage malware developers from choosing the platform.
The installed cost will be higher, but the operating costs will probably be lower. If you were going to go conventional, you could use natural gas combined cycle plant, which only costs $0.50 per installed watt (and is therefore 1/5 to 1/10 the cost of Nuclear by your metric). Also, it's not fair to compare the projected costs of a prototypical molten salt solar plant to the known costs of building a conventional nuclear power station. You have know idea whether or not it will even work, and the real costs are likely to vary from projections. That's why they're building it, so they will know.
You have just made my point. The law enforcement agencies in your examples targeted individuals, rather than blocking the information directly. A good counter example would have been the domain name fiasco that happened a while ago, but even that happened as part of a criminal investigation.
All of this is beside the point, because I am not claiming that the US is better, or significantly different. My whole point is that there is no practical difference, only a theoretical one.
most of those cases are of people being fast and loose with their (incriminating) information. no government intervention required.
See what I mean? Somehow the debate has shifted from why the government is looking at things that are none of their business to why their victims were talking about inappropriate things. The effect is a chilling on free speech, people are expected to censor themselves, and if they don't they deserve to be victimized. No good can come from that. Practically everyone does something illegal every day. Why shouldn't we talk openly about it?
I'm not claiming that there's an actual conspiracy, so much as I'm saying that this is realistically the state of affairs. Large corporations need to be associated with the government for a number of reasons. First of all, they need to actively work to prevent legislation that would be damaging to their business. Secondly, they need to seek out tax breakes and legislation that makes their business more profitable in order to stay competitive. Finally, they need to stay friendly with law enforcement and regulatory agencies to avoid running afoul of the law.
The other dimension to my claim that they are pusedo-government is the authority they exercise. Facebook, for example, has the ability to control they way people are able to interact on the Internet. Moreover, they are expected to police their website and block spammers. Banks really hold a great deal of power, too much to list out here. Other corporations may not have as much of a direct influence on the general public, but they still exercise a great deal of control over their employees.
Well, wikileaks says they work with the government, though it's really just a suspicion so I don't know if you's regard that is credible. Here is an article about the IRS using facebook to catch tax cheats, and we've all heard about local law enforcement using it to catch criminals. There have also been cases of school districts expelling students over comments made on Facebook. None of this proves that Facebook is in on it, but they certainly haven't done anything to stop it, likely they know it would lead to problems for them if they weren't willing to cooperate with these government agencies. In this past, if the government were obtaining information like this it would have been a scandal. Now it's more or less accepted under the "well they shouldn't have been criminals in the first place" thinking. Basically, the courts have decided that this kind of communication, while nominally private, it open to free inspection by government agencies. Facebook doesn't really have to be in on it for it to be a freedom of speech problem at that point.
The main difference is the way censorship is theoretically justified. In China, the government is allowed to block content based on the message, while in the US, the government is allowed to block content based on the source. Of course, you'd be an idiot to believe such power is not abused, regardless of how it is done.
I think most slashdotters are aware that such abuses exist, since you see articles about them posted on the main page every so often. I also believe that most Chinese who concern themselves with such matters are also aware of the problem (hence this news article).
Perhaps one area of confusion is that in the US much censorship is done by psuedo-governmental organizations like the RIAA, or telecoms, or facebook, etc. . . which are not, in name, a part of the government but in reality have deep government ties.
Slashdot Mirror
I was looking for his comment too! Can't I depend on anything anymore?
Or they will just use something else.
I'm still trying to figure out whether or not you are a troll. All of your comments mention subluxatioins, and they're always posted at or near the top on seemingly unrelated articles (the same way a first post, or GNAA troll would be posted, they don't need to read the article or think about the subject before posting). For example the only connection between your comment and the article is CO2, but you are talking about soda, and the article is talking about the atmosphere and environmental effects.
Also, cancer has been known as a major killer for all of recorded history (for example, it is mentioned in the Bible). It is not new at all.
I doubt Monsanto will ever have a monopoly on seeds. I don't think it's physically/technically/hypothetically possible, but even if it was, it wouldn't last long. They're not planning to jack up prices in the future, you can tell because their seeds are more expensive than those of their competitors and they are already making a healthy/obscene profit.
Your statement implies that the technology is currently in use, when in reality it is still in development. Presumably such seeds would be marketed as having this gene, if they are not I'd think a farmer would stop using them after a year in the event they were planning to reuse the seeds (since they'd have to buy more). As the parent pointed out, farmers are already barred from planting the seeds they've grown by the contracts they've signed. You're playing it like this is some insidious backdoor "gocha" GMO manufacturers are trying to pull over on farmers, and that really isn't the case. It's stupid to get on the case of GMO manufacturers over this, since selling these seeds is their bread and butter and they obviously don't want someone else producing the seeds and under-cutting their prices (which would be easy to do). The people you should be complaining about/to is farmers, who are ok with buying the seeds year after year.
Isn't the goal of quantum theory to explain electric and chemical phenomena on a molecular/sub molecular scale? Since the behavior or electrons on this scale is part of the workings of the brain (as we currently understand it), and consciousness seems to occur in the brain, isn't it reasonable to hypothesize that quantum mechanics might someday explain consciousness? I'm not saying it will, and we're certinally no where near that point, but you have to admit it's not completely off the wall either.
iPads don't have floppy drives. All software must be installed from the app store, unless you jail-break them. The same thing is possible in enterprise.
. . .If you've jailbroken it. It's hardly fair to say a feature has failed, if you have to hack in order to disable the feature so that it won't work. To make a car analogy, it would be like complaining an air-bag failed to deploy after manually cutting it out of your vehicle. Of course it doesn't work if you turn it off.
That's the best part. Once they are aware of the malware, they can take it out of store, and erase if from everyone's device. Brilliant.
To be clear, Safari will not automatically execute downloaded files. But it will automatically open "safe" file formats, and the installer is considered a safe format (probably because you have to approve the install and enter your administrator password when you open it in order for the install to continue).
I see the problem. I was thinking you were claiming that it installed the application automatically. I don't think just opening the installer is really all that bad, since it's a big red flag that something is wrong. The thing is that there's a lot of people who don't know where the downloaded files go, or how to open them. That can lead to a lot of user frustration, and it's why apple opens them automatically. I don't know if that's how I'd design it, but I think the user is adequately protected nonetheless.
I'm sorry, but your experience does not match my own, nor any of the other reports I've read. My understanding is that OSX always prompts you for the administrator password when installing new software (at least that's the default setting and that's they way it is on all the macs I operate).
Also, if you click on a link to a hyperlinked file, it will download and run the linked file. I suppose you could use JavaScript to automatically redirect to an installer file and that would get you to a point where you're running the installer automatically. Even so, it should ask for approval before installing and require a password, most people wouldn't grant it that since they were clicking on a link to a website, not trying to install an application.
Perhaps you stumbled on it accidentally, but the way it happened was not likely result in an install because you wern't prompted with the virus scan warning message. That may be the difference between what you've seen and what most people are seeing.
What is the google image search result you are clicking on?
Fully automatic means that you do nothing (as in you go to the website, and then you are infected with malware). How many buttons are you clicking, and how many times do you have to enter your password?
They now have a app store, much like you would find on an iPhone, for desktop apps.
This is how it appears to work, but in reality the user must click a link to download the file (the link is called "scan"). Then once's it's downloaded it opens an installer, which asks "are you sure you want to install this thing you downloaded from the internet" and prompts you for your administrator password. It's far from automatic.
I don't think the solution is more "click ok" boxes. That just conditions the user to click ok without knowing what is going on. But it shouldn't automatically open installers. A user who is competent to choose software to install also knows how to find and run the installer he's downloaded. Other people should ask someone who knows what they are doing.
That's not true. One of the thing that throws users for a loop is that it opens up a dialog box that says "scan" instead of download. They could change the settings so that any window is obviously a website (so that users can't get confused about whether they are seeing a webpage, or a dialogue box from their computer). The users trust their computer, but they wouldn't trust some random website. The trick is presenting information to the user so that they can understand what is going on. It's not like they're trusting some random website to install shit on their computer. They think MacDefender is a security feature on their own computer and trust if tor that reason. As with anything, the man thing that causes the stupid behavior is a lack of information. So the solution is providing the user with the right information.
Apple does not have a setting that automatically downloads files when visiting a website. There is a setting that automatically opens downloaded files, but it's debatable whether they should turn it off or not, since you usually want to open something once you've downloaded it. As others have said before, installing software (any software) on a mac requires your administrator password. You discription can't get much farther from the truth than that You are pretty much completely wrong about everything you've said.
This is the idea behind the walled garden approach they've taken to the iPhone and iPad. All the software they run has to be approved by apple first. They seem to be heading this direction with their desktops as well.
I hope Apple doesn't take your advice! It would probably be best to nip this problem in the bud. That may discourage malware developers from choosing the platform.
The installed cost will be higher, but the operating costs will probably be lower. If you were going to go conventional, you could use natural gas combined cycle plant, which only costs $0.50 per installed watt (and is therefore 1/5 to 1/10 the cost of Nuclear by your metric). Also, it's not fair to compare the projected costs of a prototypical molten salt solar plant to the known costs of building a conventional nuclear power station. You have know idea whether or not it will even work, and the real costs are likely to vary from projections. That's why they're building it, so they will know.
There is no future in paper books.
You have just made my point. The law enforcement agencies in your examples targeted individuals, rather than blocking the information directly. A good counter example would have been the domain name fiasco that happened a while ago, but even that happened as part of a criminal investigation.
All of this is beside the point, because I am not claiming that the US is better, or significantly different. My whole point is that there is no practical difference, only a theoretical one.
See what I mean? Somehow the debate has shifted from why the government is looking at things that are none of their business to why their victims were talking about inappropriate things. The effect is a chilling on free speech, people are expected to censor themselves, and if they don't they deserve to be victimized. No good can come from that. Practically everyone does something illegal every day. Why shouldn't we talk openly about it?
I'm not claiming that there's an actual conspiracy, so much as I'm saying that this is realistically the state of affairs. Large corporations need to be associated with the government for a number of reasons. First of all, they need to actively work to prevent legislation that would be damaging to their business. Secondly, they need to seek out tax breakes and legislation that makes their business more profitable in order to stay competitive. Finally, they need to stay friendly with law enforcement and regulatory agencies to avoid running afoul of the law.
The other dimension to my claim that they are pusedo-government is the authority they exercise. Facebook, for example, has the ability to control they way people are able to interact on the Internet. Moreover, they are expected to police their website and block spammers. Banks really hold a great deal of power, too much to list out here. Other corporations may not have as much of a direct influence on the general public, but they still exercise a great deal of control over their employees.
Well, wikileaks says they work with the government, though it's really just a suspicion so I don't know if you's regard that is credible. Here is an article about the IRS using facebook to catch tax cheats, and we've all heard about local law enforcement using it to catch criminals. There have also been cases of school districts expelling students over comments made on Facebook. None of this proves that Facebook is in on it, but they certainly haven't done anything to stop it, likely they know it would lead to problems for them if they weren't willing to cooperate with these government agencies. In this past, if the government were obtaining information like this it would have been a scandal. Now it's more or less accepted under the "well they shouldn't have been criminals in the first place" thinking. Basically, the courts have decided that this kind of communication, while nominally private, it open to free inspection by government agencies. Facebook doesn't really have to be in on it for it to be a freedom of speech problem at that point.
The main difference is the way censorship is theoretically justified. In China, the government is allowed to block content based on the message, while in the US, the government is allowed to block content based on the source. Of course, you'd be an idiot to believe such power is not abused, regardless of how it is done.
I think most slashdotters are aware that such abuses exist, since you see articles about them posted on the main page every so often. I also believe that most Chinese who concern themselves with such matters are also aware of the problem (hence this news article).
Perhaps one area of confusion is that in the US much censorship is done by psuedo-governmental organizations like the RIAA, or telecoms, or facebook, etc. . . which are not, in name, a part of the government but in reality have deep government ties.