Your chances of acquiring a serious illness are mostly due to genetics. Most of my parents' family smoked. They all lived to be a ripe old age. It's not unusual for a person, any person, to get old and die a natural death and have an autopsy reveal all sorts of nastiness, including cancer.
On the other hand, people do develop lung cancer and die after smoking for a few years only, while others die of lung cancer long after they've quit. Peter Jennings' name comes to mind. He quit in his 40s and died early.
Me? I have no health issues (I try and stay healthy), but that's not to say my lungs are in the best condition or that I wouldn't "feel healthier" if I quit. Put another way, I'm giving serious thought to running the LA marathon next year.
So pick your vices with care, and monitor your habits.
Rough going, huh? For me, it's quiet the opposite.
I've been smoking for over 20 years, and on occasion I get the urge to quit. The reason has to do with the habit itself. Any habit taken to the extreme or adopted for far too long tends to get less enjoyable as time passes.
When, I do quit, it's typically for a few weeks or maybe a few months at a time. No real withdrawl, except for the day or two, of course. By the end of that period, I come to the same conclusions. Namely, that the "benefits" of smoking (enhanced concentration, relaxation, creativity, etc.) are gone and I want them back. Not need them, but want them. Life, I think, is a bit too ordinary without a vice.
Say what you will about the dangers of smoking, it has its rewards. Besides, what else to do when having a drink, after sex, or when you need to ponder a big idea? And no, nicotine in drug form (as a safer alternative) isn't the answer any more than taking caffeine pills is a substitute for enjoy a coffee. With a cigarette of course.;-)
As a side note, all cigarettes sold in the US and EU are now required to "fire-safe". That's an oxymoronic term for "they're doused with a chemical to retard burning and prevent fires". The result is a cigarette that doesn't burn properly and tastes like shit. If I do ever quit, it'll be because I've taken up cigars and Scotch.
Too many of the comments seem to come from Fox News viewers. All rant, no facts.
California has a long history of mandating higher fuel efficiency and lower vehicle emissions for cars sold in the state. In doing so, it's played a positive role in setting national (CAFE) standards.
In this case, California is mandating electricity usage instead of mileage and pollution, but the action taken (and anticipated results) are similar enough to be considered analogous.
With that in mind, let's re-phrase the comments thus far:
We should focus on real issues.
Increasing fuel efficiency is like rearranging deck chairs.
Overpopulation is the problem, not dwindling petroleum reserves or pollution.
You can pry my gas-guzzler from my dead hands.
We should concentrate instead on increasing oil drilling and refining capacity.
My old car gets better mileage than that new SUV, so leave me alone.
I don't drive a lot, so I deserve to be left alone.
Eco-terrorists and burdensome regulations are ruining our way of life.
If we increase the taxes on gasoline instead, and let the invisible hand of the market do its work, all our problems will be solved.
You're right. Fox News and ill-informed rants it is. I guess the Sarah Palin book tour is having an effect.;-)
I use Irfanview for conversion, resizing, cropping and other basics (yes, even on Linux - sorry but it runs perfect on WINE and does 90% of what I need...
Not a big fan of Irfanview, but what I can't get over is why the *nix world lacks an image viewer that is as fast as Irfanview is, or as fast as similar programs like ACDSee, etc. Most such programs that ship by default with popular Linux distros are somewhere between embarassing and next to useless.
It's similar to the situation with trying to get Firefox to use an external viewer for graphics (i.e., "No such option" or "Use this add-on and we might give you an option buried in a context menu"). I don't care how nifty, feature-full, or stylised your image gallery home website is, who really wants to use a frigging browser to display anything other than thumbnails?
As for conversion, resizing, cropping, etc., you might want to look into ImageMagick. A bit overkill for most, but for automated tasks, nothing beats it.
Maybe you should try the many current events news websites out there if you want more pressing stories. This is slashdot, not CNN.
If CNN showed the same stories posted to Slashdot with the same depth of coverage as found in the comments (on most days), it would be an improvement. As it is, CNN is the equivalent of a Slashdot user reading the story submission, and stopping at the Frist Post.
Maybe it's a good thing they stick to their own choice of stories. Watching Anderson Cooper pose uninformed questions (with the usual mumbling and fake interest) to guests championing their choice of a text editor would never meet the standards of Must See TV.
Well, for most people. I'd probably watch it, and maybe even yell at the TV screen.;-)
You think people won't write malware or trojans if macos or linux suddenly jumped to a majority market share?
"Oh, please" back at you.
It's fine to comment on hypothetical scenarios, but the reality is that malware is a problem for Windows users only. The only conclusion that's valid (and demonstrably so) is that everyone else is immune. The rest is speculation and serves no real or useful purpose.
I'd suggest letting go of hypotheticals. They have as much value as asserting that the *next* version of Windows will the best and most secure version yet. The next version is already here, and gasp, there are still problems.
Maybe next time things will be better? Maybe next time Linux users will be affected? Maybe those smug Mac users will get their due. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Maybe I'll get a pony.
Well, we don't know whether the government was playing politics, or was honest in their intentions. Either way, it's fair to characterise Microsoft's moves as good business for them, but problematic for everyone else.
By problematic, I'd use the analogy of a loan shark giving you a special rate on a new load to get you past the missed interest payment you missed on your last unpaid loan. Sure it resolves the crisis, but the underlying problems and high costs remain.
And speaking of underlying problems and high costs, the following article is appearing on news.google.com.
Beer mixed with coffee sounds quite horrible. In fact, anything mixed with beer does.
Here's one I grew up with -- whisk two raw egg yolks with 1-2 tablespoons of table sugar in the bottom of a large glass, and then fill to the top with beer. Apparently, soldiers during WW2 drank the concoction for breakfast. It's rather good once you get over the initial WTF.
The US economy is strong because there are a lot of good honest people in America. If the corruption in the US becomes rampant, like in the FSU, it will be a bad thing for every one.
So is it the economy, or everything?
I'd suggest a certain level of corruption is A Good Thing.
Years ago when I lived in Chicago, it was customary to offer a small donation when pulled over by the police for speeding. Existing tickets could be be handled similarly (but more discretely) in traffic court; it wasn't uncommon for the average person to have the glove compartment, or in my case, the trunk, filled with old and unpaid parking tickets. The police officers walking the sidewalks ate donuts, openly smoked cigars, and talked to everyone, including the friendly black girls hanging out on street corners. Life was fine.
When I arrived in LA, I discovered a very different world. The police department continues in the Parker tradition, which could be described as both professional and militaristic. Traffic violations are treated with the same seriousness as major felonies, and a routine stop for a minor infraction can involve additional patrol cars showing up, all with flashing lights. A "Get out and spread your arms and legs" isn't uncommon. And that's just for white guys with late model cars.
I suspect the problem with LA is that the police don't have friendly black girls to talk to. It wouldn't be possible, anyway. The police are required to shut down major thoroughfares and get everyone people off the sidewalks and roads when the bars close.
Then, there's the example of New York a few years ago when the mafia was forced out of the garbage business. Respectable corporations with proven track records for efficient waste disposal moved in, prices shot up, and services went down. Everyone complained (including major corporations), but corruption was gone.
Widespread corruption can be a problem, and it certainly is in certain countries or localities, but a certain level of it, to "grease the wheels" so to speak, makes life livable.
This is just a utility that MS released to help people be able to burn a Windows 7 iso onto USB/DVD.
From the Annals of Just Another Utility...
By the time you add the 1001 "tools" that Microsoft offers (tools tucked away on an installation CD, in the various Resource Kits, the Sysinternals collection, etc.), and then add any number of "must have" third-party tools just so you can have a system that does more than open a file or web browser, you might as well have installed Linux distro or FreeBSD and had both your tools and package management all taken care of for you. Hell, the only thing missing would be a mint on your pillow!
Oooh, is that an installer? I wonder if I'll get any choices as to what happens when I run it, whether the un-installer works, or I get a systray icon. Maybe it's a self-extracting executable? Don't like those. Last time, it dumped all sorts of shit somewhere on my C: drive. Never know whether I should save it, or all the shit it created in a folder with a different name. I know! It's a standalone program. My friend told me just to run it, so let's see what happens... Wait. Lemme go check the wepage again. Now where did I store that URL...
Sigh. Lather, rinse and repeat.
People always complain about Windows programs not being available on Linux. I have the complete opposite opinion. Of all the tools and programs I take for granted on a *nix system, few are available for Windows (modulo a 500MB Cygwin installation), and what does exist, typically sucks.
*Currently playing an 8 year old burned CD with no issues*
First, there are people who have experienced no problems, and there are people who have. Saying that you belong to one group or another contributes nothing useful.
Second, a music file like an mp3 with a few flipped or unreadable bits may be playable, and the music may sound fine. But that certainly doesn't mean the file isn't corrupted, or that the CD hasn't degraded or won't start degrading in the future.
Third, I'll wager that a CD bought 8 years ago (before the onslaught of multiple manufacturers and heavy discounting) is a very different CD than what's currently available on store shelves.
Stop relying on blacklists as your primarily (or only!) filtering mechanism. There are far more sophisticated filtering solutions out there these days. Filtering based solely on blacklists is antiquated, ineffective, and vulnerable to massive issues with false positives.
Avoiding a primary reliance on blacklists is generally good advice, but let's not overstate things.
In a SOHO environment, for example, it could be considered perfectly acceptable, and offers a surprisingly effective and simple setup with none of the problems you cite.
On the other hand, if you work for a large corporation that has business dealings in China, the inappopriate use of a blacklist will, among other things, cost you your job. The same could be said of grey listing. Oddly enough, people are as insistent that grey-listing works as you are that blacklists don't.
LOL. I'd suggest disabling javascript and calling it a day.
Alternatively, use a text-based browser. If the webpage has any content worth reading, then a simple lynx -dump in 99% of cases will give you what you want, with the added bonus of re-formatting those mile-wide lines into something readable.
On the other hand, I suspect most people don't want the "old internet". What was once communicated on usenet or email in a few simple lines, for example, now increasingly appears in the form of a complex website that displays giant graphic-laden pages, replete with bad formatting and full of extraneous rubbish. And people like it!
"You're driving down the road, and you stop at a traffic light. A man, dressed like a mechanic, approaches your car and says 'I think your car has a problem. Please pop the hood, and let me do a free analysis." Do you let him?"
In a GUI centric world, the average user doesn't understand the source or meaning of error messages, warnings, or confirmation dialogs. They're just another window that pops up on what they believe to be an "appliance". It isn't the window they're interested in, and not knowing what to do with it, they just want it to go away.
"You get a package in the mail. You don't recognize the return address. You open it, and inside is a device with a note that says 'want a good laugh? press this button'. Do you press it?"
A package in the mail has all it's shipping information clearly printed on the outside. With email, the information is in the headers, most all of which are routinely hidden (what is visible is often useless or suspect). The average user has no idea headers exist, and will reject any prodding that they learn how to read them, replying that they clutter up their screen (like viewing file extensions).
Moreover, they certainly don't want to know about MIME structures. Attachments? If it's like a package in the mail, how to know what it is if you don't open it?
"A stranger walks up to you on the bus, and says 'My name is Rev. Kwame. I want a reliable person who could assist us to transfer the sum of... Do you give them your bank account number?"
An example that's more "real world" to the average user. Regrettably, in the real world, people (especially older folks) do fall prey to scams or otherwise obvious fraud.
You are thinking of just the root account, or maybe "su" which is really "login as root".
Aaargh. su(1) is certainly not "login as root".
NAME
su -- substitute user identity
SYNOPSIS
su [-] [-flms] [-c class] [login [args]]
DESCRIPTION
The su utility requests appropriate user credentials via PAM and switches
to that user ID (the default user is the superuser). A shell is then
executed.
Regardless, its not a question of freedom, its a question of public health. It might be a stupid public health answer, but it goes through the right channels.
Public health oncerns are generally overbroad, politically targetted, and regularly exaggerated.
I'd suggest it's up to the individual to decide whether second hand smoke from someone smoking pot should characterised as objectionable, welcome, or somewhere in between (as in "Dude, it's only 8:00 in the morning").
The biggest danger Rupert faces is Apple Tablet - if you can read on that, and it works well - newpapers are in for a world of pain.
Dunno about Apple Tablet, but if it comes to pass that some invents an affordable New and Improved version of the Kindle for newspapers and periodicals, then I'd suggest the exact opposite will happen. People will happily pay for subscriptions for the same reasons that the early adopters have lined up to pony up money for the overpriced Kindle and DRM-ed ebooks.
Note that's just not my opinion. It's one that's shared by numerous publishers. If reading news in a webrowser on an LCD screen works for some, great. There's plenty of us who find both that approach less than satisfactory, and would welcome the opportunity for the "better" publishers to start making money again. And doing away with newsprint would be a bonus for everyone.
As to your first point, most business are very secrative about potentially damaging things. I don't understand why it's surprising when MS acts just like every other large corporation in protecting itself.
It's a truism, if not a cliche, to point out business are secretive about potentially damaging things.
The difference here is that the scope of damage extends outside narrow corporate concerns. In such situations, it's both fair and reasonable for customers to expect a certain level of transparency. In many industries, disclosures that negatively affect third parties are mandated by law (cue the car analogies).
Microsoft has chosen, in historically typical fashion, the complete opposite of transparency. The criticisms are well deserved.
If you need an application to appreciate that, then we have very little in common...
Be kind. Most people need something tangible to inspire creative thought. To the OP, imagine, if you will, browsing the aisles of a toy store in your local mall. Next to the ant farm kits, and legos, you see
New from Ronco(TM). LifeBuilder(TM) 1.0. Disclaimer: Space-like conditions and meteorites not included.
The stuff that western civilisation pushed on us under the label food, is often highly processed, devoid of useful nutrients, and stuffed with harmful chemicals and empty calories. Not buying stuff that comes in boxes (and tins and plastic packaging) if often a good (if somewhat rough) rule of thumb to improve health (including losing weight).
Sums things up, doesn't it?
The problem, however, is that people are as out of touch with food as they are with most things in the natural world, their own bodies included. And they'll continue to be that way so long as they value convenience over everything else.
The irony, of course, is that spending time in the aisles of grocery stores reading labels is not only acceptable, but indicative of a careful and intelligent shopper. Going to a farmer's market and preparing your own food is, I don't know. Too hard?
Personally, I'm not holding my breath for people to change. The average grocery store would be a tiny fraction of its size if they sold just "food". And far less profitable. The owners would tell you that ordinary food just doesn't sell, and what people really want is something else.
Slashdot Mirror
Your chances of acquiring a serious illness are mostly due to genetics. Most of my parents' family smoked. They all lived to be a ripe old age. It's not unusual for a person, any person, to get old and die a natural death and have an autopsy reveal all sorts of nastiness, including cancer.
On the other hand, people do develop lung cancer and die after smoking for a few years only, while others die of lung cancer long after they've quit. Peter Jennings' name comes to mind. He quit in his 40s and died early.
Me? I have no health issues (I try and stay healthy), but that's not to say my lungs are in the best condition or that I wouldn't "feel healthier" if I quit. Put another way, I'm giving serious thought to running the LA marathon next year.
So pick your vices with care, and monitor your habits.
Rough going, huh? For me, it's quiet the opposite.
I've been smoking for over 20 years, and on occasion I get the urge to quit. The reason has to do with the habit itself. Any habit taken to the extreme or adopted for far too long tends to get less enjoyable as time passes.
When, I do quit, it's typically for a few weeks or maybe a few months at a time. No real withdrawl, except for the day or two, of course. By the end of that period, I come to the same conclusions. Namely, that the "benefits" of smoking (enhanced concentration, relaxation, creativity, etc.) are gone and I want them back. Not need them, but want them. Life, I think, is a bit too ordinary without a vice.
Say what you will about the dangers of smoking, it has its rewards. Besides, what else to do when having a drink, after sex, or when you need to ponder a big idea? And no, nicotine in drug form (as a safer alternative) isn't the answer any more than taking caffeine pills is a substitute for enjoy a coffee. With a cigarette of course. ;-)
As a side note, all cigarettes sold in the US and EU are now required to "fire-safe". That's an oxymoronic term for "they're doused with a chemical to retard burning and prevent fires". The result is a cigarette that doesn't burn properly and tastes like shit. If I do ever quit, it'll be because I've taken up cigars and Scotch.
California has a long history of mandating higher fuel efficiency and lower vehicle emissions for cars sold in the state. In doing so, it's played a positive role in setting national (CAFE) standards.
In this case, California is mandating electricity usage instead of mileage and pollution, but the action taken (and anticipated results) are similar enough to be considered analogous.
With that in mind, let's re-phrase the comments thus far:
You're right. Fox News and ill-informed rants it is. I guess the Sarah Palin book tour is having an effect. ;-)
I use Irfanview for conversion, resizing, cropping and other basics (yes, even on Linux - sorry but it runs perfect on WINE and does 90% of what I need ...
Not a big fan of Irfanview, but what I can't get over is why the *nix world lacks an image viewer that is as fast as Irfanview is, or as fast as similar programs like ACDSee, etc. Most such programs that ship by default with popular Linux distros are somewhere between embarassing and next to useless.
It's similar to the situation with trying to get Firefox to use an external viewer for graphics (i.e., "No such option" or "Use this add-on and we might give you an option buried in a context menu"). I don't care how nifty, feature-full, or stylised your image gallery home website is, who really wants to use a frigging browser to display anything other than thumbnails?
As for conversion, resizing, cropping, etc., you might want to look into ImageMagick. A bit overkill for most, but for automated tasks, nothing beats it.
Maybe you should try the many current events news websites out there if you want more pressing stories. This is slashdot, not CNN.
If CNN showed the same stories posted to Slashdot with the same depth of coverage as found in the comments (on most days), it would be an improvement. As it is, CNN is the equivalent of a Slashdot user reading the story submission, and stopping at the Frist Post.
Maybe it's a good thing they stick to their own choice of stories. Watching Anderson Cooper pose uninformed questions (with the usual mumbling and fake interest) to guests championing their choice of a text editor would never meet the standards of Must See TV.
Well, for most people. I'd probably watch it, and maybe even yell at the TV screen. ;-)
You think people won't write malware or trojans if macos or linux suddenly jumped to a majority market share?
"Oh, please" back at you.
It's fine to comment on hypothetical scenarios, but the reality is that malware is a problem for Windows users only. The only conclusion that's valid (and demonstrably so) is that everyone else is immune. The rest is speculation and serves no real or useful purpose.
I'd suggest letting go of hypotheticals. They have as much value as asserting that the *next* version of Windows will the best and most secure version yet. The next version is already here, and gasp, there are still problems.
Maybe next time things will be better? Maybe next time Linux users will be affected? Maybe those smug Mac users will get their due. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Maybe I'll get a pony.
Well, we don't know whether the government was playing politics, or was honest in their intentions. Either way, it's fair to characterise Microsoft's moves as good business for them, but problematic for everyone else.
By problematic, I'd use the analogy of a loan shark giving you a special rate on a new load to get you past the missed interest payment you missed on your last unpaid loan. Sure it resolves the crisis, but the underlying problems and high costs remain.
And speaking of underlying problems and high costs, the following article is appearing on news.google.com.
Are Microsoft to blame for "hidden" malware costs
Beer mixed with coffee sounds quite horrible. In fact, anything mixed with beer does.
Here's one I grew up with -- whisk two raw egg yolks with 1-2 tablespoons of table sugar in the bottom of a large glass, and then fill to the top with beer. Apparently, soldiers during WW2 drank the concoction for breakfast. It's rather good once you get over the initial WTF.
If this development is any indication, then we'll be there soon enough.
That's ironical, isn't it?
The US economy is strong because there are a lot of good honest people in America. If the corruption in the US becomes rampant, like in the FSU, it will be a bad thing for every one.
So is it the economy, or everything?
I'd suggest a certain level of corruption is A Good Thing.
Years ago when I lived in Chicago, it was customary to offer a small donation when pulled over by the police for speeding. Existing tickets could be be handled similarly (but more discretely) in traffic court; it wasn't uncommon for the average person to have the glove compartment, or in my case, the trunk, filled with old and unpaid parking tickets. The police officers walking the sidewalks ate donuts, openly smoked cigars, and talked to everyone, including the friendly black girls hanging out on street corners. Life was fine.
When I arrived in LA, I discovered a very different world. The police department continues in the Parker tradition, which could be described as both professional and militaristic. Traffic violations are treated with the same seriousness as major felonies, and a routine stop for a minor infraction can involve additional patrol cars showing up, all with flashing lights. A "Get out and spread your arms and legs" isn't uncommon. And that's just for white guys with late model cars.
I suspect the problem with LA is that the police don't have friendly black girls to talk to. It wouldn't be possible, anyway. The police are required to shut down major thoroughfares and get everyone people off the sidewalks and roads when the bars close.
Then, there's the example of New York a few years ago when the mafia was forced out of the garbage business. Respectable corporations with proven track records for efficient waste disposal moved in, prices shot up, and services went down. Everyone complained (including major corporations), but corruption was gone.
Widespread corruption can be a problem, and it certainly is in certain countries or localities, but a certain level of it, to "grease the wheels" so to speak, makes life livable.
Don't count the US out until you can count 10. Maybe the reason for its endurance is that the US is really never just one nation of one people.
Discussions of exceptionalism aside, you must find the term "homeland" (as in "Homeland Security") as inappropriate (even funny) as I do.
This is just a utility that MS released to help people be able to burn a Windows 7 iso onto USB/DVD.
From the Annals of Just Another Utility ...
By the time you add the 1001 "tools" that Microsoft offers (tools tucked away on an installation CD, in the various Resource Kits, the Sysinternals collection, etc.), and then add any number of "must have" third-party tools just so you can have a system that does more than open a file or web browser, you might as well have installed Linux distro or FreeBSD and had both your tools and package management all taken care of for you. Hell, the only thing missing would be a mint on your pillow!
Oooh, is that an installer? I wonder if I'll get any choices as to what happens when I run it, whether the un-installer works, or I get a systray icon. Maybe it's a self-extracting executable? Don't like those. Last time, it dumped all sorts of shit somewhere on my C: drive. Never know whether I should save it, or all the shit it created in a folder with a different name. I know! It's a standalone program. My friend told me just to run it, so let's see what happens ... Wait. Lemme go check the wepage again. Now where did I store that URL ...
Sigh. Lather, rinse and repeat.
People always complain about Windows programs not being available on Linux. I have the complete opposite opinion. Of all the tools and programs I take for granted on a *nix system, few are available for Windows (modulo a 500MB Cygwin installation), and what does exist, typically sucks.
*Currently playing an 8 year old burned CD with no issues*
First, there are people who have experienced no problems, and there are people who have. Saying that you belong to one group or another contributes nothing useful.
Second, a music file like an mp3 with a few flipped or unreadable bits may be playable, and the music may sound fine. But that certainly doesn't mean the file isn't corrupted, or that the CD hasn't degraded or won't start degrading in the future.
Third, I'll wager that a CD bought 8 years ago (before the onslaught of multiple manufacturers and heavy discounting) is a very different CD than what's currently available on store shelves.
Enjoy your CD.
Stop relying on blacklists as your primarily (or only!) filtering mechanism. There are far more sophisticated filtering solutions out there these days. Filtering based solely on blacklists is antiquated, ineffective, and vulnerable to massive issues with false positives.
Avoiding a primary reliance on blacklists is generally good advice, but let's not overstate things.
In a SOHO environment, for example, it could be considered perfectly acceptable, and offers a surprisingly effective and simple setup with none of the problems you cite.
On the other hand, if you work for a large corporation that has business dealings in China, the inappopriate use of a blacklist will, among other things, cost you your job. The same could be said of grey listing. Oddly enough, people are as insistent that grey-listing works as you are that blacklists don't.
I want my old Internet back. And a pony.
LOL. I'd suggest disabling javascript and calling it a day.
Alternatively, use a text-based browser. If the webpage has any content worth reading, then a simple lynx -dump in 99% of cases will give you what you want, with the added bonus of re-formatting those mile-wide lines into something readable.
On the other hand, I suspect most people don't want the "old internet". What was once communicated on usenet or email in a few simple lines, for example, now increasingly appears in the form of a complex website that displays giant graphic-laden pages, replete with bad formatting and full of extraneous rubbish. And people like it!
Reasonable and useful analogies. However ...
"You're driving down the road, and you stop at a traffic light. A man, dressed like a mechanic, approaches your car and says 'I think your car has a problem. Please pop the hood, and let me do a free analysis." Do you let him?"
In a GUI centric world, the average user doesn't understand the source or meaning of error messages, warnings, or confirmation dialogs. They're just another window that pops up on what they believe to be an "appliance". It isn't the window they're interested in, and not knowing what to do with it, they just want it to go away.
"You get a package in the mail. You don't recognize the return address. You open it, and inside is a device with a note that says 'want a good laugh? press this button'. Do you press it?"
A package in the mail has all it's shipping information clearly printed on the outside. With email, the information is in the headers, most all of which are routinely hidden (what is visible is often useless or suspect). The average user has no idea headers exist, and will reject any prodding that they learn how to read them, replying that they clutter up their screen (like viewing file extensions).
Moreover, they certainly don't want to know about MIME structures. Attachments? If it's like a package in the mail, how to know what it is if you don't open it?
"A stranger walks up to you on the bus, and says 'My name is Rev. Kwame. I want a reliable person who could assist us to transfer the sum of ... Do you give them your bank account number?"
An example that's more "real world" to the average user. Regrettably, in the real world, people (especially older folks) do fall prey to scams or otherwise obvious fraud.
You are thinking of just the root account, or maybe "su" which is really "login as root".
Aaargh. su(1) is certainly not "login as root".
Regardless, its not a question of freedom, its a question of public health. It might be a stupid public health answer, but it goes through the right channels.
Public health oncerns are generally overbroad, politically targetted, and regularly exaggerated.
I'd suggest it's up to the individual to decide whether second hand smoke from someone smoking pot should characterised as objectionable, welcome, or somewhere in between (as in "Dude, it's only 8:00 in the morning").
What's the point? If you don't need to rely on a GUI program (99% of the posters here), then use OpenSSL.
To encrypt:
openssl enc -aes-256-cbc -in plaintext_file -out encrypted_file -salt -e -a
Decryption (and auto password generation) is left as an exercise for the reader.
Uh right, problem solved there. In other news, once you get an oil change in your car you no longer have to rotate the tires.
Obviously you've never worked with Windows users.
The biggest danger Rupert faces is Apple Tablet - if you can read on that, and it works well - newpapers are in for a world of pain.
Dunno about Apple Tablet, but if it comes to pass that some invents an affordable New and Improved version of the Kindle for newspapers and periodicals, then I'd suggest the exact opposite will happen. People will happily pay for subscriptions for the same reasons that the early adopters have lined up to pony up money for the overpriced Kindle and DRM-ed ebooks.
Note that's just not my opinion. It's one that's shared by numerous publishers. If reading news in a webrowser on an LCD screen works for some, great. There's plenty of us who find both that approach less than satisfactory, and would welcome the opportunity for the "better" publishers to start making money again. And doing away with newsprint would be a bonus for everyone.
As to your first point, most business are very secrative about potentially damaging things. I don't understand why it's surprising when MS acts just like every other large corporation in protecting itself.
It's a truism, if not a cliche, to point out business are secretive about potentially damaging things.
The difference here is that the scope of damage extends outside narrow corporate concerns. In such situations, it's both fair and reasonable for customers to expect a certain level of transparency. In many industries, disclosures that negatively affect third parties are mandated by law (cue the car analogies).
Microsoft has chosen, in historically typical fashion, the complete opposite of transparency. The criticisms are well deserved.
If you need an application to appreciate that, then we have very little in common ...
Be kind. Most people need something tangible to inspire creative thought. To the OP, imagine, if you will, browsing the aisles of a toy store in your local mall. Next to the ant farm kits, and legos, you see
New from Ronco(TM). LifeBuilder(TM) 1.0.
Disclaimer: Space-like conditions and meteorites not included.
Or something like that.
The stuff that western civilisation pushed on us under the label food, is often highly processed, devoid of useful nutrients, and stuffed with harmful chemicals and empty calories. Not buying stuff that comes in boxes (and tins and plastic packaging) if often a good (if somewhat rough) rule of thumb to improve health (including losing weight).
Sums things up, doesn't it?
The problem, however, is that people are as out of touch with food as they are with most things in the natural world, their own bodies included. And they'll continue to be that way so long as they value convenience over everything else.
The irony, of course, is that spending time in the aisles of grocery stores reading labels is not only acceptable, but indicative of a careful and intelligent shopper. Going to a farmer's market and preparing your own food is, I don't know. Too hard?
Personally, I'm not holding my breath for people to change. The average grocery store would be a tiny fraction of its size if they sold just "food". And far less profitable. The owners would tell you that ordinary food just doesn't sell, and what people really want is something else.