Not sharing your vision of a unified desktop nor considering working towards that goal of the wide adoption of Linux does not make one an elitist. Many people, including myself, have seen these visions of a unified Linux desktop before. And we've seen them quickly become corrupted to using the tools available instead of doing the work to fill the gaps where no single "way" fits all needs. But, while people will claim to be elite and some out and reject your goals out of pessimism, there are many who reject your ideas because they already have their own goals. And while it is true that gaining a critical mass of users is likely to advantage those same people in jobs and hardware support, that's just a nice side effect to them.
And just so you know, I find the repeating of "elitist" a bit offensive as well. Just because a handful of people express a certain viewpoint does not explain the behaviors of a large variety of people who have their own reasons for not going along with your plans. It is very much this generic calling of those who disagree as "elitist" that gives me the vibe of ignorant authoritarianism. I can only hope you really believe that the amount of people who are real elitists are much smaller than the community at large.
This is in reply to this post and all the posts up the line made by you. This seems the best place, considering I have a response to various parts throughout the line. So, to begin:
When I wrote my article and its follow-up on directions I think a Linux Distribution could take...
I'd like to start out by asking what Linux Distribution you were talking about. Was it Gentoo? Mandrive? Ubuntu? Or did you mean all distros?
Which is surprising, because the very point of the Linux design is that different distributions were supposed to be able to explore completely different tracks. There shouldn't be any "one distro to rule them all", yet many of the respondants demanded exactly that! (Amusingly, they couldn't agree on *which* distro to rule them all.)
What I find surprising is that you seem to be making grand generalizations of "the Linux Destop", not "the Linux Desktops". For all your talk about exploring different tracks, you're suggesting a single track for everyone. It comes as no surprise to me that the many people in the many already existing tracks are yellling "Never change it!" aka "we don't want to unify under your design". It really shouldn't amaze you that they can't agree on one Linux to "rule them all".
I understand that the Linux community is wide and varied, but this sort of attitude is not helping anyone.
It probably helps established distros to not wonder off on a goose chase whom already have a target audience.
In fact, this sort of attitude causes Linux to take two steps back for every one step forward it takes in the market.
"The" market, of course, is the goal all distros should be aiming for, since clearly all distros are interested in competing in one market, not many markets.
When I pointed this out to many responders, and mentioned the fact that I'm merely attempting to suggest a Desktop environment that would help Linux adoption, I got another surprising response: "Who said we wanted regular users? Linux is for the elite. If you're too stupid to recompile your kernel or read all the scattered HOWTOs, you're too stupid to use Linux!"
I'd love to know if this was the actual quote from a user. There's nothing about using Linux that makes one elite. At the same time, there's already many distros where it's not necessary to recompile the kernel nor read scattered HOWTOs. However, I can understand why many users of Linux aren't interested in others adopting Linux.
Now, in response there was this from an AC:
"If people can make some money off of Linux then good luck to them, but Linux should not change to meet some commercial wish list."
And you replied:
Why not? Why can't there be a Linux distribution that is changed to meet commercial desires? Why can't there be a Linux distribution that is changed to meet home user desires? Why can't there be a Linux distribution that is changed to meet scientific researchers' desires?
What is wrong with different Linux distros to meet the desires of different markets?
I'd assume when he talks about Linux, he's talking about the Linux community. Distros are, to some extent, a completely outside influence. From time to time, one distro makes a major contribution to the Linux community. But that sort of adoption is almost always based on technical merit, not on "to meet home user desires". And while I certainly encourage Ubuntu and Mandrive to continue their work to make a distro to their own ends, I'd never suggest that the main line of developers change their objectives. Why? Because it's their project for which they're allowed to do whatever they want. And pissing them off means that I, whom is already capable of doing such work, would basically be forced to do such work. This sort of goes on to your next idea:
Isn't that the entire point of Linux? "It's just a kernel," we say. But then the community berates anyone who attempts to reuse that kernel in Community Unapproved Ways(TM). How
First, spreading a virus or other malicious code would probably be easier than patching the problem, at least most of the time. This means that exploits for a vulnerability would be be out before fixes for them.
Quite possibly.
I'd prefer the uncertainty that hackers may or may not have found a vulnerability above the certainty that they can find it, even at the cost of being unaware of the vulnerability itself.
And I'd prefer the certainty that vulnerabilities not exist than the uncertainty of whether vulnerabilities exist. Interestingly enough, it's possible to formally prove most programs. It just takes a lot of effort.
Second, what am I supposed to do if I do know about the vulnerability? Change software? Even for a home user this is a substantial undertaking, and sometimes impossible. (For instance, even though I like Linux and dual-boot with Gentoo, I do most of by stuff in Windows because there are a couple things I *can't* in Linux.) In a corporate world, the situation is even worse.
The simple answer is, probably. If you don't, you'll run into your first stated problem, and the damage done from that will likely be worse than the effort and pain of using another system. The best answer is not necessarily best because it has the most features.
Again, in many cases, we're back to the same problem: I have to run software with a vulnerability (i.e. even if I know about it I can't do anything), do I want that vulnerability known by a lot of people or as few as possible?
You never have to run software. You choose to run software just as others do. If you choose that the advantages of running the software are greater than the damage associated with it, you choose to continue running it. This is likely tied to the ability to mitigate damage. Never the less, other people may very well decide differently, and your wish to keep things secret are no basis upon which to keep others from receiving the information. Of course, I still say I'd rather have software that's verifiably correct. Of course, such doesn't rely on keeping things secret.
Finally, what am I supposed to do even if I COULD change any software at will? Follow all the websites where security stuff would be posted to see if something was broken? Yeah right, many people don't even install patches. I don't have time to pay attention to security sites. Even if I did, I might not have the knowledge to evaluate how bad of a threat something was.
Now, here is where your argument is very splintered. It is in your best interest to track the security/safety of the things you use, be it software or physical goods. The fact that other people don't do the same isn't really relevant--deciding on whether to get vaccinated against a disease based on if others are vaccinated is taking a gamble instead of directly resolving the problem. If you don't have time to verify the security of software then you really shouldn't be using it. Just like you shouldn't buy a car if you don't make enough to buy insurance.
I draw this analogy because insurance, in the form of a support system, is the simplest method of achieving the sort of security you desire with the least amount of personal time devoted to the task. Such a support system would be responsible for informing you of threats and providing you patches. Of course, the best insurance is to have functionally correct software wherever possible. That might not be economical, though.
Now, I do think there comes a point where if the company is sitting on its hands and doing nothing that something has to be done and the vulnerability should be released to the world in an attempt to force it to take action, but as long as the company is making a good attempt I think that it should remain as secret as practical. (I also think that vulnerabilities should be released a couple weeks, maybe a month, after the patches are, both to give the public information about the general security of that company's products and
So who pays for roads, traffic police, pollution control, and other traffic-related costs in your country then, if it's not coming from fuel tax?
Who said it wasn't coming from fuel tax (and just FYI, I believe that traffic fines are part of it too)? Europe has primarily taxed at over 100% to reduce oil consumption and increase the tax flow. It's not because 100%+ tax is necessary to support all those things you listed.
Do you just share the cost between all motorists regardless of how far, how often, and what car they drive?
No, but then a car that's twice as heavy as a normal car, causes twice as much damage to the roads per mile than a normal car, and is 75% as efficient as a normal car will end up doing more damage per mile while not paying enough taxes to compensate. Taxing fuel might be a simple approximation, but by no means is it an accurate assessment upon those responsible.
Heck, who pays for the stabilisation of the oil-producing middle-east countries, if it doesn't come from fuel tax?
No one. The US, nor Europe, should be into nation building. Now, can people in the US aid rebels to overthrow a dictator? Sure, there's nothing illegal about that. If you really do think that fuel tax was for stabilizing the middle-east, then Europe should have stepped in ages ago to solve the problem.
Does the government just assume that everyone is interested in funding that?
No, the government probably doesn't assume that. But if stability increases profits, it's very likely that the oil industry would work to stabilize the middle-east through their own funding. As others have stated, though, it's not clear that stabilizing the middle-east is for their benefit.
Do they take taxes from cyclists and pedestrians to pay for the steady supply of oil?
Yes, they do. Beyond the federal oil reserve, there's also subsidies to fund oil well drilling. And while giving tax breaks to oil companies is not paying them money, it certainly doesn't improve the situation of cyclists and pedestrians directly (whether it does indirectly, by cheaper transport and production of goods is a whole other debate).
Maybe if your government didn't tax gasoline at a rate of over 100% (or in some countries, over 200%) it'd be cheaper? Of course, the US provides money for drilling and tax cuts for oil companies which may or may not be keeping the price down. Personally, I wish government would stop getting involved in both circumstances and let the market sort things out.
Yep. That's what clones are all about. If Fuddruckers had looked at his game and made their own using the same name and gameplay, not only would he not be pissed off (he did the same thing, and it's widely accepted that cloning is a-okay) but he couldn't do anything about it (they created it and would be hosting it). Truthfully, though, it'd be a sad state of trademark if one could trademark a single word like "Burgertime" such that one could be smacked around with trademark law (imagine MS going after Open Office).
You do realize that trademark is about associating a *company* with a *product* right? Fact is, no matter how closely the guy cloned the original game, the game wasn't made by Namco. Trademarks are there so that you can brand your product in an otherwise commodity market (eg. McDonalds hamburger vs Burger King hamburger). The simple fact is that Burgertime could be thought of the generic term for that type of game, just like x86 is the generic term for a specific processor line--x86 is a lot more complex than such a game.
Overall, though, it sounds like the guy was generally pissed off less about them including the content at all but more about specifically linking to his content without making mention of being not theirs nor hosting the content themselves. To make a simple analogy, imagine if you had a free for public use drinking fountain in your backyard, accessibly most easily by coming through the front gate. Now imagine if Wal-mart set up shop next door, but instead of making their own drinking fountain they simply created a nice walkway to your free drinking fountain through the back gate. Ie, it's not about people using a drinking fountain but about them being too damn lazy to take the steps to build their own or at least be nice and ask if you'd mind. It's wishful thinking to assume the drinking fountain will be there forever; and it'd be hardly suprising if the drinking fountain was no longer free rather quickly. The amount of grass trampling probably doesn't matter.
somewhere buried in your fount of cynicism and negativity is someone who actually cared about something once
I'm not sure if you really believe this or not, but I feel rather compelled to correct your belief. Distrusting some people, or especially organizations of people, is not cynicism. Cynicism of the whole world is a paranoia of people or of how the world works, and I believe neither of theses are real. How the world works often now is only a factor of how people decide to respond to things, and it's the fact that many people either do not care yet or do not believe enough yet to change that sets the temporary course.
Further, it is not negativity to realize that politicians are most often interested in votes more than people or that people jump behind the disaster of the day than the mundane killers of life. The first is a function of democracy and the sloth of people well off enough to not need to think much. The latter is a function of repetition of a previous unthought of and the media's thirst for reporting on yet a new disaster. In the end, I'm a Libertarian not only because I believe it wrong to force one's will on another, but I also believe that people naturally are able to overcome all these problems without the need for force. If anything, it's only the question of people stepping up to catalyze the change, even in societies which otherwise are made static by forces external to the individual.
Finally, I think in truth the major concerns of terrorism are already solved. Yes, the suicide bombers can still attack the subway trains. But any sort of hostage taking will almost certainly be different. The media has, in its own way, done its part to awaken people that compliance doesn't mean one will live. That's a lesson that can be extended to all cases. And in the end, I think it's the resilience of people to not be swayed by threats or acts that will insure that terrorism will fail; a fitting analogy, imho, is the act of ignoring the bully who calls you names, and if he tries to commit force on you, you respond in kind without fear.
It's funny you say that, given this link: New York Murder Rate in 2000. Some more googling indicates that in 2004 the murder rate was under 500. So, it's reasonable to say that that over the spans of 8 years there's been more "regular" murders than the murder performed on 9/11. Further, death in motor accident rates are many times the homicide rate, so I'd imagine that it only took one or two years before NYC covered 4000 dead.
Do you support sticking a camera in every alley and along every roadway? Of course, nothing about a camera will stop those motor accident rates (though they'll at least be caught). And if there's cameras in the alleys, I'm sure that they'll just murder in the building or at the docks or somewhere else there aren't cameras. But my major point is, this is a serious waste of money. If New York City is getting $200 million to work on anti-terrorism, then I'd expect it to be spending at least $5.5 billion on trying to stop motor accident deaths (this based on death statistics and counting 9/11 as homicides). Hell, I'd expect at least $400 million spent on working on resolving suicide.
So, we're talking over $150 billion on just trying to cure motor vehicle deaths. Do you see that coming anywhere? Now, you might say that motor vehicle deaths are accidents and hence there's no one to hold coupable, so more effort is spent on going after the terrorists. But you don't see NYC receiving an equally matched $200 million to help with their homicide problem. There's hardly any talk about trying to stop the cigarette trade to stop lung cancer; with lung cancer being 30% of all cancer deaths and 90% of lung cancer being the result of cigarettes, you'd think we'd have law makers going crazy over the cigarette drug and its 10 fold killing rate over homicide--and all this is on the positive spin ignoring that there are people who survive the cancer.
So, my biggest complaint is not even that there's going to be cameras on the subway, which for the most part is a hugely pointless exercise, but that all of this money is funneling from a supposedly monetarily conservative government to fight terrorists instead of a war on drug or a war on conservative spending or one of the many other supposed wars the Republican lead government stands for. The hypocrisy of it all just tells me it's a show and dance, where the politicians make it all too clear they don't really give a fuck about the people.
the other little detail folks are not mentioning here is that the kids used some sort of rootkit equivalent to find the password AFTER it had been changed.
Doesn't that qualify for breaking and entering?????
No. It does qualify as unauthorized computer access, though.
These kids aren't angels...and whoops - there was consequences for their illegal actions..oh and to make sure everyone here gets that. These kids committed a crime.
Yep, they committed at least one crime, but probably a few.
They KNOWNINGLY violated the machines by using the admin password they weren't suppose to have.
Which admin password are you speaking of, btw? The one that was included with the computer or the one they illegally acquired?
Look - if I leave my house unlocked, does that make it any more wrong for someone to enter and start taking my things?
Is that even a proper analogy? There were two situations. One, where by analogy the school gave them the keys to their own house (how "own" it was is up to debate; it was tax payers who bought the machines, and I find it hard to justify why the school would get to keep the computers). The second analogy, after the illegal access, would be them stealing the key from the school to gain access to their own house (they don't own the key, obviously, though that's quite stupid).
The other issue is that these are still kids, and if they're under 18.... it isn't on their permanent record.
Why do you mention this? If it doesn't go on their permanent record, are we supposed to be more/less willing to punish them for their crimes? I'd say we should punish them regardless.
If you guys are constantly going to make excuses though about oh- it wasn't that bad, then the rest of the rules of society might as well fly out the window as well.
Not all of us are making excuses. The kids should be punished for the spying on admins, the rootkiting, and the unauthorized access to the new admin password. But should they be punished for hacking their own computer or using the password given to them? Fuck no.
As a society, we place markers on adult shops so that minors don't enter them.
Actually, that's local zoning law, which is rather questionable on its face.
We place black bars on risque magazines so that minors can't see them.
Actually, risque magazines are usually kept behind the counter. So, the we is store owners who fear losing customers after a vocal threat of boycott.
Movies are labeled 'R' or 'NC17' identifying them as adult-only.
Most porn movies aren't labeled. Rating is a voluntary process. It's mainly the fact that most theaters choose to not carry NC17 rated films nor unrated films (again, threat of boycott) that force such films primarily to be sold as VHS/DVD.
We have ESRB ratings on games,
Again, voluntary. Of course with games, getting AO games is relatively hard (smaller market than movies) and M games are on the shelf by other games.
V-Chip ratings on TV shows,
Okay, this was forced by the government. For at least the broadcast stations there's at least a legitimate basis by which the government can support this, but I can't see how pushing it on cable/satellite is legal.
and explicit lyric labels on CDs.
That's a combination of (proactive) stores and record labels caving to threats of boycotts.
The reason I mention all of these separately is to point out that in all but two cases it was voluntary, economic interests that were the root behavior modifier. If anything, to me that indicates that we don't need the government to step in and block people.
Has any of this censored the adult industry or put them out of business? No,
Yes. At least some adult shops have been forced to close as a result of zoning laws. Also, indirectly the unified rating system combined with the forced v-chip rating system has certainly caused some films to be censored so they are an "acceptable" rating. For the rest, the government wasn't involved, so censorship hasn't occurred. No, the industry as a whole has not been "put out of business".
what it has done is to inform people about questionable content, so stupid parents don't accidentally plan their seven-year old son's birthday party at a strip bar.
Nothing can overcome the stupidity of people. Besides that, I question just how many seven-year old boys really have had that happen. I certainly wouldn't stake forcing behavior on a group to try to overcome such an issue.
It's still illegal in the United States to sell pornography to a minor, and if I walked up to your kid on the street and showed them porn, I'd be arrested.
Yes, it's illegal to knowingly show porn to a minor in most locals. To me that's pretty crazy, given that a minor is defined as anyone under 18.
I don't see why the same rules shouldn't apply on the Internet, especially in this age of popup teasers, porn spam, and misleading domain names.
Actually, the same rules do apply already. There's already law that requires that US commercial pornography sites are required to have the user sign an electronic waver stating their date of birth under penalty of perjury.
So what if the porn industry is forced to use.xxx? It's a slimeball business, and it needs to be marked just like we mark it in the real world.
There's many problems with this. Not all places are under US law, so they do not apply. As you might have noticed above, current law about porn doesn't apply to non-commercial content. This is because commercial speech is granted less privilege than non-commercial speech. As a result, a blanket push to require all porn to be on.xxx domains in the US would be very clearly unconstitutional. Also, the internet is more than the web. What sort of chaos would occur if all p2p users who every uploaded/downloaded porn were required to get an.xxx domain? There's no way, short of 4th amendment violations, to adequately go
I know you're being sarcastic. But I'd like to chime in my own obvious answer: don't let people out of prison/jail that you want to punish. Letting people out of prison "early" while placing any sort of restriction on them is paramount to turning the whole state/country into a prison. The fact that the librarian is being punished over this seems very clearly Florida's way of saying that the prison guards (police) aren't too happy with her conduct.
If Florida really wants sex offenders to be punished for the rest of their life, they better be prepared to adequately shelter them in prison for the rest of their life. If every felony meant life imprisonment (think of all the ex-felons who can't vote), I think Florida would be a quite different state.
How well does this represent our culture of openness? Is this consistent with how we want others to disclose security flaws? Obviously the authors have pegged themselves here as not pro-freedom, but simply anti-Microsoft.
I'd say that the XBox is by design anti-freedom. The "security flaws" as you put it are for a security system put in place so that the owner cannot do with their property what they wish. An analogy would be like not pointing out to a dictatorship the various ways their fortress is flawed, such that one can use it later to attack said dictatorship and "free" the country/system. The truth is, I assume that the author isn't interested in helping to make it harder for hisself/herself to write code for their platform of choice; and their decision for platform of choice is of course for the challenge, but not to make it impossible.
Ironically, I was talking about iuware and Windows, not Linux, especially not free (as in beer) distros.
All your other comments in this thread seem to indicate you....
a) don't want to spend 5 bucks for a legal copy of windows, but you would drive 30 minutes to "use" a copy.
No. I don't want to spend 5 *more* bucks to pay for a CD for a legal copy of Windows I already own. IU paid millions of dollars to MS so that its students and staff could have legal copies of Windows. That came out of the money I paid to go to IU. The comment about using a copy was to point out how much of a hoop one had to go through to avoid paying even more money.
b) don't want to recognize that there are free alternatives to buying a 5 buck winders cd
Actually, I listed the free alternative to buying a Windows CD. It was to borrow a Windows CD. If you meant Linux, I'd have to point out that that's not a version of Windows.
c) do want to copy the licensed legal copies and give them away to others
Give them away or sell to them copies of a CD to IU students who already own a license to Windows. If it costs me either 30 minutes to 1 hour of time or $5 to get a copy of something I already own, I might as well have the right to try to recoup the cost, especially if it means selling to people at $1 who would otherwise have to spend time or $5 to get a copy themselves.
d) think you have the right to do whatever you wish just because you "were" a student at IU once upon a time.
No. I think that at the time, I was a student at IU and had the right to do what a site-license deal would imply. That is, if the school wasn't handing out free CDs to students, then there's no reason I shouldn't be allowed to hand out free CDs to students or even charge for a copy, just like the school was.
Get real dude, 5 bucks isn't squat for a legal copy.
And if it was only really $5, I wouldn't have made a single comment.
BTW the reason you cant D/L windows from IUWARE is because the license agreement states each purchaser must physically sign for the CD and provide a valid student or employee ID.
That might be the case. I wouldn't know. Why not? Because when I asked, I was given some BS excuse about some technicality prevented burn a bootable Windows 2000 CD (this was BS, btw, because while this might have been true, all Windows OSs were taken down; nothing about Windows 2000 not being bootable would somehow revoke the ability to distribute OSs already downloadable); oh, and I was also given the excuse that people would end up d/ling and installing Windows 2000 as an "upgrade" to Windows 98, which would be too much of a drain on support costs (I consider this an excuse because clearly they weren't stopping people from going down to buy a copy; besides, it's pointless to pay for software you don't want anyone to use). At the time, the agreement that was up for reading didn't make any mention of any requirement to physically sign for a CD. Perhaps that situation has changed.
And that license agreement says you can't redistribute the CD or make copies if it.
I assume by you, you mean the students and staff. But perhaps you mean the university as well, and MS was selling the CDs to IU. Like I said, no contract I read said anything of the kind.
If you don't like it bitch at Microsoft and stop ragging on IU like some whiney arsed farmboy from Martintucky;)
As I was a student at IU, whom I was paying to indirectly do my bidding, to claim I shouldn't "rag" on IU for agreeing to policy that seems irrational is to ignore exactly what IU's role was in this affair. Does this mean I think Microsoft is somehow not culpable? Of course not. But the subject at hand was IU's part in their licensing of MS Windows OSs and their disper
One, at the time I was there they didn't offer RedHat Linux or any other Linux there. Two, while it was possible to "checkout" an installation CD, as I recall you only had on the order of an hour to borrow the CD. Where I lived, that basically meant 30 minutes to copy the CD. The fact is, there's no sane reason why if you had to provide your student card to borrow a CD you couldn't provide your student id to d/l the CD off iuware; sane reasons, btw, do not to me include trying to inhibit copying to students/staff nor encouraging people to spend $5 instead of going through the hassle of a 1hr grace window to make a copy.
Oh, and one other small note. I asked about if I could make copies and give them to other students with a valid student ID, and they pretty clearly said no. Now, there was ~30,000 students at IUB. How many UITSs are there? Thrity? A hundred? Assuming the latter (for simpler math), it'd take 12.5 straight days to for everyone to make their own copy that they're legally entitled to. Good luck actually getting that to work out, btw, with that many students.
So, one might not technically "have" to pay $5 for a copy of Windows one already owns. But that seems a rather moot point considering their options. I mean, it's not like they're a library with a finite number of legal copies below the population they serve. It seemed/seems rather BS to me to require jumping through hoops for a Windows OS when other software is available off iuware.
As a Chinese native living in the USA, I am surprised daily as to how many people feel sympathy for the Japanese b/c they were nukes, because I can never bring myself to feel such sympathy. To sympathize with them, is to denigrate the millions of my countrymen who were brutally slaughtered.
Were you born before the cold war? I think a large part of the reason that the USA is sympathetic to the Japanese is because for decades there was the constant threat of there being a "nuclear holocaust". That's not to say that threat has truly disappeared, though most Americans I think now think there's more risk from a rogue group inside the countries which made up the Soviet Union than there is of Russia attacking us unprovokedly.
And that finally word is the fine point. While it's certainly true that Japanese civilians were in the war effort, it wasn't the many Japanese civilians that were in China and Korea raping and murdering those countries. And while certainly Japanese prospered and allowed these acts to occur, either by intentional ignorance or acceptance of such acts, there's still greatly a feeling of empathy that as individuals they had very little control over what their country and military is doing, let alone the response of another country.
So, I can sympathize with the many Japanese who were killed or had their lives effected by the nuclear arms dropped on their country. And I can realize that in some small part such is their own doing. It's also why when bin Laden and others bomb the US, it's hard to simply mark him as a terrorist and say that there's absolutely no justification for his acts. The people of the US, just like the people of Japan, need to change their country to stop brutalizing and raping other countries, be it their people, their land, or their souls.
I'd like to take this a step further. Up until 2000 or so one could d/l just about any software that was available under this license agreement off of an IU website by providing your username/password. But then they decided to change the rules and make it so you had to pay $5/copy if you wanted an OS. Now, I personally was a bit belligerent about this when I e-mailed on why this change occurred (at the time, I was planning to try out the NT line under Windows 2000). The excuse I got was something along the lines of "we can't get it to work like that". Of course, this rather ignores that they took down Windows 95, NT 4.0, 98, and 98SE as well, so that excuse didn't exactly fly.
So it was little use trying to explain to them that you've already paid for the software and you don't want to spend the extra $5/copy and have to actually go down to the IU store to get a copy. In any case, I eventually switched to Linux (mostly due to a programming class), but I still have copies of Windows around for WINE/qemu as needed. It still quite irks me having to dish out $5 for a $0.30 CD.
Bill Gates is (approximately) the world's richest man because he, as much as anyone, made computers accessible and affordable to the average home and office.
Uh, no. It was Compaq and others who made PC clones that made the PC accessible and affordable to the average home and office. When the price of a system is $3000, the price of a $200 OS is piddly. It was the PC clones and to a great extent AMD's competition into the low-end computer market that commoditized the x86 PC and greatly reduced its price. Of course, the increase demand causing a glut in the market for PCs also had a lot to do with it. To that end, the only thing Windows provided was a standard OS to write drivers for. And to that end, any sufficient OS could have just as easily took its place (OS/2 being the prime example).
But in the interest of protecting the rights of all people (you and those in the RIAA as well) there have to be rules protecting the ownership of information.
This is obviously not true. It's called contracts. Possession and usage rights of things, be them owned by contractor or merely under the contractor's posession/control under contract, are what contracts are all about. In fact, user agreements and the like covering personal information are contracts as well precisely because of this fact.
To put it another way, you'll have to rethink what exactly is "owned" in the first place. If, for example, someone else is playing a song loudly in their home and you record it with a tape recorder and distribute it, have you violated copyright? Of course, because you're clearly copying the data. What if, on the other hand, you were to take photos of a person and collect fingerprints off of objects they touch? The only real limits would be whatever limits are specifically in place for your work, if any. Ie, a private citizen could do whatever they want but the FBI would have specific rules.
So, this claim of ownership is already very one-sided. But this is how it should be for private information, because it's ridiculous to claim we can't even open our eyes until we've signed a contract with a person to record private information (height, weight, gender, address, etc are things easily observable yet almost always listed as private information). Instead, when you hand over your information to someone, you can sign a contract with them to not divulge the information to others. But in the end, there's nothing to stop a stake out or a legal middleman to collect information.
<The genetically successful male breeds with as many partners as he can, as often as he can.
This is bullshit. Evolutionary success depends upon producing the most children who go on to have more children, not to spread the most of your genetic material around.
Well, you're right with the second statement.
A well cared for child that receives proper parental attention, who grows into a stable adult, is a greater "success" and will likely breed more and better children than five kids who are malnourished and mentally underdeveloped without the interaction and protection of the father.
Here's a key point. You're ignoring that "the father" might not be the biological father. More on this below.
I'm not disagreeing with your first statement. Monogamy can be hard, but don't pull that "men are hardwired for infidelity" crap. The notion that women are "supposed" to try desperately to hold on to one man while men are "supposed" to want to spread their baby batter everywhere is a product of our culture, and is a cop-out for both sexes.
Okay, let's assume your argument is right. Men aren't hardwired for infidelity and woman aren't desperate to hold on to one man. So, those men who commit infidelities and women desperate to hold on a man then are acting out their culture. However, this means they're overriding their natural instincts.
But, there's somewhat of a contradiction. If one looks at the Bible, specifically the 10 Commandments, one will notice a peculiar thing about sex: there's only the mention of adultery in it. Rape, bestiality, and fornication? Not in the top ten of problems, but adultery is. Now, you could claim that fornication isn't in itself a breaking of a vow with God and hence it's okay, but why wasn't rape and bestiality listed? Certainly rape is a very destructive crime to a community. And rampant bestiality would at some point begin to diminish the population size (though admittedly it would do so in favor of the "good").
I propose that adultery was rampant to the extent that it was becoming very difficult to pass along heirs to a biological child, a cultural normal to advantage one's own lineage. It was so rampant in fact that it made the cut above all other sex crimes, in the big top ten list. Now as wicked of deeds that the people were doing at the time involving sex and seeing how ingrained adultery is as a sin, it seems a bit far stretch to claim that Christians or Christian-like individuals would ever commit adultery.
On a side note, I think it's been argued that women look for strong (physically and financially) and older men. Now, I'll admit that part of this is indeed a cultural norm, but seeing the infidelity that's being claimed, it seems that part of such a maneuvering is to be a position to have greater prospects for producing children while being financially stable enough to raise one's children.
None of the above, btw, is a cop-out. Just because one has an urge to do something, be it cultural training or natural instinct, doesn't mean doing the act itself is somehow justified. The whole concept of sin quite well revolves around this point. Simply admitting that man is a beast at heart means one knows the ground rules and works hard to overcome those weaknesses one sees in producing a monogamous relationship.
Oh, and obviously there's individual fluctuation upon how much culture overcomes one's natural tendendices to the extent one no longer likes what would come natural (look at how strongly groups can reject various food/drinks based on what they're composed of on religious grounds). So, even while the "norm" to want to commit infidelity combined with a lack of want to commit infidelity is abnormal, there's clearly cases where it's better for yourself to be abnormal. Accepting oneself is the most important thing.
I mean you have to remember, that most of the people in the world CAN'T, even if they want to, because they aren't writers. The majority of the population, well over 90%, does not know how to write. It's stupid to say they should learn how to. The whole point of specialization of labour is that people don't have to do everything. Writers write, and other people use what they make.
I mean you have to remember, that most of the people in the world CAN'T, even if they want to, because they aren't literate. The majority of the population, well over 90%, does not know how to read. It's stupid to say they should learn how to. The whole point of specialization of labour is that people don't have to do everything. Readers read, and other people use what they hear.
etc
Just because it was once true 90% of most countries were illiterate doesn't mean it's a specialized skill that a select few should know. The same can be said for math, which many people are told has no "real world" use beyond simple arithmetic. Programming/coding is a combination of language, math, and logic to perform tasks. Perhaps if a larger percentage of the world was coders there'd be a lot less people who would accept closed proprietary products; ie, more people would demand to do their own source code modding. There's a reason it's called computer literacy. And there's a reason why taking a course in using Excel isn't it.
Actually, you're partially right. You can *attempt* to block a search warrant by locking a door, but the cops will just knock down the door. So, the same logic would hold that if you don't hand over the key they're left to breaking the lock of the encrypted document. Until they have actual evidence, though, they'd be wise to not arrest you. Maybe 40 years from now they'll be able to actual crack the encryption.
Of course the better analogy would be if you wrote a document out encrypted (ie, physical pen and ink). Do you think not telling them how to decrypt it would be a crime as well? Do you really think it should be?
Yea, explosives were obviously invented in the 21st century and kamikaze attacks are a wholly 21st century approach. Terrorism is as old as feudal times. Kings used it to subjegate their people and "barbarians" used it to steal from the peons. Further, blending in is simple "cloak and dagger", hardly a new concept. Look at the various mobs, for another example. There's virtually nothing in component that's different today than in the past, so I can't begin to imagine what basis there is to try to subvert the Constitution.
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Not sharing your vision of a unified desktop nor considering working towards that goal of the wide adoption of Linux does not make one an elitist. Many people, including myself, have seen these visions of a unified Linux desktop before. And we've seen them quickly become corrupted to using the tools available instead of doing the work to fill the gaps where no single "way" fits all needs. But, while people will claim to be elite and some out and reject your goals out of pessimism, there are many who reject your ideas because they already have their own goals. And while it is true that gaining a critical mass of users is likely to advantage those same people in jobs and hardware support, that's just a nice side effect to them.
And just so you know, I find the repeating of "elitist" a bit offensive as well. Just because a handful of people express a certain viewpoint does not explain the behaviors of a large variety of people who have their own reasons for not going along with your plans. It is very much this generic calling of those who disagree as "elitist" that gives me the vibe of ignorant authoritarianism. I can only hope you really believe that the amount of people who are real elitists are much smaller than the community at large.
This is in reply to this post and all the posts up the line made by you. This seems the best place, considering I have a response to various parts throughout the line. So, to begin:
When I wrote my article and its follow-up on directions I think a Linux Distribution could take...
I'd like to start out by asking what Linux Distribution you were talking about. Was it Gentoo? Mandrive? Ubuntu? Or did you mean all distros?
Which is surprising, because the very point of the Linux design is that different distributions were supposed to be able to explore completely different tracks. There shouldn't be any "one distro to rule them all", yet many of the respondants demanded exactly that! (Amusingly, they couldn't agree on *which* distro to rule them all.)
What I find surprising is that you seem to be making grand generalizations of "the Linux Destop", not "the Linux Desktops". For all your talk about exploring different tracks, you're suggesting a single track for everyone. It comes as no surprise to me that the many people in the many already existing tracks are yellling "Never change it!" aka "we don't want to unify under your design". It really shouldn't amaze you that they can't agree on one Linux to "rule them all".
I understand that the Linux community is wide and varied, but this sort of attitude is not helping anyone.
It probably helps established distros to not wonder off on a goose chase whom already have a target audience.
In fact, this sort of attitude causes Linux to take two steps back for every one step forward it takes in the market.
"The" market, of course, is the goal all distros should be aiming for, since clearly all distros are interested in competing in one market, not many markets.
When I pointed this out to many responders, and mentioned the fact that I'm merely attempting to suggest a Desktop environment that would help Linux adoption, I got another surprising response: "Who said we wanted regular users? Linux is for the elite. If you're too stupid to recompile your kernel or read all the scattered HOWTOs, you're too stupid to use Linux!"
I'd love to know if this was the actual quote from a user. There's nothing about using Linux that makes one elite. At the same time, there's already many distros where it's not necessary to recompile the kernel nor read scattered HOWTOs. However, I can understand why many users of Linux aren't interested in others adopting Linux.
Now, in response there was this from an AC:
"If people can make some money off of Linux then good luck to them, but Linux should not change to meet some commercial wish list."
And you replied:
Why not? Why can't there be a Linux distribution that is changed to meet commercial desires? Why can't there be a Linux distribution that is changed to meet home user desires? Why can't there be a Linux distribution that is changed to meet scientific researchers' desires?
What is wrong with different Linux distros to meet the desires of different markets?
I'd assume when he talks about Linux, he's talking about the Linux community. Distros are, to some extent, a completely outside influence. From time to time, one distro makes a major contribution to the Linux community. But that sort of adoption is almost always based on technical merit, not on "to meet home user desires". And while I certainly encourage Ubuntu and Mandrive to continue their work to make a distro to their own ends, I'd never suggest that the main line of developers change their objectives. Why? Because it's their project for which they're allowed to do whatever they want. And pissing them off means that I, whom is already capable of doing such work, would basically be forced to do such work. This sort of goes on to your next idea:
Isn't that the entire point of Linux? "It's just a kernel," we say. But then the community berates anyone who attempts to reuse that kernel in Community Unapproved Ways(TM). How
First, spreading a virus or other malicious code would probably be easier than patching the problem, at least most of the time. This means that exploits for a vulnerability would be be out before fixes for them.
Quite possibly.
I'd prefer the uncertainty that hackers may or may not have found a vulnerability above the certainty that they can find it, even at the cost of being unaware of the vulnerability itself.
And I'd prefer the certainty that vulnerabilities not exist than the uncertainty of whether vulnerabilities exist. Interestingly enough, it's possible to formally prove most programs. It just takes a lot of effort.
Second, what am I supposed to do if I do know about the vulnerability? Change software? Even for a home user this is a substantial undertaking, and sometimes impossible. (For instance, even though I like Linux and dual-boot with Gentoo, I do most of by stuff in Windows because there are a couple things I *can't* in Linux.) In a corporate world, the situation is even worse.
The simple answer is, probably. If you don't, you'll run into your first stated problem, and the damage done from that will likely be worse than the effort and pain of using another system. The best answer is not necessarily best because it has the most features.
Again, in many cases, we're back to the same problem: I have to run software with a vulnerability (i.e. even if I know about it I can't do anything), do I want that vulnerability known by a lot of people or as few as possible?
You never have to run software. You choose to run software just as others do. If you choose that the advantages of running the software are greater than the damage associated with it, you choose to continue running it. This is likely tied to the ability to mitigate damage. Never the less, other people may very well decide differently, and your wish to keep things secret are no basis upon which to keep others from receiving the information. Of course, I still say I'd rather have software that's verifiably correct. Of course, such doesn't rely on keeping things secret.
Finally, what am I supposed to do even if I COULD change any software at will? Follow all the websites where security stuff would be posted to see if something was broken? Yeah right, many people don't even install patches. I don't have time to pay attention to security sites. Even if I did, I might not have the knowledge to evaluate how bad of a threat something was.
Now, here is where your argument is very splintered. It is in your best interest to track the security/safety of the things you use, be it software or physical goods. The fact that other people don't do the same isn't really relevant--deciding on whether to get vaccinated against a disease based on if others are vaccinated is taking a gamble instead of directly resolving the problem. If you don't have time to verify the security of software then you really shouldn't be using it. Just like you shouldn't buy a car if you don't make enough to buy insurance.
I draw this analogy because insurance, in the form of a support system, is the simplest method of achieving the sort of security you desire with the least amount of personal time devoted to the task. Such a support system would be responsible for informing you of threats and providing you patches. Of course, the best insurance is to have functionally correct software wherever possible. That might not be economical, though.
Now, I do think there comes a point where if the company is sitting on its hands and doing nothing that something has to be done and the vulnerability should be released to the world in an attempt to force it to take action, but as long as the company is making a good attempt I think that it should remain as secret as practical. (I also think that vulnerabilities should be released a couple weeks, maybe a month, after the patches are, both to give the public information about the general security of that company's products and
So who pays for roads, traffic police, pollution control, and other traffic-related costs in your country then, if it's not coming from fuel tax?
Who said it wasn't coming from fuel tax (and just FYI, I believe that traffic fines are part of it too)? Europe has primarily taxed at over 100% to reduce oil consumption and increase the tax flow. It's not because 100%+ tax is necessary to support all those things you listed.
Do you just share the cost between all motorists regardless of how far, how often, and what car they drive?
No, but then a car that's twice as heavy as a normal car, causes twice as much damage to the roads per mile than a normal car, and is 75% as efficient as a normal car will end up doing more damage per mile while not paying enough taxes to compensate. Taxing fuel might be a simple approximation, but by no means is it an accurate assessment upon those responsible.
Heck, who pays for the stabilisation of the oil-producing middle-east countries, if it doesn't come from fuel tax?
No one. The US, nor Europe, should be into nation building. Now, can people in the US aid rebels to overthrow a dictator? Sure, there's nothing illegal about that. If you really do think that fuel tax was for stabilizing the middle-east, then Europe should have stepped in ages ago to solve the problem.
Does the government just assume that everyone is interested in funding that?
No, the government probably doesn't assume that. But if stability increases profits, it's very likely that the oil industry would work to stabilize the middle-east through their own funding. As others have stated, though, it's not clear that stabilizing the middle-east is for their benefit.
Do they take taxes from cyclists and pedestrians to pay for the steady supply of oil?
Yes, they do. Beyond the federal oil reserve, there's also subsidies to fund oil well drilling. And while giving tax breaks to oil companies is not paying them money, it certainly doesn't improve the situation of cyclists and pedestrians directly (whether it does indirectly, by cheaper transport and production of goods is a whole other debate).
Maybe if your government didn't tax gasoline at a rate of over 100% (or in some countries, over 200%) it'd be cheaper? Of course, the US provides money for drilling and tax cuts for oil companies which may or may not be keeping the price down. Personally, I wish government would stop getting involved in both circumstances and let the market sort things out.
Yep. That's what clones are all about. If Fuddruckers had looked at his game and made their own using the same name and gameplay, not only would he not be pissed off (he did the same thing, and it's widely accepted that cloning is a-okay) but he couldn't do anything about it (they created it and would be hosting it). Truthfully, though, it'd be a sad state of trademark if one could trademark a single word like "Burgertime" such that one could be smacked around with trademark law (imagine MS going after Open Office).
You do realize that trademark is about associating a *company* with a *product* right? Fact is, no matter how closely the guy cloned the original game, the game wasn't made by Namco. Trademarks are there so that you can brand your product in an otherwise commodity market (eg. McDonalds hamburger vs Burger King hamburger). The simple fact is that Burgertime could be thought of the generic term for that type of game, just like x86 is the generic term for a specific processor line--x86 is a lot more complex than such a game.
Overall, though, it sounds like the guy was generally pissed off less about them including the content at all but more about specifically linking to his content without making mention of being not theirs nor hosting the content themselves. To make a simple analogy, imagine if you had a free for public use drinking fountain in your backyard, accessibly most easily by coming through the front gate. Now imagine if Wal-mart set up shop next door, but instead of making their own drinking fountain they simply created a nice walkway to your free drinking fountain through the back gate. Ie, it's not about people using a drinking fountain but about them being too damn lazy to take the steps to build their own or at least be nice and ask if you'd mind. It's wishful thinking to assume the drinking fountain will be there forever; and it'd be hardly suprising if the drinking fountain was no longer free rather quickly. The amount of grass trampling probably doesn't matter.
somewhere buried in your fount of cynicism and negativity is someone who actually cared about something once
I'm not sure if you really believe this or not, but I feel rather compelled to correct your belief. Distrusting some people, or especially organizations of people, is not cynicism. Cynicism of the whole world is a paranoia of people or of how the world works, and I believe neither of theses are real. How the world works often now is only a factor of how people decide to respond to things, and it's the fact that many people either do not care yet or do not believe enough yet to change that sets the temporary course.
Further, it is not negativity to realize that politicians are most often interested in votes more than people or that people jump behind the disaster of the day than the mundane killers of life. The first is a function of democracy and the sloth of people well off enough to not need to think much. The latter is a function of repetition of a previous unthought of and the media's thirst for reporting on yet a new disaster. In the end, I'm a Libertarian not only because I believe it wrong to force one's will on another, but I also believe that people naturally are able to overcome all these problems without the need for force. If anything, it's only the question of people stepping up to catalyze the change, even in societies which otherwise are made static by forces external to the individual.
Finally, I think in truth the major concerns of terrorism are already solved. Yes, the suicide bombers can still attack the subway trains. But any sort of hostage taking will almost certainly be different. The media has, in its own way, done its part to awaken people that compliance doesn't mean one will live. That's a lesson that can be extended to all cases. And in the end, I think it's the resilience of people to not be swayed by threats or acts that will insure that terrorism will fail; a fitting analogy, imho, is the act of ignoring the bully who calls you names, and if he tries to commit force on you, you respond in kind without fear.
So you know what I think?
I say put the cameras on the subway already.
It's funny you say that, given this link: New York Murder Rate in 2000. Some more googling indicates that in 2004 the murder rate was under 500. So, it's reasonable to say that that over the spans of 8 years there's been more "regular" murders than the murder performed on 9/11. Further, death in motor accident rates are many times the homicide rate, so I'd imagine that it only took one or two years before NYC covered 4000 dead.
Do you support sticking a camera in every alley and along every roadway? Of course, nothing about a camera will stop those motor accident rates (though they'll at least be caught). And if there's cameras in the alleys, I'm sure that they'll just murder in the building or at the docks or somewhere else there aren't cameras. But my major point is, this is a serious waste of money. If New York City is getting $200 million to work on anti-terrorism, then I'd expect it to be spending at least $5.5 billion on trying to stop motor accident deaths (this based on death statistics and counting 9/11 as homicides). Hell, I'd expect at least $400 million spent on working on resolving suicide.
So, we're talking over $150 billion on just trying to cure motor vehicle deaths. Do you see that coming anywhere? Now, you might say that motor vehicle deaths are accidents and hence there's no one to hold coupable, so more effort is spent on going after the terrorists. But you don't see NYC receiving an equally matched $200 million to help with their homicide problem. There's hardly any talk about trying to stop the cigarette trade to stop lung cancer; with lung cancer being 30% of all cancer deaths and 90% of lung cancer being the result of cigarettes, you'd think we'd have law makers going crazy over the cigarette drug and its 10 fold killing rate over homicide--and all this is on the positive spin ignoring that there are people who survive the cancer.
So, my biggest complaint is not even that there's going to be cameras on the subway, which for the most part is a hugely pointless exercise, but that all of this money is funneling from a supposedly monetarily conservative government to fight terrorists instead of a war on drug or a war on conservative spending or one of the many other supposed wars the Republican lead government stands for. The hypocrisy of it all just tells me it's a show and dance, where the politicians make it all too clear they don't really give a fuck about the people.
Even Physicists need penis enlargers and mortgages. Hell, find a place that sells condoms with nuclear radiation symbols or whirling atoms on them.
Isn't that selling umbrellas in a desert?
the other little detail folks are not mentioning here is that the kids used some sort of rootkit equivalent to find the password AFTER it had been changed.
Doesn't that qualify for breaking and entering?????
No. It does qualify as unauthorized computer access, though.
These kids aren't angels...and whoops - there was consequences for their illegal actions..oh and to make sure everyone here gets that. These kids committed a crime.
Yep, they committed at least one crime, but probably a few.
They KNOWNINGLY violated the machines by using the admin password they weren't suppose to have.
Which admin password are you speaking of, btw? The one that was included with the computer or the one they illegally acquired?
Look - if I leave my house unlocked, does that make it any more wrong for someone to enter and start taking my things?
Is that even a proper analogy? There were two situations. One, where by analogy the school gave them the keys to their own house (how "own" it was is up to debate; it was tax payers who bought the machines, and I find it hard to justify why the school would get to keep the computers). The second analogy, after the illegal access, would be them stealing the key from the school to gain access to their own house (they don't own the key, obviously, though that's quite stupid).
The other issue is that these are still kids, and if they're under 18.... it isn't on their permanent record.
Why do you mention this? If it doesn't go on their permanent record, are we supposed to be more/less willing to punish them for their crimes? I'd say we should punish them regardless.
If you guys are constantly going to make excuses though about oh- it wasn't that bad, then the rest of the rules of society might as well fly out the window as well.
Not all of us are making excuses. The kids should be punished for the spying on admins, the rootkiting, and the unauthorized access to the new admin password. But should they be punished for hacking their own computer or using the password given to them? Fuck no.
As a society, we place markers on adult shops so that minors don't enter them.
.xxx? It's a slimeball business, and it needs to be marked just like we mark it in the real world.
.xxx domains in the US would be very clearly unconstitutional. Also, the internet is more than the web. What sort of chaos would occur if all p2p users who every uploaded/downloaded porn were required to get an .xxx domain? There's no way, short of 4th amendment violations, to adequately go
Actually, that's local zoning law, which is rather questionable on its face.
We place black bars on risque magazines so that minors can't see them.
Actually, risque magazines are usually kept behind the counter. So, the we is store owners who fear losing customers after a vocal threat of boycott.
Movies are labeled 'R' or 'NC17' identifying them as adult-only.
Most porn movies aren't labeled. Rating is a voluntary process. It's mainly the fact that most theaters choose to not carry NC17 rated films nor unrated films (again, threat of boycott) that force such films primarily to be sold as VHS/DVD.
We have ESRB ratings on games,
Again, voluntary. Of course with games, getting AO games is relatively hard (smaller market than movies) and M games are on the shelf by other games.
V-Chip ratings on TV shows,
Okay, this was forced by the government. For at least the broadcast stations there's at least a legitimate basis by which the government can support this, but I can't see how pushing it on cable/satellite is legal.
and explicit lyric labels on CDs.
That's a combination of (proactive) stores and record labels caving to threats of boycotts.
The reason I mention all of these separately is to point out that in all but two cases it was voluntary, economic interests that were the root behavior modifier. If anything, to me that indicates that we don't need the government to step in and block people.
Has any of this censored the adult industry or put them out of business? No,
Yes. At least some adult shops have been forced to close as a result of zoning laws. Also, indirectly the unified rating system combined with the forced v-chip rating system has certainly caused some films to be censored so they are an "acceptable" rating. For the rest, the government wasn't involved, so censorship hasn't occurred. No, the industry as a whole has not been "put out of business".
what it has done is to inform people about questionable content, so stupid parents don't accidentally plan their seven-year old son's birthday party at a strip bar.
Nothing can overcome the stupidity of people. Besides that, I question just how many seven-year old boys really have had that happen. I certainly wouldn't stake forcing behavior on a group to try to overcome such an issue.
It's still illegal in the United States to sell pornography to a minor, and if I walked up to your kid on the street and showed them porn, I'd be arrested.
Yes, it's illegal to knowingly show porn to a minor in most locals. To me that's pretty crazy, given that a minor is defined as anyone under 18.
I don't see why the same rules shouldn't apply on the Internet, especially in this age of popup teasers, porn spam, and misleading domain names.
Actually, the same rules do apply already. There's already law that requires that US commercial pornography sites are required to have the user sign an electronic waver stating their date of birth under penalty of perjury.
So what if the porn industry is forced to use
There's many problems with this. Not all places are under US law, so they do not apply. As you might have noticed above, current law about porn doesn't apply to non-commercial content. This is because commercial speech is granted less privilege than non-commercial speech. As a result, a blanket push to require all porn to be on
I know you're being sarcastic. But I'd like to chime in my own obvious answer: don't let people out of prison/jail that you want to punish. Letting people out of prison "early" while placing any sort of restriction on them is paramount to turning the whole state/country into a prison. The fact that the librarian is being punished over this seems very clearly Florida's way of saying that the prison guards (police) aren't too happy with her conduct.
If Florida really wants sex offenders to be punished for the rest of their life, they better be prepared to adequately shelter them in prison for the rest of their life. If every felony meant life imprisonment (think of all the ex-felons who can't vote), I think Florida would be a quite different state.
I hope you're kidding. Yoshi's Island has a much more attractive design than XP. Analogies to PlaySkool and Barney would seem much more appropriate.
How well does this represent our culture of openness? Is this consistent with how we want others to disclose security flaws? Obviously the authors have pegged themselves here as not pro-freedom, but simply anti-Microsoft.
I'd say that the XBox is by design anti-freedom. The "security flaws" as you put it are for a security system put in place so that the owner cannot do with their property what they wish. An analogy would be like not pointing out to a dictatorship the various ways their fortress is flawed, such that one can use it later to attack said dictatorship and "free" the country/system. The truth is, I assume that the author isn't interested in helping to make it harder for hisself/herself to write code for their platform of choice; and their decision for platform of choice is of course for the challenge, but not to make it impossible.
IU has offered linux since 1996 via FTP or by asking for a CD from http://www.ussg.iu.edu/
;)
Ironically, I was talking about iuware and Windows, not Linux, especially not free (as in beer) distros.
All your other comments in this thread seem to indicate you....
a) don't want to spend 5 bucks for a legal copy of windows, but you would drive 30 minutes to "use" a copy.
No. I don't want to spend 5 *more* bucks to pay for a CD for a legal copy of Windows I already own. IU paid millions of dollars to MS so that its students and staff could have legal copies of Windows. That came out of the money I paid to go to IU. The comment about using a copy was to point out how much of a hoop one had to go through to avoid paying even more money.
b) don't want to recognize that there are free alternatives to buying a 5 buck winders cd
Actually, I listed the free alternative to buying a Windows CD. It was to borrow a Windows CD. If you meant Linux, I'd have to point out that that's not a version of Windows.
c) do want to copy the licensed legal copies and give them away to others
Give them away or sell to them copies of a CD to IU students who already own a license to Windows. If it costs me either 30 minutes to 1 hour of time or $5 to get a copy of something I already own, I might as well have the right to try to recoup the cost, especially if it means selling to people at $1 who would otherwise have to spend time or $5 to get a copy themselves.
d) think you have the right to do whatever you wish just because you "were" a student at IU once upon a time.
No. I think that at the time, I was a student at IU and had the right to do what a site-license deal would imply. That is, if the school wasn't handing out free CDs to students, then there's no reason I shouldn't be allowed to hand out free CDs to students or even charge for a copy, just like the school was.
Get real dude, 5 bucks isn't squat for a legal copy.
And if it was only really $5, I wouldn't have made a single comment.
BTW the reason you cant D/L windows from IUWARE is because the license agreement states each purchaser must physically sign for the CD and provide a valid student or employee ID.
That might be the case. I wouldn't know. Why not? Because when I asked, I was given some BS excuse about some technicality prevented burn a bootable Windows 2000 CD (this was BS, btw, because while this might have been true, all Windows OSs were taken down; nothing about Windows 2000 not being bootable would somehow revoke the ability to distribute OSs already downloadable); oh, and I was also given the excuse that people would end up d/ling and installing Windows 2000 as an "upgrade" to Windows 98, which would be too much of a drain on support costs (I consider this an excuse because clearly they weren't stopping people from going down to buy a copy; besides, it's pointless to pay for software you don't want anyone to use). At the time, the agreement that was up for reading didn't make any mention of any requirement to physically sign for a CD. Perhaps that situation has changed.
And that license agreement says you can't redistribute the CD or make copies if it.
I assume by you, you mean the students and staff. But perhaps you mean the university as well, and MS was selling the CDs to IU. Like I said, no contract I read said anything of the kind.
If you don't like it bitch at Microsoft and stop ragging on IU like some whiney arsed farmboy from Martintucky
As I was a student at IU, whom I was paying to indirectly do my bidding, to claim I shouldn't "rag" on IU for agreeing to policy that seems irrational is to ignore exactly what IU's role was in this affair. Does this mean I think Microsoft is somehow not culpable? Of course not. But the subject at hand was IU's part in their licensing of MS Windows OSs and their disper
One, at the time I was there they didn't offer RedHat Linux or any other Linux there. Two, while it was possible to "checkout" an installation CD, as I recall you only had on the order of an hour to borrow the CD. Where I lived, that basically meant 30 minutes to copy the CD. The fact is, there's no sane reason why if you had to provide your student card to borrow a CD you couldn't provide your student id to d/l the CD off iuware; sane reasons, btw, do not to me include trying to inhibit copying to students/staff nor encouraging people to spend $5 instead of going through the hassle of a 1hr grace window to make a copy.
Oh, and one other small note. I asked about if I could make copies and give them to other students with a valid student ID, and they pretty clearly said no. Now, there was ~30,000 students at IUB. How many UITSs are there? Thrity? A hundred? Assuming the latter (for simpler math), it'd take 12.5 straight days to for everyone to make their own copy that they're legally entitled to. Good luck actually getting that to work out, btw, with that many students.
So, one might not technically "have" to pay $5 for a copy of Windows one already owns. But that seems a rather moot point considering their options. I mean, it's not like they're a library with a finite number of legal copies below the population they serve. It seemed/seems rather BS to me to require jumping through hoops for a Windows OS when other software is available off iuware.
As a Chinese native living in the USA, I am surprised daily as to how many people feel sympathy for the Japanese b/c they were nukes, because I can never bring myself to feel such sympathy. To sympathize with them, is to denigrate the millions of my countrymen who were brutally slaughtered.
Were you born before the cold war? I think a large part of the reason that the USA is sympathetic to the Japanese is because for decades there was the constant threat of there being a "nuclear holocaust". That's not to say that threat has truly disappeared, though most Americans I think now think there's more risk from a rogue group inside the countries which made up the Soviet Union than there is of Russia attacking us unprovokedly.
And that finally word is the fine point. While it's certainly true that Japanese civilians were in the war effort, it wasn't the many Japanese civilians that were in China and Korea raping and murdering those countries. And while certainly Japanese prospered and allowed these acts to occur, either by intentional ignorance or acceptance of such acts, there's still greatly a feeling of empathy that as individuals they had very little control over what their country and military is doing, let alone the response of another country.
So, I can sympathize with the many Japanese who were killed or had their lives effected by the nuclear arms dropped on their country. And I can realize that in some small part such is their own doing. It's also why when bin Laden and others bomb the US, it's hard to simply mark him as a terrorist and say that there's absolutely no justification for his acts. The people of the US, just like the people of Japan, need to change their country to stop brutalizing and raping other countries, be it their people, their land, or their souls.
I'd like to take this a step further. Up until 2000 or so one could d/l just about any software that was available under this license agreement off of an IU website by providing your username/password. But then they decided to change the rules and make it so you had to pay $5/copy if you wanted an OS. Now, I personally was a bit belligerent about this when I e-mailed on why this change occurred (at the time, I was planning to try out the NT line under Windows 2000). The excuse I got was something along the lines of "we can't get it to work like that". Of course, this rather ignores that they took down Windows 95, NT 4.0, 98, and 98SE as well, so that excuse didn't exactly fly.
So it was little use trying to explain to them that you've already paid for the software and you don't want to spend the extra $5/copy and have to actually go down to the IU store to get a copy. In any case, I eventually switched to Linux (mostly due to a programming class), but I still have copies of Windows around for WINE/qemu as needed. It still quite irks me having to dish out $5 for a $0.30 CD.
Bill Gates is (approximately) the world's richest man because he, as much as anyone, made computers accessible and affordable to the average home and office.
Uh, no. It was Compaq and others who made PC clones that made the PC accessible and affordable to the average home and office. When the price of a system is $3000, the price of a $200 OS is piddly. It was the PC clones and to a great extent AMD's competition into the low-end computer market that commoditized the x86 PC and greatly reduced its price. Of course, the increase demand causing a glut in the market for PCs also had a lot to do with it. To that end, the only thing Windows provided was a standard OS to write drivers for. And to that end, any sufficient OS could have just as easily took its place (OS/2 being the prime example).
But in the interest of protecting the rights of all people (you and those in the RIAA as well) there have to be rules protecting the ownership of information.
This is obviously not true. It's called contracts. Possession and usage rights of things, be them owned by contractor or merely under the contractor's posession/control under contract, are what contracts are all about. In fact, user agreements and the like covering personal information are contracts as well precisely because of this fact.
To put it another way, you'll have to rethink what exactly is "owned" in the first place. If, for example, someone else is playing a song loudly in their home and you record it with a tape recorder and distribute it, have you violated copyright? Of course, because you're clearly copying the data. What if, on the other hand, you were to take photos of a person and collect fingerprints off of objects they touch? The only real limits would be whatever limits are specifically in place for your work, if any. Ie, a private citizen could do whatever they want but the FBI would have specific rules.
So, this claim of ownership is already very one-sided. But this is how it should be for private information, because it's ridiculous to claim we can't even open our eyes until we've signed a contract with a person to record private information (height, weight, gender, address, etc are things easily observable yet almost always listed as private information). Instead, when you hand over your information to someone, you can sign a contract with them to not divulge the information to others. But in the end, there's nothing to stop a stake out or a legal middleman to collect information.
<The genetically successful male breeds with as many partners as he can, as often as he can.
This is bullshit. Evolutionary success depends upon producing the most children who go on to have more children, not to spread the most of your genetic material around.
Well, you're right with the second statement.
A well cared for child that receives proper parental attention, who grows into a stable adult, is a greater "success" and will likely breed more and better children than five kids who are malnourished and mentally underdeveloped without the interaction and protection of the father.
Here's a key point. You're ignoring that "the father" might not be the biological father. More on this below.
I'm not disagreeing with your first statement. Monogamy can be hard, but don't pull that "men are hardwired for infidelity" crap. The notion that women are "supposed" to try desperately to hold on to one man while men are "supposed" to want to spread their baby batter everywhere is a product of our culture, and is a cop-out for both sexes.
Okay, let's assume your argument is right. Men aren't hardwired for infidelity and woman aren't desperate to hold on to one man. So, those men who commit infidelities and women desperate to hold on a man then are acting out their culture. However, this means they're overriding their natural instincts.
But, there's somewhat of a contradiction. If one looks at the Bible, specifically the 10 Commandments, one will notice a peculiar thing about sex: there's only the mention of adultery in it. Rape, bestiality, and fornication? Not in the top ten of problems, but adultery is. Now, you could claim that fornication isn't in itself a breaking of a vow with God and hence it's okay, but why wasn't rape and bestiality listed? Certainly rape is a very destructive crime to a community. And rampant bestiality would at some point begin to diminish the population size (though admittedly it would do so in favor of the "good").
I propose that adultery was rampant to the extent that it was becoming very difficult to pass along heirs to a biological child, a cultural normal to advantage one's own lineage. It was so rampant in fact that it made the cut above all other sex crimes, in the big top ten list. Now as wicked of deeds that the people were doing at the time involving sex and seeing how ingrained adultery is as a sin, it seems a bit far stretch to claim that Christians or Christian-like individuals would ever commit adultery.
On a side note, I think it's been argued that women look for strong (physically and financially) and older men. Now, I'll admit that part of this is indeed a cultural norm, but seeing the infidelity that's being claimed, it seems that part of such a maneuvering is to be a position to have greater prospects for producing children while being financially stable enough to raise one's children.
None of the above, btw, is a cop-out. Just because one has an urge to do something, be it cultural training or natural instinct, doesn't mean doing the act itself is somehow justified. The whole concept of sin quite well revolves around this point. Simply admitting that man is a beast at heart means one knows the ground rules and works hard to overcome those weaknesses one sees in producing a monogamous relationship.
Oh, and obviously there's individual fluctuation upon how much culture overcomes one's natural tendendices to the extent one no longer likes what would come natural (look at how strongly groups can reject various food/drinks based on what they're composed of on religious grounds). So, even while the "norm" to want to commit infidelity combined with a lack of want to commit infidelity is abnormal, there's clearly cases where it's better for yourself to be abnormal. Accepting oneself is the most important thing.
Caution: Smoker may smell bad, be fidgety.
Nope. Those stickers they wear isn't what makes me not hang around them.
I mean you have to remember, that most of the people in the world CAN'T, even if they want to, because they aren't writers. The majority of the population, well over 90%, does not know how to write. It's stupid to say they should learn how to. The whole point of specialization of labour is that people don't have to do everything. Writers write, and other people use what they make.
I mean you have to remember, that most of the people in the world CAN'T, even if they want to, because they aren't literate. The majority of the population, well over 90%, does not know how to read. It's stupid to say they should learn how to. The whole point of specialization of labour is that people don't have to do everything. Readers read, and other people use what they hear.
etc
Just because it was once true 90% of most countries were illiterate doesn't mean it's a specialized skill that a select few should know. The same can be said for math, which many people are told has no "real world" use beyond simple arithmetic. Programming/coding is a combination of language, math, and logic to perform tasks. Perhaps if a larger percentage of the world was coders there'd be a lot less people who would accept closed proprietary products; ie, more people would demand to do their own source code modding. There's a reason it's called computer literacy. And there's a reason why taking a course in using Excel isn't it.
Actually, you're partially right. You can *attempt* to block a search warrant by locking a door, but the cops will just knock down the door. So, the same logic would hold that if you don't hand over the key they're left to breaking the lock of the encrypted document. Until they have actual evidence, though, they'd be wise to not arrest you. Maybe 40 years from now they'll be able to actual crack the encryption.
Of course the better analogy would be if you wrote a document out encrypted (ie, physical pen and ink). Do you think not telling them how to decrypt it would be a crime as well? Do you really think it should be?
Yea, explosives were obviously invented in the 21st century and kamikaze attacks are a wholly 21st century approach. Terrorism is as old as feudal times. Kings used it to subjegate their people and "barbarians" used it to steal from the peons. Further, blending in is simple "cloak and dagger", hardly a new concept. Look at the various mobs, for another example. There's virtually nothing in component that's different today than in the past, so I can't begin to imagine what basis there is to try to subvert the Constitution.