Wow - that's a brilliant idea! If you could get a little underground campaign going - surely the election officials would remove them, but if you had enough people involved that every few hours someone else comes through & pastes a new sticker on...
That'd get some media attention, at least locally!
A) No, we (Americans) live in a democratic republic, which means you vote for people to represent you in the government.
B) How do you know? Have you seen the Nov 2 ballot? I sort of doubt it. You know which 2 major party candidates will be on the presidential ballot, and that's probably about it.
People who don't at least vote (if not become more politically-involved) can whine all they want about the state of affairs (freedom of speech), but they should stop short of expecting anyone to actually listen to them, much less make the changes non-voters whine about.
There's more to voting than one presidential election every 4 years; voting in the local (city / county / state) elections every year will have much more immediate and obvious effects, because in these smaller elections your vote carries a lot more weight.
I don't agree with most of your post, but that's ok - we're each entitled to our own political philosophies.
Bush recognizes that this is a war, the bad guys started it, and it's only going to get worse unless we start fighting back.
But this line I had to address - the only "war" we have is the "war" the Bush Administration made up. The "war on terror" is no more of a war than the "war on drugs", and the "bad guys" didn't start it - that's just the simple black and white picture the Bush Administration (well, the whole federal government, really) wants you to believe.
You want to talk about who started what, you should take a look at American foreign policy in the middle east over the last few decades, particularly concerning covert intelligence operations that sponsored or supported coup d'etats and gov't overthrows.
Such a sordid history doesn't justify the 9/11 attacks, but you have to realize the context they took place in - not "evil-doers" who simply hate American freedoms, but violent people who are tired of the US interfering in their national affairs and overthrowing their governments to battle the Soviets or securing the flow of affordable oil.
A user who utilizes ALDOT computer resources for any purposes other than for official ALDOT purposes, is guilty of theft or misuse of state resources and may be subject to both ALDOT personnel action and appropriate criminal prosecution.
So, by the management's own rules, the boss was guilty of theft or misuse of state resources. The first is a crime, and I'm pretty sure the latter would be covered in a criminal statute, as well.
Here's an ethical situation - boss takes the computer home (against policy, but you saw him carrying it out), his kid spills soda all over the case, boss brings the computer back in & tells you the computer is broken and needs to be replaced (we'll say acquisition costs are $1500/machine). You tell your boss's boss about the situation and you don't get any response. Do you replace the boss's computer out of the IT repair budget, or do you raise a shitstorm about it? Does it matter if your IT budget is in the red?
I see this as being the same type of deal - this man is being paid to do a job, and the evidence that we have (both the screenshots & accounts from co-workers) is that he's not doing it. Therefore, he's stealing from the government.
I don't think work computes need to be 100% business all the time (even though ALDOT policy states that is the case), but there's a difference between checking/., news, stocks, and personal emails occassionally throughout the day for mental break, and spending 70% of your time playing Solitare.
First of all, the electoral college itself is, I think, a good thing - it gives every state equal say in the presidential election as that state has power in Congress.
What's very, very, STUPID about the electoral college is how each STATE assigns its electors. Most states (all but 3, I believe), assign their electors in a winner-takes-all, total popular vote wins fashion. The better way (IMHO), is to assign electors like Congress is assigned - each congressional district should get one elector, and then two of the electors are decided by state-wide popular vote.
Ok, back to the other point - voting for a third party candidate. Look at Nader in the last election; some people claim he "stole" it from Gore. If that is true, that means that there is a subset of voters that would have voted for Gore, but felt Nader better represented their positions. So what this SHOULD BE is a correction factor for the Democratic party, saying "Ok, here's this set of voters we need to try & include". And of course, they need to make sure to not deviate too far from center, either, lest they lose voters to Bush. So I think, over the long term, voting for third party candidates IS a good thing, because those votes can help correct the direction the major parties are going.
In the short run - yeah, you might lose some elections to the other end of the spectrum.
1. System is vulnerable 2. Evil Hacker X breaks into the system 3. Evil Hacker X installs a trojan 4. j00 1Z 0wn3d 5. A month later vigilante breaks into the system 6. Vigilante doesn't see the existing trojan 7. Vigilante tells sysadmin 8. Sysadmin finds trojan 9. Sysadmin blames vigilante
Now you can argue that "well, the vigilante obviously didn't place the trojan there, or else he/she wouldn't have told the sysadmin", but steps 5-8 are still enough for a company to consider civil (if not criminal) action against the vigilante, and then it's up to a judge (and/or jury) to decide if "Well if I did it I wouldn't have told them!" is a good enough defense.
And at that point, no one will be reading your site anymore, because you've been server-hopping, or your site is down, or its slow, or any number of reasons.
I think a more correct form of what the parent post was trying to say is that big media wants to control what you consume - and they want it to be their "services" that you are consuming. A few server-hopping drops in the bucket won't make much difference, so long as their mainstream audience is mindlessly consuming what big media shoves down their pipes.
Ah - I see we do sort of agree! And we also disagree.
My perspective is that, if a person purchases a company's products or services, you implicitly support the methods by which they were produced. Implicitly, because he (or she) probably don't know what those methods were, but he agrees with the end result (which is normally a cheaper product than the competition). This was my definition of an "ignorant consumer", and I think it's our main point of disagreement. And I am ok with that:)
In my original post, I stated that if a person takes the time to learn more about how the products were produced - ie via slave labor, shoddy construction, sub-par regulation, etc - than he is an informed consumer, and can choose to explicitly support or deny those methods.
The bottom line is: people don't give a shit about other people on this planet. It's against basic human primate hierarchical dominance/submission neurological conditioning.
The only thing they can conclude from a purchase is they have priced the product correctly and somebody needs that product. It has nothing to do with the methods used to produce that product - especially if the public does not know what those methods are.
That's the key point - they have priced the product correctly. Nearly all production processes influence the product's production cost, so cheaper production = (lower sale price or more profit). Economically, if slave labor were legal (ie America in 18/19th centuries), that is much cheaper than paying workers a decent wage. Therefore (from a micro-economic perspective), slave labor is the right tool to use (because it is the lowest cost). That does not mean it is morally, ethically, or legally correct, however.
If company A uses slave labor and prices their widgets at $10, and company B uses living wages and prices their widgets at $15, who's going to sell more (assuming the public doesn't know how the widgets are produced)? Company A, of course. Now if you tell enough people about the slave labor, then the public starts getting outraged and gives company A a bad image, and they lose business because of it. This is because the public value system doesn't agree with the use of slave labor. Was slave labor the right method to use? Yes, until the public found out.
Oh, and I'd appreciate it if you would save the personal attacks for the plaground - I prefer intelligent discussion (such as your first paragraph) to name-calling.
More and more health care systems & hospitals are switching to computers for electronic medication ordering, drug interactions, etc. Most of these systems are (at least on the client side) Windows-based. Windows has IE.
Now, a good IT security policy would be to not allow these machines on the internet, at all. I don't know how many hospitals have such an IT policy (many might, many might not - I just don't know). But computers can and do have a dramatic effect upon people's lives - of course, final say should always rest with a human, but...
(Disclaimer: I work in the health care IT industry)
Given the danger that would pose to a site's continued ability to do business, it's unlikely a court is going to find you negligent for failure to take such extreme measures.
Then maybe such a website should consider using technology & tools that are less likely to be compromised?
I'm really not a troll. Consider the following example - You have a retail business with a single lock on your front door with weak hinges. If someone breaks in & steals your inventory, that's not your fault, correct? It's the perp's fault.
However, its still your lost time, productivity, and potentially customers because of your poor security. I see a similar situation here - security through obscurity alone (as everyone knows) is no security at all. Choose software that is more resistant to such attacks, and keep current with patches, and you don't have to hide.
Personally I don't buy the argument that just because I buy a product, I'm supporting the methods that went into making it - particularly when I don't know that is the case. And I can hardly investigate every corporation that makes every product I buy down to toilet paper.
Of course you support the methods that went into making it - by definition! You are purchasing the product - that's the biggest feedback a company gets if it is on the "right" track. Ignorance is no excuse - if you are an informed consumer, you will purchase products made by companies with processes that agree with your value system. If you are not an informed consumer, you will purchase products based on price.
Unfortunately, most Americans (myself included) are very ignorant consumers. Most people don't have a clue what they buying or whom they are buying it from. And, as others have posted - they just don't care. Most people care only about price, and hearing something bad about a company or product only tends to induce guilt, it doesn't change people's behavior. Ignorance is bliss.
SS7 - Signalling System #7 is a set of protocols defined by ITU-T, specifically in the Q.7* set of documents, used to set up telephone calls. (from Wikipedia).
Himalay / NonStop - The NonStop servers, which sell for an average of more than $1 million a piece, are highly valued for their ability to handle thousands of simultaneous transactions and their capability to continue operating even if hit with multiple hardware failures. The robust computing systems are particularly favored by financial institutions and are used to run 15 of the world's largest stock exchanges as well as automated teller machine networks for some of the nation's largest banks. (from PCMag, 2002)
Parent is a very informative post - I didn't know about this other side of HP/Compaq!
Installation via P2P is a very interesting idea! For simple updates and single-machine installs, FTP is probably the way to go, but when re-mirroring machines or distributing large updates (like a Windows service pack) that would overwhelm a single FTP server, a BT-style P2P would pretty neat. Your FTP server would be the tracker & seed, and then your machines would start downloading the updates. If you had the updates in some sort of silent install package & the P2P client running as a silent background daemon, you wouldn't even need to go to the machines - sort of a distributed "push" technology. Then you'd get the advantages of centralized remote management, but you save yourself the hardware you'd need for a big server to handle all of the machines.
of course, you can save yourself that by just scheduling machines so they don't all try update at once, too, and that's probably an easier solution to implement:)
But there'd be other uses, too - if there's a lot of course content or packages to install in a lab, for example, this would be kind of a nice, efficient way to distribute it.
Alright, I need to do laundry now - nice discussing with you:-)
I agree that you have the right to distribute your material as you see fit - however, the school does not have the responsibility to provide you with the means to do so (ie the bandwidth & the access). As a part of using their equipment & bandwidth, you have to respect their "terms of service" and the restrictions they have chosen to place on that service (unless, of course, such restrictions are deemed unlawful, but I don't think that would apply in this case).
And, for the record, the whole "napster-as-insurance" deal is a huge scam, IMHO. About the only advantage I see is for the students that do use it, they're taking up less internet bandwidth (assuming a napster server is hosted at the university) for everyone else. I don't really think its going to have a huge impact on music/movie/software downloads, however.
And you're right - it's sort of a moot point because legit P2P for research & such is much more likely at the college level. But it's still fun to discuss principles once & awhile:-)
No offense to you, but what "right" of your's are they infringing upon? Traffic-shaping (as I understand it, not being a sysadmin) is a hell of a lot quicker & cheaper to setup than printing up "rules & regs", posting them, finding offenders, and dealing out punishments.
While I don't agree with "quash the minority for the sake of the majority" principle in general, for schools in this particular type of situation, I think there's no realistic alternative. I think there are legitimate uses for P2P, but that trying to separate legit from illegit uses is 1) Not trivial, 2) Expensive (because of #1), 3) Not a significant factor in the quality of education for a school's students.
Except in XP, there's "file protection", so that if any of the windows system files get changed, they are automatically restored from the c:\windows\system32\dllcache directory. And if you try & change *those* files, Windows pops up a dialog asking you to insert the XP CD to restore the damaged files.
So it wouldn't be impossible to do, but definitely more complicated.
This would actually make a very interesting case - have a destructive virus (or some spyware or something) infect a computer, present the user with a EULA pop-up saying something to the effect "By clicking ok you agree to allow this program to [nasty thing] and not blame the author", wait for the user to click Ok, then [do nasty thing]. You'd have one of two outcomes -
1. EULAs are proven to be binding, so you don't go to a federal, pound-me-in-the-ass prison, or
2. Precedent is set against EULAs
Sort of a win-win situation, I would say!
And of course, IANAL and I probably don't know what I'm talking about.
Funny - I've got 7 Habits on my desk (shelf, actually). It was given to me when I joined the company about a year ago (I'm technical support staff - not like a user help-desk, but client-support & custom programming), for me to read & incorporate some of its ideas to help me manage my time & projects, etc.
So why is it still on my desk? Because I still have intentions to read it eventually:-) In the meantime, it makes a nice paper weight for the stacks of specs & notes for the projects I keep getting myself into!
Slashdot Mirror
Wow - that's a brilliant idea! If you could get a little underground campaign going - surely the election officials would remove them, but if you had enough people involved that every few hours someone else comes through & pastes a new sticker on...
That'd get some media attention, at least locally!
A) No, we (Americans) live in a democratic republic, which means you vote for people to represent you in the government.
B) How do you know? Have you seen the Nov 2 ballot? I sort of doubt it. You know which 2 major party candidates will be on the presidential ballot, and that's probably about it.
People who don't at least vote (if not become more politically-involved) can whine all they want about the state of affairs (freedom of speech), but they should stop short of expecting anyone to actually listen to them, much less make the changes non-voters whine about.
There's more to voting than one presidential election every 4 years; voting in the local (city / county / state) elections every year will have much more immediate and obvious effects, because in these smaller elections your vote carries a lot more weight.
No, but it did cost Microsoft money to produce Windows & Office and to hire the lawyers to write up those EULA's.
:)
Sure, the *marginal cost* of selling more licenses is about zero, but the true cost is not, since that factors in all of the fixed costs & R&D.
Just a little economics lesson
I don't agree with most of your post, but that's ok - we're each entitled to our own political philosophies.
Bush recognizes that this is a war, the bad guys started it, and it's only going to get worse unless we start fighting back.
But this line I had to address - the only "war" we have is the "war" the Bush Administration made up. The "war on terror" is no more of a war than the "war on drugs", and the "bad guys" didn't start it - that's just the simple black and white picture the Bush Administration (well, the whole federal government, really) wants you to believe.
You want to talk about who started what, you should take a look at American foreign policy in the middle east over the last few decades, particularly concerning covert intelligence operations that sponsored or supported coup d'etats and gov't overthrows.
Such a sordid history doesn't justify the 9/11 attacks, but you have to realize the context they took place in - not "evil-doers" who simply hate American freedoms, but violent people who are tired of the US interfering in their national affairs and overthrowing their governments to battle the Soviets or securing the flow of affordable oil.
At worst, his boss violated office policy and is a bit lazy.
/., news, stocks, and personal emails occassionally throughout the day for mental break, and spending 70% of your time playing Solitare.
From the Excerpts from ALDOT Computer Usage Policy:
A user who utilizes ALDOT computer resources for any purposes other than for official
ALDOT purposes, is guilty of theft or misuse of state resources and may be subject to
both ALDOT personnel action and appropriate criminal prosecution.
So, by the management's own rules, the boss was guilty of theft or misuse of state resources. The first is a crime, and I'm pretty sure the latter would be covered in a criminal statute, as well.
Here's an ethical situation - boss takes the computer home (against policy, but you saw him carrying it out), his kid spills soda all over the case, boss brings the computer back in & tells you the computer is broken and needs to be replaced (we'll say acquisition costs are $1500/machine). You tell your boss's boss about the situation and you don't get any response. Do you replace the boss's computer out of the IT repair budget, or do you raise a shitstorm about it? Does it matter if your IT budget is in the red?
I see this as being the same type of deal - this man is being paid to do a job, and the evidence that we have (both the screenshots & accounts from co-workers) is that he's not doing it. Therefore, he's stealing from the government.
I don't think work computes need to be 100% business all the time (even though ALDOT policy states that is the case), but there's a difference between checking
It should be clear, you start with "L" and work your way up to the "A" :)
I disagree, from a different perspective.
First of all, the electoral college itself is, I think, a good thing - it gives every state equal say in the presidential election as that state has power in Congress.
What's very, very, STUPID about the electoral college is how each STATE assigns its electors. Most states (all but 3, I believe), assign their electors in a winner-takes-all, total popular vote wins fashion. The better way (IMHO), is to assign electors like Congress is assigned - each congressional district should get one elector, and then two of the electors are decided by state-wide popular vote.
Ok, back to the other point - voting for a third party candidate. Look at Nader in the last election; some people claim he "stole" it from Gore. If that is true, that means that there is a subset of voters that would have voted for Gore, but felt Nader better represented their positions. So what this SHOULD BE is a correction factor for the Democratic party, saying "Ok, here's this set of voters we need to try & include". And of course, they need to make sure to not deviate too far from center, either, lest they lose voters to Bush. So I think, over the long term, voting for third party candidates IS a good thing, because those votes can help correct the direction the major parties are going.
In the short run - yeah, you might lose some elections to the other end of the spectrum.
Wow - no wonder I always felt dirty when my lit teachers made me put periods & commas inside quotation marks. That explains it.
++ Insightful!
But here's a third scenario...
1. System is vulnerable
2. Evil Hacker X breaks into the system
3. Evil Hacker X installs a trojan
4. j00 1Z 0wn3d
5. A month later vigilante breaks into the system
6. Vigilante doesn't see the existing trojan
7. Vigilante tells sysadmin
8. Sysadmin finds trojan
9. Sysadmin blames vigilante
Now you can argue that "well, the vigilante obviously didn't place the trojan there, or else he/she wouldn't have told the sysadmin", but steps 5-8 are still enough for a company to consider civil (if not criminal) action against the vigilante, and then it's up to a judge (and/or jury) to decide if "Well if I did it I wouldn't have told them!" is a good enough defense.
And at that point, no one will be reading your site anymore, because you've been server-hopping, or your site is down, or its slow, or any number of reasons.
I think a more correct form of what the parent post was trying to say is that big media wants to control what you consume - and they want it to be their "services" that you are consuming. A few server-hopping drops in the bucket won't make much difference, so long as their mainstream audience is mindlessly consuming what big media shoves down their pipes.
Ah - I see we do sort of agree! And we also disagree.
:)
:-)
My perspective is that, if a person purchases a company's products or services, you implicitly support the methods by which they were produced. Implicitly, because he (or she) probably don't know what those methods were, but he agrees with the end result (which is normally a cheaper product than the competition). This was my definition of an "ignorant consumer", and I think it's our main point of disagreement. And I am ok with that
In my original post, I stated that if a person takes the time to learn more about how the products were produced - ie via slave labor, shoddy construction, sub-par regulation, etc - than he is an informed consumer, and can choose to explicitly support or deny those methods.
The bottom line is: people don't give a shit about other people on this planet. It's against basic human primate hierarchical dominance/submission neurological conditioning.
This we pretty much agree on
Ahhh.. to dream.
Would be nice, wouldn't it? I have my doubts that we'll see that sort of enlightened thinking in the government within my lifetime, however.
The only thing they can conclude from a purchase is they have priced the product correctly and somebody needs that product. It has nothing to do with the methods used to produce that product - especially if the public does not know what those methods are.
That's the key point - they have priced the product correctly. Nearly all production processes influence the product's production cost, so cheaper production = (lower sale price or more profit). Economically, if slave labor were legal (ie America in 18/19th centuries), that is much cheaper than paying workers a decent wage. Therefore (from a micro-economic perspective), slave labor is the right tool to use (because it is the lowest cost). That does not mean it is morally, ethically, or legally correct, however.
If company A uses slave labor and prices their widgets at $10, and company B uses living wages and prices their widgets at $15, who's going to sell more (assuming the public doesn't know how the widgets are produced)? Company A, of course. Now if you tell enough people about the slave labor, then the public starts getting outraged and gives company A a bad image, and they lose business because of it. This is because the public value system doesn't agree with the use of slave labor. Was slave labor the right method to use? Yes, until the public found out.
Oh, and I'd appreciate it if you would save the personal attacks for the plaground - I prefer intelligent discussion (such as your first paragraph) to name-calling.
More and more health care systems & hospitals are switching to computers for electronic medication ordering, drug interactions, etc. Most of these systems are (at least on the client side) Windows-based. Windows has IE.
Now, a good IT security policy would be to not allow these machines on the internet, at all. I don't know how many hospitals have such an IT policy (many might, many might not - I just don't know). But computers can and do have a dramatic effect upon people's lives - of course, final say should always rest with a human, but...
(Disclaimer: I work in the health care IT industry)
Given the danger that would pose to a site's continued ability to do business, it's unlikely a court is going to find you negligent for failure to take such extreme measures.
Then maybe such a website should consider using technology & tools that are less likely to be compromised?
I'm really not a troll. Consider the following example - You have a retail business with a single lock on your front door with weak hinges. If someone breaks in & steals your inventory, that's not your fault, correct? It's the perp's fault.
However, its still your lost time, productivity, and potentially customers because of your poor security. I see a similar situation here - security through obscurity alone (as everyone knows) is no security at all. Choose software that is more resistant to such attacks, and keep current with patches, and you don't have to hide.
Personally I don't buy the argument that just because I buy a product, I'm supporting the methods that went into making it - particularly when I don't know that is the case. And I can hardly investigate every corporation that makes every product I buy down to toilet paper.
Of course you support the methods that went into making it - by definition! You are purchasing the product - that's the biggest feedback a company gets if it is on the "right" track. Ignorance is no excuse - if you are an informed consumer, you will purchase products made by companies with processes that agree with your value system. If you are not an informed consumer, you will purchase products based on price.
Unfortunately, most Americans (myself included) are very ignorant consumers. Most people don't have a clue what they buying or whom they are buying it from. And, as others have posted - they just don't care. Most people care only about price, and hearing something bad about a company or product only tends to induce guilt, it doesn't change people's behavior. Ignorance is bliss.
"exposing secretive inner workings" [of the US government]
Please, please! Why won't someone think of the children?? Clearly, they should not be exposed to such naughty and immoral things!
For the ignorant (like myself):
SS7 - Signalling System #7 is a set of protocols defined by ITU-T, specifically in the Q.7* set of documents, used to set up telephone calls. (from Wikipedia).
Himalay / NonStop - The NonStop servers, which sell for an average of more than $1 million a piece, are highly valued for their ability to handle thousands of simultaneous transactions and their capability to continue operating even if hit with multiple hardware failures. The robust computing systems are particularly favored by financial institutions and are used to run 15 of the world's largest stock exchanges as well as automated teller machine networks for some of the nation's largest banks. (from PCMag, 2002)
Parent is a very informative post - I didn't know about this other side of HP/Compaq!
Continuing your off-topic thought...
:)
:-)
Installation via P2P is a very interesting idea! For simple updates and single-machine installs, FTP is probably the way to go, but when re-mirroring machines or distributing large updates (like a Windows service pack) that would overwhelm a single FTP server, a BT-style P2P would pretty neat. Your FTP server would be the tracker & seed, and then your machines would start downloading the updates. If you had the updates in some sort of silent install package & the P2P client running as a silent background daemon, you wouldn't even need to go to the machines - sort of a distributed "push" technology. Then you'd get the advantages of centralized remote management, but you save yourself the hardware you'd need for a big server to handle all of the machines.
of course, you can save yourself that by just scheduling machines so they don't all try update at once, too, and that's probably an easier solution to implement
But there'd be other uses, too - if there's a lot of course content or packages to install in a lab, for example, this would be kind of a nice, efficient way to distribute it.
Alright, I need to do laundry now - nice discussing with you
Just make sure Ashcroft doesn't get his dirty hands on the original!
I agree that you have the right to distribute your material as you see fit - however, the school does not have the responsibility to provide you with the means to do so (ie the bandwidth & the access). As a part of using their equipment & bandwidth, you have to respect their "terms of service" and the restrictions they have chosen to place on that service (unless, of course, such restrictions are deemed unlawful, but I don't think that would apply in this case).
:-)
And, for the record, the whole "napster-as-insurance" deal is a huge scam, IMHO. About the only advantage I see is for the students that do use it, they're taking up less internet bandwidth (assuming a napster server is hosted at the university) for everyone else. I don't really think its going to have a huge impact on music/movie/software downloads, however.
And you're right - it's sort of a moot point because legit P2P for research & such is much more likely at the college level. But it's still fun to discuss principles once & awhile
No offense to you, but what "right" of your's are they infringing upon? Traffic-shaping (as I understand it, not being a sysadmin) is a hell of a lot quicker & cheaper to setup than printing up "rules & regs", posting them, finding offenders, and dealing out punishments.
While I don't agree with "quash the minority for the sake of the majority" principle in general, for schools in this particular type of situation, I think there's no realistic alternative. I think there are legitimate uses for P2P, but that trying to separate legit from illegit uses is 1) Not trivial, 2) Expensive (because of #1), 3) Not a significant factor in the quality of education for a school's students.
Just my $0.02....
Except in XP, there's "file protection", so that if any of the windows system files get changed, they are automatically restored from the c:\windows\system32\dllcache directory. And if you try & change *those* files, Windows pops up a dialog asking you to insert the XP CD to restore the damaged files.
So it wouldn't be impossible to do, but definitely more complicated.
This would actually make a very interesting case - have a destructive virus (or some spyware or something) infect a computer, present the user with a EULA pop-up saying something to the effect "By clicking ok you agree to allow this program to [nasty thing] and not blame the author", wait for the user to click Ok, then [do nasty thing]. You'd have one of two outcomes -
1. EULAs are proven to be binding, so you don't go to a federal, pound-me-in-the-ass prison, or
2. Precedent is set against EULAs
Sort of a win-win situation, I would say!
And of course, IANAL and I probably don't know what I'm talking about.
Funny - I've got 7 Habits on my desk (shelf, actually). It was given to me when I joined the company about a year ago (I'm technical support staff - not like a user help-desk, but client-support & custom programming), for me to read & incorporate some of its ideas to help me manage my time & projects, etc.
:-) In the meantime, it makes a nice paper weight for the stacks of specs & notes for the projects I keep getting myself into!
So why is it still on my desk? Because I still have intentions to read it eventually