Try Ubuntu's latest release (Dapper Drake) and then run EasyUbuntu (or one of the other automatic config programs you'll find sticky'ed at the top of the forums.) I've installed it on half a dozen machines, and I've yet to run into ANY problems, hardware or otherwise. It Just Works. And interestingly, 90% of the time XP does NOT Just Work--it inevitably requires that you download and install drivers (unless your OEM provided an OS installation CD with the drivers built in. Dell, however, no longer provides you even with the ability to create your own backup CD.)
So maybe this is an anecdote, fine, but it's becoming a much more commonly heard anecdote with every release of Ubuntu. Usability is their top priority, but unlike Microsoft they aren't willing to sacrifice stability or security in the process.
so why does "history" end now? When Pluto was discovered, no one said "well, we've traditionally had 8 planets, so let's not add any more." It's just stupid. Either we should keep adding planets based on the (loose) criteria that we used to add Pluto to the list, or remove Pluto and redefine the term. Simply saying "no more planets!" is neither historical nor scientific; it's just lazy.
You and me can call Pluto whatever the hell we want, but in science "tradition" doesn't trump ANYTHING (with a few very specific, trivial exceptions e.g. what we call positive eletromagnetism should properly be called negative, and vice versa.) For the sake of clarity and consistency, it matters.
Now, I don't have a problem with them leaving Pluto a planet, but to refuse to add any more names to the list of planets simply because "we've traditionally had 9 planets" is just about the most retarded thing I've ever heard (and mind you, I do work with the mentally handicapped.)
It's such a load of fucking bullshit that parents can forcefeed their kids Ritalin for years if they don't like the grades they've been getting, but if a college student wants to take a small, one-time dose of speed so he can study for a tust he gets thrown in jail (and if you want to argue that Ritalin isn't speed, simply substitute "Adderall" instead. The former is a pseudo-amphetamine, the latter IS amphetamine and both have practically identical effects to methamphetamine.) I was addicted to speed (aka Ritalin) for four years before I finally refused to take it any more. I was 14 years old, and I somehow managed to overcome "peer pressure"--which directly from my parents and doctors, strongly urging me not to quit.
I went through severe withdraw and lost all self-control for about two weeks. My sense of humor was oddly changed and it took months for the fog to clear from my mind. To this day I'm still not sure if it's affected me permanently, and to this day I despise the feeling evoked by most stimulants (caffeine included.)
ADD (without physical hyperactivity) is a fucking scam. Medical bodies recommend AGAINST any form of physiological diagnosis (e.g. MRI), and the criteria for psychological diagnosis is hopelessly vague--it's a catch-all for ANY otherwise-intelligent kid who has problems in school. Doctors and shrinks will keep a kid on it even though it can have serious, permanent side effects, even if it's obvious that the kid is still having problems, even if the kid has gone into a severe depression as a result. Yes, depression is a known side effect of Ritalin and Adderall--the solution? Stick 'em on an antidepressant. Oh, but watch out 'cause in many cases this can increase depression and/or suicidal tendencies, and even if it doesn't there are plenty of other lovely common side effects such as libido supression.
My point is that we're turning millions of perfectly normal (if somewhat academically challenged) kids into crank addicts, sometimes against their will, while denying the right of informed adults to use this drug (or even a nonaddictive drug like marijuana) on an infrequent, occasional basis. This is severelyfucked up. You talk about drugs being shoved in your face--you have no fucking clue what you're talking about until you have your mom or dad tell you that you must take this pill or you'll be grounded.
And just so you know, I work in the mental health field so no, I am not just basing this on my own experience I've seen hundreds of kids (and dozens of mentally deficient adults) diagnosed with ADHD while in reality only maybe 2 or 3 of them were truly hyperactive/attention-deficient. The rest were just a bit uncooperative or apathetic.
At the ripe old age of 14, I educated myself on drug dependence, addiction, and withdraw, and I successfully quit the drug despite peer pressure in the worst sense of the term. I now occasionally employ alcohol and marijuana, but never in excess and never for more than 2 or 3 consecutive days (or when I otherwise feel like I'm building up a tolerance.) I feel that both drugs have had a positive impact on my life. Alcohol in the quantities I typically has numerous health benefits, and ingested marijuana has virtually no harmful side effects. I will not do either if I plan on driving anywhere.
So tell me, why should I be thrown in jail? Why should the shrinks and the overcontroling parents be allowed to forcefeed children addictive substances against their will on the basis of a nearly completely arbitrary diagnosis?
It's also worth nothing that all three of those substances are addictive and it's possible to fatally overdose with all three. Marijuana is not addictive (and don't give me that "psychological addiction" crap. If non-physiological addiction counts, then TV must be about 1000x more addictive.) and it is nearly impossible to die of an overdose (no recorded case.) On top of this, I don't believe that there are any proven long-term harmful effects of marijuana when ingested (not that there aren't any consequences of heavy, long-term use--there probably are, but they are small enough that most studies performed so far have failed to come up with anything conclusive.)
So remind me... why are we wasting billions of taxpayer dollars and throwing teenagers in jail over this drug? Christ, there was actually a better argument for the Prohibition.
I'm not sure I like "old school" PC RPGs, if by "old school" you mean hack 'n slash. I prefer open-ended story-based, which is really rather a rarity even on the PC. Black Isle games (Planescape: Torment and the Fallout 1 & 2) and Elder Scrolls series are really the only quality titles that spring to mind. And like I said, Elder Scrolls may be available on the Xbox/Xbox 360 but the lack of patches (Bethesda games are notoreously buggy immediately after release) and mods makes them very unappealing compared to their PC counterparts.
HL2 did hit the Xbox last year but it's a complete joke (on a machine with a 733Mhz proc and 64 megs of shared ram? what did they expect???) The 360 version is not due out until Februrary.
Third person shooters and platformers--yes, consoles have traditionally dominated both.
Curious about the Sims... according to Wikipedia they're PC/MAC-only, but I checked and you're right--they are available for a wide variety of consoles. Someone should fix that, but it's nearly 6 am so that someone shall not be me.
a-fucking-men. If anything, back in the day your average computer owner was likely very technically proficient and could pirate games even in case of technical copy protection schemes (yes, there were actual technical schemes out there--Inner Space is a good example--that made it impossible to simply copy the contents of the floppy and play. It wasn't all "What's the fifth word on page 39?" nonsense.) Computer games did alright then... and nowadays copy protection has grown even stronger and the average computer user has become much less technically proficient. It's still possible to pirate games without *too* much trouble by downloading a copy, but cracking it yourself is extremely difficult, as recent games tend to do things like refusing to work if they notice you have Daemon-tools installed. If anything, I'd wager piracy has gone DOWN (in relative terms) in the past 10 years if for no other reason than Joe Sixpack has started using computers and he probably knows a lot less about Bittorrent than the average late 80s/early 90s geek knew about copying floppies.
This argument USED to be true, and it's one of the major reasons why console gaming has thrived so much in recent years.
But I hate to break it to you... it simply isn't true anymore. Take a look at your numbers--$200-$400 The Xbox 360 Core is $300 and if you actually want it to come with a hard drive (why the hell haven't these things become a console standard yet? Swap space, greatly reduced load times, as many saved games as you want, official patches, actual MODS... the possibilities are endless) you'll have to fork out another $100. Already, we're at the top end of your price range, and there's rumors that the P3 might be even more expensive (Wii will likely be less expensive, but then again less graphically powerful, i.e. the equivalent graphics card would be much cheaper.)
On the other had, my gaming rig's processor and motherboard are 3+ years old and they run just fine, and I project it will continue to do fine for at least several more years. Instead of buying a $400 console every few years, I buy a $150 video card. Even if I did need to replace my entire system, I could pick up something decent from Dell for maybe $300 (if I waited for a good sale--usually only requires a few weeks; I've done this many times in the past, including my aforementioned 3+ year old gaming rig) or buy a motherboard+CPU combo from Outpost.com and some ram and stick it in my old box--this latter option should cost maybe $200 tops. The fact is video game consoles have been going up in price and computers have only been going down--and even the ones that are a few years old are perfectly capable so long as they have a decent video card.
Granted, a lot of people just don't want to fuck with computers (especially if you have to swap out hardware yourself) and that's fine, I can respect that, but don't try and tell me it's vastly more expensive. That was true 5-10 years ago--not so today, and I can't it changing in the near future.
Not to sound elitist, but I should also add that for most of the types of gaming I usually like, consoles simply are not a substitute:
1. Non-FF-style RPGs. Yes, there's always Morrowind, but Morrowind on the Xbox is buggy and laughable--Morrowind on the PC (with the official patches and a few mods) has almost no bugs, much improved graphics, VASTLY improved character models, improved physics, improved game balance, better [whatever the hell you didn't like about the original]. In a year or so, I wager the same will be true of Oblivion.
Also, I've yet to see a Black Isle-quality RPG released on a console (then again, we haven't seen one in a long time on the PC in a while, too, so maybe this isn't a valid complaint.)
2. FPSes. Sorry, they're a joke. Xbox fanboys talk about Halo like Jesus himself coded it, but in reality it was a very mediocre FPS... though it WAS admittedly fun to play with 4 people in the same room. (I do miss the death of "hotseat" PC gaming--this is one area I will admit we are sadly deficient in. I do own a Gamecube just for multiplayer games such as Mario Party/Smash Bros.) The fact remains, though, that just about any PC FPS released at about same time completely blows it away. Play the original Halo (or hell, the sequel) and then play Battlefield: 1942 and tell me that they are even REMOTELY the same in terms of general quality and fun (the hotseat issue notwithstanding.) I'm sure the 360 has some OK shooters now, but I highly doubt they'd compare well to Battlefield 2. Ok, so I see that by next year they're porting HL 2... wake me up when they have a have a console-original title (i.e., not a 3 year old ported PC title) that rocks.
3. Strategy. Civilization 3 and 4, Warcraft 3, The Sims (and the rest of the Sim series) etc. are PC-only. I think Starcraft had an N64 port, but come on... no multiplayer, no custom maps? From what I can tell, console strategy is not only dead, but I doubt it was ever alive (at least, it hasn't been alive since the 80's--I've heard good things about M
So what moral code do we decide on? What is or is not illegal to do with your own body?
One of my somewhat bigger secrets is I've had "sexual relations" with my (conservative) friend's 16 year old daughter. Actually, it was a couple weeks before her 16th birthday, so I'm pretty sure that counts as a felony in my state... let me stress, I didn't get her drunk; I didn't seduce her; I didn't even remove any of *my* clothing at all--I just made her very happy for one glorious night. She was (and still is) a very mature and intelligent person for her age--much moreso than at least half the adults my age I know. I asked her repeatedly if she wanted me to stop, and she said no over and over. We had an awesome night and four years later we're still close friends--I'm IMing her at this very moment, in fact. I don't regret that night, and neither does she.
But her father, if he found out, would've at the very least turned me in to the police and might've even killed me or at least given me a few bruises. The legal system would've likely been similarly unsympathetic. Frankly, her father and the lawmakers and all the rest of the uptight love-hating Christian world can suck my dick. I don't care what anyone fucking says, non-exploitive love and pleasure between two consenting souls is never an inherently bad thing.
So... that's my reason for wanting to keep my privacy, and I happen to think it's a damn good one. I don't think your "points" system works for larger violations of the law, and yes even the large violations can be morally debatable. If you DO think I deserve to be rotting in prison right now, then consider the civil right's movement--MLK Jr. and co. broke plenty of laws. If the police were instantly informed the moment they started planning an illegal demonstration, the civil rights movement would have been crushed before it ever got off the ground. If this technology had been around in the colonial days, the same would have happened to Ghandi in India...
Absolute proof of questionable act X would either result in society declaring act X legal (thus making it not corruption at all) or society would stamp it out entirely. Privacy allows for shades of gray--with absolute 2-way transparency, every single issue must become black or white--detection and enforcement become so trivial, there's no way the cops could look the other way--the media would give conclusive videotaped proof that they're not enforcing law X and that would force the police to make the decision--enforce it and eradicate it entirely, or don't enforce it and thus effectively legalize it? Of course, we're assuming that public outcry makes selective enforcement impossible--if this is untrue, then the system is flawed and a despotic totalitarianism has been created.
But even if the police could be kept fair and impartial, I don't think this system a desirable thing. Why do I have to stand proudly by everything I've done? Why can't I fuck up once in a while? Why can't I break a few of the more pathetic rules once in a while without having an everpresent iron boot of Orwellian justice slammed in my face? When rules are absolutely enforced they become absolutely unchangable--and I think our society's moral evolution has a long, long way to go, especially in regards to:
1. Active morality--i.e. what is wrong to do? vs. passive morality--what is wrong NOT to do? We place extreme emphasis on action and almost no emphasis on inaction. This is the origin of all undesirable groupthink, "risky shift", and passing the buck. Great evils are perpretrated not by a single person, but by many people spread out over hundreds/thousands/even millions insulated and protected by apathetic people who simply pass the buck instead of standing up loudly and condemning the injustice. This is because the inaction of not saying anything and quietly doing your job/not rocking the boat is only very weakly condemned in comparison to the evil act itself.
2. Victimless crimes--there should be no such thing. There should be a mechanism to protect people from themselves in extreme cases, but it absolutely should not ever result in criminal charges, and it should allow people to do whatever they want as long as they can demonstrate mental and emotional control (which includes rationally explaining their actions and stating that they do not regret them) and as long as they aren't hurting others.
3. Sense of proportion. One need only look at the figures of lives (or dollars, if you want to be exceedingly pragmatic) lost because of traffic accidents or heart disease vs. terrorist attacks to understand this one. We like fighting evil infinitely more than we like doing good--this can tie into #1, but not every example does. For instance, we're extremely obsessed with plane crashes when we're (usually) far more likely to die in a car accident on the way to the airport. If we required anywhere near the same level of safety on our roads (better streets, stricter car safety standards, stricter traffic enforcement on serious/repeat offenders), we'd likely save tens of thousands of lives. But plane crashes are more dramatic, so they get all the attention.
So really this is two points--an obsession with fighting evil that trumps our sense of efficiency and our will to do good, and an obession with the dramatic at the expense of the mundane yet vastly more devastating and tragic. When these two things appear together very strongly (9/11) the result is a catastrophic waste, both financial and intangible (our freedoms.)
4. Capitalistic law--intellectual property, monopolies and trusts, workers' rights (and employers' rights not to be *completely* castrated by unions), taxes, welfare (corporate and individual), political contributions, etc. are all very sticky issues that need to be resolved before we commit to any singular, unchangable set of rules regarding right and wrong.
So yeah, I think it's a very bleak scenario (complete moral stagnation) even if the system was im
Sorry my hippie friend, but it's not going to happen. The transformation would need to be almost instantaneous, and it would need to be completely fool-proof and abuse-proof the FIRST time. If the first incarnation of such a system was in any way flawed (and inevitably, it would be), those who had the ability to abuse it would do so and become nearly-invulnerable 1984-style despots.
But there is an even bigger problem. In a nutshell, in order for your plan to work we would first need a unified system of morality. All of us would have to absolutely agree what is right and wrong (or desireable, undesireable, and tolerable), period. Do you think we're ready to do that just yet? Even when it comes to drugs and sex and other arguably-victimless crimes? Without privacy, there would be no room for debate or change. Homosexuality would still be illegal because homosexuals would be identified and imprisoned (or "corrected", likely via chemical castration) immediately. And, of course, everyone knows that homosexuality is inherently wrong, ya know?
Yeah, I have something to hide. I have a metric assload of secrets. Most are firmly in my past, yet some of them are still very... important, in the I-could-be-killed-or-arrested sense of the term. I'd wager that most interesting, creative non-dronelike individuals have made similar forays outside the laws of the land or at the very least, outside the unwritten laws of society. We CANNOT agree on what "the good life" is so we compromise like crazy and (hopefully) try not to pry into the lives of others so long as they're not affecting anyone but themselves. I have at least a dozen gay friends and for about half of them, they live happy lives with their families because they choose to keep their orientation a secret. In the case of 3 of them (including my own Uncle), the family even for all intents and purposes "knows" about it, but they're allowed to invent whatever flimsy excuse or justification why Mike and Larry live together.
Yes, they're in deep denial, and maybe that isn't very healthy, but it's sure a hell of a lot more healthy than the alternative. My grandmother has for all intents and purposes accepted that my uncle is gay, treats his partner is a member of the family, etc.--but she still vigorously denies that they're gay if one of her friends mentions it. And what if one of her conservative friends could just flick a switch and show her my uncle getting it in the ass... my grandmother would have to make a choice on the spot--conservative Christian morality (and social acceptance that comes with it) or the love of her own son (and the social rejection that would come with it.) Privacy spares her from making that decision.
Yes, there's a chance you could accelerate society's moral growth by removing privacy, but the risk that you'd accelerate it in the wrong direction is far too great.
I run Firefox with the noscript extension. I do not use IE, Outlook Express, or WMP and all three are completely denied access to the internet by Kerio Firewall. I have AVG Antivirus and I run Ad-Aware and Spybot monthly. I keep up to date with security patches.
And yes, it is still unstable compared to Ubuntu. It's only one major fuckup every other week (as opposed to nearly daily, as it was under 9x), but that's still one unexpected major fuckup that Ubuntu DOESN'T have. Every fuckup I've had under Ubuntu is as direct, foreseeable result of something dumb I've done, and I've been able to figure it out and remedy the situation. With XP, generally all I can do is reboot and run my malware scanners and cross my fingers that it doesn't happen again.
Well, it held true on all 5 of my machines (all of which have completely different hardware--except both the laptops are Dells and my grandparents' machine. So anecdotal it may still be, but I would be very surprised if the majority of users are still having hardware problems.
Also, unless you have an example with Ubuntu's Dapper Drake, you're comparing apples to oranges. I've used FC/Red Hat before, and Mandrake/driva and SuSe and MEPIS and even Knoppix and I've always had MAJOR hardware problems. With 5.04 Ubuntu I had only minimal problems (e.g. laptop touchpad not quite working the way I wanted to--sound mixing not working quite right) and since Dapper these problems have been completely eliminated on all 5 of my machines and my grandparents' box.
Linux and the GPL weren't designed to make money (though some people do make money off of Linux); they SAVE people money.
I should clarify-- by "people", I meant companies as well. Hence, close sourced companies should learn to grow up and play well with Linux not because they can sell it, but because they can save money. Plus, since it's open source, they can easily modify any part of it as needed (they don't even have to redistribute the changes, so long as they don't distribute the binaries outside the company.)
As far as business desktop vs. home desktop needs go, I'd say Linux is even more suited for work environments because gaming is (usually) discouraged, user rights management is much better, and there's certainly no lack of development tools available for Linux.
"Pay them more"--absolutely. And give them better equipment, including more nonlethal (or "less-lethal") devices. And give them additional training. And ordered to stop wasting resources on victimless crimes and trolling innocent civillians for petty criminals "You were swerving"--TWICE I have been pulled over very late for this, when I know for a fact I was not. It's happened to a few other people I know, too--always late at night. EVERYONE swerves a tiny bit in their lane, so the cops just wait for it to happen noticably and pull that person over. I get off work at 11:15 PM, and I've noticed there's one particular stretch of road where there's ALWAYS someone pulled over. Once I saw them actually pull the person over--and I can verify that he wasn't weaving or speeding. Maybe his registration was expired, I dunno, but I'd bet dollars to donuts that they pulled him over for "weaving".
I'm not anti-cop by any means; I'm just anti-cop mentality. You might have a practical reason why cops are given a looser leash than fry cooks, but that doesn't make it a moral one.
Linux and the GPL weren't designed to make money (though some people do make money off of Linux); they SAVE people money.
SUCCESSFUL business strategy
News flash: "Linux" in and of itself is not a business. And last I checked Red Hat and IBM were doing alright.
With the exception of servers and anti-virus software, Linux is far, far away from being a serious threat to Windows (and Macs.)
I have 5 machines in active use in my house. All of them dual boot XP/Ubuntu. No matter what machine I'm working with, when (re)installing XP I have to deal with the installer's MBR-related retardation and I have to hunt down and manually install the drivers for the network card, video card, and sound card. With the latest release of Ubuntu, ALL of my hardware is detected right out of the box. 3d-acceleration doesn't work, of course, but there are a few third party applications such as EasyUbuntu which automatically set this up for me. Installing Ubuntu and running EasyUbuntu is easier and by default requires less user input than XP and doesn't require hunting down drivers, and after it's done I can watch DVDs, check my email, surf the web, open or create MS Office documents using OpenOffice.org, play from a vast selection of Linux games (no, they're not Battlefield 2 but they're hella better than just Pinball, Minesweeper, Solitaire, Freecell, and Hearts... varients of which are all of which are included in the Ubuntu repositories, btw), easily install and run most simple Windows programs under Wine, and easily upgrade every single application on my computer with two mouse clicks.
Yes, there are still plenty of rough spots, but its flaws aren't 1/100 as bad as the flaws Windows 98SE had. 99% of XP's non-gaming desktop functionality is there, and the remaining 1% is largely a result of Microsoft's anti-competitive practices and/or Window's momentum (Windows-only programs/drivers/APIs, IE-only websites, etc.) And on top of Window's functionality, you get immunity to most forms of malware, the benefits of the Debian package managment (makes InstallShield look like rocket science in comparison, and it automatically keeps your stuff up to date), and all-around predictability and stability--weird stuff still occasionally happens, but it isn't an constant, everpresent fact of life like it is with XP. (And don't give me that "XP/2000 is just as stable as *nix" argument--that'scrap. It's a big improvement over 9x, but that's akin to saying Ramen noodles is an improvement over eating dog crap. It still crashes. It still causes apps to crash. It still behaves in an extremely unpredictable fashion--problems seemingly coming out of nowhere--at least a couple times a month.)
In terms of market share no, no it isn't a threat, but then Linux isn't a business, so market share isn't a terribly fair metric. Linux can thrive (and indeed has) even on an extremely small user base; Windows cannot.
I hearby pronounce the neverending joke about this finally being the "year of the Linux Desktop" officially dead. Linux IS on the desktop, and my grandmother DOES use it for everything most people use Windows for--email, web browsing, music, watching movies, casual gaming....and if you are indeed arguing that desktop Linux is nonexistant, then you're a goddamned ignorant troll.
No, I'm not suggesting that (and I said as much, if you were paying attention.) I'm saying that every organization has rules for acceptable behavior. I didn't say that McDonald's should be the same as the police's--just that at McDonald's, the rules are extremely rigid. With the police, they are nearly non-existent (at least so long as there aren't any non-police observers around.) Police officers can demonstrate an obscene level of incompetence and overreaction and disregard for the law that may even result in the deaths of innocent civilians, and yet they still usually walk away with (at worst) a repremand.
And even if the rules were actually enforced and the police had to stay within the bounds of the law at all times, there are still numerous gaps (e.g. uncompensated property seizure, selective/discriminatory law enforcement, laws that criminalize everyday objects such as crowbars as criminal tools or alligator clips as drug paraphernalia--depending on officer discretion of course, Patriot Act provisions that permit forfeiture of citizenship or indefinite detainment without trial, the "anti-social" laws in Britain which spit in the face of due process and presumption of innocence, etc.) that allow for an increadible level of harassment of perfectly law-abiding citizens. This is not why the police were created. The rules they are governed should reflect their duty (to protect us from each other) and the rules should be enforced much, much better than they are now. I'm tired of the police always getting the benefit of the doubt--THEY serve US, not the other way around. It's their job to make sure they don't fuck up, not my job to make sure I don't look at them the wrong way. And yeah, maybe their job will be a bit tougher but again, they choose the job, and I think it's far from being the worst one available. I'm not anti-cop--if you want to talk about giving them better equipment or better salaries, I'm all for it. Just don't ask me to look the other way while they shoot yet another innocent man in the back as he was running away, or haul more children off in handcuffs on trumped-up and/or unintentional misdemeanors.
There's PLENTY of potentially lethal violence at McDonald's. I saw it myself firsthand, and most of the veterans I talked to had been through at least one holdup.
And anyway, I don't think that these cops had anything to fear from a couple of fucking kids playing in a fucking tree.
The perfect reply to this argument (which comes up every time someone mentions that most cops are assholes) is this: a McDonald's employee has more accountability than a cop does. As a 16 year old burger-flipper, if a customer acts like a complete asshole--even going so far as to yelling and cussing you out--you are NOT allowed to verbally abuse the customer in return in any way, shape or form. At most you can ask him/her to leave the building, that's it.
Years ago, I worked at McDonald's for four months and a very good friend of mine was punched in the face. Through a plate glass window. A woman tried to order at the pickup window, was told she needed to drive around again, so she punched through the drive-through window, hitting my friend in the face. If she (my friend) had hit her back, there's not a doubt in my mind that she would have lost her job. Instead, she walked away calmly and called her supervisor and the police.
Now, I'm not implying that the police shouldn't use force when necessary. I'm also not denying that they're human too, that it's a nasty, dirty job and I'm sure it's really rough on them. But you know what? Working at McDonald's is in many was rougher (if you doubt this, I could tell you some more horror stories... absolutely the worst 4 months of my life, period.), and yet their workers are held to a much higher standard than the police. Why is that? Why do so many of us make allowances for the police to exercise HUGE leaps of personal discretion, to bend the law whenever it suits them? It's a tough job, but they chose it and we shouldn't let them bend the rules (or ignore them) whenever they feel like it. I saw a TON of asshole customers at McDonalds, yet I didn't say a foul word to any of them. I didn't spit in their food either (no one did--they would've been fired on the spot.) I did my job as professionally as I could, regardless of how shitty I was treated.
And I was a fucking fry cook!
Please please please please PLEASE tell me we can hold our police officers up to the same standards as our burger flippers.
These kids will dislike and mistrust the police for the rest of their lives.
Well then, perhaps some good has come of this after all. If there's anything England needs right now, it's a nice, healthy distrust of law enforcement.
Actually, I've seen one of these that could actually qualify as a "technology device" (in the sense that the article meant.) It's a small bluetooth-enabled vibrator--I shit you not--and it actually vibrates whenever your cell phone receives a call. I came THIS close to buying it for my girlfriend for our aniversary but I think it was like 250 pounds sterling (isn't released in the USA, apparently), which was a tad out of my price range at the time. Oh well, maybe next year...
In that case, they are using active RFID and my rant is misplaced. However, since they already have contacts on the key for power (since we're talking about the ignition key here and not a wireless keyfob, it's obviously tapping into the car's power), I don't see why they couldn't include a contact for challenge/response and thus avoid all this nonsense of broadcasting. True, this system should be secure (if what you say is true), but the implementation could be broken--e.g. the random number generator isn't random at all--and this would lead to the possibility of cracking the code from a considerable distance using a parabolic antenna. A lot of effort, yes, but it could be worth it if your targets are $40k+ luxury cars and you want to cause as little damage as possible and/or make your getaway as quickly as possible.
There ARE many examples of passive RFID locks (the house door lock and the implanted server room lock I mentioned were both passive RFID), so I just assumed this was one of them. But even if it is not, I still maintain that it is an example of pointless RFID broadcasting when a direct data transfer would make much more sense. If they can make contacts for the power, they can make contacts for the data tranfer.
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Try Ubuntu's latest release (Dapper Drake) and then run EasyUbuntu (or one of the other automatic config programs you'll find sticky'ed at the top of the forums.) I've installed it on half a dozen machines, and I've yet to run into ANY problems, hardware or otherwise. It Just Works. And interestingly, 90% of the time XP does NOT Just Work--it inevitably requires that you download and install drivers (unless your OEM provided an OS installation CD with the drivers built in. Dell, however, no longer provides you even with the ability to create your own backup CD.)
So maybe this is an anecdote, fine, but it's becoming a much more commonly heard anecdote with every release of Ubuntu. Usability is their top priority, but unlike Microsoft they aren't willing to sacrifice stability or security in the process.
so why does "history" end now? When Pluto was discovered, no one said "well, we've traditionally had 8 planets, so let's not add any more." It's just stupid. Either we should keep adding planets based on the (loose) criteria that we used to add Pluto to the list, or remove Pluto and redefine the term. Simply saying "no more planets!" is neither historical nor scientific; it's just lazy.
Illegalize TV first.
You and me can call Pluto whatever the hell we want, but in science "tradition" doesn't trump ANYTHING (with a few very specific, trivial exceptions e.g. what we call positive eletromagnetism should properly be called negative, and vice versa.) For the sake of clarity and consistency, it matters.
Now, I don't have a problem with them leaving Pluto a planet, but to refuse to add any more names to the list of planets simply because "we've traditionally had 9 planets" is just about the most retarded thing I've ever heard (and mind you, I do work with the mentally handicapped.)
You want to fight drug abuse, eh?
Ban Ritalin.
It's such a load of fucking bullshit that parents can forcefeed their kids Ritalin for years if they don't like the grades they've been getting, but if a college student wants to take a small, one-time dose of speed so he can study for a tust he gets thrown in jail (and if you want to argue that Ritalin isn't speed, simply substitute "Adderall" instead. The former is a pseudo-amphetamine, the latter IS amphetamine and both have practically identical effects to methamphetamine.) I was addicted to speed (aka Ritalin) for four years before I finally refused to take it any more. I was 14 years old, and I somehow managed to overcome "peer pressure"--which directly from my parents and doctors, strongly urging me not to quit.
I went through severe withdraw and lost all self-control for about two weeks. My sense of humor was oddly changed and it took months for the fog to clear from my mind. To this day I'm still not sure if it's affected me permanently, and to this day I despise the feeling evoked by most stimulants (caffeine included.)
ADD (without physical hyperactivity) is a fucking scam. Medical bodies recommend AGAINST any form of physiological diagnosis (e.g. MRI), and the criteria for psychological diagnosis is hopelessly vague--it's a catch-all for ANY otherwise-intelligent kid who has problems in school. Doctors and shrinks will keep a kid on it even though it can have serious, permanent side effects, even if it's obvious that the kid is still having problems, even if the kid has gone into a severe depression as a result. Yes, depression is a known side effect of Ritalin and Adderall--the solution? Stick 'em on an antidepressant. Oh, but watch out 'cause in many cases this can increase depression and/or suicidal tendencies, and even if it doesn't there are plenty of other lovely common side effects such as libido supression.
My point is that we're turning millions of perfectly normal (if somewhat academically challenged) kids into crank addicts, sometimes against their will, while denying the right of informed adults to use this drug (or even a nonaddictive drug like marijuana) on an infrequent, occasional basis. This is severelyfucked up. You talk about drugs being shoved in your face--you have no fucking clue what you're talking about until you have your mom or dad tell you that you must take this pill or you'll be grounded.
And just so you know, I work in the mental health field so no, I am not just basing this on my own experience I've seen hundreds of kids (and dozens of mentally deficient adults) diagnosed with ADHD while in reality only maybe 2 or 3 of them were truly hyperactive/attention-deficient. The rest were just a bit uncooperative or apathetic.
At the ripe old age of 14, I educated myself on drug dependence, addiction, and withdraw, and I successfully quit the drug despite peer pressure in the worst sense of the term. I now occasionally employ alcohol and marijuana, but never in excess and never for more than 2 or 3 consecutive days (or when I otherwise feel like I'm building up a tolerance.) I feel that both drugs have had a positive impact on my life. Alcohol in the quantities I typically has numerous health benefits, and ingested marijuana has virtually no harmful side effects. I will not do either if I plan on driving anywhere.
So tell me, why should I be thrown in jail? Why should the shrinks and the overcontroling parents be allowed to forcefeed children addictive substances against their will on the basis of a nearly completely arbitrary diagnosis?
It's also worth nothing that all three of those substances are addictive and it's possible to fatally overdose with all three. Marijuana is not addictive (and don't give me that "psychological addiction" crap. If non-physiological addiction counts, then TV must be about 1000x more addictive.) and it is nearly impossible to die of an overdose (no recorded case.) On top of this, I don't believe that there are any proven long-term harmful effects of marijuana when ingested (not that there aren't any consequences of heavy, long-term use--there probably are, but they are small enough that most studies performed so far have failed to come up with anything conclusive.)
So remind me... why are we wasting billions of taxpayer dollars and throwing teenagers in jail over this drug? Christ, there was actually a better argument for the Prohibition.
I'm not sure I like "old school" PC RPGs, if by "old school" you mean hack 'n slash. I prefer open-ended story-based, which is really rather a rarity even on the PC. Black Isle games (Planescape: Torment and the Fallout 1 & 2) and Elder Scrolls series are really the only quality titles that spring to mind. And like I said, Elder Scrolls may be available on the Xbox/Xbox 360 but the lack of patches (Bethesda games are notoreously buggy immediately after release) and mods makes them very unappealing compared to their PC counterparts.
HL2 did hit the Xbox last year but it's a complete joke (on a machine with a 733Mhz proc and 64 megs of shared ram? what did they expect???) The 360 version is not due out until Februrary.
Third person shooters and platformers--yes, consoles have traditionally dominated both.
Curious about the Sims... according to Wikipedia they're PC/MAC-only, but I checked and you're right--they are available for a wide variety of consoles. Someone should fix that, but it's nearly 6 am so that someone shall not be me.
Errr. Am I the only one thinking he's using an alternate definition of "couple of centuries", too?
a-fucking-men. If anything, back in the day your average computer owner was likely very technically proficient and could pirate games even in case of technical copy protection schemes (yes, there were actual technical schemes out there--Inner Space is a good example--that made it impossible to simply copy the contents of the floppy and play. It wasn't all "What's the fifth word on page 39?" nonsense.) Computer games did alright then... and nowadays copy protection has grown even stronger and the average computer user has become much less technically proficient. It's still possible to pirate games without *too* much trouble by downloading a copy, but cracking it yourself is extremely difficult, as recent games tend to do things like refusing to work if they notice you have Daemon-tools installed. If anything, I'd wager piracy has gone DOWN (in relative terms) in the past 10 years if for no other reason than Joe Sixpack has started using computers and he probably knows a lot less about Bittorrent than the average late 80s/early 90s geek knew about copying floppies.
This argument USED to be true, and it's one of the major reasons why console gaming has thrived so much in recent years.
But I hate to break it to you... it simply isn't true anymore. Take a look at your numbers--$200-$400 The Xbox 360 Core is $300 and if you actually want it to come with a hard drive (why the hell haven't these things become a console standard yet? Swap space, greatly reduced load times, as many saved games as you want, official patches, actual MODS... the possibilities are endless) you'll have to fork out another $100. Already, we're at the top end of your price range, and there's rumors that the P3 might be even more expensive (Wii will likely be less expensive, but then again less graphically powerful, i.e. the equivalent graphics card would be much cheaper.)
On the other had, my gaming rig's processor and motherboard are 3+ years old and they run just fine, and I project it will continue to do fine for at least several more years. Instead of buying a $400 console every few years, I buy a $150 video card. Even if I did need to replace my entire system, I could pick up something decent from Dell for maybe $300 (if I waited for a good sale--usually only requires a few weeks; I've done this many times in the past, including my aforementioned 3+ year old gaming rig) or buy a motherboard+CPU combo from Outpost.com and some ram and stick it in my old box--this latter option should cost maybe $200 tops. The fact is video game consoles have been going up in price and computers have only been going down--and even the ones that are a few years old are perfectly capable so long as they have a decent video card.
Granted, a lot of people just don't want to fuck with computers (especially if you have to swap out hardware yourself) and that's fine, I can respect that, but don't try and tell me it's vastly more expensive. That was true 5-10 years ago--not so today, and I can't it changing in the near future.
Not to sound elitist, but I should also add that for most of the types of gaming I usually like, consoles simply are not a substitute:
1. Non-FF-style RPGs. Yes, there's always Morrowind, but Morrowind on the Xbox is buggy and laughable--Morrowind on the PC (with the official patches and a few mods) has almost no bugs, much improved graphics, VASTLY improved character models, improved physics, improved game balance, better [whatever the hell you didn't like about the original]. In a year or so, I wager the same will be true of Oblivion.
Also, I've yet to see a Black Isle-quality RPG released on a console (then again, we haven't seen one in a long time on the PC in a while, too, so maybe this isn't a valid complaint.)
2. FPSes. Sorry, they're a joke. Xbox fanboys talk about Halo like Jesus himself coded it, but in reality it was a very mediocre FPS... though it WAS admittedly fun to play with 4 people in the same room. (I do miss the death of "hotseat" PC gaming--this is one area I will admit we are sadly deficient in. I do own a Gamecube just for multiplayer games such as Mario Party/Smash Bros.) The fact remains, though, that just about any PC FPS released at about same time completely blows it away. Play the original Halo (or hell, the sequel) and then play Battlefield: 1942 and tell me that they are even REMOTELY the same in terms of general quality and fun (the hotseat issue notwithstanding.) I'm sure the 360 has some OK shooters now, but I highly doubt they'd compare well to Battlefield 2. Ok, so I see that by next year they're porting HL 2... wake me up when they have a have a console-original title (i.e., not a 3 year old ported PC title) that rocks.
3. Strategy. Civilization 3 and 4, Warcraft 3, The Sims (and the rest of the Sim series) etc. are PC-only. I think Starcraft had an N64 port, but come on... no multiplayer, no custom maps? From what I can tell, console strategy is not only dead, but I doubt it was ever alive (at least, it hasn't been alive since the 80's--I've heard good things about M
So what moral code do we decide on? What is or is not illegal to do with your own body?
One of my somewhat bigger secrets is I've had "sexual relations" with my (conservative) friend's 16 year old daughter. Actually, it was a couple weeks before her 16th birthday, so I'm pretty sure that counts as a felony in my state... let me stress, I didn't get her drunk; I didn't seduce her; I didn't even remove any of *my* clothing at all--I just made her very happy for one glorious night. She was (and still is) a very mature and intelligent person for her age--much moreso than at least half the adults my age I know. I asked her repeatedly if she wanted me to stop, and she said no over and over. We had an awesome night and four years later we're still close friends--I'm IMing her at this very moment, in fact. I don't regret that night, and neither does she.
But her father, if he found out, would've at the very least turned me in to the police and might've even killed me or at least given me a few bruises. The legal system would've likely been similarly unsympathetic. Frankly, her father and the lawmakers and all the rest of the uptight love-hating Christian world can suck my dick. I don't care what anyone fucking says, non-exploitive love and pleasure between two consenting souls is never an inherently bad thing.
So... that's my reason for wanting to keep my privacy, and I happen to think it's a damn good one. I don't think your "points" system works for larger violations of the law, and yes even the large violations can be morally debatable. If you DO think I deserve to be rotting in prison right now, then consider the civil right's movement--MLK Jr. and co. broke plenty of laws. If the police were instantly informed the moment they started planning an illegal demonstration, the civil rights movement would have been crushed before it ever got off the ground. If this technology had been around in the colonial days, the same would have happened to Ghandi in India...
Absolute proof of questionable act X would either result in society declaring act X legal (thus making it not corruption at all) or society would stamp it out entirely. Privacy allows for shades of gray--with absolute 2-way transparency, every single issue must become black or white--detection and enforcement become so trivial, there's no way the cops could look the other way--the media would give conclusive videotaped proof that they're not enforcing law X and that would force the police to make the decision--enforce it and eradicate it entirely, or don't enforce it and thus effectively legalize it? Of course, we're assuming that public outcry makes selective enforcement impossible--if this is untrue, then the system is flawed and a despotic totalitarianism has been created.
But even if the police could be kept fair and impartial, I don't think this system a desirable thing. Why do I have to stand proudly by everything I've done? Why can't I fuck up once in a while? Why can't I break a few of the more pathetic rules once in a while without having an everpresent iron boot of Orwellian justice slammed in my face? When rules are absolutely enforced they become absolutely unchangable--and I think our society's moral evolution has a long, long way to go, especially in regards to:
1. Active morality--i.e. what is wrong to do? vs. passive morality--what is wrong NOT to do? We place extreme emphasis on action and almost no emphasis on inaction. This is the origin of all undesirable groupthink, "risky shift", and passing the buck. Great evils are perpretrated not by a single person, but by many people spread out over hundreds/thousands/even millions insulated and protected by apathetic people who simply pass the buck instead of standing up loudly and condemning the injustice. This is because the inaction of not saying anything and quietly doing your job/not rocking the boat is only very weakly condemned in comparison to the evil act itself.
2. Victimless crimes--there should be no such thing. There should be a mechanism to protect people from themselves in extreme cases, but it absolutely should not ever result in criminal charges, and it should allow people to do whatever they want as long as they can demonstrate mental and emotional control (which includes rationally explaining their actions and stating that they do not regret them) and as long as they aren't hurting others.
3. Sense of proportion. One need only look at the figures of lives (or dollars, if you want to be exceedingly pragmatic) lost because of traffic accidents or heart disease vs. terrorist attacks to understand this one. We like fighting evil infinitely more than we like doing good--this can tie into #1, but not every example does. For instance, we're extremely obsessed with plane crashes when we're (usually) far more likely to die in a car accident on the way to the airport. If we required anywhere near the same level of safety on our roads (better streets, stricter car safety standards, stricter traffic enforcement on serious/repeat offenders), we'd likely save tens of thousands of lives. But plane crashes are more dramatic, so they get all the attention.
So really this is two points--an obsession with fighting evil that trumps our sense of efficiency and our will to do good, and an obession with the dramatic at the expense of the mundane yet vastly more devastating and tragic. When these two things appear together very strongly (9/11) the result is a catastrophic waste, both financial and intangible (our freedoms.)
4. Capitalistic law--intellectual property, monopolies and trusts, workers' rights (and employers' rights not to be *completely* castrated by unions), taxes, welfare (corporate and individual), political contributions, etc. are all very sticky issues that need to be resolved before we commit to any singular, unchangable set of rules regarding right and wrong.
So yeah, I think it's a very bleak scenario (complete moral stagnation) even if the system was im
Sorry my hippie friend, but it's not going to happen. The transformation would need to be almost instantaneous, and it would need to be completely fool-proof and abuse-proof the FIRST time. If the first incarnation of such a system was in any way flawed (and inevitably, it would be), those who had the ability to abuse it would do so and become nearly-invulnerable 1984-style despots.
But there is an even bigger problem. In a nutshell, in order for your plan to work we would first need a unified system of morality. All of us would have to absolutely agree what is right and wrong (or desireable, undesireable, and tolerable), period. Do you think we're ready to do that just yet? Even when it comes to drugs and sex and other arguably-victimless crimes? Without privacy, there would be no room for debate or change. Homosexuality would still be illegal because homosexuals would be identified and imprisoned (or "corrected", likely via chemical castration) immediately. And, of course, everyone knows that homosexuality is inherently wrong, ya know?
Yeah, I have something to hide. I have a metric assload of secrets. Most are firmly in my past, yet some of them are still very... important, in the I-could-be-killed-or-arrested sense of the term. I'd wager that most interesting, creative non-dronelike individuals have made similar forays outside the laws of the land or at the very least, outside the unwritten laws of society. We CANNOT agree on what "the good life" is so we compromise like crazy and (hopefully) try not to pry into the lives of others so long as they're not affecting anyone but themselves. I have at least a dozen gay friends and for about half of them, they live happy lives with their families because they choose to keep their orientation a secret. In the case of 3 of them (including my own Uncle), the family even for all intents and purposes "knows" about it, but they're allowed to invent whatever flimsy excuse or justification why Mike and Larry live together.
Yes, they're in deep denial, and maybe that isn't very healthy, but it's sure a hell of a lot more healthy than the alternative. My grandmother has for all intents and purposes accepted that my uncle is gay, treats his partner is a member of the family, etc.--but she still vigorously denies that they're gay if one of her friends mentions it. And what if one of her conservative friends could just flick a switch and show her my uncle getting it in the ass... my grandmother would have to make a choice on the spot--conservative Christian morality (and social acceptance that comes with it) or the love of her own son (and the social rejection that would come with it.) Privacy spares her from making that decision.
Yes, there's a chance you could accelerate society's moral growth by removing privacy, but the risk that you'd accelerate it in the wrong direction is far too great.
I run Firefox with the noscript extension. I do not use IE, Outlook Express, or WMP and all three are completely denied access to the internet by Kerio Firewall. I have AVG Antivirus and I run Ad-Aware and Spybot monthly. I keep up to date with security patches.
And yes, it is still unstable compared to Ubuntu. It's only one major fuckup every other week (as opposed to nearly daily, as it was under 9x), but that's still one unexpected major fuckup that Ubuntu DOESN'T have. Every fuckup I've had under Ubuntu is as direct, foreseeable result of something dumb I've done, and I've been able to figure it out and remedy the situation. With XP, generally all I can do is reboot and run my malware scanners and cross my fingers that it doesn't happen again.
Well, it held true on all 5 of my machines (all of which have completely different hardware--except both the laptops are Dells and my grandparents' machine. So anecdotal it may still be, but I would be very surprised if the majority of users are still having hardware problems.
Also, unless you have an example with Ubuntu's Dapper Drake, you're comparing apples to oranges. I've used FC/Red Hat before, and Mandrake/driva and SuSe and MEPIS and even Knoppix and I've always had MAJOR hardware problems. With 5.04 Ubuntu I had only minimal problems (e.g. laptop touchpad not quite working the way I wanted to--sound mixing not working quite right) and since Dapper these problems have been completely eliminated on all 5 of my machines and my grandparents' box.
Linux and the GPL weren't designed to make money (though some people do make money off of Linux); they SAVE people money.
I should clarify-- by "people", I meant companies as well. Hence, close sourced companies should learn to grow up and play well with Linux not because they can sell it, but because they can save money. Plus, since it's open source, they can easily modify any part of it as needed (they don't even have to redistribute the changes, so long as they don't distribute the binaries outside the company.)
As far as business desktop vs. home desktop needs go, I'd say Linux is even more suited for work environments because gaming is (usually) discouraged, user rights management is much better, and there's certainly no lack of development tools available for Linux.
"Pay them more"--absolutely. And give them better equipment, including more nonlethal (or "less-lethal") devices. And give them additional training. And ordered to stop wasting resources on victimless crimes and trolling innocent civillians for petty criminals "You were swerving"--TWICE I have been pulled over very late for this, when I know for a fact I was not. It's happened to a few other people I know, too--always late at night. EVERYONE swerves a tiny bit in their lane, so the cops just wait for it to happen noticably and pull that person over. I get off work at 11:15 PM, and I've noticed there's one particular stretch of road where there's ALWAYS someone pulled over. Once I saw them actually pull the person over--and I can verify that he wasn't weaving or speeding. Maybe his registration was expired, I dunno, but I'd bet dollars to donuts that they pulled him over for "weaving".
I'm not anti-cop by any means; I'm just anti-cop mentality. You might have a practical reason why cops are given a looser leash than fry cooks, but that doesn't make it a moral one.
Seriously now...
...and if you are indeed arguing that desktop Linux is nonexistant, then you're a goddamned ignorant troll.
when Linux shows multi-BILLION dollar profits
Linux and the GPL weren't designed to make money (though some people do make money off of Linux); they SAVE people money.
SUCCESSFUL business strategy
News flash: "Linux" in and of itself is not a business. And last I checked Red Hat and IBM were doing alright.
With the exception of servers and anti-virus software, Linux is far, far away from being a serious threat to Windows (and Macs.)
I have 5 machines in active use in my house. All of them dual boot XP/Ubuntu. No matter what machine I'm working with, when (re)installing XP I have to deal with the installer's MBR-related retardation and I have to hunt down and manually install the drivers for the network card, video card, and sound card. With the latest release of Ubuntu, ALL of my hardware is detected right out of the box. 3d-acceleration doesn't work, of course, but there are a few third party applications such as EasyUbuntu which automatically set this up for me. Installing Ubuntu and running EasyUbuntu is easier and by default requires less user input than XP and doesn't require hunting down drivers, and after it's done I can watch DVDs, check my email, surf the web, open or create MS Office documents using OpenOffice.org, play from a vast selection of Linux games (no, they're not Battlefield 2 but they're hella better than just Pinball, Minesweeper, Solitaire, Freecell, and Hearts... varients of which are all of which are included in the Ubuntu repositories, btw), easily install and run most simple Windows programs under Wine, and easily upgrade every single application on my computer with two mouse clicks.
Yes, there are still plenty of rough spots, but its flaws aren't 1/100 as bad as the flaws Windows 98SE had. 99% of XP's non-gaming desktop functionality is there, and the remaining 1% is largely a result of Microsoft's anti-competitive practices and/or Window's momentum (Windows-only programs/drivers/APIs, IE-only websites, etc.) And on top of Window's functionality, you get immunity to most forms of malware, the benefits of the Debian package managment (makes InstallShield look like rocket science in comparison, and it automatically keeps your stuff up to date), and all-around predictability and stability--weird stuff still occasionally happens, but it isn't an constant, everpresent fact of life like it is with XP. (And don't give me that "XP/2000 is just as stable as *nix" argument--that'scrap. It's a big improvement over 9x, but that's akin to saying Ramen noodles is an improvement over eating dog crap. It still crashes. It still causes apps to crash. It still behaves in an extremely unpredictable fashion--problems seemingly coming out of nowhere--at least a couple times a month.)
In terms of market share no, no it isn't a threat, but then Linux isn't a business, so market share isn't a terribly fair metric. Linux can thrive (and indeed has) even on an extremely small user base; Windows cannot.
I hearby pronounce the neverending joke about this finally being the "year of the Linux Desktop" officially dead. Linux IS on the desktop, and my grandmother DOES use it for everything most people use Windows for--email, web browsing, music, watching movies, casual gaming.
Actually, at the time I was still a virgin. And that hot cashier wouldn't give me the time of day. Goddamn hellish teenage years...
No, I'm not suggesting that (and I said as much, if you were paying attention.) I'm saying that every organization has rules for acceptable behavior. I didn't say that McDonald's should be the same as the police's--just that at McDonald's, the rules are extremely rigid. With the police, they are nearly non-existent (at least so long as there aren't any non-police observers around.) Police officers can demonstrate an obscene level of incompetence and overreaction and disregard for the law that may even result in the deaths of innocent civilians, and yet they still usually walk away with (at worst) a repremand.
And even if the rules were actually enforced and the police had to stay within the bounds of the law at all times, there are still numerous gaps (e.g. uncompensated property seizure, selective/discriminatory law enforcement, laws that criminalize everyday objects such as crowbars as criminal tools or alligator clips as drug paraphernalia--depending on officer discretion of course, Patriot Act provisions that permit forfeiture of citizenship or indefinite detainment without trial, the "anti-social" laws in Britain which spit in the face of due process and presumption of innocence, etc.) that allow for an increadible level of harassment of perfectly law-abiding citizens. This is not why the police were created. The rules they are governed should reflect their duty (to protect us from each other) and the rules should be enforced much, much better than they are now. I'm tired of the police always getting the benefit of the doubt--THEY serve US, not the other way around. It's their job to make sure they don't fuck up, not my job to make sure I don't look at them the wrong way. And yeah, maybe their job will be a bit tougher but again, they choose the job, and I think it's far from being the worst one available. I'm not anti-cop--if you want to talk about giving them better equipment or better salaries, I'm all for it. Just don't ask me to look the other way while they shoot yet another innocent man in the back as he was running away, or haul more children off in handcuffs on trumped-up and/or unintentional misdemeanors.
There's PLENTY of potentially lethal violence at McDonald's. I saw it myself firsthand, and most of the veterans I talked to had been through at least one holdup.
And anyway, I don't think that these cops had anything to fear from a couple of fucking kids playing in a fucking tree.
The perfect reply to this argument (which comes up every time someone mentions that most cops are assholes) is this: a McDonald's employee has more accountability than a cop does. As a 16 year old burger-flipper, if a customer acts like a complete asshole--even going so far as to yelling and cussing you out--you are NOT allowed to verbally abuse the customer in return in any way, shape or form. At most you can ask him/her to leave the building, that's it.
Years ago, I worked at McDonald's for four months and a very good friend of mine was punched in the face. Through a plate glass window. A woman tried to order at the pickup window, was told she needed to drive around again, so she punched through the drive-through window, hitting my friend in the face. If she (my friend) had hit her back, there's not a doubt in my mind that she would have lost her job. Instead, she walked away calmly and called her supervisor and the police.
Now, I'm not implying that the police shouldn't use force when necessary. I'm also not denying that they're human too, that it's a nasty, dirty job and I'm sure it's really rough on them. But you know what? Working at McDonald's is in many was rougher (if you doubt this, I could tell you some more horror stories... absolutely the worst 4 months of my life, period.), and yet their workers are held to a much higher standard than the police. Why is that? Why do so many of us make allowances for the police to exercise HUGE leaps of personal discretion, to bend the law whenever it suits them? It's a tough job, but they chose it and we shouldn't let them bend the rules (or ignore them) whenever they feel like it. I saw a TON of asshole customers at McDonalds, yet I didn't say a foul word to any of them. I didn't spit in their food either (no one did--they would've been fired on the spot.) I did my job as professionally as I could, regardless of how shitty I was treated.
And I was a fucking fry cook!
Please please please please PLEASE tell me we can hold our police officers up to the same standards as our burger flippers.
These kids will dislike and mistrust the police for the rest of their lives.
Well then, perhaps some good has come of this after all. If there's anything England needs right now, it's a nice, healthy distrust of law enforcement.
Actually, I've seen one of these that could actually qualify as a "technology device" (in the sense that the article meant.) It's a small bluetooth-enabled vibrator--I shit you not--and it actually vibrates whenever your cell phone receives a call. I came THIS close to buying it for my girlfriend for our aniversary but I think it was like 250 pounds sterling (isn't released in the USA, apparently), which was a tad out of my price range at the time. Oh well, maybe next year...
In that case, they are using active RFID and my rant is misplaced. However, since they already have contacts on the key for power (since we're talking about the ignition key here and not a wireless keyfob, it's obviously tapping into the car's power), I don't see why they couldn't include a contact for challenge/response and thus avoid all this nonsense of broadcasting. True, this system should be secure (if what you say is true), but the implementation could be broken--e.g. the random number generator isn't random at all--and this would lead to the possibility of cracking the code from a considerable distance using a parabolic antenna. A lot of effort, yes, but it could be worth it if your targets are $40k+ luxury cars and you want to cause as little damage as possible and/or make your getaway as quickly as possible.
There ARE many examples of passive RFID locks (the house door lock and the implanted server room lock I mentioned were both passive RFID), so I just assumed this was one of them. But even if it is not, I still maintain that it is an example of pointless RFID broadcasting when a direct data transfer would make much more sense. If they can make contacts for the power, they can make contacts for the data tranfer.