I have no doubt that militaries around the world have experimented with (and perhaps even deployed) sentry guns, but this is something any halfway intelligent thug with an old computer and a AK-47 can throw together. I could see some very powerful uses for this in guerilla warfare, gang warfare, and for drug runners. For a few hundred bucks (less if they steal the supplies), these guys can protect their turf, protect their stash, set up ambushes for their rivals, etc.
Also, I highly doubt people will ever grow complacent during my lifetime. September 11 is so infamous it far overshadows even Pearl Harbor, and people still obsess over Pearl Harbor to this very day. It will be one hundred years before this memory begins to fade (possibly much more), and by then I suspect that the situation in the Middle East will be changed one way or the other. (For one, they'll run out of oil before then. We may still be using oil extracted using more advanced techniques, but these techniques can be used perfectly well right here in North America, so there will be no reason to rely on the Middle East for oil anymore, and that WILL change the economic and political climate quite a bit.)
At any rate, having the ability for pilots get earlier and better information cannot be a bad thing.
Yes it can be a bad thing, because every dollar spent on this worthless scheme is a dollar that could be spent on cancer research or better weapons for our troops or safer highways or backscatter X-Ray (which can detect plastic knives and may be able to detect certain metal-free bombs), etc.
As I said before, if all they want to do is crash the plane then they merely need to smuggle on enough high explosive to either take out the cockpit or breach a fuel tank. They go to the bathroom, light a 30-second fuse, then run like hell (or casually walk over) to the cockpit door or a window overlooking the wing. Trying to take over the plane requires being alive and unhindered by the crew and passengers. Blowing up the plane merely requires that the terrorist be in location X when the bomb goes off, and that really isn't hard to do.
Better cockpit doors and better door locks are all we need for better security vs. potential hijacking. The terrorist will be dead or subdued long long LONG before he manages to break through the reinforced cockpit door. Any other security measures taken, inasmuch as we NEED more security measures (personally, I think the money could be better spent elsewhere), should focus on security vs. suicide bombers.
Most of the terrorists were here legally, so I think that the REAL threat is in allowing visitors/immigrants from the middle east at all. Whether or not it's a threat we should eliminate (and risk fostering more xenophobia and ill will) is debatable. Personally, I don't think it's possible to be truly secure without compromising our ideals (either of freedom, or of diversity and immigration--"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.") We've pissed off a lot of people in that region of the world, but it's still within our means to take away their motivation to fight us. Pull out all visible military presence (but leave behind intelligence operatives) and stop blindly supporting Israel in the UN and we'll probably never see another Muslim terrorist attack. Sucks for Israel, but they knew what they were getting into (at least they should've) when they decided to settle there.
Selling your customers a physical object is a privilege, not a right. If you want to tell us exactly where and how we can use your product, then you are no longer SELLING us anything at all and we should be required to actually sign a contract stating that we will only play your CD in approved devices.
It's so lovely how music is considered a physical property by the RIAA and its goons whenever it suits them (file sharers are STEALING our music! Every download represents loss of revenue!), yet other times consider it to be some draconian implied contract (oh, you think you OWN that CD? You think you actually have the right to do whatever you want with it and play it on whichever device you have handy? Hah!)
I didn't download the video (feeling benevolent today), but that's pretty harsh, even if he was an annoying little brat. I shot myself with a $1.90 plastic airsoft at about 3' away. just to see what it felt like, and the answer was yes, it hurts like hell. It was a half an hour before the stinging stopped and I had a huge angry red welt for several days.
On a completely unrelated note, if it works for airsoft there's no reason why it can't work with real bullets. Obvious safety and legal issues aside, I get the feeling that someone somewhere is going to build a genuine honest-to-god automated gun turret. Maybe a relatively sophisicated gang or drug ring...
If a terrorist wants to blow up the plane, he'll smuggle on a metal-free fuse-detonated bomb (like the shoe bomber) and he'll blow it up from the toilet (unlike the rather foolish shoe bomber.) This device doesn't matter at all if all the terrorist is trying to do is take down the plane. Indeed, nothing short of mandatory strip searches can stop this sort of attack.
As for hijackings, you don't need to worry about it because IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN. I can't believe people still think that terrorists will try again to hijack a commercial airliner and use it as a missile--it was a one-time trick and it will NEVER work again. If you want proof of this, you need look no farther than United Airlines Flight 93. ONE HOUR after the first plane hit the trade center, the passengers of the Pennsylvania flight decided not to let the terrorists keep control of the plane. Despite the fact that the terrorists had already taken control in the cockpit and should have had a significant tactical advantage, the passengers were able to overwhelm them and force them to abort the mission. Had the passengers acted earlier, they would have never even made it to the cockpit. A few passengers may have died, but NO ONE can stand against dozens or hundreds of passengers stampeding them in close quarters.
Our mindset has changed now, and not a single person in the USA, from a seven year old boy to a ninety year old grandmother, is stupid or cowardly enough to let someone hijack the plane. This device is pointless, because no potential hijacker will ever made it to the cockpit ever again.
I agree that user behavior always matters, but you don't seem have a very good grasp of *nix security.
On Linux, there's no need for a typical user to ever run as root. UNLIKE Windows, 99.9% of Linux stuff actually works without admin/root privs. Users might occasionally need to use sudo in order to install programs, but as long as the distribution pops up a little notice telling them that this is probably the ONLY time they should use sudo and they should never run a program claiming otherwise unless they understand why, they will be safe.
The requirement of a password in order to use sudo plus apt-get package management makes malware propogation about 1000x harder, even for the lusers." There's no reason why package management has to be limited to free OSS--I've seen dummy packages for commercial projects. Thus, using repositories and checksums it is possible for the distro to PERSONALLY CHECK AND VALIDATE ANY PIECE OF SOFTWARE YOU INTEND TO INSTALL. Known malware will, of course, be excluded from the package list. As long as users are trained to always use an apt package manager (like Synaptec) to install applications, they will be protected.
So, in summary: there's no need to run as root. Password prompts for sudo prevents applications from installing themselves, and a very small amount of user training ("The package manager is used to install things. It is the only program that EVER needs your password. Do not give your password to any other program.") prevents users from installing the malware themselves. I agree that you can be reasonably safe in XP SP:2, but it requires third-party software (antivirus, and arguably a better firewall) and it requires much more user training... and you STILL aren't quite as secure as you are on Linux.
I did not mean to imply that user friendliness and security were contradictory or maintained an inverse relationship. I simply meant that useability for the absolute beginner is the number one priority for Windows (and security is a mere afterthought), whereas for *nix security is generally not compromised for usability (or if it is, not nearly to the extent that it is with Windows.) Maybe OS X has the best of both worlds; I don't know, I haven't had the opportunity to use it yet.
You're ALMOST right. My belief is based on the fact that I have to type in my password before launching ANY AND EVERY process that has the ability to modify my system files. And yes, that does make it secure by design.
On top of that, firewalls are enabled by default, it isn't REQUIRED that you log in as root for most apps (unlike Windows admin account, which is a joke), horrible ideas like ActiveX are generally shot down long before they're implemented, etc. Yeah, these things are no match for complacency and user stupidity, but all things being equal the Linux box will almost always be harder to crack.
Sugar coat it however you want, but using any version of Windows is by far the single largest security risk, period. Partially this is because Windows is the predominant desktop OS, but it is also because *nix is generally secure by design, whereas Windows is user friendly by design.
If you install Windows, you are making a conscious decision to open yourself up to a plethora of attacks that simply aren't possible on any other platform. Maybe the benefits outweigh the risks, but don't pretend that the risk isn't there or that it's some outdated joke.
Katrina did cause a lovely $0.30-$0.40 spike, but prior to this unleaded (at least in my area) was still rising at a very brisk pace. We went from just over $2/gallon to $2.55 in the span of just a month or two, and before that there was another (slower) climb from $1.50 to $2. And it's not like $1.50 is a really low number to start with. Nine years ago, I remember the price in my area (east central Florida) was as low as $0.85/gallon.
My point is, gas prices were stable in the early 90s, but they've been rising steadily for years and have hit a major spike in recent months. +$0.50 in two or three months is pretty huge. Katrina is not the primary cause; she just exacerbated the situation.
By the time the refineries reach full capacity again, I bet it'll be too late to reel the prices back under $3/gallon.
every time some music is pirated, it IS money that would have otherwise gone to the artist
Bullshit. If I was so inclined, I could sit down and burn 500 copies of Metallica's last album. I wouldn't even consider buying one of them, let alone 500. If those 500 copies just sit in my basement, then how can you possibly justify such a blanket statement? Where has Metallica lost any money?
A more down to earth example: I'm very poor at the moment. I have $9.13 in my bank account and lint in my wallet. With bills and creditors and obscene gas prices, there is no way in HELL I would consider buying a CD right now. So yeah, I've downloaded a couple albums. One or two of them I will probably buy, when I have the money again. Some of them I will not buy, and I would not have bought them anyway. Even if I didn't have the option of downloading music, under no circumstances would I be buying CDs at the moment... I'd make do with the CDs I already have and the radio.
It's one thing to suggest that piracy as a whole costs artists money (though this is very debatable. I'd claim that it only costs the high-profile artists money, and actually helps out the small artists. Personally, I care more about supporting independant artists than making sure Britney has enough zeros on her check, but that's just my opinion), but to suggest a 1:1 correlation of copyright infringment and loss of a sale is, franky, pure stupidity. My friend at UF has only a little more money than me, and last I checked he literally had 50+ gigs of music...
I don't deny that marketing influences people, but you said that you *really* wanted to see The Forty Year Old Virgin now because marketing told you it was funny. You also said that this desire would in all likelihood disappear four months from now.
I don't see how you can actually say that and have it remain true. What I mean is, how can you just accept that? How can ALL desire to see the movie disappear simply because the hype went away? Some of the best movies I've ever seen I've seen months or years after they were released. I get just as excited about them, and it's not a problem talking about them with my friends regardless whether they've already seen it or not. Once you acknowledge the (over)hype and its power over you, I don't really see how or why you would let it continue to control you. It's hollow. It doesn't make the movie any better in any way, shape or form... and there are plenty of non-hyped ways you can research a movie (amazon.com, IMBD, Rotten Tomatoes, etc.)
Yes, I suppose the four-month cooling off period does you a favor, but that only serves to reenforce my point. It's a crying shame that more people have watched (random example) Catwoman than have watched Memento. If you wasted money on the former, and then saw the latter, I don't see why you would let marketing sway your actions (and you pocketbook) that much ever again. Yes, marketing will always have a subconscious effect, and yes it does help if you've actually heard of the movie in question (I won't be too surprised if you've never heard of Memento), but there's a HUGE difference between "Hmmm, that looks interesting, I will have to check it out" and "OMG OMG I MUST SEE IT NOW" & (four months later) "Meh, haven't seen a commercial for it in a while, who cares?"
Sorry if I came off sounding a little insulting, but what you're saying is downright disturbing. I'd be one thing if you used phrases like "somewhat more likely" or "misled by critics", but you spoke in near-absolutes, and you didn't even mention the real quality of the movie at all. You spoke as if the movie itself is a mere afterimage of the entire marketing/hype "experience", and I'm sorry but that's just ass-backwards. The Matrix had tons of hype and it was awesome. The Matrix: Revolutions had tons of hype and it sucked nuts. Memento had little hype and it was breathtaking. Pi had little hype and it was (IMO) pretentious, over-stylized, and boring.
It's not a matter of being affected by marketing; it's a matter of being downright controlled by it, recognizing and admitting that you're controlled by it, and then lamenting that lately it's been failing to control you thoroughly enough. I'm not sure if I can be any clearer than that.
Obviously you're new to the concept of class action lawsuits. The corporation may or may not lose big (witness the record labels that were "forced" to give their customers $5 off coupons as punishment for price-fixing. This laughable settlement may have actually made them more money), but the customer NEVER wins.
The only ones who invariably come out ahead are the lawyers.
You're frustrated that DVDs come out so much later after the hype because the hype is your only reason for wanting to see the movie in the first place... and your ideal solution to this is for them to release the DVD immediately, in the middle of the "marketing fog", so that you will be compelled to go out and spend money on something that you would admitedly NOT have bought of your own free (unmarketed) will.
Wow. Just wow.
Maybe I'm alone in this, but the PRIMARY reason why buy or go to see a movie is because I think that it may be good, not because the man in the magic glowing box tells me to go watch them. The fact that you actually desire the man in the glowy box to tell you what to do because you can't do it without him is nothing short of terrifying.
I think that the grandparent answers you very nicely. What if they are planning on using wireless net, dark fiber, and Google talk to launch a "free" (only pay the cost of phone) alternative to cellular in all of the major metropolitan markets? Talk about a revolution...
But this is a war they would definitely not want to fight head-on. If the cell companies cannot kill it legally (and you can bet their lobbyists would try), they would simply copy them.
Look at how Gmail took the internet by storm, look at how much ground they gained while their competitors struggled to play catchup. How effective would their Gmail coup have been if they had announced it years before it was ready?
Don't get me wrong, I don't advocate unconditional trust of any for-profit corporation, but I find nothing odd or wrong or evil about their development process being kept secret. On the contrary, if Google really is committed to being non-evil, keeping their products a secret until launch may well be the only way in which they can remain competitive.
Oh come on. There are literally thousands upon thousands of games that you can join. Want prizes? I can think of at least a dozen events offhand that offered some form of prize. Want a completely unique, personal, completely-devoid-of-any-trace-of-commericialism game? Make some new friends and strike up a game in the hotel room or on the floor of one of the less-crowded hallways.
I don't exactly like all of the commericalism either. The ticket policies are downright Nazi-ish (no refunds, no replacements, period. Does not matter if it's lost in the mail, like mine was. Even though they have computer record that you paid for that ticket, even if you show them the credit card you used to buy it and your driver's license, they will still force you to spend another $70.) The D&D Open modules are riddled with errors and it takes place in a setting that few gamers use, all because WotC wants to use it as a marketing vehicle. Depending on your tastes, it's also not too difficult to spend a small fortune on event tickets, too. Don't get me wrong, True Dungeon is the greatest thing since sliced bread, but do they really need to charge $19 a head? That's on top of whatever they made off of their True Dungeon tavern (brilliant idea) this year. They've even got this slave-labor thing going on where you can volunteer for 8 hours and get in free, even if the tickets are already sold out. Volunteering to help put together a cool game that everyone can enjoy is one thing, but volunteering just to make someone else obscenely rich... hell, Gencon LLC does that on an even bigger scale, conning DMs to come work for them by paying for their hotel rooms, plane tickets, and/or Gencon badge. It sounds like a good deal until you realize that you're working at least ten hours a day ALL FOUR DAYS and missing all of the events you wanted to actually attend and oh by the way, you still end up losing money on your meals even if they do cover everything else.
So, erm, yeah, I guess my point is that I agree that all the commercialism is bad, but I don't think that Gencon is dead. The community itself is awesome, most of the events are sponsored by small-time companies, and I think a lot of them really pour their heart and soul into their work.
I never attended when it was still at Milwaukee, but by all accounts Gencon simply outgrew the city. Shops closed up insanely early (6 or 7 PM) and there were few 24 hour restaurants. The hotels, restaurants and retailers Indianapolis simply make more of an effort to welcome Gencon and its attendees.
Mock us all you want, but the day you set foot in the Indianapolis convention center is the day you will finally realize that dorkiness scale is actually cyclic--shove tens of thousands of the dorkiest people on the planet together in one place and suddenly it's extremely cool to be a dork.
Witnessing jocks mocked by mobs of people dressed as anime characters or with T-shirts bearing clever jokes (incomprehensible to anyone who hasn't taken several years of physics) is just too priceless to put into words. All the local restaurants and hotels are dominated by us. At least one of the local sports bars (The Ram) has embraced their fate: instead of football games, they show Lord of the Rings marathons and they have an entire page in their menu devoted to RPG-themed entrees. Anywhere within a mile of the convention, if you eavesdrop on random passersby, more often than not you will hear the words "hit points" or "Evangelion" or "jedi" or "Bush sucks donkey balls."
and if that doesn't make you want to turn to the dark side, I invite you to consider these two words:
chainmail bikinis
There are really quite a lot of girls at Gencon, and a staggeringly large number of them walk around in outfits that outright defy the laws of physics. And anyone who doubts the attractiveness of gamers obviously hasn't seen duct tape girl in all her glory or that female storm trooper (complete with chest-forming, middrift showing stormtrooper armor) from last year.
Chances are their IQs are actually larger than that of a boiled turnip, too...
Decogestants and diet pills contain ephedrine or psuedo-ephedrine--are stimulants and precursors to amphetimine, but by no means are they the same chemical. If they had very similar effects, then people would be smoking cold pills instead of spending hours scraping red phosphate off of matches and doing all kinds of dangerous acetone extractions in order to turn their ephedrine into meth.
Of course, some people do chug straight cough syrup, but that's usually for the DXM, a dissociative hallucinogen similar to (but much more dangerous than) ketamine.
...I'm beginning to think I know way too much about this shit.
Compliant judges? Rewriting the constitution? Ok, this whole scenario is implied by your "open society." If you open society would still require police to obtain judicial approval to obtain wiretaps, then 99% of the dangers I'm talking about here are moot and I've completely misunderstood what you've meant by open. This entire conversation took place in the context of an article granting vast (and potentially unlimited by judicial review) surveillence powers to the police, and in reply to a satirical post highlighting the importance of personal privacy, so I'm not sure how else I should read your comment.
You are the one (apparently) advocating rewriting the constitution, and under this rewrite judges would be entirely irrelevant... those same judges who are supposed to PREVENT the police chiefs from being too zealous.
If you believe that this massive and passive surveillence technology (very badly disguised as a 911 service) is useful to our LEAs, but it should be restricted a case-by-case, judicially approved (i.e. a warrant) basis, then that's cool. Perhaps you should have mentioned that in the first place, instead of blithely saying that our society needs to be more open.
But if you believe that the police should have this and similar types of surveillence without any sort of judicial approval or limitations, than you are indeed rewriting the constitution and opening the door to all of the catastrophes I have mentioned.
I was just defending the grandparent's original comparison of terrorism spending vs. heart disease research. The fact is even without a comprehensive "war on heart disease", even if you just gave the money to the researchers and said "have at it", you'd likely save more lives by at least one order of magnitude.
If you prioritized the problems of and threats to our way of life and worked out comprehensive solutions, you could likely save a thousandfold more.
You don't seem to understand what a truly "open" society entails. Long before you engage in any sort of rebellion, you will be pegged as a potential dissident. If LEAs have the power to keep tabs on all American citizens, you can bet your ass they will. Complex search algorithms combined with the power of statistics means that you will not be able to visit websites or check out books or buy periodicals (unless you use hard cash every time) that are opposed to a current law without being labelled a potential criminal. If some of the new "always-on" wiretap measures are enacted, they may even be able to use voice recognition technology (and I'm sure the NSA has much more reliable voice recognition compared to whatever you can get at your local Best Buy) and then you won't even be able to talk about it on the phone, either. A couple billion dollars later, and there are microphones in every public place and you won't be able to talk about your ideas in public, either.
This sounds like an unrealistic nightmare, but if you give the police the constitutional ability to conduct unlimited warrantless surveillence and the money to set up these systems, you can bet your ass that it'll happen. No one will think about them, most won't even realize that they're being watched, but the moment you cross the line from talking about how a law is bad to actually breaking it, they will swoop in from the shadows and you will be imprisoned. Organized resistence is nigh impossible, even if it's 100% legal resistence (and remember, 100% legal resistence is often quite ineffective. Both Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. advocated breaking the law.) Even if you take care not to break the law you're protesting, if the FBI or the local police cheif does not agree with you, he can just dig through the (now enormous) paper trail on every single person in your group and find a minor crime or potential crime to arrest them. It could be as asinine as saying "I'm going to kill you!" in jest to your wife over the phone, but they could very well arrest you for assault and then claim later that it was just a misunderstanding.
Maybe it all sounds unrealistically evil, but it inevitably happens because those people who are cutthroat and cold enough to do shit like will inevitably rise to the top of the law enforcement food chain simply because they're not afraid to use such methods for personal advancement. Power begets power, and you must assume that all power will be abused to some extent. You cannot ever get rid of this problem entirely, but you must take care to limit the damage. "Open" society plus todays technology is a recipe for near unlimited power in the hands of fallible, corruptable humans.
Whatever advantage the information age brings to the dissidents will be nullified if an uppity police cheif tells his parking enforcers to concentrate their efforts on giving them tickets and his highway patrol to pull them over for random searches and mails out letters informing the community that they have a potential lawbreaker in their midst. This isn't unrealistic, because I know for a fact that it happened as late as the 70's in my county (mob corruption. Basically, some people would just find piles of parking tickets on their cars every day, even if they were legally parked.) The police can bend the law at will (or break it entirely, if they know the ins and outs of their own surveillence systems.) The dissidents cannot.
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I have no doubt that militaries around the world have experimented with (and perhaps even deployed) sentry guns, but this is something any halfway intelligent thug with an old computer and a AK-47 can throw together. I could see some very powerful uses for this in guerilla warfare, gang warfare, and for drug runners. For a few hundred bucks (less if they steal the supplies), these guys can protect their turf, protect their stash, set up ambushes for their rivals, etc.
Also, I highly doubt people will ever grow complacent during my lifetime. September 11 is so infamous it far overshadows even Pearl Harbor, and people still obsess over Pearl Harbor to this very day. It will be one hundred years before this memory begins to fade (possibly much more), and by then I suspect that the situation in the Middle East will be changed one way or the other. (For one, they'll run out of oil before then. We may still be using oil extracted using more advanced techniques, but these techniques can be used perfectly well right here in North America, so there will be no reason to rely on the Middle East for oil anymore, and that WILL change the economic and political climate quite a bit.)
At any rate, having the ability for pilots get earlier and better information cannot be a bad thing.
Yes it can be a bad thing, because every dollar spent on this worthless scheme is a dollar that could be spent on cancer research or better weapons for our troops or safer highways or backscatter X-Ray (which can detect plastic knives and may be able to detect certain metal-free bombs), etc.
As I said before, if all they want to do is crash the plane then they merely need to smuggle on enough high explosive to either take out the cockpit or breach a fuel tank. They go to the bathroom, light a 30-second fuse, then run like hell (or casually walk over) to the cockpit door or a window overlooking the wing. Trying to take over the plane requires being alive and unhindered by the crew and passengers. Blowing up the plane merely requires that the terrorist be in location X when the bomb goes off, and that really isn't hard to do.
Better cockpit doors and better door locks are all we need for better security vs. potential hijacking. The terrorist will be dead or subdued long long LONG before he manages to break through the reinforced cockpit door. Any other security measures taken, inasmuch as we NEED more security measures (personally, I think the money could be better spent elsewhere), should focus on security vs. suicide bombers.
Most of the terrorists were here legally, so I think that the REAL threat is in allowing visitors/immigrants from the middle east at all. Whether or not it's a threat we should eliminate (and risk fostering more xenophobia and ill will) is debatable. Personally, I don't think it's possible to be truly secure without compromising our ideals (either of freedom, or of diversity and immigration--"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.") We've pissed off a lot of people in that region of the world, but it's still within our means to take away their motivation to fight us. Pull out all visible military presence (but leave behind intelligence operatives) and stop blindly supporting Israel in the UN and we'll probably never see another Muslim terrorist attack. Sucks for Israel, but they knew what they were getting into (at least they should've) when they decided to settle there.
Selling your customers a physical object is a privilege, not a right. If you want to tell us exactly where and how we can use your product, then you are no longer SELLING us anything at all and we should be required to actually sign a contract stating that we will only play your CD in approved devices.
It's so lovely how music is considered a physical property by the RIAA and its goons whenever it suits them (file sharers are STEALING our music! Every download represents loss of revenue!), yet other times consider it to be some draconian implied contract (oh, you think you OWN that CD? You think you actually have the right to do whatever you want with it and play it on whichever device you have handy? Hah!)
I didn't download the video (feeling benevolent today), but that's pretty harsh, even if he was an annoying little brat. I shot myself with a $1.90 plastic airsoft at about 3' away. just to see what it felt like, and the answer was yes, it hurts like hell. It was a half an hour before the stinging stopped and I had a huge angry red welt for several days.
On a completely unrelated note, if it works for airsoft there's no reason why it can't work with real bullets. Obvious safety and legal issues aside, I get the feeling that someone somewhere is going to build a genuine honest-to-god automated gun turret. Maybe a relatively sophisicated gang or drug ring...
If a terrorist wants to blow up the plane, he'll smuggle on a metal-free fuse-detonated bomb (like the shoe bomber) and he'll blow it up from the toilet (unlike the rather foolish shoe bomber.) This device doesn't matter at all if all the terrorist is trying to do is take down the plane. Indeed, nothing short of mandatory strip searches can stop this sort of attack.
As for hijackings, you don't need to worry about it because IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN. I can't believe people still think that terrorists will try again to hijack a commercial airliner and use it as a missile--it was a one-time trick and it will NEVER work again. If you want proof of this, you need look no farther than United Airlines Flight 93. ONE HOUR after the first plane hit the trade center, the passengers of the Pennsylvania flight decided not to let the terrorists keep control of the plane. Despite the fact that the terrorists had already taken control in the cockpit and should have had a significant tactical advantage, the passengers were able to overwhelm them and force them to abort the mission. Had the passengers acted earlier, they would have never even made it to the cockpit. A few passengers may have died, but NO ONE can stand against dozens or hundreds of passengers stampeding them in close quarters.
Our mindset has changed now, and not a single person in the USA, from a seven year old boy to a ninety year old grandmother, is stupid or cowardly enough to let someone hijack the plane. This device is pointless, because no potential hijacker will ever made it to the cockpit ever again.
I agree that user behavior always matters, but you don't seem have a very good grasp of *nix security.
On Linux, there's no need for a typical user to ever run as root. UNLIKE Windows, 99.9% of Linux stuff actually works without admin/root privs. Users might occasionally need to use sudo in order to install programs, but as long as the distribution pops up a little notice telling them that this is probably the ONLY time they should use sudo and they should never run a program claiming otherwise unless they understand why, they will be safe.
The requirement of a password in order to use sudo plus apt-get package management makes malware propogation about 1000x harder, even for the lusers." There's no reason why package management has to be limited to free OSS--I've seen dummy packages for commercial projects. Thus, using repositories and checksums it is possible for the distro to PERSONALLY CHECK AND VALIDATE ANY PIECE OF SOFTWARE YOU INTEND TO INSTALL. Known malware will, of course, be excluded from the package list. As long as users are trained to always use an apt package manager (like Synaptec) to install applications, they will be protected.
So, in summary: there's no need to run as root. Password prompts for sudo prevents applications from installing themselves, and a very small amount of user training ("The package manager is used to install things. It is the only program that EVER needs your password. Do not give your password to any other program.") prevents users from installing the malware themselves. I agree that you can be reasonably safe in XP SP:2, but it requires third-party software (antivirus, and arguably a better firewall) and it requires much more user training... and you STILL aren't quite as secure as you are on Linux.
I did not mean to imply that user friendliness and security were contradictory or maintained an inverse relationship. I simply meant that useability for the absolute beginner is the number one priority for Windows (and security is a mere afterthought), whereas for *nix security is generally not compromised for usability (or if it is, not nearly to the extent that it is with Windows.) Maybe OS X has the best of both worlds; I don't know, I haven't had the opportunity to use it yet.
You're ALMOST right. My belief is based on the fact that I have to type in my password before launching ANY AND EVERY process that has the ability to modify my system files. And yes, that does make it secure by design.
On top of that, firewalls are enabled by default, it isn't REQUIRED that you log in as root for most apps (unlike Windows admin account, which is a joke), horrible ideas like ActiveX are generally shot down long before they're implemented, etc. Yeah, these things are no match for complacency and user stupidity, but all things being equal the Linux box will almost always be harder to crack.
Sugar coat it however you want, but using any version of Windows is by far the single largest security risk, period. Partially this is because Windows is the predominant desktop OS, but it is also because *nix is generally secure by design, whereas Windows is user friendly by design.
If you install Windows, you are making a conscious decision to open yourself up to a plethora of attacks that simply aren't possible on any other platform. Maybe the benefits outweigh the risks, but don't pretend that the risk isn't there or that it's some outdated joke.
Katrina did cause a lovely $0.30-$0.40 spike, but prior to this unleaded (at least in my area) was still rising at a very brisk pace. We went from just over $2/gallon to $2.55 in the span of just a month or two, and before that there was another (slower) climb from $1.50 to $2. And it's not like $1.50 is a really low number to start with. Nine years ago, I remember the price in my area (east central Florida) was as low as $0.85/gallon.
My point is, gas prices were stable in the early 90s, but they've been rising steadily for years and have hit a major spike in recent months. +$0.50 in two or three months is pretty huge. Katrina is not the primary cause; she just exacerbated the situation.
By the time the refineries reach full capacity again, I bet it'll be too late to reel the prices back under $3/gallon.
Bullshit. If I was so inclined, I could sit down and burn 500 copies of Metallica's last album. I wouldn't even consider buying one of them, let alone 500. If those 500 copies just sit in my basement, then how can you possibly justify such a blanket statement? Where has Metallica lost any money?
A more down to earth example: I'm very poor at the moment. I have $9.13 in my bank account and lint in my wallet. With bills and creditors and obscene gas prices, there is no way in HELL I would consider buying a CD right now. So yeah, I've downloaded a couple albums. One or two of them I will probably buy, when I have the money again. Some of them I will not buy, and I would not have bought them anyway. Even if I didn't have the option of downloading music, under no circumstances would I be buying CDs at the moment... I'd make do with the CDs I already have and the radio.
It's one thing to suggest that piracy as a whole costs artists money (though this is very debatable. I'd claim that it only costs the high-profile artists money, and actually helps out the small artists. Personally, I care more about supporting independant artists than making sure Britney has enough zeros on her check, but that's just my opinion), but to suggest a 1:1 correlation of copyright infringment and loss of a sale is, franky, pure stupidity. My friend at UF has only a little more money than me, and last I checked he literally had 50+ gigs of music...
I don't deny that marketing influences people, but you said that you *really* wanted to see The Forty Year Old Virgin now because marketing told you it was funny. You also said that this desire would in all likelihood disappear four months from now.
I don't see how you can actually say that and have it remain true. What I mean is, how can you just accept that? How can ALL desire to see the movie disappear simply because the hype went away? Some of the best movies I've ever seen I've seen months or years after they were released. I get just as excited about them, and it's not a problem talking about them with my friends regardless whether they've already seen it or not. Once you acknowledge the (over)hype and its power over you, I don't really see how or why you would let it continue to control you. It's hollow. It doesn't make the movie any better in any way, shape or form... and there are plenty of non-hyped ways you can research a movie (amazon.com, IMBD, Rotten Tomatoes, etc.)
Yes, I suppose the four-month cooling off period does you a favor, but that only serves to reenforce my point. It's a crying shame that more people have watched (random example) Catwoman than have watched Memento. If you wasted money on the former, and then saw the latter, I don't see why you would let marketing sway your actions (and you pocketbook) that much ever again. Yes, marketing will always have a subconscious effect, and yes it does help if you've actually heard of the movie in question (I won't be too surprised if you've never heard of Memento), but there's a HUGE difference between "Hmmm, that looks interesting, I will have to check it out" and "OMG OMG I MUST SEE IT NOW" & (four months later) "Meh, haven't seen a commercial for it in a while, who cares?"
Sorry if I came off sounding a little insulting, but what you're saying is downright disturbing. I'd be one thing if you used phrases like "somewhat more likely" or "misled by critics", but you spoke in near-absolutes, and you didn't even mention the real quality of the movie at all. You spoke as if the movie itself is a mere afterimage of the entire marketing/hype "experience", and I'm sorry but that's just ass-backwards. The Matrix had tons of hype and it was awesome. The Matrix: Revolutions had tons of hype and it sucked nuts. Memento had little hype and it was breathtaking. Pi had little hype and it was (IMO) pretentious, over-stylized, and boring.
It's not a matter of being affected by marketing; it's a matter of being downright controlled by it, recognizing and admitting that you're controlled by it, and then lamenting that lately it's been failing to control you thoroughly enough. I'm not sure if I can be any clearer than that.
/rant
Obviously you're new to the concept of class action lawsuits. The corporation may or may not lose big (witness the record labels that were "forced" to give their customers $5 off coupons as punishment for price-fixing. This laughable settlement may have actually made them more money), but the customer NEVER wins.
The only ones who invariably come out ahead are the lawyers.
So let me get this straight:
You're frustrated that DVDs come out so much later after the hype because the hype is your only reason for wanting to see the movie in the first place... and your ideal solution to this is for them to release the DVD immediately, in the middle of the "marketing fog", so that you will be compelled to go out and spend money on something that you would admitedly NOT have bought of your own free (unmarketed) will.
Wow. Just wow.
Maybe I'm alone in this, but the PRIMARY reason why buy or go to see a movie is because I think that it may be good, not because the man in the magic glowing box tells me to go watch them. The fact that you actually desire the man in the glowy box to tell you what to do because you can't do it without him is nothing short of terrifying.
I think that the grandparent answers you very nicely. What if they are planning on using wireless net, dark fiber, and Google talk to launch a "free" (only pay the cost of phone) alternative to cellular in all of the major metropolitan markets? Talk about a revolution...
But this is a war they would definitely not want to fight head-on. If the cell companies cannot kill it legally (and you can bet their lobbyists would try), they would simply copy them.
Look at how Gmail took the internet by storm, look at how much ground they gained while their competitors struggled to play catchup. How effective would their Gmail coup have been if they had announced it years before it was ready?
Don't get me wrong, I don't advocate unconditional trust of any for-profit corporation, but I find nothing odd or wrong or evil about their development process being kept secret. On the contrary, if Google really is committed to being non-evil, keeping their products a secret until launch may well be the only way in which they can remain competitive.
Oh come on. There are literally thousands upon thousands of games that you can join. Want prizes? I can think of at least a dozen events offhand that offered some form of prize. Want a completely unique, personal, completely-devoid-of-any-trace-of-commericialism game? Make some new friends and strike up a game in the hotel room or on the floor of one of the less-crowded hallways.
I don't exactly like all of the commericalism either. The ticket policies are downright Nazi-ish (no refunds, no replacements, period. Does not matter if it's lost in the mail, like mine was. Even though they have computer record that you paid for that ticket, even if you show them the credit card you used to buy it and your driver's license, they will still force you to spend another $70.) The D&D Open modules are riddled with errors and it takes place in a setting that few gamers use, all because WotC wants to use it as a marketing vehicle. Depending on your tastes, it's also not too difficult to spend a small fortune on event tickets, too. Don't get me wrong, True Dungeon is the greatest thing since sliced bread, but do they really need to charge $19 a head? That's on top of whatever they made off of their True Dungeon tavern (brilliant idea) this year. They've even got this slave-labor thing going on where you can volunteer for 8 hours and get in free, even if the tickets are already sold out. Volunteering to help put together a cool game that everyone can enjoy is one thing, but volunteering just to make someone else obscenely rich... hell, Gencon LLC does that on an even bigger scale, conning DMs to come work for them by paying for their hotel rooms, plane tickets, and/or Gencon badge. It sounds like a good deal until you realize that you're working at least ten hours a day ALL FOUR DAYS and missing all of the events you wanted to actually attend and oh by the way, you still end up losing money on your meals even if they do cover everything else.
So, erm, yeah, I guess my point is that I agree that all the commercialism is bad, but I don't think that Gencon is dead. The community itself is awesome, most of the events are sponsored by small-time companies, and I think a lot of them really pour their heart and soul into their work.
I never attended when it was still at Milwaukee, but by all accounts Gencon simply outgrew the city. Shops closed up insanely early (6 or 7 PM) and there were few 24 hour restaurants. The hotels, restaurants and retailers Indianapolis simply make more of an effort to welcome Gencon and its attendees.
Mock us all you want, but the day you set foot in the Indianapolis convention center is the day you will finally realize that dorkiness scale is actually cyclic--shove tens of thousands of the dorkiest people on the planet together in one place and suddenly it's extremely cool to be a dork.
Witnessing jocks mocked by mobs of people dressed as anime characters or with T-shirts bearing clever jokes (incomprehensible to anyone who hasn't taken several years of physics) is just too priceless to put into words. All the local restaurants and hotels are dominated by us. At least one of the local sports bars (The Ram) has embraced their fate: instead of football games, they show Lord of the Rings marathons and they have an entire page in their menu devoted to RPG-themed entrees. Anywhere within a mile of the convention, if you eavesdrop on random passersby, more often than not you will hear the words "hit points" or "Evangelion" or "jedi" or "Bush sucks donkey balls."
and if that doesn't make you want to turn to the dark side, I invite you to consider these two words:
chainmail
bikinis
There are really quite a lot of girls at Gencon, and a staggeringly large number of them walk around in outfits that outright defy the laws of physics. And anyone who doubts the attractiveness of gamers obviously hasn't seen duct tape girl in all her glory or that female storm trooper (complete with chest-forming, middrift showing stormtrooper armor) from last year.
Chances are their IQs are actually larger than that of a boiled turnip, too...
*would not be
Decogestants and diet pills contain ephedrine or psuedo-ephedrine--are stimulants and precursors to amphetimine, but by no means are they the same chemical. If they had very similar effects, then people would be smoking cold pills instead of spending hours scraping red phosphate off of matches and doing all kinds of dangerous acetone extractions in order to turn their ephedrine into meth.
...I'm beginning to think I know way too much about this shit.
Of course, some people do chug straight cough syrup, but that's usually for the DXM, a dissociative hallucinogen similar to (but much more dangerous than) ketamine.
Compliant judges? Rewriting the constitution? Ok, this whole scenario is implied by your "open society." If you open society would still require police to obtain judicial approval to obtain wiretaps, then 99% of the dangers I'm talking about here are moot and I've completely misunderstood what you've meant by open. This entire conversation took place in the context of an article granting vast (and potentially unlimited by judicial review) surveillence powers to the police, and in reply to a satirical post highlighting the importance of personal privacy, so I'm not sure how else I should read your comment.
You are the one (apparently) advocating rewriting the constitution, and under this rewrite judges would be entirely irrelevant... those same judges who are supposed to PREVENT the police chiefs from being too zealous.
If you believe that this massive and passive surveillence technology (very badly disguised as a 911 service) is useful to our LEAs, but it should be restricted a case-by-case, judicially approved (i.e. a warrant) basis, then that's cool. Perhaps you should have mentioned that in the first place, instead of blithely saying that our society needs to be more open.
But if you believe that the police should have this and similar types of surveillence without any sort of judicial approval or limitations, than you are indeed rewriting the constitution and opening the door to all of the catastrophes I have mentioned.
I was just defending the grandparent's original comparison of terrorism spending vs. heart disease research. The fact is even without a comprehensive "war on heart disease", even if you just gave the money to the researchers and said "have at it", you'd likely save more lives by at least one order of magnitude.
If you prioritized the problems of and threats to our way of life and worked out comprehensive solutions, you could likely save a thousandfold more.
You don't seem to understand what a truly "open" society entails. Long before you engage in any sort of rebellion, you will be pegged as a potential dissident. If LEAs have the power to keep tabs on all American citizens, you can bet your ass they will. Complex search algorithms combined with the power of statistics means that you will not be able to visit websites or check out books or buy periodicals (unless you use hard cash every time) that are opposed to a current law without being labelled a potential criminal. If some of the new "always-on" wiretap measures are enacted, they may even be able to use voice recognition technology (and I'm sure the NSA has much more reliable voice recognition compared to whatever you can get at your local Best Buy) and then you won't even be able to talk about it on the phone, either. A couple billion dollars later, and there are microphones in every public place and you won't be able to talk about your ideas in public, either.
This sounds like an unrealistic nightmare, but if you give the police the constitutional ability to conduct unlimited warrantless surveillence and the money to set up these systems, you can bet your ass that it'll happen. No one will think about them, most won't even realize that they're being watched, but the moment you cross the line from talking about how a law is bad to actually breaking it, they will swoop in from the shadows and you will be imprisoned. Organized resistence is nigh impossible, even if it's 100% legal resistence (and remember, 100% legal resistence is often quite ineffective. Both Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. advocated breaking the law.) Even if you take care not to break the law you're protesting, if the FBI or the local police cheif does not agree with you, he can just dig through the (now enormous) paper trail on every single person in your group and find a minor crime or potential crime to arrest them. It could be as asinine as saying "I'm going to kill you!" in jest to your wife over the phone, but they could very well arrest you for assault and then claim later that it was just a misunderstanding.
Maybe it all sounds unrealistically evil, but it inevitably happens because those people who are cutthroat and cold enough to do shit like will inevitably rise to the top of the law enforcement food chain simply because they're not afraid to use such methods for personal advancement. Power begets power, and you must assume that all power will be abused to some extent. You cannot ever get rid of this problem entirely, but you must take care to limit the damage. "Open" society plus todays technology is a recipe for near unlimited power in the hands of fallible, corruptable humans.
Whatever advantage the information age brings to the dissidents will be nullified if an uppity police cheif tells his parking enforcers to concentrate their efforts on giving them tickets and his highway patrol to pull them over for random searches and mails out letters informing the community that they have a potential lawbreaker in their midst. This isn't unrealistic, because I know for a fact that it happened as late as the 70's in my county (mob corruption. Basically, some people would just find piles of parking tickets on their cars every day, even if they were legally parked.) The police can bend the law at will (or break it entirely, if they know the ins and outs of their own surveillence systems.) The dissidents cannot.