"Hi, I'm an expert on how to find hidden complex security holes. I'm someone who has a history of making money by selling information about vulnerabilities in the kernel. Would you like to add my patch to the kernel that I developed so it will appear in all future kernels? I promise you can trust me that I didn't add a new exploit of my own to the patch with the goal of getting it propigated to every linux user a few years down the road - really...honest...."
Disregard him? No - But accept his patches? Hell No.
This is of course predicated upon the notion that the unevidenced assertion made up above about selling vulnerabilities is correct - which is itself suspect.
The things you say about hiring people is true, but completely ignores the reasons why insecure systems get made. They get made because security was not a top priority. Even the most competent person in the world is still not going to optimize for security if doing so gets rid of functionality that the boss says is mandatory. Most of Microsoft's security holes have come from logically using the features they put in place, in a way that fits perfectly with how they were meant to be used. Windows was made with remotely executable content as a goal, becuase it makes things "easy". That goal is not compatable with the goal of security.
The real problem is that for every one person complaining about a legitimate problem, there are oodlees of trolls complaining about made up bogus problems of inflated importance. If you're in a position of a kernel maintainer, you probably have to deal with volumes of that kind of claptrap. Thus if you don't know the submitter, it's going to be hard to identify quickly that he's not just another annoying troll.
No. It also includes people using religion as an excuse to kill, regardless of whether it's a religion they personally adhere to or not. (Otherwise it would be impossible to tell who is and is not killing in the name of religion, unless you could read minds.)
That makes it worse, not better. If corporations are blameless if they commit a criminal act, and individuals can only be blamed for crimes that they committed directly, then there isn't an entity to blame when the corporation, as a large group, does a criminal act. (For example, if Union Carbide, not through an individual act, but through the sum of the actions of many people within the corporation, ends up committing mass negligent homicide by releasing poison gas near a residential population, it's not a matter of statute, not a matter of civil lawsuits, but a matter of criminal behavior - or at least it WOULD be if the same thing was done by a single individual. Union Carbide got a fine. An individual would have gotten a massive prison term.
The public doesn't give a crap what the MPAA supports.
True - they only give a crap about what they can find in stores. It's just that the two are the same exact thing. Downloading was, and will continue to be, done by a minority of the marketplace.
The communist manifesto says nothing about what kind of government the worker class will have - only that it will be them that's in charge. While I agree with you that following the manifesto can only result in dictatorship, I don't agree that this is what is actually predicted by the manifesto. The manifesto suffers from naivete, not from deliberate desire to set up a dictatorship.
I don't want my doctors to be trailer park trash who only took the jobs for the money. I want my doctors to be people who will do the job because it's what they want to do. There are many failings of communism, but that wasn't one of them. (The problem was not that people weren't paid much for what the did. The problem was that people didn't have the freedom to choose their job quite as much, so your doctor might not be someone doing it because he is both qualified and enthusiastic about it - he might be doing it because he is qualified but not enthusiastic, but the government noticed that and "suggested very strongly" that he train to be a doctor.)
The communist form of government had little to do with killing people. It ultimately fell victim to a human trait called greed.
The relevant difference betwene communism and capitalism is that communism ONLY works if nobody is greedy, while capitalism accepts that people are greedy and tries to work with that brutal fact and make something useful out of it.
If the system ONLY works when everyone is perfect, then it's a broken system.
During the spanish inquisition, population density was much, much lower. If you measure mass killings by numbers killed, then whatever happens to be most modern at the time will always "win". Hundreds of years ago, 40,000 was the population of a major city. Today a major city has millions.
I'm not convinced the US is truly capitalist anymore. Capitalism does NOT mean companies paying the government to make laws designed to hinder new upstart competitors. The government helping companies to stay running which would otherwise have fallen down is not capitalism.
The old DVDs don't need to be outlawed - just not suported anymore by the MPAA - that's all it would take for the new format to take over. If using the old format is only possible with previously released movies, then people will start switching.
You overestimate the intelligence of the public. As long as companies continue to lie, and people continue to be gullable, they won't realize that these are in fact "silly stunts".
Because it is physically impossible to put a corporation in prison for a couple of years, treating corporations as if they were individuals gives them all the rights of individuals, but not all the responsibilities of individuals. Corporations breaking the law do not face the same risk of punishment as individuals do. For them it's "Is this infraction worth the risk of a fine?", whereas for actual living, breathing people, the deterrent is "Is this infraction worth the risk of several years of prison?"
Well, with fictional literature I agree, since it's not trying to make claims about facts about the universe. But with philosophy and religion I do not agree. They are merely dealing with unknown objective things, not subjective things. Whether or not god created the universe, for example, is in fact an objective issue (It cannot be simultaneously true and false) - it's just one that we don't know the answer to it yet (and likely never will).
Not to sound like a broken record, but: "subjective" means all opinions are equally correct. Therefore there is a difference between something that is objective yet unknown as opposed to something that is subjective. Whether or not a particular music band is good is subjective. You can say "it is good" and I can say "it sucks" and we can both be correct. Whether or not the Chineese were the first to invent gunpowder is objective yet not known with certainty. You might say "yes" and I might say "no", and we might not know who's right yet, but we do know it is not possible for our contradictory positions to be simultaneously correct, and that is what makes it be an objective issue.
Again, you confuse "subjective" with "objective yet unknown". They are not the same thing. Admitting that you can be wrong does not mean the subject is subjective. In fact, it means the exact opposite. If it is possible to be proven wrong in the future, that's only because the topic IS objective. Subjective topics are ones where all opinions are equally correct.
I wasn't fooled by hollywood. But others are, and since I live in a culture that includes those that are, I am affected by those lies. Just like I'm affected by the bible even though I don't believe it, because others who *do* believe it make up a large part of this country I live in, and I have to live with them and their politics.
Deception is detrimental, regardless of whether I personally buy into it or not.
Slashdot Mirror
"Hi, I'm an expert on how to find hidden complex security holes. I'm someone who has a history of making money by selling information about vulnerabilities in the kernel. Would you like to add my patch to the kernel that I developed so it will appear in all future kernels? I promise you can trust me that I didn't add a new exploit of my own to the patch with the goal of getting it propigated to every linux user a few years down the road - really...honest...."
Disregard him? No - But accept his patches? Hell No.
This is of course predicated upon the notion that the unevidenced assertion made up above about selling vulnerabilities is correct - which is itself suspect.
The things you say about hiring people is true, but completely ignores the reasons why insecure systems get made. They get made because security was not a top priority. Even the most competent person in the world is still not going to optimize for security if doing so gets rid of functionality that the boss says is mandatory. Most of Microsoft's security holes have come from logically using the features they put in place, in a way that fits perfectly with how they were meant to be used. Windows was made with remotely executable content as a goal, becuase it makes things "easy". That goal is not compatable with the goal of security.
The real problem is that for every one person complaining about a legitimate problem, there are oodlees of trolls complaining about made up bogus problems of inflated importance. If you're in a position of a kernel maintainer, you probably have to deal with volumes of that kind of claptrap. Thus if you don't know the submitter, it's going to be hard to identify quickly that he's not just another annoying troll.
I agree. Now go back and re-read what I originally posted. And then what do you think the phrase I used would mean - "not supporting the old ones"?
No. It also includes people using religion as an excuse to kill, regardless of whether it's a religion they personally adhere to or not. (Otherwise it would be impossible to tell who is and is not killing in the name of religion, unless you could read minds.)
Yes, and that was a very large signifigant portion of the world population at the time. Today it's not.
That makes it worse, not better. If corporations are blameless if they commit a criminal act, and individuals can only be blamed for crimes that they committed directly, then there isn't an entity to blame when the corporation, as a large group, does a criminal act. (For example, if Union Carbide, not through an individual act, but through the sum of the actions of many people within the corporation, ends up committing mass negligent homicide by releasing poison gas near a residential population, it's not a matter of statute, not a matter of civil lawsuits, but a matter of criminal behavior - or at least it WOULD be if the same thing was done by a single individual. Union Carbide got a fine. An individual would have gotten a massive prison term.
from another story, a guy is getting 25 years for shining a laser pointer
directly at a landing plane's cockpit, and holding it there for several seconds, temporariliy preventing the pilots from seeing anything.
Yeah, sure, sounds totally harmless and accidental to me...
With point #1, you are just plain wrong and that's all there is to it. But with point #2, you make a good point and I retract what I said.
The public doesn't give a crap what the MPAA supports.
True - they only give a crap about what they can find in stores. It's just that the two are the same exact thing.
Downloading was, and will continue to be, done by a minority of the marketplace.
The communist manifesto says nothing about what kind of government the worker class will have - only that it will be them that's in charge. While I agree with you that following the manifesto can only result in dictatorship, I don't agree that this is what is actually predicted by the manifesto. The manifesto suffers from naivete, not from deliberate desire to set up a dictatorship.
I don't want my doctors to be trailer park trash who only took the jobs for the money. I want my doctors to be people who will do the job because it's what they want to do. There are many failings of communism, but that wasn't one of them. (The problem was not that people weren't paid much for what the did. The problem was that people didn't have the freedom to choose their job quite as much, so your doctor might not be someone doing it because he is both qualified and enthusiastic about it - he might be doing it because he is qualified but not enthusiastic, but the government noticed that and "suggested very strongly" that he train to be a doctor.)
The communist form of government had little to do with killing people. It ultimately fell victim to a human trait called greed.
The relevant difference betwene communism and capitalism is that communism ONLY works if nobody is greedy, while capitalism accepts that people are greedy and tries to work with that brutal fact and make something useful out of it.
If the system ONLY works when everyone is perfect, then it's a broken system.
Ignoring, for the moment, that the Inquisition was set up to prevent torture and killing (see my earlier post)
I'll continue to ignore it until it becomes true.
During the spanish inquisition, population density was much, much lower. If you measure mass killings by numbers killed, then whatever happens to be most modern at the time will always "win". Hundreds of years ago, 40,000 was the population of a major city. Today a major city has millions.
A policy of "kill people because they are jewish" is still killing in the name of religion.
An actual nerd would also be technically competent.
I'm not convinced the US is truly capitalist anymore. Capitalism does NOT mean companies paying the government to make laws designed to hinder new upstart competitors. The government helping companies to stay running which would otherwise have fallen down is not capitalism.
The old DVDs don't need to be outlawed - just not suported anymore by the MPAA - that's all it would take for the new format to take over. If using the old format is only possible with previously released movies, then people will start switching.
You overestimate the intelligence of the public. As long as companies continue to lie, and people continue to be gullable, they won't realize that these are in fact "silly stunts".
Because it is physically impossible to put a corporation in prison for a couple of years, treating corporations as if they were individuals gives them all the rights of individuals, but not all the responsibilities of individuals. Corporations breaking the law do not face the same risk of punishment as individuals do. For them it's "Is this infraction worth the risk of a fine?", whereas for actual living, breathing people, the deterrent is "Is this infraction worth the risk of several years of prison?"
Well, with fictional literature I agree, since it's not trying to make claims about facts about the universe. But with philosophy and religion I do not agree. They are merely dealing with unknown objective things, not subjective things. Whether or not god created the universe, for example, is in fact an objective issue (It cannot be simultaneously true and false) - it's just one that we don't know the answer to it yet (and likely never will).
Not to sound like a broken record, but: "subjective" means all opinions are equally correct. Therefore there is a difference between something that is objective yet unknown as opposed to something that is subjective. Whether or not a particular music band is good is subjective. You can say "it is good" and I can say "it sucks" and we can both be correct. Whether or not the Chineese were the first to invent gunpowder is objective yet not known with certainty. You might say "yes" and I might say "no", and we might not know who's right yet, but we do know it is not possible for our contradictory positions to be simultaneously correct, and that is what makes it be an objective issue.
Again, you confuse "subjective" with "objective yet unknown". They are not the same thing. Admitting that you can be wrong does not mean the subject is subjective. In fact, it means the exact opposite. If it is possible to be proven wrong in the future, that's only because the topic IS objective. Subjective topics are ones where all opinions are equally correct.
I wasn't fooled by hollywood. But others are, and since I live in a culture that includes those that are, I am affected by those lies. Just like I'm affected by the bible even though I don't believe it, because others who *do* believe it make up a large part of this country I live in, and I have to live with them and their politics.
Deception is detrimental, regardless of whether I personally buy into it or not.